In How to Get Away With Murder Season 6, prosecutors charged Annalise Keating with several counts of murder and other conspiracy charges stemming from her late husbands death. The charges came as a result of Connor Walsh and Michaela Pratts agreed testimony against their former law professor.

Many fans hate the Keating 2 for taking the deal and turning on Annalise, someone who only tried to help them. Others dont blame the law students as they believe the lawyer is the ringleader and guilty of the charges pressed against her.

Annalise Keating | Ali Goldstein

Annalise Keating charged with several murders

The FBI arrested Michaela Pratt (Aja Naomi King), Connor Walsh (Jack Falahee), and later, Oliver Hampton (Conrad Ricamora), for the murder of their friend and informant, Asher Millstone (Matt McGorry). At a bail hearing, the prosecutors released Oliver, who spontaneously confessed at the hospital.

However, they threatened Connor and Michaela with a life sentence in prison unless they testified against their former professor, Annalise Keating (Viola Davis).

The two took the immunity deal, and the authorities immediately arrested the lawyer, who fled to Mexico under the fake name, Justine. Initially, the prosecutors charged Annalise with possessing false documentation and falsifying her passport.

The courtroom isn't ready. #HTGAWM continues with the final two episodes Thursday. pic.twitter.com/2IqYss7W5Q  How To Get Away ABC (@HowToGetAwayABC) May 2, 2020

However, with the help of her new co-counsel, Tegan Price (Amirah Vann), they found out the prosecution intended to charge her with everything since her late husbands death, including the murders of him, Emily Sinclair, Rebecca Sutter, and witness intimidation of Simon Drake.

Because they are charging her with Sams murder, she knew Michaela and Connor flipped.

Some think Annalise Keating is the mastermind behind everything

Even though the esteemed lawyer did not pull the trigger herself, many fans believe she should be held accountable for the multiple murders as shes the ringleader of the crew.

Additionally, they dont think she deserves the sympathy of fans because she framed Nate Lahey (Billy Brown) for Sams murder. One user listed all of the criminal things Annalise has done, including destroying evidence that would exonerate her client to protect her husband in a murder case.

The lawyer also secretly masterminded the cover-up of Sams murder and forbid Michaela and Connor from involving the authorities. Additionally, she covered up several other murders and has multiple instances of obstruction and witness tampering.

Another fan insists that Annalise drew the Keating 5 members into her web and only did things for her own benefit. The esteemed lawyer also abruptly left everyone to flee to Mexico under a different name.

Finally, one viewer pointed out that Annalise allied herself with the two with the highest body count, and a person doesnt have to kill to face a charge of criminal conspiracy murder such as Charlie Manson.

Many believe Annalise Keating is being treated unfairly

On the other hand, many fans believe Annalise is being mistreated as shes one of the only characters on the show who havent killed anyone. Additionally, they feel as Michaela and Connor are ungrateful because the esteemed lawyer has helped them get out of messes they created, and now theyre turning on her.

Another fan claims Annalise is the least guilty and thinks everything started because of her desire to protect Wes Gibbins (Alfred Enoch). They also believe the kids owe her, for protecting them by any means necessary as everyone would have been in jail by the end of Season 1.

So, are you ready to hear our new ask? #HTGAWM pic.twitter.com/s1xmFTdIiu  How To Get Away ABC (@HowToGetAwayABC) May 1, 2020

Instead, Connor and Michaela are willing to perjure themselves and admit to murders they had no part in only to get Annalise behind bars. While both sides can agree that the lawyer has blood on her hands to some degree, many dont think its fair that shes facing a lifetime in jail for murders she didnt commit.

Additionally, its even more hurtful for some that two people Annalise tried to protect are turning on her to save themselves. How to Get Away With Murder airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. on ABC.
Latyrus Edwards is disabled and has lupus so shes fearful because her husband is slated to return to his factory job at Hyundai near Montgomery with several thousand other workers on Monday.

She feels they must choose between their jobs and their lives.

We dont want to be homeless, she said.

Many workers across Alabama are preparing to return to work this week or face losing unemployment if they opt not to. They face a wide range of risks and individual choices. Several shared with AL.com their diverging feelings on whether their employers are doing enough to keep them safe.

Edwards husband comes in contact with many people on the car assembly line when he picks up cars and drives them off the line. One Hyundai worker has died from coronavirus and she knows others who got the disease.

Its a lot of stress, but I try not to stress, because its a flare up for lupus, she said, adding that they have masks for him to wear and he will give it a try.

Edwards said the return to work should be postponed until case numbers decline. Its all about a dollar, not peoples health, but all about the money."

But some, like Airforce Cyber Security Analyst Tommy Sears, 47, who has been working from home are eager to get back to the office, or the cube farm, as he calls his.

I have little to no fear of it, he said of the coronavirus.

He said he and his wife have not been wearing masks and no one in their home has pre-existing conditions that would put them at risk. I think that the higher-risk groups should have taken more precautions, perhaps stayed home, he said.

Sears said the states shutdown went too far. He added: I dont like being told I have to stay home."

Some lack options, others are eager to get back to work

Daycare worker Tanya Murphy would like to stay home, but she said it is not an option.

Its a risk that, unfortunately, a lot of people have to take to provide for their families, she said.

Murphy, a 32-year-old in Montgomery, has been unable to get through to the states unemployment office since she was furloughed in March. She fears she could catch coronavirus from someone at work and die from it, leaving her kids behind.

She said she doesnt like how the situation is being handled by state officials

I just feel like theyve dropped the ball on a lot of things as far as trying to make sure were all safe and OK, she said.

But to some, the shutdown has already saved lives, and now its time to re-open.

The staying at home was never going to be sustainable economically for more than a few weeks, and weve gone long past that, said Earl Morriss, a 62-year-old land surveyor.

Morriss works at an office in Birmingham where employees will be phased back into regular life.

This is like some really bad vacation, he said, adding that going to the office is just what people do. We dont stay at home and play with the cat and cook lunch every day. Ive been doing it for like 40 years, he said.

Morris said his company has researched safety precautions, such as wearing face masks, limited office use, and possibly one-way hallways for social distancing.

No guarantees

To stylist Amy Vaughn, 33, it is a relief that the governor has not yet reopened salons.

Her son had a bone infection last summer that weakened his immune system, which she worries will put him at risk, and shes also afraid of what coronavirus could mean for herself and her wife.

We could all possibly have an autoimmune disorder, and not know of it, she said. Whos to say you dont have that?

Vaughn says many of her clients work in the ER, and she isnt certain she feels comfortable cutting their hair but also would hate to turn them way.

Lets face it, if medical professionals are getting this covered in all the PPE, how are you going to guarantee me and my clients that were going to be safe? She asked. You cant.

Amy Vaughn cuts a client's hair prior to the coronavirus

Because her wife is working and she is getting unemployment, they are OK financially for now.

But even when salons reopen, she wonders if reduced capacity and added sanitation requirements will slow business beyond what is profitable for her as a commission-based stylist. That profit loss might be another reason to stay home longer with her kids.

I miss my clients. I love my job. Its one of the things I love most in life, she said, adding that, I dont know if I could perform to the best of my ability while feeling anxious the whole time.
Copyright  2020 Albuquerque Journal

To use political jargon, Santa Fe County Treasurer Patrick Varela is termed out and ineligible to run for reelection.

There are three candidates, all Democrats and all with considerable financial experience, vying to fill his position.

One of the candidates, Jennifer Jenn Manzanares, is already in the treasurers office. Shes currently chief deputy treasurer for Santa Fe County, an appointed position.

Manzanares, who prefers to be known as Jenn, has deep roots in the Pojoaque Valley, worked as a tribal liaison for U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Lujan for eight years and has been involved in public service for 24 years.

One of her opponents, Robert Rubin (pronounced Rubeen), is a retired longtime state and county employee who has deep knowledge of New Mexicos tax code. Although he hails from Wagon Mound, he has lived and worked in Santa Fe for 42 years.

Rubin has worked for both the Santa Fe County Treasurers office and the State of New Mexico Property Tax Division for more than 30 years. He currently has a private consulting business to help property owners with tax issues.

Lucinda Marker, a New York City transplant with deep finance experience who was born in Dayton, Ohio, is also seeking the position.

Marker, who was a professional actress, has endured some tough times. She and her husband both were diagnosed with the plague not long after 2000. The couple then went through some ups and downs before her husband died of a rare cancer.

Rubin is sensitive to the burdens of property taxes on senior citizens and pledges to try to bring about tax relief for older property owners, while knowing such help can come about only through the New Mexico State Legislature.

Manzanares, who repeatedly referred to taxpayers as customers, thinks the county needs to up its game on technology to make it easier for out-of-state property owners to file taxes.

On a seemingly contradictory note, she spoke about the difficulty of New Mexico land owners to gain access to government services when they live in a rural part of the state where internet connections are poor.

In a phone interview, she praised the efforts of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham prior to the coronavirus to bring government services to the people with open-house events.

Marker, who lived through the 9/11 crisis in New York City and the health issues of her late husband John Tull, said she feels called to public service by the tenor of the times.

She had considered running for Santa Fe County Commission, but because of her background, in the Santa Fe offices of such finance firms as Davis Select Advisers and Ameriprise Investment Advisors, decided that the county treasurer position might be more aligned with her skills.

Although his emphasis appears to be on tax relief for seniors, Rubin also sees the need for improvement in the treasurers online website. In a letter that he has been dropping off in his community, he called for more thorough information, as well as a user-friendly inquiry and payment system.

In a telephone interview, Manzanares spoke about her deep roots in the community and her connections with tribal neighbors.

One of these candidates will likely be the countys next treasurer as no one from any other party sought the position.
The Assam government on Sunday announced a statewide curfew between 6 pm and 6 am starting from Monday on all days during the extended lockdown in view of Covid-19 pandemic.

The state governments directive is different from the Union home ministry guidelines issued earlier which proposed curfew from 7 pm and 7 am. While no reason was given for the change, officials said the step was taken as sunrise and sunset in the state happen earlier than other parts of the country.

Directives have been issued to police to take stringent action against curfew violators. Hence, we request everyone to ensure that the restrictions are complied with, Assam health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said while announcing the curfew.

However, pharmacies, media houses, medical establishments, fire services, ambulances and government vehicles on official duty will be exempted from the curfew.

Click here for full Covid-19 coverage.

From Monday, oupatients departments at hospitals, doctors clinics, veterinary clinics, pathological laboratories and standalone shops in rural and urban areas will be allowed to resume services.

Shops in market places will be allowed to open on a 1/3 policy i.e. there should be a gap of two closed shops between two open shops. The rule wont apply for bookstores, grocery shops and pharmacies.

All offices and business establishments will have to close at 5 pm in order to allow employees, customers to reach homes before the 6 pm curfew. Auto-rickshaws, cycle-rickshaws, taxis and private vehicles will be allowed to operate with one driver and a maximum of two passengers.

Two-wheelers will be allowed to ply with pillion riding allowed for women and children below 12 years of age. All construction activities will be allowed to resume with 50% workforce. E-commerce services will also start.

Buses will be allowed to ply within a district and outside with 50% passengers. Tea stalls, juice stalls, restaurants, ice-cream parlours etc. can open but only take away and home delivery will be allowed.

From Monday government and private offices will open with 50% employees. But women employees with children under 5 years of age are not needed to attend office.

Barber shops, saloons, spas, beauty parlours etc. wont be allowed to open, but barbers and beauticians can provide home service. In view of African Swine Fever detected in pigs in Assam, no vehicles carrying livestock will be allowed entry into the state.

All relaxations are only for districts in green zones, but earlier restrictions will continue for red and orange zones. Morigaon, Goalpara, Dhubri and Bongaigaon districts are in orange zone, Sarma said.

We would like to stress that wearing masks and maintenance of social distancing norms will have to be followed. Persons above 65 years and those under 12 years will not be allowed to step out of their homes unless for medical emergencies, he added.

Sarma said that besides the guidelines issues by the state government, the earlier restrictions and relaxations allowed by the Union home ministry will continue to be followed.

Assam has recorded 42 Covid-19 cases so far out of which nine are active cases, 32 have been discharged and one has died.

Earlier in the day, chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal appealed to people to follow lockdown guidelines.

I appeal to the people of Assam to follow the guidelines of the lockdown effectively especially with regards to social distancing, wearing of masks of maintaining hygiene, Sonowal said.

On Sunday, the state government also constituted an eight member economic advisory committee to revive economy.

The committee headed by retired IAS officer Subhash Das would study various aspects of Assams economy and suggest recommendations to boost it through systematic interventions.
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As gloomy as reality has turned out to be lately, between our WFH weeks and anxiety-ridden weekends, sanity calls for some sort of escape that is detached from our current circumstances whatsoever.

And thinking of escape, if there is one thing that has been keeping us afloat the past month and a half, it has to be streaming some good stuff online. Now, given the uncertainties that still loom ahead of us regarding the lockdown and Indias COVID-19 crisis, we decided to create a quick May watch-list that will give us all something to look forward to in the coming days...or weeks.

Here are 6 web shows that you should check out in May.

1. Paatal Lok - Amazon Prime

 Amazon Prime

This grunge, crime-thriller series works best for anyone who savours disillusionment, and finds peace in the bitter truth. Based around a society that sustains itself on class divide and thrives on crime and violence, Paatal Lok is a dark reality check of the discreet societal undercurrents which often lay ignored.



Releases on May 15, 2020.

2. Illegal - Voot Select

 Voot Select

Voot Selects latest original Illegal is a fast-paced legal drama that takes the audience through a narrative which will explore the world of lawyers and seek answers to reveal the true intent behind their battles. Do they give in to the lure of greed, ambition and power or do they fight for fair justice.



Releases on May 12, 2020

3. Mastram - MX Player

 MX Player

A refreshing addition to the list, MX Players Mastram is an adult comedy series set in the 80s. The series traces the story of a writer who struggles to get published, ends up giving in to the demands of the industry and starts writing erotic fantaties. He becomes famous as Mastram and all is well until he falls for a girl who hates this writer. Will Mastram be able to keep his career and love-life afloat? Find out.



Streaming on MX Player.

4. Shark Tank Season 11 - Voot Select

 Voot Select

If you love a good rush of entrepreneurial possibilities and love the idea of working towards financial freedom on your own terms, Shark Tank ought to be on your list. The latest season will see The Sharks - self-made, multi-millionaire and billionaire tycoons - give people a chance to build their dreams by investing in their businesses and products.



Streaming on Voot Select

5. Its A Dogs Life With Bill Farmer - Disney+ Hotstar

 Disney+ Hotstar

If you love anything and everything dogs, make sure you dont miss out on this. Disney+ Hotstars newest offering Its a Dogs Life, hosted by the man behind Goofy and Pluto's voice, Bill Farmer, is a must watch for every dog-lover. The show takes us on a journey where along with Bill, we meet dogs who have incredible jobs which make our lives better.



Releases on May 15, 2020.

6. Hollywood - Netflix

 Netflix

Set in post-WWII Hollywood, this Netflix drama traces the lives of a few aspiring actors and filmmakers who wish to succeed in Hollywood at all cost. Every character offers a sneak peek into Hollywood's Golden Age, highlighting every form of unfairness related to race, gender and sexuality that is at work There is a lot to witness and discover in Hollywood.



Streaming on Netflix.
Bright green-coloured water spewing from a stormwater channel in Sydney has left residents scratching their heads.

A woman filmed the very strange looking water in Rushcutters Bay Park near the citys centre and posted the footage to Facebook last Saturday.

What is this green chemical coming from the sewage system at Rushcutters park? she wrote alongside the clip.

The bright green water seen at Rushcutters Bay Park last Saturday. Source: Facebook

Footage shows groups of people looking at the bright green water with quizzical expressions.

Some Facebook viewers joked the liquid was Mountain Dew or Midori liquor.

Many others insisted it was fluorescein, which is used to check for leaks in stormwater and sewer systems.

Its a non-toxic fluorescein dye. It is used by plumbers and water authorities to trace leaks, one man wrote.

A woman said she had also seen the green water, calling it very strange.

A spokesperson for Woollahra Municipal Council told Yahoo News Australia the area seen in the footage was a stormwater channel owned and operated by Sydney Water.

Sydney Water told Yahoo News Australia it was aware of the bright green water, but said it was a matter for City of Sydney Council.

A City of Sydney spokesperson told Yahoo News Australia stormwater outlets within the park are managed by Sydney Water.

The Citys stormwater network is one water source that feeds into the Sydney Water culverts, the spokesperson said.

Non-toxic tracing dyes can be used by private contractors to check the flow of pipes upstream. The City of Sydney does not use this dye.

Could be highly toxic

There is something very wrong with the quality of the water in the video clip, Dr Ian Wright, a senior lecturer at Western Sydney Universitys School of Science, told Yahoo News Australia on Friday.

The colour could be caused by fluorescein, but could also be a rip-roaring algae bloom, he said.

That colour is a real warning sign, Dr Wright, who used to work for Sydney Water, said.

If its algae, thats a really bad bloom.

Blue-green algae is highly toxic and can cause live damage to people and animals, Dr Wright explained.

Story continues

It can actually kill. It needs to be checked out, he added.s

NSW has recently seen heavy rainfall and warm temperatures, meaning an algae bloom is possible, he said.

Any NSW resident who sees what they believe is pollution in their community is urged to call the EPA hotline on 131 555.

Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@yahoonews.com.

You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and download the Yahoo News app from the App Store or Google Play.
India may have to move the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to gain access to espionage accused Kulbhushan Jadhav after Pakistan failed to comply with the July 2019 order in the case

India may have to move the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to gain access to ex-naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav as Pakistan failed to comply with the July 2019 order in the case, senior advocate Harish Salve said.

Salve was Indias counsel during the hearing of the Kulbhushan Jadhav case in The Hague, Netherlands last year, in which the ICJ had asked Pakistan to undertake an effective review of the conviction and sentence of Kulbhushan Jadhav and asked it to grant consular access to him without further delay.

In an online lecture held on Saturday, Salve said that India was trying to secure access to Jadhav and had sent as many as 23 requests to Pakistan, but had received no response, according to a Times of India report. "We have been trying to persuade Pakistan to let him go. If they want to say they are releasing him on humanitarian grounds, they can do so. We want him back," he Salve said, adding that the case involving the former naval officer has become an ego problem in Pakistan.

Salve also said that India hopes in an effort to release Jadhav, India also hopes that they will be able to persuade Pakistan through the back-channel. We have come this far, they cannot now put him (Jadhav) to death. Our consular officers have to be given access, he said.

India has been doing its best to keep the spotlight on this case, Salve said in response to a question on how it will be ensured that Jadhav does not meet the fate of Sarabjit Singh. "We have kept the glare on this case in the hope that Pakistan will not act worse than it generally does," he said.

Recounting the proceedings of the July 2019 hearing at The Hague, Salve said, Pakistan tried theatrics through power point presentations of his confession. They even claimed that he was given their passport by the government of India. In their FIR, they named the entire Indian security apparatus, including the home minister and intelligence agency heads. But we relied on the Vienna convention where they should have granted us consular access before his confession. We also raised the issue of human rights violation by Pakistan.

Salve also said that India has written to Pakistan asking them for evidence against Jadhav other than a video of his confession, adding that neither the chargesheet, FIR nor the military court judgment has been shared with India. Their domestic courts may find that sufficient. They know if it comes to a fair consideration and a fair trial, they will have no choice but to release him. Someday, we shall have him back in India, he added.

Jadhav was arrested on 3 March, 2016 from the Balochistan province and India was informed about it on 25 March, 2016, when the Pakistan Foreign Secretary raised the matter with the Indian High Commissioner in Islamabad. Meanwhile, India insisted that he was illegally detained from Iran, where he was on a business visit.

Jadhav was sentenced to death on charges of espionage and terrorism in April 2017 and a month later, India approached the ICJ against the Pakistan military courts farcical trial. In January 2018, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval had gently nudged then Pakistan counterpart Nasser Khan Janjua to release Jadhav, Indian Express reported.
Health Canada is restricting the use of a made-in-Canada, rapid COVID-19 test created by Spartan Bioscience after the National Microbiology Lab found problems with the test that made it unreliable.

"In light of the clinical results, Health Canada has placed conditions on the company's authorization to restrict the use of the product to research use only until adequate evidence of clinical performance can be provided," the federal agency said in an emailed statement sent to CBC, after the story was first reported by Le Journal de Montreal.

"The Spartan product can continue to be used for research purposes only."

The portable test was called a "game changer" by health officials because it reportedly could deliver on-location results in under 60 minutes. Further upgrades to the test made by the Ottawa-based company promised to reduce that time down to 30 minutes.

According to Spartan, Health Canada's concerns stem from the efficacy of the swabs the testing unit uses  and not with the machine itself.

Issue with swabs

The company was first informed by Health Canada about the concerns on Friday.

"The same report indicated no concerns regarding the accuracy and analytical performance of Spartan's test reagents and portable DNA analyzer device," said a statement published on the company's website.

The company said it has already shipped out 5,500 tests nationally, but said it's voluntarily recalling the product to perform more clinical tests. Most of those units were delivered to the National Microbiology Lab.

"Spartan will be working as quickly as possible to address the concerns and bring its test to market," the company said.

Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

The federal government had ordered 40,000 tests a month from Spartan.

"While the Spartan system, the device, performed very well in a laboratory setting  along the specification the manufacturer had provided  it was in the clinical setting, the real-life setting, where it didn't perform well," Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada's chief public health officer, said during a news conference Sunday.

Story continues

Canada hopes to begin testing 60,000 people for the virus daily, and Tam said the setback wouldn't affect that goal.

She also said the clinical testing done with the Spartan cube wouldn't have affected the actual diagnoses of any patients.

Dr. Howard Njoo, Canada's deputy chief of public health, said at the same news conference that he hopes the company can make the necessary adjustments so it can be used in a clinical setting in the future.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Sunday that some setbacks are expected, given that the federal government has accelerated the approval process for a number of potentially life-saving devices.

"We've said from the very beginning, that in this unprecedented crisis we needed to move very, very quickly," Trudeau said.

"When we do that quickly, there are going to be new facts that come in and situations that evolve that will require shifts in our postures.... Similarly, provinces will have to adjust to new realities and adjust to successes and challenges as they come up."

Provinces react

Several provinces were planning to use Spartan's portable testing kits.

Quebec had ordered 200,000 tests, which were expected to be delivered on May 31.

The $16-million purchase was conditional upon the approvals of Health Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada and the National Microbiology Laboratory, the province's ministry of health and social services said in an email.

Ontario had also placed an order for more than 900,000 of the kits.

WATCH: Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam talks about reopening Canada:

"We are actively engaging with Heath Canada to obtain clarification," Hayley Chazan, a spokesperson for Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott, wrote in an email.

"Despite Ontario not yet having used the Spartan tests, we are a leader in Canada in daily testing volumes per capita and rank among the top globally."

Alberta Health Services (AHS), which announced a $9.5-million contract with the company in late March, said in an email Sunday it had suspended its evaluation of the testing devices following concerns about the technology's efficacy.

AHS said it had received only a small number of devices to date, and was working to validate them before any use in clinical settings. None of the kits have been deployed for use in Alberta, AHS said.

The company said that provinces have not yet paid in full for the tests they ordered, although some have made a 10 per cent down payment. Spartan said it plans to fulfil all its contractual obligations once the issue with the swab is fixed.

Peter Lin, CBC News medical contributor and family physician, called the setback a "hiccup."

"You just have to change the swab and go through testing again," he said.

Lin said the swabs couldn't reach far enough into a person's nose to properly test for the virus.

"So what happened was that their swab is for your mouth. Therefore, it cannot fit all the way up into your nose, and you have to actually go pretty high up in the nose," the doctor said. "Their swab systems are not able to pick up everything."
We have tried to build a constructive relationship with Representative Jayapal, but that has proven difficult given her seeming lack of interest in getting to know our company and the facts, Mr. Herdener said. For example, she claims to have concerns about employee safety, yet shes declined our invitation to visit a fulfillment center to see for herself, and chose instead to attack us in the media.

Ms. Jayapal, 54, was elected to the House in 2016 after a stint as a state legislator and a career as an activist, jobs that had put her at odds with some of the major companies that call Seattle home.

When I came in, I made a round of calls to everybody, and I said, Look, I know we havent always seen eye to eye, but I represent the district and youre an employer in the district, and I want to hear what you have to say, she said.

She rose to become a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and a prominent voice on the national left.

These days, Ms. Jayapal is hunkered down with her family in Seattle when shes not in the nations capital. The pandemic, she said, has made them more reliant on home deliveries, like groceries from a Seattle food cooperative that works with Instacart. They maintain an Amazon Prime membership for the occasional household purchase.

I do feel some heartburn around inconsistency here with my frustrations around the things Im seeing with some of the workers and then the fact that Im using the service, Ms. Jayapal said.
Dr Benjamin Anyagre, Executive Director of the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute (KNII), said this in an interview that the covid-19 fight should however by no means serve as a source of political competing and rivalry.

He said whilst health workers in Africa were doing their best to curb the pandemic, COVID-19 had exposed certain weaknesses within the governance systems on the continent that needed corrections.

Dr. Anyagre said the pandemic had for example exposed weaknesses in social well fare systems, such as the lack of appropriate data, to facilitate the proper identification of the vulnerable in the society for administrative purposes during a crisis.

He observed that it should for example be possible to identify and distribute food to specific people in the society, without creating chaotic scenarios, if there was a well-established means of doing that.

Dr Anyagre proposed that in the meantime, institutions such as the churches could be involved in helping with the provision of data for governments to manage the concerns of the vulnerable in society.

He said the institutions had knowledge of individuals that belonged to them, and could help with the provision of information to the government.

"The time has come for us to reform our public institutions and systems, and make them more effective, towards confronting events like the COVID-19," Dr. Anyagre said.

---GNA
Mr Antonio Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General, has called for greater protection of journalists providing the antidote to a pandemic of misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 crisis.



Mr Guterres made the appeal in a video message to mark World Press Freedom Day, which was made available to the Ghana News Agency by the UN.



In 1993, the UN General Assembly proclaimed May 3 as World Press Freedom Day following a recommendation adopted at the 26th session of UNESCOs General Conference in 1991.



The Day serves as an occasion to inform citizens of the violations of press freedom.



Mr Guterres reiterated the crucial role media played in helping people to make informed decisions; adding that under the current circumstances, those decisions could make the difference between life and death.



As the pandemic spreads, it has also given rise to a second pandemic of misinformation, from harmful health advice to wild conspiracy theories, he said.



The press provides the antidote: verified, scientific, fact-based news and analysis.



As the COVID-19 crisis has deepened, both the UN Secretary-General and the World Health Organization (WHO) have been focused on countering the COVID-19 infodemic.



It would be recalled that in late March, the Secretary-General announced the launch of a communication strategy to fight the rise in misinformation and conspiracy theories surrounding the new disease.



The UN Secretary-General urged governments to protect journalists and others who work in media, and to uphold press freedom.



He said while temporary movement constraints were essential to beat back COVID-19, they must not be abused as an excuse to crack down on journalists ability to do their work.



Mr Guterres expressed his gratitude to the media for providing facts and analysis; for holding leaders-in every sector-accountable; and for speaking truth to power.



He particularly recognised those journalists playing a life-saving role in reporting on public health.



And we call on governments to protect media workers, and to strengthen and maintain press freedom, which is essential for a future of peace, justice and human rights for all."

Source: GNA









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Chinese diplomats are encouraged to be combative by Beijing, said Susan Shirk, a China scholar and director of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego. The promotion of Mr. Zhao to spokesman and his statement about the U.S. Army signals to everyone in China that this is the official line, so you get this megaphone effect, she said, adding that it makes any negotiations more difficult.

But in the longer run, China is seeding mistrust and damaging its own interests, said Ms. Shirk, who is working on a book called Overreach, about how Chinas domestic politics have derailed its ambitions for a peaceful rise as a global superpower.

As China started getting control over the virus and started this health diplomacy, it could have been the opportunity for China to emphasize its compassionate side and rebuild trust and its reputation as a responsible global power, she said. But that diplomatic effort got hijacked by the Propaganda Department of the party, with a much more assertive effort to leverage their assistance to get praise for China as a country and a system and its performance in stopping the spread of the virus.

In recent days, Chinese state media has run numerous inflammatory statements, saying that Australia, after announcing its desire for an inquiry into the virus, was gum stuck to the bottom of Chinas shoe. Beijing warned that Australia risked long-term damage to its trading partnership with China, which takes a third of Australias exports.

Maybe the ordinary people will say, Why should we drink Australian wine? Eat Australian beef? Chinas ambassador, Cheng Jingye, told The Australian Financial Review. Australias foreign minister, Marise Payne, dismissed Chinas attempt as economic coercion.
The Ratline

Philippe Sands W&N, 20

Rating:

Like the Fuhrer he served with unblinking loyalty, Otto Wachter was an Austrian. But unlike the Austrian corporal  as President Hindenburg derisively called Hitler  Wachter was very much of the officer class.

His father, Josef, a commander in the imperial army, was both ennobled and impoverished after the First World War.

In lieu of wealth, Josef passed on to Otto his nationalism, his antisemitism and his self-regard. These, along with his ambition and organisational skills, made Otto a great success in the eyes of his SS masters, as a governor in occupied Poland; and later, a hunted war criminal.

Like the Fuhrer he served with unblinking loyalty, Otto Wachter was an Austrian. But unlike the Austrian corporal Wachter (above) was very much of the officer class

Ottos story  his rise, precipitous fall and subsequent, thwarted efforts to flee Europe via the Ratline of the title, an escape route to Latin America or the Middle East devised by Nazi sympathisers  is at the centre of this fascinating book.

Yet Otto is not its central character. There are four principals here, and three key relationships.

There is Otto and his scarcely less repellent wife, Charlotte. There is their son, Horst, decent and kind, yet inexorably committed to apologism for his late parents. And theres the author himself, who spends the book trying to bring Horst to the point of acknowledging Ottos culpability.

The key relationship is perhaps that of Horst and Charlotte. That, Sands comes to realise, is where Horsts devotion truly lies.

If Otto is hard to get a grip on as a personality  he is a man of action, most of it atrocious  then in Charlotte we find a monster painted in detail. She is callous, venal, self-pitying, feathering her nest with looted spoils, cosseting her brood while her husband sends other families to slaughter: a portrait of not only the banality, but the domesticity of evil.

Switching between the distant and very recent past, the book is episodic in nature, but this only makes it more compelling.

It combines a mystery with a straight retelling of history  shining a light into one of the less investigated corners of the Nazi era and its aftermath  and a thoughtful inquiry into how we reckon with it.

Small Men On The Wrong Side Of History

Ed West Constable, 20

Rating:

Are conservatives on the way out? Not judging by recent political earthquakes  Brexit, Trump, Boris  if we agree these events were conservative in nature.

But Ed West, like many of the finest Right-wing thinkers, is what the Prime Minister would call a doomster and a gloomster. He thinks conservatism itself is quite possibly doomed, or will survive only in tiny pockets, and fears this era-defining change.

No wonder hes a glass-half-empty man.

To be conservative, he quotes the philosopher Michael Oakeshott, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, the tried to the untried present laughter to utopian bliss.

Thankfully, there is a lot of laughter in this Eeyorish but highly entertaining book.

It is part memoir, as West charts the dawning realisation through his childhood and young adulthood that he is indeed a woefully uncool conservative. To begin with, he thought he had  in political terms  simply aged faster than his friends, as if conservatism was like baldness or impotence.

But as he moves from being the only Right-wing journalist on a lads mag to a prospective Tory councillor, he realises that his peer group and neighbours arent heading the same way.

So alongside dips into his life story, and an enjoyable history of conservative thought, he issues a stark warning: the world is getting more Left-wing and theres not really much to be done about it.

That old rule about people getting more conservative as they grow older? It simply isnt true any more.

According to research, the percentage of American millennials who see themselves as liberal went from 41 per cent in 2004 to well over half in 2017. Just 15 per cent of them now identify as conservative.

Its a similar story in Britain. In other words, its only a matter of time before so-called progressives hold the whip hand over the rest of us. These are the people who thought Jeremy Corbyn as PM was a good idea.

And they have spent the past few years no-platforming anyone who holds views that depart from politically correct orthodoxy.

They also think traditional values  things to do with faith, flag and family  should be consigned to the dustbin of history. Left-wingery is the new religion and most young people are genuinely committed believers.

There is a temporary antidote to all this, however, in one uplifting passage, when West escapes trendy North London for rural Herefordshire. A break from the ceaseless internet culture wars and the bubble of dinner parties does him the world of good.

He sees another Britain entirely and is reassured by it, even if it seems to be slowly disappearing. Theres a lesson here. When hes next allowed, West should cheer himself up by following Dominic Cummingss recent advice to a BBC journalist  get out of London and stop talking to rich Remainers!

Will Heaven
Mrs Serial Killer

Cast: Jacqueline Fernandez, Manoj Bajpayee, Mohit Raina, Zayn Marie

Direction: Shirish Kunder

Rating: * (one star)

By Vinayak Chakravorty

Some films are bad right from the first shot and, much against your sincerest hopes, things don't get better. Shirish Kunder made one such utterly unbearable film a few years ago, with "Joker". He's done it again with his new feature for Netflix.

"Mrs Serial Killer" aims to be a psycho thriller, and Kunder probably thought of making it because the only film of worth he's ever made so far was "Kriti", a short film that belonged to that genre and garnered much applaud. In "Mrs Serial Killer", he also brings back Manoj Bajpayee, who starred in "Kriti". It's an absolutely wasted casting exercise as the minutes pass, because not even brilliant Bajpayee can save this incoherent mess.

Bajpayee is Mrityunjoy Mukherjee, a successful gynaecologist. A serial killer is on the prowl. Bodies of half a dozen young pregnant girls have been found -- each of them aborted and dismembered. Evidence points at Mrityunjoy, or Joy, and who should be probing the case but Inspector Imran Shahid (Mohit Raina), ex-boyfriend of Joy's wife Sona (Jacqueline Fernandez).

Image Source: IANS Jacqueline Fernandez's unseen avatar in Mrs. Serial Killer wins hearts.

Sona decides Shahid is victimising Joy because he is jealous. That's when Joy's lawyer (Darshan Jariwala) comes up with a bizarre plan. Sona must kill a young pregnant girl in much the same way while Joy is still in jail, so that the cops believe his innocence.

If that brainwave sounds wacky, there's more in store. For her own sake and the script's runtime, Sona doesn't even have to hunt around for her victim. Neighbourhood girl Anushka (Zayn Marie) is just what the narrative ordered.

It is clear where Kunder was coming from. He has obviously been inspired by too many Far East thrillers -- those grizzly gems that have redefined the psycho movie over the years. While the gore factor is substantially lower in "Mrs Serial Killer" than what Korean and Japanese psycho flicks normally hawk, you don't miss trademark of the genre in its grungy camerawork (Ravi K. Chandran and Kiran Deohans) and the moody background score. The film's production design (Shashank Tere) is also impressive. Yet, all the technical gloss get overshadowed by inept storytelling.

Watch the trailer

It doesn't help that almost all actors are essaying half-baked roles. Jacqueline looks like she is either clueless about what she's supposed to do with her title role, or simply too wooden to come up with the right expressions.

Newcomer Zayn Marie gets to impress with an action sequence, but then spends the rest of her footage as a captive tied to a bed. Manoj Bajpayee clearly signed the film for the last half hour or so, which is when he doesn't let his fans down. Most of the others go through the motions of their roles mechanically.

From "Ghost Stories" to "Drive" to "Mrs Serial Killer", Netflix's filmmaking graph in India is only going embarrassingly southwards. The OTT platform needs to reorganise strategy before they are rendered irrelevant.

(Vinayak Chakravorty can be reached at vinayak.c@@ians.in) IANS

vnc/vnc

-- Syndicated from IANS
Actor Joe Pantoliano  best known for his role as mobster Ralph Cifaretto on The Sopranos  is recovering at his Wilton home after he was reportedly hit by a car Friday.

Pantoliano was on a walk around his neighborhood when a T-bone collision reportedly sent one of the cars sliding down the road, hitting Pantoliano, according to Variety.
It would not have come as a surprise to most people when a national survey last week showed an staggering 93% of Indians expressing confidence in Prime Minster Narendra Modis leadership in tackling the coronavirus crisis. In fact, other surveys had shown publics confidence having steadily grown, from 77% at the beginning of the national lockdown over a month ago, to 83% earlier this month.

This was evident to anyone with an ear to the ground, such as the millions of volunteers who have been reaching out to assist those in need, or those who are in touch with many of them to coordinate aid. That confidence was also echoed by the vast majority of domestic and international public health experts monitoring India. Their sentiments were backed by solid evidence of the nation having done remarkably well in managing the pandemic.

Nevertheless, for a group of the usual suspects among international media, and some of their fellow travellers in India, all this might have been happening in a different galaxy. So deeply do they seem vested in purveying bad news about India, that they appeared oblivious to the overwhelming evidence that India was a stunningly positive outlier.

In the early stages, this school of reportage and commentary predicted catastrophe for India. They kept emphasising that since first world nations with superior healthcare systems were in big trouble, India was doomed. Some headlines include Callousness of Indias Covid response; A vulnerable population braces for a pandemic; The consequences (in India) will be especially grim; and even Mr Modi is in big trouble.

Next, as the days went by, they cast doubts on the relatively few infections by hyping the low level of testing. Never mind that their cynicism which should have been corroborated by a severe shortage of hospital beds and ventilators, and a sharp rise in respiratory-related deaths was contradicted by reality. As testing was ramped up dramatically to the hundreds of thousands, and it became clear that far fewer Indians were turning up positive per 100 (IS THIS 1,000?) tests than in Europe and the United States (US), that bogey has mostly been quietly tucked away.

Thereafter, their acknowledgment that India was doing relatively well has been fleeting, and the tone grudging. Some sounded wistful, almost as if hoping that the good news about India were untrue, or if it were, that it would soon be overcome by negative developments. To be sure, the road ahead for Indias fight against the virus will be long and arduous. But while it is not the global medias job to exude undue optimism about India, neither should it be to downplay real achievements and ooze negativism.

Finally, when the doom and gloom failed to materialise, these purveyors of a rigidly-blinkered narrative on India turned to their favourite charge: Islamophobia. They pounced on the developments surrounding the Tablighi Jamaat, and the publics disapproval of its members behaviour, to accuse the Modi government and most Indian media of polarising the situation.

Of course, the reports that made this claim invariably omitted mentioning that the governments rules such as the closure of places of worship were equally applicable to all religions. Or that the PMs repeated appeals to unite people, including asserting that this virus does not see race, religion, caste...we are in this together was exactly the opposite of their allegation. And ironically, even those in the Indian media who went out of their way to be politically correct, more often preferring to use the euphemism single source rather than name the Tablighi Jamaat, were nevertheless accused just the same.

Such jaundiced views about India have gradually become commonplace among far-left, modern liberals within and without the country. Another aspect that stands out among this group is an excessive empathy for China that defies reason and which has eroded their credibility.

That was visible in the hotly-contested debate about the name of this virus. Although originally termed the Wuhan virus and later whitewashed into SARS-CoV-2, the moment US President Donald Trump called it a Chinese virus, all hell broke loose. Calling it that has, somewhat oddly, been termed racist by these commentators. More to the point, as the American talk show host and classical liberal and no fan of Trump Bill Maher pointed out, all past epidemics have been named after the place of their origin. These include German measles, Japanese encephalitis, Spanish flu, Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and others.

The reason this should be of interest in India is that none of this cohort objected a few years ago when an antibiotic-resistant bacterial strain was named the New Delhi metallo beta-lactamase 1 (NDM-1), because it was possibly first acquired here. This sort of hypocrisy only reinforces the perception of an entrenched bias against India among these circles.

As India grapples with the next phase of this pandemic, both in containing it as well as reviving the economy, it will also have to contend with more such determinedly pessimistic portrayals. It would be more appropriate for us to strive for a more balanced global narrative on India.

Baijayant Jay Panda is vice president, BJP

The views expressed are personal
Fayaz Wani By

SRINAGAR: Two soldiers, who we injured after shelling by Pakistani troops along the Line of Control (LoC) in Baramullah district, died on Saturday. Defence spokesman Rajesh Kalia said three army men were injured in the mortar shelling in Rampur sector of Uri on Friday.



The deceased were identified as Havaldar Gokaran Singh and Naik Shankar S P Coy. Four civilians, including a four-year-old boy, were injured on Friday when Pakistan initiated an unprovoked ceasefire violation.

Militants killed in Pulwama Two militants were killed in a six-hour long encounter with security forces in Pulwama district of south Kashmir during a cordon and search operation at Hydergund, Dangerpora area. As the encounter was going on, local youth attempted to march towards the encounter site to save the militants.

However, on being intercepted by security personnel, youth pelted stones on them, sources said. They said security men fired tear smoke shells and resorted to baton charge to disperse the stone pelters.

While the Pulwama encounter ended, another gunfight erupted between militants and security forces in Chanjmulla area of Handwara in border district of Kupwara.

The search operation in the Chanjmulla area turned into an encounter after holed-up militants fired on troops. Meanwhile, two army men sustained bullet injuries in an accidental fire inside an army camp in Karnah sector of Kupwara district, sources said.
Jon Caldara is the president of the Independence Institute, Colorados free market think tank.
Eurostar passengers on cross-Channel trains between London, Paris and Brussels will be required to wear face masks from next week. as part of measures to cut close-contact transmission of the novel coronavirus, the company said on Saturday.

"From May 4, passengers must wear a face mask or face covering at our stations and on board in line with guidelines announced by the French and Belgian governments," the company said on its website.

It warned passengers that anyone not covering their mouth and nose may be refused travel or fined by the French and Belgian authorities.

UK-based Eurostar has been running a reduced timetable since the outbreak, because of movement restrictions, enhanced border checks and lower demand.

Catering facilities on trains and in stations have been closed, and special assistance suspended because of social distancing requirements, the company said on its website.

The measures are among several to be introduced as governments on both sides of the Channel look at easing stringent lockdown restrictions.

France

It also advised passengers that France was restricting travel to EU citizens of mainland continental Europe returning home to their main residence.

UK and non-EU citizens with a residency permit in an EU country, plus essential workers, were allowed to travel, it added.

But all passengers required additional paperwork in France to show their trip was essential.

France is gradually lifting its lockdown restrictions from May 11.

Belgium

Belgium, which has had the highest per capita rate in the world -- 67 per 100,000 people -- begins to ease its lockdown on Monday.

Anyone travelling on public transport in Belgium is required to cover their mouth and nose or risk a fine.

Britain

Britain has not told the public to wear masks, although Prime Minister Boris Johnson this week indicated they could be "useful" when restrictions are lifted.

(with wires)
Phuket Opinion: Phukets Awesome Mix Tape

Sunday 3 May 2020, 11:59AM

Right now the only way to know if you are allowed back onto Patong Beach is to go find out, but you might be arrested for braking a provincial order. Photo: Patong Municipality

The lifting of some of the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions is now causing just as much confusion as when the orders were being initially rolled out.

In issuing the initial orders, the Phuket Provincial Office was announcing them publicly just hours before they were being implemented, leaving people no time to prepare. Some of the orders came less than hour before the midnight start of the order began.

That may have been intentional, no matter how unprofessional, how unorganised that may have seemed, or how unwelcomed it was.

Worse, nationwide orders were being issued in Bangkok that superceding the authority of any provincial governors, while many other orders were left at the governors discretion. Think national nightly curfew from 10pm to 4am, versus the Phuket Governors request for people to stay indoors from 8pm to 5am. For those still confused, it is the 10pm to 4am that applies in law.

More recently was the confusion over the order from Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha late Thursday to issue an notice extending all health and provincial orders, just after Phuket Governor Phakaphong Tavipatana had announced the lifting of the Tambon Lockdown  and naming the five high-risk areas that will remain under control. That left everyone unsure as to whether the Tambon Lockdown had been lifted at all.

All we needed from Phuket authorities was one simple sentence to explain the state of play in Phuket at a that point in time. If possible, a little advance notice would be even better.

That clarity has not been provided.

Today (May 3), a raft of businesses are allowed to re-open and a host of activities allowed to resume, within certain limits to prevent the spread of COVID-19, yet that order to allow these to resume came from Bangkok  and all the restrictions lifted as of May 3 remain at the discretion of provincial governors. The governor in each province reserves the right to keep any health orders in effect as they see fit for the province they apparently govern.

All the COVID-19 shutdown orders in Phuket were ratified by provincial orders issued by Phuket Governor Phakaphong. There has been no confirmation that any of the provincial orders other than the Tambon Lockdown have been rescinded.

Today, according to the national order in Bangkok, all recreation areas are now free to use as long as there are no gatherings of people and no group events or activities. Individual activities that do not risk the spread of the virus are allowed.

Anywhere else in the world beaches are classified as recreation areas. Here in Phuket, today, we just dont know if people are allowed to go to the beach or not. To be clear, no such beach ban was issued in Phang Nga, immediately north of Phuket.

As for the nationwide alcohol ban being lifted today, the lifting of that restriction was another Bangkok order delivered by no less than Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam, yet it came with the one rider: But Bangkok and some provinces can extend the ban if they think [lifting it] will do more harm than good, he said.

The alcohol ban in Phuket was re-ratified by a provincial order, and there has still not been any notice that order has been rescinded.

Right now, if anyone wants to know if a provincial order remains in effect in Phuket  despite whether or not the restriction has been lifted by natiownwide order announced in Bangkok  people are just going to have to try their luck. A word of warning, people may be arrested for breaking a provincial order that has not been lifted in this province, despite a national announcement saying that the restriction has been lifted.

Bangkok officials have been very clear that the lifting any restrictions remains at the discretion of provincial governors.

Dear Phuket Governor, we are at your discretion. We are willing to oblige by health orders that help prevent the spread of the virus, regardless of how people behave in Bang Tao, but we need to know which restrictions remain in effect, and which restrictions have been lifted.

Could you please let us know?

Just a little clarity on exactly what is and what is not allowed would be much appreciated.
Amid the raging controversy over the actual number of COVID-19 fatalities in Bengal and the need for a committee to audit them, the state government has altered the the panel's mandate and it will now not certify whether a patient died due to coronavirus or a pre-existing ailment, a senior member of the team said on Sunday.

He said now the doctors treating COVID-19 patients will certify whether they have died of the viral disease or any other concurrent illness.

The panel formed by the state government on April 3 was in the eye of a political storm, with opposition parties calling it a government's tool to "fudge" the COVID-19 data related to the number of deaths and afflictions.

The West Bengal government had acknowledged on Thursday that 105 Covid-19 positive patients had died in the state till then but insisted the actual death toll from the disease was only 33.

Citing the audit committee findings, Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha had said 72 of the 105 deaths occurred due to severe comorbidities (pre-existing diseases) and that Covid-19 was only incidental in those cases.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the panel member said the committee will now collect random samples from hospitals treating infected patients and study them to find out more about the disease.

"Doctors will follow the recommendations of the audit panel and certify whether a death was because of the coronavirus infection or comorbidities. The experts committee will no longer audit the deaths. It will look into the peculiar cases of COVID-19, he told PTI.

He said the panel had not received any fresh samples since it submitted its report on the 105 deaths.

According to the committee member, the principal objective of the panel was to study the death of COVID-19 patients and find out more about the character of the virus.

"There are several questions in the mind of the common people about the disease. As there is no study or database in this regard, the government wanted set up a treatment and containment protocol to understand the symptoms... and how that kept changing from the preliminary to aggravated stage.

"And in case of deaths, how many days did the virus take to reach that stage when the infected person finally succumbs," he said.

The panel, he said, has formed a list of dos and don'ts for medical practitioners treating novel coronavirus cases and certifying deaths.

"We analysed, researched and formed a list of recommendations for the doctors to treat and certify deaths because of COVID-19," the member said.

The committee will henceforth collect samples from hospitals for examination, and will give necessary suggestions to the health department, if there are new findings.

"This panel will not certify any coronavirus-related death. We will now go for random collection of samples from hospitals. In case of any new or peculiar finding, we will inform the state health department and make our recommendations," he said.

The audit committee had earlier noted that there was scope for improvement in medical record-keeping at COVID-19 hospitals, following which Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha said the health department would soon issue an advisory.

"During our research we found that the death certificates were issued without following the norms set by the WHO and the ICMR for COVID-19 deaths.

"The certificates should have included the immediate cause of death, antecedent cause of death and underlying cause of death. The medical record-keeping requires uniformity and that's the responsibility of hospital authorities," the panelist said.

An advisory, once issued by the government, will definitely help hospitals in understanding the character of the disease and how to deal with it, he said.

West Bengal has officially reported 48 deaths due to Covid-19 till Saturday.

The total number of people infected with the coronavirus stands at 886. Of them, 624 are active cases and 199 have recovered. The Union Health Ministry has put the figure of those stricken by the disease at 922.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Online searches for questions including 'How to do fractions' and 'What is an adverb' have skyrocketed during the lockdown imposed due to the coronavirus crisis.

After schools were closed in March and children were sent home, many pupils have been taught by their parents and taken to Google themselves to help with school work.

And it appears that some parents have forgotten some basic lessons too - searches for 'how to do fractions', 'what is an adverb?' and 'why did WW1 start?' have all increased since the beginning of March.

Other mathematics-related searches which have which have seen dramatic spikes include, 'what is a prime number?' and 'how do to long division'.

These graphs by Google show the interest since March 1 in the questions including 'how to do fractions', with figures towards 100 showing the relative peaks of interest

Schools have been closed in the UK since March 23 and it appears some parents have had to look up basic grammar questions as they seek to help their children with school work

As for science-related searches, much larger numbers of people asked the question, 'where does photosynthesis take place?' after the lockdown was imposed on March 23 than before it.

Students and parents needing help with basic grammar also seem to have taken to Google.

For English, there have been spikes in people have asking both 'what is an adjective?' and 'what is a verb?' since the lockdown began.

The question, 'what is alliteration?' also spiked dramatically in April.

Other mathematics-related searches which have which have seen dramatic spikes include, 'what is a prime number?' and 'how do to long division'

Top 10 coronavirus-related searches in the UK over the past month 1. kate garraway coronavirus 2. coronavirus tips 3. kate garraway husband coronavirus 4. gov.uk coronavirus test 5. daily death toll coroanvirus uk 6. coronavirus prevention 7. bcg and coronavirus 8. uk coronavirus deaths today 9. coronavirus deaths today 10. coronavirus sweden Advertisement

One mother-of-two Haddy Folivi, from Essex, told the BBC that homeschooling as a single parents has made her realise how much she has forgotten.

She said: 'I've realised I'm actually quite dumb. Google is my friend right now.'

And father-of-four Joel Lawson, in Belfast, said he had to use Google to check the atomic number of an element.

'A quick Google and it all came back,' he says. 'It was quite amazing trying to remember things I knew that I knew but I never used.'

The data on search terms was revealed on Google Trends, which also showed that searches for 'online lessons' has increased since mid-March.

Google Trends also revealed that searches subject areas including maths, grammar, geography, biology and history have all increased.

Last month, a new national helpline was set up for parents who are struggling to home-school their children.

As for science-related searches, much larger numbers of people asked the question, 'where does photosynthesis take place?' after the lockdown was imposed on March 23 than before it

History students and their parents have also asked 'why did WW1 start?' in increased numbers since the lockdown began

Google Trends also revealed that searches subject areas including maths, grammar, geography, biology and history have all increased

Named 'StarLine', the service will offer advice to families on how to educate their children.

The service, launched by a coalition of academy trusts and parenting groups, will also provide advice to parents on how to deal with difficult behaviour.

Mufti Hamid Patel, chief executive of Star Academies, one of the academy trusts behind the project, said: 'We understand that this is a time of additional pressure for many parents and carers.

Students and parents needing help with basic grammar also seem to have taken to Google. For English, there have been spikes in people have asking both 'what is an adjective?'

On Sunday, union chiefs hit out at reports that the Government could look to re-open primary schools in England as early as June 1.

Kevin Courtney, General Secretary of the National Education Union, the largest teachers' trade union for England and Wales, said talks about a June re-opening are 'very premature'.

Reports have suggested Prime Minister Boris Johnson is hoping to put teachers on three weeks' notice to re-open the country's primary schools.

There have been spikes in people asking 'what is a verb?' since the lockdown began

The question, 'what is alliteration?', also spiked dramatically in April

The data also showed that searches for 'online lessons' has increased since mid-March

He told the Sun on Sunday that he wants primary schools reopened 'as fast as we can'.

Ofsted's chief inspector Amanda Spielman backed the plans to get younger children back into schools, saying there is a 'great deal of logic' in such a move.

But Mr Courtney, whose union has more than 460,000 members, has warned the government against 'rushing' its decision and urged decision markers to put the health of teachers and staff first.
The RBI governor appreciated the efforts of banks in ensuring normal to near normal operations during the lockdown period.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das on Saturday held a meeting with the heads of banks and reviewed the economic situation and implementation of various measures announced by it to reduce stress in the financial system amid the COVID-19 crisis.

The meeting, which happened in two separate sessions through video conference, saw participation of managing directors and CEOs of major public and private sector banks, the RBI said in a statement after the meeting.

In his opening remarks, Das appreciated the efforts of banks in ensuring normal to near normal operations during the lockdown period. During the meeting, among other matters, review of the current economic situation and stability of the financial sector among other things were discussed.

Credit flows to different sectors of the economy, including liquidity to non-banking financial companies, microfinance institutions, housing finance companies, mutual funds, and post-lockdown credit flows including provision of working capital, with special focus on credit flows to MSMEs, were also deliberated upon.

Implementation of three-months moratorium on repayment of loan instalments announced by the RBI was also reviewed during the meeting.

The Supreme Court earlier this week directed the RBI to ensure that its March 27 guidelines directing lending institutions to allow a three-month moratorium to all borrowers is implemented in letter and spirit.

Monitoring of overseas branches of banks in view of the slowdown in economies across the globe was discussed, it added.

The Reserve Bank has announced several steps to ease the pressure being faced by borrowers, lenders and other entities including mutual funds and has promised to take more initiatives to deal with the developing situation.

The RBI has injected funds totalling 3.2 percent of GDP into the economy since the February 2020 monetary policy meeting to tackle the liquidity situation.

The RBI has been prompting banks to push lending by cutting its key policy rate by 75 basis points to an 11-year low of 4.4 percent. Besides, it also slashed reverse repurchase rate, a tool to control the money supply, to 3.75 per cent to encourage banks to deploy surplus funds within the system towards lending.

The reverse repo rate cut will discourage banks from parking cash with the RBI and encourage them to lend to the economy.

The Indian economy may be headed for a rare quarterly contraction during April-June as economic activities have come to a halt due to the coronavirus lockdown.

The government had earlier unveiled a Rs 1.7 lakh crore package of free foodgrains and cash doles to the poor to deal with the challenges posed by the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic.
India reports dip in Covid infections with 2,38,018 new cases, positivity rate at 14.43%

Failure to vaccinate everyone will give rise to new variants, says UN chief

Faith vs safety in burials: COVID-19 remains in dead bodies for 9 days says Centre

WATCH: India's aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya 'punches' coronavirus on its deck

India

oi-Deepika S

New Delhi, May 03: Indian Navy ship INS Vikramaditya on Sunday paid special tributes to the frontline workers dealing with coronavirus by symbolically "punching" the deadly virus on its lit deck as armed forces paid tribute to the warriors.

"#INSVikramaditya the pride of #India symbolically punches the #CoronaVirus on its deck as #ArmedForces pay tribute to the #CoronaWarriors," PRO Defence Mumbai tweeted on Sunday.

The short 41-second video is going viral on social media, as part of Indian armed forces' day-long exercise to pay tributes to the frontline workers dealing with Covid-19 pandemic in the country.

25 Indian Naval warships across nine port cities including those in Andaman and Nicobar Islands were illuminated from 7:30 PM as part of the thanks-giving exercise.

Overall 40 ships participated in the exercise.

At the sea, the Navy's front-line ships INS Jalashwa and INS Savitri saluted the 'corona warriors'. Navy personnel onboard aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya too expressed their appreciation by forming a human chain.

In the Southern Naval command, seven fast interceptor crafts in Kochi displayed a banner thanking the those fighting the pandemic.

The thanks-giving activities started with laying of wreaths at the national police memorial in Delhi to honour the police personnel deployed in enforcement of the nationwide lockdown, officials said.

A military chopper also showered petals on the memorial. From Srinagar to Thiruvananthapuram and Dibrugarh to Kutch, the Army carried out these activities and felicitated health professionals and emergency supply operatives.

"Visits to hospitals were carried out in over hundreds of towns in all states from the local Army formations," the defence ministry said in a statement. In a series of tweets, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh complimented the armed forces for the exercise.

"I thank the Armed Forces for their special initiatives like fly pasts, showering flower petals and several other performances to express gratitude towards medical professionals, police and other frontline warriors.

The entire nation stands united in these challenging times," Singh said. Singh said the "frontline warriors" are doing commendable work in strengthening India's fight against COVID-19.

Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat had on Friday announced that the three services will carry out a series of activities to thank the "corona warriors".
Fines issued to people who breach lockdown rules could be doubled - Gustavo Valiente

Fines for breaching coronavirus lockdown rules could be increased to 100 for a first offence and soar to 3,200 for serial offenders, under proposals being considered by ministers.

It is hoped doubling the fine each time a person who repeatedly flouts rules to stay at home will give police greater powers to punish those ignoring warnings they could be spreading the coronavirus and putting lives at risk as well as stretching NHS resources.

The move comes after it emerged a hard core of people breaking the lockdown rules resulted in 400 fixed penalty notices being handed out by police to repeat offenders in the four weeks to April 27 in England and Wales. One person was even fined six times.

Police have been issuing fixed penalties at a rate one of every five minutes to those breaking rules. More than 9,000 fines were issued throughout England and Wales during the same four week period.

The problem with breaching stay at home rules was illustrated starkly yesterday in London when a group of protesters opposed to the lockdown began hugging outside New Scotland Yard in Westminster. One of the placards among the handful of demonstrators read My body. My Choice. We do not consent.

Police encourage the group to go home, however one man was arrested for failing to comply with the request and assault on an officer.

It is also hoped the near doubling of the first fine from 60 to 100 will help combat the increasing likelihood more people will be tempted to try to breach the rules as good weather moves in for the summer months.

The possible toughening of the enforcement regime would see fines start at 100 and double for a repeat offence. Consequently a second offence would mean a 200 fine, a third 400, a fourth 800, then 1,600 and finally a sixth offence would cost 3,200. It would mean the offender would end up 6,300 out of pocket.

Story continues

Anyone who fails to pay the fine can be jailed. Police are expected to also have power to arrest serial offenders who breach the social distancing rules and endanger public health.

A Whitehall source said: In the next phase of our fight against coronavirus some of the social distancing measures will be relaxed, others will be toughened up.

Hand in hand with the new rules will come tougher enforcement powers for the police to crack down on the small minority who break the rules  and stop them putting everyone else at greater risk.

However, it is understood there are no plans yet to relax the current social distancing rules, with the Government insisting the lockdown will not be lifted until its five key tests have been met.

The source added: We are hugely grateful for the vast majority of people who have followed the detailed guidance, and stayed at home.

He added that when the rules are changed it will be even more critical that people adhere to them to keep the R value - the number of people someone with Covid-19 infects - under one to avoid a dangerous second peak.

We will send a clear signal to the small minority of those breaching the rules that they will not get away with it by increasing the starting point for fines to 100, he said.

A senior government source said: "Thanks to the enormous sacrifices of the British people we have succeeded in protecting the NHS from being overwhelmed.

"The vast majority of people have followed the rules, but in the next phase of our fight it will be even more critical that a small minority of rule-breakers do not put the rest of us at risk.

"That is why we will give the police tougher powers to stamp down hard on rule-breakers."
India registered a record jump of 83 deaths and 2,487 cases in 24 hours as the number of COVID-19 fatalities rose to 1,306 and total cases climbed to 40,263 on Sunday, according to the Union health ministry.

The number of active COVID-19 cases stood at 28,070, while 10,886 people have recovered and one patient has migrated, it said. The total number of cases also include 111 foreign nationals.

Of the 83 deaths reported since Saturday evening, 36 were from Maharashtra, 26 from Gujarat, 11 from Madhya Pradesh, three each from Rajasthan and Delhi, two from Telangana and one each from Tamil Nadu and Bihar.

With 521 fatalities, Maharashtra accounts for the maximum of the nationwide 1,306 deaths. Gujarat comes second with 262 deaths, followed by Madhya Pradesh 156, Rajasthan 65, Delhi 64, Uttar Pradesh 43, and West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh 33 each.

The death toll reached 29 in Tamil Nadu, 28 in Telangana, while Karnataka has reported 25 fatalities due to the respiratory disease. Punjab has registered 20 COVID-19 deaths, Jammu and Kashmir eight, Kerala, Bihar and Haryana have reported four deaths each. Jharkhand has recorded three COVID-19 fatalities.

Meghalaya, Himachal Pradesh, Odisha and Assam have reported one fatality each, according to the ministry data. The health ministry's Saturday evening update had put the death toll at 1,223 and the number of cases at 37,776 in the country.

According to the health ministry data updated on Sunday evening, the highest number of confirmed cases in the country is from Maharashtra at 12,296, followed by Gujarat at 5,055, Delhi 4,122, Madhya Pradesh 2,846, Rajasthan 2,772, Tamil Nadu 2,757 and Uttar Pradesh 2,626.

The number of COVID-19 cases has gone up to 1,583 in Andhra Pradesh and 1,063 in Telangana. It has risen to 922 in West Bengal, 772 in Punjab, 666 in Jammu and Kashmir, 606 in Karnataka, 500 in Kerala and 482 in Bihar.

Haryana has reported 394 coronavirus cases, while Odisha has 160 cases. A total of 115 people have been infected with the virus in Jharkhand and 94 in Chandigarh. Uttarakhand has reported 59 cases, Assam and Chhattisgarh have 43 cases each, while Himachal Pradesh and Ladakh have registered 40 cases so far.

Thirty-three COVID-19 cases have been reported from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Meghalaya has reported 12 cases, Puducherry eight, while Goa has seven COVID-19 cases.

Tripura has registered four cases, while Manipur has two cases. Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh have reported a case each.

The ministry said, "139 cases are being assigned to states for contact tracing."



"Our figures are being reconciled with the ICMR," it said on its website, adding state-wise distribution is subject to further verification and reconciliation.

However, a PTI tally of figures reported by states directly showed at least 1,328 deaths across the country while the number of confirmed cases of infection had reached 40,440 as on Sunday evening. Of them, 10,661 have been cured and discharged.

There has been a lag in the Union Health Ministry figures, compared to the aggregate of numbers announced by different states, which officials attribute to procedural delays in assigning the cases to individual states.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Chain of Command II

The firing of city administrator Howard Lazarus was timely for police chief Mike Cox.

by James Leonard

From the May, 2020 issue

A West Point grad, Howard Lazarus believes strongly in respecting chains of command. According to mayor Christopher Taylor, that's what put him at odds with the councilmembers who removed him in February. It's also what got police chief Mike Cox in trouble over a parking ticket-fixing investigation in his department--and spared him formal punishment for violating a direct order from the administrator.



Cox came here last September after retiring from the Boston police department, only to be put on leave six months later over his role in the parking investigation. An outside report by law firm Miller Canfield found that Cox "appeared to attempt to convince people not to conduct an investigation into a supervisor" and "evidence [showed] that people feared retaliation by the Chief."



Lazarus put Cox on administrative leave, and directed him not to discuss the case; after a new internal investigation, the parking supervisor was fired. But Cox made things worse for himself by calling in two deputy chiefs to vent about the leave--an action the report called "insubordination."



A contrite Cox explained in a letter to council that he "did not read the letter placing me on administrative leave until after I had already violated its conditions." But more may have been at work than inattention: according to the report, "the Chief believes that he effectively has no boss when it comes to policing [and] nobody can tell him how to run the Police Department."



"While the matter of addressing parking tickets ... may seem trivial, arbitrary enforcement of these policies undermines discipline," Lazarus wrote in a letter to council. He added that while "I do not consider Chief Cox to be intentionally subordinate [sic], nevertheless, his comments about 'not having a boss' as it relates to police operations are problematic. While working within a smaller police agency with a direct reporting relationship with the City Administrator has been an adjustment, it does not excuse the belief that he can operate without control."



Lazarus made it clear that if the council hadn't fired him, he would have gone further and suspended the police chief. "Although I have the authority to issue a suspension," Lazarus wrote, "I am not taking that action given the extenuating circumstance that I will not be the City Administrator" when the suspension ended.



Police unions have questioned Cox's ability to continue to lead the department. But, Taylor notes, "the chief has community support"--and the support of council's new majority.



[Originally published in May, 2020.]








The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) has disowned an Ebonyi indigene who was parading himself as a staff of the Corps, saying it has no record of him as an officer.

I further state that the said name Mbam James is not contained in the database of the Corps and I am unable to provide any information on him.

The attention of the Corps has been called to a report on section of media that the Ebonyi State Neighbourhood Security Watch has arrested one Mr. Mbam James who claimed to be a personnel of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) attached to Orumba Umunze in Anambra State and 2 other passenger he smuggled into the State with his motorcycle.

The Corps appreciated the members of the Ebonyi State Neighbourhood Security Watch for accosting and eventually arresting the impersonator Mbam James who was carrying two persons on his motorcycle coming to Abakaliki and was arrested at Timber Shade axis of Afikpo North Local Government Area, of the state.

It was reported that; Mbam James was flagged down by members of Ebonyi State Neighbourhood Security Watch and he was asked to identify himself, which he could not provide Identity card nor Curfew/Movement/Emergency Pass, when contacted about the development, the Commandant of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps in the state, Lucy Samu, said she has no record of Mbam James and declared him impersonator.

However, we wish to place on record that the said Mr. Mbam James from all available records is not a staff of Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps.

Civil Defence under the able leadership of the Commandant General Abdullahi Gana Muhammadu is noted for discipline and exemplary behaviour with adequate machinery to check excesses and abuses.

We therefore always inculcate in staff at all times the necessity to follow the laid down rules and regulation while on official duties and even on private engagements.

Therefore, on hearing the report, the Commandant General Abdullahi Gana Muhammadu, a disciplinarian, who has zero tolerance for indiscipline, ordered investigation into the case.

Throughout this period of move restriction, all staffs including those on escort duties traveling inter-states must notify their state Commandants and obtain a permit to travel between states in the country; Gana Said.

While the investigation is on-going, it should be noted that the suspect shall be prosecuted in the court of law immediately he lives withholding centre in Ebonyi where is been quarantined and expected to be tested for COVID-19.

The Commandant General wishes to use this opportunity to enjoin all Nigerians to cooperate with the Corps and indeed all other security agencies by giving credible information that will assist in the identification and eventual arrest of the criminals in any part of our beloved country.

Signed

Ekunola Gbenga

Media Assistant to the Commandant General
Places of worship across New Jersey function to bring together people of faith, and often depend on their steady financial support to continue to serve as a symbol of unity in their communities.

But, nearly two months after the coronavirus outbreak spread to New Jersey, churches and temples remain closed  and, like hundreds of thousands of residents throughout the state, are not immune to the fiscal hardships created by the pandemic.

Hoboken-based Our Lady of Grace & St. Joseph  two of the oldest churches in the country that merged their parish communities in 2008  are currently receiving about 25% of their regular donation amounts, which the Rev. Alexander Santora said is certainly not enough.

Were not doing what we normally would, and that certainly is going to hurt us in the long run, Santora said. "Were able to get by now because obviously we dont live from hand to mouth; theres always been a cushion that Ive made sure we have.

While emphasizing that the churches are not in danger of shuttering permanently due to the income provided by Catholic School rental fees, Santora said the parishes nonetheless depend upon contributions from its estimated 1,300 regular parishioners, the vast majority of whom worship at and give to Our Lady of Grace rather than St. Josephs  where the donation rate has been more heavily impacted.

(St. Josephs) is mostly Hispanic, and theye not using online giving," Santora said. (In Hoboken,) they tend to be more ... on the lower end socioeconomically, so their contributions come in envelopes at Mass.

Many of them are struggling, and Im sure with this situation its even tougher for them, he added.

In addition to applying for a small business loan, the churches have also been accepting virtual donations via Zelle as well as established a GoFundMe page in alignment with the Archdiocese of Newark Parish Support Initiative and Mass Livestream, created to enable worshippers to provide direct support to local Catholic parishes throughout the pandemic.

As of Thursday, the initiative has raised nearly $500,000 in contributions.

Beyond Catholic churches throughout New Jersey, other places of worship are similarly experiencing a decreased amount of donations due to the pandemic. Rev. Enger Muteke, pastor of both the Good Shepherd United Methodist Church in Northfield and Lifegate United Methodist Church in Somers Point, said donations to her parishes have declined by between 5% and 10%.

Muteke underscored that both churches, which are each regularly visited by about 50 to 55 parishioners, are receiving enough donations to keep the lights on, keep the buildings maintained and keep its staff paid, as the impact is most heavily felt upon the churches funds for missions and outreach.

Nonetheless, the churches have been receiving donations from individuals who Muteke said do not typically donate, which she credited to her churches continued activism throughout the pandemic.

Theres been a decline in giving, but at the same time the amount of people who are giving online and by mail, they are people that regularly do not give every week," Muteke said. Because theyre inspired by maybe online worship, or by mission and ministry stories, or by the care that our care team is giving to members including them.

In terms of God continuing to meet the needs of the community and the church through the ministry, were seeing miracles happen that way," she added.

Nearly 100 miles away from these United Methodist churches, Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church in Princeton is also receiving support from a greater number of individuals, even though its overall contributions have declined.

According to the Rev. Lukata Mjumbe, while contributions to the church have fallen overall, its live streaming services have enabled the church to grow its donation reach by expanding its parishioner base from between 80 and 90 in-person worshippers to more than 2,000 virtual viewers.

Were one of those churches where a lot of our contributions would still normally come in through the small white envelopes. People have not been able to come into church, and many people are not comfortable with online giving or not familiar with it, so we certainly have been impacted," Mjumble said. We are encouraged though, because we are finding that a number of people  certainly many more people than normally gave to us through our online platforms  are now giving through our online contributions.

We are also finding some success in reaching people beyond our regular members. We have many more people who are actually viewing our services, he added.

Due in part to its virtual outreach, the church, which Mjumbe said is completely dependent" on the giving and support it receives, is currently breaking even in terms of its earnings and losses.

There have been Sundays where we have significantly increased our online collections, but that has oftentimes been balanced by a decrease in the check cash collections that we havent received," Mjumbe said.

While describing the balance as a real victory ... in this time," Mjumbe acknowledged that the outcome is partially the result of the churchs cutting back significantly on expenses" due its continued closure.

So how long this is sustainable is a question we are thinking about and praying about, and we certainly need to continue to do a good job in encouraging online contributions, he said. We are not a church that has all of the bells and whistles, but we are making use of every bell and every whistle that we can find so that we can create the opportunity for people to continue to sow seeds into the ministry.

Churches are not alone in experiencing declines in their contribution rates due to the pandemic. Fundraising for Temple Beth Shalom in Livingston, provided in part through testamentary gifts and additional freewill giving, has also diminished as a result of the outbreak.

Matthew G. Halpern, executive director for the synagogue, said that donations are continuing to come in but at a slower pace, including the larger contributions typically received by the congregation because people are assessing where they are financially."

He added that event-driven fundraising for the synagogue has particularly declined, as a number of fundraising events, including Temple Beth Shaloms annual gala, were canceled due to the coronavirus outbreak.

That has had an impact, but were trying to make the best of the situation ... because our hope is that well be able to hold (a gala) in some way at a later date, we just dont know what that date is, Halpern said. We are encouraging people, if theyre able to  and we recognize that finances are in a great state of flux for many, many people and many businesses and organizations  to make their commitment now in anticipation of attending some type of event or program for our annual gala at a later date.

While recognizing that the synagogue does rely upon these donations to continue to service its worshippers, Halpern assured that Temple Beth Shalom has already received the majority of our income in the form of membership dues and school payments.

Many synagogues operate on a model where every year families or individuals pay a certain amount of money in terms of dues to the synagogue that helps with the overall operation. In our situation, thats usually done in the first half of our fiscal year," Halpern explained.

Reflecting upon the importance of continued worship and giving despite the closure of temples and churches across the state, Halpern underscored that these places of worship serve as outlets where people can come together  a service that should not be potentially jeopardized by economic shortcomings.

If somebody wants to engage with our synagogue community, we want them to be apart of that. We dont want finances to be the barrier, if possible, Halpern said. "That still rings true now ... but at the same time we recognize that there are more financial challenges that people are facing in their families, in their businesses, and in organizations. So were trying to encourage people to continue their support of the synagogue in the ways that theyre able to.

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Caroline Fassett may be reached at cfassett@njadvancemedia.com.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- To show their appreciation to frontline workers in the community, a Staten Island school wanted to give back by donating food and sending thank-you notes and cards.

Staff at Great Kills High School -- which is part of PS 37, a specialized school for students with special needs -- had the idea to help the boroughs essential workers and first responders, while also supporting small businesses on Staten Island.

During the regular school year, students at Great Kills High School partner with small businesses to receive vocational training and work experience. Jessica Fitzpatrick, Great Kills High School assistant principal, and staffer Barbara Moran worked to raise money to buy food from small businesses to donate to essential workers.

The school purchased food from its small business partners -- ONeills, Towne Deli, Nuccis South, and Ambrosinos Pizza. Staff members at the school, which included Moran, Rachel Franchi and Nick Giglio, organized the food deliveries to essential workers.

Deliveries were sent to local police precincts, firehouses, EMS, NYC Health + Hospitals/SeaView, Staten Island University Hospital (SIUH) in Ocean Breeze and Princes Bay, and Richmond University Medical Center (RUMC).

Food was also delivered to the boroughs three Regional Enrichment Centers (RECs) that provide child care to essential workers and first responders. That includes PS 56 in Rossville, PS/I.S. 48 in Concord, and the District 31 Richmond Pre-K Center located at 841 Father Capodanno Blvd. in Midland Beach. Supervisors of those centers are John Ferrannini, Mary Grace DiForte, and Joe Miller.

*** CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF CORONAVIRUS IN NEW YORK ***

Great Kills High School also made donations to the non-profit Staten Island Recreation Association, which provides equine therapies to children and young adults with disabilities.

In addition to food deliveries, students at Great Kills High School wanted to say thank you to the first responders and essential workers with handmade cards. The cards were also compiled into one video by Sarah Collins, a school speech and language therapist.

You can watch the video below.

SCHOOLS SUPPORTING COMMUNITY

Many Staten Island schools are thinking of creative ways to thank the community.

St. Joseph by-the-Seas competitive cheerleading program made a video of various pictures with members of the team displaying signs thanking first responders, doctors, nurses and essential workers for a job well done.

Students at Monsignor Farrell High School are bringing joy and companionship to residents at a Staten Island nursing home through virtual visits during the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.

In celebration of those responsible for providing free meals at PS 45, paraprofessionals, teachers, lunch aides, and others joined together in a clap to support the lunch crews daily work.

And our In Class education column has also been highlighting what schools are doing to give back, and remind students of how much they miss them while school buildings are closed.

45 Photos of the pandemic in NYC: Our lives changed forever

FOLLOW ANNALISE KNUDSON ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER.
Gov. Greg Abbott's multi-phase plan to reopen Texas does not include salons yet, but a Stone Oak shop is busy installing safeguards to show its clients it will be ready to serve their manicure and pedicure needs when the time is right.

Like other salons, Vinpearl Nails and Lashes, located at 20079 Stone Oak Parkway, hasn't received approval to open its doors. The husband-wife ownership duo of Tuyet Nguyen and Tuan Do are hoping for mid-May as a possible return. In the meantime, the couple installed guards around each work station in the salon, including enclosures around pedicure chairs. The sneak-peek photos were also shared on social media. Those anxious to fulfill their personal upkeep needs by professionals, shared and commented on the post by the thousands.

Abbott's current orders for reopening businesses like restaurants, movie theaters, malls and retail stores include minimum standard health protocols for each. During an April 27 update, Abbott said he wants to reopen businesses like salons, bars and gyms as soon as possible, barring a spike in COVID-19 cases. Similar guidance from the state government for reopening those businesses is expected at that point. In the meantime, Vinpearl owners are doing what they can to assure clients they will be prepared.

"We know it's not the best, but we will do the best we can for all of our safety," Nguyen said.

The owner said she and her husband took inspiration from shopping at stores like H-E-B, where sneezeguards have been at checkout lanes since the onset of the pandemic.

The couple's response plan also includes having free masks available for each client, disinfecting furniture between uses, using one-time disposable tools and spacing out customers to ensure they are 6 feet apart.

The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation oversees cosmetology businesses. Vinpearl maintains a current license, according to records. The department employs cosmetology administrative rules for licensees, which includes sanitation measures.

Nguyen said she and her husband are in "shock" by the response the photos have received online.

The post has more than a thousand shares and hundred of comments, some from users joking about making a trip to San Antonio just for a nail appointment at Vinpearl.

A salon in Georgia, where businesses reopened a few days ahead of Texas, also received attention online this week. A journalist shared a photo showing an unnamed salon using a plastic drape to separate customers from employees. The photo was met with some criticism from online onlookers who considered the desire to book salon appointments during the pandemic "vain."

Madalyn Mendoza covers news and puro pop culture for MySA.com | mmendoza@mysa.com | @maddyskye
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WASHINGTON - Congressional leaders are girding for a huge fight over the re-entry of millions of Americans to the workplace, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., insisting that employers be shielded from liability if their workers contract the coronavirus. He appears to have the backing of top White House officials.

Democratic leaders have declared they will oppose such blanket protections, putting Washington's power brokers on opposite sides of a major issue that could have sweeping implications for health care and the economy in the coming months. The battle has unleashed a frenzy of lobbying, with major industry groups, technology firms, insurers, manufacturers, labor unions and plaintiffs lawyers all squaring off.

The clash is a sharp departure from the past six weeks, when lawmakers from both parties came together to swiftly approve nearly $3 trillion in emergency funds as Americans hunkered down during the pandemic. Now, lawmakers are warring over what the rules should be when millions of Americans return to the workplace.

With President Donald Trump increasingly focused on pushing businesses to reopen, the Republican-led Senate is preparing to reconvene on Monday. Key GOP senators are circulating drafts of legislation to set up legal protections they say would give businesses the confidence to reopen without worrying about lawsuits.

"It seems intuitive to me that if you're a marginal small business and you're making the decision whether to hang in there and try to survive, or whether you're just going to give up and either declare bankruptcy or just become insolvent, that this would around the margins, this could make the difference," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

Cornyn is working on legislation that would shield businesses from liability over coronavirus-related claims as long as they comply with government guidelines.

The Democratic-run House remains largely shuttered for at least another week, with leaders citing the health risks. And Democratic leaders want to focus their next legislative effort at pumping more money into the economy, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., pointing to $1 trillion in needs for cities and states.

But for McConnell, one of the biggest concerns appears to be the threat of lawsuits against businesses. He has described the potential for a "second pandemic" of litigation, and he and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., say discussion of liability protections will be "absolutely essential." Democratic leaders, however, have not expressed any interest in advancing such protections at a time when workers are risking their health by laboring at manufacturing jobs, grocery stores, hospitals and other businesses that have stayed open throughout the crisis.

"Providing some kind of blanket immunity shield is an idea that's the result of the majority leader's imaginary bogeyman of a flood of lawsuits, a parade of horribles that is a political ploy," Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said Friday. He said the proposal would be "a non-starter."

Lawmakers in both parties, along with Trump administration officials, agree that Congress must attempt to produce additional measures to address the pandemic, as the economy still reels after more than 30 million Americans filed unemployment claims in six weeks. But reaching consensus between the Senate, controlled by Republicans, and House, controlled by Democrats, could prove much harder than previous efforts.

In addition to the GOP demand for corporate liability protection, Democrats have demanded more assistance for cities and states, which McConnell says he won't agree to without liability protections included.

For now, public posturing has taken the place of any serious bipartisan negotiations.

It's not yet clear what types of legal liability proposals Republicans and the Trump administration might coalesce around. Cornyn and other Republicans are looking for ways to shield businesses and health providers from coronavirus-related claims while making exceptions for gross negligence, and they're also eyeing protections for makers of protective gear. In earlier coronavirus bills, Congress has already approved some protections for makers of protective masks and for volunteer health workers. Cornyn also suggested the possibility of establishing a federal fund that would pay out claims.

"We're pretty strongly exploring the breadth and depth of liability protection for businesses and the like as we go through reopening and sustaining opening through the pendency of coronavirus prior to the introduction of a vaccine," said a senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe confidential deliberations.

 FAQ: Your coronavirus questions, answered.

The debate over legal liability and tort reform has divided the parties for years, with Democrats accusing Republicans of doing the bidding of big business while Republicans contend that Democrats are in the pocket of trial lawyers. Powerful business lobbies like the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the insurance industry are now lobbying heavily in support of liability shields for businesses, while trial lawyer associations, unions and groups representing plaintiffs and consumers are pressuring Democrats to oppose any such measures.

An April 29 letter to congressional leaders signed by scores of unions and advocacy and consumer groups including the AFL-CIO and the National Consumers League said they strongly oppose any legislation that would establish nationwide immunity for businesses that operate in an unreasonably unsafe manner, causing returning workers and consumers to risk COVID-19 infection.

Linda Lipsen, chief executive of the trial lawyers lobby American Association for Justice, alleged that Republicans and business groups are trying to use the pandemic to advance their long-standing agenda of limiting people's ability to sue when they are harmed.

"Sen. McConnell has been promoting immunity for companies that act unreasonably for over 30 years, and this is an extension of that," Lipsen said. "This move to hold this COVID package hostage with his agenda items is unpatriotic."

Multiple lawsuits have already been filed against businesses including Wal-Mart, nursing homes, insurers and others. More are on the way. Ads from plaintiffs attorneys are popping up on late-night TV seeking clients who've suffered damages in some way from the coronavirus outbreak.

A group called Top Class Actions that runs a website funded by attorneys is advertising multiple investigations related to the coronavirus, ranging from issues involving denied refunds for college courses, canceled flights, and faulty or lacking personal protective equipment, among other things.

Scott Hardy, the group's president, said they'd received more than 10,000 submissions in just the last month related to the coronavirus.

Hardy pointed to the example of meat packing facilities where workers have been required to stay on the job, in some cases, they say, without appropriate protective gear or in unsafe conditions. Some have fallen ill as a result.

"We can't be taking these rights away from all of these employees who are doing their best, these essential workers who are doing their best to help us," Hardy said.

Republicans and business groups dispute that they are trying to prevent workers or consumers from filing legitimate claims, or protect employers who have actually been negligent. Instead, business officials insist they are advancing limited sets of proposals aimed specifically at setting up reasonable protections for employers and health care workers in the context of the pandemic.

The National Association of Manufacturers, for instance, is asking Congress to limit lawsuits to instances where a manufacturer had actual knowledge that workers could be exposed to coronavirus and consciously disregarded that information or acted with reckless indifference. They're also seeking protections to ensure employers can collect and exchange critical information about employees' health status, and asking for liability shields for manufacturers that are producing protective gear like respirators or masks.

"If we are to get the country back to work and get our economy going again, employers have to have the confidence they can restart their operations or ramp their operations back up if they've been working all along," said Linda Kelly, general counsel at the National Association of Manufacturers.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is seeking some similar measures, including a safe harbor against customer lawsuits for businesses that have followed public health guidelines, and protections for health care workers and doctors on the front lines.

"We're not looking for permanent tort reforms here," said Neil Bradley, executive vice president at the U.S. Chamber. "We really do believe this should be focused on businesses and health care providers who are following, to the best of their ability, the public health guidance. They should not be subject to legal liability."

White House officials and allies have indicated support for such proposals, with National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow telling CNBC recently that businesses should not have to deal with "trial lawyers putting on false lawsuits."

Stephen Moore, a conservative economist who is a member of the White House council to reopen the country, claimed credit in an interview for bringing the issue to the attention of the administration - although GOP aides and administration officials saying they've been hearing about the topic from businesses all over.

"Here's how I got the idea: I kept getting calls from employers, small business owners and people who run factories, who were saying, 'It's going to be really difficult even when we reopen to hire back workers if we have to worry about these lawsuits.' One of them said, 'Is there any way we can get an immunity clause from lawsuits?'" Moore recounted.

"And I thought, 'Wow, I'm sure a lot of businesses are feeling the same pressure and it turns out that was exactly right.' There are a lot of employers saying this," Moore said. "Then I sent it to White House economic team and said it has to be part of any economic recovery package."

The Washington Posts Jeff Stein contributed to this report.
Former US President George W. Bush has issued a rousing call to Americans to unite during the coronavirus pandemic, while current President Donald Trump continues to lock horns with Democrats over the nation's response.

Bush, whose own White House tenure saw the US ravaged by the September 11 terrorist attacks, sent a message to the American people that 'we are human beings' who 'rise or fall together' and are 'not partisan combatants'.

In a video released by the George W. Bush Presidential Center Saturday for the 24-hour Unite benefit, he urges people to 'remember how small our differences are' and come together to fight the 'invisible enemy' and support one another during the crisis.

His call for unity comes as the US political parties are more divided than ever before with Trump battling with Democrat governors, senators and representatives on a near daily basis.

A Message from President George W. Bush@TheCalltoUnite pic.twitter.com/FIn9wuOPTF  George W. Bush Presidential Center (@TheBushCenter) May 2, 2020

Former US President George W. Bush has issued a rousing call to Americans to unite during the coronavirus pandemic which has so far claimed the lives of almost 67,000 people nationwide

'This is a challenging and solemn time in the life of our nation and world - a remorseless, invisible enemy threatens the elderly and vulnerable among us,' Bush's voice is heard saying against a video montage of various images of American life.

'A disease that can quickly take breath and life. Medical professionals are risking their own health for the health of others, and we're deeply grateful.

'Officials at every level are setting out the requirements of public health that protect us all, and we all need to do our part.'

The footage starts with a reel of images showing the old normal - pictures of children smiling, brides on their wedding days, large celebrations such as the Chinese New Year, men in barber shops and people dancing together.

Bush admits that the current situation is one of 'loneliness' where 'a hug, a touch - can bring the opposite of the good we intend' as social distancing guidelines mean people cannot currently enjoy typical human interaction.

But, though it is 'frustrating', these measures are critical to protecting lives, he points out.

'The disease also threatens broader damage, harm to our sense of safety, security and community. The larger challenge we share is to confront an outbreak of fear and loneliness,' he says.

Bush at Ground Zero three days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks: In the video he reminds Americans that the nation has faced times of crisis before, when 2,977 people were killed in the attacks across New York City, Washington DC and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania

'And it is frustrating that many of the normal tools of compassion - a hug, a touch - can bring the opposite of the good we intend. In this case, we serve our neighbor by separating from them.'

He is heard encouraging people to find new ways of connecting with each other.

'We cannot allow physical separation to become emotional isolation. This requires us to be not only compassionate but creative in our outreach - and people across the nation are using the tools of technology and the cause of solidarity,' he says.

Bush goes on to remind Americans that the nation has faced and come through times of crisis before, when 2,977 people were killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks across New York City, Washington DC and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

As president at the time of the attacks, Bush led the nation through its last great test.

His approval rating by the American public soared after 9/11 and the nation showed signs of unity.

People rallied behind the phrase United We Stand and patriotism skyrocketed, polls taken in the aftermath revealed.

Bush reminds people of this time in the video as stills of him meeting emergency responders at Ground Zero after the attacks play across the audio.

'In this time of testing, we need to remember a few things. First, let us remember that we have faced times of testing before. Following 9/11, we saw a great nation rise as one to honor the brave, to grieve with the grieving and to embrace unavoidable new duties. And I have no doubt - none at all - that this spirit of sacrifice is alive and well in America,' he says.

Medical workers in New York battle the pandemic: Bush admits social distancing is 'frustrating' but these measures are critical to protecting lives

Images then turn to modern day, of people delivering food to the doors of elderly neighbors, sewing masks to protect people from the virus and food donations being handed out to Americans in need.

Bush calls for people to remember 'empathy' and to be mindful that some groups - 'the elderly, the ill, and the unemployed' - are being harder-hit by the pandemic than others.

'Second, let us remember that empathy and simple kindness are essential, powerful tools of national recovery. Even at an appropriate social distance, we can find ways to be present in the lives of others - to ease their anxiety and share their burdens,' he said.

'Third, let's remember that the suffering we experience as a nation does not fall evenly. In the days to come, it will be especially important to care for the elderly, the ill, and the unemployed.'

'Finally let us remember how small our differences are in the face of this shared threat.'

He added: 'In the final analysis, we are not partisan combatants - we are human beings, equally vulnerable and equally wonderful in the sight of God. We rise or fall together and we are determined to rise. God bless you all.'

The former president's calls for unity comes as the Republican Trump administration has been embroiled in ongoing clashes with Democrats over the US's response to the pandemic.

Analysis released last week revealed the president had spent a total of two hours attacking the media and Democrats over the course of his daily coronavirus press briefings.

Studies from the Washington Post and the New York Times found the daily meetings have been used for the president to praise his own response to the pandemic and attack his rivals.

Outside of press briefings, Trump has almost-daily jibes with Democrats on social media.

He launched yet another spat Saturday - this one targeting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi because of her decision to reject the White House's offer to provide Congress with rapid coronavirus testing.

The former president's calls for unity comes as the President Trump has been embroiled in ongoing clashes with Democrats over the US's response to the pandemic

'No reason to turn it down, except politics. We have plenty of testing. Maybe you need a new Doctor over there,' he blasted in a Twitter rant.

'Crazy Nancy will use it as an excuse not to show up to work!'

His outburst came just days after he attacked her in another social media post where he accused her of canceling the House's return because she is 'enjoying [her] vacation'.

Pelosi said the House will not return due to COVID-19 health concerns.

This marks just one in a string of incidents where the president has picked fights with Democrat politicians during the pandemic.

In recent weeks, Trump has heaped praise on states with Republican governors for easing lockdowns and singled out states with Democrat governors that have maintained stay-at-home orders.

Many feel his approach has more of a political agenda than being in the best interests of tackling the pandemic as many anti-lockdown protesters who are pictured marching on state capitols up and down the country sport 'Make America Great Again' merchandise and wave Trump banners.

Thousands have taken to the streets across the US demanding an end to stay-at-home orders, saying they are taking away American liberty and destroying US jobs and the economy.

Several governors have relaxed restrictions, but many Americans are still angry with the lockdowns.

The mostly-Republican protesters have been met by Democratic counter-protesters who say the measures are critical to saving lives while the outbreak rages on.

While Trump has sparred with several Democrat govenors over the lockdowns, his most notable and long-running spat has perhaps been with New York's Andrew Cuomo.

There's been no love lost between the two throughout the crisis.

In mid-April, Trump claimed that he has blanket authority to order a reopening of the country and cease stay-at-home orders - a power that rests with individual states.

Cuomo blasted the president saying that the last time he checked the US had 'a constitution...not a king' and Trump was forced to backpedal on the claims.

The US continues to be the hardest-hit nation from the pandemic.

As of end of Saturday, 67,173 Americans have been killed by coronavirus and 1,160,519 people have been infected.
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Jammu and Kashmir Lt Governor G C Murmu on Sunday paid rich tributes to five security personnel killed in an encounter with terrorists in Handwara area of Kupwara district.

"We salute the valour of the Army, police and other security forces for playing a crucial role in combating terrorism and ensuring safe and secure environment for the people", Murmu said.

Four army personnel, including a colonel and a major, and a police officer were killed in an encounter with terrorists in Handwara. Two terrorists, including a Pakistani national, were also killed in the gunfight.

"The supreme sacrifice made by security personnel who attained martyrdom during an encounter in the Handwara area of Kashmir will always be remembered," the Lt Governor said.

He also expressed solidarity with the families of the martyrs and said the sacrifices of the bravehearts will not go waste.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Almost 1.5 million university students should be back on campus by July after federal Education Minister Dan Tehan declared he wanted to see the sector return to face-to-face teaching for second semester.

Mr Tehan also warned the shock from COVID-19 had triggered an "urgent" look at the international education business model at universities. Vice-chancellors, joined by Labor, are calling for a major rethink of Australia's higher education funding system as a potentially sustained drop in full-fee-paying overseas student enrolments threatens to shrink the sector.

Education Minister Dan Tehan wants university students back on campus by semester two. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Universities were forced to close campuses and move to online learning upon the introduction of strict social distancing measures, adapting rapidly as they also weather the loss of billions in lost international student revenue. Onshore numbers of overseas students are down 30 per cent on last year's levels.

"The first step has to be our campuses reopened here for domestic students and those international students who are onshore. That's the first priority of the government," Mr Tehan told The Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age.
The Bharatiya Janata Partys (BJPs) president JP Nadda on Sunday praised journalists for their doing their job during the coronavirus pandemic despite the risk involved.

Press is the 4th pillar of our democracy & plays a great role in the nation by shaping opinions and creating awareness. On this #WorldPressDay, I salute our media persons for risking their lives to make public aware of various aspects of COVID-19, Nadda posted on Twitter.

World Press Freedom Day was proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in December 1993, following the recommendation of Unescos General Conference.

May 3, the anniversary of the Declaration of Windhoek, is since then observed worldwide as the World Press Freedom Day.

India dropped two places on a global press freedom index to be ranked 142 out of 180 countries in the annual Reporters Without Borders analysis released last month.
The city police on Sunday arrested four persons for allegedly committing sacrilege of gurbani pothis (scriptures) and gutkas (gurbani handy book) in Mohalla Guru Nanak Pura locality here.

The desecrated gurbani scriptures were found in the garbage collected by a municipal corporation vehicle. This vehicle was moving in Fatahpur area when some people saw the holy books lying amid the waste. They immediately informed Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) officials.

Following this, SGPC office-bearers and officials arrived at the spot and took the desecrated pothis and gutkas into custody. They informed the police and the accused  Mangal Singh, his two sons and a relative  were arrested in the presence of SGPC functionaries, including senior vice-president Rajinder Singh Mehta, chief secretary Roop Singh, additional secretary Sukhdev Singh Bhoora and additional manager Rajinder Singh Ruby.

Police commissioner Sukhchain Singh Gill said the matter will be thoroughly probed to unearth the conspiracy behind the sacrilege.

Meanwhile, advocate Jaswinder Singh, president of Akal Purakh Ki Fauj, has sought a fair probe fearing the involvement of a particular communitys preachers in the incident.

A case has been registered against the accused under Section 295-A of the IPC, said Kot Khalsa SHO inspector Sanjeev Kumar.
Putting blame on China, United States reportedly looking to punish Beijing over coronavirus outbreak.

While some individual states have already filed lawsuits against China, the administration of US President Donald Trump is reportedly considering measures against Beijing for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Trumps position is that China could have done more to warn and protect the world from the pandemic.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Sunday said enormous evidence showed the new coronavirus originated in a lab in China, further fueling tensions with Beijing over its handling of the outbreak.

Trump, increasingly critical of Chinas management of the first outbreak in the city of Wuhan in December, last week claimed to have proof it started in a Chinese laboratory.

Scientists believe the virus jumped from animals to humans, after emerging in China, possibly from a market in Wuhan selling exotic animals for meat.





Trump, without giving details, said Thursday he had seen evidence the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the source, appearing to echo speculation fueled by US right-wing radio commentators about a secret lab.

China denies the claims and even the US Director of National Intelligence office has said analysts are still examining the exact origin of the outbreak.

Infecting the world

Pompeo, a former CIA chief, told ABC News he agreed with a statement from the US intelligence community about the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not man-made or genetically modified.

But Pompeo went further than Trump citing significant and enormous evidence the virus originated in a Wuhan lab.

I think the whole world can see now, remember, China has a history of infecting the world and running substandard laboratories.

Pompeo said early Chinese efforts to downplay the coronavirus amounted to a classic Communist disinformation effort. That created enormous risk.

President Trump is very clear: well hold those responsible accountable.

Dangerous situation





Some Democrats have said Trump is trying to shift blame to avoid responsibility for a slow response to the pandemic that has resulted in the US having by far the largest numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths.

Not wanting to take responsibility as the deaths continue to mount, he blames others, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont said in a statement.

US news reports say Trump has tasked US spies to find out more about the origins of the virus, as he makes Chinas handling of the pandemic a centerpiece of his campaign for the November presidential election.

Shawn Zeller from Congressional Quarterly Magazine said one way to retaliate against Beijing would be for Washington to bring back to America some of the manufacturing capacity that has been glaringly lacking during this crisis.

We are in a dangerous situation in the United States when our medicine is produced in China, when the masks and gowns and other protective equipment that we need are produced in China. So I could certainly see movement there to bring that manufacturing back  which would hurt China, Zeller told Al Jazeera.
Bhubaneswar, May 3 : At a time when Odisha is bracing to receive over five lakh people from other states, two Surat returnees have tested COVID-19 positive in the state.

The two positive patients of the Ganjam district have been identified as a 17-year-old and a 22-year-old youth. Both are Surat returnees and asymptomatic, said the Information and Public Relations department on Sunday.

With this, Ganjam being the 16th district joined the list of COVID-19 affected districts in the state.

Besides, a 40-year female has tested positive in the Jharsuguda district, taking the total positive tally to 160 in Odisha.

After the West Bengal returnees, who have a posed a serious challenge for the state with many testing COVID-19 positive, Odisha is now worried following the arrival of people from other states.

People from other states have started arriving in different parts of Odisha by bus and train.

The first special train carrying as many as 1,150 migrant workers hailing from Odisha reached Jagannathpur Railway Station in Ganjam district on Sunday morning.

The migrants were stranded in Kerala due to the nationwide lockdown.

They will go to their native areas along with respective Panchayat-level officials and undergo a mandatory quarantine for 14 days at the temporary medical camps.

The state government has so far set up 7,261 temporary medical centres in 6,798 gram panchayats of the state.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
I drove a few miles by back roads this morning from my remote farm in the Upper Exe valley to the garage at Wheddon Cross to fill up with petrol.

I'm not sure whether, strictly speaking, this was an 'essential' journey as laid down by law.

The tank was still a quarter-full, but I reckoned I had a good excuse ready if I was intercepted by a zealous representative of the Avon and Somerset constabulary.

'Well, actually officer...,' I was going to say, 'I'm planning to pick up the papers as well.

'I think there may be something in them about the birth of my latest grandchild, Wilfred Johnson.'

I felt absurdly proud that my grandson Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas Johnson, safe in his mother's arms, would carry to his dying day my father's own first name and his surname too, writes STANLEY JOHNSON

As it happened, I reached the garage without being intercepted. I filled up with petrol and bought a full set of the available papers.

I flipped through them before heading for home. Most of them carried a charming front-page photo of Boris's fiancee, Carrie, and the new baby.

'Meet Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas Johnson,' urged The Mail on Sunday, for example. 'He's got Daddy's hair!'

I admit I felt, at that moment, overcome with emotion.

I hadn't had the faintest idea that 'Wilfred', my own father's first name, was even in the running as a candidate for the birth certificate  let alone that 'Wilfred' would end up in pole position.

But there was more to it than that.

I felt absurdly proud that this tiny infant, safe in his mother's arms, would carry to his dying day my father's own first name and his surname too.

Wilfred Johnson The Elder  better known in these parts as 'Johnny' Johnson  is no longer with us to tell us himself what he thinks of recent events. Pictured: Boris Johnson's grandfather during the Second World War

When I got home, I headed off for some moments of quiet reflection in my study, looking out at the sparkling river that flows through the meadow below the house.

Here I was in the very place where my parents after the war had made their home.

They lived here full-time for 40 years. My siblings and I spent our childhood and adolescence here.

What would my father have made of today's news, I wondered. He wasn't a talkative man.

He weighed his words. But I am 100 per cent sure that he would have been pleased, even delighted.

I can imagine him popping down to the Royal Oak in Winsford, ordering a pint and taking his pipe from his mouth (though he was usually wedded to it) to acknowledge proffered congratulations.

Well, Wilfred Johnson The Elder  better known in these parts as 'Johnny' Johnson  is no longer with us to tell us himself what he thinks of recent events.

So I am going to allow myself the luxury of saying a word or two about the man this new young Wilfred may one day refer to as 'Great-Grandaddy'.

I am going to allow myself the luxury of saying a word or two about the man this new young Wilfred may one day refer to as 'Great-Grandaddy'. Pictured: Stanley Johnson with his son, Prime Minister Boris Johnson

The papers carried a photo of my father and me walking side by side on the track which leads to our farm. I look at him now and I acknowledge how much I owe him.

By any standard, he had a tough start in life.

His mother, Winifred, died in Bournemouth of puerperal fever four days after he was born. He was brought up by his maternal grandmother.

His own father, Ali Kemal, a Turkish politician, once the Sultan's Minister of the Interior, was kidnapped in Istanbul in 1922 and brutally murdered.

Wilfred himself served the whole of the Second World War in RAF Coastal Command, flying Wellington bombers on long anti-U-boat patrols over the Atlantic.

He survived two crashes, hated post-war urban life with a passion, and came to Exmoor and a hill-farmer's life which couldn't by any stretch of the imagination have been called easy.

Even though it's 27 years since my father died, they still remember him in the village  particularly the time when, coming back to the farm from the pub late one night, he drove his car off the bridge into the river.

Boris Johnson's fiancee Carrie Symonds gave birth to their son last week. Pictured: The couple in September last year

He emerged pipe in hand, gruff but unscathed, though the vehicle had to be towed out with the tractor the next day.

I have said that my father was not a talkative man. By that I mean that, he didn't spend a lot of time in conversation.

I cannot recall that we ever had a 'dinner party' at home or indeed that my parents ever went to one, not while they lived on Exmoor anyway.

My father was a farmer. That's what he wanted to be and that  late in life  was what he managed to achieve.

My mother sometimes complained that he spent more time talking to his beloved horse Sunshine than he did to her.

Happily he could ride Sunshine over the hill to the pub, knowing that the 'dear old girl' would be able to find her own way back on the darkest of nights.
President Moon Jae-in, right, listens to a researcher after attending a meeting of officials from industrial, academic and medical circles to discuss ways to develop medicines and vaccines for COVID-19 at the Institut Pasteur Korea in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, in this April 9 photo. Yonhap



By Bahk Eun-ji



A number of pharmaceutical companies, scientists and research bodies all over the world are actively joining in the race to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, but experts cautiously predict that many obstacles still stand in the way of their goal.



At the beginning of the month, President Moon Jae-in voiced hopes that the country could take the lead in developing vaccines and medicines for the highly contagious virus, calling for consistent efforts to do so during a joint meeting with related academics and industry and hospital officials. Moon also said 210 billion won ($172 million) will be allocated to support development of a vaccine, and he promised to support the private sector in its vaccine development efforts.



As the country has been mapping out a government-wide support system, pharmaceutical companies have engaged in the call to arms to find treatments and vaccines to combat COVID-19. In Korea, many seek to carry out clinical tests on antibody-based treatments for the virus as a large number of blood samples have already been collected from people infected with the virus. In addition, development of a process for using blood plasma taken from recovered patients is also expected.



SillaJen, one of the nation's largest bio startups, announced on April 26 that it has recently started animal trials for a potential COVID-10 vaccine in Canada. Testing for two candidate vaccines has been underway, and the company said it expects to take around six weeks.



Institut Pasteur Korea, a research center specializing in infectious diseases, has conducted tests on cells for some 2,500 medications in an effort to find potential drugs that could be effective in treating coronavirus patients. In February, the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning provided emergency research funds to the institute for the project.



There are hundreds of ongoing clinical trials not only in Korea but also all over the world. However, only a handful of drugs have advanced into the research stage.



Failures of promised treatments






Given the rising number of coronavirus cases in the country, the contract tracing feature is a must. While there are plenty of apps addressing this issue for smartphones, including the Aarogya Setu App, there wasn't any solution for feature phones until now. Aiisma, India's consumer to business data marketplace, has designed an Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) feature for contact tracing in rural areas.

Aiisma claims that it's the only app in India to utilise the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) feature for contact tracing. This feature is for non-smartphone users who have feature phones and might not support 3G, 4G or 5G connectivity. Unlike apps installed on smartphones, feature phone users will be propagated with options, of which they can select one. This will be facilitated by their service provider.

Also Read: Coronavirus impact: Global smartphone market dips 13% - fastest decline ever

Basic handsets too share the location information via cell towers with the telecom service provider. If the user gives consent, this feature using USSD will gain access to information and share it with Aiisma ecosystem. Available for free, currently this feature is available only in the English language but the company is working on introducing it in local languages in the next two-three weeks.

Also Read: How to keep smartphone, keyboard, other daily items clean, virus-free? This UV steriliser may help

The company claims to ensure anonymity and privacy. Aiisma said that the tracking feature keeps the person's details anonymous, thus ensuring the privacy of data and identity. The anonymous feature will release a trigger function that will alert any Aiisma user who might have come into close contact with the infected person and maybe potentially infected. The aim is to create a digital fence of sorts against COVID19 and help authorities and citizens overcome it. For positive carrier identification, Aiisma is talking to the government. The company explains, "at this time symptom mapping is a feature that doesn't require specific information about positive carrier so that is operational. If symptoms are pointing to a possible infection, an alert is sent out."

Aiisma belives 70 per cent of the country's population lives in rural areas and this can be a great way of contract tracing for such areas. The company already has a contract tracing app for smartphones. Here the infrastructure in the back-end of the app and mobile remains the same, the service is accessible for feature phones.
Two big challenges characterize leadership today as we fight the COVID-19 pandemic. The need to juggle a growing series of paradoxical demand, do more with less, cut costs but innovative and think globally, act locally. The other is the unprecedented pace of disruptive change, which speeds up interaction of these demands and simultaneously increases the pressure on governments to adapt.

The challenges we facing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, have amplified the need for versatile leaders who have the ability and the wherewithal to cope with a variety of changes and the wherewithal to resolve our competing priorities. With what we witnessing currently, it is no overstatement to say that versatility is the most important component of leading today.

His Excellency John Mahama, yesterday, via his Facebook page, had conversation with Ghanaians. He showed that he has the capacity to read and respond to change with a wide repertoire of complementary skills and behaviour. What Ghana needs now is enabling leadership which will bring all on board and bring out their best not forceful leadership which is all about asserting personal and positional power. We also need strategic leadership to position the country to be competitive in the long run. We don't need sweet promises and vague assurances. We need operational leadership to get things done: setting direction, driving execution, focusing resources, and introducing innovation to provide order and stability. "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function".

The current President and people around him have a rigid and narrow view of themselves and think opposing perspectives and suggestions should be avoided rather than experimented with and learned from. One useful leadership strategy is to periodically invite others with skills and perspectives different from your own out to coffee or launch. With an open mind, try to see things from their point of view and understand their way of thinking.

Leadership is usually used as a measuring tool for a country's success. The more successful a leadership is the better the country is supposed to be. May be, Gabby and his apostles after listening to the former President, would understand why most Ghanaians vehemently rejected and condemned the President's 88 new hospitals promise. Yea, we need more hospitals but is that our priority considering the number of uncompleted health facilities across the country, inadequate equipments to fight the tormenting COVID-19 pandemic, lack of education, inefficient testing and contact tracing methods, inadequate preparations in our schools to curb transmissions and infections when the kids and the students return to school, the collapse of businesses and associated loss of jobs, etc etc. These are critical challenges that demand immediate and short-term response. We don't need centric style leadership now. Participation from others including your critics is key to success in a democratic environment. The former president showed has command over the issues he discussed and proper understanding of the issues because of the constant interactions which go on between him and associations, experts, civil society organizations, lecturers and other governance stakeholders. At times we need that laissez-faire kind of leadership to enable a leader gather information from experts and highly trained person across the sectors.

The suggestions and advice the former President offered must be given critical attention by all. Let's take power (energy) for instance. Hitherto, we heard people die at the theatre during medical operations because of power outages. The problem persisted before the coming into office of Mr Mahama. Under his dynamic leadership, our power generation increased and huge population was brought under electricity coverage and the nation has recovered from the decades-old chronic energy crisis. Load shedding which intermittently bedevilled the country for decades is no more. Hospitals and other private health facilities without standby generators are assured of constant power for their operations. Imagine the temperature testing device at the international airport fixed by the Mahama administration during the Ebola epidemic was not there when we started getting imported COVID-19 cases. Yes, other countries have received funds from the IMF but can we compare how leaders in these countries handled and handling the pandemic to the abysmal response we witnessed in Ghana.

The ICT sector has been supportive in the Covid-19 fight, the online learning, working from our homes via the internet and all that. We are enjoying stable internet operations because of the huge investments the last administration made in the telecommunication sector. Through use of ICT use, we are able to bring various types of information related to the covid-19 fight, livelihood and other private services to the doorsteps of all citizens. These are the basic things we need to support the system respond to epidemic and pandemics when they hit us. The establishment of infectious disease centres, building of more laboratories and upgrading the existing ones should be our priority now. We need systems which could enable us undertake comprehensive and efficient testing and contact tracing. This is not the time for tall promises and subtle campaign tricks.

And Gabby was celebrating government's ability to raise $7.5 billion. Isn't that interesting. The economy they described as robust and resilient and the fastest growing in Africa, could not withstand three weeks COVID-19 shock forcing government to abandon its own NO MORE IMF promise. The economy is seriously ill according to the IMF's latest report. The pandemic has exposed the true health state of the Ghanaian economy so, why these numerous promises.

What about water! Water is very important in the COVID-19 fight. In four years, the Mahama government brought massive relief to all parts of the country that had suffered perennial water problems. Before leaving office, Urban and rural water coverage was close to 80% each.

Author: Andrews Krow
The weather is going to change for the better and leave us with only one day of rain.

Do not rejoice just yet. There remains one day of clouds and rain fall (and we know how that can send readers into a tailspin)....it will be Monday.

This is of course bad news for senior pupils, who will return to their school's classrooms for the first time since the beginning of the outbreak.

Morning temperatures will be between 6 and 8 C, the afternoon between 15 and 17 C.

The entire day will be accompanied by rain clouds and that eventual rain shower.

The rest of the week will be more blissful however, starting Tuesday: sun and up to 18 C during the afternoon.

Reason enough to get out the bikes or go for an extended walk outside. The remainder of the week will ultimately approach the 20 C barrier - sun tan weather.
Japans prime minister, Shinzo Abe, will consult with experts at a meeting on Monday to extend the national state of emergency until May 31, broadcaster NHK reported on Sunday.

The government will also discuss further action on how to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus epidemic that has infected 15,589 people and killed 530 in the country.

Japan is expected to declare the extension of the state of emergency after the meeting, and Abe will hold a news conference in the evening to address the nation about the pandemic.

The current state of emergency is set to expire on Wednesday, the last day of a week-long national holiday.

Japans economy minister said earlier the country could also ease some of the current coronavirus-related curbs on economic activity by allowing places such as parks and museums to reopen, provided proper preventive measures were in place.
People like State Department lawyer Monica Jacobsen, 34, an Emerging Leader finalist, who has helped strengthen the governments ability to sanction human rights abusers around the world. She is part of a group, she told me, who are not doing it for the recognition, theyre certainly not doing it for the money. Theyre doing it for the impact that can be made when good, smart people try to make sure the government is trying to do the right thing.
Allentown, PA (18103)

Today

Partly sunny, brisk, and chilly. Winds should ease up later in the day..

Tonight

Partly to mostly cloudy and cold.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 3

By Fidan Babayeva - Trend:

A key factor in lowering global CO2 emissions will be to electrify the economy, and renewable energies will be instrumental to this end, a source in Total company told Trend.

"Becoming the responsible energy major means taking this reality into account by investing heavily in solar, onshore wind and, now, offshore wind," the source said. "These fast-growing energy sources present a number of advantages: they are abundant, clean, efficient and increasingly competitive."

"Total recently continued its growth in renewable energies with two substantial investments in offshore and onshore wind power," the source said. "The Group has signed an agreement with the developer Simply Blue Energy to acquire a stake in the pioneering floating wind project Erebus, located in the Celtic Sea in Wales. The project will have a 96-megawatt capacity and will be installed in an area with water depth of 70 meters."

"With this project, Total is a pioneer on two fronts: it is one of the first movers in this technology in the United Kingdom, the worlds largest offshore wind market, and it is tapping the potential of a completely wind-turbine-free zone," the source said.

"This emerging technology has great potential, opening access to sites further offshore, which have less of an impact on the landscape, and harnessing very strong wind resources," the source said. "Total will bring its expertise in offshore operations to ensure future success in this field."

Total and the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic SOCAR participate in the Absheron fields joint development project. The field is located in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea, southeast of Baku. Its development is carried out by JOCAP, a joint venture of SOCAR and Total. The drilling operations are conducted by SOCAR CDC.

Absheron field is one of the biggest gas condensate fields in Azerbaijan, as well as the biggest discovery by Total over the past 10 years. Its development will make an important contribution to ensuring growing domestic demand for natural gas in Azerbaijan and increasing the export revenues.

----

Follow the author on Twitter: Fidan_Babaeva
M S Sahoo, Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI), in an email interview with Namrata Acharya, says debtors and creditors should think of solutions outside Insolvency and Banking Code (IBC), and explains why in the days ahead, liquidation will be rare, as the objective of the code is to rescue companies in distress.

Edited Excerpts: What, according to you, will be the long and short-term impact of Covid-19 on the resolution of stressed assets through IBC? Covid-19 is an external variable. The lockdown and other measures, government and citizens take to address Covid-19 are ...
Russia billed the United States $ 660 thousand for humanitarian aid to fight the coronavirus, which was delivered on April 1 to the airport in New York, as the ABC News reported.

"The State Department received a final bill from the Russian government in the amount of $ 659,283," the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said.

According to FEMA, Russia delivered 45 mechanical ventilation devices, 4,000 gas masks M-95, 15,000 respirators, hand disinfectants, surgical gloves, and medical clothing.

Part of the equipment, according to sources, was useless. For example, ventilators are designed for a voltage of 220 volts, and in the USA they use 110 volts. M-95 gas masks are intended for the military and cover the entire face; they are unsuitable for caring for patients.

Initially, sending medical equipment from the Russian Federation to the United States was presented as a humanitarian action.

As we reported before, the Russian government is asking Italy to pay for the humanitarian aid sent, forcing Brussels to lift the sanctions.
World Laughter Day 2020, is around the corner and as most of us are cooped indoors, movies are a perfect alternative to celebrate this day while social-distancing. Grab your popcorn and set yourself for a laughter riot on the day. Check out the last often classic comedy Malayalam language movies that are perfect for the day.

Malayalam comedy movies to watch

Nadodikkattu

The film directed by Sathyan Anthikad released in the year 1987. The film unfolds the story of two impecunious young men, Ramdas (Mohanlal) and Vijayan (Sreenivasan) who, not being able to find any job in Kerala, plan to immigrate to Dubai to make their fortunes. The story, screenplay and characters have achieved a milestone and considered as a cult.

READ | Ramayan's Luv-Kush Win Hearts, Teary-eyed Fans Say 'Warning: You'll Get Emotional'



In Harihar Nagar

The comedy-thriller hit the theatres in 1990. The film not only bagged huge amounts at the box-office but is also listed as one of the iconic comedy flicks in Malayalam cinema. The film was remade twice in Hindi as Parda Hai Parda and Dhol.

Godfather

Godfather is directed by Siddique-Lal. In 2004, Priyadarshan crafted the film in Hindi as Hulchul. Reportedly, the film completed 417 days at Sreekumar theatre in Thiruvananthapuram.

READ | Unseen Pic Of The Day: Janhvi & Khushi's Fashion Game Has Been On-point Since Childhood

Ramji Rao Speaking

If you enjoyed watching the Hindi film Hera Pheri, Ramji Rao Speaking can give you a good laugh. The screenplay and storyline of both films are the same. The sequels of the film were released in 1995 and 2014.

Thenmavin Kombath

The Malayalam-language rom-com was written and directed by Priyadarshan. The film features Mohanlal, Shobana, and Nedumudi Venu in the lead among many others. The film became the second highest-grossing Malayalam film of the year 1994.

READ | 'Ramayan' Actor Sunil Lahri Assures To Never Disappoint Fans; Says 'Thanks For Support'

Punjabi House

The film starring Dileep, Cochin Hanifa, Harisree Asokan and Mohini, Lal, Neena Kurup among many others, released in 1998. The film follows the story of a young man, who is presumed dead after falling into an ocean due to financial trouble. But he manages to survive and eventually ends up in a Punjabi house. The film is available on Hotstar.

Two Countries

The 2015 Malayalam-language romantic comedy film, Two Countries, is written by Rafi and directed by Shafi. Dileep and Mamta Mohandas essayed the lead characters. The film is about a cunning procrastinator in his late 30s who makes a living by deceiving people. His life turns upside down when he decides to marry Laya, a wealthy woman, who is settled in Canada.

My Boss

Dileep and Mamta Mohandas tickled the funny bone of the audience with another collaboration My Boss. The film is inspired by the American movie The Proposal, which released in 2009. The film received a positive response from the audience and the critics.

READ | Nushrat Bharucha And Manish Malhotra's Pics That Shell Out Major Friendship Goals

Meesha Madhavan

The Lal Jose directorial was the highest-grossing Malayalam film of the year. The musical-comedy raised Dileep's stardom to a superstar level. Reportedly, the film ran in theatres for more than 100 days.

Sandesham

Though it was a satire film, many sequences in the film gave a good laugh to the audience. The film released in 1991 talked about political activism existing in Kerala and took major digs on the political parties in the state. The film saved a spot in the iconic films of Malayalam-language.
OTTAWAA few months before the novel coronavirus arrived in Canada, the Makwa Sahgaiehcan First Nation at Loon Lake, Sask. was already raising the alarm over suicides in the community, about 360 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon.

The First Nation declared a state of crisis in mid-November 2019 after three deaths by suicide occurred over three weeks, including a 10-year-old girl. In the weeks that followed, band leaders say eight people, mainly youths, also tried to take their lives.

Chief Ronald Mitsuing says a deep sense of grief remains within the community of just over 1,000 people, especially after a 31-year-old man in the community died by suicide two weeks ago.

Now, Mitsuing says he fears the stress and worry about a possible outbreak of COVID-19 could trigger further mental health suffering among some of his residents.

Losing the youth really took a big toll out of our community. And I know its ongoing  people thinking about it all the time, cant get past it, he said.

Were not in that comfortable stage yet where we know its going to be all right.

He is not alone. As the number of COVID-19 cases begins to climb in Indigenous communities across Canada, First Nations and Inuit chiefs say they are deeply concerned about how the pandemic is affecting the mental health of their residents.

The Makwa Sahgaiehcan First Nation did receive help from the province and federal government to deal with the immediate aftermath of the suicide crisis, but Mitsuing says they need more permanent resources. He wants funding to train locals as trauma counsellors, rather than relying on outside help or having to send youth away for treatment.

This is especially needed during the pandemic, as the First Nation remains locked down to outsiders, Mitsuing said.

Chief Eugene Hart of the Sheshatshiu Innu First Nation in central Labrador shares the same concerns for his community, which also declared a crisis in the months before the pandemic following 10 suicide attempts in less than a week in October 2019.

The community of roughly 1,300 people had also been struggling with more than a dozen other deaths from natural causes before that  a toll that was hardest felt by young people with few supports in place to help them address their grief, Hart said.

Im worried about everything in general now, because we dont know what people are thinking, where we have the lockdown in the community as well. We dont know what kind of stress people are going through daily because we cant interact with them.

He echoed Mitsuings concerns about not having adequate supports that are permanent. He would like to see full-time crisis counsellors and staff and mental health crisis lines staffed by people in the community. However, he says his First Nation has not received the support from Ottawa or from the province necessary to make this happen.

Everything is totally different now, and its going to be like this awhile and a lot of people are still scared, he said.

Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller says he knows COVID-19 is affecting the mental health of Indigenous communities, particularly among those who are at a high risk from the illness  or have families who are.

He says the federal government is increasing the number of crisis intervention counsellors on shift at the Hope for Wellness helpline, which provides telephone and online support for First Nations, Inuit and Metis in English, French, Cree, Ojibway and Inuktitut.

More than 100 calls and chats every week are linked to COVID-19, according to assistant deputy minister Valerie Gideon, which represents an increase to previous volumes.

The apprehension and fear that exists within the communities is real and has an impact on mental health. As part of Indigenous Services Canada a large amount of the support we provide turns in and around supports around mental health, Miller said, adding the department is ready to do more as it assesses the impact of the pandemic.

Grand Chief Garrison Settee of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, which represents northern First Nations in the province, says concern about inadequate personal protective equipment and sanitation supplies in remote, fly-in communities is further adding to the strain.

Its in our psyche, its in our conscience. Every waking moment, Im thinking about whats going to happen from day to day. Do we have enough resources to be able to address (COVID-19) if it does hit? Settee said.

Elia Nicholson-Nave, executive director of the Kuu-Us Crisis Line Society, which runs an Indigenous-specific crisis line in British Columbia, says March brought a noticeable spike in calls, which has continued, due to pandemic-related issues.

Many people are fearful of what is yet to come and often the unknown causes additional anxiety, depression and mental health distress, she said, adding they have received no extra funding.

Back in Makwa Sahgaiehcan First Nation, Chief Mitsuing says COVID-19 restrictions have put on hold any opportunity for healing as community members and elders remain shut in their houses.

When COVID-19 is over, the chief says he wants to organize sharing circles to help people deal with their anxiety and ongoing grief.

He also wants to teach the youth about their cultural identity as a way to help them heal. He said that is what one of the youths wrote in a letter before dying by suicide.

Thats what they were asking for. They didnt know who they were ... that they didnt have an identity, so were going to try to teach them their culture, the way we were brought up.
Some German churches have reopened on Sunday after being shut for more than a month because of Covid-19.

Worshippers will have to maintain social distancing and wear masks, according to the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle.

Singing will be forbidden amid concerns that it causes the virus to spread more easily, and physical contact  like the handshakes that take place in Catholic services  will be prohibited.

Cologne Cathedral, one of the worlds largest churches, has held a service for people connected with the church.

The ceremony is limited to 122 people, a restriction which will also apply to public services that begin on Wednesday.

Cologne Cathedral usually has 20,000 visitors coming through its doors each day.

Synagogues will also start to reopen slowly, as will mosques, which will hold their first public prayers since lockdown on 9 May.

Angela Merkel announced last week that religious buildings, museums and playgrounds would be allowed to open.

This followed the reopening of small shops throughout the country.

Ms Merkel said: We must work to make sure we bring the number of new infections down further.



If the infection curve becomes steep again, we need to have a warning system to notice it early and be able to act, she added.

Karl Justen, a prelate in the German Catholic Church, called the governments decision to reopen religious buildings a positive sign that religious freedom and infection prevention could work in harmony.

Josef Schuster, the president of the German Central Council of Jews, said: People need stability and trust in their religions, especially in the current situation.
Disney theme parks have sometimes been marketed as The happiest place on Earth, but that didnt wind up being the case for one Alabama man who tried to camp at Discovery Island inside Disney World (which has been shut down since March). The island itself is a lesser-known part of Disney World; it was open to guests from 1974-99, but has been closed since then. But its still owned by Disney and is still on their property, and it comes with plenty of signs prohibiting visitors. That didnt stop 42-year-old Mobile, Alabama resident Richard McGuire from trying to camp there, though.

McGuire was found and arrested by Orange County (Florida) sheriffs deputies Thursday night following a lengthy search, which started after Disney personnel spotted a man on the island. McGuire refused to leave the island, and he claimed he didnt know he couldnt go there. Heres more on that from Levi Edwards of AL.com:

McGuire told deputies he had entered the island to go camping on Monday or Tuesday and had planned on staying on the island for approximately one week. The arresting deputy reported that he explained to McGuire he was in a restricted area that is not open to the public. McGuire told the deputy he was unaware of it and that it looked like a tropical paradise. Deputies earlier in the day had been searching for a man spotted at the island by Disney personnel. Deputies searched for the man on foot, by boat and by using a sheriffs helicopter, according to the report. Orange County Marine deputies had been on Bay Lake making announcements via a public address system to tell the man to exit the island, the affidavit states. Richard (McGuire) said that he did not see or hear them due to being asleep in one of the buildings on the island, the report states.

Discovery Island still has many of the buildings from when it was an operating part of Disney World. Only Disney employees are allowed to go there, but a few people have snuck out there over the years, including YouTube video creator Matt Sonswa. Heres a video of it he posted in December 2018:

That does seem like an interesting place to explore, except for, you know, the laws banning that. But defying those laws didnt work out too well for McGuire. Maybe being in Florida gave him some Florida Man inspiration. At least he was observing social distancing practices?

[AL.com; McGuire photo at left via ClickOrlando, photos at right via Matt Sonswa on YouTube]
The former Joe Biden staffer who claims he sexually assaulted her in 1993 has slammed Democrats for hypocrisy as she revealed the intense online abuse she has received since making the accusation.

Tara Reade hit out at the Democratic Party in an interview with Fox News on Saturday night as she said that creepy voice messages were being left for her as part of a torrent of abuse following her claim against the presumed Democratic presidential candidate.

'I find it astounding - the hypocrisy that Democrats are talking about women being able to tell their story safely,' Reade told Fox.

'I'm a Democrat, a lifelong Democrat, but yet here I am trying to talk about my history with Joe Biden and I'm just the target of online harassment.'

She spoke about the shocking extent of the abuse as two further people were identified who corroborated her story about the sexual assault.

Tara Reade, pictured in 2019, has been supported by two more people regarding her claims that she was sexually assaulted by presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden

Reade has accused Biden, pictured, of shoving his hand under her skirt and penetrating her with his fingers while they stood in a Senate corridor in 1993 while she was on his staff

One friend, who knew Reade in 1993, said Reade told them about the alleged assault when it happened, The Associated Press reported Saturday

The second friend met Reade more than a decade after the alleged incident and confirmed that Reade had a conversation with the friend in 2007 or 2008 about experiencing sexual harassment from Biden while working in his Senate office.

Both spoke on condition of anonymity to protect their families' privacy.

There are now at least four people who have corroborated Reade's allegations.

The former staffer previously said she had not come forward sooner about her abuse as she feared the backlash she could face, a fear that may now have been realized as she detailed the stunning extent to which she is being harassed online.

Reade told Fox that fake social media accounts have been created to impersonate her, which are using personal pictures of her and her family and that she has received emails calling her a 'f---ing whore' and a 'disgrace to womanhood'.

'You are a rip-roaring b---h and the great majority of Americans dont believe you anyhow... I hope you drop dead,' the email read.

She added that some of the posts on the fake accounts were being shared by Biden supporters as she condemned the Democratic Party for placing a barrier up for other sexual assault survivors who could come forward.

'This is something that really has to stop and I'm just wondering where this is coming from,' Reade told Fox News.

'Are these just fanatic supporters? And if so, what does that say about our Democratic voters? Why are they targeting me when the party line is supposed to be allowing people to be safe? Why are they targeting my family and myself and making my family frightened?

'It creates barriers for survivors to want to come forward and talk about difficult things that have happened, she added.

Tara Reade, pictured here in 2019, detailed the intense online abuse she has received in a Fox interview since she came forward with a claim that Joe Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993

Reade has said that she filed a complaint about Biden at the time but is uncertain what exactly it contains. She said she did not directly accuse him on sexual assault as she was 'scared'

And in my case, talking about how Joe Biden sexually harassed and sexually assaulted me is very excruciating and enough by itself, but then to be targeted and harassed and have my whole family targeted and harassed online by people that call themselves his supporters is not only just upsetting, it's frightening.'

As well as sharing the address and phone numbers of one of her family members online, Reade said that the same person also received four calls from an unknown number on Friday night. The caller left creepy voicemails claiming to be a reporter.

Two of the voice messages were obtained by Fox who reported them as saying 'Hi Ms. Reade, this is Dave Johnson from the Observer, a small New York newspaper before adding Jeffry Epstein didnt kill himself and Trump 2020.

A second voicemail said: 'Hey Tara, this is Dave Johnson with the Observer and I would really love, I'd really appreciate a call back so we can discuss your new powerful allegation against Vice President Biden. I think you're setting a tone and underscoring a double standard put forth by the Me Too movement, so I'd really appreciate it if you could just call me back, give me a couple of quick questions.'

Reade highlighted the online abuse as two more people were identified who corroborate her allegations of either sexual assault or harassment against Biden, adding to two associates identified earlier this week.

Pictured are Tara Reade, left, and Joe Biden circa 1993 when the alleged assault took place

Reade posted an image on social media of what she looked like in 1993, the year she alleged Biden sexually assaulted her. She has detailed how she did not specifically use the words sexual harassment or assault in her initial report about Biden to the Senate in 1993

The two who previously came forward included Lynda LaCasse, a former neighbor, who said Reade told her about the alleged assault a few years after Reade said it happened in the mid-1990s.

The other was a former coworker Lorraine Sanchez who said Reade told her she had been sexually harassed by her boss during her previous job in Washington.

Reade's interview with Fox also followed her criticism of an Associated Press report covering her accusations earlier on Saturday, which she claims misrepresented her in its headline.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Reade has restated a previous claim that she not explicitly accused Joe Biden of sexual assault or harassment when she filed a limited report with a congressional personnel office in 1993.

Yet speaking to Fox News, Reade said, 'I do not know what is on the form until we see it. I filed a sexual harassment complaint and included retaliation'.

On Saturday, Reade slammed the AP report as 'false' for saying in its headline that she had not directly accused Joe Biden of sexual assault even though the story included a direct quote from her stating such.

It also included 2019 quotes in which she said she had 'chickened out' and not detailed the sexual harassment in the report at the time because she was scared.

Tara Reade branded an AP report as 'false' on Saturday despite the article including a direct quote from her stating 'I know I didn't use sexual harassment' in her report

Reade added that the headline was misleading. She says that she filed a form regarding the sexual harassment but that she decided against detailing the assault in 1993 fearing backlash

Reade later told Fox that she had filed a sexual harassment complaint even if she hadn't used those exact words.

'They're standing by the fact... that I said I don't think I used the term "sexual harassment." We didn't use it as much back in 1993, so I don't know but that's not to say that there isn't a box that I didn't check. Until we get that form, we don't know,' Reade explained.

According to an interview with Reade published by the AP on Saturday, the former Biden staffer said she filed a limited report with a congressional personnel office that did not explicitly accuse him of sexual assault or harassment.

Shortly after the interview was published, however, Reade shared the story tweeting 'this is false', despite the article including a direct quote from her stating 'I know I didn't use sexual harassment' in the report.

She later attempted to clarify her meaning by tweeting that 'the headline was quite misleading' in saying she had not mentioned sexual harassment specifically but she doesn't know if there was a box she ticked about it until she sees the report.

'I filed the intake form regarding sexual harassment and retaliation however that was articulated on form in 1993. I filed with Senate Personnel. Perhaps Joe Biden knows where that form is located. Ask him,' she added.

Reade later told Fox News the 'story itself is correct' but the headline, which read 'Tara Reade says a Senate report she filed against Joe Biden didnt refer to sexual harassment or assault', was wrong.

In multiple interviews with the AP on Friday, Reade insisted she filed an 'intake form' at the Senate personnel office, which included her contact information, the office she worked for and some broad details of her issues with Biden.

On Saturday, Reade told the AP there may have been a box to check on the form noting a sexual harassment complaint, but she couldn't remember and wouldn't know for sure until she saw the form.

Reade filed an official criminal complaint against the now presumptive Democratic presidential nominee on April 9 of this year, accusing Biden of shoving his hand under her skirt and penetrating her with his fingers while they stood in a senate corridor, an accusation he has denied.

She says she was fired from Biden's office after filing a complaint with the Senate alleging harassment.

The former staffer made the complaint about the alleged assault last month after going public with her story in March but the statue of limitations had passed.

The former Biden staffer has spoken out about the threats she has received online

Reade was among the women who came out last year alleging Biden was too handsy but did not make her allegation of sexual assault until speaking with journalist Katie Halper for her 'Katie Halper Show' podcast on March 25.

She says she was reluctant to share details of the assault during her initial conversations with reporters over a year ago because she was scared of backlash, and was still coming to terms with what happened to her.

According to the Associated Press, Reade filed a report after the alleged assault but it did not mention sexual assault or harassment specifically.

'I remember talking about him wanting me to serve drinks because he liked my legs and thought I was pretty and it made me uncomfortable,' Reade said.

'I know that I was too scared to write about the sexual assault.'

Reade said she described her issues with Biden but 'the main word I used - and I know I didn't use sexual harassment - I used "uncomfortable". And I remember "retaliation".'

The AP reported that it had discovered additional transcripts and notes from its interviews with Reade last year in which she says she 'chickened out' after going to the Senate personnel office. They interviewed Reade in 2019 after she accused Biden of uncomfortable and inappropriate touching.

The existence of the Senate report has become a key element of the accusations against Biden, which he has flatly denied.

Reade says she doesn't have a copy of the report, and Biden said Friday that he is not aware that any complaint against him exists. He asked the Senate and the National Archives to search their records to try to locate a complaint from Reade.

But Reade is suggesting that even if the report surfaces, it would not corroborate her assault allegations because she chose not to detail them at the time.

According to a transcript of her 2019 interview with the AP, Reade said: 'They have this counseling office or something, and I think I walked in there once, but then I chickened out.'

She made a similar statement in a second interview with AP that same day, according to written notes from the interview.

On Friday, Reade said she was referring to having 'chickened out' by not filing full harassment or assault allegations against Biden.

Reade was one of eight women who came forward last year with allegations that Biden made them feel uncomfortable with inappropriate displays of affection.

During one of the April 2019 interviews with the AP, she said Biden rubbed her shoulders and neck and played with her hair. She said she was asked by an aide in Biden's Senate office to dress more conservatively and told 'don't be so sexy.'

She said of Biden: 'I wasn't scared of him, that he was going to take me in a room or anything. It wasn't that kind of vibe.'

Biden acknowledged the complaints and promised to be 'more mindful about respecting personal space in the future'.

Reade's recent accusation has roiled Biden's presidential campaign, however, sparking anxiety among Democrats.

Republicans have accused Biden backers of hypocrisy, arguing that they have been quick to believe women who have accused President Donald Trump and other conservatives of assault.

Trump has faced multiple accusations of assault and harassment, all of which he denies.
Jacqueline Fernandez Poses With Salman Khan's Horse As She Turns Cover Girl For A Magazine
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Chrissy Hale, owner of Halo Hair & Beauty Bar at 100 N. Main St. has two reasons to celebrate.

One is the possibility that her salon will finally be able to reopen for business by mid-May.

Second, but most importantly, she just received word she had received federal funding from the Paycheck Protection Program, part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act that will allow her to not only pay her employees wages for the next 2 1/2 months but also the bonuses and tips they would have received had the salon not been shut because of the coronavirus pandemic.

That was a huge blessing, she said in a phone interview.

Hale is awaiting word on when Texas will allow salons like hers to reopen. Gov. Greg Abbott has said May 18 is the date that businesses like hers can reopen, and she said she is awaiting any updates.

Well see how it goes the next two weeks -- see if the virus is better contained, Hale said.

The salon already practiced good sanitation, she said. Employees would sanitize the salon when they werent busy tending to clientele. But when the salon reopens, that will be taken up a notch, Hale said.

After every client, we will sanitize doorknobs, shampoo basins, chairs, the front counter; well sanitize constantly, she said.

Also, in keeping with guidelines, only 10 people  including staff  will be allowed in the salon at a time. Customers will be required to wear masks, and there will be masks available for purchase if the customer doesnt have one.

Theres proof masks help stem the spread, she said.

Customers also will be asked to sign forms stating they have had no COVID-19 symptoms in the two weeks before their visit, and if they develop symptoms within two weeks after their visit, they will contact the salon. That will help contract tracing efforts, she said.

Weve been able to stay open by selling products, color kits, pedi kits, she said. The first couple of weeks we were closed, there was no decline in business. Our clientele really supported us. Theyd buy products online, gift cards online. The community really helped keep us alive.
Liquor shops in Chhattisgarh will reopen from Monday following the implementation of the new lockdown guidelines released by the Centre. The state excise department said it was ready to home deliver liquor at some places.

As per an order issued by the Chhattisgarh excise department on Sunday, the liquor shops in the state, including the premium liquor shops, will remain open from 8 am to 7 pm from Monday onwards.

To maintain social distancing, we have decided to provide home delivery to some big colonies and settlements. The liquor will also be available at the liquor vends, but if anyone asks for its home delivery, the liquor will be delivered, Chhattisgarhs excise minister Kawasi Lakhma told Hindustan Times.

He added that additional charges will be applicable for the home delivery option.

Delivery boys will be hired by a placement agency and the rate of delivered liquor will be determined after calculating the cost of hiring manpower agency, the order stated.

The minister further said the modalities of home delivery of liquor were still being worked out and it will be announced on Monday. We are still working on it.

The government order adds that one person will not be allowed to buy more than 5000 ML at a time from any liquor shop.

For Coronavirus Live Updates
Egypts health ministry announced on Sunday the detection of 272 new coronavirus cases in the country and the deaths of 14 people from the contagion.

The total number of infections nationwide has risen to 6,456, while the total death toll stands at 429.

The statement added that 40 coronavirus patients have been discharged from hospital, bringing the total number of recoveries to 1,562 so far.

The number of people who have retested negative, including the 1,562 recoveries, has now reached 2,041, according to health ministry spokesmen Khaled Megahed.

The rate of coronavirus cases in Egypt has seen a surge since Friday, when the highest single-day toll was reported with 358 new positive coronavirus cases.

The country hit the 1,000-case mark on 4 April and surpassed the 6,000-case mark on 2 May.

The government has indicated that it will ease restrictions put in place to limit the spread of the virus after the Eid Al-Fitr religious holiday, which marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan on 23 May.

A number of sweeping measures have been imposed since March in a bid to contain the pandemic after the first case of COVID-19 was detected in Egypt on 14 February, almost two months after the virus first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Some lockdown measures have already been lifted with the partial resumption of some government services.

Combating the virus

Egypt has started a three-level strategy to prepare 34 fever and pulmonology hospitals countrywide to serve as isolation facilities for coronavirus patients. The hospitals will be tasked with providing check-up, diagnosis, quarantine, and treatment, in addition to carrying out scientific research.

The strategy is part of the country's plan to live with the virus as per the guidelines of the World Health Organisation, which has said that the whole world will have to live with the reality of the virus, said the minister.

The country started its first steps to confront the deadly virus by dedicating 14 isolation hospitals for coronavirus cases, in addition to 47 fever hospitals and 35 pulmonology hospitals for triage and the referral of patients.

Health Minister Hala Zayed has urged all Egyptians to wear medical masks on public transport as well as in hotels and restaurants and to maintain social distancing, especially for seniors, pregnant women, and those with chronic diseases.

Zayed pointed out that the ministry has contracted to bring in additional coronavirus detection kits.

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03.05.2020 LISTEN

Once again I am challenging, the founder of Omega Ministries, Apostle Suleman, to heal a coronavirus patient and get a sum of money, this time a higher amount-five thousand US dollars. I am throwing the challenge one more time because Suleman has in his response refused to categorically accept or decline the offer.

Suleman seemed to imply that the amount, which I had earlier advanced was little. Let's not forget that in his widely circulated video, Apostle Suleman offered to heal COVID19 patients for free. Thus a thousand dollars offered for him to perform the same activity could not have been a disincentive. I have castigated Suleman for being insensitive and for pretending to have a cure for a virus that has killed tens of thousands of people worldwide

I urged the NCDC to sanction him for evangelical recklessness, and for advancing propositions that could lead to the spread of the infection and more deaths. In the article, I made it clear that Apostle Suleman was peddling bogus therapeutic claims given the fact that there was no evidence that prayer could heal any bacterial or viral infection or any disease at all.

Surprisingly, this insightful comment did not go down well with this pastor. And in his reply, Suleman denounced me. He adjudged my statement as 'nonsense', stating that God was bigger than the coronavirus. I said well, if he believed that prayer had any medical efficacy, and could heal COVID19 patients, then he should come forward and prove it under scientific conditions.

Apostle Suleman boasted that he could heal 18 out of 20 patients. I asked this televangelist to heal just one coronavirus patient and go home with seed money of a thousand dollars. Is that not a good offer? Is that amount not more than the monthly tithes of some of his church members? I even went further to give him an alternative option. That, in a situation where legal and ethical concerns stopped him from accessing and healing a COVID19 patient, he could faith-heal an HIV patient at the same fee. Was that not magnanimous?

Instead of taking advantage of this historic opportunity to demonstrate his faith healing abilities, Apostle Suleman resorted to being evasive and making excuses.

He stated that he would send me details of the people he had healed. Did I ask him for that? No. Did I challenge him to produce the names of those that he had healed? Not at all. He went further to indulge in personal attacks, describing the one thousand dollars that I offered as a sign that I was 'broke' and 'poor'.

I mean, that was not the issue at stake. I did not challenge Apostle Suleman to a show of wealth; to demonstrate if he was rich or if he was richer than me. I asked him to prove in a way that was scientifically confirmable that he could heal a COVID19 patient as he claimed. That was all. Once again he dodged the matter and could not demonstrate his ability to heal a patient through prayer.

Now it could be that Apostle Suleman was unable to accept the challenge because the amount was too small as he hinted. So a higher amount could get him to perform. Look the world urgently needs a cure for the coronavirus. There is no better point in human history that the healing power is needed than now. The world is literally in lockdown and many local and international businesses have been grounded due to the coronavirus pandemic. So it is proper to incentivize the discovery of a cure or a healing facility even at a paltry sum. Anyone who claims to have an ability to heal by faith and prayer should be allowed to demonstrate it even if at an extra cost.

Apostle Suleman should bear in mind that if he succeeds in healing a COVID19 patient through prayer, he would instantly become a billionaire. He would be richer than the Bill Gates of this world and then stop relying on tithes and offering. And who turns down such an opportunity for a financial breakthrough? That was why after some thoughtful consideration, I decided to challenge Apostle Suleman again. This time I am challenging him to demonstrate his so-called gift or power of healing a COVID19/HIV person and take home five thousand dollars. This healing performance will take place under agreed scientific conditions and the money will be handed over to Suleman after the healing has been confirmed. I hope that Suleman accepts the challenge this time so that the world would bear witness to his special gift. Whether for a fee or for free, Suleman should come forward and prove his faith healing abilities. No more excuses!

And if perchance, Apostle Suleman forges another alibi, and declines this healing challenge. If he refuses to rise to the occasion as he did when I offered a thousand dollars, I hope other pastors who claim to have such powers would come forward and heal a COVID/HIV patient through prayers and take home the sum of money.

Apostle Suleman, will you accept the challenge this time? Is there any pastor who could rise to the occasion? A coronavirus stricken world is waiting to benefit from your healing powers

Leo Igwe directs the Advocacy for Alleged Witches(AFAW). AFAW is not a witches' group as has been reported but a campaign initiative to stop witch persecution in Africa.
I lived in Chicago for over 36 years and followed the mayors. After moving to Hazel Crest I still had an interest in Chicago politics. I felt I would never see a mayor so inspirational and as inspriring as the one Chicago has now. She is all about governing and has no patience for playing games. Her choice for police superintendent, as far as I am concerned, is a four star. She handled the outgoing of the last superintendent with dignity, taking into consideration of his family.
Manzanita's Wreck of the Glenesslin: Historical Oregon Coast Controversy

Updated Periodically

By Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff

(Manzanita, Oregon)  One of the Oregon coasts more infamous shipwrecks still remains a controversy into this century  and it all happened in tiny Manzanita, even before the village had that name.

On a pleasant, even gorgeous day  October 1 of 1913  the massive British square rigger Glenesslin plowed into a part of Neahkahnie Mountain you cant really see these days. A mystery to everyone, conditions were crystal clear, waters were calm and it was only 2:30 in the afternoon.

The ship was built in Glasgow in 1885: 1,818 tons of steel that were 260 feet long. In this case, it was coming up from Brazil, bound for Portland with only sand ballast and no cargo, as it was to pick up various goods in Stumptown.

When it hit the jagged shoreline of Neahkahnie Mountain, a large group of locals came to the rescue of the crew, and what followed was a dramatic trial over who was at fault for the wrecking of the Glenesslin. Testimony was heard that the captain was drunk as well as other crew members, and in the end Captain Owen Williams and second mate John Colefield were suspended for six months, while first mate F.W. Harwarth simply received a reprimand.

Afterwards, historians started speculating there was another possibility, that the Glenesslin was wrecked on purpose for the insurance money. Wind-driven ships were by this time not profitable with steam ships the standard, yet the C.E. DeWolf & Co. could not afford to replace it. The trial itself was a major brouhaha of he said / he said. Thus lingers this Oregon coast controversy.

The Glenesslin had a bit of fame to it: about 1900 it set a record for sailing speed, making the run from Portland to South Africa in 74 days. Numerous other local papers covered it after that, usually mundane business reports about what it arrived in Portland with, and even one report of pesticide used to kill all the rats aboard to prevent Bubonic plague.

Newspaper reports of the shipwreck are interesting in their detail. One article tells of a man living on the beach (presumably a cabin near the surf) who knew something was very wrong as he watched the ship make a kind of beeline for the cliffs. Also watching were the guests and staff at the fabled Neah-Kah-Nie tavern, a hotel / restaurant that was famous for many decades. (In fact the Sand Dune Pub has a similar decor in homage to that watering hole). There, people watched through a giant window as the ship ducked into the side of the mountain.

Immediately, a small crowd of locals ran out to render aid, among them Samuel G. Reed, owner of the tavern and a local legend in Manzanita. He, along with others helping crewmen out of the ship, noted many of them reeked from alcohol, including the captain.

According to the East Oregonian newspaper on October 2: All those aboard were saved, with their baggage, by shooting a line from the boat to shore, where the line was made fast to the big bowlders [sic] by S. G. Reed, owner of Necarney Tavern, his clerk, Thomas Williams, Walter Cain and two laborers.





Reed testified at the hearing in Astoria on October 13 to the presence of alcohol. Back in 2011, local historian Paul Bartels told the Cannon Beach History Center the crew wanted to rid themselves of the whiskey before docking.

Subsequent articles by the Oregon Daily Journal (The Oregonian) and Oregon Capitol Journal (Statesman-Journal) in the days following talked about the ship listing and shifting, but not getting battered too badly by waves. However, with several holes and the fact it was in kind of a weird spot where wind was blocked  and thus couldnt move on its own  it was a total loss.

Then came the hearing, which included a handful of British naval men and admirals. The stories varied and the courtroom scene felt a little like something out of Downton Abbey.

One one side was second mate Colefield who was on watch on the deck, claiming he tried to awaken Captain Williams from his nap at 2 p.m. as the captain had ordered, but found him and first mate Harwarth essentially too liquored up to wake up, according to the Oregon Daily Journal. At one point Williams did make it on deck, but by then it was too late to steer the ship away.

On the other side was Williams, who claimed he had not been awakened as requested. Moreover, if the testimony is to be believed, the whole incident couldve been averted by one man.

According to the Oregon Daily Journal: A Chinese cook testified that he had gone upon the poop deck and asked Colefield to stand offshore and that the latter told him to clear out and mind his own business.

An unusual scene took place in the courtroom, where the judge and an attorney began postulating what they might do if they were in the first mates place. This caused Colefield to become livid and burst out: Theyve got me hung. I see that I shall have to appeal because I see that I am to be made the one to blame.

The courts final rulings made no specific mention of the alcohol. Officials apparently didnt really believe either camp entirely, punishing both with what was the most severe penalties possible.

Within days of the wreck, a surveyor for auction house Lloyds took stock of the ship. It was later sold for a mere a 500-some dollars, sight unseen, though it wouldve been worth $30,000 or so intact. After that, the new owner sold it for $100.

Exactly how the Glenesslin was dismantled is not known.

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Manchester, Stansted and East Midlands airports will this week begin requiring travellers to wear face masks and gloves.

The three airports are also trialling temperature checks and looking at plans to ask all passengers to make a health declaration before entering.

Passengers will be expected to bring their own gloves and masks, but the airports will have some PPE supplies on standby.

A Manchester Airport spokesman said: 'Manchester Airport can confirm it will be piloting various new safety measures that are being put in place across Manchester Airports Group (which also owns and operates Stansted and East Midlands) later this week.

'They are designed to help the small number of passengers currently making essential journeys through our airports feel safer and more confident about flying at this time.'

It comes as the Eurostar says all its passengers must wear face masks as a safeguard against Covid-19, effective from Monday.

Manchester, Stansted and East Midlands airports will this week begin requiring travellers to wear face masks and gloves

In a tweet in French and in English, the international high-speed train service says the policy will apply to both its trains and its stations, 'in line with guidelines announced by the French and Belgian governments'.

It warned passengers without a mask could be refused travel.

Travellers to France, including French citizens returning home, will face a compulsory two-week quarantine and possible isolation when they arrive in the country to help slow the spread of coronavirus, the health minister said on Saturday.

'This quarantine will be imposed on any person returning on French soil,' Health Minister Olivier Veran told a press briefing after the weekly cabinet meeting.

It was not immediately clear whether the quarantine would only apply to people arriving from outside Europe's open-border Schengen area, whether they would need to self-isolate at home or in hotels, and for how long the measures would be in place.

Eurostar says all its passengers must wear face masks as a safeguard against Covid-19, effective from Monday

The news of the requirement to wear a mask and gloves at the three UK airports comes as ministers have been accused of being 'slow to work with airports' on how air travel will function when the lockdown is lifted.

The Department for Transport set up a taskforce - the Recovery and Restart Group - weeks ago to discuss what measures should be brought in but it is thought it failed to consult with airports.

Charlie Cornish, boss of Manchester Airports Group told the Sunday Telegraph: 'Government has been slow to work with the UK aviation industry. It is vital we work together to establish a workable set of proposals.

'UK airports have put a package of measures on the table for discussion. We now need the Government to work urgently with airports and airlines to agree how we operate in the future.'

If the public decide to go on last-minute summer holidays after lockdown is lifted it is feared that airports will struggle to cope with a wave of travellers.

Passengers will be expected to bring their own gloves and masks, but the airports will have some PPE supplies on standby. Pictured: passengers outside Stansted airport

Michael O'Leary, the boss of Europe's biggest airline Ryanair said that he expects 'a rush to get to the beaches in July and August'.

Last week it was disclosed that British officials were drawing up plans based on the 14-day 'stay home' notices currently issued to Singaporean citizens returning to their country from abroad.

A poll then found overwhelming support for proposals for those flying into the UK to be asked to self-isolate for two weeks - with 92 per cent agreeing a scheme should be in place.

An ORB International survey of 2,082 people found only four per cent of people disagreed that both British citizens and those from abroad should be 'forced to quarantine' for a period of two weeks after flying into UK airports.

It comes as the debate over the effectiveness of wearing face masks rumbles on.

This week at a daily press briefing the PM Boris Johnson said face masks will be 'useful' as part of coming out of lockdown, both for disease control and for making people feel safe on public transport.

Current UK Government advice is for Britons to avoid all non-essential global travel indefinitely, but people are able to fly for other reasons such as to return home after being stranded overseas or if they are travelling for work.
85% of workers afraid to return as Alberta meat plant preps to reopen after COVID-19 outbreak, union says

The union representing workers at an Alberta meat-packing plant, the site of one of North America's largest COVID-19 outbreaks, continues to fight to prevent the facility from reopening on Monday as planned.

A total of 1,510 cases of COVID-19 in Alberta are now linked to the outbreak at the Cargill plant, located near High River, according to a spokesperson for Alberta Health.

Nearly half of the company's 2,000 staff, 917 workers, have tested positive. Cargill announced the plant would close on April 20, after a worker died of COVID-19.

"The plant shouldn't reopen unless it's safe," said Thomas Hesse, president of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 401. "In recent days, large plants in the United States that have been closed for two weeks have reopened and the number of diagnoses doubled after some plants reopened."

The union surveyed more than 600 workers in four languages over the weekend; 85 per cent reported they are afraid to return to work and 80 per cent said they do not want the plant to reopen Monday.

UFCW is seeking a stop-work order from Alberta Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) and has also filed an unfair labour practice complaint against both the Cargill plant and the Government of Alberta.

The Alberta Labour Relations Board scheduled emergency proceedings over the weekend to address the matter, Hesse said.

Cargill has said it is responding to concerns raised by workers and will be providing personal protective equipment and changing policies to increase safety.

Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press

But Hesse said workers and the union haven't been involved in discussions with Cargill  he learned the plant was reopening through a news release.

"No civilized country that has the rule of law puts people in this kind of jeopardy to put a hamburger on the table," he said.

Employment lawyer Andrew Monkhouse said workers concerned about their safety have an uphill battle now that the plant has been cleared to reopen.

Story continues

"Obviously we need to balance having food production but then also the care for the individual workers. The work has to go on. It's about finding a way ... that is as safe as possible while still getting the work done," he said.

"There are processes in place to be able to deal with these disagreements and hopefully to be able to get food production and labour production rolling again."

Employees at the plant have accused the company of ignoring physical distancing protocols and trying to lure them back to work from self-isolation.

After the COVID-19 pandemic was declared, no preventative inspection of the Cargill plant was done. A live video inspection by OHS, conducted after dozens at the plant were already sick, concluded the work site was safe to remain open.

OHS is now investigating the plant, and Cargill said provincial health officials will be in attendance for Monday's reopening.

Hesse and Monkhouse both said if the legal challenge isn't successful and the plant reopens on Monday, workers still have the option to exercise their right to refuse unsafe work if necessary.

"The right of the individual workers to stop work when they feel it's dangerous, they're going to continue to have that right," Monkhouse said.

The plant processes about 4,500 head of cattle per day  more than one-third of Canada's beef-processing capacity.
Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has said that the state government is constantly working for the safe and smooth movement of migrants and workers during the Covid-19 lockdown. At a review meeting on Covid-19 lockdown and movement of people on Saturday, Gehlot said that there should be no negligence, else entire efforts will go waste.

The third phase of lockdown will begin from May 4. The guideline issued by the GoI and state should be strictly followed. There should not be any kind of negligence on social distancing and necessary arrangements should be made for the industrial activities, which have been allowed to commence in the third phase, said Gehlot.

He added that institutional quarantine has been arranged for migrants and workers from other states to prevent the spread of infection, but those who do not want to use it must necessarily stay in home quarantine. Also, their families should cater for social distancing and should not go out of the houses, the chief minister said.

He said that screening of all passengers should be ensured along with sanitisation of trains and buses. All other arrangements, including masks, sanitisers, food, should also be available for them, Gehlot added.

Gehlot said that till date, around 14 lakh people have registered for movement and it is a big challenge to send them to their respective homes. These people should be called about 4 to 6 hours before the departure of a train by giving timely information related to the schedule and fare of the train through SMS, to avoid rush, Gehlot said at the meeting. He also said that social distancing norms should be followed in trains too.

Chief Secretary DB Gupta informed that constant communication and coordination is being done with the state governments regarding the movement of migrants and workers. He said that Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Telangana and West Bengal have not agreed to take people other than the workers currently living in the camps. Therefore, it is not possible to send people of these states. We are making efforts that governments of these states provide consent soon, said Gupta.

Additional Chief Secretary Industries Subodh Agrawal informed that 45,287 workers and migrants have been sent from the state till Saturday and 57,521 workers and migrants have been brought to the state. Ensuring social distancing, around 1,200 passengers have been transported in a train. They have been asked to pay the fare fixed by the Indian Railways through the state government.
After working remotely  very remotely, I might say  from his Butler County farm for five weeks, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley is looking forward to working with his colleagues in person.

Although the coronavirus crisis is far from over, the Senate will be back in session next week because the peoples business must go on.

Im not kidding you, the Republican senator told reporters on his weekly call. Theres no shortage of work to be done in the United States Senate.

Congress will consider further spending to combat the virus and to set the stage for an economic recovery. It already has appropriated about $3 trillion,

Taking a historical perspective on the situation, Grassley expressed confidence that although the coronavirus has claimed tens of thousands of lives and caused economic havoc not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the nation will emerge a stronger and more prosperous country than ever before.

The economic situation is not the fault of the 30 million people unemployed, its not the fault of the small businesses, Grassley said. Rather it was the government-ordered shutdown of businesses that caused unemployment. Now it is governments responsibility to reopen the economy so people can go back to work, he said.

One of Grassleys priorities, whether hes in Washington or on the farm, will be oversight to prevent waste, fraud and abuse of the $3 trillion already appropriated.

Ive got a reputation for being an equal-opportunity overseer of the enforcement of the law, he said. So Im going to monitor the ongoing public health and economic situations for my constituents in Iowa, but also across the country to make sure Congress is fulfilling its constitutional duty to govern, (and) the checks and balances on seeing laws are enforced are part of that.

Although he is looking forward to working with his colleagues in person, Grassley said the situation in Washington is more dangerous, (weve) got to be more cautious.

More than half of the senators, including Grassley, are older than 65. One has contracted the coronavirus.

Although no specific guidance has been given senators and their staffs, Grassley said they will be following social distancing guidelines and other recommendations of Capitol Hill medical personnel.

Im not concerned about it, he said. Were going to take the proper precautions.

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This combination of pictures created on April 25, shows (top) Muslim devotees offering prayers after breaking fast during their holy month of Ramadan at the Jama Masjid mosque in New Delhi on June 5, 2018, and (bottom) an empty Jama Masjid mosque on the first day of Muslim's holy fasting month of Ramadan under a government-imposed nationwide lockdown as a preventive measure against the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus in New Delhi on April 25 . (Xavier Galiana, Sajjad Hussain/AFP via Getty Images)
Gurbir Singh By

By the end of December 2019, US President Donald Trump had beaten back the Democratic Party challenge. It was to skewer the President for his collusion with Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, his likely competition for the November elections. We had written in these columns that the big momentum in Trumps favour then was the steady performance of the US economy.

His anti-immigrant rhetoric combined with unemployment dropping to just 3.5 per cent, a historic 50-year low, gave Trumps re-election campaign a big boost before the Christmas vacation.

The December 2019 CNN poll said 76 per cent of the voters, up from 67 per cent last year, felt the economy was in good shape, the highest approval rating since 2001.

And it appeared that Donald Trump was cruising to victory. But, not anymore. On Wednesday the Federal Reserve revealed that the US economy had suffered its sharpest decline since the Great Recession  a 4.8 per cent fall  for the January- March quarter.

The collapse of the 1930s, captured so vividly in The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, put back America by nearly a decade, and the coronavirus pandemic is likely to wreck similar damage.

AMIT BANDRE

Even though the shutdown of economy really started in the second half of March, in two weeks household spending crashed 7.6 per cent and business investment fell 8.6 per cent. Bereft of sustained demand, small and medium businesses are folding up, and the latest figures show 30 million Americans jobs have evaporated.

A callous leader

Along with a shuttered economy, Trump is now also battling the image of a callous leader, uncaring of the dead and dying; and a President willing to barter the health of a nation in the interests of his own gamble for a second term. As the number of Covid-19 patients in the US tops a million and deaths exceed 60,000, it is slowly sinking in that perhaps the US started shutting down and keeping people at home too late to prevent community transmission of the virus.

And now Trump is restless to get things opened up once again and the economy running. Perhaps, before time, again dangerously inviting a second bout of the pandemic. His daily reviews with the press are a dose of brazen untruths each day. Sample these: Last year 37,000 Americans died from the common flu. Nothing is shut down, life and the economy go on... Think about that.

And on March 9, when asked about WHO data on the viruss death rate: I think the 3.4 per cent is false... Personally, I think the number is way under 1 per cent. But what took the cake was his assertion at a briefing that disinfectants and ultraviolet light were strong remedies for coronavirus.

He even suggested these be ingested for cleansing! Till March, despite all the evidence to the contrary, the US public felt Trump was doing a good job in handling the pandemic. Data released by Emerson College showed that in March, 49 per cent of those polled approved Trumps responses as against 41 per cent who disapproved. However, in April the approval rating had fallen to 38.9 per cent.

Another depression coming

Significantly, soon after Trumps outrageous suggestion that Covid-19 patients be treated by injecting bleach and other disinfectants in their body, Reuters/Ipsos did an opinion poll. The results, released on Tuesday, were a shocker. The poll found that as many as 47 per cent of US adults still said they were very or somewhat likely to follow recommendations Trump makes about the virus. The consolation is there is a 15 per cent-point drop from 62 per cent in March to 47 per cent who said they would follow Trumps advice.

But, really! The disinfectant proposal (which Trump later said he had made in sarcasm) should have sunk him like a stone among a decently educated electorate! Interestingly, Democrat nominee Joe Bidens lead of 6 points too had not changed in April. While in March, Biden was ahead of Trump in voter support by 53 per cent to 47 per cent, in April Bidens lead over Trump was 48 per cent to 42 per cent. So Trump still has his swagger; but it is going to be the economy that will be his Waterloo. We are going to see economic data for the second quarter thats worse than any data weve seen for the economy, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome H.

Powell said in a video news conference. He called it heartbreaking to witness millions of job losses, especially in minority communities. Analysts say the second quarter is likely to show a decline of more than 30 percent  a level not seen since the Great Depression  with millions more jobs lost in months to come. Estimates on depths of the recession vary. Bloomberg Economics has projected a 37 per cent annualised contraction, while the most bearish, UniCredit, estimates it at 65 per cent. By the time elections take place in November, the tide against Trump can only grow.
Member of Parliament for Tamale Central, Inusah Fuseini has waded into the debate saying that Governments plan of constructing 88 new district and six regional hospitals within one year is a move smacks of a political gimmick.

He argued that the New Patriotic Partys (NPP) administration has taken the health of Ghanaians for granted since assuming office.

It is 88 [district] hospitals [and six regional hospitals] but to be honest it may sound nonsensical, that is why the people of Ghana are raising concerns. A lot of people are taken aback because Nana Akufo-Addo within the beginning of this year and the ending of the last year introduced loans to Parliament for the construction of hospitals. And after the fulfilment of the condition precedent, the projects were going to be completed within 24 months  that is not one year but two. So you have a president who reads Cabinet memo that said that the constriction of that hospitals will take a minimum of two years comes to make a promise that he will do them in one year if this not a political gimmick then I dont know what is it, he said on The Big Issue.

President Akufo-Addo who made the announcement said the standard 100 -bed facilities which will be in districts without hospitals will also have accommodation for staff for improved health care.

But many want the government to focus on completing abandoned hospital projects in the country instead of starting new ones.

For Mr. Inusah argued that the non-availability of any detailed plan on the project leaves room for serious concerns.

He added that the government would not have prioritized health infrastructure if Ghana had not recorded cases of the new coronavirus outbreak.

The whole discussion of whether it will be feasible for the President to build 88 hospitals, six regional hospitals, and renovate the Effia Nkwanta Regional Hospital have all come into sharp focus because of COVID-19. So putting it in context, we must, first of all, extend some level of gratitude and acknowledgement but for the COVID-19 case, Nana Akufo-Addo the President will not have prioritized the health of the people in his administration. It had to take COVID-19 and a national broadcast for us to hear this. There was no plan to build 88 hospitals. The wealth of ta country is the health of the people. So every political actor or anybody who is put in charge of the administration and management of a country must take conscious efforts to invest in the health of its citizens because nothing happens if you have a sick population.

Government is still in the process of finalising the cost of the facilities, according to the Health Minister, Kwaku Agyeman Manu.

The pledge for this project by the government led to a focus on health projects ongoing because of concerns there was no need for new health projects to commence.

The Africa Centre for Health Policy (ACeHP), for example, advised the government to complete abandoned health projects before constructing new ones.

Opposition MPs have also accused the current administration of abandoning hospital projects started under the recent National Democratic Congress administration.

But the Minister of Health, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu has debunked flatly, allegations that the healths projects started by the erstwhile John Mahama administration have been abandoned by the current government.

Government after assuming office in 2017, has never abandoned any health facility which was started by the previous government and I have to emphasize that government has never abandoned any health facility before assumption of office in 2017, the Health Minister said.

---citinewsroom
Australia's reality television industry has been turned on its head due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the past months, production for The Bachelor, The Block and Big Brother have been forced to shut down, as social distancing is simply impossible on-set.

Now, producers are searching for programs to fill in the gaps, and it seems Shark Tank Australia could be a perfect match.

'The best ideas in history has been though adversity': Entrepreneur Janine Allis, 55, (pictured) has revealed why Shark Tank Australia is the perfect COVID-19 reality show

Speaking to TV Tonight on Sunday, Shark Tank judge Janine Allis, 55, revealed why now would be the perfect time to revive the now-defunct Channel 10 format.

'The best ideas in history has been though adversity,' she said, adding that would love to see ideas that could benefit people after the pandemic has ended.

Fortunately, the program also already adheres to social distancing standards, as judges Naomi Simson, Glen Richards, Janine Allis, Steve Baxter and Andrew Banks are positioned far away from each other on-set.

Perfect for a pandemic! The program already adheres to social distancing standards, as judges Naomi Simson, Glen Richards, Janine Allis, Steve Baxter and Andrew Banks are usually positioned far away from each other on-set

The same rule applies for contestants, who stand a significant distance in front of the judges as they deliver their business proposals.

Shark Tank Australia first aired in 2015, and has not been renewed since its latest season in 2018.

Produced by Endemol Shine, Shark Tank Australia follows entrepreneurial contestants as they approach a panel of business 'sharks' in the hopes of gaining financial backing for their ideas.

Welcome to the tank! Produced by Endemol Shine, Shark Tank Australia follows entrepreneurial contestants as they approach a panel of business 'sharks' (pictured) in the hopes of gaining financial backing for their ideas

Speaking to SmartCompany in 2019, Naomi Simson said she was hopeful the show would return in 2020.

'I think people love the show because everyones got a business idea, and it promotes a real swell in entrepreneurship. Its also a family show, which is rather unusual for the subject matter,' she said.

'I think its a great franchise that Australians love,' she added.
This is the opinion of University of Connecticut sociology and journalism senior Jamiah Bennett.

For many college students like me, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted our mental and emotional health in ways we never could have imagined two months ago. In addition to the heartbreaking losses of life and livelihood, we are mourning the abrupt loss of our academic year that was so much more than just attending classes every day and taking exams every few weeks.

The memories we would have formed during times such as Spring Weekend and graduation day  as well as everyday moments in our dorms and walking around campus  were stolen from us by the coronavirus.

As a college senior at the University of Connecticut, I was nervous to receive an email during spring break from UConn President Thomas Katsouleas with Important UConn / COVID-19 Update in the subject line.

With other universities in the region, such as Sacred Heart University and Harvard University, canceling normal campus operations for the remainder of the semester, I had a gut feeling that Katseouleas was going to announce the same for UConn.

When I opened the email, my eyes skipped over the first four paragraphs and immediately went to the bold text in the fifth paragraph: In light of this, coursework at UConn will continue to be delivered online for the remainder of the spring 2020 semester, including final exams, and I am sorry to say that there will be no May commencement exercises this year.

Tears immediately filled my eyes.

It took all of 30 seconds for my phone to start lighting up with texts from my peers. Some students were upset that they werent able to say a proper goodbye to friends, loved ones and acquaintances. Other students were worried about no longer having housing or a job. Many of my fellow seniors were upset that they would not have a traditional graduation ceremony after years of hard work and anticipation of walking across the stage.

As I tried to process my emotions while empathizing with the rest of the world, I also tried to think of ways that I could support my peers. Then it came to me.

At the start of my spring 2020 semester, I partnered with Marie Shanahan, journalism professor at UConn, to create a podcast on self-care practices for college students. As a result of conversations I was having with my peers, I was inspired to slightly change the direction of the podcast called Expect the Unexpected.

Keeping in mind that self-care is more important now than ever, I decided to repurpose the material I had already gathered on self-care practices so it could complement student stories about experiences they are having during the pandemic.

For a recent episode, Barbara Shehata, a senior at UConn studying allied health, spoke with me about expectations she had a month before the pandemic.

I was expecting to hug the people that I miss, she said. I was expecting to visit my cousin who just moved to Florida. I was expecting a lot.

Amber Smith, a senior who is also taking graduate classes in political science, discussed the scramble to figure out where shed go if she couldnt stay on campus.

Housing on campus is not just something that is fun to have the full college experience, even though that is wonderful, Smith said. For a lot of students, that is their only form of housing available to them.

These experiencescan greatly impact the mental health of students. For how long is not yet known.

More Information Self-Care Tips Create brave spaces within relationships by establishing routines, co-creating expectations and leading by example. Reach out to as many people as possible to help you navigate and process challenging situations. Find a community to support you. Be aware of your personal energy levels. Show up for yourself physically, mentally and emotionally. Get some movement in each day (walk, stretch, dance, etc.). Journal. See More Collapse

In a first-person piece featured on BU Today, the dean of Boston Universitys School of Public Health said the mental health effects of COVID-19 can shape health for many years, long past the events that precipitated them.

While it can be difficult to take the long view when the events of the moment are so compelling, Sandro Galeo wrote, it is necessary if we are to ensure the steps we take now are in the best interest of public health once this pandemic passes and our task moves from one of response to one of recovery.

My hope is that Expect the Unexpected will help students process their current experiences through conversations that lead to building a community of individuals who can support each other today and beyond.
OTTAWA - It was a sunny March 18 when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau presented the government's first big attempt at containing the economic fallout from COVID-19 in the form of an $82-billion rescue package.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 3/5/2020 (625 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The employment insurance section of the Government of Canada website is shown on a laptop in Toronto on April 4, 2020. It was a sunny March 18 when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau presented the government's first big attempt at containing the economic fallout from COVID-19 in the form of an $82-billion rescue package. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jesse Johnston

OTTAWA - It was a sunny March 18 when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau presented the government's first big attempt at containing the economic fallout from COVID-19 in the form of an $82-billion rescue package.

The viral pandemic's effect in Canada was already bad: Schools were closing, workplaces shutting down, employees being laid off or having their hours cut deeply.

The $82-billion response was immense by any standard. But the jobless numbers would overwhelm it, and they were still rising.

On the Monday before Trudeau spoke, there had been 71,000 claims on the employment-insurance system  surpassing the previous single-day record of 38,000 set during the global financial crisis just over a decade ago.

On the day Trudeau announced the first relief plan, 87,000 claims were filed, almost 10 times the usual daily volume for mid-March.

By Thursday morning, officials overseeing the safety-net program started sensing the magnitude of what was coming. Just processing all the incoming claims in the usual way would take months.

They needed to explain it to a half-dozen senior civil servants in a boardroom and the remainder on videoconference for a regular morning briefing.

"Dunkirk" was the comparison that stuck.

Early in the Second World War in the face of an unexpected attack from Nazi Germany, an Allied army retreated to the French town on the English Channel. An immense sealift saved some 340,000 British, French and other soldiers so they could fight another day.

Rescuing them took hundreds of vessels, including fishing boats and pleasure craft whose civilian crews set out from the south of Britain. Naval officers commandeered riverboats and took them to sea to take part in the mightiest such effort in history.

"Dunkirk." That was the scale of what was coming, what would be needed. Everyone in the room perked up.

"There was no way we could continue to deliver the EI program the way that it typically is delivered," said one official in the room, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the behind-the-scenes talks.

Within an hour, there were briefings to key ministers and the clerk of the Privy Council, the most senior federal civil servant. By the afternoon, Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough was telling the rest of the cabinet.

The Liberals had promised a benefit for people staying home to care for a child or ill family member, and a second for those who had to go into quarantine or self-isolation. Qualtrough said the multiple programs were already complicated for Canadians to navigate and for the government to explain.

Officials cloistered in meetings starting on Thursday afternoon and lasting into the weekend decided simply to roll everything into a single benefit, especially if an EI recipient was going to get less than the new consolidated benefit, which the Canadian Centre of Policy Alternatives estimated to be 84 per cent of recipients in early April.

Eligibility was set at having earned $5,000 in the previous 12 months, and now having an income of zero as a result of COVID-19. But gaps emerged. Students didn't have enough earnings to qualify. Nor would people whose hours were slashed but still had some income.

"It wasn't like a week later we said, 'Oh, boy, we didn't realize this.' In some cases there was a choice, in some cases not so much," Qualtrough said in an interview. The idea was to spread a broad net at first and then widen it to catch more people.

The core system that delivers EI payments is over 40 years old, having gone through myriad changes over the years. It's fragile, already in need of replacement, and changing too much about how it works risked a debacle.

Delivering the benefit through EI was out.

By the end of the weekend, the Canada Revenue Agency had been called in to develop a delivery system because it handles millions of tax returns annually. Most Canadians already have tax accounts. Automation was agreed upon to limit manual work that would add to processing and payment times.

At the same time, Employment and Social Development Canada found some 3,000 laptops for employees ordered to work at home  it's now closer to 7,000  and boosted department bandwidth to handle thousands of remote users.

(This week, there were 19,500 remote users on the network, keeping the system running mostly from their homes, on top of those who were still in the office.)

By the start of the week after Trudeau made his first announcement, new legislation was being drafted and a budget put in place: spending was going up with one, instead of two, emergency benefits.

All that was left was a launch date for the benefit, and a deadline to deal with the backlog of EI claims: April 6. Applications for the CERB launched that day.

"It all came together, but it was through government doing things very differently, through decision-makers assuming a level of risk that was probably unprecedented," Qualtrough said.

By the end of March, before the emergency benefit kicked in, the government had about 2.2 million EI claims. Now, there are over seven million people, or more than one-third of the Canadian workforce, on the benefit. The government says they have received about $26 billion.

There have been hiccups:

Duplicate payments for those who applied for EI and then applied as well for the CERB.

Pregnant women whose EI files have yet to be migrated over to the CERB and receive their first payments

Single mothers who can't qualify for help because the drops they've seen in child support payments aren't counted in the income test.

The first has been fixed and the other two will be, the government says, although the antiquated accounting system makes it more difficult.

There are also hours-long wait times to get through to a special CERB call centre that was set up in nine days, including training 1,500 volunteers from ESDC to man the phones.

Stay informed The latest updates on the novel coronavirus and COVID-19 delivered to your inbox every weeknight. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

"Our officials are doing everything that they can . . . to make sure we are serving Canadians promptly," Social Development Minister Ahmed Hussen, who is in charge of Service Canada call centres, told a Commons committee Thursday, "but we're dealing in a context of really unprecedented demand in terms of people calling in."

Qualtrough said the government is now watching how the $35-billion CERB interacts with a separate $73-billion wage-subsidy program, which funnels money through employers to help keep people on payrolls.

Even though officials considered the interplay between the two programs, Qualtrough said policy details are still being worked out, such as how a worker transitions between programs, and avoiding duplicate payments.

"We knew that these things had to work together. We're not retroactively saying, 'Oh crap, we've got to make sure these things work together,'" Qualtrough said.

"So right now we're dealing with the reality of who is not captured, will they be captured elsewhere, who do we still need to capture ... and who applies for what."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 3, 2020.
The Haryana government has decided to send migrant labourers from states bordering it in buses and those from other states in trains, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said on Sunday.

During a video conference with labour unions affiliated to various political parties, Khattar said the Haryana government is committed to ensure all migrant labourers stranded in the state due to lockdown reach their homes at the earliest, according to a government statement.

It was decided during the meeting that agricultural labourers from Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh will be sent home in buses and those from Bihar, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh by Shramik Special trains.

The return of migrant labourers of the remaining states, being relatively fewer in numbers, shall be ensured through special trains from New Delhi, the statement quoted Khattar as saying.

On Saturday, Khattar appealed to migrant workers in the state to not leave and start working in industrial units that have been allowed to resume operations according to the Centre's guidelines.

He, however, said if anyone still wants to leave, the state government will make arrangements for their return.

At Sunday's conference, there was consensus that as far as possible industrial labourers should be encouraged to assist in early reopening of their units, the statement added.

The Haryana government has also launched a web page where migrant workers who want to return to their home states can register themselves. The move is aimed at facilitating the inter-state movement of migrant workers.

Khattar also said that the migrants must observe social distancing, try to engage in useful work and learn new skills until arrangements are made for their return home.

The government is committed to ensure that no person would go hungry during this crisis, he said.

It was also decided in the meeting that district-level committees including representatives of labour unions will be set up to review the progress of disbursement of salaries for March and April to workers.

Khattar assured the labour unions that there was no plan to cut down the 17 per cent Dearness Allowance being paid to government employees.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Mumbai police registered an FIR against Arnab Goswami, editor and owner of Republic TV channel on Saturday following a complaint that he tried to create hatred against Muslims last month.

The case was registered at Pydhonie police station and investigation has been initiated, police said.

Irfan Abubakar Shaikh, secretary of Raza Educational Welfare Society and a resident of Null Bazar in South Mumbai in his complaint to the police alleged that both the channel and Goswami were trying to create hatred against the Muslim community and targeted a mosque in Bandra that had no link to the protest by migrants on April 14.

Also Watch: Arnab Goswami, wife attacked in Mumbai; 2 arrested

Shaikh said that on April 29, the Hindi channel Republic Bharat had used footage of the Bandra protest by migrants who had gathered near Bandra railway station. Arnab Goswami was anchoring the show.

There was no link or issue related to the mosque near the Bandra station. The only issue was that the migrants had gathered in the open space near the mosque. But Arnab purposely highlighted the mosque to create communal disturbance in the city, said Shaikh in his compliant to the police.

Shaikh highlighted alleged comments by Goswami like Ab se thodi der pehle Mumbai ke Bandra me Jama Masjid Hai. Aur Is Jama Masjid Ke Pass Achanak Hazaro logo Ki Bheed Jama Hogae. (Thousands of people gathered outside Jama Masjid in Bandra) Mumbai ke Bandra me masjid Ke pass kisne bheed jutae. (Who gathered the crowd outside the mosque in Bandra?) Lockdown me har Bheed Masjid ke pass kyu Juti Hai? (Why is it that crowds gather near every mosque during lockdown), which he claimed fuelled hatred against Muslims.

There were many such questions and debate on the channel intended to blame the Muslim community for the spreading of Covid-19 disease. Goswami had made many such hate filled comments against the community, targeting it, the complainant said.

Shaikh said Goswami linked the Bandra Mosque to the migrants protest without any reason and gave a communal colour to the protest which had no link or involvement if any particular community.

The Pydhonie police registered a case under various sections of the Indian penal code.

We have registered a case against Arnab Goswami and the owner of Republic TV for the hatred. Further investigation is going on. As part of evidence after taking the statement we have collected the footage of the shows with the clips in a pen drive as evidence, said a police officer from Pydhonie police station.
Montreal, CA (H4T1V6)

Today

Becoming cloudy with snow likely overnight. Low near --12C. WSW winds shifting to E at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 90%. Snow accumulations less than one inch..

Tonight

Becoming cloudy with snow likely overnight. Low near --23C. WSW winds shifting to E at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 90%. Snow accumulations less than one inch.
CASA hosts virtual training event

CASA of the Pikes Peak Region needs volunteers to advocate for abused and neglected children as the organization strives to meet its Vision 2020 goal of serving every child in need by the end of the year.

Community members who are interested in becoming CASA volunteers can learn more about the program at a virtual information session, by Zoom meeting, 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Tuesday.

To receive a link and login information, send an RSVP email to Uriko Stout at urikos@casappr.org.
More than 500 NSW schools exceed their newly-introduced enrolment caps, and some will have to reduce their populations by almost 1000 students to meet them.

A list of the new caps, which calculate the capacity of a school's permanent buildings, shows Carlingford West Public School's population exceeds its enrolment ceiling by almost 1000 students, while Castle Hill High has twice as many students as its 900-person target.

Cherrybrook Technology High is oversubscribed by more than 500 students, while popular Matthew Pearce Public School in Baulkham Hills will have to gradually reduce its population by around 800, the NSW Department of Education figures show.

Three schools - Iron Bark Ridge Public in Rouse Hill, Ropes Crossing Public near Penrith and Meadowbank Public School - have triple the number of students than their permanent buildings can cater for, and will have to cut their populations by two-thirds.
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Given that it is unclear precisely how many children Boris Johnson has had  it is, after all, something that is difficult to keep track of  one wag suggested his new baby be called "Enth". As the British Prime Minister returned to No.10, again a father, and newly recovered from the coronavirus that has killed almost 27,000 of his country-fellows, bottles of Dom Perignon were delivered to his doorstep.

Would we be so quick to toast a female leader doing the same in the thick of a global emergency? While Johnsons struggles with fidelity arent inspiring, I do, on one level, applaud the mans sheer pluck and energy. Onwards, to the next woman, the next child, the next whatever, like a mop in perpetual motion, although perhaps more likely to create than clean up mess.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson arriving back at Downing Street from hospital after the birth of his baby son. Credit:AP

Id hazard a guess that the majority of us wouldnt care how many offspring someone has if they could control a global pandemic and prevent too deep a recession. One who could ensure the economy can roar back into life without leading to a corresponding surge in carbon emissions.

But the double standard is blinding isnt it? Can you even imagine a woman leader, Beverley Johnson, lurching from one relationship to marriage to affair to another, popping out children along the way and not being savagely slut-shamed? (Or, as the US President has, weathering multiple rape and sexual assault allegations? Just shrugging them off, impervious and indignant that someone might even ask the question?)
Washington, May 3 : American business tycoon Warren Buffett's company, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has reported a net loss of nearly $50 billion in the first quarter amid the COVID-19 pandemic, while it also sold off all its airline stocks.

The net loss totalled to $49.75 billion in the first quarter, or $30,653 dollars per Class A share and $20.44 per Class B share, compared with a net earning of $21.66 billion a year ago, Xinhua news agency quoted Berkshire as saying in a statement on Saturday.

The first-quarter operating earnings rose to $5.87 billion from $5.55 billion dollars, it added.

"As efforts to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated in the second half of March and continued through April, most of our businesses were negatively affected, with the effects to date ranging from relatively minor to severe," the statement said.

Berkshire has taken "necessary" actions to mitigate the economic losses due to lower "consumer demand for products and services", it said, adding that the company could not "reliably predict" when its many businesses would return to normal or when consumers would resume their former buying habits.

At a virtual shareholder meeting also on Saturday, Buffett announced that his conglomerate has sold all its airline stocks, sending an alarming signal to industry devastated by the global pandemic.

"The world has changed for the airlines," he said.

"And I don't know how it's changed and I hope it corrects itself in a reasonably prompt way. It turned out I was wrong about that business." The Berkshire Hathaway previously held shares of United Airlines, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines and Delta Airlines, worth over $4 billion last December, but stocks were down this year by 69.7 per cent, 62.9 per cent, 45.8 per cent, and 58.7 per cent, respectively, according to a report from CNBC.

Berkshire, a US multinational conglomerate holding company, is based in Omaha, Nebraska.
A picture of Neetu Kapoor and Ranbir Kapoor paying obeisance to Rishi Kapoor at a prayer meet is being widely shared on social media. The snapshot has Neetu dressed in white and Ranbir wearing a red turban, next to a framed photograph of Rishi with garlands on it.

As per reports, Riddhima Kapoor Sahni also attended the prayer meet, after being unable to make it to Rishis funeral. She could not get permission to fly down to Mumbai from Delhi, owing to the nationwide lockdown, and drove all the way to be with her family. She and her daughter Samara reached on Saturday night.

Rishi died at a Mumbai hospital on Thursday after a two-year battle with leukaemia, his family said in a statement. They requested fans and well-wishers to remember him with a smile instead of tears.

Several Bollywood stars, including Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Alia Bhatt, Anushka Sharma, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Hrithik Roshan and Akshay Kumar, expressed their shock and sadness at the news of Rishis death and paid tribute to him on social media.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi also condoled the demise and tweeted, Multifaceted, endearing and lively...this was Rishi Kapoor Ji. He was a powerhouse of talent. I will always recall our interactions, even on social media. He was passionate about films and Indias progress. Anguished by his demise. Condolences to his family and fans. Om Shanti.

Also see | Meenakshi Seshadris final goodbye to Damini co-star Rishi Kapoor: I will remember you Rishi ji always

Rishi was diagnosed with cancer in 2018 and travelled to New York for treatment. After almost a year of chemotherapy sessions, he returned to Mumbai in September 2019. A few months later, it was revealed that he was in remission.

However, Rishis cancer relapsed after he travelled to Delhi in February for a wedding. Rakesh Roshan said in a recent interview, Both of us had cancer, though different kinds. I am aware of how infection-prone we are. So when Chintu told me about his plans to go to Delhi in February for a wedding I advised him against it. But he still went, and had a relapse there. When I met Chintu he admitted he shouldve listened to me and that he made a mistake by going to Delhi.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
Tesla has applied for a licence to generate electricity in the UK, according to documents, sparking rumours that Elon Musk is going to war with Britain's Big Six.

The US carmaker is mainly known for its electric vehicles but also has operations in battery energy storage and solar panel and solar roof tile manufacturing.

The purpose of the licence may be to introduce the company's 'Autobidder' platform, according to a company source speaking to The Telegraph.

Tesla has applied for a licence to generate electricity in the UK, according to documents, sparking rumours that Elon Musk is going to war with Britain's Big Six (pictured, Chief Executive Elon Musk at the Washington Convention Center, March 9, 2020)

Britain's Big Six gas and electricity suppliers The Big Six are the UK's largest gas and electricity suppliers. British Gas, EDF Energy, E. ON, Npower, Scottish Power, and SSE have seen off numerous competitors. As of Q3 2019, the Big Six held a combined market share of 70 per cent for electricity supply and 69 per cent for gas supply in Great Britain. They previously held a combined market share across both markets of 100 per cent in 2004. Advertisement

Having built a significant battery business in recent years, the carmaker is now preparing to enter the UK market with its technology, industry sources claim. The application, made to the Gas and Electricity Markets Authority by Tesla Motors Co. on Tuesday, does not specify the reasons for seeking a licence.

However, it is suspected it will aim to introduce Tesla's Autobidder - a real-time platform which provides independent power producers currently operating at Hornsdale Power Reserve (HPR) in South Australia - to Great Britain.

Autobidder claims that, through market bidding, it has 'added competition to drive down energy prices', according to its website. This looks to give executives at the UK's Big Six suppliers - British Gas, EDF Energy, E. ON, Npower, Scottish Power, and SSE - a headache.

In Australia, the company designed the largest lithium-ion power storage facility in the world, which is capable of storing enough energy to power 30,000 homes.

Experts predict that such large-scale batteries will be essential in the future to manage power demand, as fossil fuels are phased out.

Tesla created huge lithium-ion batteries for the Australian state grid in 2017.

CEO Elon Musk said his company would develop the 100-megawatt battery within 100 days of contracts being signed at the end of September, and if it failed to deliver on time he would hand the battery to the South Australia state government for free.

Tesla has applied for a licence to generate electricity in the UK. The US carmaker ishas operations in battery energy storage and solar panel and solar roof tile manufacturing

Shares of Tesla Inc tumbled more than 10 per cent on Friday after Musk tweeted that the electric carmaker's high-flying stock was overly expensive.

'Tesla stock price is too high,' Musk said on Twitter in one of several unusual messages, including ones quoting parts of the US national anthem and that he would sell almost all his physical possessions.

The subsequent share drop erased around $13billion from Tesla's market value and nearly $3billion from the value of Musk's stake.

Still, shares remain up almost 50 per cent from the start of April.
The Lagos State Police Command has arrested popular music director, Clarence Peters, over the death of Nigerian dancer and video vixen, Love Divine, popularly known as Kodak.

The dancer was alleged to have died of electrocution while charging her phone at Peters house on Wednesday.

Bala Elkana, the Lagos State police spokesperson, told PREMIUM TIMES on Sunday evening that the music video director is in police custody and is currently being interrogated.

He also said enquiries into the circumstances surrounding the young womans death are ongoing.

We are still investigating the case, we will ascertain the cause of her death when we conclude investigation, but police has taken up the matter, he said.

When the police spokesperson was asked if the energetic dancer died from electrocution, Mr Elkana said the report is unconfirmed at the moment.

We have expert investigators on the case, that is their work. It is after they conclude their investigation that we can reach a conclusion on the cause of her death.

An autopsy will also be carried out to further unravel the circumstances surrounding her death, Mr Elkana said.

PREMIUM TIMES earlier reported how Nigerian music stars including Olamide and Dremo grieved over the death of the dancer.

The deceased was popular in the industry for working with Clarence Peters in music videos for acts like Burna Boy, Tekno, Davido, Olamide, and more.

One of the last videos she posted on her Instagram page was one of her with a popular dancer, Poco Lee.

The death of the dancer, who is well-known within the music industry, has continued to draw reaction from her colleagues and friends.
The death toll due to the coronavirus pandemic increased in Massachusetts to 4,004 with health officials reporting 158 new deaths Sunday.

The state also reported 1,824 new positive cases bringing the total to 68,087.

Officials said 15,652 new tests were performed as of Sunday.

As of May 6, people will be required to wear a face covering in public. Gov. Charlie Baker issued the order on Friday.

The order includes people using public transportation and those going grocery shopping.

Here are the cases listed by county:

Barnstable County: 946

Berkshire County: 451

Bristol County: 4,019

Dukes County: 21

Essex County: 9,542

Franklin County: 269

Hampden County: 4,066

Hampshire County: 559

Middlesex County: 15,370

Nantucket County: 11

Norfolk County: 6,280

Plymouth County: 5,507

Suffolk County: 13,777

Worcester County: 6,288

Unknown location: 981

Coronavirus in Mass.: Cases, maps, charts and resources

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Uzbek authorities on May 3 launched a criminal probe after a newly constructed dam burst, prompting the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from both Uzbekistan and neighboring Kazakhstan.

The dam of the Sardoba Reservoir in the eastern Uzbek region of Sirdaryo burst early on May 1 and at least 70,000 people have been evacuated, while more than 50 people were hospitalized.



Over 600 homes in southern Kazakhstan have also been flooded.

Uzbekistan's State Prosecutor said on May 3 that a criminal probe had been opened into "official negligence" and construction rules violations.

The Sardoba Reservoir was completed in 2017 after seven years of construction work that began under the supervision of current President Shavkat Mirziyoev, who was prime minister at the time.

Mirziyoev on May 1 flew to the region to oversee the evacuation and cleanup operation. The region had experienced strong winds and heavy rains prior to the collapse of the dam.

Officials in Kazakhstan's southern Turkistan region, where more than 5,000 people have been evacuated so far, have criticized Uzbekistan for not providing timely information on the status of flood control.

"We have a copy of our correspondence with the Uzbek side, that as of (8 p.m. on May 1) the situation was stable and there were no problems," said Saken Kalkamanov, deputy governor of the Turkistan region, on May 2.

"They said that not a drop of water would reach Maktaraal district," he said, referring to the area where the flood hit. "Nevertheless, what happened has happened."

Kazakh officials say the floods caused crop damage worth more than $400,000 -- mostly to cotton.

Uzbekistan also has signed a $23 million contract with China for the construction of a hydroelectric power station at the site of the dam.

The Chinese hydroelectric project had been scheduled for completion in 2022.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Uzbek Service, and AFP
File photo: A man wears a mask as arrives at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta, on April 23, 2020.

Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images

American Airlines, Delta, and United will all require passengers to wear masks when traveling, the airlines each announced this week.

Other US airlines are also adding the requirement, describing it as a way to protect passengers and crewmembers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The policies take effect over the next two weeks. All of the airlines are encouraging passengers to wear face coverings voluntarily in the meantime.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Most major US airlines will start requiring passengers to wear face masks when traveling, as airlines look for ways to both protect and reassure employees and potential passengers.

American, Delta, and United all announced their policies on Thursday, following JetBlue  which announced its requirement on Wednesday  and Frontier, which announced its policy earlier on Thursday. Alaska Airlines announced a similar policy on Friday.

American's policy, which takes effect May 11, will require passengers to wear a mask or another kind of face covering while on board aircraft. The airline previously required flight attendants to begin wearing masks.

Delta's policy takes effect on May 4, and requires passengers to wear masks while checking in, boarding, and throughout the flight, except for during meals. JetBlue's policy similarly requires face coverings in most public areas, including at the airport.

United's mask protocol, which also takes effect May 4, requires masks to be worn on board aircraft, while Frontier's policy goes into effect May 8. Alaska's policy begins May 11.

All of the airlines said that supplies will be available for passengers who do not bring their own masks or face coverings, and that small children and any passengers with conditions that make them unable to wear the masks will be exempt.

"The American Airlines team continues to prioritize the safety of our customers and team members, and requiring a face covering is one more way we can protect those on our aircraft," Kurt Stache, American's head of customer experience, said in a statement. "We ask customers to bring their own masks or face coverings they're comfortable with when they travel. American is working to procure face masks and hand sanitizer as a supplement."

Story continues

Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, said she was pleased with the airlines' decisions, but called on the federal government to enact a formal requirement for passenger masks.

File photo: A man wearing protective masks and gloves is seen at Miami International Airport in Miami, Florida, United States on March 29, 2020.

Eva Marie Uzcategui Trinkl/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

"We're happy to see airlines taking action to require masks or face coverings for passengers, crew and other frontline employees," Nelson said in a statement. "We continue to call on the federal government  whether it be DOT, FAA, HSS, CDC  to require masks for crew, frontline employees and all passengers."

Airlines are seeking ways to ensure passenger and crew safety, while also convincing passengers that it will be safe to travel once states and countries begin lifting stay-at-home orders. Masks are unlikely to provide much protection to the wearer, but they can protect others nearby from possible asymptomatic carriers, who can unknowingly spread the virus despite showing no symptoms.

Airlines have also ramped up cleaning and disinfecting procedures for cabins between flights and overnight.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Government has congratulated all journalists in Ghana as the world marks Press Freedom Day today.



This years celebration is being marked globally under the theme Journalism without Fear or Favour.



The theme focuses on the significant role the Press is playing in the ongoing COVID-19 situation, and how their contribution by providing verified information can lead the prevention of getting infected.



A statement issued in Accra and signed by Information Minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah said government celebrate the significant role the Press is playing in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.



Their reporting and publishing of information on preventive etiquette is contributing positively in this fight, he added.



Mr Nkrumah said the Akufo-Addo administration has been working closely with the Media and other stakeholders in disseminating information and educating the public as part of the broader COVID-19 Government response.



The Media, as the President in one of such engagements described, is an invaluable ally in the fight against COVID-19



The statement said We are hopeful that together, we will defeat this pandemic in the shortest possible time and continue with initiatives to make the media and broadcasting space increasingly productive



The Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization(UNESCO), also in a statement indicated that at a time when we are mired in worry and uncertainty because of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, free information is essential to helping us face, understand, think about and overcome this crisis. We must consider the vital importance of information in this situation: informing the public means giving everyone the means of combatting the illness by adopting appropriate practices.





Source: King Edward Ambrose Washman Addo/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Nigeria Ex-captain, John Obi Mikel has donated food items to the needy at his hometown, Jos.

This will be the second time in one month that the 33-year old will be donating to the needy in Jos, Plateau state after donating 1800 crates of egg during the beginning of April.

This time, Mikel donated bags of rice, beans and noodles to the less privileged in the North Central State.

The former Chelsea and Middlesbrough midfielder took to the social media to announce the donation.

Together we can all help. Today in Jos. Where I grew up, reads a post on his Instagram page with pictures of the items and a banner of Mikel wearing a Nigerian jersey.

Mikel started his professional career at Plateau United in Jo's before seeking new pastures in Europe.

It will be recalled that the former Super Eagles midfielder left Turkish side, Trabzonspor due to a misunderstanding in the way the league organizers handled the coronavirus pandemic.
3 1 of 3 Christian Abraham / Hearst Connecticut Media Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Tara O'Neill / Hearst Connecticut Media Show More Show Less 3 of 3





BRIDGEPORT  What started out as a call about roughly 10 people stuck on the breakwater inside Bridgeport Harbor turned out to be nearly triple that Saturday night.

Scott Appleby, the citys director of emergency communications and emergency management, said two police officers from the harbor unit responded to a call about seven to 10 people fishing and stuck on the breakwater in the harbor.
A prison riot has left at least 47 dead and 75 wounded in western Venezuela, a country where NGOs and inmates' families regularly denounce unsanitary conditions, violence and overcrowding behind bars. The Venezuelan Prison Observatory (OVP) rights group provided the figures for the riot, which happened Friday afternoon at the Los Llanos prison center in Guanare city. Parliamentary Deputy Maria Beatriz Martinez, who represents Portuguesa state where the prison is located, said: "At the moment we have been able to confirm 47 dead and 75 wounded." Martinez and the NGO said all of the dead were detainees. According to an army report on Friday, the disruption started when inmates began destroying "the security fences around the perimeter" in a "massive escape attempt." It also said the prison's director was wounded. Martinez refuted that account, stating the uprising was staged by a group of prisoners "because they did not have access to food." According to OVP, guards opened fire following the incident at the facility, which has a capacity for 750 inmates but houses some 2,500. With the coronavirus pandemic raging, visits from family and friends -- who often bring food and medicine to inmates -- have been greatly reduced. "What is happening right now is because of the guards. They don't transfer the food" brought by families to the inmates, Yessica Jimenez, who knows someone inside the prison, told AFP. The identities of those killed were verified "through the morgue, thanks to relatives who recognized the dead in photos that were shown to them on a computer," said Carolina Giron of OVP. She added inmates' family and friends "don't have access to the hospital." According to the organization, 97 deaths occurred in Venezuelan prisons last year, 70 percent of which were due to diseases such as tuberculosis and a lack of medicine. More than 330 cases of coronavirus, including 10 deaths, have been recorded in Venezuela, but authorities say there have been no cases in the country's jails. Opposition leader Juan Guaido has refuted Venezuela's official count, accusing the government of Socialist President Nicolas Maduro of "shamelessly lying." The initial toll Friday from the riot was 17 dead and nine wounded.
Gon Coulibaly, 61, self-isolated in late March because of possible exposure to coronavirus.

Ivory Coasts Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly, who is the governing partys candidate in Octobers presidential election, was evacuated to France for medical checks.

A brief statement from the presidency on Sunday provided no additional details about Gon Coulibalys health status.

Gon Coulibaly, 61, self-isolated in late March because of possible exposure to the coronavirus but did not test positive.

Defence Minister Hamed Bakayoko, who recovered from the virus last month, will serve as interim prime minister in Gon Coulibalys absence, the statement said.

Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara designated Gon Coulibaly in March as the governing RHDP partys candidate for the presidential election after ruling out seeking a third term himself.

Ivory Coast has recorded more than 1,300 cases of the coronavirus, one of the highest totals in West Africa, and 15 deaths.
As many as five people were reported injured in the blast in Ahgam village of Handwara in Jammu and Kashmir. All the injured have been admitted to the nearby district hospital. Superintendent of Handwara district hospital, Doctor Ejaz has said that two out of five people are children and the condition of three injured is stable.

Jammu & Kashmir: Five people injured after an unexploded shell went off when they were cleaning a drainage in Ahgam village of Handwara. "Handwara District Hospital Superintendent Dr Aijaz says, "Out of the five people, two are children. Condition of three patients is stable". pic.twitter.com/vzYgRQCj6G  ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020

READ: 5 personnel including Army Colonel, Major martyred in Handwara; Raksha Mantri pays tribute

Counter-terror operation

Meanwhile, in a counter-terror operation, a team comprising of five Army and JK Police personnel entered the target area occupied by the terrorists to evacuate the civilians and extricated the civilians, the statement said. Two terrorists were eliminated and the team of five security forces personnel comprising of two Army officers, two Army soldiers and one JK Police Sub Inspector attained martyrdom. Top Lashkar-e Taiba commander Haider from Pakistan has been killed in Handwara encounter, reported news agency ANI quoting IG Kashmir Vijay Kumar.

READ: BJP President condoles death of security personnel in Kashmir encounter

Defence Minister pays tribute

Paying his tribute to the martyrs, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said: "I offer my tributes to the soldiers and security personnel who fell in action. My heart goes out to the families who lost their loved ones today. India stands shoulder to shoulder with the families of these brave martyrs. The loss of our soldiers and security personnel in Handwara(J&K) is deeply disturbing and painful. They showed exemplary courage in their fight against the terrorists and made supreme sacrifice while serving the country. We will never forget their bravery and sacrifice."

Prime Minister Modi pays tribute

Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid tributes and expressed condolences to families of five security personnel martyred in an encounter with terrorists at a village in north Kashmir's Handwara area on Sunday. In counter-terror operation, an Army Colonel and a Major were among five martyred, the Indian Army said

READ: Teaching in Kashmir goes online, but low speed internet an issue

READ: Jammu & Kashmir reports 27 new COVID-19 cases; UT tally stands at 666
New Delhi, May 3 : It was raining when the old woman's son left for the US. She says the house wept too. She is sitting in the courtyard, alone. Maybe because the rooms are in mourning.

There is a certain rhythm to things in the way filmmaker Harjant Gill's handles migration in his documentary film 'Sent Away Boys' that illuminates the experiences of those who are left behind, of course in addition to exploring the phenomenon of global migration through the framework of gender (specifically masculinity). Rather than following the journeys migrants undertake, he prefers to gaze at how families and communities are transformed by their absence, as well as the circumstances that motivated their decision to leave their home.

If you watch Gill's three documentaries 'Sent Away Boys', 'Mardistan' and 'Roots of Love' back to back, what strikes most is not the lives of the subjects or the research. But the pregnant pauses. While 'Mardistan', a reflection on manhood, addresses the urgent and widespread issues of patriarchy, son-preference, sexual violence, and homophobia in the Indian society, it also presents the responsibilities and challenges confronting Indian men today. A married gay man, who insists that cannot leave his wife for she is not at 'fault'...

'Roots of Love' delicately talks about identity, the turban and hair being representative - a young Sikh man, who has cut his hair, listening, while the mother tells the camera her anguish...

Associate Professor of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice at Towson University , Gill, a 2020 Fulbright-Nehru Research Fellow, who is at present developing a script which is a Punjabi adaptation of the great American novel, 'The Great Gatsby' is also writing his book, 'Coming of Age in Macholand'.

Though all the three documentaries in the masculinity series were funded by the PSBT (Public Service Broadcasting Trust), the filmmaker agrees that funding for this format is certainly dwindling. "I have stopped applying for funding to Indian institutions primarily because I want filmmakers in India to be availed of those dwindling opportunities. I have been blessed to have a full time teaching position in USA, and I have been pretty successful at getting American institutions to fund my research and film projects. There are of course other trade-offs - I don't have the kind of time I wish I had to work on my projects given my teaching commitments. I have also been writing a lot about how the distribution landscape has changed in the last ten years, with the arrival of streaming." He adds, "And now, with Covid-19, this will force us to innovate and come up with new ways of sharing our work and scholarship. I am ultimately hopeful and excited about the possibilities that emerge out of these new limitations which will lead to innovation in technology of storytelling." Talk to him about Punjabi cinema's obsession with romantic comedies and the unserious depiction of people from this part of the country, and he asserts, "Punjabi men are the biggest audiences of these films and they are very popular among people in diaspora, for instance, my parents who live in CA watch almost every Punjabi film that has been released in the last 20 years. And most them they watch on YouTube. I would argue that Punjabi audiences interact with Punjabi films very differently from Hindi films that feature Punjabis. While Hindi films like 'Singh is Kinng' or even DDLJ are seen as "exaggerated" fantasy films where transgression of social norms, such as interfaith or inter-caste marriages are possible, Punjabi films like 'Tera Mera Ki Rishta' or 'Munde UK De' are viewed as a more accurate/authentic reflection of the reality on Punjab, albeit through rose-colored glasses of transnational migration.

"Even though they are poorly scripted and acted, Punjabi films are more palatable because they don't transgress social norms around marriage, love, etc... There were films in 1980s such as 'Long Da Lishkara', where this was done, but the films that have come out after the 1990s - particularly the "NRI genre" of Punjabi films, are fairly muted in their plot lines... As an interlocutor summed it up for me, 'Punjabi films are basically a travel video though videsh - you get to see how Punjabis live abroad, you to go on videsh-di-saar, while enjoying AC for three hours, what more do you want'?" Stressing that with social media, he is seeing a lot of imagination at play, Gill adds, "The young are definitely engaging in everyday artistic expressions - which is how they cope with the utter banality and hopelessness that young Indian are confronting. I just wish there was more critical reflection, more questioning and more challenging of norms that went on among young Indians. Maybe we need to make films that appeal to them and can translate to platforms they prefer? There's a reason why most of my films have been under 45 minutes. My students in USA, like their Indian counterparts, look interested within 30 minutes. It's not their fault, they grew up in environment where their attention spans is constantly being interrupted or diverted. Yet, most Indian documentary filmmakers I know are still making films that are two hours long... maybe it's the filmmaker and storytellers who need to adapt their approach." Still in touch with the subjects of his documentaries, Gill checks in with them via Facebook or WhatsApp. "Sometimes even if don't want/need to talk to them, they call me up just to chat... I quite like the fact that they feel comfortable enough to get in touch whenever they want to talk, sometimes even in the middle of the night. They know as much about my life, as I know about theirs. A subject moved to Canada in Nov 2019. I learned about it via his Facebook page... most Punjabis won't tell their friends that they are going abroad.. their friends only learn about their migration when they post selfies at the airport. I am hoping to travel to Canada sometime soon, after flights resume, and interview them for follow up interviews for my book."

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
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President John Magufuli of Tanzania on Sunday ordered a probe on the countrys coronavirus testing protocols, citing possible interference by unnamed saboteurs.

President Magufuli also dismissed the test kits used in the country saying that they were faulty because they had returned positive results on samples taken from a goat and a pawpaw.

Magufuli, whose government has already drawn criticism for being secretive about the coronavirus outbreak and has previously asked Tanzanians to pray the coronavirus away, said the kits had technical errors.

We extracted a sample from a goat which turned positive. This tells you that something is not adding up. Are we now supposed to quarantine goats and fruits? President Magufuli posed.



The Covid-19 testing kits had been imported from abroad, Magufuli said, although he did not give further details.

There is something happening. I said before we should not accept that every aid is meant to be good for this nation, said Magufuli.

The Tanzanian leader, who has been governing from his rural home in Chato since the onset of the pandemic, urged citizens to exercise caution, but downplayed the severity of the disease saying it could be managed without disrupting the countrys economy.

Lets continue working. Factories must continue to produce products. I have said it before and I will repeat this: I will not place Dar es Salaam under lockdown, he asserted.

On Friday, the World Health Organization (WHO) chided Tanzania for its ongoing lack of cooperation and transparency in the global fight against the Covid-19 pandemic as cases in the country continue to soar.

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The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's new code of conduct designed to bring fairness to the digital advertising marketplace will be world-first. But will it be world-class?

The fight between media companies such as News Corporation and Nine, owner of this newspaper, and Google and Facebook, pits print against digital, regulation against the open internet, market power against political influence, Canberra against California, Walkley Award winning investigations against cat videos.

ACCC Chair Rod Sims faces a difficult task. Credit:Peter Rae

Our online advertising market is worth about $9 billion a year, and for every $100 spent by advertisers online, excluding classifieds, $47 goes to Google, $24 to Facebook and $29 elsewhere.

But given the intricacies of social media ecosystems, the opacity of digital ad markets, the platform and publishers co-dependent but mutually antagonistic embrace, the fact that social media and search engines operate completely different revenue models, attempting to find a way forward will not be easy.
Dubai: Over 150,000 Indians in the UAE, who wish to return home amid the coronavirus lockdown, have applied through the online registration process to the Indian missions here, according to media reports.

The Indian missions in the country last week opened online registration for the expatriates who wish to fly back home after getting stuck in the country amidst the lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.

As of 6 pm on Saturday, we received more than 150,000 registrations, Consul General of India in Dubai Vipul told the Gulf News on Saturday.

A quarter of them want to return to their homeland after losing their jobs, he said.

According to a report in the Khaleej Times on Sunday, about 40 per cent of the applicants who have registered are blue-collared workers and 20 per cent are working professionals.

"Roughly 20 per cent have suffered job losses and about 55 per cent of the total applicants are from Kerala," Neeraj Aggarwal, Consul, Press, Information, Culture was quoted as saying in the report.

Aggarwal said that the figures would change as they are expecting registrations from workers from other states, including Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar.

About 10 per cent of the applicants are visit and tourist visa holders who got stranded here due to the ongoing lockdown in India.

India extended the ongoing lockdown by two weeks from May 4 to contain the spread of the coronavirus that has affected nearly 40,000 people in the country.

Aggarwal said that a small number of the applications constitute those from pregnant women and other medical cases.

Since the online registration process was launched, the Consulate's website crashed several times due to the heavy rush of applicants wishing to register to fly back home.

The site has been working fine now though it took a lot of time for it to stabilise in the initial phase due to the heavy traffic, the counsel general said.

He said that the missions here have not yet received any information from the Indian government about the mode of transport of the stranded citizens, the prices of the tickets or how the COVID-19 test results of applicants would be assessed for their journey.

There are high-level discussions going on regarding these things, he said in the report.

Meanwhile, Norka (The Non Resident Keralites Affairs) said it has received a total of 398,000 applications from Keralites across the globe who wish to return home.

"Of which, the highest numbers are from the UAE. At least 175,423 applicants have signed up from the UAE," Norka said in an official statement on Saturday.

It also received 54,305 registrations from Saudi Arabia, 2,437 from the UK, 2,255 from the US, and 1,958 from Ukraine from those who wish to return to India, the Khaleej Times reported.

The coronavirus has infected 13,599 people and claimed 119 lives in the UAE, the Ministry of Health and Prevention said on Saturday.
The nine persons in question had taken part in organizing deadly riots on May 2, 2014, which brought casualties but never led to the region going rogue with Russia's direct support as it happened with parts of Donbas.

As part of the negotiations on the exchange of held persons in September - December 2019, Russia insisted that Ukraine hand over at least nine persons who had organized pro-Russian separatist riots in Odesa, that's according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine.

In a commentary on the tragic events in Odesa of May 2, 2014, MFA's press service recalled that those events became another element in the chain of Russian provocations in the framework of the failed "Novorossiya" project aimed at destabilizing the Ukrainian east and south and the disintegration of Ukraine.

The ministry emphasized that Ukrainian law enforcement are doing everything possible to find and prosecute those responsible for the crimes committed on that tragic day, with 37 indictments having been forwarded to court and three sentences handed down.

Read alsoSecurity agency prevents provocations of pro-Russian forces in Odesa

The State Bureau of Investigation is conducting a separate pre-trial investigation in criminal proceedings regarding the possible involvement of Russian intelligence in masterminding the Odesa riots.

"The only party that is clearly not interested in establishing an objective picture of the tragic events in Odesa and the reasons that led to the tragedy is Russia. Not only did Russia shelter one of the main suspects in the investigation, former deputy chief of Odesa police D. Fuchedzhi, they also granted him Russian citizenship, reports say, and denied an extradition request under this pretext," the foreign ministry noted.

MFA Ukraine has called on the international community to pursue joint efforts to counter Russian propaganda and misinformation, which are an important element of Russian aggression and destabilizing actions directed against Ukraine and other democracies.

UNIAN memo. On May 2, 2014, as a result of mass riots in Odesa involving pro-Russian separatists and pro-Ukrainian activists, 48 people were killed and nearly 300 injured. Clashes broke out in the city center, where several people were shot.

Then pro-Ukrainian activists moved to the Kulikovo field, where separatists had set up a tent camp. The tents caught fire and then a blaze broke out in the Trade Unions' House, where more people died.
: Helicopters of the Indian



Navy showered flowers on the main hospitals here as a mark of gratitude to the frontline health workers who were rendering yeoman service in the ongoing fight against the dreaded coronavirus pandemic.

The Naval choppers from the Eastern Naval Command here flew past the designated Covid-19 hospitals the state-run Chest and Communicable Diseases Hospital and the private Gitam Hospital on Sunday morning and showered flowers.

Doctors, nurses and paramedical staff lined up on the hospital premises and acknowledged the Defence forces gesture.

The ENC officers later felicitated the doctors and other medical staff in a thanksgiving gesture.

Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat had on Friday announced that the three services will carry out a series of activities to thank the "corona warriors".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Standardbred racing participant Amber Guse, who was born and raised into the business, began her work in harness racing some 25 years ago.

Both my parents, Patti McGillivary and Bill Windsor, owned and trained, she has said. I began working alongside mom at the age of seven. I can still remember, back in the day, carrying the pails and blankets down the long path to the old paddock at Western Fair. It was around that time that I just fell in love with the horses.

When it comes to her first career win as a horse owner, Guse has stated that it was quite the experience. That came about 10 years ago, at Flamboro, with Hope Tobea Star, and she was parked out most of the mile," Guse explained. "She was far from a star for me, but on that day she was the biggest star. Theres nothing better than meeting your own horse back in the winner circle!

A top-notch caretaker for trainer Steve Bossence, Guse has worked for the Bossence barn over the last decade. It all started when I moved my mare over to the training centre where Steve was stabled," she explained. "I then began helping out with his horses and the rest is history. Im very thankful for all the nice horses Ive looked after over the years for Steve and his owner, Stephen Palermo. Theyve certainly helped in making some of my dreams come true!

Speaking of 'dreams,' one of Guse's top Western Fair performers came to mind. My fave girl to race was always Distinctiv Dreamer, Guse stated. She won me quite a few races there in London. My most favourite win ever was our first together. I bought her for just $1,500 (in February of 2013) and I really wasnt expecting much from her in her first start -- to be honest, I was only hoping for a cheque. Well, she had other plans, and drew off on the field to win by 17 lengths. And, at that moment, I knew we had something special. That girl was always game and just loved to win. She was the horse that made all my dreams come true!

Guse has also owned and raced (at The Raceway at Western Fair District in recent years) Total Knockout, Stonebridge Loyal and her newest acquisition, Golden Leader.

Guse also took the time to discuss some of the special moments and memories from horses that she has looked after over the years. I had the pleasure of looking after Ms Goliath while working for Jason Libby (in 2008). She got me my first OSS Gold win and raced against some classy fillies that year -- she was a special one! Strike A Light is also an extremely special guy. I have driven across the country to bring this boy home multiple times. We had many wins together and also took home awards in back-to-back seasons. Hes a super special guy (and is) now enjoying his retirement life. And Nebraska Jack, hes my 'heart horse' Hes the classiest, sassiest horse Ive ever had the pleasure of looking after. I just love him!

In terms of Guse's favourite wins this past season as a caretaker, she pointed to her heart horse. I would have to say our Preferred wins with Nebraska Jack (The Raceway at Western Fair District 2019 Aged Trotter of the Year). After claiming him for $12,000 and then watching him turn into this solid top-class trotter, its been simply amazing! And Raising Royalty (The Raceway at Western Fair District 2019 Three-Year-Old Trotting Colt of the Year) winning the City of London final was a pretty special moment for the whole team, as well.

When it came to being the runner-up for Canada's 2019 Caretaker of the Year at the O'Brien Awards, Guse stated, I dont think Ill ever forget that phone call. I just burst into tears. All I know is horses and Ive worked so hard to get to where Im at now. It was such an overwhelming feeling, and, at the same time, a feeling of accomplishment. There are so many amazing caretakers in this business that it was honestly just an honour to be noticed!

Western Fair's annual awards banquet took place a few weeks following the OBriens, and Amber was again recognized as a caretaker of the year nominee. Being my second time to be recognized for this award was truly an honour," she said. "I was up against some wonderful caretakers that also put so much time and work into their horses. It was a great feeling to be a nominee!

When it comes to the current happenings at the Bossence barn, Guse explained that, We have two babies in training currently. Publicity Seeker is going amazing. He has a great attitude and is loving his work thus far. Were really excited to see what he grows into. We also have a gorgeous red filly, Royal Gossip, that has had a little time off due to being a big, growthy filly. Shes just starting back again, and so far is looking pretty good out there. And, finally, our racehorses are pretty much good to go. We just need some races for them.

In terms of this current downtime from racing, Guse stated, Theres no such thing as downtime in my world. I have three children: Emma (13), Brody (10) and Adelynn (4). Life can sometimes get crazy busy between working, racing and then raising a family. Thus far, I think Ive done a pretty great job juggling it all. I have some pretty talented, smart and caring kids, along with some happy horses. Life is good!

(Shannon 'Sugar' Doyle for The Raceway at Western Fair District)
https://www.aish.com/tp/i/sacks/Radical-Uncertainty.html

There is something very strange about the festival of Succot, of which our parsha is the primary source. On the one hand, it is the festival supremely associated with joy. It is the only festival in our parsha that mentions rejoicing: And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days (Lev. 23: 40). In the Torah as a whole, joy is mentioned not at all in relation to Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur or Pesach, once in connection with Shavuot and three times in connection with Succot. Hence its name: zeman simchatenu, the festival of our joy.

Yet what it recalls is one of the more negative elements of the wilderness years: You shall live in booths seven days; all citizens in Israel shall live in booths, so that future generations may know that I made the Israelites live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I the Lord your God. (Lev. 23:42-43)

For forty years, the Israelites lived without permanent homes, often on the move. They were in the wilderness, in no mans land, where it is hard to know what to expect and what dangers lie in wait along the way. To be sure, the people lived under Divine protection. But they could never be sure in advance whether it would be forthcoming and what form this protection might take. It was a prolonged period of insecurity.

How then are we to understand the fact that Succot of all festivals is called zeman simchatenu, the festival of our joy? It would have made sense to call Pesach  freedoms birthday  the festival of joy. It would have made sense to call Shavuot  the day of revelation at Sinai  the festival of joy. But why give that title to a festival that commemorates forty years of exposure to the heat, cold, wind and rain. Remembering that, why should we feel joy?

Besides which, what was the miracle? Pesach and Shavuot recall miracles. But travelling through the wilderness with only temporary homes was neither miraculous nor unique. That is what people who travel through the wilderness do. They must. They are on a journey. They can only have a temporary dwelling. In this respect there was nothing special about the Israelites experience.

It was this consideration that led Rabbi Eliezer1 to suggest that the succah represents the clouds of glory, ananei kavod, that accompanied the Israelites during those years, sheltering them from heat and cold, protecting them from their enemies, and guiding them on the way. This is a beautiful and imaginative solution to the problem. It identifies a miracle and explains why a festival should be dedicated to remembering it. That is why Rashi and Ramban take it as the plain sense of the verse.

But it is difficult, nonetheless. A succah looks nothing like the clouds of glory. It would be hard to imagine anything less like the clouds of glory. The connection between a succah and clouds of glory comes not from the Torah but from the book of Isaiah, referring not to the past but to the future:

Then the Lord will create over all of Mount Zion and over those who assemble there a cloud of smoke by day and a glow of flaming fire by night; over everything the glory will be a canopy. It will be a succah for shade from heat by day, and a shelter and hiding place from the storm and rain. (Is. 4:5-6)

Rabbi Akiva dissents from Rabbi Eliezers view and says that a succah is what it says it is: a hut, a booth, a temporary dwelling.2 What, according to Rabbi Akiva, was the miracle? There is no way of knowing the answer. But we can guess.

If a succah represents the clouds of glory  the view of Rabbi Eliezer  then it celebrates Gods miracle. If it represents nothing other than a succah itself  Rabbi Akivas view  then it celebrates the human miracle of which Jeremiah spoke when he said: Thus said the Lord, I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved Me and followed Me in the wilderness, through a land not sown (Jer. 2:2).

The Israelites may have complained and rebelled. But they followed God. They kept going. Like Abraham and Sarah, they were prepared to journey into the unknown.

If we follow Rabbi Akiva, we can infer a deep truth about faith itself. Faith is not certainty. Faith is the courage to live with uncertainty. Almost every phase of the exodus was fraught with difficulties, real or imagined. That is what makes the Torah so powerful. It does not pretend that life is any easier than it is. The road is not straight and the journey is long. Unexpected things happen. Crises suddenly appear. It becomes important to embed in a peoples memory the knowledge that we can handle the unknown. God is with us, giving us the courage we need.

Each Succot it is as if God were reminding us: dont think you need solid walls to make you feel safe. I led your ancestors through the desert so that they would never forget the journey they had to make and the obstacles they had to overcome to get to this land. He said, I made the Israelites live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. (Lev. 23:43) In those booths, fragile and open to the elements, the Israelites learnt the courage to live with uncertainty.

Other nations told stories that celebrated their strength. They built palaces and castles as expressions of invincibility. The Jewish people was different. They carried with them a story about the uncertainties and hazards of history. They spoke of their ancestors journey through the wilderness without homes, houses, protection against the elements. It is a story of spiritual strength, not military strength.

Succot is a testament to the Jewish peoples survival. Even if it loses its land and is cast again into the wilderness, it will lose neither heart nor hope. It will remember that it spent its early years as a nation living in a succah, a temporary dwelling exposed to the elements. It will know that in the wilderness, no encampment is permanent. It will keep travelling until once again it reaches the promised land: Israel, home.

It is no accident that the Jewish people is the only one to have survived 2,000 years of exile and dispersion, its identity intact and energy unabated. It is the only people who can live in a shack with leaves as a roof and yet feel surrounded by clouds of glory. It is the only people who can live in a temporary dwelling and yet rejoice.

Economist John Kay and former Governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King have just published a book, Radical Uncertainty.3 In it they make the distinction between risk, which is calculable, and uncertainty, which is not. They argue that people have relied too much on calculations of probability while neglecting the fact that danger may appear from a completely unexpected source. The sudden appearance of the Coronavirus just as their book appeared proved their point. People knew there was a possibility of a pandemic. But no one knew what it would be like, where it would come from, how rapidly it would spread, and what toll it would take.

More important than the calculation of probabilities, they say, is understanding the situation, answering the question, What is going on?4 This, they say, is never answered by statistics or predictions but rather by narrative, by telling a story.

That is exactly what Succot is about. It is a story about uncertainty. It tells us that we can know everything else, but we will never know what tomorrow will bring. Time is a journey across a wilderness.

On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we pray to be written into the Book of Life. On Succot we rejoice because we believe we have received a positive answer to our prayer. But as we turn to face the coming year, we acknowledge at the outset that life is fragile, vulnerable in a dozen different ways. We do not know what our health will be, what our career or livelihood will be, or what will happen to society and to the world. We cannot escape exposure to risk. That is what life is.

The succah symbolises living with unpredictability. Succot is the festival of radical uncertainty. But it places it within the framework of a narrative, exactly as Kay and King suggest. It tells us that though we journey through a wilderness, we as a people will reach our destination. If we see life through the eyes of faith, we will know we are surrounded by clouds of glory. Amid uncertainty we will find ourselves able to rejoice. We need no castles for protection or palaces for glory. A humble succah will do, for when we sit within it, we sit beneath what the Zohar calls the shade of faith.

I believe that the experience of leaving the protection of a house and entering the exposure of the succah is a way of taming our fear of the unknown. It says: We have been here before. We are all travellers on a journey. The Divine Presence is with us. We need not be afraid. That is a source of the resilience we need in our interconnected, hazardous, radically uncertain world.

Shabbat Shalom

Succah 11b. Succah 11b. John Kay and Mervyn King, Radical Uncertainty, Bridge Street Press, 2020. The authors derive this idea from Richard Rumelt, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, Crown, 2011.

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With much of the world still overrun by the pandemic, we can look to a handful of countries that have either largely avoided or quickly recovered from COVID-19. A handful of countries (16 at recent tally), mostly small and remote, have had no cases at all. But there are others that have been more exposed, but have done well to limit the spread, as well as the death toll. As World Crunch writes, looking at these cases, there's apparently not one perfect solution  rather a variety of steps, strategies and most probably also luck, that have shown to be the most effective to claim a kind of victory of the coronavirus. And just as importantly, there are some lessons for the rest of us:

VIETNAM: has an impressive coronavirus record for a country of 93 million people: 268 cases and zero deaths, reports Les Echos. What did Vietnam do differently? The government opted for a low-cost strategy: instead of mass testing, the country relied on rapid identification and isolation of infected individuals and tracking of their contacts via a mobile app. As a result, nearly 75,000 Vietnamese went through a 14-day quarantine in military camps and state-run hotels. Six townships and neighborhoods were cut off from the world. Above all, Vietnam was one of the first countries to close its border with China, even though its economy is highly dependent on its larger neighbor.

NEW ZEALAND: Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declared this week that the country has won the battle against coronavirus as "there is no widespread, undetected community transmission." Throughout the outbreak, the country has reported 19 coronavirus deaths in total  meaning 4 deaths per one million. After nearly five weeks in one of the world's toughest lockdowns  with offices, schools, bars and restaurants closed, including takeaway and delivery services  New Zealand now begins to ease the restrictions, reports SBS News.

SOUTH KOREA: From being Asia's worst-hit country outside China a few months ago, South Korea is now hailed as a role model for successfully containing the outbreak. At the heart of its success lies the strategy of widespread testing and intensive contact tracing. In an impressive demonstration of speed, South Korean authorities have made tests freely available and set up drive-in stations for anyone to get tested. Isolating only those who tested positive, the epidemic was swiftly controlled while successfully avoiding a nationwide shut down.

SLOVAKIA: With 20 coronavirus deaths so far, Slovakia has the lowest death rate per capita in Europe. The country enforced one of Europe's harshest and earliest lockdowns, including early bans on international travel as well as all public, religious, cultural and sporting events. Schools and most shops have been closed and people returning from abroad have to undergo a 14-day quarantine. Slovakia was also one of the first places to impose compulsory wearing of face masks in public. But severe restrictions cannot be the only factor explaining such low numbers, since other central and eastern European countries proceeded in a similar way and ended up with significantly higher per capita figures of deaths and infections. In fact, epidemiologists and demographers don't have a clear explanation for how the country, as Slovak daily Dennik N put it, became "an island in the sea of mortality".

OTHER ISLANDS: There are still a handful of countries with zero reported cases of coronavirus, mostly among Pacific Islands in Oceania. Islands like Vanuatu, Samoa, and Micronesia were quick to implement travel restrictions and some of them also enforced lockdowns. At the same time, countries like Tuvalu or the Solomon Islands are some of the least visited countries in the world, which has been a massive help in preventing an outbreak.
ted mcfall So my name is Ted McFall. I live in the Pacific Northwest, northern Washington, and I am a hobby beekeeper. Ive been a beekeeper my whole life. I grew up in a beekeeping family. My fathers kept bees. And so Im very familiar with all things related to bees. So on a typical day of beekeeping, Ill usually wait until around midday. So what Ill do is Ill just open up the hive. Ill puff them with some smoke, which calms them down, and then I just go through the hives and see what each individual colony needs. Whenever theyre cranky, sometimes I talk to them, and theyre trying to sting me, and I do. I talk to them. I say, hey, whats going on? Why are you so upset? I say hey, you know, is your queen doing OK? Is your queen here? Because the queen gets sick or something happens to the queen, and that makes them cranky. Or Im like, is a predator messing with you guys? Basically I talk to them. I know that they dont understand what Im saying, so I guess really its more of talking to myself. Yeah, and it is kind of funny whenever Im going through the hive because a lot of times I do see all their little eyes all lined up along the top bars staring at me. So sometimes I do feel like I have thousands of eyes staring at me at once whenever Im going through their home. And I know that maybe thats a little bit of a some kind of romanticized idea of beekeeping, but I feel like maybe they do kind of recognize me and know, OK, this guy again.

mike baker

So one morning in November of last year in northern Washington state Ted McFall gets out of bed, and hes going to go check on his hives.

ted mcfall It was a typical morning. I made something to eat. I got all my stuff together, and I was just planning to go do a typical hiving inspection. So I went and I got my smoker and my bee equipment, my bee suit. And then I put everything in my pickup truck, and I went to the bee yard. And as I drove into the bee yard, I could see from afar kind of a dark shadow in front of one of my beehives. And I thought, oh, I wonder what that is?

mike baker

And before he even gets out of the truck he can see that somethings wrong.

ted mcfall And as I drove closer, I noticed that those were bee bodies. There were thousands of bee bodies strewn all over the ground in front of the beehive. And as I looked at the ground where all the dead bees were, I noticed that they were all decapitated.

mike baker

Each of their heads has been removed from their bodies.

ted mcfall I open up the beehive, and I looked inside, and it was just more carnage inside the beehive. There were just bees chopped up left and right. There were bee heads everywhere. It was hard for me to believe that someone like that could happen without the bees being able to mount any sort of a defense because if theyre attacked by another predator, most of the time  or I think that most of time  all the time theyre able to mount a defense and kill a certain amount of the attackers. However, in this case, there was not one attacker to be found. There was just something that I could not believe. I mean, I had been a beekeeper for so many years. I have never seen anything like this.

mike baker

So he takes some pictures. He sends him to his dad.

ted mcfall And I was going to say, hey, look at this. Do you have any ideas what the heck this could have been? And he was totally bewildered also. So I took all the bee bodies, and I just took them to the woods, and I dumped all their severed bodies and cleaned up my equipment and brought it home. And so needless to say, it bugged me for a few weeks after that, you know, thinking what the heck happened? And I just thought, well, maybe it was zombies. I have no idea what could have caused this crazy thing.

[music]

michael barbaro

From The New York Times, Im Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, it came to the U.S. from Asia and first appeared in Washington State. The country was slow to recognize it, and now if its not stopped, it could reshape the country. Mike Baker on the Asian giant hornets. Its Friday, May 8. Mike, what are these insects, and where did they come from?

mike baker

So theyve earned the nickname the murder hornet, but really theyre known as the Asian giant hornet, and they usually live in Asia. Thats where they have developed the nickname because they are a voracious consumer of honeybees. Theyre known as an insect that can spot a colony of honeybees, mark it with a pheromone, you know, a kind of an odor that can draw them back there. Then that forager will go back to its nest, get a backup crew to go and target the hive. And then the attack begins.

michael barbaro

And what are the mechanics of this attack once this crew heads off to the hive?

mike baker

So its a pretty brutal scene. These hornets are so big, and theyve got mandibles. Essentially their jaws on the front of them are enormous compared to the bees. And so the attack can be pretty swift. They can kill thousands of them in just a few hours. Each one of the hornets can kill a bee every 14 seconds because one of their main ways to make this happen is just to decapitate the bees. Thats their goal.

michael barbaro

Why? Why decapitate them?

mike baker

What theyre really after here is the part of the bee known as the thorax, essentially the bees chest, and theyre going to take that component back to their nest and use it to feed their young. I mean, thats really a signature of one of their attacks as you look inside one of these hives, and all the bees are dead, and their bodies are split apart, and the honey has been left behind.

michael barbaro

They ignore the honey altogether?

mike baker

Exactly.

michael barbaro

And how did these giant Asian hornets actually get from Asia to the United States?

mike baker

Well, they didnt fly here. Theres a lot of open questions about how it happened. I think the most common theory seems to be some sort of connection to international trade. These queens from the hornets hibernate over winter and then emerge in the spring to basically start the creation of a new colony. So did one of these queens end up at the bottom of a ship somewhere where there was enough dirt for them to establish themselves, or did they go into their base of the right bonsai tree that was going to come across the ocean and get sold at some nursery somewhere? That seems like the theory most likely to the researchers who are following this.

michael barbaro

So its the kind of pregnant-hornet travel theory.

mike baker

Thats right. But what we do know is that around November of last year we started to get these indicators of the hornet here in the United States. And we heard the story of Ted McFall where his hive gets wiped out in mysterious ways. And then just a few weeks after that, a couple miles away, theres a guy who walks out onto his porch one morning letting his dog out. And he looks down and immediately has a jarring fear because he sees the largest hornet hes ever seen in his life.

michael barbaro

Wow. And hes initially sort of scared but also realizes its just lying there and looks to be dead, and he starts to poke around and look at it a little more closely. And as luck would have it, he had watched a YouTube video once about the Asian giant hornet.

archived recording Hornet! Giant hornet, 100%. You got one? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Hold on a second. Dude, you got it. Yes, got it.

mike baker

So he has a hunch that this might be an Asian giant hornet. I mean, it didnt make sense to him at the time because theyre not in the United States. They wouldnt be here. But he just had enough of a hunch that he wanted to pursue it, and it ended up getting all the way to the state. And their invasive-species specialists come by and go, yeah, it actually is. Its the Asian giant hornet. Its here for the first time ever.

michael barbaro

So this kind of random man on the street, man on the stoop, happens to have seen the right YouTube video and then sees this hornet in his yard, notifies the authorities, and there you go, first official sighting in the U.S.?

mike baker

You got it. Thank God for YouTube finally.

michael barbaro

Finally. So what happens once these invasive-species specialists realize what theyre dealing with?

mike baker

So this first one was in December, and around that same time there was another person in the area that had found a second one of these hornets. So theres now been two of these worker hornets that have been discovered. But then because its December, these worker hornets are dying off just as part of their natural cycle, and the queens are going off to find somewhere to hibernate for winter. So theres no longer a great way for the state to commit a bunch of resources to track these things down.

michael barbaro

They cant really catch these hornets in the winter.

mike baker

Right. Now all of a sudden theyre sitting waiting for spring to arrive.

michael barbaro

And what happens in the spring?

mike baker

So this is really the time that the queens are going to start emerging from hibernation. Theyre going to start flying around looking for a new patch of dirt to start creating a nest, building a new colony, developing a whole new network of worker hornets that are going to spend the summer foraging throughout the region.

michael barbaro

And murdering honeybees.

mike baker

More of that too.

michael barbaro

Right.

mike baker

So now is the moment. I mean, now is the chance the way this window has opened to start catching queens, tracking them down, to stop them from establishing a new nest. And its really a chance to stop these before its too late.

[music]

michael barbaro

Well be right back.

mike looney I do have a  I have a hornets suit in the garage. We had to buy special  mike baker Oh, you did? Oh, really? Like extra thick or something? speaker Yeah.

michael barbaro

So, Mike, now were here. Its the spring, this critical moment to try to stop the murderous hornets. How are the authorities in Washington trying to do that?

mike baker

So I got a chance a couple weeks ago to go out with Chris Looney, whos the state entomologist whos really the guy leading the war being waged against the hornets right now. Its social-distancing time, so I put on my mask that had some cartoon bees on it.

speaker So are you making these, basically? mike looney Yeah, basically.

mike baker

We meet at this forest edge, and hes making traps out of clear fruit jugs, essentially. The regular wasp traps would be too small for the hornet to even fit in, so theyre making those.

mike looney Yeah, we just made them out of these juice containers that we bought in bulk.

mike baker

You know, really trying a variety of strategies here to entice some of these hornets to get stuck.

mike looney We either put a half a cup of orange juice and rice wine in it  so basically the grossest mimosa on earth for the hornets. Or this is a kefir and water blend. Its the fermented milk protein is essentially what were going for there. mike baker Yeah, sure.

mike baker

Chris was very kind to bring some specimens along to show what these things look like. He had a bunch of them in a little jar.

mike looney Heres the hornets if you want to look at them.

mike baker

Its a chunky baby carrot. This is a huge thing.

mike baker They get up to two inches or something like that? mike looney The queens will get up to two inches. mike baker Thats a wingspan thats almost like  thats a wing like a dragonfly almost.

mike baker

You know, its got tiger stripes down the back, and its face is large enough to peer at in person, and its got this Spider Man teardrop eyes and a really sort of ferocious look. Its just a  its a really striking sight to see them.

speaker I feel like its going to come alive...

michael barbaro

It sounds like it looks like a nasty, murdering hornet.

mike baker

That sounds a good description.

michael barbaro

So how is the trap supposed to work?

mike baker

To be able to track them back to where they are. Let them back out of the jug and follow them back to their nest because its not that great to kill just one of these hornets. You want to be able to find the source and kill them all.

michael barbaro

And whats the plan for what happens when a nest is found?

mike baker

So the ideal situation, you find one. You come back at nighttime when you know all the hornets are cooped up inside, and you can go in and go on the attack. I talked to this one guy in Vancouver Island in British Columbia who had the job of doing just that, going out in the middle of night and trying to eradicate this nest that they had found. He puts on his shorts and then thick sweatpants and then on top of that his bee suit. Hes got Kevlar around his wrists and ankles. I mean, hes ready.

michael barbaro

Hes prepared.

mike baker

Hes ready for battle. But as hes approaching the nest  I mean, hes rustling through the bushes, and hes got a flashlight on his head, and something about all that awakens the hive, and some of them start emerging.

michael barbaro

Uh oh.

mike baker

And just as he is about to douse the nest with carbon dioxide, he feels those first searing stabs in his leg through the bee suit, through the sweatpants, the thick sweatpants that he has.

michael barbaro

Wow.

mike baker

And he gets stung seven times, some of them drawing blood even through the bee suit.

michael barbaro

Jeez.

mike baker

And he tells me that it essentially feels like red-hot thumbtacks that are being driven into his flesh. He wakes up the next day, and his legs are aching like he has the flu. Hes been a beekeeper and done that kind of work for many years. Hes been stung thousands of times, and he says these strings were the most painful hes ever experienced.

michael barbaro

Mike, what happens if this eradication effort youre describing just doesnt work?

mike baker

So one thing is western Washington is a bit of an ideal habitat for the Asian giant hornet. Its got plenty of woods for it to establish itself, lots of nice dirt. The hornet doesnt do great in high altitudes or really dry plains, so theres a lot of concern that it could quickly spread through this part of the Northwest. And then how far can go beyond there is an open question. I mean, if it hitches a ride to the right place in Colorado or the South or the Northeast, it could quickly establish itself there as well. And theres a window here to contain and eradicate the hornet in the next year or two. And then if they have enough time and space to spread over that time period without getting wiped out, that would essentially be the end of it. Then its just more of a containment as opposed to an eradication strategy.

michael barbaro

And how bad a situation would that be for the United States? Im mindful that one of the reasons this story has attracted so much attention is that honeybees are this important part of our ecosystem. So a murderous invader seems really threatening to that. But as you mentioned, these hornets have been in Japan for a really long time, and its not like their ecosystems have collapsed.

mike baker

Right. Yeah, its a part of normal life there, but there is one real important difference. And that is over time, the Japanese honeybees have evolved to fight back against the Asian giant hornet. When an Asian giant hornet approaches a hive in Japan, the bees begin a strategy of teamwork that involves surrounding the hornet and staying surrounded as a ball, so many of them that you cant even see the hornet anymore.

michael barbaro

Wow.

mike baker

And they flex their muscles essentially like theyre flying and produce a constant heat that essentially turns their little ball into a tiny oven. And over the span of 10 minutes, then 20 minutes, then 30 minutes, and it gets warmer and warmer and warmer. The hornet eventually gets cooked to death.

michael barbaro

Wow.

mike baker

Unfortunately, the European honeybees, the Western honeybees that we have  theyre the most popular pollinators here in the United States. The researchers have looked into whether they have the same instinct, whether they have the same ability to fight back, and they dont.

michael barbaro

So the honeybees in the U.S., they would be pretty defenseless for  I mean, in terms of evolution, a really long time.

mike baker

It seems likely that if these things are going to start targeting a variety of hives in the United States, its just going to be massacre after massacre after massacre.

[music]

ted mcfall A lot of people dont realize it, but one third of every bite that you take is dependent on honeybee. So much food would not be pollinated without honeybees. If you like apples, well, guess what? A honeybee pollinated that. If you like nuts, well, guess what? A bee pollinated that. If you like avocados, a bee pollinated that. There is so much that our bees pollinate. Actually, even they help pollinate alfalfa, which helps feed the livestock. I mean, bees do so much for us that people dont really realize it, but if the bees find themselves in trouble, then humanity will find itself in trouble. The only thing that we have going for us right now is the fact that it is over here in the corner of the United States. So we have it a little bit isolated. If we can get rid of them right now, theres still hope. Its basically a now-or-never situation. If we dont deal with it now, then its going to spread over the entire United States.

michael barbaro

Mike, Im curious how youre thinking about this story, especially because, for the past two or three months, you have done almost nothing but write about the coronavirus pandemic.

mike baker

Yeah. I mean, it was my task there early on in the outbreak here in the Seattle area to report on the emergence of the virus, the nursing home where so many people died early on, and then continue to report and watch as it spread elsewhere across the country. And I took the opportunity for this story about the hornets as a bit of a break from that, as a bit of a reprieve, and, in some ways, thought it was just an interesting quirk of something thats happening here and that it would just be a one-off story. Go out and do this interesting thing. Its a curiosity but nothing major. But instead, in the process of reporting, you also had this sense of the uncanny parallels here. Here I am reporting again on something thats come in from Asia. It lands in Washington State first. We have just a couple cases here. Theres just a couple of them now, but its potentially poised to spread much further. And as I have sort of been processing that, the story, once it got published, took off in ways that I totally did not anticipate, and Ive been trying to make sense of that too. Why are all these people from all over the country emailing me their photos of the various insects theyve just found in their backyard? Is this the murder hornet? Is this the one here? Is it in my county? Is it in my state? And so I get the sense of others around the country, consciously or not, are seeing the same parallels of this threat that has arrived and an opportunity to stop it. And as our lives are consumed by coronavirus that we didnt prevent it from spreading  in this case, were almost back at the beginning of that story and a chance to get it right.

michael barbaro

Right, we didnt stop the coronavirus, but perhaps we can stop the hornets, and that would be something.

mike baker

That would be  that would be great.

michael barbaro

Mike, thank you very much.

mike baker

Thank you.

[music]

michael barbaro

Well be right back. Heres what else you need to know today. On Thursday, the Department of Justice dropped its criminal case against Michael Flynn, President Trumps first national security advisor, who had pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents about his communications with Russia.

archived recording We are both obviously relieved and gratified that we have an attorney general and other attorneys in the Department of Justice now with enough integrity to bring the truth to light.

michael barbaro

The decision, which was celebrated by Flynns lawyer on Fox, came after newly revealed documents suggested that the FBI agents lacked the proper justification to interview Flynn in the first place.

archived recording (donald trump) I felt it was going to happen just by watching and seeing like everybody else does. He was an innocent man.

michael barbaro

Asked about the decision at the White House, President Trump immediately praised it and congratulated Flynn.

archived recording (donald trump) So Im very happy for General Flynn. He was a great warrior, and he still is a great warrior. Now in my book, hes an even-greater warrior.

michael barbaro
The new year was hours old when bullets began flying in Salem.

A New Years Day shootout at Salem Motor Lodge was followed the next day by another shooting at the motel that left two dead.

The violence in this Salem County town hasnt stopped.

The county seat has seen five homicides in the first four months of 2020. Compared to some battle-hardened cities to the north, that may not seem like a high number, but its more than Salem had in its last two years combined. The city recorded two homicides in 2019 and two in 2018.

With a population of around 4,800, its a big deal.

At least three of the killings have been linked to gang activity.

The third case was March 21, when Tajmire Clark was gunned down on Olive Street.

The fourth involved an acquaintance who allegedly stabbed a woman to death in her apartment. The fifth came early Saturday, when 60-year-old Jerry Wright was shot following an argument, authorities said.

Saturate the city

City and county officials have launched a task force to tackle the unprecedented level of violence. Salem County Prosecutors Office, Salem County Sheriffs Office, New Jersey State Police, and agents from the FBI and federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have teamed up over the last month to confront the problem.

Its an effort to drastically increase the law enforcement presence in Salem City, said Salem County Prosecutor John T. Lenahan. Were just trying to saturate the city, to do what we can to reduce criminal activity and work to make people less brazen in their activities.

Lenahan attributes much of the violence to gangs. In his 17 years as prosecutor, hes never seen it this bad.

Weve had incidents in the past, but nothing to this level, he said. This is a gang war that weve never really experienced before. Ive never seen this level of violence in this short period of time.

Typically, we have five or less homicides in the entire county.

The task force is supporting the citys 18 police officers in tackling all types of lawlessness, including violent crime, traffic offenses, quality of life issues and violations of the governors executive orders regarding the coronavirus pandemic.

In conversations with Salem Police Chief John Pelura III, they agreed drastic action was needed, Lenahan said.

Public cooperation lacking

One of the big challenges is getting cooperation from witnesses. Its not a problem unique to Salem. In some cases, those with knowledge of events arent willing to speak on the record or testify in a courtroom. Thats what were running up against now, Lenahan said.

No one has been charged in the recent shooting deaths, including a case from 2019 in which Jireh S. Douglas was shot to death on Sinnickson Street.

Thats why the task force is so important. Were trying to do what we can to fill the void from people on the ground who wont testify, Lenahan said.

Pelura said progress has been made.

We are currently working on the murder investigations and getting more insight as to the parties involved and what led up to the shootings, he said. Investigative measures, both conventional and unconventional, are being taken to mitigate the violence, but discussing those in detail would put their effectiveness at risk.

Senselessly taking lives

Charles Washington, Salems mayor and lifelong resident, understands that many fear retribution if they cooperate with police, but said residents cannot complain about crime in their city if they arent willing to step up.

People are senselessly taking lives of young men and we need to do a better job as a community of making a commitment to work with law enforcement officers to bring some closure to the victims families, he said. We cant hope to live in a safe community if we withhold information from law enforcement."

The Salem County Sheriffs Office has four officers assigned to the task force, along with others who are available to assist as needed, explained Undersheriff Warren Mabey.

Were supporting the task force, assigning sheriffs officers, including two K-9 officers, that are assigned to various shifts working with the task force, Mabey explained, utilizing marked and unmarked vehicles to assist Salem PD in being visible and diligent in enforcing COVID-related laws and all other laws, hopefully to quell the rash of criminal activity within the city.

Apart from the killings, there have been several other shootings in Salem that resulted in no injuries.

Two houses and a car were riddled with bullets in back-to-back shootings on the night of April 5. Investigators believe these cases were gang-related and potentially tied to earlier killings.

A man arrested that night was found with an assault-style rifle and a fully automatic rifle, both with high-capacity magazines, according to his criminal complaint.

Its only a matter of luck that no innocent bystanders have been hit in these shootings, Lenahan said, recalling the case of a Bridgeton child killed by a stray bullet that tore through the wall of her house as she slept in 2018.

Officers surround a location in Salem City where a man barricaded himself during a standoff with police in January 2019.

Feds bring additional skills

Federal agencies involved in the task force bring additional resources.

ATF maintains a database which contains images of spent bullets and cartridge cases collected from crime scenes. With that technology, investigators can compare newly recovered evidence to connect cases, said Special Agent Dylan K. Wiggins.

They also trace the origins of firearms used in crimes back to their original purchaser, allowing investigators to uncover possible weapons trafficking.

Teaming up in a task force means all of this happens more quickly.

A lot of us working together is helping solve crimes a lot faster and more efficiently, Wiggins explained.

The ATF can also target repeat offenders charged with gun crimes by taking their cases to the federal level, with the U.S. Attorneys Office handling prosecution, Wiggins noted. This happens with the agreement of local prosecutors and guidance from detectives who deal with these offenders on a regular basis.

We work hand in hand with these folks to make sure we are targeting the worst of the worst, he said. A lot of times, that will ensure we are removing the most violent people from the community.

Well aware of our shortfalls

Salems mayor acknowledged the economic challenges faced by his city and the part that plays in the crime problem. An estimated 41 percent of city residents live below the poverty line and Salem is among the most economically distressed cities in New Jersey.

The City of Salem is very well aware of our economic distress and shortfalls, Washington said, but we have plans in place.

Those plans require reliable county and state partners if the city is to see an economic turnaround, he added, pointing to a failed effort to bring 150 jobs to the city last year. That fell apart when Empire Blended Products backed out, saying needed county railroad improvements hadnt been completed. Salem County officials responded that the work had been completed, leaving a murky picture of what really derailed the project.

As economic development efforts continue, agencies involved in the anti-crime push remain at work.

The task force is about four weeks old and already has resulted in a significant number of arrests, Lenahan said.

All of this came together as the coronavirus pandemic was taking hold in the state. As prosecutors and sheriffs offices were scaling back their office staffing in response to the health crisis, they were increasing their presence on Salems streets.

We have less people working in the office and more people working in Salem City than we ever have had, Lenahan said.

How long will the task force operate?

As long as it takes, Lenahan responded. Until we have a noticeable reduction in violence, it will remain in place.

Salem County Prosecutor John T. LenahanSJN

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Ninety-four per cent of Queenslands COVID-19 patients have recovered, with 980 of the state's 1038 no longer infected.

Recent travellers overseas and people in close contact with a confirmed case accounted for 972 of the state's cases.

A total of 116,650 people have been tested for COVID-19 in Queensland, with 1052 of those performed in the past 24 hours.

Nine of the 52 active confirmed cases are in hospital, with four of these in intensive care.

The remainder of active cases are currently recovering at home.

Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young says the efforts of parents, children and school staff had contributed to allowing the soon return to school-based learning.

The Department of Education has gone to significant lengths to prepare schools for a safe return to school-based learning, including putting in place multiple measures to assist with social distancing, she said.

The return of kindy, prep, year one, and years 11 and 12 ahead of other grades will allow schools to practice, assess and refine the effectiveness of these measures.

Dr Young urged Queenslanders to continue to practise social distancing and good hygiene.

While Queensland has continued to record very low numbers of new cases over the past week, we cannot be complacent and its so important that we continue to exercise social distancing, good hygiene and comply with all the restrictions in place, as well as staying home if youre unwell, she said.
It was one of those rare hinge-of-history moments. The country, already deeply riven by a war that would take more than 58,000 American lives and millions of Vietnamese lives, would never be the same. This horrific event on May 4, 1970, would be seen as the end of the post-World War II era and the beginning of a new era in U.S. politics and society that has brought us to the current moment of almost hopeless polarization, cynicism and distrust.
City Editor

Tom Roeder is the Gazette's City Editor. In Colorado Springs since 2003, Tom has covered the military at home and overseas and has covered statehouses in Denver and Olympia, Wash. His main job, though, is being dad to two great kids.
Coronavirus: The latest updates from Spain and around the world Coronavirus Sunday's updates on the global pandemic

That is all for today. Make sure and join us tomorrow for all the latest coronavirus news.

22:04. Around 1.7 million masks will be distributed throughout Madrid in the next few days, with 14.5m given out over the country as a whole.

21:52. Since the State of Emergency was enacted in Spain, more then 7,000 people have been detained for not abiding by the rules.

21:40. The UK have registered 315 deaths in the last 24 hours, their lowest daily number since March.

21:05. Vienna airport will test anyone arriving in Austria and in the case of a negative result, the person in question will avoid an obligatory 14 day quarantine.

19:56. Atletico Madrid players will undergo COVID-19 tests on Wednesday with view to restarting training by Friday.

19:14. Italy has recorded 174 deaths in the last 24 hours, which represents the lowest number of deaths since lockdown began. Starting on Monday the confinement measure will gradually be lifted.

18:31. Jordan has lifted all restrictions it had imposed because of the spread of the coronavirus. The country has 460 confirmed cases of COVID-19. The economy is expected to contract by three percent.

18:16. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said in an interview with ABC News that his government has "a significant amount of evidence" that the COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.

17:36. The Spanish government has given the autonomous regions until May 6 to make their proposals on the de-escalation plan and the possible particularities of their territories. The government has promised to hold a telematic meeting to assess them.

17:12. In Spain, wakes with a maximum of 15 people will be allowed when held outdoors and 10 when held indoors.

16:05. Madrid's local police have reported 30 cases of people meeting to drink outside on Saturday, which was the first day walks are allowed in the capital. Between the fine for drinking in public and skipping confinement, the penalty amounts to 1,000 euros.

14:29. The 'cure for humility' that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to humanity will lead to an increase in digital life, a rise in individualism, the temptations of totalitarianism and a growth in protectionism, according to a study by the consulting firm Labrand Brand Psychology.

13:41. More than 300 health and social professionals have received the support of the telematic service for psychological accompaniment set up by the Ministry of Health through the La Caixa Foundation, to minimise the impact of the emotional stress that the COVID-19 pandemic may cause them. This service, launched on April 3 under the collaboration agreement between the two institutions, is a psychological care platform by telephone, video conference and online monitoring specifically designed for this sector.

12:25. Headaches or severe headaches have been detected as a warning symptom of COVID-19 and patients who suffer from migraines and know how to recognise this pain have reported peaks of particular intensity, which could indicate that they may have had coronavirus without knowing it. Dr. Patricia Pozo-Rosich, head of the Headache Unit at the Vall d'Hebron Hospital in Barcelona, explained that having a migraine is not a risk, but if you have COVID-19, a headache has been reported as one of the main warning signs.

11:46. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has once again called for prudence and reminded the Italian public that the so-called 'phase 2', the gradual deconfinement that Italy begins on Monday, does not mean 'freeing everyone'. "We are entering 'phase 2' of the emergency, thanks to a powerful collective effort. This new phase has cost us enormous sacrifices and for that reason it cannot be understood as 'freeing everyone'," Conte said in an interview published on Sunday in the newspaper La Stampa.

11:32. The Community of Madrid have recorded a total of 40 deaths from coronavirus in the last 24 hours, 30 less than Saturday's figure, according to data from Spain's Ministry of Health. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the total number of deaths in the region has reached 8,332.

11:25. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez spoke with the regional presidents via a video conference to announce a procedure for the co-governance of the de-escalation, as well as the details of the 16 billion euro fund for reconstruction.

10:35. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has stated that 164 people have died of COVID-19 in the last 24 hours in Spain, the lowest figure since the state of emergency was declared 50 days ago. Sanchez also reported that new cases of coronavirus in the last 24 hours have not exceeded 1,000.

10:27. Journalists in Turkey on World Press Freedom Day on Sunday denounced the arrest of a dozen reporters for their publications on COVID-19 in the last month and warned of pressure from the authorities on information related to the coronavirus. The journalists were arrested for "spreading panic and fear" with their reports on the virus, the daily Bianet Erol Onderoglu, Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) representative in Turkey, reported.

10:14. The Spanish government's delegations and sub-delegations received 14.5 million masks over the weekend, of which six million will be distributed in transport stops, seven million will be given to city councils and the remaining 1.5 million to social entities all over Spain.

9:01. On Saturday, the Community of Madrid welcomed a sixth plane from China loaded with 56 tonnes of medical material that will be distributed among hospitals in the region. The Community of Madrid have now had six aircrafts arrive carrying 408 tonnes of material over the course of a month, which included 18 million units of masks, protective suits and goggles, medical isolation gowns or tights.

7:23. In China, they have reported two cases of coronavirus in the last 24 hours with no deaths, according to the country's Ministry of Health. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 82,877 infections have been recorded and 4,633 people have died.
03.05.2020 LISTEN

This is the moment of truth. This is the moment of tell it all. And, this is the moment of calling a spade a spade. If Ghanaians collectively aspire to achieve sound development for themselves as a nation and a people, having learnt and continue to learn bitter lessons from the ongoing outbreak of novel coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, then now is the moment to be very serious in holding our institutions accountable. For without strong and responsible institutions, Ghana will be going in circles wobbling in poverty, denigration, committal of crimes by certain people with impunity, and domination of injuriously baneful official corruption to finally relegate the people to subhuman status quo.

I quite remember when then President of the United States of America, His Excellency Barack Obama, came to Ghana and in his address to the nation at Ghana Parliament, advised the nation to build strong institutions, many Ghanaians might not have grasped his well-intended message. In later years, I heard many a Ghana say that although Barack Obama was a black man, he did not help Africans in any way unlike his predecessor white President George W. Bush Jnr. who gave money to African countries.

The Ghanaian or the African sees only money, and craves for material wealth but not knowledge through useful advice. Ghana could have got more money than what George Bush gave to us if we had heeded Obamas advice to build strong institutions rather than having strong men who end up embezzling the nations funds and assets with impunity to deprive the nation of the needed funds to carry out developments.

Going back to my topic for the day, The unethicality of the Ghana Judiciary and the Law Enforcement Agents is dangerously retarding the progress of Ghana, let me first define what ethics or ethicality is. Ethics or Ethicality is defined by the dictionary as being in accordance with the rules or standards for right conduct or practice, especially the standards of a profession while Unethicality is defined as lacking moral principles; unwilling to adhere to proper rules of conduct; not in accord with the standards of a profession

The Ghana Judiciary which is the third arm of government responsible for interpreting the laws of the land have oftentimes, and in the eyes of many a Ghanaian, proven themselves disgracefully unethical hence tagged as corrupt. How often had the Chief Justices not bemoaned the corruption within the judicial system as is orchestrated by the staff, i.e. court registrars, clerks and bailiffs, and some judges?

Some judges have been known to base their court pronouncements of rulings on inducements they are offered but not on the available credible facts and evidence laid before them. Is it how they were trained to do? Is it what the laws tell them to do? This is shameful and irresponsible of them. By this despicable and criminal behaviour by them, some hardened criminals have indirectly been given the free licence to perform their trade with impunity why because they can buy their way out when caught and arraigned for prosecution.

There are times that the police have claimed to be discouraged of arresting and putting criminals before the courts because the judges often just set the criminals free. I dont think this is based on the fact of there not being enough evidence but because of their quest to engage in nefarious deals of selling justice to the highest bidder. This has been proved by Anas Aremeyaw Anas, although I disagree with his modus operandi.

How many times have court registrars not been heard of hiding, removing, destroying or letting miraculously disappear, vital documents, from some litigants files or dockets in the courts custody?

If judges and judicial staff ceased to behave unethically, there would be less crimes in the nation for the government to have more money to develop the nation for the collective betterment of all. However, for the ridiculous attitudes by some of our nations judges and the judicial staff, some people are emboldened to steal and commit all sorts of crimes with impunity. If Ghana judges were more ethical like their counterparts in the civilized western countries, the rate of official corruption in Ghana will have greatly reduced, however, as corrupt and unethical as they are, Ghana is bleeding financially with her pains exacerbated by Covid-19.

On the Law Enforcement Agents, principally the police and the military, especially the police, their infatuation with corruption, collecting bribes at any least opportunity they get, even using force as are seen on Ghana roads, is as equally disgusting, pernicious and unethical as those in the judicial system like the judges and court clerks.

It has on a number of occasions turned out that the law enforcements agents have disguised themselves to take to armed robbery or connived and condoned with armed robbers to go out to steal and be given their share of the booty. They are alleged to give tip offs to criminals when the criminals have been reported to the police for arrest, or parted with their uniform and weapons to the criminals to effectuate their crimes.

How can Ghana develop with the judges and police officers behaving selfishly, parochially and insatiably greedy, corrupt and remarkably unethical?

The ravaging Covid-19 with the apprehension of the Chinese descending on Ghana to re-colonise us to take us back into slavery has reinvigorated me to come out boldly to educate and lambast our irresponsible institutions by seeking to make them strong and responsible for the general good of all Ghanaians and the nation and by extension, to awake the deeply asleep and snoring Africans and their leaderships. This moment is not the time to continue to lazily fall asleep when we should be wide awake and on our feet fighting for our very survival by being innovative, self-reliant to some extent, and curtail our overly dependency on foreigners and foreign handouts.

I have not finished. I shall be back. Please forward this publication to all your friends and family members until it reaches the homes of every Ghanaian.

Lest I forget, when are all those suspected big time criminals on trial in Ghana be finally dealt with? I mean those who are alleged to have caused financial loss to the state. Is unnecessarily constantly deferring cases for years also part of the ethical expectations of the courts? If yes, how do you explain away the legal dictum, Justice delayed is justice denied, the Ghana judicial system?

Rockson Adofo

Sunday, 3 May 2020
03.05.2020 LISTEN

The Ghana Education Service has interdicted a teacher at the Arigu D/A Junior High School (JHS) in the North East Region, Baba Zumah Yaro for allegedly using certificates that do not belong to him to gain employment.

According to a final report on the investigation into the allegations of impersonation, Mr. Yaro is said to have used educational certificates of his late brother Baba Zumah, a former lecturer of Tamale Polytechnic to gain employment into the Ghana Education Service in 2005.

In a letter signed by the Director-General of the Ghana Education Service, Prof. Kwesi Opoku-Amankwa and sighted by Citi News, Baba Zumah has been directed to hand-over all official property to the West Mamprusi District Director of Education and proceed on interdiction.

Mr. Baba Zumah is also standing trial at the Bolgatanga High Court on charges related to the same matter.

The letter further stated that GES reserves the right to take any administrative decision on the matter irrespective of the pendency of the trial.

In an investigative report by the Ghana Education Service REF.NO.GES/HQ/IAU/VOL II/39, Mr. Baba Zumah had three different names on different documents representing him.

For instance, he bears the name Baba Zumah on his educational certificates for appointment into GES which is being challenged by GES, and he registered as a candidate to contest as assemblyman for Tindongo/Sheaga in 1998 under the name Teroug Zongbil Yaro Zumah while having Baba Zumah Yaro on his national health insurance card issued in 2008.

Who blew the alarm?

According to the Ghana Education Service, Baba Zumah Yaro was appointed as a graduate teacher by GES in September 2005 and posted to Zebilla Secondary Technical School in the Upper East Region.

Between October 2009 and January 2010, letters were received from some persons, Farruk Braimah and Tebon Zumah alleging that Mr. Yaro was an imposter.

Mr. Tebon Zumah, who is the maternal and paternal brother of Baba Zumah Yaro alleged that the certificates submitted for employment by Baba Zumah Yaro belonged to their late brother Baba Zumah who was a lecturer at the Tamale Polytechnic and died in 2002.

Preliminary investigations were launched by the Upper East Regional Director of Education and subsequently, the salary of Baba Zumah Yaro was frozen.

On August 2, 2010, when Baba Zumah Yaro appeared before the GES investigation committee, he denied having a brother by the name Baba Zumah who was a lecturer at Tamale Polytechnic but rather had a brother by name Zong Tii Zumah who worked at Ghana Highways as a foreman and died in Tamale in 2002.

On his second appearance on October 5, 2010, Baba Zumah Yaro denied Baba Zumah as a brother but stated that he had a brother by name Tii-e Zongbil who worked with an NGO in Tamale and died in 2001.

According to the GES report, there was no evidence of change of name nor confirmation that the same person bears two names at the time of his appointment into GES, however, he only attached affidavits to that effect in February 2007.

Meanwhile, Baba Zumah has told Citi News that he has not received any interdiction letter from the Ghana Education Service in connection with the matter but was quick to add that, he was standing trial at the Bolga High court over the same matter.

I was invited by the Upper East Regional police telling me that, they have received a complaint and that I was under investigation on this issue and I gave out my statement and was granted bill. Six months later, they(police) said there is a docket that had come from the State Attorney and that I should be prosecuted and charged so, I was charged, I went to court and was given bill and the case has been running for two years now, he said.

Then all of a sudden that, there is a letter that I need to pick not even from my Regional or District office but from Accra and I don't work in Accra and my recruitment was not done by Director-General, I was recruitment in the Upper East Region. So, if a letter has been written and I have not received a copy and that I have been interdicted, let it go on because this case that is running in court today, it is not GES that took me to court, Baba Zumah Yaro added.

Mr. Baba Zumah Yaro said, he has been in court for two years now on the matter but not over the allegations of impersonation.

I'm in court because the police say, their intelligence says that I have been drawing money from a name that is not my name and that I'm fraudulent and that is what I'm fighting in court now, he said.

---citinewsroom
Facing questions over why Britain's death toll from the new coronavirus was now the second-worst in Europe after Italy, a British minister said on Sunday people should not jump to conclusions and the full picture was not yet clear.

The death toll was 28,131 as of May 1, just short of the Italian total, increasing pressure on the conservative government which has been accused by the opposition of having acted too slowly in the early stages of the outbreak.

Ministers have rejected comparisons of the headline death toll with that of other countries, saying that excess mortality -- the number of deaths from all causes that exceed the average for the time of year -- was a more meaningful metric.

The most recent available data showed there were almost 12,000 excess deaths in England and Wales in the week to April 17. Of these, just under 9,000 were linked on the death certificates to COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus.

Analysis by media including Sky News and the Financial Times suggests those figures are worse than in other European countries.

Appearing on Sky News on Sunday, transport minister Grant Shapps rejected a suggestion that the evidence on excess mortality showed the government's response to the outbreak had failed.

"You need to look at that over a much longer period of time. So we'll have to look back over a year I'm afraid, not to be evasive but we just won't have that information," Shapps said. "It's much more complex than you're making it sound."

He said some impacts of the outbreak would not be known for a long time and that differences in the age and health profiles of nations, as well as population size and density, were among many factors that would have to be taken into account.

"You have to look at the whole picture and that information simply isn't available as yet," he said. "We shouldn't look at the raw data and jump to conclusions."

COMPARISONS "UNBELIEVABLY DIFFICULT"

The UK National Statistician, Ian Diamond, also cautioned against relying on any "league table" of worst-affected countries.

"I'm not saying that we're at the bottom of any potential league table, it's almost impossible to calculate a league table, but I'm not prepared to say that we're heading for the top," he said during an interview on BBC News.

Diamond, the head of the Office of National Statistics (ONS) which collates excess deaths numbers, said it was "unbelievably difficult" to make international comparisons.

He said the way Britain was counting and reporting its coronavirus-related deaths was the most transparent, because the ONS was including deaths where COVID-19 was mentioned on the death certificate even if the person had not been tested.

In some other countries, only people who had tested positive for the new coronavirus before they died are included in the official statistics.








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The on-going 5G Auto-Immune Disease shutdown has adversely affected everyones economic standing. Its no secret that by the time this health crisis comes to an end, the world will be left grappling with an unprecedented economic crisis.

Faced with this ugly truth, Business2community maintains that businesses can choose one of two ways to deal with the present reality. For one they can curl up in fear, resign themselves to fate and wait to rebuild whatever is left of their business by the end of this health crisis. Alternatively, businesses can fight to keep their head above water by restrategizing and formulating new policies that are more suited for a period such as this.

Many business owners have already adapted their business strategies by working with firms such as AgoraPublishing.com and Starpage.ca to set up their online businesses. Others are still having a hard to adapting their business strategies to suit the internet.

Business2community reached out to several business owners asking for tips and advice on how businesses can emerge from this storm bigger and stronger. The following are tried and tested solutions suggested by business owners:

Keep clients informed on whatever youre doing.

According to serial entrepreneur, Enstine Muki, if you have taken measures to protect your employees such as working from home or closing your doors to walk-in customers, then you must let your customers know about these measures.

If your business can afford it, offer free services, discounts and other special considerations to potential and existing customers who might be going through rough times at the moment.

Pay attention to your emails as you can expect to get a flood of enquiries from new and existing clients who cannot leave the house. Delays in responding to customer queries might have them going to your competitors.

In everything you do, ensure that your business is following the World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines and that Government regulations are closely followed.

Use this opportunity to market your business while competition is low

According to Chad Hill, CMO of Hill and Ponton law, now is the time to market, market, market. Hill says that because the competition is currently low, you must use this time to sell yourself to the customer.

Dont market by shoving your products down customers throat; rather you should give your customers exactly what they need to get through these tough times which is some encouragement and ways to cope with the shutdown.

Finally, he advises business owners to utilize online collaboration tools like Monday.com, Google Docs, Zoom, and the likes to keep your business running despite social distancing.

Organize Events

Stefan Debois, CEO and Founder of Survey Anyplace says the best way to keep your teams spirits up is by organizing digital events to spark the team spirit of the whole company.

This could be an after-work drinking event thatd be held behind your computer screen rather than in the local bar or you could organize an online game, a pop quiz, a game to get to know your colleagues better, the list is endless. Of course, while organizing virtual social events, you should ensure they dont clash with business hours so thatyour teams stay on top of your business.

Finally

Many businesses who had earlier on stood up to the task of tackling this shutdown situation are already starting to see some success for instance, educational institutions and training centres, even gyms, all of which quickly switched to offering online classes, have started to reap the benefits of their wisdom. Theres no use waiting to see what happens tomorrow, do what you can right now, to ensure your business remains alive once this virus has been defeated for good.
I f someone tests positive for coronavirus more than once, it does not necessarily mean they have been reinfected, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Speaking on BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO's technical lead on the outbreak, said doctors were finding instances where "dead cells" emerged during the healing process of the lungs.

These people were testing positive for Covid-19, but the individuals themselves have not been reinfected, she explained.

It comes after health experts have said there was no evidence that survivors had built up immunity to the disease.

Dr Van Kerkhove said on Sunday: "Some individuals are they test negative after a week or two or longer, are finding that they are testing positive again."

She explained that what is happening is that as the lungs heal, there are fragments of dead cells that are testing positive.

But she said: "It is not infectious. It is not reinfection. It is not reactivation. It is actually part of the healing process that has been captured again as being positive. So that is something really interesting."

On being asked whether people can be reinfected by the disease, Dr Van Kerkhove said: "That is a very important question.

"When someone is infectious they develop anti-bodies and they develop part of an immune response one to two to three weeks after infection.

"Does this mean they have immunity? Does it mean they have a strong protection against reinfection and if so how long does that last?

"We do not have the answer to that yet."

Dr Van Kerhove also told Marr that all countries must remain "on alert" over the possibility of further transmission of the coronavirus.

Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO's technical lead on the outbreak, said doctors were finding instances where "dead cells" in the lungs were still testing positive / AFP via Getty Images

She said that many people remain susceptible to the virus, even where transmission has been suppressed.

Asked if a second wave of infection could be likely in countries that have started to ease their lockdowns, Ms Van Kerkhove said: "It's certainly possible. What we're seeing in a number of countries that have been successful in suppressing transmission is that many more people remain susceptible."

She added: "All countries must remain on alert for the possibility of additional transmission even if they have been successful in suppressing transmission in the first round."

Following comments by Prime Minister Boris Johnson that face masks will be "useful" as part of measures to come out of lockdown, Dr Van Kerkhove said that masks are recommended for those who are feeling unwell.

She said: "We do recommend the use of masks for people who are feeling unwell, but masks alone will not solve the problem, they cannot solve the problem, and especially if you're thinking about lockdowns and you're thinking of lifting lockdowns.

"There has to be a number of measures that have to be put in place before lockdowns can be released and it must be done in a slow and staggered approach."

Asked about the longer-term health impact of the virus, Dr Van Kerkhove said: "The majority of people who are infected with Covid-19 will make a full recovery.

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"But there will be some people that may have some longer term effects. It affects the lungs, it affects the body in different ways and so we may see some damage to the lungs.

"We need to follow individuals over time. We're in our fourth month of this pandemic so it's very, very early days."

Dr Van Kerkhove also addressed claims by US President Donald Trump that he had seen evidence that the virus had originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

She said: "Coronaviruses normally circulate in animals and many coronaviruses are circulating in bats.

"Most emerging pathogens, viruses, come from an animal reservoir. Everything that we have seen about the novel coronavirus, Covid-19 or Sars-CoV-2, of the tens of thousands of sequences that are available, full genome sequences and partial sequences, compared to other coronavirus sequences that are available, this is of a natural origin.

"And it originally comes from bats because the coronaviruses come from bats. What we need to do is really understand what we call the intermediate host - what is the animal that was infected from bats that potentially infected humans?

Listen to The Leader: Coronavirus Daily podcast

"It's important that we know this because from a public health point of view, it's very important that we find the animal host so that we prevent this, (what) we call spillover from transmission from an animal to a human, we prevent that spillover from happening again."
Iraq and Syria are battling a resurgence in attacks from ISIS as the terror group takes advantage of the coronavirus pandemic.

There are between 2,500 to 3,000 Islamic state fighters in Iraq, security officials estimate, and a further 500 have escaped from prisons in Syria, fuelling a spike in violence in the region.

Three security guards were killed outside a government building in Kirkuk, Iraq, after a suicide bomber blew himself up in the first week of Ramadan.

And yesterday ten Iraqi military fighters were killed in a three-pronged co-ordinated attack in Salahaddin province, just 54 miles from the capital Baghdad.

As many as 32 Syrian soldiers were killed during a two-day ISIS attack on a settlement near Homs. Two oil fields were also heavily damaged by the terror group, causing electricity production to collapse to 70 per cent of normal levels.

Iraq and Syria are battling a resurgence of ISIS attacks as both countries continue to tackle a pandemic. Pictured above is a vehicle following an ISIS attack near Kirkuk, where ten Iraqi soldiers were killed

Peshmerega fighters are pictured above helping Iraq's Yazidi minority as they arrive at a medical centre near Kirkuk, Iraq

The deputy prime minister of Iraq's northern Kurdish region, Qubad Talabani, said the group's resurgence is a 'real threat'.

'They are mobilising and killing us in the north and they will start hitting Baghdad soon,' he said.

Iraq's designated prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, has paid tribute to those killed on May 2. 'This attack reflects a desperate attempt to capitalise on the state of political rivalry which has impeded the formation of a new government that will work to protect and secure its citizens,' he said.

The village of Kujalo, concealed in the barren centre of Iraq, has also seen a rise in extremist activity.

'They know everything about each farm in Kulajo and they know to whom each house belongs,' a local farmer said. 'IS has been carrying out attacks in Kurdish areas for a long time, but now they are more organised and have more people.'

An attack in the Makhoul mountain range in Diyala killed a federal police officer and wounded a battalion commander and brigadier general on April 1. And an IED attack targeted a patrol of a commando regiment of earlier last month.

ISIS fighters have also targeted a military installation outside Kirkuk (pictured above)

A soldier stands next to the burnt out building. There has been a resurgence in ISIS attacks despite the group being defeated three years ago

The uptick comes as Baghdad cuts the number of soldiers on the ground by half due to coronavirus, and as the US-led coalition forces continue to withdraw from bases in Nineveh and Kirkuk, western Iraq.

Territorial disputes between Baghdad and authorities in the northern Kurdish region have also left parts of three provinces without law enforcement, leaving the rugged landscape open to rebel groups.

'Before the emergence of the virus and before the American withdrawal, the operations were negligible, numbering only one operation per week,' said a senior intelligence official, who declined to be named.

'Now', he said, 'security forces are seeing an average of 20 operations a month.'

Coalition spokesman Colonel Myles B. Caggins III said IS attacks were increasing in reaction to operations against its hideouts in the mountains and rural areas of north-central Iraq.

Analysts have warned the surge in attacks is aimed at securing the influence of the new leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Quraishi, named after his predecessor who was killed last year.

Iraq has recorded 95 deaths and 2,219 cases of Covid-19 since the outbreak began, although the figures are feared to be far higher due to the country's proximity to Iran.

Oil wells in Syria have also been targeted. When the Shaer and Hayan wells were hit, they led to a 30 per cent fall in the country's electricity production

Syria and Iraq have also been battling the coronavirus outbreak. Neither have recorded more than 1,000 cases so far

Syrian forces have also faced a sudden surge in ISIS-run violence.

On April 9, extremists targeted government positions near Sukhna, Homs, forcing the government to bring in reinforcements covered by a Russian airstrike.

As many as 32 soldiers died in two days of gun-fighting, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It also said 26 ISIS fighters were killed.

Gas wells in the fields of Shaer and Hayan were targeted on April 13, leaving them non-operational and causing a 30 per cent fall in electricity production.

Syria has recorded three deaths due to coronavirus and 44 cases.

However, nine years of civil war have left the country's health system severely damaged, prompting fears there may be far more cases in the country than reported.




The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has responded to the submission by former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar on the need to diversify Nigerias economy.

The APC in its response noted that the submissions by Atiku were noted and appreciated but then hit back at him for being too sanctimonious.

It will be recalled Atiku in an opinion article titled how to pull Nigeria from the brink, urged the federal government of Nigeria led by President Muhammadu Buhari to urgently look into diversifying the countrys economy in the face of dwindling oil revenues.

The APC in its reaction to the article in a statement on Saturday sent to Naija News by Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu, its National Publicity Secretary said the former Vice President had the opportunity to set Nigeria on the path to economic restructuring but failed to do it right.

The statement reads:

The All Progressives Congress (APC) welcomes the opinion of the former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and expresses our sincere thanks for the suggestions he made to the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration on the need to diversify Nigerias economy.

However, we are a bit surprised that the former Vice President failed to acknowledge the bold efforts this administration has made in the last five years towards diversification of the economy and the many positive gains our country has recorded. Perhaps, it was an oversight. Or, could it be too inconvenient a truth to admit?

While we appreciate that Atiku Abubakar is keying into this administrations policy direction regarding diversification, we are only worried that it took him 13 years after leaving office to realise that the Government under which he served as the Vice President was short-sighted for its failure to faithfully diversify the Nigerian economy.

Not to be confused, Atiku Abubakar had eight years as a powerful Vice President and Chairman of the National Council on Privatisation with vantage opportunity to lead the country away from its dependence on oil. How Nigeria got worse even when international oil prices were stable and high are matters Atiku Abubakar may still need to address in future.

Mallam Issa-Onilu went ahead in the statement to highlight what the administration of President Buhari has done to diversify Nigerias economy since it came to power in 2015.

For free, we would gladly educate the former Vice President on the several policies this administration has introduced since 2015 to diversify Nigerias economy.

As far back as 2016, President Muhammadu Buhari launched the Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP), an intervention policy primarily aimed at giving farmers access to finance.

This entails the provision of credit for financing the production of rice, wheat, ginger, maize and soybeans in many states of the federation.

This policy driven by the Central Bank of Nigeria is an initiative that has, in the last four years, provided hundreds of billions of naira for rice farming, cultivation and milling. Few years down the line, Nigeria is now rated the highest producer of rice in Africa, producing over seven million tonnes per annum.

And just late last year, the APC-led government through the CBN has also made available huge funds to our cotton farmers, a move geared towards reviving our moribund textile factories thereby creating millions of direct and indirect jobs.

Also, as part of the efforts of the President Buhari-led administration to boost agriculture is the massive successes recorded in the local production of fertiliser. This was one policy personally driven by the President and which has received applause from even his most virulent critics. This policy, which is built on a partnership between Nigeria and the Kingdom of Morocco, has led to the resuscitation of 11 blending plants producing about 1.3million tonnes of fertiliser, creation of over 50,000 direct and 150,000 indirect jobs, in addition to farmers having timely access to the product at an affordable price.

The contributions of agriculture to the overall Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has consistently been on the increase and is being captured by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in the last four years.

Most heart-warming is the fact that the private sector is keying into the President Buharis agenda. An example is the Dangote Groups ongoing test running of its $2billion fertiliser plant, which would make Nigeria meet all its domestic demand and also make our country a net exporter of fertiliser.

So, we ask Alhaji Atiku Abubakar: if all these major achievements are not commendable efforts towards diversification of the economy, what are they?

The APC also countered Atikus submission on Nigerias border closure, stating that the policy is yielding positive results.

Atiku Abubakar said in his article that land border closure is an insane policy. We believe that the former Vice President did not consider his position on this matter well enough as the facts leading to the closure of the border clearly justify the temporary closure. Perhaps, Atiku Abubakar is now at pain that the trans-border security challenge our country was facing and from which he was making a huge political capital is now mostly curtailed. He should have realised the contradiction in his new propositions and the counterproductive business of smuggling of foreign goods into our country through our borders. How does the former Vice President expect Nigeria to be a productive economy if we continue to allow neighbouring countries to jeopardise our efforts to grow our own economy?

Alhaji Atiku Abubakar may wish to know that the policy he has unfortunately chosen to label as insane has led to a significant spike in rice production across the country, opening up of hundreds of rice mills, indigenous manufacturing firms are sourcing their raw materials locally, boom in poultry farming, with Nigerians now patronising locally made food items like never before and, in the process, boosting the income of farmers and local producers.

It is heart-warming to know we are coping well as the Coronavirus pandemic and the resultant lockdowns are testing our countrys capacity to feed itself. We have been able to meet the pandemic induced surge in demand for foods only because the APC administration has been implementing policies targeted at expanding the capacity of our farmers and the other players in the allied industries. We ask Atiku Abubakar; where would we have gotten the farm produce for palliatives and feed our people during the lockdown if we had not taken the courageous route of looking inwards while curtailing sabotage from neighbouring economies?

In the areas of plugging revenue leakages, curbing waste, diversifying and growing the economy, budgeting, borrowings, ease of doing business, support of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs), the President Muhammadu Buhari government is matching electoral promises with actions.

Since the launch of the National Action Plan on Ease of Doing Business, being driven by the Presidential Enabling and Business Environment Council (PEBEC), the APC government has aggressively implemented major reforms by reducing the challenges faced by the Minor, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs) in accessing credits, paying taxes, amongst others.

According to industry reports, Nigeria startups attracted $122million out of the $493million in funding for African startup sector in 2019. In the latest World Bank ranking, Nigeria jumped 15 places from her previous 2019 spot and was also named amongst the 10 most improved economies in the world.

In February this year, the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, held a meeting with all federal agencies that are playing one role or the other in the MSMEs sector. At the meeting, the Bank of Industry (BoI) approved a $20 million Technology Fund for young innovators, while the CBN is offering a N90billion soft loan facility for small scale agricultural enterprises. All these and more are part of this administrations drive at changing the nations decades of mono economy status.

In the fight against public sector corruption, the launch of the Open Treasury Portal (OTP) complements other initiatives such as the administrations full implementation of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) which has increased the level of accountability, transparency in financial resources of government and plugged leakages.

Importantly, we no longer borrow money to pay salaries, but to build infrastructure, particularly roads, rails and airports. The era of phony and abandoned contracts is in the past, contracts awarded are now strictly monitored to ensure full value for released contract sums.

For instance, in the road, railway and aviation sectors, the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration has recorded milestones that are visible to see and feel. While all the 36 states can boast of at least one major road project being undertaken by this government, there are also legacy projects, which include the Abuja to Kano expressway, Lagos to Ibadan expressway reconstruction, and the ongoing Second Niger Bridge.

On railway, this administrations record is unmatched. It is to this governments credit that the Abuja to Kaduna Standard Gauge rail line was completed in 2017, while the Itakpe to Warri railway, which had been abandoned since 1987 by successive administration has been completed and is due for commissioning. Even more commendable is the near completion of the Lagos to Ibadan Standard Gauge rail, construction of which started about three years ago.

On aviation infrastructure, the APC government has, in the last two years, completed the upgrading of terminals at the Nnamdi Azikwe International Airport, Abuja and Port Harcourt International Airport, while work has reached advanced stages on many terminals across the country.

While we consolidate our rank as Africas biggest economy, aided by our re-emergent manufacturing sector, we continue to climb in global ranking on the ease of doing business. Our investment and focus on agriculture where we have comparative advantage has been a huge success. We are beginning to look inward and grow our SMEs. We now have an army of entrepreneurs supported by government and creating wealth and livelihoods.

Finally, the APC welcomes Alhaji Atiku Abubakars concerns and the fact that he is beginning to make a good attempt at sounding like a statesman. Going forward, this is the least we expect from him, even as we hope that he will be more forthcoming in future, in appreciating and commending the positive steps, while offering suggestions on what more can be done.

We, however, urge him to continue to do this without sounding overtly sanctimonious.

Meanwhile, the full text of Atikus article which elicited a response from the APC can be read here.

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Reuters

Two NASA astronauts gearing up to ride SpaceX's new space taxi will now be on a mission planned to last more than a month, instead of a week, to help the short-handed crew aboard the International Space Station, the US space agency said on Friday.

The launch is scheduled for May 27 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida and will arrive at the ISS the following day. The mission, SpaceX's first carrying humans, marks the company's climactic test before NASA can certify its Crew Dragon capsule for regular operational flights.

Space Shuttle veterans Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are set to be the first astronauts launched from American soil since the shuttle program was terminated in 2011.

The mission's extension allows Hurley and Behnken to help swap out the station's batteries, a task that requires an outside spacewalk the current US resident on the ISS, Chris Cassidy, could not do alone.

The two astronauts embraced the mission extension, with Hurley saying it could last anywhere from one to four months.

"I think that it being in the summertime, hopefully with a 27 May launch date, we're hitting a good time so that my son will be able to follow the mission a little more closely than he would if he was in school," Behnken said.

SpaceX and Boeing Co have been awarded a combined $7 billion to build separate crew transportation systems under the Commercial Crew Program, NASA's flagship campaign to use the private sector for ISS missions and curb its reliance on Russia's Soyuz rocket.

"We currently are supporting the station with the bare minimum," NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said on Friday. "Without the presence of Behnken and Hurley, we otherwise would likely defer such an operation until additional NASA crew members are available."

Kirk Shireman, NASA's ISS program manager, told reporters on Friday that the agency is basing the length of Hurley and Behnken's mission on how quickly SpaceX can finish preparations on its next capsule.

Delays with development of both SpaceX and Boeing vehicles have led NASA to extend its reliance on Russia, forcing the space agency to buy additional seats on the Soyuz rocket to ferry more astronauts to space.
Israels top court Sunday started hearing arguments to bar Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from forming a new government as he faces a criminal trial on corruption charges.

The Supreme Court will also hear petitions challenging a coalition deal with his rival-turned-partner Benny Gantz, who is currently speaker of the Knesset, Israels parliament.

Either case carries with it the danger of forcing another election, after three polls in less than a year failed to produce a government and left the country in a grinding political deadlock.

Today we shall hear arguments on the question of bestowing the duty of forming a government on a Knesset member against whom an indictment has been filed, Chief Justice Esther Hayut said as she opened proceedings.

Tomorrow there will be a hearing on the second issue, regarding the coalition agreement, she said, sitting at the head of a panel of 11 judges, all wearing face masks in line with COVID-19 precautions.

The hearing was broadcast live on the court website.

Neither Netanyahu, the right-wing premier in power since 2009, nor the centrist ex-military chief Gantz, was able after a March election to form a viable governing coalition in the deeply divided 120-seat Knesset.

They agreed to a power-sharing deal last month, aiming to avert a fourth poll that is opposed across the political spectrum.

Netanyahu indictments

Under the three-year coalition deal, the governments first six months will be dedicated primarily to combatting the novel coronavirus that has infected more than 16,000 Israelis and ravaged the economy.

But eight separate petitions to the Supreme Court seek to declare the deal illegal, including one from former Gantz ally Yair Lapid, head of the opposition Yesh Atid.

Lapid broke with Gantz last month when the ex-military commander was elected parliament speaker and decided to pursue a deal with Netanyahu.

Hundreds of Israelis demonstrated against the deal in Tel Aviv on Saturday, the latest in a series of protests over a unity government.

Sundays court session deals with indictments filed against Netanyahu in January.

The veteran premier has been charged with accepting improper gifts and illegally trading favours in exchange for favourable media coverage. He denies wrongdoing and his trial is set to start May 24.

Israeli law bars an indicted person from serving as an ordinary cabinet minister, but does not compel a criminally-charged prime minister to leave office.

The complication regarding Netanyahu is that he is not currently an ordinary prime minister. He has been serving as the caretaker head of a transitional government through Israels period of political deadlock.

According to some interpretations of Israeli law, that makes Netanyahu merely a candidate to become prime minister.

Interviewed on public radio Saturday, energy minister and Netanyahu ally Yuval Steinitz said that if the court rules Netanyahu cannot serve, it would amount to an unprecedented attack on Israeli democracy.

The Gantz-Netanyahu agreement, Steinitz said, is a necessity, the result of three election campaigns and a desire among Israelis to avoid a fourth election.

The deals terms

The main argument against the coalition deal concerns specific provisions opponents say violate the law.

The agreement sees Netanyahu serving as prime minister for 18 months, with Gantz as his alternate, a new title in Israeli governance.

They will swap roles midway through the deal before likely taking voters back to the polls in 36 months.

But Israeli law traditionally endows governments with four-year mandates, an issue pounced on by the deals opponents.

There is also a provision freezing certain public appointments during the governments initial six-month pandemic emergency phase, which critics also say is illegal.

An opinion delivered to the Supreme Court this week by Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, who indicted Netanyahu, said that while certain arrangements in the coalition agreement raise major difficulties... at this time there are no grounds to disqualify (it).

He advised that problematic provisions be reviewed at the implementation stage.
By Julie Steenhuysen, Peter Eisler, Allison Martell and Stephanie Nebehay

(Reuters) - In the race to develop a vaccine to end the COVID-19 pandemic, governments, charities and Big Pharma firms are sinking billions of dollars into bets with extraordinarily low odds of success.

Theyre fast-tracking the testing and regulatory review of vaccines with no guarantee they will prove effective. Theyre building and re-tooling plants for vaccines with slim chances of being approved. Theyre placing orders for vaccines that, in the end, are unlikely to be produced.

Its the new pandemic paradigm, focused on speed and fraught with risks.

The crisis in the world is so big that each of us will have to take maximum risk now to put this disease to a stop," said Paul Stoffels, chief scientific officer at Johnson & Johnson <JNJ.N>, which has partnered with the U.S. government on a $1 billion investment to speed development and production of its still-unproven vaccine. If it fails, Stoffels told Reuters, it will be bad.

Historically, just 6% of vaccine candidates end up making it to market, often after a years-long process that doesnt draw big investments until testing shows a product is likely to work. But the traditional rules of drug and vaccine development are being tossed aside in the face of a virus that has infected 2.7 million people, killed more than 192,000 and devastated the global economy. With COVID-19, the goal is to have a vaccine identified, tested and available on a scale of hundreds of millions of doses in just 12 to 18 months.

Drug companies and the governments and investors that finance them are boosting their at-risk spending in unprecedented ways. The overriding consensus among more than 30 drug company executives, government health officials and pandemic-response experts interviewed by Reuters is that the risks are necessary to ensure not only that a vaccine for the new coronavirus is developed quickly, but that it is ready to distribute as soon as its approved.

Story continues

Investments from governments, global health groups and philanthropies have been aimed primarily at the most promising of the more than 100 vaccine candidates in development worldwide. But only a handful of those have advanced to human trials, the real indicator of safety and efficacy - and the stage where most vaccines wash out.

Even among the more encouraging prospects, very few are likely to succeed. Its possible more than one will work; its possible none will.

For companies in the race, there are some likely benefits: It's a proving ground for vaccine technologies and a chance to burnish reputations and boost shares. While some large companies, including Johnson & Johnson and GlaxoSmithKline Plc <GSK.L>, have said they plan to make the vaccine available at cost - at least at first - they may reap profits down the road if seasonal vaccination is needed and countries invest in stockpiles.

But finding a vaccine that works does little good without the ability to produce and distribute it. That means building manufacturing plants now.

"We want to make investments up front, at risk, even before we know the vaccines work, to be able to (immediately) manufacture them at a scale of tens or hundreds of millions of doses, said Richard Hatchett, a physician who managed U.S. pandemic flu policy under former President George W. Bush and returned to advise the Obama White House during the 2009 swine flu pandemic.

Hatchett now heads the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), a vaccine-development consortium supported by private donors as well as the United Kingdom, Canada, Belgium, Norway, Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands. The organization has raised more than $915 million of the $2 billion it anticipates spending to accelerate testing and build specialized production plants for at least three coronavirus vaccine candidates.

In the United States, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), a federal agency that funds disease-fighting technology, has announced investments of nearly $1 billion to support coronavirus vaccine development and the scale-up of manufacturing for promising candidates.

One underlying fear, shared by everyone Reuters interviewed, is that even if a vaccine does prove effective, there wont be enough to go around.

Having reserves ready worldwide to immediately inoculate critical populations - health care workers, the elderly, people made vulnerable by medical conditions - would stamp out the pandemic faster and reignite economies, Hatchett said. The alternative, he said, is a replay of past pandemics, including the H1N1 influenza outbreak of 2009, with wealthy countries hoarding the vaccines.

If that happens, pandemic experts warn, infection hot spots will continue to pop up, each with the potential to create a new wave of illness.

FULL SPEED AHEAD

The scale of the coronavirus vaccine race has no historical parallels. CEPI has identified at least 115 ongoing vaccine initiatives worldwide. And the race is shattering norms of speed and safety in drug and vaccine development.

Some developers are running safety and efficacy trials in tandem, instead of sequentially, as is typical, and short-cutting traditional testing protocols. Others are working with regulators in multiple countries simultaneously, looking for the quickest path to market.

The resulting uncertainty makes it especially risky to invest in manufacturing facilities for a given candidate, since different types of vaccines can require very distinct production lines.

Many of the candidates attracting the most investment rely on proven vaccine approaches being adapted by Big Pharma companies with regulatory and production acumen. Some funders are gambling on smaller biotech companies and academic labs, which may have promising technologies but little to no experience getting a drug or vaccine approved and produced at scale.

BARDA, the U.S. R&D agency, is one of the biggest vaccine funders, with some $5 billion to spend. The agency plans to invest in five vaccine candidates, focusing mostly on projects from experienced drug makers.

"Each is coming with a lot of prior experience, said Rick Bright, who until this month was BARDAs director. They all know how to scale up."

In one of its biggest bets, BARDA is pouring nearly $500 million into a J&J effort.

J&Js coronavirus vaccine candidate uses a cold virus, rendered harmless, to deliver genes derived from the spiky, crown-shaped proteins on the surface of the new coronavirus, prompting an immune response.

J&J is using the same technology to develop vaccines for other viruses, including Ebola. While none has completed testing and won full U.S. approval, trials so far in tens of thousands of people have produced data showing the basic approach is safe, which could speed regulatory approval for the new coronavirus vaccine. But its far from a sure bet: Animal test data, due this summer, will give the first hint of the vaccine's effectiveness and human trials will begin in September.

By end of the year, well know whether it protects humans, said Stoffels, J&Js chief science officer.

In China, CanSino Biologics Inc <6185.HK> has vaccine technology similar to the one being used by J&J. CanSino is further along with its testing, having announced this month that its candidate had cleared initial safety trials in humans and was set to advance to the next stage.

Sanofi SA <SASY.PA>, the worlds largest vaccine maker, has attracted BARDA money for another proven approach, based on its approved Flublok flu shot. Sanofi uses insect cells instead of the traditional chicken eggs to grow the genetically altered virus proteins used to spur an immune response.

Not all the vaccine projects getting attention have a Big Pharma pedigree.

Moderna Inc <MRNA.O>, a biotech firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was the first in the United States to begin human trials when it began testing its vaccine last month. Working with the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the company received seed money from CEPI, and this month, BARDA kicked in $483 million to support the vaccines development and help scale up manufacturing. That includes hiring 150 skilled workers to eventually produce vaccine around the clock.

Modernas vaccine uses genetic material called messenger RNA (mRNA) to instruct cells in the body to make specific coronavirus proteins that then produce an immune response.

No mRNA vaccine has ever been approved for public use, but the technology is drawing interest, in part because it makes a vaccine easier to design and produce in vast quantities.

The end game is millions of doses," Tal Zaks, Moderna's chief medical officer, told Reuters. The company hopes to have an approved vaccine available as early as March 2021, and possibly before then for healthcare workers. German vaccine makers CureVac and BioNTech SE <22UAy.F> <BNTX.O>, which is partnering with Pfizer Inc <PFE.N>, are preparing to begin trials with similar mRNA-based vaccine candidates. So is Lexington, Massachusetts-based Translate Bio Inc <TBIO.O>, which is working with Sanofi.

EXTRAORDINARY SHORTCUTS

Even for vaccine hopefuls already in human tests, it will be months before theres conclusive evidence on safety and effectiveness - something funders are keenly aware of.

The rush has prompted scientists to consider previously unthinkable shortcuts.

Normally, vaccines would need to undergo clinical trials involving thousands of people before widespread inoculation is allowed. But after testing a prospective vaccine in a smaller group to ensure it is not toxic, Swiss researchers seek to immunize a lot of the Swiss population in the next six months and then produce for a world market, Dr Martin Bachmann, head of immunology at Inselspital, the University Hospital of Bern, said this week.

A spokesman for Swissmedic, the countrys drug regulator, said it was in contact with Bachmann's group and would not allow trials until the agency is assured that safety risks are addressed.

The Swiss vaccine employs virus-like particles to provoke an immune response, an approach that theoretically is considered safer because it does not directly expose people to the actual coronavirus. So far, it has only been tested in mice.

Dr. Gregory Poland, a vaccine researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, is among those worried about the risks of injecting a large group of people with a vaccine that has only been through minimal testing in humans.

"I dont see how this is possible, he told Reuters, referring to Inselspitals plan.

LESSONS UNLEARNED?

The war on COVID-19 is haunted by lessons from the fight against another virus a decade ago.

In the spring of 2009, the H1N1 swine flu virus emerged in the United States and Mexico and spread worldwide. Within weeks, the World Health Organization(WHO) declared it the first pandemic since 1968.

Wealthier governments that had provisional contracts with vaccine makers immediately exercised them, effectively monopolizing the global vaccine supply," according to Hatchett and numerous official reports. The U.S. alone ordered 250 million doses, and Australia, Brazil, France, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland and Britain all had vaccine.

Under pressure from the WHO, those countries ultimately committed to share 10% of their stockpiles with poorer nations. But due to production and distribution snarls, only about 77 million doses were shipped  far less than needed  and only after the disease had peaked in many regions.

If an effective vaccine emerges for the new coronavirus, a replay is possible, experts in pandemic preparedness say. None of the global health authorities consulted by Reuters believes there will be sufficient supplies to satisfy the immediate demand. Governments will be under tremendous pressure to immunize their own citizenry and get life back to normal, so hoarding remains a serious risk.

Ronald St. John, a physician who has held government posts on infectious disease control in the United States and Canada, expects a similar scenario with vaccines.

There is going to be a lot of self-interest in terms of the production, he said.

BARDA explicitly gives preference to vaccine projects promising U.S. production capacity.

We're asking the American taxpayer to give a lot to the vaccine effort, so its important to ensure U.S. access to any successful vaccine, said Bright, BARDAs recent chief.

But he added that BARDA also is encouraging the companies it backs to build manufacturing capacity outside the United States, so we can have a global supply all at once.

Many governments are pouring money into vaccine initiatives with expectations that they will be first in line if a viable vaccine emerges.

Arcturus Therapeutics Holdings Inc <ARCT.O>, a San Diego biotech, is receiving up to $10 million from the Singapore government to develop its mRNA-based coronavirus vaccine candidate in partnership with the Duke-National University of Singapore Medical School. If the vaccine is approved, Singapore gets first access, said Arcturus CEO Joseph Payne. Everything after that, he said, goes to whoever pays for it.

Arcturus is not responsible for the ethics of distribution - governments are - but in order for governments to get the vaccine, they need to pay for it, Payne said. The country that will win is the country that stockpiles multiple vaccines at risk.

The company raised $80.5 million this week from a common stock public offering.

In China, a major global producer of vaccines, the government is backing several coronavirus vaccine projects, raising the prospect it will inoculate its 1.4 billion people first. One government-backed effort, by Sinovac Biotech Ltd. <SVA.O>, is already testing vaccine candidates in humans and awaiting initial data..

Sinovac got 60 million yuan ($8.4 million) in low-rate credit lines through a discount loan program supported by Chinas central bank. Government officials quickly made land available for the company to build production plants, including a factory meant to produce up to 100 million doses a year of its coronavirus vaccine.

Sinovac would not discuss how much public money is being invested. The relevant government agencies declined requests for comment.

On Friday, the World Health Organization announced a landmark collaboration across the international community to raise $8 billion to accelerate the coronavirus vaccine development and ensure equitable access worldwide to any successful vaccine. Countries across Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas announced their participation, but the United States and China, two of the worlds biggest pharma forces, did not.

There will be no U.S. official participation, a spokesman for the U.S. mission in Geneva told Reuters, adding that the U.S. supports global cooperation to develop a vaccine.

Broader questions about U.S. policy on international vaccine distribution are still under consideration within the Trump administration, according to a member of the White House coronavirus task force who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity. The official noted that the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development are spending nearly $500 million to assist with the COVID-19 response internationally.

A WHO spokeswoman said Fridays announcement was the beginning of a global collaboration and we would welcome more countries coming on board. China did not respond to a request for comment.

People involved in the global vaccine race told Reuters that the greatest incentive for countries to promise to share coronavirus vaccines may be the uncertainty around which ones will work.

Since no country can be sure the candidates it backs will prove successful, committing to sharing with other nations can help assure theyll have an initial supply to inoculate health care workers and other critical populations.

"That's enlightened self-interest, as well as a global public good," said Jeremy Farrar, an infectious disease expert and director of the Wellcome Trust global health charity.

(Steenhuysen reported from Chicago, Eisler from Washington, Martell from Toronto and Nebehay from Geneva; additional reporting by Matthias Blamont in Paris, Alexandra Harney in Hong Kong, Roxanne Liu in Beijing, John Miller in Zurich and Kate Kelland in London. Editing by Michele Gershberg and Julie Marquis.)
Jammu and Kashmir Polices sub-inspector Sageer Ahmad Pathan, who was killed along with four other security personnel during an encounter with terrorists in Handwara on Saturday night, was a counter-terrorism specialist who earned three out of turn promotions during his glorious career, the J&K police said.

Sageer Ahmad Pathan was born in 1978 in Trad Karnah of Kupwara District in Jammu and Kashmir and was appointed as a constable in the armed wing of Jammu and Kashmir Police in 1999.

He volunteered to work for the Police SOG (Special Operations Group), an elite counter-terrorist force in 2006 and continued their till date because of his outstanding performance, said a statement from the police department.

Pathan was killed in an operation at Chanjmulla in Handwara along with commanding officer Colonel Ashutosh Sharma of 21 Rashtriya Rifles, Major Anuj Sood, Naik Rajesh Kumar and Lance Naik Dinesh Singh of the same unit, while rescuing civilians taken hostage by terrorists belonging to Pakistan-based terror outfit Lashkar-e- Toiba.

Yesterday, when inputs were received about the presence of terrorists in village Chanjmulla, Handwara, Sageer led the SOG team under the command of Handwara SP along with the Colonel Ashutosh Sharma and launched the operation. He was part of the original team which went in to evacuate the civilian inmates taken hostage by terrorists hiding in a house.

The team rescued the inmates safely but came under heavy fire from the terrorists, during the evacuation process and died.

The police department said Pathan had led various successful anti-terror operations as part of the SOG.

In recognition of his immense contribution, he was granted three out of turn promotions and rose from the rank of a constable to sub-inspector over the years, the department said.

Sageer was honoured with various medals including Sheri-Kashmir Police Medal for Gallantry in 2009 and the Police Medal for Gallantry by President of India in 2011.

He had also won DGP J&K Commendation Medal and GOC-in-C, Northern Command Commendation Disc.

The operation was concluded successfully on Sunday morning with the recovery of two terrorists eliminated in the encounter, along with arms and ammunition. One of the slain terrorists is identified as Haider, a Pak national working in Lashkar-e-Toiba in Kashmir for the past couple of years. The identity of the other terrorist is being ascertained, said the police.

All Ranks of JKP salute the brave heart martyrs of police SI Sageer and other members of the team led by Colonel Ashutosh, the statement adds. Sageer is survived by three daughters, a son and aged parents.
More than a thousand years ago, people from across the Southeast regularly traveled to a small island on Florida's Gulf Coast to bond over oysters, likely as a means of coping with climate change and social upheaval.

Archaeologists' analysis of present-day Roberts Island, about 50 miles north of Tampa Bay, showed that ancient people continued their centuries-long tradition of meeting to socialize and feast, even after an unknown crisis around A.D. 650 triggered the abandonment of most other such ceremonial sites in the region. For the next 400 years, out-of-towners made trips to the island, where shell mounds and a stepped pyramid were maintained by a small group of locals. But unlike the lavish spreads of the past, the menu primarily consisted of oysters, possibly a reflection of lower sea levels and cool, dry conditions.

People's persistence in gathering at Roberts Island, despite regional hardship, underscores their commitment to community, said study lead author C. Trevor Duke, a researcher in the Florida Museum of Natural History's Ceramic Technology Lab.

"What I found most compelling was the fact that people were so interested in keeping their ties to that landscape in the midst of all this potential climate change and abandonment," said Duke, a Ph.D. candidate in the University of Florida department of anthropology. "They still put forth the effort to harvest all these oysters and keep these social relationships active. These gatherings probably occurred when different groups of people were getting together and trying to figure out the future."

Duke and his collaborators compared animal remains from shell mounds and middens -- essentially kitchen trash heaps -- at Roberts Island and Crystal River, home to an older, more prominent ceremonial site. Their findings showed Crystal River residents "pulled out all the stops" for ritual feasts, regaling visitors with deer, alligator, sharks and dozens of other dishes, while at Roberts Island, feasts consisted of "oysters and very little else," Duke said.

The Roberts Island ceremonial site, which was vacated around A.D. 1050, was one of the last outposts in what was once a flourishing network of religious sites across the Eastern U.S. These sites were characterized by burial grounds with distinctly decorated ceramics known as Swift Creek and Weeden Island pottery. What differentiated Roberts Island and Crystal River from other sites was that their continuous occupation by a small group of residents who prepared for the influx of hundreds of visitors -- not unlike Florida's tourist towns today.

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"These were very cosmopolitan communities," Duke said. "I'm from Broward County, but I also spent time in the Panhandle, so I'm used to being part of a small residential community that deals with a massive population boom for a month or two months a year. That has been a Florida phenomenon for at least two thousand years."

Archaeologists estimate small-scale ceremonies began at Crystal River around A.D. 50, growing substantially after a residential community settled the site around A.D. 200. Excavations have uncovered minerals and artifacts from the Midwest, including copper breastplates from the Great Lakes. Similarly, conch shells from the Gulf Coast have been found at Midwestern archaeological sites.

"There was this long-distance reciprocal exchange network going on across much of the Eastern U.S. that Crystal River was very much a part of," Duke said.

Religious ceremonies at Crystal River included ritual burials and marriage alliances, Duke said, solidifying social ties between different groups of people. But the community was not immune to the environmental and social crises that swept the region, and the site was abandoned around A.D. 650. A smaller ceremonial site was soon established less than a mile downstream on Roberts Island, likely by a remnant of the Crystal River population.

Duke and his collaborators collected samples from mounds and middens at the two ceremonial sites, identifying the species present and calculating the weight of the meat they would have contained. They found that feasts at hard-strapped Roberts Island featured far fewer species. Meat from oysters and other bivalves accounted for 75% of the weight of Robert Island samples and roughly 25% of the weight from Crystal River. Meat from deer and other mammals made up 45% of the weight in Crystal River samples and less then 3% from Roberts Island.

Duke said evidence suggests that Roberts Island residents also had to travel farther to harvest food. As sea levels fell, oyster beds may have shifted seaward, possibly explaining why the Crystal River population relocated to the island, which was small and had few resources.

"Previous research suggests that environmental change completely rearranged the distribution of reefs and the ecosystem," Duke said. "They had to go far out to harvest these things to keep their ritual program active."

No one knows what caused the widespread abandonment of most of the region's ceremonial sites in A.D. 650, Duke said. But the production of Weeden Island pottery, likely associated with religious activities, ramped up as bustling sites became ghost towns.

"That's kind of counterintuitive," he said. "This religious movement comes on really strong right as this abandonment is happening. It almost seems like people were trying to do something, create some kind of intervention to stop whatever was happening."
By Vladimir Soldatkin MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia raised oil and gas condensate output in April to 46.45 million tonnes, or 11.35 million barrels per day (bpd), from 11.29 million bpd in March, Interfax reported on Saturday, before it makes cuts this month under a global supply pact. The report, which cited Energy Ministry data, showed April's figure was the highest monthly average output since January 2019, when it was 11.38 million bpd.

By Vladimir Soldatkin

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia raised oil and gas condensate output in April to 46.45 million tonnes, or 11.35 million barrels per day (bpd), from 11.29 million bpd in March, Interfax reported on Saturday, before it makes cuts this month under a global supply pact.

The report, which cited Energy Ministry data, showed April's figure was the highest monthly average output since January 2019, when it was 11.38 million bpd.

Reuters uses the barrels/tonnes ratio of 7.33.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and other allied producers, a group known as OPEC+, agreed last month to cut their combined oil output by about almost 10 million bpd, or 10% of global supply in May and June to tackle the economic fallout from the new coronavirus.

The United States, Norway, Canada and Brazil may add cuts that would bring the total reduction to 20 million bpd, or 20% of global supply, although the coronavirus crisis has driven down demand by as much as 30%, driving down prices.

Russia is expected to cut its oil production by 2.5 million bpd from a baseline of 11 million bpd in May and June.

This number exempts production of gas condensate, or light oil. Russian energy ministry does not disclose gas condensate production separately.

TATNEFT'S REDUCTION

Russia's mid-sized oil producer Tatneft said on Saturday it produced 1.994 million tonnes of oil in April, down from 2.442 million tonnes in March.

The reduction amounted to around 90,000 bpd, or 16% from March. It did not say why it reduced output last month.

Tatneft cut output because storage capacity is full and European demand is weak, according to sources and data seen by Reuters last week.

The company operates in Tatarstan in central Russia which became the country's main oil province in the 1970s with output of 2 million bpd, helping the Soviet Union fund its arms race with the United States.

Russia has pledged to meet its commitments in full with output projected to fall to between 480 million and 500 million tonnes, or 9.6 million to 10 million bpd, this year, its first annual decline since 2008.

Natural gas production in April reached 55.14 billion cubic metres, a decline of 14.3% from the same month a year earlier, the Interfax news agency also reported.

It also said Russian oil exports increased 2.2% year on year to 83.79 million tonnes in the January-April period.

(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Tom Hogue, Edmund Blair and Frances Kerry)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Former President George W. Bush called for unity in an emotional video this weekend, urging Americans to remember that "we are not partisan combatants".

The video was posted on the official Twitter account of the George W. Bush Presidential Center and tagged @TheCallToUnite, a livestream where celebrities and public figures have been posting video messages during the pandemic.

There have been more than 65,000 deaths in the US from the coronavirus.

The video featured a voiceover from Bush set against an array of images of Americans social distancing, frontline workers and also included emotional scenes of Bush during his presidency, comforting people following 9/11.

He said: We are not partisan combatants. Were human beings, equally vulnerable and equally wonderful in the sight of God.

It continued: "We cannot allow physical separation to become emotional isolation.

President George W. Bush consoles families of victims of the 9/11 terrorist attack in 2001, during a visit to New York City (US National Archives)

This requires us to not only be compassionate but creative in our outreach. Let us remember that empathy and simple kindness are essential, powerful tools of national recovery.

The video highlighted that impacts of the coronavirus does not fall evenly" and the importance of caring for the elderly, the ill and the unemployed.

The video had more than 4m views as of Sunday morning.
Shimla, May 3 : An adult highly-endangered snow leopard was trapped from a sheep pen in a Himachal Pradesh helmet in the Himalayan cold desert and authorities are now transporting it to the heavily populated state capital miles away from there for examination, wildlife officials said on Sunday.

They are later planning to house the rare and elusive snow leopard, a species whose survival is challenged by poaching and habitat loss, at a rehabilitation centre-cum-zoo on the outskirts of Shimla for exhibiting to the tourists, if it is physically unfit to hunt.

Expressing dismay, wildlife experts annoyed with the decision to translocate the snow leopard, first of its kind by the wildlife wing, from its natural cold zone habitat to comparatively 'warmer' climes of Shimla that is too harsh for the high-altitude species to survive.

An adult snow leopard was trapped from Gue village, famed worldwide for the 500-year-old mummified remains of a Buddhist monk, under Kaza subdivision in the Spiti Valley, some 350 km from Shimla, on May 1.

The village is close to the Indo-Tibetan border.

Divisional Forest Officer Hardev Negi told IANS on the phone that the snow leopard was trapped by the wildlife wing on the complaint of villagers of killing their sheep.

"In just four days, it killed 43 sheep. It was trapped in a cage positioned inside a pen," he said.

According to Negi, it was the easy pray that was attracting the snow leopard to the human habitation. Otherwise, there was no report of its intrusion in the village.

"From the series of killings, it seems that the snow leopard is not fit to kill prey in the wild. There is possibility of some internal injury and is not advisable to release it in the wild," he added.

Chief Wildlife Warden Savita told IANS that after examination the snow leopard would be quarantined in Kufri, 15 km here.

She said the wild cat would be kept in the Himalayan nature park to prevent incidents of its straying into human habitations.

"In order to minimise human-wild animal conflicts and retaliatory killings, it is advisable to keep the snow leopard in the nature park where we have adequate facilities," she added.

"We can also go for breeding programme if the animal is fit," she added.

Last year authorities in Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park in Darjeeling had agreed to lend a pair of snow leopard to the wildlife wing in Himachal Pradesh for conserving bloodlines of the highly endangered species in the participatory zoos.

Officials said the breeding programme couldn't be initiated as the cats offered by the Darjeeling zoo were not healthy.

The Darjeeling zoo is internationally recognised for its over 33-year-old conservation breeding programme for the snow leopard.

"One or two instances of killing livestock doesn't mean the animal is physically unfit to hunt in the wild. It may be the easy prey that is attracting the predator to the village," a wildlife expert told IANS.

He said the wildlife wing could depute a veterinarian from Shimla to examine the snow leopard at the spot rather than bringing the snow leopard to Shimla all through such a treacherous and tiring journey that can take the animal to even stress. "This clearly reflects insensitive approach towards such a prized species." Domestic animals like goats and sheep are an easy prey for a carnivore. Attacks on them often leads to retaliation by the locals.

Studies by the Wildlife Department with the assistance of the Nature Conservation Foundation show the presence of one snow leopard per 100 sq km in the upper Spiti landscape.

The department is monitoring the habitat, range and behaviour of snow leopards through camera traps (automatic cameras).

Information gleaned from these devices suggests the snow leopard population is around 20-25 in the Spiti region, an area dominated by Buddhists.

Legendary field biologist George Schaller, who has worked for nearly two decades on studying endemic wildlife in the Tibetan Plateau, has told IANS recently that the snow leopard needs protection from pastoral communities.

(Vishal Gulati can be contacted at vishal.g@ians.in)
21st century X-ray technology has allowed University of Warwick scientists to peer back through time at the production of the armour worn by the crew of Henry VIII's favoured warship, the Mary Rose.

Three artefacts believed to be remains of chainmail recovered from the recovered hull have been analysed by an international team of scientists led by the Universities of Warwick and Ghent using a state-of-the-art X-ray facility called XMaS (X-ray Materials Science) beamline.

They analysed three brass links as part of continuing scientific investigations into the artefacts recovered during the excavation of the wreck in the Solent. These links have often been found joined to make a sheet or a chain and are most likely to be from a suit of chainmail armour. By using several X-ray techniques available via the XMaS beamline to examine the surface chemistry of the links, the team were able to peer back through time to the armour's production and reveal that these links were manufactured from an alloy of 73% copper and 27% zinc.

Emeritus Professor Mark Dowsett from the University of Warwick's Department of Physics said: "The results indicate that in Tudor times, brass production was fairly well controlled and techniques such as wire drawing were well developed. Brass was imported from Ardennes and also manufactured at Isleworth. I was surprised at the consistent zinc content between the wire links and the flat ones. It's quite a modern alloy composition."

The exceptionally high sensitivity analysis revealed traces of heavy metals, such as lead and gold, on the surface of the links, hinting at further history to the armour yet to be uncovered.

Professor Dowsett explains: "The heavy metal traces are interesting because they don't seem to be part of the alloy but embedded in the surface. One possibility is that they were simply picked up during the production process from tools used to work lead and gold as well. Lead, mercury and cadmium, however, arrived in the Solent during WW2 from the heavy bombing of Portsmouth Dockyard. Lead and arsenic also came into the Solent from rivers like the Itchen over extended historical periods.

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"In a Tudor battle, there might be quite a lot of lead dust produced by the firing of munitions. Lead balls were used in scatter guns and pistols, although stone was used in canon at that time."

The Tudor warship the Mary Rose was one of the first warships that Henry VIII ordered not long after he ascended to the throne in 1509. Often considered to be his favourite, on 19 July 1545 it sank in the Solent during a battle with a French invasion fleet. The ship sank to the seabed and over time the silts covered and preserved its remains as a remarkable record of Tudor naval engineering and ship board life.

In 1982 the remaining part of the hull was raised and is now housed in the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth alongside many thousands of the 19,000 artefacts that were also recovered, many of which were remarkably well preserved by the Eocene clays.

After recovery, the three artefacts were subjected to different cleaning and conservation treatments to prevent corrosion (distilled water, benzotriazole (BTA) solution, and cleaning followed by coating with BTA and silicone oil). This research also analysed the surface chemistry of the brass links to assess and compare the levels of corrosion between the different techniques, finding that all had been effective at preventing corrosion since being recovered.

Professor Dowsett added: "The analysis shows that basic measures to remove chlorine followed by storage at reduced temperature and humidity form an effective strategy even over 30 years."

XMaS is owned by the Universities of Liverpool and Warwick and is located in Grenoble, France, at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF). It works with over 90 active research groups, representing several hundred researchers, in diverse fields ranging across materials science, physics, chemistry, engineering and biomaterials and contributes to societal challenges including energy storage and recovery, tackling climate change, the digital economy and advances in healthcare.

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It is a National Research Facility and is currently undergoing a major upgrade thanks to 7.2million funding from the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills through the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Professor Mieke Adriaens, Head of the Electrochemistry and Surface Analysis Group at Ghent University said: "XMaS is extremely versatile and flexible in the analytical strategies which can be devised and implemented. What's more, the beamline scientists are amongst the best we've encountered anywhere. It is fascinating to examine ancient technology using specially developed analytical methods which can then be applied to modern materials too. It was also a real privilege to be allowed access to these unique artefacts and to play a part in unravelling their story."

Professor Eleanor Schofield, Head of Conservation at the Mary Rose: "This study clearly shows the power of combining sophisticated techniques such as those available at a synchrotron source. We can glean information not only on the original production, but also on how it has reacted to being the marine environment and crucially, how effective the conservation strategies have been.

Co-author Professor Pam Thomas, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research at the University of Warwick, said: "We are very pleased that researchers at Warwick are continuing to put our expertise in Analytical Sciences at the forefront of research on important historical artefacts. The long tradition of X-ray scattering and diffraction science within the Department of Physics at Warwick continues to give high-quality data and leads to penetrating insight across a wide range of scientific problems. It is testament both to the expertise at the XMaS beamline of ESRF and in the X-Ray Diffraction Research Technology Platform (RTP) at Warwick."
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-02 16:57:40|Editor: huaxia

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The World Health Organization on Friday reiterated that the novel coronavirus which causes COVID-19 is "natural in origin." Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program, told a virtual press conference from Geneva that scientists who are examining the genetic sequences of the virus have assured "again and again that this virus is natural in origin." Answering a question from the press, Ryan said that for WHO the real question now is what the natural host for this virus is and how the animal-human species barrier was breached. "The purpose of the understanding is that we can put in place the necessary prevention and public health measures to prevent that happening again," he said. Last month, the WHO said that all available evidence has suggested that the novel coronavirus has an animal origin, and is not a virus "manipulated or constructed" in a lab or somewhere else.
India's armed forces are expressing gratitude to lakhs of doctors, paramedics, sanitation staff and other front-line workers engaged in fighting the coronavirus pandemic by conducting aerial fly-pasts, lighting up ships at sea and showering flower petals on hospitals. The activities will go on for about 10 hours in different parts of the country throughout the day.

Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat on Friday announced that the three services would carry out a series of activities to thank the "corona warriors". The thanks-giving activities started with laying of wreaths at the police memorial in Delhi and in several other cities in the early morning to honour the police personnel deployed for enforcement of the nationwide lockdown. It's being followed by fly-pasts by fighter jets and transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force, covering a sizeable number of cities and towns across the country beginning 10 AM.

Also read: Coronavirus India Live Updates: Lockdown 3.0! 2,644 new cases in 24 hours; biggest 1-day spike; tally-37,776

Cities, where fighter jets of IAF will conduct fly-pasts, include Delhi, Mumbai, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Patna and Lucknow. Transport aircraft of the force will carry out similar drills in a number of cities including Srinagar, Chandigarh, Delhi, Jaipur, Bhopal, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Coimbatore and Thiruvananthapuram. They said fighter aircraft formations, comprising Sukhoi-30 MKI, MiG-29 and Jaguar, will be flying over Rajpath, Delhi's centrepiece boulevard, and will orbit over the city for around 30 minutes from 10 AM.

Also Read: Coronavirus in India: COVID-19 cases near 40,000; check state-wise tally, deaths, list of testing facilities

Check out latest visuals coming in from different parts of the country

Aircraft shower flowers on King George's Medical University in Lucknow.

#WATCH Indian Air Force aircraft shower flowers on King George's Medical University in Lucknow to express gratitude towards medical professionals fighting #COVID19. pic.twitter.com/idIGNnM2Wj  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) May 3, 2020

Aircraft flypast Kalinga Institute of Medical Sciences in Bhubaneswar.

#WATCH Indian Air Force aircraft flypast Kalinga Institute of Medical Sciences in Bhubaneswar to express gratitude towards medical professionals fighting #COVID19. #Odishapic.twitter.com/ZjcqO7kTe1  ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020

Air Force showers flower petals on Victoria Hospital, Bengaluru.

#WATCH Indian Air Force aircraft showers flower petals on Victoria Hospital in Bengaluru to express gratitude towards health workers for their contribution in the fight against #COVID19 pandemic. #Karnatakapic.twitter.com/bkBfj80kqk  ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020

IAF chopper showers flower petals on the Police War Memorial in Delhi.

#WATCH IAF chopper showers flower petals on the Police War Memorial in order to express to pay tribute to police officials for their contribution in the fight against COVID19 pandemic#Delhipic.twitter.com/XmKDBOAtfJ  ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020

IAF chopper holds flypast over Government Hospital, Panchkula.

#WATCH IAF chopper holds flypast over Government Hospital, Panchkula; Indian Army band performs outside the hospital to express gratitude towards medical professionals fighting #COVID19.#Panchkulapic.twitter.com/PKut0f3czf  ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020

Navy chopper showers flower petals on Goa Medical College in Panaji.

#WATCH: Navy chopper showers flower petals on Goa Medical College in Panaji to express gratitude towards medical professionals fighting #COVID19. pic.twitter.com/fhIz1pQlpM  ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020

With PTI and ANI inputs
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The northwest of England has passed London as the epicentre of the UK's coronavirus outbreak on Sunday, with more people in the region in hospital with the illness than in the capital.

Data shared at Sunday's government briefing revealed coronavirus patients in London had dipped to 2,033 while patients with the illness in the northwest of England rose to 2,191.

It is the first time a region's total has surpassed the capital since the height of the outbreak - though both totals are significantly lower than their respective peaks.

London's number of coronavirus patients peaked at 4,813 on April 8, the highest daily total in the UK, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson among the patients battling the virus in hospital in the capital at the time.

The northwest of England, meanwhile, peaked at 2,908 on April 3, the third highest in the UK after London and the West Midlands.

The capital remains the area of the UK with the highest number of overall cases at 24,828, while the North West is second with 20,125.

It comes as Britain announced 315 new coronavirus deaths on Sunday, bringing total fatalities to 28,446 and putting the country on course to become the hardest hit in Europe.

The UK's toll is now only 264 behind Italy, the continent's original epicentre, which it will likely overtake tomorrow to have the second highest deaths in the world after the United States.

As Britain mourned more deaths in its health emergency:

Michael Gove warned that the lockdown could be reintroduced in areas that see infection rates rise in 'whack-a-mole' plan as the government tries to ease crippling restrictions;

Piers Morgan tweeted he is taking time off 'out of an abundance of caution' while he awaits results of a Covid-19 test after feeling unwell;

Boris Johnson revealed doctors prepared to announce his death in his first interview since his knife-edge coronavirus battle;

A former chief scientific adviser set up a rival group to Sage, which has become embroiled in a secrecy row;

Senior doctors warned the PM the lockdown should be eased for over-70s on mental health grounds;

Minsters were said to be examining plans to re-open some schools from the beginning of June;

Some people were found to be enjoying the lockdown, saying it was helping their relationships, they were enjoying work more and plan to spend more time with their children in future;

Public transport could return to approaching normal levels of service but with measures in place to limit rush hour numbers.

The UK announced 315 new coronavirus deaths on Sunday, bringing total fatalities to 28,446 and putting the country on course to become the hardest hit in Europe

A new interactive map lays bare the coronavirus postcode lottery and reveals sprawling areas in Wales, the South West and East England which have recorded zero deaths

Minister for the cabinet office Michael Gove fronts the government's daily coronavirus press briefing from Number 10

Before Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove announced the Department of Health's UK death toll at Sunday's Downing Street briefing, the public health bodies from the four nations revealed their individual death tallies which totalled 358.

The difference in totals reflects varying data gathering methods and time-frames.

England suffered the lion's share of yesterday's reported deaths with 327 patients, aged between 46 and 101, passing away in NHS hospitals.

A further 12 died in Scotland, 14 in Wales and five in Northern Ireland, bringing each nation's total toll to 1,571, 983 and 381, respectively.

Of those reported yesterday to have lost their lives, 56 died on May 2, 125 died on May 1 and 43 died on April 30.

The reporting lag also meant 95 of the new deaths took place between April 1 and April 29. The remaining eight deaths occurred in March, with the earliest new death taking place on March 28.

Sunday's death figures for England also shows the gulf in deaths between the regions, with the Midlands reporting 69 fatalities and the South West 19.

Mr Gove praised the stoicism of the public in mostly adhering to strict rules in place for the past five weeks.

Michael Gove warns Britain the lockdown will be reintroduced in areas that see infections rise in 'whack-a-mole' plan Parts of the UK that fail to adhere to safety measures designed to get Britain back to work face being slapped straight back into lockdown if there is a surge in coronavirus cases, Michael Gove warned Britain tonight. The Cabinet Office Minister confirmed that the Government would follow a 'whack-a-mole' strategy against resurgent areas as it slowly lifts the economically crippling restrictions and get UK PLC going again. He praised the stoicism of the public in mostly adhering to strict rules in place for the past five weeks. But speaking at tonight's press conference he warned that areas that see a relapse in coronavirus cases when the lockdown slowly begins to be eased face a return to the current lockdown. He spoke after revealing that the number of tests carried out up to 9am yesterday fell to just short of 76,500, 48 hours after reaching 122,000 - blaming the weekend for the steep fall. Mr Gove said it was important to speak to firms and trade unions 'in order to make sure people understand the guidance about working safely'. But he added: 'It is also important that we make clear that any approach we take is staged ... a phases approach is one which allows us to monitor the impact that those changes are having on public health and if necessary, in a specific and localised way, that means that we can pause or even reintroduce those restrictions that might be required in order to deal with localised outbreaks of the disease.' The Prime Minister is expected to reveal his roadmap of proposals to very carefully and slowly lift the restriction in place since late March later this week. Advertisement

But, speaking at tonight's press conference, he warned that areas that see a relapse in coronavirus cases when the lockdown slowly begins to be eased face a return to the current restrictions.

He spoke after revealing that the number of tests carried out up to 9am yesterday fell to just short of 76,500, 48 hours after reaching 122,000 - blaming the weekend for the steep fall.

Mr Gove said it was important to speak to firms and trade unions 'in order to make sure people understand the guidance about working safely'.

But he added: 'It is also important that we make clear that any approach we take is staged ... a phases approach is one which allows us to monitor the impact that those changes are having on public health and if necessary, in a specific and localised way, that means that we can pause or even reintroduce those restrictions that might be required in order to deal with localised outbreaks of the disease.'

The Prime Minister will this week reveal his 'whack-a-mole' strategy to ease the lockdown and put the UK economy back into gear.

He is expected to reveal his roadmap of proposals to very carefully and slowly lift the restriction in place since late March, but come down hard on any secondary hotspots that emerge.

It comes as a new interactive map revealed just how different areas of the UK were affected differently by the virus.

Certain regions such as London and the Midlands have suffered the brunt of the pandemic while larges swathes of the country have escaped relatively unscathed.

A new interactive map lays bare the coronavirus postcode lottery and reveals sprawling areas in Wales, the South West and East England which have recorded zero deaths.

The map, from Office for National Statistics data, shows outside of London, twenty-four towns in Cornwall have not incurred any Covid-19 deaths, with the county suffering just 14 deaths per 100,000 people.

One expert told MailOnline the data lends weight to a growing chorus of voices urging the government to ease curbs in areas with the least infections first.

The interactive ONS map shows the bulk of virus deaths are in densely populated cities and their transport routes to one another, while, towns furthest away from cities appear to be avoiding the worst of the crisis.

In the East of England, at least 23 local authorities have not recorded any coronavirus deaths in Suffolk, and 21 in Norfolk.

There are nine towns and villages where residents are yet to fall victim to the disease in the Welsh county of Conwy, seven in Pembrokeshire, five in Gwynedd and five in Ceredigion.

The 315 fatalities reported by the Department of Health is the fewest daily deaths recorded in over a month

Michael Gove revealed the total number of cases jumped to 186,599 following an extra 4,339 positive tests

The cabinet office minister said 76,496 tests had been performed up to 9am yesterday, dipping below the 100,000 daily target set by the government

In the New Forest national park in Hampshire there have been no recorded deaths in the Milford and Lymington south area, while in neighbouring Dorset, places such as Bovington, Wool and Lulworth have no recorded Covid-19 deaths.

There have been growing calls for lockdown to be eased on rural communities that have not been impacted by the pandemic.

Mr Gove last week there was some 'scientific justification' for trialling the easing of lockdown measures in island communities, such as the Outer Hebrides - although this has sparked a backlash from locals furious at suggestions they be used as the nation's guinea pigs.

Prof Paul Hunter, Professor in Medicine, University of East Anglia told MailOnline there is an argument for relaxing the lockdown in more rural areas that have been less impacted by the pandemic.

He said: 'There are a number of factors that impact R0 (the average number of people an individual can expect to infect) and one of those is population density.

'In the countryside you may only see five people a day, but in London if you could spend time with several hundreds of people a day such as seeing them on the underground. A lot of the variation is due to the fact R0 is greater in an area of higher population density.'

Professor Hunter added: 'There is something to be said about areas of the countryside not having as intense a lockdown. From that perspective there are technically a number of areas where the spread is not very high, and have not been impacted as severely as the main urban centres. But the problem with that is you see people in rural areas on Facebook having a good time, and you will probably feel quite annoyed.'



The number of people being treated for coronavirus in hospitals is falling as is the number of patients in critical care beds

Mobility trackers show the number in people in public places is steadily creeping up

The first easing of restrictions is not expected to come into force until June, and will be accompanied by the stricter enforcement of breaches of the remaining rules, with fines rising from the current 60 to more than 3,000 for repeat offenders.

It will include a massive PR blitz urging people who cannot work from home to go in where they can safely, and urging key workers to send their children back to school to free them up for vital tasks.

Public transport will also increase, but will strict social distancing measures at stations and attempts to stagger working hours to reduce the rush hour.

Senior citizens could also lose their free travel during peak times to lower surge numbers further, the Sunday Times reported.

Piers Morgan tweets he is taking time off 'out of an abundance of caution' while he awaits results of a Covid-19 test after feeling unwell Piers Morgan will be taking some time off Good Morning Britain while he awaits the results of a coronavirus test. The presenter, 55, started feeling unwell over the weekend and will stay off the programme 'out of an abundance of caution'. He had been going into the London studio every morning and doing his own make-up to abide by social distancing rules. Mr Morgan tweeted on Sunday night: 'UPDATE: On medical advice, and out of an abundance of caution for a mild symptom that arose in past 48hrs, I've had a test for COVID-19 and so won't be working on @GMB until I get the result back, which should be tomorrow.' The GMB host has been one of the strongest voices holding the government to account throughout the crisis. Since the country was put in lockdown on March 23, he has become the interviewer ministers fear most due to his ruthless scrutinising of the facts. He has spoken truth to power at every turn, including fiercely questioning decisions made by both the British and US governments. In an article for MailOnline on Thursday the columnist branded Prime Minister Boris Johnson's first press briefing back after beating Covid 'complete and utter bullsh*t'. He said Mr Johnson's speech had made US President Donald Trump seem credible and that his Brexit strategy cannot be used to beat the virus. Mr Morgan wrote: 'When Boris fans, the vast majority of them with union jack flags and Brexit slogans in their profiles, scream abuse at me all day long on Twitter for challenging their heros coronavirus strategy, they do so because to them, any criticism of the government over this crisis is a re-run of the viciously toxic and partisan Brexit campaign.' He added: 'None of Boris Johnson's political skills that won him the Referendum and Decembers election are working like they did before the virus struck.' The journalist pointed to a chart that was shown at the end of the briefing on the Global Death Comparision. He spotted how it showed the UK was trending to be the second worst hit country in the world for Covid-19 deaths Advertisement

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps warned that Britain will not return to 'business as usual' this month.

He told Sky's Sophy Ridge On Sunday: 'I don't think we should expect us to go from this situation that we have at the moment of social distancing back to where we were in February - that's clearly not going to happen and I don't think anyone imagines that for one moment.'

Ministers are concerned that the public have gone beyond the letter of the law introduced when the pandemic began to sweep the nation, according to the Sunday Times.

A senior Whitehall source told the paper: 'What you are going to see this week is a restatement of what we thought would happen right at the beginning when we first issued the lockdown.

'But it's going to be repackaged as a slow opening up of the economy. Please will construction sites reopen, please will you go to work if you can without hurting people, please if you are a key worker will you send your children to school.

'We've gone round the houses to get back to where we started.'

New polls on Sunday revealed how reluctant Britons are to return to normal while hundreds of people are still dying every day.

More than four in five Britons are against lockdown restrictions being eased for schools, pubs and restaurants this week, according to a poll by Opinium for the Observer.

Just 17 per cent thought the time was right to consider re-opening schools, with smaller proportions of people thinking conditions had been met to allow cinemas, sporting stadia and nightclubs to open their doors.

There was also opposition to the reopening of restaurants and pubs - with only 11 per cent agreeing Britain is at a place to reopen eateries and 9 per cent supporting a return to pubs.

Britons more strongly opposed a return to stadium events and nightclubs, with 7 per cent saying conditions have been met for both to resume, compared to 84 per cent who did not.

In the Sunday Times, a YouGov poll found that just 25 per cent of adults would feel safe returning to work and oppose reopening schools by 48 per cent to 28 per cent.

And 59 per cent of people polled by the Sunday Express said they would not feel comfortable going out and do not plan to resume a normal life next month.

Ministers will aim to tread a fine line between kickstarting economic activity and keeping 'R', the reproduction rate of the virus, below 1.

The Government's main priority is getting the economy going again, amid dire statistics about commercial activity and hundreds of billions of pounds flowing out of the treasury to prop up firms and pay the wages of furloughed workers.

It comes as a leading business group urges the Government to be 'bold' and not shy away from sustaining high levels of public spending.

The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) laid out a series of moves for a phased end to the current lockdown in a letter to the PM.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps this morning told Sky's Sophy Ridge on Sunday: 'It's no secret that of course we want the kids to go back to school but I'd be over-egging it to say there's a date in place, there's a plan in place'

Steps should include safely reopening public spaces, schools and public transport, as well as workplaces and commercial spaces, said the letter.

Moves should be made to minimise job losses and business failures, putting the UK economy on a 'high-growth, high-wage and low unemployment trajectory' as soon as possible.

The plans due to be laid out this week are reported to focus on those who work outside, including construction workers, because of science suggesting the virus is harder to catch outdoors.

Public transport is likely to return to normal levels and non-food retailers, factories, and warehouses will be encouraged to open.

Boris Johnson reveals doctors prepared to announce his DEATH Boris Johnson has revealed that doctors prepared to announce his death in case he lost his coronavirus battle, admitting he was 'a lucky man'. The Prime Minister, 55, confirmed he was 'not in particularly brilliant shape' while battling the disease at St Thomas' Hospital in central London last month. As his chances of survival balanced on a knife-edge, he said he was given 'litres and litres' of oxygen as medics fought to keep him alive in intensive care. In his first interview since recovering from Covid-19 - and the birth of his son Wilfred - the PM recalled his frustration that he could not seem to shake the virus. But Mr Johnson described how the sobering experience allowed him to see the 'fantastic' care offered by the NHS, his voice cracking as he reflected on the rollercoaster past few weeks. 'I realised it was getting pretty serious', he told the Sun on Sunday. 'And I remember saying to myself, ''How am I going to get out of this?''' He added: 'To be honest, the doctors had all sorts of plans for what to do if things went badly wrong. 'I was not in particularly brilliant shape because the oxygen levels in my blood kept going down. 'But it was thanks to some wonderful, wonderful nursing that I made it. They really did it and they made a huge difference.' Advertisement

Work on this has already started: people on Saturday flocked to newly reopened DIY stores and rubbish tips.

Orderly queues formed at branches of Homebase, which opened 164 stores, as well as B&Q and Wickes. Costa Coffee drive-throughs were also busy.

Offices are expected to instruct most of their staff to continue working from home.

But for those who cannot there will be strict rules for office spaces

They include mandatory floor markings to keep staff two metres apart, staggered start times and breaks, limits on how many people can get in lifts and regular deep cleaning, according to the Sunday Express.

And in a blow to everyone desperate to celebrate the release of the lockdown with a cold pint in their local, pubs and restaurants are likely to remain closed for weeks or even months longer.

This is because the bring people into close proximity to each other in difficult to control ways.

But the phased reopening will be accompanied by harder action against those who break social distancing rules.

Primary schools could re-open on June 1, with students from Years 10 and 12 becoming the first in a wave of secondary pupils flocking to classes.

Boris Johnson is hoping to put teachers on three weeks' notice to re-open primary schools in England to all pupils as soon as next month.

Whitehall sources have claimed the earliest possible return of primary schoolchildren is intended to help parents to return to work.

It will also prevent damage being done to 'early years development' about which Gavin Williamson has warned, according to The Sunday Telegraph.

Officials are understood to be contemplating limiting the size of classes temporarily, while the question of when to re-open nurseries is an open one.

Pupils from Years 10 and 12 would then head to school, provided ministers were satisfied the transmission rate did not cause a 'second peak'.

The move is being considered as data show that younger children are potentially less likely to transmit Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

The discussions also come after Mr Williams told the education select committee this week that schools would not reopen opening during the summer holidays as a way of helping pupils who have missed out on education to catch up.

The education secretary also suggested a phased return to schools, saying it was 'not realistic or practical' for all school children to return in one day.

He said scientists were looking at other countries for best practice and that a special team of the Scientific Group for Emergencies (SAGE) had been set up to focus solely on schools reopening.

Mr Shapps told Sophy Ridge on Sunday: 'It's no secret that of course we want the kids to go back to school but I'd be over-egging it to say there's a date in place, there's a plan in place.'
Bennett Carr, headteacher of Kind Edward VI School

One of Stratfords greatest traditions still managed to take place last week as King Edward VI School paid tribute to Shakespeare.

During Stratfords annual Shakespeare Celebrations pupils from KES usually lead the Birthday parade to Holy Trinity Church to place flowers on the Bards grave.

Started in 1893 by than headmaster Rev Robert de Courcy Laffan and pupils from the school, the ceremony has only previously been cancelled during the First and Second World Wars.

Rev de Laffans idea for a procession of children and ordinary people carrying offerings of wild flowers soon caught on and remains a central part of the celebrations to this day.

Like all churches, Holy Trinity Church is currently closed due to coronavirus, an action that had put the flower laying ceremony this year in jeopardy.

However, determined that the school should still honour their former pupil, current headmaster Bennet Carr came up with a way of celebrating Shakespeares life and observing social distancing regulations and ventured to the church on Thursday afternoon

With the permission of Rev Patrick Taylor, the headmaster placed a wreath on the outside wall of the church on 23 April, closest to Shakespeares grave and directly behind the bust of Shakespeare, where Kes pupils place a quill each year.

Mr Carr said: The floral procession, which has become a central part of the Shakespeare Celebrations, all started from that simple tribute made by the headmaster and the students at Kes back in 1893. School folklore is that the idea actually came from the headmasters wife, like all the best ideas do!

The floral procession has only not taken place during the war years and in 1946, its only really been halted by war and we thought we should make an effort to continue the tradition, even though everyone is not able to join us this year.

I had a discussion with Rev Patrick Taylor and the churchwarden and they suggested where might be the best place to put the wreath.

Then as part of my daily allocated exercise, following social distancing guidelines, I walked there with members of my family to place the wreath. It was a very simple act and it was quite nice doing something that took the ceremony back to its roots.

I tweeted a picture explaining that Id laid the wreath on behalf of the school and I had some really positive responses from people, there were some who asked whether we were happy for the wreath to be on behalf of them too and I said of course it was.

Rev Patrick Taylor of Holy Trinity Church, added: One of the highlights of the year for us at Holy Trinity is welcoming the many hundreds of people who come to the church on the Saturday of the Birthday Weekend to lay flowers by the grave of William Shakespeare.

It was very sad to have to keep the church locked shut this year, but I was delighted to see that Bennet Carr has kept going the tradition of King Edward VI School by coming to lay flowers, albeit this year placing them in the churchyard on the other side of the church wall to the grave.

It was a gesture repeated by others whom I see have laid sprigs of rosemary and flowers at the doors of the church. The wreath from KES has now been joined by a beautiful bouquet of flowers left by the Shakespeare Club, who have also played a prominent role in the history of the Birthday celebrations in the town.

Thank you to Sylvia Morris for providing additional material for this article.
Helicopters showered masked health workers with rose petals and jets roared across the skies today as India's military paid tribute to frontline workers battling the coronavirus pandemic.

In one of the first of several gestures on Sunday, petals fell onto medical personnel clad in protective gear as an army band played patriotic tunes including 'Jai Ho' (May victory prevail) from the popular Slumdog Millionaire film.

In several states and territories across the vast nation of 1.3 billion people, fighter jets and transport aircraft in formations took part in low-flying aerial salutes to thank the country's so-called 'corona warriors'.

An Indian Air Force helicopter showers flower petals on the staff of INS Asvini hospital in Mumbai, India today

In one of the first of several gestures on Sunday, petals fell onto medical personnel clad in protective gear as an army band played patriotic tunes including 'Jai Ho' (May victory prevail) from the popular Slumdog Millionaire film

'The entire nation stands united in these challenging times,' Defence Minister Rajnath Singh tweeted Sunday as he praised the 'commendable work' of the 'frontline warriors', including police which have been enforcing the nationwide virus lockdown in place since late March.

The navy will light up its ships off the sub-continent's shores when night falls as part of the tributes.

An Indian Air Force helicopter showers flower petals on health workers at the Guwahati Medical College Hospital, (GMCH) in Gauhati, India, today

An Indian health worker at the Guwahati Medical College Hospital, (GMCH) collects flower petals showered from an Indian Air Force helicopter in Gauhati, India

In several states and territories across the vast nation of 1.3 billion people, fighter jets and transport aircraft in formations took part in low-flying aerial salutes to thank the country's so-called 'corona warriors'. Pictured is Gauhati in India today

The performances were the third public show of gratitude to health and other frontline workers, after Indians took part in nationwide clapping and lamp lighting efforts led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on previous Sundays.

The lockdown was extended for another two weeks by the government on Friday, although some restrictions were lifted in regions that have lower numbers of virus cases.

India has recorded almost 40,000 coronavirus cases, including 1,301 deaths.

The performances were the third public show of gratitude to health and other frontline workers, after Indians took part in nationwide clapping and lamp lighting efforts led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on previous Sundays. Pictured: petals being dropped in Mumbai

Victoria hospital personnel react as an Indian Air Force helicopter disperses flowers to pay tribute to health workers responding to the ongoing coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic in Bangalore, India
Big-box stores like Lowes and Walmart are permitted to have hundreds of cars and people because the Governor chose them to be essential businesses. However, under the same orders a church may not have anyone in its buildings with limited exceptions for virtual services, according to the filing from state Dels. Daniel L. Cox, Warren E. Miller, Neil C. Parrott, and Robin L. Grammer Jr.
https://www.aish.com/jw/s/New-App-Revolutionizes-the-Art-of-Giving.html

Falling on hard times, Jerry Latinik responded by finding ways of helping others. His vision sparked a revolution in kindness. .

Jerry Latinik, who now lives in Efrat, Israel has launched a revolutionary new mobile app to make it easier for people all over the world to do a single act of kindness. Just One Chesed (act of kindnes) now has 250 charities signed up, who submit their needs to the app, with around 2,400 volunteer users, able to click to take on the job. Ranging from walking someones dog, making a weekly phone call to someone living alone, or delivering a food package, Just One Chesed also allows volunteers to state what opportunities they are interested in hearing about. Connecting to google maps, it has enabled tzedakah (charitable) organizations to connect with potential volunteers, where and when they need them, unleashing serious giving power.

Originally from Chicago, Latinik, now 43, was married with three children and working in the Healthcare industry in 2011 when his business faced collapse.

I wasnt sure how things would come right financially, Latinik told Aish.com, but I believe that whatever you go through is for a reason and if God put me through that, he wanted me to grow from it.

Acting in a way that many would seem counter-intuitive, Latinik focused on doing positive things for others to turn his own situation around.

Volunteers delivering gifts to Israeli soldiers

I learned a powerful lesson from my father when he fell very ill around 20 years ago, that hardships can be seen as opportunities. The more doctors were telling him about all the things he would not be able to do in the future, the more he persevered his way through the many obstacles, increasing his determination to overcome the challenges he faced.

Unable to give charity in the way he used to, Latinik looked to his skills to make a difference, deciding after some thought, to organize an powerful Shabbat of unity for his community. Bringing together seven different shuls in Chicago, the result was an incredible program with inspiring guest speakers, knock out Shabbat meals and sell out music concerts. Something like that had never happened before. It was so uplifting with an awesome feeling of unity, that completely surpassed all of my expectations.

One mitzvah leads to another

When Latinik was deciding where to donate the funds raised from the event, an eye-opening tour of local tzedakah organizations got him thinking. Firstly, I was so unaware of how many unbelievable organizations there actually were, each doing something amazing for the community, providing essential support. But I also saw just how much they were in need of more volunteers.

The idea began to take shape in Latiniks mind for a chesed broker to connect organizations more directly with potential volunteers, and to connect those in need with the organizations that could help them the most. While many organizations lacked the resources to actively search for volunteers they needed, what was also so exciting was the opportunity to help activate the desire so many people have to help others and inspire so many more.

If one person can play a guitar, theres another family out there that doesnt have the money to afford a teacher. If one person can drive, theres another person who cant and needs help getting to a medical appointment. I often think that almost going bankrupt was the best thing that could have happened to me because it really made me realize that everyone has something valuable they can give to help another person.

From emergency responders, Hatzola, to food redistribution service Leket and Soup kitchen Meir Panim, there is now an ever-growing list of organizations listed on the site. As his vision for Just One Chesed started to become reality, Latinik and his family made true on another dream moving to Israel and the community of Efrat, south of Jerusalem.

The Kindness App

Last year, New York native Joe Klein, who also lives in Israel, joined Latinik, helping to grow the volunteer base and partnerships with other tzedaka organizations. In August 2019, its mobile app was launched, utilizing Google Maps to alert volunteers for organizations nearby that need them, and also allowing potential volunteers the opportunity to do an act of kindness wherever and whenever suits their schedule.

With 2,400 people pledging their time and skills to over 250 tzedaka organizations, momentum is building fast.

Miri Schreiber, of the Yad Ezra VShulamit welfare charity in Israel said: Thanks to the Just One Chesed app, we can always count on being able to recruit volunteers at the drop of a hat to pack food baskets for hungry children and families in Israel.

Just One Chesed has also seen that its service can be of help in schools, with many including volunteering hours as part of their schedule. The new app now also includes newly created software to help them track and manage this.

Cue Coronavirus

In the midst of their plan to reach a wider audience, the Coronavirus pandemic hit, and with so many vulnerable people isolated in lockdown there was a surge of new volunteers looking for ways to help.

Just One Chesed launched Project Check In with organizations listing people living alone, in need of a phone call once a day to check they are okay and if theres anything they need. Hundreds of complete strangers make daily phone calls to those in need, with others delivering medical or food supplies.

There are so many examples of how a small donation of time has made a huge difference, Klein explained, One elderly man in Queens NY, who was called by a volunteer, hadn't eaten for two days. He was suffering from Alzheimer's and couldnt remember his address to order food.

In another incident, a family who had been visiting New York for cancer treatment were left stranded in the city with no one they knew in the area. Just One Chesed managed to match them with a local family with a child who had the exact same condition, which was a source of great comfort and support.

Another campaign named Uplift alleviates feelings of loneliness and despair with a string of inspiring free online virtual events. Live music concerts were tuned in to by thousands, while Israeli tour guides gave packed out zoom tours through different sites in Israel.

24k for 24k

The most recent campaign is utilizing the crowd-funding platform Charidy, not to fundraise, but to reach a target of 24,000 acts of kindness before the holiday of Shavuot in a months time. The number, 24,000 relates to the same number of students of Rabbi Akiva who died from a plague in these weeks around 2,000 years ago.

Latinik says, Our goal is to make chesed exciting! Rather than setting a fundraising target to raise, families can set themselves a chesed target to reach. At the end of the day, its about making a difference, and in this current lockdown there is so much we can do by seeing the value of each act of kindness.

To find out more, download the app and take part in 24k for 24k, see the link below.

https://www.charidy.com/justonechesed

To learn more about Just One Chesed visit: https://justonechesed.org/

This wouldn't have been possible without the kindness and dedication of David Brenner who leads our IT
Failure to vaccinate everyone will give rise to new variants, says UN chief

MHA orders second line of defence for police as cases rise

India

oi-Deepika S

New Delhi, May 03: The ministry of home affairs (MHA) on Sunday directed chief secretaries, director generals of police (DGPs) of all states and heads of central paramilitary forces to "prepare a second line of defence" in police to make up for those who may be rendered ineffective due to COVID-19.

The MHA said the police chiefs may consider the option of ''work from home'' for personnel not deployed on frontline, and wherever feasible.

"To meet the challenge of COVID-19, and to ensure sustainment of control strategy for COVID- 19, police forces need to prepare an effective second line of defence to make up for the police personnel who may be rendered ineffective due to COVID infection during the pandemic," the home ministry said.

'Ready to live with Coronavirus': Kejriwal announces lockdown relaxations with conditions

"Forces can use the services of home guards, civil defence, NCC cadets, Scouts and Guides and Students Police Cadets in the areas where there are not imminent law and order duties," it added.

The order comes in the wake of reports of more personnel being infected with Covid-19 cases. The CRPF has been the worst hit with more than 100 of its troopers testing positive in Delhi which forced it to seal its headquarters on Sunday.
ARCHDALE  A High Point man has been charged with second-degree murder in a Friday shooting that left an Archdale man dead, the Randolph County Sheriff's Office said.

Corey Nathaniel Collins, 20, of Old Thomasville Road is being held without bail in the Randolph County Detention Center, the sheriff's office said Saturday in a news release.

Deputies responded about 7:45 p.m. Friday to Middle Point Road in Archdale and found 22-year-old Hunter Robinson shot to death. Collins was taken into custody at the scene for questioning before being charged, according to the sheriff's office.

Officials did not release a motive in the killing.
When Gov. Tom Wolf closed Pennsylvania schools for two weeks on March 13, teachers and their students didnt know it would be the last time theyd be together in the classroom. On April 9, he announced schools would be closed for the remainder of the school year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

All of this happened very abruptly, says Courtney Weikert, a kindergarten teacher at Thomas Jefferson Elementary School in Bethlehem. We didnt get a chance to talk to (the kids) about it. They were nervous when they got home that night.

To ease the nerves of her young students, Weikert recorded a video of her reading a story and pushed it out to her classs social media channel. The response was so overwhelmingly positive that Weikert has recorded one story every day, including weekends, since the school closed nearly two months ago.

I read to them because its something we did in the classroom, and its something they can count on every day, she says.

These unprecedented times have forced teachers to think outside the classroom to engage, reassure and continue to educate their students.

Fun with Words

Christine Warfel, a second grade teacher at Lehigh Elementary School in Lehigh Township, is using scavenger hunts as a way for her students to practice their spelling lists. Right now, theyre learning whats called hunk-and-chunk words  a combination of certain letters that make a sound  and Warfel realized many of those words are common household items, like comb.

To practice the list on our Google Meet, well give the kids a clue and they have to find that item and bring it back, she says.

For example, what is something that you write with? The hunk-and-chunk word is write because of the silent w. Warfels students brought back pens, markers and pencils.

Warfel has also used scavenger hunts to practice concepts, like cause-and-effect.

I told the kids that we ate lunch and got messy, so what do we need? she says.

They brought back napkins.

The scavenger hunts are a good way for the kids to connect and see different parts of ourselves because theyre using things in their own homes. Thats not something we do in the classroom, Warfel says. And were tying in their phonics and spelling at the same time.

Get Moving

With playgrounds closed and crummy weather, its been hard for kids to get outside to run around.

Jenna Husovsky, a physical education teacher at Calypso and Marvine elementary schools in Bethlehem, has been hosting weekly virtual lessons during lunch for her students in which they can practice their physical exercises (think: jumping jacks and butterfly stretches) or participate in an activity challenge.

But one class was having a particularly hard time without gym class, so their teacher asked if Husovsky could conduct a virtual session. She said yes.

During the class, one student needed a break from the exercises and came back to the screen holding his stuffed animal. That prompted the rest of the students, including their teacher, to bring their stuffed animals to the workout.

It was not originally planned to be a class with stuffed animals, Husovsky says.

But the animals joined in, including a body pillow-sized dolphin named Flip.

Physical activity is hugely important, especially in a time like this, Husovsky says. Its very easy for kids to be put in front of a screen especially because their workload is now in front of a screen.

Husovsky has challenged her students to move with activities like fort-building, chalk-drawing and building a kite with items around the house.

I keep it simple but also get them moving and into the fresh air, she says. Its good for their mental health as well.

Dallas Cruz, a student at Calypso Elementary School in Bethlehem poses with Flat Mrs. McKeown, a creation of his teacher, Denise McKeown. (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com)

Together, Apart

Denise McKeown, a first-grade teacher at Calypso Elementary School in Bethlehem, had plans to read Flat Stanley, a book about a boy traveling the world, to her students at the end of the school year. Disappointed she wasnt going to be able to do that, she created and sent Flat Mrs. McKeown to her students.

McKeown created a cartoon version of herself and wrote her students a letter: I know we cant be together, so here is a flat version of Mrs. McKeown that you can take with you on your adventures while youre at home.

As soon as McKeowns students received Flat Mrs. McKeown she started hearing about her paper versions adventures, including bike rides, weightlifting, arts and crafts, and reading.

My goal is just to let the kids know that Im still here with them and even though I may not be physically with them, Flat Mrs. McKeown will help get them through the rest of the school year, she says.

At Governor Wolf Elementary School in Bethlehem, some of the first-grade teachers have become pen pals with their students using traditional mail. Danette Walters read her students The Letter over video, in which Toad is sad because he never gets any mail. His friend Frog starts to send him letters, which inspired Walters students to do the same.

I explained that I missed them and would wait on my porch, like Toad, for a letter from them, she says.

Leighton Kennedy poses with Flat Mrs. McKeown, a creation of her first-grade teacher at Calypso Elementary School in Bethlehem. (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com)

Create Memories

Years from now, teachers want their students to remember not the fear and uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic but the support and sense of community.

Lindsey Joseph, a third-grade teacher at William Penn Elementary School in Bethlehem, knew she would help her students create a memory book at the end of the year. That didnt change when schools were closed, but she did have to get creative in how to execute the project.

Joseph put together a digital template for her students to fill out with things like their favorite memories of the year or how they would describe their teacher (nise, one student wrote). The goal, Joseph says, is to make sure her students know theyre in this together, even if physically apart.

I wanted them to do something more creative and to have fun with it, she says. They miss school and each other.

Another teacher at William Penn Elementary School has continued the tradition of a school-wide talent show through the schools social media network. Eric Frank, a fourth-grade teacher, put out a call to the entire school to submit minute-long videos of their acts.

Frank has posted one video a day for nearly three weeks: dancers, a stand-up comic, a magician, musicians, a cyclist weaving through cones, a skateboarder (Frank, himself) and a dog performing tricks.

The talent show is one of those events that gets the best participation, he says. The kids get really excited. Its their time to shine. Right now, it reminds people that we can still have fun in tough times and it gives us a chance to not think about all the stress thats there.

In the end, these teachers want their students to remember the good that came from trying times. The kindergartners who started school for the first time in the fall may not have come back into the classroom for the remainder of the year, but their education and connection to each other never stopped.

School was different but it didnt stop, Weikert says. They werent ever really alone.

Frank hopes the sense of community that his teachers, parents and students have built during a time of isolation continues when things start to return to normal.

I want to look at this as one of the greatest victories of humanity, he says. We came together for a single purpose: to look out for each other.

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T he coronavirus lockdown should be eased for over 70s who are considered healthy due to the impact staying inside is having on their mental health, senior doctors have warned.

The British Medical Association (BMA) and the Royal College of GPs (RCGP) said age alone should not be the determining factor for who can go about their daily lives when the Government takes the decision to ease the coronavirus lockdown measures.

At the start of the lockdown, 1.8 million people in England were asked to stay indoors for 12 weeks as they were considered most at risk from Covid-19.

According to The Times, senior doctors said that easing lockdown restrictions should be determined on individual risk with a system that applies to all ages, and not just "an arbitrary age of 60 or 70".

One minute silence to NHS heroes who lost lives to the Coronavirus 1 /25 One minute silence to NHS heroes who lost lives to the Coronavirus London Ambulance Staff observe the minute silence today at their HQ in Waterloo Road Jeremy Selwyn Staff stand outside Salford Royal Hospital in Manchester during a minute's silence to pay tribute to the NHS staff and key workers who have died during the coronavirus outbreak PA Shoppers queue in the rain outside Costco in Thurrock during a minutes silence to pay tribute to the NHS staff and key workers who have died during the coronavirus outbreak PA A minute silence in honour of key workers who have lost their lives due to COVID-19 Sky News London Ambulance Staff observe the minute silence today at their HQ in Waterloo Road Jeremy Selwyn Staff react outside Salford Royal Hospital in Manchester during a minute's silence to pay tribute to the NHS staff and key workers who have died during the coronavirus outbreak PA A staff member reacts outside Salford Royal Hospital in Manchester during a minute's silence to pay tribute to the NHS staff and key workers who have died during the coronavirus outbreak PA Members of the public, NHS staff, and Police offices, some wearing PPE (personal protective equipment) of a face mask as a precautionary measure against COVID-19, pause for a minute's silence to honour UK key workers AFP via Getty Images A police officer observes a minute silence in honour of key workers who have lost their lives due to COVID-19 outside 10 Downing Street, Reuters London Ambulance Staff observe the minute silence today at their HQ in Waterloo Road Jeremy Selwyn Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill, Prime minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak stand inside 10 Downing Street, London, to observe a minutes silence in tribute to the NHS staff and key workers who have died during the coronavirus outbreak PA A minute silence in honour of key workers who have lost their lives due to COVID-19 Sky News London Ambulance Staff observe the minute silence today at their HQ in Waterloo Road Jeremy Selwyn Staff stand outside the Royal Derby Hospital, during a minutes silence to pay tribute to the NHS staff and key workers who have died during the coronavirus outbreak PA Staff stand outside the Royal Derby Hospital, during a minutes silence to pay tribute to the NHS staff and key workers who have died during the coronavirus outbreak PA Staff stand inside Camberwell bus depot in London, during a minute's silence to pay tribute to the NHS staff and key workers who have died during the coronavirus outbreak PA National Shop Stewards Network protesters outside St Thomas' Hospital in London, during a minute's silence which was to pay tribute to the NHS staff and key workers who have died during the coronavirus outbreak. PA Staff members applaud outside the Royal Derby Hospital, following a minute's silence to pay tribute to the NHS staff and key workers who have died during the coronavirus outbreak. PA First Minister Nicola Sturgeon stands outside St Andrew's House in Edinburgh to observe a minute's silence in tribute to the NHS staff and key workers who have died during the coronavirus outbreak PA

The BMA said in a statement: "A blanket ban on any section of the population being prohibited from lockdown easing would be discriminatory and unacceptable."

Martin Marshall, chairman of the RCGP, also warned of the harm a prolonged lockdown would do to the mental health of those over the age of 70.

He said age alone was not a sophisticated criteria on which to base decisions on who should self-isolate and for how long in the future.

"People of all ages have a wide range of capabilities and are subject to various risk factors, of which their age is one, that might affect their health and how they respond to Covid-19," he said.

Asking any individual to undertake strict isolation measures is already a significant ask that will undoubtedly have some impact on their physical and mental health.

GPs are finding that many patients who are currently shielding are expressing concern about their ability to continue extreme isolation for a long period, and this needs to be taken into account as plans for how the lockdown will continue are formulated.

Coronavirus in numbers: UK death toll rises to 28,131

He said doctors could only strongly advocate that patients follow official guidance, but could not mandate action.

However, Health Secretary Matt Hancock prompted confusion on Sunday about whether those aged over 70 should be self-isolating.

He said on Twitter: "We have strongly advised all over 70s to follow social distancing measures.

"However, there is no 'blanket ban', and the suggestion that the clinically vulnerable include 'people aged 70 or older regardless of medical conditions' is wrong and deeply misleading."

It appears to contradict advice issued on the Government website which says that "clinically vulnerable people include anyone aged 70 or over, as well as those under 70 with an underlying health condition".

The Standard has approached the Department of Health for clarity.

England's deputy chief medical officer Jenny Harries / via REUTERS

It comes as the Government said the blanket restrictions will be reviewed in a bid to create more stratified guidance.

Speaking at the Downing Street daily briefing, Dr Jenny Harries said officials were trying to review the restrictive rules because we do recognise that asking somebody to stay shieldedfor a very long period of timeis quite a difficult thing for them to do".

Dr Harries told reporters that experts were looking at the measures in two different ways, including adapting existing services and looking at those risks again now we have more information to try and build a better, more stratified picture.

Communities minister Robert Jenrick also acknowledged the huge emotional impact shielding was having on those affected.

Shapps: more testing would have meant fewer deaths

He said the Government is considering more long-term plans and told the briefing that local councils have been sent lists of shielded people so they can provide more tailored support, and a check in and chat service is being developed.

Mr Hancock also said on Tuesday that the safest thing for people in the shielded category to do is to stay at home and be protected from all contact.

Medical conditions that place someone at greatest risk of severe illness from Covid-19 include specific cancers, severe respiratory conditions such as cystic fibrosis and asthma, rare diseases and inborn errors of metabolism that significantly increase the risk of infections.
The Deputy Governor of Borno State, Umar Kadafur, has said the refusal of residents to adhere to outlined safety measures against COVID-19 reminds him of the attitude that gave oxygen to Boko Haram over a decade ago.

Mr Kadafur, who is the chairman of the states committee on COVID-19, expressed his displeasure over the unwillingness of the residents of Maiduguri, the state capital, to adhere to safety regulations, including social distancing.

Addressing journalists Sunday at the resumed briefing on COVID-19, he said the committee, however, would not give up on the people because COVID-19 is real.

As you could see on Saturday evening a lot of people defied orders and went out for burial, they felt that this thing (COVID-19) is not true, he said.

The deputy governor was making reference to the crowded funeral of a popular Borno Islamic cleric, Modu-Goni Kolo, who died on Saturday. A video clip of his funeral revealed hundreds of mourners struggling to touch his corpse in utter disregard for social distancing protocol.

Mr Kadafur also frowned at how some mosques continue to violate social distancing order by calling for prayers five times a day.

Some persons would not put off their mosque microphones, rather they put them and call for congregational prayers. This is how Boko Haram started.

He said when Boko Haram started, many people in the state did not see the group as a danger against them until it was too late.

This COVID-19 is for us another Boko Haram because it posses greater danger to our lives. When Boko Haram started people didnt take them seriously.

If you want to play with COVID-19, you can choose to, but I will not stop telling you the truth that this is real and as a leader in the state, I wont get tired of telling them that for their own good and that of others, they should obey social distancing order, embrace hygiene culture and they should put on face masks each time they go out in public places

He reminded the residents that COVID-19 has no cure.

People should know that taking confirmed persons to isolation centre is to prevent the spread and not treatment, he said.

He said all the 11 confirmed COVID-19 deaths died as a result of underlying medical conditions like asthma, diabetics, high blood pressure.

Mr Kadafur said already, the two isolation centers in Maiduguri are filled to capacity and his committee was in the process of setting up yet another isolation centre to accommodate the daily recorded cases of COVID-19.

Since the confirmation of the index case on April 19, 11 persons have died of the disease, including the index case. Borno now has a total of 75 confirmed cases, out if which none has been discharged.

The commissioner for health, Salisu KwayaBura, said all the patients are stable and none of them are in critical condition as we speak.
Australian Associated Press has entered detailed discussions with multiple bidders interested in salvaging the newswire and its contacts database Medianet but it will be weeks before its fate is decided.

Chairman Campbell Reid said in a statement that the Board would enter confidential discussions with interested parties over several weeks after it met with consultancy TMT Partners on the weekend to discuss sale proposals.

The AAP Board has entered into detailed discussions with a number of parties interested in acquiring the business. Credit:AAP

"The safeguarding of AAP staff entitlements is the first consideration for the AAP board in these discussions and any agreement entered into with a purchaser will oblige the purchaser to honour those entitlements," Mr Reid said. "In the event of there being no sale AAP will honour those entitlements."

AAP's future has been in doubt since February when The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age revealed that AAP's major shareholders Nine Entertainment Co (publisher of this masthead) and News Corp planned to close the 85-year-old organisation to save costs. But the decision, which affects about 600 employees, was put on hold two months ago after AAP received a number of approaches from parties interested in acquiring its operations.
The number of China-Europe freight trains hit a record monthly high of 979 in April, up 46 percent year on year, the China State Railway Group said Saturday.

A total of 88,000 TEUs (20-foot equivalent units) of cargo were transported by the trains, up 50 percent from a year earlier.

From January to April, a total of 2,920 China-Europe freight trains transported cargo of 262,000 TEUs, up 24 percent and 27 percent from a year earlier, respectively.

The number of departing trains rose 36 percent year on year to 1,638 during the first four months, while the number of returning trains climbed 11 percent to 1,282.

China-Europe cargo train services have become an important logistics channel to ensure smooth trade as air, sea and road transportation have been severely affected by the novel coronavirus epidemic, the company said.

The freight trains have also been playing a crucial role in helping with the fight against the pandemic in Europe as massive quantities of medical supplies were sent by them.

From March 21 to the end of April, anti-epidemic supplies totaling 660,000 items and weighing 3,142 tonnes were sent by the freight trains to European countries such as Italy, Germany, Spain and the Czech Republic.
Faced with 19,000 coronavirus deaths and counting, the nation's nursing homes are pushing back against a potential flood of lawsuits with a sweeping lobbying effort to get states to grant them emergency protection from claims of inadequate care.

At least 15 states have enacted laws or governors' orders that explicitly or apparently provide nursing homes and long-term care facilities some protection from lawsuits arising from the crisis.

And in the case of New York, which leads the nation in deaths in such facilities, a lobbying group wrote the first draft of a measure that apparently makes it the only state with specific protection from both civil lawsuits and criminal prosecution.

Now the industry is forging ahead with a campaign to get other states on board with a simple argument: This was an unprecedented crisis and nursing homes should not be liable for events beyond their control, such as shortages of protective equipment and testing, shifting directives from authorities, and sicknesses that have decimated staffs.

As our care providers make these difficult decisions, they need to know they will not be prosecuted or persecuted, read a letter sent this month from several major hospital and nursing home groups to their next big goal, California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom has yet to make a decision.

Other states in their sights include Florida, Pennsylvania and Missouri.

Watchdogs, patient advocates and lawyers argue that immunity orders are misguided.

At a time when the crisis is laying bare such chronic industry problems as staffing shortages and poor infection control, they say legal liability is the last safety net to keep facilities accountable.

They also contend nursing homes are taking advantage of the crisis to protect their bottom lines.

Almost 70% of the nation's more than 15,000 nursing homes are run by for-profit companies, and hundreds have been bought and sold in recent years by private-equity firms.

What you're really looking at is an industry that always wanted immunity and now has the opportunity to ask for it under the cloak of saying, 'Let's protect our heroes,' said Mike Dark, an attorney for California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform.

This has very little to do with the hard work being done by health care providers, he said, and everything to do with protecting the financial interests of these big operators.

Nowhere have the industry's efforts played out more starkly than in New York, which has a fifth of the nation's known nursing home and long-term care deaths and has had at least seven facilities with outbreaks of 40 deaths or more, including one home in Manhattan that reported 98.

New York's immunity law signed by Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo was drafted by the Greater New York Hospital Association, an influential lobbying group for both hospitals and nursing homes that donated more than $1 million to the state Democratic Party in 2018 and has pumped more than $7 million into lobbying over the past three years.

While the law covering both hospital and nursing care workers doesn't cover intentional misconduct, gross negligence and other such acts, it makes clear those exceptions don't include decisions resulting from a resource or staffing shortage.

Cuomo's administration said the measure was a necessary part of getting the state's entire health care apparatus to work together to respond to the crisis.

It was a decision made on the merits to help ensure we had every available resource to save lives, said Rich Azzopardi, a senior advisor to Cuomo. Suggesting any other motivation is simply grotesque.

Nationally, the lobbying effort is being led by the American Health Care Association, which represents nearly all of the nation's nursing homes and has spent $23 million on lobbying efforts in the past six years.

Other states that have emergency immunity measures are Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts; Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, Nevada, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.

Their provisions vary but largely apply to injuries, deaths and care decisions, sometimes even to property damage.

But there are limitations: Most make exceptions for gross negligence and willful misconduct, and they generally apply only during the emergency.

Toby Edelman of the Center for Medicare Advocacy is troubled that homes are getting legal protections while family members aren't being allowed to visit and routine government inspections have been scaled back.

Nobody is looking at what's happening, she said, adding that immunity declarations could make even gross or willful negligence suits harder since homes could argue any deficiencies were somehow tied to the pandemic.

Everything can't be blamed on COVID-19. Other things can happen that are terrible, she said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Democratic Republic of Congos Diocese of Uvira Caritas Director, Fr Dominic Mulumeoderhwa has said close to 100 000 people have been displaced by raging floods and need immediate humanitarian assistance.

Paul Samasumo  Vatican City

Torrential rains that started last week have triggered flash floods in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Initial reports spoke of over 52 deaths, but with reports of many people still missing, it will be a while before an accurate account is available.

Aid agencies focusing on COVID-19

The densely populated city of Uvira with more than 450 thousand inhabitants has been hit the hardest. Two bridges connecting the town were swept away by the waters cutting off the city from the rest of the country. According to residents, water just kept coming into houses and on to the streets. It swept away people, especially children -swept away everything: Homes, schools, churches, shops have all been damaged. An already fragile road-network has been eroded. The city shares a border with Burundi, but that was already closed due to coronavirus anti-contagion confinement.

This all comes when funding and international Aid agencies are focused on the coronavirus emergency. Restrictions in travel are also adding to an already stressful situation. This means that there is limited help for the people of Uvira.

No one remembers seeing Lake Tanganyika this high

Fr Dominic Mulumeoderhwa describes the situation as a nightmare. No one in living memory remembers Lake Tanganyika this high. The Kanvimvira and Mulongwe rivers are also overflowing. The floods are so unprecedented that Hippos have been sighted near residential areas of the city.

The Diocesan Caritas office says Uvira needs urgent help. There is a lack of clean drinking water, sanitation has been compromised, and there is a real danger of water-borne diseases such as cholera.

United Nations (UN) agencies doing their best

Local government authorities working with UN agencies particularly UNHCR; the Church through parishes and Caritas Uvira; humanitarian actors already on the ground were all doing their best to coordinate relief efforts. Others such as the Congolese Red Cross were also pitching in to help. Volunteers have been carrying on with search and rescue operations for missing persons.

The Blue Helmets UN Mission in Congo (MONUSCO) situated in the area has rescued thousands of people in flooded areas.

Uvira needs food, medicines, drinking water, shelter kits, domestic utensils, and mosquito nets.

Last year Pope Francis prayed for peace in the south Kivu region.

The flooding is just the latest of challenges in a region already besieged by years of insecurity and conflict waged by gangs. During a Mass, on 1 December 2019, at the start of the Catholic Liturgical season of Advent in the St. Peters Basilica, Pope Francis celebrated a special Mass with the Congolese community-based in Rome. During the Mass, Pope Francis prayed for an end to the conflict in the south Kivu region. He said the conflict in the area gravely threatened peace and was responsible for so much suffering. A religious sister at the Mass, Sr. Rita Mboshu Kongo told Pope Francis that a silent genocide was happening in the DRC.

South Kivu Province is also home to more than 50,000 Burundian refugees who fled neighbouring Burundis political turmoil.

With more rains still being dumped on the city of Uvira and surrounding areas, there is need for more humanitarian assistance. Local efforts are overwhelmed.
President Magufuli says tests were found to be faulty after goat, sheep and pawpaw samples test positive for COVID-19.

Tanzanias President John Magufuli has dismissed imported coronavirus testing kits as faulty, saying they returned positive results on samples taken from a goat and a pawpaw.

Magufuli made the remarks during an event in Chato in northwestern Tanzania on Sunday. He said there were technical errors with the tests.

The president, whose government has already drawn criticism for being secretive about the coronavirus outbreak and has previously asked Tanzanians to pray the coronavirus away, said he had instructed Tanzanian security forces to check the quality of the kits.

They had randomly obtained several non-human samples, including from a pawpaw, a goat and a sheep, but had assigned them human names and ages.

These samples were then submitted to Tanzanias laboratory to test for the coronavirus, with the lab technicians left deliberately unaware of their origins.

Samples from the pawpaw and the goat tested positive for COVID-19, the president said, adding this meant it was likely that some people were being tested positive when, in fact, they were not infected by the coronavirus.

There is something happening. I said before we should not accept that every aid is meant to be good for this nation, Magufuli said, adding the kits should be investigated.

On Saturday, Magufuli announced that he had placed an order for a herbal treatment for the coronavirus touted by the president of Madagascar.

I have already written to Madagascars president and we will soon dispatch a plane to fetch the medicine so that Tanzania can also benefit from it, he said.

The herbal remedy, called Covid Organics and prepared by the Malagasy Institute for Applied Research, is made out of Artemisia, a plant cultivated on the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar.

Despite a lack of scientific evidence, President Andry Rajoelina of Madagascar claimed that the remedy has already cured some Madagascans of COVID-19. Children returning to school have been required to take it.
Facing questions over why Britain's death toll from the new coronavirus was now the second-worst in Europe after Italy, a British minister said on Sunday people should not jump to conclusions and the full picture was not yet clear.

The death toll was 28,131 as of May 1, just short of the Italian total, increasing pressure on the conservative government which has been accused by the opposition of having acted too slowly in the early stages of the outbreak.

Ministers have rejected comparisons of the headline death toll with that of other countries, saying that excess mortality -- the number of deaths from all causes that exceed the average for the time of year -- was a more meaningful metric.

The most recent available data showed there were almost 12,000 excess deaths in England and Wales in the week to April 17. Of these, just under 9,000 were linked on the death certificates to COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus.

Analysis by media including Sky News and the Financial Times suggests those figures are worse than in other European countries.

Appearing on Sky News on Sunday, transport minister Grant Shapps rejected a suggestion that the evidence on excess mortality showed the government's response to the outbreak had failed.

"You need to look at that over a much longer period of time. So we'll have to look back over a year I'm afraid, not to be evasive but we just won't have that information," Shapps said. "It's much more complex than you're making it sound."

He said some impacts of the outbreak would not be known for a long time and that differences in the age and health profiles of nations, as well as population size and density, were among many factors that would have to be taken into account.

"You have to look at the whole picture and that information simply isn't available as yet," he said. "We shouldn't look at the raw data and jump to conclusions."

COMPARISONS "UNBELIEVABLY DIFFICULT"

The UK National Statistician, Ian Diamond, also cautioned against relying on any "league table" of worst-affected countries.

"I'm not saying that we're at the bottom of any potential league table, it's almost impossible to calculate a league table, but I'm not prepared to say that we're heading for the top," he said during an interview on BBC News.

Diamond, the head of the Office of National Statistics (ONS) which collates excess deaths numbers, said it was "unbelievably difficult" to make international comparisons.

He said the way Britain was counting and reporting its coronavirus-related deaths was the most transparent, because the ONS was including deaths where COVID-19 was mentioned on the death certificate even if the person had not been tested.

In some other countries, only people who had tested positive for the new coronavirus before they died are included in the official statistics.

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For over a decade Russia has been trying to create equivalents of the most famous American UAVs; Predator, Reaper and Avenger. All these UAVs have another thing in common, they were all developed and are manufactured the same firm; General Atomics. The Russian equivalents of these UAVs are the one ton Inokhodets, the five ton Altair/Altius-M and the 15 ton jet-powered Okhotnik (Hunter).

The Inokhodets have been flying for several years but the flight testing phase of development is still not over. This indicates some problems getting the Predator clone to work properly. The first version of the Russian Reaper-type UAV, the Altair, flew in 2016. That design needed a lot of changes that produced the six ton, twin-engine Altius-M. Russia appears more interested in its version of Reaper than its earlier Predator-type aircraft.

Russia decided it needed its own Predator and Reaper UAVs about a decade ago. At that point, the two originals had established impressive records. By 2011 the U.S. Air Force had decided to replace its MQ-1 Predators with MQ-9 Reapers. At that point, new Reapers cost about $6.2 million each. The price more than doubled, as sensors, fire control and communications gear were added. This is typical with combat aircraft, and that's what the air force considers the Reaper.

At the time the air force had over 60 Reapers in service. The air force wanted to buy another 250 Reapers before starting to replace MQ-9 with the MQ-X. Meanwhile, the last air force Predator was built in 2010. At that time the total air force fleet of Reapers and Predators consisted of nearly 250 UAVs. By 2020, the army and air force planned to have over a thousand of these large, armed, UAVs. That did not happen because most American troops were gone from Iraq and Afghanistan by 2014 and there was less demand for these UAVs and less procurement cash to pay for them.

Up until 2011 about 20 percent of the 500 air force and CIA (a major operator of UAVs over Pakistan, and other places) Predators and Reapers built or on order had been lost. But the troops couldn't get enough of this aircraft overhead, and in 2011 Predators and Reapers spent over 400,000 hours in the air over Iraq and (mostly) Afghanistan. That's compared to 300,000 hours in 2010, 185,000 hours in 2009 and 151,000 hours in 2008. It took 12 years of service (1995-2007, including development) for the Predator to reach its first 250,000 hours. It took another two years (2007-2009) to fly an additional 250,000 hours (500,000 total). It took less than a year to reach another 250,000 hour milestone (Spring 2010).

The Predator evolved into a family of three aircraft. The original is a one ton aircraft that is 8.7 meters (27 feet) long with a wingspan of 15.8 meters (49 feet). It has a hard point under each wing, which usually carry one (47 kg/107 pound) Hellfire each. Each hardpoint can also carry a Stinger air-to-air missile. Max speed of the Predator is 215 kilometers an hour, max cruising speed is 160 kilometers an hour. Max altitude is 8,000 m (25,000 feet). Typical sorties are 12-20 hours each.

In contrast, the Reaper is a 4.7 ton, 11.6 meters (36 foot) long aircraft with a 21.3 meters (66 foot) wingspan that looks like a larger Predator. It has six hardpoints and can carry 682 kg (1,500 pounds) of weapons. These include Hellfire missiles (up to eight), two Sidewinder or two AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, two Maverick missiles, two 227 kg (500 pound) smart bombs (laser or GPS guided.) Max speed is 400 kilometers an hour, and max endurance is 15 hours. The Reaper is considered a combat aircraft, to replace F-16s or A-10s on many missions.

The third Predator variation is the U.S. Army MQ-1C Gray Eagle. This one is a slightly larger Predator that weighs 1.5 tons, carries 136 kg (300 pounds) of sensors internally, and up to 227 kg of sensors or weapons externally. It has an endurance of up to 36 hours and a top speed of 270 kilometers an hour. Gray Eagle has a wingspan of 18 meters (56 feet) and is 9 meters (28 feet) long. The MQ-1C can land and take off automatically, and carry four Hellfire missiles (compared to two on the Predator). MQ-1C initially cost $8-25 million each in 2011, depending on the sensor package.

About the same time MQ-1C showed up, China was trying to export UAVs nearly identical to the Predator, but about 20 percent lighter. China eventually succeeded, big time, mainly because they had no restrictions on who they would sell to and provided their own version of the Hellfire missile.

The MQ-9 replacement, MQ-X, never got out of the design stage because budget cuts and improved sensors (multiple cameras on one aircraft) forced the air force to just "evolve" the MQ-9. That eventually meant adding electronic warfare and missile defense equipment so it could survive in areas where the enemy has better anti-aircraft weapons. There is also a need for better flight control software, and improved ability to handle cold weather operations (as in places like Afghanistan), where wing icing is a constant problem.

The air force worked hard to improve the reliability of its UAVs, and reduce the loss rate (an accident causing destruction, or at least a million dollars of damage), per 100,000 flight hours. As of 2010 the rate for its MQ-1 Predators was down to about 7. Although this is twice the rate of manned fighter aircraft (like the F-15 or F-16), and five times the rate of the old, but very reliable, B-52, it was about the same rate as single-engine private aircraft (8.2). Within five years the Predator loss rate was under 4 per 100,000 hours and continued to decline.

In 2008 the loss rate for the 1.1 ton MQ-1 was 30 per 100,000 hours. The 4.7 ton MQ-9 Reaper had a loss rate of about 15 in 2010, after four years in service. The MQ-9 made its first flight in 2001. The Predator has been in action since the late 1990s. The design and operation of the MQ-9 learned much from the experience of the MQ-1.

Unmanned aircraft have always had a much higher loss rate, which is largely the result of not having a pilot on board, and not doing all that could be done to compensate for that. Older model UAVs had much higher rates. The 1980s era RQ-2A Pioneer had an annual rate of up to 363 per 100,000 hours. Despite that, the RQ-2 proved very useful during the 1991 Gulf war.

Finally, there is the General Atomics large UAV that did not see wide acceptance. The development of the jet-propelled Avenger began after September 11, 2001. The first flight was supposed to have been in 2007 but technical problems kept coming up. Apparently it was worth the wait, as the U.S. Navy was impressed and particularly interested in using Avenger to replace the soon-to-be-retired EA-6Bs in their most dangerous attack missions. The air force liked the ability to arm Avenger with a smart bomb, including the 900 kg (2,000 pound) GBU-34 penetrator version.

Avenger looked like a larger jet-powered version of the five ton Reaper. Avenger is 13.2 meters (41 feet) long, with a 20.1 meter (66 foot) wingspan, and built to be stealthy. The V-shaped tail and smooth lines of the swept-wing aircraft will make it difficult to detect by radar. There is a humpbacked structure on top of the aircraft for the engine air intake. There is an internal bomb bay holding about a ton of weapons, sensors, or additional fuel to provide another two hours of flying time (in addition to the standard 20 hours endurance). The 4,800 pound thrust engine is designed to minimize the heat signature that sensors can pick up. Total payload is 1.36 tons (3,000 pounds) and total weight of the aircraft is nine tons. Cruising speed is 740 kilometers an hour. The Avenger is designed to fly high (up to 20,000 meters/60,000 feet) and cross oceans. Avenger took its first flight in early 2009. Until 2009 the Avenger didn't officially exist and was a "black" (secret) program. Avenger is, like Reaper, a combat UAV that will often carry weapons as well as sensors. Each Avenger costs about $15 million.

All this attention to stealth should be no surprise. General Atomics has a division devoted to building stealth features into aircraft. This includes the world's largest indoor radar cross-section testing facility. Despite its internal bomb bay, the Avenger was expected to be used primarily to carry ground surveillance radar, which could be mounted on the bottom of the aircraft in an aerodynamically smooth enclosure.

The U.S. Navy was interested in Avenger since the beginning of development. Thus the Avenger wings can be built to fold for use on carriers and have a tailhook needed for carrier landings. The Avenger uses landing gear from the F-5, an aircraft of the same weight class. The naval version came to be called the Sea Avenger. The navy did not buy Avenger and turned to new designs.

The navy, and several air forces, also considered using Avenger as an ELINT (electronic intelligence) aircraft. The ability to carry a ton of sensors and stay in the air for twenty hours per sortie has a lot of appeal for an aircraft that is already stealthy and doesn't carry a pilot. Moreover, the Avenger can perform ELINT missions entirely autonomously, making it more difficult to detect. General Atomics believes it can get the Avenger to operate (takeoff and land) from a carrier before any of the other contenders (mainly the 19 ton X-47). The Avenger weighs less than half as much and has an exemplary track record.

In 2011 the U.S. Air Force decided to take a shortcut in developing its next-generation tactical reconnaissance UAV (MQ-X) and simply adopt a beefed-up version of the existing Avenger ("Predator C"). This jet-powered aircraft was developed privately by General Atomics as its candidate for MQ-X. The air force bought one Avenger and sent it to Afghanistan. Several years of Avenger test flights were encouraging enough for the air force to adopt Avenger as the base design for MQ-X. This was supposed to lead to Avenger B which would probably be a little larger and more expensive than the original. The air force never revealed their wish list of changes for Avenger B and air force interest did not last as the air force decided to put off jet-powered UAV development. That did not last and the air force turned to the establishment of warplane manufacturers (Lockheed and Northrop Grumman) for stealthy, jet-powered UAVs. In 2016 Avenger was used, apparently by the CIA, in Syria to drop pamphlets. But since then there has been little to report other than the 2018 Russian announcement that it was designing its own version of Avenger. At this point, Russia may be paying more attention to China than the United States. China is a major exporter of Predator and Reaper clones and is also working on jet-propelled models. Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force is ending Reaper purchases at 337 aircraft because Reaper is considered too vulnerable in a conventional war. The Reaper replacement has not been selected yet. China continues to sell lots of Predator and Reaper clones, as are Israel, Russia and Turkey. Israel was the pioneer in this area and General Atomics was the only American firm to pay close attention and adopt Israeli UAV concepts. Israel has not yet put any jet-powered UAVs into service.
The teenagers were part of a large gathering around 3:30 a.m. in the 3700 block of West 13th Street, police said. A gray four-door sedan drove by and fired shots at the group. The party happened after Mayor Lori Lightfoot warned Saturday that we are never getting out of this if Chicagoans keep flouting COVID-19 stay-at-home orders by holding house parties.
New research led by University of South Australia has found that smokers who receive the medication varenicline tartrate combined with Quitline counseling following a period of hospitalization due to a tobacco-related illness are six times more likely to quit smoking than those who attempt to stop without support.

The world-first study led by UniSA's Associate Professor Kristin Carson-Chahhoud found that after two years, nearly 30 per cent of study participants were still smoke-free after the treatment, while 18 per cent of participants who had only received Quitline counseling during the same trial also sustained their abstinence.

According to Assoc Prof Carson-Chahhoud, the results prove that both treatment options are highly viable - compared to quitting without support which has a success rate of only three-to-five per cent - and should be implemented in hospitals immediately.

Not only did we confirm that the combination of varenicline tartrate and counseling offers smokers a very real chance of successfully quitting for good, it also demonstrates the safety and effectiveness of varenicline tartrate over a long period of time. This is the first trial of varenicline tartrate worldwide that evaluates long-term effectiveness of the medication with two-year follow-up, and the first study to evaluate the use of varenicline tartrate in a hospital setting among people with many co-morbidities, compared to other studies of the drug that have used primarily 'healthy' community volunteers. Given the success of the trial and the relative ease in which the treatment could be implemented, we hope our findings influence how smokers who are hospitalized are supported to quit." Associate Professor Kristin Carson-Chahhoud, UniSA

Varenicline works by blocking receptors in the brain that nicotine goes into meaning that people who smoke while using the medication don't get the rush and enjoyment they normally would from smoking. Because the receptors in the brain aren't getting that hit of nicotine from each cigarette smoked, the drug also decreases cravings or eliminates them entirely.

Based at the Australian Centre for Precision Health at UniSA, Assoc Prof Carson-Chahhoud says supporting people to quit smoking during hospital admissions is a massive and underutilized opportunity.

"Providing the right treatment and support for those hospitalized with tobacco-related illnesses would lead to long-term success in reducing smoking rates in our community," she says.

"Even minimal intervention like Quitline counseling - that starts with a simple phone call to get support - can make such a huge difference in helping a smoker successfully quit long-term.

"The health benefits of quitting are widely known - people who stop smoking have fewer hospital admissions, emergency department visits and GP visits, as well as improved quality of life.

"Ultimately we hope that this evidence will be enough to convince policy makers that having a dedicated quit smoking support officer based in hospitals is a very worthwhile investment that will pay long-term dividends."

Dr Carson-Chahhoud also hopes that varenicline tartrate combined with Quitline counseling will become standard practice among hospitalized smokers. "The hospital setting is a powerful time to help people in their quitting journeys for a number of reasons. Among people admitted because of a tobacco-related disease, it's usually something serious and can act as a wakeup call for people to put their health first," she says.

"It also takes them out of their usual routine and natural environment, where they are a captive audience and more willing to consider quitting smoking as part of their new post-illness routine. In addition, many patients have already had to stop 'cold turkey' for a few days while in hospital.

"Our study proves that with the right intervention, nearly a third of those admitted to hospital with smoking-related illness could be discharged and walk away already well on their way to never smoking again."

While the study was conducted with patients admitted to hospital, Assoc Prof Carson-Chahhoud notes that varenicline tartrate plus Quitline counseling is also a viable treatment option for outpatients.

"In the current pandemic of COVID-19, there has never been a better time to quit since the latest data coming out of China is showing that smokers are significantly more likely to get COVID-19, have a more severe case, need to be admitted to intensive care unit and die from the disease, compared to non-smokers," she says.

Assoc Prof Carson-Chahhoud first commenced work on the study during her Ph.D. at the University of Adelaide.
Mumbai, May 3 : A prayer meeting was held on Sunday for actor Rishi Kapoor, who passed away earlier this week after battling leukemia.

The prayer session was held at the late veteran actor's residence in Mumbai.

A picture is also doing the rounds on the internet in which Rishi Kapoor's wife Neetu Kapoor and son Ranbir Kapoor are seen sitting next to the former's photograph.

Ranbir is seen wearing a red tilak and saffron coloured turban. Rishi Kapoor's daughter Riddhima, who could not be in Mumbai on time to attend her father's last rites, reached the city on Saturday night. She travelled all the way from Delhi to Mumbai via road.

Rishi Kapoor breathed his last on April 30 at the HN Reliance Foundation Hospital in Mumbai.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 01:33:13|Editor: huaxia

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The White House is seen in a rainy day in Washington D.C., the United States on April 30, 2020. (Photo by Ting Shen/Xinhua)

"Weakening sovereign immunity to sue China could boomerang back."



NEW YORK, May 2 (Xinhua) -- A more aggressive stand adopted by some top U.S. administration officials against China on economic, diplomatic and scientific issues at the heart of the relationship between the world's first and second largest economies may backfire, reported The New York Times on Saturday.

"Along with lost opportunities to fight the (COVID-19) pandemic, climate change and other transnational threats, U.S. efforts to punish China could backfire badly," Jessica Chen Weiss, a professor of government at Cornell University, was quoted by the newspaper as saying. "Weakening sovereign immunity to sue China could boomerang back."

A staff member displays samples of the COVID-19 inactivated vaccine at Sinovac Biotech Ltd., in Beijing, capital of China, March 16, 2020. China has approved two COVID-19 inactivated vaccine candidates for clinical trials, according to the State Council joint prevention and control mechanism against the coronavirus Tuesday. (Xinhua/Zhang Yuwei)

China controls a vast supply of the masks and protective gear needed by American hospitals. "And if China develops a vaccine first, it will wield a powerful card, one that will bolster its global standing and give it leverage over the health of hundreds of millions of Americans," it reported.

China is likely to emerge from the recession caused by the pandemic faster than other nations, said the paper. "The United States - still reeling from the virus, with more than 1 million infected and more than 64,000 dead - will probably rely on economic activity in Asia to help prop up its own economy."

A worker is seen at a specialized robots production workshop at the Tangshan Hi-tech Industrial Development Zone in Tangshan, north China's Hebei Province, April 29, 2020. With strict novel coronavirus pandemic prevention measures in place, high-end equipment manufacturing companies at the zone have all resumed productions, and been busy working for orders. (Xinhua/Yang Shiyao)

The newspaper listed the executive order signed by U.S. President Donald Trump to stop the import of foreign equipment for power plants and transmission systems, the request by several agencies for the Federal Communication Commission to ban China Telecom Americas from domestic networks, as well as the support of some White House aides this week for Trump to issue another executive order to block a government pension fund from investing in Chinese companies, among others, as the recent actions or tendencies that have dampened the bilateral ties between China and the United States.

With COVID-19 lingering in the United States, "the Trump administration may feel cornered into taking enforcement actions against China, even on dubious grounds, to show how tough they are," explained Wendy Cutler, a vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute. 
Cindy Schultz/Times Union

DOVER  New York State Police from the Dover Plains barracks charged Daniel Laporte, 34, of Albany Saturday with predatory sexual assault against a child, a class A felony.

State Police said they were notified April 29 of a possible sexual assault against a child in Dover. Police, in coordination the Dutchess County Child Advocacy Center, allege Daniel Laporte sexually assaulted a child under the age of thirteen on multiple occasions.


Jennifer Lawrence once "peed herself" when Josh Hutcherson played a prank on her.

The pair starred together in the 'Hunger Games' movie series and loved springing jokes on one another, but one day the 27-year-old actor's gag left his co-star "terrified".

He told Cosmopolitan magazine: "My pranking days are behind me now but unfortunately, when we were shooting 'The Hunger Games', there was a very realistic life-size human recreation of one of the characters who had been stung by tracker jackers (giant wasps).

"We put it in the bathroom in Jen's trailer and waited to see what happened. She actually peed herself. Terrified."

Josh - who is in a relationship with Spanish actress Claudia Traisac - revealed he has attracted some devoted fans over the years, with one family even travelling 400 miles to visit him at Christmas.

He recalled: "I was at home in Kentucky one Christmas Eve and the doorbell rang. "It was two sisters who were about 12 years old. Their mum had driven them down from Chicago.

"I was having a family dinner with my grandparents.

On another occasion, the 'Future Man' actor was stunned to discover a fan who he had given his autograph to had had his name tattooed onto her arm.

He said: "Another time, one fan asked me if I could sign their arm with a sharpie and later I randomly saw them in the street and they showed me that they'd tattooed over my exact signature."

Meanwhile, Josh wishes he could teleport because it would make travelling much easier and quicker.

Asked his dream superpower, he said: "Teleporting. Being able to snap your fingers and arrive anywhere would be cool. "I could be like, 'Hey, I'm going to check out the pyramids in Egypt for a second."
In 1948, Thomas E. Dewey, the governor of New York and Republican nominee for president, decided that President Harry Trumans whistle stop tour was working. Dewey took to the rails himself and spoke to thousands of voters from the back of the train. At one stop in October the train lurched, and Dewey blurted out: Thats the first lunatic I have had for an engineer. He probably ought to be shot at sunrise.

Whether it was real anger or just a joke, the hot microphone exposed a candidate who was already thought to be an elitist. It was devastating and one of the reasons that President Truman defied the odds and won reelection.

There was a similar moment in a 1992 presidential debate when George H.W. Bush was caught glancing at his watch. Intended or not, he came across as bored or distracted. The moment impacted his campaign and helped elect Bill Clinton.

There are numerous other unforced errors that have impacted campaigns. President Ford mistakenly claimed that Poland was free of communist control when it was not. Mike Dukakis was asked if he would support the death penalty if his daughter was raped and murdered. Instead of righteous rage, he gave a cold, legal response to the question. This, combined with a preposterous photo of him looking befuddled in an Army tank, partially assured his demise.

When the time comes for negative ads in the fall, the Democrats will have plenty of options to choose from. A ban on Muslims, a botched hurricane response in Puerto Rico, children in cages at the border, obstruction of justice outlined in the Mueller Report, impeachment by the House of Representatives, hush money to an adult film star, pandering to dictators and alienating allies, and thousands of misleading or demonstrably false statements are just the tip of the iceberg of miscues that would be fatal to any other candidate.

The reality is, however, that it is the revealing slip of the tongue or the moment of truth that is most destructive.

President Trumps moment came when he was fumbling around for COVID-19 solutions and suggested that it might be possible to ingest disinfectants as a cure. At that moment, millions of Americans uttered a collective gasp. Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci, relegated to the sidelines at that moment, could not tell him: Drinking Clorox is fatal. Under no circumstances is that sound medical advice  especially cloaked in the authority of the presidency.

Some have already branded this the Trump Lysol Moment and it is not likely to go away.

In fact, it crystallized what most believe has been a terrible example of emergency preparedness and crisis management by a president. Reports continue to surface that the president was warned by his own Department of Health and Human Services to be prepared for an inevitable pandemic. We now know his daily intelligence briefings outlined the worldwide problem of COVID-19 in a dozen separate reports. The president either ignored them or simply did not read them. We also have a clear video record of him minimizing the threat -- China has this under control . . .The coronavirus would disappear like a miracle . . . We will go from 15 cases down to zero very quickly.

We have now confirmed over a million cases of the coronavirus in the country and the grim estimate is that more than 75,000 people will die.

Will this impact the election in November? Absolutely. This is not just about gross negligence; this is about a president who is more focused on scoring political points than easing a nations pain. Voters have soured on the Trump reality show and there will be a reckoning in the fall.

Does that mean that Democrats are rooting for the president to fail? Absolutely not. The best thing for all of us would be to go back to work. It would be great to see the unemployment numbers turn around and the stock market recover. The tremendous outpouring of civic pride and heroic actions by health care providers and first responders has been nothing short of magnificent. We can all take pride that, at its core, America is compassionate and resourceful.

After the Lysol Moment, even Republican groups emerged to eschew policies that are inconsistent at best and cruel at worst. Democrats, independents, and, yes, some Republicans have galvanized around Joe Biden and he now leads decisively in most of the battleground states.

It is true that some states and localities saw agitation to jump start the economy  regardless of the threat of a revived pandemic. It turns out that these spontaneous demonstrations were funded and organized by political groups with ties to the president or their own agenda.

The reality is that leadership and character matter. This is what will be on the ballot in November.

Mark S. Singel is a former Democratic Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania. He and Republican Charlie Gerow can be seen at 8:30 a.m. each Sunday on CBS21s Face the State.
One silver lining of the pandemic now unfolding around the world is that it could spell an end to the age of right-wing populism. With his handling of the coronavirus crisis, Donald Trump has single-handedly shown the dangers of entrusting the levers of state to narcissistic right-wing showmen.

According to polling numbers, he is not only on course to lose the elections, but may also flip the Senate in favour of the Democratic Party.

Democrats in Washington are already whispering about setting up an agenda for a post-Trump era. Even Republicans, sickened by Trumps missteps  such as recommending the injection of disinfectant to cure Covid-19  are looking ahead.

Social-distancing measures have thus far prevented the equivalent of a Yalta summit to plan out steps for the post-populist order, but in phone conversations and Zoom sessions, some key players have begun making plans. Wish lists include tightening campaign-finance rules, giving teeth to oversight rules that Trump has flouted, reforming immigration, and tightening laws requiring candidates to disclose their financial records.

The focus of the discussions is on inequality, corruption, oligarchy and understanding authoritarianism, says one Washington insider. Were doing some work understanding corruption on a global and national level as a threat.

Daron Acemoglu, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recently sketched out a series of possible political and economic reforms to address the structural defects in US politics and its economy that contributed to the rise of Trump, laying out a policy agenda to address rising inequality and political marginalisation.

In order to make such grand renovations, however, some major housekeeping matters must first be addressed.

Too many Republicans went along with the Trump agenda out of opportunistic and careerist aims. Lawmakers could raise the price for those who would consider enabling the next version of Trump by subpoenaing members of his inner circle. They could thus be compelled under oath to describe what roles they played in the various scandals that erupted during his presidency: from the dealings with Russia, to the handling of the hurricane in Puerto Rico, the locking up of migrant children in cages, and the seizure of aid destined for Democratic states during the coronavirus crisis.

Criminal behaviour could be prosecuted, malpractice subject to civil litigation, and unethical deeds publicly exposed.

Trump didnt come out of nowhere. In addition to the Republican Party, a constellation of media outlets, think tanks and financiers enabled his rise. In order to inoculate politics from populism, all of them should be publicly named and compelled to speak before Congress about their actions.

Of course, freedom of expression must not be breached or punished, but news outlets that endangered the public by broadcasting false news, such as the Fox News networks downplaying of the coronavirus threat even as its own employees stocked up on masks, could be in violation of federal regulations. Secretive collaboration between media outlets and Trump insiders should be exposed.

In addition, the charitable tax-exempt status of the think tanks, foundations and religious institutions peddling Trumps line and abetting his rise should be carefully reviewed.

Courts packed with right-wing judges will resist. Congressional impeachment of the judges, or the threat of it, could act as a check on any overreach.

In 2009, President Obama, hoping to build a consensus, opted to let bygones be bygones and declined to target the excesses and abuses of his predecessor, including the widespread use of torture by the CIA. In retrospect, some say, that was a disastrous strategic misstep; Republicans gave him nothing, and instead became the American equivalent of a far-right European party.

It was a huge mistake by the Obama administration not to seek accountability, says the Washington insider. I want the next president to hold people accountable.

Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan Show all 11 1 /11 Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan A demonstrator shouts next to two masked security guards at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan during a protest against stay-at-home orders AFP via Getty Images Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan Armed members of a milita group at the state Capitol building in Lansing, Michiga, during a protest against coronavirus lockdown measures REUTERS Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan A protester at the state Capitol in Lansing holds a sign comparing Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer to Adolf Hitler during a demonstration against coronavirus lockdown measures AFP via Getty Images Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan An armed protester takes part in a demonstation against lockdown measures at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan AP Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan A protester holds a sign saying 'Bill Gates is evil' at a demonstration against stay-at-home orders at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan. Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and a billionaire philanthropist, has warned of the dangers of viral pandemics AFP via Getty Images Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan Protesters take part in a demonstration at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan against stay-at-home orders AFP/Getty Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan A protester holds a pro-Trump sign at a demonstration against lockdown measures outside the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan AFP via Getty Images Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan Armed protesters take part in a demonstration at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan against lockdown measures during the coronavirus pandemic AFP via Getty Images Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan A protester holds a sign reading 'Every job is essential, get workers back to work safely now' during a demonstration at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan over lockdown measures AFP via Getty Images Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan A protester with a US flag painted on her face takes part in a demonstration at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan against lockdown measures during the coronavirus pandemic AFP via Getty Images Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan A protester wearing a Guy Fawkes mask holds up a sign reading 'Stay Free' during a demonstration against lockdown measures at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan AP

Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, is an old-school centrist who may be tempted to follow in Obamas footsteps and give Republicans a pass for enabling Trump. That would be a costly mistake. Deflating, deterring and dismantling the cult of Trump will be vital for the next president. The insider notes that if Trump leaves office in January, he wont vanish in a puff of smoke, but will continue to summon his supporters  including sycophants in Congress  to sabotage any reforms.

Hell still be on Twitter, he says. Hell still be calling in on Fox. Hell still have his cult.

Even if Trump again defies the polls and wins another four years, it will be worthwhile for his opponents to devise strategies to make sure someone like him never comes into power again, and then summon up the courage to ram through those provisions the next time there is an opportunity.

Defanging the most toxic elements of the Trumpian right would not only benefit the United States but could reverberate around the world. Humiliating exposure and punishing scrutiny of the misdeeds of Trump and his fellow travellers worldwide could serve as a deterrent against anyone who would buttress a charlatans rise to power.
The latest novel coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Sunday (this file is no longer being updated. Read the latest here.). Web links to longer stories if available.

10:11 p.m.: New Zealand reported no new cases of the coronavirus on Monday, marking a significant moment that indicated the countrys bold strategy of trying to eliminate the virus was working. It was the first time since the outbreak took hold in mid-March that the country has reported zero new cases.

Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said the figures were clearly encouraging and a cause for celebration but it wont be known until later this week if new cases continue to pop up in the community.

New Zealand closed its borders and imposed a strict monthlong lockdown after the outbreak began. The lockdown rules were eased a little last week to help reopen the economy, but many restrictions remain in place. Many businesses including most retail stores and sit-down restaurants  remain closed, most school children are learning from home, and people are required to maintain social distancing. New Zealand has reported nearly 1,500 cases of the virus and 20 deaths.

9:32 p.m.: Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations Chief Bobby Cameron says in a news release that the province was quick to take over local checkpoints, but his group is now getting calls that officers are stopping northerners from travelling south to get groceries.

Beauval Mayor Nick Daigneault says in the release that he was assured by the government that community members would be allowed to travel for groceries after their only grocery store was closed due to COVID-19.

Chief medical health officer Dr. Saqib Shahab expressed concern last week about an outbreak of COVID-19 in La Loche, a Dene village about 600 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon, and the Saskatchewan Health Authority has also declared an outbreak in Beauval.

The Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency said in an email that travel within the northern region is allowed for residents, but that people should not travel for food or medical care if its already available within their own community. The email conceded that not all checkpoints are staffed 24/7, but that they all have permanent signage.

Limiting non-essential travel helps prevent the spread of COVID-19 into communities throughout the province, the government email stated.

Shahab told a news conference last week that aggressive contact tracing was underway in La Loche and that between 50 to 100 health authority staff are set to be in the community for added support.

The virus is spreading through the community after someone who had been in northern Alberta brought it into the region. The public safety agency email noted checkpoints are staffed by the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency, along with provincial protection and response team members, which it says includes highway patrol and conservation officers. It also noted RCMP have increased patrols on roads in the Northern Saskatchewan Administration District.

Daigneault said his community had hired its own security companies to monitor the checkpoints, but said the government came in hard, fast and very disorganized.

The province says they want to work with us, but our input and efforts are being ignored, he said.

Cameron, meanwhile, suggested in the news release that the outbreaks could have been prevented if the province had heeded his organizations calls for checkpoints and border closures earlier.

8:53 p.m.: Anxious to spur an economic recovery without risking lives, President Donald Trump on Sunday insisted that you can satisfy both  see some states gradually lift lockdowns while also protecting people from the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 60,000 Americans.

The president, fielding questions from Americans in a virtual town hall from the Lincoln Memorial, acknowledged valid fears on both sides of the issue. Some people are worried about getting sick; others are reeling from lost jobs and livelihoods.

But while Trump increased his projection for the total U.S. death total to 80,000 or 90,000  up by more than 20,000 fatalities from what he had suggested just a few weeks ago  he struck a note of urgency to restart the nations economy, declaring we have to reopen our country.

We have to get it back open safely but as quickly as possible, Trump said.

As concerns mount about his reelection bid, Trump stuck to his relentlessly optimistic view of the nations ability to rebound soon.

It is all working out, Trump said. It is horrible to go through, but it is working out.

Many public health experts believe the nation cannot safely reopen fully until a vaccine is developed. Trump declared Sunday that he believed one could be available by years end.

U.S. public health officials have said a vaccine is probably a year to 18 months away. But Dr. Anthony Fauci said in late April that it is conceivable, if a vaccine is soon developed, that it could be in wide distribution as early as January.

Though the administrations handling of the pandemic, particularly its ability to conduct widespread testing, has come under fierce scrutiny, the president defended the response and said the nation was ready to begin reopening.

Ill tell you one thing. We did the right thing and I really believe we saved a million and a half lives, the president said. But he also broke with the assessment of his senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, saying it was too soon to say the federal government had overseen a success story.

Trumps impatience also flashed. While noting that states would go at their own pace in returning to normal, with ones harder hit by the coronavirus going slower, he said that some states, frankly, I think arent going fast enough. He singled out Virginia, which has a Democratic governor and legislature. And he urged the nations schools and universities to return to classes this fall.

6:30 p.m.: Australias population growth will likely halve next year as COVID-19 spurs a collapse in migration. Population Minister Alan Tudge said the decline would hurt the economy.

The Treasury estimates net overseas migration will fall 85% in 2020-2021. The population has been growing about 1.6% a year for the past decade, about 60% due to migration, Tudge said on ABC radio.

Kristina Keneally, the home affairs spokeswoman for the opposition Labor party, called for a reduction in migrant numbers after the pandemic, saying the countrys reliance on immigration to boost growth has hurt workers.

5:25 p.m.: Another resident has died of COVID-19 at Eatonville Care Centre in Etobicoke. The home says that due to a clerical error in how earlier numbers were reported, the total number of deaths at Eatonville remains 39.

Confirmed positive COVID-19 cases stand at 144 residents. Eatonville staff cases have remained unchanged at 101 confirmed positive cases, 61 negative cases, and 53 pending test results. We are pleased to report that the majority of these cases have passed the 14-day mark and most no longer have symptoms, the home said in a statement.

6:08 p.m.: A justice advocacy group says it wants prisoners at a federal institution in British Columbia ravaged by a COVID-19 outbreak to know there are people in the community fighting for their safety.

Meenakshi Mannoe of the Vancouver Prison Justice Day Committee says members were rallying outside Mission Institution Sunday and making noise from their cars or at a safe physical distance.

The committee is calling for the urgent care of all prisoners across Canada and the immediate release of detainees to ensure adequate physical distancing and quarantine measures. Inmates sentences should not include exposure to a potentially fatal respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, Mannoe said.

However we feel about the crimes people do, theyre not supposed to be subject to further punishment inside, she said.

We want to let them know were out here making noise and were calling for action from all levels of government and the Correctional Service of Canada to make sure people have safe living conditions.

The group is also calling for broader testing of all prisoners, and daily updates with details of the situation for their family members.

Mission Institution is experiencing the largest prison outbreak in Canada. The B.C. government said Saturday that 133 inmates and staff have tested positive for COVID-19.

Across Canada, 290 federal inmates have been infected, with 155 having recovered, according to federal figures released Saturday.

There were 41 active cases among correctional officers among a total of 84 who have tested positive since the pandemic began, the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers said Saturday.

Public Safety Minister Bill Blair said in a statement Sunday that the government knows correctional institutions face unique vulnerabilities during public health emergency.

The situation around COVID-19 is both challenging and rapidly evolving, and our response will continue to adapt as required, Blair said.

The Correctional Service of Canada said in a statement that its working to limit the spread of the virus at each of its prisons.

Inmates who show symptoms or test positive for COVID-19 are medically isolated and both staff and inmates are provided with masks and information about how to use them, it said. Enhanced cleaning protocols are in place, including disinfecting common areas and high-contact surfaces.

Every effort is made to provide inmates on medical isolation with as much time out of cell as possible while respecting strong infection and prevention principles in order to contain the spread of COVID-19, it said in an emailed statement.

The correctional service has also suspended visits, temporary absences unless medically necessary and all inter-regional and international transfers of inmates.

On April 25, the correctional service said all inmates at the medium-security Mission prison had been tested for the virus, although new cases continue to be identified.

Based on expert recommendations, the prison installed new handwashing stations, boosted hygiene supplies and now has nurses at the site around the clock and physician coverage every day.

These are unprecedented times and we are working diligently, and often around the clock, to prevent the spread of the virus. The situation around COVID-19 is both challenging and rapidly evolving and we continue to adapt our response and do everything in our power to keep our employees and inmates safe, the correctional service says in a statement.

4:30 p.m.: Toronto Public Health is changing how they will report COVID-19 cases to better align with the Province of Ontarios reporting schedule, according to a news statement released Sunday.

Therefore, the city said they are not releasing their latest numbers.

However, as of Saturday afternoon, there were 5,967 COVID-19 cases in Toronto.

Of the 5,967 cases, 5,366 were confirmed, 601 were probable, 375 people were hospitalized with 112 in intensive care units; 298 people in Toronto have died from COVID-19, according to the citys latest statistics.

On Saturday, the city received 73 complaints regarding the Civil Protection Act, with officers issuing six tickets. Since April 3, bylaw officers have issued 594 tickets.

The city received 26 complaints on Saturday regarding non-essential businesses remaining open. Since March 24, Municipal Licensing & Standards, as well as Toronto Public Health have issued 100 tickets and 215 notices to non-essential businesses, according to the press release.

4:29 p.m.: U.S. officials believe China covered up the extent of the coronavirus outbreak  and how contagious the disease is  to stock up on medical supplies needed to respond to it, intelligence documents show.

Chinese leaders intentionally concealed the severity of the pandemic from the world in early January, according to a four-page Department of Homeland Security report dated May 1 and obtained by The Associated Press. The revelation comes as the Trump administration has intensified its criticism of China, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo saying Sunday that China was responsible for the spread of disease and must be held accountable.

The sharper rhetoric against China coincides with administration critics saying the governments response to the virus was inadequate and slow. President Donald Trumps political opponents have accused the president and his administration of lashing out at China, a geopolitical foe but critical U.S. trade partner, in an attempt to deflect criticism at home.

The analysis states that, while downplaying the severity of the coronavirus, China increased imports and decreased exports of medical supplies. It attempted to cover up doing so by denying there were export restrictions and obfuscating and delaying provision of its trade data, the analysis states.

The report also says China held off informing the World Health Organization that the coronavirus was a contagion for much of January so it could order medical supplies from abroad  and that its imports of face masks and surgical gowns and gloves increased sharply.

Those conclusions are based on the 95% probability that Chinas changes in imports and export behaviour were not within normal range, according to the report.

Trump has speculated that China could have unleashed the coronavirus due to some kind of horrible mistake. His intelligence agencies say they are still examining a notion put forward by the president and aides that the pandemic may have resulted from an accident at a Chinese lab.

Speaking Sunday on ABCs This Week, Pompeo said he had no reason to believe that the virus was deliberately spread. But he added, Remember, China has a history of infecting the world, and they have a history of running substandard laboratories.

4:15 p.m.: Peru will lift restrictions on mining and other industries this month, the government said in a decree, as the worlds No. 2 copper producer begins to slowly lift lockdown measures.

Mining and metal work, along with tourism, are among industries and services that can restart this month under special safety measures, according to the decree. Measures to contain the pandemic led to an effective control of the outbreak, the government said.

3:47 p.m.: Provinces across the country are set to begin easing COVID-19 restrictions on Monday following a weekend in which thousands more cases of the respiratory illness were identified, hundreds more were reported dead and a much-ballyhooed made-in-Canada testing kit was recalled.

Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan are among those set to take another step out of lockdown by allowing the resumption of some economic and social activities that have been halted for than a month due to the pandemic.

Manitoba is poised to go the farthest by allowing museums, libraries and retail businesses  including restaurants  to reopen, albeit at half capacity. Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta are also letting non-essential medical activities, such as dentistry and physiotherapy, resume.

Ontario and Quebec arent going as far. Ontario is allowing a small number of mostly seasonal businesses to reopen while Quebec is easing the lockdown on most retail stores outside the Montreal area, which has been hit hard by COVID-19 over the past month and a half.

Yet unlike the other provinces, Quebecs plan to begin reopening comes as the province has shown little progress in curbing the illnesss spread, with another 1,800 positive cases and 183 deaths from the disease reported over the weekend.

Quebec Premier Francois Legault has previously defended plans to start reopening, noting most of the provinces deaths have been in long-term care homes and arguing the fight against COVID-19 is entirely different in those facilities.

Quebec officials also added more than 1,300 cases to Aprils count, saying those numbers werent originally included because of a technical problem. The province accounts for more than half of the Canadian cases of COVID-19, which includes more than 3,680 deaths.

Quebec Premier Francois Legault did not hold a briefing on Sunday, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other federal government officials sidestepped questions in Ottawa about the provinces plan to begin reopening even as more cases continue to be reported.

Those plans also include unlocking elementary schools and daycares across Quebec on May 11.

3:37 p.m.: Quebecs English-language school boards dont have the right to refuse to reopen their elementary schools, Education Minister Jean-Francois Roberge said Sunday on the eve of the provinces gradual economic relaunch.

Roberge said the government will decide when the school year resumes after a pause brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

English school boards dont have the legal power to push back the opening of school establishments, his office said in an email.

It is an exclusive competence of the government of Quebec.

Last week, the provinces English-language school boards association signalled to the minister that they would reopen if and when they believed the situation to be safe, regardless of the governments schedule.

While high schools are closed for the remainder of the school year, elementary schools and daycares outside Montreal are scheduled to reopen May 11, with those in the hard-hit city set to follow a week later.

On Sunday, Roberge made it clear that he expected school boards to respect the governments timeline.

It is up to public health experts to judge if the health conditions for a gradual return to class are met, not elected school officials, he said, noting that an extended confinement could have negative mental health consequences for students.

The government has said classes will be limited to 15 students, and no parent will be required to send their child if theyre not comfortable doing so.

Roberge added that health officials would not hesitate to push back the opening dates if the situation warrants.

2:35 p.m. Nova Scotia is reporting six more COVID-19 deaths at the Northwood long-term-care home in Halifax, the site of the majority of the provinces active cases. The death toll in the province is now at 37, with 31 of those at the non-profit facility. As of Sunday, Nova Scotia has 347 active cases of COVID-19, with 220 involving residents of Northwood.

1:25 p.m. Quebec is reporting 892 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, as well as 1,317 additional cases from April that were not previously included in the provincial tally. The province says those previous cases originated mostly from the Montreal, Laval and Monteregie areas, and were not counted due to a technical problem.

The province now has 31,865 cases and 2,205 deaths, the latter an increase of 69 over yesterday. Quebec says 7,258 people have recovered from the illness.

11:40 a.m. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the federal government is investing millions to boost online access to health services and to support a Vancouver biological companys research into treatment and prevention of COVID-19.

The government is spending $240 million to boost access to online health services, including mental-health support and virtual access to doctors for primary care.

Ottawa is also providing $175 million to AbCellera Biologics Inc., which Trudeau says has shown promising signs of progress in identifying antibodies that could be used create a treatment for COVID-19.

11:35 a.m. A rapid test developed for COVID-19 has experienced a setback.

Ottawas Spartan Bioscience says it is voluntarily recalling its COVID-19 product and performing additional studies after Health Canada expressed some concerns Friday.

Spartan says Health Canada was concerned about the efficacy of the proprietary swab for the testing product. The company says Health Canada had no concerns about the accuracy and analytical performance of the product.

Health Canada says the product is restricted to research use only until adequate evidence of clinical performance can be provided.

11:30 The daily numbers from Ontarios regional health units once again exhibited two distinct trends Sunday morning: The daily tally of new COVID-19 cases trended downward again despite a recent spike in testing, but the count of newly reported deaths remains stubbornly high.

As of 11 a.m. Sunday, the health units were reporting a total of 18,555 confirmed or probable cases of COVID-19, up 447 cases or a very low 2.5 per cent jump from the same time Saturday.

This slow growth was more notable following three consecutive days of very high levels of completed tests; days with big totals of new positive cases have tended to follow spikes in testing.

But this did not happen Sunday: In the morning, the province reported testing labs had processed a record 17,146 samples the previous day, but the apparent positive rate for these tests was the lowest the Star has counted, at slightly above 2.5 positive cases for every 100 tested samples.

Daily case growth has slowed greatly from the rapid increases seen in late March: In the second half of that month, the province saw an average daily growth of 20 per cent, a rate that doubled Ontarios case count about every four days. In the first half of April that rate slowed to an average of 9.5 per cent daily growth, or doubling about every eight days. The second half of the month average about 4 per cent growth, or a doubling time of around two-and-a-half weeks.

Meanwhile, even with case growth on a downward trajectory, the rate of new deaths in the province has not yet begun to fall. As of 11 a.m. Sunday, the health units were reporting a total of 1,293 COVID-19 deaths, up 47 from the same time Saturday, a total that is about in line with the daily average for the second half of April.

Still, any count of fatal cases in the province is clearly a significant undercount because they do not yet include hundreds of confirmed deaths in long-term-care facilities. It can be several days between when these deaths are first reported by the homes themselves and when the health units enter case details into the provinces health reporting system, or to their websites.

Still, because many health units publish tallies before reporting to Public Health Ontario, the Stars count is more current than the data the province puts out each morning.

Earlier Sunday, the province said 1,010 patients are now hospitalized with COVID-19, including 232 in intensive care, of whom 174 are on a ventilator  numbers that were up Sunday after several days of fluctuation. The province also says more than 12,000 patients who have tested positive for the coronavirus have now recovered from the disease  nearly two-thirds of the total infected.

The province says its data is accurate to 4 p.m. the previous day. The province also cautions its latest count of total deaths  1,216  may be incomplete or out of date due to delays in the reporting system, saying that in the event of a discrepancy, data reported by (the health units) should be considered the most up to date.

The Stars count, includes some patients reported as probable COVID-19 cases, meaning they have symptoms and contacts or travel history that indicate they very likely have the disease, but have not yet received a positive lab test.

8:30 a.m. India reports its biggest one-day jump in coronavirus cases as the country entered the 40th day of a nationwide lockdown.

Confirmed infections have neared the 40,000 mark and the death toll has reached 1,301, including 83 deaths in the last 24 hours, officials said. The 2,600 newly confirmed cases are a single-day high for the country.

7 a.m. Italians are counting down the hours until they regain some measures of personal freedom after two months of nationwide lockdown to contain Europes first outbreak of COVID-19. Starting Monday, parks and public gardens can reopen for strolling, jogging or biking. But people will have to stay a meter apart, ruling out picnics and playgrounds. Spain, Thailand and South Korea also continue to relax restrictions.

But while some countries are moving to lift restrictions as infections drop Russia is seeing a spike in cases. Russia reported more than 10,000 new cases of coronavirus infections on Sunday, the first time the countrys daily tally reached five figures.

More than half of the 10,633 new cases reported were in Moscow, where concern is rising about whether the capitals medical facilities will be overwhelmed. A Russian epidemiologist says the sharp increase in coronavirus infection cases reflects increased testing.

5 a.m.: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will resume his COVID-19 briefings to the nation today after taking a rare day off from the daily routine on Saturday.

With clear evidence of the pandemic curve flattening in Canada, some provinces have already begun relaxing certain lockdown restrictions, with others, including hardest hit Ontario and Quebec, set to do so on Monday.

4 a.m.: Quebec still has the most confirmed and presumptive cases of COVID-19 in Canada. Here are the numbers by province and territory: Quebec: 29,656 confirmed (including 2,136 deaths, 6,965 resolved); Ontario: 18,106 confirmed (including 1,246 deaths, 11,390 resolved); Alberta: 5,670 confirmed (including 94 deaths, 2,359 resolved); British Columbia: 2,171 confirmed (including 114 deaths, 1,376 resolved); Nova Scotia: 963 confirmed (including 31 deaths, 609 resolved); Saskatchewan: 421 confirmed (including 6 deaths, 302 resolved); Manitoba: 269 confirmed (including six deaths, 236 resolved), 11 presumptive; Newfoundland and Labrador: 259 confirmed (including 3 deaths, 231 resolved); New Brunswick: 118 confirmed (including 118 resolved); Prince Edward Island: 27 confirmed (including 24 resolved); Yukon: 11 confirmed (including 11 resolved); Northwest Territories: 5 confirmed (including 5 resolved); Nunavut: one confirmed

Saturday 7:08 p.m.: The total number of COVID-19 related deaths at Hawthorne Place Care Centre has risen to 23, according to executive director Gale Coburn.

In a media statement released Saturday, Coburn said 41 residents and 78 staff have COVID-19 confirmed cases.

Toronto Public Health has cleared three Hawthorne Place staff members who previously tested positive for the virus. Coburn said they are returning to work this week.

I am so proud of each of our returning staff for their dedication and passion when it comes to our residents care, he said.

In addition to the deaths reported at the Hawthorne Place Care Centre, a health care worker at Downsview Long Term Care died Saturday. Three front-line workers in the GTA have died in the span of three weeks due to COVID-19.

Saturday 5:15 p.m.: As of Saturday afternoon, there are 5,967 COVID-19 cases in Toronto, according to a news statement released by the city.

Of the 5,967 cases, 5,366 are confirmed, 601 are probable, 375 people are hospitalized with 112 are in intensive care units and 298 people in Toronto have died.

On Friday, the city received 116 complaints regarding the Civil Protection Act, with officers issuing one ticket. Since April 3, bylaw officers have issued 588 tickets.

The city received 43 complaints on Friday regarding non-essential businesses remaining open. Since March 24, Municipal Licensing & Standards, as well as Toronto Public Health have issued 99 tickets and 210 notices to non-essential businesses, according to the press release.

Correction - May 4, 2020: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly said AbCellera Biologics Inc., has shown promising signs of progress in identifying antibodies that could be used to create a vaccine or a treatment for COVID-19. In fact, the company is developing a treatment, not a vaccine.

Read more about:
Eight special trains carrying



stranded people, including migrant labourers, tourists and pilgrims, left Gujarat for different destinations in Odisha and Uttar Pradesh in two days, a senior official said on Sunday.

While four trains left on Saturday, as many others started their journey on Sunday, he said.

Apart from them, two more trains are scheduled to leave late night on Sunday, the official said.

"Four trains- two each from Ahmedabad and Surat- left on Saturday for places in Uttar Pradesh and Odisha. Four other trains carried passengers from Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara and Palanpur on Sunday for those two states. Two more special trains will leave late tonight," Additional Chief Secretary Vipul Mittra, said.

These ten trains will carry around 9,500 passengers to their destinations in Odisha and Uttar Pradesh, from where the state governments will make further arrangement for them, he said.

The Gujarat government has appointed Mittra as the nodal officer to co-ordinate with the Railways and respective state governments for the movement of stranded migrant workers and other passengers in special trains.

"Since yesterday, we have been constantly coordinating with the railways and the state governments to streamline the movement of labourers to their home states. Trains are being run at half their capacity to maintain social distance norms," he said.

According to him, in order to avoid unnecessary crowding at the stations, the district collectors have been asked to inform the labourers in advance that they should not ask other unregistered persons to accompany them.

All the passengers were screened before the journey to ensure that only asymptomatic persons board the trains, he said.

"District collectors are working out lists of people to be shifted over the next seven days. The host states are being given the entire list and phone numbers of the travelling passengers well in advance to enable them to arrange for further logistics on arrival," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
[Editors note: Phay Siphan is the spokesman for the Cambodian government. On Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index, Cambodia ranks 144 out of 178. Ahead of the international press freedom day, VOA Khmers Aun Chhengpor sat down with Siphan to talk about reporting on corruption, independent journalism, and professionalism.] VOA: Is there a free press in Cambodia? Phay Siphan: Cambodia has taken a big step toward what we call a free press regime in the context of an open and democratic nation where we need journalists who have freedom. But at the same time, journalists need to be responsible for what they speak and write. VOA: Are reporters free to report on whatever topic they want? Phay Siphan: Yes. Whatever you want to report, do it. But it must be built on the basis of truth, and be neither terrifying, nor create a misunderstanding that leads to uprising. Journalists are neither political activists nor do they belong to any political party. They only need to be professional. Journalists need to report accurately and comprehensively, not perform the role of a political activist. VOA: Can journalists report on sensitive issues, including corruption and illegal logging? Phay Siphan:I observe that journalists  if they are professional  can report on those issues, because there is no reason [not to], as the government respects free press; we have zero pre-publication censorship. At the same time, we urge [journalists] to respect privacy in order to avoid accusation of [violating] privacy. For example, if your reporting involves mentioning exact names and displaying portrait-photographs of the person, they have to be able to respond to defend their reputation. Thats because journalists are not judiciary judges. VOA: Is there a no-go zone at any level of the cabinet that cannot be reported by journalists or that is immune to criticism or scrutiny? Phay Siphan: I dont think there is any boundary, as an upcoming Law on Access to Information is being finalized by the Information Ministry. This will assist investigations.

VOA: Recently, Radio Free Asia did two investigations. First, they found that the Energy Ministrys Secretary of State Ith Prang held vast amounts of property in Florida and Georgia in the U.S. Second, they found a property purchase in the early 2000s by Prime Minister Hun Sens children. In both pieces, they raise questions about a balance between the value of the properties in question and the salaries that government employees receive in Cambodia. Is this kind of investigation available in Cambodia? Phay Siphan: I think that the content of their report is one thing  but we have to question whether they did any investigation into where the money came from. We see that their reporting seems to be directed toward an accusation that those [properties] were financed by corrupted money. That is what they [the RFA journalists] want to tell. But I know Ith Prang, his family, and many other people. Even my own children own millions in property not because they are corrupt, but because the economy of Cambodia is booming in areas like real estate. It is not related to political or public affairs, but a private matter. They earn money through a clean channel by investing in real estates and other kinds of businesses. And, for the money transferred to buy properties abroad, foreign embassies of the destination shall make their own scrutiny on the background of the money before they allow the transaction. Some journalists commit the act of envy, and, in some cases, it leads to insults and allegation. VOA: You talk about the absence of pre-publication censorship. How about self-censorship among journalists? Phay Siphan: I have never been a journalist so I do not know. VOA: Do you think self-censorship exists? Phay Siphan: How can I think whether it exists or not when I am not a reporter? But regarding self-censorship, I dont think reporters would back down [from any topic] if they are professional. If you are scared of reporting this and that, you are not a journalist. But I encourage that before you and other journalists publish anything, you have to check whether your wording and tone looks like a news report or a court verdict. VOA: Do you know if journalists can do investigative journalism here in Cambodia? Phay Siphan: I see that some local journalists do that for the foreign press. But those investigations are not correct in content. The content runs counter to the reality in Cambodia. It only touches on the surface with little news value. Some investigations are entirely wrong or emotion-driven, moving beyond bias, and journalists become activists. Of course, you can report what you see or what you observe. But you have to make sure you are not accused of becoming a judge or an opposition activist. The government, however, does not hate journalists. If we were, there would be no need for spokespersons to work or for this press affairs unit to exist at all.
The ongoing saga between Jim Thorpe Borough and the Reading & Northern Railroads passenger train ride in town has a new chapter, and its off the rails once again.

The (Lehighton) Times-News reported Saturday that the boroughs relationship with the railroads Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway had hit another standstill, according to a letter sent to borough residents from Jim Thorpe Borough Council.

Describing itself as primarily a freight company, Reading & Northern said last October it was ceasing the popular rides because it did not want to pay the boroughs amusement tax. Borough officials in November agreed to cancel a lawsuit seeking nearly $100,000 in back taxes, and the railroad operator announced in February it had resolved its tax dispute with the borough and was resuming trips.

According to the Times-News, councils letter said it had drafted an ordinance that would exempt the popular railway from amusement taxes, stating: Recently we had been told by the railroad that they do not accept the proposed ordinance change and will not restart the railroad without a binding written agreement that the railroad does not owe the amusement tax, has never owed the amusement tax and will never owe the amusement tax.

The borough cant legally agree to these terms, The Times-News quotes from the letter.

Reading & Northern Railroad did not immediately return a call to the newspaper for comment. Efforts by lehighvalleylive.com on Saturday to reach Jim Thorpes borough council president were not immediately successful.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to Lehighvalleylive.com.

Connor Lagore may be reached at clagore@njadvancemedia.com.
A member of the Nasarawa State House of Assembly, representing Nasarawa central, Mr. Sule Adamu, has died of coronavirus, The PUNCH reports.

Governor Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa state confirmed this on Sunday while briefing newsmen on the update of COVID-19 pandemic in the state.

He said the states House of Assembly would also be shut down and all the state lawmakers be quarantined to contain the spread of the virus in the state.

Meanwhile, the Emir of Kaura-Namoda in Zamfara State, Alhaji Mohammed Ahmad Asha, died in the early hours of Sunday.

He was said to have died of suspected coronavirus-related complications.

The Emir, according to the Publicity Secretary for the Control and Prevention of COVID-19 in the state, Alhaji Mustafa Jafaru Kaura, had been in isolation at the Yariman Bakura Specialist Hospital, Gusau three days ago.

Mustafa stressed that his blood sample had been sent to Abuja for the COVID-19 test, explaining, however, that the result is still being awaited.

Details later.
In the not too distant future, 10 luxurious homes will occupy a picturesque hilltop within Mexicos luxurious Punta Mita resort.

Known as Las Vistas Estates, the homes will range in price from $2.3 to $2.85 million. Theyll be perched atop the Careyeras hillside, framing picturesque views of Banderas Bay and the Pacific Ocean.

Youre at the top of it all in Punta Mita in Las Vistas Estates, with home sites ranging from just over a half and acre to over an acre, there is amble space to build your dream home, said Brendan Wood sales director of Punta Mita. The master developer, in line with the low density make up of Punta Mitas master plan carefully set each lot not to affect the natural ravines of Careyeros mountain and keeping optimal viewscapes.

Las Vistas Estates is the first phase of a master-planned resort community. These 10 residences offer a chance to get in at the very beginning. Buyers will have opportunities to customize their homes with luxurious fits and finishes, while Wood promises jaw-dropping views from every lot.

Its Punta Mitas version of Pacific Heights, soaking up the best views of the Punta Mita peninsula, Sierra Madre mountains, and year-round panoramic sunrise and sunset views, caped off nightly with the best natural light show around, the fire ball setting into the ocean.

More Information Details Address: Las Vistas Estates, Punta Mita, Mexico. Price: $2.3 million to $2.85 million. Features: Ten luxurious homes within the Punta Mita Resort, known collectively as Las Vistas Estates, are available for sale. Lots range in size from roughly half an acre to more than an acre. Perched atop the Careyeras hillside, the homes will frame views of the Pacific Ocean and Banderas Bay. See More Collapse

Initial examples of architectural styles indicate the multilevel homes will cascade down the hillside, offering grand view terraces and expansive outdoor spaces.

Multiple lots within the enclave will boast more than 200 feet of frontage space. The largest lot, estate four, a watering bucket-shaped plot along the southern border of the community, occupies 1.04 acres and allows its owner to construct up to 15,838 square feet of living space.

Encircled by nearly 10 miles of Pacific Ocean and home to more than a dozen luxury communities, Punta Mita has long been a destination for those looking to live it up south of the border.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

If anything stands out to Woods, its the views that Las Vistas Estates will enjoy.

Many people dont realize the natural beauty of this region when they visit Punta Mita and the coast of Riviera Nayarit, he said. Theres the Sierra Madre Mountain Range leading right into the Pacific Ocean, island formations just outside one of the largest bays on the Pacific Coast, the natural convergence of the end of the Sea of Cortez, open Pacific Ocean, and Bay of Banderas  all within plane sight of Las Vistas Estates.

Learn more at www.puntamita.com.

Contact: Punta Mita Properties at USA, 1-888-647-0979, pminfo@puntamitaproperties.net.
Remdesivir is an investigational antiviral drug. According to early clinical data, it can help Covid-19 patients recover faster. The experimental antiviral, which was recently approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) for emergency use authorisation in the US, is created by pharmaceutical firm Gilead Sciences which is headquartered in California, US, with operations in over 30 countries.

The United States Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) describes Remdesivir as a nucleoside ribonucleic acid (RNA) polymerase inhibitor.

The data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery, Anthony Fauci, the top US epidemiologist who oversaw the study, told reporters at the White House as reported by news agency AFP. However, he added that the experimental drug is not a miracle cure.

The drug was first developed to treat Ebola and showed early promise in a primate study in 2016.

In February, the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) announced working with remdesivir to tackle Covid-19.

Also read: US okays remdesivir for emergency Covid-19 use

How does it work?

In a trial, evaluating 5-day and 10-day dosing durations of the drug remdesivir in coronavirus patients, it was found that the drug achieved improvement in patients with a severe manifestation of Covid-19 .

The effectiveness of the drug was measured in terms of clinical improvement reported in patients ranging from improvement in breathing, increased level of oxygen support to hospital discharge.

Nearly 50% of patients in the 5-day treatment showed clinical improvement in 10 days. More than half of patients in two treatment groups of the clinical trial were discharged from the hospital by Day 14. The trial was conducted by Gilead Sciences, Inc.

The availability

Remdesivir has already been given to patients around the world, both in clinical trials and outside. Gilead has been responding to compassionate use requests for emergency access. The company is also looking into potentially developing an inhaled formulation, but hasnt given a timeline.

The US FDA has already issued an emergency use authorisation which will expand its use further, before it gets a formal approval.

The drug is complex to manufacture and is administered via injection, rather than a pill.

(With inputs from AFP, Gilead Sciences, US FDA)
For us in Ogun state, the extension will now end on Sunday, 9th May, that is, taking into consideration the initial one week of grace granted us by Mr. President, he said.
Prabhu Chawla By

Power is a beast with an insatiable appetite. The economy is its pabulum. As the Made in China virus rampages through the world, upending high tables and roasting economies from the west to the east, two mighty Asian nations seem destined to pick up the spoils. China and India, both traditional enemies and economic powerhouses, are currently corona strickenone more, the other less. COVID-19 has paralysed the money machines of Europe, Britain and America, though Asia seems to be riding the curve. The final economic outcome of the battle could be decided by the two powers left standing: the Indian elephant and the Chinese dragon.

Chinas $13 trillion wallet could shrink more than the American economy, which is expected to shrink by almost one third of its $ 21 trillion GDP. Germany and Japan are sneezing badly. India, the fifth largest nation in terms of GDP with around $2.8 trillion, is better placed not only to absorb the COVID-19 shock but become an attractive and profitable ecosystem for commerce. The Wuhan virus and its fatal fallout have raised apprehension among opportunistic multinationals who were taking full advantage of Chinas prison labour and sweatshops. They are now looking for safe investment destinations. The authoritarian Communist dragon, flamboyantly fierce, projecting military might (though PLA hasnt fought an all-out battle since its inception) and practicing rogue diplomacy has exported its image of a corporate treasure trove.

The majestically slow moving Indian elephant is the product of centuries of karmic deliberation, percolates every aspect of life even today. Sensing the Chinese crisis, PM Narendra Modi as the mahout of Indian power has decided that slow and steady wins the race. China, after North Korea, is known as the most inward looking nation. Modi urged pampered Indian capitalists to look outward for inviting MNCs leaving China to bring their wealth to the elephants stable. The Chinese economy has started to bleed. First mover Japan announced a $2 billion incentive package for its companies to move out of China. So did the US and the European companies. The virus is just a catalyst: the exodus is triggered by the fear that China would use its foreign exchange reserves to take over mega corporations devastated by the stock market.

By controlling almost 50 percent of the supply chain of global manufacturing, Beijing can bring global economy to its knees. With the second largest economy, it has a massive domestic market which every global corp would like to capture. Corona changed this monetary mythology. The elephant is better placed with a bigger market and better legal transparency. It is fluent in the global language of commerce. The chimera of Chinas military invincibility was destroyed in 1979 by Vietnam, which routed the 200,000 strong PLA. China won the 1962 war because of the gaps in Indias defence. As the elephant got bigger and surer, the dragon encouraged its entrepreneurs to become global capitalists, but remained comrades at home. It used financial clout to infiltrate Western systems from media to diplomacy. While America influenced international economic policy through business schools, China used its trade dollars. Even in India, the Chinese control digital payment portals. They have invested enormously in Indian infrastructure. They even helped build the Statute of Unity.

With such massive penetration, India may find it difficult to offer an attractive entry to businesses leaving China. According to media reports, less than half a dozen foreign companies have moved to India. The Indian governments struggle to contain COVID-19 seems to have hampered its efforts to woo foreign investment. However, Yogi Adityanath took the lead by inviting over 100 MNCs to invest in Uttar Pradesh; he offered almost instant entry with single window clearances for new projects. Indias challenge is to replace Chinas economic charisma. Modi alone cant be the investment magnet. His instruments and allies in governance are failing him. Despite a cleaner government, India is still the most difficult place to start a new business, taking over three weeks to complete all procedures as against OECD average of 12 days. A business entity has to pay over 30 taxes and other charges even after GST. Settling legal disputes takes at least five years.

Above all, the bureaucracy, instead of shedding its control, has further expanded its vice-like grip over decision making, staying out of sync with Modis new and innovating style of thinking. Global investors were ecstatic when he promised Minimum Government and Maximum Governance. Slowed down by pressing issues and elections, he is unable to control bureaucratic bloating. As someone used to leading from the front, he has converted his office into the engine that runs the nation. Never before has a PMO had cabinet rank officers who deal with Union Ministers as equals. Most ministries and their officers have used the PMO as an excuse to hold up files. Even as India effectively tries to contain Corona, the number of notifications and subsequent clarifications indicate the hidden hand of insensitive bureaucracy. Instead of minimum government, the number of babus, offices, personal staff and perks has grown exponentially.

More and more retired civil servants, defence officials and politicians are getting irrelevant plum posts. There are more Commissions, Tribunals, Expert Groups and Advisory Councils today, than a decade ago. According to official figures, India spends over `1.70 lakh crore in salaries for its 33 lakh employees. It has a top-heavy establishment with a multitude of mantris, mandarins and chairpersons heading statutory and informal outfits. Over `1,000 crore was spent to build swanky houses for senior civil servants. New offices have come up to accommodate them. According to an unofficial estimate, Central government offices and employees occupy space larger than the states of Nagaland or Mizoram.

The bureaucracy has framed rules only to promote red tape and create roadblocks. Some Union ministers hold charge of multiple departments. Each Cabinet minister is entitled to have 12 personal staff. Three ministries together have 36 officials from peons to private secretaries to keep files moving between the ministers own desks. In spite of the political and economic reformative changes, babudoms clout has only grown.

China, on the other hand, is ruthless in imposing the leaders will over bureaucrats, even using extreme measures to end corporate corruption. Even celebrities and billionaires arent spared of the States wrath when the mandate of conformity is compromised. The virus has weakened the formidable dragon, official secrecy notwithstanding. The time has come now for the elephants trumpet to resonate around the world. Its both the sound of welcoming and the sound of battle to mark the rise of a new global economy.

The author can be contacted at prabhuchawla@newindianexpress.com. Follow him on Twitter @PrabhuChawla
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday that there was 'enormous evidence' that the coronavirus pandemic originated in a laboratory in Wuhan.

'There's enormous evidence that that's where this began. We've said from the beginning that this was a virus that originated in Wuhan, China,' Pompeo said on ABC's This Week.

'We took a lot of grief for that from the outset. But I think the whole world can see now. Remember, China has a history of infecting the world, and they have a history of running substandard laboratories,' he added.

Experts believe the virus started spreading as early as February in the United States before it forced states to issue lockdown directives for millions of Americans beginning in mid-March.

There are more than 1.1 million confirmed coronavirus cases in the US with at least 68,000 deaths.

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US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (right) says there is 'enormous evidence' that the new coronavirus originated in a lab in Wuhan, China

'We've said from the beginning that this was a virus that originated in Wuhan, China,' Pompeo said. 'We took a lot of grief for that from the outset. Remember, China has a history of infecting the world, and they have a history of running substandard laboratories,' he added

'These are not the first times that we've had a world exposed to viruses as a result of failures in a Chinese lab,' Pompeo said.

Pompeo, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said he agreed with a statement Thursday from the US intelligence community in which it concurred 'with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not man-made or genetically modified'.

President Donald Trump has been increasingly critical of China's role in the pandemic, which has infected nearly 3.5 million people and killed more than 240,000 around the world.

He has insisted that Beijing recklessly concealed important information about the outbreak and demanded that Beijing be held 'accountable'.

Trump has reportedly tasked US spies to find out more about the origins of the virus, first blamed on a Wuhan market selling exotic animals like bats, but now thought possibly to be from a virus research laboratory nearby.

Last week, Trump claimed that he had seen evidence that coronavirus started in the Wuhan virology laboratory and warned he could impose tariffs of $1trillion on China in retribution for the pandemic.

'Yes I have. Yes I have,' Trump said when asked if he had seen proof the virus originated in the Wuhan Institute of Technology.

The lab is located near a wet market that has been identified as the likely epicenter of the outbreak that took place late last year.

However, the president would not divulge what the evidence was that confirmed his suspicions, when asked by a reporter.

'I can't tell you that. I am not allowed to tell you that,' he responded.

President Donald Trump has reportedly tasked US spies to find out more about the origins of the virus, first blamed on a Wuhan market selling exotic animals like bats, but now thought possibly to be from a virus research laboratory nearby

On Saturday, Chinese health authorities said two new coronavirus cases were confirmed, continuing a downward trend since the government took steps to cut the number of people arriving from overseas

Pompeo said early Chinese efforts to downplay the coronavirus amounted to 'a classic Communist disinformation effort. That created enormous risk'.

'China behaved like authoritarian regimes do, attempted to conceal and hide and confuse. It employed the World Health Organization as a tool to do the same.'

'This is an ongoing threat, an ongoing pandemic,' Pompeo said. 'The Chinese Communist Party continues to block access to the Western world, the worlds best scientists, to figure out exactly what happened.'

While highly critical of China's handling of the matter, Pompeo declined to say whether he thought the virus had been intentionally released.

On Saturday, Chinese health authorities said two new coronavirus cases were confirmed, continuing a downward trend since the government took steps to cut the number of people arriving from overseas.

One new case was in the inland Shanxi province, west of Beijing, and the other was an imported one in Shanghai.

China's official confirmed case count stands at 82,877. Most of the patients have recovered and been discharged from hospitals.

The country reported no new deaths Saturday and has recorded just one in the past two weeks. China's official death toll has reached 4,633.

The government has blocked virtually all foreigners from entering the country and sharply curtailed the number of international flights, making it difficult for Chinese citizens to return from overseas too.
Church sues Ill. governor over stay-at-home order, accuses state of discriminatory hostility

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A congregation in Illinois has filed a lawsuit against the governor and local officials, claiming that their orders to stop in-person worship conveyed discriminatory hostility to churches.

The Beloved Church of Lena and Pastor Stephen Cassell filed the complaint on Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Rockford.

Beloved Church plans to hold in-person worship on Sunday, despite being told by officials in the past that they are not allowed to hold services during the coronavirus shutdown.

The suit claims that Gov. Jay Pritzker and officials with Lena and Stephenson County unlawfully declared houses of worship non-essential when enacting stay-at-home orders.

On the eve of Easter, the holiest day on the Christian calendar, Pritzker expressly prohibited even no-contact, drive-in services in Illinois church parking lots. At the same time, he declared a laundry list of businesses to be essential, from liquor stores to lawyers to landscapers, the complaint says.

[Pritzker] has flagrantly violated the fundamental religious liberties of Illinoisans, in violation of the First Amendments Free Exercise clause and parallel provisions of the Illinois Constitution and statute.

The church also took issue with the governors reported intentions to extend a strict stay-at-home order for the state until the end of May, if not longer.

Defendants have no compelling justification for their discriminatory treatment of churches and pastors and people of faith, nor have they attempted in any way to tailor their regulations to the least restrictive means necessary to meet any arguable compelling interest, the church argued.

Plaintiffs seek temporary and permanent injunctive relief against Pritzkers orders shuttering their church, church ministries, and pastoral activities, as illegal and unconstitutional on their face and as applied to Plaintiffs.

Beloved Church and Cassell are being represented by the Thomas More Society, a conservative law firm based in Chicago.

The spiritual well-being of the people of Illinois is just as important as their temporal well-being during these dark times, said Society Vice President and Senior Counsel Peter Breen in a statement released Thursday.

Keeping liquor stores open but indefinitely shutting down churches and religious ministries violates our constitution and our most basic liberties. If liquor stores are essential, so are churches.

As states issue shutdown orders for gatherings of more than 10 people, much debate and litigation has centered on whether houses of worship should be exempted.

The vast majority of churches in the United States have agreed to shut down in-person services to help curb the spread of COVID-19, with many switching to online worship.

Some churches have argued that states cannot lawfully order them to shut down, and they continue to hold services, often with social distancing measures put in place.

In March, several members of an Illinois-based Pentecostal church fell ill after a worship service, with many testing positive for the coronavirus.

The Life Church of Glenview reported at the time that over 40 attendees of a March 15 service became sick, with several testing positive for COVID-19.

They all havent tested but whoever gets a test done ends up being positive, and we all have the same symptoms, wrote Layna LoCascio, wife of the pastor of the Glenview church, in a Facebook post at the time.

Its just not easy. Its especially not easy when youre a leader and a pastor of a precious church and we all got infected together.
Rebecca Judd has no time for so-called 'anti-appers' who refuse to download the COVIDSafe contact-tracing app due to privacy concerns.

On Friday, the model wife of AFL legend Chris Judd shared a powerful message on Instagram about the importance of the app, which has been downloaded by more than four million Australians since its launch on April 26.

She made two compelling arguments as to why her followers should register for the app in spite of fears over what might happen to their data.

Taking a stand: Rebecca Judd (pictured) has no time for so-called 'anti-appers' who refuse to download the COVIDSafe contact-tracing app due to privacy concerns

Firstly, she stated that the app isn't permanently installed on users' phones and can be deleted after the pandemic is over.

Secondly - and this is perhaps the most persuasive argument of all in favour of downloading - she pointed out that other websites and apps have far more intrusive access to personal data than the government-developed COVIDSafe.

She wrote: 'Just download the bloody app, people. You can delete it later.

'Instagram, Facebook, Google etc know far more about you than the COVIDSafe app. Download it so we can all get back to business, school, seeing friends and family etc.'

Soapbox: On Friday, the wife of AFL legend Chris Judd (pictured together with their children, Oscar, Billie, Tom and Darcy) shared a powerful message on Instagram about the importance of the app, which has been downloaded by four million Australians since its launch on April 26

Valid points: 'Just download the app, people. You can delete it later,' she wrote. 'Instagram, Facebook, Google etc know far more about you than the COVIDSafe app. Download it so we can all get back to business, school, seeing friends and family etc'

It comes after Rebecca spoke with technology expert Trevor Long on KIIS FM's 3pm Pick-Up last Monday about privacy fears surrounding the COVIDSafe app.

Mr Long said: 'It's going to keep us all safe and it's going to end this lockdown for us.

'The app is completely safe to use. It is not tracking your location. In no way is it sharing information with the government in real time.'

Advice: Firstly, she stated that the app isn't permanently installed on users' phones and can be deleted after the pandemic is over. Pictured: a demonstration of the COVIDSafe app as seen at Parliament House in Canberra on April 26

Double standards? Secondly - and this is perhaps the most persuasive argument of all in favour of downloading - she pointed out that other websites and apps have far more intrusive access to personal data than the government-developed COVIDSafe. Pictured: Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder and CEO of Facebook, which has been criticised for how it handles users' data

Addressing security concerns, he added that it takes months to delete a Facebook profile, for example, whereas all the information gathered by the COVIDSafe app is stored on your phone and 'when you delete the app, it's gone'.

Only if you test positive for coronavirus and agree to the information in your phone being uploaded will the information be accessible to state or territory health officials.

These officials will then be able to advise people you have been in close contact with that they may need to quarantine or get tested.

The data will be deleted once the pandemic is over, Mr Long concluded.

Making progress: More than four million people have so far downloaded and registered for the contact-tracing app, but millions more need to follow suit before lockdowns can be lifted. Pictured: a woman using her mobile phone while walking at Bondi Beach on April 3

Rebecca agreed with the expert, saying that mass uptake of the voluntary app 'is the fastest way out' of lockdown.

'We need to get people back in jobs. We need livelihoods back. We need to get the kids back to school,' she said. 'If we can all do it, then we're out of this mess and life returns.'

On Sunday, one of Australia's top advisers to the World Health Health Organization said she refused to download COVIDSafe until she knew more about where the data it collected was stored and secured.

University of NSW professor Mary-Louise McLaws, a member of the peak WHO coronavirus response panel, is not convinced by repeated government promises that it is safe, and is concerned the data could be accessed through Amazon's servers under U.S. law.

Concerns: University of NSW professor Mary-Louise McLaws (pictured), one of Australia's top advisers to the World Health Health Organization, said on Sunday she refused to download COVIDSafe until she knew more about where the data it collected was stored and secured

'What's not clear is who the custodian of the data is and where the data is stored. It's not true informed consent,' Professor McLaws told the Sydney Morning Herald.

'Until we know what the source code is and until we know whether Amazon has to fulfill Australian law, I won't download the app.'

American delivery giant Amazon won the tender to store the app's data on its servers in the U.S.

The data could theoretically be obtained under American laws through a subpoena, but Health Minister Greg Hunt has said Australian law would prevent this.

Polls indicate more than half of Australians support the app and say they will download it, but only 16 per cent have actually done so.

Slowing the spread: Prime Minister Scott Morrison is pushing for 40 per cent of the population to sign up, which is the level government officials say is needed for the app to be effective

More than four million people have so far downloaded and registered for the contact-tracing app.

Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy urged more to sign up last week, as the number of people on board is still not enough to make the scheme effective.

'We need the app uptake to be higher before we can say that the final piece in the jigsaw puzzle of contact tracing is there,' he said.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said getting back to the pub and resuming everyday life depends on people signing up for the app.

He is pushing for 40 per cent of the population to sign up, which is the level government officials say is needed to help slow the spread.

Straight-talking: Morrison said last week that getting back to the pub and resuming everyday life depends on people signing up for the app. Pictured at Parliament House on Friday
100 Hours 100 Stars: Sonakshi Sinha Talks About Her Quarantine Routine; Reveals The First Place Shell Visit After Lockdown
The Guardian

The Steelers quarterback is headed to the Hall of Fame. But he was unloved outside Pittsburgh for understandable reasons Ben Roethlisberger almost certainly played his final game in the NFL on Sunday. Photograph: Ed Zurga/AP Ben Roethlisberger is lucky that football legacies are not decided by finales. If Sunday night was indeed Big Bens last ever NFL game, as he has strongly hinted, it wasnt exactly a mic drop. In the 42-21 beatdown by the Chiefs, Roethlisberger struggled with rollouts, and l
Ravi Shankar By

Sometime early last week, when the number of COVID-19 fatalities in the US exceeded 55,000 and infections crossed nine lakh, Americans woke up to a kooky email. Can you keep a secret? it asked. The mail was from Donald J Trump for President, Inc. and the Republican National Committee. The secret? A HUGE surprise birthday gift for first lady Melania Trump.



I want to surprise her with a birthday card signed by 1 MILLION Americans from all around the Country, it read. It also asked them to fill in their personal details. Closing the window led to a pop-up asking for four more years of a Trump presidency. For Donald J Trump, it was business as usual. No wonder, the majority of Americans are horrified.

Four more years of a racist reality show host and dodgy property developer who recommends injecting household disinfectant into lungs of patients and shining UV light inside their bodies as a coronavirus cure wouldve been a stand-up hoot wasnt it for the fact that it was real advice coming from the President of the United States, the head of the most powerful country in the world. The hashtag #TrumpDeathCult started trending on Twitter immediately after the Lysol prescription.

Any presidents dream in election year is to dominate the news cycle. Trump is doing exactly that. But not in the way he and his shrinking power circle in the White House want. The unravelling of Trump doesnt bode well for Americas position as the worlds top superpower. Agrees Lalit Mansingh, former Indian Foreign Secretary and Ambassador to the US, The platform on which Trump won the elections was America First. All his policies have been in Americas interest. He has clearly not played the global role the world expected of him.

INTIMATIONS OF GLOBAL DECLINE



It was World War II, which turned the US into the fulcrum of leadership for the West and many geopolitically important Third World nations. By entering the war on the side of Britain and the Allies, the US turned the tide against Nazi and Axis armies. It unleashed nuclear power for the first and only time in history. It became the bulwark of democracy against Communism and Soviet global ambition. It had men on the moon before anyone else could.

The US dominated the world; by taking over British bases everywhere, the US Navy literally controlled all trade routes and posed a deterrent to hostiles. President Franklin D Roosevelts economic moves during the Great Depression made the US the worlds most powerful economy. Its leadership of NATO, fiduciary influence in the UN and other agencies, military interventions in civil war-ridden countries, the War against Terror, Silicon Valley clout, Climate AccordAmerica was the leader and its presidents the face of its global leadership. Except for President Woodrow Wilsons Trump-like handling of the Spanish flu, every modern US presidents superintendence of H2N2, Swine flu, AIDS, SARS, H1N1, Zika and Ebola, initial hiccups notwithstanding, set the template for other nations combating disease.

America taught the world. America learned from the world. Today America teaches the world Trumpism: a Pandoras portmanteau of racist, xenophobic, corrupt, immature, naive, sycophantic, contemptuous, hostile lashouts. I dont think its about Americas leadership in the world; its rather about Trumps leadership of America which will have global consequences. This situation is widely perceived to be the result of Trumps mismanagement of the (corona) crisis. This will have ripple effects as far as Americas global standing is concerned, says Harsh V Pant, Director, Studies & Head, Strategic Studies Programme, Observer Research Foundation, Delhi.

TARGETING HEALTHCARE



Donald Trump hates what he doesnt understand; in this case Science. His antipathy has made America the worlds pandemic leader. Infectious disease expert Michael Osterholm has warned that the final death toll in the US could be around 800,000, 16 times from late April. As far back in 2016, the outgoing Obama administration had cautioned Team Trump of an incoming pandemic, and gave a step-by-step guide to deal with its impact. It was ignored; paradoxically, Trump unsuccessfully tried to blame Obama for the current crisis. In May 2018, the White House pandemic response team was disbanded because it was set up by Obama. In November 2019, Trump brushed away the US militarys tip about a devastating epidemic from Chinain 2017, he had given millions to the Wuhan Virology Institute. The same year, the Department of Homeland Security stopped updating its annual models of pandemic devastation on Americas critical infrastructure.

Last year, the advice of American medical experts in WHOto which Trump horrifyingly decided to cut off funding in the middle of the contagionwho cautioned him about an imminent coronavirus pandemic was junked. In January, US government experts warned that the virus would spread beyond China and become a global pandemic. Trump pooh-poohed them. Ever since he entered the White House, he has targeted healthcare. He shut down the National Security Councils global health security, closed the $30-million Complex Crisis Fund and reduced national health spending by $15 billion. Today, it has come back to bite the US and Trump. The $308-billion bailout for COVID-19-hit small businesses has greatly benefitted the billionaire club: one of the beneficiaries was Fisher Island off the Miami coast whose beaches are made from sand imported from the Bahamas and residents earn on average $2.2 million a year.



FALSEHOODS THAT HOODWINKED AMERICA



Trumps conduct is the perfect manual for How to Destroy America. He reacted only two days after January 20, when the Center of Disease Control (CDC) confirmed the first coronavirus case in the US. Even then he lied on TV, Its one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. Its going to be just fine. Two weeks later, Trump still hadnt named a White House official to coordinate the administrations virus response.

On March 4, he sent the country into a tailspin after telling Fox News that based on a hunch, expert estimates of COVID-19 death rate were all wrong. On January 29, economic adviser Peter Navarro had sent a memo warning of 543,000 American deaths. Trump took no action, saying he was already being briefed by Chinaa downright lie. When Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar warned him about the pandemics destructive potential, Trump called him alarmist. As the contagion picked up speed, Trump refused to shut down incoming flights from Europe where COVID-19 was killing hundreds by the day. By then faulty test kits from CDC were being recalled or re-testedthe shortage still continues.

On Valentines Day, when corona fatalities had reached over 1,000, Trump fibbed to National Border Control Council that only around 12 people were infected and that Many of them are getting better So were in very good shape. He reiterated the same lie during his India visit. He also said that a vaccine was due relatively soona claim rejected by Dr Anthony Fauci, a chief medical expert on the coronavirus task force who had advised five presidents in his career. Trumpists and Fox News anchors, who had dismissed the virus as a hoax perpetrated by the Democrats, called for Faucis firing. Testing, which has been privatised by now, wasnt matching the viral spread.

America is in the full grip of a healthcare crisis but Trump has resorted to his patent crisis-fighting archetype: shift the blame and politicise the cause. He sabotaged medical help to Democrat-run cities and states, took away test kits and fired up his base by calling COVID-19 China Virus. The kind of polarisation America is passing through is the reason why his presidency became possible in the first place. And I have not seen any reason to believe that the polarisation is declining, says Pant.

As the country descended into panic and tragedy, Dr Trump pushed hydroxychloroquine as the game-changer cure; he arm-twisted other countries, including India, to export the drug to the US. He fired Rick Bright, the governments top vaccine expert, for refusing to direct money toward hydroxychloroquine, one of several potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections. Since clinical trials proved its ineffectiveness and dangerous side-effects, Trump has dialled it down. Unemployment26.4 million as per the latest reportskyrocketed but welfare checks were held up to print Trumps signature on them. Aware of the economic fallout on his election prospects, the President called for Civil War in his own country against the lockdown. Liberate Minnesota, Michigan, and Virginia, he tweeted. By last week, the president was coming apart at the seams. He attacked the Republican Georgia Governor, Brian Kemp, for heeding his own advice to open Georgia.

PATHOLOGY OF A PRESIDENT



Many in Trumps administration suspect that he is unhingeda potentially disastrous prospect since his finger is on the button of thousands of nuclear warheads. During the impeachment process, mental health professionals warned that the presidents mental health was deteriorating rapidly. A petition signed by a Yale psychiatrist and a top CIA profiler read, He is unable to take responsibility for any error, mistake, or failing. His default in the situation is to blame others and to attack the perceived source of his humiliation.

These attacks of narcissistic rage can be brutal and destructive. The diagnosis of psychologist and psychotherapist John Gartner, who contributed to the bestseller The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, is that the president is a malignant narcissist whose democidal behavior delights in hurting and killing a multitude of people, including his own supporters. When emergency hotlines saw a spike in calls regarding the presidents advice to drink disinfectant, he denied responsibility; cant imagine why, he added.

Trumps hatred of officials who dont play along is part of this pathology: he lambasted Health and Human Services Inspector General Christi Grimm for publishing a report critical of the federal coronavirus response calling it Another Fake Dossier. He sacked inspector general Glenn Fine, who was overseeing coronavirus relief. Now, the White House has found a scapegoat in a junior official for the drink bleach fiasco. Persuaded by advisors, who include son-in-law Jared Kushner who has zero experience in epidemic control, the experts were either fired or cowed into silence.

MINIMISING AMERICAS GLOBAL RELEVANCE



The chaos Trump has sown has begun to tilt the global status quo against the US. China, which has brought its viral load under control, is jockeying to take Americas place. (Trump owes state-owned Bank of China $211 million). India is making plans to woo China-based manufacturing while protecting itself from hostile investments. Europes leaders have woken up to the sudden gap in world leadership, which Trumpian anarchy has created: French President Emmanuel Macron is en route to filling the void. In mid-April, he issued a statesman-like call for a worldwide ceasefire from Afghanistan to Syria to Iraq to Yemen. Of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, four are claimed to be with Macron. With Americas only ally UK in Brexit limbo, whether Europe will return to its powerful pre-World War II global position is an open game.

The polls are predicting an alarming dip in Trumps chances of a second term, primarily due to his bungling, insensitivity and untruths. The virus is yet to impact his base in the red states with large rural populations, which have poor connectivity, high rates of heart disease, obesity and poverty. Republicans are spreading the narrative that COVID-19 is a Democratic Party creation. A substantial majority still believes in what Trump is doing. The protests in various cities to open up the economy are by his supporters. Clearly his vote bank at the moment remains intact, explains Pant. Trumpists in denial is more than just belief in Trump, writes US history professor Ian Reifowitz in AlterNet, When your identity rests on Trump and his party being right, to admit that they are wrongor worse, that they dont even give a rats ass about you and yoursrequires rethinking everything you are. I guess for some people, dying is easier.

Should coronavirus become the Grim Reaper of the Bible Belt, Donald Trumps presidency would be the final victim of the blight of his own creation in America. Meanwhile, the presidents son Eric Trump has asked Americans to stock up on quarantine wine from Trump Winery. He tweeted, The team at @TrumpWinery has you covered if your quarantine wine supply is running low! Check us out. For the Trumps, COVID-19 is just rose by any another name.
A resident waves as she is brought into a seniors residence in Montreal on May 1, 2020 . (The Canadian Press/Ryan Remiorz)

Lawsuits Over Covid-19 Handling in Nursing Homes Raise Questions About Standard of Care

TORONTOAs the deadly toll of COVID19 on Canadas nursing homes gives rise to a growing number of proposed classaction lawsuits, some legal experts say the cases will turn on whats considered reasonable care during a pandemic.

The ongoing global health crisis that has disproportionately affected the elderly poses a unique and unprecedented backdrop for such civil actions, which have emerged in Ontario and Quebec in recent weeks, experts say.

While nursing homes cant be blamed for the pandemic, they can be held accountable for unnecessary and preventable deaths, said Michael Smitiuch, a Torontobased lawyer who previously led a successful negligence lawsuit against a Brampton, Ont. facility for seniors.

A crisis like this does not give nursing homes a free pass to neglect the elderly. So I think what will happen iswere going to look back at this through a lens of what was reasonable under the circumstances, he said.

The interesting question will be, what is the standard of care during a pandemic?

The courts will likely look to the requirements and guidelines issued by health ministries, the World Health Organization, and other similar bodies in gauging whether any defendants were negligent, Smitiuch said.

The novel coronavirus has ravaged private and governmentrun seniors homes, particularly in Canadas two largest provinces, causing a large proportion of the countrys more than 3,000 deaths.

Rules and standards for nursing homes have evolved rapidly as public health officials respond to the crisis, with several provinces now banning staff from working in multiple facilities.

However, a number of proposed classaction lawsuits allege negligence on the part of governments or nursing home operators in their handling of the virus.

In Quebec, the son of a 94yearold woman who died of COVID19 at one of the provinces hardesthit facilities has filed a classaction application against the governmentrun CHSLD SteDorothee.

A Toronto law firm, meanwhile, has served the provincial government with notice of a proposed class proceeding on behalf of all Ontarians in longterm care homes.

It alleges the provinces failures in overseeing the facilities have resulted in widespread, avoidable illness and death during the pandemic.

Another such lawsuit launched by two Ontario men whose mothers died from COVID19 targets Revera, a privately owned nursing home company.

None of the cases have been certified as class actions so far and their claims have not been tested in court.

Scott Stanley, a personal injury lawyer in Vancouver, said these lawsuits and any others that surface in the coming months will face multiple hurdles in meeting the criteria for negligence.

First, he said, it may be difficult for plaintiffs to show the actions of the operators or government caused the deaths.

If the theory is, well, workers were able to go from one home to the other and transmit the virus  thats a theory, but you have to show factually that that actually caused other people to be affected or infected, he said.

It may also be challenging to demonstrate that the care given fell below established standards, particularly when suing governments, since they are measured against the standards they created, Stanley said.

Governments could also introduce legislation to protect themselves against COVID19 related lawsuits, although there is a very live debate over whether they can preclude cases involving breaches of charter rights, he said.

Such laws are generally very unpopular politically, he said.

Even if any of the proposed class actions are successful, plaintiffs may be shocked to find the damages they receive are minimal, he said.

People are not compensated for the loss of companionship, the loss of friendship, from an older person thats deceased, he said.

Youre basically compensating for the loss of economic benefits they brought to you. And most older people are not in a position where theyre providing economic benefitsso in many instances those claims are actually worth nothing.

In truly egregious cases, a nursing home could face punitive damages, which are meant to deter certain conduct, said Smitiuch, the Toronto lawyer.

Governments should also consider an inquiry into how care homes responded to the crisis, he said.

It would be something that would be valuable for the future, because no doubt well be facing something like this sometime in the future, he said.

Three professional orders in Quebec have said they will hold a joint investigation into the situation at seniors homes and longterm care centres since the COVID19 pandemic struck.

Paola Loriggio
Dani Venn was eliminated from MasterChef Australia: Back To Win on Sunday night while wearing the show's only immunity pin.

And the chef says that she's disappointed that she chose the wrong dish - but stands by her decision not to use her immunity pin.

The 34-year-old was undone by runny eggs in her Thai street food staple, son-in-law-eggs, with the judges complaining that the dish was undercooked.

Oh no: Dani Venn (pictured) was eliminated from MasterChef Australia: Back To Win on Sunday night while wearing the show's only immunity pin

Dani told Ten Daily on Sunday: 'Of course, on reflection, I could have used [the pin but] I think what I'm more upset about is, I could have cooked a different dish!

The cook also admitted, 'The egg was a stupid idea.'

The cook says that she felt it was too early to use the pin: 'I didn't play the pin because I felt like if I'm going to play the pin at this point in the competition there's not really much point in me being there. There's still 20 people in the competition'.

The chef then joked that she'll have to sell her immunity pin - which the show has let her keep.

Bad move: The 34-year-old was undone by runny eggs in her Thai street food staple, son-in-law-eggs, with the judges complaining that the dish was undercooked

Dani said after her elimination: 'On reflection, I could have used [the pin but] I think what I'm more upset about is... I could have cooked a different dish! The cook also admitted, 'The egg was a stupid idea'

Jokes: The chef then joked that she'll have to sell her immunity pin. She said: 'I still have the pin... and it's going straight on eBay. I'm kidding. They tried to make me give it back and I was like nope, this is mine. I'm taking it'

She said: 'I still have the pin... and it's going straight on eBay. I'm kidding. They tried to make me give it back and I was like nope, this is mine. I'm taking it.'

Fans were devastated for Dani, with one person Tweeting: 'I feel for Dani. She looked a bit run down and that she was struggling with illness and obviously missing her kids a lot.'

Another wrote: 'Gutted to see Dani left the kitchen with the one and only immunity pin. Aarrgghhh!! Nonetheless, she will always be remembered for her positivity in doing all kinds of challenge.'

Fans were devastated for Dani, with one person Tweeting: 'I feel for Dani. She looked a bit run down and that she was struggling with illness'. However not everyone was so sympathetic

Someone else chimed in: 'Dani's last words on her deathbed.. "I should have played the immunity pin"'.

Yet another person joked that she would sell her unused pin on eBay - the same joke Dani later made herself.

Not everyone was so sympathetic, with some fans saying she should have used her pin, and one person calling her 'arrogant' for not having done so.

MasterChef continues Monday at 7.30pm on Channel Ten
In a setback, two senior army officers, including a colonel-rank officer, were among five security personnel killed during an encounter with terrorists at a village in Rajwar forests of North Kashmir, officials said Sunday.

The deceased security personnel are: Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, Major Anuj Sood, Naik Rajesh and Lance Naik Dinesh, all from the Brigade of GUARDS regiment, and at present part of the 21 Rashtriya Rifles, deployed to counter terrorism in the hinterland.

A Jammu and Kashmir Police sub-inspector, Shakeel Qazi, also fell victim of to the bullets of terrorists.

The two holed-up terrorists, who were eliminated in the encounter, included commander of banned Lashker-e-Taiba Haider, a Pakistani national who has been active in North Kashmir area. The identity of the other was yet to be ascertained.

They had held some civilians hostage, the officials said.

Director General of JK police Dilbagh Singh said, "Sad to inform that five brave personnel including Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, Major Anuj Sood and sub-inspector of JKP Shakeel Qazi were martyred in the line of duty."

Security forces had noticed presence of some terrorists in the Rajwar forests in Handwara area for the past few days and a brief exchange of fire had taken place on Thursday deep inside the jungles.

Around Saturday afternoon, intelligence inputs indicated presence of the same group of terrorists inside a house at Changimulla village, prompting Col Sharma to launch a cordon and search operation along with his team and Qazi.

After a considerable lull, Col Sharma and four others personnel barged into a cowshed adjacent to the house, presuming that the terrorists had been eliminated in the heavy gunfire.

According to the officials, the team came under heavy fire after rescuing the civilians and all communication link with Col Sharma and his team were snapped. Calls made on the mobile numbers of the team were answered by terrorists.

The army then rushed in para-troopers, who after ascertaining that the Army officer and his team were killed in the encounter, launched an offensive by the first light of the day and killed the two terrorists.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the nation in paying tributes to the soldiers.

"Tributes to our courageous soldiers and security personnel martyred in Handwara. Their valour and sacrifice will never be forgotten. They served the nation with utmost dedication and worked tirelessly to protect our citizens. Condolences to their families and friends," the Prime Minister said in a tweet.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh described it as "deeply disturbing and painful".

Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat said the anti-terror operation highlighted the determination of the security forces to safeguard the lives of the people of Kashmir.

The army, in a tweet, said Chief of Army Staff General M M Naravane and all ranks of the force paid tributes to the "valiant braves of our Army and JK Police for their supreme sacrifice while fighting and eliminating terrorists in Handwara."

The death of Col Sharma and Major Sood, both from 21-RR, was a sad reminder of a near similar incident two decades back when Commanding Officer of the same batallion Colonel Rajinder Chauhan was killed by terrorists along with Brig B S Shergil in 2000.

The death of a Colonel-rank officer was seen in the valley after five years. In 2015, the Army had lost two colonels in a year in Kashmir.

Colonel M N Rai of 2/9 Gorkha Rifles, was the CO of 42 RR and laid his life for the country while fighting militants in Tral in South Kashmir in January 2015.

The same year, Col Santosh Mahadik was killed in an encounter in Kupwara area.

On the latest operation, the Army said based on the intelligence input that terrorists were taking hostage some civilians in a house, a joint operation was launched by the army and the JK Police.

A team comprising five Army and police personnel entered the target area occupied by the terrorists to evacuate the civilians and successfully extricated them.

However, during the process, the team came under a heavy volume of fire by the terrorists and in the ensuing firefight the five personnel were killed, the Army said.

The terrorists are believed to have come to Handwara to receive an infiltrating group from Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, officials said.

A wreath-laying ceremony would be held tomorrow after which Col Sharma's body would be flown to Jaipur and that of Major Sood to Pune, the officials said.
Shreya Sen-Handley is the author of the recently published Strange: Stories, the award-winning Memoirs of My Body, and a forthcoming book of travel misadventures.

The coronavirus has claimed 27,583 lives in Britain and killed 2.38 lakhs worldwide

Remember when Kurt Cobain sang Smells like ethnic cleansing? Well, he wouldve if hed lived to see 2020. Because the world reeks of it. Of the pong of pogroms. And the whiff of dissimulation.

As the coronavirus spreads across the planet, indiscriminately passing from person to person as viruses do, killing hundreds of thousands without heed to nationality as pandemics must, a strange pattern has emerged. A pattern of pernickety culling unknown to contagion.

Far from the Great Leveler politicians like British second-in-command Dominic Raab insist it is, it appears to be targeting particular people. Not just the ailing and elderly as originally suggested, but people of colour, and of specific creeds. More than a pandemic, its begun to look like a pogrom.

The virus, personified though it has been (A genius, hailed Trump), has no particular bone to pick. Nor is it a manifestation of Gods displeasure. It isnt a Chinese biological weapon unleashed on the West, or a western one on China that boomeranged. Or fallout from the implementation of 5G.

And every other kooky conspiracy theory that has spread like corona is, unlike the latter, fake news.

So you should ignore the damned lies, but not the statistics which tell a worrying tale. In a number of American states, over 80 per cent of the dead are black, though they form a much smaller segment of the country.

Of the 15,464 British dead, 35 per cent are from black and Asian backgrounds, despite forming just 14 per cent of the population. Whether painted a drain on resources, or bogeymen to Brexiteers, they are Britains unwanted.

Though the magnitude of the coronavirus crisis in India is not borne out by the 507 official Covid deaths, plus 200 from starvation in lockdown, ground reports reveal millions in jeopardy. Most, poor migrants, often dalits or Muslims, cluttering up the pure Hindutva landscape promised by those in power.

Yet, these are all natural deaths, from disease or circumstance. Can it be a coincidence, or have the powerful taken advantage of this perfect storm to cleanse their world of the inconvenient? Have they been finetuning not just the figures, but the path of the pandemic itself? Thats not to suggest they are neck-deep in some nefarious plot, but that theyre more than happy to throw those they consider dispensable under the bus.

They didnt manufacture the bus or drive it down. They saw it coming and gave an almighty shove to those teetering on the edge. Teetering because years of aggressive disenfranchisement had put them there. How easy it is to bump off the already vulnerable! Easy peasy corona wheezy.

We know Boris Johnson supports eugenics, with white supremacists amongst his advisors. That Caribbean immigrants from the Windrush generation, invited over by the UK government, were deported recently by the same.

That the elderly dying of Covid-19 in care homes have been denied hospital treatment. That a nasty organisation called NICE had recommended that Britains limited ventilators not be wasted on the disabled. Even emergency services have assigned a worth to those in distress, turning BAME away while blond buffoon BoJo is shooed into ICU suffering from mild discomfort.

And what can one say about the thousands of black and Asian medics pushed to the frontline in the fight against the pandemic, and dying? They have been carefully placed in the line of fire over years of discrimination with jobs.

In the US, as bodies of immigrants, the poor, and people of colour, pile up, no one (except Duplicitous Donald) can deny that years of marginalisation have put them in the jobs, housing, and neighbourhoods, that expose them to the virus more than others.

Yet, is that a surprise when the US administration not only wanted to erect a wall to keep immigrants out, but mass-interred them in detention camps, having snatched and caged their children? Or that they do nothing now as the homeless die of Covid and cold in American parking lots?

We know that Modi too has been building detention centres for migrants, many of them Muslim, awkward masjid-shaped pegs in our mandir-shaped holes, and that hes turned a blind eye to their murders across India, as in Gujarat in 2002.

That in his bungled lockdown of the cities, impoverished migrant workers were left open to disease, and without livelihood, and therefore food, were compelled to walk thousands of miles to get home to ravaged villages, dropping from starvation as they went. That the people of the worlds largest slum, Dharavi, have been offered up as lab rats for experiments to find a cure for Covid.

And that nothing was done as fake news sent the desperate to Bandra railway station from which trains would allegedly take them home, exposing them to condemnation for their malicious intent to spread infection, and the infection itself.

With Covid-19 as both cover and enabler, our new-age Pots and Goebbels dont even have to ethnic-cleanse in secret. Not only are their personae-non-gratae apparently disposing of themselves, its now possible to be rid of many more than in a month of non-pandemic Sundays.

To paraphrase Kurt again, Its fun to lose (the right wrong people), and then pretend (innocence). Pretense hasnt been hard either, in India, for example; dazzled by its new son-et-lumiere, the thali bajao and bati jalao show.

Not the great leveler then, but the great revealer. And the great reveal wont be the Himalayas from your Bengaluru bungalow, clearer though the air is after a 50 per cent dip in pollution. It will be the Nirvana of knowing theyll come for you too.

The scrubbing clean of society happens in incremental steps, starting with those on the margins, and with each layer it decimates, it gets closer to the middle, the mainstream, us. After World War II, Martin Niemoller concluded, then they came for me/And there was no one left/To speak out for me.

I looked at myself in the mirror today after weeks of lockdown, and felt stupid and contagious like Cobain. For reasons of colour, disability and dysfunction, I was just as likely to be next. As yet untouched by Covid, I could clearly smell ethnic cleansings acrid stench. Cant you?

This piece was written on April 19. As of May 2, the coronavirus has claimed 27,583 lives in Britain and killed 2.38 lakhs worldwide.

Shreya Sen-Handley is the author of the recently published Strange: Stories, the award-winning Memoirs of My Body, and a forthcoming book of travel misadventures. Her Twitter and Insta handle is @shreyasenhan.
A farmer has been airlifted to safety after breaking his leg in a quad bike accident.

It happened earlier this afternoon near Lough Mordha in the Comeragh Mountains in Co. Waterford.

Volunteers from the South East Mountain Rescue Group and members of the man's family aided in the rescue effort.

But Liam McCabe, the rescue group's team leader, said the Coast Guard's Rescue 117 deserve high praise for their work in tricky flying conditions.

He said: "The issue today was there was no wind. It challenges the helicopter with no wind.

"It was a technically difficult rescue today and it just went really really well.

"I have to say great credit to the Rescue 117 crew. They were the right people in the right place at the right time.

"We came along and offered extra bodies to help move the casualty and secure the casualty which allowed them to get the stretcher carried out."
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Britain has announced 315 new coronavirus deaths today, bringing total fatalities to 28,446 and putting the country on course to become the hardest hit in Europe.

The UK's toll is now only 264 behind Italy - the continent's original epicentre - which it will likely overtake tomorrow to suffer the second highest fatalities in the world after the United States.

Michael Gove revealed at the daily Downing Street press conference that the overall number of cases has climbed to 186,599 following an extra 4,339 positive tests.

The cabinet office minister said 76,496 tests had been performed yesterday, dipping below the 100,000 daily target set by the government.

Although figures are typically lower on Sundays and Mondays because of a weekend reporting lag, the 315 fatalities reported by the Department of Health across all care settings marks the fewest daily deaths recorded in over a month.

NHS medical director Professor Stephen Powis, who also spoke at the Number 10 briefing, said the latest figures underscored the 'good news' that Britain is past the peak of the outbreak.

He also said the rate of infection, known as the R number, was at 0.7 which means the spread of the disease is slowly waning.

Mr Gove further fleshed out the government's bare-bones exit strategy and confirmed ministers will adopt a 'whack-a-mole' approach to loosening restrictions.

Certain regions such as London and the Midlands have suffered the brunt of the pandemic while larges swathes of the country have escaped relatively unscathed.

The capital, which has consistently reported the highest amount of coronavirus patients in hospital, today fell below the number reported by the North West for the first time.

A new interactive map lays bare the coronavirus postcode lottery and reveals sprawling areas in Wales, the South West and East England which have recorded zero deaths.

The map, from Office for National Statistics data, shows outside of London, twenty-four towns in Cornwall have not incurred any Covid-19 deaths, with the county suffering just 14 deaths per 100,000 people.

One expert told MailOnline the data lends weight to a growing chorus of voices urging the government to ease curbs in areas with the least infections first.

The UK has announced 315 new coronavirus deaths today, bringing total fatalities to 28,446 and putting the country on course to become the hardest hit in Europe

A new interactive map lays bare the coronavirus postcode lottery and reveals sprawling areas in Wales, the South West and East England which have recorded zero deaths

Boris Johnson reveals doctors prepared to announce his DEATH Boris Johnson has revealed that doctors prepared to announce his death in case he lost his coronavirus battle, admitting he was 'a lucky man'. The Prime Minister, 55, confirmed he was 'not in particularly brilliant shape' while battling the disease at St Thomas' Hospital in central London last month. As his chances of survival balanced on a knife-edge, he said he was given 'litres and litres' of oxygen as medics fought to keep him alive in intensive care. In his first interview since recovering from Covid-19 - and the birth of his son Wilfred - the PM recalled his frustration that he could not seem to shake the virus. But Mr Johnson described how the sobering experience allowed him to see the 'fantastic' care offered by the NHS, his voice cracking as he reflected on the rollercoaster past few weeks. 'I realised it was getting pretty serious', he told the Sun on Sunday. 'And I remember saying to myself, ''How am I going to get out of this?''' He added: 'To be honest, the doctors had all sorts of plans for what to do if things went badly wrong. 'I was not in particularly brilliant shape because the oxygen levels in my blood kept going down. 'But it was thanks to some wonderful, wonderful nursing that I made it. They really did it and they made a huge difference.' Advertisement

As Britain mourned more deaths in its health emergency:

Boris Johnson revealed doctors prepared to announce his death in his first interview since his knife-edge coronavirus battle;

A former chief scientific adviser set up a rival group to Sage, which has become embroiled in a secrecy row;

Senior doctors warned the PM the lockdown should be eased for over-70s on mental health grounds;

Minsters were said to be examining plans to re-open some schools from the beginning of June;

Some people were found to be enjoying the lockdown, saying it was helping their relationships, they were enjoying work more and plan to spend more time with their children in future;

A ban on picnics and visits to beauty spots could be lifted;

Public transport could return to approaching normal levels of service but with measures in place to limit rush hour numbers.

Before Mr Gove announced the Department of Health's UK total, the public health bodies from the four nations revealed their individual death tallies which totalled 358.

The difference in totals reflects varying data gathering methods and time-frames.

England suffered the lion's share of today's reported deaths with 327 patients, aged between 46 and 101, passing away in NHS hospitals.

A further 12 died in Scotland, 14 in Wales and five in Northern Ireland, bringing each nation's total toll to 1,571, 983 and 381, respectively.

Today's death figures for England also shows the gulf in deaths between the regions, with the Midlands reporting 69 fatalities and the South West 19.

The interactive ONS map shows the bulk of virus deaths are in densely populated cities and their transport routes to one another, while, towns furthest away from cities appear to be avoiding the worst of the crisis.

In the East of England, at least 23 local authorities have not recorded any coronavirus deaths in Suffolk, and 21 in Norfolk.

There are nine towns and villages where residents are yet to fall victim to the disease in the Welsh county of Conwy, seven in Pembrokeshire, five in Gwynedd and five in Ceredigion.

In the New Forest national park in Hampshire there have been no recorded deaths in the Milford and Lymington south area, while in neighbouring Dorset, places such as Bovington, Wool and Lulworth have no recorded Covid-19 deaths.

The capital, which has consistently reported the highest amount of coronavirus patients in hospital, today fell below the number reported by the North West for the first time

The 315 fatalities reported by the Department of Health is the fewest daily deaths recorded in over a month

Michael Gove revealed the total number of cases jumped to 186,599 following an extra 4,339 positive tests

The cabinet office minister said 76,496 tests had been performed yesterday, dipping below the 100,000 daily target set by the government

There have been growing calls for lockdown to be eased on rural communities that have not been impacted by the pandemic.

Michael Gove last week there was some 'scientific justification' for trialling the easing of lockdown measures in island communities, such as the Outer Hebrides - although this has sparked a backlash from locals furious at suggestions they be used as the nation's guinea pigs.

Prof Paul Hunter, Professor in Medicine, University of East Anglia told MailOnline there is an argument for relaxing the lockdown in more rural areas that have been less impacted by the pandemic.

He said: 'There are a number of factors that impact R0 (the average number of people an individual can expect to infect) and one of those is population density.

'In the countryside you may only see five people a day, but in London if you could spend time with several hundreds of people a day such as seeing them on the underground. A lot of the variation is due to the fact R0 is greater in an area of higher population density.'

Professor Hunter added: 'There is something to be said about areas of the countryside not having as intense a lockdown. From that perspective there are technically a number of areas where the spread is not very high, and have not been impacted as severely as the main urban centres. But the problem with that is you see people in rural areas on Facebook having a good time, and you will probably feel quite annoyed.'

Of those reported today to have lost their lives, 56 died on May 2, 125 died on May 1 and 43 died on April 30.

The reporting lag also meant 95 of the new deaths took place between April 1 and April 29. The remaining eight deaths occurred in March, with the earliest new death taking place on March 28.

Minister for the cabinet office Michael Gove fronts the government's daily coronavirus press briefing from Number 10

This afternoon's figures, which and are typically lower at weekends, puts Britain's toll just 264 behind Italy which was the original epicentre of the continent's outbreak

Mobility trackers show the number in people in public places is steadily creeping up

The number of people being treated for coronavirus in hospitals is falling as is the number of patients in critical care beds

Former chief scientific adviser sets up rival to Sage in wake of secrecy row A former chief scientific adviser has assembled a rival team of experts to the government's Sage panel after the group became engulfed in a secrecy row. Sir David King's group will run parallel to the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies which has been guiding Boris Johnson's coronavirus crisis response. It will broadcast its 'robust, unbiased' advice on YouTube which will likely underscore splits among the country's top scientific minds. Sir David's transparency mission comes amid mounting concerns over the secrecy of Sage, whose membership is classified and advice is not immediately published. A simmering row over the group's covertness reached fever pitch last month when it emerged top Downing Street aide Dominic Cummings had attended its meetings. Sir Patrick Vallance, who chairs the group and is a podium regular at the daily Number 10 briefings, moved to calm the storm by agreeing to reveal Sage's membership list 'shortly'. But Sir David's new team could prove a fresh blow to the government panel if its advice runs contrary to the Prime Minister's current battle plan. Sir David told the Sunday Times: 'I am not at all critical of the scientists who are putting advice before the government... but because there is no transparency the government can say they are following scientific advice but we don't know that they are.' Advertisement

Mr Gove praised the stoicism of the public in mostly adhering to strict rules in place for the past five weeks.

But speaking at tonight's press conference he warned that areas that see a relapse in coronavirus cases when the lockdown slowly begins to be eased face a return to the current lockdown.

He spoke after revealing that the number of tests carried out yesterday fell to just short of 76,500, 48 hours after reaching 122,000 - blaming the weekend for the steep fall.

Mr Gove said it was important to speak to firms and trade unions 'in order to make sure people understand the guidance about working safely'.

But he added: 'It is also important that we make clear that any approach we take is staged ... a phases approach is one which allows us to monitor the impact that those changes are having on public health and if necessary, in a specific and localised way, that means that we can pause or even reintroduce those restrictions that might be required in order to deal with localised outbreaks of the disease.'

The Prime Minister will this week reveal his 'whack-a-mole' strategy to ease the lockdown and put the UK economy back into gear.

He is expected to reveal his roadmap of proposals to very carefully and slowly lift the restriction in place since late March, but come down hard on any secondary hotspots that emerge.

The first easing of restrictions is not expected to come into force until June, and will be accompanied by the stricter enforcement of breaches of the remaining rules, with fines rising from the current 60 to more than 3,000 for repeat offenders.

It will include a massive PR blitz urging people who cannot work from home to go in where they can safely, and urging key workers to send their children back to school to free them up for vital tasks.

Public transport will also increase, but will strict social distancing measures at stations and attempts to stagger working hours to reduce the rush hour.

Senior citizens could also lose their free travel during peak times to lower surge numbers further, the Sunday Times reported.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps warned that Britain will not return to 'business as usual' this month.

He told Sky's Sophy Ridge On Sunday: 'I don't think we should expect us to go from this situation that we have at the moment of social distancing back to where we were in February - that's clearly not going to happen and I don't think anyone imagines that for one moment.'

Ministers are concerned that the public have gone beyond the letter of the law introduced when the pandemic began to sweep the nation, according to the Sunday Times.

A senior Whitehall source told the paper: 'What you are going to see this week is a restatement of what we thought would happen right at the beginning when we first issued the lockdown.

'But it's going to be repackaged as a slow opening up of the economy. Please will construction sites reopen, please will you go to work if you can without hurting people, please if you are a key worker will you send your children to school.

'We've gone round the houses to get back to where we started.'

New polls today reveal how reluctant Britons are to return to normal while hundreds of people are still dying every day.

People queue outside a B&Q store in Greenwich as the DIY giant opens all their stores ahead of an expected easing of the lockdown restrictions in the coming week

'Discriminatory' lockdown should be eased for the healthy elderly, say senior doctors Senior doctors have warned Boris Johnson the lockdown should be eased for over-70s that are considered healthy, due to the damage keeping them inside is doing to their mental health. Both the Royal College of GPs and the British Medical Association (BMA) weighed in to say that age alone should not be the determining factor when the government establishes who can return to their daily lives as the lockdown is eased, potentially in the coming weeks and months. Around 1.8 million people classed as 'clinically vulnerable' were told to stay indoors for 12 weeks when the lockdown began as they were considered to be the most at-risk people in the UK from Covid-19. Some ministers have even suggested that such groups could have to stay at home until a vaccine has been developed, which could well take a year or more. Those in the 'clinically vulnerable' category include anyone 'aged 70 or older regardless of medical condition', as well as anyone who is younger than 70 with a 'underlying health condition'. According to The Times, the doctor's union said that while it agreed that the most vulnerable people in society must be protected, measures should be determined on individual risk with a system that applies to all ages, and not just 'an arbitrary age of 60 or 70.' Martin Marshall, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, warned of the harm a prolonged lockdown would do to the 'physical and mental' of those over the age of 70, and that their age is not the best way to determine 'who should self-isolate and to what extent during the next stage of lockdown'. The BMA said said in a statement: 'A blanket ban on any section of the population being prohibited from lockdown easing would be discriminatory and unacceptable.' Advertisement

More than four in five Britons are against lockdown restrictions being eased for schools, pubs and restaurants this week, according to a poll by Opinium for the Observer.

Just 17 per cent thought the time was right to consider re-opening schools, with smaller proportions of people thinking conditions had been met to allow cinemas, sporting stadia and nightclubs to open their doors.

There was also opposition to the reopening of restaurants and pubs - with only 11 per cent agreeing Britain is at a place to reopen eateries and 9 per cent supporting a return to pubs.

Britons more strongly opposed a return to stadium events and nightclubs, with 7 per cent saying conditions have been met for both to resume, compared to 84 per cent who did not.

In the Sunday Times, a YouGov poll found that just 25 per cent of adults would feel safe returning to work and oppose reopening schools by 48 per cent to 28 per cent.

And 59 per cent of people polled by the Sunday Express said they would not feel comfortable going out and do not plan to resume a normal life next month.

Ministers will aim to tread a fine line between kickstarting economic activity and keeping 'R', the reproduction rate of the virus, below 1.

The death toll has edged closer to that of Italy, which now stands at 28,710 and is the highest in Europe, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

The Government's main priority is getting the economy going again, amid dire statistics about commercial activity and hundreds of billions of pounds flowing out of the treasury to prop up firms and pay the wages of furloughed workers.

It comes as a leading business group urges the Government to be 'bold' and not shy away from sustaining high levels of public spending.

The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) laid out a series of moves for a phased end to the current lockdown in a letter to the PM.

Steps should include safely reopening public spaces, schools and public transport, as well as workplaces and commercial spaces, said the letter.

Moves should be made to minimise job losses and business failures, putting the UK economy on a 'high-growth, high-wage and low unemployment trajectory' as soon as possible.

The plans due to be laid out this week are reported to focus on those who work outside, including construction workers, because of science suggesting the virus is harder to catch outdoors.

Public transport is likely to return to normal levels and non-food retailers, factories, and warehouses will be encouraged to open.

Work on this has already started: people yesterday flocked to newly reopened DIY stores and rubbish tips.

Orderly queues formed at branches of Homebase, which opened 164 stores, as well as B&Q and Wickes. Costa Coffee drive-throughs were also busy.

Offices are expected to instruct most of their staff to continue working from home.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps this morning told Sky's Sophy Ridge on Sunday: 'It's no secret that of course we want the kids to go back to school but I'd be over-egging it to say there's a date in place, there's a plan in place'

But for those who cannot there will be strict rules for office spaces

They include mandatory floor markings to keep staff two metres apart, staggered start times and breaks, limits on how many people can get in lifts and regular deep cleaning, according to the Sunday Express.

And in a blow to everyone desperate to celebrate the release of the lockdown with a cold pint in their local, pubs and restaurants are likely to remain closed for weeks or even months longer.

This is because the bring people into close proximity to each other in difficult to control ways.

But the phased reopening will be accompanied by harder action against those who break social distancing rules.

Primary schools could re-open on June 1, with students from Years 10 and 12 becoming the first in a wave of secondary pupils flocking to classes.

Boris Johnson is hoping to put teachers on three weeks' notice to re-open primary schools in England to all pupils as soon as next month.

Whitehall sources have claimed the earliest possible return of primary schoolchildren is intended to help parents to return to work.

It will also prevent damage being done to 'early years development' about which Gavin Williamson has warned, according to The Sunday Telegraph.

Officials are understood to be contemplating limiting the size of classes temporarily, while the question of when to re-open nurseries is an open one.

Pupils from Years 10 and 12 would then head to school, provided ministers were satisfied the transmission rate did not cause a 'second peak'.

The move is being considered as data show that younger children are potentially less likely to transmit Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

The discussions also come after Mr Williams told the education select committee this week that schools would not reopen opening during the summer holidays as a way of helping pupils who have missed out on education to catch up.

The education secretary also suggested a phased return to schools, saying it was 'not realistic or practical' for all school children to return in one day.

He said scientists were looking at other countries for best practice and that a special team of the Scientific Group for Emergencies (SAGE) had been set up to focus solely on schools reopening.

Mr Shapps told Sophy Ridge on Sunday: 'It's no secret that of course we want the kids to go back to school but I'd be over-egging it to say there's a date in place, there's a plan in place.'

A large 'thank you' rainbow on display in Herrington Country Park in Sunderland to show the city's appreciation for all NHS

British Airways planes parked on the runway at Bournemouth Airport in Dorset this week

But Ofsted chief inspector of schools Amanda Spielman told the same programme: 'If you look at the interests of children ... it's very clear that their interests are served, in the vast majority of cases, by being back at school as soon as possible.'

Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford has said schools in Wales could reopen at the beginning of next month.

Asked for an indication about when pupils could return, Mr Drakeford told the BBC's Andew Marr Show: 'Our advice from the trade unions and from the local education authorities is that you will need three weeks as a minimum from the point that we decide to do that, to when schools can reopen, so we are talking about the beginning of June.'

He said some groups could return earlier than others, using the examples of year-six children who are due to move up to secondary school, and Welsh medium pupils who may not have had opportunities to use the language at home during lockdown.

But Kevin Courtney, General Secretary of the National Education Union, the largest teachers' trade union for England and Wales, says talks about a June re-opening are 'very premature'.

He told MailOnline: 'While we all want to see a return to some sort of normality the National Education Union believes it's really premature to talk about a June return date.

'Instead the government should be providing evidence about how this can be safe, how many more fatalities would we expect to see amongst school staff and parents and how these can be prevented or minimised.'

He added: 'If the government proceeds in this sort of way it is will fail to get the confidence of heads, staff and parents.'

Public transport could return to approaching normal levels of service but with measures in place to limit numbers.

Scenes of packed Tube trans during the lockdown shocked the nation and Mr Shapps this morning said that it was unlikely that would be allowed.

He indicated that the staggered start times enforced in offices could be used to help reduce peak demand on trains and buses.

'The crushes would be completely at odds with social distancing,' he told Sky.

'Of course i'm very concerned about people being able to wash their hands - it's still far and away the most important advice.

'We can help with that by trying to have hand sanitiser , one-way systems, spacing on platforms and at bus stops and that sort of this clearly marked out.

'There are a lot of different measures that can be taken, of which easing into this is clearly going to be one of the most important things of all.'

But he refused to confirm the idea reported last week that commuters could face temperature checks at stations before being allowed on to services.

Ministers are preparing to lift restrictions on outdoor activities such as picnics as the first stage in relaxing the lockdown rules.

A Costa Coffee drive-thru at Cameron Toll in Edinburgh which has re-opened for take away only and contactless payments

Britons will be allowed to exercise several times each day and drive to the countryside for walks and picnics in the first stage of relaxing lockdown Ministers are preparing to lift restrictions on outdoor activities such as picnics as the first stage in relaxing the lockdown rules. The Mail on Sunday understands the plans  likely to be introduced later this month if coronavirus infection rates continue to fall  will mean people can exercise several times each day and drive to the countryside and other outdoor spaces for walks and picnics. However, they will only be allowed to do so with members of their household and must stay at least two metres (6ft 6in) away from other groups. The change, which will end the sight of police officers moving on solitary sunbathers in parks, follows new scientific advice to ministers that the risk of transmitting the disease outside is substantially lower than indoors. But people will still be barred from areas such as playgrounds and beaches where crowds congregate and the two-metre rule becomes harder to observe. The softening of restrictions will be accompanied by the stricter enforcement of breaches of the remaining rules, with fines rising from the current 60 to more than 3,000 for repeat offenders. Boris Johnson's review of the lockdown on Thursday is not expected to lead to any more substantial changes until next month when public transport is likely to return to normal levels and non-food retailers, factories, warehouses and more construction sites will be encouraged to open. Offices are expected to instruct most of their staff to continue working from home, while pubs and restaurants are likely to remain closed for weeks or even months longer. Advertisement

The Mail on Sunday understands the plans  likely to be introduced later this month if coronavirus infection rates continue to fall  will mean people can exercise several times each day and drive to the countryside and other outdoor spaces for walks and picnics.

However, they will only be allowed to do so with members of their household and must stay at least two metres (6ft 6in) away from other groups.

The change, which will end the sight of police officers moving on solitary sunbathers in parks, follows new scientific advice to ministers that the risk of transmitting the disease outside is substantially lower than indoors.

But people will still be barred from areas such as playgrounds and beaches where crowds congregate and the two-metre rule becomes harder to observe.

Trials of an NHS coronavirus contact tracing smartphone app are to start in the Isle of Wight this week, before being rolled out nationwide.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said around 50 to 60 per cent of people will need to use the software for it to be effective as he described it as the 'best possible way to help the NHS'.

The NHSX app is part of the Government's test, track and trace strategy and will be central to its efforts in slowing the spread of coronavirus.

Contact tracing has been used extensively in South Korea, Hong Kong and Germany, where outbreaks have been contained more quickly.

Mr Shapps stressed the app would be completely confidential but called it a 'fantastic way' to ensure the country can 'keep a lid' on coronavirus and prevent a second wave.

'The idea is that we will encourage as many people to take this up as possible,' he said.

'This is going to be a huge national effort and we need for this to work 50-60 per cent of people to be using this app.

'Not everybody has a smartphone, and I appreciate that for various reasons not everybody will download it but it will be the best possible way to help the NHS.'

Mr Shapps said he did not know how many of the 18,000 contact tracers the Government is seeking have been hired yet - with plans for them to be in place by mid-May.

He told Sky: 'It's not an issue because the app isn't going to be available for some time yet, a few weeks yet, but when it is there we will have the people in place.'

Labour's shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds said that testing and tracing will be 'so important' in easing the lockdown in the weeks and months ahead.

Speaking on Sky's Sophy Ridge programme, he said: 'We've been asking for the ramping up of testing so clearly I'm pleased that testing has been ramped up.

'I think there's always been a difference between the number of tests actually carried out and the overall statistics, indeed the number of people tested is a different figure.

'But of course I'm pleased that testing has been ramped up. But that in itself is not a strategy.

'Firstly, the testing has to be increased further, I mean the original target we were talking about a quarter of a million tests a day some time ago, but it has to be linked to tracing as well and it's that testing and tracing that is going to be so important now in terms of easing the measures of the lockdown in the weeks and months ahead.'

Mr Shapps said he was 'actively looking at' quarantining people travelling to the UK from abroad to keep coronavirus infection rates under control.

New restrictions would make the UK one of the last countries to introduce them, with the country very much an outlier in recent weeks by not halting inbound flights or insisting arrivals are checked.

People arriving are advised to self-isolate but there is no enforced testing.

Home Secretary Priti Patel is believed to be among those who have demanded tougher rules for foreign visitors and the remaining Brits still abroad who make it home.

Appearing on the BBC's Andrew Marr show Mr Shapps said: 'I think it is important that as we are seeing the numbers decrease and the R rate we hope decrease... that we do ensure that the sacrifices in a sense - social distancing - that we are asking the British people to make are matched by anybody who comes to this country.

'I am actively looking at these issues right now so that when we have infection rates within the country under control we are not importing.'

Coronaphobia UK is rife: Two new polls find just one in four Britons would feel safe at work and more than half are opposed to schools reopening

Just one in four Britons would feel safe at work amid the coronavirus crisis and more than half are opposed to schools reopening in the next few weeks, new polls have found.

Data published by Opinium found only 17 per cent of Britons believed conditions had been met to considering reopening schools on May 8, with 67 per cent of those polled believing the opposite.

There was also opposition to the reopening of restaurants and pubs - with only 11 per cent agreeing Britain is at a place to reopen eateries and 9 per cent supporting a return to pubs.

Britons more strongly opposed a return to stadium events and nightclubs, with 7 per cent saying conditions have been met for both to resume, compared to 84 per cent who did not.

The data, collected between Wednesday and Friday last week, came as a YouGov poll found only one in four adults would feel safe returning to work amid the current state of coronavirus.

The second poll, carried out on behalf of The Sunday Times, also noted 47 per cent of Britons opposed the reopening of schools in the next few weeks, compared to 28 per cent who did not.

A third survey, undertaken by Redfield and Wilton Strategies and published by the Express, found 56 per cent of those polled approved of how the Government had handled the crisis.

An earlier poll of 1,500 people by the researchers found 54 per cent of Britons would not feel comfortable returning to work, with only 13 per cent agreeing they would feel safe travelling to London on May 7.

A majority 88 per cent of Britons added they would not feel safe attending a sporting event, compared to 12 per cent who would.

Psychologist Professor Dame Til Wykes of King's College London told the Guardian that 'it is likely that most people will feel anxious' as lockdown restrictions are lifted.

She said: 'We have been given strict behavioural advice for more than five weeks, and when that is removed people will feel pressured, and individuals who had pre-existing anxiety, particularly about their health, will be worst hit. It will take quite a lot of psychological treatment to get over this.

'Different groups will be more affected than others, in particular the elderly and also parents, who will worry about their children bringing home the virus from schools.'

Boris Johnson said on Friday that Britain is 'past the peak' of coronavirus - which has killed 28,131 in the UK amid 183,500 confirmed cases.

Heading his first Downing Street briefing since falling ill, the Prime Minister said the UK is now on the 'downward slope' and praised Britons for having avoided an 'uncontrollable and catastrophic' epidemic.

But Mr Johnson dashed hopes of an imminent loosening, after making clear that a new flare-up of the deadly disease would be worse than the current crippling impact on the economy.

He claimed that efforts to bolster the NHS had avoided a 'reasonable worst-case scenario' of 500,000 deaths if no action to combat the pandemic had been taken, likening it to digging a tunnel under an alpine mountain.

But in the strongest hint yet that restrictions will run into June and beyond, he added: 'It is vital that we do not now lose control and run slap into a second and even bigger mountain.'

The premier said a 'huge amount of work' was going into an 'exit strategy' with the first draft to be published next week. While it will offer a 'road map, a menu of options' for how the curbs could be eased in future, he cautioned that it would not give any timings as they would depend on the science.

He gave a strong hint that it will involve advising people to wear face coverings in some circumstances, saying they 'will be useful' as the situation evolves.

Mr Johnson also said he was 'not going to pretend' the government had not made any mistakes in the handling of the crisis, pointing to PPE supplies. He admitted they were learning lessons every day.

The Opinium poll found only 47 per cent of people approved of how the Government had responded to the coronavirus crisis.

Three in five Britons also disapproved of how the Government had handled access to PPE for NHS staff and essential workers, with only 16 per cent praising their response.

An overwhelming 79 per cent of Britons said they have been following strict lockdown rules since they were introduced by Mr Johnson on March 23.

However, 23 per cent admitted to heading to the shops for non-essentials and 21 per cent said they have left the house more than once per day for exercise.
The Trump administration may insist on sanctuary city reforms in discussions with states about the next round of COVID-19 relief funding, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said May 1.

Phase 4 is something we want to start negotiating on immediately and get to work on, McEnany said in her first appearance in her role, adding that funding shouldnt be an excuse for decades and decades of bad Democrat governance that have run these states into a financial predicament.

I dont want to get ahead of the negotiations but I do want to emphasize [the president] has mentioned sanctuary cities, she added. It is something he would like to see in Phase 4.

McEnanys remarks at the press briefing echo earlier statements made by President Donald Trump, who on April 28 suggested that federal pandemic relief to states could hinge on their sanctuary city policies.

In remarks during a meeting that day with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump listed a few possible caveats to federal funding to help states fight COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, the novel coronavirus that emerged from China late last year.

Wed have to talk about things like payroll tax cuts. Trump said. Wed have to talk about things like sanctuary cities, as an example.

Trump also said a distinction should be drawn between states with funding shortfalls due to the outbreak and those with poor fiscal management.

I think theres a big difference with a state that lost money because of COVID and a state thats been run very badly for 25 years. Theres a big difference, in my opinion, he said.

Trump said at a meeting with business leaders that he wanted to include sanctuary city adjustments when distributing federal aid.

The problem with the states is were not looking to recover 25 years of bad management and give them the money that they lost. Its unfair to other states, Trump said.

Now, if its COVID-related, I guess we could talk about it. But wed want certain things also, including sanctuary city adjustments, because we have so many people in sanctuary cities, which I dont even think are popular even by radical-left folks, because whats happening is people are being protected that shouldnt be protected, he said.

A lot of bad things are happening with sanctuary cities, Trump added, possibly referring to issues such as reports of city authorities refusing to cooperate with federal immigration authorities or providing services to illegal aliens.

From The Epoch Times
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 07:03:11|Editor: huaxia

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A formation of the Blue Angels fly over Washington D.C. area, the United States, on May 2, 2020. The U.S. Navy's Blue Angels and U.S. Air Force's Thunderbirds honored frontline COVID-19 responders and essential workers with formation flights over here on Saturday. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

WASHINGTON, May 2 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Navy Blue Angels and U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds conducted a flyover on Saturday in Washington D.C., Northern Virginia and Prince George's County in Maryland in support of the frontline healthcare workers fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

The show is one of a series of flyovers the squadrons have been making around the country.

The 20-minute Washington D.C. flyover, which followed one in Baltimore of Maryland earlier in the day, started at 11:45 a.m. Eastern Time in Prince George's County of Maryland. The planes then hovered around Montgomery County of Maryland and headed into Northern Virginia via Arlington.

After passing over Fairfax City, the planes looped back in Prince William County, and then flew toward the National Mall in the downtown D.C. area, where the flyover was brought to an end at around 12:05 p.m.

Saturday's flyover was part of the "America Strong" tour, which President Donald Trump announced at a recent news conference.

"What we are doing is paying tribute to our front-line health care workers confronting COVID, and it's really a signal to all Americans to remain vigilant during the outbreak," Trump said at an April 22 news briefing.

"Operation America Strong was the idea of our great military men and women - the Thunderbirds and the Blue Angels crews who wanted to show support to the American medical workers who, just like military members in a time of war, are fiercely running toward the fight," said the president. Enditem
(Natural News) More than 16,000 employees at Boeing have been axed amid the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis as the manufacturing giant faces a lack of new orders for airplanes.

A whopping one in 10 people who make up Boeings entire global workforce is now jobless as the airplane company deals not just with declining demand but also continued distrust due to the infamous 737 Max debacle.

Boeing reported a core operating loss of $1.7 billion during the first three months of 2020, as well as an estimated increase of $5 billion tacked on to its 737 Max costs. In other words, Boeing is bleeding cash with no end in sight.

Dave Calhoun, Boeings new CEO, says that the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis combined with the 737 Max fiasco has put unprecedented pressure on the company. He still claims, however, that Boeing is progressing toward the safe return to service of the 737 Max.

As you may recall, Boeing suspended 737 Max production back in December as it awaits a regulatory stamp of approval for the planes airworthiness  which may never come, it is important to note.

The company had been seeking a government bailout of tens of billions of dollars, but has since decided to instead borrow $25 billion in the form of a bond. This bond includes seven tranches with maturities that range from anywhere between three to 40 years.

Boeing claims that there is robust demand for its bonder offering, which it says reflects strong support for the long-term strength of Boeing and the aviation industry.

Listen below to The Health Ranger Report as Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, talks about how the number of deaths caused by Boeings 737 Max airplanes is nothing compared to the number of deaths caused by Big Pharmas chemical poisons:

Boeing rejects $17 billion government bailout, chooses bond loan instead

Calhoun explained in a statement that the latest round of layoffs is concentrated on the parts of Boeings business that serve commercial airlines, which are struggling with declines in travel. Boeings defense and aerospace projects will be less affected by the layoffs.

At the same time, every element of Boeings business is being affected in some way, including its corporate functionality, because everything is intertwined to a degree.

The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting every aspect of our business, including airline customer demand, production continuity, and supply chain stability, Calhoun is quoted as saying.

During the first quarter of 2020, Boeing delivered a scant 50 commercial aircraft to its customers, which represents about one-third of the deliveries sent out during this same time back in 2019.

Boeings revenues have also subsequently declined from this, not to mention the $800 million in costs associated with the suspension of production of the 737 Max, and the $336 million it cost to fix the pickle fork that links the wings to the fuselage on the earlier model 737 Next Generation.

Airbus, Boeings major European competitor, has also seen a major decline in income, according to company head Guillaume Faury. According to Faury, it could take as long as five years for passenger aviation to return to pre-coronavirus levels.

Boeing had been offered up to $17 billion in taxpayer-funded aid as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, though it decided at the last minute to turn down this offering.

As a result of the response, and pending the closure of this transaction expected Monday, May 4, we do not plan to seek additional funding through the capital markets or the U.S. government options at this time, the company announced about its decision to go the bond route instead.

To keep up with the latest Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) news, be sure to check out Pandemic.news.

Sources for this article include:

TheGuardian.com

NaturalNews.com

USAToday.com
President Donald Trump answers questions from reporters in the East Room of the White House in Washington on April 30, 2020. (Alex Brandon/AP Photo)

To Dismay of Democrats, Trump Declines Role of Dictator

Commentary

When the U.S. Constitution was first formed, it didnt have the Bill of Rights trailing behind. It took some nudging from George Mason and other Anti-Federalists to get James Madison and the Federalists to add the 12 Amendments, which were eventually narrowed to 10.

During this pandemic, the First, Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, and 14th Amendments have been trampled underfoot by numerous local and state government leaders. While tyranny has been in vogue, the great tyrant-to-be shied away.

President Donald Trump had every opportunity, and wouldnt have been halted in his quest, to vanquish the 10th Amendment during the national emergency. Politicians, health officials, and everyday citizens requested, even demanded, that he enact a federal stay-at-home order.

The 10th Amendment, which states that powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people, truly hung in the balance.

When Gene Marks, of small-business consulting firm Marks Group, demanded a national shutdown in a March 19 op-ed for The Hill, he spoke strictly from a business perspective, and not from a constitutional one. His title Shut us down already, Mr. President! was alarming. His bravery was based on corrupt information and an incredibly naive belief.

Today it was reported that Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, reported zero new cases. Zero! Why? Because they were shut down. Totally and completely shut down. In a totalitarian society like China, this was possible, he wrote.

Marks, much like many others, began to view totalitarianism in a favorable light. Of course, the argument would be that the tyranny would be short-lived. In the history of mankind, however, a nation has never bounced back from tyranny with its freedoms unscathed.

Even constitutional scholars urged the president to take dictator-like action. During an April 9 episode on the We the People podcast, professor Kim Lane Scheppele of Princeton University and professor Deborah Pearlstein of Cardozo Law School expressed concern that the president hadnt taken extreme authoritarian action in response to the pandemic.

Before Scheppele broached the topic of Trumps lack of dictatorial enthusiasm, she raised the alarm about the power-grabbing of global leaders, such as Hungarys Viktor Orban and Serbias Aleksandar Vucic, who have sidelined Parliament, taken complete authority of the state, postponed elections indefinitely, and have established five- to eight-year prison sentences for those who defy lockdown orders.

She noted that the crisis had opened the door for leaders who had exhibited dictatorial habits to become outright tyrants. She professed that Trump was one of those leaders who had exhibited such behavior, but now there was an interesting caveat.

This has been one of the exceptions to my general principle that an emergency brings out what a state is already like.  What you would guess, watching President Trumps other activities, is that he would love this emergency, because he could take all these powers, he could do all these things, it enlarges the scope of the presidency, and instead what youve seen is this odd shrinking of presidential responsibility by basically refusing to do the things that a president should do in an emergency.

Do what a president should do? Scheppeles suggestion of what should be done was in line with what had been done by the leaders whom she had just previously condemned. Pearlstein agreed completely. In fact, they both went so far as to recommend Congress forcing the executive to take such dictatorial steps. The irony of the entire conversation was unremittingly evident.

At a time when Democrats seem most paranoid about the power of the Republican Party, due to the presidency, the Senate majority, and the Supreme Court majority (notwithstanding the mass amount of conservative judges being appointed and placed into seats), theyre now clamoring for the executive to secure even more authority to himself.

Robert Reich, the chancellors professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and senior fellow at the Blum Center, wrote on his blog that Trump will do anythinganythingto hold on to power. In his mind, the coronavirus crisis is just another opportunity.

Trump has continued to insult members of the media, fire people within the executive branch, and avoid presidential norms, but ultimately, his actions have not been out of character from his previous three years. So although the coronavirus crisis did present an opportunity to obtain more power, it was an opportunity he decided to avoid.

From The Los Angeles Times to The New York Times and everywhere in between, countless media publications demanded, as Marks had done, that Trump shut down the economy. He resisted a national shutdown, just as eight Republican governors resisted statewide shutdowns. The numbers tell the tale of why a national shutdown was unnecessary.

If history has taught Americans anything, its that federal government overreaction causes more harm than good. Whether or not you believe his decisions throughout this pandemic were right or wrong, it would be difficult to establish an opposing argument that his resistance against undermining the 10th Amendment was a mistake.

Were not really dealing with somebody, Scheppele said, who takes legal advice very easily or someone who really considers the constitutional consequences of what hes doing.

Actually, Trump seems to have been one of the few who, at least in this moment, truly considered the constitutional consequences.

Dustin Bass is the co-founder of The Sons of History, a YouTube series and weekly podcast about all things history. He is a former-journalist-turned-entrepreneur. He is also an author.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
A couple kiss, at the Barcelona airport, Spain, Thursday, March 12, 2020.

Associated Press

As cities and towns around the world enforce stay-in-place orders and lockdowns, long-distance couples have to grapple with indefinitely postponed meetups.

For others, the coronavirus has forced them to become long-distance against their will, putting an unanticipated strain on their relationships.

Long-distance couples told Insider that the coronavirus pandemic has made them feel defeated and anxious about their relationships.

* Some names have been changed to protect anonymity.

Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Charlotte*, a 31-year-old New York City resident and public relations executive, was excited to finally see her husband.

After three years of Charlotte living in New York while her husband lived in Germany, his Green Card Application had been completed and finalized, and their long-distance relationship was about to end. But then, the coronavirus pandemic happened.

"For something that was finally within reach for us, it now seems like a distant memory. The timing for when he can finally move to New York is all very much TBD," Charlotte, who asked to use a pseudonym to protect her privacy, told Insider.

As cities around the world enforce stay-in-place orders and lockdowns, couples like Charlotte and her husband have to grapple with indefinitely postponed meetups. For others, the coronavirus has forced them to separate from their partners against their will, putting an unanticipated strain on their relationships.

When a long-awaited reunion gets pushed back

Charlotte and her husband met through Tinder in 2016, when he was completing his business degree at Cornell University in upstate New York and she lived in New York City. Once they finally met for drinks in person in Brooklyn, Charlotte said she knew she'd found her soul mate. They continued to date and eventually got married in February 2019.

But without a visa to stay on, Charlotte's husband had to move back to Germany, so they continued the relationship long-distance and visited each other as much as they could.

Story continues

They communicate regularly, and share everything with eachother, but never really got into FaceTime and preferred phone calls and texts. Charlotte said she felt pressure to look a certain way on FaceTime, which created additional stress around the communication method.

But since the coronavirus, they've become more open to it because they don't have any other options.

"Funny enough, as awkward as I feel it is at times to do a FaceTime chat, it does make you feel more connected with the person at-hand," Charlotte said.

"It has helped pass the time in between times we get to see one another. I used to feel like I had to get myself 'together' when I'd FaceTime with my husband, but now I deem it as part of our day-to-day life without there needing to be frills or any form of filter, if you will."

phone call

anyaberkut/ iStock

A couple forced to become long-distance

Tessa, a 23-year-old with family in Tennessee, is studying for a Master's degree in Galway, Ireland, but recently made the heart-wrenching decision to go back to the United States, leaving her Irish boyfriend of two years behind.

She had met her boyfriend when she first moved to Ireland, as an undergraduate studying abroad.

"One date quickly turned into three and before I knew it we were talking every single day without fail. When my program had ended he spent one of my last days in Ireland with me," Tessa said. They continued to stay in touch over social media and phone calls, and even took a road trip together, then Tessa returned to Ireland for her graduate program and that's when their relationship was really solidified.

On March 14, Tessa heard American universities with undergraduate study abroad programs were instructing their students to head back to the states. Although Tessa didn't fit that criteria as a public policy graduate student, she decided it was best to go back to the states.

"I had to weigh my options and question what was safer for me," Tessa said. "What if I got sick en route back home? What if I got someone else sick? What if I was stuck abroad and borders closed? It resulted in around 15 to 20 phone calls a day with my parents and very little sleep for about three days."

iphone facetime head tilt

Apple

Tessa said two factors ultimately led to her decision to leave her boyfriend in Ireland. First, she had more comprehensive healthcare coverage in the United States, and second, her two Irish roommates were nurses treating COVID-19 patients and she didn't want to risk getting ill.

"The day I realized the severity of things in Ireland and learned that my university would be shutting down, I called him after having a panic attack. He was in Dublin at the time," Tessa said. "A few hours later, I heard a knock at my front door and he was there. It was an incredibly difficult decision to leave him, but he supported me wholeheartedly in doing so. He kept my best interest in mind which I value dearly."

On March 16, Tessa's boyfriend drove her to the Dublin airport and they said their goodbyes.

"I think that the uncertainty of it all is the hardest," Tessa told Insider. "I know that it is in my best interest to be back in my home country with my family, but saying goodbye to someone I love, even if just temporarily, is incredibly hard. I spent my last few days in Ireland with him. We tried to reassure each other that things will be alright, but I still worry nonetheless."

Tessa said the five-hour time difference between them has been one of the biggest obstacles to keeping up communication, though it helps that her boyfriend has been so supportive of her decision to go back.

But the uncertainty of when they'll see each other next worries her. She feels they would be normally equipped to deal with a long-distance arrangement, but this is a unique situation.

"I have no idea when I will be back in the home I built in Ireland with him, which in times of worry can feel defeating," she said.

A long-distance couple who rely on regular trips together are having to indefinitely postpone their meet-ups

"Funny enough, as awkward as I feel it is at times to do a FaceTime chat, it does make you feel more connected with the person at-hand," Charlotte said. "It has helped pass the time in between times we get to see one another."

Westend61/Getty Images

Even couples who were in long-distance relationships before the pandemic are struggling with the sudden change.

Ava, 27, lives in Eastern Europe while her boyfriend lives in the United States, and that's been the case for the entirety of their two-year relationship.

They met through a mutual friend when he was visiting Ava's hometown during vacation, and although they had no intentions of getting serious, they kept in close contact following that meetup.

"It didn't start as dating at first. We were just really infatuated with each other and ended up never not talking," Ava, who works in advertising, said. "Then we decided to see each other and started taking trips to each other, which made it more of a relationship than it was before. It started as a fling which turned into something we didn't want to stop pursuing."

Normally, Ava, who asked to use a pseudonym for privacy reasons, and her boyfriend would see each other every couple of months by planning a trip together. But now, the reunion trip they were planning is indefinitely on hold.

"I would say [the coronavirus pandemic] has affected us tremendously. Traveling is a huge part of our relationship so we are preparing for the idea that we may not be able to see each other for another four or five months, which does put a little pressure on us," Ava said.

Long-distance couples are excellent communicators, but still have trouble with coronavirus-related separation

The key to a successful long-distance relationship is staying connected despite the distance, according to relationship experts.

Although Charlotte and Ava are seasoned communicators, the pandemic has still affected their relationships.

"While I do think FaceTime is better than nothing, I don't think there is any comparison to being able to share a laugh together in person, relax on a couch with one another, or cheers with some bubbly at a great bar," Charlotte said.

Ava said she and her partner have always used WhatsApp, FaceTime, and shared playlists and memes as a way to feel connected, and that these methods have become even more important during the pandemic.

But for Tessa, who has never spent much time apart from her boyfriend, this is new territory. She's confident they can make do, but she is concerned about the inevitable tension that distance brings.

"I love to joke with my boyfriend about him being a grandpa because he is definitely an old man trapped in a 24-year-old's body. He is not very keen on using his phone constantly and he only purchased data for the first time in his life six months ago," Tessa said.

"So that will pose a challenge as well. I do not mind connecting through our phones, but we both prefer seeing each other in person. Our love language is quality-time or touch, and it's difficult to obtain that when there is an ocean separating you."

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A nurse and a domestic services assistant have become the latest healthcare workers to die after contracting coronavirus.

"Caring mother and wife" Philomina Cherian, 63, died on April 30 at Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital after 40 years working as a nurse.

Meanwhile, Ray Lever, who was a domestic services assistant at the Northern General Hospital, died on Saturday and has been remembered as a "perfect dad and grandad".

It comes as NHS workers continue to put their life on the line to battle against the Covid-19 pandemic.

Ms Cherian was married and had three children and, according to her family, she was planning to retire in a couple of years' time.

"She was a great human being, a caring mother and wife," her husband Joseph Varkey said.

"She was a dedicated nurse. For her, nursing was not just a profession but it was her passion.

Coronavirus hits the UK - In pictures 1 /81 Coronavirus hits the UK - In pictures A deserted Westminster Bridge PA A man wearing a face mask or covering due to the COVID-19 pandemic, walks past customers sat outside a restaurant AFP via Getty Images Boris Johnson addresses the nation on the Coronavirus lockdown Andrew Parsons Runners pass cardboard cutouts of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and Prince William during the London Marathon in London AP An empty escalator at Charing Coss London Underground tube station Jeremy Selwyn Electronic bilboards displays a message warning people to stay home in Sheffield PA A sign is displayed in the window of a student accommodation building following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Mancheste Reuters People take part in a 'We Do Not Consent' rally at Trafalgar Square, organised by Stop New Normal, to protest against coronavirus restrictions, in Londo AP People sing and dance in Leicester Square on the eve on the 10PM curfew Reuters Hearts painted by a team of artists from Upfest are seen in the grass at Queen Square, following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Bristol Reuters Graffiti reads 'good luck and stay safe', as the number of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases grow around the world, under a bridge in London Reuters A sign is pictured in Soho, amid the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in London Reuters Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures, during a coronavirus briefing in Downing Street, London AP A person runs past posters with a message of hope, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues in Manchester REUTERS Riot police face protesters who took part in a 'We Do Not Consent' rally at Trafalgar Square, organised by Stop New Normal, to protest against coronavirus restrictions in London AP An image of The Queen eith quotes from her broadcast to the UK and the Commonwealth in relation to the Coronavirus epidemic are displayed on lights in London's Piccadilly Circus PA Military vehicles cross Westminster Bridge after members of the 101 Logistic Brigade delivered a consignment of medical masks to St Thomas' hospital Getty Images Durdle Door in Dorset Reuters Captain Tom Moore via Reuters Mia, aged 8, and Jack, aged 5, take part in "PE with Joe" a daily live workout with Joe Wicks on Youtube to help kids stay fit who have to stay indoors due to the Coronavirus outbreak PA An NHS worker reacts at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital during the Clap for our Carers campaign in support of the NHS Reuters Goats which have taken over the deserted streets of Llandudno @AndrewStuart via PA Tobias Weller PA Novikov restaurant in London with its shutters pulled down while the restaurant is closed London Landscapes: Hyde Park and the Serpentine, central London. Matt Writtle A newspaper vendor in Manchester city centre giving away free toilet rolls with every paper bought as shops run low on supplies due to fears over the spread of the coronavirus PA Theo Clay looks out of his window next to his hand-drawn picture of a rainbow in Liverpool, as the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continue Reuters A young man cuts another man's hair on top of a closed hairdresser in Oxford Reuters General view of the new NHS Nightingale Hospital, built to fight against the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in London via Reuters Jason Baird is seen dressed as Spiderman during his daily exercise to cheer up local children in Stockport, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues Reuters A woman wearing a face mask walks past Buckingham Palace Getty Images A man holds mobile phone displaying a text message alert sent by the government warning that new rules are in force across the UK and people must stay at home PA Medical staff on the Covid-19 ward at the Neath Port Talbot Hospital, in Wales, as the health services continue their response to the coronavirus outbreak. PA Prime Minister Boris Johnson taking part in a virtual Cabinet meeting with his top team of ministers PA A shopper walks past empty shelves in a Lidl store on in Wallington. After spates of "panic buying" cleared supermarket shelves of items like toilet paper and cleaning products, stores across the UK have introduced limits on purchases during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some have also created special time slots for the elderly and other shoppers vulnerable to the new coronavirus. Getty Images People on a busy tube train in London at rush hour PA Mia, aged 8 and her brother Jack, aged 5 from Essex, continue their school work at home, after being sent home due to the coronavirus PA Children are painting 'Chase the rainbows' artwork and springing up in windows across the country Reuters Social distancing in Primrose Hill Jeremy Selwyn A general view of a locked gate at Anfield, Liverpool as The Premier League has been suspended PA Homeless people in London AFP via Getty Images A piece of art by the artist, known as the Rebel Bear has appeared on a wall on Bank Street in Glasgow. The new addition to Glasgow's street art is capturing the global Coronavirus crisis. The piece features a woman and a man pulling back to give each other a kiss PA The Queen leaves Buckingham Palace, London, for Windsor Castle to socially distance herself amid the coronavirus pandemic PA A general view on Grey street, Newcastle as coronavirus cases grow around the world Reuters Matt Raw, a British national who returned from the coronavirus-hit city of Wuhan in China, leaves quaratine at Arrowe Park Hospital on Merseyside PA Britain's Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty (L) and Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance look on as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures as he speaks during a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) news conference inside 10 Downing Street Reuters The ticket-validation terminals at the tram stop on Edinburgh's Princes Street are cleaned following the coronavirus outbreak. PA Locked school gates at Rockcliffe First School in Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear PA A sign at a Sainsbury's supermarket informs customers that limits have been set on a small number of products as the number of coronavirus (COVID-19) cases grow around the world Reuters Jawad Javed delivers coronavirus protection kits that he and his wife have put together to the vulnerable people of their community of Stenhousemuir, between Glasgow and Edinburgh AFP via Getty Images A sign advertising a book titled "How Will We Survive On Earth?" Getty Images A man who appears to be homeless sleeping wearing a mask today in Victoria Jeremy Selwyn A pedestrian walks past graffiti that reads "Diseases are in the City" in Edinburgh AFP via Getty Images Staff from The Lyric Theatre, London inform patrons, as it shuts its doors PA A quiet looking George IV Bridge in Edinburgh PA A quieter than usual British Museum Getty Images A racegoer attends Cheltenham in a fashionable face mask SplashNews.com A commuter wears a face mask at London Bridge Station Jeremy Selwyn A empty restaurant in the Bull Ring Shopping Centre Getty Images A deserted Trafalgar Square in London PA Passengers determined to avoid the coronavirus before leaving the UK arrive at Gatwick Airport Getty Images

"She would have lived for so many years and enjoyed her well-deserved retired life if she was not affected by Covid."

Ms Cherian, originally from Kerala in India, worked as a nurse in Saudi Arabia before moving to the UK.

A statement from Oxford University Hospitals (OUH) said of Ms Cherian: "She was a popular and hugely valued member of our OUH nursing family who will be sorely missed by her colleagues as well as by her family and friends."

Philomina Cherian, 63, who passed away with coronavirus on Thursday at Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital, / PA

Sam Foster, chief nursing officer, said: "I wanted to express that at this very sad time our thoughts are with the family of Philomina, as well as with her friends and colleagues throughout the Trust.

"She was an incredibly caring friend and colleague who will be terribly missed by us all.

"Many of you will have known her and worked closely with her and I ask you to remember how she wonderfully cared for her patients and her colleagues, acting as an exemplar nurse to all who met her.

"Philomina was cared for with the utmost love, care and attention and we would like to thank all staff who were involved in her care."

One minute silence to NHS heroes who lost lives to the Coronavirus 1 /25 One minute silence to NHS heroes who lost lives to the Coronavirus London Ambulance Staff observe the minute silence today at their HQ in Waterloo Road Jeremy Selwyn Staff stand outside Salford Royal Hospital in Manchester during a minute's silence to pay tribute to the NHS staff and key workers who have died during the coronavirus outbreak PA Shoppers queue in the rain outside Costco in Thurrock during a minutes silence to pay tribute to the NHS staff and key workers who have died during the coronavirus outbreak PA A minute silence in honour of key workers who have lost their lives due to COVID-19 Sky News London Ambulance Staff observe the minute silence today at their HQ in Waterloo Road Jeremy Selwyn Staff react outside Salford Royal Hospital in Manchester during a minute's silence to pay tribute to the NHS staff and key workers who have died during the coronavirus outbreak PA A staff member reacts outside Salford Royal Hospital in Manchester during a minute's silence to pay tribute to the NHS staff and key workers who have died during the coronavirus outbreak PA Members of the public, NHS staff, and Police offices, some wearing PPE (personal protective equipment) of a face mask as a precautionary measure against COVID-19, pause for a minute's silence to honour UK key workers AFP via Getty Images A police officer observes a minute silence in honour of key workers who have lost their lives due to COVID-19 outside 10 Downing Street, Reuters London Ambulance Staff observe the minute silence today at their HQ in Waterloo Road Jeremy Selwyn Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill, Prime minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak stand inside 10 Downing Street, London, to observe a minutes silence in tribute to the NHS staff and key workers who have died during the coronavirus outbreak PA A minute silence in honour of key workers who have lost their lives due to COVID-19 Sky News London Ambulance Staff observe the minute silence today at their HQ in Waterloo Road Jeremy Selwyn Staff stand outside the Royal Derby Hospital, during a minutes silence to pay tribute to the NHS staff and key workers who have died during the coronavirus outbreak PA Staff stand outside the Royal Derby Hospital, during a minutes silence to pay tribute to the NHS staff and key workers who have died during the coronavirus outbreak PA Staff stand inside Camberwell bus depot in London, during a minute's silence to pay tribute to the NHS staff and key workers who have died during the coronavirus outbreak PA National Shop Stewards Network protesters outside St Thomas' Hospital in London, during a minute's silence which was to pay tribute to the NHS staff and key workers who have died during the coronavirus outbreak. PA Staff members applaud outside the Royal Derby Hospital, following a minute's silence to pay tribute to the NHS staff and key workers who have died during the coronavirus outbreak. PA First Minister Nicola Sturgeon stands outside St Andrew's House in Edinburgh to observe a minute's silence in tribute to the NHS staff and key workers who have died during the coronavirus outbreak PA

A fundraising page has been set up to help cover the costs of Ms Cherian's memorial.

Meanwhile, Mr Lever's daughters Rachel, Kathryn, and Rebecca said: "Dad was the perfect dad and grandad and nothing was ever too much trouble for him if it meant helping someone else.

"He was always cheerful and loved a laugh and joke. Our world will never be the same."

They went on to thank staff at the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (STHNHSFT) for their "unbelievable care", which included providing protective clothing to ensure one of the three could be with him at the end of his life.

Domestic services assistant Ray Lever at Northern General Hospital, who has died with Covid-19, the Trust said. / PA

The daughters added: "They even fulfilled his last request to have a drink of beer by sending someone out to get a bottle of his favourite tipple.

"A small gesture but it demonstrated the kindness of an incredible team."

Mr Lever had previously worked in patient areas but was moved to non-patient areas "early on in the outbreak", according to the trust.

His colleagues remembered him as a "genuinely, lovely, kind man who put others before himself".

STHNHSFT chief executive Kirsten Major said: "His family can be justifiably proud that he made a difference to people's lives each and every single day."

She added: "We were very fortunate to have someone like him as part of our team. He was a credit to the NHS."

STHNHSFT facilities director Andrew Jones said: "He was always showing pictures of his family and particularly his grandchildren who he doted on.

"It is so very sad for everyone who had the privilege to know and work with Ray."
Bengaluru: Indian Air Force (IAF) Mi-17 helicopter showering rose petals over Covid-19 warriors at the state-run Victoria Hospital and its Command Hospital in Bengaluru on May 3, 2020. (Photo: IANS) Image Source: IANS News

Mumbai: Indian Air Force (IAF) Mi-17 helicopter showering rose petals over Covid-19 warriors at the state-run Victoria Hospital and its Command Hospital in Bengaluru on May 3, 2020. (Photo: IANS) Image Source: IANS News

Bengaluru, May 3 : An Indian Air Force (IAF) Mi-17 helicopter on Sunday showered flowers over the state-run Victoria Hospital in the city centre and its Command Hospital in the eastern suburb, honouring Corona warriors, including doctors, nurses and paramedics.

"The Russian-built Mi-17 took off from the Yelahanka air base in the city's northern suburb at 10.15 a.m. and flew over Victoria Hospital and Command Hospital between 10.30-10.45 a.m., showering rose petals over them from a low height," a defence spokesman told IANS here.

A clear summer sky enabled the pilot to locate the hospitals easily and drop the flower petals on their roofs and around its area.

Maintaining physical distance and wearing masks, doctors, nurses and staff of both hospitals stood in the open ground and cheered the chopper pilot with thumbs up sign for greeting them with flowers on the occasion.

"They all clapped and waved hands to the pilot as the copter flew over the hospitals," the official said.

An IAF band played music at both the hospitals and saluted the Covid warriors in the grounds.

"We are touched by the IAF gesture in honouring our healthcare professionals who have been working day and night over a month-and-half in taking care of Covid patients in the isolated wards," a hospital official told IANS on phone.

A C-130 transport aircraft of the air force will fly over the state secretariat (Vidhana Soudha) later in the afternoon as a tribute to the Covid warriors.
ComebackTown is published by David Sher for a more prosperous greater Birmingham & Alabama

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Todays guest columnist is Danny Cohn. If youd like to be a guest columnist, please click here.

Just about everyone told us we were crazy to move to Birmingham.

Then right when I moved, family yet to come, the world was hit with the Coronavirus.

So Im new to Birminghamstarting a new job and a new lifeall alone.

I arrived in Birmingham on March 9th as the new CEO of the Birmingham Jewish Federation. My family relocated to Omaha, Nebraska five years ago having spent the previous 15 years in Chicago.

Though I was hoping for the best, I was not prepared for the incredible generosity of my new community.

What people dont seem to understand is that Birmingham is not only a great place to raise a family, but as I have come to realize over the last eight weeks, a great place to set an example of how people take care of others during a crisis. Its only been eight weeks, but the sense of community here is astounding.

Many people dont realize how few Jews live hereonly about 6,000 of the 1.1 million people in our metropolitan area. (Half of one percent)

The Levite Jewish Community has provided more than 1,300 meals for those in need, delivered 225 perishable and non-perishable food packages for senior living facilities, put together 75 non-perishable food kits for HICA and serves essential worker families through its Operation Cares Camp. In addition, the LJCC is serving as a mobile site for the Community Food Bank and has provided more than 300 grocery boxes for those in need.

Since pivoting from face-to-face service to a new normal, Collat Jewish Family Services has served 191 clients. Each of these clients received wellness and needs assessment calls at least weekly. These regular calls are reducing the isolation and loneliness so many are experiencing at this time. Additionally, CJFS assists clients in getting the food/medication/household supplies they need safely, either through delivery services or through its own staff and volunteers.

CJFS has also provided financial assistance for rent, utilities, food and medications to people who are experiencing financial hardships directly related to COVID-19.

The United Way of Central Alabama along with our Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham are models for other communities on how to do things right by providing grants that are successfully reaching those in need throughout all of Birmingham. The people of Birmingham are generous which has been shown through the amount of monies flowing into these organizations.

For the last 84 years the Birmingham Jewish Federation has served as the central philanthropic arm of the Birmingham Jewish Community, providing funding for the communitys most critical needs. I am honored to be at the helm of this organization. I am also proud to say we are able to financially support all of the institutions mentioned above, as well as communities abroad, such as Israel, that need our help through these unprecedented times.

When people question our move to Birmingham, my reply is  just wait until you visit and you will understand. Aside from a strong philanthropic arm and beautiful scenery, we have collaboration, not just philanthropically, but with government and NGOs that want to support each other, not only in times of crisis but on a daily basis. I look forward to forging these relationships after we as a community successfully emerge from this pandemic.

Birmingham isnt a come back town its a run to town.

I knew from our visits Birmingham was beautiful, I knew that residents were kind, the cost of living was low, and the food scene was on fire. And I knew that the health care system here was second to none. What I didnt know was that southern hospitality isnt just home hospitality, but caring for the community as well  a community I am now proud to call home.

Danny Cohn, a recent transplant from Omaha, NE, is the newly appointed CEO of the Birmingham Jewish Federation, the Jewish Communitys central fundraising, community relations and community development agency.
Greece on Sunday condemned

what it called harassment of its defence minister and army chief by Turkish jets over a small island in the Aegean Sea.

The encounter occurred according to Greek defence sources after Greek jets intercepted Turkish aircraft in what are common but occasionally dangerous manoeuvres by two NATO allies.

Defence Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos and army chief of staff general Konstantinos Floros were onsureboard a helicopter that had taken off from the small island of Inoussses following a visit to forward bases near the border with Turkey.

The Greek press agency Ana reported that two Turkish jets flew over the island at an altitude of 3,500 feet (1,000 metres) after their helicopter lifted off, and then buzzed a second Greek island, Agathonissi, at 1,700 feet.

The Greek foreign ministry "firmly condemned the harassment" and urged Turkey to respect established rules "like other countries in the region instead of systematically violating them".

Shortly before the incident, Greek jets had intercepted Turkish ones that according to Greek officials had violated the country's air space, a military source said.

In April 2018, a Greek pilot died when his plane crashed following a similar interception.
Madhya Pradesh Congress president



and former chief minister Kamal Nath on Sunday said the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government in the state was testing less number of people for novel coronavirus so as to deliberately keep the COVID-19 numbers low.

He said people were being tested in some major cities, but the vast rural population in the state was being left out.

Speaking to reporters through video conference, Nath said, "The fight against the COVID-19 outbreak is not sufficient (in MP). In which town or village is testing taking place? Fewer tests are being carried out so that the pandemic numbers can be kept low," he claimed.

"People are being tested only in big cities like Indore, Bhopal, Jabalpur and some district headquarters. Is there a planned way to conduct tests to detect the virus," Nath, who lost his chief ministership on March 20 following a party rebellion, said.

Nath said if he was in power now, then testing kits would been given to every district in the state to test people for the virus.

He also expressed apprehension on migrants returning to their villages.

"Labourers having exposure to the virus are returning to their villages. What will happen now," he asked.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hubei, Wuhan yet to be top destinations amid sharp tourist declines on May 1

Tourists visit the Yellow Crane Tower in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province (Xinhua/Xiao Yijiu)

Central China's Hubei Province, one of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) hardest-hit regions in China, saw a sharp year-on-year decline of tourists during this year's May Day holidays although its capital city Wuhan had been chosen as a top destination by some domestic visitors.

Only 109,664 tourists visited Hubei's 22 reopened key scenic areas on Friday - the first day of the five-day vacation From May 1 to 5 - a dramatic 86.97 percent year-on-year decrease.

The 22 scenic areas generated a total of 6.79 million yuan ($961,729) of tourism revenue on Friday, a 95 percent year-on-year plummet, reported the Xinhua News Agency, citing figures released by the Hubei Culture and Tourism Administration.

Just three days ahead of May Day holidays, Wuhan was ranked as the top domestic travel destination, according to a survey of 15,163 questionnaires released by the Tourism Research Center under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences on April 28. The report had been echoed by many Chinese on social media.

Nonetheless, contrary to the interest that people had expressed online for Wuhan, few have seemed to have really traveled there in this vacation.

Some hesitated tourists told the Global Times that they feel it is not yet the "best time" to go there as they worry about the possible risks of infection - although Wuhan has reported zero in-hospital COVID-19 patients on April 26.

Wen Zhe, a tourist who initially planned to visit Wuhan during the May holidays, changed his destination to Xi'an in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province. "I like Wuhan, but I think it is safer to go there after some time," he said.

Wuhan's landmark Yellow Crane Tower served only 1,595 visitors on Friday, only accounting for 3 percent of those in the same period last year, said the scenic area's staff.

The number was much fewer than the daily limit of 5,400 visitors the tower has set for the vacation. "It is basically in line with our expectations," Jiang Meng, a publicity staffer with Yellow Crane Tower management office, told the Global Times on Saturday.

Liu Shanliang, a 57-year-old visitor who had been to the tower on Friday, said he only saw a few tourists when entering the scenic area around 10:30 am. "There were neither crowds nor queues," he told the Global Times.

Another visitor surnamed Wu, a Wuhan local resident, said to the Global Times that he saw approximately 100 people in this scenic area on Friday.

"The tower was quiet, different from the busy and lively scene I experienced (in the same vacation) last year," he recalled.

Others didn't choose Wuhan because they were reluctant to bring added virus-control pressure to the city. "Wuhan has made a lot of efforts to fight the virus," one said. "I don't want us tourists to threaten the local situation."

It is understandable Wuhan hasn't seen many tourists in this vacation as the epidemic has not come to a final end, Wu said. He estimated that visitors will largely increase months later, especially during this year's National Day vacation in October.

Similar to Wuhan's Yellow Crane Tower, some other key scenic areas in Hubei reached by the Global Times on Saturday also said they had a tremendous decline in tourists. Many scenic areas have limited the daily visitor number under 30 percent of their largest carrying capacity to avoid possible risks of virus transmission, but the actual tourists they served on Friday were far fewer than the limit.

Visitors to the Wudang Mountain in Shiyan city, known as cradle of the Taoist culture, decreased by over 80 percent year-on-year, said a staffer with the scenic area surnamed Chen. "The majority of the visitors were Hubei locals," Chen said.

The Longzhong scenic area in Xiangyang city, one of China's 5-A (the highest level) tourist attractions, saw 5,500 visitors on Friday, with more than an 80-percent year-on-year drop as well.

The falloff is not surprising, said director of Longzhong's publicity department surnamed Zhao. "We have expected this," Zhao told the Global Times, adding that he believes the decline won't last long as the local epidemic situation continues to improve.

Hubei is gradually recovering from the pains caused by the deadly virus. There have been no new COVID-19 cases across the province for 29 consecutive days since April 4.

To boost local tourism, the Hubei government released a notice on Friday that contains policies including allocating 100 million yuan to support tour companies and encouraging a 2.5-day weekend.
Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Saturday said it has cancelled the licence of Mumbai-based CKP Co-operative Bank Ltd as its financial position is unsustainable and also not in a position to pay its depositors.

The bank is not satisfying the stipulated minimum regulatory capital requirement of 9 percent, the RBI said while cancelling the licence from the close of business on 30 April.

"Consequent to the cancellation of its licence, The CKP Co-operative Bank Ltd, Mumbai, is prohibited from conducting the business of 'banking' which includes acceptance of deposits and repayment of deposits..." it said.

With the cancellation of licence and commencement of liquidation proceedings, the process of paying the depositors of the co-operative bank as per the DICGC Act, 1961 will be set in motion.

"On liquidation, every depositor is entitled to repayment of his/her deposits up to a monetary ceiling of Rs 5,00,000 from the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation (DICGC) as per usual terms and conditions," the RBI said.

Giving details, the RBI said the financial position of the bank "is highly adverse and unsustainable".

Also, there is no concrete revival plan or proposal for a merger with another bank.

Besides, a credible commitment towards revival from the management is not visible, it added.

"The bank is not in a position to pay its present and future depositors," it said.

The RBI further said the affairs of the bank "were and are" being conducted in a manner detrimental to the public interest and interest of the depositors and that the general character of the management of the bank is prejudicial to the interest of depositors as also the public interest.

The Registrar of Co-operative Societies, Pune has been asked to issue an order for winding up the affairs of The CKP Co-operative Bank and appoint a liquidator for the bank.
ORLANDO, Fla. - Florida deputies arrested a man who had been living out his quarantine on a shuttered Disney World island, telling authorities it felt like a tropical paradise.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 2/5/2020 (626 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ORLANDO, Fla. - Florida deputies arrested a man who had been living out his quarantine on a shuttered Disney World island, telling authorities it felt like a "tropical paradise."

Orange County Sheriff's deputies found Richard McGuire on Disney's Discovery Island on Thursday. He said he'd been there since Monday or Tuesday and had planned to camp there for a week, according to an arrest report.

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The 42-year-old said he didn't hear numerous deputies searching the private island for him on foot, by boat and by air because he was asleep in a building. He told the deputy he didn't know it was a restricted area, despite there being numerous "no trespassing" signs.

"Richard stated that he was unaware of that and that it looked like a tropical paradise," according to the arrest report.

Orange County Marine deputies on Bay Lake used a public address system to tell McGuire he was not allowed to be on the property, but he remained on the island, anyway, according to the arrest report.

A security representative for Disney said she saw McGuire using a company boat Thursday, noting that the area had several "no trespassing" signs and two closed gates. She asked the agency to press charges.

McGuire was arrested on a trespassing charge and taken to jail without incident. It was not immediately clear whether he had an attorney who could comment.

Previously called Treasure Island, Discovery Island had been the site of a zoological park before the island was closed to the public in 1999.
Popular On-Air-Personality Toke Makinwa has reacted to the news that Kano state government has relaxed the total lockdown by calling on other governors to completely ban inter state travels adding that if Kano intends to gamble with lives, then they should keep it there.

Read Also: Lockdown: Stay At Home If You Dont Have Any Business Out There: AY Comedian

Speaking via her official Twitter handle, she further stated that the government of Kano think the pandemic is a joke.

She said, The government of Kano, its like they think its a joke, relaxing the lockdown is ridiculous as their numbers are on a high, every state should cancel interstate travel now more than ever, if your governor in Kano wants to gamble with your lives, pls keep it there.

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JERUSALEM - At the Michel household, the first normal school morning in six weeks felt anything but. Clil and Alma, identical twin 7-year-olds, were by turns giddy and apprehensive as Israel, after days of on-again, off-again uncertainty, opened schools Sunday to thousands of first-, second- and third-graders.

Like families around the world, the Michels had been waiting for back-to-school day as a coronavirus milestone. But even as they packed the backpacks - the new supply lists included masks, hand sanitizer and cloth napkins to unfold under their snacks - they didn't know whether the return would reduce the frightening grind of the country's outbreak, or amplify it.

By breakfast time, the girls had dressed, brushed their own hair and - as they bounced on couches in the living room that had been their only classroom since the middle of March - talked of friends they would finally see.

Israel's lurch back toward scholastic routine after weeks of online learning has been scattered and controversial. Education officials have been caught between health experts warning of a second outbreak and business advocates seeking to free parents up to return to work.

Last week, with the country's infection rate declining, the Ministry of Education announced that grades one through three would return Sunday in most schools, with grades 11 and 12 to follow later in the week. Classes would be divided into smaller groups and some schools would stagger start times. Teachers over the age of 65 and those with underlying health concerns would remain at home. Local school systems could choose not to reopen. Each family could decide whether to send their child.

"We have succeeded in finding a balance between the desire to restore the economy and guidelines from the Ministry of Health," Education Minister Rafi Peretz said in a statement Saturday.

Some parents would have preferred more clarity. Just how much danger will there be to the students? To their families at home?

Michal Abramson is a mother of three in the city of Modi'in. The household includes two people with compromised immune systems.

"I am dying to send my kids back and they really want to go, but no one knows what will happen, and that puts us all at risk," she said. "When the kids are in school they don't know how to social distance. When one kid gets head lice, they all get head lice."

For Julia Boxer, a business owner in the town of Even Yehuda, knowing that kids will be kids meant keeping her 8-year-old daughter at home a while longer.

"Of course they are going to want to hug and kiss their friends," she said. "They have not seen each other for six weeks."

Several large cities, including Tel Aviv, said they would stay closed for now. Teachers groups, too, pushed back, wanting clarity on safety measures and how they will be paid for weeks of online teaching. Several associations of preschool and day care workers said their members would not return to work on May 10, when the government hopes to reopen those facilities.

Matti and Anna Michel had gone over the new rules with the twins several times: No taking books from the library, no borrowing pencils from other students, no games that require touching ("Which is pretty much every kid game there is," Matti, 36, said ruefully).

Now Matti braced to deliver some bad news the parents had received on a conference call the night before - the call in which the teacher had warned that the whole setup was a "social experiment," and two mothers, crying, had said they were too afraid to send their children back. "Girls," he said. "We won't be able to come into school with you. We have to leave you at the gate."

Clil looked over the wall of cereal boxes, tearing up. She had already learned that her class would be split in two to create space for physical distancing. She was moving to a 5th-grade classroom far from half her friends and her twin sister.

"I don't want to go alone," she said. "I don't know where to go."

"You do know," said her sister, who started to sketch a map of the building on a scrap of paper. "It's by the music room."

"That's the stress," Matti said, as mother Anna pulled Clil's hair through a scrunchy and the girl fit the cords of a face mask, decorated with unicorns, over her ears.

The family was safe and healthy. But Matti and Anna had made a point of telling the girls that the pandemic had cost some of their friends their jobs. They knew why they hadn't been able to hug their grandparents in weeks. They knew people were dying. Sometimes on the street the girls asked: Why isn't that person wearing a mask?

What no one knew was whether they would be back to square one again in two weeks, stuck once more in their third-floor apartment as infection rates spiked anew. But now it was time to go.

"Ready?" asked Anna, opening the door.

"I don't envy the teachers," she said as the family made their way down still-quiet streets to the school. "It's nearly an impossible situation."

Normally the sidewalks would be filled with students; commuter traffic would make it a chore to cross HaPalmach Street. Now, the Michels were all but alone, pioneers on the march to a new normal.

"Good for you," said a man who was guiding an oil truck backward into a driveway, pausing it to let them pass.

Anna, a nonprofit executive who is between jobs, made good use of the home-schooling window by teaching her girls to read in her native Russian, which she has spoken to them since birth.

"Suddenly, I had all this time with them," she said.

She would prefer that schools waited until it was clearer that the risk of a second wave had passed. Her husband, a lawyer,wishes they would move faster. He's comforted by evidence he has read that children are less prone to be infected.

He called up a photo of a boy with a backpack. It was just sent by his brother-in-law, a pediatric lung specialist. "They are sending their son to school this morning," Matti said. "I think it's fine."

At the Henrietta Szold Elementary School gate, the Michels found none of the usual hubbub. Only a few cars pulled up to disperse little masked scholars. Matti filled out a form that pledged the family to check the children's temperature each morning.

Alma walked through the gate. Clil followed, and then walked out again, her eyes scared above her mask. "This is so crazy," Matti said.

Suddenly, her mother pointed and Clil saw a staff member handing out Popsicles on the other side. She went in, and moments later they saw her enter the building, guided by a teacher to her new classroom.

"It's the uncertainty that has been so hard," said Rotem Halevi after walking her second-grade daughter to the gate. As a class representative, she knew of at least three families in the grade of around 30 who were planning to keep their children home. "People don't feel secure because they keep changing the directions so often."

Education officials reported Sunday that 80 percent of Israel's local school systems opened their early grades for the first day. Sixty percent of students who were eligible to return showed up, they said.

To many, it felt like a start.

"I think it will take a week for people to get used to the idea," Halevi said. Her husband has had to close his coffee shop in a Jerusalem mall during the outbreak.

"This is what we all want," she said. "To come back to normal."

The Michels turned back home. Anna pushed their one-year-son in a stroller toward a house that would be strangely quiet as they waited to hear, from the children on the front line of return, just how normal it was going to be.

- - -

The Washington Post's Ruth Eglash contributed to this report.
Oil producer Apache Corp and its joint venture partner Total SA said on Thursday that they made their second significant oil discovery of the year in a closely watched area off the coast of South America's Suriname.

Shares of Apache were trading more than 12% higher after surging nearly 21% at market open, on a day when oil stocks were generally stronger due to a recovery in global crude prices.

The discovery comes at a time when shale oil producers in North America are grappling with the worst oil price shock in decades, which has led several companies, including Apache, to cut spending for the year and slash dividends.

The conventional plays offshore Suriname are especially significant for Apache as it follows the U.S. oil and gas producer's failed bet in the Alpine High region of the Permian basin, which has suffered from diving natural gas prices.

Apache's second major find was made at the Sapakara West-1 well drilled offshore Suriname on Block 58, which comprises 1.4 million acres, the companies said on Thursday, adding that the third and fourth exploration well locations in the block have been identified.

The well was drilled by a water depth of about 1,000 meters and encountered 79 meters net pay of high-quality volatile oil and condensate.

"We believe that, while still in the very early stages of exploration, the results from the Sapakara well further demonstrate what we believe to be the enormous potential of Apache's offshore Suriname position," SunTrust Robinson Humphrey analyst Neal Dingmann said in a note.

Houston-based Apache last month unveiled deep cuts to its exploration budget, pledging to stop all drilling in the Permian basin and to scale back some international operations, in a bid to remain profitable despite the low oil prices.

The announcement also comes on the heels of a downgrade on Suriname's debt by Standard & Poor's, which cited the coronavirus epidemic, the fall in oil prices and an upcoming presidential election as risks the country could default.

Suriname President Desi Bouterse described the discovery as a "great gift."

"This will be a lot of money for this small country," Bouterse said in a statement.
Kim Jong Un visits a fertiliser factory in Sunchon, South Pyongan province on May 1 (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP/PA)

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un did not undergo surgery or any other medical procedure, a South Korean official has said amid continued speculation about his health.

North Korea had said on Saturday that Mr Kim attended the completion of a fertiliser factory near Pyongyang on Friday, in his first public appearance in about 20 days.

While his re-emergence, captured on video footage released by North Korean state media, quelled intense rumours that he might be gravely ill or even have died, some media outlets and observers still raised questions about his health, citing moments when his walking looked a bit stiff at the factory.

A senior South Korean presidential official told reporters on Sunday that the government has determined that Mr Kim did not have surgery or any other procedure, according to the presidential Blue House.

When rumours about Mr Kims health surfaced in recent weeks, the South Korean government steadfastly dismissed them as baseless and maintained there were no unusual activities in the North.

Expand Close Kim Jong Un cuts a tape, watched by his sister Kim Yo Jong, during his visit to a fertiliser factory (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Kim Jong Un cuts a tape, watched by his sister Kim Yo Jong, during his visit to a fertiliser factory (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)

It is not the first time Mr Kim has disappeared from public view for an extended period.

In 2014, when he reappeared after a six-week absence, he walked with a cane and used an electric cart.

The North Korea-provided footage on Saturday showed the 36-year-old riding an electric cart similar to the one he used in 2014, when he was reported to have an ankle injury.

In 2018, Mr Kim entered talks with President Donald Trump on the fate of his nuclear arsenal, but their diplomacy has been deadlocked in recent months.

Mr Trump tweeted on Saturday that I, for one, am glad to see he is back, and well!
The headquarter of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in Delhi was sealed on Sunday (May 3) after a driver attached with a senior official tested positive for coronavirus COVID-19.

The CRPF has said in a statement that its headquarter will be sealed for sanitisation till further orders and no one will be allowed to enter the building. The CRPF has already informed the district surveillance officer for "initiating required protocols" for proper sealing of the building located in the CGO complex on Lodhi Road, PTI reported.

On Saturday, the CRPF had said that 122 jawans of its 31st battalion in Delhi have tested positive for the highly contagious disease in the last two weeks, The men awere based in east Delhi's Mayur Vihar Phase-3, which has been sealed after a spike in the number of coronavirus cases.

Meanwhile, the coronavirus cases in India crossed 39,000 mark on Sunday (May 3, 2020) with 2644 cases and 83 deaths reported in last 24 hours. This is the highest spike in the number of cases reported in a day in India.

As per the Ministry of Health data the total number of COVID-19 positive cases in India stood at 39,980 including 28,046 active cases, 10,633 cured/discharged/migrated and 1301 deaths as per the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Maharashtra has emerged as the epicenter of coronavirus spread where cases have crossed the 12,000-mark with more than 500 deaths. As per the Ministry data, the cases in Maharashtra on Sunday morning was at 12,296 including 2000 recovered cases and 521 deaths.
India had hoped it might be able to persuade Pakistan through "back channel" to release retired Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, who was sentenced to death by a Pakistan military court on charges of "espionage and terrorism" in 2017, senior advocate Harish Salve has said.

Salve was the lead counsel for India in the Jadhav case at the International Court of Justice which had last year ruled that Pakistan must review the death sentence awarded to the retired naval officer after a closed trial.

During an online lecture series organised by the Akhil Bharatiya Adhivakta Parishad, affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh on Saturday, Salve from London said the Indian side has kept on asking how do Pakistan propose to carry out the ICJ judgement and give effective review and reconsideration, but no answer has been forthcoming.

"We were hoping that through back channel, we may be able to persuade Pakistan to let him go. If they want to say on humanitarian ground or whatever, we want him back. We said let him go. Because it has become a big ego problem in Pakistan. So, we were hoping that they will let him go. They haven't," he said, while answering a question on the current situation in the matter.

"We have written four-five letters. They just keep on denying," he said. "I think we have reached a point where we have to now decide whether we want to go back to ICJ for consequential directions because Pakistan has not moved ahead."

Salve said that following the ICJ order, Pakistan had granted consular access but it was too late and "we have now been in a tussle with Pakistan to get them to set up machinery."

"Pakistan believes, first of all they told the whole world they have won the case, good for them. And now, they keep saying that you have to file a proceeding in a Pakistani court or take Pakistani proceedings," he said.

"We keep saying how you propose to carry out the judgement of ICJ and give effective review and reconsideration. They refuse to answer that question. We have had exchanges backward and forward. I think the Government of India has been writing to them and who knows the way things are going, we may have to go back in the ICJ someday, trying to get justice for Jadhav," Salve said.

He said till date, Pakistan has refused to share the case details such as the FIR, the chargesheet or the judgement of the military court in the matter.

Responding to a question about the alleged offensive languages used by lawyer representing Pakistan at the ICJ, Salve said the Pakistan's lawyer had used very "strong language" against India.

"In the ICJ, we never used words like these. I did the word check and worlds like disgusting, lying and dishonest have been used by Pakistan many times," he said.

Salve said that he did not want to stoop to the Pakistan's level as Indian traditions did not allow him to use such bad words and, moreover, he respected the ICJ and its portal.

Salve then referred to a statement of a registrar of the ICJ made to the Indian ambassador during a function.

"He (registrar) said that there was so much heat in this case." Salve recalled, adding that he said that the America-Iran sanction case was important one, but that was done peacefully.

Sharing the experience about the hearing in the Jadhav case, he said that by the time of rejoinder argument, the Pakistan lawyer was apologetic for the language used.

We are keeping this case under the glare of the international community in the hope that Pakistan does not do what it does, he said in response to a question as to how to save Jadhav from the fate meted out to Sarabjit Singh in a Pakistan jail.

Sarabjit, who was convicted for alleged involvement in bomb attacks in Pakistan's Punjab province in 1990, was brutally attacked by inmates in the Kot Lakhpat Jail and had died in a hospital in the country.

Salve, while addressing the lawyers, gave the background of Jadhav's case and said he is the ex-navy commander and his case is that he carries out business in Iran and one day he was kidnapped.

He was handed over by the Taliban to the Pakistan Army. The fact that he was seized by the Pakistan Army at the Pakistan border with Iran is an admitted fact. Of course Pakistan does not admit that he was kidnapped by the Taliban. There is no clarity. There has been no clarity in Pakistan's case as to how they nabbed him, Salve said.

Their case generally is that they caught him trying to infiltrate Pakistan at the Pakistan-Iran border at the place called Chhabahar. That's where they caught him, he said.

Salve added that before Pakistan informed India about Jadhav's arrest, they had made his confession global.

The confession makes an interesting reading. It is a very general kind of confession saying that I have been a bad boy. I have indulged in terrorism activities in this place and that place and on behalf of India. I have done lot of bad things in Pakistan. No details, no dates, no incidents mentioned, no specific incidents mentioned. They claim that on basis of this, he was then sent to trial, he was given an Army officer, as a lawyer to represent him. They claim he was tried, he said.

Pakistan has claimed that Jadhav was arrested on March 3, 2016 and India was informed on March 25, 2016, when its Foreign Secretary raised the matter with the Indian consulate in Islamabad.

Jadhav was sentenced to death on charges of espionage and terrorism in April 2017 by the Army court.

India had moved the ICJ against the Pakistan Army court.
SENATOR Ana Theresia Risa Hontiveros announced Sunday, May 3, that her chief legislative officer has tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

Hontiveros said lawyer Jave dela Cruz Bekema has not gone to the Senate offices since March 9.

She is now under home quarantine and complying with all Department of Health guidelines on home-based management of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), Hontiveros added.

We celebrated when my Chief Legis Ofcr, Atty Jaye dela Cruz Bekema, announced to us that she was pregnant.

Was very sad when she informed me on 25 Ap that she had lost her baby at 18 weeks, & shocked when she notified us 5 days after that she had tested positive for COVID-19.

 risa hontiveros (@risahontiveros) May 3, 2020

Rest assured, our office is doing all that we can to support her and attend to her needs, Hontiveros said. (MVI/SunStar Philippines)
G V L Narasimha Rao By

In these times of global uncertainty, Prime Minister Narendra Modis handling of the Covid-19 crisis has received global acclaim. World leaders, international agencies, philanthropists, Nobel laureates and many others have praised Modis leadership. The findings of a global survey by Morning Consult revealed that Modi has the highest approval rating84%among all world leaders in handling the pandemic. A nationwide opinion poll carried out by C-Voter found that an overwhelming majority, 94% of Indians, support the PMs lockdown measures and other corona-related actions.

Was India always recognised and appreciated globally for its efforts in dealing with health crises? The answer is a resounding no. For several decades after Independence, India was seen as a problematic country with little capacity and concern to deal with its health problems. Lack of political will and not lack of resources was the main impediment.

The indifference with which India tackled the problem of the smallpox virus in the 1960s and 70s best illustrates the poor track record in addressing serious health challenges. The deadly variola (smallpox) virus killed thousands in India every year till the mid 70s. Though global efforts for smallpox eradication began in the early 1950s, India had the highest incidence of smallpox till the mid-70s.

Throughout Indira Gandhis reign as PM between 1966 and 1977, smallpox continued to cause havoc , killing tens of thousands of people. India lagged behind as the then PM did not show the requisite political will and concern to end the deadly and infectious disease. Political apathy, bureaucratic rigidity and lack of coordination with state governments and global agencies like the WHO complicated the problem.

Sanjoy Bhattacharya and Rajib Dasgupta have documented the institutional lacunae and challenges in their research paper published in the American Journal of Public Health in July 2009: Discussions between senior members of the WHO and the Indian federal government did not go smoothly; there was disagreement about even the most basic issues, such as the exact definition of smallpox eradication... calls for smallpox eradication in the late 1950s and early 1960s received a frosty reception across the political spectrum. Indias federal authorities agreed to organise district-level pilot projects within each state. To the frustration of several officials in WHO Geneva, most pilot projects started late, failed to meet agreed timetables, and often produced defective data. Governmental neglect proved to be fatal for the citizens of three smallpox endemic states.

In 1974, between January and May, as per the governments own reports, 61,482 people contracted the smallpox virus resulting in the death of 15,000 people in Bihar, West Bengal and Orissa and leaving thousands of others disfigured or blinded. All three states were under Congress rule and Indira Gandhi was its undisputed leader then. Even such a large tragedy did not stir her conscience or wake up her government into action. The scale of infection in India in 1974 was alarming, accounting for 83% of all cases that year. With the help of $900,000 Swedish aid and foreign health experts pressed into action by the WHO, India began intensive efforts for smallpox eradication, eventually becoming smallpox free in 1976. Foreign aid, experts and efforts were largely credited for its eradication; it was not seen as Indias own success.

Coming to 2020, Modis exemplary leadership in tackling the Covid pandemic has brought about a transformational shift in Indias image globally. India is today seen globally as a role model and a saviour providing medicines, supplies and medical assistance to its neighbours and nations in West Asia, and supplying medicines to powerful nations like the US, Russia, etc.

Sample a few responses: US President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter, Thank you Prime Minister @NarendraModi for your strong leadership in helping not just India, but humanity, in this fight! WHO commended Indias timely and tough actions to stop Covid and its chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus praised steps taken by Modi to help the poor during the crisis by announcing a $24 billion (`1.7 lakh crore) package.

Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi enjoyed large majorities in both houses of Parliament and ruled in most states of the country. This is a luxury that Modi does not enjoy with the opposition ruling in many states of the country and the ruling coalition in a minority in Rajya Sabha. Yet, Modi mounted a national effort and was able to enlist the support and participation of even states ruled by other political parties.

There is a lesson in Indias handling of the Covid and smallpox epidemics. How a country values the lives and well-being of its citizens and its humanitarian responses largely shape a countrys global image. Indias poor global image in the earlier decades was not due to its economic backwardness but

its lack of sensitivity towards the suffering and hardship of its own citizens. Despite the huge electoral support enjoyed by her, Indira Gandhi failed to demonstrate that human sensitivity in times of health crises.

In contrast, Modi exhibited remarkable concern for the health and well-being of the masses with his timely and effective actions in controlling this pandemic. That is why Modis India is being seen as

a progressive, caring nation leading the global effort in controlling the pandemic while India under Indira Gandhi was seen as a laggard with little ability and concern for human tragedy.

G V L Narasimha Rao

Member of Rajya Sabha, BJP

(Email: nraobjp@gmail.com)
The Haryana government has decided to send migrant labourers from states bordering it in buses and those from other states in trains, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said on Sunday.

During a video conference with labour unions affiliated to various political parties, Khattar said his government is committed to ensure all migrant labourers stranded in the state due to lockdown reach their homes at the earliest and safely, according to an official statement.

It was decided during the meeting that the migrants from Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh will be sent home in buses and those from Bihar, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh by Shramik Special trains.

The return of migrant labourers of the remaining states, being relatively fewer in numbers, will be ensured through special trains from New Delhi, the statement quoted Khattar as saying.

On Saturday, Khattar appealed to migrant workers to not leave Haryana and start working in industrial units allowed to resume operation. He, however, said if anyone still wanted to leave, the state government will make arrangements for their return.

At Sunday's conference, there was a consensus that industrial labourers would be encouraged to assist in early reopening of the units, the statement added.

The Haryana government has launched a web page where migrant workers who want to return to their home states can register themselves. The move is aimed at facilitating their inter-state movement.

Khattar also said the migrants must observe social distancing, try to engage in useful work and learn new skills until arrangements are made for their return home.

The government is committed to ensure that no person goes hungry, he said.

It was also decided in the meeting that district-level committees including representatives of labour unions will be set up to review the progress of disbursement of salaries for March and April.

Khattar assured the labour unions that there was no plan to cut down the 17 per cent Dearness Allowance being paid to government employees.

According to state government guidelines issued on Sunday, deputy commissioners will be the in-charge of all movement of stranded persons. The deputy commissioners will decide the entry and exit points as well as the modalities for medical examination of these persons.

All persons exiting and entering an area will be provided food and water and arrangements will be made for parking for vehicles and toilets.

The deputy commissioners will ensure that permits issued for buses/vehicles clearly mentions the destination state and district, date of journey and the route. However, movement from containment zones will not be permitted, till the restrictions are lifted.

The Chief Medical Officer will ensure the medical examination and screening of every incoming and out-going person.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Looking for some new recipes in quarantine while helping give back?

A Montclair-based company, Raos Homemade, has you covered. The New Jersey-based sauce company launched Sauce for Cause earlier this month, where different celebrity chefs and personalities are cooking their recipes on Instagram Live.

Ever try a spaghetti pie? Or need a new twist on a penne dish? For every featured meal recreated by a fan at home and posted on Instagram, the company is donating money for a meal to a family in need, through Jersey Cares. The post of the featured recipe must include the hashtag #Sauce4Cause, within one week of the featured chefs videos live date, and tag Raos handle.

Raos is also making a donation directly to Jersey Cares on behalf of every chef and host partnering with them, which will include an initial donation of $40,000.

Jersey Cares, an affiliate of the Points of Light network, is a local nonprofit that addresses community-identified needs by organizing events, collection drives, and other opportunities. One of its COVID-19 relief efforts is a healthy food delivery program.

Its delivering these meals, on behalf of Raos, to New Jersey families who are struggling to obtain basic groceries. The organization is partnering with a local food distributor that connects the regions sustainable family farms to communities.

Giving back is a core part of our values at Raos Homemade, and our team is always looking for ways to give back throughout the year, said Santino Certo, the companys director of marketing. As the COVID crisis escalated, it became more important than ever for us to give back to our local community.

Previous guests have included Top Chef judge Gail Simmons, Z100s Danielle Monaro, and recipe developer and cookbook author Dawn Perry. Buddy Valastroalso known as the Cake Bossis an upcoming guest for the program.

Simmons made her spaghetti pie, for example, and Monaro made a chicken penne pasta recipe.

And for each submitted photo of the featured recipe on May 5, which is Giving Tuesday, Raos Homemade will donate five meals to Jersey Cares. The company has committed to donating at least 1,000 meals to families in need through this initiative.

The program will continue through the end of next week, with the final Instagram live slated for May 8.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Brianna Kudisch may be reached at bkudisch@njadvancemedia.com.
The global death toll from the coronavirus is more than 246,000 with almost 3.5 million infections confirmed, causing mass disruptions as governments continue to try to slow the spread of the new respiratory illness.

Here's a roundup of COVID-19 developments in RFE/RL's broadcast regions.

Russia

Russia on May 3 registered more than 10,600 new coronavirus infections, marking a fresh one-day record increase amid expanded testing.

New infections jumped by 10,633 to 134,687 cases, the seventh-highest number globally, Russian authorities said. It is the fourth day in a row with a record number of infections after 9,623 were registered on May 2.

Russia is now the European country with the most registered new infections. But the official fatality rate is low in comparison to countries like Italy, Spain, and the United States.

Fifty-eight people died over the past 24 hours, bringing the total death toll to 1,280, according to official figures. More than 15,000 people in Russia have recovered from the virus.

Among the infected is Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, who announced on April 30 that he had tested positive for the coronavirus. Mishustins spokesman, Boris Belyakov, said on May 3 that the prime minister feels fine and is regularly speaking with officials by phone.

President Vladimir Putin has said the situation inside the country remains "very difficult.



St. Petersburg Governor Aleksandr Belgov said that 44 people have been infected with COVID-19 at a local psychiatric hospital, including 28 patients and 16 workers.

Meanwhile, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin has said the Russian capital, which has emerged as the epicenter of the contagion, was not yet past the peak of the outbreak and that he may further restrict the number of residents who can travel around the city.

If we see any threat, of course, we will not hesitate for a minute. We will come out with a proposal to tighten these measures, he told state television on May 2.

Muscovites can leave their homes to go to the grocery store, the pharmacy, throw out trash, and walk their dogs. They need a government-issued digital pass to use public or private transport.

With the arrival of the May holiday season, Russian law enforcement are using drones to find quarantine violators in Moscows forested parks.

More than half of Russia's newly recorded cases -- 5,948 -- are in Moscow, bringing the capital's total to 68,606. Sobyanin said that about 2 percent of Moscow residents -- or more than 250,000 people -- have the coronavirus.

Officially, Moscow has a population of 12.7 million but the real figure is believed to be higher.

Moscow made the use of digital passes for travel mandatory on April 15, leading to huge lines at subway stations all around the city.



Some are now questioning whether the recent spike in the city's infection count is partially due to the crowded conditions on that day. The virus has an incubation period as long as two weeks.

However, Moscow's headquarters for monitoring of the coronavirus said the jump in registered cases is driven in part by greater testing and quicker turnaround of the results. The city now has 14 centers analyzing samples compared with just one previously, it said in a statement on May 2.

The headquarters also said that the greater testing is enabling the city to find people with the infection at an early stage and treat them before it becomes severe. That has enabled the city to keep the number of hospitalized stable at 1,700, even as the number of cases continues to grow, it said.

Despite the steady increase in cases, the government has indicated it could gradually lift restrictions from May 12, but the easing will depend on the region.

Belarus

Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka said his nation will hold its annual Victory Day parade in the capital on May 9 despite concerns over the spread of the coronavirus inside the country.

We cannot cancel the parade. We simply cant, Lukashenka said on May 3, adding that some of those who fought against the Nazis also died of viruses and other diseases.



And think what people will say. Maybe not immediately, but the next day or two days later, they will say that we were afraid, he said about canceling the parade.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended that nations impose social-distancing measures and avoid large public gatherings to slow the spread of COVID-19, which is easily transmitted from person to person.

The WHO warned in late April following a visit to Minsk that COVID-19 had entered the community transmission scenario" in Belarus and called on the government to take stronger measures.

Belarus currently has more than 16,705 registered cases of COVID-19 and 99 deaths.

However, Lukashenka has publicly dismissed concerns about the dangers of the virus several times.

Victory Day commemorates the Soviet Unions victory over Nazi Germany in 1945 and is the most important national holiday in Belarus and other former Soviet states.

Belarus lost about one-quarter of its population during the war.

The May 9 parade held in Minsk will feature a column of mechanized weaponry, troops, and aerial units. The parade is expected to include more than 3,000 military personnel and more than 180 pieces of military hardware.

Thousands of citizens are expected to line up to watch the hourlong parade, which is often followed by picnics and other activities at public locations such as parks.

Lukashenka said that many war veterans, now in their 90s, have expressed a desire to see the parade, though he warned against dragging people to the event. COVID-19 has proven to be particularly deadly among the elderly.

Russia has canceled its grand celebration of the 75th anniversary of Victory Day as it steps up its fight against the spread of the coronavirus. Russia now has the seventh-most registered cases in the world.

Lukashenka said that several Russian deputies and senators have expressed a willingness to attend the parade in Minsk and that Belarus is willing to help coordinate travel for Russians who want to visit.

Russia closed its border with Belarus in March and later halted passenger train service to its smaller neighbor.

We welcome it. Let them travel. We will not close the doors to our friends and brothers, Lukashenka said.

Serbia

Serbia will lift its state of emergency imposed over the COVID-19 pandemic, President Aleksandar Vucic said on May 3.

Vucic said on broadcaster TV Pink that parliament would vote on May 6 to end the state of emergency.

The Balkan nation has enforced since March 15 some of the strictest lockdown measures in Europe as part of the state of emergency, including border closures and nightly and weekend curfews.

Vucic said that two conditions for restrictions to end had been met: Infections declining to under 5 percent of tests for seven days in a row and significantly fewer people on respirators.

The country has confirmed 9,464 cases and 193 deaths from the COVID-19 disease.

From May 4, bus and rail services are allowed but passengers will be required to wear face masks and no air conditioning is allowed.

Shopping malls, cafes, and restaurants will also reopen with social distancing and hygiene measures in place.

Small shops were allowed to reopen in late April.

Afghanistan

Afghanistan could be bracing for a surge in COVID-19 cases after a random test of 500 people in the nations capital indicated one-third were infected with the coronavirus.

A spokesman for the nations Public Health Ministry, Wahid Mayar, called the results of the test carried out in Kabul concerning.

A nation of nearly 37 million, Afghanistan has performed only 12,000 tests to date with slightly less than one-quarter testing positive.

The number of registered infections is likely to spike once the nation begins rolling out testing on a broader scale, Mayar said.

The poor, war-torn countrys health-care system could become overwhelmed, some fear. Afghanistan only has 400 ventilators.

The country has imposed lockdowns in Kabul and other cities to contain the spread, but compliance has been weak.

The infection may have spread rapidly around the country after more than 250,000 Afghan migrants returned earlier this year from neighboring Iran, which has been among the worst-hit countries by the virus.

Iran has registered more than 96,000 cases since it announced its first cases in mid-February. The virus has killed more than 6,150 people in the country.

The Afghan migrants returning from Iran were not tested or quarantined.

Some reports describe migrants dying from COVID-19 upon their return, raising skepticism about the official mortality data.

The country has registered only 85 deaths from COVID-19.

The Afghan government has only recently begun testing for COVID-19 in western Herat, the province the migrants crossed upon their return from Iran.

Some have blamed the government, which is mired in crisis, for responding too slowly to the pandemic.

The U.S. Special Inspector-General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said in an April 30 report that the spread of COVID-19 could derail stalled peace efforts.

Iran

Iranian President Hassan Rohani said on state television that mosques would reopen in many low-risk regions of the country on May 4, after they were closed in early March as Iran was hit by the Middle East's deadliest coronavirus outbreak.

Rohani, in a televised meeting of the country's virus task force on May 3, said 132 counties, around one-third of Iran's administrative divisions, would "reopen their mosques as of tomorrow."

"Social distancing is more important than collective prayer," Rohani added, adding that Islam considers safety obligatory, while praying in mosques is only "recommended."

The counties earmarked for reopening are "low risk," Rohani said.

He said the committee was also considering reopening schools by May 16 to allow for a month of classes before the summer break.

The outbreak has killed more than 6,150 people and infected more than 96,440 in Iran since it announced its first cases in mid-February.

Iran on May 2 reported its lowest daily toll of new infections since March 10.

Experts and officials both in Iran and abroad have cast doubts about Iran's officially reported figures, saying the real number of cases could be much higher.

Iran has shut universities, cinemas, stadiums, and other public spaces since March.

But it has allowed a phased reopening of its economy since April 11, arguing that the sanctions-hit country cannot afford to remain shut down.

Only "high-risk" businesses like gyms and barbershops remain closed.

"We will continue the reopenings calmly and gradually," Rohani said.

With reporting by AFP, TASS, and Reuters
DyCM C N Ashwath Narayan on Sunday reassured Kannadigas in United Arab Emirates that the Karnataka government will petition the Centre to airlift them.

According to entrepreneur Praveen Shetty based in Dubai, as many as one lakh Kannadigas were in Dubai, of which 20,000 were facing immense challenges due to the lockdown.

He also sought immediate assistance of 270 people from Karnataka who arrived in Dubai on a visiting visa before the Covid-19 pandemic shut off all air travel. "Government should come to their rescue as they neither have jobs nor shelter," he said.

Ashwath Narayan said that arrangements will be made to airlift the stranded Kannadigas, and said that the government was arranging facilities to quarantine 10,000 to 12,000 people from the state who are expected to return once the Centre lifts the ban on air travel.
The Health Secretary has sowed confusion about whether those aged over 70 should be self-isolating from coronavirus or not  after appearing to muddle up the government's instructions to different groups.

Matt Hancock took to social media to claim that "the clinically vulnerable, who are advised to stay in lockdown for 12 weeks, emphatically DO NOT include all over 70s".

The statement appears to contradict government advice that over-70s should minimise contact with the outside world, as well as Mr Hancock's own prior statements.

The government's own webpage, last updated 28 April, says that "clinically vulnerable people include anyone aged 70 or over, as well as those under 70 with an underlying health condition".

In March Mr Hancock said that over-70s would be asked to "shield" themselves by self-isolating for several months, because of increased vulnerability to Covid-19 infection.

But in a string of tweets responding to an article published in the Sunday Times, he said: "We have strongly advised all over 70s to follow social distancing measures.

"However, there is no 'blanket ban', and the suggestion that the clinically vulnerable include 'people aged 70 or older regardless of medical conditions' is wrong and deeply misleading."

But twitter users appeared confused, with one commenting: "The over 70s didnt all shut themselves away for a laugh. You told them them they were clinically vulnerable, regardless of medical condition."

Another said the comments were "blatantly not true" and pointed to screenshots from the government's website.

The confusion appears to have been partly fuelled by the fact the government has two separate but similarly named categories, each asked to follow different requirements: "clinically vulnerable" and "clinically extremely vulnerable".

Mr Hancock appears to be wrong to say that over-70s are not automatically in the "clinically vulnerable" group  they are listed as such on the government's website on a webpage updated on 1 May.

These people are being advised to "take particular care to minimise contact with others outside your household" and follow the general lockdown guidelines more stringently than others.

Other than the elderly, this group also includes with people with underlying health conditions like asthma, COPD, emphysema, heart disease, kidney disease, and diabetes. It also includes pregnant women and those who are significantly overweight, or have a weakened immune system.

High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Show all 18 1 /18 High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Najaf, Iraq A man holds a pocket watch at noon, at an almost empty market near the Imam Ali shrine Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Bangkok, Thailand Wat Phra Si Rattana Satsadaram (The Temple of the Emerald Buddha, part of The Grand Palace) Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Prague, Czech Republic An empty street leading to the historic Old Town Square Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Washington DC, US Lawn stretching towards the Capitol, home of Congress Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Jerusalem's Old City A watch showing the time in front of Damascus Gate Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world London, UK The Houses of Parliament seen from Westminster Bridge Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Wuhan, China Empty lanes in the city that saw the first outbreak of disease Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Havana, Cuba The Malecon road and esplanade winds along the city's seafront Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Cairo, Egypt A little busier than elsewhere: midday traffic in Tahrir Square Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Berlin, Germany The Brandenburg Gate, the only surviving city gate in the capital Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Caracas, Venezuela Bolivar Avenue, opened in 1949 and the site of many demonstrations and rallies Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Moscow, Russia Spasskaya Tower (left) on the eastern wall of the Kremlin, and St Basil's Cathedral Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Istanbul,Turkey The harbourside Eminonu district is usually buzzing with activity Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world New Delhi, India Rajpath, a ceremonial boulevard that runs through the capital Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Amman, Jordan The Roman amphitheatre that dates back to the 2nd century AD Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world New York City, US The main concourse of Grand Central station in Manhattan Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Kiev, Ukraine Maidan Nezalezhnosti, the site of many political protests since the end of the Soviet era Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Accra, Ghana The odd walker out in the midday sun on Ring Road Central Reuters

However, over-70s are not automatically in the additional "clinically extremely vulnerable" category. This second group includes organ transplant recipients; people with specific cancers, severe respiratory conditions, rare diseases; those on immune suppression therapy, and some pregnant women with heart complications.

This even stricter group is being asked to follow what the government officially refers to as "shielding", which requires people not to leave their home at all for the coming months and register for help.

The Independent has contacted the Department of Health for comment on this story.

The Health Secretary was criticised last week for "massaging" figures on how many people had been tested for Covid-19 in order to meet an artificial target he had set himself.
Four people have been displaced and a home has been destroyed after a fire early Saturday in Lancaster County.

The American Red cross of Greater PA is assisting two adults and two children after a fire at a single-family home on the 1400 block of Diamond Station Road in West Earl Township near Ephrata.

Shortly after midnight, we assisted a family of 2 adults and 2 children after a fire at their single family home in the 1400 block of Diamond Station Rd, Ephrata (Lancaster County). Financial assistance was given along with lodging assistance due to unlivable house conditions.  Red Cross Greater PA (@RedCrossGPA) May 2, 2020

The family was given financial assistance and lodging since their home is now unlivable, according to the Red Cross.

According to West Earl Fire Station 29, firefighters from multiple companies were called in to battle the blaze. The home was fully engulfed in flames when they arrived.

Units were on the scene for several hours.

There were no reports of injuries.

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A Special Aide to former President John Mahama, Lawyer Edudzi Tamakloe believes President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo deliberately chose to honour his promise of building a Cathedral to God than fulfil his campaign promise to construct district hospitals for Ghanaians in the party's 2016 manifesto.



According to him, in the NPP's 2016 manifesto, under the Health Sector, the party pledged to construct district hospitals in 2017, yet three years down the line the Akufo-Addo administration has not made any attempt to commence even one of those structures since none of the budget statements from 2017 to 2020 captured these projects.



 . . I have seen the 2017 budget statement in Parliament and it did not capture the project and in the 2018 to 2020 budget statements, the district hospital projects are not captured, he indicated.



Speaking on Okay FMs Ade Akye Abia Morning Show, Lawyer Edudzi Tamakloe said it is an undeniable fact that when he (Akufo-Addo) became President, he indicated where his priority lies; building a Cathedral for the glory of God.



When he was voted into power, the President made it clear that his topmost priority was to build a cathedral for the glory of God . . . he promised God that should he win the election to become President, he will honour Him with a Cathedral . . . for the past three years, the President has been assiduously working towards fulfilling that promise to God more than the district hospitals captured in their manifesto, he asserted.



Sod-cutting Is Your Only Achievement



Wondering how the President will be able to fulfil the promise of constructing 88 district hospitals within a year with barely 8months to the end of his four-year tenure, he said; "you are left with some few months to exit office and here you are making outlandish promises to put up 88 district hospitals in a year. The only thing your administration can tout as achievement is the sod-cut for what looks like a hospital performed by the Vice President Bawumia at Walewale, and since then, nothing has happened over there . . . and then also the commissioning of that small structure at Atomic by the President which he said will be used as a facility for the referral of COVID-19 cases."



No Fantasy Dome-like Hospitals



Sounding a bit cynical, the NDC activist entreated the current administration that, even though they appear to be in a bit of haste, it will be prudent on the NPP's part to ensure the party does not oversee or spearhead the construction of pavilion-like district hospitals, but rather the Dodowa type of hospital ex-President John Dramani Mahama put up.



 . . we have seen the kind of district hospital at Dodowa and so your kind of district hospital is it pavilion-like in the fashion of the Fantasy Dome at the Trade Fair? Is he coming to build the kind at Dodowa with 100 beds or what kind of hospital is he going to build? he quizzed.

Source: Daniel Adu Darko/Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
VANCOUVERThe waters off the coast of British Columbia are quiet these days. So quiet, the whales dont have to shout to be heard over the loud hum of noise we humans make with our boats.

Due to coronavirus restrictions, yachts have been anchored at marinas, BC Ferries says trips are down by 80 per cent and whale watching businesses have closed.

Its a rare opportunity that has scientists scrambling. For decades, theyve asserted that a quieter ocean could help take the Salish Seas southern resident killer whales off the endangered species list. But they lacked enough data to quantify this theory  until now.

The Salish Sea off Canadas West Coast is an inland sea dotted with islands that cargo ships must navigate in order to dock at the busy ports near Vancouver and Seattle. The Salish Sea is also home to the iconic orcas  and normally, its an incredibly noisy home.

Here, the low rumble of the ocean liners is constant.

And motors from smaller vessels punctuate the soundscape as they whiz by.

Underwater, sounds travel incredibly well. Some baleen whales can call to each other from as far as tens of thousands of kilometres apart. But orcas communicate in closer quarters and at a higher register  around the same register as the sound small boats make.

When we put that kind of noise into their environment, it can really impact the ability of these whales to effectively communicate with each other, and to detect the fish, said Lauren McWhinnie, a marine biologist and coastal geographer who has been studying the effect of vessel noise on orcas for the past five years at the University of Victoria.

She compared it to trying to talk to a friend at a noisy pub. Its difficult to hear because everyone is talking at about the same register, said McWhinnie, who is currently an assistant professor at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland.

We know from studies the whales have adapted over time to increase the energy in their calls, and they change the type of calls they are using, she said. The theory is theyre trying to talk over that background noise level.

And how do scientists eavesdrop on the whales? With underwater microphones of course.

A network of more than 50 hydrophones provide a soundscape of B.C.s coastal waters that scientists use to analyze everything from the force of winter storms to orca conversations.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada operates about a dozen hydrophones while more are monitored by OrcaLab and other non profits. But the majority  about 25  belong to Ocean Canada Networks, a research initiative based at the University of Victoria.

The Salish Sea is a particularly unique place, said Richard Dewey, associate director for science services at Ocean Networks Canada.

There are few other places in the world where there is higher shipping, he said, adding the area also has a steady stream of recreational boating in the summer.

And the resident orcas add to this noise.

The fish-eating orcas are particularly chatty and spend much of their time talking with each other, said Dewey. The mammal-eating orcas, called transients, are quieter.

At times, the resident orcas calls and squeals  which almost sound like meows  are sometimes difficult to hear above the vessel noise.

But the human-made noises are more than just a nuisance.

Sound is for whales what sight is for humans, according to researchers. The more noise there is in the ocean, the harder it is for the orcas to use echolocation to find food and navigate.

Making it noisy would be equivalent to us being blind, said Dewey, adding that the orcas can adjust to their environment to a certain extent.

They can speak more loudly, they can concentrate a bit more.

But research shows vessel noise impacts whales at a physiological level.

In 2012, biologists published a study that found right whales in the Bay of Fundy had lower stress levels in the aftermath of 9/11, when there was a substantial decrease in commercial shipping on the East Coast.

That same year, a paper by a group of Washington-based scientists found hungry southern resident orcas have higher levels of stress hormones when there are many boats around.

Deborah Giles, a scientist at University of Washingtons Center for Conservation Biology as well as the advocacy group Wild Orca, has studied the southern residents for more than 15 years. Her work centres around the analysis of stress and nutritional hormones in whale feces.

In a nutshell, stress hormones were higher in times when there were high boat numbers and the whales were nutritionally stressed, she said.

And the southern residents are always hungry.

The three pods in this distinct population  Jpod, Kpod and Lpod  traditionally spend nearly a third of the year in the Salish Sea, earning them the name resident killer whales.

The southern resident orcas used to spend nearly 100 days in the Salish Sea in the spring and summer, following the summer runs of Chinook salmon. Last year, they spent 20 days in the area, according to Taylor Shedd, program co-ordinator with Soundwatch, a non-profit that tracks the presence of boats near the orcas.

Researchers say a lack of prey, vessel noise and toxins in the water all threaten the critically endangered southern residents.

The demise of this particular group of whales has increased dramatically in recent years. Fewer than 30 are of breeding age, according to the Center for Whale Research, the organization responsible for conducting an annual whale census. There has also been a high percentage of miscarriages  70 per cent, according to a 2017 paper  and several recent high-profile deaths.

These setbacks have meant the population is getting closer to the levels of the 1970s, when dozens of orcas were captured for aquariums, leaving just 68 whales in the southern resident population. Eventually, it grew to 89 whales by 2006.

Today, there are 72 resident orcas left.

Scientists hope that the fragile population will have a reprieve this summer  a chance to forage and rest in the Salish Sea with fewer boats to disturb them.

And a small army of researchers are already using this unique situation to collect as much data as possible.

Between January and April this year, an offshore hydrophone station west of Vancouver Island recorded a 15 per cent  or 1.5 decibel  decrease in noise compared to the same time last year.

Its a small but significant reduction and may hint at even larger decreases in the coming months, said David Barclay, an assistant professor of oceanography at Dalhousie University, who conducted the analysis.

Over the year, noise in that part of the ocean can change by as much as six to seven decibels, he said.

And in the busy Strait of Georgia  the body of water between Vancouver Island and the B.C. mainland  Barclay looked at the change in noise week over week, noting that not only was the ocean getting quieter, it was getting quieter at a faster rate.

The biggest change for the orcas will likely happen in the coming weeks as people continue to cancel vacations and curb travel to stop the spread of COVID-19.

The hope is we seize this moment to make the measurements necessary to get a better understanding on what impacts we humans are having on the ocean, said Barclay.

Were very good at modelling and predicting these things, but a little data can go a long way in being really convincing.

The southern resident orcas have yet to make their annual arrival in inland waters on the West Coast where the biologists most familiar with the whales are stationed. But they are making preparations.

Baseline data is being collected by hydrophones, ship logs, sightings and other environmental metrics so that when the (southern resident killer whales) appear well be able to study any changes, said Shedd, with Soundwatch.

Giles is readying her research boat in case the whales make an early appearance. She said the waters between the southern tip of Vancouver Island and San Juan Island where she lives are unusually empty, save for a few military ships and the coast guard.

Theres just nobody out there.

For the orcas, McWhinnie said this calm water will probably feel like a brand new experience.

A lot of these whales have probably never known the waters around Vancouver to be as quiet as they now are.

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The Manitoba Nurses Union says an emergency order that bans staff from working in more than one personal care home during the COVID-19 pandemic tramples on Employment Standards and collective agreements.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 2/5/2020 (626 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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The Manitoba Nurses Union says an emergency order that bans staff from working in more than one personal care home during the COVID-19 pandemic tramples on Employment Standards and collective agreements.

"Nurses understand the need for the single site order  our first concern is always the well-being of our patients and residents, and during this time of crisis, we understand difficult decisions need to be made," nurses union president Darlene Jackson said in a news release. "Unfortunately, the Pallister government is refusing to work collaboratively with the nurses they are relying upon to provide care and instead allowing employers to suspend nurses rights."

Darlene Jackson

Starting Friday, staff at Manitobas licensed personal care homes can no longer work in more than one facility during the COVID-19 pandemic to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 among residents and staff.

The union, which represents more than 12,000 nurses across Manitoba from all designations, said the order effectively allows employers to change work assignments and scheduling unilaterally.

"Just days earlier, MNU had been in talks with government seeking to work out an agreement that would reduce the impact on nurses and ensure resident care standards," Jackson said. "Instead, government decided to take a unilateral, heavy-handed approach."

Due to the widespread scheduling changes required by the public health order, she said, "nurses are deeply concerned that chronic short staffing situations in long-term care facilities, and impact the care residents receive."

In 2018, the union released a study on long-term care in Manitoba illustrating chronic short staffing in long-term care facilities, which is resulting in insufficient direct care hours per resident per day. Manitobas guideline is currently set at 3.6 hours, although many facilities are not able to meet that due to short staffing, Jackson said.

"Time and again, the Pallister government has decided to fight with nurses instead of finding reasonable compromise," she added. "During these extraordinary times, its all the more important to offer respect and recognition to nurses for putting patients first."

Lanette Siragusa, Shared Healths chief nursing officer, said Friday that because of changing schedules, the emergency orders have had to look the collective agreements.

"But, of course, we would do everything we can to make sure its as least disruptive to the staff and follow as much of the parameters of the collective agreements as we possibly could, but appreciating that schedules will change and we have to be adapted to that in order to meet the public health orders (on single-site staffing)," Siragusa said.

When asked about short-staffing concerns in the care homes, Siragusa said the hours-per-resident day is their standard "and still applies."

Manitoba has guidelines in place at care homes requiring staffing that will support 3.6 hours of care per resident per day.

 brobertson@brandonsun.com
On Sunday, Oscar nominee Owen Wilson grabbed a towel and appeared to be headed for one of the many Malibu beaches closed by California Governor Newsom in an effort to contain the spread of coronavirus.

All Malibu beaches, trails, restrooms, and parking lots have been closed since March by the California Department of Parks and Recreation as part of the stay-at-home order - which could be lifted by May 18.

The barefoot 51-year-old Texan was joined by his sons - six-year-old Finn and nine-year-old Robert - from past relationships with personal trainer Caroline Lindqvist and Federal Air Marshal Jade Duell.

Getting some sunshine: On Sunday, Oscar nominee Owen Wilson grabbed a towel and appeared to be headed for one of the many Malibu beaches closed by California Governor Newsom in an effort to contain the spread of coronavirus

Neither Owen nor his two growing boys wore cloth COVID-19 face masks as recommended by the Center for Disease Control on April 3. But he was rocking a $107.80 pair of Ray-Ban 'classic aviators.'

Los Angeles County's stay-at-home order was extended through May 15 due to the 24,936 confirmed coronavirus cases in LA, which has led to 1,212 deaths as of Sunday - according to Johns Hopkins University.

Wilson has never met his 18-month-old daughter Lyla Aranya with Varunie Vongsvirates, but he does financially support his youngest child.

'You should see your daughter. She's incredible. You're really missing out. She looks just like you,' the 35-year-old brunette urged the Zoolander funnyman via MailOnline back in November.

Could be lifted by May 18! All Malibu beaches, trails, restrooms, and parking lots have been closed since March by the California Department of Parks and Recreation as part of the stay-at-home order

Towel in hand: The barefoot 51-year-old Texan was joined by his sons - six-year-old Finn and nine-year-old Robert - from past relationships with personal trainer Caroline Lindqvist and Federal Air Marshal Jade Duell

'You're really missing out': In November, Varunie Vongsvirates (R) told MailOnline that Owen has never met his 18-month-old daughter Lyla Aranya, whom he financially supports (pictured June 23)

'Lyla needs a father. It's ironic how he keeps getting these father roles...and he's never met his own daughter.'

Owen is rumored to be playing Marvel villain Kang the Conqueror in the Disney+ six-episode series Loki due out early 2021, according to ComicBook.com.

The spin-off - set after the events of Avengers: Endgame - centers on the Norse god of mischief (Tom Hiddleston) using the Tesseract to travel through time and alter human history.

Prominent character: Wilson is rumored to be playing Marvel villain Kang the Conqueror in the Disney+ six-episode series Loki due out early 2021

Set after the events of Avengers: Endgame! The spin-off centers on the Norse god of mischief (Tom Hiddleston) using the Tesseract to travel through time and alter human history

Wes Anderson was forced to move the release date to his movie The French Dispatch - starring Wilson as journalist Herbsaint Sazerac - from July 24 to October 16 due to the fast-spreading respiratory illness.

The retro ensemble flick also features six Oscar winners - Tilda Swinton, Christoph Waltz, Adrien Brody, Benicio Del Toro, Frances McDormand, and Anjelica Huston.

The French Dispatch marks the Independent Spirit Award winner's 10th big-screen collaboration with the 50-year-old filmmaker dating back to his 1993 directorial debut Bottle Rocket co-starring his younger brother Luke.

Wes Anderson was forced to move the release date to his movie The French Dispatch - starring the Zoolander funnyman (2-L) as journalist Herbsaint Sazerac - from July 24 to October 16 due to the fast-spreading respiratory illness
After the success of Lady Gagas initiative, Together At Home, Give India has organised a digital concert to raise relief funds for people effected by COVID 19. The indoor concert will be held today at 7:30 on Facebook where you can witness celebrities from across the globe come together for a great cause.









From Bollywood biggies like Shah Rukh Khan, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Akshay Kumar, Gulzar, AR Rahman to international names like Mick Jagger, Mindy Kaling, Nick Jonas, Will Smith and Russel Peters, the I for India concert will have contributions from artistes across the world to urge people to donate money towards the noble cause. Organised by Bollywood directors, Karan Johar and Zoya Akhtar, the show will be live-streamed on Facebook to pay tribute to workers fighting the pandemic. It aims to raise millions of dollars for more than 100 groups - providing food and other essential services during the crisis in India.









Heres a list of all the stars that will be coming together tonight for the concert for our times. Take a look.














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We are now firmly focused on getting this medicine to the most urgent patients, ODay said on CBSs Face the Nation. We intend to get that to patients in the early part of this next week, beginning to work with the government, which will determine which cities are most vulnerable and where the patients are that need this medicine.
Wining elections in Africa is not a childs play. If you win, the universe is on your side, if you lose, better luck next time.

We take a look at Seven politicians who have lost at the poll but bounced back to winning wins.

1. Abiola Ajimobi

He is the immediate past governor of Oyo State. He was governor between 2011 and 2015. In fact, he holds the record of being the only Oyo governor to have governed the state on two consecutive occasions.

But before Ajimobi, who is now the All Progressives Congress, APC, deputy national chairman (south) defeated incumbent Adebayo Alao-Akala of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP in the tension-soaked 2011 governorship polls, he had lost his bid to govern the state in 2007; he was runner up to the same Alao-Akala. Ajimobi, who contested the election under the defunct All Nigeria Peoples Congress, ANPP, had represented Oyo South senatorial district between 2003 and 2007 under the platform of the defunct Alliance for Democracy, AD.

2. AbdulFatai Buhari

Described as a politician of note. Between 2003 and 2007, he represented Ogbomoso North/Ogbomoso South/ Oriire federal constituency on the platform of the PDP. In 2007, his bid to represent Oyo North senatorial district on the platform of the Labour Party, LP, didnt materialize. In 2011, he lost his bid to go back to the House of Representatives under the platform of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN.

From being a special adviser and later commissioner for local government and chieftaincy matters between 2011 and 2015, the APC chieftain defeated incumbent Hosea Ayoola Agboola to become a senator. His mandate was renewed in the 2019 election, making him the first person to represent the district twice.

3. Adedapo Adesina

Popularly called Dapolam, son of late former governor Lamidi Adesina, represented Ibadan North East / Ibadan South East federal constituency between 2015 and 2019 on the platform of APC.

But before then, the University of Ibadan alumnus had initially lost the same election in 2011 to Olubukola Ajaja of Accord. Between 2011 and 2015, he was commissioner for youth and sports, and later commissioner for industry, science and technology.

4. Bosun Oladele

Lawyer and former youth leader of the defunct AD, lost his bid to represent Irepo/Olorunsogo state constituency to Ojemuyiwa Ojekunle of the PDP (now commissioner for agriculture and natural resources).

In the 2015 election, the APC chieftain and former information commissioner was elected to represent Oorelope/Irepo/Olorunsogo federal constituency.

5. Seyi Makinde

Before he became governor in 2019, Seyi Makinde had contested every election since 2007. As a senatorial candidate of the defunct ANPP in 2007, he lost to PDPs Kamarudeen Adedibu. In 2011, he lost the PDP senatorial ticket to Adedibu again. In 2015, he was the governorship candidate of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, where he came a distant 5th position. When many had written him off, he defeated Adebayo Adelabu of the then ruling APC.

6. Akin Alabi

Founder of Nigerias first online betting site, NairaBet, Akin Alabi represents Egbeda/Ona-Ara federal constituency. Before winning the seat in the 2019 national assembly, he had lost the same bid in the 2015 election under the platform of the PDP.

7. Teslim Folarin

At 40 in 2003, Teslim Folarin became Oyo Central senator on the platform of the PDP. He was there till 2011. He was unable to seek re-election as he had a running battle with them governor Alao-Akala. Many had thought he would contest governorship poll. Alao-Akala wanted to go for another term and would not even allow Folarin go for a third term; he was said to have preferred then minister of state for Federal Capital Territory, Jumoke Akinjide who would later lose the general election to APCs Ayo Adeseun.

In 2015, Folarin, having successfully taken over the control of the PDP machinery in the state, contested the governorship election but came 4th. He would later joined his cousin, Ajimobi, in the then ruling APC circa 2018. He was the candidate of the party in the 2019 senatorial election and he defeated incumbent Monsurat Sunmonu and Makindes chief of staff, Bisi Ilaka, to break a record; the first three-term senator from the state. He had, in 2011, previously set a record of being the first person to represent a senatorial district twice in the history of Oyo State.

Credit: Oyo Insight
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Comedian Elayne Boosler says her elderly Jewish cousin, who died last month, inexplicably got saddled with a pricey Christian burial package while in a Brooklyn nursing home.

Now my beautiful Jewish cousin is clutching rosary beads after a fake funeral that never  couldnt have  happened because of coronavirus, Boosler, who grew up in Sheepshead Bay, told THE CITY from her California home.

She noted that her first instinct was to go for the funny and try not to bleed on my audience, if you will. Also, going for the joke is how I distance myself and my emotions.

But she confessed she hasnt slept in days.

I am horrified at how she must have died, she said, at how she was swindled and at how she is now far from her family in a strange grave.

Are You Sitting Down?

The ordeal began, Boosler recalled, when her cousin Harriet Saltzman phoned her from Florida on April 14 and said, Are you sitting down? Pull the chair closer to the table in case you fall over.

Saltzman told her that she had been trying to reach their mutual first cousin Dorothea Buschell at the Hamilton Park Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, to wish her a happy 83rd birthday.

When no one answered in Buschells room, Saltzman said she began leaving voicemails at the main number, but no one returned her calls for weeks.

Finally, on April 14, a frazzled staffer who happened to pick up the phone said, Oh, no one called you yesterday? Uh, she died this morning.

And then Harriet said, Why would someone have called yesterday if she died this morning?, Boosler said.

Buschell died April 13.

By the time Saltzman called, Buschells body had already been transferred to Forest Green Park cemetery in Morganville, N.J.  not her intended, already-paid-for, family plot in New Montefiore Cemetery in Farmingdale, L.I. She was buried on April 15.

Because they figured it was the virus that she died from, there was no autopsy, Saltzman wrote Boosler in an email. She was double bagged, put into the coffin, doubled bagged again and shipped.

Saltzman noted that Forest Green will not be able to dis-inter her for a while because of the pandemic, and they will call me when they are ready to do it.

The Plot Thickens

In a phone interview with THE CITY, Boosler added, But wait. Theres more. Much more.

The saga began in either late 2016 or early 2017, Boosler recounted, after Buschell, an artist who had taught English on U.S. Army bases in Italy for a quarter century, landed in Hamilton Park after a series of mini-strokes.

On April 28, 2017, she was sold an irrevocable $15,000 pre-need funeral plan which she never signed  and which Boosler stressed Buschell never would have consciously agreed to since she already had a family plot.

During an August 2018 visit, Boosler had taken steps to ensure that copies of the family-plot paperwork were in her cousins nursing home file, she said, along with up-to-date family contact numbers for Saltzman and herself.

Dorothea was in there for physical health reasons, but she was mentally a hundred percent, Boosler said. She probably never even saw the pre-need documents.

Richard J. Brum, an attorney for the Allure Group, the company that owns Hamilton Park nursing home, said he was unable to provide any details regarding residents for privacy reasons, in accordance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Whenever a resident passes away, our policy is to immediately notify their family representative who is then responsible for making final arrangements for the deceased, Brum said in a statement. When family is not involved in the residents care, we notify the court-appointed legal guardian who then makes those arrangements.

According to state law, if a resident has no known relatives, the chief executive officerof a facility in which the person alleged to be incapacitated is a patient or resident may petition the state Supreme Court to appoint a guardian.

Boosler said she was never told of any court-appointed guardian.

The pre-need plan, which lists Buschell as the purchaser, was signed by one David Blau, a person unknown to Buschells remaining family.

While Blaus affiliation is listed nowhere on the document, he works for New York Guardianship Services, where his staff profile on the company website lists his former experience at Merry Lynch.

Greatest Punchline

A copy of the pre-need plan, provided to THE CITY by Boosler, includes a long itemized list of costs that runs the gamut from $34 for bridge and road tolls to $95 for makeup to $400 for a dress to $4,950 for a mahogany casket.

AND THE GREATEST PUNCHLINE OF ALL TIME: Boosler wrote in an all-caps Facebook post, CLERGY, $500. GRATUITIES $60. CROSS AND ROSARY BEADS $200.

The total bill: $15,005.75

Thats right folks, Boosler continued on Facebook, they buried my Jewish cousin, who never wore makeup & never spent more than $25 on an outfit, who always tipped 20% and would have known to take the Queensboro Bridge to avoid tolls, IN A CATHOLIC CEMETERY HOLDING A ROSARY FOR AFUNERAL THAT NEVER HAPPENED.

Boosler stressed to THE CITY that she was not looking to sue.

We understand COVIDs a bitch, and if the nursing home had apologized and ensured she was in the right place, buried next to her mom and dad and sister, we would understand, she said. But its been two weeks now and no communication. Theyre not being upstanding. Do the right thing, dont make it harder.

Boosler said the family would like a copy of the death certificate and Buschells personal effects if they didnt already burn them  and access to her bank accounts to see what was docked by the so-called guardian.

Where are her things? Boosler asked. Her jewelry from Italy? Her photo albums? We have nothing.

Blame Game

Blau of New York Guardianship Services did not respond to calls from THE CITY.

Saltzman, however, received an email from Kristina Billini, a case manager at New York Guardianship Services, blaming the nursing home for unacceptable negligence.

Hamilton Park wrongfully informed us that Ms. Buschell had no family and neglected to inform us of her Jewish faith on the date of her death, Billini wrote in the email, which was shared with THE CITY.

They informed us that the morgue had come for your cousin and that they would get us back the information, however, they never did and began to ignore our calls.

Billini noted that Kehila Chapels of Brighton Beach claimed Buschells remains and were able to respectfully bury her.

Unfortunately, she added, as we had no knowledge of her Jewish faith, it appears that she was not laid to rest in a Jewish cemetery.

Boosler, called The Comedy Master Who Hasnt Gotten Her Due by The New York Times, noted on Facebook, Every great punchline has a great tag: The funeral home now wants us to pay $10,000 to transfer Dorothea to her actual plot next to her family.

Kehila Chapels did not return calls for comment.

I have no horse in this race, Boosler told THE CITY. Its not about the money. Its about doing whats right.

The state Department of Health, which oversees nursing homes, referred questions about the case to the State Attorney Generals Office.

The State Attorney Generals Office, which investigates allegations of abuse or neglect in nursing homes, said it could not comment on Booslers allegations, but noted its Consumer Frauds Bureaus online complaint form.

In 2018, the Allure Group was required to pay $750,000 in penalties and costs in a settlement after the attorney general investigated the closing of two of its nursing homes, Rivington House on Manhattans Lower East Side and the CABS Nursing Home in Brooklyn.

Hamilton Park earned a two- out of five-star rating from the state Department of Health, which received 48 complaints about the facility from March 1, 2016 to Feb. 29, 2020. The DOH issued 15 health and safety citations against the facility during the same period, compared to a statewide average of 31. All citations were resolved.

Boosler said she had not hired an attorney. But she said she would do so if Hamilton Park and the funeral home didnt sort out the mess, move Buschell to her rightful plot and return the charges Boosler believes to be bogus to her estate.

And if shes still holding a rosary instead of a pastrami, Boosler added, then Im getting a lawyer.

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A second special train from Kota carrying 956 students from Jharkhand reached the Dhanbad railway station on Sunday, a district official said.

The students from 10 districts of Jharkhand stood in circles marked on the platform to maintain social distancing. They were welcomed by senior police and district officials, including Deputy Commissioner Amit Kumar and Senior Superintendent of Police Akhilesh B Wariyar.

These students were stranded in Kota due to the nationwide lockdown imposed to contain the spread of coronavirus. Earlier this week, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) allowed the states to ferry migrant labourers, students and tourists back home in buses or special trains.

"The special train carrying 956 students from Jharkhand's 10 districts reached Dhanbad late afternoon," the Dhanbad deputy commissioner said.

They were screened by doctors and given food packets by the district administration before being boarded to their destinations.

The students from Dhanbad, Bokaro, Giridih, Koderma, Dumka, Deoghar, Pakur, Jamtara, Sahibganj, and Godda boarded the special train in Kota at 9 pm on Saturday and reached Dhanbad at 3.55 pm on Sunday, railway officials said.

Barring district administration and railway officials, no other person was allowed near the station premises, officials said.

The first train carrying 1,200 students from Kota had reached Ranchi on Saturday night, a day after an equal number of migrant workers reached Hatia railway station from Telangana.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Theres no question about it: Holding successful elections under current conditions is going to be difficult.

The good news is that a group of experts put together by election-law maven Rick Hasen, the Ad Hoc Committee for 2020 Election Fairness and Legitimacy, has thought through many of the major issues and published solid recommendations for getting it right this November. Now well see whether politicians and the media will follow through.

How to work around the pandemic? Whats needed, Hasens group says, is an approach that allows for several methods of voting. Mail voting should be an important piece of this, and no-excuse absentee voting (meaning you dont have to explain why you are casting your ballot that way) extended to those states that dont have it.

The overall strategy: Having a diversity of avenues for voting  in-person, absentee, curbside, on-site at hospitals and other such facilities  enhances the stability of the system, maximizing the likelihood that elections may continue despite whatever unexpected threat emerges. No one knows how difficult in-person voting will be by the fall, but states should prepare for the worst  and Congress should immediately provide emergency funding, with up to $2 billion needed.

Id support such spending because democracy is worth spending money on. If this perhaps idealistic reason isnt enough, theres sufficient practical justification for the U.S. to make sure its elections are run well. No one wants the uncertainty of an extended contested election with complaints like those we heard about the recent Wisconsin primary or the Iowa caucuses in February.

The ordeal of a contested presidential election was bad enough in 2000 when the nation was in pretty good shape, and even then it was probably damaging. Just imagine if it happened during an ongoing pandemic and a severe economic contraction. Spending a little now to reduce the chances of chaos in November would be a smart insurance play.

Story continues

The 2020 election committee began its work before the coronavirus showed up, because significant challenges to U.S. democracy were already in place. Some will be even bigger threats now. One big one involves reporting election results. As more states have switched to vote by mail, counting has extended well beyond election night, and a gap has emerged in which late-counted votes have tended to be more Democratic than Republican.

The Hasen committee urges states to be as transparent as possible about the slow counts that they cant prevent. Overall, the aim should be to reduce the extent to which the counting of such ballots might be subject to counting delays that could cause significant shifts in vote margins after in-precinct returns are reported on election night.

For its part, the media, especially TV, have an important role to play in how they handle election-night coverage (as well as pre-election reporting). They need to emphasize that vote counts will be slow in some states; that experience has shown that the late tallies tend to help Democrats; and that the reason for slow counting is accuracy, not anything nefarious.

Remember: States know these situations are coming. Journalists who cover elections should certainly know they are. And with more absentee ballots expected this fall, theres going to be even more late counting than usual. The chances that an election-night lead will flip, as more votes are tallied, are higher than ever.

This should not be difficult to convey. Its common for a TV network to explain that an early lead doesnt mean much because we dont know where the votes are coming from, or even that a lead is unlikely to hold up because we know that precincts expected to support the trailing candidate havent been totaled yet. All the reporters have to do is to extend their where provisos to include the when factor of slower counting.

For all its good specific guidance for ensuring a fair election, the committee unfortunately has no convincing answer when it comes to the larger threats to democracy. Heres what it recommends:

Losers of fair elections should quickly accept election results once they are final. Elections, even those conducted during a crisis or emergency such as COVID-19, should be resolved consistent with fair election principles, recognizing and resolving disputes in good faith.

Thats easier said than done in any situation, and its unfortunately impossible to assume that President Donald Trump will uphold democratic norms. After all, he has repeatedly accused others of fraud, even in an election he won, and continued to make such claims, even after his phony allegations were investigated and fully debunked.

About all we can do is hope that other Republicans resist the temptation to back up whatever preposterous claims Trump will make if he loses, and that Democrats resist the temptation to emulate his tactics should they fall short. Neither party has a great record on this score. On balance, I think Democrats have done better, but many of them bought into false conspiracy theories about supposedly manipulated vote counts in the 2004 election, so theyre not blameless either.

At any rate, Hasen and his colleagues have performed an important service to the nation. I strongly recommend the report and Hasens recent book warning about what can go wrong.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy. He taught political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio and DePauw University and wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion

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LONDONBritains Prime Minister Boris Johnson said plans were being made in the event of his death while he was being treated for COVID-19 in hospital.

I was not in particularly brilliant shape and I was aware there were contingency plans in place, Johnson said in an interview with the British tabloid The Sun on Sunday.

It was a tough old moment, I wont deny it. They had a strategy to deal with a Death of Stalin-type scenario, Johnson said, referring to the 2017 comedy film focused on the events surrounding the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

At a point when his health deteriorated and doctors were considering putting a tube down his windpipe, there were discussions about how to handle it presentationally.

The 55-year-old spent a week in hospital after he fell ill with COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus.

He was in intensive care for three days.

Johnson returned to Downing Street about a week ago.
THE coronavirus crisis, which has badly grounded the aviation industry, has delayed the launch of new international routes from Cebu that were supposed to start from the second quarter of 2020.

The resumption of Philippine Airlines Cebu to Los Angeles route has been tentatively postponed to June 2 from the original target May 2 launch, according to aviation data provider Routesonline.

The revival of Qatar Airways direct link between Cebu and Doha, Qatar has also been moved to July 1. This service resumption was supposed to start last April 8.

The launch of new routes from Cebu to Taiwans capital Taipei by China Airlines and Starlux Airlines has also been postponed to Oct. 1 (from June 12) and July 1 (from April 6), respectively.

All international and domestic flights at the Mactan-Cebu International Airport (MCIA) have been suspended for over a month now until May 15 due to quarantine measures to beat the spread of Covid-19.

However, MCIA remains operational for sweeper flights for stranded passengers and cargo flights.

Local carriers are expected to resume operations in limited capacity flights on May 16, under a new normal where crew wear protective gear, passengers use digital channels and maintain physical distancing even in the air.

But the outlook on the airline industry remains uncertain.

The industry facing a new business environment in post-lockdown era as its expected to struggle to get travelers fly back again.

High ticket price

According to International Air Transport Association chief executive officer Alexandre de Juniac social distancing measures inside the cabin will force ticket prices higher, otherwise airlines will risk losing enormous amounts of money, as the market recovers while the threat of Covid-19 remains.

American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines said Thursday, May 1, 2020, they will soon require passengers to cover their faces during flights, following the lead of JetBlue Airways.

The move comes as airlines big and small contemplate how to comply with social-distancing recommendations in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

Story continues

Most flights are nearly empty these daysair travel is down 95 percent from a year ago, and the average domestic flight has 17 passengers, according to industry figures.

Beyond masks, several airlines said they are blocking some or all middle seats to create social distancing. That is possible now on most flights but will become more difficult when passengers begin returning in bigger numbersairlines would forfeit revenue if they block seats then. It is also more difficult on smaller regional jets; passengers might be seated near each other to balance the planes load.

Tourism, being one of the major economic drivers in Cebu, is expected to suffer the most, according to Efren Carreon, regional director at the National Economic and Development Authority in Central Visayas.

He estimated around US$40 million in foregone monthly revenue for the tourism industry.

Most businesses in Cebu, including hotels, malls and resorts have been closed since late March when the strict mass quarantine was imposed across the province.

We expect some contraction in our economy given the disruptions in business activities in the region, Carreon said. / (with AP)
Delhi govt to get Rs 10,000 cr revenue from bidding of liquor shops under new excise policy

Delhis liquor shops reopen from today under new excise policy| Check timings, costs and other details here

States allow sale of liquor from tomorrow, Kerala decides to wait

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, May 03: Many states have decided to open up liquor stores, but Kerala has decided to wait. States like Karnataka, Maharashtra and Assam have decided to open liquor stores, but Kerala said that it would take a call soon.

Kerala's Chief Minister, Pinarayi Vijayan said that there is no need to worry. It is only a temporary measure and it would reviewed soon, he also said.

Delhi to reopen standalone liquor shops in non-containment zones

In those states which have decided to allow the sale of liquor, the excise department said that shops will have to comply with social distancing norms. Moreover not more than five persons shall be allowed at one time, the department also said.

Liquor stores will be allowed to open in all zones, provided they are not in malls or shopping complexes. There was some confusion about this, but the Centre has clarified on the same, Karnataka's excise minister, H Nagesh said. However liquor stores will not be allowed inside containment zones, the minister also clarified.

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Story first published: Sunday, May 3, 2020, 8:18 [IST]
Demonstrators gathered Saturday in Salem, demanding Oregon ease social distancing restrictions meant to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.

A few hundred folks gathered in front of the Oregon State Capitol, rain alternately pounding and drizzling as many attendees waved signs with slogans like Reopen Oregon," Open schools and no more masks. Other demonstrators waved the U.S. flags or Dont Tread on Me flags, while others waved banners reading Trump 2020.

Some of the rally-goers wore face masks but the vast majority did not.

Organizers said they view the social distancing mandates issued by Gov. Kate Brown as government overreach. Since mid-March, Browns orders have shuttered many businesses, put some parks and campgrounds off limits and required public schools to adopt distance learning programs.

You cant just place citizens under house arrest and enforce those orders, event organizer Adam Ellifritt said.

STATE OF EMERGENCY EXTENDED: Gov. Kate Brown signed an executive order Friday extending Oregons state of emergency to July 6 in response to the coronavirus outbreak. The move comes roughly two months after the original declaration was signed March 8. It was set to expire May 7.

OREGON CASES: The Oregon Health Authority on Saturday reported five new deaths from coronavirus as confirmed cases climbed by 57 to 2,635. The agency announced that a 64-year-old man from Polk County, a 70-year-old man from Multnomah County, a 75-year-old man from Multnomah County, a 91-year-old woman from Marion County and a 76-year-old woman from Umatilla County had died from the disease. That brings the states death toll to 109. All suffered from underlying conditions, though the state did not specify what those conditions were.

PORTLAND SCHOOLS: Portland Public Schools plans to furlough all employees one day a week for the rest of the school year, using a little-known provision of the special $600-a-week federal unemployment subsidy that Congress authorized through July, officials said Friday.

HEALTH: Gov. Kate Brown granted Oregonians permission Friday to return to doctors and dentists for non-urgent visits. In doing so, Brown joined at least 22 governors in other states -- including Utah, Texas and Georgia -- who have disregarded recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to continue to postpone outpatient medical and dental visits that arent urgent or who never delayed the visits in the first place.

Hospice patient Maria Ortiz wanted to see the ocean. (Seasons Healthcare Management)

#TEAMOREGON: Maria Ortiz never had seen the ocean. It was one thing she wanted to do before she died. A group of hospice workers and people of good will made it happen on the Oregon coast.

CHILD CARE: Child care centers throughout the state are concerned about their survival as they navigate low enrollment or remain indefinitely shuttered due to the COVID-19 crisis.

WHATS OPEN: The rules have changed about businesses can and cant open. Heres a look at whats open and whats closed as of May 1 in Oregon.

TRIMET: TriMets paratransit contractor laid off nearly 300 employees, then cut health care. In a layoff notice provided to The Oregonian/OregonLive, First Transits general manager stressed that workers would be called back when possible and that COVID-19 led to the furloughs and medical care cuts.

TRAVEL: Counties on the Oregon coast have begun planning  and in some cases taking  small steps toward reopening vacation rentals, hotels and RV parks amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

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-- The Oregonian/OregonLive

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 16:53:50|Editor: huaxia

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VIENTIANE, May 3 (Xinhua) -- Laos has reported no new case of COVID-19 for 21 consecutive days, with the total number of confirmed cases unchanged at 19.

Lao Deputy Minister of Health Phouthone Meaungpak told a press conference on Sunday that the total number of COVID-19 in Laos remained at 19, as no new case was confirmed.

The National Taskforce Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control announced it had been monitoring 639 people at 147 accommodation centers across the country along with 400 people self-isolating at home.

As of Sunday, Laos tested 2,184 suspected cases with 19 cases tested positive, and nine patients have recovered.

The nine patients, who have recovered, included six cases in Lao capital Vientiane and three cases in Luang Prabang province.

Another 10 infected cases are treated in designated hospital -- Mittaphab Hospital (Hospital 150) in Lao capital Vientiane.

Laos announced its first two COVID-19 confirmed cases on March 24. Enditem
Germany has been forced to cancel public events to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of World War Two in Europe but Berliners need no ceremonies to remember their downfall - the scars of war are all around them.

Facades in the centre are disfigured by bullet holes and shell damage, a reminder that Hitlers Third Reich ended in devastating defeat, not the liberation it is hailed as today.

Thanks to the coronavirus, Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will mark the May 8 Day of Liberation by laying wreaths at the Memorial to the Victims of War and Dictatorship, home to the tomb of the unknown soldier.

This replaces a previously planned larger ceremony including foreign diplomats and young people plus a range of events including an art installation documenting the last days of the war and tracing the path to democracy, which will now go online.

Nazism, the Holocaust and the devastation of war still shape German identity and politics.

Today you can say we were freed from the Nazi dictatorship but most Germans were defeated. They were perpetrators, not victims of Nazism, said Bjoern Weigel, curator of the 75th Anniversary of the End of the War art project.

You have to look at this differentiation to avoid a myth (of victimhood) taking hold, he said.

The Battle of Berlin, in which Red Army tanks, artillery and infantry fought their way forward street by street in April and May 1945, reduced the Nazi capital to rubble.

It was one of the wars bloodiest battles. Including assaults to encircle Berlin from Seelow and Halbe, more than a quarter of a million people died, say historians, although estimates vary and bodies are found every year.

SURRENDER

Germans fought on even after Hitler committed suicide on April 30 and the Berlin garrison surrendered on May 2. It took until May 8 for German generals to capitulate.

In 1945, not all Germans felt happy. For many it was a catastrophe, said Joerg Morre, director of the German-Russian museum at Karlshorst where the unconditional surrender was signed.

Vivid reminders of the battle still disfigure Berlin buildings, offering evidence of fierce fighting.

Traces of the battle range from obscene graffiti scrawled on walls inside the Reichstag by victorious Red Army soldiers to damaged facades of city museums, bunkers and bridges.

People living here are aware of this but they dont see it as being particularly relevant, said tour guide Nick Jackson.

Locals should be allowed to reinvent their city, he said.

Rebuilding and moving forward is a natural process that I dont think is malicious, he said, adding younger Germans like to see May 8 as a celebration of liberation and democracy.

In the last decade or so, some Germans have focused more on their own suffering during the war and prominent members of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), Germanys third biggest parliamentary party, want to rewrite the history books.

As the rise of the right raises questions about Germans view of the past, it is even more important to stress the responsibilities linked to democracy on May 8, said Weigel.

You can see the link between the Nazi era and now. What these people wanted when they voted Hitler in was not what they got, he said.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text.)

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The Azerbaijan Grand Prix is one of the ten Grands Prix that could not take place on the planned date. However, the organization is still busy looking for a new date.

Closing date

The organization says they have a deadline around mid-October, but would like to organize the race before September 15th. After that, all schools will reopen after the summer holidays in Azerbaijan.

"We are in close contact with the government of Azerbaijan, the F1 and other stakeholders", said director of the Baku City Circuit Arif Rahimov to MotosportWeek.com. At this moment in time, while we are keen to host a race in 2020, we obviously cant commit to running the race later in the year until the situation with COVID-19 becomes clearer and the world returns back to close to how we remember it prior to the pandemic."

Read more Premiere Red Bull promo: Dutch Road Trip

"We agreed with F1 that the race shouldn't be postponed until after mid-October", Rahimov continued. "We really care about our fans and appreciate their experience, so we want them to enjoy great weather in Baku during the race weekend".

Complications

Rahimov acknowledges the additional complications involved in organizing an event in the city, but believes that the infrastructure can be arranged in a shorter timeframe if desired.

"The fact that the race is held in the city streets makes it even more complicated - just like any other street circuit", says Rahimov. "As such, it would ideally be great to try to run the race before the schools restart after the summer break on September 15th.
Blount County Sheriff Mark Moon wont enforce orders to keep business and churches closed, according to the Cullman Daily News.

Ive told my deputies not to go into businesses and churches and stop either, Moon said, according to the Cullman Daily News Facebook page.

According to the Alabama Department of Public Health, Blount County has 40 cases of coronavirus and no deaths. Cases have been creeping up in recent days, but still lag far behind nearby Jefferson County, which has more than 900. State Sen. Shay Shelnutt (R-Trussville) expressed his support for Moon and said the two messaged back-and-forth about the post.

I think the Sheriff is correct by telling his officers not to go into businesses and churches, Shelnutt said. I wish more leaders across the state would follow his lead. Last I checked government should have limits as to what they are allowed to do. I trust the people of Blount County and Alabama to have the personal responsibility to do what is best for themselves and their families.

Gov. Kay Ivey recently announced a Safer-at-Home plan that discourages unnecessary travel and keeps dine-in restaurants, bars, gyms and salons closed. On Friday, the state ended closures of retail businesses, but decreased capacity to 50 percent. Church services are still prohibited under the order, which expires May 15.

According to his Facebook page, Moon is a pastor at Countyline Baptist Church, which held a drive-in service this morning.

Moon noted that he cannot force himself to go after the hard-working people and churches for doing what they feel is the best thing for them, their families or congregations, the short post also said.

A couple barber shops, including one in Shelby County, have opened in violation of the states public health order. Law enforcement officials shut down a barber shop in Mobile that opened in April, after health orders prohibited its operation.
An overhaul of Manitobas emergency measures legislation is overdue and should be reviewed post-pandemic, an emergency management expert says.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 3/5/2020 (625 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An overhaul of Manitobas emergency measures legislation is overdue and should be reviewed post-pandemic, an emergency management expert says.

Jack Lindsay, emergency studies professor at Brandon University, has long been pushing for a rewrite of legislation that was developed to protect the province in case of a nuclear attack in the Cold War era and is now being used to respond to COVID-19.

Many provinces across the country use similar emergency measures laws, which are meant to be wide-ranging and only used as a last resort when a state of emergency is declared. But Lindsay said the existing Emergency Measures Act in Manitoba, because of its purposeful broad design, isnt specific enough about how different authorities  from public health officials to municipalities  should be carrying out the sweeping powers the law gives them in an emergency.

"It was, What do we do if we get hit during the Cold War? And those powers have just lingered. The act hasnt really changed very much since 1952," he said.

"While the Emergency Measures Act is meant to be all-hazard or generic, it really isnt, in the sense that they havent looked at all the different hazards to make sure that the powers cover all of them. Theyve taken the powers that existed for nuclear war and applied them just as if they would work for everything."

To take action in a state of emergency, governments still need to issue amendments or orders of cabinet to properly apply the emergency laws, such as the temporary changes Manitoba made last week when the government announced it was extending the validity of drivers licences and registration, post-secondary student financial aid, and support for young adults in the child-welfare system during the pandemic.

"Declaring a state of emergency essentially opens the toolbox, but before you grab any particular tools, you need an order in council to use that," Lindsay said.

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Society has changed since the emergency measures legislation was designed, he added, underscoring the need for a systemic review.

"Rather than opening a 1950s toolbox and seeing if theres anything left in there that we can use, its actually going around and asking everyone what kind of problems will you face, and what kind of tools do you want us to have in the toolbox so we can help you? That has never happened."

Its fairly common for governments to make changes to their laws in the aftermath of a crisis: Legislation revisions were undertaken in Ontario after the SARS outbreak, in Alberta after the Fort McMurray wildfires, and in Manitoba after major floods, Lindsay said. The letter of the law has been tinkered with in the province, but making widespread changes in the absence of an active emergency has been a challenge, he said.

"I hope that if the government offers (emergency management operations staff) that sort of opportunity this time, that theyre willing to take this and really dig in and do the hard work of rethinking the system rather than just fixing section by section, sort of wordsmithing. Its more than just that, its a much bigger, systemic problem."

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay
In Handwara encounter on early Sunday morning, India lost its four army personnel including one colonel, one major, two jawans as well as one police personnel. PM Modi has paid his tribute to the martyrs and extended his condolences to their family and friends.

Handwara encounter: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday paid his tribute to the martyred soldiers and security personnel who lost their lives in the Handwara encounter. PM Modi tweeted that the valour and sacrifice of these brave-hearts will never be forgotten. They displayed utmost dedication towards the country and worked tirelessly to save the civilians. He also extended his condolences to their family and friends.

Earlier on Sunday, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh had shared his condolences on Twitter. Expressing the loss of soldiers and security personnel in Handwara as deeply disturbing and painful, Rajnath Singh said that they displayed exemplary courage while fighting the terrorists and made supreme sacrifices to serve the country, which will never be forgotten. His heart goes out to all their families who lost their loved one. He added that India stands shoulder to shoulder with those families.

Speaking about the Handwara operation, Chief of Defence Staff Bipin Rawat also applauded the bravery and courage of the martyred soldiers and security personnel. He said that the Handwara encounter displays the determination of security forces to ensure to safety of Indian citizens. Moreover, the armed forces are extremely proud of them as they have successfully eliminated all the terrorists.

Also Read: Army Colonel, Major among 5 killed in action in encounter in J&Ks Handwara; 2 terrorists gunned down

Tributes to our courageous soldiers and security personnel martyred in Handwara. Their valour and sacrifice will never be forgotten. They served the nation with utmost dedication and worked tirelessly to protect our citizens. Condolences to their families and friends.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) May 3, 2020

I offer my tributes to the soldiers and security personnel who fell in action. My heart goes out to the families who lost their loved ones today. India stands shoulder to shoulder with the families of these brave martyrs.  Rajnath Singh (@rajnathsingh) May 3, 2020

The armed forces are proud of their courage as they have successfully eliminated the terrorists. We salute these brave personnel and express our deepfelt condolences for the bereaved families: Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat on Handwara operation https://t.co/VE9bqIPpZG  ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020

Also Read: Armed forces hold fly past, shower flower petals to salute COVID-19 frontline workers

In a nearly 7 hour long gun battle at Jammu and Kashmirs Handwara town, India lost its four army personnel including the commanding officer of 21 Rashtriya Rifles Unit along with 2 soldiers and one police personnel. The commanding officer has been identified as Colonel Ashutosh Sharma. Colonel Ashutosh Sharma had been awarded with the gallantry medals twice for his exemplary courage and bravery in counter-terrorism missions. Since last five years, he was serving the nation as a first commanding officer. Other officers who lost their lives in the mission have been identified as Major Anuj Sood, Naik Rajesh and Lance Naik Dinesh.

Inspector-General of Police Kashmir, Sector Comdr, Deputy Inspector General North Kashmir & Superintendent of Police Handwara paid tribute to our heroes at Langate #Handwara: Kashmir Zone Police pic.twitter.com/lkkJuSlFwO  ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020

The encounter begun at around 3:30 pm upon receiving Intel that militants have taken civilians under hostage at a house in Handwara. Followed by which, the security personnel surrounded the area and waited for about an hour until militants fired their last bullet. They then successfully slipped into the house, managed to save the civilians and gunned down about two militants, one of whom has been identified as a top Lashkar commander.

Top Lashkar-e Taiba commander Haider from Pakistan killed in Handwara encounter: IG Kashmir Vijay Kumar pic.twitter.com/OY8YeYMAWQ  ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020

Also Read: Coronavirus update: Total cases in India nears 40,000 with the toll at 1301

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A police officer in Vietnams Mekong Delta has suffered brain hemorrhage and a broken leg and jaw after being crashed into by a street racer while he was on duty.

Major Nguyen Le Ho, an officer of the traffic police division in Tien Giang Province, is now being treated at Cho Ray Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Van Dung, chief of the police unit, confirmed on Sunday.

The incident happened when a team of traffic officers raided a group of young men and women who were about to participate in illegal street racing along National Highway 1 in Chau Thanh District at around 10:00 pm Saturday.

Ho and some officers were in charge of barricading the road.

He was signaling the street racers to stop when Nguyen Hoang Nam, 18, who was among them, crashed into the officer.

Ho suffered brain hemorrhage and a broken leg and jaw after the crashing and was brought to the hospital for emergency treatment.

The street racers are arrested in Tien Giang Province, Vietnam on May 2, 2020. Photo: H.T. / Tuoi Tre

The other street racers attempted to escape but were eventually captured by police officers.

A total of 19 suspects were captured and nearly 20 motorbikes confiscated.

One of the suspects was under the influence of alcohol while another tested positive for narcotics.

Motorbikes of the street racers are kept at the police station in Tien Giang Province, Vietnam on May 2, 2020. Photo: H.T. / Tuoi Tre

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Mamata Banerjee's TMC gives yet another jolt to Congress in Meghalaya; 11 members switch sides

COVID-19: Meghalaya announces relaxations

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Shillong, May 03: The Meghalaya government announced several relaxations from May 4, including partially lifting the curfew.

Public and religious gatherings, however, will continue to remain prohibited to prevent further spread of the COVID-19 in the state, officials said.

After a review meeting, Deputy Chief Minister Prestone Tynsong told reporters that curfew will be lifted in Shillong agglomeration with effect from May 4.

Lockdown 3.0: Ready reckoner of what is allowed, what is not

However, night curfew as prescribed by the Ministry of Home Affairs will be imposed from 7 pm to 7 am, he said.

Right now, we want to bring back normalcy as much as possible to the state. Therefore, we have given powers to the respective deputy commissioners to exercise their powers in this regard, he added.

Tynsong several relaxation, including the functioning of offices in the state secretariat and directorates.

Construction works in urban areas, including Mylliem block, besides opening of hardware shops, electrical shops and quarrying activities will now be allowed to resume, he said.

All officers are directed to report to their respective offices with immediate effect. However, as far as Group C and D staff are concerned, only 33 per cent is considered. We have asked the chief secretary to work out the modalities with HoDs to ensure compliance of this 33 percent attendance, he said.

All wine shops are also allowed to reopen from May 4.

Tynsong said that all such activities are allowed on condition that strict protocols, including social distancing norms, are followed in totality.

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Story first published: Sunday, May 3, 2020, 8:43 [IST]
The Carnival Sunshine is based at the State Ports Authority's Union Pier Terminal (above) in Charleston. The authority wants to renovate an existing building roughly 600 yards north into a new cruise terminal. The plan has drawn opposition from environmental and historic preservation groups. File/Lauren Petracca/Staff
Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh announced a Rs 10 lakh aid and a job to the kin of an Army jawan from the state killed in an encounter with terrorists in north Kashmir's Handwara on Sunday.

He termed the attack a ghastly act at a time when the whole word was grappling with the coronavirus pandemic.

Naik Rajesh Kumar, a soldier who hailed from Mansa district of Punjab, was among five security personnel killed in the anti-terror operation which began on Saturday and continued till late last night.

A decorated colonel and a major were also killed in this operation.

Extending his heartfelt condolences to the family of Naik Rajesh Kumar of 21 RR (Rashtriya Rifles, parent unit 3 GUARDS ), who belonged to Rajrana village in Sardulgarh tehsil of Mansa, the CM said his heart went out to them.

According to a a government release, the CM announced a financial assistance of Rs 10 lakh, including Rs 5 lakh as ex gratia and the remaining in lieu of a plot, to the next of kin besides a government job to one eligible member of his family.

The body of the martyr will arrive in his village on Monday where he will be cremated with due honours, keeping the coronavirus safety protocols in mind, said the release.

As the of the martyrdom of the four Indian Army personnel and a J&K policeman came, the CM joined the nation in saluting the bravery and valour of the martyrs, and prayed to God to grant strength to their families in this time of grief.

The chief minister described the attack as a ghastly and cowardly act by the terrorists, who continued to be pushed in by Pakistan from across the border despite the whole world, including the two nations, currently engaged in a bigger war against the COVID-19.

While terrorism could not be condoned at any time, resorting to such an act at a critical time like this showed a total lack of shame on the part of Islamabad, which seemed hell-bent on exploiting the opportunity for their own gains, said Singh in a statement here.

But India would not take such attacks on its security personnel, he added, warning that notwithstanding the COVID battle at hand, nobody should make the mistake of trying to take advantage of the country's perceived vulnerability at this difficult time.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A California man was arrested three times over the course of 12 hours last week, but was given a citation and released each time, due to the restrictions amid the CCP virus pandemic, according to a statement issued by the Glendora Police Department.

Between 8:20 a.m. and 8:50 p.m. on April 29, Dijon Landrum, a 24-year-old from Monterey Park, was apprehended three times. All three incidents occurred around 23 miles east of Los Angeles, according to the statement.

Police received a call at around 8:28 a.m. regarding a man who was trying to break into a car on the 1400 block of South Grand Avenue. After officials arrived on the scene in question, they found Landrum trying to drive away in the stolen vehicle. During that arrest, Landrum was also found to be in possession of other stolen property and illegal drugs, police said.

However, due to the pandemic, the California Zero-Bail policy was implemented, and Landrum was released after being issued a citation, according to the statement.

Then at around 2:20 p.m., the Glendora Police Department again received a call about a man was walking in the area of Bennett and Pennsylvania carrying a box and walking through front yards of residences. It appeared that the male was placing items in this box as he was walking through the properties, the statement read.

When officers arrived at the scene, authorities found Landrum in possession of items that did not belong to him. The 24-year-old was apprehended for the second time, given a citation, and then released.

Landrum was then arrested a third time around 8:49 p.m., after the police department received a call about someone stealing a vehicle from a parking lot on the 1300 block of South Grand Avenue.

Our officers were able to track the vehicle and found it westbound on the 10 freeway in the area of La Puente, police said.

Authorities tracked the vehicle and with the help of the LA County Sheriffs Department and California Highway Patrol, Landrum was ultimately apprehended in Pasadena, following a pursuit.

He was then cited for being in possession of a stolen vehicle, as well as evading officers, and was released shortly afterwards.

Glendora police thanked the public for reporting the man, writing on Facebook: We want to thank all of the citizens that helped with this investigation, particularly those that called when they noticed something suspicious. They encouraged residents to contact authorities with additional information regarding the case should there be any.

Californias Zero-Bail policy was implemented in early April. It sets bail at $0 for most misdemeanor and lower-level felony offenses in an effort by the state to empty its jails to curb the spread of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

Meanwhile, complaints have been ringing in about the new policy, reported Fox News.

We hear from people and theyre disappointed that someone can commit a crime and they go to jail, we go through the whole process with them and book them for the crime because there is probable cause to do that, and then because of this order, theyre released, said Cindy Bachman, the public information officer at the San Bernardino County Sheriffs Department.

People are disappointed, theyre angry, but this is an order. We have to follow it, but we dont have to be happy about it, Bachman said.
London: Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds released the first picture of their baby son on Saturday, named after the doctors who helped save his father's life.

And perhaps not surprisingly for the son of a Prime Minister noted for his blond locks, Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas Johnson had a near full head of fair hair. Symonds, 32, posted a picture of her cradling her newborn son on social media saying she "couldn't be happier" and that her "heart is full".

Mother and baby are understood to be back at No.10 with the Prime Minister. The infant was also named after Johnson's paternal grandfather, Wilfred Johnson, a decorated Second World War pilot, and Symonds's maternal grandfather, Lewis Lawrence, known as Lawrie.

Stanley Johnson, the baby's grandfather, said he was "absolutely thrilled". Speaking from his farm in Exmoor, he said: "I'm glad Carrie got her grandpa in there. It's a good day for grandpas."
Phuket police bomb suspect run gives family of five on motorbike a lift to Yala

PHUKET: Patong Police officers on their way to the Deep South to pick up a suspect wanted for his role in the spate of bombings that rocked Southern Thailand, including Phuket, in 2016 came across a family of five riding on the one motorbike in Krabi heading home from Phuket to Yala, and gave them a lift.



By Eakkapop Thongtub

Sunday 3 May 2020, 02:37PM

Abdulstopa Sulong, 36, originally from Pattani, wanted for his role in the 2016 bombings, was brought back to Patong Police Station and charged. Photo: Patong Police

The family greatly appreciated the lift, saving them a further 300-plus kilometres on the motobike. Photo: Knights Border / Facebook

The officers saw the family of five on the one motorbike in Krabi on Friday (May 1). Photo: Knights Border / Facebook

The act of goodwill became public after it was posted on the Knights Border (also branded as the Knights of the Southern Border) Facebook page.

The Patong Police officers, Maj Suchart Chumphusaeng and Sen Sgt Maj Satta Sammueng, saw the family on the motorbike in Krabi on Friday (May 1), and asked if they could be of assistance.

The father driving the motorbike explained that he and his family had left Phuket because he no longer had work due to the COVID situation. With no money to support his family, he decided to go back to his home in Yala province, the post explained.

The man and his family were among the first to leave Phuket under the current project to allow people stuck on the island without any income to return to their home provinces, the man said.

Maj Suchart and Sen Sgt Maj Satta contacted Patong Police Chief Col Akanit Danpitaksart and were granted permission to give the family a lift all the way home to Yala before picking their bomb suspect in Pattani - a detour of only about 40km.

The kind act was much appreciated by the family, which had some 360 more kilometres to go to reach home.

The post by the Knights Border also noted, People in trouble do not have enough to eat, they shoulder the burden and the cost of unemployment. The most wanted thing is to go home. # Share. Good stories in society.

Patong Police officers returned to Phuket yesterday (May 2) with their suspect, Abdulstopa Sulong, 36, originally from Pattani, in custody.

Patong Police Chief Col Akkanit explained that Abdulstopa was arrested by Pattani Muang Police on Friday by the side of Pattaniphirom Rd in Tambon Anoru, Muang District, Pattani.

He was wanted on arrest warrants issued on Nov 8, 2016 and Feb 23, 2017, Col Akkanit said.

Abdulstopa was one of 11 suspects wanted for their involvement in the spate of bombs that detonated in many areas throughout Southern Thailand on Aug 10-12, 2016, Col Akanit explained.

Police are still working on searching for the rest of the other suspects, he added.

Col Akkanit did not reveal how many of the suspects had been arrested the bombings so far, but confirmed that Abdulstopa will be charged for his part in acting collectively to illegally possess explosives, as well as setting fire to other peoples property, and being member of a secret society.

In the aftermath of the bombings on Aug 12, 2016, which killed four people and injured 36 others throughout Southern Thailand, police were issued arrest warrants after DNA from a bomb in Phuket matched that of a known insurgent in the Deep South.
That seemingly small adjustment will have important consequences, notably in diminishing the ability of the justices to use their questions to talk to one another by jumping in to build on or respond to their colleagues concerns. The court will mute the lines of lawyers before and after they argue, but it has not said whether or how the justices themselves will be muted when it is not their turn to ask questions.
A photo of Paul Cary in front of an Ambulnz van.

CBS Denver

Paul Cary, from Aurora, Colorado, died from COVID-19 on Thursday, about a week after testing positive for the virus.

The 66-year-old had traveled to New York City to volunteer for Ambulnz, an ambulance service provider, to work on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic and transport COVID-19 patients.

Cary spent more than 30 years working as a firefighter and paramedic for Aurora's fire department before joining Ambulnz.

Cary was the first FEMA-deployed volunteer responder to COVID-19 in New York to die from the virus.

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A 66-year-old paramedic from Colorado traveled to New York to volunteer on the front lines of COVID-19  then he died from the virus.

Paul Cary, from Aurora, Colorado, died from COVID-19 on Thursday, about a week after testing positive for the virus. He had traveled to New York to volunteer for Ambulnz, an ambulance service provider, where he transported COVID-19 patients, KDVR reported.

In a statement to CBS Denver, Cary's family said they were "devastated" by his death.

"Accepting Paul's commitment to serving others in need, we respected his choice to volunteer to be part of Ambulnz's response team to the COVID-19 crisis in New York City," the family said. "He risked his own health and safety to protect others and left this world a better place. We are at peace knowing that Paul did what he loved and what he believed in, right up until the very end."

According to ABC 7 New York, Cary was the first FEMA-deployed volunteer responder to COVID-19 in New York to die from the virus.

Mayor Bill de Blasio gave a tribute to Cary in his daily COVID-19 press conference.

"We have lost someone who came to our aid, to our defense and there's something particularly painful when someone does the right thing; a fellow American comes from across the country to try and help the people in New York City and while working to save lives here, gives his own life," de Blasio said, according to ABC 7. "It's very painful. It's heroic. It's something we honor, but it's very, very painful that we've lost this good man. Paramedic Paul Cary from Aurora, Colorado, part of the FEMA relief effort has died of the coronavirus. For three decades he served the people of Aurora and then came very bravely to serve us  he did not have to do it  he made the choice to come here to save lives."

Story continues

Cary spent more than 30 years working as a firefighter and paramedic for Aurora's fire department before joining Ambulnz.

He is survived by two sons and four grandchildren.

Read the original article on Insider
The Reserve Bank has cancelled the licence of Mumbai-based The CKP Co-operative Bank Ltd citing its unsustainable financial position. The apex bank also noted that the CKP Co-operative Bank was not in a position to pay its depositors.

According to the RBI order the CKP Co-operative Bank's licence has been cancelled from the close of business on April 30.

BCCL

"Consequent to the cancellation of its licence, The CKP Co-operative Bank Ltd, Mumbai, is prohibited from conducting the business of 'banking' which includes acceptance of deposits and repayment of deposits..." the RBI said.



With the cancellation of licence and commencement of liquidation proceedings, the process of paying the depositors of the co-operative bank as per the DICGC Act, 1961 will be set in motion.

"On liquidation, every depositor is entitled to repayment of his/her deposits up to a monetary ceiling of Rs 5,00,000 from the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation (DICGC) as per usual terms and conditions," the RBI said.

PTI

RBI said that 99.2 percent of The CKP Co-operative Bank's 1.32 lakh customers have accounts with funds less than Rs 5 lakh, and they will be eligible for full recovery under the DICGC scheme when the bank is liquidated.

Giving details, the RBI said the financial position of the bank "is highly adverse and unsustainable". Also, there is no concrete revival plan or proposal for a merger with another bank. Besides, a credible commitment towards revival from the management is not visible, it added.

"The bank is not in a position to pay its present and future depositors," it said. The RBI further said the affairs of the bank "were and are" being conducted in a manner detrimental to the public interest and interest of the depositors and that the general character of the management of the bank is prejudicial to the interest of depositors as also the public interest.

PTI

The Dadar-based bank which has a history of 105 years and has six branches across Mumbai and Thane, and two extension counters had a loan book of Rs 158 crore and deposits of Rs 486 crore. It had a negative net worth of Rs 239 crore, according to the latest figures available.

CKP Co-Operative is the third co-operative bank to face RBI action after PMC Bank in Mumbai and Sri Guru Raghavendra Sahakara Bank in Bengaluru. Unlike in the case of CKP, both PMC and Guru Raghavendra have only been placed under restrictions.
A man is recovering in hospital following a stabbing in west Belfast.

He was attacked by three men in the Woodbourne Crescent area at around 5.30pm on Saturday was left with stab wounds to the abdomen.

A 17-year-old male was questioned over the incident and has since been released on police bail pending further inquiries.

The PSNI have issued an appeal for witnesses to come forward.

The 26-year-old man was taken to hospital for treatment for his injuries where his condition is described as stable, a PSNI spokesman said.

A 17-year-old male was arrested on suspicion of grievous bodily harm with intent and possession of an offensive weapon. He was interviewed and subsequently released on police bail pending further inquiries.

Detectives are appealing for anyone who witnessed the incident or anyone who has any information that can assist with the investigation to contact them in Musgrave Police Station on 101 quoting reference 1322 02/05/20.

Sinn Fein MLA Alex Maskey paid tribute to local people who he said acted quickly to help the victim.

Actions like this have no place in our society particularly at this time when our health service, as well as other frontline statutory agencies and indeed communities, are doing what they can to fight against Covid-19, he said.

I would like to pay tribute to residents and shopkeepers who acted quickly to help the injured party.

Anyone with information about this incident should bring it immediately to the PSNI.
Chief Minister Hemant Soren on Sunday said a "total" lockdown will continue in Jharkhand for the next two weeks and the Centre's relaxation guidelines will not be applicable in the state.

The relaxations given by the central government during the lockdown would not be applied in the state to protect the health of people, he said.

On May 1, the Ministry of Home Affairs announced a "limited" lockdown. The suspension of air, train and inter-state road travel will continue to remain in force across the country for two more weeks from May 4, but some activities will be allowed after a classification of districts into "Red", "Orange" and "Green" zones, based on COVID-19 risk-profiling, it said.

Taking to Twitter, Soren said, "As a precaution, the lockdown will continue in Jharkhand for the next two weeks."



"The central government's fresh instructions regarding relaxations will not be applied in Jharkhand at present. As students, migrant labourers and others are returning home, this is necessary to protect the health of the people of the state," he wrote on the microblogging website.

Soren's government had, on April 27, announced that it would not implement the Centre's guidelines on opening of standalone and neighbourhood shops due to a sudden spurt in the number of coronavirus cases in the state.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Nearly 1,200 students from various colleges and universities across Noida and Greater Noida on Sunday left for their homes on specially-arranged buses amid the COVID-19 lockdown, officials said.

Fifty-one buses were arranged by the Gautam Buddh Nagar administration to send the stranded students back to their homes as per directions from the Uttar Pradesh government, the officials said.

These students were stuck in Noida and Greater Noida due to the nationwide lockdown imposed to contain the spread of coronavirus. Earlier this week, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) allowed the states to ferry migrant labourers, students and tourists back home in buses or special trains.

"A total of 1,184 students left for their homes on Sunday on 51 buses. The students followed the guidelines of COVID-19 prevention and observed social distancing as they got on board the buses to leave for their destinations," an official statement said.

District Magistrate Suhas L Y and nodal officer for COVID-19 response Narendra Bhooshan oversaw the process, for which students had enrolled themselves by filling registration forms online, it said.

"Once they reach home, these students will have to stay in home quarantine for 14 days. The students have been instructed on how to carry out the quarantine at home and told that it was necessary so that the novel coronavirus does not spread, according to the statement.

The students were also provided food packets and water bottles and the buses were sanitised before the passengers got on board, the officials said.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had three days ago issued directives that students who want to return to their homes in the state be prepared.

He had sought a list of students from Noida, Ghaziabad and Aligarh besides those from Delhi. He has asked his officials to establish a communication with the Delhi government to ensure the stranded students return to their homes in UP, according to tweets shared by the chief minister's office on Thursday.

As of Sunday evening, the western Uttar Pradesh district has recorded 167 positive cases of coronavirus, even as the number of patients cured and discharged from hospitals rose to 101, according to official figures. PTI KIS



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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A protester at the "Re-Open Illinois" protest outside the Thompson Center in Chicago on May 1, 2020.

Jim Vondruska/NurPhoto via Getty Images

The official Twitter account of the Auschwitz memorial in Poland condemned a sign that bore a Nazi slogan at an anti-lockdown rally in Chicago on Friday.

The sign, belonging to an unidentified woman, read: "Arbeit Macht Frei, JB," referring to the Illinois governor JB Pritzker who is of Jewish descent.

The Auschwitz memorial responded to the picture, saying that it was "painful to see this symbol instrumentalized and used again to spread hate."

Dennis Kosuth, a nurse attending the event as a counter-protester, posted the picture on Twitter, which has since garnered more than 50,000 likes.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The Auschwitz Memorial in Poland has condemned a photo of a sign from an anti-lockdown protest in Chicago that bore the Nazi slogan: "Arbeit Macht Frei, JB."

The sign, which was held by an unidentified woman attending the "Re-Open Illinois" protest on May 1, is referring to Illinois governor JB Pritzker, who is of Jewish descent.

"Arbeit macht frei" is a German phrase which means "Work sets you free", and was placed above the gates of Auschwitz  the largest Nazi extermination camp during the Holocaust, where at least 1.1 million people died.

On Saturday, the organization that runs the Auschwitz Memorial responded to the picture on Twitter, saying it was "painful to see this symbol instrumentalized and used again to spread hate."

The full tweet read: "'Arbeit macht frei' was a false, cynical illusion the SS gave to prisoners of Auschwitz. Those words became one of the icons of human hatred. It's painful to see this symbol instrumentalized and used again to spread hate. It's a symptom of moral and intellectual degeneration."

Story continues

The photo was shared on Twitter by a registered nurse, Dennis Kosuth, who attended the same event on Friday as a counter-protester. It has since garnered more than 50,000 likes.

Kosuth, who said he took the picture on his phone, told Buzzfeed that some protesters at the event were trying to provoke him by claiming he was an actor.

According to Kosuth, when he confronted the woman holding the sign, she defended herself by saying she had Jewish friends.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence with his wife Karen and Poland's President Andrzej Duda with first lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda stand at the "Arbeit Macht Frei" gate at the former Nazi German concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz in Oswiecim, Poland, February 15, 2019.

Kacper Pempel/Reuters

The protest in Chicago is the latest in a series of demonstrations around the country to reopen the economy.

On April 30, hundreds of demonstrators, some armed, descended on Michigan's state capitol to protest Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's extension of the state's stay-at-home order.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Amongst the most awaited releases, last month, was Extraction. Well, the movie is streaming on Netflix, and people gave rave reviews to this one. The film stars a bevy of well-known Bollywood actors including Randeep Hooda, Pankaj Tripathi, and Priyanshu Painyuli. After the movie released, people noticed that Priyanshu has sunk teeth into his character.



Every time he came on the frame, it was difficult to not notice the efforts he has put in to put up a great show as a mafia. Its not something that we have ever seen Priyanshu doing on the screens. It was way different from all his earlier appearances. For me, he was one of the major highlights of the movie.

Well, I got an opportunity to talk to the star in the making so I grabbed it without thinking even once for that matter. We connected over call wherein he shared his reaction to the overwhelming response he has been getting for the movie. We talked about his journey and struggles and yes, we did talk about the pandemic.

Here are the excerpts of my interview with him:

First of all, congratulations that Extraction has been getting a great response from the viewers, and especially your character has been getting positive feedback.

The response has been overwhelming and this one is a special one as this was my first international project. I couldn't have asked for anything better than this. It's by Russo brothers and it's interesting that I got to do a meaty role. It's not a stereotypical sort of villain. A lot of people are sending me messages, I am getting calls from my industry friends and they all told me that they didn't imagine me doing something like this at this point in time in my career. I have just played the good guy roles. This is completely different and people loved the calmness in my character. If you see the chart of actors in the movie, I am the youngest there and people were surprised to see me as a villain.

You just said that you were the youngest actor on the board. Both Chris Hemsworth and Randeep Hooda are two powerful actors we have in the industry. Were you scared that you will be somewhere overshadowed by these talented stars?

No, not at all. For me, I was on top of the world when I got to know that I will be a part of a Russo brother movie. When I got the details of the cast, I was happy and I have been a fan of everyone. This ensemble is huge and I am just a few movies old. I was nervous and excited both. There's no comparison at all as they are seniors. I just wanted to learn from them. I wanted to prove myself and I had a part like that wherein I could experiment. My director Sam gave me a lot of confidence.

The best part of the movie was how the director kept the local language intact and we had Indian actors on board. But, a lot of people pointed out that it was meant for the Indian audience. Do you agree with this?

I don't think this was the scenario that if we have the Indian actors, we are catering to a certain section of the viewers. In fact, most of the movie was set in Dhaka (Bangladesh) and what I really like is that Sam kept it real, as you pointed out that people were talking in their local languages. It's not a glossy action film. This is a film where India is shown as India and Bangladesh is shown as Bangladesh. It was never about selling to the Indian audience. On Netflix, you need to make sure that you keep the content real. We have Money Heist, that's in Spanish but we are seeing it with subtitles.

I am glad that Extraction worked well for you but you worked hard for getting to this space where you are right now. If I take you back in time when you first cams to Mumbai, what do you recall? we all know that Mumbai is one expensive city and it's not that you start earning from day one itself. So how difficult was it for you?

I moved in 2010 and it was a sudden plan as my family was looking at Australia for my higher education. I had done a course in filmmaking based in Bangalore and the institute had a headquarter in Australia. I was thinking of filling in forms and my parents were sure that I won't be considered an IT guy in Bangalore. I was sure that I want to get into acting and I moved to Mumbai because we have a regular theatre. When I moved in here, I made a deal with my parents that you help me pay my rent for a year and post that, I will take care. For every outsider. the struggle is to look for a house in the city. I found one and share with 3 more flatmates in 1 BHK in Versova. That's how I started. My main advantage was that I had done filmmaking so I could grab any job. I did a few projects even for free because I wanted to show my work. I, actually, started as an assistant to Deepti Naval, and my flatmate was working with her, so I pitched in as an assistant. I started understanding how the business works. Deepti mam was working on the post-production of 'Do Paise Ki Dhoop' and that's how I connected with Rajit Kapoor. I used to make posters for plays and all of that, I did for a year. Then, I auditioned for the play Mahua which was under Rajit Kapoor's guidance and that's how my theatre journey started. So, I used to save a lot of money with the part jobs I used to do in the field. There were times that I didn't know how to pay for my next month's rent but you need to keep auditioning.

Priyanshu, as you mentioned that you keep giving auditions. What's your process of handling these auditions? Do you expect that you will land up a role after giving an audition or do you just give and don't expect it to work?

Let me tell you that I love giving auditions as they are a great playground. Whenever someone calls me for an audition, I used to run and give them. I feel in auditions, you get to play some interesting characters. My acting craft won't be getting nourished by sitting at home. Today, the audition process has changed a lot and in fact, has become a lot better than it was in 2010. Now, the casting directors follow a systematic approach.

Yes, I completely agree. Now, casting procedure has become way less complicated and if not Bollywood, you can try for OTT platforms. What's your take on the entire boom of OTT platforms in the country? It's a complete paradigm shift for that matter.

If you see in the last two years, the boom of the web has been crazy and the kind of the content that is coming, it's refreshing. I think theatrical films are getting affected and I think theatrical films will have to take up that challenge. People want to go to theatres and watch movies in the halls. Now, people also have to consume content on their laptops and phones. OTT platforms have become more global but it's equally challenging if the content is not good, you will switch to some other series or a movie. You have to keep them engaged throughout as people have the power in their hands and that's not really the case in the theatres.

Well, you kept mentioning about theatres. Owing to the pandemic, theatres are shut. Do you miss that experience of watching movies on the big screens? And do you think OTT will completely take over as people would be a bit reluctant in going to the theaters even after we are declared COVID -19 free?

I hope not because I am a big fan of watching movies in theatres. The pandemic is there and I am sure, it'll pass. Yes, there will be a major loss but people would come back to theatres as the experience is completely different, and maybe by then, people would be tired of sitting at home and watching movies on their laptops. There's a difference between watching an AR Rahman concert live and watching it at your home. It's an experience, right. Yes, we will have to take a lot of measures for that matter. At least, mad lovers like me would want to see movies in theatres.

As we are talking about the pandemic, we all are staying under the lockdown. How are you spending your days? Do you stay alone or sharing your flat with someone?

I stay alone but I do have friends in the society whom I am staying with. Sometimes, we come together and share food. We keep exchanging meals so that we don't have to cook every day. Otherwise, I keep learning something or the other. Cooking is of course there and everyone is becoming a Masterchef in the quarantine. I also have a few instruments which were earlier kept aside and I am going online and learning how to play them. I also love writing so I am also focusing on that. It's a good time to invest in your hobbies which you weren't able to pursue in your busy days.

I also agree with the fact that everyone is learning to cook and has become a a Masterchef in his/her own way. I, somewhere, feel as a woman that because of the pandemic, men have also realized that domestic chores have no gender. What do you have to say about this?

It required a pandemic for all it to happen this way. This would have been the case otherwise too. I am a freelancer and I used to do a bit of domestic chores earlier as well. Maybe now, we are doing more and realizing how much energy is invested in taking care of the house. It's good that men are realizing it. There should be a balance. Huge respect to the mothers who have been handling the house. I think when my maid is going to come back, I will do some sort of mala ceremony and ask her to not go for this long (laughs).

On this note, we both hung up the phone wishing for the safety of one another in these times.
Blacks and Hispanics lost their homes at a far higher rate than whites in the 2007 housing crash, forcing many into rental units. Now, in the latest crisis, it's renters who are the hardest hit  and that's threatening to widen the country's already staggering racial wealth gap.

While congressional relief has allowed homeowners to delay payments on federally guaranteed mortgages  more than 60 percent of the market  renters are more vulnerable. The CARES Act banned evictions in federally backed apartment buildings, but that applies to only one in four rental units, and eviction protection doesn't help apartment dwellers pay the rent.

As a result, one of the next big battles on Capitol Hill will be over a push by leading Democrats, such as House Financial Services Chairwoman Maxine Waters and Sen. Sherrod Brown, to include billions of dollars in direct rental assistance in the next economic relief package.

Waters, of California, is lobbying hard to get the rescue package to include her legislation banning evictions and directing $100 billion in rental assistance to tenants in unsubsidized housing.

Ive warned everyone we must include my $100 [billion] plan to protect renters from evictions, Waters tweeted on April 24. Im prepared to fight till hell freezes over to get it done!

Immediate relief could head off a long-term danger for many renters: Struggling tenants  including a disproportionate number of minorities whose jobs have been wiped out by the crisis  will be unable to stay current on their rent, meaning they could be slammed with massive payments when the emergency ends. They will then face not only eviction but also a major hit to their credit scores, which would hurt their ability to build wealth for years to come.

House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters, takes her mask off to speak during a signing ceremony for the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act, H.R. 266, after it passed the House on Capitol Hill, Thursday, April 23, 2020, in Washington. The almost $500 billion package will head to President Donald Trump for his signature. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) is seeking an immediate moratorium on evictions for all types of rentals, not just those that are federally subsidized.

We haven't recovered from the last recession in terms of the loss of one's home, Lee said in an interview. In communities of color, we have a pandemic upon a pandemic.

Story continues

The growing frustration among tenants resulted in a series of rent strikes across the nation on Friday, with protesters from California to New York calling on state officials to freeze rents during the pandemic.

But getting federal help to apartment dwellers won't be easy. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi failed in her attempts to include rental assistance and forgiveness in the last relief package, with Republicans arguing that direct cash payments the government is already offering to millions of Americans could go toward rent.

And merely canceling rent payments  as progressives like freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have advocated  would cripple many landlords who pay property taxes to fund things like schools. Even the moratorium on evictions is raising concerns that landlords will be unable to make basic payments, and housing advocates are worried that there will be a wave of evictions once the crisis passes.

Some Senate Republicans like Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, meanwhile, are starting to raise objections to the growing price tag of government relief, setting the stage for more fights over the costs of every assistance provision going forward.

Yet for black and Latino populations the situation is dire, since they are suffering higher rates of hospitalization and death because of the virus. It's a disparity that National Fair Housing Alliance President and CEO Lisa Rice says points to multilayered systemic inequality that has long linked race with location in America, with the legacy of decades of redlining, which is the practice of denying home loans to those in minority neighborhoods.

What's more, its easier to tailor government assistance for people who own their homes because we already have this huge housing financial apparatus set up around homeowners, said Zillow senior principal economist Skylar Olsen.

That gives a large advantage to whites: While about 74 percent of white households live in homes they own, only about 44 percent of black households and 49 percent of Hispanic households do, according to Census data.

White residents are getting a better deal because theyre disproportionately homeowners, Rice said.

And since owning a home is the primary way most Americans build wealth, the disparity in homeownership exacerbates the gap between the races. The median net worth of a white family was nearly 10 times the net worth of a black family and a little over eight times the wealth of a Latino family in 2016, according to Federal Reserve data.

It does become self-reinforcing, Olsen said. If I have a barrier to homeownership, I dont have that source to pass on that wealth, I dont have that equity to draw on during bad times,  it really was kind of primed for a lot of reasons to get worse.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that own or guarantee half of the nations $11 trillion mortgage market, were created to encourage homeownership. Government support for renters  such as low-income housing vouchers administered by HUD  is paltry by comparison.

Its also easier to tack missed payments onto the end of a mortgage, Olsen said, to avoid hitting people with massive bills when the emergency has passed.

The real pain will come back when you have to start paying this back, she said, since homeowners can modify their loans. For the homeowner theres more options  they can design it so that you can pay it back at the end of the term,  but with rent, how would that work?

National Low Income Housing Coalition President and CEO Diane Yentel also warned that policymakers may be creating a financial cliff for renters to fall off when eviction moratoriums are lifted and back-rent is owed.

The black homeownership rate peaked at 46.5 percent in 2007, before a wave of foreclosures from the subprime meltdown sent the rate plummeting to pre-1970 lows. Hispanic homeownership also has failed to return to pre-crisis levels over the last 12 years.

Latinos have made gains since the 2008 recession but those who are U.S.-born  and make up 52 percent of the Hispanic workforce  have not fully recovered, according to a Pew analysis .

Latinos were the hardest hit of any racial ethnic group in terms of wealth loss during the Great Recession, said Sonja Diaz, director of UCLAs Latino Policy and Politics Initiative. Over the course of the last five years, Latinos have had targeted increases in their share of home ownership in the United States and in fact have been instrumental in increasing the national share of home ownership, [but] any recession associated with the coronavirus threatens that.

Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) said she is pushing for all of the above regarding rental assistance and eviction halts for the next relief package. And Rep. Brenda Lawrence (D-Mich.), who represents parts of Detroit, is pushing to include a moratorium on utility shutoffs.

Part of the problem with the existing eviction moratorium, according to housing advocates, is that its nearly impossible for most renters to figure out if the protection applies to them because they don't know whether their landlord has a federally backed mortgage. Waters bill includes $10 million for HUD to carry out a national media campaign to educate the public of increased housing rights during the pandemic.

Black and Latino households pay a higher share of their income on rent than white households in most major metropolitan areas, according to Zillow, which found that recent mass layoffs are already hurting minorities housing security, in an analysis released this week .

While any economic shock would slam those communities, this crisis has been particularly brutal. Racial minorities have been walloped by job losses and furloughs, economic data show, largely because they make up a significant portion of workers in the industries, like retail and food service, hit early and hard by shutdowns.

In the most recent monthly jobs report from the Department of Labor, the unemployment rate jumped by 0.9 percentage point from February to March, to 4.4 percent  a period that barely begins to take in the worst of the pandemic shock. While white and black workers both saw the same 0.9 percentage point increase, Hispanic or Latino workers saw a rise of 1.6 percentage point.

That exacerbated a gap in the overall unemployment rate by race. The unemployment rate for white workers stood at 4.0 percent in March, compared with 6.7 percent for black workers and 6.0 percent for Latino workers.

Weve had these racial unemployment gaps, and theyve persisted through good economies and poor economies, said Olugbenga Ajilore, a senior economist at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. Once this epidemic hit, it just basically showed these cracks in the structure.

Its likely those gaps will be larger in the April jobs report, due May 8. Hispanic workers account for 18 percent of employment in the economy, but 21 percent in higher-risk industries, according to a recent Pew Research Center analysis of government data. Black workers account for 12 percent of employment overall but 14 percent in higher-risk industries.

At the same time, other data show minorities are less likely than white workers to be able to work remotely. A Labor Department analysis from late last year showed 16 percent of Hispanic workers said they were able to work from home  barely half of the 31.4 percent of non-Hispanic workers who reported the same.

The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed in our country the disparate way in which people live, CBC member Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) said. It's going to take a lot of work and it's going to take a lot of reflection so that we don't find ourselves basically in a vicious cycle.
New Delhi, May 3 : The banned terror outfit Hizbul Mujahideen and Lashkar-e-Taiba's (LeT) newly formed The Resistance Front (TRF), were quibbling over the credit for perpetrating the terror attack in Kashmir's Handwara town.

While one of the Hizbul terrorists made an audio call to his aide during the encounter with the Indian security forces in Handwara, claiming responsibility for the terror attack, TRF has been posting pictures of the two terrorists taking credit for the same.

Two terrorists were killed after they had been challenged by Indian security forces in an eight hour-long gun battle in Handwara town of Kupwara district on Saturday.

One Colonel, one Major, two soldiers of 21 Rashtriya Rifles (RR) unit of India Army and one sub-inspector of Jammu and Kashmir Police (JKP) also lost their lives in the anti-terror operation.

In the audio call, a clip of which has been accessed by IANS, one of the two terrorists informed a Hizbul member about the encounter in which he and his partner were trapped with injuries in Handwara.

Amidst the thrumming of gunshots, the terrorist identified as Tariq, is heard telling the Hizbul member, whose identity or location was not apparent from the audio clip, that he suspects his location may have been revealed to Indian security forces by a member of the TRF, a smokescreen for the LeT headed by Mumbai attack mastermind, Hafiz Saeed.

The Hizbul member is heard comforting Tariq in his last moments and hailing the "martyrdom" of the two terrorists for the religious cause.

Hizbul Mujahideen is based in Pakistan and headed by Syed Salahuddin.

Incidentally, way before the encounter ended, TRF, had claimed responsibility for the terror attack on social media and Telegram channels.

Declaring the two terrorists as their "martyrs", TRF circulated pictures of two terrorists with their utensils, cooking and eating, somewhere in open.

Another picture circulated on social media by TRF channels was of a hand with a weapon. From pictures, it appeared, the location and the identity of the two terrorists wasn't clear.

TRF's another pseudonym The Joint Kashmir Front (TJKF) also posted similar content with details about the encounter on its Facebook page.

A turf war between the globally banned terror groups and the newly formed fronts, both sponsored by ISI, has emerged in the last few months as the latter are attempting to replace the former in view of the mounting pressure from international community on Pakistan to curb cross-border terrorism in India.

Recently, a Hizbul commander in Kashmir defected to TRF after his disagreement with chief Riyaz Naikoo.

Naikoo is believed to be upset with his boss in Pakistan, Syed Salahuddin for being "soft" since India abrogated the special status of Jammu and Kashmir last August and for not giving Hizbul in Kashmir the same importance as before.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has directed banks not to lay off staff amidst the coronavirus pandemic.

Although speculations about the impending sack of workers in the banking sector have been on since the outbreak of the coronavirus, Access Bank Plc was the first to announce its plan to downsize, or in the alternative slash its workers salaries.

The group managing director of the bank, Herbert Wigwe, announced during a video conference with the banks staff that the management of the bank plans to offload about 75 per cent of its workforce.

Criticism has tailed the banks decision with the Nigeria Labour Congress threatening to mobilise its members to fight such plans.

But, apparently to forestall a major crisis in the country, even as the countrys economy is struggling to find its footing as the economic impact of the coronavirus bites harder, the CBN, through its Bankers Committee, on Sunday, ordered the immediate suspension of such plans.

The CBN spokesperson, Isaac Okoroafor, who signed the statement, said the order was given at the end of a special meeting of the Bankers Committee held on May 2 to further review the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Nigerian banking industry.

The statement titled: CBN, Bankers Committee Suspend Lay-offs in Banks, reads:

A special meeting of the Bankers Committee was convened on May 2, 2020, to further review the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Nigerian banking industry. The Committee particularly deliberated on the issue of the operating costs of banks in view of the disruptions emanating from the global economic difficulties and decided as follows:

1. In order to help minimize and mitigate the negative impact of the COVID- 19 pandemic on families and livelihoods, no bank in Nigeria shall retrench or lay-off any staff of any cadre (including full-time and part-time).

2. To give effect to the above measure, the express approval of the Central Bank of Nigeria shall be required in the event that it becomes absolutely necessary to lay-off any such staff.

The Central Bank of Nigeria solicits the support of all in our collective effort to weather through the economic challenges occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Roche aims to more than double production of its new coronavirus antibody test to "significantly more than" 100 million tests a month by the end of the year, the company's diagnostics unit head said on Sunday.

The Swiss company won U.S. emergency use approval for the test that relies on taking intravenous blood draws. Roche said its test has a specificity rate of more than 99.8% and sensitivity rate of 100%, figures indicating very few false-positive tests and no false negatives.

"If you take blood from a finger prick, you will never be able to achieve the same level of specificity that you will achieve...when you take blood from the vein," Roche diagnostics head Thomas Schinecker told Reuters on Sunday. "You have to have very, very high specificity. Even 0.1 or 0.2 percent makes a difference."




A remittance service has pledged to support the relatives of a Zimbabwean NHS mental health worker who died from Covid-19 - leaving her 12-year-old daughter orphaned in the UK with no family.





Single mother Rutendo Mukotsanjera, 45, lived in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire and passed away from coronavirus on April 10 after a two week battle with the infection.





With no family in Britain, her 12-year-old daughter Cheidza, known as Chichi, is now being cared for by members of the Renew Church in Uttoxeter, where her mother worshipped.





Rutendo used to work weekends and evenings to regularly send money back home to Zimbabwe through Mukuru, an African remittance company, to help her loved ones including her 22-year-old son Shungu Shaun and her mother.





According to her sister Rumbidzai, Rutendo was helping her son by renting him a place in the country's capital Harare and paying his school fees so he could complete his GCSEs.





She said Rutendo was still sending money home right up until she passed away, and was very worried about the future well being of her family.





Mukuru has now pledged to continue supporting her son and mother by matching her monthly sends from the past year for the next 12 months - roughly 2,300.





Rumbidzai told FEMAIL: 'My sister was special and so dear to me. I will forever miss her greatly. She still stays close to my heart. Even though I am heartbroken, I thank God for the time we shared.





'Thank you Mukuru, from the bottom of my heart, for thinking of us in this time of mourning.'





Mukuru CEO Andy Jury said a remittance is always more than just about money; it is a representation of the love, care and hard work of senders, with the remittances often being a lifeline, an opportunity or even a celebration to the recipient.

Pastor with Chichi

He added: 'Miss Mukotsanjera was the very embodiment of a Mukuru customer - hardworking, selfless, and the backbone of the family she supported. We were so saddened to hear of Miss Mukotsanjera's passing.





'We would like to continue that support to her son in Zimbabwe over the next 12 months, to ensure he is able to continue along the path his mother paved for him.'





The Renew Church has also set up a JustGiving page to raise money for Rutendo's funeral as well as legal and support costs for Chichi, which has so far attracted donations of almost 37,000.

Church members have been in contact with Rutendo's relatives in Zimbabwe to decide what to do in the best interests of Chichi, though no firm plans can be made until lockdown in the UK and Zimbabwe is lifted.





In a recent Facebook livestream with Pastor Matthew Murray, Chichi paid tribute to her mother, and assured people she is 'doing OK'.





'Obviously it's not going to get easier but at least now I know that my mum's not in pain and I can have some sort of humanity knowing that she's OK,' she said.





'She was always that person I could talk to and she was always that person who would play and be there for me and my brother and everyone. She had such a kind heart.'





Rutendo's funeral was held on a Monday, and her family said it broke their heart that they couldn't attend.





Pastor Matthew, who delivered a speech on Chichi's behalf to gathered churchgoers outside before initiating a clap in Rutendo's memory, said the young girl has been 'brave and amazing' throughout her ordeal.





Rumbidzai said they are planning for her ashes to be sent back to Zimbabwe, where they can have their own ceremony and say goodbye.





They are hopeful that Chichi will be able to fly out for this service so they can be all together as a family.





'We are taking everything one step at a time,' she added. 'It's tough but we have to soldier on.'





According to The Mirror, Ms Mukotsanjera was a public health official and had previously worked for the Infrastructure Bank in Zimbabwe.




People with vitamin D deficiency could be more likely to die from coronavirus, a study has suggested, Mirror.co.uk reports.

As the UK continues following strict lockdown measures  which include restrictions on time outdoors  research has shown that a vitamin usually procured from natural sunlight could help boost Covid-19 survival rates.

In the study, scientists from Queen Elizabeth Hospital Foundation Trust and the University of East Anglia write: We believe, that we can advise Vitamin D supplementation to protect against SARS-CoV2 infection.

The paper, published on Research Square, states that vitamin D levels are found to be severely low in the ageing population, especially in Spain, Italy and Switzerland.

This is also the group most vulnerable for Covid-19.

It reads: "Severe deficiency is defined as a serum 25(OH)D lower than 30nmol/L. In Switzerland, mean vitamin D levels are 23(nmol/L) in nursing homes and in Italy 76% of women over 70 years of age have been found to have circulating levels below 30nmol/L.

"These are countries with high number of cases of COVID19 and the aging people is the group with the highest risk for morbidity and mortality with SARS-Cov2.

"The research has not yet been peer-reviewed by other scientists and only offers up tentative evidence at this point."

The authors of the paper also acknowledge: The number of cases/country is affected by the number of tests performed.

Currently the NHS website recommends people consider taking 10 micrograms of vitamin D per day.

It adds: This is because you may not be getting enough vitamin D from sunlight if youre indoors most of the day.
Grieving families of patients who have died after contracting coronavirus are exploring the possibility of taking the NHS to court, as unions warn litigation threats are piling added pressure on already stressed medics.

At least 17 families whose loved ones have died during the Covid-19 pandemic are considering legal action against the NHS, according to support charity Action Against Medical Accidents (AvMA).

It comes as the Sun on Sunday today reported that NHS bosses are reportedly so concerned about future claims that they have issued guidance to staff to ensure they are protected.

Meanwhile, bosses from the Medical Defence Union (MDU) warned that Covid-19 and threat of legal action was adding stress to the 'highly pressurised and stessful working conditions'

The union is now calling on healthcare professionals to be given immunity from Covid-19 related claims.

At least 17 families whose loved ones have died during the Covid-19 pandemic are considering legal action, according to support charity Action Against Medical Accidents (AvMA). Pictured: An ambulance outside a hospital (library image)

It is also supporting a call by the think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) for a support package to protect medical professionals' health and well-being during and after the pandemic.

Dr Udvitha Nandasoma, MDU acting head of advisory services, said: 'The Covid-19 pandemic has magnified the highly pressurised and stressful working conditions for healthcare professionals to an unprecedented level.

'Many clinicians will be dealing with increased workloads or operating in unfamiliar fields of practice.

'Added to that are the extra pressures of treating seriously ill patients and the thought of the personal risks to them and their families.

'This creates an environment of extreme stress and anxiety for frontline NHS staff which is recognised in the Care fit for carers report.

'In addition to the guarantees being suggested, healthcare professionals must also be offered protection from the stress of facing the claims for compensation which may result from the extraordinary efforts they are taking.

'Such claims may come in many years after the public memory of the sacrifices being made are forgotten and will be a drain on staff time, morale and stretched NHS resources.'

Charity AvMA, which has been offering support and advice to aggrieved relatives of healthcare patients for over 30 years, says it has been contacted by 17 families in relation to coronavirus.

Chief executive of the Croydon-based charity, Peter Walsh, said not all of the potential cases related directly to Covid-19 deaths.

He said: 'The majority are indirectly linked and might involve something going wrong with treatment where Covid-19 has been involved or a trust has made changes because of the virus.

'There are a minority of cases directly involving Covid-19.'

Mr Walsh said the charity provided support and advice and did not take on any legal action itself.

But he said the charity could point aggrieved families in direction of specialists lawyers if necessary.

He added that the charity was still in the early stages of reviewing the 17 cases and did not know if they would be taken to court.

The Sun reports that the NHS Litigation Authority, the body which handles all compensation case, is currently facing claims of 83.4billion, with an average payout per claim standing at 50,000.

The concerns come as Matt Hancock last week announced the government would pay out 60,000 to NHS staff who died of the virus, while insisting families could still take legal action.

Across the UK, 28,446 people have died from Covid-19.

More than 90 NHS staff are reported to have died so far from the virus.

The concerns come as Matt Hancock (pictured) last week announced the government would pay out 60,000 to NHS staff who died of the virus, while insisting families could still take legal action

More than 90 NHS staff are reported to have died so far from the virus. Pictured are those NHS workers who have died since the outbreak

One of those was Ken Lambatan, 34, a nurse working in a Clinical Research Facility at St George's Hospital in London.

His death was announced a short time before the nation held a minute's silence for health workers such as Mr Lambatan, who lose their lives to the killer disease.

Jacqueline Totterdell, Chief Executive of St George's Hospital and Professor Jenny Higham, Principal of St George's, University of London led tributes to their colleague, describing him as a 'true gem'.

Hospital cleaner Eileen Landers died at the place where she had worked for the past 16 years  Queen's Hospital in Burton-upon-Trent, on Sunday, the University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust (UHDB) said.

She was the third person from the trust to die after contracting the disease.

It follows the deaths of 55-year-old consultant Amged El-Hawrani, on March 28, and A&E consultant Manjeet Singh Riyat, 52, at the Royal Derby Hospital, where he worked, on April 20.

Mr El-Hawrani was the first frontline NHS worker to die after getting the virus, NHS England said.

Earlier this month, two older health workers still caring for patients into their 70s and 80s both died on the same day of coronavirus.

Ken Lambatan (left), 34, a nurse working in a Clinical Research Facility at St George's Hospital in London who died after contracting Covid-19. Pictured right: Thomas Harvey, 57, who worked for the NHS for more than 20 years at Goodmayes Hospital in east London, died in March after contracting the virus

Great-grandmother Margaret Tapley was working as an auxiliary nurse at the age of 84 and hailed as a legend on the ward.

Sophie Fagan, 78, had served the NHS for more than five decades, starting as a nurse before becoming a hospital care co-ordinator.

Meanwhile, Thomas Harvey, 57, who worked for the NHS for more than 20 years at Goodmayes Hospital in east London, died in March after contracting the virus.

The father-of-seven is said to died 'gasping for air' at the family home in east London.

His son later criticised the government over a lack of person protective equipment (PPE) for his father.

MailOnline contacted NHS England for a comment, but was deferred to the Department for Health and Social Care, who are yet to comment.
Birds Of Tokyo frontman Ian Kenny has revealed the painful story behind his hit new song Good Lord.

Speaking to Adelaide Now on Sunday, the Australian rocker admitted he wrote the gut-wrenching ballad as a way of dealing with the mental health fallout of his acrimonious marriage breakdown in 2017.

'I wasn't really in the best of shape and I didn't know how much I had in me (musically) or how much I wanted to talk about it all,' he told the publication.

'I wasn't in the best shape': Birds Of Tokyo's Ian Kenny (pictured) has revealed his painful divorce and mental health spiral led him to write the 2019 hit song Good Lord

Struggling to cope with the emotional pain, Ian initially turned to drinking but later decided to channel his feelings into writing music for Birds Of Tokyo's new album Human Design.

'And then it started feeling like it was helping  it didn't in the beginning', he said of the cathartic song-writing process.

Ian told the publication that showing emotional vulnerability also helped him form deeper bonds with his bandmates.

'We talk a lot now, about what's health communication': Ian told the publication that showing emotional vulnerability also helped him form deeper bonds with his bandmates. Pictured: Birds Of Tokyo, November 2019

'[My bandmates and I] talk a lot now, about what's healthy communication, what's a healthier picture of the modern man and forgetting all those layers that build up,' he said.

In a previous interview with The Sydney Morning Herald, Birds Of Tokyo's bassist Ian Berney admitted he was concerned for his bandmate's mental health following his messy divorce.

'It wasnt easy watching Kenny get through that stuff. In fact it was heartbreaking because hes such a good mate,' he said.

Happy: These days, frontman Ian (pictured) is in a much better place and has even found new love

'You can get stuck in a loop that you cant get out of sometimes. So I was worried,' he added.

These days, frontman Ian is in a much better place and has even found new love.

Since its release in February 2019, Good Lord has gone double-platinum and received critical acclaim.

At the ARIA Music Awards of 2019, the song was nominated for Song of the Year.

It was also nominated for Most Performed Australian Work of the Year and Most Performed Alternative Work of the Year at the APRA Music Awards in 2020.

If you or someone you know needs support please call Lifeline on 13 11 14
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 16:36:35|Editor: huaxia

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A woman gets her body temperature checked before entering a market during a government-imposed nationwide lockdown as a preventive measure against COVID-19 in Agartala, the capital city of India's northeastern state of Tripura, April 28, 2020. (Str/Xinhua)

- India's total cases near 40,000

- Buffett company's airline stocks all sold

- Russia registers new single-day record of 10,633 new COVID-19 cases

- Brazil registers 96,559 COVID-19 cases with 6,750 deaths

- China's Hubei reports no increase in COVID-19 cases for 29 consecutive days

BEIJING, May 3 (Xinhua) -- The following are the updates on the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

NEW DELHI -- India's federal health ministry on Sunday morning said 78 new deaths due to COVID-19, besides fresh 2,204 positive cases were reported since Saturday evening in the country, taking its total number of deaths to 1,301 and cases to 39,980.

On Saturday evening, the number of COVID-19 cases in the country was 37,776 and the death toll was 1,223.

According to ministry officials, so far 10,633 people have been discharged from hospitals after showing improvement.

Sunday marks the 40th straight day of ongoing lockdown across the country announced by the government to contain the spread of the pandemic. The lockdown which was announced on March 25 was Friday evening again extended for the third time for two more weeks until May 17.

Utility service vehicles disinfect a road in Moscow, Russia, on April 24, 2020. (Xinhua/Evgeny Sinitsyn)

MOSCOW -- Russia on Sunday reported a new single-day record with 10,633 new COVID-19 cases confirmed over the last 24 hours, raising its total number of infections to 134,687, its coronavirus response center said in a statement.

U.S. billionaire investor Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, visits an exhibition on his invested companies before the Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholders meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, the United States, on May 5, 2018. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

WASHINGTON -- Billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who serves as Berkshire Hathaway chairman, said Saturday that his conglomerate has sold all its airline stocks, sending an alarming signal to U.S. airline industry devastated by the COVID-19 outbreak.

"The world has changed for the airlines," said Buffett in Omaha, Nebraska, at Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholder meeting, which was held virtually this year.

The Berkshire Hathaway previously held shares of United Airlines, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines and Delta Airlines, according to a report from CNBC.

Worldwide, there were 111,000 commercial flights per day in the week ending Jan. 7, but the figure plunged to 29,000 in the week ending April 30, according to the industry group.

People visit Wuhan Zoo in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, April 22, 2020. (Xinhua/Cheng Min)

WUHAN -- No new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) were reported for the 29th consecutive day in central China's Hubei Province Saturday, the provincial health commission said Sunday.

The province reported 651 asymptomatic cases under medical observation, after nine such cases were added and five released from quarantine Saturday.

A total of 282,632 close contacts of COVID-19 patients in the province had been tracked by Saturday, 1,383 of whom were still under medical observation.

Hubei was cleared of confirmed COVID-19 cases on April 26. It has so far reported 68,128 confirmed COVID-19 cases in total, including 50,333 in Wuhan, the provincial capital.

Staff members check the information of passengers entering China at the Pudong International Airport in Shanghai, east China, March 18, 2020. (Xinhua/Ding Ting)

BEIJING -- The Chinese mainland reported one new imported case of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) Saturday, bringing the total number of imported cases to 1,672, the National Health Commission said Sunday.

Of the total imported cases, 1,221 had been discharged from hospitals after recovery, and 451 were being treated in hospitals with 6 in severe conditions, the commission said.

A woman wears a face mask amid covid-19 outbreak in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on April 4, 2020. (Photo by Rahel Patrasso/Xinhua)

SAO PAULO -- A total of 96,559 COVID-19 cases have been reported with 6,750 deaths as of Saturday, the health ministry reported.

In the past 24 hours, Brazil registered 4,970 more cases and 421 deaths, becoming the hardest-hit Latin American country with the highest numbers of cases and deaths. 
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 16:36:45|Editor: huaxia

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XI'AN, May 3 (Xinhua) -- Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, will set up 25,000 5G base stations by 2022 to comprehensively promote the integrated and innovative application of 5G in the city.

Xi'an will build 9,000 new 5G base stations, totaling 13,000, this year, achieving high-quality coverage of the 5G network in its core urban areas and key areas including industrial parks, transportation lines and tourist attractions, said a guideline unveiled by the city's government.

The city is scheduled to build 7,000 and 5,000 new 5G base stations in 2021 and 2022, respectively, bringing the total number in the city to 25,000 and covering the major urban areas and key areas in outlying districts. By the end of 2022, the scale of its 5G industry will exceed 30 billion yuan (about 4.23 billion U.S. dollars), said the guideline.

Xi'an also plans to create 20 to 30 innovative applications of 5G in fields such as advanced manufacturing, smart cities and artificial intelligence by the end of 2022. Enditem
As the numbers of COVID-19 cases continue to rise in India, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has allowed Punjab to conduct clinical trials of convalascent plasma therapy in the treatment of coronavirus patients.

Earlier in April, Punjab CM Captain Amarinder had allowed use of this therapy when Assistant Commissioner of Police Anil Kohli was tested positive for the coronavirus and admitted to SPS Hospital in Ludhiana. However, the ACP passed away before his treatment could be started. Former Director PGIMER, Chandigarh, Dr KK Talwar had organised the requisite professional guidance but ACP Kohli's condition deteriorated before the therapy could be tried out. However, Punjab pursued the matter and a formal proposal was sent to ICMR for approval.

Additional Chief Secretary (ACS) Governance Reforms and Chairman, COVID Health Sector Response and Procurement Committee, Vini Mahajan said that the ICMR had given its nod to conduct the trial, which is expected to commence shortly.

Also Read: Coronavirus India Live Updates: Delhi ready to reopen, says Arvind Kejriwal; COVID-19 cases breach 40,000-mark

"The Government Medical College Amritsar and Patiala, Guru Gobind Singh Medical College and Hospital in Faridkot, Sri Guru Ram Das Institute of Medical Sciences and Research at Amritsar, The Christian Medical College and Hospital at Ludhiana, the Dayanand Medical College and Hospital at Ludhiana and Satguru Partap Singh Hospital, also in Ludhiana, have partnered to undertake the clinical trial of convalascent plasma therapy," Mahajan said.

The inter-institution coordination would be done by the Principal Investigators, who would also ensure that the entire trial is conducted in strict accordance with the ICMR protocol at each institution, she added.

Also Read: Lockdown 3.0: What to keep in mind when you visit liquor shop

Mahajan further said that under the guidance of Dr KK Talwar, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed by the Principal Investigators, including Dr Aikaj Jindal, the Head of Department, Transfusion Medicine, Satguru Partap Singh Hospital, Ludhiana; and Dr M Joseph John, Head of Department, Clinical Hematology, Christian Medical College and Hospital, Ludhiana.

She further said that Punjab was united in this latest effort to fight against COVID-19.

With 331 fresh coronavirus cases, total reported cases in Punjab jumped over 1,100 as on May 3, according to latest data released by the state health department. Out of the total cases, 117 have been cured while 21 others succumbed to the infection and the number of active cases stands at 964.

By Chitranjan Kumar with agencies inputs
The West Bengal government has



assured all possible help to the two individuals from Mizoram who recently tested positive for COVID-19 in Kolkata, state health minister R Lalthangliana said.

He also said that the Minister of State for Health, Chandrima Bhattacharya, has promised to provide assistance to people from Mizoram stranded in the eastern state.

The state health minister thanked Bhattacharya and the West Bengal government for extending medical aid to the COVID-19 patients, both suffering from cancer, and arranging screening and check-up of others stuck in the Mizoram House.

Two persons at Kolkata's Mizoram House, aged 72 and 63, were found to have contracted the disease on Friday.

They are currently undergoing treatment at AMRI Hospital in the metropolis.

The health minister said that he had written to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee seeking her help.

With the initiative of Banerjee, the Bengal health department and the deputy resident commissioner of the Mizoram House, Jacob Lalawmpuia, efforts were being made to trace the contacts of the COVID-19 patients, he said.

At least 18 other inmates and a staff member of the Mizoram House in Kolkata have been placed under quarantine.

The health minister asked Mizo people in Kolkata not to panic, as the "state government is monitoring the infected patients and other inmates, who have been put in isolation".

Meanwhile, an official of the Mizoram health department said that the condition of the state's lone Covid- 19 patient is improving.

The patient's CT scan report on Saturday showed signs of recovery, he said.

Four samples of the patient have been collected and sent to Silchar Medical College and Hospital in Assam for examination on Friday, and the results were awaited, according to the official.

Samples of three other suspected patients sent for examination to Silchar have tested negative for COVID-19, he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Week 18 in review:Several new Xiaomi and Redmi smartphones, MIUI 12 is official

The last few days of April brought several new phones, most of them coming from one company - Xiaomi. It introduced two new additions to its Mi brand and another one from the Redmi family, while another was finally launched on the global scene.

The Xiaomi Mi 10 Youth was revealed in China with a periscope camera and 5x optical zoom, making it the first device by the company with the feature. Later through a Qualcomm press message, we learned its name will actually be Xiaomi Mi 10 Lite Zoom on the global scene.

Alongside it, the company unveiled MIUI 12, which will power most of the company's phones in the second half of the year.

The Xiaomi Mi Note 10 Lite is another smartphone that saw the light of day - it has four cameras, one of them being 64 MP, neat OLED display and a low price tag of 349 or 399 - depending on the storage that you want to accompany the 6 GB RAM.

The iPhone 12 rumors are starting to intensify - this week we heard the lineup will include four phones and all of them will have 5G support. More excitingly, a rumor suggested that this won't lead to higher prices as was the case with some Android competitors.

LG revealed its Velvet phone will have a 48 MP main camera, a Snapdragon 765G chipset, and an OLED screen. The phone will be all about functionality and looks, and we hope this will try to pull the Korean company out of the pit its mobile division has fallen in.



MIUI 12 officially announced Beta testing is already available for Chinese users, while the stable build is expected in June.





The OnePlus Z coming in July The OnePlus 8 duo was unveiled in mid-April, but the Z - the "lite" model - was delayed.





Sony Mobile President talks the Xperia II phones, 5G and the future Meanwhile, Sony Mobile online stores in Europe have closed, instead the official site redirects you to local retailers.





Xiaomi Mi Note 10 Lite launching tomorrow, April 30 It will have a similar front panel, but only four shooters on the back.





Sony shows the Xperia 1 II camera and its Alpha-inspired features in detail Eye AF for humans and animals, 20fps continuous shooting with AE/AF enabled and a ZEISS lens with T* coating are just the tip of the iceberg.





Xiaomi releases MIUI 12 beta eligible device list The stable build will begin rolling out around the end of June for Chinese users.





Unreleased Realme smartphone leaks in live images This might be an upcoming phone, but also possibly a dead prototype.


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New Delhi, May 3 : The Delhi government on Sunday issued the standard operating procedure (SOP) for the movements of the migrants in and out of the city amid the lockdown.

In an order, Delhi Chief Secretary Vijay Dev said in each district, the Additional District Magistrates concerned and their police counterparts, the Additional Deputy Commissioners of Police are the designated district nodal officers.

"They shall register stranded persons and prepare the database, after collecting the details in the web based online application," Dev, in his capacity as the Chairperson Delhi State Executive Committee, said in the order.

All the District Magistrates of Delhi will supervise preparation of a comprehensive data base of migrant workers, pilgrims, tourists, students and other persons belonging to other states/UTS, who are stranded in Delhi and are desirous of going back to their respective native place.

Delhi has already appointed the nodal officers for each state/UT for interacting and coordinating with the Resident Commissioners of all States/UTs.

"The nodal officers will continue to function as the nodal officers for the respective State/UT which have been assigned to them," Dev said in the order.

The SOP says the Health Department will make arrangements for proper screening of the stranded persons and only those found asymptomatic should be allowed to proceed from Delhi and also will be allowed to enter Delhi.

"Buses will be used for transport of groups of persons," the SOP reads.

The Transport Department was asked to coordinate for the same with the state nodal officers.

Also, for those travelling by the trains, the SOP said special trains will be operated by the Ministry of Railways (MOR) which will designate nodal officers for coordinating with the state/UTs.

"The MOR will issue detailed guidelines for sale of tickets; and for other safety measures.. the persons who wish to travel by making their own arrangements can proceed on the basis of a transit pass issued by respective District Magistrate." It also said that the states/UTs can arrange for the appropriate number of buses to be sent to pre-designated bus terminal(s)/locations in Delhi for transportation of the stranded persons from their states/UTs.

The SOP also said that while leaving and entering Delhi, people should be encouraged to use the Aarogya Setu app through which their health status can be monitored and tracked.

For movement into Delhi, the SOP said on the basis of total number of stranded Delhi residents, the Transport Department will send the requisite number of buses to the pre-designated locations in different states/UTs for bringing them back.

"Only those found asymptomatic after proper screening by the authorities in the state where Delhi residents are stranded shall be allowed to board." Also, on arrival in Delhi, all the persons will be assessed by the teams designated by the Health Department at each point of disembarkation.

"Respective District Magistrates shall ensure that such persons are kept in home quarantine." It also directed the police to ensure that appropriate security arrangements are made at the point of embankments, disembarkment and medical screening of stranded persons.

"Strict vigil on inter-state movement and inter-state borders and adequate number of pickets be set up in all the areas where migrant workers are residing to prevent unlawful movement of persons."
She became a stay-at-home mom, and he stopped doing any housework and parenting because "that's what stay-at-home mothers do, all the house and kid stuff."
The team of "Parks and Recreation" has raised up to USD 2.8 million for charity with its one-time scripted special episode.

The episode, which premiered on NBC on April 30, was watched by 3.67 million viewers and had a rating of 1.4, reported Deadline.

The special raised money for Feeding America's COVID-19 Response Fund, which helps food banks secure the resources they need to serve the most vulnerable members of their communities.

All the stars of the sitcom -- Amy Poehler, Rashida Jones, Aziz Ansari, Nick Offerman, Aubrey Plaza, Chris Pratt, Adam Scott, Rob Lowe, Jim O'Heir and Retta -- returned for the Universal TV-produced special.

Some other familiar faces, including Ben Schwartz and Jay Jackson, also came back.

The half-hour special saw Pawnee, Indiana's most dedicated public servant, Leslie Knope (Poehler), determined to stay connected with her friends and colleagues during a time of social distancing.

Michael Schur, who co-created the show with Greg Daniels, spearheaded the initiative.

"Parks and Recreation" ran from 2009 to 2015 on NBC. During the run, the series was nominated for a number of Emmys and Golden Globes. Poehler had won the show's lone Globe in 2014 for her performance.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Labor has called for Australia's immigration program to be overhauled and curtailed in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, saying Australian workers must "get a fair go and a first go at jobs", in comments that form common ground with some Coalition MPs.

Home affairs spokeswoman Kristina Keneally, who is part of Labor's core leadership group, said the country had an unprecedented chance to shift the immigration program away from the "lazy" approach used by governments of all persuasions to boost the economy at the expense of local workers and community concerns.

Labor's immigration spokeswoman Kristina Keneally says Australia's post-pandemic immigration program must change. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

In an opinion piece for The Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age today, Senator Keneally writes: "The post-COVID-19 question we must ask now is this: when we restart our migration program, do we want migrants to return to Australia in the same numbers and in the same composition as before the crisis? Our answer should be no."

Meanwhile, members of the Coalition are also pushing for changes to the spread and composition of the migrant program, with one MP arguing the international student intake should be doubled.
The South African government has stated it will not back down on its decision to ban the sale of cigarettes.

The Sunday Times reported that Minister in the Presidency Jackson Mthembu said there is no possibility of talks with the cigarette industry.

There is no possibility of a midway agreement that accommodates them and us. We believe that it is the right thing to do. I dont see any of us agreeing on the measures the other party has taken. We will make our case in court. We believe we have very good reasons, said Mthembu.

As part of South Africas lockdown regulations  including during level 4  the sale of cigarettes is not allowed.

This has resulted in anger from citizens and tobacco companies.

British American Tobacco said it will give the government until Monday to reverse the ban on cigarette sales in the country, ot it will launch legal action to remove the ban.

Online petition

The statement from the government follows an outcry on the ban on cigarette sales.

An online petition to lift the ban on cigarette sales in South Africa has received over 470,000 signatures from people who feel their rights are being infringed upon.

The online petition states that as law abiding citizens our rights have been taken away under the pretext of the pandemic.

It gained momentum after Minister of Cooperative Governance Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma backtracked on a previous proposal to unban cigarette sales from 1 May.

Dlamini-Zuma defended the decision, saying 2,000 people who engaged the government were against the sale of cigarettes under level 4 of the lockdown.

Many commentators have argued all this does, however, is encourage the illegal cigarette trade.

The financial impact of the cigarette ban is also devastating, as it costs the country millions of rand a day in lost excise revenues.

Now read: A simple guide to the new level 4 lockdown rules in South Africa
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2020 > Migrant Workers in The Present Time of Chaos

Ranabir Samaddar delivered the Biblab Chakraborty Memorial Lecture (2018) titled The Present Time of Chaos. One of his seminal observations in the lecture was that a historical sense is important in a situation of chaos, as the conditions of chaos do not exist in some ethereal space outside of history.

Very recently, Calcutta Research Group (CRG), under the editorship of Ranabir Samaddar, has brought out a collection of essays around the lives and politics of migrant workers in India, focusing on COVID-19 (Borders of an Epidemic: COVID-19and Migrant Workers). In a sense, the collection represents The Present as History.

In his recent interview with The Wire, Samaddar has reflected on different dimensions of migrant workers in India, explored in the collection of essays edited by him. While talking about the effects of coronavirus-induced national lockdown on migrant workers, he observed: Following the abrupt 21-day clampdown, we witnessed hundreds and thousands of migrant workers trying to reach home. No provisions were made to meet their needs of food, shelter, health, families and life itself...We do not know how many lost their way in the middle, how many finally reached their destination and in what condition. Or how many died (The Wire, April 23, 2020). This signifies that the present time of chaos in India has distinct class dimensions.

How the migrant workers are treated in our neoliberal economy? To put it in the words of Samaddar: ...we have to understand the dynamics of the visibility and invisibility of migrant labour...The migrant workers are visible in the economy; they are invisible in politics. In many cases they have no right to vote in municipal polls, no social entitlements. They are not allowed to disturb the civil society-centred politics. But they must be available as a ready labour force, what Marx called a reserve army of labour. Appear only when summoned (ibid).

Samaddar highlighted in his interview greater economic predicaments and harsher social marginalization of migrant workers in our country in the post-coronavirus situation.

It is difficult to predict what will be the shape and parameters of politics in the time of chaos. In his interview in The Wire, Ranabir Samaddar has given a broad outline of politics in the coming days:

Perhaps the biggest post-coronavirus political struggle will play out between those powers functioning along a neo-Malthusian line of necessary loss of a section of population in a time of epidemic (or a war), and those powers who will uphold the cause of life.

The present time of chaos in India brings back toour mind Antonio Gramscis observation made in his famous essay Against Pessimism (1924): The great battles are drawing closer; battles which will perhaps be more bloody and harder than those of previous years...Clearly we will also need to fight hard...
There are fears hundreds of residents in a Bail village could have contracted coronavirus from an influx of cruise ship workers who have returned home and ignored warnings to self quarantine.

After eight positive COVID-19 tests in Serokadan hamlet in Abuan village, Central Bali earlier this week, the government's national coronavirus task force moved in with the military to lockdown the area's 1200 residents and begin widespread testing.

Of the 1200 blood samples initially taken through 'rapid testing,' more than 400 returned 'reactive' results, which means they have not officially tested positive but are suspected to have the deadly virus.

Bali's military move in to lockdown Serokadan hamlet in Abuan village, Central Bali, with fears hundreds of residents may have been infected with coronavirus. Pictured: teams in hazmat suits order residents to follow instructions

'We have followed up the rapid test results by taking swab samples for further PCR [polymerase chain reaction] tests to get accurate results on whether they are positive for COVID-19 or not,' the Bali provincial COVID 19 task force executive chairman, Dewa Made Indra, said.

'Of course, we will use the swab test results as the final results.'

So far 126 residents have returned a negative result after providing swabs.

'On Friday morning, we took another 183 swab samples for the PCR test,' Mr Indra said.

'We are conducting the test in phases.'

The task force team have now set up a communal kitchen to provide food for the village and make sure no one tries to leave.

There have been 10,843 confirmed coronavirus cases across Indonesia including a total of 831 deaths.

The Indonesian army has helped distribute thousands of personal protective equipment (PPE) for medical and health officers dealing with COVID-19

In Bali, there have been 237 positive tests with four deaths, however health experts suspect the figures may be significantly higher.

Of the 137 imported coronavirus cases into Bali, 134 have been made up of migrant workers, mostly in the cruise ship industry who have returned home since the outbreak began.

About 20,000 Balinese are estimated to work abroad, but since the beginning of March it's believed over 10,000 have now returned home.

With 60 percent of the island's revenue stemming from tourism, the holiday hotspot has been largely decimated by the pandemic.

'The potential losses for 2020 is approximately US$9 billion,' chairman of the Indonesian Tourist Industry Association Ida Bagus Agung Partha Adnyana told CNN.

Although social distancing measures have been put into place by authorities restricting religious ceremonies to no more than 25 people, footage over the weekend indicates not everyone is getting the message.

A Hindu cremation ceremony was held in Buleleng Regency showing hundreds of worshippers crowding in the street.
Indias armed forces on Sunday exhibited their appreciation and gratitude toward thousands of corona warriors across the country - doctors, nurses and police personnel - who have been at the forefront of the countrys battle against the coronavirus pandemic.

This is the third massive display of gratitude to Covid-19 warriors after Prime Minister Narendra Modi previously asked people to clap for them from their balconies and light candles in their honour.

The militarys plan to honour front-line workers on Sunday was finalised at a meeting chaired by defence minister Rajnath Singh on Friday. The meeting was attended by the national security adviser, the chief of defence staff and the three service chiefs.

Several activities like fly-pasts, flashing warship lights and other displays by the Indian Army bands have been included in todays spectacular show.

Here is what is in store:

* Fly-pasts across the length and breadth of the country by the Indian Air Forces (IAFs) fighter jets and transport planes from Srinagar to Thiruvananthapuram and Dibrugarh to Kutch. The IAFs fighter jets fly-pasts over Mumbai, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Patna and Lucknow, apart from Delhi and the national capital region (NCR).

* Showering of petals over hospitals dedicated to treating coronavirus disease (Covid-19) patients across 23 locations in the country carried out military helicopters . These include Delhi, Leh, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Mumbai, Jaipur, Dispur, Shillong (subject to confirmation by state administration) Itanagar, Trivandrum and Chennai.

* Wreath-laying by armed forces personnel at the police memorial on behalf of the three service chiefs to show support for Covid-19 warriors.

* Transport aircraft will also fly in formation over 10 cities including Delhi, Srinagar, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Mumbai and Hyderabad.

* The fighter jets featuring in the fly-past over Delhi-NCR, or IAFs aerial salute, include the Sukhoi-30s, MiG-29s and Jaguars.

* The fly-past will be followed by the C-130J special operations aircraft flying over Delhi-NCR in formation.

* Showering of petals over the National Police Memorial and Delhi hospitals involved in providing relief to Covid-19 patients by IAF helicopters.

* These include Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital, GTB Hospital, Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, Safdarjung Hospital, Sri Ganga Ram Hospital, Baba Saheb Ambedkar Hospital, Apollo Indraprastha Hospital and the Army Hospital (Research and Referral).

* The Indian Navy illuminated its warships at anchorage from 7.30pm to midnight on Friday at Mumbai, Porbandar, Karwar, Vizag, Chennai, Kochi and Port Blair. Naval helicopters will shower petals over Covid-19 hospitals in Mumbai and Goa.

* Forty-six Indian Coast Guard ships will also be lit up at 25 locations along the countrys eastern and western seaboards. Ten coast guard helicopters will shower flower petals over Covid-19 hospitals in Daman, Mumbai, Goa, Chennai and Port Blair.

* The tributes being offered to Covid-19 warriors will also see army bands perform outside several hospitals and locations across the country including the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Sri Ganga Ram Hospital, the Armys RR Hospital and the Base Hospital in Delhi Cantt.

* Performance by army bands to honour Covid-19 warriors at Srinagars Dal Lake, among other locations.
Two senior army officers, a colonel and a major, were among five security personnel martyred in an encounter that ensued in Handwara town in Jammu and Kashmir's Kupwara district late Saturday. In nearly an eight-hour long firefight, security forces gunned down two terrorists, which included Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET) chief identified as Haider. The identity of the second terrorist is yet to be ascertained.

"The chief commander of Lashkar in Valley, identified as Haider, has been killed in Handwara encounter. We had inputs that he was in Handwara to receive a fresh batch of infiltrators but was eliminated," Inspector General in Jammu Kashmir Police, Vijay Kumar, told India Today TV.

Army officer Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, Major Anuj Sood and Lance Naik Dinesh and sub-inspector of JKP Shakeel Qazi were martyred in the line of duty, Director General of Police Dilbagh Singh told news agency PTI.

"Based on the intelligence input that terrorists were taking the civilian inmates of a house in Changimulla, (in the) Handwara (area) of Kupwara district, hostage, a joint operation was launched by Army and JK Police. A team comprising of five Army and JK Police personnel entered the target area occupied by the terrorists to evacuate the civilians," the official statement read.

Condoling the death of security personnel, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that their valour and sacrifice would never be forgotten. "Tributes to our courageous soldiers and security personnel martyred in Handwara. Their valour and sacrifice will never be forgotten. They served the nation with utmost dedication and worked tirelessly to protect our citizens. Condolences to their families and friends," PM Modi said in a tweet.

Tributes to our courageous soldiers and security personnel martyred in Handwara. Their valour and sacrifice will never be forgotten. They served the nation with utmost dedication and worked tirelessly to protect our citizens. Condolences to their families and friends. - Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) May 3, 2020

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh also paid tributes to the security personnel killed in the encounter. "The loss of our soldiers and security personnel in Handwara(J&K) is deeply disturbing and painful. They showed exemplary courage in their fight against the terrorists and made supreme sacrifice while serving the country. We will never forget their bravery and sacrifice (sic)," he tweeted.

I offer my tributes to the soldiers and security personnel who fell in action. My heart goes out to the families who lost their loved ones today. India stands shoulder to shoulder with the families of these brave martyrs. - Rajnath Singh (@rajnathsingh) May 3, 2020

Chief of Defence Staff Bipin Rawat said the operations in Handwara highlighted the determination of the security forces to safeguard the lives of the people.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 19:46:19|Editor: huaxia

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MADRID, May 3 (Xinhua) -- A Boeing 777 plane carrying 56 tons of sanitary material from China for Community of Madrid, one of the 17 autonomous communities of Spain, landed at Madrid-Barajas Airport late on Saturday night, the regional government has informed.

Among the equipment on the aircraft, which came from Shanghai, were 315 multi-parameter monitors, which are used in intensive care units.

The material was shipped to Pavilion 10 at the IFEMA exhibition center in Madrid, which is being used as a warehouse for sanitary equipment during the ongoing coronavirus crisis, and will subsequently be distributed among the region's hospitals.

Saturday's arrival was the sixth shipment of sanitary material which has arrived in Madrid from China since April 2, bringing a total of 18 million items, such as facemasks, protective gowns and shoe coverings.

Apart from the monitors, Saturday's arrival contained 1.5 million face masks (including 560,000 FFP2 masks), 560,000 gloves and 158,000 protective gowns.

Madrid is the worst-hit region of Spain by the pandemic with over 62,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 8,332 deaths. Enditem
The Somanya Police has arrested 14 persons for flouting the ban on social gatherings in the wake of the novel Coronavirus pandemic.

The 14 are said to have gathered in a house to perform puberty rites, known as Dipo, despite the ban on all forms of gatherings.

The suspects have been charged and granted court bail to appear before the Somanya District Magistrate Court on Monday, May 4, 2020.

This arrest follows a similar one in the Eastern Region where four royals in the Akuapem traditional area were nabbed for flouting the ban on mass gatherings.

The ban on social gatherings is still in force, despite the lifting of the partial lockdown on Accra, Kumasi, Tema and Kasoa.

For the avoidance of doubt, President cited conferences, workshops, funerals, parties, nightclubs, drinking spots, beaches, festivals, political rallies, religious activities and sporting events as part of activities still banned in Ghana.

Though all educational facilities are also to remain closed, the President said: businesses and other workplaces can continue to operate, observing staff management and workplace protocols with the aim of achieving social distancing and hygiene protocols.

---citinewsroom
A remittance service has pledged to support the relatives of a Zimbabwean NHS mental health worker who died from Covid-19 - leaving her 12-year-old daughter orphaned in the UK with no family.

Single mother Rutendo Mukotsanjera, 45, lived in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire and passed away from coronavirus on April 10 after a two week battle with the infection.

With no family in Britain, her 12-year-old daughter Cheidza, known as Chichi, is now being cared for by members of the Renew Church in Uttoxeter, where her mother worshipped.

Rutendo used to work weekends and evenings to regularly send money back home to Zimbabwe through Mukuru, an African remittance company, to help her loved ones including her 22-year-old son Shungu Shaun and her mother.

Single mother Rutendo Mukotsanjera, 45, lived in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire and passed away from coronavirus on April 10 after a two week battle with the infection, leaving her 12-year-old daughter Cheidza, known as Chichi, orphaned in the UK with no family

According to her sister Rumbidzai, Rutendo was helping her son by renting him a place in the country's capital Harare and paying his school fees so he could complete his GCSEs.

She said Rutendo was still sending money home right up until she passed away, and was very worried about the future well being of her family.

Mukuru has now pledged to continue supporting her son and mother by matching her monthly sends from the past year for the next 12 months - roughly 2,300.

Rumbidzai told FEMAIL: 'My sister was special and so dear to me. I will forever miss her greatly. She still stays close to my heart. Even though I am heartbroken, I thank God for the time we shared.

'Thank you Mukuru, from the bottom of my heart, for thinking of us in this time of mourning.'

Rutendo was still sending money home right up until she passed away, and was very worried about the future well being of her family

Mukuru CEO Andy Jury said a remittance is always more than just about money; it is a representation of the love, care and hard work of senders, with the remittances often being a lifeline, an opportunity or even a celebration to the recipient.

He added: 'Miss Mukotsanjera was the very embodiment of a Mukuru customer - hardworking, selfless, and the backbone of the family she supported. We were so saddened to hear of Miss Mukotsanjera's passing.

'We would like to continue that support to her son in Zimbabwe over the next 12 months, to ensure he is able to continue along the path his mother paved for him.'

The Renew Church has also set up a JustGiving page to raise money for Rutendo's funeral as well as legal and support costs for Chichi, which has so far attracted donations of almost 37,000.

Mukuru has now pledged to continue supporting Rutendo's (centre) son and mother (pictured right) by matching her monthly sends from the past year for the next 12 months - roughly 2,300

Church members have been in contact with Rutendo's relatives in Zimbabwe to decide what to do in the best interests of Chichi, though no firm plans can be made until lockdown in the UK and Zimbabwe is lifted.

In a recent Facebook livestream with Pastor Matthew Murray, Chichi paid tribute to her mother, and assured people she is 'doing OK'.

'Obviously it's not going to get easier but at least now I know that my mum's not in pain and I can have some sort of humanity knowing that she's OK,' she said.

In a recent Facebook livestream with Pastor Matthew Murray, Chichi paid tribute to her mother, and assured people she is 'doing OK'

'She was always that person I could talk to and she was always that person who would play and be there for me and my brother and everyone. She had such a kind heart.'

Rutendo's funeral was held on a Monday, and her family said it broke their heart that they couldn't attend.

Pastor Matthew, who delivered a speech on Chichi's behalf to gathered churchgoers outside before initiating a clap in Rutendo's memory, said the young girl has been 'brave and amazing' throughout her ordeal.

Rumbidzai said they are planning for her ashes to be sent back to Zimbabwe, where they can have their own ceremony and say goodbye.

Rutendo's funeral was held on a Monday, and her family said it broke their heart that they couldn't attend

They are hopeful that Chichi will be able to fly out for this service so they can be all together as a family.

'We are taking everything one step at a time,' she added. 'It's tough but we have to soldier on.'

According to The Mirror, Ms Mukotsanjera was a public health official and had previously worked for the Infrastructure Bank in Zimbabwe.

Britain's black and minority ethnic communities appear to have been hardest hit by the virus sweeping the UK.

Despite only making up 14 percent of the population of England and Wales, they represent a third of the patients in intensive care with coronavirus, according to the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre.

Pastor Matthew Murray, who delivered a speech on Chichi's behalf to gathered churchgoers outside before initiating a clap in Rutendo's memory, said the young girl (left) has been 'brave and amazing' throughout her ordeal

Chaand Nagpaul, head of the British Medical Association, said this was 'extremely disturbing and worrying'.

'We have heard the virus does not discriminate between individuals, but there's no doubt there appears to be a manifest disproportionate severity of infection in BAME people and doctors,' he told The Guardian newspaper.

The first ten doctors who died with coronavirus in Britain were from ethnic minorities, including Alfa Sa'adu, Jitendra Rathod, Mohamed Sami Shousha and Syed Haider.

In a letter to the government, several opposition Labour MPs said deaths represented 'serious concerns' and called for an urgent investigation.

Rutendo's mother, two sisters and her son (pictured) recently shared a message on Facebook thanking the Renew Church in Uttoxeter for looking after Chichi

Sunder Katwala, the head of thinktank British Future, also said that a large number of Filippino nurses, hospital porters and other staff had been affected by coronavirus.

'Tragically, a disproportionate number of those in the NHS who died are people who came to make their lives here and to work in the NHS,' Health Secretary Matt Hancock said in a recent press conference.

Non-British staff make up 12 percent of the UK healthcare workforce, according to the Office for National Statistics.

In London, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak in Britain, this rises to 23 per cent.

Rutendo used to work weekends and evenings to regularly send money back home to Zimbabwe through Mukuru, an African remittance company, to help her loved ones including her 22-year-old son Shungu Shaun (pictured)

In terms of patients, people from ethnic minorities are more likely to live in London or in the West Midlands - another hard hit area - and suffer more poverty and ill health.

'South Asians live in more deprived areas and have more cardiovascular disease and diabetes,' said Kamlesh Khunti, an expert in ethnic minority health who led the ICNARC study.

They also often live in larger, multi-generational households and so 'social isolation may not be as prevalent'.

Zubaida Haque, deputy director of the race equality Runnymede, said ethnic minorities were also more likely to be in low-paid jobs or be key workers - as transport and delivery staff, healthcare assistants, hospital cleaners and social care workers.

Baroness Doreen Lawrence, who is heading Labour's investigation into the high rate of black and Asian illness and deaths from coronavirus, pictured in January (file photo)

'All of which bring them into more contact with coronavirus and so increase their risk to serious-illness and death,' she told the BBC.

Last month, Public Health England said it would review the high rate of black and Asian illness and deaths. Former equality watchdog chief Trevor Philips was spearheading the probe, but no details have emerged of what that inquiry will entail or how long it will take.

Labour has also announced its own investigation, headed by Baroness Doreen Lawrence.
Juul is preparing to leave five European countries within the year, according to BuzzFeed News. The e-cigarette maker is reportedly planning to pull out of Austria, Belgium, Portugal and Spain in July followed by France at the end of the year. Unlike all the shutdowns and layoffs reported over the past months, BuzzFeeds source says the decision didnt have anything to do with the coronavirus pandemic.

Austrias, Belgiums and Portugals markets are apparently too small in the first place. Juul enjoys relatively high sales in Spain and France compared to the rest of the continent, but not high enough to justify the costs of running a business there and the trouble of dealing with regulators. The European Union has stringent requirements when it comes to e-cigarette products, as the publication notes, requiring companies to stick to a nicotine limit of 20 milligrams per milliliter of fluid. Meanwhile, a single Juul pod can contain up to 59 milligrams of nicotine per milliliter in the US.

Juuls exit in those markets means hundreds of employees will lose their jobs. According to an earlier report by The Wall Street Journal, the company will lay off around 800 to 950 employees as part of a restructuring plan. Its just unclear if that number already includes the employees losing their jobs due to the European closures.
Copyright  2020 Albuquerque Journal

If youre one of thousands of frustrated New Mexicans trying to file or have filed for an unemployment claim and have yet to start receiving money, the head of the state Department of Workforce Solutions has some suggestions that might help.

Among them: Call toward the end of the week, make sure you are recertifying your claim weekly and please, please  dont forget your online password.

Last week, department secretary Bill McCamley chatted with the Journal for a video, answering a wide range of questions submitted by the public and reporters about how his agency is handling the flood of unemployment claims due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the interview, McCamley acknowledged the frustration many are feeling and offered suggestions on how best to navigate the system.

All who can use the internet should

While many New Mexicans lack access to broadband internet, those with access should go to www.dws.state.nm.us to file a claim.

Its going to be better for you, its going to be better for us, and its going to leave those phone lines open for those people who maybe dont have the web capability, McCamley said.

Take advantage of tools already in place

 A dedicated COVID-19-specific Frequently Asked Questions page.

 A how-to YouTube video that walks applicants through each step of the process.

 An automated chat bot that answers broad user questions.

Only call if absolutely necessary

The goal is to get answers for as many applicants as possible online without tying up the departments phone lines unnecessarily  including with calls from people who did the application correctly and call to be assured of that.

Weve put a lot of effort to make sure that our website is robust and working, McCamley said.

If you must call, try to avoid Mondays

For those who cant accomplish what they need to online, the workforce agency unemployment hotline is 1-877-664-6984.

The agency is asking New Mexicans to call on different days based on the last digit of their Social Security number:

Monday: SSN ending in 0, 1, 2 or 3

Tuesday: SSN ending in 4, 5 or 6

Wednesday: SSN ending in 7, 8 or 9

Thursday and Friday: Anyone who didnt get through earlier in the week.

But the busiest day, by far, is Monday. If you cant get through on your correct day, you may have better luck on Thursday and Friday.

File weekly certifications  every week

McCamley said more than 4,600 New Mexicans in the system could be receiving benefits right now, but they arent because they arent filing weekly certifications. For applicants who havent received unemployment benefits and arent sure why, McCamley recommended making sure their weekly certifications are up to date.

Answer that 877 number thats calling you

Be prepared to answer calls you might otherwise reject. State unemployment workers will sometimes call applicants to clarify information. The call comes from a number with an 877 area code, which can sometimes result in the call being marked as spam.

Please try to pick it up and answer, because that may be our office trying to get in touch with you proactively to fix your issue, McCamley said.

Do NOT lose your password

Remember your password, or write it down, or risk slowing down the whole process.

Applicants who forget their passwords have three tries to get it right before the system locks them out.

If you do get locked out, use email links

Security measures make password resets finicky on the state site.

If you do have to have your password reset, just use the links in the reset email to get to the right site  dont copy and paste those into a new browser or window.

Ditto for the temporary password. McCamley said the best method isnt copy-and-paste  you should write the password down and retype it into the indicated field.

More features coming soon

McCamley said more changes are in the works to streamline the process:

 The department is looking to get its last batch of new trainees, largely from other state departments, on the phones by this coming week.

 From there, the agency will look at adding a new live chat feature on its website, where applicants can communicate with a department staffer. McCamley said this should help connect applicants with experts who can handle specific technical questions.

Thats a way for a lot of people to get some pretty efficient information, he said.

 As the economy starts to reopen, the workforce department is working with other state agencies to draft a list of rules and regulations for employers and employees to follow. He said he expects these rules to come out in the next several days.

Who should apply for unemployment?

The CARES Act has expanded the categories of workers who are eligible for unemployment. It added part-time workers, independent contractors and gig workers to the eligible categories, and it covers most of those who have had their hours cut, or been furloughed or laid off. The CARES Act also provides $600 in weekly benefits for anyone who qualifies for state unemployment.

But if someone still has a source of income that pays more than $461 a week, they do not qualify for state or CARES Act unemployment.

And those who choose to leave their job  and are not laid off  do not qualify unless they can prove good cause. In addition, those who are offered their jobs back but do no take them do not qualify for unemployment.

McCamley warned that those who purposely game the system are committing fraud and could face consequences.

Be patient, thousands are getting their checks

Of the more than 141,000 New Mexicans who have successfully filed initial unemployment claims since March 15, McCamley said, more than 60% are now receiving payments. The remainder fall into the following categories:

 22,896 (16.1%) of the claims were too new to be receiving funding as of Thursday.

 12,405 (8.8%) are awaiting adjudication by the workforce department.

 12,500 (8.9%) were deemed ineligible for state benefits.

 4,624 (3.2%) could be getting money, but havent provided a weekly certification.

 2,922 (about 2.4%) require additional information from the applicant, or have been denied.

Despite doubling the number of phone lines and tripling the number of people manning the phones, the system is still swamped. Many of those taking the calls have volunteered for this assignment and many are working overtime.
It had the makings of an adventure straight from Disneys Swiss Family Robinson  being on an uninhabited island and living off the land.

But for one Alabama man, the adventure  on a former island attraction at Walt Disney World in Florida  was short-lived and ended in an arrest.

The man, Richard J. McGuire, 42, of Mobile, Ala., was accused of trespassing at the theme park after he tried to camp on Discovery Island, a former zoological park that was closed in 1999, the authorities said.

On Thursday, an Orange County sheriffs deputy responded to a report of a trespasser on the island, which is east of Disneys Contemporary Resort, in Bay Lake. A security representative for Disney told deputies she had seen a man using a boat earlier that day and that the area was closed to the public, with signs warning against trespassing.
New Delhi, May 3 : The Congress has paid tributes to martyrs of Handwara in Jammu and Kashmir who lost their lives battling terrorists and said that India is proud of them.

Congress Chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said, "Salute to brave martyrs who have given highest sacrifice to the Mother India and India is proud of you." The Security forces lost 4 officers including two army personnel while trying to evacuate hostages who were taken by terrorists in Handwara.

"We are deeply saddened by the loss of 5 of India's brave hearts, including, Col Ashutosh Sharma, Major Anuj, J&K Police SI Shakeel Qazi. The incident in Handwara is a stark reminder of the incredible sacrifice our defence forces make in order to keep our Nation safe. Jai Hind, "said Congress on its Twitter handle.

Seven including two senior Army officers, two junior ranks, an officer of the local police and two terrorists were killed in the fierce gunbattle on Sunday in Jammu and Kashmir's Kupwara district.

Srinagar based Defence Ministry spokesman, Colonel Rajesh Kalia confirmed the martyrdom of the five security personnel with their ranks without giving out their names.
Mumbai: A political war of words has erupted in Maharashtra over the Centre's move to station the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) Authority in Gujarat. After Congress and Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party president Sharad Pawar has raised his objection on the decision and requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to revisit his decision.

"The Centres decision to locate the newly created International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) Authority at Gujarat's Gandhinagar will not only cause financial damage to the country, but also bring international discredit by undermining the importance of Mumbai," Pawar said in a letter to PM Modi on Saturday, released on Sunday (May 3).

Pawar said the Centre's move to set up the headquarters of IFSC at Gandhinagar would be taken as an act of undermining the strategic importance of Mumbai that boasts as the nation's financial capital and even the financial institutions worldwide will be taken aback by this shocking decision.

He pointed out that in the general psyche of the business community, bankers and other financial institutions, Mumbai is their natural choice for setting up such a unified authority, and fervently urged the Prime Minister to reconsider the decision.

.@NCPspeaks chief @PawarSpeaks writes @narendramodi requesting to revisit his decision of locating #IFSC authority. Pawar demanded #IFSCinMumbai rather than Gandhinagar. Mumbai & Maharahtra give major revenue to central so Mumbai is natural choice for #IFSC @NewIndianXpress pic.twitter.com/7bx36Kk8z4  Sudhir Suryawanshi (@ss_suryawanshi) May 3, 2020

On April 27, the Centre issued a notification declaring Gandhinagar in Gujarat as the headquarters of the IFSC Authority, at the Gujarat International Financial-Tech (GIFT) City.

While Maharashtra's ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government of Shiv Sena-Nationalist Congress Party-Congress was left rattled by the move, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader of Opposition Devendra Fadnavis defended the Centre's move.

Shiv Sena leader and Industry Minister Subhash Desai said it is natural for the IFSC to be in Mumbai, which is acknowledged as the country's financial capital. "Just giving a name does not make a financial capital. The world knows Mumbai and its financial might," Desai said.

State Congress President and Revenue Minister Balasaheb Thorat termed the decision as intended to lower Mumbai's stature, and wanted to know why the state BJP was silent on the issue. "The Centre must rescind the decision. After all, Mumbai is the financial hub of the country," Thorat said.
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has issued a new set of guidelines for the state keeping in mind the extension of the lockdown by two more weeks. The rules have been made keeping in mind the demarcation of green, red and orange zones. As per the rules, only Ernakulam district qualifies to be a green zone as it has not reported any new cases in the last 21 days. Wayanad that was earlier a green zone, has been earmarked as an orange zone as more cases emerged.

Here's a lowdown of what will remain open and what will be closed in Kerala according to the new guidelines:

1. Sundays will remain closed for everything. There will be no vehicular movement.

2. Public transport, public gathering, cinema theatres, religious places, events, malls, liquor shops, bars, barbershops, beauty parlours, gyms and educational institutions will remain closed in the state.

Also read: Coronavirus India Live Updates: Lockdown 3.0! Highest 1-day jump with 2,644 cases; IAF salutes corona heroes

3. Government offices have been allowed to function with 50 per cent attendance for Group A and Group B employees. It said only 33 per cent attendance will be allowed for Group C and D categories.

4. Non-essential services have been allowed.

5. In the green zones, shops can remain open between 7am and 7:30pm for six days of the week.

6. Taxi services have been allowed in the green zones but only two passengers can board the vehicle.

7. Inter-district travel have been permitted for a maximum of two persons.

Also read: Major milestone! India conducts 1 million coronavirus tests

CM Vijayan also spoke about containment zones and said that the list of containment zones will be reviewed periodically. It means that zones will earmarked according as and when cases fluctuate. Red zones will have no exemptions, he said.

"With a new case being reported on Saturday, the status of Wayanad district has changed from green zone to orange zone. Wayanad was earlier in the green zone list declared by the Centre. With no coronavirus patients under treatment, Alappuzha and Thrissur districts have moved to green zone. Kannur and Kottayam are under the red zone. All the other districts in the state are in Orange Zone," he said.

Meanwhile, one case each in Wayanad and Kannur were reported in Kerala on Saturday. According to Ministry of Health and Family Welfare data, Kerala has reported 499 cases of coronavirus so far, with 400 recoveries and discharges and four deaths.

Also read: Coronavirus lockdown 3.0: Delhi govt to soon allow liquor sale as it battles revenue dip
This week saw Nasa celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope. Launched on April 24, 1990, the telescope was lifted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Centre aboard the space shuttle Discovery.

It was implemented into Earth Orbit the following day and since it has opened the universe and altered our lives and the way we view space. The telescope was after American astronomer Edwin Hubble. Edward Hubble was born in 1889 and went on to discover many space objects previously thought to be clouds of dust and gas and classified as nebulae were actually galaxies beyond the Milky Way. The cost of the Hubble Telescope came in at over $2billion and has a total running cost exceeding 10billion. These are just some of the discoveries that the Hubble Space Telescope has made in that time.

1: Seasonality: One of the many ways scientist have used the Hubble telescope is to track seasonal changes on other planets. One such example was how it was used to track Jupiters weather patterns, this allowed researchers to track changes in the colour of the bands of clouds in the gas giants atmosphere.

2: Discovering Planets: The first image of a planet in visible light was taken by the telescope. The planet known as Fomalhaut b, is three times the size of Jupiter. The use if the telescope to gaze into the atmospheres of alien planets whenever they move across the face of their stars from Earths perspective. Furthermore, it allows scientists to gather important data about these planets as its travels beyond its star.

3: Black Holes: One of the biggest mysteries in space is the occurrence of black holes. Hubble discovered that super-massive black holes probably lurk in every galaxy that has a bulge of stars at its centre. The association between the size of these central black holes and the size of their galaxies was also highlighted by the images for Hubble. It showed that these occur in direct link with each other.

4: Distant Galaxies: Hubble images showed seven primitive galaxies from a distant population that formed more than 13 billion years ago. These images highlighted galaxies as they were when the Universe was less than 4 percent of its present age.

The images from the telescope are wonderous and need to be view, so when you have time (and we all have a lot of it at present) then have a look at NASAs best images from the Hubble.

Limerick Astronomy Club email limerickastronomyclub @gmail.com
Sana Shakil By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: The headquarters of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in the national capital was sealed on Sunday after the personal staff of a senior officer and a bus driver tested positive for coronavirus, officials said.

The five-storeyed CRPF building is located inside the Central Government Offices (CGO) complex which houses several other government offices too. Besides the two new cases in CRPF, the Border Security Force also recorded 25 fresh cases of COVID-19, all from a company of the 126 battalion, which was deployed with Delhi Police in Jama Masjid/Old Delhi area.

80 test results of BSF personnel came out on Sunday while five are awaited. On Saturday, seven personnel of the same company, which has a strength of 94, were found infected. So far, there are 42 active cases of coronavirus in the border guarding force.

The CRPF has a total of 139 cases and 135 of them are from Delhis Mayur Vihar based 31 battalion which also a recorded COVID-19 death. The entire battalion has been sealed since then. As many as 480 troopers of the unit were tested for COVID-19 and 22 test results are awaited.

Besides CRPF and BSF, other Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) have coronavirus cases too. There are six active cases in CISF, five in ITBP, and four in SSB. With the new cases, the total number of infections in the CAPFs rose to 196 on Sunday.

The rising number of COVID-19 cases in the CAPFs, especially CRPF which is the countrys largest paramilitary force, has become a serious concern for the security grid.

CRPF Special Director General Jawed Akhtar's personal secretary tested positive for Covid-19 early Sunday. Around 40 CRPF personnel, including Akhtar, have self-quarantined and will undergo the test for coronavirus on Monday, according to officials.

The second positive case is of a bus driver who ferried personnel working at the headquarters. One driver attached with CRPF headquarters has tested COVID-19 positive. The headquarters is closed for sanitisation till the task is completed, a government spokesperson said.

Authorities have begun contact-tracing of all the personnel who came in contact with the staffer at the headquarter building. All procedures will be followed. CRPF Director General A P Maheshwari has issued clear directions that all COVID-19 guidelines have to be followed strictly, a senior official said.

55-year-old sub-inspector Mohammad Ikram Hussain of the CRPFs 31st battalion had succumbed to the disease on April 28.

This was the first COVID-19 death in the Central Armed Police Forces, comprising the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Border Security Force (BSF), the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) and Assam Assam Rifles

Earlier, CRPF DG AP Maheshwari had spent 21 days in self-quarantine after coming in indirect contact with a patient. He had later tested negative.


Deaths of actors Irrfan Khan and Rishi Kapoor have left people shocked and saddened. For a past few days, people are taking to social media to express their grief and pay tributes to the actors. Bengaluru artist Baadal Nanjundaswamy is one among them who has created a beautiful artwork to pay tribute to both the actors too.

A tribute to these legendary artists, with this caption Nanjundaswamy tweeted a video. It shows a hand drawn picture of Rishi Kapoor on a paper sheet which has multiple folds. As the clip proceeds, a surprise reveals itself:

This is, however, not the first time Nanjundaswamys artwork has captured peoples attention. Last year, he shared a video of himself moonwalking on a road in Bengaluru filled with potholes. It was his unique way to alert the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) about the terrible condition of the roads in the city. The video quickly went viral, globally.
Canadian Utilities Limited (TSE:CU) stock is about to trade ex-dividend in 2 days time. Investors can purchase shares before the 6th of May in order to be eligible for this dividend, which will be paid on the 1st of June.

Canadian Utilities's next dividend payment will be CA$0.44 per share, on the back of last year when the company paid a total of CA$1.74 to shareholders. Based on the last year's worth of payments, Canadian Utilities has a trailing yield of 5.1% on the current stock price of CA$33.83. Dividends are an important source of income to many shareholders, but the health of the business is crucial to maintaining those dividends. That's why we should always check whether the dividend payments appear sustainable, and if the company is growing.

View our latest analysis for Canadian Utilities

Dividends are typically paid out of company income, so if a company pays out more than it earned, its dividend is usually at a higher risk of being cut. Canadian Utilities paid out more than half (52%) of its earnings last year, which is a regular payout ratio for most companies. Yet cash flow is typically more important than profit for assessing dividend sustainability, so we should always check if the company generated enough cash to afford its dividend. Over the past year it paid out 139% of its free cash flow as dividends, which is uncomfortably high. It's hard to consistently pay out more cash than you generate without either borrowing or using company cash, so we'd wonder how the company justifies this payout level.

While Canadian Utilities's dividends were covered by the company's reported profits, cash is somewhat more important, so it's not great to see that the company didn't generate enough cash to pay its dividend. Cash is king, as they say, and were Canadian Utilities to repeatedly pay dividends that aren't well covered by cashflow, we would consider this a warning sign.

Click here to see the company's payout ratio, plus analyst estimates of its future dividends.

Story continues

TSX:CU Historical Dividend Yield May 3rd 2020

Have Earnings And Dividends Been Growing?

Companies with consistently growing earnings per share generally make the best dividend stocks, as they usually find it easier to grow dividends per share. If earnings fall far enough, the company could be forced to cut its dividend. This is why it's a relief to see Canadian Utilities earnings per share are up 5.1% per annum over the last five years. Earnings have been growing at a steady rate, but we're concerned dividend payments consumed most of the company's cash flow over the past year.

Many investors will assess a company's dividend performance by evaluating how much the dividend payments have changed over time. In the past ten years, Canadian Utilities has increased its dividend at approximately 9.5% a year on average. It's encouraging to see the company lifting dividends while earnings are growing, suggesting at least some corporate interest in rewarding shareholders.

The Bottom Line

Is Canadian Utilities an attractive dividend stock, or better left on the shelf? Canadian Utilities is paying out a reasonable percentage of its income and an uncomfortably high 139% of its cash flow as dividends. At least earnings per share have been growing steadily. Overall it doesn't look like the most suitable dividend stock for a long-term buy and hold investor.

With that in mind though, if the poor dividend characteristics of Canadian Utilities don't faze you, it's worth being mindful of the risks involved with this business. To that end, you should learn about the 5 warning signs we've spotted with Canadian Utilities (including 2 which don't sit too well with us).

A common investment mistake is buying the first interesting stock you see. Here you can find a list of promising dividend stocks with a greater than 2% yield and an upcoming dividend.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
The Ashanti regional organizer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr. Francis Adomako, known in the political space as Francois has admonished Ghanaians to adhere to the safety precautionary measures put in place to curb the spread of the Coronavirus disease.

Speaking to a group of people in the Greater Kumasi Metropolis as part of his COVID-19 community education, the reserved but hardworking regional organizer of the party urged members of the group to wear their protective masks at all times.

He also admonished them to practice the physical or social distancing measure and other measures that have been put in place to fight the pandemic.

Francois also encouraged these groups to keep their hopes alive knowing that indeed, with all the protocols being used by government and other stakeholder agencies, this too shall surely pass.

Mr. Francis Adomako and his able operations team have together engaged in unrelenting community sensitization as part of their contribution to the fight against COVID-19.

Over the weeks, they have also distributed large quantities of COVID-19 relief items to various institutions, communities, and vulnerable persons living in the greater Kumasi metropolis.
India prepared on Sunday for the third phase of the ongoing lockdown with states and Union Territories drafting their own rules, mostly in line with federal guidelines that have given area-specific relaxations in a graded approach to bring back normalcy in the backdrop of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic.

There were some that stood out. Among them was Jharkhand, which announced that there will be no relaxations spelt out by the central government for the three zones in the country --- red, orange and green --- for two weeks beginning Monday.

Migrant workers, students and others are returning home from other states. As a precautionary measure, lockdown would continue in Jharkhand for next two weeks. The new directions of the Centre regarding relaxations would not be implemented in for now, chief minister Hemant Soren said in a Twitter post.

Coronavirus outbreak: Full coverage

In the eastern state, capital Ranchi is in red zone (areas with most Covid-19 cases); 11 districts are in orange zone (places with fewer cases) while the rest of the 12 are in green zone (places with no cases).

The northeastern state of Mizoram promulgated an ordinance making the punishment for violations of lockdown measures more stringent, a day after Rajasthan passed a similar ordinance.

The Assam government announced a complete ban on the movement of non-essential travel between 6pm and 6am for the next two weeks, which covers the extended lockdown period. The central guideline has banned such travels from 7 pm and 7 am.

Directives have been issued to police to take stringent action against curfew violators. Hence, we request everyone to ensure that the restrictions are complied with, health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said. All relaxations are only for districts in green zones... Of Assams 33 districts, 30 are green and three orange zones.

Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, two big states, toed the Centres line.

The Maharashtra government allowed the functioning of standalone liquor shops across the state, barring containment zones (which are areas inside red/orange zones with stricter perimeter control).

According to a government notification, standalone shops selling non-essential items, too, will be allowed in red zones, which include Mumbai and Pune. Construction activities in all red zone districts will be allowed, provided workers are available on site.

In UP, standalone liquor shops can operate from 10 am to 7 pm with social distancing in red zones. The state also allowed all standalone shops and shops in residential complexes.

In line with the central directive, the state allowed private four-wheelers with a maximum of two persons besides the driver for all activities permitted by the government in red zones. Private offices can operate with up to 33% of staff strength in such areas.

Lucknow, the capital of Indias most populous state, Agra and Gautam Budh Nagar (which houses Noida), among other districts in UP, are red zones.

Chhattisgarh, too, allowed liquor shops and was planning to start its home delivery, according to a minister. Liquor shops will be open from 8am to 7pm. To maintain social distancing, we have decided to provide home delivery to some big colonies and settlements, Chhattisgarh excise minister Kawasi Lakhma said. How liquor will be delivered online will be announced on Monday. We are still working on it.

Karnataka, too, permitted the sale of liquor in standalone stores. So did Madhya Pradesh. But a minister in Uttarakhand said liquor shops may not be open in red zones. And Kerala, where per capita consumption is second highest after Punjab, was yet to resume selling liquor.

Karnataka said Bengaluru urban and its four neighbouring districts (Bengaluru Rural, Ramanagara, Chikkaballapur and Kolar) would be treated as a single unit for inter-district movement of individuals and vehicles between 7am to 7pm for permitted activities with the production of letter from the company they are working in and the official identity card. Hence, no other inter-district passes will be required to move across these districts, the order said.

The Goa government agreed to restart public transport, including buses, taxis and auto rickshaws but only with 50% of seating capacity, while restricting their timing from 7am-7pm.

Chief minister Pramod Sawant announced said several services and economic activities will resume in line with the central guidelines since Goa is a green zone. He, however, stressed that all non-essential shops should be closed by 6pm so that people can be home by 7pm.

Only essential workers such as medical workers and other essential services like shops selling milk will be allowed to be open after 7pm, Sawant said.

Restaurants, street eateries, beach shacks and drinking in public places will remain prohibited as these activities banned across the nation.

In Rajasthan, the government prohibited the sale of pan and tobacco products, though the central guidelines have allowed the opening of shops selling tobacco products with strict social-distancing norms.

The Centre first imposed a 21-day lockdown on March 25, and then extended it for 19 days till May 3. On Friday, the government announced another two-week extension, but this time with zone-specific curbs and relaxations though there are some activities banned throught the country.

(With agency inputs)
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In late March, on what is known as Match Day, graduating medical students like myself found out where we would continue training as residents. This has always been an exciting but stressful time. This year it is more than that. On top of the countless challenges of starting residency, we are becoming doctors on the front lines of a pandemic.

How well are we prepared for this role? I am not questioning our technical preparedness, which we have proven by passing board exams and securing residency spots. Rather, I am concerned about the psychological impacts of learning the ropes amidst a global health catastrophe. Before COVID-19, mental health was a hot topic among the medical community. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, almost a third of medical students and residents suffer from depression, and one in ten report suicidal thoughts. The American Medical Student Association found that medical students are three times more likely to die by suicide than age-matched peers.

For trainees, suicide is the first and second most common cause of death among male and female residents, respectively. After training, attending physicians die from suicide at double the rate of the general population.

The statistics are not abstract for me. During my four years as a medical student at Mount Sinai, I mourned the death of a fellow student, a first-year resident, and a first-year attending  all by suicide. Experts point to a wide variety of complex factors that result in such tragedies, which occur at medical centers across this country. A more succinct explanation comes from the dean of my school, Dr. David Muller: Were so focused on taking care of patients and providing quality care that absent from our education is how we take care of ourselves.

How are we taking care of ourselves during COVID-19? As we were conditioned to do throughout our education and training, my colleagues are enduring interminably long hours, routinely missing meals and rest, and expending every ounce of energy to treat patients to the best of their abilities  no matter what personal sacrifice it requires. As hospitals fill up and ventilators run out, we have to accept that our best will often not be good enough.

I believe that COVID-19 will sweep from my home in New York City to many other hotspots, peaking and then gradually diminishing, but inevitably followed by a second curve. This curve will consist of medical students, residents, and attendings who begin experiencing COVID-related anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress. Even as the infection curve flattens, we will carry the psychological burdens of the most difficult decisions of our careers. Medical students might feel guilty for not being able to do more to help. New graduates will struggle to come to terms with losing not just their first patient, but realistically, dozens, or even hundreds of patients. Residents and attendings will check in with colleagues to see who was infected, who recovered, and who did not.

And where will I be? I start residency this June at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where the majority of patients are immunocompromised and at high risk of infection. Their fights against cancer must continue alongside the new threat of COVID-19, and I have to imagine that they are terrified. To be candid, so am I.

I am scared that I will be caring for patients in isolation wards where it will not be safe for loved ones to be with them to provide comfort and strength  or even to say goodbye. I am scared for my classmates, residents, and attendings who were already experiencing mental health challenges before COVID-19. I worry that their distress will compound and that colleagues will be too singularly focused on helping patients to realize that these providers need help, too. And my greatest concern is that without interventions, this distress might overcome their abilities to work through this pandemic, to remain in medicine after this pandemic, or worst of all, to continue living.

On April 26, a New York City emergency room doctor was unable to continue living after treating hundreds of COVID-19 patients. She died by suicide, despite having no prior history of mental illness. This doctor is patient zero of COVID-related suicide among U.S. physicians, and I am not aware of any coordinated containment strategies.

We cannot let this happen. If the second curve of mental distress among doctors mirrors the first curve of COVID-19, then our country could start losing its infantry, and we could lose this war. We urgently need collective action  from individual citizens up to our countrys leaders  to save the lives of those who are saving the lives of others.

Mimi Smith is a medical student. A version of this article originally appeared in MedPage Today.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
'During this crisis, we will not let you face difficulties,' said Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar

Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Saturday urged to not leave the state as some of industrial units have resumed operations during the

"Industries have resumed operations, and those which remain, will open from tomorrow. Hence, I would like to appeal to the migrant labourers to not return to their homes. You will not face any difficulties here," the Chief Minister said.

"Maybe you have not been to your homes in the last one or two years, you may feel homesick or families must be pressuring you to come back. But during this crisis, we will not let you face difficulties and will also ensure that your jobs remain secure," he added.

He also said that the state government will make arrangments for people, including tourists and pilgrims, who are stranded in the state.

The chief minister said the government will also bring back Haryana residents who are stranded in other states.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Wednesday granted permission for movement of stranded migrants workers, students and tourists.

The lockdown, which was scheduled to end on May 3, has been extended by another two weeks.
Visakhapatnam, May 3 : The Indian Navy saluted corona warriors by showering petals on Government Hospital for Chest and Communicable Diseases and GITAM Hospital in this port city on Sunday.

A Chetak helicopter from INS Dega showered flower petals on both the hospitals as a symbol to thank doctors, nurses, other paramedical staff and sanitation workers for their services in the battle against Coronavirus.

The medical professionals and paramedics had gathered in the hospital premises as the chopper showered petals on them in a rare honour.

Commodore Sanjeev Issar Naval Officer-in-Charge (Andhra Pradesh) felicitated the Corona warriors on behalf of Eastern Naval Command (ENC).

He presented a bouquet to Dr P.V. Sudhakar, Principal, Andhra Medical College, Dr K.V.V. Vijaya Kumar Superintendent Government Hospital for Chest and Communicable Diseases (GHCCD) and Dr Surya Kumari Covid Nodal Officer at GHCCD and Dr N. Dwarakanath, Medical Superintendent, GITAM Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (GIMSR).

Saluting the Corona Warriors, he expressed wholehearted gratitude to all the doctors, nurses, other health workers, hygiene and sanitation staff who have been risking their lives and relentlessly fighting the Covid and containing the spread of the pandemic.

Two Indian Navy ships will also be illuminating at anchorage from 7.30 p.m. on Sunday to midnight at Visakhapatnam coast to pay homage to Covid-19 warriors.

Medical professionals and others thanked the Indian Navy for their gesture. "We feel happy and honoured to be saluted by our brave defence personnel for showering the petals. We will together win this war," said Dr Surya Kumari.

Andhra Pradesh has been witnessing a spike in the number of Covid-19 cases for the last few days. The state reported 58 positive cases on Sunday, taking its tally to 1583.

According to the health department, Covid-19 has so far claimed 33 lives in the state. Out of total positive cases, 488 have recovered while 1062 are undergoing treatment.

Visakhapatnam has so far recorded only 29 cases, one of the least among 13 districts in the state.

Kurnool is the worst affected district with 466 cases including 10 deaths. Guntur reported 319 cases and Krishna 266 cases.
Bengaluru, May 3 : The Indian Air Force (IAF) gave an aerial salute to corona warriors by showering flowers from an helicopter on two hospitals while its two transport aircraft did a fly-past over the iconic state Secretariat building (Vidhana Soudha) in the city centre while cruising from Srinagar in Kashmir to Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, an official said on Sunday.

"A Russian-built Mi-17 took off from the Yelahanka air base in the city's northern suburb at 10.15 am and flew over Victoria Hospital and Command Hospital between 10.30-10.45 am, showering rose petals over them from a low height," a defence spokesman told IANS here.

Around 4.15 pm, the air force's latest twin transport aircraft - C-130 Hercules of the American Lockheed Martin - flew over the secretariat building in a partially cloudy sky as a tribute to the healthcare professionals fighting the Covid-19 battle since March across the country.

"About 100 people, including a few state officials, an Army music band and healthcare professionals, including doctors, nurses and paramedics from the state-run hospitals, were stationed on the ramparts of the imposing Secretariat building to wave at the twin speeding aircraft, wearing masks and maintaining physical distance," said the official.

Earlier in the day, a clear summer sky enabled the pilot to easily locate the hospitals in the city centre and eastern suburb to drop the flower petals on their roofs and around.

Maintaining physical distance and wearing masks, doctors, nurses and staff of both hospitals stood in the open ground and cheered the chopper pilot with thumbs-up sign for greeting them with flowers on the occasion.

"They all clapped and waved to the pilot as the copter flew over the hospitals," the official said.

An IAF band played music at both the hospitals and saluted the COVID-19 warriors in the grounds.

"We are touched by the IAF gesture in honouring our healthcare professionals who have been working day and night over a month-and-a-half in taking care of COVID-19 patients in the isolated wards," a hospital official told IANS on phone.
Madhya Pradesh Congress president Kamal Nath claimed on Sunday that the Congress party would again form the government in the state after the by-polls to 24 state assembly seats are held.

Kamal Nath, whose government lost the majority in the state assembly after a rebellion by 22 party MLAs, said, The voters are wise enough to understand the BJPs designs. The voters of the 22 constituencies, from where Congress MLAs resigned in March, know well that their representatives betrayed them and their party. The BJP will face anti-incumbency in the by-polls whereas, the Congress enjoys the trust of people. The rebellion had compelled Nath to tender his resignation from the chief ministers post on March 20.

In reply to a question he said the rebellion was unexpected.

Neither myself nor Digvijaya Singh ever believed that 22 of the Congress MLAs would be lured to betray the party and part ways with it, he said.

He also played down the allegations levelled by the rebels that he didnt listen to them and ignored development work in their constituencies.

I have got a complete list of works recommended by the MLAs and done by the then government. But I dont want to go into it. I am confident that our party is going to win the by-polls convincingly, Nath said.

On allegations that senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh used to run his government from behind the curtains, Kamal Nath said, I never outsourced the government. I ran my government. Its wrong to say that the MLAs were upset. I used to have meetings with ministers and officers to take decisions on public welfare schemes. At the same time, I used to meet MLAs too.

He also responded to chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhans allegations that the then Congress government did nothing to contain the coronavirus spread in the state and said his government undertook adequate measures including testing for the disease. Nath said it was under the BJP government that the coronavirus situation worsened in the state.

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Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said that the previous Congress government had created a chaotic situation in the state. The real heroes and true leaders are those who helped in uprooting a corrupt government. Jyotiraditya Scindia is such a leader for whom the interest of the state is supreme. Thats why he parted ways with the corrupt government, along with his friends, he added.

Chouhan said he also held the Congress rebels in high regard since they decided to put their political careers at stake to dislodge a self-centred government.

Those who worship a particular family and dont think of the public interest cant run their government for long even if they are able to get power by mistake, Chouhan said.

The Congress formed the government in the state on December 17, 2018, after securing 114 seats in the 230-member state assembly in the November elections. The government was also supported by 7 MLAs including 4 independent, two BSP and one SP MLAs.

The HT Guide to Coronavirus COVID-19

After the resignation of 22 Congress MLAs in March, the Congress is left with 92 MLAs, while the BJP has 107. Other two seats fell vacant after two MLAs--one each from the Congress and the BJP-- died. The present strength of the state assembly is 206 and the reduced majority mark is at 104.
(Newser)  Kim Jong Un has been welcomed back to the world stage, after nearly three weeks out of public view. President Trump tweeted that, "I, for one, am glad to see he is back, and well!" Trump shared state media photos of Kim, smiling and talking, purportedly at the opening of a fertilizer plant in Sunchon on Friday. US intelligence officials don't doubt that Kim is alive, Reuters reports, but haven't confirmed that the photos are of North Korea's ruler, or that they were taken Friday. Kim's absence had led to speculation about whether he had died or was incapacitated. The state news agency reported that crowds at the plant "broke into thunderous cheers of hurrah" when they saw him, per the BBC.

story continues below

Trump and Kim have exchanged personal letters in the past and met three times since 2018, and the president still refers to him as a friend. But there's been little progress in arms negotiations. "US-North Korea talks going nowhere," said Joseph Yun, an envoy to North Korea under former President Obama. "Kim Jong Un pushing the envelope, say through short-range missile tests; Trump hoping that nothing much happens at least through the November elections." Another analyst sees a lesson in the US unease over the past couple of weeks. "No one seemed particularly prepared to respond in case of a North Korean crisis given the current political conditions," he said. "That is something that should be addressed." (Read more Kim Jong Un stories.)
ISTANBUL - A smartphone app in Turkey asked for Murat Bur's identity number, his father's name and information about his relatives. Did he have any underlying health conditions, the app wondered, presenting him a list of options. How was he feeling at the moment, it asked. It also requested permission to track his movements.

None of this felt intrusive to Bur, a 38-year old personal trainer. The app, which he had voluntarily downloaded, had helpfully warned him that his neighborhood was a coronavirus hot spot. "There are people in our country still having parties and picnics. I do not see the harm in people being followed," he said. "There is an extraordinary situation in the world."

To the feelings of fear, restlessness, insecurity and sorrow taking hold around the globe, the pandemic era has added another certainty: being watched.

In a matter of months, tens of millions of people in dozens of countries have been placed under surveillance. Governments, private companies and researchers observe the health, habits and movements of citizens, often without their consent. It is a massive effort, aimed at enforcing quarantine rules or tracing the spread of the coronavirus, that has sprung up pell-mell in country after country.

"This is a Manhattan Project-level problem, that is being addressed by people all over the place," said John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab, a research center at the University of Toronto.

He is among a group of researchers and privacy advocates who say there is not enough debate over the consequences and utility of the new surveillance tools, and no indication how long the scrutiny will last - even as the flood of prying apps are becoming a reality for millions of people, like solitude and face masks.

Because of the pandemic, surveillance is a "necessary evil," said Lee Yoon-young, a South Korean university student who was under strict, government-monitored quarantine after returning home from her studies overseas. "I am not disturbed since I understand that stronger quarantine control allows those not under stay-at-home order to continue on with their lives without a nationwide lockdown," she said.

At least 27 countries are using data from cellphone companies to track the movements of citizens, according to Edin Omanovic, the advocacy director for Privacy International, which is keeping a record of surveillance programs. At least 30 countries have developed smartphone apps for the public to download, he said.

The monitoring has raised fewer objections in countries that have been more successful at battling the virus, like Singapore, and provoked a much louder debate in Europe and the United States - a difference that is reflected in the numbers of people who voluntarily download tracking applications.

In South Korea, millions of people have signed up to use websites or apps that show how the virus is spreading. More than 2 million Australians quickly downloaded a coronavirus contact-tracing app that was released on Sunday. But 3 in 5 Americans say they are unwilling or unable to use an infection-alert system being developed by Google and Apple, a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll has found.

Epidemiologists and government health officials have taken a central role in designing some of the coronavirus tracking programs. Privacy groups have been far more concerned when intelligence agencies have taken the lead, as they have in Pakistan and Israel, or when governments outsource tracing to private companies.

Infection-tracking software by NSO, an Israeli company, has attracted criticism before it has even launched. The company is best know for designing surveillance tools used by authoritarian governments to spy on dissidents, journalists and others. A person close to NSO said its new coronavirus tracking software, called Fleming, was being tested by more than two dozen governments around the world.

The pandemic has all but silenced the debate about encroachments on privacy by corporations, Scott-Railton said. "People are anxious. They are worried. They want to go back to normal, to handle doorknobs, to online date.

"We are looking to anyone who is pitching hope."

- - -

Turkey, which is wrestling with one of the worst outbreaks in the world, uses technology to track the spread of the virus in at least two ways. One is the app, called Life Fits in the Home, which solicits personal details to track infections and provides information, including the location of nearby hospitals and pharmacies.

The government has said that it is doing mandatory tracking of people 65 years or older, who are required to quarantine, and sending them cellphone messages when they venture out of their homes.

There has been little public backlash against the surveillance in Turkey, where people are accustomed to an intrusive and increasingly authoritarian central government. Any misgivings have also been tempered by a feeling the state should be taking stronger measures to control the outbreak.

Cigdem Sahin, an economics professor at Istanbul University, said she didn't think twice before downloading the tracking app, even though she is normally wary of government surveillance.

"I actually think it might be useful to surveil the spread of corona - if the system is used effectively and does not give an error," she said.

"I have no doubt that Turkey will use such apps as a vehicle for pressure and surveillance when need be," Sahin said.

But her primary concern was whether the app could work properly. It told her little she did not already know about her neighborhood, called Fatih, where there was a high concentration of infections. So she stopped using the app.

"We are being watched and our lives are being recorded, and one wonders how to deal with it," she said. "There is no escaping it."

One of the most critical questions is whether the programs actually yield reliable information about infection chains. Hasan Kasap, 73, a retired university professor, said he received a text message from the health ministry last month warning him to stay home, though he said he had not left his apartment in weeks.

"This approach made me lose my trust in this institution or this tracking system and even made me feel insulted," he said. "Location information is private. It should remain private." After the message, he turned off the option on his own phone that allowed it to be tracked, he said.

- - -

South Korea has never imposed a nationwide lockdown or travel restrictions in response to the coronavirus, only issuing strong advisories against nonessential travel as part of a national social distancing campaign. The country's coronavirus response, featuring widespread testing for infections, is often held up as a model around the world.

As part of that effort, South Korea's health authorities track the movement of people and then later retraces the steps of those diagnosed with the virus by using GPS phone tracking, credit card records, surveillance video and interviews with patients. The patient travel histories are published without names to help others identify whether they crossed paths with a virus carrier.

Another smartphone app monitors thousands of people under self-quarantine and reports their movements to the government.

Lee Yoon-young, the university student who has been under the remotely monitored quarantine, said she welcomed the geo-positioning app on her phone that allowed the government to pinpoint her location.

Lee returned to South Korea after her studies in the United Kingdom were disrupted by the pandemic. The contrast between the government response in the two countries was stark. In Brighton, where she studied, she had relied on patchy news reports to identify virus-prone locations to avoid. In South Korea, she has found it reassuring to be able to see online travel histories of virus carriers.

But the Korean travel data can be accessed not just by health-conscious residents but also voyeuristic onlookers, which was "concerning," she said, adding that personal information about infected people should be redacted.

Singapore also mobilized early to contain the epidemic by aggressively tracking chains of infection, imposing harsh penalties on patients who violated quarantine rules and mounting ubiquitous public awareness campaigns - while avoiding a full lockdown. Cellphone apps were developed to helped enforce self-quarantine rules and aid the contact-tracing effort by making use of Bluetooth technology.

Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, an author and journalist who lives in New York, saw how strictly quarantine rules were enforced when she flew to Singapore in late March and was forced to self-isolate in a hotel. Her location was monitored through her cellphone and twice a day, she was required to verify her whereabouts for the government, occasionally by sending a picture of her surroundings. Once, she got a video call from health officials, just to make sure she was where she said she was.

"They were very strict about it," she said. "As they should be."

Her experience in New York, with one of the world's deadliest outbreaks, made her more willing to accept government monitoring and less tolerant of people flouting quarantine and other distancing rules. "These are desperate times. I would have fought for my personal liberties on many levels before. Now I am the one trying to restrict the people around me. I am more of a scold," she said.

The intrusions were easier to accept because Singapore's government appeared to have citizens' welfare in mind, and no "ulterior motives," she said. But the number of intrusions was rising: one government app allowed people to report violations by their neighbors. More recently, some grocery stores had required people to provide their identity numbers to enter.

"It's worrying once you give up these liberties," she said. "Is this the way it's always going to be?"

- - -

The experience of countries hurriedly deploying apps and similar surveillance software highlights the limits of such technology and the challenge of wide-scale public buy-in even in places that are largely open to being watched.

Experts warn, for example, that apps relying on Bluetooth radios can provide inexact location data and falsely identify people as infected.

Jason Bay, the director of Singapore's contact tracing app, called TraceTogether, said in an online post last month, "If you ask me whether any Bluetooth contact tracing system deployed or under development, anywhere in the world, is ready to replace manual contact tracing, I will without qualification say that the answer is no."

John Scott-Railton of Citizen Lab said the effectiveness of such apps was ultimately determined by "human social behavior and racial and age demographics."

Apps are of limited utility unless a large percentage of a country's population downloads them, and even then, the reach of the software is limited to people who own smartphones, which often excluded lower income people, racial minorities and people over 65, he said.

Some surveillance initiatives have also run into organized efforts to rein them in.

In Israel, a group of civil liberties groups went to court in March to block a far-reaching effort by Israel's internal security agency, the Shin Bet, to track cellphones of covid-19 patients. The agency uses cellphone location signals of known coronavirus cases and its own vast trove of data to detect users who have been in proximity to an infected person - information health officials use to alert people to self-isolate.

On Sunday, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the government tracking would require parliamentary legislation to continue much past the end of April, when the emergency measure was due to expire.

Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, was one of the groups that filed a petition with the high court objecting to the government's reliance on emergency powers to expand the reach of its security apparatus. "Surveillance violates the constitutional right to privacy and there exist other tools to deal with the coronavirus," said Suhad Bishara, an attorney for Adalah.

While contact tracing is an important tool for isolating infected people, "extending the work of such an agency to do civil-related matters becomes very problematic," she said, adding that many Palestinians, subject to surveillance or interrogations by Israeli security services over decades, fear the agency would misuse health records and other data it has access to, she said.

Roxanne Halper, 60, who works in international development and leans toward the left end of Israel's political spectrum, said she would normally be wary of government surveillance, but not this time.

"I feel like I should have a problem with it and yet I don't," Halper said during a phone interview from her home on a small kibbutz between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Like many, she said health considerations now seem more pressing than privacy. She had even downloaded a voluntary government app and appreciated it every day when it told her she had had no contact with a known coronavirus case. (The app is separate from the Internal Security Agency's tracking efforts.)

"I take comfort from that," she said. "I can't be afraid of the [risk to privacy] right now. I'm much more afraid of corona and what it's doing to society," she said.

- - -

Kim reported from Seoul and Hendrix from Jerusalem. The Washington Post's Shibani Mahtani in Hong Kong, Zeynep Karatas in Istanbul and Brian Murphy in Washington contributed to this report.

- - -

How countries use phones to fight the virus

Singapore's government launched the TraceTogether app in late March, saying it would speed up and simplify contact tracing. Downloading the app is voluntary. Users can choose whether to allow the health ministry to access data showing the phone owner's contacts. Roughly one in five people in Singapore have downloaded the app, which uses Bluetooth technology.

Israel's Internal Security Agency used its advanced cyber-tracking capabilities to keep tabs on people infected with the coronavirus as well as those they may have come in contact with. The health ministry used the information to order people into quarantine after coming in contact with someone infected. Civil liberties groups went to court to block the effort. The Israeli Supreme Court ruled last month that government tracking would require parliamentary legislation to continue.

South Korea's health authorities retrace the steps of people infected with the virus, using GPS phone tracking, credit card records, surveillance video and personal interviews with patients. The patients' travel histories are posted on a website without names to help others identify whether they crossed paths with a virus carrier.

- Kareem Fahim
New Delhi: With an uncertain global future staring every nation amid the coronavirus pandemic, New Delhis message to the rest of the world is clear that India will be a reliable partner on medicines. Form the mighty United States to the tiny Caribbean island nation of St. Lucia not far from it, India is engaging with nations both big and small and across continents and conveying the same message.

The export of anti-malarial drug Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) by India, seen as a key drug across the world in the fight against the dreaded coronavirus, has proved to the world that India has walked the talk. From Latin and South America to the US, across Africa, Europe, the Gulf region, South-east Asia, Australia and East Asia, it is a message that has resonated with Indias friends in their hour of need.

External affairs minister S. Jaishankar conveyed to his counterpart from St. Lucia late on Friday evening that India will be a reliable partner on medicines. Just on Thursday, his ministrys spokesperson Anurag Srivastava had declared that the supply of essential medicines by India to foreign nations to fight the coronavirus pandemic had enhanced Indias reputation as the pharmacy of the world.

It may be recalled that on the supply of medicines by India to foreign nations, the MEA spokesperson had on Thursday said, Our supplies to other countries of Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), and other essential medicines produced in India are ongoing. These supplies are taking place both as humanitarian aid as well as on a commercial basis. Even in these challenging times, we have remained responsible in living up to our international commitments which has enhanced our reputation of being the pharmacy to the world.

He had added, In terms of numbers, we have already provided 2.8 million HCQ tablets as grant assistance to 25 countries. We have also provided paracetamol, about 1.9 million tablets as well as in another form to 31 countries. In addition, consignments of HCQ and of paracetamol are being sent to 87 countries on a commercial basis.
Challenges associated with food availability are causing Pennsylvania adults over the age of 60 to leave their homes more often than anticipated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Such was the leading takeaway last week from a 32-page report on a survey of older Pennsylvanians released from the Pennsylvania Council on Aging, according to Robert Torres, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Aging.

For that, Torres stressed during a video press conference, the state will do what it can to help reverse that trend, including encouraging grocery stores to better assist older adults in curbside orders and home-delivery effectiveness.

With some of the concerns that were raised about food access, I was surprised that older adults are going out more than I expected, said Torres, when asked about the most unexpected result of the study. However with the shift to seniors not being able to go to senior centers or adult day centers, theres a lot of pressure being put on to make sure food is being made available to the seniors.

I think the pressure being put on the supply chain as far as delivery and not having enough inventory is obviously pushing the seniors to go out.

The statewide online review was completed in one week by the Council on Aging and received 3,776 responses from older adults. The findings broken into three categories, reflecting the replies of citizens aged 60 to 70, 71 to 90 and 91 and older. With the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reporting that 80 percent of coronavirus-connected deaths in the United States have been of adults 65 or older, the study sought findings specific to Pennsylvania.

The survey was distributed through an internet link to contacts of the Council on Aging, in both English and Spanish. Among those included in the study, the council said, were community-based organizations serving older Latino, African-American and LGBTQ adults. Of the responses, 3,692 were deemed suitable. The surveys were meant to identify how older adults are interacting in their communities during the pandemic, included 14 questions and took approximately five minutes to complete.

While a statewide stay-at-home order was issued on April 1, the study found, among other things, that Pennsylvanias older adults are visiting grocery stores nearly twice a week and that they are going to pharmacies in high numbers. Family and religious interests have also driven older adults to leave their homes during the emergency.

Older Pennsylvanians, the study showed, were also the most likely to visit post offices and banks and less likely to have their groceries delivered. They are also more inclined to feel the effects of social isolation.

One of the comments that we saw frequently in the survey was that theyre not getting their orders completely filled and delivery times were long, Torres said. Its an opportunity to see who we can work with to see if there are opportunities to change some of the current procedures. In terms of social isolation, theres a lot of interest on that topic. We are working with universities that have expressed interest in working with the department to work with older adults on the issue.

To reduce that isolation, particularly among nursing-home residents, Torres said his department has a partnership with the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) to provide more devices to patients to maintain better contact with family members. According to Torres, the AARP has hundreds of volunteers prepared to assist in that effort.

From the study, the Department of Aging recommended that grocery stores prioritize delivery or curbside pickup for older adults. Also, it encouraged stores to offer specific hours for seniors to shop on Sundays, the day they are most likely to leave their homes.

We really hope these findings will lead to good decision-making and policies and procedures moving forward, said Faith Haussler, the executive director of the Council on Aging, during the cyber-briefing. We wanted to be sure we were capturing real-time information from older adults.

The full State of Older Adults COVID-19 Report, can be accessed at the Department of Agings website, www.aging.pa.gov. Choose the Organizations option, then select the Council on Aging category.

The (Tom) Wolf administration and the Department of Aging are keenly aware that food access, community connections and social isolation have and will continue to be issues affecting older adults well-being and quality of life, said Torres, in a statement announcing the study results. The responses drawn by this survey, in real time during this pandemic, present an opportunity for us to deepen our collective understanding of these major issues and engage with partners to develop thoughtful, creative and effective solutions.
Washington

As the global death toll from the coronavirus (COVID-19) surpassed 200,000 yesterday, countries took cautious steps toward easing some lockdowns. The worldwide death toll had reached nearly 202,000, according to a tally compiled by John Hopkins University from government figures, but the actual death toll is believed to be far higher, said an AP report. In India, easing restrictions meant reopening neighborhood stores that many of the countrys 1.3 billion people rely on for everything from cold drinks to mobile phone data cards. But the loosening didnt apply to hundreds of quarantined towns and other places hit hardest by the outbreak, which has killed at least 775 people in the country and terrified its multitudes of poor who live in slum conditions too crowded for social distancing.

Shopping malls also stayed closed nationwide. Still, for families that run small stores, being able to earn again brought relief. Elsewhere in Asia, authorities reported no new deaths yesterday for the 10th straight day in China, where the virus originated. And South Korea reported just 10 fresh cases, the eighth day in a row its daily jump came below 20. There were no new deaths for the second straight day. Some countries extended or tightened restrictions, confirming a pattern of caution. Sri Lanka had partially lifted a month-long daytime curfew in more than two thirds of the country. But it re-imposed a 24- hour lockdown countrywide until Monday after a surge of 46 new infections, its highest increase in a day. Norway extended until at least Sept. 1 its ban on events with more than 500 participants.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced that Spaniards will be allowed to leave their homes for short walks and exercise starting May 2, after seven weeks of strict home confinement, though he said maximum caution will be our guideline. Kids in Spain will get their first fresh air in weeks when a ban on letting them outside is relaxed starting today after 44 days indoors, with restrictions. Belgium sketched out plans for a progressive lockdown relaxation starting May 4 with the resumption of nonessential treatment in hospitals and the reopening of textile and sewing shops to make face masks.

In Italy, where restrictions also will be eased May 4, authorities warned against abandoning social distancing practices as millions return to work. Britain held off on changes to its lockdown as the virus-related death toll in hospitals topped 20,000. The figure doesnt include deaths in nursing homes, likely to be in the thousands. In France, the government prepared to ease one of Europes strictest lockdowns from May 11, while officials in Rio de Janeiro and four other major cities warned that their hospital systems are on the verge of collapse or already overwhelmed.
WASHINGTONFormer U.S. president George W. Bush called on Americans on Saturday to put aside partisan differences, heed the guidance of medical professionals and show empathy for those stricken by the coronavirus and the resulting economic devastation.

In a three-minute video message, Bush, who rarely speaks out on current events, struck a tone of unity that contrasted with the more combative approach taken at times by President Donald Trump as the former president evoked the sense of national solidarity in the wake of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Let us remember how small our differences are in the face of this shared threat, Bush said in the professionally produced video set against music and photographs of medical workers helping victims of the virus and of ordinary Americans wearing masks. In the final analysis, we are not partisan combatants. We are human beings, equally vulnerable and equally wonderful in the sight of God. We rise or fall together and we are determined to rise.

While Bush never mentioned Trumps name, the sitting president clearly took the message as an implicit rebuke and lashed out at his predecessor Sunday. In a Twitter message, Trump quoted a Fox News personality saying, Oh bye the way, I appreciate the message from former President Bush, but where was he during Impeachment calling for putting partisanship aside.

Trump then added in his own voice, He was nowhere to be found in speaking up against the greatest Hoax in American history!

Bushs message was part of a series of videos aired online as part of a 24-hour livestreamed project, The Call to Unite, that also featured Oprah Winfrey, Tim Shriver, Julia Roberts, Martin Luther King III, Sean Combs, Quincy Jones, Naomi Judd, Andrew Yang and others.

Former president Bill Clinton also delivered a message, speaking into a camera in what looked like a video chat from his home. We need each other, and we do better when we work together, he said. Thats never been more clear to me as I have seen the courage and dignity of the first responders, the health care workers, all the people who are helping them to provide our food, our transportation, our basic services to the other essential workers.

Trump has declined to call on his predecessors to help bring the country together during the pandemic, which has claimed more than 66,000 lives in the United States and put more than 30 million people out of work. Past presidents made a point of enlisting former occupants of the White House from both parties in times of crisis to demonstrate national resolve and unity.

Bush recruited his father, former president George Bush, and Clinton to respond to a devastating tsunami in Asia and then to hurricane Katrina. President Barack Obama asked the younger Bush and Clinton to respond to an earthquake in Haiti.

Trump, for his part, has dismissed the idea of calling his predecessors for help, either to participate or even to offer advice. I dont think Im going to learn much, he said when asked about the idea in March. I guess you could say that theres probably a natural inclination not to call.

Bush has never been a fan of his fellow Republican president. Trump defeated his brother, Jeb Bush, for the nomination in 2016 and has lambasted the 43rd presidents record repeatedly. Bush refused to support Trump that fall, saying he had voted for none of the above instead. While disturbed by Trumps leadership, Bush has largely kept quiet since then with a couple of notable exceptions, such as a speech in New York and a eulogy for Sen. John McCain that were seen as implicit rebukes of the incumbent.

In his video message Saturday, Bush recalled the difficult days after Sept. 11. Let us remember, we have faced times of testing before, he said as images flashed on the screen of him comforting relatives of those killed in the attacks. Following 9/11, I saw a great nation rise as one to honour the brave, to grieve with the grieving and to embrace unavoidable new duties. And I have no doubt, none at all, that this spirit of service and sacrifice is alive and well in America.

Bush also called for compassion, a trait that Trump has largely eschewed during the pandemic in favour of demonstrating what he considers strength and optimism. Let us remember that empathy and simple kindness are essential powerful tools of national recovery, Bush said. And he added: Lets remember that the suffering we experience as a nation does not fall evenly.

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Rep. Ben Ray Lujan said hes disappointed that funding for small communities struggling through the COVID-19 pandemic was not included in the last coronavirus aid package that provided additional relief for small businesses and the health care industry.

Under the CARES Act, cities with populations under 500,000 could not apply directly for money set aside for state and local governments to cover COVID-19 costs. In New Mexico, only Albuquerque can apply on its own.

Lujan and U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., have sponsored legislation that would provide $250 billion in stabilization funding across the country for smaller communities.

We must do more to support local and state governments that are incurring significant costs responding to this pandemic, Lujan said.

He and fellow Democrat U.S. Rep. Xochitl Torres Small told the Journal they believed relief for small towns and rural communities would be included in the next package. Torres Small said much-needed funding would be included for law enforcement and fire departments.

Too many cities are suffering, she said. They need our help to keep functioning.

Flexible funding is absolutely essential, Heinrich said during a Thursday news conference, maintaining that no community should be left behind as the nation recovers from the pandemic.

U.S. Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M., said during a press briefing with Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller that she would like to see funding for high-speed internet so everyone has access for school, economic opportunities and essential activities, such as replying to the Census or filing for unemployment.

She also said she wanted to make sure families have access to relief regardless of immigration or tax status.

SECOND ROUND OF SMALL-BUSINESS AID: Heinrich said it was too early to tell if New Mexicos small businesses still have the same kind of problems applying for aid through the Paycheck Protection Program as they did following passage of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act.

The CARES Act set aside almost $350 billion, but the program ran out of money just as many businesses in the state were applying. Another $310 billion was appropriated during the second round.

A better job of policing needs to be done this time to make sure funding doesnt go to places where it shouldnt go, the senator said. During the first round, larger corporations got money that was intended for smaller businesses.

We need to find out where some of that money went, Torres Small said. Too many New Mexico businesses were crowded out in the first round.

Heinrich said his office was working with businesses to find out if they were the right fit for the funding. If not, he said, his office was trying to help find other sources of relief.

MLG FEATURED IN TRUMP REELECTION AD: President Donald Trumps reelection campaign has launched a digital ad featuring Democratic governors praising the president for his COVID-19 pandemic help.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is featured in a national news clip saying the state received ventilators it requested in short order.

Other Democratic governors featured in the ad included New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and California Gov. Gavin Newsome.

In the fight against the coronavirus, the Trump administration is not just taking a whole of government approach, but a whole of America approach, Trump campaign deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews said in a news release. Even Democratic governors recognize President Trumps tireless work to combat the coronavirus and his commitment to protecting all Americans.

The ad will be featured on YouTube and Facebook in 17 states, including New Mexico.

Scott Turner: sturner@abqjournal.com
The SBI official also said the Indian Banks Association (IBA) is also evaluating measures, which can be taken by the banks in this situation

Kolkata: The country's largest lender, State Bank of India, on Saturday said it would be very difficult to assess medium or long-term impact on the banking sector at the moment in the wake of the ongoing nationwide lockdown as this will continue to evolve in the emerging situation.

The bank is looking at the short-term nowthe next two or three quarters, a senior SBI official said on condition of anonymity.

The impact of the lockdown over the next one to two years will be difficult to assess at the moment, he pointed out.

"In the next one to two years, we will have to navigate very carefully and SBI is sure of a turnaround as India is young country and a growing economy," the senior official of the lender said.

He said the bank was the first to come out with the response by providing working capital as "emergency COVID-19 credit line to the extent of ten percent". This was extended to all the customers with "standard assets", he said, adding that other banks then followed the suit.

Regarding the three-month moratorium on repayment of loans, announced by the Reserve Bank of India in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, he said, nearly 20-25 percent of SBI's corporate borrowers had availed of it. "Availing of the moratorium has an inherent interest cost," the official said.

He said the RBI's LTRO (Long-Term Repo Operations) facility to banks has also helped in getting liquidity.

"SBI took around 20-25 percent of this liquidity facility provided by RBI," he said. The bank is reaching out to customers who are havingan impaired cash-flow so that they can be helped further, he said.

According to an analysis, the aviation, hospitality, travel and tourism sectors were the most affected in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, he said, adding power and steel were also adversely impacted as demand falls. The sectors that could benefit from the pandemic are the pharmaceutical industry and medical equipment manufacturing, the official said.

According to him, the banks have been allowed to reassess working capital limits of the companies, in case they are affected by the COVID-19 crisis. Normally, reassessment of working capital is equivalent to restructuring and has to be shown as non-performing assets, he said.

The SBI official also said the Indian Banks Association (IBA) is also evaluating measures, which can be taken by the banks in this situation, and weighing further supports that can be sought from the regulator.

India could derive an advantage from the COVID-19 outbreak as number of companies overseas have shown interest to shift their base to the country, he said.

For exporters, he said, charges and fees had already been lowered prior to the present crisis, and the bank is willing to look at liquidity and other supports that can be given, whenever needed.
In an encounter with militants and an intense gun battle that lasted nearly eight hours, in Handwara town in Jammu and Kashmir, a Colonel, a major, two Army jawans and a police sub-inspector were killed.

ANI

Colonel Ashutosh Sharma was the commanding officer of the 21 Rashtriya Rifles unit team which was leading the counter-terror operation.

According to an ANI report, Colonel Ashutosh Sharma belonging to the Guards Regiment had been serving in the Kashmir valley for a long time and was twice awarded the Sena Medal for gallantry including one for his bravery as commanding officer.

After a long anxious night, we have this heart-rending news about martyrdom of our brave-hearts.

COLONEL ASHUTOSH SHARMA

21 RR,

MAJOR ANUJ SOOD

21 RR,

NAIK RAJESH

21 RR,

LANCE NAIK DINESH

21 RR,

SUB INSPECTOR SHAKEEL QAZI

J&K POLICE#Handwara_Encounter pic.twitter.com/CpmrZBlbAY  Imtiyaz Hussain (@hussain_imtiyaz) May 3, 2020

He had received gallantry as a CO when he had saved the lives of his men by subduing a militant running towards them with a concealed grenade, reports India Today.

Sources in the Indian Army said that the Colonel Ashutosh Sharma had told his colleagues earlier that it was his aim to either nab or gun down Lashkar-e-Taiba commander Haider.



I salute & pay my respects to

COLONEL ASHUTOSH SHARMA

21 RR,

MAJOR ANUJ SOOD

21 RR,

NAIK RAJESH

21 RR,

LANCE NAIK DINESH

21 RR,

SUB INSPECTOR SHAKEEL QAZI

J&K POLICE

Who were martyrd at #Handwara_Encounter . Its a great loss to the nation.

 pic.twitter.com/P7NwI4se7P  Ashoke Pandit (@ashokepandit) May 3, 2020

As reported by India Today, Colonel Ashutosh Sharma's demise is the first time in five years that a Commanding Officer or Colonel-rank officer has been killed during a counter-terrorism operation in Jammu and Kashmir.

This is heart wrenching

"A daughter's first love" "A hero"



Dear princess your father will always remain in our hearts.



COLONEL ASHUTOSH SHARMA with her daughter. pic.twitter.com/30Li3X2n6h  Dipti Prajapati (@DiptiPrajapat17) May 3, 2020

Colonel Sharma, originally from Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh, is survived by his wife and 12-year-old daughter.
SEATTLE  When a pack of Asian giant hornets targets a hive of honeybees for slaughter, the carnage can be swift.

The so-called murder hornets, which have surfaced for the first time in the United States, have a particular appetite for bees and specialize in group attacks. The slaughter begins when a worker hornet spots a colony, marks it with a pheromone and then brings a backup crew of between two and 50 others. While a honeybee hive can have thousands of residents, hornets can wipe out the entire population in hours.

During one recorded slaughter examined by researchers, each hornet killed one bee every 14 seconds, using powerful mandibles to decapitate its prey.

But some bees have also demonstrated a remarkable survival strategy by working as a team to fight back against individual invaders, researchers have found.

When a hornet enters the hive of Japanese honeybees, researchers have witnessed how hundreds of bees can respond by forming a ball around a hornet. While the bees face an immense disadvantage in both size and strength, the bees working in unison can vibrate to produce heat, raising the temperature in the formation, like a tiny oven, to more than 115 degrees. Bees can survive the high temperature, but the hornet cannot, and after up to an hour of cooking, the hornet dies.

European honeybees, which are the most common pollinator in the United States, dont appear to have the same instinct. They try to defend against a hornet attack by stinging the invaders, but the Asian giant hornet carries a rigid exoskeleton that makes bee stings ineffective, according to researchers.

The honeybee in Japan has adapted with this predator and learned through generations to protect themselves, said Ruthie Danielsen, a beekeeper in Birch Bay, Washington, near where two Asian giant hornets were discovered. Our honeybees, the predator has never been there before, so they have no defense.

While the Asian giant hornet is a threat to humans, with a potent stinger that kills up to 50 people each year in Japan, its arrival in the United States has brought particular dread to beekeepers. They are working together to post traps to try to catch queens this spring and workers in the upcoming summer. Government biologists are trying to identify where the hornet has settled in Washington state and eradicate it before it establishes a permanent presence.

Danielsen said the beekeepers were exploring a special trap used in Japan that was placed in front of a beehive, designed to catch an Asian giant hornet before it marks the hive with a pheromone.

Tim Lawrence, a professor of entomology at Washington State University with expertise in honeybees, said that in Japan, however, there were smaller beekeeping operations compared with in the United States. In America, he said, it is not uncommon to find hundreds of bee hives in an apiary.

We dont know whats going to happen if the hornet is established in an apiary of that size, Lawrence said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
By bailing out the sources of systemic fragility with trillions of dollars, the Fed has shifted the risk to the entire financial system and the nations currency.

That the global economy is fragile is painfully obvious to all. What is less obvious is the bailouts intended to "save" the fragile economy actively increase its fragility, setting up an inevitable collapse of the entire precarious system.

Systems that are highly centralized, i.e. dependent on a handful of nodes that are each points of failure--are intrinsically fragile and prone to collapse. Put another way, systems in which all the critical nodes are tightly bound are prone to domino-like cascades of failure as any one point of failure quickly disrupts every other critical node that is bound to it.

Ours is an economy in which capital, wealth, power and control are concentrated in a few nodes of the network/ecosystem we call "the economy." A handful of corporations own the vast majority of the media, a handful of banks control most of the lending and capital, a handful of hospital chains, pharmaceutical companies and insurers control healthcare, and so on.

Control of digital technologies is even more concentrated, in virtual monopolies: Google for search and Youtube, etc. and Facebook / Instagram and Twitter for social media, Microsoft and Apple for operating systems and services derived from OS, and so on.

The vast majority of participants in the economy are tightly bound to these concentrated nodes of capital and power, and these top-down, hierarchical dependencies generate fragility.

When unexpectedly severe variability and volatility occur, the disruption of a few nodes brings down the entire system. Thus the disruption of the subprime mortgage subsystem--a relatively small part of the total mortgage market and a tiny slice of the global financial system--nearly brought down the entire global financial system in 2008 because the GFS is a tightly bound system of centralized concentrations of capital, power and control.

Currently, were seeing the fragility of a meat production system that has concentrated ownership and production of meatpacking into a relatively few nodes on which the entire food supply chain is totally dependent.

And so whats the status quo "fix" when this intrinsically fragile system comes apart? Increase its fragility by bailing out the most tightly bound, dominant nodes. This is what the monopoly on creating currency, the Federal Reserve, is doing on a vast scale.

Rather than reducing the fragility of the system, the Federal Reserve is increasing the fragility, guaranteeing a collapse of not just the financial system but the currency as well.

To better understand systemic fragility, we turn to Nassim Talebs description of antifragile systems. For those who havent read Talebs book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, here is a partial definition: Nassim Taleb: A Definition of Antifragile and its Implications:

"Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure , risk, and uncertainty. Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Let us call it antifragile. Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better. This property is behind everything that has changed with time: evolution, culture, ideas, revolutions, political systems, technological innovation, cultural and economic success, corporate survival, good recipes, the rise of cities, cultures, legal systems, equatorial forests, bacterial resistance...even our own existence as a species on this planet.

And we can almost always detect antifragility (and fragility) using a simple test of asymmetry: anything that has more upside than downside from random events (or certain shocks) is antifragile; the reverse is fragile.

We have been fragilizing the economy, our health, political life, education, almost everything... by suppressing randomness and volatility. Much of our modern, structured, world has been harming us with top-down policies and contraptions (dubbed 'Soviet-Harvard delusions in the book) which do precisely this: an insult to the antifragility of systems. This is the tragedy of modernity: as with neurotically overprotective parents, those trying to help are often hurting us the most.

Given the unattainability of perfect robustness, we need a mechanism by which the system regenerates itself continuously by using, rather than suffering from, random events, unpredictable shocks, stressors, and volatility."

Does our financial system advance via unexpected shocks, extreme volatility, unknown unknowns and ceaseless variability? Youre joking, right? The smallest perturbation in any node brings the system to the edge of collapse. Exhibit #1 is last Falls spot of bother in the obscure financial node known as the repo market. This relatively modest part of the financial system almost triggered a stock market crash, and so the monopoly on creating currency, the Fed, immediately printed hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out every single player in the repo market--all behind the scenes, of course, lest the extreme fragility of the entire over-leveraged, speculative contraption become visible.

Making an incredibly fragile system more fragile via bailing out every node of concentrated capital, power and control guarantees the entire rotten structure will collapse. As I have often pointed out here, risk cannot be made to disappear, it can only be shifted. By bailing out the sources of systemic fragility with trillions of dollars, the Fed has shifted the risk to the entire financial system and the nations currency.

Simply put: the only possible output of Fed bailouts is the complete collapse of the entire financial system, including the currency the Fed is creating with such abandon.

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From Phase 1 of the Spanish government's de-escalation plan (from 11 May for the whole country except the islands of Formentera, El Hierro, La Graciosa and La Gomera, where it will be from tomorrow), people will be able to meet in groups of a maximum of ten.

These gatherings can be at someone's home or outside, such as on a terrace. People should maintain social distancing of two metres and observe established hygiene measures. Excluded from such gatherings will be pregnant women and people who, for example, have diabetes or suffer from immunosuppressed conditions.

The government has amended the regulation regarding bar terrace capacity from Phase 1. This had been set at 30%, but has been increased to 50%.

Entering Phase 1 is still conditional on provinces meeting criteria set by the government. These include the infection rates, testing and health system capacity.
Students and staff without coronavirus symptoms at 80 West Australian public schools, education support centres and residential colleges will start getting voluntarily tested for the virus in coming weeks.

Swab testing of school-aged children in WA to start.

No student-to-student or student-to-teacher transmission of COVID-19 has been recorded in WA and schools have been deemed safe, but for this to continue the state government has enlisted medical researchers to test asymptomatic members of key community sectors.

In partnership with the Telethon Kids Institute, the state governments DETECT program will start randomised testing of school students and staff without symptoms before moving on to include fly-in, fly-out workers and frontline healthcare workers.

The study will start this week but swab testing of school staff and students will begin in the coming weeks, according to the state government, as student attendance is expected to increase from the average 60 per cent recorded at public schools on Friday. Swab testing of children will be less invasive and is reflected in the above picture.


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The pastor of a Worcester church will be issued a $300 fine after he violated the governors ban on gatherings, city officials said Sunday.

Meanwhile, the pastor of the Adams Square Baptist Church plans to continue to hold the in-person services.

It is the citys understanding that the pastor of the Adams Square Baptist Church has today violated Governor Bakers order prohibiting public gatherings of more than 10 people, City Manager Edward Augustus Jr. said in a statement. It is disappointing that despite all of the sound medical advice, and evidence of the effectiveness of limiting public gathering in curbing the spread of the COVID-19 virus, that this pastor has chosen to ignore that.

Augustus said Pastor Kristopher Casey put the health of his parishioners, and anyone they may come in direct contact with, at risk.

The city will issue Casey a $300 civil fine Monday for violating Gov. Charlie Bakers order on gatherings of 10 or more people.

There were at least 45 people at the churchs service Sunday, the third in-person service held amid the coronavirus pandemic and the governors orders.

A week ago, the church had more than 50 people inside the church and was issued a warning. The church had another service Wednesday but fewer than 10 people gathered inside.

After the service Sunday, Casey had a group of people outside gather and pray. He also had the group sing God Bless America.

Casey said the governors order violates clear Constitutional rights under the 1st and 14th Amendments and Massachusetts law.

Just because its not written into law, it may be an order, it may be something else, but no law means, no law, Casey said.

The pastor talked about Provincetown, Massachusetts and the first settlers. Settlers built homes and cut down trees in the Cape Cod community, he said.

What they didnt realize is the root structures died and left areas unprotected from the wind. It caused dunes to collect, the pastor said.

If we cut down the gospel tree of Jesus Christ and we cut down the tree of the church, if we allow the state or the government or anybody to lay their hand on the axe and slice that tree down, it will completely change the dynamic of what America is all about, Casey said.

The pastor said he needed to take a stand and let "authorities know were not going to let it happen on our watch.

Casey would only say more than 10 people were inside the church. He did tell people he would see them next Sunday.

Worcester Police Chief Steven Sargent was nearby counting the number of people going through the doors. The chief was in plainclothes.

Casey said the church had a deep cleaning and everyone inside was required to wear masks and gloves.

At the church Sunday, the pastor offered gloves to people who needed them and another member of the church took peoples temperatures as soon as they entered. Hand sanitizer was available at the entrance.

Casey planned to keep people apart while inside the church in order to practice social distancing, but people were standing within 6 feet of one another while entering the church and outside after the service.

In a Facebook post, Casey wrote that churches should be considered essential business because businesses like liquor stores remain open during the pandemic.

Casey can now face a $500 fine and possible criminal charges if the governors order is violated again.

City officials, a week ago, criticized the church for having the in-person service with more than 50 people. Sargent hand-delivered a letter telling the pastor to comply with the governors order.

Related Content:
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-04 01:12:37|Editor: huaxia

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BAGHDAD, May 3 (Xinhua) -- The Iraqi health ministry on Sunday confirmed 77 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total number to 2,296 in the country.

The 77 new cases during the past 24 hours were 55 in the capital Baghdad, eight in Basra and Muthanna each, five in Kirkuk and one in Anbar, the ministry said in a statement.

So far, 97 have died from the disease while 1,490 recovered, according to the statement.

The Iraqi authorities have taken several measures to contain the outbreak of COVID-19, including a nationwide curfew.

Last month, the Iraqi authorities decided to partially lift the curfew from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. between April 21 and May 22 except for Friday and Saturday, which covers most of the holy month of Ramadan starting April 24.

On April 26, a Chinese team of medical experts left Iraq after a 50-day stay to support the Iraqi health system to contain the pandemic.

China has also donated medical aid to Iraq to combat the coronavirus pandemic. On March 7, China sent the first batch of medical aid to Iraq, followed by the second batch on April 8, and the third on April 20. Enditem
An Indian Air Force (IAF)



helicopter on Sunday showered rose petals on doctors, nurses, laboratory technicians and sanitation workers of two hospitals in Guwahati to express gratitude for their fight against COVID-19.

The Mi-17 chopper showered the petals on the staff assembled in the premises of the Gauhati Medical College and Hospital and the MMC Civil Hospital here.

Three Sukhoi SU-30 fighter jets also flew past the Assam Legislative Assembly building.

An IAF band also played patriotic songs to express gratitude to the frontline personnel.

The doctors, nurses and other healthcare providers said they were overwhelmed by the gesture.

"This expression of gratitude is a blessing and encouragement to us to serve the people in this battle against COVID-19 and other diseases," a doctor at GMCH said.

An emotional nurse at GMCH said that the medical fraternity has been encouraged by the gesture to continue the fight against COVID-19.

Volunteers of a local NGO also honoured the health personnel with 'Gamosa', a traditional hand-woven Assamese scarf.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
On Colombia`s National Day of Peace, still more has to be done to achieve overall tranquility for a country which still struggles with the hangover resulting from five decades of Civil War.

By James Blears

In his 2017 visit to Colombia, at Simon Boliver Park in the Capital Bogota, His Holiness Pope Francisco urged every faction to swim instead of flounder by setting aside agendas. He said: "Jesus passes through Colombia and calls on its inhabitants to cast out into the deep, to take risks for peace and reconciliation."



During this week the National Liberation Army, the ELN scrapped a month long truce with the Colombian Government, taking into account the Coronavirus. Both sides immediately accused the other of not working hard enough to reach and secure a final peace pact, yet both are ready to resume cudgels. After the 2016, Peace Agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia the FARC, the ELN is the last major guerrilla group that`s still waging an armed conflict. It`s been dragging on since the 1960`s.

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In this same week, eleven military officials have been fired and an Army General has been retired, following magazine reports of cyber spying on national and international journalists, politicians, members of the Government and even their own colleagues. Minister of Defense Carlos Holmes Trujillo confirms the investigation is ongoing. The Country and its ordinary people, are trying with all their might to return to the path of full democracy with peace for all. But the effort by some groups, who remain determined to cling to the coarse security blanket of the blundering past, must be significantly more selfless with a greater and significantly more courageous goal. Today of all days is a time for those few, those entrenched minority to think peace, NOT self. to unclench a corroding iron fist, discard the sword, pick up a peace pen and then finally after more than half a lifetime... shake hands.
Although the Second World War ended nearly 75 years ago, the hunt for Nazi war criminals continues as a specialist unit battles to bring the last living perpetrators to justice.

Jens Rommel heads up a small team at the Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist [Nazi] Crimes dedicated to scouring the world for the elderly Nazis.

As the chief senior prosecutor, Rommel works out of a former women's prison in the picturesque German city of Ludwigsburg.

He and his investigators scour around 1.7 million documents dating back to the 1930s to find perpetrators of Nazi war crimes in Adolf Hitler's totalitarian killing machine.

The commission possesses the largest collection of files, documentation and materials concerning criminal activities during Nazi rule.

German prosecutor, head of Central Office of the Judicial Authorities of the Federal States for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes, Jens Rommel in the archives room

Jewish women and children, some wearing the yellow Star of David patch on their chests, at Auschwitz concentration camp, Poland, in around 1943

Rommel shows an index card bearing the name of former physician Josef Mengele in the archives room

Since 2015, Rommel has headed the unit, which began in 1958 as the newly formed West Germany began investigating crimes which took place outside of the country, in former German-occupied territory such as Lithuania and Poland.

The team's investigations into the dark past of WWII have taken Rommel's unit of five prosecutors, two judges and one police officer across the world to places such as Russia, Canada, the United States, Brazil and Argentina in search of their targets.

From Hitler to the lowliest soldier or assistant, every Nazi wrongdoer up until the present day has been identified and recorded by the team then stored in their basement of documents, along with the places and nature of their crimes.

The last perpetrators, accomplices, witnesses and survivors are starting to die off, and the ones that are still alive are well into their 90s, making the hunt for living war criminals even more difficult.

Once all the perpetrators are gone, Germany will close the judicial side of its coming-to-terms with the Nazi government's extermination of six million Jews and hundreds of thousands of others in the Holocaust.

The spectacle of frail defendants aged in their 90s appearing in courtrooms to answer for crimes dating back to 1945 or earlier has renewed debate about the country's dark history.

Investigators scour around 1.7 million documents dating back to the 1930s to find perpetrators of Nazi war crimes in Adolf Hitler's totalitarian killing machine

John Demjanjuk during his trial in Munich in 2009 over the murder of 27,900 Jews at a Nazi death camp following 30 years to try prosecute him after he moved to Ohio

Jakiw Palij (left and right during WWII), a 95-year-old worked as a guard at the Trawniki Labor Camp in what was then German-occupied Poland, was sent to Germany from the US to face war crimes charges

Rommel, who is no relation to Hitler's Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, said the office has been involved in 120,000 investigations, resulting in 6,000 verdicts, which he says is 'a rather bad ratio'.

For decades after the war, the German government and justice system showed little haste to track down many of those involved in the organised mass murder.

A landmark change came with the 2011 sentencing of John Demjanjuk, who served as a guard at the Sobibor extermination camp in occupied Poland in 1943, to five years in prison.

It took 30 years to extradite him from Ohio, where he had worked as an autoworker. He had previously been extradited to Israel and sentenced to death 1988 after Holocaust survivors identified him as feared Treblinka guard 'Ivan the Terrible'.

However, this was overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court when Soviets documents claimed another guard as the sadistic gas chamber operator.

Demjanjuk then returned to the US to carry on living his life, before being extradited to Germany to face different charges.

The ruling 2011 opened the way to prosecuting anyone who worked at a concentration camp, from soldiers to accountants, as an accomplice in mass murder.

Oskar Groening, known as the 'The Bookkeeper of Auschwitz' for his role as an SS accountant at the Nazi death camp, was tried and convicted in the northern German city of Lueneburg in 2015 as an accessory to the murder of 300,000 people.

As a result of this prosecution Rommel said in 2016 that his office would go after more civilian camp workers who were employed as secretaries and telephone operators and put them on trial as accomplices to mass murder.

Nazi German physician, Josef Mengele, who was born in 1911 and died in 1979 in Brazil, having evaded justice for the remainder of his life

Dr Josef Mengele left, who was known as 'The Angel of Death' for the medical experiments he carried out on the inmates of Auschwitz

Rommel said: 'We believe the guards were to a certain extent accomplices to the murders. It's going to be more difficult to judge the responsibility of the civil employees, even though the work they performed was also essential to keep the operations going.

'We put together the smallest pieces of information, like the pieces of a puzzle, to work out who was employed in what role, from when until when.

'We have to put every day to use if we want the chance to bring someone else to justice.'

When they do find an alleged Nazi war criminal still living, Rommel and his team prepare evidence, which is forwarded to a public prosecutor who decides if it is enough to launch a trial.

Some cases are deemed to have enough evidence but still do not proceed to trial because defendants die before the hearing begins, or they are deemed unfit to stand trial by doctors.

He also told VICE News time may be running out to bring the last Nazis to justice, adding: 'I think we have a few years left.

Oskar Groening, a 94-year-old former SS sergeant looking up as he listens to the verdict of his trial at a court in Lueneburg, northern Germany in 2017

A picture from July 1945 of the main gate at the Mauthausen Concentration Camp, near Linz, in Austria

'But the youngest defendant is 91 years of age. And it's getting more and more difficult to find someone still alive, and still fit enough to stand trial.'

Earlier this month Helmut Oberlander, who worked as a translator for the roaming Nazi killing squads used by the regime before the development of concentration camps, had his Canadian citizenship revoked.

The 95-year-old had been fighting to stay in Canada since 1995 after it was discovered he had lied about his involvement in the Einsatzkommando squad.

Many have criticised the comparatively small number of Nazi war criminals ever brought to justice, and by 2012 around 6,498 people had been convicted for their part in the Holocaust.

One of the most notorious Nazis to evade capture was Dr Josef Mengele, known as the 'Angel of Death', who as the Auschwitz doctor carried out horrific experiments on prisoners held at the camp.

A record in the unit's files, prepared in the late 1950s, states that his location is 'presently unknown, likely in Argentina'.

Mengele died in 1979 in Brazil, having evaded justice for the remainder of his life.

Johann Rehbogen, 94, is a former SS guard who is being tried on hundreds of counts of accessory to murder at the Stutthof concentration camp

Last August the 95-year-old Jakiw Palij, who US authorities had been trying to deport since 2005, was sent back to Germany to face prosecution.

Palij, who died in January, had worked as a guard at the Trawniki Labor Camp in what was then German-occupied Poland. He claimed he and other men were coerced into working for the Nazis.

Palij entered the US in 1949 under the Displaced Persons Act, a law that was meant to help refugees from leave post-war Europe.

He passed away in a home for the elderly in the German town of Ahlen, according to local media at the time.

Hans Werner H, whose last name was not released due to German privacy rules, was accused of serving as an SS guard in the Mauthausen camp in northern Austria from 1944 to 1945.

But last November a German court declined to put the 95-year-old on trial, saying it did not see enough evidence to support charges of accessory to murder.

Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenautz-Birkenau where 1.1 million people are thought to have been killed during the Holocaust

The Berlin state court said prosecutors have appealed against its decision. Charges against the suspect were filed in October 2018 and prosecutors are awaiting the next date for the appeal process.

He is alleged to have served as a guard when prosecutors say 36,223 people were killed at Mauthausen.

He wasn't accused of a specific killing, but prosecutors argued that as a guard he helped the camp function.

Johann Rehbogen, a 94, is another former SS guard who is being tried on hundreds of counts of accessory to murder at the Stutthof concentration camp.

Since the war the extent of Nazi's who fled to the US was not widely known.

Proceedings were launched against 137 alleged war criminals with around 67 being deported, extradited or voluntarily leaving.

Out of the remaining 70, 28 died while their cases were pending and nine died in the US because no other country would take them.
Ex-Army generals have urged the Chancellor to reward frontline NHS workers with cash bonuses as a thank you for risking their lives in the war against Covid-19.

General Lord Richard Dannatt and ex-chief of the Defence Staff General Lord David Richards backed calls for nurses, doctors and care workers to be granted a tax-free allowance, similar to operational allowances given to those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As of last month, soldiers deployed to the most dangerous regions get a daily tax-free payment of 29.02 on top of their wages for six months, according to the MOD.

The salary of an NHS health care assistant starts at 18,000 to 19,400 depending on their experience, with nurses' wages starting at less than 25,000 a year.

General Lord Richard Dannatt (left) and ex-chief of the Defence Staff General Lord David Richards (right) backed calls for nurses, doctors and care workers to be granted a tax-free allowance

The salary of an NHS health care assistant starts at 18,000 to 19,400 depending on their experience, with nurses' wages starting at less than 25,000 a year (pictured in Manchester during the minute's silence on Thursday)

Lord Dannatt told the Sunday Mirror: 'All the talk is about our heroic NHS and care workers on the front line, just as we talked about our brave men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan.

'But the difference is we gave our soldiers an extra daily allowance to fight on our behalf, so why are we not doing the same on the NHS and care front line?'

Lord Richards added: 'One good thing to come out of the pandemic is the chance for us all to pause and rethink what is important.

'Those that genuinely serve and sometimes risk their lives for their country must go much higher up the list of those we value most - whether nurses, doctors, soldiers or care workers.'

The calls come two days after Wales's First Minister announced care workers in Wales will each receive a 500 bonus to reflect their 'value' during the coronavirus pandemic.

Mark Drakeford said the payments would be made to around 64,000 care home workers and domiciliary care workers who provide the 'scaffolding' of services across the country.

He told the Welsh Government's daily Covid-19 briefing on Friday: 'This payment is designed to provide some further recognition of the value we attach to everything they are doing.'

Care workers in Wales will each receive a 500 bonus to reflect their 'value' during the coronavirus pandemic, the First Minister has announced. Pictured: Staff at Morel Court care home in Penarth, South Wales, join in the weekly 'clap for carers' on Thursday

Mark Drakeford said the payments would be made to around 64,000 care home workers and domiciliary care workers who provide the 'scaffolding' of services across the country

The move follows the announcement from the Scottish government last month that all care workers in Scottish care workers are to be given a 3.3 per cent pay rise in recognition of their role in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Department of Health and Social Care and its counterpart in Northern Ireland have not announced a similar bonus or pay rise for English or Northern Irish care workers.

This is despite calls last month from union leaders and a leading care home provider for staff to be given a pay rise.

Mr Drakeford added of Welsh care workers: 'This group of people, usually women, often not well paid, are providing the invisible scaffolding of services which support both our NHS and our wider society.

'Without this small army of people, large numbers of others would not be able to continue to live independently at home, or receive everyday support with basic needs by living in a residential care home.'

Mr Drakeford noted some of the social care workforce were among the lowest paid in Wales, and that the picture contrasted with the Welsh NHS where there are pay bands and salaries paid are of the living wage or above.

He also called on the UK Government to waive tax and national insurance deductions from the one-off payment, on the basis the country was experiencing 'exceptional circumstances'.

Local authorities are expected to administer the payments but no date was given as to when they will be made.

The Department of Health and Social Care and the Northern Irish department of health have been approached for comment.

Last month, St John Care Trust, which operates 70 care homes in the UK, wrote to care minister Helen Whateley to ask the Government to fund a new 11.50 hourly minimum wage for social care workers during the COVID-19 panedmic.

The move follows the announcement from the Scottish government last month that all care workers in Scottish care workers are to be given a 3.3 per cent pay rise in recognition of their role in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic. Pictured: Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon

The median pay rate for a care worker in the independent sector is 8.10 per hour, according to Skills for Care.

But Health Secretary Matt Hancock said 'now is not the moment to enter a pay negotiation' when he was asked by BBC journalist Andrew Marr if nurses should be given a pay rise amid the coronavirus crisis.

He said: 'Well, look, everybody wants to support our nurses right now and I'm sure that there will be a time to debate things like that.

'At the moment the thing that we're working on is how to get through this. And so you know I'm very sympathetic to that argument, but now is not the moment to enter into a pay negotiation.

'Now is the moment for everybody to be doing their very best.'
The Ghana Health Service (GHS) is reminding Ghanaians that the fight against the coronavirus Disease remains unabated.



This follows a sharp decline in hand washing with soap and the use of hand sanitisers.



So far, the country has recorded 2,169 confirmed cases of the COVID-19 with 17 deaths and 212 recoveries.



The GHS noted that, the countrys confirmed cases are disturbing as figures continued surging and admonished the public to continue to adhere to health and safety protocols and personal hygiene to stem the spread of the virus disease.



Dr. John Ekow Otoo, the Deputy Bono Regional Director in-charge of Public Health raised the concerns when the Bono Regional office of the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) presented some items to the GHS in its fight against the COVID-19 at a short ceremony in Sunyani.



The items comprised; 300 packs of bottled water, 150 packs of tissue paper, and three containers of liquid soap worth GH4,000.00.



Dr. Otoo said it would be suicidal, if Ghanaians relaxed and failed to adhere to health and safety protocols put in place to protect themselves and others around them.



He called on the media to scale-up public education on the use of nose masks and handwashing with soap under running water and social and physical distancing.



Mrs Evelyn Ama Kumi-Richardson, the Bono Regional Minister, thanked the GWCL for the support, and appealed to other institutions to emulate that patriotic effort.



She said so far the region had not recorded any confirmed case, and hoped citizens would comply with governments directives against the COVID-19. Mr. Abraham Adjei-Kwarteng, the Bono Regional Chief Manager of the GWCL said the water company was also contributing to stem its spread.

Source: GNA









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Speaking with the Sun UK, Boris said he was in a life-or-death struggle against the virus, adding that he depended on litres and litres of oxygen to survive.
Liquor shops and establishments dealing in non-essential commodities are allowed to open with certain conditions even in red zones across Maharashtra, the government announced on Sunday via a revised notification. The revision came a day after the state announced it will continue with the stricter norms of the coronavirus-enforced lockdown in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad and Malegaon. Containment zones in these cities, however, have been excluded from the exemptions. The decision will come into effect from Monday, the beginning of the third phase of the lockdown and which will be in force till May 17.

Maharashtra on Sunday reported 678 coronavirus disease (Covid-19) cases, taking the total to 12,974. It registered 27 deaths, taking the toll to 548. Of the new cases, 441 were from Mumbai, which also saw 21 deaths on Sunday. Of the other deaths, four were in Pune and one each in Bhiwandi and Navi Mumbai. Fourteen of the patients who died on Sunday were above 60 years of age, while 13 had high-risk comorbidities. The mortality rate in the state stood at 4.23%, down from 7.21% on April 12, but the number of deaths is increasing with 270 deaths in the past ten days. The countrys mortality rate hovers around 3.25%.

Excise commissioner Kantilal Umap issued a circular on Sunday announcing that wholesale and retail liquor shops will remain open between 10am and 6pm across the state.

The circular has also stated that the manufacturing of liquor in MMR, Pune, Pimpri Chinchwad will not be permitted during the lockdown restrictions.

On the lines of the exemptions given by the Centre in the third phase of the lockdown, the state has extended relaxations to commercial and industrial activities in the big cities too.

According to the notification issued on Saturday, Maharashtra government had, contrary to the Central order, continued the restrictions in these activities. By revising it on Sunday, the state has allowed stand-alone shops and establishments dealing in non-essential services to open. These establishments, however, will be regulated by local authorities (municipal corporations and police) to ensure that no more than five shops (excluding the establishments dealing in essential commodities) in a lane are open at a time.

The state government has, however, not allowed private and government offices to open in MMR, Pune, Pimpri-Chichwad and Malegaon. The government offices in these cities will operate with 5% workforce. The state government has also allowed construction activities in these cities to resume. They will, however, have to ensure that their workforce is available in-situ. The Centre had allowed construction activities after completion of the first lockdown on April 14, however, we had banned those for the past two weeks, said Bhushan Gagarani, principal secretary, Maharashtra government.

The change in the notification is to ensure the resumption of economic activities, which had come to a standstill, affecting the states economy badly. We will ensure that lockdown is strictly followed in the containment zones. By allowing these activities, we also want to retain the migrant workers who have been insisting on going back to their homelands, said a senior state government official.

An official from the excise department said that the state was losing revenue of around 68 crore a day earned from excise duty and sales tax on liquor. Secondly, by imposing the ban only in certain areas, there was fear of smuggling of liquor from the areas it is allowed, said the officer.

Containment zones will be demarcated by the district and municipal corporation authorities. The boundaries are defined by taking into account the various factors including mapping and geographical dispersion of cases and contacts and perimeter. The zone may vary from a building, colony, ward, mohallas to town and cluster of villages, the notification stated.

Chief minister Uddhav Thackeray held a video conference with district collectors and divisional commissioners on the eve of the commencement of the third phase of the lockdown and relaxations given for commercial and industrial activities. District authorities have been directed on the strict implementation of the lockdown, especially in the containment zones. With relaxations extended in the third phase, the containment in the affected areas has become very important. The district collectors were directed to implement it strictly, said an official from the government.

In the past 24 hours, the state has carried out 9,047 coronavirus tests and 678 people have tested positive, which is 7.49% of the total people tested. The number of tests state touched 1,70,139 on Sunday. 1,56,078 of them were negative. 1,81,382 people are currently under home quarantine, while 13,158 are under institutional quarantine. 11,048 teams of health workers have screened 51.05 lakh people for suspected infection after having come in contact with patients. 2,115 patients have fully recovered from various hospitals after testing positive in the past six weeks. The state government has stated that its testing rate is 1,237 per million against the national rate of just 803.

E-commerce deliveries, however, will continue to be under restrictions of dealing in essential commodities. In green and orange zones, all e-commerce activities are allowed, clarified state government officials. Salons, spas, barber shops, taxis and autorickshaws will not be allowed in red zones.

The state government has also clarified that it has no intention of plying any train from Mumbai or Pune in the near future for stranded migrant labourers. As of now, there will be no trains originating from Mumbai and Pune for migrant workers. We have run four trains, three to Uttar Pradesh and one to Madhya Pradesh for stranded migrant workers. There are no plans to run trains from Mumbai and Pune, looking at the severity of the infection in these cities, Gagarani said.

Of the total Covid-19 cases in the state, 89.19% (10,968 of 12,296) and 85.6% of the deaths (446 of 521) are from the MMR, Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad as on Saturday. Malegaon municipal corporation area has been added as a hotspot with 219 cases and 12 deaths reported till Saturday.

Meanwhile, CM Uddhav Thackeray has requested the railway ministry to waive off the fare from migrant workers who are travelling in special trains being arranged from Maharashtra. He said the workers are not in a position to bear the cost . He also has directed district collectors to keep the lists of the migrants who want to return to their respective states ready, so a to avoid last minute hassles.

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The New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) will provide Rs 15 lakh compensation in case of death of any of its employee fighting the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic.

The compensation will be provided to both regular and contractual workers, including outsourced employees.

"The council has decided to provide compensation of Rs. 15 lacs in case of death of any such employee (including regular, contractual, RMR, TMR, outsourced wagers etc.) who are working in close proximity of COVID-19 and are exposed to the danger of contracting the coronavirus," the civic body said in a statement.

"Though NDMC is adopting all measures to safeguard and protect its employees / workers from COVID -19, however it has been felt necessary to assure financial help to their family members in case of death due to COVID-19 attributable to duty, so that such workers are able to serve NDMC in such difficult times," it added.

NDMC clarified that though temporary measure will be available for three months, no age limit is prescribed of fulfilling the criteria for engagement with NDMC.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Assam government on Sunday said the first instance of African Swine Flu has been detected in the north eastern state which has already killed around 2,500 pigs across 306 villages.

Despite a go-ahead from the Centre, the state will not resort to culling of the pigs immediately and will adopt alternative mechanisms to prevent the spread of the highly contagious disease, state Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Minister Atul Bora said.

"The National Institute of High Security Animal Diseases (NIHSAD), Bhopal has confirmed that it is African Swine Flu (ASF). The central government has informed us that it is the first instance of the disease in the country," he said.

According to a 2019 census by the state department, the pig population in Assam was 21 lakh, but it has increased in recent times to around 30 lakh, the minister said.

"We have discussed with experts if we can save the pigs without culling them. The death percentage of the pigs affected by the disease is almost 100 per cent. So we have made some strategies to save the pigs, which are not yet affected by the virus," Bora said.

He, however, said the disease has not spread much yet.

The minister added that 2,500 pigs have died due to ASF across 306 villages in seven districts in the state.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
More than 3.4 million people have been infected with coronavirus worldwide and nearly 244,000 deaths have been reported.

In the UK, 28,131 people have died from Covid-19, while 182,260 have tested positive for the disease.

Here is your morning briefing of the coronavirus news you might have missed overnight.

Contingency plans were put in place to announce the death of Boris Johnson as he lay in intensive care, the prime minister has said after admitting he had to be forced to go to hospital.

Downing Street was keen to downplay the level of threat faced by the PM during his time as St Thomas in London, repeatedly saying he was in good spirits after he was taken into intensive care three weeks after his initial diagnosis.

However the PM has since confirmed a strategy was ready in the event of his death, and that he was being given litres and litres of oxygen despite assurances from first minister Dominic Raab at the time that he was breathing unassisted.

Describing it as a tough old moment, Mr Johnson told the Sun on Sunday: They had a strategy to deal with a death of Stalin-type scenario.

I was not in particularly brilliant shape and I was aware there were contingency plans in place.

Half a million jobs in the construction industry could be at risk if Boris Johnson gets his exit strategy from lockdown wrong, a trade body has warned.

With the prime minister promising to set out a roadmap for restarting the economy on Thursday, builders are one of many sectors urging government to keep support going for long enough to allow businesses to get back off their knees  and then to open the spending taps to spark the economy back to growth.

Representatives of the brewing industry told The Independent that an abrupt end to state support could be fatal to pubs across the country. And retailers said that financial assistance will be needed for months after the exit from lockdown begins, as shopping gradually returns to normal levels.

It comes after Rolls Royce became the latest firm said to be considering redundancies  with the BBC reporting the aircraft engine producer could cut 8,000 UK jobs due to strain in the aviation sector.

The government has announced measures to support the most vulnerable in society during the ongoing coronavirus lockdown, including rough sleepers and domestic abuse survivors.

Robert Jenrick, the housing secretary, said a 76m package would support more safe spaces and accommodation for those who had gone through domestic abuse, as well as their children.

The package would also help recruit counsellors to help victims of sexual violence and to keep charity helplines funded, while he pledged that victims would get priority need status for local housing.

You are not alone, you do not have to stay at home, you can and should leave the home if youre in danger, Mr Jenrick said in a message to abuse victims. Our outstanding police will be there for you, they will help you.

Gay and bisexual men who have recovered from coronavirus may be excluded from donating plasma to a new trial hoping to treat those suffering with the virus, the NHS has confirmed.

Doctors at Guys and St Thomass hospital in London will start using plasma from recovered patients as a therapy to help others fight off the virus, which has claimed more than 242,000 lives worldwide and lead to more than 28,000 deaths in the UK.

However, male patients who have slept with other men within the last three months will be barred from donating the white blood cell-rich blood component due to restrictions on transfusions first introduced to stem the spread of HIV in the 1970s and 1980s.
Its fairly common to compare deaths attributed to the Wuhan coronavirus to deaths attributed to the flu in a bad season. The number used for flu deaths in a bad season is typically around 61,000, based on the CDCs estimate for the 2017-18 season. The number of deaths attributed to the corornavirus is around 65,000 and rising fast.

Attempting the comparison is reasonable  certainly more so than comparing coronavirus deaths to those resulting from auto accidents, the Vietnam War, and even health-related events like heart attacks. Coronavirus deaths, like those from the flu, are the product of an infectious disease. In theory, the comparison approaches apples to apples.

But there is a problem with using flu-related deaths as a comparator. The coronavirus number is a count, albeit an imperfect one. The flu number isnt a count, its the product of equations.

That is the gist of this article by Robert VerBruggen, which cites this piece in Scientific American by Jeremy Samuel Faust. VanBruggen says the CDCs reported number of actual confirmed flu deaths  that is, counting flu deaths the way we are currently counting deaths from the coronavirus  has ranged from 3,448 to 15,620 a season.

How do we get from a high of less than 16,000 to a high of 61,000? Via adjustments. VerBruggen quotes this explanation by the CDC:

First, we adjusted the reported annual hospitalization rates from FluSurv-NET [a system that collects flu data from a small subset of U.S. health-care providers] . . . using multipliers that included the probability of being tested for influenza and the sensitivity of influenza testing. . . . Rates of influenza mortality were calculated by multiplying the adjusted rates of hospitalization by the ratio of deaths to hospitalizations.

How is the ratio of deaths to hospitalizations determined?

Not all persons who die with influenza are admitted to a hospital prior to their death, and others may die after hospital discharge, thus hospital surveillance does not fully capture deaths due to influenza in the catchment area. To estimate a more complete ratio of deaths to hospitalizations, we also included data on the probability that a person with a respiratory infection would die outside of a hospital admission. For this we used publically available mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics for the U.S. population in 2010 to identify the deaths attributable to pneumonia and influenza (ICD-10 codes: J10-J18) and the proportion that occurred while hospitalized vs. outside of a hospital admission (e.g., at home, on arrival, in the emergency department, in hospice or long-term care facility).

Faust criticizes this methodology. He claims it seriously inflates the number of flu deaths. I cant evaluate this contention but it does seem odd that the actual number of deaths from the flu in a given season would be four times higher than the observed number. And, says Faust, the CDC acknowledges that its count includes deaths from pneumonia.

The coronavirus death count is also imperfect. The imperfection results from ambiguity in some cases about whether a particular death was due to the virus or some other cause.

This is a different kind of imperfection than one caused by the use of multiple equations based on multiple assumptions. In that sense, comparisons between flu deaths and coronavirus deaths arent really apples to apples.
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Among the sweeping responses to the coronavirus pandemic is the release of thousands of local and state prisoners. With social distancing nearly impossible in lockups, the state and counties are emptying cells to prevent infection.

Its a move that has to happen if California  and other states doing much the same  have any hope of flattening the disease curve for good. For now, both state and county leaders are freeing inmates who are medically vulnerable, aged, awaiting trial or near the end of their sentences.

But thats not the end of it.

The state prison count is down by 3%, with counties matching or beating that figure. Cells still are nothing close to federal health guidelines due to their very design. Basic features such as bunk beds, group showers and jammed dining halls are prime ingredients for passing on the virus. Of Californias 35 state prisons, 10 have reported coronavirus cases. Lockups are on the hot-spot list alongside nursing homes and homeless shelters, all close-quarter living spaces that are prime breeding grounds.

Many more releases may be required. If handled effectively  with sufficient support services for re-entry  this could offer a template for a move away from an era of mass incarceration that has been so costly in public dollars and wasted lives.

Progress of any sort is welcome in alleviating the health risks behind bars. But where the prisoners go next may be an unplanned nightmare. Those set free are nonviolent offenders, though the public may still worry about personal safety. But there is even more danger to those being released. Because the decision came late in the virus fight, some of those released may be infected and capable of spreading disease.

It makes no sense to keep the cell doors locked in all cases. Prisons and jails are dangerous incubators. Neither guards nor inmates have enough masks or sanitizer. Those pressures led local leaders and Gov. Gavin Newsom to move toward the releases last month. Prison rights lawyers are pressuring for more, noting the bare-bones medical protections and lack of widespread testing.

The state prison system is about halfway along on freeing 3,500 inmates. Counties including San Francisco, Alameda, San Mateo and Marin have reduced jail populations, releasing inmates judged to be low risks for offense or near the end of their terms. In San Franciscos case, for example, the sheriff, district attorney and public defender are all on the same page in dropping the numbers.

Theres a natural concern that the pandemic is in effect subverting the legal system intended to mete out sentences or hold suspects. But keeping thousands of prisoners behind bars is an inhumane danger.

A serious risk lies ahead. Upon release, inmates leaving the prison world will need extra help. The state must come up with housing and oversight plans, not just a bus ticket home or hope that families will step in. Anything else would be irresponsible and reckless as the coronavirus lingers in the population.

Consider the obstacles that released prisoners face. The Cares federal stimulus bill calls for small business loans but rules out anyone with a criminal record. The same group cant receive food stamps and in many parts of the state can be denied housing where laws dont protect them as applicants. With basic service employment or entry jobs hit with layoffs, finding a job for an ex-con wont be easy.

Those barriers are daunting anytime, but they are magnified at a time when the economy is reeling and a severe health risk is pervasive. California needs to consider emergency measures to waive rules that prevent those leaving incarceration from obtaining housing or social services.

The last thing the state should be doing is releasing former inmates into the community without a plausible chance to restart their lives, whether they are leaving after years in prison or were being held in jail while awaiting trial. A homeless shelter or sidewalk tent invites physical harm, infection and scant chance of a dependable future.

California is focusing on the right goal of protecting prisoners along with every other resident. Now the state needs to follow up with steps to make sure that those released will stay healthy, productive and out of trouble.

This commentary is from The Chronicles editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-04 01:53:19|Editor: huaxia

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A man wearing a face mask walks on a street in Cairo, Egypt, on May 3, 2020. The Egyptian health ministry confirmed on Sunday 272 new cases of COVID-19, bringing the total number in the country to 6,465. (Xinhua/Wu Huiwo)

CAIRO, May 3 (Xinhua) -- The Egyptian health ministry confirmed on Sunday 272 new cases of COVID-19, bringing the total number in the country to 6,465.

Meanwhile, 14 patients died from the novel coronavirus on Sunday, raising the death toll to 429, the ministry's spokesman Khaled Megahed said in a statement.

Megahed pointed out that 40 more COVID-19 patients were completely cured and discharged from hospitals, increasing total recoveries to 1,562.

He highlighted Egypt's cooperation with the World Health Organization regarding COVID-19 case detection and necessary medical care.

Earlier in the day, Egyptian Health Minister Hala Zayed inspected three public hospitals specialized in fever and chest diseases in Giza Province near the capital Cairo, amid a plan to prepare 34 similar hospitals nationwide as quarantine hospitals for COVID-19 patients.

Egypt announced its first confirmed case of the novel coronavirus on Feb. 14 and the first death on March 8, both of whom were foreigners.

The Egyptian government has recently started to ease restrictions and reopen services and offices that have been closed for more than six weeks, within a coexistence plan to carry out precautionary measures while resuming services and economic activities.

The North African country is currently implementing a nationwide nine-hour nighttime curfew that will continue until the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Enditem
Michigan hit another somber milestone Saturday -- 4,000 deaths from the coronavirus.

The new data, released Saturday, May 2 by the state Department of Health and Human Services, shows 4,020 deaths, up by 154 from Friday.

Below is a look at the most recent developments related to the crisis.

Michigan launches mental health crisis text line for support during coronavirus

Michigan residents can now text a hotline to receive mental health support as part of an initiative during the coronavirus pandemic, the state announced Saturday.

Texting RESTORE to 741741 will launch a confidential text conversation with a crisis counselor as part of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Stay Home, Stay Well initiative. Counselors are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to help residents coping with any mental health crisis, including anxiety, financial stress, suicidal thoughts and domestic violence.

Whitmer orders extension of protection guidelines for grocery stores, pharmacies until May 30

Michigan residents will be required to wear face coverings upon entering a grocery store or pharmacy through May 30.

The requirement is part of an executive order signed Saturday, May 2 by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer which extends existing safety measures to protect consumers and employees from spreading the coronavirus at grocery stores and pharmacies.

Along with ordering customers to wear face masks, the mandate also requires grocery stores and pharmacies to allocate at least two hours per week of shopping time for vulnerable populations until May 30.

We must continue protecting the health and safety of both consumers and employees at our grocery stores and pharmacies, which we rely on more than ever during this unprecedented public health crisis, Whitmer said in a released statement. Michigan has begun flattening the COVID-19 curve, but we must not take our progress for granted and continue taking aggressive action to avoid further spread of this deadly disease.

Michigans blind voters to get electronic absentee ballots for May 5 local elections

The Michigan Secretary of State office has agreed to provide absentee electronic ballots to the states blind residents to temporarily resolve an accessibility complaint filed as the coronavirus crisis continues.

The National Federation of the Blind of Michigan filed a lawsuit, claiming the Secretary of State and Michigan Bureau of Elections had failed to provide accessible absentee ballots for the blind.

As a temporary solution, the state has agreed to give blind voters the option of receiving a Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting (UOCAVA) ballot for the Tuesday, May 5, local elections. That type of ballot is typically reserved for overseas voters and members of the military.

National Guard to assist in testing 7,500 northern Michigan prisoners for coronavirus

All prisoners in Michigans Upper Peninsula will be tested for the coronavirus in the coming week with help from the states National Guard.

The Michigan Department of Corrections will begin mass testing Monday, May 4, at Baraga Correctional Facility and then continue east across the U.P. with the goal of testing one facility each day, according to a news release issued Saturday by MDOC.

The Michigan National Guard will assist state officials by sending 15 three-person teams to complete the testing of 7,500 prisoners in the U.P. There will be medical specialists in each team to handle sample collection, according to the release.

Michigan beef, pork producers advise public against panic buying

Michigans meat producers say they are working to ensure the states grocery stores arent lacking beef and pork while asking consumers not to panic buy.

Michigans meat processing has slowed and occasionally stopped briefly in recent weeks as new safety measures for employees are implemented, industry leaders said.

While this could lead to some near-term speed bumps, everyone should recognize these changes will deliver long-term supply chain strength and, most importantly, improved safety for workers throughout the agricultural industries," said Gary McDowell, director of the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Grand Valley prepares for in-class learning this fall but decision weeks away

Grand Valley State University leaders say theyre planning for face-to-face learning this fall, but will not make a final decision until mid-June as uncertainty about the coronavirus crisis continues.

Mantella said the plans are for face-to-face learning and living on campus, but she also said administrators have contingency plans.

Right now, three learning options are in the mix: fully online, a hybrid model and face-to-face instruction.

Hurley Medical Center to lay off employees

Hurley Medical Center in Flint announced it plans to lay off employees because the hospital is facing "financial challenges caused by reduced patient volumes including surgeries and other elective procedures, officials said Saturday.

The amount of layoffs is not yet known as analysis is ongoing.

SNL star blown away by Michigan care package from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer

Whitmer has given Saturday Night Live star Cecily Strong a taste of Michigan  literally.

The Michigan governor recently sent Strong a Michigan care package full of Kalamazoo-based Bells Brewery beer and memorabilia, in honor of Strongs recent portrayal of that woman from Michigan.

PREVENTION TIPS

In addition to washing hands regularly and not touching your face, officials recommend practicing social distancing, assuming anyone may be carrying the virus. Health officials say you should be staying at least 6 feet away from others and working from home, if possible. Carry hand sanitizer with you, and use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and when you go into places like stores.

Read more Michigan coronavirus coverage here

Saturday, May 2: Latest developments on coronavirus in Michigan

Grand Valley prepares for in-class learning this fall but decision weeks away

If youre in danger of foreclosure due to coronavirus, dont wait to seek help, Michigan treasurers say

Im tired of hiding, says Ann Arbor immigrant calling for worker protection amid pandemic
The Blue Angels and Thunderbirds saluted frontline responders battling the coronavirus pandemic with a flyover on Saturday as large crowds gathered to watch - with some appearing to ignore public health officials advice on social distancing.

The US Air Force and Navy's elite demonstration teams said that the performance was in honour of those on the frontlines, to show that "we're in this together".

The "America Strong" display took place on the east coast on Saturday. The tour started in Baltimore shortly after 11am before flying over Washington, DC, and a few hours later, Atlanta.

The warm sunny weather drew people out of lockdown and into public parks in large numbers, including on the National Mall in DC where authorities had asked people not to gather ahead of the display.

However, some were not wearing masks and the six feet of social distancing recommended by public health officials was not always evident. 

In a mix of masks and not, people wait for the final flyover of the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds in Arlington, Virginia, part of a "salute to frontline COVID-19 responders" on 2 May (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) (AP)

First Lady Melania Trump was also pictured watching the display from the portico of the White House, waving as the aircraft soared across the National Mall.

Ms Trump tweeted that she was proud to see the salute to healthcare and frontline workers, thanking the pilots for the beautiful display of solidarity.

We want people to basically walk outside, and be able to look up and see it, and feel that sense of our country coming together since were all in this together, Major Zane J. Taylor, USAF Thunderbirds pilot, said, prior to the display.

Earlier this week, the elite pilots honoured medical workers, emergency responders and other essential employees with a flyover in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Watertown, NY (13601)

Today

Partly cloudy this evening, then some snow showers after midnight. Low 1F. SE winds at 5 to 10 mph, increasing to 15 to 25 mph. Chance of snow 40%. Higher wind gusts possible..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening, then some snow showers after midnight. Low 1F. SE winds at 5 to 10 mph, increasing to 15 to 25 mph. Chance of snow 40%. Higher wind gusts possible.
The World Health Organization lists 13 symptoms, and the CDC lists nine

The official list of COVID symptoms has been branded 'dodgy' and 'inadequate' by a top scientific advisor.

Dr Nick Summerton called for tiredness, breathlessness and loss of appetite to be included in key symptom list.

Currently the NHS only notes a persistent cough and fever as the main signs, and says these are the only symptoms to warrant calling 111.

But the World Health Organization lists 13 symptoms, and the CDC bumped its up to nine last week.

Both acknowledge muscle pain, loss of taste and smell and headaches as typical signs of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

By leaving out symptoms, Dr Summerton said the virus could fuel further spread of the virus in Britain.

There are now more than 180,000 cases in the UK - but there are potentially millions that have gone unnoticed. Deaths are nearing 29,000.

Currently the NHS only notes a persistent cough and fever as the main signs, and says these are the only symptoms to warrant calling 111

Dr Nick Summerton called for tiredness, breathlessness and loss of appetite to be included in key symptom list. He said without doing so, the UK could not get a grip on the epidemic. Pictured: A soldier doing swabs at a drive-in testing centre at Glasgow Airport

Dr Summerton, leading primary care diagnostics expert with a doctorate from Oxford University, has acted as an adviser to the Government during the pandemic.

He said he has urgently called for urgent research to be conducted to detect the most common symptoms of the virus.

'These two basic symptoms aren't good enough,' Dr Summerton told The Sunday Times.

'We need to consider what the broader group of symptoms are and the combinations of symptoms patients have. Time is not on our side and we must get this right.

WHAT SYMPTOMS DO HEALTH OFFICIALS LIST? CDC'S PREVIOUS AND CURRENT LIST OF CORONAVIRUS SYMPTOMS NHS The NHS lists the following as the main symptoms of the coronavirus: a high temperature  this means you feel hot to touch on your chest or back (you do not need to measure your temperature) a new, continuous cough  this means coughing a lot for more than an hour, or 3 or more coughing episodes in 24 hours (if you usually have a cough, it may be worse than usual) It also says to use the NHS 111 service if you have those symptoms The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Until recently, the CDC only listed three symptoms of coronavirus on its website: Fever

Cough

Shortness of breath Last week, the CDC expanded its list to include the following signs: Chills

Repeated shaking with chills

Muscle pain

Headache

Sore throat

New loss of taste or smell The World Health Organization Most common symptoms: Fever

Dry cough

Tiredness Less common symptoms: Aches and pains

Sore throat

Diarrhoea

Conjunctivitis

Headache

Loss of taste or smell

A rash on skin, or discolouration of fingers or toe Serious symptoms: Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath

Chest pain or pressure

Loss of speech or movement Advertisement

'We've got people who are wandering around with the coronavirus and that's the concern. Those missed cases will just spread around the community. That's why I believe these two symptoms are a dodgy foundation.

'If we haven't got this bit right, we're never going to get a grip on the epidemic. If you don't get the case definition right, you don't know who you're fighting.'

Dr Summerton claims to have broached the subject with government officials on multiple occasions, but his worries had fallen on deaf ears.

Three times this has been with Professor John Newton, the UK's national testing co-ordinator from Public Health England. But he had not received any response.

The public health physician said the public may be reassured they don't have the coronavirus if they look at the NHS website, therefore unwillingly go around spreading it to others.

Dr Summerton fears the UK will fail to get 'a grip on the epidemic' by ignoring the presence of symptoms which may have previously been seen as uncommon.

Research has pointed towards an array of symptoms SARS-CoV-2 can cause beyond the typical cough and fever. Sometimes these depend on the severity of disease.

More than a month ago, on March 31, King's College London researchers said almost 60 per cent of coronavirus patients experienced a loss of taste and smell.

They collected data of more than 1.5million Britons who downloaded the Covid Symptom Tracker App.

Some 59 per cent of those who reported their health by March 29 and tested positive reported a loss of smell and taste, compared with 18 per cent of those who tested negative.

But the Government discarded loss of smell and taste - which Health Secretary Matt Hancock said he suffered with during his illness - as 'anecdotal evidence' on April 3.

Loss of taste or smell as well as chills, repeated shaking with chills, muscle pain, headache and sore throat were recently added to CDC's list of symptoms.

Health officials made the changes after pressure from physicians. It also conducted its own research on thousands of patients in the US - where cases have reached 1.1million and deaths 67,000.

Data has highlighted the main symptoms in hospitalised American adults - including muscle pain in 61 per cent of cases and a headache in 58 per cent.

But its Coronavirus Disease 2019 in Children report on April 6, formed part of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, showed symptoms are less obvious in children.

Compared with adults, children are less likely to have the tell-tale symptoms and may not show any signs of the virus at all. Pictured: Around 73 per cent of US children have a fever, cough or shortness of breath, compared with 93 per cent of adults

Headaches, listed by the CDC, were flagged as a potential sign by Chinese researchers in mid-April after a study of 214 patients.

Neurologic symptoms were seen in 36.4 per cent of patients and were more common in patients with severe infection - based on their respiratory symptoms.

HEADACHES AND DIZZINESS A SIGN OF COVID-19 More than a third of coronavirus patients develop neurological symptoms including headaches and dizziness, a study in China suggests. Researchers analysed 214 patients hospitalised in Wuhan who tested positive for COVID-19. Most (60 per cent) were not seriously ill. Neurologic symptoms were seen in 36.4 per cent of patients and were more common in patients with severe infection - based on their respiratory symptoms. The researchers said 13 per cent reported a headache, 17 per cent dizziness, 19 per cent nerve pain and 19 per cent muscle inflammation. Patients whose condition became severe went on to develop more intense neurological problems, including confusion, seizure and stroke. All neurologic manifestations were reviewed and confirmed by two trained neurologists, the team wrote in their paper, published in the medical journal JAMA Neurology. They explained that the neurological symptoms may be due to the way in which the virus attaches to cells in the body. In January 2020, a receptor called ACE2 was identified as the 'door' into cells. The receptor is found in multiple human organs, 'including nervous system and skeletal muscles'. Advertisement

The researchers said 13 per cent reported a headache, 17 per cent dizziness, 19 per cent nerve pain and 19 per cent muscle inflammation.

Patients whose condition became severe went on to develop more intense neurological problems, including confusion, seizure and stroke, according to the paper published in the medical journal JAMA Neurology.

In a similar vein, the WHO has 'loss of speech or movement' under serious symptoms.

The board has the most expansive list of coronavirus symptoms which it says can appear up to 14 days after infection.

It says tiredness is one of the most common symptoms, alongside fever and a dry cough. Some people with the infection report feeling constantly tired or wiped out.

The WHO also warns that 'around one out of every five people who gets COVID-19 becomes seriously ill and develops difficulty breathing' - another symptom the NHS has not recorded.

A rash on the skin or discolouration of the fingers or toes have also been listed by the WHO - bizarre signs that have come to light in recent weeks.

Dermatologists in Spain have warned of at least five different skin conditions they believe are related to the virus, including small blisters over the torso and a nettle-like rash.

They studied 375 patients with suspected or confirmed mild COVID-19 before the lockdown came into force, finding half had a rash with raised or flat bumps.

It followed 'numerous' reports across Europe of bruising and lesions on the feet - either purple chickenpox or chilblain-like marks - on COVID-19 patients.

Experts warn the mysterious symptom has primarily been spotted in children and teenagers.

But skin manifestations potentially caused by the virus were seen in one in five patients in an Italian hospital.
Dow Inc. DOW is scheduled to come up with first-quarter 2020 results before the opening bell on Apr 30. The companys earnings are likely to have benefited from cost synergy savings and its U.S. Gulf Coast investments. However, its first-quarter performance is expected to reflect lower equity earnings from joint ventures, higher pension expenses and some unfavorable impacts of turnarounds and outages.



The company delivered a positive earnings surprise of 5.4% in the last reported quarter. It had benefited from its actions to reduce costs in the period.



Dows shares are down 39.5% year to date, compared with 29.5% decline recorded by the industry.





Lets see how things are shaping up for this announcement.



What do the Estimates Say?



Dow expects revenues for the first quarter to be in the band of $10-$10.4 billion.



The Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenues for Dow is currently pegged at roughly $9,584 million.



The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the companys Packaging & Specialty Plastics unit is pegged at $4,656 million, suggesting a 3.8% decline on a sequential comparison basis. The same for the Industrial Intermediates & Infrastructure segment stands at $3,100 million, indicating a 4.7% sequential decline. The consensus estimate for the Performance Materials & Coatings unit is pegged at $2,058 million, suggesting a 1.1% sequential rise.



Factors at Play



Dow is expected to have benefited from cost synergy realizations in the first quarter. It remains focused on maintaining cost and operational discipline through cost synergy and stranded cost-removal initiatives. It expects to complete stranded costs removal target in 2020 and capture $140 million of savings.



Dow also remains committed to invest in attractive areas through highly accretive projects. The company is likely to have gained, in the first quarter, from the contributions of new capacity from its U.S. Gulf Coast investments.



The company is also expected to have benefited from higher demand for its materials across healthcare and packaging markets, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. The outbreak has led to a surge in demand for health, hygiene and safety products (including PPEs, sanitizers, disinfectants and cleaning products).



However, the company is likely to have faced some headwinds from lower equity earnings from joint ventures in the quarter to be reported. It envisions an unfavorable impact of $20 million for in the Packaging & Specialty Plastics unit and another $30 million in the Industrial Intermediates & Infrastructure segment. This is expected to have hurt margins in these segments.



Higher pension expenses are also likely to have affected margins in the quarter to be reported. The company expects a $15-$20 million associated headwind in the Packaging & Specialty Plastics unit for the quarter. Moreover, both the Performance Materials & Coatings and Industrial Intermediates & Infrastructure units are projected to witness a $5-$10 million headwind in the first quarter.



The impacts of turnaround activities at the performance monomers site in Texas and third-party supplier outages are also expected to get reflected on the companys results. The company expects roughly $35 million headwind in the first quarter in its Performance Materials & Coatings unit due to higher turnaround activity at its performance monomers site. It also sees a $40 million impact from an outage in Spain at the Industrial Intermediates & Infrastructure unit.



Moreover, soft demand across certain industrial end markets is likely to have affected Dows volumes in the first quarter. Dow is exposed to a challenging demand environment in certain markets. The company is seeing softer demand in automotive and consumer electronics end markets as witnessed in the last reported quarter. Weakness across these markets is likely to have continued in the March quarter amid the coronavirus outbreak.



Story continues

Dow Inc. Price and EPS Surprise

Dow Inc. Price and EPS Surprise

Dow Inc. price-eps-surprise | Dow Inc. Quote

Zacks Model

Our proven model does not conclusively predict an earnings beat for Dow this season. The combination of a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) increases the chances of an earnings beat. But thats not the case here.



Earnings ESP: Earnings ESP for Dow is -7.00%. This is because the Most Accurate Estimate is currently pegged at 56 cents while the Zacks Consensus Estimate stands at 60 cents. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before theyre reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.



Zacks Rank: Dow carries a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell).



Stocks Poised to Beat Estimates



Here are some companies in the basic materials space you may want to consider as our model shows they have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter:



Verso Corporation VRS, expected to release earnings on May 13, has an Earnings ESP of +20.00% and carries a Zacks Rank #1. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.



The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company SMG, scheduled to release earnings on May 6, has an Earnings ESP of +1.49% and carries a Zacks Rank #2.



Franco-Nevada Corporation FNV, scheduled to release earnings on May 6, has an Earnings ESP of +1.38% and carries a Zacks Rank #2.



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The Directorate of Revenue



Intelligence (DRI) on Sunday seized 436.5 kg of ganja worth Rs 78 lakh in Bihar's Patna district and arrested a person in this connection.

Acting on a tip-off, the DRI personnel intercepted a container truck on the Patna-Bakhtiyarpur four-lane highway near Fatuha and seized the contraband.

They recovered 89 packets of ganja and apprehended the truck driver, a resident of Vaishali district, a DRI official said.

The packets were hid in the driver's cabin of the truck having a registration number of Odisha, he said.

During the interrogation, the accused revealed that he collected the contraband from Bargarh in Odisha and planned to deliver it near Didarganj in Patna.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Borders are closed. Airlines are grounded. Overseas travel is banned. But travel agents and cruise lines are fielding inquiries and, in some cases, taking bookings from eager travellers.

Travel agent Barry Downs said customers were beginning to discuss future holiday plans instead of seeking refunds or postponing travel.

Lulu Morton is planning her gap year trip to Europe next year once travel restrictions are lifted. Credit:Eddie Jim

"Travellers fall into three categories," he said. "One: I'm out of here as soon as the restrictions are lifted. Two: I'll travel again, but only when [or] if there is a vaccine or global screening and testing. Three: unlikely to travel again."

Mr Downs said few Australians fell into the third category. "Australians travel further and for longer than any other nationality. We will travel again when the time is right."
Australias COVIDSafe App Not Activated, Downloads Top 4 Million

The Australian government has delayed activating its contact tracing app COVIDsafe despite over four million downloads since its launch on April 26.

Federal Minister for Health Greg Hunt has lauded the achievement of four million downloads.

Thank-you Australia for your amazing effort, he said on Twitter.

4 million downloads in under a week. Thank-you Australia for your amazing effort. But there is more to be done so please encourage your friends and family to download the COVIDSafe App  https://t.co/vn3NoeQpal pic.twitter.com/Y0Zd2yb8Xc  Greg Hunt (@GregHuntMP) May 2, 2020

But contact tracers will have to wait until next week to access COVIDSafe data, Deputy Chief Medical Officer Micheal Kidd explained, saying that the app launch was being delayed while health authorities at the state level work out the details of how the system will operate.

What were doing is making sure that the operations are going to work appropriately and safely, but also [making] sure that the people in the contact-tracing facilities in the states and territories are trained on how to use the app, and how to use it appropriately, Kidd said at a press conference in Canberra.

As it stands now, the app is operational and collecting data. But states and territories still need to implement the processes that will allow contact tracers to access and make use of the data. This will pose a delay for the authorities tracing the contacts of those currently testing positive for the Chinese Communist Party virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus.

COVIDSafe works using Bluetooth exchange of encrypted data between two phones that come into close contact for longer than 15 minutes.

Conflict With Other Health Apps

The government also said that it was looking into reports that the COVIDSafe app was conflicting with the functions of other health apps that rely on Bluetooth connection.

Diabetes Australia has cautioned users of continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) apps that the COVIDSafe app may cause connection problems with those apps.

According to some diabetes patients commenting on the warning on Facebook, not all issues are being attributed to the COVIDSafe app.

There are other medical devices relying on Bluetooth, such as heart monitors and blood oxygen monitors, that may be interfered with by the COVIDSafe app, with users being asked by the government to report such problems straight away.

There has been ongoing controversy about the privacy protection provided by the app, with some MPs saying that theyre refusing to download it for this reason. A spokesperson from the Department of Health confirmed, The rules on privacy are being finalized, along with final IT testing.

The system will be operational next week ahead of the decision on possible easing of restrictions.

Easing Restrictions

Kidd has said that its realistic that the government will see millions more people download the app before the National Cabinet meeting on May 8, when it is scheduled to consider easing restrictions.

All territories and states except Victoria have also started easing restrictions.

Premier Daniel Andrews has urged his residents to be patient.

Opposition Federal Labor minister Andrew Giles believes that Australians should be concerned about a second wave of the virus citing the situation in Singapore.

Everyone has really taken very seriously the experience of Singapore, which was, of course, lauded as a great example of how to manage the pandemic, and of course they have been struck by a very significant second wave, Giles told the ABC on May 2.

There have been a total of 94 deaths in Australia. The latest was reported at an Anglicare-run nursing home in western Sydney, bringing the fatalities in the Newmarch House aged-care home to 14.

According to the Department of Health, the number of reported cases stands at 6,787, with 5,789 patients having recovered.
How the revamp of state tort laws Mr. McConnell envisions could be accomplished in the short run, amid a pandemic, is one of many thorny questions his proposal raises but does not answer. Corporations have been spooked by the suit pending on behalf of workers at a Smithfield meatpacking plant in Missouri, which alleges that many employees are at risk of being infected because of the companys failure to provide adequate protective gear or social distancing. (Smithfield denies the charges.) Perhaps businesses, and Mr. McConnell, should be a bit less indignant about supposed plaintiff lawyer opportunism and a bit more worried by the possibility that the allegations in the lawsuit, or others like it, might be true.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 16:15:39|Editor: huaxia

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Photo taken on April 28, 2020 shows the U.S. Capitol building in Washington D.C., the United States. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

- Instead of doing everything they can to save as many Americans as possible, President Donald Trump's administration and its supporters in Congress are working furiously to frame Beijing as the original culprit and use China as a scapegoat for its own missteps.



- "Yet the record is clear: China got the epidemic under control while the U.S. did not. China implemented a strict national lockdown while the U.S. did not. China deployed its top technologists and companies to do the job. In fact, Trump repeatedly praised China during February, only turning on China when the situation got tough in the U.S.," Jeffrey Sachs, a professor at Columbia University, wrote.

WASHINGTON, May 3 (Xinhua) -- With COVID-19 cases and deaths mounting daily, the U.S. government has intensified attempts to fan the flames of anti-China rhetoric to divert attention from its direct responsibility for the crisis.

The number of COVID-19 deaths in the country reached 66,369 as of Saturday night, with total infections at 1,132,539, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

Instead of doing everything they can to save as many Americans as possible, President Donald Trump's administration and its supporters in Congress are working furiously to frame Beijing as the original culprit and use China as a scapegoat for its own missteps.

Screenshot of a Politico report published on April 24, 2020 which unveils a detailed memo sent by the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) to GOP campaigns.

"Don't defend Trump, other than the China Travel Ban -- attack China," a detailed memo sent by the National Republican Senatorial Committee to GOP campaigns has advised, urging Republican candidates to address the COVID-19 pandemic by aggressively attacking China.

The 57-page strategy document, obtained by Politico recently, includes advice on everything from how to tie Democratic candidates to the Chinese government to how to deal with accusations of racism.

The April 17 memo is focused on three main lines of assault -- China caused the virus "by covering it up," Democrats are "soft on China," and Republicans will "push for sanctions on China for its role in spreading this pandemic," Politico summarized.

A firefighter conducts disinfection at the Wuhan Tianhe International Airport in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, April 3, 2020. (Xinhua/Cheng Min)

Citing current and former U.S. officials, The New York Times reported on April 30 that senior Trump administration officials pushed intelligence agencies to hunt for evidence to support a theory that a lab in Wuhan was the origin of the outbreak as the president escalated a public campaign to blame China for the pandemic.

But many scientists argue that the evidence tilts firmly toward a natural transmission -- a still-unknown interaction in late fall that allowed the virus to jump from a bat or another animal to a human.

There is "no scientific backing" for the two claims floated recently by some U.S. politicians and media outlets that COVID-19 could be human-made and have escaped from a laboratory, said a report by Buzzfeed citing interviews with several scientists on April 22.

Vincent Racaniello, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University, told BuzzFeed that he wasn't even comfortable calling the idea that the lab was the source of the outbreak a theory. "A theory is based on results," he said. "I think it's driven by politics, frankly."

Jeremy Konyndyk, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development, said there is currently no evidence that the coronavirus originated in a lab -- either as a deliberate creation or an accidental release.

A protester holding a poster stands in front of the Capitol in Washington D.C., the United States, Feb. 3, 2020. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

World Health Organization (WHO) spokesperson Fadela Chaib told a news briefing On April 21 that "all available evidence suggests the virus has an animal origin and is not manipulated or constructed in a lab or somewhere else."

The U.S. intelligence community "concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified," the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) said in a statement on April 30.

Jeffrey Sachs, a professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University said in a recent opinion piece that the White House "will continue to fulminate against WHO and China and any other targets to distract attention."

"Yet the record is clear: China got the epidemic under control while the U.S. did not. China implemented a strict national lockdown while the U.S. did not. China deployed its top technologists and companies to do the job. In fact, Trump repeatedly praised China during February, only turning on China when the situation got tough in the U.S.," Sachs wrote. 
Free online Bible program encourages virtual communal Bible reading amid lockdown

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Tyndale House Publishers has teamed up with the Institute For Bible Reading to offer free resources for communal Bible reading and studying as many churches remain closed.

One of the things that weve seen recently in the midst of this is that reading the Bible by yourself can be lonely. You're there alone to wrestle with your questions. And so ... we want to bring people together," Paul Caminiti, senior director of mobilization for IFBR, told The Christian Post.

The book publisher and activist think tank have worked together for the last few years to offer the increasingly popular Immerse Bible Reading Experience.

The six-volume Bible was created to provide faith communities with the best reading experience possible by laying out the Scripture in a single-column setting with each chapter displayed according to its literary genre without notations, chapter and verse numbers, section headings, and footnotes.

But in light of the coronavirus pandemic and stay-at-home orders, the two organizations have launched Immerse From Home, or 10-day virtual Bible book clubs, allowing believers to study Luke-Acts with fellow churchgoers online.

The new initiative provides free copies of its book Immerse Messiah (narrating the books of Luke and Acts in novel form) along with a plethora of digital resources allowing users to hold their own book club sessions with members of their churches, friends or family.

We really made a hard pivot away from Bible studies to book clubs, Caminiti said. So there's no participant guides. There is no filling in the blanks.

Immerse From Home includes a virtual resource kit with a free PDF for Immerse Messiah.

This initial engagement with Scripture would be centered around the big stories of the first century: the life of Jesus, and the birth of the early church, Caminiti said.

There's the audio version that goes along with it. So we had created a brand new Immerse Audio. There are several videos that are kind of like trailers of what people are going to read that week.

While at home, the initiative calls on users to host video conference studies so that they can discuss the text with others in their community. The free resources include prompts for open-ended questions that users can discuss and instructions on how to set up an account for Zoom video conferencing.

We're still inviting people to read on their own but then to get together at least once a week, Caminiti said. And you know, what we're hearing is that some groups are doing this now in four weeks instead of two weeks. And they're still reading substantial amounts.

The way the two-week plan is set up is that people would read about eight or nine pages a day, he added. If you listen to the audio version, the average is 29 minutes a day. And it's a five-day-a-week plan.

Caminiti said the initiative is a great fit for churches looking for ways to keep their small groups active while congregants remain at home. But even for people who are not in church small groups, he said the studies can easily be done with two or three of their closest friends or family members from across the country.

So we're really urging people not to do this as a solo event, he said.

Over 13 years ago, many of the big influencers in the Bible publishing movement began to have a crisis of conscience about how the Bible is being published and consumed by the modern church culture as many niche Bibles were being published, noted Caminiti. At the time, he was a Bible publisher for Zondervan.

As we began doing some research about our study Bibles and our devotional Bibles, we discovered to our chagrin that people were reading the notes, and the prayers and the devotionals, but very little reading of the text, he explained.

And so that sent me and several of my colleagues kind of on the tour to Christian thought leaders and scholars to ask the question, How is it that when Bible access is skyrocketing (the average household in North America owns four and a half Bibles), why is Bible reading in freefall?

He feared that the modern church had created, in some ways, a culture of misuse of the Scriptures.

In our Western individualism, Bible reading has turned into a solo sport, even amongst the devout, he said. We go years at a time, getting up in the morning, go into our private area, and read. Its us and the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit. That's just far removed from the intent of the Scriptures at the beginning.

In the early centuries, Caminiti said that communities of faith engaged the Scriptures together.

IFBR and Tyndale are now calling on churches across the country to observe modern-day Ezra Moments. In other words, community Bible reading in this time of crisis.

When the people of Israel returned from captivity and began rebuilding Jerusalem, they sensed that something was still broken: themselves, Caminiti said. They believed that healing would come from reimmersion in their story. Ezra responded immediately by organizing corporate Scripture reading. Shaken from our usual routines and frenetic pace, the coronavirus has given us an opportunity to refocus on our founding story told in the Scriptures; to observe a modern-day Ezra Moment.
T he UK will begin the first round of post-Brexit trade deal talks with the US this week.

It comes as the Government seeks to strike an "ambitious" relationship which "opens up new opportunities" to UK businesses.

International Trade Secretary Liz Truss and US trade representative Robert Lighthizer will launch the negotiations via video call on Tuesday due the coronavirus lockdown measures.

Around 100 negotiators on each side will take part in the talks, the first round of which are set to last for a fortnight.

Ms Truss will begin trade talks on Monday / Reuters

Further rounds will take place roughly every six weeks, and will continue to be carried out remotely until it is safe to travel.

Ms Truss said: "The US is our largest trading partner and increasing transatlantic trade can help our economies bounce back from the economic challenge posed by coronavirus.

"We want to strike an ambitious deal that opens up new opportunities for our businesses, brings in more investment and creates better jobs for people across the whole of the country.

"As we sit down at the negotiating table early next week, be assured that we will drive a hard bargain to secure a deal that benefits individuals and businesses in every region and nation of the UK."

Talks will be led on the UK side by UK-US chief negotiator Oliver Griffiths, while all UK trade negotiations are being overseen by the Department for International Trade's chief trade negotiation adviser Crawford Falconer.

It comes after the UK blamed Brussels for having made "limited progress" during the second round of negotiations on a future trade deal between the European Union and UK.

Negotiators have warned their counterparts across the Channel that Britain will "not subordinate" its laws to the EU "in any areas" and called for more flexibility from the bloc in order to strike a deal.

The EU's negotiation mandate stated that the UK must sign up to some Brussels-set regulations to prevent the bloc being undercut on standards once the transition period ends in December.

Michel Barnier, the EU's chief negotiator, last month accused the UK of refusing to commit "seriously" on numerous fundamental points during the talks, which took place via video-conferencing technology because of the coronavirus pandemic.
For the New World Order, a world government is just the beginning. Once in place they can engage their plan to exterminate 80% of the world's population, while enabling the "elites" to live forever with the aid of advanced technology. For the first time, crusading filmmaker ALEX JONES reveals their secret plan for humanity's extermination: Operation ENDGAME.

Jones chronicles the history of the global elite's bloody rise to power and reveals how they have funded dictators and financed the bloodiest warscreating order out of chaos to pave the way for the first true world empire.

Watch as Jones and his team track the elusive Bilderberg Group to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III.





to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III. Learn about the formation of the North America transportation control grid, which will end U.S. sovereignty forever.





Discover how the practitioners of the pseudo-science eugenics have taken control of governments worldwide as a means to carry out depopulation.





View the progress of the coming collapse of the United States and the formation of the North American Union.

Never before has a documentary assembled all the pieces of the globalists' dark agenda. Endgame's compelling look at past atrocities committed by those attempting to steer the future delivers information that the controlling media has meticulously censored for over 60 years. It fully reveals the elite's program to dominate the earth and carry out the wicked plan in all of human history.

Endgame is not conspiracy theory, it is documented fact in the elite's own words.




The Worcester church that was criticized for holding an in-person service a week ago during the coronavirus pandemic is opening its doors once again this Sunday, even after Gov. Charlie Baker ordered all non-essential businesses to stay closed through May 18.

Adams Square Baptist Church posted on Facebook Sunday that morning worship is planned for 11 a.m. and doors will open at 10:15 a.m.

The message states that anyone with a cough or cold should stay home even if the person thinks it is allergies.

The pastor told Boston25News that the church paid $2,000 for a deep cleaning on Friday.

Pastor Kristopher Casey said anyone attending the service will have their temperatures taken and will have to wear masks and gloves. All families will be able to sit together but will be set apart from other families, according to the television station.

The church held a service on April 26, drawing more than 50 people. Worcester city officials criticized the church and warned the pastor that future services violating state orders could result in fines.

Morning worship service is at 11:00am. Doors will open at 10:15am. Please stay home if youre having any cough/cold... Posted by Adams Square Baptist Church on Sunday, May 3, 2020

The church had a second service Wednesday, but it did not violate the governors order banning gatherings of more than 10 people, police officials said.

Im deeply disappointed as mayor that Pastor Kristopher Casey chose to violate the order of the governor and city manager and chose to endanger his parishioners and the city as a whole by holding services, Worcester Mayor Joseph Petty said on April 27. Across Massachusetts men and women of faith have chosen to follow the best medical advice from professionals and conduct worship services virtually.

Police did check the church on April 26, but the service had ended. The city then had Worcester Police Chief Steven Sargent hand-deliver a letter to Casey informing the pastor to comply with the governors order.

Sargent also reminded the pastor he is required to follow the order.

In his Facebook post, Casey wrote that churches should be considered essential business because businesses like liquor stores remain open during the pandemic.

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(Newser)  Venezuelan officials said they foiled an early-morning attempt by a group of armed men to invade the country by boat on Sunday, killing eight attackers and arresting two more. Socialist party chief Diosdado Cabello said on state television that two of the attackers were being interrogated by authorities, the AP reports. Interior Minister Nestor Reverol earlier described the attackers as "mercenary terrorists" who had arrived from Colombia intent on overthrowing Venezuela's government and creating "chaos." Officials said the attack took place in La Guaira, about 20 miles from Caracas and home to the nation's largest airport. Venezuela has been in a deepening political and economic crisis in recent years under President Nicolas Maduro. Crumbling public services such as running water, electricity and medical care has driven nearly 5 million to migrate.

story continues below

A coalition of nearly 60 nations back opposition leader Juan Guaido. The US has led a campaign to oust Maduro, increasing pressure in recent weeks by indicting the socialist leader as a narcotrafficker and offering a $15 million reward for his arrest. In addition, Maduros government has faced small-scale military threats, including an attempt to assassinate Maduro with a drone and Guaidos call for a military uprising, which few soldiers joined. The AP reported Friday that an attempt to amass an invasion force of 300 men in Colombia had setbacks in March when an organizer was arrested, an arms cache was seized, and some participants left camp. Also Sunday, Cesar Omana, a businessman who participated in a plot against Maduro a year ago, said some 30 armed commandos from the Sebin intelligence police raided his Caracas home early in the day. Omana is not in the country.

(Read more Venezuela stories.)
SEATTLE - As the coronavirus pandemic rapidly spread across the United States in March, Bill Gates peppered his longtime friend Jeff Raikes with the science behind testing for the disease during dinner at his home in Medina, Washington.

The two men ate sushi - at an "appropriate" social distance, Raikes said - while Gates detailed the challenges of using nasopharyngeal swabs that reach deep into nasal passages to test for the novel coronavirus. Instead, Gates offered that self-testing with simpler, shorter swabs could be more effective and wouldn't require health-care workers to risk infection themselves, said Raikes, a former senior leader at Microsoft who went on to run the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

"He is in his element right now," said Raikes, who has worked closely with Gates for four decades.

As the virus has spread, killing more than 239,000 people globally, Gates has used his fame and wealth to push for science-based approaches to end the pandemic. Having studied infectious diseases for the past 20 years as part of his philanthropic work, Gates has warned about the potential for a pathogen-spread pandemic since 2015, in a TED Talk, lectures and medical journal articles. Since February, the foundation he runs with his wife has given away $250 million to expand testing for the coronavirus and find a cure for covid-19, the disease it causes.

But the coronavirus is unlike any global health challenge Gates has faced. He's spent years trying to address health threats vexing the developing world, such as malaria, polio and HIV. Those diseases have either vaccines or therapies, but the countries where they remain a major threat lack health systems to deliver them to people, something the Gates Foundation is trying to fix. When it comes to the coronavirus, though, there is neither a vaccine nor a therapy, and it's spread to both rich and poor countries.

With the coronavirus afflicting rich countries as well as developing ones, Gates also needs to navigate the thickets of U.S. politics. One new challenge for Gates: pressing messages that often run headlong into comments by President Donald Trump that lack scientific basis. In an interview, Gates noted past global health achievements by the United States, such as President George W. Bush's support for drugs to address the AIDS epidemic sweeping across sub-Saharan Africa nearly two decades ago.

"People are hoping for U.S. leadership. It's still an opportunity we haven't seized," Gates said. "The vacuum of waiting for the U.S. to step in and help out with that, there's still a huge opportunity there."

Gates hasn't directly criticized Trump, and he remains largely apolitical. But research he has cited has undermined some of the president's claims. The Gates Foundation, for example, is funding a clinical trial on hydroxychloroquine, the drug Trump that tweeted could, when combined with azithromycin, be "one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine." Gates, though, focused on the data, writing in an April 23 blog post that early indications from the trial suggest "the benefits will be modest at best."

Gates also took aim at the president's plans in April to suspend payments to the World Health Organization in response to the U.N. agency's handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

"Halting funding for the World Health Organization during a world health crisis is as dangerous as it sounds," Gates tweeted on April 14, arguing that the no other organization is capable of replacing the agency. The Gates Foundation is the second-biggest donor to the WHO, after the U.S. government.

"Bill is a guy who believes in science and technology and the positive impact that can have in the world," Raikes said. "I think at least subconsciously, like many of us, he's been disturbed by the attack on science," though Raikes acknowledged that he hasn't talked specifically with Gates about the topic.

Despite politicians' calls to quickly reopen society that aren't backed by science, Gates is not likely to become more political now, said Sue Desmond-Hellmann, the former chief executive of the Gates Foundation. Gates' philanthropic work - addressing the vexing inequities in global health and U.S. education systems - requires the support of governments.

"You have to pick your spots," Desmond-Hellmann said. "Obviously, the WHO comment was of the magnitude that Bill and Melinda spoke out and said that the world needs the WHO."

Gates famously dropped out of Harvard University to found Microsoft with his high school buddy, Paul Allen. But he is a voracious reader, and over the past two decades of his charitable focus on global health, he's taught himself the science of infectious diseases.

"When I spend billions of dollars on something, I have a tendency to read a lot about it," Gates said.

As Gates began to move away from Microsoft in the early 2000s, he gave a fireside chat to senior leaders at its Redmond, Washington, conference center, discussing his foundation's efforts to address malaria. Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, in particular recalled Gates's "encyclopedic assessment" of mosquitoes, and how they behaved and transmitted the disease.

"I will always remember listening and thinking, 'Oh, my gosh, he can go just in deep in talking about mosquitoes, as he did in talking about software code,' " said Smith, who has worked closely with Gates for 26 years.

Since the coronavirus first emerged in China late last year, Gates has consumed medical journal articles about testing, treatments and vaccines for the virus. He's talked at length with immunologists, epidemiologists and social scientists about slowing the coronavirus' spread.

"When Bill takes on an issue, he doesn't seek to become just generally familiar with it," Smith said.

Gates has met with presidents from both parties, including Trump. He has made campaign contributions to both Democrats and Republicans. Even when the federal government sued Microsoft for violating antitrust laws in the late 1990s, Gates refrained from publicly attacking the Clinton administration, which brought the suit.

With a net worth of $105 billion, Gates is the world's second-wealthiest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, behind his Seattle neighbor Jeff Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post. Gates has poured much of his wealth into the foundation he runs with his wife. It has become one of the world's largest philanthropies, with an endowment of $46.8 billion as of 2018.

Over the past two decades, he has gradually shed his Microsoft responsibilities to focus on philanthropic work. In March, he gave up the last of his formal Microsoft titles, stepping down from the company's board, though he said he would continue to provide technology advice to its leadership.

A pillar of Gates' philanthropic thrust has been addressing the infectious diseases, such as malaria and polio, that continue to devastate the developing world. His foundation helped create a market for drugs for those diseases, which were often ignored by a pharmaceutical industry that has a financial incentive to develop medication for ailments common in the more lucrative markets of the developed world.

His knowledge of infectious diseases led him to the conclusion in 2015 that a pathogen-based pandemic could sweep over the globe, killing indiscriminately and destroying economies.

"If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it's most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war," Gates said in his TED Talk, which seems eerily prescient today.

He expressed concern that governments hadn't invested in systems to stop a pandemic in the same way they financed nuclear deterrents. He encouraged the development of strong health systems in poor countries where he expected the outbreak to first emerge. He pushed for stepped-up research into and development of vaccines and diagnostic testing apparatus. And he called for "germ games," akin to war games, to simulate a pandemic to help identify shortcomings.

"We need to get going, because time is not on our side," Gates said in the talk.

It's an issue he has regularly raised with government leaders around the world. That warning largely fell on deaf ears. The lack of response is something Gates laments as "unfortunate."

"I often think, 'Could I have been more persuasive?' " Gates said.

The foundation invested in efforts to prepare for a pandemic even before Gates' TED Talk. Leaders including Gates worried about the impact the Ebola outbreak in 2014 had on its global health work and spent hundreds of millions of dollars building scientific infrastructure that is now helping slow the spread of the disease.

In 2017, it gave $279 million to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, a group to which it had previously given funds. IHME has since developed a widely used forecasting model to predict the need hospital beds, ventilators and other medical equipment in every state and in countries around the globe.

The same year, the foundation committed nearly $100 million to help launch the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, which has been financing experimental research into coronavirus vaccines.

The 18-month-old, Gates-funded Seattle Flu Study research project tracks the spread of infectious diseases such as influenza. As the coronavirus outbreak was beginning to hit the United States, researchers with the project tested for the coronavirus even though it wasn't what they were certified to do. They found one of the first U.S. cases in a teenager who tested positive for the virus.

The project's mission has evolved into the Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network, which is conducting coronavirus testing with self-swab sampling kits that won't expose health workers to the virus. That testing is now certified, and received approval for emergency use by the Washington State Department of Health.

As the coronavirus spread, Gates has taken to the talk-show circuit, making his case for science-backed approaches. He chatted remotely on "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert," lamenting the missed opportunities to have prepared for the pandemic. A few days earlier, he and his wife, Melinda, recorded a message aired during the One World: Together At Home global charity event expressing hope that a vaccine for the virus could emerge by the end of next year. That followed his video call with Ellen DeGeneres on her talk show in which he discussed the criteria for a return to normalcy.

His foundation's global health efforts have allowed Gates to work with officials including Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. Gates said he's in frequent communication with both.

"I'm talking, actually quite a bit, to both Tony and Francis about what they're seeing, what we're seeing," Gates said.

"My primary value add is finding out who the innovators are in understanding the system of scaling delivery that is necessary, like testing and contact tracing, which some countries are doing very, very well," Gates said, bringing together scientists and researchers with whom the foundation is working and the government.

The Gates Foundation has faced past criticism for the outsize influence it wields in areas such as global health and public education. The massive sums that the foundation has put toward global health challenges has threatened to distort the way governments address those threats, encouraging them to adopt its priorities to receive its grants, according to research by Jeremy Youde, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and global health politics researcher at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Youde acknowledged that the coronavirus pandemic is different. One reason: There's so much money being poured into the public health crisis-from other philanthropies as well as pharmaceutical giants-that the Gates Foundation alone won't determine the vaccine winners and losers. The pandemic illustrates "why it's important to have these international collaborations," Youde said.

There's one group with whom Gates isn't popular: the social media mob pushing conspiracy theories that the billionaire engineered the pandemic, and is mining it for profit and leveraging it for global surveillance and population control. His tweet about WHO funding cuts generated a flood of more than 75,000 comments, many questioning Gates' motives and patriotism. Protesters at rallies pushing to end government lockdowns have waved signs railing against Gates.

Some conspiracy theories are being amplified by the Russian government, which is spreading misinformation about the coronavirus through "state proxy websites," according to a State Department report. One article from early March on the website of the Zvezda television channel, a Russian state controlled network run by the ministry of defense, claims that Gates played a role in creating the virus

"I got a note of sympathy from George Soros, so it must be getting serious," Gates joked, referring to the liberal billionaire philanthropist who is a frequent target of conspiracy theories.

Gates, though, did have an early window into the spread of the virus. The foundation's operations in China experienced firsthand the impact of the virus' outbreak there, said Mark Suzman, the current chief executive. And it gathered information from the Seattle Flu Study's work regarding the U.S. spread.

"We got an early heads-up about that," Suzman said. That led to the recognition that "we should be cranking up as a foundation very rapidly to see what we can do to help support" efforts to combat the outbreak.

In February, the foundation committed $100 million to improve detection, isolation and treatment efforts; to accelerate the development of vaccines, drugs and diagnostics; and to protect at-risk populations in Africa and South Asia. On April 15, the foundation added an additional $150 million to that effort.

Gates recognizes the need to spend billions of dollars to develop facilities to develop and manufacture vaccines, many of which won't pan out. It makes most sense, Gates said, to waste money building for approaches that don't ultimately work so that the vaccine that ultimately proves successful can be made and distributed rapidly around the globe, and end the economic devastation of the pandemic.

There's a need to spend "billions to save trillions," Gates said

The foundation won't cover all of the cost of developing vaccines, Suzman said. But it can provide financing to quickly spin up manufacturing facilities.

"We're a distinctive kind of capital. We can be risk-taking. We can be catalytic. We should never be in there substituting for public or private money, which could be doing the job just as well," Suzman said.

While the foundation's scope is broad - from eradicating polio to boosting college completion rates - Gates is now spending the predominant amount of his time on the pandemic, Suzman said. Non-coronavirus efforts have shrunk to about 10 percent to 15 percent of the discussion at the foundation. Emails from Gates dive deep into technical details about epidemiological modeling, vaccine constructs and what the cost of production per unit might be, Suzman said.

"All of the deep learning and expertise over the last 20 years of the foundation going into global health is very applicable to the current moment," Suzman said.

And Gates doesn't believe the call for pandemic preparedness will go unheeded any longer.

"I think this time people will pay attention," Gates said.
New Delhi: The Jammu and Kashmir Police on Sunday (May 3, 2020) saluted the braveheart Sub Inspector Sageer Ahmad Pathan also known as Qazi who attained martyrdom along with the team led by Colonel Ashutosh Sharma and Major Anuj Sood while protecting the integrity and sovereignty of the county. The team of five was martyred in an encounter in the Chanjmulla area of Jammu and Kashmir's Handwara on Sunday (May 3).

Qazi, the J & K Police SI had many gallantry awards like Sheri-Kashmir Police Medal, Police Medal for Gallantry by President of India, DGP J&K Commendation Medal and GOC -in-C and Northern Command Commendation on his name.

Born in 1978 in Trad Karnah of Kupwara District, Qazi was appointed as a Constable in 1999 in Armed Wing of Jammu and Kashmir Police. Later in 2006, he had volunteered for working in Police SOG, an elite Counter-Terrorist Force of J & K police.

During his posting in SOG, Qazi led various successful anti-terror operations. In recognition of his immense contribution, he was granted three out of turn promotions and he rose from the rank of a constable to Sub-Inspector over the years.

On Saturday, when inputs were received about the presence of terrorists in village Chanjmulla (Handwara), he led the SOG team under the command of District SP Handwara along with CO 21 RR and launched the operation.

He was part of the original team that went in to evacuate the civilian inmates in the target house who were taken hostage by the hiding terrorists.

The team safely rescued the inmates but came under heavy fire from the terrorists, during the evacuation process and attained martyrdom.

The other parties of police and SF continued the operation through the night under the supervision of Brig Rathore, DIG Police NKR Suleman Choudhary, and District SP Sundeep Chakravarti.



On the conclusion of the operation, the target house was searched early on Sunday morning and dead bodies of two terrorists eliminated in the encounter were recovered along with arms and ammunition.

One of the slain terrorists was identified as Haider, a Pakistani National working in Lashkar-e-Taiba in Kashmir for the past couple of years, a terrorist outfits run by Pakistan.

The identity of the other terrorist is being ascertained.

J & K Police on their official Twitter account said, "JKP Martyr Sageer attained martyrdom protecting the integrity and sovereignty of our nation and safeguarding the interests of people till last breath. All Ranks of JKP Salute the braveheart Martyrs of Police SI Sageer and other members of the team led by Col Ashutosh."

Martyr Sageer attained martyrdom protecting integrity & sovereignty of our nation & safeguarding interests of people till last breath. All Ranks of JKP Salute brave heart Martyrs SI Sageer & team members led by Col Ashutosh.

Martyr is survived by 3 daughters,a son & aged parents.  J&K Police (@JmuKmrPolice) May 3, 2020

The martyr is survived by three daughters, a son and aged parents.
New Delhi: Hours after the encounter at Jammu and Kashmir's Handwara on Sunday (May 3) in which five security personnel were martyred, Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered condolences to their families of the fallen soldiers and paid tributes honoring their courage.

Taking to microbloggiong site Twitter, PM Modi wrote: "Tributes to our courageous soldiers and security personnel martyred in Handwara. Their valour and sacrifice will never be forgotten. They served the nation with utmost dedication and worked tirelessly to protect our citizens. Condolences to their families and friends."

Tributes to our courageous soldiers and security personnel martyred in Handwara. Their valour and sacrifice will never be forgotten. They served the nation with utmost dedication and worked tirelessly to protect our citizens. Condolences to their families and friends.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) May 3, 2020

On Sunday, five security officers, four from the Indian Army  including the Commanding Officer of an unit of Indian Army's counter-insurgency force and a Major, and one officer of the Jammu and Kashmir Police were martyred in the encounter that took place in Chanjmulla area of Handwara. Two terrorists have also been killed in the encounter.

According to sources in the Army, the Army unit was trying to prevent a civilian hostage situation when the encounter ensued. They were successful in evacuating the civilians.

"A team comprising of Army officers and JK Police personnel entered the target area occupied by terrorists to evacuate the civilians. The team of Army and JK Police entered the area and successfully extricated the civilians," an Army spokesperson said.

The encounter started on Saturday (May 2) after the security forces succeeded in trapping the terrorists inside the house located in the forest of Handwara.

Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, Commanding Officer of 21 RRR, Major Anuj Sood, Naik Rajesh Kumar and Lance Naik Dinesh Singh and sub-inspector of Jammu-Kashmir police Shakeel Qazi were martyred in the encounter.
A Nobel Prize-winning mathematical modeller has slammed Australia as a 'standout loser' for damaging its economy with coronavirus lockdowns, but medical scientists and economists have blasted his ideas as 'dangerous'.

Stanford University professor of structural biology Michael Levitt, who specialises in mathematical models, branded lockdowns a 'huge mistake'.

Professor Levitt, who won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2013, said he was in favour of 'herd immunity', which means letting enough of the population catch the virus to develop immunity so that it doesn't spread.

Mathematical modeller Michael Levitt (pictured in the video above) said Australia's lockdowns were a 'mistake' as they damaged the economy. Medical scientists and economists disagree. Pictured is Bondi Beach, closed on April 21.

He said Germany and Sweden had been the standout winners in their response to the coronavirus.

'They didn't practice too much lockdown, enough people got sick to get some herd immunity,' he said on YouTube channel UnHerd in a video uploaded Saturday.

'And the standout losers are Austria, Australia, Israel, which have had strict lockdowns without many cases. They have damaged their economies, society, harmed the education of their children but not obtained any herd immunity.'

ANU Medical School associate professor of infectious diseases Sanjaya Senanayake disagreed, saying there was no evidence that catching the virus actually gave a person immunity.

'We don't know that yet,' he told Daily Mail Australia on Sunday.

Medical teacher Dr John Campbell who combats coronavirus myths on his YouTube channel said early lockdowns had saved Australia from millions of cases and economic ruin

Herd immunity could only be achieved by getting 60 to 80 percent of the population infected, he said.

'I think Australia and New Zealand have done extremely well,' he said.

'We've not put a strain on the health system.

'We've had a relatively brief period of these restrictions and because we've done so well we're looking to lift them and slowly get back to normal.'

Epidemiologist Professor Raina MacIntyre, who heads the biosecurity research program at UNSW's Kirby Institute, said the success of preventive health is absence of disease.

US Centre for Disease Control figures show that coronavirus is five times more lethal than the flu for young adults aged 20 to 44. Coronavirus 0.1 percent while the flu kills 0.02 percent. Coronavirus is also far more deadly overall.

Australia had 6799 coronavirus cases as of Sunday night

Sweden has a death rate of 10 percent, Germany a death rate of 4 percent while Australia had one of only 1 percent, she said.

'Australias death rate is one order of magnitude less than Germany and two orders of magnitude lower than Sweden, which points to Australia being very successful,' Prof MacIntyre said.

'The reason that Germany had lower case fatality rates than other European countries is that they had three times as many ICU beds per head of population as other European countries. They were able to ventilate patients who needed it.'

Coronavirus: Sweden, Germany and Australia Coronavirus cases in total: Germany: 164,967 Sweden: 22,082 Australia: 6799 Cases per million people: Germany: 1969 Sweden: 2186 Australia: 267 Deaths per million people: Germany: 81 Sweden: 264 Australia: 4 Figures as of Sunday May 3. Source: Worldometers Advertisement

Sweden and Germany have infection rates almost 10 times Australia's - but have not approached the herd immunity level of 80 percent infected.

As of Sunday evening, Sweden had 2186 cases per million while Germany had 1969 cases per million, according to the Worldometers coronavirus tracking site.

Australia had 267 cases per million, by comparison.

Sweden and Germany's death toll is also much higher than Australia's.

Sweden has 264 deaths per million, Germany has 81 deaths per million while Australia is on 4 deaths per million.

Professor Levitt said 'panic' from 'incorrect numbers' had prompted the lockdowns, which he said would cause economic and societal damage that would 'exceed any saving of lives by a huge factor'.

Medical teacher Dr John Campbell, who combats coronavirus myths in daily evidence-based YouTube updates, said this thinking was 'really dangerous stuff'.

'Australia is not a loser as if they hadn't locked down now it would have spread,' he told Daily Mail Australia on Sunday.

'If you followed this guy's advice, in one month's time the disease would have been absolutely all over Australia.

'So the fact that Australia locked down early has actually saved Australia from economic ruin.'

Dr Campbell said without early lockdowns, Australia would soon have had up to 10 million cases.

This would have developed some herd immunity but would have overwhelmed the health system up to nine times over and raised the case fatality rate, he said.

A Melbourne woman wears a facemask to protect others from her exhaled droplets on Friday. Widespread use of facemasks reduces virus transmission by forming a barrier to droplets

Professor Michael Levitt accepts his Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2013 in Sweden. Professor Levitt says lockdowns cause more harm than good, but medical scientists disagree

Australia would then have had to make a horrendous choice between mass casualties and mass death, or a later lockdown which would have had to last for months and would have cost way more, he said.

Economist Leith Van Onselen, who worked for Treasury, Goldman Sachs and now writes for website Macrobusiness, said it was true that lockdowns had been painful for the economy but if Australia had not taken such extreme measures, the long-term economic damage would have been far worse.

CORONAVIRUS CASES IN AUSTRALIA: 27,244 Victoria: 20,269 New South Wales: 4,273 Queensland: 1,161 Western Australia: 692 South Australia: 473 Tasmania: 230 Australian Capital Territory: 113 Northern Territory: 33 TOTAL CASES: 27,244 ESTIMATED ACTIVE CASES: 269 DEATHS: 897 Updated: 5.31 PM, 11 October, 2020 Source: Australian Government Department of Health Advertisement

'Because we managed to get a grip on the situation so early, the Australian economy will recover much faster than if we had let the virus rip,' he told Daily Mail Australia on Sunday.

'Indeed, recent MIT research showed that jurisdictions that undertook harsher lockdowns during the Spanish flu of 1918/19 experienced much stronger economic recoveries post virus.

'The government must ensure that it eases lockdowns in a controlled manner. If they trigger another breakout of the virus it could necessitate another, even more severe, lockdown. Much like what has happened in Singapore,' he warned.

'That outcome would result in the total collapse of faith in authorities to manage the crisis, delivering a much deeper structural blow to confidence across the economy, for a much longer period.'

Australia's National Cabinet has agreed to bring forward its review of coronavirus restrictions by a week to next Friday.

Australia had a total of 6799 coronavirus cases as of Sunday night with 5817 recovered, 887 active infections and 95 people dead.
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Two weeks after a villa owner in Hanoi sought private investigators help locating his lost IBM laptop, the suspect was busted and handed over to police officers.

He turned out to be a slender man able to climb poles like Spider-Man.

It was a thrilling search for a laptop owned by a French national residing in a villa located in Quang An Ward, Tay Ho District, Hanoi.

The contents of its hard drive held greater value than that of the machine itself.

According to the client, his powerful second-hand IBM laptop and some personal belongings vanished into thin air one night, despite the stronghold surrounding his villa.

Interestingly, all the locks and latches were still in place, and the furniture inside was intact.

According to Tuan Anh, the detective in charge of the case, CCTV cameras were not so popular around that time. Finding clues was an uphill struggle, and there was no suspect.

Some of the clients Vietnamese friends told him that the house was haunted, which to them could explain the mysterious disappearance.

Dat, a member of the detective team, was assigned the task of locating the store that dealt with the stolen laptop.

He was a fresh graduate from Hanoi Open University and used to make a living selling computer parts.

He left no stone unturned around the computer hub of Thai Ha Street and Le Dai Hanh Street, as well as some other black market spots.

The team basically had to search the whole of Hanoi.

The one-week search narrowed down to four laptops, none of which matched the descriptions of the client, but the dealers of those were put under inspection.

One of them was active near the student zone of the Hanoi University of Science and Technology and the National Economics University.

The detective team finally got to meet in person with their targets.

One turned out to be an uncanny drug addict, the other an overweight game addict who got stuck in college for seven years, unable to qualify for graduation.

Thanks to the strings he had, Tuan Anh found two other similar reports of theft, one of which happened on the same date as their own case.

All these cases occurred at villas rented by non-Vietnamese. Also, none of the locks were picked, and expensive stuff simply disappeared.

It was definitely one single man behind the scenes.

The only trace they ever had was some dirt track near the window of the second floor. The detectives could not figure out how the gig was done.

Without a ladder and assistants, only a Spider-Man or a ninja, a kind Japanese stealth warrior, could climb such high walls.

Therefore, the two suspects above were removed from the list, as neither the drug addict nor the fat guy was capable of such a wall climbing feat.

Tuan Anh claimed that the thief must have been a slender man living outside of the capital.

Their search had a turn. Now they targeted suspects from the south of Vietnam as many people there are good at climbing coconut trees.

Again, hundreds of names were crossed out considering their alibi.

The trap

As the deadline of the contract drew near, the detective team decided to stop their search. They set a trap instead.

They used dozens of villas around Tay Ho District as bait.

The most luring bait was one villa situated in an alley, with a broken electric pole on its side.

That night, the villa owner left the light on on the first floor and opened the window on the second floor.

A detective team meets up to discuss a case. They blend in with their suspect to gather information. Photo: Vu Tuan / Tuoi Tre

He, together with the investigation team, stayed up anxiously awaiting the thief.

Around 2:00 am, there suddenly appeared a slender man walking around the area. The tall figure abruptly made a turn into the alley and quickly climbed the electric pole.

His whole gig was caught on camera. While slender Spidey was joyfully stuffing his pocket with a valuable necklace, the light went up.

Three sturdy men stood in his way, and the thief was handed over to local authorities.

He turned out to be the very target that the investigators had been trying to capture.

Just as they had anticipated, so the slender man was responsible for the break-ins at the three villas as mentioned above.

The French client, finally, got his laptop back.

The Spide-Man thief came from Hai Duong Province. He made a two-hour bus journey to Hanoi for his patrol then headed back home.

Everybody was stunned to see how skillfully he climbed the poles during the reconstruction of the crime scene. Even coconut tree climbers in the south had to watch in awe, Tuan Anh said.

This job is as demanding as being a cop. It takes skill to watch and tail a target. You have to be able to recognize your target and avoid being spotted.

I may look like this for now, but later this afternoon when I leave the office, Ill be wearing a different jacket and helmet, and Ill even change my walking gait.

An old hand at the job

According to Tuan Anh, there once was an old hand at the job whom he deeply respected.

Twenty years ago, this master solved a case with a drug lord named Khanh.

Khanh denied all charges of his alleged murder. The only clue in the investigation file was a knife mark made by a left hand.

Ever since he was arrested, the drug lord had done everything with his right hand.

But Khanh could not fool the experienced detective.

Aware that he was a heavy smoker, the investigator left him alone for two days without any interrogation, during which he was not allowed anywhere near cigarettes.

During an interrogation later, the investigator simply sat in front of him, enjoying himself over a cigarette.

Sensing the drug lords surging thirst, the detective pulled out one cigarette and tossed it over to him.

By instinct, Khanh caught it with his left hand, revealing he was a lefty.

He had to forfeit all right-hand acts and spill out the truth about his crimes.

According to Tuan Anh, those involved in investigative jobs should be very well aware of legal issues.

Quite a number of clients make bogus evidence and have detectives collect them. The detectives themselves have to know how to set a trap as well.

Whatever the case, private investigators should draw a fine line when it comes to breaking the law.

According to Vu Van Tinh, a lawyer from the Hanoi Bar Association, a private investigators job is to collect evidence of law breaking, not to intrude on peoples privacy.

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This election, we focused our endorsements on contested primaries for open legislative seats in the Portland area, all of which were on the Democratic side. In races with more than two candidates, we sent questionnaires asking about priorities, positions on campaign finance reform and other issues. Their responses guided our decision on whom to interview. We then conducted interviews with the finalists via Zoom, recordings of which are available on The Oregonians YouTube channel.

Senate District 14  Beaverton

Kate Lieber, a Portland Community College instructor and former prosecutor, lacks the name recognition of her opponent, Washington County Commissioner Dick Schouten, but voters should choose her all the same. Methodical and detailed, Lieber, 53, brings the action-oriented mindset of a person who gets things done.

The current chair of Transition Projects, Liebers primary focus is ensuring a compassionate and strategic recovery. She also wants to adopt reforms to prevent a repeat of Republicans walkout, which blocked passage of a cap-and-trade bill.

House District 28  Aloha

The candidates running to replace longtime legislator Jeff Barker are decidedly to the left of the widely-respected moderate Democrat. Voters should look to Alisa Blum, a 60-year-old workplace improvement specialist and former social worker, as the candidate best prepared to represent constituents. Shell bring a focus on improving housing affordability and investing in safety-net services. Her closest opponent, Wlnsvey Campos, has a compelling life story, but her grasp of Oregons budgetary challenges falls short.

Other candidates: Jacob Bride

House District 33  Portland

Voters should pick Maxine Dexter, a pulmonary doctor who has already demonstrated her fearlessness in pushing elected leaders to act urgently with data-based solutions. Early on in the pandemic, Dexter, 47, called on the governor to close schools and take decisive actions to prevent the spread of COVID-19. While her focus is on health care reform, she has a broad understanding of other key priorities, ensuring that she would be a strong voice in shaping policies. While we valued Andy Saultzs interest in budget issues and his revenue ideas, Dexter is our pick in this tough race.

Other candidates: Serin Bussell and Christina Stephenson

House District 35  Tigard

Voters should elect Dacia Grayber, a Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue firefighter and paramedic, to the seat being vacated by Margaret Doherty. We were unable to schedule a Zoom interview with Grayber and her opponent, wildland firefighter Keenan Casavant. But in questionnaire responses, she provides a broader assessment of whats needed in post-pandemic Oregon and offered a more achievable plan, including speeding up implementation of paid family leave and improving internet infrastructure for students educational access. While Casavant offers some interesting fiscal proposals, Graybers thoughtful take on collaborating every day with co-workers of different political views earned our vote.

House District 36: Portland

Lisa Reynolds, a pediatrician, promises shell be the candidate to push legislators to consider bold ideas that help rebuild a stronger, more equitable Oregon in the wake of the pandemic. Voters should take Reynolds up on the offer. While Reynolds expertise is health care, she also recognizes how longstanding practices are exacerbating inequities and that the recovery will give legislators the chance to overhaul those . While her toughest competitor, teachers union lobbyist Laurie Wimmer, clearly understands how Salem works, theres no shortage of legislators already representing Wimmers positions. Reynolds will bring a much-needed outsiders perspective and priorities.

Other candidates: Rob Fullmer; Adam Kelly Meyer

House District 46 - Portland

Khanh Pham, an organizer with Opal Environmental Justice, has already proved her effectiveness, helping lead the campaign that established a new clean-energy fund in Portland. But shes also demonstrated the political courage to stand for principles over party. She publicly opposed Democrats cap-and-trade bill over concerns that it was not a productive or equitable way of achieving carbon reductions and comes armed with detailed information to back up her stances. Opponent and former Multnomah County Chair Jeff Cogen touts his experience leading the county during the Great Recession, but doesnt offer much new. Pham is the stronger choice.

Other candidates: Shawn MacArthur

House District 50 - Gresham

Gresham is in good hands. Both William Miller, 27, and Ricki Ruiz, 25, are well-informed, thoughtful and passionate advocates who share common priorities to address affordability and educational needs and would serve the community well. But Miller, an advocacy manager with the Native American Youth and Family Center, gets our endorsement. He rightly highlights the urgency to focus on addiction services, noting the connection between substance abuse and so many other entrenched problems in Oregon. Miller, whose fathers death from an opiate overdose is only one of a number of traumatic experiences, would help ensure that crisis gets the attention it deserves.

- The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board

For links to all our endorsements for the May 2020 election, click here.
SEOUL, KOREA, REPUBLIC OFNorth Korean leader Kim Jong Un did not undergo surgery or any other medical procedure, a South Korean official said Sunday, amid speculation about his health that continues to linger even after he reappeared publicly in recent days.

North Korea had said Saturday that Kim attended the completion of a fertilizer factory near Pyongyang on Friday, in his first public appearance in about 20 days.

While North Korean video showing a smiling Kim moving around, cutting a red ribbon and smoking quelled intense rumours that he might be gravely ill or even have died, some media outlets and observers still raised questions about his health, citing moments when his walking looked a bit stiff at the factory.

A senior South Korean presidential official told reporters Sunday that the government had determined that Kim did not have surgery or any other procedure, according to the presidential Blue House. The official, whose name wasnt disclosed by the Blue House, refused to provide the basis for the intelligence assessment.

South Korea has a spotty record in confirming developments in North Korea, one of the worlds most secretive countries. But when rumours about Kims health surfaced in recent weeks, the South Korean government steadfastly dismissed them as baseless and maintained there were no unusual activities in the North.

It wasnt the first time Kim had disappeared from public view for an extended period. In 2014, when he reappeared after a six-week absence, he walked with a cane and used an electric cart. The North Korea-provided footage on Saturday showed Kim riding an electric cart similar to the one he used in 2014, when he was reported to have an ankle injury.

Kim, 36, is the third generation of his family to govern North Korea with an iron fist that tolerates no dissent. He hasnt publicly anointed his successor, and rumours about his health triggered worries about the Norths political stability and its nuclear program.

In 2018, Kim entered talks with United States President Donald Trump on the fate of his nuclear arsenal, but their diplomacy has been deadlocked in recent months. Trump tweeted Saturday that I, for one, am glad to see he is back, and well!

North Korea hasnt explained Kims absence, including why he missed the April 15 commemoration of the birthday anniversary of his late grandfather and North Koreas founder, Kim Il Sung. Its the Norths most important state anniversary, and Kim hadnt skipped the event since taking power in late 2011 upon his father Kim Jong Ils death.

Read more about:
Crowds of Californians take to the streets to protest the closure of Orange County beaches.

Reuters

Hundreds of Californians have protested against the state's coronavirus lockdown.

On Thursday, California Governor Gavin Newsom ordered all beaches in Orange County to close.

He made the decision following thousands of people visiting the Huntington Beach Pier the previous weekend, ignoring public health guidelines.

In response, crowds took to the streets by Huntington Beach on Friday with placards demanding the beaches reopen and restrictions are lifted.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Thousands of protestors swarmed the Huntington Beach, world-renown for its surfing, to protest California's stay-at-home orders.

On Thursday, California Governor Gavin Newsom made the decision to close all beaches in Orange County after the previous weekend had seen hordes of people ignoring public health guidelines by sunbathing and surfing.

The following day, on May 1, crowds of Californians descended on Huntington Beach Pier with placards and American flags to demand the beaches reopen.

NBC Los Angeles (@NBCLA) May 1, 2020

As the above video and the following photos show, protesters did not follow social distancing guidelines.

"I served in the army and fought tyrants and dictators overseas and this has gone too far," Andrew Norman told the LA Times.

"I didn't do that to come back here and live under a tyrant in my own country."

It was one of a series of rallies across the state opposing the continued strict lockdown imposed in response to California's coronavirus crisis.

There were about a dozen organized rallies in cities including Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco, according to AP.

Police across the state appear to have taken a softly-softly approach with protestors, despite the fact they were violating stay-at-home requirements and not following physical distancing recommendations, reported the news agency.

Story continues

Pockets of defiance have become to emerge across California. A country in the north of the state, Modoc County, home to about 9,000 people, has said it is reopening. Meanwhile, individual restaurants and hairstylists have also decided to open their doors again in rural and urban areas.

More than 2,000 people have died in California of the coronavirus, the US's most populous state.

Most people who joined the protest did not wear facemasks nor follow social distancing guidelines.

Crowds of Californians take to the streets to protest the closure of Orange County beaches.

Reuters

The crowd was significantly larger than the number that had gathered at the same spot two weeks earlier, according to the LA Times.

2020 05 02T012104Z_1_LYNXMPEG4101O_RTROPTP_4_HEALTH CORONAVIRUS USA

Reuters

Many people had brought flags and were dressed to match.

2020 05 02T041301Z_663514881_RC24GG97D539_RTRMADP_3_HEALTH CORONVIRUS USA

Reuters

And there were also plenty of placards with messages for the authorities.

2020 05 02T002206Z_1_LYNXMPEG4100B_RTROPTP_4_HEALTH CORONAVIRUS USA

Reuters

"This is not Nazi Germany," one woman had written.

2020 05 02T002206Z_1_LYNXMPEG4100C_RTROPTP_4_HEALTH CORONAVIRUS USA

Reuters

Huntington Beach is a surf hotspot, and locals aren't happy about being banned from the waves.

2020 05 02T000836Z_1567500709_RC20GG9IMAPG_RTRMADP_3_HEALTH CORONAVIRUS USA

Reuters

However, the beaches have signs pointing out that they're closed.

2020 05 02T012104Z_1_LYNXMPEG4101M_RTROPTP_4_HEALTH CORONAVIRUS USA

Reuters

Police were also on hand to monitor the protest.

2020 05 02T003224Z_1_LYNXMPEG4100L_RTROPTP_4_HEALTH CORONAVIRUS USA

Reuters

As well as calling for the reopening of the beaches, some people demanded further lockdown restrictions are lifted.

2020 05 02T003224Z_1_LYNXMPEG4100J_RTROPTP_4_HEALTH CORONAVIRUS USA

Reuters

"Let us work," one man had written on his sign.

2020 05 02T004658Z_779376422_RC20GG91GLJM_RTRMADP_3_HEALTH CORONVIRUS USA

Reuters

"Let me open my salon," added a women wearing dungarees featuring the US flag.

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Reuters

Some people joined the protest from their cars.

2020 05 02T002206Z_1_LYNXMPEG41009_RTROPTP_4_HEALTH CORONAVIRUS USA

Reuters

In his Friday news conference, Newsom said that the "only thing that is assured to advance the spread of the virus is thousands of people congregating together, not practicing social distancing or physical distancing."

2020 05 01T225254Z_1_LYNXMPEG4049M_RTROPTP_4_HEALTH CORONAVIRUS USA CALIFORNIA

Reuters

Source: LA Times

Read the original article on Business Insider
Even as the state copes with the effects of the coronavirus, Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz says Connecticut is still well ahead of the national average in responses to the 2020 U.S. Census.

More than 55 percent of Fairfield County has participated, led by Darien at nearly 66 percent, Westport at 65 percent and New Canaan at 63 percent, Bysiewicz said Tuesday during a virtual town hall with local leaders about the census.

Connecticut was well ahead of the national average, Bysiewicz said. We were at 56.2 percent of our households having self-responded, and the national average is 53.4 percent. And we are leading the New England region, so were ahead of the seven states and Puerto Rico that make up the region.

Bysiewicz said all of the participation has been done online or through the census 800 number. She also credited the states Complete Count Committees for the strong start.

One of the reasons that we are ahead of the curve is because weve had 156 local Complete Count Committees across our state, working very hard at the grassroots level to make sure people responded to the census, Bysiewicz said.

She said the COVID-19 pandemic has challenged municipalities to develop ways of reaching citizens without face-to-face contact.

For every person who is not counted, municipalities forego $2,900 of federal funding per year. Since the census is taken every 10 years, that adds up to nearly $30,000 of missed funding for each person who is not counted.

The major point that all of us need to be making to our constituents is filling out the census is something that we can do that directly can help our communities, Bysiewicz said, Whether its disaster relief, Medicaid and Medicare funding, or SNAP funding, (in) which weve seen an increase demand by four-fold for those food programs.

Jeff Behler, director for the U.S. Census Bureaus New York regional office, said paper questionnaires had been mailed and should reach every household that hasnt responded by the end of the week.

Norwalk, which has a response rate of nearly 56 percent, according to 2020census.gov, faces some unique challenges, according to Mayor Harry Rilling.

Some of the efforts have included hanging banners and posters at the citys 11 food distribution sites during the pandemic, distributing census materials with meals, mailers, working with the NAACP to share information with its outreach bags, and including pamphlets while handing out masks and face coverings.

Norwalk is a very diverse community and we perhaps have challenges that some of the other communities may not have regarding getting our people engaged, Rilling said. But we do have a very effective team of elected leaders, knowledge leaders, business people, clergy, and citizens throughout the community, and were stepping up our efforts.

In addition to Rilling, municipal leaders from Stamford, Westport, New Canaan and Darien participated in the virtual town hall. The meeting also included Sens. Alex Kasser, D-Greenwich, and Will Haskell, D-Westport, state Reps. Caroline Simmons, D-Stamford, David Michel, D-Stamford, and Matt Blumenthal, D-Stamford.

Blumenthal encouraged citizens to participate in the census, reassuring them of the confidential process.

The personal information that you share with the census is completely confidential. It is not connected with any other government function, he said. That is a point we need to emphasize to everybody, but especially in places like Stamford where in our immigrant communities because there is some nervousness in those communities about sharing information with the government.
Two teenagers have been arrested after an incident in Upminster, east London during which an 11-year-old boy was shot, Scotland Yard said.

The suspects, 16 and 18, have been arrested on suspicion of aggravated burglary.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said the homeowner opened the front door at 9.30pm on Friday to a person purporting to be a delivery driver, before the male, and a number of other suspects, forced their way into the property.

Two firearms were recovered from the address.

Ray Hawkins, 45, who suffered a cut to his head from a machete, and his son - who is feared to have 'life-changing injuries' - were rushed to hospital after the raid.

Two teenagers have been arrested after an incident in Upminster, east London during which an 11-year-old boy was shot, Scotland Yard said (pictured, the crime scene taped off)

The suspects, 16 and 18, have been arrested on suspicion of aggravated burglary

The Metropolitan Police said neither had life-threatening injuries but the boy's 'may be life-changing'. He had been playing videogames when the gang broke in.

Neighbour Marilyn O'Connor, 70, said on Friday: 'I heard loads of police cars last night but I didn't know what was going on.

'I then read on Facebook that a small boy has been shot this morning.

'It's just so unnerving. This is a quiet place, it's a leafy suburb. You wouldn't expect something like that to happen in a place like this.'

Officers pictured at the scene in Upminster, east London, on Saturday

A road block remained in place on Saturday. Two firearms were recovered from the address

Peter Frost, 71, retired, said: 'We didn't hear anything as we've got double glazing.

'There's been a lot of confusion. First we thought a woman's been attacked, then someone's been stabbed, and now a boy's been shot.

'This is a quiet road, lots of retirees around here. It's a nightmare for that poor boy to be left with injuries like that.

'You just hope he'll be able to live as best a life as he can, get by, and hopefully he'll recover. I'm sure everyone will be behind him.'
The post Covid-19 world order will be markedly different and it will be in Pakistans own interest to change its actions like supporting terrorism, BJP National General Secretary Ram Madhav said on Sunday, asserting that India knows how to handle such countries.

In an exclusive interview to PTI, he also said that there will be a flight of capital from China in the post pandemic phase and India will be an attractive destination for investments by global corporate giants.

Strongly rejecting allegations of Islamophobia in India, Madhav said Prime Minister Narendra Modi is enjoying support of all communities in the fight against coronavirus and those suffering from Modi-phobia are trying to communalise the countrys discourse.

In an apparent reference allegations of Muslims being targeted for the spurt in Covid-19 cases after a Tablighi Jamaat congregation in Delhi, the BJP general secretary said: It will not be fair to blame an entire religious community for perceived mistakes of some members of a group. It doesnt help the community and country at large. On Pakistan, Madhav said the country has not relented on its anti-India and pro-terror campaigns even when the entire world is focusing on dealing with the coronavirus crisis.

It shows that somewhere something is hugely amiss in Pakistans leadership. It doesnt want to improve relations with India, he said.

Madhav said Pakistan itself will be forced to decided what place it wants in the post Covid-19 global order. It is as much a question to Pakistan as much to China. He further said: It will be in Pakistans own interest to change its actions in emerging new world order and India knows how to handle such nations. Pakistan has been unrelenting in its efforts to push militants into India as there have been rising incidents of unprovoked firing by Pakistan military along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir in the last few weeks notwithstanding the coronavirus crisis, according to military officials.

Talking about China, Madhav said he felt many companies will move out of the neighbouring country in the wake of the coronavirus crisis and India will be an attractive destination for them.

In the post COVID period there will be a flight of capital from China and India will certainly be an attractive destination for them, he said.

The BJP leader said the allegations of Islamophobia are nothing but some sort of propaganda and are not based on the ground reality. There has been a wave of angry reactions on Twitter by leading citizens and rights activists from various Arab countries following allegations that Muslims are being blamed for spreading Covid-19 in several parts of India.

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, a powerful bloc of 57 countries, recently accused India of Islamophobia. India rejected the charges as regrettable.

Crediting Modis leadership for effectively handling the pandemic, Madhav said: India has set a shining example that how visionary leadership, democratic governance and popular support can work together to face such challenges. He said one of the major reasons for successful handling of coronavirus crisis is that the country is unitedly standing behind the government.

Referring to surveys showing higher approval ratings for Modi among global leaders, Madhav said they reflected that he is enjoying the support of Muslims, Christians and all other minorities.

Look at the way the country has responded to his clarion calls to light lamps or clap for corona warriors. But some elements are trying to communalise the discourse as they are suffering from Modi-phobia, he said. PTI JTR MPB RT
When North Korea broke a three-week silence on leader Kim Jong Uns public activity on Saturday, it offered no clue where he has been during a period of intense global speculation about his health and whereabouts, or why he was hidden from the public for so long.

Instead, state media simply showed him surrounded by aides and appearing confident at a gleaming fertiliser factory that is believed by outside experts to be part of a secret nuclear-weapons programme.

While much remains a mystery about Kims condition, the abrupt re-emergence of the relaxed and smiling leader was clear choreography of key messages from the secretive government: Kim is the supreme leader in full control of a drive to improve the impoverished countrys food security and economy, amid tough international sanctions and the threat of the new coronavirus.

CENTRE OF WORLD NEWS

The official Rodong Sinmun newspaper devoted three of its six pages on Saturday to touting Kims leadership, crediting him for what it called prosperity and self-reliance.

Reuters could not verify the accuracy of official accounts or the authenticity of pictures from the event.

The sprawling complex is the result of Kims vision to build a modern factory that will support agricultural production and make progress in automating its chemical industry, Pak Pong Ju, a party elder and a loyal aide to Kim, said at the ribbon-cutting where Kim reappeared.

North Korea is under sanctions over its nuclear-weapons and missile programmes, leaving the country chronically struggling with food shortages, aggravated by bad weather and mismanagement.

Kims appearance at the Sunchon fertiliser plant, which official media said occurred on Friday, was an example of field guidance - a key part of Kims public persona, where he presides over an event at a major industrial or social project, or at other times at military drills involving strategic weapons such as ballistic missiles or tactical warfare.

His second public visit this year to the site 50 km (30 miles) north of the capital Pyongyang included a sizeable audience of officials from the army, the ruling Workers Party and the local community. Many wore face masks in an apparent precaution against the coronavirus.

Agricultural production is a top priority, which has a direct impact on the lives of the people, Koh Yu-hwan, the president of the Korea Institute for National Unification, a South Korean government think-tank, said.

Koh said Kims sudden return was a strategy to be in the centre of world news without resorting to nuclear or missile tests.

THE ENTOURAGE

The makeup of Kims entourage featured familiar faces at such events, including two at the forefront of the Norths years-long drive to improve economic conditions: former premier Pak Pong Ju, who is Kims deputy at the State Affairs Commission, and Paks successor as premier, Kim Jae Ryong.

The pair had accompanied Kim on his last major field guidance, the March groundbreaking of the General Hospital in Pyongyang.

To Kim Jong Uns immediate right on the podium was his sister, Kim Yo Jong, a vice director of the partys Central Committee and unofficially her brothers chief of staff.

SECRET PROJECT

The phosphate fertiliser factory in Sunchon, under construction since June 2017, has received much attention from North Koreas leaders, with multiple visits by Kim Jae Ryong and Pak.

International observers say the plant is part of the Norths clandestine pursuit of uranium extraction for use in nuclear weapons, as the mineral can be a byproduct of making phosphate fertiliser.

There is strong evidence the factory is involved in uranium extraction, said a report this month by the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, based in California, in line with Kims policy of pursuing economic and military strength.

The North is motivated to use the plant because it is cost-effective and can easily conceal uranium enrichment, which Pyongyang has long sought to hide, the report said. Uranium enrichment offers an alternative to plutonium processing as a fuel for nuclear weapons.
In the midst of the worst health crisis America has suffered in 102 years, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell decided it was still a good time to play politics.

The Kentucky Republican, in a April 22 radio interview, said it was time to push the pause button before moving forward with this whole business of additional assistance for state and local governments.

Thats reasonable ... depending on how long the pause button will stay pressed amid, among other troubling signs, record increases in unemployment filings due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

But then his office put out a news release in support of his views: Stopping Blue State Bailouts, an apparent allusion to some of the states having financial difficulty being run by Democrats.

Leader McConnell is among the last legislators who should be talking about dependence on the federal government: Kentucky is the fourth-most dependent on federal money for its budget, with nearly 40 percent of its funding coming from federal taxpayers in blue states like California, red states like Texas and purple states like Wisconsin.

Kentucky is quite different from New York state, but the Bluegrass State is facing a revenue shortfall just the same.

The number of Kentuckians that have enrolled in unemployment, the shutting down of sales tax collections across the state, extending the filing deadline on income taxes  it will have major impacts on state government, state Rep. Steven Rudy, a Republican, told the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Heres where Kentucky and New York state differ: Kentucky receives more federal dollars than it sends to Washington, while the opposite is true in New York.

This is not the time or the place or the situation to start your divisive politics, a visibly agitated New York Gov. Mario Cuomo said in response to McConnell. Its not red and blue. Its red, white and blue.

Or to put it another way, COVID-19 doesnt care which way your state leans politically.

We think its entirely reasonable to mandate that new federal assistance not be used to clean up state messes unrelated to the pandemic. Illinois money pit of a state pension system is the result of decades of bad decisions and no decisions; legislators in the Land of Lincoln are going to have to fix that themselves.

We also want members of Congress and President Donald Trump to be conscious of the long-term risk of throwing billions of dollars here and billions of dollars there.

But the fact is, every states budget and every states economy is being dealt a severe blow by the pandemic, and every state will need some degree of financial assistance from the federal government.

We can, and should, debate the amounts of money to be allocated. But all of the states in question  red, blue or purple  are American states with American citizens.

Were confident that, despite his divisive rhetoric, Leader

McConnell knows that.

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Every name on the BrandBucket marketplace is exclusively listed with BrandBucket. That means that all of our sellers are very responsive, making for quick domain transfers.

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- Some few weeks ago, reports from South Korea indicated 163 patients had tested for COVID-19 sometime after recovery

- The WHO clarified that this phenomenon was caused by dead lung cells which tested positive but added it was all part of the healing process

- This came at a time when the world's number of cases hit 3,526,781 and the death toll 246,510

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has clarified that the reported coronavirus reinfections in South Korea were actually false positives.

The organisation's technical lead, Maria Van Kerkhove, it was very normal to find a negative person who had previously tested for the virus, test positive again after a week or two of recovery.

READ ALSO: You will go back to Hague if you continue humiliating Ruto - MP Kimani Ngunjiri warns

WHO said dead cells tested positive but ideally, it was not the disease itself. Photo: UGC.

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Still in denial: President Magufuli says testing kits could be inflating number of COVID-19 cases

Speaking to BBC, the doctor said the fragments of the dead lungs cells could test positive and it was all part of the healing process.

"It is not infectious virus, nor reinfection or reactivation but it was all part of the healing process and this is something very interesting," Kerkhove said.

READ ALSO: Comedian Jalang'o's luxurious Mercedes-Benz ride vandalised on Mombasa road

At least 163 people had tested positive for the virus after recovery. Photo: BBC.

Source: UGC

This came weeks after the reports of positive cases from patients who had recovered from the virus.

According to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), 163 people recovered people later turned positive. The same case was reported in China.

The KCDC reported that 44% of the "reinfected" patients had shown mild symptoms but they were mostly uncontagious.

This development came at a time the number of cases in the world hit 3,526,781 with the death standing at 246,510.

The United States still remains the country with the highest number of cases which stand at 1,170,184.

Source: TUKO.co.ke
In a bizzare turn of events, a Pakistani television host Aamir Liaqat Hussain mocked the death of Irrfan Khan and Sridevi by making distasteful jokes and laughing at them.

This happened when Pakistani actor Adnan Siddiqui who has worked with Irrfan Khan in A Mighty Heart and Sridevi in Mom, appeared on the show. Now, both of them have apologised.

tribune.com

In a clip going viral on social media, the Pakistani television host, who is also a politician from Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party Aamir Liaquat Hussain, stated Adnan had spared Bollywood actresses Rani Mukerji and Bipasha Basu by not working with them.



"Look, you worked in Mom, Sri Devi passed away. You worked with Irrfan Khan, and now he died. Whoever works with you outside (Pakistani cinema) dies...", he said.

Twitter

Siddiqui immediately snapped back stating that he didnt find it funny.

Apparently, Adnan was offered Jism and Mardaani 2, but he rejected them both. He added that he worked with Sridevi and Irrfan, and both of them have passed away.



Shame on everyone who keeps hiring him, shame on everyone who keeps cheering him on, shame on everyone in the audience who clapped pic.twitter.com/A2Qk8DUkeH  Hassan Choudary (@hassanchoudary) May 1, 2020

Now, Adnan Siddiqui has released a statement on Twitter wherein he is apologising to the family members of the late actors. He said called the incident worse than "below the belt".

"So I dont know how to explain what Im feeling right now or what to say. But this needs to go out. I was invited on the live chat show Jeewey Pakistan yesterday when this unfortunate incident happened. The anchor Amir Liaquat Sahab joked about something extremely sensitive. Not only were they both close to me but also as a human it was wrong on so many levels. I cannot even call it hitting below the belt," he wrote.



Twitter

He shared his statement with folded hands emoji.

"It was an extremely callous act to joke about the deceased. This is in very bad taste, not only does it show him and me but also the entire country in bad light. I want to apologise to the families of Sridevi Sahiba and lrrfan Khan Sahab, their loved ones and fans. If you see my body language I was extremely uncomfortable with what he said but I didnt want to stoop to that level. I regret being on the show. Ive learnt my lesson and I promise I will not tolerate such an act in future. I was hoping this bit wouldnt become public but unfortunately it has. Im sorry. Thank you," he added.

Aamir Liaqat Hussain has also apologised on Twitter.

I am sorry



Amir Liaquat pic.twitter.com/EdyscYv2TZ  Aamir Liaquat Husain (@AamirLiaquat) May 2, 2020

A Mighty Heart was produced by Brad Pitt. The film starred Angelina Jolie as the female lead.


If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this





Got news tips, gossip, suggestions, complaints?E-mail us: progressivecharlestown@gmail.com We strive to avoid errors in our articles. Our correction policy can be found here
His magnum opus in 2019, Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire has been his most successful and critically acclaimed work till date; but that has only encouraged historian William Dalrymple to scale even higher.

No newcomer to the concept of a lockdown, the author is wasting no time on a time-out; feverishly penning his next work. Well the timing of it the lockdown and its many extensions has worked for me, instead of taking a break Im already working on my next book. I am used to going into self-imposed lockdown when I write, so its not unusual for me. I cant go to archives or libraries but I can do nine-tenth of what I need to do from home.

The historians next is an even more ambitious piece of work -- a sweeping look at Indias ideological colonisation of Asia, China and Europe during the short period between 250 BC to about 800 AD. Ive penned four books on the history of India which have been narratives of conquest and colonialism. What interests me now is the reverse as it were, the period of early Indian history, where India influenced the world, not through conquest or colonising, but through its sophistication of ideas, its soft heart, and its scientific prowess, states Dalrymple.

The book speaks of the influence India had on the East and on the West. The first phase looks at how Buddhism traveled from India to become the state religion of China. The second on how Hinduism from its South Indian variety took over South East Asia, dominating Burma, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia with epics like Mahabharata and Ramayana being major influences.

The author looks at the whole region between Kandahar and Singapore, as it becomes literate in Sanskrit and Hinduism becomes the dominant religion. So much so that even Java has a Sanskrit name, the old Capital of Thailand was called Ayutthaya, and the whole story culminates with civilization in its prime at Angkor Wat, Cambodia.

The third period focuses on India traveling to the West with its idea of mathematics and the numerical system, Indian ideas of mathematics, the decimal, numerical system and astronomy traveled from Baghdad to Renaissance Europe. By the 13th century Europe takes the system of alkuraimi to algorithm.

The award winning author cant contain his excitement, Normally I am quiet social but this has forced me into deep concentration. Im leaping up at half past 6 in the morning to exercise and write, and I come out for supper at 9 pm. Its non stop. This story has never been told together. Its always been told as different stories, never as one-- Buddhism, Hinduism, Sanskrit and triumph of Indian Science in a short period of time between 250 BC to about 800 AD.

Adding, India was never a united country but it was a coherent cultural region. Just like Greece, which was never one country but its culture was one and it spread in all of Europe in its classical forms of philosophy, ideas and architecture. Similarly, in this part of the world, India was the cultural model for these regions never by conquest, but by sheer power of its sophistication its incredible.

The author is currently in lockdown in his farmhouse in Mehrauli, and far from feeling locked-in, hes in his element.

In the sense, I am more fortunate than many others and I am in the privileged position to have a space like this for the lockdown. I have vegetable patches, goats for goat milk, honey from bees, a swimming pool to exercise, and space to walk around. My wife and sons are here, while my daughter is in Somerset, having a good time with her cousins. So I have everything I need, its not very different from when I sit down to author my books. I can carry on exactly like before, I go to my study and the nooks and crannies in the house where I write. Im very disciplined.

In fact, Dalrymple has been busier than ever through this time period coordinating and hosting Jaipur Literature Festivals digital festival Brave New World, as Festival Director which has been a huge success. I have literary asked all the people Ive most wanted to invite to the Jaipur Lit Fest to come online with us. There are various people I have had to keep chasing given their busy schedules who either havent been able to attend, or those whose sessions I have enjoyed so much that I its been such to pleasure to have them back with us, even online.

The author signs of on a poignant note, One of the pleasures of being a writer is that you do spend and are used to spending a lot of time on your own. This allows you to be disciplined and get used to solitude. You learn to become happy with your own company and give yourself time. This time has allowed people to take the opportunity to think, to spend time with themselves rather than rushing to next appointment, project or party its rather good to have time dont you think?

(This story has been published from a wire agency without modifications to the text)

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attends the completion of a fertiliser plant, together with his younger sister Kim Yo Jong, in a region north of the capital, Pyongyang, in this image released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on May 2, 2020.

KCNA/via Reuters

Images released by North Korean state media show the country's leader, Kim Jong Un, at his first public appearance after weeks of widespread speculation about his health.

Kim attended the completion ceremony of a fertilizer plant north of the capital, Pyongyang on Saturday, according to North Korean state news agency KCNA.

Business Insider could not verify the authenticity of the pictures.

The pictures show Kim touring the plant and talking to aides, one of which was his sister, Kim Yo Jong.

It is the leader's first public appearance since April 11.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

North Korean state media released images of the country's leader, Kim Jong Un, making his first public appearance after weeks of speculation about his health and whereabouts.

Business Insider could not verify the authenticity of the photos.

Kim attended the completion ceremony of a fertilizer plant north of the capital, Pyongyang on Saturday, marking his first public appearance since April 11.

Rumors had circulated that Kim might be dead, but US and South Korean intelligence services expressed skepticism over such reports, the Washington Post reported in late April.

The North Korean leader's younger sister Kim Yo Jong joined her brother on the visit to the fertilizer plant, according to KCNA. She's the most powerful woman in North Korea, and it's speculated she would take over as the leader of the rogue state in the event of her brother's death.

South Korean Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul recently suggested that concern over the coronavirus pandemic was likely to blame for Kim's lack of public appearances.

"He had never missed the anniversary for Kim Il Sung's birthday since he took power, but many anniversary events including celebrations and a banquet had been cancelled because of coronavirus concerns," the minister told a parliamentary hearing, per a Reuters report from Tuesday.

Story continues

Scroll down to see photos of the North Korean leader touring the plant, speaking with aides, and smiling at a crowd of attendees.

After weeks of intense speculation about his health, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made his first public appearance on Saturday, according to official news agency KCNA.

Kim Jong Un attends the completion of a fertilizer plant in a region north of the capital, Pyongyang, in this image released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on May 2, 2020.

KCNA/via Reuters

Kim attended the completion ceremony of a fertilizer plant north of the capital, Pyongyang and was accompanied by senior aides, including his younger sister, Kim Yo Jong.

Kim Jong Un, together with his younger sister Kim Yo Jong, at the completion ceremony of a fertilizer plant in Pyongyang on May 2, 2020.

KCNA/via Reuters

Source: Reuters

In the pictures, which could not be verified by Business Insider, the leader is seen smiling and waving on a podium in front of a crowd of people.

People watch a television broadcast reporting an image of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during a news program on May 02, 2020 in Seoul, South Korea.

Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

NK News also published a video of the leader touring the plant with his aides.

KCNA also reported that the people attending the event "burst into thunderous cheers of 'hurrah!' for the Supreme Leader..." In the footage, almost all attendants are seen wearing face masks.

A Screenshot of North Korean State Television showing Kim Jong Un at Sunchon Phosphatic Fertilizer Factory in South Pyongan Province on May 2, 2020.

KCNA Watch

Source: Reuters

This is the first report of Kim's whereabouts since April 11.

A Screenshot of North Korea State Television showing Kim Jong Un at Sunchon Phosphatic Fertilizer Factory in South Pyongan Province on May 2, 2020.

KCNA Watch

The rumors of his health started when Kim missed the annual birth-anniversary celebrations of his grandfather, state founder Kim Il Sung, on April 15. It is the country's most important holiday.

Television broadcast reporting an image of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during a news program on May 02, 2020 in Seoul, South Korea.

Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

Source: Business Insider

Adding to the speculation, a South Korean news outlet that specializes in reporting the secretive state said that Kim had undergone a cardiovascular procedure and was recovering, although this report was unconfirmed.

A Screenshot of North Korea State Television showing Kim Jong Un at Sunchon Phosphatic Fertilizer Factory in South Pyongan Province on May 2, 2020.

KCNA Watch

Source: Reuters

Satellite images released on April 29 showed a train usually used by the leader near a resort town, with people suggesting he may be staying there.

Kim Jong-un's train is seen parked near Wonsan, North Korea on Wednesday, a sign that experts say show he may be alive and hiding out from the coronavirus in the resort town.

Planet Labs Inc./38 North via Reuters

Source: Reuters

Kim's absence also prompted the suggestion that the leader may have been taking precautions against the coronavirus.

Students wearing face masks disinfect their hands and undergo a temperature check as they arrive for a lecture on preventative measures against the COVID-19 novel coronavirus at the Pyongyang University of Medicine in Pyongyang on April 22, 2020.

Kim Won Jin/AFP via Getty Images

North Korea has implemented some measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, but claims that its has no confirmed cases as well as fatalities.

Read the original article on Business Insider
CONCORD (BCN)

A 31-year-old man arrested Tuesday after leading police on a 1.6-mile pursuit after allegedly firing a gun in a Concord backyard has been charged with negligent discharge of a firearm, felon in possession of a firearm, and resisting arrest, Concord police said Saturday.

The Contra Costa County District Attorney's Office on Friday filed the charges against Kentreal Julius Irving, who had had recent addresses in Richmond and Sacramento. Irving remained in the Martinez Detention Facility Saturday night in lieu of a $50,000 bond.

Concord police were called Tuesday to the 3500 block of Concord Boulevard, near Farm Bureau Road, on reports of someone discharging a firearm in a back yard. When officers arrived, the man later identified as Irving fled by jumping neighborhood fences.

Police tracked the suspect with the help of several area residents who called 911 to report a man running through their yards, and help from a California Highway Patrol helicopter. After a 49-minute, 1.6-mile pursuit, police arrested Irving near Chestnut Avenue and Emma Court, about a half mile away from where he had first been seen, police said.

Officers found a loaded gun and several shell casings near where they first spotted Irving, police said.

Police referred the case to the district attorney's office on Thursday.

Copyright  2020 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.
he has already come for months and then left. people is like 6 months behind on news i guess

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Are they still together?

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apparently they still talk whatever that means for amber. i kind of feel like if he isnt here she isnt with him

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ps listen to my teen mom podcast 'feathers in my hair' except this week bc my audio file crashed and was lost which sux

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I used to root for her. I thought she truly wanted to be a good mom and change. But this season I can see that her main priority is meeting new guys. Her kids aren't and have never been #1 to her.



After everything that happened with her ex, meeting a new guy should be the last thing on her mind. Fixing herself and her own issues, should be a top priority. But it's clear that she doesn't believe she has any issues.

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yeah she doesnt want to treat her borderline personality disorder. she should be in a serious DBT program. instead she sees a psychiatrist every once in a while. its sad

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She should not be allowed on the show. Shes an abuser and no different than anyone else theyve kicked off.

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the most wild part is that how they are editing her to be the victim and having the whole cast support her!

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Dont get me wrong, I hate Farrah but I cant believe they all rally behind a repeat abuser and try to make her a victim but Farrah was a piece of shit for doing a sex tape.

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Its absolutely disgusting and I lost a lot of respect for MTV and Gary since hes been enabling her bullshit and making Andrew out to be the villain.



Yes, his actions were opportunistic but everyone else around her (including Gary himself) see a paycheck out of her but in no way should he be expected to brush off being attacked by her holding a damn machete. Id do what I had to do in the court of public opinion to gtfo too.

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I was screaming in the last episode when he couldn't understand her and she was trying to get him to understand what comfortable meant. Mess and a half.

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i can perfectly imagine her flipping out at him "SPEAK ENGLISH YOU DUMB MOTHER FUCKER!!!!!!!!!"

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Is she trying to get on 90 Day Fiance or something???

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She's such an awful person, I wish they'd stop giving her a platform.

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What kind of messy 90 Day Fiance realness

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She continues to make amazing life choices.

And MTV keeps giving her a fat paycheck to enable it all.

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I really have not been keeping up with these people cause I had NO idea she had another kid.

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Why is Amber being supported by the show?

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Where my Belgians at woop woop

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*Zwaait vanuit Rotterdam*

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but will this relationship be as bad as her tattoo?

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lmao greatest comment ever.

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I hate all of these garbage people

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I kinda miss the days of her and that shady guy everyone hated. Matt or something?

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Medical professionals administer COVID-19 tests at the Bondi Beach drive-through COVID-19 testing center on April 6, 2020 in Sydney, Australia. (Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)

Australian Teacher Tests Positive For COVID-19

A primary school in an Australian suburb in Melbourne north will be shut for three days after one of its music teachers tested positive to COVID-19.

But the principal of the school says the teacher had not been in contact with any children this year.

Victorian Health Minister Jenny Mikakos revealed Meadowglen Primary School in Epping will be closed from Monday until Wednesday in response to the infected staff member, allowing time for deep cleaning.

This staff member has been on site recently  this is why it is necessary for the school needs to be cleaned, she told reporters on Sunday.

Parents and carers of children at the school were notified of the development on Sunday morning.

Students who have been attending the school in person will be able to go to a neighbouring school until the school reopens on Thursday.

Victoria recorded 13 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, an uptick on recent days which has brought the states total number of cases so far to 1,384.

Six of the new cases are linked to an outbreak at a meat processing plant.

Victorian meat safety regulator PrimeSafe has stressed meat processed at the facility does not pose any risk, as there is no evidence COVID-19 can be transmitted to people through food or packaging.

Based on this information, consumers can have confidence that meat processed at the facility is safe to eat, they said in a statement on Sunday.

The Department of Health and Human Services has elected not to name the plant, with Mikakos stressing the authority only does so for outbreaks where there is a significant public health risk.

She insisted there was no double standard in the government releasing the name of Meadowglen Primary School.

We have made these assessments on a case by case basis each and every time, she said.

The prime schools principal Loretta Piazza said the infected staff member was a music teacher, who is experiencing mild symptoms and hasnt been in contact with students in person this year.

Contact tracing at the school has been completed and only two other teachers will need to enter quarantine for two weeks, she said.

The music teacher undertook the test which came back positive because a family member was tested.

Its my understanding that he was involved in a cluster very early on and he did go to get tested and he tried a number of times to be tested but was knocked back, she told 3AW on Sunday.

More than 9,000 people were tested for coronavirus in Victoria on Saturday, as a testing blitz aiming to amass 100,000 tests in the fortnight to May 11 continues.

Three of the latest identified cases have been confirmed through the blitz.

Victoria is not expected to relax its measures to suppress the spread of coronavirus before its state of emergency is due to expire on May 11.

Victoria Police issued 46 fines to people breaching coronavirus restrictions in the 24 hours to Saturday at 11pm, after completing 853 spot checks.

Meanwhile, the state government is also giving several major zoosMelbourne Zoo, Werribee Open Range Zoo, Healesville Sanctuary and Phillip Island Nature Parks$14 million (US$9 million) to ensure they can continue operating and retain permanent staff.

By Marnie Banger
The first special train for Uttar Pradesh carrying more than 800 workers who were stranded in Maharashtra reached Lucknow on Sunday, marking an end to the long wait of the migrants who had been desperate to return home since the nationwide lockdown began over a month ago.

The railways is running Shramik Special trains to move migrant workers, pilgrims, tourists, students and other persons stranded in various parts of the country since March 25.

The first train left for Jharkhand from Hyderabad on Friday.

The 02121 Shramik Special from Nashik started its journey Saturday morning and reached Lucknow nearly 24 hours later.

As the dawn broke, the first announcement about the train's arrival at the Charbagh station was made but the sweet voice synonymous with railway announcements was missing.

A few minutes later at 5.52 am, the train entered Platform No. 1 amid heavy presence of railway, police and health officials.

Some passengers, excited to return home after remaining stranded for over a month amid the uncertainty of the coronavirus, waved at the officials and others captured the moment on their cameras.

A railway official said the passengers were allowed to exit through two gates one near the place engine was to stop and the other towards the rear of the train. The public address system continuously urged the passengers to maintain social distance on the platform and to exit the station premises only after their medical check up is done.

After the medical check-up was done, the passengers were given food packets and told to board the UPSRTC buses parked outside the station to return to their homes.

The Uttar Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation deployed 32 buses to cater to the migrants from all districts in the state, Lucknow Depot Regional Manager PK Bose said.

"The total number of passengers who have boarded the UPSRTC buses is 841. The major destinations covered are Siddharthanagar, Shravasti, Kannauj and Bahraich," Managing Director of UPSRTC Raj Shekhar said in a statement.

On Friday, around 5,000 migrant labourers from UP stranded in Madhya Pradesh returned in 155 buses, while around 1,341 labourers hailing from MP were sent back home from Uttar Pradesh.

Around4,00,000 workers stranded in Delhi and 12,000 in Haryana have already reached UP.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
MOSCOW, May 3, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- PhosAgro CEO, member of the Management Board of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RUIE), and President of the Russian Association of Fertilizer Producers, Andrey Guryev, took part in a round table hosted jointly by the Russia-24 television network and the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF). The round table was devoted to the experience of industries in the fight against the novel coronavirus.

Measures designed to prevent COVID-19 and protect the health of employees and residents of the cities where the companies operate, as well as the uninterrupted operation of continuous-cycle enterprises during the pandemic, were among the topics discussed by Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of RDIF; Anna Popova, Head of the Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection (Rospotrebnadzor); Andrey Chibis, Governor of the Murmansk Region; Alexei Teksler, Governor of the Chelyabinsk Region; Dmitry Konov, Chairman of the Management Board of PJSC SIBUR Holding; Pavel Grachev, CEO of PJSC Polyus; and Sergey Ivanov, CEO of ALROSA.

As Rospotrebnadzor head Anna Popova noted in her speech, Russia currently has only several cases of group sickness and infection in production facilities, which speaks to the positive practice being followed in the country.

"All production facilities that have organised the process in a timely and proper way and that don't permit violations are operating normally and don't have issues with infections," Popova emphasised.

Popova maintains that the set of anti-epidemic measures in place at production facilities contains two key elements. The first involves organising work process in a way that eliminates the risk of infection among people in the workplace who are in close proximity to one another. The second involves restricting worksite access to those who have tested positive for the virus. Important safety measures that have successfully been deployed in industrial enterprises include the use of personal protective equipment, measuring the temperature of people at the entrances to worksites, holding video and audio meetings, and testing. Regarding the latter, the emergence of reliable and sensitive rapid test systems, funded by the RDIF, is both timely and important.

Diagnostics can be carried out promptly both directly at production sites and in nearby settlements that do not have special laboratories. Making this possible is rapid testing technology developed jointly by Russian and Japanese scientists with the support of RDIF, which was discussed in detail by RDIF CEO Kirill Dmitriev.

"Thanks to our network of 18 leading sovereign funds, we were able to begin analysing the situation back in January and saw that testing is one of the key elements for keeping the situation under control. Separation of the infected from the uninfected, especially at industrial enterprises, is to a large degree key to success and safety on rotation shifts, at production operations, and at large investment projects," said Dmitriev.

He argued that the speed of diagnosis - one of the key elements in the fight against the virus - is a distinctive characteristic of testing systems produced by EMG with the support from RDIF. These testing systems make it possible to establish reliably within 30 minutes whether a person is infected.

Andrey Guryev, PhosAgro CEO and co-chairman of the RUIE Coordinating Council for Combating the Coronavirus, spoke about the pilot experience in using these rapid tests.

"When a patient suspected of having coronavirus was found on 24 March in Apatit, where a significant number of PhosAgro mining and processing plant employees live, we decided to deliver rapid tests manufactured by EMG with RDIF support to the city as quickly as possible. We sent a plane to Kazan and brought 100 of the express tests that were available at that time to Apatit.

"They helped us to check the first and second circles of people who had been in contact with the alleged patient zero, as well as the medical staff, within three hours. This quick and effective solution made it possible to isolate the infected group and put a barrier in place to stop the spread of infection," emphasised Guryev.

PhosAgro's CEO noted that the company moved swiftly to enact active anti-crisis steps, having begun developing instructions for pandemic action in advance based on Russian and Soviet epidemic control protocols and relevant foreign experience of partner companies based in Europe and China.

"I am certain that the measures taken by companies, authorities, municipalities, and governors have been highly effective today. In many respects, the key to this is sharing best practices in combating the epidemic both between regional command centres and between large companies. This sharing is facilitated by the work of the RUIE Coordinating Council for Combating the Coronavirus, which combines the best Russian and foreign practices for implementing action protocols during a pandemic. Information about this experience is available on the RUIE website as collections of best practices for business and regions," said Guryev.

He emphasised that continuous-cycle enterprises would not be able to operate steadily during a pandemic without close coordination with Rospotrebnadzor and regional authorities, noting the role of governors of the regions where the company operates who headed regional command centres.

According to Murmansk Region Governor Andrey Chibis, the experience of combating a pandemic has once again demonstrated: "How important and proper it is for the government and large businesses to work hand in hand to ensure people's safety."

Commenting on actions to combat the outbreak of coronavirus in Apatit, he noted that: "The clear and well-coordinated work of the command centres, Rospotrebnadzor, and PhosAgro allowed us to quickly identify a circle of contacts, test them rapidly, and localise the outbreak. This experience helped us greatly moving forward."

"It is fundamentally important that large companies not only help with testing, but also provide necessary preventative regimens in their workplaces and help us deploy additional beds to treat COVID patients," Chibis emphasised, citing as an example PhosAgro's assistance in deploying additional capacity at medical institutions in the cities where it operates.

"As governor, I feel really good about how clearly and harmoniously we have managed to work with big business," Chibis said in summary.

Agreeing with him was Alexei Teksler, governor of the Chelyabinsk Region, who noted that adherence to general sanitary and epidemiological requirements, as well as collaboration with large industrial enterprises, is what is needed today to maintain control over the situation in the regions as a whole.

"It seems that the activities undertaken today are allowing us to maintain precautionary standards, as employees are monitored and handled appropriately, and people are constantly supervised while on the enterprise territories. This is extremely important," said Teksler.

RDIF CEO Kirill Dmitriev concluded by emphasising that Russian companies are taking very fast and active steps to combat the coronavirus:

"We believe that in many ways Russian enterprises are better prepared than many companies in other countries. The fast mobilisation work that we see at PhosAgro, Polyus, Alrosa, Sibur, and other companies is producing results."

About the Company

PhosAgro (www.phosagro.com) is one of the world's leading vertically integrated phosphate-based fertilizer producers in terms of production volumes of phosphate-based fertilizers and high-grade phosphate rock with a P2O5 content of 39% and higher. PhosAgro's environmentally friendly fertilizers stand out for their high efficiency, and they do not lead to the contamination of soils with heavy metals.

The Company is the largest phosphate-based fertilizer producer in Europe (by total combined capacity for DAP/MAP/NP/NPK/NPS), the largest producer of high-grade phosphate rock with a P2O5 content of 39% and one of the leading producers of MAP/DAP globally, one of the leading producers of feed phosphates (MCP) in Europe, and the only producer in Russia, and Russia's only producer of nepheline concentrate (according to the RAFP).

PhosAgro's main products include phosphate rock, 39 grades of fertilizers, feed phosphates, ammonia, and sodium tripolyphosphate, which are used by customers in 100 countries spanning all of the world's inhabited continents. The Company's priority markets outside of Russia and the CIS are Latin America, Europe and Asia.

PhosAgro's shares are traded on the Moscow Exchange, and global depositary receipts (GDRs) for shares trade on the London Stock Exchange (under the ticker PHOR). Since 1 June 2016, the Company's GDRs have been included in the MSCI Russia and MSCI Emerging Markets indexes.

More information about PhosAgro can be found on the website: www.phosagro.com.
03.05.2020 LISTEN

The Ghana chapter of Junior Chamber International (JCI), an affiliate of the global body has open nominations for the submission of entries for the JCI Ten Outstanding Young Persons (TOYP) awards.

The awards which recognize under 40 young people who have excelled in their chosen fields and exemplify the best attributes is in line with the JCI Mission to provide development opportunities that empower young people to create positive change.

The JCI TOYP awards will focus on ten categories including business and economics, leadership, medical innovation, humanitarian services, scientific and technological development, political and legal, cultural development among others.

National President of JCI Ghana, Godfred Annan said 10 active Ghanaian citizens who contributed to the development of the country through innovative actions, extraordinary achievement, and dedication services to others will be recognized through the JCI TOYP award.

Mr Annan encouraged all Ghanaians to identify and nominate outstanding young citizens for the awards.

He challenged the youth of Ghana not to despise their little efforts but maximize them to build a sustainable future for a better world.

"We can build a sustainable future if we continue to do these small things we are doing in our small ways.

The world can be a better place if we continue to hold on to the small things we do in our communities" Mr. Annan stated.

Find below details regarding the nomination procedures :

Do you know any Outstanding Young Ghanaian?

JCI has opened nominations for entries for the JCI Ten Outstanding Young Persons (TOYP) Awards.* In line with the JCI Mission to provide development opportunities that empower young people to create positive change, The JCI TOYP Program serves to formally recognize young people who have excelled in their chosen fields and exemplify the best attributes of the worlds young people.

By recognizing these people, JCI encourages them and others to seek excellence and serve others. JCI also hopes to provide fitting role models for other young people by promoting the prominent roles they have played that will inspire young people in shaping a better future for society.

Target and Categories

If you know an outstanding young person who is a Ghanaian citizen between 18 and 40 years of age, then you nominate them in one of the 10 categories for the Ten Outstanding Young Persons as determined by the International Guidelines:

1. Business, economic and/or entrepreneurial accomplishment

2. Political, legal and/or governmental affairs

3. Academic leadership and/or accomplishment

4. Cultural achievement

5. Moral and/or environmental leadership

6. Contribution to children, world peace and/or human rights

7. Humanitarian and/or voluntary leadership

8. Scientific and/or technological development

9. Personal improvement and/or accomplishment

10. Medical innovation

*To nominate* you may directly visit the website https://jci.cc/en/events/1169/toyp_nominees/new

Nominations should also be forwarded through the JCI Ghana Email address [email protected]

DEADLINE for submission of entries is close of business Monday 4th May 2020.

For further information contact: 054 544 8569 or 0245247296 or 050 644 2088.
Last week, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said companies had until May 7 to voluntarily return the funds and that firms could be held criminally liable if they did not meet the programs criteria. He said the United States would audit any company that received more than $2 million in loans.

The huge amount of money Ashford and its related companies applied for  more than any other known company  caught lawmaker attention. Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, had asked for an investigation into the companys loans, and Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for this years presidential race, wrote on Twitter that the firm should give the money back.

Ashford Inc. and related companies announced on Saturday that they would return the funds by the governments May 7 deadline, saying the Small Business Administrations rule changes, including one on April 30 that suggested that corporate groups should not have access to unlimited funding, had shaken their thinking about whether they qualified.

While we believed then and continue to believe today that we qualify for P.P.P. loans based on the legislation and rule-making in place at the time our applications were submitted, the company said in its statement, continuous S.B.A. rule changes and evolving opinions by administration officials have led us to conclude that we may no longer qualify.

The company was one of several large firms that drew public ire after receiving funding that was intended to help smaller companies  like dry cleaners, restaurants and nail salons  keep paying their employees amid the coronavirus-induced shutdowns. Ashfords ability to receive money became a flash point in large part because the program quickly ran out of its initial $349 billion, drawing long backlogs of unfunded loans and leaving many tinier companies without relief. Congress has since allocated another $310 billion to the program but that money is also expected to be quickly depleted.
The Trump administration is reportedly planning to punish China after a leaked research dossier claims China intentionally hid evidence of the coronavirus outbreak while stockpiling medical supplies.

According to the intel compiled by the "Five Eyes" intelligence agency, the Chinese government purposely misled the rest of the world about the contagiousness and threat of the coronavirus pandemic, leading to the loss of over 244,600 lives across multiple nations.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security alleges that Beijing increased imports and decreased exports of medical supplies, including personal protective equipment, in early January before it notified the World Health Organization that COVID-19 is a contagion.

Global trade data showed a massive decline in worldwide imports from China. Imports of surgical gowns, face masks, medical ventilators, and intubation kits plummeted, a likely sign of the export reduction in January.

The department also said the Chinese government denied imposing an export ban on masks and other medical equipment.



Locked Up or Gone

The 15-page research document states Chinese officials covered up news of the virus by destroying vital evidence in laboratories and refusing to provide live samples to international scientists who are working on a coronavirus vaccine. It also reveals the Chinese government silenced or "disappeared" doctors who spoke out about the pandemic.

On Chinese social media, rumors swirled about a Wuhan Institue of Virology researcher named Huang Yan Ling and her connection to the virus. According to a report by a Chinese news site, Yan Ling was the first person to be diagnosed with COVID-19, making her "patient zero."

Due to the widespread claims, the Chinese government made a statement denouncing the rumor. Yan Ling's biography and image were immediately deleted from the research institute's website. Despite claiming she was alive and well, they haven't presented a photograph or video proof.

Healthcare professionals who spoke up about the new virus were reportedly detained; their photos were splashed across the state-owned media during detention. Eight other civilians were also arrested after spreading rumors about the local outbreak online.



Coronavirus Cover-up

China ordered a sweep on search engines and social media platforms on all things and terms related to "SARS variation," "Wuhan seafood market," and "Wuhan Unknown Pneumonia" on December 31.

On January 3, China's federal health agency ordered all virus samples to be destroyed or moved to specific testing facilities. Researchers were also given a "no-publication order" on all information regarding the COVID-19 outbreak.

The Australian government also trained and financed a team of Chinese scientists. They worked in a research facility that genetically modified deadly and incurable coronaviruses.

The intel featured the team, led by scientist Shi Zhengli, and their work on discovering samples of the virus from a cave in the Yunnan province. The samples were said to bear a striking genetic similarity to COVID-19. They allegedly researched synthesizing a bat-derived coronavirus that had no existing treatment.

Scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology team worked in the CSIRO's Australian Animal Health Laboratory. They research deadly pathogens found in live bats. The study is part of an ongoing partnership between the CSIRO and the Chinese government-the studies are still conducted to this day despite concerns about risks.

It's estimated Dr. Shi has at least 50 virus samples in her laboratory. The samples are said to be a 96 percent genetic match to COVID-19. While she insists that none of the genetic sequences of COVID-19 matched the samples in her lab, the international intelligence agencies are now monitoring her laboratory.







Want to read more? Check these out:
Gay and bisexual men who have recovered from coronavirus may be excluded from donating plasma to a new trial hoping to treat those suffering with the virus, the NHS has confirmed.

Doctors at Guys and St Thomass hospital in London will start using plasma from recovered patients as a therapy to help others fight off the virus, which has claimed more than 242,000 lives worldwide and lead to more than 28,000 deaths in the UK.

However, male patients who have slept with other men within the last three months will be barred from donating the white blood cell-rich blood component due to restrictions on transfusions first introduced to stem the spread of HIV in the 1970s and 1980s.

The move, first reported by ITV, follows blood donation rules established by the Department of Health, which state any man who has had oral or anal sex with another man must wait for three months before donating.

NHS Blood and Transplant guidance says men who have sex with men are at an increased risk of acquiring certain infections through sex.

A spokesperson for the NHS department told The Independent: We will initially be using the current donor selection guidelines although we will keep this under review.

The guidelines are there to protect the health of the donor and the recipient. Under the current guidelines, men must wait three months after having oral or anal sex with another man.

We appreciate this deferral can feel disappointing if you want to save lives. Separately to the convalescent plasma trial, we are working with LGBT+ groups to explore whether we might be able to introduce a more individualised risk assessment for blood donation.

First introduced during the health crisis caused by a rise in HIV and Hepatitis B cases some fifty years ago, the policy initially saw men face a lifetime ban if they had engaged in oral or anal sex with other men over concern the viruses may be passed on to vulnerable patients.

The ban was reduced to apply only to those who had been sexually active in the last 12 months in 2011, and then reduced further to those who had been active in the last three months in 2017 as testing methods improved.

Laura Russell, director of policy at Stonewall, said: Its really upsetting that gay and bi men who want to help in the fight against coronavirus are being prevented from doing so.

The decision on whether people should be able to give blood or plasma should be based on individual risk assessments, not on peoples sexual orientation.
FORT MCMURRAY, Alta. - When Norm Sutton was allowed to return to his home in Fort McMurray, he could see that his wife's car had been totally submerged and floodwater had completely filled his finished basement, soaking everything right up to the ceiling.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 2/5/2020 (625 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Residents affected by flooding line up as the Wood Buffalo Food Bank Association gives away produce donated by Superstore in Fort McMurray, Alta., on Saturday, May 2, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Wood Buffalo Food Bank Association, Dan Edwards

FORT MCMURRAY, Alta. - When Norm Sutton was allowed to return to his home in Fort McMurray, he could see that his wife's car had been totally submerged and floodwater had completely filled his finished basement, soaking everything right up to the ceiling.

The water is gone now, but it's left a deep layer of mud in the basement and has soaked the drywall. The family issued a plea on social media for volunteers to come on Sunday to form a chain to pass debris up the stairs to a dumpster, but they warned the work will be wet and that anyone who comes to help should bring rubber boots.

"The furniture, the library, I've got over a thousand books downstairs. Everything was destroyed. My wife's sewing room, her sewing machines, the fabric collection, the beds, my record collection, the stereo, everything is totally destroyed," Sutton said in a phone interview Saturday.

"But we were luckier than quite a few of my neighbours in that it did not reach the main floor of the house."

The Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo lifted a mandatory evacuation order for five parts of the city late Friday, citing receding water levels. An ice jam earlier this week on the Athabasca River led to the flooding of the city's downtown, forcing close to 13,000 people out of their homes.

When Fort McMurray residents returned home following a wildfire that forced the entire city to flee in 2016, they hoped that their homes had escaped the flames and were still standing.

This time, the homes are still there, but some aren't inhabitable beacuse of the water damage, at least in the immediate future.

One downtown supermarket that was forced to close  but escaped the flooding  was able to help lift the spirits of returning evacuees on Saturday with free food.

Dan Edwards, executive director of the Wood Buffalo Food Bank Association, said Superstore contacted the group and told them that their coolers had continued to run during the evacuation and they had a lot of produce they wanted to donate.

The food bank's building is damaged from the flooding so they couldn't distribute it there, but Edwards said they called in some volunteers and set up a temporary distribution point.

"It's beautiful. It's like produce I would buy myself. You get the odd bad apple, but that's like when you'd go to the store anyways," Edwards said.

"It is amazing product. It is stuff they could have sold had they been open."

The municipality said Saturday that electricity and natural gas service has not been restored to the flood-affected areas yet, but crews were working to restore it as quickly as possible. A boil-water advisory for the city and surrounding region also remained in effect.

www.redcross.ca.

Edwards noted that despite the strain that many people are facing, the ones who stood in line for the free produce took the time to ask how he and the volunteers were doing.

"Literally every single person I talk to, they say, thank you. I've had people asking me what I need as I'm walking down the lineup," Edwards said, noting a lot of the people won't be covered by insurance.

"We're only just beginning this phase, and it's going to be a while before things are whole again."

On Friday, Environment Minister Jason Nixon said a 44-kilometre-long icy mass on the Peace River could mean another 6,000 people in the region might need support from the province.

About 750 people have left their homes on the Little Red River Cree Nation, which declared a state of local emergency last Monday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 2, 2020.
Alfonso Perez Acosta waits until the house is quiet to pick up the stylus. He peeks toward the rooms where his daughters, ages 4 and 6, finally gave in to sleepiness, before turning back to the basal swirls on green-hued backgrounds.

In the moments before midnight, the white spirals culminate in an intimate portrait of a person within a burgeoning community often overlooked during the coronavirus pandemic: survivors.

The attention is focused heavily on the numbers; the deaths, the cases, and how somber this world is becoming, he said in paisa-Bogota accented Spanish. But in the middle of this, theres also recovery. I wanted to connect people to that reality.

By Sunday morning, more than 1 million people across the world who tested positive for the coronavirus have recovered, according to a tracker by Johns Hopkins University. In the U.S., that number is almost 176,000.

Acosta wanted to spotlight those stories.
Bollywood movies give great joy. Infact, many hearts broke when cinema halls were the first to shut down due to the pandemic. For the longest time, movie watching was an integral part of everyone's life until 0TT hit us.





Content is king and as 90s kids, there was some phenomenal work done by child artists back then, who stole our hearts away, either by their cuteness or great role. They always made us wonder how brilliantly they could act while we would just trouble our parents.





Here's taking a look at 9 child artists' who were spectacular in their Bollywood journey and what they are upto now. Yes, let the nostalgia begin.





1. Kunal Kemmu

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He's an established actor whose last release was Malang iin February this year. He was appreciated for this intense thriller role. But not many know that Kunal Kemmu has been in Bollywood since forever. Remember the cute child in Hum Hai Rahi Pyaar Ke. Yep, that was him.





2. Angelina Idnani

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The 2007 Ta Ra Rum Pum movie starring Rani Mukerji and Saif Ali Khan also had an adorable child artist Princess. Angelina Idnani played the role of Saif and Rani's daughter is now all grown up.





Rani di was more like a mother [to me] whereas with Saif uncle, it was more of jokes and him roaming around in his boxers, chilling with us, Angelina Idnani once said in an interview.





She is 22 years old now and switching between Singapore, Mumbai and Dubai. Angelina also pursued a diploma in Fashion Marketing.





3. Adil Rizvi





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The fabulous Akele Hum, Akele Tum was not just known for Aamir and Manisha's chemistry but also for the father-son love. The little one called Adil is all grown up. Adil and Aamir, as father-son duo, complemented each other, Their song, 'Oh! I Love You Daddy' became an instantly hit and melted millions of hearts. After 'Akele Hum Akele Tum', Adil did a movie called Luv Kush.







4. Ahsaas Channa





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The little one has featured in Vaastu Shastra, Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna,My Friend Ganesha and Phoonk. On-screen, she has played the role of a n adorable boy but in real life, she is one of hell of a charmer. Yes, this little girl has turned out to be quite a looker. Now she is seen in a couple of Disney shows. Infact, her mother Kulbir Kaur is also a well known actress.







5. Omkar Kapoor





He was the most popular child artists from the 90s. He kickstarted his journey in Bollywood from the film Masoom, directed by Shekhar Kapur and unlike other Bollywood child actors, Omkaar continued working in movies. He was seen in Hero No. 1, Judwaa and Judaai.





Now the actor is all grown up. He made a massive debut with Pyaar Ka Punchnama 2. He has also assisted Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Farah Khan and Ahmed Khan.





6. Aftab Shivdasani





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This boy needs no introduction. The actor who made melted a million hearts with his dimple made debut in Mast opposite Urmila Matondkar. But do you know, he was one of the boys in Mr. India. Check his picture above. He was also selected as the Farex baby when he was 14 months and featured in many TV commercials.





Now the actor is established in Bollywood and has been a part of Grand Masti franchise.





7. Pooja Ruparel





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You may remember her as Chutki from the successful film Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge but not many know that Puja Ruparel first appeared in King Uncle. The movie that released in the 1993 left a horrific impact on most of the 90s kids as it showed child trafficking. DDLJ was the second film of Pooja with SRK. She is Sonakshi Sinha's cousin and has stayed away from the limelight. However, as per her Instagram profile, the actress is now a stand up comedian and photographer.









8. Sakshi Sem





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The cute little girl appeared with late actor Rishi Kapoor in Raju Chacha. The child actress is also grown up and recently graduated from Mithibhai college.





9. Juanna Sanghvi



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The movie Heyy Baby revolved around this little one, Angel. Akshay Kumar and Vidya Balan's on-screen daughter is still young and cuter than ever. The film released in 2007 and she is close to 14 years now,
It would be a "worst nightmare" to lay wreaths alongside a representative of the country waging war against Ukraine in modern days.

Ambassador of Ukraine to Germany Andrij Melnyk refused Berlin mayor's invitation to mark the end of World War 2 in Europe alongside the head of the Russian embassy.

A few weeks ago, three ambassadors received an invitation from the mayor of Berlin, Michael Muller. Together with representatives of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, on May 2, he sought to lay wreaths in the Berlin-Tempelhof area in honor of the end of World War 2, Europeiska Pravda reports with reference to Tagesspiegel.

"First of all, the event is about a commemoration of Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian soldiers of the Red Army, Berlin mayor's office stated.

However, the ambassador of Ukraine said he would not participate in the event.

Melnyk told Tagesspiel he was grateful for the invitation: "This is recognition of the undeniable contribution of the Ukrainian people to the liberation of Europe from the Nazi regime."

The ambassador emphasized that the memory of the victims of war is his moral duty. However, he had to refrain from participating in the event on May 2.

"Not even in my worst nightmare could I imagine laying wreaths alongside a representative of the country that has for more than six years been cynically waging a bloody war in eastern Ukraine," Melnyk said, asking the city hall for understanding.

Read alsoPutin has "no other choice but to withdraw from eastern Ukraine and Crimea"  Ukraine's foreign minister

"In defiance of international law, Russia has annexed the Crimean peninsula and occupied a large part of Donbas," the Ukrainian ambassador stressed, according to MFA Ukraine. The "hostile policy of the Kremlin leader has generated the alienation between Ukrainians and Russians that could never have been imagined. "Therefore, joint commemoration is impossible," he said, adding, "It's a shame that the Mayor obviously misses all of these shocking facts."

"We, the Ukrainians, would like to see a more tactful approach, more understanding and empathy." the diplomat noted.

Seventy-five years after the end of World War 2, the diplomat says "blind spots" are still there in the German culture of remembrance, especially with regard to the annihilation of Ukrainians during the war. The ambassador notes it is a shame that Berlin has not yet erected a monument to commemorate the Ukrainian victims of Nazism.

"Therefore, I appeal to the Bundestag and the Berlin Senate to establish a Memorial to the Ukrainian victims of the Nazis in a prominent location in the center of the federal capital," Melnyk said.
Thiruvananthapuram, May 3 : Breaking his silence on the opposition's allegations of extravagance indulged in by his LDF government, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has dismissed the charges as baseless.

Vijayan has been attacked by the opposition's top brass, including Leader of Opposition Ramesh Chennithala and state Congress President Mullapally Ramachandran.

The Chief Minister said that though the Congress top brass has been slamming him for around a month now, he had not reacted so far since these were "all baseless allegations".

In a point-by-point rebuttal, Vijayan took on the opposition in his weekly TV programme, which will be telecast later in the day by TV channels. This endeavour also was dubbed by the opposition as a wasteful expenditure, with the only beneficiary being party-backed Kairali TV channel which produces it.

Incidentally, this TV programme is anchored by his media adviser John Brittas, who also heads the Kairali TV channel.

As for the controversy over an expenditure of over Rs 1.50 crore for hiring a helicopter, Vijayan claimed that it is now a norm since many states use these in an emergency and for security reasons.

On the passage of an ordinance to defer salaries of all state government employees for six days a month for five months, the Chief Minister said that this has been done in various forms by other states and also by the Centre.

"People will take stock of what was done by a section of the employees here on the issue. Also, the Congress should express its view on the way the Rajasthan government resorted to salary cuts," said Vijayan.

On the allegations that his half a dozen advisers were costing a fortune to the southern state, he pointed out that if the remunerations of all his advisers was added up the amount wouldn't add up to the salary of a high-ranked official.

On the issue of hiring 'very expensive' lawyers when the state has a battery of lawyers, Vijayan said that at times it might be necessary to hire top experts to defend the state government. This has been done by the Congress governments several times in the past, he said.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Islamabad: Slain US journalist Daniel Pearl's parents have petitioned to the Pakistani Supreme Court seeking to overturn a ruling that freed four men who had been convicted in 2002 of involvement in his killing, their lawyer said on Saturday.

"We're standing up for justice, not only for our son, but for all our dear friends in Pakistan so they can live in a society free of violence and terrorism," Pearl's father Judea said in an emotional video message posted on Twitter.

Judea Pearl, father of American journalist Daniel Pearl, who was killed by terrorists in 2002. Credit:AP

Their lawyer Faisal Siddiqi told Reuters he had filed the petition on their behalf. A court official said it had yet to be admitted for further proceedings.

"A bare perusal of the entire record would reveal that there was a plethora of incriminating evidence, both forensic as well as oral, which proved that murder was committed and that all the accused persons aided and abetted the murder," the appeal petition said.
The governor of Michigan has defended Joe Biden against a sexual assault allegation, saying she believes the presumptive Democratic nominee's denials and added that she resents having to answer such questions as a survivor of sexual assault herself.

Gretchen Whitmer, currently seen as a top choice to serve as the former vice presidents running mate in the race against Donald Trump, told CNN that she had been heavily researching the allegation made by Tara Reade, a former Senate staffer to Mr Biden.

I know Joe Biden, and Ive watched his defence and theres not a pattern that goes into this, Ms Whitmer, a former prosecutor and state lawmaker, told CNNs Jake Tapper about the accusation against Mr Biden. I think for these reasons, Im very comfortable that Joe Biden is who he says he is.

The governor then sought to tamp down any follow-up questions about the controversial allegation, which has garnered national news in recent days as Mr Biden appears set to secure the partys Democratic nomination.

And you know what? Thats all Im going to say about it, Ms Whitmer said. I really resent the fact that every time a case comes up all of us survivors have to weigh in.

She added: It is reopening wounds and it is, take us at our word, ask us for our opinion, and lets move on.

The governor said that sexual assault survivors feel a simmering anger about seemingly having to represent other victims when high-profile allegations take over the national news cycle.

Ms Reade has accused Mr Biden of assaulting her when she worked for him as a Senate staffer on Capitol Hill in the 1990s. The accusations have come under intense scrutiny after she appeared to advance her previous claims of uncomfortable behaviour on the part of Mr Biden to outright assault in the final months of the Democratic primaries.

The former staffer said she complained about how she was treated in the office to other aides, who have said they do not recall such conversations. She also said she never filed an official complaint and made no mention of assault or harassment on a form she filed about the allegations with a congressional personnel office.

While Ms Whitmer has largely avoided answering questions about serving as a running mate to Mr Biden, she has praised the former vice president in a series of interviews in recent weeks after endorsing him for the White House.

Were cut from a similar cloth, she told Politico about herself and Mr Biden. Im grateful for the friendship, and thats  you know, everything that Im doing right now is focused on helping the people of my state through this crisis.

Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan Show all 11 1 /11 Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan A demonstrator shouts next to two masked security guards at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan during a protest against stay-at-home orders AFP via Getty Images Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan Armed members of a milita group at the state Capitol building in Lansing, Michiga, during a protest against coronavirus lockdown measures REUTERS Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan A protester at the state Capitol in Lansing holds a sign comparing Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer to Adolf Hitler during a demonstration against coronavirus lockdown measures AFP via Getty Images Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan An armed protester takes part in a demonstation against lockdown measures at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan AP Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan A protester holds a sign saying 'Bill Gates is evil' at a demonstration against stay-at-home orders at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan. Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and a billionaire philanthropist, has warned of the dangers of viral pandemics AFP via Getty Images Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan Protesters take part in a demonstration at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan against stay-at-home orders AFP/Getty Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan A protester holds a pro-Trump sign at a demonstration against lockdown measures outside the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan AFP via Getty Images Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan Armed protesters take part in a demonstration at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan against lockdown measures during the coronavirus pandemic AFP via Getty Images Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan A protester holds a sign reading 'Every job is essential, get workers back to work safely now' during a demonstration at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan over lockdown measures AFP via Getty Images Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan A protester with a US flag painted on her face takes part in a demonstration at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan against lockdown measures during the coronavirus pandemic AFP via Getty Images Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan A protester wearing a Guy Fawkes mask holds up a sign reading 'Stay Free' during a demonstration against lockdown measures at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan AP

However, her states lockdown orders have resulted in demonstrators taking to the streets and demanding Michigan be reopened for business despite the coronavirus pandemic. Ms Whitmer announced some of the most restrictive stay-at-home guidelines in the country after the state saw one of the first significant outbreaks of Covid-19 in the US. It remains unclear for now whether the protests will jeopardise Ms Whitmers potential placement on the ticket.

On Sunday, Ms Whitmer told CNN that we have to listen to the epidemiologists and health experts while slamming the demonstrations in the state capitol, saying the protesters, some of whom brandished swastikas, Confederate flags and assault rifles, were not representative of who we are.

Mr Biden has vowed to select a female VP nominee, and previously said Ms Whitmer joined his list of possible picks shortly after she delivered the official Democratic response to Mr Trumps State of the Union address in February.

She told Politico earlier this month she would be the most enthusiastic supporter of [a] Biden-whomever ticket.

I would include people like Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren and Stacey Abrams and Amy Klobuchar and Val Demings, she said. You know, I think that there really is a great  theres a huge class of highly competent women leaders across this country that would, I think, be fantastic.
The Houston Police Departments air support division  one of the oldest and largest units of its type in the nation  will be temporarily grounded as it recovers from the first fatality in its history, Chief Art Acevedo said.

Tactical Flight Officer Jason Knoxs death Saturday marks the first in the history of the departments Marine and Air Division, which was established in 1970 and prides itself on its safety record.

Its never happened before, said Ray Hunt, former president of the Houston Police Officers Union.

At one point, the 50-year-old division had 16 helicopters and one fixed wing aircraft in its fleet, making it one of the largest such units of any municipal police department in the U.S. It now fields 11 aircraft: six patrol helicopters, three for training, one for search and rescue, and one airplane.

Their operations are an extremely valuable tool that we need to keep this community safe, Acevedo said Saturday. Especially one so sprawled out.

Helicopter fatalities are extremely rare.

There were 122 accidents involving helicopters in 2019, with 24 fatal accidents and 51 fatalities, according to the United States Helicopter Safety Team, a national organization that tracks such statistics. This year, there have been 19 helicopter crashes across the country, three of which were fatal and claimed 13 lives, according to the organizations data  though its not clear if that included Saturdays crash in Houston.

At a news conference detailing Knoxs death and pilot Chase Cormiers condition, Acevedo said he would be temporarily grounding the fleet to process the recent events.

Were going to stand them down for a little bit just to get everybodys emotions together, he said. Officials from the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Harris County Sheriffs Office have offered to step in to patrol by air during that time, he said.

There is a great tactical advantage to the aerial perspective, whether the tactical advantage is from a fixed wing platform, at a higher advantage, moving a little faster, or a helicopter that can slow down, or even stop and over and give you that aerial perspective, said Daniel Schwarzbach, who spent 38 years at the Houston Police Department, including 30 years in the air support division. He now serves as executive director of the Airborne Public Safety Association.

While this is HPDs first fatal crash, a minor crash just happened in 2019  raising concerns for Schwarzbach.

Having two crashes like that is not normal within the same agency in that short amount of time, he said. Theres something going on that needs to be looked at.

Acevedos predecessor, Charles McClelland, said that during his tenure with the department, helicopter pilots repeatedly proved their value.

Those pilots out there are incredibly skilled pilots, incredibly skilled, McClelland said. Helicopters are expensive to maintain and operate. But when you need one, you need one. Theyve assisted in capturing hundreds and hundreds of suspects and saved officers lives.

They've also helped apprehend suspects -- in 2016, one flight team gained national attention after a dramatic video went viral of a flight officer hopping out of his still-hovering chopper and running down a burglary suspect in north Houston, then wrestling him into submission. The crash left rank-and-file patrol officers mourning for a division they said acted as reassuring backup whenever they arrived on scene. "To see and witness that division hurt, struck down really hits home," one officer told the Chronicle. "Without them, our eyes our blinded on what we have to deal with on foot. Our brothers in the sky are so crucial on whether we breathe or die on the ground."

HPDs helicopter division has experienced very few crashes of any type over the last 25 years, according to data from the National Transportation and Safety Board and other records.

One came in 1996, during a training flight, when the departments helicopter suffered a hard landing. The chopper was traveling about 20 when it pitched forward and to the right. The flight instructor felt at least three severe impacts to the aircraft and then the aircraft was stopped, the records show.

An inspector from the Federal Aviation Administration found a mechanic failed to follow proper inspection procedures and that the bottom of the right aircrafts right skid tube was worn beyond the manufacturers tolerances.

In other cases, officers have faced serious dangers and hair-raising situations, according to records. Chopper engines have failed and aircraft have come under fire from criminal suspects. And at least 10 times in the last decade, HPDs helicopter pilots have had to land after running low on fuel, or experienced other mechanical mishaps, according to internal police records, disciplinary paperwork and news reports.

A 2009 Houston Chronicle article detailed one officers emergency landing after his choppers engine failed. The officer was flying 600 feet above ground level and made an emergency landing in a Midtown parking lot. The pilot performed a maneuver called an autorotation landing, to make a safe landing in an empty lot in the 2800 block of Brazos near Dennis, saving his life and that of two passengers.

One helicopter ran low on fuel and had to land at a police station in southwest Houston in 2010, records show. That same month, an internal review at the air support division noted that on another flight, a helicopter experienced a loss of tail rotor effectiveness and plunged about 200 feet.

Records credited the officer for responding and recovering the aircraft without damage to the chopper or injury to its passengers but noted it was flown on at least one patrol flight after that without being inspected.

Numerous days passed without the submission of the required incident report, which delayed the inspection and diagnoses of the ship, supervisors wrote in their review.

In October of that same year, supervisors conducted another review, after a pilot ran low on fuel and made an emergency landing. Two similar incidents occurred the following year. In one, the pilot assisting officers chasing a suspect burned through too much fuel and had to land at Bush Intercontinental Airport to refuel before flying back to Hobby Airport. Then on Dec. 30, 2011, a pilot flew in worsening weather and had to land at the Houston municipal courts building after seeing that a wall of fog had enshrouded their regular landing spot at Hobby.

The (pilot-in-charge)s decision making and judgment to launch the flight put the aircrew in a situation that caused the offsite landing and may have been avoided, supervisors noted.

In 2016, pilots who responded to a mass shooting in Memorial ended up getting shot at five times. An Army veteran who served two tours in Afghanistan experiencing a mental health crisis went on a shooting spree that killed one person and wounded several others. During the incident, the man fired 212 rounds and hit one of the police departments copters five times.

In 2017, one pilot took two of his relatives on ride-alongs. During the second flight, he ran low on fuel and had to land in a parking lot. The officer received a five-day suspension and his supervisor received a nine-day suspension, records show.

The most significant recent crash came in July 2019, as Sgt. Stephen Howard and Knox  the flight officer  were preparing to land. Records with the NTSB show the pilot was just a few feet above the ground when the helicopter had a sudden uncontrollable yaw and bank to the right. The pilot felt the left skid hit the ground before the helicopter rolled on its right side. Both Howard and Knox were able to extricate themselves from the helicopter when it came to a rest.

Neither was seriously injured. The pilot, Howard, retired soon after.

Jay R. Jordan contributed to this report.

st.john.smith@chron.com
Altera Infrastructure is an international midstream service provider that owns and operates assets used in storage, production as well as transportation of products by the offshore oil and gas industry. The coronavirus outbreak has led to a sharp decrease in demand for oil, a surge in its supply and a resultant drop in oil prices to record lows. In this report, we analyze the companys business model, exposure to near term volatility in oil, its ability to meet financial obligations, dividend prospects and finally conclude with whether the companys preferred stock offers an attractive balance between risks and rewards.

Overview:

Incorporated as Teekay Offshore Partners L.P. with Teekay Corporation as the general partner, the companys common stock was listed in 2006. Brookfield Business Partners (BBU), part of the Brookfield Asset Management (BAM) group has accumulated 99% of the common shares of the company since 2017 and has recently rebranded it as Altera Infrastructures L.P. The companys common stock was de-listed this year after its acquisition by Brookfield.

[caption id="attachment_573818" align="aligncenter" width="750"]

Kanok Sulaiman/Shutterstock.com[/caption]

Altera Infrastructure operates storage, production, and transportation assets which are mainly used by the oil and gas industry to support offshore drilling activities. Geographically, the company focuses on the offshore oil regions of the North Sea, Brazil, and the East Coast of Canada. The Companys assets consist of floating production, storage, and offloading units, shuttle tankers, floating storage and offtake units, long-distance towing, and offshore installation vessels. The consolidated assets of Altera are valued at approximately $5.2 billion. Altera operates its business in 5 major segments:

Q1 2020 hedge fund letters, conferences and more

FPSO Segment: FPSO assets are floating offshore assets that provide production and storage facilities. They are mainly used to support oil fields situated in deep-water areas. An FPSO receives a mixture of crude oil, water, and impurities from risers and then separates the fluids into crude oil, natural gas, and other impurities. As of 2019, Altera had 6 FPSO assets in which it had ownership of 100%, 4 of which have been operating under contracts with major energy companies and 2 are in lay-up. It also has 50% interest in 2 FPSOs which are operating under contract in Brazil. Revenue in this segment is primarily earned through long-term, fixed-rate contracts. These contracts had an average remaining life of 3.2 years as of 2019 year-end.

Story continues

Shuttle Tankers Segment: Shuttle tankers are customized ships that are used to transport oil products from offshore oil fields to onshore terminals and refineries. Alteras shuttle tanker fleet consists of 26 vessels that are operated under fixed-term contracts of affreightment, time charters, and bareboat charters. The company also has 7 new shuttle tankers which are expected to be delivered between 2020 and 2022. The Contracts of Affreightment (COA) have an average term period of 3.4 years whereas the time charter and bareboat charter contracts have an average term period of 4.5 years. As of 2019, the total cargo capacity of 34 shuttle tankers was 4.2 million deadweight tonnes.

FSO Segment: FSO is a simplified version of FPSO. It provides on-site storage and offloading facility to oilfields but it does not possess the ability to process it. In this segment, Altera operates 5 FSO units that are under fixed-term contracts and have an average remaining contract term of 2.6 years. The total cargo capacity of these 5 assets is 0.6 million deadweight tonnes.

Towage and Offshore Installation Vessels: In this segment, the company owns and operates 10 assets which are used for towage, station-keeping, installation and decommissioning of large floating assets such as FPSOs and FSOs.

UMS Segment: In this segment, the company operates a single asset named Arendal Spirit. This asset provides offshore accommodation, storage, maintenance, and modification facility to existing offshore installations. It has 500 berths and is currently under lay-up.

As evident in the chart below, FPSO and Shuttle tankers are the largest segments of Altera. FPSO contributes 47% of the adjusted EBITDA of the company while constituting 39% of the revenue. Whereas Shuttle Tankers segment accounts for 44% of the revenue while contributing 39% of the EBITDA.

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The companys contracts with its customers are mainly long term in nature with rates fixed, therefore, its cash flows are largely immunized from the daily fluctuations in the global commodity prices, at least in the near term. Based on existing contracts as of 2019 end, Altera has $4.6 billion of forward revenue secured before including any contract options, which provide relative stability to future earnings and cash flows. The customer portfolio consists of several blue-chip companies including Shell (RDS.A) (RDS.B), Equinor (EQNR), BP (BP), and Total (TOT), to name a few. Royal Dutch Shell is the companys largest customer accounting for 25% of revenues, followed by Equinor ASA (formerly Statoil) which contributes 13% and is majority owned by the Government of Norway.

Decline in oil prices due to COVID-19 having a severely negative impact on the broader energy industry

There has been unprecedented pressure on the global oil and gas industry because of the widespread outbreak of COVID-19. As a measure to control its spread, almost all countries have announced mild to stringent lockdowns, which has resulted in a substantial decline in global oil demand. Further, largely unchecked production levels have resulted in severe demand-supply mismatch and consequently a free fall in oil prices. Since the beginning of this year, brent oil prices have declined from the mid $60s per barrel to the low-to-mid 20s per barrel just in a span of a couple of months. The demand is forecasted to remain subdued for much of 2020 because of wide-spread reduction in business activities. As per the recent IEA report, global oil demand is expected to fall by 9.3 million barrel/day. Historic lows in oil prices are forcing oil producers to considerably reduce production levels and fixed costs. Global oil supply is set to plunge by 12 million barrel/day in May as per IEA.

Please note that, recently, all the major oil producing nations have mutually agreed to reduce oil production by 10% in the coming months in order to support prices. Although this historic deal will provide some support to prices, any major improvement is not expected in the short term unless deeper production cuts are announced, or the global economy shows some signs of turnaround despite the outbreak. As per the April IEA report:

The measures announced by OPEC+ and the G20 countries wont rebalance the market immediately. But by lowering the peak of the supply overhang and flattening the curve of the build-up in stocks, they help a complex system absorb the worst of this crisis.

Super Contango in the oil market leading to boom, albeit temporary, in the tanker industry

The current highly unusual conditions in the oil market have led to windfall gains in the tanker market. The mismatched demand and supply situation has led to creation of contango which basically means there is so much excess supply at the moment that value of one barrel of oil in hand today is substantially less than value of one barrel at a later date. As a result, there has been a surge in demand for storage facilities as companies try to preserve the value of their product by holding on to it longer and investors look to profit from arbitrage opportunities. As onshore storage facilities are reaching full capacity levels, oil industry stakeholders are looking to offshore assets as storage options. This increased demand has led to a surge in spot rates or per day charges which is benefiting several tanker companies globally.

In fact, during a recent interview with CNBC, Mr. Herbjrn Hansson CEO of Nordic American tankers mentioned that they are charging $70,000 per day per ship for their Suezmax tankers which are substantially higher than average rates of approximately $30,000 in 2019. The operating costs remain at $8,000 thereby generating extraordinarily high cash flows from the assets.

We are making a lot of money at this time, improving our balance sheet tremendously, and I have never seen such a strong market. And Ive been around for a little while.

Altera Infrastructure, especially its shuttle tankers segment is well placed to benefit from these contango markets. In addition to the increased pricing for vessels operating under spot contracts, the company will have an upper hand in re-negotiating its time charter contracts when they come up for renewal. Altera has 2 tankers under spot contracts which constitutes 9% of its overall fleet capacity. Also, contracts for 5 shuttle tankers which constitute 19% of its storage fleet capacity, are expiring in the next 3 months and therefore can be re-contracted at higher rates. Further, the company will receive 3 new shuttle tanker vessels in 2020 which will provide additional growth to revenue and profits assuming the demand and supply imbalance continues to exist over the next few quarters or natural demand in the industry is able to absorb additional capacity. The new fleet additions will increase total fleet capacity by 26% YoY.

Limited impact in the short term in FPSO segment, however, long-term picture murky if oil prices stay sub $25

Any large fluctuations in energy prices may not affect Alteras FPSO and FSO business in the short run to the same extent as an oil producer, but in the medium to long term, its performance can be adversely affected. Although the majority of Alteras revenue comes from fixed rate contracts which have over 3 years of average life, sub-$25 oil prices medium to long term will reduce the need to hire companys assets especially since offshore drilling tends to be costlier than onshore. In the near term however limited impact from oil price dislocation is expected. The company has one FPSO which has been announced for decommissioning this year and other than that, all contracts remains active until 2022. Also, these contracts are primarily with large oil producing companies such as Petrobas (PRB) and Shell. Petrobas is majority owned by the Brazilian Government and Shell is the largest energy company in the world, therefore they are not expected to easily wither away in the ongoing storm in the oil markets due to large capital backing.

Key Contracts:

On the positive side, the decommissioned FPSO has a storage capacity of 270,000 barrels of crude oil and Altera has an excellent opportunity to source a short-term storage contract for the vessel until a suitable oil producer is found for an FPSO contract. The same opportunity lies with respect to 2 FPSOs currently in lay-up, which have a combined storage capacity of almost 700,000 barrels.

We expect that the combined effect of strong surge in storage demand and additional shuttle tankers being delivered this year will provide enough tailwind to Altera to more than offset any modest negative impact which the FPSO segment may face. Even without considering the available short-term storage opportunity in decommissioned and lay-up FPSOs, the company should be able to largely maintain its earnings power.

Preferreds are trading at a steep discount

Altera has 3 sets of preferred stock outstanding. All the preferred shares are perpetual, and the coupons are cumulative. Due to the broader market sell-off because of the coronavirus outbreak and uncertainty in the oil industry, dividend yields of all 3 preferreds reached almost 30% last month. Since then, the preferred stocks have shown significant recovery however are still trading at a dividend yield between 13  14%, which is still materially higher than its 12-month historical average of 9 - 10.5%. Series E is yielding the highest as of now because of its longer maturity and call period. Also, Series E has a Fixed to Floating conversion feature and after the call date, the fixed preference dividend rate will be converted to a floating rate of LIBOR + 6.4%. Series A is trading at the lowest dividend yield primarily because its call date was nearly 2 years ago, and it is expected to be the first in line to get redeemed whenever company chooses to announce a redemption plan. However, in the most recent earnings call, management suggested they have no plan to redeem any time soon.

No, we have no plans other than to continue to have the preferred outstanding and listed and continue our reporting obligations in relation to those securities.  Jan Rune Steinsland, CFO in Q4 2019 earnings call.

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Comfortable near-term debt maturities

Altera has outstanding debt of $3.2 billion as of the end of FY 2019. The debt to EBITDA is 4.7 times and the interest coverage ratio (EBITDA to interest) is 3.4 times. Altera has $374 million of debt maturing in 2020 and already has more than $300 million of liquidity at its disposal in the form of cash and undrawn credit facility. Further, keeping in mind the free cash flow generation along with significant tailwind in the shuttle tankers segment, we do not expect the company to face any material headwinds meeting its near-term financial obligations by either paying cash or refinancing its debt.

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Plenty cushion available for preferred dividend distribution

The annual preferred dividend liability amounts to just $32 million, and in the past few years, Altera has consistently maintained enough cushion for its obligations in case the business deteriorates. Please note that the company has announced dividends on preferreds just a couple of days ago on 22nd April despite the turmoil in energy markets. As indicated in the table below, we have estimated Alteras sources and uses of cash assuming a worst-case scenario of 10% EBITDA decline as well as a slightly optimistic scenario of 5% growth in EBITDA. In both scenarios we found the preferred dividends of the company to be safe for 2020.

Altera

Note:

(1) Capital expenditure includes obligations for new shuttle tankers in 2020. These expenditures will significantly decline to $101 million and $73 million in 2021 and 2022 respectively.

(2) The financing for large part of scheduled capital expenditures related to new shuttle tankers has already been secured.

Risks:

Privatization: Brookfield Business Partners has bought all the common equity shares from the public and consequently the common stock was delisted from the exchanges. The company may not stop at common shares and also look to eliminate preferred stock from the capital structure as well, and it may take the tender offer route at a lower rate instead of calling the preferreds at par given the deep discounts preferreds trade at the moment. Additionally, it may choose to delist preferreds while not redeeming them which will significantly impact liquidity and as a result pricing of these preferreds. However, some comfort was given by management in this regard on the Q4 2019 earnings call:

No, we have no plans other than to continue to have the preferred outstanding and listed and continue our reporting obligations in relation to those securities.  Jan Rune Steinsland, CFO in Q4 2019 earnings call.

Further weakness in the oil market: As discussed in this report earlier, a sub-$25 oil price longer term will be detrimental to the companys business even as the companys business model is partially insulated in the near to medium term.

Conclusion:

The global oil industry is going through an uncertain environment because of a severe supply-demand mismatch as a result of coronavirus related global lockdowns. That said Alteras business is largely insulated in the near term as a result of long-term contracts with blue chip customers and a temporary lift from the tanker business. At the same time, the companys preferred shares are trading at a fairly large discount to their pre-COVID 19 yields. As such, we believe the companys preferreds offer a strong risk reward and also provide investors an opportunity to gain low risk exposure to energy.

Looking for more attractive investment opportunities like Altera Preferreds? We offer many. Consider a membership

Article by Blue Harbinger

Disclosure: None

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Massachusetts State Police attached to Norfolk District Attorney Michael W. Morrisseys Office are investigating a police-involved shooting in the town of Braintree.

Police received a 911 call about an armed male in the vicinity of Grove Street at approximately 5:33 p.m. on Saturday.

The man who was in his 50s was shot and wounded by police and has been transported by Braintree Fire Department and Brewster Emergency Medical Services to South Shore Hospital where he is receiving care.

Police Chief Mark Dubois has asked District Attorney Morrissey and State Police detectives assigned to his office to lead the investigation into the shooting.

Got a news tip or want to contact MassLive about this story? Email newstips@masslive.com or message us on Facebook orTwitter. You can also call our news tips line at 413-776-1364.
Much before Irrfan Khan wowed the world with his acting talent, the actor was a shy, passionate and sincere person, who was meant to be all things great, say friends and colleagues from his early days.

Irrfan passed away on Wednesday after losing his battle with a rare form of cancer at the age of 54. The industry dubbed the actor's untimely demise as an emotional void, which will be hard to fill.

Much of Irrfan's journey to become the actor he eventually did, began when he got into the National School of Drama (NSD) in 1984, where "Taare Zameen Par" actor Vipin Sharma first saw him.

"I had already graduated but used to hang out in the hostel. I was friends with Tigmanshu Dhulia, Sanjay Mishra and would often be with them in their rooms.

"Irrfan was my junior and I remember he had done a play in one of the students' productions, and when I saw it I was totally blown away by his performance," Sharma told PTI.

The actor said back then Irrfan and Tigmanshu weren't the best of friends and barely used to chat.

"I remember telling Tigmanshu that Irrfan was a great guy and he should connect with him. We all know how that turned out," he said.

Tigmanshu and Irrfan went on to form a solid cinematic partnership, with consecutive acclaimed work, from "Haasil", "Paan Singh Tomar", for which the actor won a best actor National Award, to "Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster Returns".

Sharma recalled the actor had a small room to himself in one corner in NSD.

"He was a very private person from the beginning. Normally in the hostel, two-three people shared a room. Irrfan had picked up this room, which was single occupancy. It was in the back, right in the corner.

"We would see him sitting by the window, reading a book. He was in his own world. It wasn't that we spent a lot of time in NSD but strangely our bond grew after college. I felt like he was a brother to me."



When Irrfan graduated from NSD, the actor came to Mumbai looking for work and fortunately, got cast in Mira Nair's award-winning 1988 film "Salaam Bombay".

For the film's workshop, Irrfan was flatmates with another actor, who would go on to cement his position in the coming years: Raghubir Yadav.

The "Peepli Live" actor said though Irrfan was his junior in NSD, the duo met during the workshop in 1987, which lasted for nearly six weeks.

"There was me, Irrfan, Mira, writer Sooni Taraporevala, Barry John and 130 kids. We lived in an apartment behind Jaslok Hospital. Shyam Benegal would live right above us. Irrfan was an extremely hardworking person and incredibly passionate. Every day after finishing workshops, he'd say 'Raghu bhai, let's go to the streets, explore.'



"Both of us were new to Mumbai and were supposed to play local city characters. We just didn't know the culture, the lingo, and lifestyle. We would travel by bus, locals and spend so much time on Grant Road. Just observing people, studying how they talk, walk. There was so much learning with him," Yadav said.

For the film, where Yadav played a character named Chillum, the actor had to learn how to smoke which he had never done in his life.

"I remember Mira had asked us to light a bidi, my first, and it was Irrfan's duty to get two bidi bundles everyday, which we would finish in 24 hours. We would smoke one and talk so that we remain in character," he recounted.

Yadav said Irrfan was hoping he would get a role as one of the kids in the group in "Salaam Bombay!", and when that didn't happen, heartbreak and tears followed.

"I was already signed for Chillum but he was devastated. He cried so much that night. I calmed him down, told him we have just started. Everything that's broken can be fixed. He didn't get the role because of his height. Though Mira had told him he'd get something else, he was inconsolable."



The actor recalled the director came over with beer to console him and the duo made him realise that this wasn't the end of his journey.

"I told him this is just the beginning. This is the same city which will one day embrace him. Of course, I had said that to soothe him but he was sincere and I'm not surprised my words turned prophetic.

"He had such passion to learn, surrender and adapt, I knew he would go far. It was his sincerity, which took him ahead, so far."



From a cameo in "Salaam Bombay!", Irrfan went on to headline films like "Maqbool", Nair's "The Namesake", "The Lunchbox", "Piku", "Hindi Medium" and his last outing, "Angrezi Medium".

Even as he grew in stature, Irrfan remained deeply connected to all those he met in the beginning of his journey, his friends said.

Sharma remembered how Irrfan was "instrumental" in getting him back to acting after he had briefly quit the industry.

"When 'Maqbool' came, he asked me to watch the film and said how cinema was changing and great things were happening. I saw the film and told him I loved it. He said, 'If that's the case, come back to Mumbai and start acting.' I kept thinking about what he had said and eventually returned.

"I last met him when I visited him in London during his treatment. We kept in touch through messages. He told me he was coming to India in August and would meet me. I kept waiting, but it never happened... Memories are the only thing left now," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Area rugs are an excellent idea to help zone areas in your home, and this week I thought I would share some of the stunning rugs in our rug collection from Villa Nova.

This eye-catching collection of rugs has been created in collaboration with renowned rug makers Louis de Poortere. The Villa Nova brand has a philosophy for creating stylish fabrics, wallcoverings and accessories for modern living and these superb rugs are the perfect addition to their interiors brand.

When choosing a rug there are two options available from this rug range  the flat weave rug or the hand tufted rug. Here is a little overview of the differences between the two.

Flat Weave Rugs

These flat weave rugs are woven with soft chenille. The flat weave collection incorporates subtle variations of colour and interesting textures. Using intricate woven details, these rugs perfectly capture the essence of the original Villa Nova fabric.

The flat weave rugs are available in sizes small, medium and large with special orders for XL and XXL available on request.

Ideal locations for the flat weave rugs are bedrooms (either a large rug placed under the bed to help anchor the space or a small rug beside the bed for warmth underfoot), dining rooms (they can create a real wow statement when placed in a formal dining setting under the dining table) or living rooms.

Hand Tufted Rugs

Hand tufted rugs are, by their nature, thicker in depth and have a rich, deep, luxurious pile that is comfortable and sumptuous underfoot. Hand tufted rugs are perfect for living rooms where you want to make a luxurious design statement. The Villa Nova hand tufted rug collection introduces warmth, luxury and statement design to any home. They are available in sizes medium and large with special orders for sizes XL and XXL.

Here is a glimpse at some of my favourite rugs from this stunning collection:

Akina Rugs

Featuring a stunning, oversized floral design with linear detailing, the Akina Rug has a beautiful wash of colour that echoes the style of a batik fabric. Woven with soft, cotton chenille, subtle variations in tone give this statement rug a casual, time-worn appearance. Available in two colourways.

Tobi Rugs

A characterful flat weave rug combining cotton chenille and wool yarns, featuring a contemporary geometric pattern that takes influence from traditional folk textiles. Available in four colourways.

Marit Rugs

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 11:39:30|Editor: huaxia

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SEOUL, May 3 (Xinhua) -- Multiple gunshots fired from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) hit a South Korean guard post in the inter-Korean border, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said Sunday.

The bullets, fired from the DPRK side, hit a South Korean guard post in the central front of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) at about 7:41 a.m. local time, the JCS said in a statement.

No casualty or damage was reported from the South Korean side, according to the JCS.

Following the gunshots, the South Korean military issued broadcasting warnings and fired back twice.

The JCS said the South Korean military was taking actions through the military communication lines with the DPRK to grasp a situation and prevent further incident, while maintaining a necessary defense posture.

The DMZ has left the Korean Peninsula divided since the 1950-1953 Korean War ended with armistice. Enditem
By Express News Service

CHENNAI: The State government on Saturday relaxed the lockdown in non-containment areas in all zones from Monday. Giving much relief to the industries which were clamouring to resume operations, the State has allowed them to resume operations from May 6. However, in the containment areas, the lockdown will continue to be enforced with all restrictions. Official sources said TASMAC shops will remain closed across the State for now.

Decisions in this regard were taken at the Cabinet meeting on Saturday. Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami, in a statement here, said, District collectors and the Chennai Corporation Commissioner have been instructed to follow the guidelines and make arrangements to allow industries to function from May 6. He said the government would continue to monitor the spread of coronavirus infection, and more relaxations would follow as and when the rate of infection comes down.

Stating that schools, colleges, training institutes, research institutions and all other educational institutions would remain closed until further orders, the CM added that public prayers and all religious gatherings would remain barred. The business timings for shops selling essential commodities have been extended. Similarly, hotels will be allowed to function with only takeaway facility.

ALSO WATCH:Lockdown 3.0 Explained: Barbers only in orange and green zone, but liquor shops allowed everywhere

what is open, what is not?

The State government has brought in several relaxations including resumption of business activities in non-containment zones
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan on Sunday pushed back against pressure to lift his stay-home orders, saying that he respects the rights of demonstrators who gathered over the weekend to protest the restrictions, but that it is too soon to safely reopen the state.

Hogan noted the crowds of people gathered at the National Mall in Washington and in other public spaces to enjoy the weekend's weather as cause for concern - an example of why he is reluctant to immediately lift measures designed to contain the novel coronavirus, which causes the deadly disease covid-19.

"You see this happening around the country as states try to open in a safe way," Hogan said during an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union."

He continued: "Unfortunately, the pressure is to do it in a not-safe way, and that's something that we're very concerned about and one of the reasons we're being cautious, and trying to do things in a slow, safe and effective manner."

Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia reported 85 additional covid-19 deaths, along with 2,148 new coronavirus infections. As of Sunday, the region had recorded a total of 2,192 deaths and 49,149 confirmed cases of the virus.

In Virginia, there were 44 new deaths reported overnight for a total of 660. Fairfax County saw its highest single-day increase, 31 fatalities, bringing its death toll from the virus to 184. More than 700 residents in the county have been hospitalized due to covid-19.

John Silcox, a spokesman for the Fairfax County Health Department, said the spike reported Sunday was the result of deaths last month, but not confirmed as covid-19-related until recently.

In a message to residents, Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay, a Democrat, warned that the county is "in the exponential growth phase of our epidemic curve" and said residents could expect to see cases and deaths increase for several more weeks. He also noted that known infections in Fairfax, as in other jurisdictions, were growing because of increased testing.

D.C. officials reported 11 new deaths Sunday, bringing the toll in the nation's capital to 251.

In Maryland, an additional 30 deaths were reported, including 13 in Montgomery County. Prince George's County added eight new deaths. A total of 1,281 people statewide have died of the disease.

On a positive note, for the third consecutive day the number of covid-19 patients hospitalized in Maryland decreased. On Sunday, there were 1,635 patients in hospitals, the lowest number in five days.

Residents across the Washington region have been locked down since late March. Hogan has released a plan to reopen the state in three stages and has estimated that the first phase could happen in early May.

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, also is hearing from residents and businesses who want restrictions eased. Northam's order closing most nonessential businesses is set to expire Friday, and the governor said last week that he will have guidance Monday on whether he intends to extend the measure.

As of Friday, Northam had lifted a ban on non-emergency procedures for doctors, dentists and veterinarians.

Hogan, Northam and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, have said any reopening of the region would be a coordinated effort. Hogan has said he will not consider lifting stay-home measures until the state sees either a consistent plateau or downward trend in new hospitalizations and new patients in intensive care units.

He and leaders in other states continue to face pressure from some corners to reopen more quickly. On Saturday, a modest crowd of residents frustrated by the prolonged social distancing restrictions held a rolling "Reopen Maryland" protest from Frederick to Salisbury.

Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., gave the keynote speech and likened Hogan's restrictions on church gatherings to autocratic regimes of communist China and North Korea.

"Everybody has a right to protest and express their feelings," Hogan said in response, during his CNN appearance Sunday. "Sadly, we had far more people die yesterday in Maryland than we had protesters."

Separately, a coalition of Maryland religious leaders, business owners and state lawmakers have filed a federal lawsuit, asking a judge in Baltimore to intervene to block Hogan's restrictions on certain businesses and religious gatherings.

In the court filing, four Republican delegates say the governor is picking and choosing which businesses can continue to thrive during the pandemic, while violating the constitutional rights of individuals to gather to worship or engage in political speech.

Big-box stores such as Lowe's and Walmart "are permitted to have hundreds of cars and people because the Governor chose them to be 'essential' businesses. However, under the same orders a church may not have anyone in its buildings with limited exceptions for 'virtual' services," according to the filing from Dels. Dan Cox of Frederick, Warren Miller of Howard, Neil Parrott of Washington, and Robin Grammer of Baltimore County.

The religious leaders involved in the lawsuit say that their congregations do not have the equipment to broadcast worship services online or to host drive-in services, and that many of their members do not have the resources to watch online.

Among the businesses, Adventure Park USA in Frederick County said it will lose $700,000 during the spring season if it cannot open in May and has taken out a $150,000 loan to meet its tax obligations.

Cox, a delegate who represents Frederick and Carroll counties, said in the court filing that he was told by Hogan's advisers that he could be arrested for attending and speaking at a rally protesting the stay-home orders.

Hogan spokesman Michael Ricci said Sunday that Cox was never told he could not speak.

"We fully respect Delegate Cox's right to protest and express his feelings, but that doesn't entitle him to make false and baseless claims."
Police recorded 37 violations within 3 hours at the Luxembourg-France border.

Police monitored the A31 for three hours on Saturday, and among the 300 drivers inspected, 37 were breaching Covid-19 travel restrictions.

According to Lorraine media outlets, offenders crossed the borders to restock on fuel and cigarettes despite the ongoing lockdown and travel restrictions.

Commissioner Bordereau explained to the Republicain Lorrain that the roads were significantly quieter due to the restrictions with 50% fewer drivers on the streets.

Related:

- Strict checks at Luxembourg border

- Police shocked by number of unjustified trips across the border
The recent agreement between the state and American Indian tribes on voter identification requirements should serve as a reminder to the state that it needs to work with tribes.

If there was any victory for the state, its a hollow one. The tribes feel the agreement is a victory for them, and it will cost the state a yet-to-be-determined amount of money.

Since 2004, the state has required a voter identification with a provable street address. Tribes have argued many members dont have permanent addresses, live with family members or are homeless. Many streets on reservations lack signs. The identification law prompted two lawsuits, the first by individual members of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in 2016. A second lawsuit was filed in 2018 by the Spirit Lake Nation that was later joined by the Standing Rock Sioux.

A mediator helped the state and tribes reach the agreement in February, and U.S. District Judge Dan Hovland approved it last week. This solution shouldnt have taken so long, and the Tribune believes the state is responsible for the delay.

Tribal concerns over the identification law were legitimate and needed attention. Tribal members were forced to sue to protect their voting rights. Many state officials probably will dispute that statement, but they were reluctant to consider tribal concerns.

The argument that the ID law is needed to prevent voter fraud is questionable at best. Opponents of the ID law believe the Republican-dominated state government wanted to hamper Native voting because it tends to favor Democrats. The Tribune thinks there is truth to this argument.

North Dakota prides itself on the accessibility to the voting booth and now the mail-in ballot. Theres no voter registration, which always surprises new residents. Despite this openness, there are few examples of voter fraud.

The approved agreement provides protections against voter fraud. These protections, agreed to by the tribes, could have been established without a long fight. Instead, the tribes were treated as interlopers. The Dakota Access Pipeline protests also soured some state officials on working with tribal members during this time.

Fortunately, state officials and tribes have worked hard recently to improve relationships. During the last legislative session, a major oil agreement was reached. The Legislature and tribes are working on tax issues and improved safety on reservations. Gov. Doug Burgum made it a priority to work with tribes from the beginning of his administration.

This cooperation needs to continue. The tribes play an important role in North Dakota, and the days of treating them with suspicion should be long gone.

The voter identification agreement appears to satisfy all sides. In the end, it should serve as a model of what can be achieved through working together instead of mandating.

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Shramik trains should have 90 per cent occupancy: Railways

India

pti-PTI

New Delhi, May 3: Indian Railways has issued a set of guidelines for its zones for running the Shramik special trains to ferry stranded people, saying the trains should have at least 90 per cent occupancy to operate.

Railways said the local state government authority shall handover tickets of such trains to passengers cleared by them and collect the ticket fare and hand over the total amount to Railways. It also said that the originating state will provide adequate security at the designated station to ensure that only those passengers, who have been cleared by state government to travel and have valid train ticket for journey, should enter station premises. "Each Shramik Special train shall be a non-stop train bound for a single destination.

Normally, the Shramik Special trains will be run for distances more than 500 kms. These trains will not stop at any in between station before the destination station. The train with full length composition with social distancing (not counting the inside middle berths) can carry approximately 1200 passengers each," it said.

"The originating state shall plan the group of travellers accordingly. The occupancy of train should not be less than 90 per cent," the guidelines stated. Railways shall print train tickets to the specified destination, as per number of passengers indicated by originating state and hand them over to the local state government authority, it said.

"The local state government authority shall handover tickets to passengers cleared by them and collect the ticket fare and hand over the total amount to railways," the guidelines stated. The state government shall issue food packets and drinking water at the originating points, it said. "It will be mandatory for all passengers to wear face cover.

The state authorities shall advise the passengers to use mask/ face covers "The originating state will encourage all passengers to download and use Aarogya Setu App," it said.

For trains with long journey beyond 12 hours, one meal will be provided by the railways On arrival at their destination, the passengers will be received by state government authorities, who would make all arrangements for their screening quarantine, if necessary, and further travel.

The receiving state will make adequate security arrangements at the railway station. "Railways reserves the right to discontinue Shramik Special train operations if safety, security and hygiene protocols are flouted at any stage," the guidelines issued to all zonal general managers said. Indian Railways on Friday last rolled out non-stop "shramik special" trains to ferry migrant workers, students and others stranded since the nationwide lockdown began on March 25 to contain the rising number of coronavirus cases.
A royal photographer has revealed how Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were 'really happy' with his breathtaking photo taken as they walked through the rain during their farewell tour.

Royal fans around the world gushed over 'beautifully breathtaking' photographs of Prince Harry, 35, and Meghan Markle, 38, giving each other the 'look of love' in the rain as they made their first post-Megxit appearance in March.

Samir Hussein managed to snap a stunning photograph of the Duke and Duchess as they stepped out arm-in-arm underneath an umbrella to attended the Endeavour awards evening at Mansion House in London.

Now he has shared how even the couple themselves love the photograph, telling US weekly: 'I spoke to some of their team and they were really happy about it and talking about it.'

Royal photographer Samir Hussein has revealed how Prince Harry, 35, and Meghan Markle, 38, were 'really happy' with the now famous photograph of them walking through the rain at the Endeavour Awards

In one of the snaps, Meghan and Harry can be seen gazing at each other and smiling as they tackle the wet weather conditions and cobbled streets arm-in-arm.

A second photograph sees the royal couple with their backs to the lens as the flashes from the photographers' cameras lights up the darkness and emphasises the rain drops.

Royal enthusiasts across the nation were quick to take to social media - with many saying the smiley snaps looked like something 'out of a movie scene.'

'Only Harry and Meghan could make a rainy day look this romantic,' enthused one, while a second penned: 'Novels should be written off this photo alone.'

The royal photographer, who has joined the couple on tour across the world, revealed how the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were talking about the breathtaking image

The photographer went on to describe the image as 'one in a million'.

He added that he was 'disappointed' he might not be able to photograph the couple in the future.

He said: 'Im really disappointed that I wont get to photograph them so much anymore.

He noted how he had been across the world with the couple, joining them on their tours of Australia, Fiji and Southern Africa, before adding: 'Ive really, really enjoyed photographing them. Im going to miss photographing them.

The photographer called the incredible image 'one in a million' and said he would miss snapping pictures of the couple

At the time, photographer Samir, who captured the magical moment, said: 'It's a one in a million when all the elements you could wish for as a photographer come together - perfect timing, great lighting, strong symbolism and amazing subjects make this a magical photo I am extremely proud of.'

Social media users were equally impressed, with one commenting: 'This looks like it came out of a photoshoot,' commented a third, while a fourth added: 'Wow, what a great shot! Can I get lighting and fake rain to follow me everywhere so I can get a shot like this!'

It comes amid reports the couple are looking to buy a $13 million mansion round the corner from Tom Hanks and Ben Affleck, complete with a 'granny annex' for Doria.

The snap was taken during Prince Harry and Meghan's farewell tour before the couple stepped by from royal duty officially in March

The Sussexes are said to be eyeing up a sprawling six-bedroom home near LA's wealthy neighborhood of Pacific Palisades and are planning to have Meghan's mom Doria move in with them and baby Archie.

'Once quarantine and lockdown are over, Harry and Meghan will be moving into their new pad - and they want Doria to be included in these plans,' a source told The Sun.

The source said Meghan wants to keep her mother, 63, close as she is 'her rock' and now 'doesn't trust many people' outside of an immediate circle of family and friends.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 22:55:07|Editor: huaxia

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NEW DELHI, May 3 (Xinhua) -- The number of COVID-19 cases in India crossed 40,000 mark on Sunday evening. The death toll due to the pandemic meanwhile has reached 1,306.

With 2,487 positive cases and 83 fatalities due to COVID-19 since Sunday morning, the total tally of the novel coronavirus cases has reached 40,263, while 1,306 people have lost their lives, India's federal health ministry said.

Across the country 10,887 patients have recovered so far, pushing the recovery rate at 27 percent.

According to top health research body -- Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), 1,046,450 samples have been tested until Sunday morning.

A nationwide lockdown imposed on March 25 is underway in India to contain the pandemic. In the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, life in India has come to a standstill, which badly hit economic activities.

Sunday marks the 40th straight day of the ongoing lockdown likely to end on May 17.

The government has divided the districts across the country into three zones -- red, orange and green. The zone classification determines the severity of infection in the respective district and the kind of restrictions it has been placed under.

Red zone means a hotspot, where the cases are increasing, orange zone refers to the place where no new cases are reported over the past two weeks, and the green zone is the area where no case is reported since the past 21 days.

"Health Minister Harsh Vardhan urged the people of India to observe the extended period of lockdown 3.0 (till May 17) in letter and spirit and treat it as an effective intervention to cut down the chain of transmission of COVID-19," a statement issued by health ministry said.

Health experts said extending the lockdown postponed the spread of COVID-19 and the real challenge would be how to tackle the pandemic after restrictions are lifted.

"I have been saying if more tests are carried out, more cases would add up. With lockdown India only postpones the speed of spread of novel coronavirus," renowned virologist T Jacob John said. "The day lockdown is lifted, the spread will begin. There will be more transmission, which would mean more cases and more deaths."

A study carried out by local TV network Times Network in partnership with global consulting firm Protiviti, has predicted the COVID-19 epidemic could peak in India by the middle of May and gradually peter out after that. According to the study, India could see the number of confirmed cases crossing 75,000 around May 22.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to economic devastation and millions of people, mostly migrant workers, losing their jobs in India. Many of the laborers have returned to their homes but others are stuck in cities waiting to return home.

The federal government with cooperation of states has begun the process of ferrying stranded passengers, mostly migrant workers and students, back home. On Friday a special train brought 1,200 migrant workers from Telangana to Jharkhand amid the nationwide lockdown, officials said.

Officials said the stranded passengers are first screened for symptoms, and social distancing guidelines are strictly followed while making them board the trains.

Thousands of migrant workers, students, businessmen and others had been left stranded in other states following the abrupt lockdown. With a halt on economic activity because of the lockdown, thousands were left without jobs, money, food or shelter.

As per estimates, about 10 million migrant laborers are stranded across the country.

With the suspension of passenger trains, the railway ministry only allows goods trains to ferry the supply of essentials.

Meanwhile, the ongoing ban on domestic and international flight operations has been extended until May 17, in accordance with the continuation of the nationwide lockdown.

Indian army, navy and air force on Sunday showed solidarity with the country's medical staff fighting COVID-19 by a series of activities across the nation.

The latest gesture by the armed forces is the third massive display of gratitude to health workers fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

The first show of gratitude to health workers was called by Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging people to clap for COVID-19 warriors from their balconies. It was followed by a show of solidarity with turning off lights and lighting candles. Enditem
An Indian Air Force (IAF)



helicopter on Sunday showered flower petals on a Covid hospital in Odisha capital to express gratitude to medical personnel engaged in the fight against coronavirus.

Flower petals were showered on Kalinga Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS) Covid Hospital as a mark of gratitude to frontline coronavirus warriors.

Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat had announced on Friday that the three services of the armed forces will carry out a series of activities to thank the "corona warriors".

The IAF took this unique initiative to boost the morale of the Covid warriors, who have dedicated themselves to save lives of the patients affected by novel coronavirus.

"We express our heartfelt gratitude to the Government of India for motivating and lifting the spirits of the Covid warriors at KIMS. Because of this, the willpower of all doctors, nurses, and paramedical staff along with all others Covid warriors will be strengthened by and large and they would continue their fight against the novel coronavirus with renewed zeal", said Dr Achyuta Samanta, Founder of KIIT, KISS and KIMS.

He also thanked Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik for his support to open a special Covid Hospital at KIMS. As a result, it has been possible for us to witness such a remarkable and memorable moment today (Sunday), added Samanta.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom has hit the wall with new European projects  Nord Stream 2 will be finished at some point in the second half of 2021, the exact route of TurkStreams second line remains veiled in ambiguity and no other major gas importer voiced their interest in carrying out a new project. Thus, the only remaining prospect for growth lies in Eastern Asia and primarily China. Apart from a tangible gas market saturation in Europe, there are two main premises for a second-phase Gazprom expansion into China: its largely untapped Eastern Siberian gas reserves that would be very costly to move all across Russia onto European markets and the competitiveness of Russian pipeline gas on the Chinese market.

Gazproms current China-bound project, the 38 BCm per year Power of Siberia (PoS) pipeline, started up in December 2019. Surprisingly, the Russian firm halted gas exports via PoS mid-March for a (previously non-indicated) two-week maintenance which turned out to be an elegant way of circumventing the massive demand drop in China. Even with another round of maintenance announced for autumn, Gazprom should be able to meet its export target for 2020  5 BCm, rising steadily to 10 BCm per year in 2021 and 15 BCm in 2022. By 2025 Power of Siberia should reach its nominal capacity and it is the next step after that currently exercises the minds of Russian policy makers and gas traders alike.

The contours of the next major project have been emerging for some time already  the idea to construct Power of Siberia-2 (PoS-2) was flaunted already in the early 2010s, its purpose being of meeting the gas requirements of Western Chinese provinces via Mongolia. This late March Gazproms request of conducting a feasibility study for PoS-2 has found President Putins approval. The projected pipeline would have a throughput capacity of 50 BCm per year and would be traversing Russias Altay region before crossing over to Mongolia and Western China. The first thing that struck market observers was that at some point in early 2020 the capacity of Power of Siberia-2 was upgraded from a preliminary estimate of 30 BCm per year to an officially presented volume of 50 BCm per year.

Premium: 2 Stocks To Consider As Oil Nears $15

The framework for Power of Siberia-2 (also known as the Altai pipeline) was laid down in 2015 when Gazprom and the Chinese state-owned company CNPC signed a preliminary gas supply deal, without specifying the technicalities of pricing. Given that Pos-1 pricing talks took a decade to conclude, the tardiness of PoS-2 negotiations is hardly surprising. Yet at the same time Russian authorities are betting heavily on it happening  the recently issued Energy strategy-2035 sees pipeline gas exports reaching 300 BCm per year by 2035, of which 80 BCm per year will go to China, with European pipeline exports effectively stalling for the next decade and half. It has to be noted that the Energy Strategy also surmises a pessimistic scenario, whereby Gazproms gas exports increase from 220 BCm in the base year of 2018 to 255 BCm per year in 2035, meaning a slight decline in European demand and Power of Siberia-1 remaining the only China-bound gas conduit, with no Pos-2 construction taking place.

Graph 1. Russias 2035 Gas Strategy.

(Click to enlarge)

Source: Authors data.

Gazprom needs Power of Siberia-2 for many reasons. First of all, its immense 2P reserve base of 24.3 TCm (which keeps on increasing with time by 0.1-0.2 TCm in the last couple of years) compels it to act upon it whilst Eurasian economies still perceive natural gas as a bridging energy source and do not penalize its utilization. Second, China is the only easy-to-access market outlet whose demand for natural gas has still not peaked  once China reaches that stage, there remain only more adventurous and technologically complex variants (eg.: constructing a pipeline to South Korea, subsea or transiting North Korea). Thirdly, Gazprom might dovetail Pos-2 with one of its long-time ambitions  linking the gas transmission system of Russias Far East to the ones in Western Siberia and Europe. Given that still only 69 percent are connected to the federal gas transmission system, this would be a politically very useful objective.

Graph 2. Map of Power of Siberia-2.



(Click to enlarge)

There is one additional novelty in how Power of Siberia-2 would look like  namely, the inclusion of Mongolia as a transiting country. Heretofore Mongolia has neither produced nor imported natural gas, hence Gazprom could potentially enter a completely new market. This being said, as of today the main reason for including Mongolia lies in the possible bifurcation of the pipeline so that at least some part of it heads towards northeast China. In addition to the above listed commercial rationale, the agreement, as indicated during President Putins meeting with Mongolian Prime Minister Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh in December 2019, might also turn out to be a stepping stone to something much more politically complex. Despite all the benefits that Russia might garner from Power of Siberia-2, Gazprom has to face an array of challenges that will seriously jeopardize its viability.

Above all others, there is the question of Chinese pipeline gas demand  the Western route (from the Chinese point of view) pits Gazprom against Central Asian producers, namely Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, who already have a separate conduit to supply the Chinese market. The 55 BCm/year capacity Central Asia Gas Pipeline was utilized last year to the extent of 87 percent (47.9 BCm), with most of the delivered gas coming from Turkmenistan. China remains the main market outlet for Galkynysh production, therefore unwanted competition in the form of Gazprom vying for a place under the sun would be hardly welcome news for Ashgabat. Thus, it is not only competition against LNG that Gazprom ought to win but also deal with a China-dependent Turkmenistan, all this against the background of tough-as-usual Chinese price negotiations. At least things have started moving after a prolonged lull.

By Viktor Katona for Oilprice.com

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Berlin Mayor Michael Muller invited ambassadors of Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus to the commemorative event on the occasion of the end of World War II on May 2

Open source

Ambassador of Ukraine to Germany Andriy Melnyk refused to participate in commemorative events in Berlin with representatives of Russia on the occasion of the end of World War II in Berlin on May 2. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry reports this on Facebook, as well as the Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel writes about it.

Even in my worst nightmare, I could not imagine laying wreaths with a representative of a country that has been fighting a cynical and bloody war in eastern Ukraine for more than 6 years. Today, 14,000 Ukrainians were killed in the course of the ongoing Russian aggression, Ukrainian diplomat explained his decision.

Melnyk noted that he appreciate the invitation of the Mayor of Berlin because in this way the indisputable contribution of the Ukrainian people to the liberation of Europe from the violent Nazi regime is recognized.

The diplomat recalled that 6 million Ukrainians fought in the Red Army, and every second of them did not live to see the end of the war. More than 5 million civilians in Ukraine were killed by the Nazis. However, in public discussions in Germany, Soviet victims are often identified with Russian victims, Melnk noted.

The ambassador emphasized that honoring the victims of the crushing war was a moral duty for him, however, he was forced to refrain from participating in memorial events on May 2 due to the Russian annexation of Crimea and the occupation of a significant part of Donbas.

On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Europe from the brown plague, Miller called on the Bundestag and Berlin authorities to finally build a memorial in the center of the German capital for 8 million victims of Nazism.

Berlin Mayor Michael Muller wanted to mark the end of World War II together with representatives of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. A few weeks ago, ambassadors of three countries received an invitation from the burgomaster to attend the ceremony of laying wreaths at the memorial on Schulenburgring Street in the Tempelhof district of Berlin on May 2.

As we reported before, the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) of Germany plans to reject the application of Nord Stream 2 AG building the Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline, for exemption from the EU gas directive.
Kerala has successfully flattened the Covid-19 graph as of now as no fresh cases have been reported on Sunday, state health minister K K Shailaja said. The state has been showing a sharp decline in coronavirus cases in the last few days and on Saturday it reported only two positive cases while on Friday it drew a blank.

The minister said out of 499 Covid-19 positive cases in the state, 95 people are in the hospital and others have been discharged. Out of 95 cases, the maximum number of cases are in Kannur (north Kerala) 37, also a red zone. At least 21,720 people are under observation and 32,217 samples have been tested. The state has the lowest mortality and highest recovery rate in the country.

Kerala was the first state in the country to report a coronavirus case in January 2020, when a medical student who had returned from China tested positive for the disease.

Covid-19 cases increased in the first week of March after people started returning from middle-eastern countries and Europe. At one point it was leading in cases of the infectious disease but after the Tablighi Jammat conference in Delhi, numbers in other states shot up. In terms of mortality and recovery rates, the state has been displaying good progress, statistics show.
Authorities have removed 11 bodies from a Trenton funeral home because they were not being stored at the proper temperature. The bodies were discovered by police on Thursday in several different rooms in the basement at Anderson Funeral Home, according to Trenton Police Lt. Jason Kmiec.

The temperature of the rooms was between 60 and 70 degrees and should have been 50 degrees or below.

The N.J. Department of Healths mass fatalities unit responded after an anonymous tip was received and transferred the bodies Thursday afternoon to the Central/South Jersey temporary morgue in Millstone.

This problem is being experienced by funeral homes all over the state," Trenton Mayor W. Reed Gusciora said in a statement. "We are still left with an overall sense of sadness as this pandemic has taken its toll on our Citys residents.

The mayor also said that no criminal wrongdoing was alleged.

Trenton, which has a population of nearly 84,000, has had 1,343 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 18 deaths, according to the citys coronavirus dashboard.

Anderson Funeral Services, which owns the funeral home in Trenton, also operates one in New Brunswick. The business was started in New Brunswick in 1942 by Arthur H. Anderson, Jr. The Trenton location opened in the 1950s, according to the companys website.

The bodies that were removed were being kept on metal tables, as they should have been, according to Kmiec.

Its unclear if violations will be issued to the facility. Funeral homes are regulated by the State Board of Mortuary Science of New Jersey in the Attorney Generals office. A spokesman for the Attorney Generals office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.

The pandemic has put funeral homes in a scramble to keep up with the rising death count. Gov. Phil Murphy last month ordered 20 refrigerated trucks to help alleviate the backlog as hospital morgues reached capacity and crematoriums were also overwhelmed.

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Allison Pries may be reached at apries@njadvancemedia.com.
Former lawmaker, Senator Shehu Sani has reacted to the approval of Oronsaye report on restructuring and rationalisation of Federal Government parastatals, commissions and agencies (MDAs).

Also Read: Mass Illiteracy And Ignorance Responsible For Health Crisis In Kano: Shehu Sani

Recall that some days ago, President Muhammadu President Muhammadu Buhari gave approval for the implementation of a report submitted by the Presidential Committee on Restructuring and Rationalisation of Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies (MDAs) during the Goodluck Jonathan administration.

Reacting to this development, Sani expressed that this report cannot be implemented without the input of lawmakers.

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See his tweet below:
Last updated on: May 03, 2020 21:59 IST

India's armed forces on Sunday exhibited their appreciation and gratitude towards all frontline workers including medical professionals, police and sanitation workers for their contribution in fight against COVID-19.

Several activities like fly-pasts, flashing warship lights and other displays by the Indian army bands were included in Sundays spectacular show across the country.

Here are some of the glimpses.

A navy ship is illuminated to express gratitude towards the frontline workers for their contribution in India's fight against COVID-19 in Mumbai. Photograph: Mitesh Bhuvad/PTI Photo

A team of Delhi Police conducts rounds of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences to thank medical professionals for their fight against the COVID-19. Photograph: Vijay Verma/PTI Photo

WATCH: INS Vikramaditya salutes corona warriors

An Indian Air Force chopper showers flower petals on the Safdarjung Hospital in New Delhi to express gratitude towards medical professionals for their contribution in fight against COVID-19. Photograph: Vijay Verma/PTI Photo

An Indian Navy helicopter showers flower petals on medics at INHS Asvini in Mumbai. Photograph: Shashank Parade/PTI Photo

Indian Air Force's Su-30 fighter aircraft fly over Mumbai to pay tribute to the frontline COVID-19 warriors. Photograph: Shashank Parade/PTI Photo

WATCH: Chetak helicopter showers flower petals on Visakhapatnam hospital

Air Force helicopter showering flower on RML in New Delhi during the nationwide lockdown imposed in the wake of coronavirus pandemic. Photograph: Atul Yadav/PTI Photo

A medic shows flowers showered by an Indian Army helicopter on medical professional at Gauhati Medical College and Hospitals. Photograph: PTI Photo

INS Jalashwa of Eastern Naval Command on a surveillance mission in the Bay of Bengal thanks coronavirus warriors. Photograph: @ProDefLko/Twitter

WATCH: IAF's Su-30MKI fly over Mumbai to salute 'corona warriors'

Three C-130 transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force fly over the Rajpath to express gratitude towards all frontline workers. Photograph: Manvender Vashist/PTI Photo

Three C-130 transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force fly over the Raisina Hill. Photograph: Subhav Shukla/PTI Photo

WATCH: Indian Navy fire flares for COVID-19 warriors

The gesture of thanks started with laying of flowers by representatives of the three services of armed forces at the police memorial in Delhi. Photograph: @SpokespersonMoD/Twitter

COVID-19 warriors at KGMC Hospital in Lucknow wave back at IAF helicopter flying to shower petals. Photograph: @ProDefLko/Twitter

WATCH: IAF's band performs as chopper salutes 'corona warriors'

IAF's chopper flies over the Police War Memorial in New Delhi to shower flower petals to express gratitude and appreciation towards the police officials on duty amid pandemic. Photograph: @SpokespersonMoD/Twitter
North Korean troops fired multiple gunshots towards the South in the DMZ dividing the peninsula on Sunday, prompting South Korean forces to fire back, Seoul said.

The rare exchange of gunfire comes a day after North Korean state media reported that leader Kim Jong Un had made his first public appearance in nearly three weeks following an absence that triggered intense speculation about his health and fears about the stability of the isolated nation.

A South Korean guard post was hit by several shots from the North, the joint chiefs of staff (JCS) in Seoul said in a statement, adding no casualties were reported in the South.

Our military responded with two rounds of gunfire and a warning announcement, the JCS said.



The South Korean military later said the North Korean gunshots were not deemed intentional, according to the Yonhap news agency.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also said he believed the shots had not been fired on purpose, telling ABCs This Week it was likely they were accidental.

The two neighbours remain technically at war, after fighting in the Korean War was halted with an armistice in 1953.

Despite its name, the demilitarized zone is one of the most fortified places on earth, replete with minefields and barbed-wire fences.

The last time the two sides exchanged fire on the border was in 2014. North Korean soldiers also shot at a defector in 2017 but the South did not fire back.

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By Peter Szekely and Brad Brooks NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Saturday pushed back against what he called premature demands that he reopen the state, saying he knew people were struggling without jobs but that more understanding of the coronavirus was needed. As governors in about half the United States partially reopen their economies over this weekend, Cuomo said he needed much more information on what the pandemic is doing in his hardest-hit state before he loosens restrictions.

By Peter Szekely and Brad Brooks

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Saturday pushed back against what he called premature demands that he reopen the state, saying he knew people were struggling without jobs but that more understanding of the coronavirus was needed.

As governors in about half the United States partially reopen their economies over this weekend, Cuomo said he needed much more information on what the pandemic is doing in his hardest-hit state before he loosens restrictions.

"Even when you are in unchartered waters, it doesn't mean you proceed blindly," he said. "Use information to determine action - not emotions, not politics, not what people think or feel but what we know in terms of facts."

Georgia and Texas are leading the way in letting businesses shuttered by the pandemic begin partially reopening. Leaders in those and several other states where the coronavirus has had less of an impact are under pressure to allow people to return to work as government data released this week showed 30 million Americans have sought unemployment benefits since March 21.

Cuomo pointed to the roughly 900 new coronavirus cases hospitals in New York are still reporting daily, and the fact that officials do not know where those infections are coming from, as reason enough to keep the Empire State shutdown.

The governor also released the preliminary results of a statewide antibody survey of about 15,000 people showing that 12.3% were previously infected with the virus.

It confirmed the results of another test with a smaller sample size released about 10 days ago showing that one in five New York City residents has had the virus, with the Bronx bureau seeing the highest number positive for antibodies at 27.6%.

As of Saturday, the number of known infections nationwide had climbed to more than 1.1 million, including about 65,000 deaths, according to a Reuters tally.

As testing increases across the country, so does the number of cases. North Carolina on Saturday posted a record number of new cases with 551 infections, as did Puerto Rico, with 182. Iowa hit a record for the second straight day. Overall in the United States, there were 34,000 new cases on Friday, the highest daily total since April 24.

(Reporting by Peter Szekely in New York and Brad Brooks in Austin, Texas; Additional reporting by Lisa Shumaker in Chicago; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Baroness Altmann has warned the Government against keeping over 70s locked down indefinitely - Heathcliff O'Malley/Telegraph/Heathcliff O'Malley/Telegraph

Britain faces social unrest if over 70s are forced to endure a longer lockdown than younger generations, Baroness Altmann has warned.

The Conservative peer said that many older people would "risk going to prison rather than being forced to isolate at home" if the Government implemented such a policy.

It has been reported that the over 70s could be forced to stay at home for another year under measures being drawn up by ministers to lift the lockdown.

Under leaked proposals, people judged to be vulnerable could be shielded from normal life for up to 18 months, or until a vaccine is found. The former pensions minister argued that forcing all over 70s to do so would constitute pure discrimination.

She told the Telegraph: "The evidence also shows that the virus also discriminates against BAME groups, against the obsese and against men.

Sir Michael Palin has also warned that keeping over 70s under lockdown would be unfair - Andrew Crowley/Telegraph/Andrew Crowley/Telegraph

Nobody would dream of saying, we're going to base our future restrictions of personal freedom on people in those groups - it wouldn't even be thinkable.

But somehow when it comes to older people its OK. Baroness Altmann has been leading the charge in the Lords to urge ministers to rule out an aged based extension of lockdown.

She said: So far they have refused to do so. I would very much welcome an absolute rebuttal from Matt Hancock saying they are not considering this The only answer weve had so far is, It's not us discriminating, it's the virus.

Baroness Altmann revealed that she had been inundated with emails from over 70s, with some insisting they would face punishment from the police rather than stay at home. Others have told her life won't be worth living if they are forced to remain in isolation while others are freed.

She added: Many of the over 60s are over 70s are living entirely on their own and they've made a good life for themselves by getting out into the community and having connections, and they can't wait to get back to that for their mental and physical wellbeing.

Story continues

Some of them will never walk again because they haven't had the activity they need, they could have a stroke as a result of being unable to get out. There are huge implications for both mental and physical health.

Monty Python comedian Sir Michael Palin agreed that discriminating against those over 70 would be "very difficult and very wrong and very unfair".

Sir Michael said: "I think it's a difficult call every time but you've got to be more selective here, because there are a great deal, a great number, of people in their 70s who are very active, very thoughtful, who've got lots of ideas, can contribute to our recovery.

"And I think that to treat them all as people who have to be sort of kept out of sight is going to be very difficult and very wrong and very unfair on a lot of people who want to help."

Meanwhile, Matt Hancock sparked confusion on Twitter over whether over 70s are allowed to currently leave their homes during lockdown.

The Health Secretary used Twitter to claim that "the clinically vulnerable, who are advised to stay in lockdown for 12 weeks, emphatically DO NOT include all over 70s".

Under current Government guidelines, anyone over 70 years old, regardless of medical conditions, falls into the category of clinically vulnerable. This group has been strongly advised to take particular care to minimise contact with others outside your household as they are at higher risk of contracting coronavirus.

However, they can still go outside if it is deemed essential and have not been advised to shield themselves from all contact, as those in the clinically extremely vulnerable group have been told to do.

Baroness Altmann called for clarity on the issue, admitting that the mixed messages were confusing. Bestselling author and former frontline doctor Adam Kay spotted the mistake in Mr Hancocks tweet, and said: I suspect the Health Secretary meant to say Clinically extremely vulnerable. I think its fair to say that the messaging is a little muddy.

The Department of Health and Social Care confirmed that over 70s "are not included in the most at risk group (extremely clinically vulnerable), who have been told to isolate for 12 weeks".

Is it ageist to ask over 70s to remain in isolation? Share your view in the comments section below.
Queensland's novel coronavirus testing rate, considered crucial to controlling the pandemic, has fluctuated significantly in the 95 days to Sunday since Queensland's first case.

Health Minister Steven Miles says the latest dip is the result of the state's "fortunate position", as low numbers of COVID-19 and flu patients mean there are only so many people with respiratory symptoms who qualify for testing.

Queensland recorded one new COVID-19 case on Sunday, taking the state total to 1035 and the week's figure to six. The state's recovery rate was 94.3 per cent with 976 recovered patients.

Mr Miles said 46 of the state's remaining 53 active cases were in south-east Queensland, while the remaining patients were in Cairns (4), Townsville (2) and Wide Bay (1).
One day leading up to New Years in 1993, Patricia Conway was returning from work to her Bucks County home expecting a quiet night with her husband and two kids.

But she couldnt get through the front door. It was blocked by balloons. Hundreds of them.

Her husband, Matthew, had spent the day with his children blowing up the colorful inflatables. A United Parcel Service worker, Matthew Conway had time off during the holidays. And for Patricia, that was always a scary thought.

I never knew what crazy things he was going to be doing. He was like the third child in a way, she joked. I was afraid to go to work sometimes not knowing what theyd be up to while I was there.

Matthew Conway, a larger-than-life musician who retired in a tiny Jersey Shore town, died last week at 67-years-old after taking his row boat onto the Toms River in Ocean Gate several hours before a storm rolled in. The U.S. Coast Guard and state police searched the water by boat and air before his body was found on Island Beach State Park two days later.

The last conversation Patricia Conway shared with her husband was that morning. The two talked about the days weather report, and agreed to finish their exercises before the first drops of rain hit.

The rowboater, identified as Matthew Conway, 67, was photographed on security cameras going out shortly before strong wind and storms hit the New Jersey Shore earlier this week. (Security camera screen shots via police)

Patricia went for a bike ride, and Matthew for a jog.

I said We got to get everything done before 11 a.m., because thats when the rain is going to come, she said.

When she returned, Matthew wasnt home, but she thought nothing of it. Her notoriously talkative husband probably struck up a long conversation with a neighbor or ended up helping someone with a favor, she guessed. That wouldnt be unusual.

After two hours, fear started to set in and Patricia called authorities. Search boats and helicopters swarmed the area for all hours, she said. Her husband had recently begun rowing for arm strength and likely hoped to get a quick, 30-minute session in before the waves got too rough.

He mustve thought he could go out and get back before the rain came on, she said. He was water savvy. He knew the water, he knew the wind. Its just going to remain a mystery to us for now.

Matt Conway immigrated to Philadelphia from Scotland around 1960 as a kid. Patricia met him in March of 1969 at a womens choice dance at Archbishop Ryan High School in the city. That night, she plucked up the courage to ask Matt to dance.

Matt Conway, 67, left, with his grandson, playing guitar and teaching percussion.Courtesy of Matt Conway

They married in 1973, later raising two children together. The following decades were marked with music, excitement and countless parades, concerts and events.

Since that time, there was not a moment in my life that I was ever bored with him, Patricia said.

For Matt Conway, life was a stage.

From a young age, he played a number of instruments, from bagpipes and guitar to piano and drums. The couples homes, in Pennsylvania and Ocean Gate, all had music rooms with guitars, trombones and violins lining the walls and drum kits and stools taking over the floor. Vinyl records occupied bookshelves, and keyboards took up corners.

Conway played in the Mummers Parade in Philadelphia from 1988 to 2005 while a member of the Ukrainian American String Band and then the Polish American String Band. He was introduced to bagpipes by a childhood friend, his son Matt said.

And Conway welcomed his family into his musical world. Matt Conways wife (on banjo), sister (on accordion), son (on drums) and daughter (on xylophone) joined him for practices and parades with the Ukrainian American String Band.

Matt was often the brains behind the bands zany Mummers Day Parade costume designs, his wife said. In 1994, he came up with the theme Its in the Bag." Together, his family helped make props and put together the costumes, even creatively using black shower curtain rods.

He brought everyone in. He was someone who would take in anyone who was interested, Matt Conway said.

The pair bought a home in Ocean Gate in 1985, spending summers at their residence near the river. Matt fostered a community there, organizing events for neighborhood families on the east end of town.

In 1999, he started hosting an annual Scrapple Breakfast for about 30 families, Patricia said. He got the idea after talking to neighbors with primary residences in North Jersey who had never eaten Pennsylvania Scrapple, a mush of pork scraps and trimmings combined with cornmeal and wheat flour.

The event, which drew the attention of the local newspaper at the time, featured pin the snout on the pig, Best Oink contests and other scrapple-themed games for kids and parents. He gave out prizes, like piggy banks. One year, the scrapple brand Habbersett sent the family a cooler filled with their product and Habbersett hats and T-shirts, Patricia Conway said.

Bagpiper Matt Conway leads a group of neighborhood children in Ocean Gate.Matt Conway

For years, he was involved with the Ocean Gate Fourth of July Parade, coming up with themed skits for kids to participate in (and often snagging first place). In 1998, it was a Wizard of Oz theme, and in 2006, an Olympics theme.

Hed run all his ideas by me. Hed wake up in the morning, and hed say to me You know what I was thinking Sometimes Id look at him and say Please dont think today,' Patricia Conway said. People keep saying Ocean Gate is not going to be the same (without Matt), but hed want it to be the same.

After retiring from the UPS in 2005, Matt and Patricia permanently moved to Ocean Gate, and he put his full energy into his hobbies. Most days, Patricia said, her husband worked on improving a tiki bar he built out of boat parts following Hurricane Sandy. Other days, he went sailboating with friends.

In 2007, Matt Conway joined the Toms River-based Shamrock and Thistle Pipes and Drums, donning the bands black and yellow kilt. On Tuesday nights, when the group has weekly practice, Matt Conway would bring along other instruments too: his guitar, saxophone, tin whistle and even a bass guitar he built out of a tin box, said bandmate Tom McGovern.

He could play all of them, which was amazing. It was all just about the music and the camaraderie for him, McGovern said.

Last Saturday, the band gave a waterfront bagpipe performance in Ocean Gate in memory of Matt Conway, playing songs like Amazing Grace while spaced six feet apart.

McGovern wrote an original, two-minute song for Matt called Matt Conways Call to Home, which he performed Thursday standing alone by the water, an American flag resting near his shoulder.

The songs melody came to McGovern the morning after Conway went missing, and McGovern went to his garage to work out the notes.

He had a love for Ocean Gate and living on the Toms River," McGovern said. "His life says a lot about the area. He really lived every day of his life.

Avalon Zoppo may be reached at azoppo2@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AvalonZoppo. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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To mark World Press Freedom Day 2020 and the launch of the IFJs Cambodia media monitoring project, supported by the British Embassy in Phnom Penh, the IFJ has interviewed Chak Sopheap, the Executive Director of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR). CCHR is one of the leading human rights organizations working for the promotion and protection of political and civil rights in Cambodia. Over recent years Chak Sopheap has witnessed systematic restrictions on press freedom and judicial harassment of journalists and human rights defenders.

1) What are the main challenges facing press freedom, particularly since the shutdown of independent media outlets starting in 2017 and the ongoing crackdown on social media?

Freedom of expression and freedom of information are fundamental human rights which are guaranteed under Cambodian and international law, and press freedom is a crucial component of these rights, as well as being vital to a healthy democracy. However, journalists and the media in Cambodia continue to face significant judicial harassment and intimidation in violation of these rights. This has taken the form of arbitrary arrests of journalists and the widespread shutdown of independent media outlets using a range of legislative tools, such as tax regulations or the Lese Majeste criminal offense. There are few sources of independent media left in Cambodia, and this legal assault has significantly diminished press freedom across the country. This is continuing and has been exemplified recently with the arbitrary arrest of TVFB reporter Sovann Rithy for sharing a quote from Prime Minister Hun Sen on social media and the subsequent swift license revocation of TVFB. This continued harassment encourages self-censorship amongst Cambodian media outlets, who cannot report freely and independently or criticize the actions of the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) for fear of similar treatment. It is the responsibility of states to ensure the media are not restricted or intimidated. Unless this harassment and intimidation of journalists and media outlets stops, and freedom of expression and information are respected, press freedom cannot be a reality in Cambodia.

2) Recently new emergency laws in Cambodia have been passed under the Covid-19 pretext, granting Cambodias leadership vast new powers. How will these laws affect press freedom?

The draft Law on the Management of the Nation in State of Emergency is extremely concerning as it grants the RGC extensive and unfettered powers to restrict human rights without sufficient checks and balances. There is potential for this law to severely curtail press freedom in Cambodia as it includes powers to further surveil all telecommunications and restrict the sharing of information through news and media. For example, Article 5(11) of the draft law allows the RGC to ban or restrict news sharing or media which is able to cause panic or chaos or bring damage to the national security or make confusion about the situation of the state of emergency. This provision is extremely vague. Considering the long-standing suppression on free and independent media in Cambodia by the RGC, and the recent worsening of this during the Covid-19 crisis, such as the arbitrary arrest of TVFB reporter Sovann Rithy and the increase in arrests for sharing fake news, this is an alarming amount of power given to the RGC to further quash press freedom. The RGC has reported to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights that they will only use the law in compliance with their obligations under international human rights law, upholding the principles of accountability, proportionality and necessity, however this assurance alone is insufficient. The observance of these principles should be written into the law itself to prevent abuse, misinterpretation and misapplication. The RGC must revise the law to include limitations on the exercise of these powers, and only implement this law appropriately in genuine states of emergency with respect for human rights, including press freedom.

3) We have seen an increase in cooperation between China and Cambodia with the launch of the Cambodia-China Journalist Association (CCJA) and a program which encourages media to write positive news about collaboration between China and Cambodia. Can you elaborate on the impact of the influence of China on the press freedom in Cambodia?

China is Cambodias largest creditor and source of foreign direct investment, and ties with China are growing stronger. This must not be permitted to interfere with the free and independent media in Cambodia. Free and pluralistic media is crucial to a functioning democracy as it ensures good governance and accountability. The RGC should encourage media pluralism and ensure the rights of critical and dissenting media outlets are afforded the same rights and protections as pro-government sources.

4) Vital amendments to the Press Law have been a long time coming. Whats the current status of these amendments?

Last year the RGC announced it would undertake consultation on and amend the Press Law (1995). Reportedly the amendments were to be regarding confidential information and intended to bring articles in line with the current situation. However, there have been no further updates on the status of the amendments, nor have any drafts been released. As free media in Cambodia has undergone systemic attacks and is subsequently severely depleted, any potential amendments to the Press Law must provide greater protection for journalists and the free media. The pending amendments must be in line with international human rights law, particularly freedom of expression, and must uphold Cambodias national and international human rights obligations.
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Diane Kruger, her boyfriend Norman Reedus, and actress Nina Dobrev headed to a meet-up in Santa Monica on Saturday.

A masked-up Kruger, 43, and Reedus, 51, arrived carrying their own bottles of alcohol.

The actress carried a bottle of beer as she strode in the sunshine wearing black platform shoes.

BYOB: Diane Kruger, her boyfriend Norman Reedus, and actress Nina Dobrev headed to a meet-up in Santa Monica on Saturday

Diane kept her cool in a black mini skirt, white tank top, and newsboy hat propped atop her short blonde locks.

Norman followed close behind, expression concealed behind sunglasses and a floral print mask.

The Walking Dead actor arrived carrying a bottle of champagne.

Meanwhile, Nina was also seen making her way to the same get-together, armed with a pack of sparkling kombucha.

Healthy options: Meanwhile, Nina was also seen making her way to the same get-together, armed with a pack of sparkling kombucha

The actress carried the eight pack with gloved hands, as a face mask dangled around her neck.

Flashing a smile, Nina definitely seemed in high spirits as she strolled ahead and into the sunshine.

Diane has been making the most of their enforced downtime after Hollywood shuttered production due to the pandemic.

Spring style: Diane kept her cool in a black mini skirt, white tank top, and newsboy hat propped atop her short blonde lock

In mid-April, Kruger shared a photo of herself and Reedus sitting in their car eating ice cream cones.

The actress has been doing her best to keep her spirits lifted during these uncertain times, including spending time with her boyfriend Norman.

The couple met while making the film Sky together in 2015, and welcomed a daughter in November 2018.

Protective gear: The actress carried the eight pack with gloved hands, as a face mask dangled around her neck

They have yet to reveal her name.

Nina, meanwhile, seems itching for lockdown to end as well.

Apart from sharing videos of herself cooped up at home, she also posted a funny photo of herself at the beach while wearing a T-shirt that read, 'Apres Corona: Cannot wait for this s**t to be over.'

'Mom, are we there yet?' she captioned the photo.
The Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) is to support the Eastern Region to intensify rice production to make Ghana self-sufficient in the staple within the next three years.



This was announced by the Minister of Food and Agriculture, Dr Afriyie Akoto, in Koforidua at the end of his five-day tour of the Bono, Bono East, Ashanti and Eastern regions.



The tour was to help find the effects of the COVID-19 on the implementation of the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ).



He expressed appreciation to the large number of farmers engaged in rice cultivation in the Region and said his office had imported equipment including planters, cultivators and harvesters for small scale rice cultivators.



Dr Akoto said the Eastern Region was not known among rice producing regions and was happy about the inroads made in cultivating the staple after meeting with rice farmers and processors in the Region.



He said his tour revealed that the PFJ was on course and had not been affected by the COVID-19 directives in terms of target set for seed and fertilizer supply and the number of farmers engaged in the programme.



Information gathered during the tour would help the Ministry to better plan for the PFJ in 2021.



Dr Akoto said in future, the Ministry would separate contract for supply of seeds from that of fertilizer to ensure that farmers got them at the right time and in the right quantities.



The Ministry would not tolerate the attempt by some contractors of seed to cheat the system by diverting subsidised seeds to sell at the open market, he cautioned.



Mr Francis Adzalo, the President of Seed Producers Association of Ghana, appealed to the MOFA to support local seed producers to produce high yielding hybrid seeds to reduce the countrys dependence on imported ones.

Source: GNA









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Count President Donald Trump among those happy to see Kim Jong Un back in public in North Korea.

Trump retweeted Saturday photos circulated by North Korean State Media of the North Korean leader attending a ribbon cutting ceremony and wrote, I, for one, am glad to see he is back, and well!

I, for one, am glad to see he is back, and well! https://t.co/mIWVeRMnOJ  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 2, 2020

The photos mark the first public appearance of Kim Jong Un in more than three weeks as rumors surrounding his health  and even whether or not he had died  swirled.

According to CNN, a state-run North Korean Teleivsion broadcast showed Kim at the event, smiling and sitting on a stage next to his sister, Kim Yo Jong.

South Korean presidential adviser Moon Chun-in told CNN Sunday that the North Korean leader was alive and well despite the speculation over his health.
His zeal for achieving higher and higher targets made him rise in the ranks of Jammu and Kashmir Police. This is the story of sub-inspector Sageer Ahmed Pathan alias 'Qazi' who joined the force in 1999 as a constable.

Born in 1978 at Trad village near the Line of Control of Karnah in Kupwara district of north Kashmir, Pathan had a passion for challenges which drew him to the police force.

Pathan was among five security forces personnel, including an Army colonel and a major, who were killed during an encounter with terrorists in Handwara in Kupwara district.

Following stints at different police stations, Pathan, whose name was earlier spelt at Shakeel Qazi, volunteered to join the elite Special Operations Group (SOG) in 2006 to fight against terrorism.

"He was always at the forefront and dangerous missions failed to dampen his courage," said a senior officer. This zeal for achieving higher targets earned him triple promotion during his career spanning a little over two decades.

Being a local, Pathan, who is survived by three daughters and a son besides aged parents, became a darling of 21 Rashtriya Rifles as he was well aware of the terrain used by the terrorists to enter the hinterland of Kashmir.

He was part of the team led by Colonel Ashutosh Sharma and Major Anuj Sood that came under heavy militant fire on Saturday night and was killed in the line of duty.

Director General of Jammu and Kashmir Police Dilbag Singh said during his posting in SOG, he led various successful anti-terror operations.

"In recognition of his immense contribution, he was granted three out-of-turn promotions and he rose from the rank of a constable to sub-inspector over the years," he said.

"Sageer attained martyrdom protecting integrity and sovereignty of our nation and safeguarding the interests of people till last breath. All ranks of Jammu and Kashmir Police salute braveheart...Sageer and other members of the team led by Col Ashutosh Sharma," he said.

The officer was honoured with Police Medal for Gallantry in 2011, Sher-i-Kashmir Police Medal for Gallantry in 2009, besides DGP Commendation Medal and GOC-in-C, Northern Command Commendation Disc.

He was part of a team which went in to evacuate civilians taken hostage by terrorists in a house. The team could safely rescue the inmates but came under heavy fire from the terrorists during the evacuation process resulting in their death, the officials said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An older genteel fellow named Xavier Bell hires private investigator Tom Phelan of Beaumont, Texas, to locate his brother, Rodney.

The hunt for Rodney  and the reason Xavier wants him found  is the principal storyline in this scintillating crime noir set in 1973, and it reveals aliases the brothers are living under. Eventually, their real surname is dug up  Sparrow; hence the books title, The Bird Boys.

The brothers relationship, it turns out, has been far from cordial. It has involved the death of their younger sister decades before and Xaviers epileptic son Rodney currently cares for.

Beyond this story, Santa Fe author Lisa Sandlin stirs a gumbo of flavorful subplots and digressions twining Phelan and Delpha Wade.

Wade is his efficient secretary, helper, tough cookie, ex-con and, late in the novel, a possible romantic interest.

In one subplot with several enticing supporting characters, Phelan is hired by a woman who wants to learn what nocturnal, and apparently illegal, activity her handsome husband is up to. She doesnt want him arrested, just brought home. Authorities are welcome to corral the other bad guys in the enterprise and whatever contraband they can intercept.

Wade herself gets a lot of attention, and deservedly. Shes a tough cookie. Witness Wade, alone in Phelans office, wounded by a knife-wielding intruder/child murderer; she kills him with a broken liquor bottle. In a long scene in which Wade is taken to the police station for questioning, Phelan and a lawyer are her backups; incidentally, Phelan is the police chiefs nephew.

One conversation in this scene brings out the Cajun-influenced speech of police Sgt. Fontenot. Not makin an argue wit you, he tells Phelan, But low me to remind you that anybody get dead, we got forms to fill out. Set your behind in a chair, you.

Police are familiar with Wades history. Months earlier, she was released from prison after serving 14 years for killing a man who had raped her. Yes, she was imprisoned.

Other short diversions refer to current events  the Watergate hearings and Atlanta Braves star Hank Aaron closing in on Babe Ruths home-run record. Phelan likes the Braves, not the nearby Astros.

Sandlin effectively and cleverly inserts descriptive single sentences  His smile was so loose it almost fell off his face  or whole paragraphs  In between the stout trunks of loblollies, whose evergreen branches began higher up, stood a lot-sized, haphazard forest of spruces and junipers, a few dogwood and redbud, a raggledy magnolia.

Sandlin knows Beaumont. She grew up in the East Texas city and thinks its an ideal setting for crime noir, with its area oil refineries and prisons.

The Bird Boys is the second of a planned quartet in Sandlins Delpha Wade and Tom Phelan Mystery series. It was nominated for an Edgar in the Paperback Original category and was named a New York Times Best Crime Novel of 2019. Sandlins first novel, The Do-Right, set in the spring of 1973, won the 2015 Hammett Prize from the International Association of Crime Writers.

Volume 3, scheduled for release in 2021, is called The People Store.

Ive read a lot of noir, Sandlin said in a phone interview. Ive read all of (Dashiell) Hammetts books. I really enjoy how he kills everyone so differently. Each has this different choreography when they die. Shes also read Raymond Chandler, Walter Mosley and Barbara Neely, who died in March.

Sandlin is a professor emeritus from The Writers Workshop, University of Nebraska-Omaha.

Book of the week review
Railways only accepting passengers, brought and facilitated by state governments

Only those authorised by states allowed in special trains during lockdown. (PTI Photo)

New Delhi: The railways reiterated on Saturday night that it was ferrying only those authorised by state governments in its special trains for people stranded during the lockdown, following reports of unauthorised travel and crowding at some stations.

In a late night statement, the national transporter said, "Railways only accepting passengers, brought and facilitated by state governments. No other group of traveller or individual are to come to station."

"Some special trains being run only on state governments' requests. All other passenger and suburban train services remain suspended," it said.

The railways also said that no tickets are being sold at any station, advising people not to converge at any rail station.

India is under a nationwide lockdown to check the spread of the novel coronavirus, with a ban on rail, air and road traffic.

Earlier this week, the Union Home Ministry allowed states to ferry their residents, particularly migrant labourers, students and tourists, stranded outside due to the lockdown in special buses and trains.
Top stories from the western



region at 1700 hrs.

BOM2 MH-VIRUS-NANDED Two Punjab returnees among three new COVID-19 cases in Nanded



Aurangabad: Three more persons, including two drivers who returned from Punjab, tested positive for coronavirus in Maharashtra's Nanded district on Sunday, an official said.

BOM8 MH-IFSC-PAWAR Centre's decision to set up IFSC HQ in Guj 'egregious': Pawar



Mumbai: NCP chief Sharad Pawar has said the Centre's decision to set up headquarters of the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) at Gandhinagar instead of Mumbai is egregious, erroneous and unwarranted", and urged the Union government to reconsider it.

BOM10 MH-LOCKDOWN-SHOPS Maha: Shops selling non-essentials allowed to open from Monday



Mumbai: The Maharashtra government on Sunday announced that shops selling non-essential commodities, including liquor, will be allowed to open from Monday in the COVID-19 non-containment zones across the state.

BOM6 MH-VIRUS-THANKSGIVING COVID-19: Defence aircraft shower petals on Mumbai hospitals



Mumbai: The Indian armed forces on Sunday thanked those engaged in the fight against COVID-19 by showering flower petals from their aircraft on various hospitals in Mumbai and carrying out a fly-past over the Maharashtra Governor's house here.

BOM5 GJ-VIRUS-THANKSGIVING IAF showers petals, conducts fly-past over Guj Assembly



Ahmedabad: Aircraft of the Indian Air Force showered petals on hospitals in Ahmedabad and conducted a fly-past over the city and the Gujarat Assembly complex in Gandhinagar on Sunday to thank healthcare workers and others involved in the fight against COVID-19 pandemic.

BOM4 CG-VIRUS-THANKSGIVING C'garh: IAF lauds COVID-19 frontline workers, shower petals



Raipur: In a novel gesture to thank frontline coronavirus 'warriors', an Indian Air Force helicopter showered flower petals on the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) here in Chhattisgarh on Sunday.

BOM3 MP-VIRUS-THANKSGIVING IAF chopper showers flowers on 'corona warriors' in Bhopal



Bhopal: An Indian Air Force helicopter showered flower petals at two hospitals in Bhopal on Sunday as a mark of gratitude towards health workers who are at the forefront of the battle against coronavirus.

BES3 MH-LOCKDOWN-CONTEST Business plan contest to encourage entrepreneurs amid lockdown



Mumbai: In an effort to promote aspiring entrepreneurs amid the lockdown-induced situation, a group of technocrats has organised a business plan contest to encourage future industrial leaders, an official associated with the event said.

BES6 MH-VIRUS-PLASMA Virus: Pune hospital gets ICMR nod for blood plasma therapy



Pune: The state-run Sassoon General Hospital in Maharashtra's Pune city has received the Indian Council of Medical Research's nod to apply plasma therapy on critical COVID-19 patients here, a senior health official said on Sunday.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 09:17:33|Editor: huaxia

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KHARTOUM, May 2 (Xinhua) -- Sudan's confirmed COVID-19 cases have increased by 59 to 592 over the past 24 hours, Sudan's health ministry said late Saturday.

"Five new deaths have also been recorded, bringing the death toll to 41," the ministry said in a statement.

Six more patients have recovered, taking the total recoveries to 52, it said.

The health ministry also said that 14 out of Sudan's 18 states have registered coronavirus cases.

The Sudanese police were intensifying measures to prevent violation of curfew in Khartoum state, the worst-hit area in Sudan.

"We have started deploying an additional force of 1,365 policemen at more than 200 checkpoints in Khartoum," said Sudanese police spokesman Omer Abdel-Majid.

On April 18, Khartoum state entered into a full curfew as part of measures to stem the virus spread. Enditem
Sinking oil storage capacity has roiled the markets in recent weeks, contributing to a plunge in oil prices.

Amid the search for additional capacity to store the flood of crude not being used by a world shut down by the COVID-19 pandemic, Gravity Oilfield Services is stepping in to help.

The Houston-based water and energy infrastructure company is offering its inventory of crude oil storage tanks to operators in the Permian Basin, Eagle Ford and Haynesville plays.

We already own the tanks and as a result of the decline in their normal use for frac tanks, mud tanks, etc., we are making them available for crude oil storage to fill the immediate needs of our customers as other storage becomes unavailable, Rob Rice, the companys chief executive officer and president, told the Reporter-Telegram by email.

The company has already shipped out more than 1,000 tanks in the past couple of weeks and has another 4,000 more available for immediate shipment, Rice said. The company Gravity doesnt plan to build more.

The tanks, Rice said, are generally used for temporary storage of liquids, but are being made available to customers for long-term use.

Historically they have not been permanent, and we do not expect them to become permanent storage now. We do expect they could be used for at least 12 months, Rice said.

He said the company is seeing high demand in the Permian, Oklahoma, South Texas and north Louisiana.

The highest demand to date has been in Oklahoma but we are seeing increasing demand in the Permian, Rice said.

In a statement announcing the availability of the tanks, Mike Sledge, Gravitys vice president, sales, said,

We have successfully navigated distressed markets before, and we are committed to leveraging our best-in-class safety record and our fleet of tanks to help operators navigate this challenging market.
Helicopters from the Indian Air Force flew over hospitals treating coronavirus patients here and showered petals as a tribute to doctors and healthcare workers on the front-line in the battle against COVID-19.

Three Sukhoi-30 fighters also flew over the state assembly to pay an aerial salute.

Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat on Friday had announced that the three services will carry out a series of activities to thank the "corona warriors".

Two MI-17 helicopters flew over SMS hospital and Rajasthan University of Health Sciences (RUHS) hospital and showered petals on doctors and nursing staff.

Health minister Raghu Sharma, additional chief secretary medical and health Rohit Kumar Singh, principal of SMS medical college Dr Sudhir Bhandari, superintendent of SMS hospital Dr D S Meena and doctors and nursing staff were present at the SMS hospital premises when the helicopters showered the petals, officials said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Sudhir Suryawanshi By

Express News Service

MUMBAI: Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) president Sharad Pawar wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi requesting to revisit his decision of locating International Financial Service Centre (IFSC) to Gandhinagar in Gujarat. Pawar said as Mumbai is the financial capital of the country, it has the natural right to have the IFSC.

The IFSC was planned in Mumbai only. The general psyche of all business communities, bankers, and other financial institutions, Mumbai is the natural choice to set up the unified authority. The central government decision of locating IFSC in Gujarat will be taken as undermining the importance of Mumbai, Pawar stated in his letter.

Pawar further said that as per the Reserve Bank of Indias published report dated April 20, 2020, the Indian banking sector has deposited the tune of Rs 145,00,000 crores. In this total deposit, the share of Maharashtra is alone 22.8 per cent, 10 per cent by Delhi, 7.8 per cent by Uttar Pradesh, 7.2% by Karnataka, while the share of Gujarat is mere 5.4 per cent. Every bank is to maintain the SLR at 18 per cent of its total deposit in the form of government securities. The central government receives such government securities to the tune of Rs 26,00,000 crore, out of it, the Rs 5,95,000 crore is received from Maharashtra as against Gujarats contribution of Rs 1,40,000 crore, Pawar pointed out.

Pawar said the despite the major contribution by Maharashtra, it is very unfortunate the IFSC is planning to locate to Gujarat. This decision is unwarranted and erroneous. It will also be perceived as a plan to shift the financial institutions and business houses away from Mumbai. It will not only damage financially but will also bring international discredit, Pawar stated.

I urge you to reconsider your decision to shift IFSC in Gujarat and relocate it in Mumbai on merit basis. I expect you to take the rational and judicial decision keeping aside the state politics and considering this issue as national utmost importance, Pawar wrote.
Rep. Greg Waldens planned retirement after 22 years representing the 2nd Congressional District opens up a rare opportunity in the massive district stretching from southwest Oregon to the eastern border.

That opportunity will almost certainly go to a Republican like Walden, considering the GOP holds an eight-point registration advantage in the largely rural district. Its no wonder that in a state where Democrats hold most statewide offices, the Republican primary to replace Walden has drawn 11 contenders. Voters should choose former state Sen. Jason Atkinson, 49, as the person who best understands the on-the-ground needs of his district.

A business consultant in Central Point, Atkinson would focus on connecting constituents with federal services and resolving disputes with agencies. He envisions creating a constituent service team for veterans and helping secure mental health grants for county health clinics. But he also aims to tackle larger policy questions. While a critic of the Affordable Care Act, he recognizes the need for better health care, noting his own familys health challenges. The coronavirus pandemic, he says, may provide the motivation for a bipartisan approach to remedying holes in the system.

Atkinson has also shown his willingness to put principles above partisanship. An avid outdoorsman, he tangled with his own party in the Legislature over conservation measures. He penned an op-ed for The Oregonian in 2012 urging Republicans to broaden its party and return to fighting for the little guy. And when asked about the 2016 takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, he offered the most nuanced analysis, differentiating between the extreme positions of bad actors and the legitimacy of residents complaints over unresponsive federal agencies.

His pro-Trump stances and long-held conservative positions  he opposes abortion and gets an A from the National Rifle Association  wont curry favor with Democrats, but they mirror the beliefs of the districts Republican constituents.

Former state legislator Cliff Bentz and former gubernatorial candidate Knute Buehler, also make strong cases for their candidacies. But Buehlers startling move to the right calls his principles into question. Atkinsons independence and focus on everyday Oregonians concerns will best serve the district.

For Democrats, Nick Nik Heuertz, a 48-year-old business consultant, also from Central Point, is their most promising of five candidates. Heuertz is pushing progressive priorities, including Medicare for All, 100% renewable energy by 2035 and other policies that will be a tough sell in this conservative district. But he offers the most comprehensive platform among those seeking to turn the district blue.

-The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board

For links to all our endorsements for the May 2020 election, click here.
When is a barn not a barn? The answer is when its a barndominium. Fans of HGTVs Fixer Upper will remember the episode in Season 3 when Chip and Joanna Gaines transformed a horse barn into a modern living space furnished with their signature decor  and of course, shiplap. Barndos, as these structures are sometimes called, have gained in popularity in recent years, especially in Texas. But you dont have to go to Waco to find one, contractor Jimmy Stewart, the founder of CMW General Contractors in Spring Branch, builds barndominiums in the Hill Country. Stewart, who lives in Spring Branch with his wife, Ginny, has spent more than two decades building and remodeling custom homes. He and his crew have built barndos in Spring Branch, Blanco and Junction. They are currently working on one in Blanco, and theyll soon be heading to San Antonio to construct barndominium No. 5.

Q: What exactly is a barndominium?

A: A steel structure, a metal building that has a dual purpose of living and workshop. A steel shell and then basically you finish the inside with wood. One thing that weve found is each one is totally different than the one before. Theres not a typical barndominium. Theyre open concept homes that are really flexible.

Q: Have you worked with old, existing barns?

A: Yes, we call those conversions. We did one in Spring Branch. What we did was convert the entire area into a living space, with the most functional modern kitchen and put in another bathroom and all the finishes that you would want. It was metal, that wasnt a wood barn.

Q: Explain the basic building process, what is the first thing you do?

A: First thing is to meet with the clients, and then meet with a drafter and come up with the actual blueprint thats needed. Then we start the process with an engineered concrete slab. It can be pier and beam, but slab is preferred.

Q: Does this process differ from having a custom home built?

A: Not really, its the same steps in the process as far as what you want to see in a home. Youre just using different material.

Q: How much do they cost? Whats the average price per square foot?

A: We start at about $134 per square foot. It depends on the design of the building and the finish out.

Q: Tell me about the one you are working on now.

A: Its in Blanco, its almost 5,000 square feet. Its 1,957 square feet of living space, about 700-feet of workspace. And then its got 2,500 square feet of porch. It overlooks beautiful Hill Country.

Q: Why do you think theyve become popular?

A: The dual purpose, its just such a great way of having a living space. Many people dont have the workspace, but thats an option. One of the biggest things is that theres zero maintenance on the exterior. Steel buildings have integrity and versatility and can showcase an owners unique style too. You can build this metal building anyway you want.

Q: How long on average does it take to build one?

A: Were averaging about four to six months.

Q: How big is the largest one youve built?

A: The largest one weve built, as far as living space, is right around 4,500 square feet. Thats in Spring Branch, it has an elevator, music studio, three baths, two bedrooms, game room, living room, storage. The smallest one we did is in Junction and its a weekend retreat. It was 1,122 square feet. It has cathedral ceilings and a fireplace. Its a one bedroom and it has one and half baths.

Q: What types of amenities can people add?

A: We can go green, modern, traditional and obviously incorporate all of those. We try to make sure that all the appliances and windows have Energy Star ratings. We love putting metal and glass rolling doors in. This client in San Antonio has talked about doing a floating staircase.

Q: Will banks finance barndominiums?

A: Yes, theres not an issue at all.

Q: Has COVID-19 impacted your construction projects?

A: One of the biggest things that has happened is that materials that were ordering have been back ordered or are much slower in getting here because their considered nonessential. Its been a change obviously, but where we left off, were going to jump right back in.

For more information about barndominiums and CMW General Contractors, call 210-394-7792 or visit https://cmwtexas.com/barndominiums/.

Lisa.harrison@express-news.net
Since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, the Islamic Republic of Iran's approach to news dissemination about the epidemic has been one of chaotic management, secrecy and lies.

Iranian officials first denied the existence of the disease, then refused to quarantine Qom and its religious sites. This behavior was followed by the dissemination of fake news and all this led to the spread of the virus to the other parts of the country.

For all the contradictions and ambiguities, the public in Iran still believes that the government is hiding what it knows about the epidemic and its dimensions in Iran.

Some three months after the start of the outbreak, still no one In Iran knows whether it was true that the virus was first brought to Qom by Chinese Muslim seminary students and what was the role of the country's executive officials, clerics, security and military forces in the spread of the disease in its initial phase.

Did they withhold the news about the epidemic fearing that the resulting panic might affect turnout in the parliamentary elections in February? Or was it the sheer inefficiency of officials that failed to control the disease?

After several weeks, still news and information coming from the government is ambiguous and often contradictory. Every day the government releases figures about the outbreak and its death toll. But few inside and outside Iran believe these figures. Even the World Health Organization has questioned their integrity.

Sometimes, contradictions and fabricated figures are so blatant that it appears the government could not care less about whether what it says is believable. They give out national figures but withhold provincial figures for what they call "expediency."

It is not just the public that does not trust the government's figures. Official institutions such as the Parliament Research Center, medical schools and provincial hospitals often release their own statistics while mentioning that figures given away by the government are inaccurate.

The government even exercises censorship over graveyards, hospitals, and provincial health officials who try to give out accurate statistics about the death toll. Instead of trying to explain ambiguities, the government arrests and silences those who question official figures. But why does the government do this? It surely knows about the negative consequences of hiding realities that have something to do with the people's wellbeing? Doesn't it know that there are many ways to verify the truth and come up with the true numbers? We can only guess why.

The first hypothesis is that the government hid real figures for a few weeks for political reasons ahead of the elections. But why did they continue their dishonest policy?

The second hypothesis is that what we see regarding the epidemic is simply the tip of an iceberg that reveals the tensions within state structures. In fact, this could be simply a manifestation of the conflict between the official and hidden governments. A duality that costs many lives. On the one hand is the government headed by the president and on the other are an amalgam of religious and military centers of power, not to mention the vast administration of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

A third hypothesis is that the government's incapability and its chaotic management, coupled with fear of destructive economic and social upheavals after the outbreak, has led the government to conceal or at least downplay the crisis.

The fourth hypothesis is that the government has been trapped by its initial lie and because the officials find it impossible to take back their lie, they go ahead with still more lies.

Last but not least, the fifth hypothesis is that like in many other cases, the Iranian government has fallen victim to its usual paranoia. It believes, as Khamenei, President Hassan Rouhani and many other official have said, that "enemies" might take advantage of the situation if they reveal the truth about the epidemic and its impact on Iran.

This does not mean that only one of these hypotheses is correct. All five hypotheses or a combination of them can explain the government's behavior.

Lack of transparency is a characteristic of the Islamic Republic. It is nothing new. We have seen it on many occasions including during the protests in November 2019 and the downing of a Ukrainian airliner in January 2020. Months after these events that claimed hundreds of lives, the Iranian government has still not told the truth.

For instance, still no one knows for sure how many people were killed during the November protests, why were they shot to death and whether those who killed them have ever been questioned. In the case of the downing of the Ukrainian plane, there is still no news of a technical investigation. Iran has been holding the black box of the aircraft and refuses to give it to Ukraine. Everything is shrouded in mystery and kept secret by the government.

Lack of transparency as a culture has seriously damaged the people's trust in the government. Part of the reason for this lack of transparency is the hidden government that is responsible for many mischiefs but is not accountable for anything. On the other hand, the concept of what is expedient for the regime justifies almost anything as the Islamic Republics first and last golden rule.

The government does not get its legitimacy from the people, so it does not show any respect to them or their wellbeing. It does not understand citizenship rights. The political structure in Iran does not call for accountability and does not encourage it.

The most powerful man in the system, the Supreme Leader, makes all the key decisions but he is not accountable to anyone. In the face of this contradiction, elected institutions such as the parliament and the president have lost all of their powers and have practically "melted into the concept of the supreme guardian" to protect the individuals who occupy posts. As a result of lack of transparency, lying and secrecy have become institutionalized in the Iranian political ecosystem. In order to remain in the government, one should turn a blind eye and keep silent. No one is bothered by the ugliness of deceit.

Lack of transparency and fabricated news and data have been practically turned into a culture that erodes the ethical contract between the society and the government and precipitates the erosion of institutional legitimacy. As a result, no one trusts the government and its media outlets and everyone turns to other sources for truth and information.

The opinions expressed by the author in this article are not necessarily the views of Radio Farda
Attack on CRPF jawans in Jammu and Kashmir: One martyred, four injured in terror attack

COVID-19: CRPF worst hit paramilitary force

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, May 03: The number of positive cases in the Delhi based battalion of the CRPF has risen to 135.

These numbers show that the CRPF is the worst affected among the paramilitary forces due to the coronavirus. The 31st battalion of the CRPF based in Mayur Vihar Phase-III of the national capital was sealed after a huge number of cases were reported.

CRPF reports 136 coronavirus cases; 17 BSF personnel also infected

A senior official said that 135 troopers of the battalion have tested positive for the virus. In all 480 samples have been taken from the unit and the results of 22 are awaited.

Sources tell OneIndia that most of them would be cured as the infected troopers are asymptomatic. Those infected have been admitted to an isolation facility of the Delhi government at Mandoli.

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Sunday, May 3, 2020, 9:08 [IST]
Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday (May 3) expressed deep grief and offered condolences on the martyrdom of five security personnel, including a colonel of the Rashtriya Rifles, in an encounter with terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir's Handwara.

I offer my tributes to the soldiers and security personnel who fell in action, Singh tweeted.

I offer my tributes to the soldiers and security personnel who fell in action. My heart goes out to the families who lost their loved ones today. India stands shoulder to shoulder with the families of these brave martyrs.  Rajnath Singh (@rajnathsingh) May 3, 2020

He added that the nation stands shoulder to shoulder with the families of these brave martyrs and asserted that India will always remember their bravery and sacrifice.

The loss of our soldiers and security personnel in Handwara (J&K) is deeply disturbing and painful. They showed exemplary courage in their fight against the terrorists and made supreme sacrifice while serving the country. We will never forget their bravery and sacrifice, his tweet read.

The loss of our soldiers and security personnel in Handwara(J&K) is deeply disturbing and painful. They showed exemplary courage in their fight against the terrorists and made supreme sacrifice while serving the country. We will never forget their bravery and sacrifice.  Rajnath Singh (@rajnathsingh) May 3, 2020

A highly-decorated colonel of the Indian Army was among five security personnel killed during an operation in which two terrorists were killed in Handwara. The operation ended after around 12 hour.

Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, the commanding officer of the armys 21 Rashtriya Rifles battalion, Major Anuj, a Lance Naik and a rifleman and sub-inspector Shakeel Qazi of the Jammu and Kashmir police were martyred in the encounter.

The bodies of the martyred security men have been recovered from the encounter site.
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Parents are eager to work with school staff in preparation for the return of middle and high school students to on-campus coursework next week, after the government has eased social distancing restrictions given a slowing novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) infection rate.

After a prolonged hiatus since Tet holiday in late January, high and middle schools in Hanoi will welcome students to classes again, starting Monday.

This same date applies to high school and grade-nine students in Ho Chi Minh City.

Since the leaders of Ho Chi Minh City announced school resumption, Nguyen Thi Thu Ha from District 4 has found herself caught in an array of tasks to help her two kids, one in grade nine and one in grade 12, get ready for safe travels back to school.

Ha has equipped each of the kids schoolbag with a tiny bottle of hand sanitizer, which in her words would be easier to use when in need, instead of relying on the public wash basin at school.

Pham Thi Thuy, a parent from District 6, shares the same sentiment. Despite her kids being fully aware of measures to protect themselves against COVID-19, she cannot help but remind them over and over again of the virus.

They can recite by heart [the measures to protect themselves] from ensuring nutrition through meals, washing their mouth regularly with saline water, maintaining body temperature, wearing face masks correctly to washing hands correctly and routinely, Thuy said.

Her kids are also told to avoid going to the school canteen in class breaks for snacks or sharing school supplies with classmates.

On Saturday morning, a majority of high and middle schools in Ho Chi Minh City started logistic work, including disinfection of facilities, before welcoming students back.

According to Hoang Son Hai, principal of Nguyen Chi Thanh High School in Tan Binh District, the school will comply with safety measures to minimize the risk of COVID-19 spread.

We will temporarily cease air conditioning and resort to open air and electric fans instead, said Hai.

There will also be teachers and staff members commissioned to regulate the use of face masks, run temperature checks, and ensure constant handwashing for students before they enter the classroom.

Another school in Ho Chi Minh City, Tran Dai Nghia High School for the Gifted has reached out to parents with guidelines in place, which state that students must remain at least one meter away from one other while waiting for body temperature checks.

Any students exhibiting signs of a high body temperature, fever, cough or difficulty breathing will get isolated in a waiting room and their parents will be notified.

Parents joins schools in fumigating campuses

Groups of parents were seen on Saturday at Yen Hoa High School in Hanoi with buckets, broomsticks, cloths, and cleaning supplies to assist teachers in cleaning classrooms.

Yen Hoas principal Nguyen Thi Nhiep said the classroom facilities are covered in molds after months of not being used.

In the latest teacher board meeting, we talked about calling for assistance from parents [to clean the classrooms]. We did not expect that many parents to show up, Nhiep said.

According to Nguyen Quoc Thang, whose child attends class 12A2 of the school, he chose to aid the school in cleaning as a way to show his involvement as a parent with the teachers work to educate his child.

The school is well equipped with hand sanitizer, soap, and body temperature meters, Thang said.

We can thus send our children to school with certain ease when the epidemic has not been totally defeated.

At Nguyen Tat Thanh Middle and High School, the parents association has its own agenda to protect the students on top of what has been implemented by the school itself.

The parents association has decided to purchase more face masks with our own budget as spare ones for the children. Some parents have donated hand sanitizer, body temperature meters, and bottled water, one parent divulged.

We will give the school our full support to navigate our children amid this tough time.

Vietnams COVID-19 prevention mandate has put K-12 schools on hold since January.

All 63 provinces and cities of Vietnam have announced plans to get students back to school, with most universities, colleges, high schools, and middle schools being the firsts to reopen, while pre-schools and elementary schools will follow suit later in May.

Vietnam eased social distancing rules from April 23, but people are still required to wear face masks and avoid any gathering of more than 30 people in public places.

The Southeast Asian country has reported 271 patients to date, with 217 having recovered and no death.

It has recorded only three new cases, all imported, since April 17.

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NEW DELHI: Concerned over the safety of soldiers posted at borders, Sparsh Ganga Abhiyan has donated 10,000 reusable masks made from khadi to the staff at the Armed Force Clinic in Delhi. These masks will also be distributed to the doctors and soldiers at the clinic, apart from soldiers posted at Indias borders. Sparsh Ganga Abhiyan has been working towards rejuvenating the Ganga since 2008, and around 5.5 lakh people the world are connected with this movement.

We are all fighting this global epidemic sitting at our homes following the lock down. But our brave soldiers on the borders are fighting twin battles  enemies from across the border, and tackling this deadly virus. It falls upon all of us to protect and save our soldiers, says social activist Arushi Nishank, an active promoter of Sparsh Ganga Abhiyan. The masks were made by Sparsh Ganga Abhiyan under its programme Raksha Sutra Se Pahle, Raksha Kavach in collaboration with AquaKraft as a sustainable initiative to help in monitoring and improving the environment and enhancing the economy.

The Sparsh Ganga Abhiyan members all over India decided to send their brothers a face shield. Raksha Bandhan is a prominent festival in our country in which sisters tie a thread of defence on her brothers wrist and brother always vows to protect her sister. Then it is also the duty of the sisters that they should protect the wrist which is always there to protect them, adds Nishank.

Stocking Up Hope

Hamdard National Foundation (India), known as HNF, has joined in relief efforts to help those most in need during the pandemic. With its initiative called Ration Distribution Drive, HNF was successful in reaching out to more than 1,200 underprivileged families, whose livelihoods have come to a standstill. To implement the food relief measures, HNF collaborated with Sofia and Guncha Foundation  NGOs that have actively extended help to underprivileged families in the National Capital Region.

Hammad Ahmed, President, Hamdard National Foundation (India) said, Hamdard is working day in and day out, with partner NGOs and the government machinery to get as much food relief material to the underprivileged families, who have lost their livelihoods, in this inevitable lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic. HNF, with the help of the District Magistrate (South East) Delhi office, distributed food ration kits to over 300 families based on emergency distressed calls received by the authorities. This was in collaboration with the NGO MARHAM, that ration kits were prepared inside Anglo Arabic Senior Secondary School, at Ajmeri Gate in Delhi, for the distribution drive.

It also donated monthly supplies for 400 families to the Ministry of Food and Civil Supplies, Govt. of NCT of Delhi. HNF distributed rations to feed 200 families through NGO Sofia. Dry food ration kits were donated to Guncha Foundation to distribute it amongst the most vulnerable sections of society. Helping Hands, an initiative by teaching and nonteaching staff of Jamia Hamdard University, also collaborated with HNF in its good works.
When Spring Break was extended in March due to the spread of COVID-19, I knew my children would not return to school this academic year.

Even though the initial closure was just for a week, and then extended for another two weeks, and then another month, the idea of returning to school as the novel coronavirus spread seemed like a nightmare/fantasy.

The fantasy being a return to school implies a return to normal and lives resumed. But the thought of resuming this ritual when thousands of Americans are dying, testing and tracing is inadequate, and there is neither a treatment nor a vaccine is a frightful exercise.

So, from this perspective, Gov. Greg Abbotts announcement that school campuses in Texas would remain closed this academic year, while news in the technical sense, felt like a formality. But the far more complicated and challenging questions are when and how traditional school resumes. Its not like there will be a vaccine for COVID-19 by August, and public health experts are prepping us for a likely second wave of infections in the fall.

Now Playing: The mayor met with the Express-News Editorial Board to discuss the reopening of San Antonio after Governor Abbott announced reopening Texas. You can watch the full video of the 1-hour session on https://www.expressnews.com/opinion/ Video: mySA

Nevertheless, we are all operating as if schools will reopen just as the summer light softens.

Even if traditional school resumes later this year, it wont be in a traditional way. Class sizes will have to be smaller. Teachers may wear masks. Cafeterias might be swapped for meals in classrooms.

When I asked Michael Villarreal, director of the Institute for Urban Education at the University of Texas at San Antonio, to imagine how schools might reopen, he immediately described students attending in shifts.

So a school that had 600 students at any one time will now have 100 students, and they will enter the buildings through designated doors so they dont clump up, he said.

Temperatures would be checked. Small groups would attend school during different parts of the day, freeing up space and accommodating work schedules of parents, or even students who might be working to support unemployed parents. Traditional schooling will be blended with distance learning. Academic plans will be in place for when students, and parents, are infected with COVID-19 and have to be quarantined, or if campuses have to close again.

Sean A. Maika, superintendent of North East ISD (where my daughter joyfully attends kindergarten) told me the district plans to resume school in August. But officials are considering rotating school days: Some students might attend Monday but stay home Tuesday, when other students attend. Blending traditional classroom teaching with distance learning will be a staple.

Maika also said the district is considering additional schooling on Saturdays or after school next year, as well as extra help this summer, either in-person or digitally, to make up for time lost.

Its like building an airplane, but with no plans, he said.

Pedro Martinez, superintendent of San Antonio ISD, also plans to resume school in August and is considering a summer program to assist students who have fallen behind. He said the district is hoping to buy no-contact thermometers for every school.

The district is also studying space in its schools to see how to reduce class sizes while also keeping kids on campus where they can have guaranteed meals, an internet connection and a safe space  none of which are guaranteed at home in this pandemic.

One of the things that I worry about is there are a lot of families in my community that just dont have good conditions, he said. For me, I would like to leverage our school buildings to be able to use them as traditional classrooms as well as for virtual learning.

Martinez said SAISD will keep building on its distance learning program to serve families who keep their kids at home even after schools reopen or when a family member is sick with COVID-19. He sees blended learning as here to stay  long after this pandemic.

So, thats how school might look when it reopens, but not for every student.

Will parents even want their kids back in school? asked Maika, the NEISD superintendent.

This question points to the next school inequity. At a time when the value and importance of schools as life and community centers, not just places of learning, have never been greater or more obvious, some parents will understandably choose to keep their kids home until there is either a proven treatment or a vaccine.

But other parents wont have the luxury of such a choice. They will assume a greater risk of exposure and sickness, exacerbating our deep health and income disparities.

Through this lens, a return to school, as necessary as it will be, and as dynamic as teachers have been in this crisis, will likely mark a deepening of our familiar normal of inequity.

jbrodesky@express-news.net
Published on 2020/05/03 | Source

The first coronavirus patient in Daegu and the Shincheonji sect was released from hospital on April 24 after some two months of hospitalization.

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The 61-year-old woman had been admitted to Daegu Medical Center on Feb. 17. She infected possibly hundreds of others in the sect, making her a so-called superspreader. She also holds the record for the longest hospital stay for coronavirus.

The first coronavirus patient in Daegu and the Shincheonji sect was released from hospital on Friday after some two months of hospitalization.

A Daegu city official said, "After continuing to display mild coughing and phlegm for two months, the woman was released from hospital after testing negative in two tests since April 22".

As her treatment dragged on, a petition was started on the Cheong Wa Dae website demanding that she must be charged for the costs she incurred the state.

Her medical bill is estimated at a minimum of W30 million (US$1=W1,236).

After she was diagnosed with the virus on Feb. 18, the disease spread rapidly in Daegu, with the daily number of confirmed cases soaring to 741 one time, bringing the city to a standstill and setting alarm bells ringing nationwide.

The case prompted health officials to zero in on the sect, which was swiftly identified as a hotbed of infection even though followers often lied about their affiliation.

Of the 6,846 confirmed cases in Daegu as of Sunday, 62.2 percent are Shincheonji followers.

It remains a mystery exactly how she contracted the virus. She never traveled abroad and had no confirmed contact with another carrier. A Shincheonji spokesman said, "What we have confirmed so far is that she was the first infected patient among our members".

She remains in self-isolation at home.
Help India!

Mushira Ashraf, TwoCircles.net

Mumbai: Humza Shaikh is an engineer by profession but the current healthcare crisis in India due to COVID-19 pandemic inspired him to manufacture Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), the dire need of which is seen all across the country.

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With his start-up CHMI Indobionics started in 2017, Shaikh came up with the initiative to manufacture PPEs by engaging around 4000 skilled and 1000 unskilled migrant labourers in the manufacturing process.

After its certification, the team started its first batch of production on 25 March.

By the end of April, we finished the production of 50,000 PPEs at our leased out manufacturing plants in Bombay, Kolkata and Bangalore, Shaikh told TwoCircles.net.

Seeing the health care crisis across India, the team also ventured into making ventilators, which is under clinical trial. We are planned to launch it soon after the certification process is over, Shaikh said.

Shaikh claimed that its a unique ICU ventilator with all the required specifications. It is an invasive product which works in coherence with the human body. The cost of this ventilator is between 1.5 to 2 lakh rupees which is comparatively very less than the traditional ventilator which costs 10-15 lakhs, he said.

According to Shaikh, most of the labourers working with them were taken out of the rehabilitation camps and been provided with lodging and boarding facilities.

We have ensured their safety and meals are provided and proper care is being taken with the implementation of social distancing norms and hygienic sanitation facilities, he said.

The team led by Shaikh, have been catering to Sai Hospital and Municipal Hospital in Bombay, Rashtra Chemical Fertilisers in Ali Bagh and Indian Army in Guwahati.

The team has also been working with West Bengal government to provide them PPEs and look forward to work with the states of Orissa and Karnataka.

The project which includes the collaboration of 3 start-ups is incubated in the central universities across India including the IIMs and IITs. The project is funded by the science and technology department, Government of India and further aims to work constructively amid pandemic.
The country-wide lockdown imposed on March 23, while necessary, has had deep ramifications on economic activity.

A CII CEOs Snap Poll on Impact of COVID-19 on Economy and Industry has found that Indian industry not only anticipates a significant decline in their topline, but also fears that economic revival and demand recovery may take more than a year. The survey saw participation from more than 300 CEOs, of which nearly two-thirds belonged to MSMEs.

Majority of the respondents (65 per cent) expect revenues to fall more than 40 per cent in the current quarter (April-June 2020). For financial year 2020-21, the expectations of a fall in revenue are staggered, with 33 per cent of the firms anticipating a revenue fall of more than 40 per cent, closely followed by 32 per cent of firms expecting a revenue contraction ranging between 20 per cent to 40 per cent.

ALSO READ: Need to allow industrial activity across all zones amid coronavirus lockdown: CII to govt

A similar snap poll conducted a month ago by CII had found significant majority of firms expecting revenues to fall more than 10 per cent.

While three out of four firms have identified 'complete shutdown of operations' as a major constraint being faced by businesses, more than half of them have also indicated 'lack of demand for products' as a hindrance to business activity.

The survey results also suggest the possibility of a protracted slowdown in economic activity. Forty five per cent of the respondents say it will take more than a year to achieve economic normalcy once the lockdown ends. However, with respect to their own companies, 34 per cent of the respondents anticipate a slightly quicker recovery, i.e. within 6-12 months. The CEOs also say the recovery in domestic demand, for their product or services, may precede the recovery in foreign demand for the same.

ALSO READ: Coronavirus lockdown 3.0: Industry welcomes relaxations but stimulus package demand still on

On the jobs and livelihoods front, more than half of the firms (54 per cent) foresee job losses in their respective sectors after the lockdown ends. A major share of respondents (45 per cent) expect 15 per cent to 30 per cent cut in jobs. However, nearly two-thirds of the respondents reported that they have not carried out a salary/wage cut in their firms so far.

Taking cognisance of the deteriorating industry expectations, Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, CII, called for a stimulus package for the industry. "While the lockdown was necessary to mitigate the impact coronavirus has on the population, it has had dire implications for economic activity. At this hour, the industry awaits a stimulus package for economic revival and livelihood sustenance besides calibrated exit from lockdown," he states.

ALSO READ: Coronavirus lockdown: 78% people want ecommerce sites to sell non-essential items too, shows survey
SAN DIEGO  Not far from where protesters gathered recently to call for an end to stay-at-home orders, Megan Haber toweled off after a Saturday morning dip in brisk, 62-degree water.

"It hurts a lot," she said of last month's shoreline closure. "The beach is a part of our lives."

San Diego city beaches reopened last Monday and, even with the boardwalk closed and sand off limits for congregating and sunbathing, people flocked to the tide line in Pacific Beach to enjoy the first weekend since March that they could access the shoreline.

Mythologized by Gidget movies and a magnet for multitudes who have crossed borders and state lines to reach it, the beach is central to what it means to be a Californian. Anger over closed beaches is not just about liberty but about equity.

"In California, by definition, the beach is a birthright," said Sean Anderson, an ecologist at California State University Channel Islands. "It's how we define ourselves."

Image: San Diego (Dennis Romero/NBC News)

Limiting access to California's most prized resource, the coastline, during the coronavirus pandemic has drawn the ire of beachgoers, activists and local officials.

A "Fully Reopen California Now" demonstration in Huntington Beach Friday was seen by many as a jab at Gov. Gavin Newsom, who ordered beaches in Orange County closed after crowds congregated on the sand during a recent heat wave.

One protester held up a surfboard marked with the words, "Surfing is not a crime."

The Huntington Beach demonstration was planned for days as part of a nationwide series of events decrying what some have described as a national lockdown.

"One of the things thats fueling protests is people are just frustrated, and they want to be able to go to the beach," Anderson said.

Coastal law and policy experts seem to agree that Newsom has the right to shut down beaches for a global pandemic. But some have a problem with uneven access.

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Officials at Doheny State Beach in Orange County said that because the park was closed to vehicles, access would be granted only to those who could get there.

"The park remains open for locals," a statement on its website said last week before the governor closed Orange County beaches. A spokesman for the state parks department did not respond to a request for comment.

But at some beaches in California, officials have used parking to try to regulate crowds. One effect is that people who live at the coast have the cherished resource all to themselves.

"You cant exclude people who arent local residents," said Richard M. Frank, director of the California Environmental Law and Policy Center at the University of California Davis School of Law. "You cant make local beaches the exclusive province of local residents. Thats discrimination and wouldn't pass muster in court."

The California Coastal Act passed in 1976 ensures public access to the beach, limits coastal development and offers environmental protections near the ocean.

"Closing beaches to the public clearly goes against the intention of the California Coastal Act," said Shelley Luce, CEO of the environmental group Heal the Bay. But she said the pandemic is one of those circumstances that would qualify as a loophole.

Frank said coastal access is not necessarily a 24/7 right because many beaches close at sunset.

"Thats not an unfettered public right of access," he said.

But that's different from allowing people in Ventura County to hit the beach and prohibiting people in the next county, Los Angeles, from doing so.

"I really would prefer something thats consistent statewide," Luce said.

The patchwork of beach closures has frustrated Californians in need of a saltwater fix, and it appears people from L.A. County are traveling north to Ventura County to get it.

Anderson said data he has collected on parking and beach access in April shows spikes in parking in some residential areas near beaches in Ventura County. At spots along Deer Creek Beach, where the summer norm for parking might be 10 to 15 vehicles a day, he has counted more than 160 in a single day in April.

The result could be crowding, he said.

"Its an unintended consequence that we need to address," he said.

With another heat wave predicted for Southern California next week, some avid beachgoers say they are prepared to sacrifice their time near the ocean if they must.

Steve Padilla, a City Council membern in Chula Vista, who nearly died from COVID-19 in March, is also chairman of the California Coastal Commission, the powerful body that oversees shoreline development and ensures beach access under the Coastal Act.

After 11 days on a ventilator in intensive care, Padilla returned home a survivor one month ago.

"I said, 'I cant wait to stick my toes in some warm sand,'" he said. "I can't imagine something that would be better for my recovery. And my family had to gently tell me, 'The beaches are closed right now.'"

He urged Californians to be patient.

"I almost didnt survive, and I support the measures put in place to protect peoples health," he said. "If I cant go to the beach for a few months and it will save one life, then Im OK with that."
When Alberta health officials urged people to stay home at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, taxi driver Adbul Qureshi was more than happy to comply if it meant potentially saving lives.

"I don't want to work and spread germs all over," he said. "That's why I thought this is a better way  isolating myself to protect my family and other people."

Qureshi has been driving in Edmonton for the past 25 years, most recently with Alberta Co-op Taxi Line.

The 48-year-old stopped driving six weeks ago, acknowledging the difficulty in maintaining physical-distancing protocol inside the confines of his cab.

He's been taking care of his four teenaged children at home ever since.

"My car is in the garage, my plate is back to the office," he said. "The government is paying to support me to isolate from COVID-19."

Qureshi says the typical process for taxi drivers who aren't working is to turn the vehicle's license plate into the company, which will then pause insurance payments that could total hundreds of dollars monthly.

Not having those insurance payments has been a relief during this difficult time, he said.

Making ends meet

Money has been tight but he's managed to make ends meet with the help of Canada Emergency Response Benefit cheques.

Then he got a letter from Co-op Taxi he never expected, he said.

"I've been driving for 25 years and it never, ever happened like this before," he recalled.

The undated letter from general manager Uday Kumar informed owner-drivers like Qureshi that due to 85 per cent of its fleet being grounded by the pandemic, management was finding it difficult to balance operational costs.

It cited the refusal by insurance companies and brokers to offer discounts to the company on its insurance during COVID-19.

According to the letter, as of May 1, Co-op Taxi would no longer be offering drivers insurance discounts for parking their taxis.

Qureshi said instead of the roughly $50 a month he currently pays to park his cab, he's now responsible for paying the full insurance cost of about $540.

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CBC reached out to Co-op Taxi but did not receive a response.

'That scared me'

"When I got that letter it shocked me and I said, 'Oh my God.' I mean, that scared me," he said.

"I'm not working; my car is in the garage; why am I going to pay that insurance for nothing?"

CBC spoke with several other drivers who echoed similar complaints but were fearful of being fired for speaking out.

Qureshi said paying the full cost of the insurance would eat up a quarter of his family's monthly budget right now.

"$2000 I'm getting from the government. How am I going to survive with my family  four kids, no one working? Who's going to survive on that?" he asked.

After contacting Co-op Taxi to say he wouldn't be paying, he was given two options, he said, pay the amount or take his plates out of the Co-op taxi business. He settled on the latter.

In that respect, he's more fortunate than some because he owns his vehicle, he said.

The downside, he said, is it means starting all over again, losing seniority and having to pay hundreds of dollars in new fees to drive elsewhere.
SPRINGFIELD  On a sunny Saturday morning, Lynn Ehmen pulls up in her Chrysler Pacifica van and does an immediate inspection of a micropantry tucked off Converse Avenue at Lanphier High School.

Theres never been this much stuff in this pantry when Ive been here, said Ehmen, eyeing the wooden cabinet that was built by students at the Capital Area Career Center. This is a lot.

Ehmen begins spraying a disinfectant to clean the outside of the cabinet and then, using a sack of potatoes to prop a door open, goes through its contents, inspecting dates and labels.

Im no food expert ... Ehmen said, setting a few cans to the side.

The micropantries have been springing up around the area as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, although the movement in the area isnt new. Ehmen, a mother of four who normally would be teaching swim lessons at the YMCA, stumbled upon the Springfield Families Helping Families Facebook page and envisioned herself helping out.

Now Ehmen and a group of others raise funds through OpenWorld Relief, a nonprofit that responds to natural disasters around the world. Ehmen spends about $600 weekly on food and other supplies, though her contacts run deep, teaming recently, for instance, with Dot Foods in Mount Sterling.

Its the least contact, easiest way to get something, Ehmen said. You can come up and take what you need. Thats pretty much how it works.

Stocking the shelves with everything from cleaning supplies to toiletries to crackers to dog and cat food, Ehmen makes her usual rounds, ending up at a micropantry outside the Bell Building on South Fifth Street, in plain sight of the governors mansion.

There are a lot of people struggling, Ehmen said later. Theres help out there, but people dont know how to access it. This is why this (movement) appeals to me, because of the accessibility of it.

Stopping by the downtown micropantry, Roxxi Goodrich said she couldnt believe her luck in finding some cleaning supplies and laundry detergent.

Soon Ehmen and another couple of women who had stopped by to drop off supplies were loading Goodrich down.

Macaroni and cheese?

Always, Goodrich said.

Kool-Aid?

Maybe a little sugar for the kids, she countered.

Coffee and filters?

Its the little things that matter most, Goodrich said, practically hugging her newfound goods.

Goodrich was born in Alton, grew up right down from Disneyland and moved to Central Illinois six months ago from Hawaii. Goodrich lives with her aunt and her aunts daughters two children, ages 6 and 8, and works at Star Graphics.

Its such a good community, said Goodrich, about Springfield. I feel like a regular person in this town. This is such a blessing.

Kristina Moss stopped at the Lanphier micropantry to deliver some feminine hygiene products, toothbrushes and toothpaste and diapers.

I want to help people, too, Moss said. Sometimes, I have to get food here. Im not in a great position myself, but if I can help someone else, Im going to help them.

Moss has a 16-year-old and lost her job because of the pandemic. Shes also watching after her brother, William, who has had diabetes since he was a kid and suffers from kidney failure.

Anything I think my brother can use, I set to the side and I take to him and his family, said Moss, breaking down. Everything else comes straight here. Every little bit helps and its appreciated.

Ehmen admitted she spent the first couple of weeks of the crisis crying, thinking of all the important events people were missing out on and all the businesses affected.

Ehmen also has empathy for those looking for assistance. Growing up in Quincy, her family was often the recipient of food drives, especially after her father died when she was 12.

Ehmen said all of her kids help out. Peri, 19, makes spreadsheets to track who needs help. Ten-year-old Josie sews face masks. Sons Bennett, 17, and Rowan, 14, help carry and stack items.

Springfield Park District board president Leslie Sgro said she tries to fill up the micropantries several times a week with soap, paper towels, apples, lettuce and whatever I can get my hands on, she said.

These people are at the end of their rope and this is a life preserver. It inspires me to try to do more.

Sgro said shes not surprised an idea like the micropantries sprung up here.

Ive always said Springfield is one of the most charitable places Ive ever been, Sgro said. If theres a need, people get together and fill it and I think this is just another example of that. I think it goes on all the time, its just less visible. This is the heart and soul of Springfield. Its why Im so passionate about the community and one of the many reasons I love living here.

Kitty Moore said she met Ehmen a few weeks ago when she donated one of her moms cabinets to use as a micropantry. A week later, Moore was picking up her daughter, Makenzie, from work when her car ran out of gas.

Guess who she called?

She was my guardian angel, Moore said of Ehmen. Shes like a mother to me now. Shes a good community helper.

Moore, a hospice nurse, has driven her neighbor, Danielle Peebles, to a micropantry at Capital City Property Management in the 1500 block of S. MacArthur Blvd.

Its an excellent thing to help people out, Moore said.

Ive made some hard and good friends from this, Ehman said.

PHOTOS: Food services during COVID-19 in Central Illinois
The management of the Federal Medical Centre, Idi-Aba, Abeokuta, on Sunday, confirmed two coronavirus cases in the institution. One of the patients is a pregnant woman who later died.

The management said three suspected cases were being managed at the Accident and Emergency Complex of the hospital in the past week, two of whom have now tested positive.

The Public Relations Officer of the hospital, Segun Orisajo, confirmed the development in a statement, explaining that two of the patients tested positive while one was negative. He said one of the patients who tested positive was a pregnant woman who died on Friday.

Mr Orisajo said the pregnant womans result returned positive on Saturday. He said her corpse was released to her husband after counselling and in adherence to the World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines on such matter.

He said the second patient who tested positive is a young man who has now been transferred to an isolation centre in the state. He said the man is clinically stable.

They were suspected cases right from onset and hence were isolated from other patients and staff throughout their stay in the unit. Similarly, the staff that attended to them observed the prescribed standard protocols and procedures, Mr Orisajo stated.

He said the standard practices of contact tracing, decontamination, amongst others have commenced. He added that the Accident and Emergency Complex where the patients were admitted has been temporarily shut down to allow for a thorough ongoing decontamination exercise while patients have been properly relocated.

The spokesman said the hospitals ambulances and ambulance bay are being decontaminated.

It should be stated that the hospital embarked on a comprehensive fumigation of all buildings in the centre a month ago, he said.

He said the management has put in place additional measures to protect parents and staff against coronavirus. Henceforth, all persons entering into the hospital premises are required to observe hand-washing protocol or use hand sanitisers at the entrance gates.

Also, all persons within the hospital premises are required to wear face masks.

The official said the Medical Director, Adewale Musa-Olomu, has allayed the fears of the staff, patients, their relatives and the general public.

As a responsible health institution, we have initiated some anti panic measures to put the mind of all our people at rest that there was nothing to be afraid of after all. As of now, the hospital does not have any coronavirus patient. We will ensure a total adherence to all the measures earlier mentioned in this statement.
As part of the planned measures under the health emergency that was extended on Saturday, anybody entering France, foreign or French, will have to remain confined for two weeks, Health Minister Olivier Veran told a news conference.

This would typically concern "French people who travelled abroad and who want to come home", he said.

He did not say whether there would be any distinction made between travellers according to country of provenance.

Anyone arriving from abroad and infected with the virus would be obliged by law to be quarantined, he said. Those developing symptoms while in isolation would also need to go into quarantine.

Details of the measures are expected in the coming days.

'Learning to live with the virus'

Infected people already in France will, however, not be forced to accept isolation and treatment, as "we trust French people's sense of responsibility", Veran said.

Once approved by lawmakers, the emergency period will last until July 24, Veran said.

The government has announced the gradual lifting of some lockdown measures from May 11, including the re-opening of primary schools. Veran said, however, that to lift the health emergency, which began on March 24, at the same time would be premature and carry the risk of a resurgence of the outbreak.

"We are going to have to perform a long-distance run," Veran said, adding he was aware that the French people had already been asked for "colossal efforts" in the fight against the virus.

"We are going to have to live with the virus for a while," Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said after a cabinet meeting decided on the extension.

"Learning to live with the virus, that's what's at stake in the coming months."

The new proposals also cover an "information system" for those have the virus and their entourage that would operate for up to a year.

The bill will go before the Senate on Monday and the National Assembly most probably the day after, said government spokeswoman Sibeth Ndiaye. It is expected to become law by the end of the week.

Easing confinement

On May 11, people in France will be allowed to leave their homes without the current obligation to carry a written justification for the movements.

They will have to wear protection masks when using public transport.

Many shops will also reopen and remote-working staff will be able to return to offices as France battles the economic impact of the coronavirus that has already pushed the country into recession.

In the latest example of the financial costs involved, the chairman of the national rail operator SNCF said Saturday that his company had already lost two billion euros during the crisis, and would probably apply for state aid and cut staff numbers.

Meanwhile, the number of daily deaths in France from the coronavirus fell to 166, the health ministry said Saturday, the lowest number in more than five weeks.

This takes the total number of reported COVID-19 deaths in France since March 1 to 24,760, the fourth highest in Europe.
By Kate Kelland and Stephanie Nebehay

LONDON/GENEVA (Reuters) - Parts of the world are starting to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic and to cautiously resume some sort of normal life, but the new coronavirus will pose significant risks until vaccines are developed, the WHO's top emergencies expert said on Sunday.

Mike Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization's (WHO) emergencies programme, said while many countries are still in the eye of the storm, others were beginning to show it is possible to contain the disease to some extent.

"In that sense, there's hope," Ryan told Reuters in an online interview from Geneva.

"At a global level the situation is still very, very serious but the pattern of the disease and the trajectory of the virus is very different in different parts of the world right now," he said.

"What we're learning is that it is possible to get this disease under control and it is possible to begin resuming normal economic and social life, with a new way of having to do that, and with extreme caution and vigilance."

However, some countries in Africa and in central and South America are still seeing "an upwards trajectory in cases" and although they may not appear to have a big problem yet, the availability of tests remains an issue, Ryan added.

More than 3.44 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 243,015 have died, according to a Reuters tally as of Sunday.

Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December.

"We're in the middle of the fight of our lives - all of us around the world," Ryan said. "There's going to be a significant and extended risk until we reach a point where we have a safe and effective vaccine available to all."

Ryan said some countries, including China, South Korea, Singapore, New Zealand and others, had reached what he described as "a steady state" with regard to the spread of COVID-19.

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Meanwhile Europe and North America are beginning to emerge from "very intense epidemics" of the disease and are now trying to navigate a safe exit from severe restrictions on economic and social activities imposed in the past few months, he said.

After months of severe lockdown, people in Italy and Spain were starting to enjoy a little more freedom on Sunday. Israel has opened some schools, while South Korea said it would further relax social distancing rules from May 6, allowing a phased re-opening of businesses.

Ryan said this showed "not that the virus can be beaten absolutely, but that we can reach a point where we have enough control over the virus that our social and economic lives can begin again".

He reiterated, however, that any government seeking to relax restrictions should do so with extreme caution.

The WHO warned on Friday that countries must lift lockdowns gradually, while still being "on the look-out" for COVID-19 and ready to restore restrictions if the virus jumps back.

(Reporting by Kate Kelland and Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Frances Kerry)
By Associated Press

DHAKA: At least 29 Rohingya refugees from a fishing boat floating in the Bay of Bengal for weeks have landed on an island in southern Bangladesh, officials said Sunday.

The refugees, including 15 women and six children, landed on Bhasan Char island on Saturday and are believed to be from one of several boats stuck at sea, said Tonmoy Das, local chief government official in Noakhali district.

Das said food, doctors and a team of 10 policemen were sent to the island to take care of the refugees.

An official from Bangladesh's Refugee Commissioner's office in Cox's Bazar district said the office was aware of the development.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Rights groups say hundreds of Rohingya are stranded on at least two fishing trawlers between Bangladesh and Malaysia.

The refugees reportedly attempted to illegally reach Malaysia, but failed because of strict patrols to keep out the coronavirus.

More than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims came to Bangladesh starting in August 2017, when the military in Buddhist-majority Myanmar began a harsh crackdown against them in response to an attack by insurgents.

Global rights groups and the UN have called the campaign ethnic cleansing involving rapes, killings and torching of thousands of homes.

Currently more than 1 million Rohingya live in Bangladesh.
Since the coronavirus outbreak began in HCM City, every day has been a busy one for health workers at Emergency Centre 115.

Since the coronavirus outbreak began in HCM City, every day has been a busy one for health workers at Emergency Centre 115.

In addition to transporting emergency patients to health facilities, they have been assigned a new task: transporting COVID-19 cases and those suspected of having coronavirus to health facilities and quarantine areas.

Medical staff at the centre are working harder than ever despite rising temperatures in the city.

They have become the "silent transporters" in the fight against the disease.

Dr Do Ngoc Chanh, the centre's deputy director, said since the end of December 2019, Emergency Centre 115 had been preparing plans to cope with the pandemic after reports started filtering from across the world.

"We were one of the first units in Vietnam to prepare a response plan because we were aware that HCM City was at high risk. Everything had to be prepared early," Chanh said.

On the 29th day of the last lunar month of the Year of the Pig (2019), the first two COVID-19 cases appeared in Vietnam and in HCM City.

Since then, the entire centre has been put on "red alert".

Dr Dao Thi Bich Hang, acting head of the centre's Administration Department, said on the second day of the Lunar New Year, they received a phone call from a resident reporting a tourist suspected of being infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus in District 3.

A team from Emergency Centre 115 fully prepared protective gear and rushed to the scene.

To be honest, at that time, we still had not received instructions on how to investigate the virus, so when someone called to report suspected infections, we prepared protective clothing before approaching patients," said Dr Hang.

The team on duty that day were concerned, and their fears were only allayed when doctors at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases reported that the tourist did not have coronavirus, she said.

On January 31, the centre received a call from a hotel reporting that a man from the US who had passed through Wuhan Airport was showing symptoms of the disease.

He was promptly treated and isolated to avoid spreading the disease, Dr Do Ngoc Chanh said.

Since then, the staff at the hospital have had many sleepless nights and unfinished meals.

Vo Lam Khoi Nguyen, a driver, said he was disinfecting his car after each trip, and was always on call.

Even at 11pm, the phone was still ringing non-stop for the drivers to pick up patients or suspected cases to health facilities, and sometimes they were returning home at 5am.

Another new day began after a sleepless night.

Hundreds of such trips have taken place during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I have experienced many pandemics but this is the most stressful, especially with people coming from abroad. Sometimes we have to transport 7-8 COVID-19 patients and suspected cases a day, not including daily emergency cases," said Pham Quoc Viet, head of the team, who has worked at the centre for nearly 30 years.

It takes 5-6 hours for each trip because the quarantine sites are far from the city, he said.

Drivers are not allowed to rest along the way when they are transporting patients or suspected cases to hospitals or quarantine zones. We have to leave our personal needs behind," Viet said.

The protective clothing, mask and gloves in cars without air conditioning makes it tougher.

"It's like torture," Nguyen said with smile.

That's the job. They all work hard to fight the pandemic.

The phone rings and they're off again./.VNA
Researchers at Nagoya University have discovered a neural circuit that drives physical responses to emotional stress. The circuit begins in deep brain areas, called the dorsal peduncular cortex and the dorsal tenia tecta (DP/DTT), that send stress signals to the hypothalamus, a small region in the brain that controls the body's vital functions. The findings were recently published in the journal Science.

Emotional stress activates the sympathetic nervous system, which leads to physical responses, such as a rise in blood pressure and body temperature, and a faster heart rate. Such responses are thought to be coping mechanisms in humans and many other mammals to boost physical performance in fight-or-flight situations. But nowadays, when most people rarely encounter such situations, these responses could perhaps have an adverse effect on their health. Excessive stress may cause symptoms such as psychogenic fever, a condition of abnormally high body temperature.

To develop strategies for treating stress-induced symptoms, the neural mechanism underlying physical responses to stress had first to be understood. To this end, a research team led by Professor Kazuhiro Nakamura and Designated Assistant Professor Naoya Kataoka, of the Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, conducted a study in which tracers were injected into the brains of a group of rats and the rats were subjected to a stressful event (rat bullying by a dominant rat).

The tracers showed that specifically the DP/DTT brain areas were highly active when exposed to stress. To further examine the role these brain areas have in stress response, the researchers impaired the areas' connections to the hypothalamus and again exposed the rats to the same stress. Now the rats did not exhibit any stress-induced physical response, neither a rise in blood pressure nor body temperature, nor a faster heart rate.

This study demonstrates that the DP/DTT areas together are responsible for sending stress signals to the hypothalamus, and thus that blocking the DP/DTT-to-hypothalamus circuit can result in a reduction of stress symptoms in rats.

Professor Nakamura sums up the research result like this: "The DP/DTT are parts of the brain that are involved in processing emotion and stress. The DP/DTT-to-hypothalamus pathway we discovered, therefore, represents a brain mechanism for a 'mind-body connection,' which can be a potential target for treating stress-related disorders such as panic disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and psychogenic fever."
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said mosques would reopen across large parts of the country Monday, as officials reported a drop in the number of deaths from the novel coronavirus. Health ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said 47 people died of the virus over the past 24 hours, the lowest daily count in 55 days. He told a news conference he hoped "the trend will continue in the upcoming days". His remarks came as President Hassan Rouhani said 132 counties, around one third of the country's administrative divisions, would "reopen their mosques as of tomorrow". "Social distancing is more important than collective prayer," he said in a televised meeting of the country's virus taskforce. The president argued that Islam considers safety obligatory, while praying in mosques is only "recommended". Rouhani did not give the names of the counties affected by the measure or the number of mosques due to reopen on Monday. The measure is not expected to be implemented in the capital, Tehran, or in the main Shiite holy cities of Mashhad which are among those most affected by the outbreak. Mosques and some key Shiite shrines in Iran were closed in March amid the Middle East's deadliest COVID-19 outbreak. The targeted counties are "low-risk", Rouhani said. The virus taskforce was also mulling reopening schools by May 16 to allow for a month of classes before the summer break. According to Jahanpour, the 47 new deaths brought to 6,203 the total number officially recorded in Iran since it reported its first cases in mid-February. He added that 976 fresh infection cases were confirmed in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 97,424. Over 78,420 of those hospitalised have since been discharged, while 2,690 are still in critical condition. Experts and officials both in Iran and abroad have cast doubts over the country's COVID-19 figures, saying the real number of cases could be much higher than reported. - Qods Day cancelled - Rouhani claimed hospital visits over potential infections were "much lower" compared to recent weeks. He said it is due to "83 percent of people on average observing health protocols" and thanked Iranians for their "cooperation". The Islamic republic has tried to contain the spread of the virus by shutting universities, cinemas, stadiums and other public spaces since March. But it has allowed a phased reopening of its economy since April 11, arguing that the sanctions-hit country cannot afford to remain shut down. Only "high-risk" businesses like gyms and barbershops remain closed. "We will continue the reopenings calmly and gradually," Rouhani said. Yet he warned that Iran should prepare for "bad scenarios" too, saying "this situation may continue into the summer". Iran's Revolutionary Guards on Sunday announced they were cancelling the annual day of protests against Israel known as Qods (Jerusalam) Day seemingly over the coronavirus pandemic. Spokesman Ramezan Sharif, quoted by Fars news agency, said the move was in line with the cancellation across Iran of other ceremonies and the closing of holy places. "Let's not worry about what the enemy might say," he added. The day has been held every year since the 1979 Islamic Revolution to show support for the Palestinians and is usually marked on the last Friday of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, which falls on May 22 this year. Iran shut down its mosques in early March in the face of the region's deadliest novelcoronavirus outbreak At a meeting with Iran's virus taskforce President Hassan Rouhani said that "social distancing is more important than collective prayer" arguing that Islam considers safety obligatory while prayer in mosques is only "recommended"
A couple have been branded 'self-centered' and 'deluded' after asking strangers to donate towards their wedding and honeymoon amid the coronavirus pandemic.

In a post shared to Reddit's Wedding Shaming forum, the anonymous couple, who are believed to be from the UK, asked for people to fund their 'traditional and modern' wedding - along with their honeymoon in either Peru, Dubai, Japan, Turkey or Egypt.

While the bride, who is a musician, offered to write an original song to express her gratitude to well-wishers, many angered forum users were quick to take to the comments section, slamming the couple for being 'tacky.'



'Wow I'd like to go to those places too! Where's my money? This would be tacky any time but especially now,' wrote one, while a second penned: 'People who think they DESERVE a nice wedding or honeymoon are deluded.'

A couple, believed to be from the UK, have been branded 'deluded' after a Reddit thread revealed they asked strangers to fund their 'dream wedding' and honeymoon amid the coronavirus pandemic. Pictured, stock image

In the initial post, the couple began: 'We are planning our wedding to take place in September. Unfortunately we are both fighting chronic illness and try to stay above water during the Covid-19 crisis.

'This wedding is supposed to be all traditional / modern wedding but our dreams have been narrowed down because of our chronic illness and medical costs.'

The duo then decided to take things a step further by discussing their dream honeymoon plans, that are yet to be decided.

It read: 'We also have dreams for our honeymoon with locations like: Peru, Dubai, Turkey, Egypt and Japan. If only we could do 1 of those locations we would see this as our dream fulfilled.'

The couple caused outrage after they asked for donations to help fund their 'traditional/modern wedding' (pictured)

'You could make the difference in helping us fulfill that dream. If you can afford to donate anything it would mean the world to us!

'[Since] I am a musician at heart I can give in return some of my latest tracks for you to enjoy.'

However, rather than taking to their purses to donate, many were left outraged by the mere suggestion of helping - with some bride's admitting they couldn't even afford their own honeymoon, so went without.

'My husband and I couldn't afford a fancy honeymoon,' wrote one. 'We used a cabin a family member loaned to us and we were grateful for that.

'I am astounded how many people ask for money to fund the honeymoon. If you can't afford it, maybe the money you're given as a present should be put into things other than a holiday.'

Some outraged forum users were quick to reveal that they couldn't afford a honeymoon, so went without (pictured)

A second commented: 'My husband and I didn't go on a honeymoon because we couldn't afford it and couldn't get the time off work. We never would have asked people to pay for our holiday. Who the hell do they think are?' while a fourth agreed:

'If someone GIFTS them money for their honeymoon without being asked, that's great, but to ask for it is very tacky and tone deaf.

'Particularly since many folks are struggling with their own issues that actually ARE related to COVID-19.'

Meanwhile, a further wrote: 'I've never understood why people think their dream wedding or honeymoon is something any stranger cares about,' to which another replied: 'Because they're self centered enough to think they're celebrities.'
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To determine Trumps highest and lowest approval ratings by state, Stacker mined data from The State of the Nation: A 50-state COVID-19 Survey and The COVID Tracking Project.

This article was first published on Stacker
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 20:40:24|Editor: huaxia

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CAIRO, May 3 (Xinhua) -- The Egyptian army announced on Sunday that its forces have recently killed 126 terrorists across the country.

In a statement, the military said the terrorists were killed during 38 raids and special operations carried out by the armed forces, without mentioning when exactly these military operations were carried out, only referring that they happened "in the past period."

According to the statement, 228 terrorist hideouts, 116 four-wheel-drive trucks and eight tunnels were destroyed during the military operations.

It added that 630 bombs that were planted by the terrorists had been detonated by the army, noting that 266 suspects and wanted elements were also arrested.

During the operations, the army said, 15 officers, non-commissioned officer and soldiers were killed.

Earlier in the day, Egyptian Ministry of Interior said police forces killed 18 terrorists during a shootout in the country's restive North Sinai Province.

Egypt has been countering terrorism since the Egyptian army ousted late President Mohamed Morsi in 2013. Enditem
Sure, it might be warm Wednesday, but what about the rest of the week?
Haryana on Sunday registered its highest single-day increase in coronavirus cases with 66 new infections, taking the COVID-19 tally to 442, officials said.

Majority of the new cases are from NCR districts -- Faridabad, Gurgaon, Sonipat and Jhajjar.

Eighteen fresh cases were reported from Sonipat, 12 from Faridabad, nine from Gurgaon, 11 from Panipat, two each from Jhajjar and Palwal, four from Fatehabad, two from Yamunanagar and six from Jind, according to the state health department's daily bulletin.

Three doctors from Sonipat, four scribes from Panipat and four pilgrims from Fatehabad who returned from Hazur Sahib Gurdwara in Nanded, Maharashtra are among those infected with the virus, officials said.

This was the highest single day spike in cases, with previous being close to 30 last month.

Haryana's recovery rate, which had been one of the best in the country, dropped from 72 per cent to 55.43 per cent on Sunday, the official said.

According to the bulletin, 245 patients have been discharged from hospitals.

Expressing concern over the rising number of COVID-19 cases in the state, Health Minister Anil Vij said, "If Chief Minister M L Khattar asks me, I would advise him to put in stricter measures in view of the fresh developments."



Haryana has maintained that many of the coronavirus cases in its NCR districts have their origins in infections emanating from the national capital and authorities had ordered sealing of the districts with Delhi to check spread of infection.

The worst-affected districts of the state with maximum number of positive cases are Faridabad (73), Gurgaon (72), Nuh (58), Sonipat (44), Jhajjar (42) and Palwal (36).

The number of fatalities due to COVID-19 stands at five.

Among the total 442 coronavirus cases in Haryana, 64 are from other states and 24 are foreign nationals.

Out of these 24 foreigners, 13 Italian tourists have been discharged from hospitals, while one elderly woman died last month.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 11:50:28|Editor: huaxia

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BUCHAREST, May 2 (Xinhua) -- Romanian Interior Minister Ion Marcel Vela said on Saturday that the money collected from the lockdown fines would go to the healthcare system.

"I met with Prime Minister Ludovic Orban," the minister told a local TV station. "These fines will not be used for other purposes ... all those who have paid the fines should know that their money will go to the medical system," he said.

Vela said that more than 300,000 fines worth 600 million lei (136 million U.S. dollars) in total have been imposed since the country entered a state of emergency on March 16.

A nationwide lockdown came into effect on March 25. Romanians are asked to stay home and carry a pass with them when going out for essential purposes.

On April 3, the government increased the level of the fines imposed during the state of emergency.

Romania has reported a total of 12,732 COVID-19 cases with 771 fatalities as of Saturday. Enditem
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- With his poll numbers looking wobbly, President Donald Trump wants the Lincoln Memorial as backdrop for a Made-for-Fox-News event today intended to portray him as the kind of leader he is not. It wont work  not just because the juxtaposition of Trump with Abraham Lincoln is so spectacularly unflattering to the current president.

When historians rank American presidents, the Civil War features prominently in their deliberations. Nearly all historians consider Lincoln one of the paramount examples of presidential leadership. Lincoln presided over a nation broken in two; his chief competitor for the top ranking, George Washington, guided a messy quasi-nation that included loyalists who had opposed the rebellion Washington had led. Both presidents made great efforts to realize the American ideal of E Pluribus Unum.

The lowest-ranked presidents likewise cluster ominously around the edges of the Civil War. Whereas unity is a mark of Lincoln and Washington, divisiveness is a recurring trait among the least admired executives. Its a key reason why Donald Trump has already joined their club.

In a 2017 C-Span survey of 91 historians who ranked the presidents (not including Trump) on measures such as crisis management and international relations, the bottom five includes three presidents whose administrations greased the skids into the Civil War  John Tyler, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan  along with the president most responsible for squandering the wars gains, Andrew Johnson. Only one president from outside the Civil War era, the notoriously unindustrious Warren G. Harding, whose administration is best known for corruption, made the bottom five.

Rankings are bound to have a subjective element, and the favor of historians is not constant over time. The top and bottom rankings, however, seem pretty durable. A Siena College survey of 157 presidential scholars, released in 2019, produced a similar roll call of failure  with one notable change. In this poll, Tyler loses his spot among the cellar dwellers to Trump, who is ranked third from the bottom, with only Johnson and Buchanan rated as worse presidents. That was before the coronavirus pandemic opened a new window on Trumps breathtaking crisis management.

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Andrew Johnson was a uniquely vile president. He betrayed the promise of emancipation, snatching defeat from victory and brutal servitude, for millions, from hard-won freedom. His swing around the circle, a series of Trump-like rallies he held mostly in the Midwest in 1866, was so divisive that his intemperate, inflammatory, and scandalous harangues became the basis of one of the articles of impeachment against him.

So Johnson may be hard to topple from last place. But what earned James Buchanan the second-to-last spot ahead of Trump?

Buchanan had seemed eminently prepared for office. He had served in the Pennsylvania state legislature and the U.S. Congress. He was in President James Polks cabinet and had been ambassador to Russia and Great Britain. He was elected in 1856, in an era of bitter sectional politics, with a plurality of the vote.

Like Trump, however, Buchanan never sought to expand his base. An admirer of the chivalrous race of white Southern men, the Democrat was a persistent partisan for Southern causes. He quietly sought to influence the Supreme Courts Dred Scott ruling, which it handed down during his first days in office, by encouraging a justice from his home state to side with the pro-slavery faction. On the viciously contested issue of whether Kansas would be free or a slave state, he appeared uninterested in stemming political violence in the territory and supported a pro-slavery minority government based in Lecompton, Kansas, along with the pro-slavery constitution it tried to foist on Kansass anti-slavery majority.

Buchanan did little to halt the nations precipitous slide toward Civil War, and may have accelerated it. In his years as President, writes Buchanan biographer Jean H. Baker, Buchanan did a great deal to popularize the view that the Republicans were a threat to the South, thereby encouraging its secession from the Union when Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860.

Division and dithering: These are the chief reasons why Buchanan ranks near the bottom, and the reasons why Trump, post coronavirus, is poised to sink beneath him. Of course, some believe Trump, encumbered by corruption, has already sunk to the lowest depth of presidential history. Yet his catastrophic inaction amid the pandemic suggests he has more room to descend. I wrote Eric Foner, an expert on Reconstruction, to ask what he makes of the competition at the bottom of the presidential pile. It seems fitting to give the last word to one of Americas greatest historians.

Buchanans involvement in the infamous Dred Scott decision and then support for the fraudulent Lecompton Constitution certainly push him toward the bottom, Foner wrote back. On the other hand he refused Southern demands to recognize the legality of secession and ironically ended up as head of a northern, pro-Union administration. His annual message to Congress made a strong argument that secession is unconstitutional. I rank Andrew Johnson below him as well as our current president. Buchanan did not recommend drinking Lysol.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Francis Wilkinson writes editorials on politics and U.S. domestic policy for Bloomberg Opinion. He was executive editor of the Week. He was previously a writer for Rolling Stone, a communications consultant and a political media strategist.

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion

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2020 Bloomberg L.P.
Easy A, Fast & Furious 8, Tim Burton's The Corpse Bride.

Kiwi-westerns, politically-charged moral quandaries and historical romances are all on telly today as TopFilmTip brings you the best films on TV for Saturday, 2 May.

Some films may require a Sky subscription.

Helen Mirren stars as the monarch suddenly despised by media and public alike before finding redemption in a metaphorical stag. Majestic drama in The Queen 12:55pm ITV 3

Raised as royal brothers, siblings' close bond breaks as one realises his true origins and must lead his people to freedom in biblical musical The Prince of Egypt 13:00pm Sky 1

Gigantified by wedding day meteor, woman joins BOB and cockroach to battle extraterrestrials in robot fighting fun Monsters vs Aliens 2:15pm BBC One

Heart warming tale of an inner city girl who discovers a talent for spelling in moving family drama Akeelah and the Bee 2:35pm Film 4

Nervous groom makes grave error of proposing to maggot-eyed murder victim in gothic, necrotic love triangle Tim Burton's Corpse Bride 3:20pm ITV2

Read more: Top-rated TV on offer

Time-slipped boy awakens years after disappearing to inventive engaging alien adventure in mercurial mystery Flight of the Navigator 4:00pm SyFy Universal

Battle Of Britain, poster, British poster art, 1969. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

Outnumbered and outgunned, 600 brave pilots hold the British skies against the nazi hordes. Magnificent true story Battle of Britain 4:00pm ITV4

Helicopter piloting, face punching, tsunami sailing emergency responder abandons all his duties to rescue wife and daughter from cataclysmic earthquake in San Andreas 6:45pm ITV2

Boer War veteran faces clash between his duty and conscience after capturing accused and innocent Maori man in grizzled Kiw-estern Tracker 6:55pm Sony Movies Action

Struggling writer finds focus and desire when gathering emotive material for new book from nazi surviving channel islanders in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society 8:30pm BBC Two

French-Scot and Scottish-Spanish-Egyptian immortals battle mangle-headed priest-licker for Queen-scored power of oneness in sword-slaying decap-athlon Highlander 8:00pm Horror Channel

Story continues

Troublesome boy and his mourning mother face wrath of grievous ghoul in charismatic, chilling, psychological creepfest as emotional allegory The Babadook 9:00pm SyFy Universal

Railroaded into cyber criminal crew, criminal betrays his crew of criminals in traffic raining submarine jumper Fast & Furious 8 9:00pm ITV2

Head-blasting, groin-kicking, pram-chasing prohibition perfection as four cops teach Al Capone 'The Chicago Way in The Untouchables 9:00pm ITV4

Humiliated by compulsory waxing, teen toxophilite vents her hormonal frustrations via child murder and insect abuse in The Hunger Games 9:00pm 5 Star

John Hughes referencing redheads rumour-riding rebellion doesnt go to plan in Emma Stones high school set Scarlet Letter Easy A 9:30pm Comedy Central

Miniature loud-mouthed Black Hammer tries to impress GF's Bro Ice Cube who does not have A Good Day in 126-ing cop comedy Ride Along 10:35pm ITV1

American actors Damon Wayans and Bruce Willis on the set of The Last Boy Scout, directed by Tony Scott. (Photo by Warner Bros. Pictures/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images)

Quip-lashing PI goes to Hallenback foiling eccentric sportsing conspiracy in Tony Scotts hyperbolic death rampage The Last Boy Scout 11:20pm ITV4

Dogged frontiersmen mount rescue of wife from cave dwelling troglodyte cannibals in gruesome gore splattered western Bone Tomahawk 11:25pm Film 4

Divinely devilish dialogue as lawyer's greedy foray entices unexpected evils in eloquent, car sexing drug drama The Counsellor 11:35pm Channel 4

Reporter's access to FBI's most wanted criminal/political activist precipitates morally murky quandaries and questions in star filled high brow thriller The Company You Keep 11:50pm BBC One

Honey-trapped teens face homophobic horror amidst federal gun-raid on rapturous church-cult in Kevin Smith's visceral Red State 00:55am Horror Channel

1975: Actors Tim Curry, Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon in scene from movie "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" directed by Jim Sharman. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

Ordinary couple find Frankensteins place, do time warp and play with gender roles in Singing camp fest The Rocky Horror Picture Show 1:00am Talking Pictures TV

Juxtaposed morally flexible cops Nic Cage and Elijah Wood plan heist of crooks treasure trove in angst inducing thriller The Trust 1:45am Sony Movies

Nick Cave provides meditative, psychoanalytical insight into his creative process in dreamlike autobiodoc 20,000 Days on Earth 2:00am Film 4

Follow TopFilmTip on Twitter for daily film recommendations.

Everything new on streaming in May:

Netflix UK: Mays new releases

NOW TV: Mays new releases

Amazon Prime Video UK: May's new releases

Disney+ UK: May's new releases
Maharashtra, which has the highest number of COVID-19 cases in India, has not allowed easing of any restrictions in the third phase of the two-week lockdown that starts on Monday. The state government has issued revised norms to be applicable after May 3, for residents as well as to those in other municipal corporations of Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) and the corporations of Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, and Malegaon.

There are 14 districts in Maharashtra which are red zones, including Greater Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Thane, Palghar, and Nashik. 16 districts are orange zones, and six are in the safe green zone.

Of the 14 red zone districts, five are in the MMR, Pune, and Malegaon, where curbs have been tightened over the next two weeks. Nine other districts have been allowed some activities, but with restrictions.

Coronavirus India Live Updates: Lockdown 3.0! Highest 1-day jump with 2,644 cases; IAF salutes corona heroes

Private offices will not be allowed to operate with 33% strength in these areas, a report in the Times of India cited state chief secretary Ajoy Mehta as saying.

Offices will not be permitted to open in Mumbai because it is a red zone, Mehta said. However, the state could consider reviewing the decision in a few days.

The norms set up by the central government on Friday fixed the framework for states while allowing them to increase restrictions, though no restrictions can be diluted.

Liquor shops too cannot open in the red zones in Maharashtra.

Only three people in one car would be allowed to travel. No pillion riders will be permitted on two-wheelers; industrial units in urban areas, only in the special economic zone (SEZ), Export Oriented Units (EOU), will be permitted excluding all municipal corporations within Mumbai, Malegaon, Pune, and Pimpri-Chinchwad. Construction activities in urban areas will be permitted only on the sites. No worker will be brought in from outside.

Meawnhile, chief secretary Ajoy Mehta has directed all state-run and private hospitals not to turn away patients without examining them under any circumstances.

Extreme care is to be taken before allowing movement from other hotspot areas such as Malegaon, Solapur, Akola, Amravati, Yavatmal, Aurangabad and Nagpur, the official order said.

It said that a certificate from a registered medical practitioner that the one intending to travel does not have influenza-like symptoms will be sufficient for the purpose and separate screening will not be required.

The nodal authority sending persons to other districts will inform its counterpart there and movement will begin only after acceptance letter of the receiving nodal authority is issued.

The system of e-pass currently in use by Maharashtra police will be made available for this purpose to the nodal authorities, and appropriate changes are being made in the system, the order said.
Madrid, May 3 : Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said that he will ask Parliament next week to extend the State of Alarm that was imposed on March 15 in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, for another 15 days when it expires on May 9.

If the request is granted by the Congress, the lower chamber of Spanish Parliament, it would be the fourth extension, reports Xinhua news agency.

"The State of Alarm has worked in Spain... So we will ask the Congress for another extension for a further 15 days," Sanchez said on Saturday in a televised speech.

His address came on the same day when majority of Spaniards were allowed outdoors to take exercise for the first time after seven weeks of virtual lockdown "We are collecting the fruits of the efforts of these seven weeks," he said, referring to relaxations of the lockdown restrictions.

The Prime Minister pointed to the falling number of new deaths and new cases in Spain, where 276 new deaths and 1,147 new cases were confirmed by the Health Ministry on Saturday, to insist that "we knew that confinement was the way to stop the propagation of the virus".

He then looked ahead to the four-stage roadmap he set out earlier in the week to bring a "new normality" to post-pandemic Spain.

Each of the stages (numbered 0 to 3) will last at least two weeks.

Each of Spain's 50 provinces will only be able to move from one stage to another after meeting a series of requirements.

Stage 0 is due to begin in most of the country on May 4 and will be a "preparation phase" while stage 1 will allow small businesses and hotels to reopen although without common areas.

Meanwhile, stages 2 and 3 will see restaurants, cinemas and theatres reopen to 30 per cent of their capacity, before increasing that to 50 per cent by the end of June, when people will also be able to use public beaches but with social distancing restrictions.

Sanchez added that from May 4, it would be obligatory to use face masks on public transport.

A State of Alarm is the first of three emergency levels a Spanish government can apply under exceptional circumstances.

It grants the government special powers to limit the movement of citizens, control the means of production, use private assets if needed and also use the military to carry out essential logistical and supply jobs.

Spain currently accounts for 216,582 coronavirus cases, with 25,100 deaths.
On the face of it, the political crisis in Maharashtra would seem to be over with the Election Commission (EC) announcing polls to the Legislative Council on May 21. In the middle of the Covid-19 crisis  because of which, incidentally, the Rajya Sabha polls were postponed by the EC  Maharashtra will vote to save Uddhav Thackerays reign.

Heres the background: Thackeray, who is not a member of either House of the Maharashtra legislature, took oath as chief minister on November 28, 2019. Under the Constitution, he needs to become member of the legislature by ...
They cheer his sallies at "the bastards in Washington." His best laugh comes when he waves at

the Courthouse and says, "We'll pick it up and send it to the moon," if Bobby Seale is

convicted. The rally has been called because the 33-year-old Black Panther leader Bobby Seale faces trial

on a charge of murder in the templed white courthouse fronting the green. He is alleged to have

ordered the killing of a Black Panther whose tortured body was found near New Haven in May last

year. It is a complicated story of informers and counter-informers. Police say they seized a tape of

the "trial" which preceded the victim's slaying in a raid on Black Panther headquarters two

days after the murder. Three of 16 Panthers arrested have confessed to a charge of second

degree murder. Molnar cartoon from SMH, May 8, 1970 Credit:Molnar On May Day, 1970, the rally is not only protesting Seale's innocence but demanding that he not

face trial.

Rallies protesting the Vietnam war and other causes have generally lost popularity in the

United States, their moderate organisers convinced they generate more resentment than converts.

But on the platform are the old Vietnam radicals - David Dellinger, Jerry Rubin, Rennie Davis,

Tom Hayden and Abbie Hoffman - whose paths we have followed from the steps of the Pentagon to

the Conrad Hilton in Chicago. Now  released on bail over Judge Julius Hoffmann's protest that they are a menace to society 

we find them in New Haven. Because the Black Panther body was dumped near New Haven and Seale

must be tried here, students from Yale University have become involved. "Chicago 7" attorney William Kunstler has visited the Yale campus and invoked student aid. The

faculty  even Yale President Kingman Brewster  are going along. The radicals have all the ingredients for provoking trouble: a cause, well-meaning

demonstrators, a "non-violent" situation for exploitation. The Democratic Governor of

Connecticut so rates the promise of non-violence he has called up troops of the New Haven

National Guard and asked Washington to fly in another 4,000 Federal soldiers on stand-by. On the New Haven green, where revolutionaries 195 years ago seized the powder house and muskets and marched against the British, May Day 1970 looks none the less peaceful, a picture of youth culture: beads and braid, banded heads and liberated bosoms, sun worship and good humour, "legalise marihuana" and Cuban flags, pets and "love animals" admonitions in short, love, not war.

'Yippies' But there is a fringe of helmeted "yippies" on the green. Leather-jacketed motor cyclists gun

their machines down adjacent streets with English names like Main, Chapel, Temple and the like, towards the Gothic buildings of nearby Yale. And on the platform, it is not all love and let live. Jerry Rubin harangues the crowd for over an hour, the voice of the former Berkeley firebrand filtering over loudspeakers at the back of the square like that of Hitler surging on radio 30 years before. Youths hand out angry pamphlets put out by the "Progressive Labour Party," a hardline group which split from the U.S. Communist party when Peking broke with Moscow. Hanoi-sympathiser David Dellinger, wearing coast and tie, advises the placid crowd: "Don't let the Establishment provoke us into a violent encounter." Today he is less profane than the other speakers, and remarks only that the hands of the U.S. Government are "dripping with blood:" In Chicago, he employed a crudity in the courtroom to describe testimony against him. This is the mod language of revolution. Police are "pigs," troops are unprintable; epithets heard from riot to riot insult, provoke, invite "police brutality" or frame pictures of bayoneted rifles at the ready.

It is 10.30 p.m. now, back on the fringe of the green. Near the centre, a mob is milling around the high Victorian Gothic church which Yale's chaplain, Dr William Sloane Coffin, has made available to demonstrators so they can "come into the church and be disengaged from the police." It is an Orwellian scene: helmeted riot police bracing themselves at New Haven's Main Street in front of plywood-protected shops, holding two ear-splitting portable machines ready to project "pepper smoke"  science's last word. The beautiful spires of three churches on the green are bathed in floodlights, a trash fire is flickering near on the steps of the courthouse which Abbie has not yet sent to the moon. Then the mob comes, led by "yippies." Their white helmets show as they try to break past the

police liner. Out of the dark whizz bottles and stones. The first bottle crashes on the pavement six feet from where the bare-headed Press are

standing. A shattered fragment hits one on the foot, other splinters cut the shins of the coffee shop waitress who served us not long before.

Explosions The police toss smoke grenades into the crowd. They explode with a crack like a rifle shot. The

roaring "pepper smoke" machines drive the mob back to the chaplain's church. Yale students,

acting as marshals, link hands shouting, "Move back" to the nearby campus. But the "yippies" come again, this time in an attempted outflanking move down Chapel Street.

More smoke grenades, some tear gas this time, and National Guard troops are moved up to block

off the street with fixed bayonets. Students pour out of nearby lecture rooms where they have been listening to tho "Chicago 7" 

"There'll be a midnight sale at Macy's," Abbie Hoffman suggested to his group. But Macy's,

wisely buried in an acre of plywood a block behind police lines, remains inviolate. The shouting turmoil continues well after midnight. The New Haven police chief rushes to every incident, restrains his men  now suffering a few bruises and excited as missiles continue whistling out of the darkness. It is no joke to be at the receiving end of unseen bottles.
Cleotilde is a farmworker in Ventura County who wears a colorful bandana to protect her from the sun and pesticides, but since COVID-19 broke out, she also hopes it can protect her from the virus.

"Farm work is an honorable job, but a tough job," she said. Her employers have implemented social distancing in the fields, but she said she's worried about putting her three daughters at risk when she returns home. "I leave at 5 in the morning and return at 5 in the evening, and I always have this fear on my mind."

While many Americans are working from home, farmworkers have continued laboring in fields. The government has deemed their work essential, meaning they're excluded from stay-at-home orders. The pandemic puts additional strain on a community historically overworked and underrepresented.

Lillian Argueta is doing everything she can to help them. Thread by thread, she weaves together splashes of brightly colored cloth to make face masks -- about 100 each day.

"One mask can save a life," she said. "I feel so happy to be able to share what I know how to do. It's my grain of sand."

PHOTO: Farm laborers from Fresh Harvest working with an H-2A visa harvest romaine lettuce on a machine with heavy plastic dividers that separate workers from each other on April 27, 2020 in Greenfield, California. (Brent Stirton/Getty Images)

Argueta has been creating masks as part of the Ayudando Latinos a Sonar organization's project "Un Respiro de Vida," which translates to "one breath of life."

Spearheaded by Dr. Belinda Arriaga, the organization has been distributing masks to farms throughout the West Coast, where many field workers have been laboring without protective gear. The group has delivered about 4,000 masks over the last few weeks.

"We really started it as a small local project -- we didn't realize the magnitude of how many and how hard it was to get this protection for the farmworkers," Arriaga said. "We're going into a season where everything is harvesting and being grown, and this pandemic has not stopped them."

MORE: Estimated 57 million Americans job vulnerable under COVID-19: Report

Story continues

Marciana Lazaro, who picks lettuce and celery in Monterrey County, California, was given a letter by her employers that explained she was an essential worker traveling to and from the fields. Her workplace told employees they could show the letter to police if stopped while commuting.

Her employer has implemented strict social distancing guidelines and ramped up sanitation practices in order to help keep Lazaro and her co-workers safe, but she has heard reports of farmworkers in neighboring towns who've been infected with COVID-19. She said she's put aside her fears to keep working, to provide for her son who's deaf.

"If I don't work, how will I pay rent?" she asked.

PHOTO: Farm laborers with Fresh Harvest wash their hands before work on April 28, 2020 in Greenfield, California. (Brent Stirton/Getty Images)

Organizations that have built relationships with farmworkers are often the first to find out about incidents where employers aren't following safety protocols.

"We're getting reports about not enough wash bins, having to bring your own toilet paper, about not having masks," said Diana Torres, executive director at the United Farm Workers Foundation.

Torres said one of the biggest challenges farmworkers face in advocating for healthier environments is fear of retaliation from employers -- or deportation.

There are between 2 to 3 million agricultural workers in the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Labor's National Agricultural Workers Survey, nearly half are undocumented immigrants. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, recently signed by President Donald Trump, provides economic help for some employees and businesses, but it excludes undocumented immigrants. Even without access to health insurance or paid sick leave, most of these workers opt to continue, at substantial personal risk.

At the beginning of the outbreak, Wilmer Jimenez, western coordinator at the Rural and Migrant Ministry, said some farmworkers in New York state were told to keep working even though they were exhibiting symptoms of COVID-19.

"They were sick and didn't know that, so they were working along with other people who didn't have the virus," he said. "But later on, when they got tested and came back positive, some of them still went to work."

Additionally, many of those workers return home to environments where social distancing measures suggested by the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention are difficult, if not impossible, to adhere to. A study conducted by Farmworker Justice, a nonprofit that advocates for healthier living and working conditions, estimates that one-third of farmworkers live in houses and apartments where multiple families share the same household.

"Their housing tends to be crowded," said Alexis Guild, director of Health Policy and Programs at Farmworker Justice. "They have shared bathrooms and shared kitchens and don't necessarily have the ability to physically distance themselves or to practice those CDC recommendations of hand-washing to keep themselves healthy."

PHOTO: Farm laborers from Fresh Harvest working with an H-2A visa maintain a safe distance as a machine is moved on April 27, 2020 in Greenfield, California. (Brent Stirton/Getty Images)

Heather Riden, manager of the Western Center for Agricultural Health and Safety at the University of California, Davis, has been working to come up with practical recommendations employers can apply to help keep workers safe while on the clock, but said there are still challenges in implementing social distancing when it comes to certain aspects of farm work.

"So, OK, if you're having people working in row crops, skip a row in between people so there's greater spacing," she said. "What about when you have equipment that is used for planting or harvesting that requires two people to be sitting in close proximity in order for that equipment to work or to be used? We don't have an exact recommendation for that -- that's a long-term engineering kind of issue."

Alexandra Allen and her husband own Main Street Produce in Santa Maria, California, and have placed signs written in Spanish warning workers that they're prohibited from entering the strawberry fields if they're exhibiting flu-like symptoms. They've placed a diagram of two people standing 6 feet apart under the tent where employees pack strawberries to remind them about social distancing. They're also stuffing paycheck envelopes with the latest information from the CDC.

"The last thing we would ever want to do is let anybody come to work who is sick," Allen said.

MORE: For tribes, casinos fund what the government doesn't. Now, they're closed.

In neighboring San Luis Obispo County, Ryan Talley also said he's focusing his efforts on keeping employees safe -- staggering shifts, limiting the number of people riding in each vehicle, disinfecting all of the shared facilities multiple times a day. In some cases, he's reduced production in order to increase safety for employees -- people he refers to as his extended family.

"Even though our machines require literally individuals being shoulder to shoulder, we've made the adjustment to where we are pulling out every other row, every other individual, so they're at least 6 feet apart in their harvesting," he said. "Our efficiencies have suffered, but we feel that's the most responsible for our employees out in the field."

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the government agency that oversees health and safety in workplaces, published "Guidance on Preparing Workplaces for COVID-19," a set of practical guidelines employers should follow to protect workers.

MORE: 'I'm not ready to die': New 'essential workers' call for protections, hazard pay in coronavirus crisis

State OSHA agencies in Washington and Oregon have taken a stronger stance against employers who ignore CDC guidelines. They've announced temporary emergency rules to increase protections for agricultural workers from COVID-19. Businesses violating state rules may be susceptible to citations.

"A couple states are issuing rules, which have an actual legal protection behind it, but federal OSHA has not done any kind of actual rule, which means that it will vary state by state," Guild added.

"Employers are and will continue to be responsible for providing a workplace free of known health and safety hazards," a Department of Labor spokesperson told ABC News. "OSHA's standards remain in place and enforceable, and they will continue to be as workers return to their work places."

Cleotilde has been helping to advocate for healthier work conditions for other women in the fields through her work at Lideres Campesinas, an organization that seeks to empower and provide resources for women and families.

She submitted a selfie video to ABC News from the field where she works, on a recent morning as the sun was rising.

"Good morning, we're here ready to start another day of work in the fields even though we are very worried about the presence of this disease," Cleotilde said in the video. "Here we are, doing everything possible despite these times, the good and the bad. We're harvesting food and sending it to the table of the millions who need it."

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Tune into ABC at 1 p.m. ET and ABC News Live at 4 p.m. ET every weekday for special coverage of the novel coronavirus with the full ABC News team, including the latest news, context and analysis.

Essential farmworkers risk COVID-19 exposure to maintain food supply originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
For Russia, the question of robots taking over the role of soldiers on the battlefield is a matter of when, not if. Living fighters will gradually begin to be replaced by their robotic brothers who can act faster, more accurately and more selectively than people, Vitaly Davydov told RIA Novosti on April 21. Davydov is the deputy director of Russia's Advanced Research Foundation, its DARPA analog. As Forbes writes, developing robots for war is an international phenomenon, and Davydovs remarks fall into a broader pattern of Russia seeking to augment its existing military with new, autonomous capabilities.

There is a still-classified Russia's military robotics road-map that sketches out various stages of Russian unnamed military developments, which undoubtedly has been influenced by Russian military actions and experience in Syria, says Samuel Bendett, an adviser at the Center for Naval Analyses.

While some Russian robots have underperformed expectations in combat, the Ministry of Defence is working on a new generation of combat machines for training and possible future use. At the center of this design is the Marker UGV, or uncrewed ground vehicle. Resembling a miniature tank with treads and turrets, the Marker is as much a test bed as it is a machine expected to see battle.

The Ministry of Defence is discussing the eventual use of robotic swarms in combat and Marker is definitely the platform to test that out, says Bendett, an Adjunct Senior Fellow at CNAS. As envisioned, it will be able to launch swarms of UAVs or loitering munitions, making it a truly versatile robotic platform.

The development parallels many robotic programs under way in the United States. It is remarkable, too, that both nations have hit upon swarms of ground robots as a way to supplement existing human formations in combat. Russia plans to test swarms of ground robots later in 2020.

Part of Davydovs argument for military robots is that they will, simultaneously, be faster, more discriminating in target selection, and more accurate than people. While it is already possible for machines to react to sensor data faster than humans, the other parts of that equation require targeting algorithms with far greater discretion than anything seen presently. (It also involves sidestepping the entire international legal and moral debate over transferring the decision to kill in battle from humans to machines.)

At this point in military autonomy, a human can designate targets once they are identified, says Bendett, but once the computing speed and the levels of battlefield complexity multiply exponentially, I wonder how true Davydov's statement will be.

Making robotic soldiers that adhere to the laws of war and protections for civilians isnt just an ethical challenge, its a coding challenge. It requires the military to prioritize positive target identification over the fastest possible response.

At this point, the Ministry of Defence says that robots replacing humans saves human soldiers from danger, says Bendett. Built into that statement is the assumption that a sophisticated unmanned system would be able to eventually distinguish military targets from civilian ones, avoiding unnecessary casualties.
(Natural News) Brazil is well on its way to becoming the next COVID-19 hotspot, experts said after the countrys number of infected individuals reached 66,896 on April 28.

We have all the conditions here for the pandemic to become much more serious, Paulo Brandao, a virologist at the University of Sao Paulo, said, noting that the intensifying outbreak in Brazil has already pushed several of the countrys hospitals to the breaking point.

According to authorities, there are already signs that a growing number of patients are now dying inside their respective residences.

Brazil, the biggest country in the Latin American region, with a population of 211 million people, is currently reporting up to 3,642 coronavirus infections per day.

Scientists, however, say that the true numbers may be much higher, with some experts speculating that over one million Brazilians may already be infected. According to scientists, this projected number is largely due to the lack of testing in the country, as well as the number of people without severe symptoms who have opted to not seek hospital care.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro initially downplayed the danger of COVID-19, first equating it to a little flu before claiming that Brazilians have a natural immunity to the virus.

Manaus: City of the dead?

The riverside city of Manaus, home to over two million people, is now bearing the brunt of what is being looked at as the federal governments inaction regarding the pandemic, with many already describing the citys situation as akin to living through a nightmare.

It is a scene out of a horror movie, Manaus Mayor Virgilio Neto said in an interview with Agence France-Presse, noting that the city is no longer in a state of emergency, but rather of absolute calamity.

The worst-hit city in the state of Amazonas, Manaus death rate from the pandemic is now pegged at 100 a day, according to authorities, with data furnished by the city government noting that an average of 100 bodies are being buried every day  triple the pre-virus average of burials. According to a spokesperson for the city hall, however, the majority of the deceased are noted to have died of unknown causes.

People are dying at home, some perhaps because they got no medical care, Neto said, adding that he fears that these deaths could be coronavirus-related.

As of this writing, the bodies of the deceased that have yet to be buried are stored in refrigerated trucks parked outside of the citys hospitals. According to Manuel Viana, one of the citys funeral directors, some of the bodies in the trucks and hospitals have not been claimed by their families and relatives, largely due to the fear of possible infection.

That is something I honestly have never seen in Manaus before, Viana said in an interview with NPR, noting that he has never seen a situation such as this in his three decades in the funerary industry.

I have been in this business for more than 30 years. We never thought we would encounter a situation like this Viana explained.

Despite the apocalyptic situation in Manaus, medical experts say the coronavirus outbreak is still far from its peak in Brazil, with its number of cases and deaths  already the highest in Latin America  still expected to rise sharply.

According to authorities, the outbreak is expected to reach its peak in May.

This spells even more bad news for Manaus, especially since the citys already-strained medical facilities are now starting to buckle under the weight of the number of infected individuals.

According to doctors  some of whom have declined to be identified  hospitals in Manaus are already at their breaking point, and that their supplies of personal protective gear and critical life-support equipment are now running low.

Complicating matters even more is that, aside from running out of supplies, the citys hospitals are now running out of space for patients and the deceased alike, as shown by a video that recently circulated on social media.

https://twitter.com/JoeB14ck/status/1251592414554251269?s=20

The video, reportedly shot by a nurse inside Manaus Joao Lucio Hospital, showed deceased patients in body bags lying on gurneys in the hallway, as well as wrapped in sheets or blankets on beds in the same room as patients undergoing treatment.

The Amazonas State Secretary of Health has since confirmed the videos validity in a statement, noting that the bodies seen in the video have been removed.

Many of the citys residents are now afraid that Manaus is on its way to becoming Brazils answer to Guayaquil, the Ecuadorian city that went viral because of the number of dead bodies that have piled up on its streets. (Related: Apocalyptic scene now unfolding in Ecuador amid surge in coronavirus cases)

We are working hard to bury people. We have had gravediggers fall ill with coronavirus. Some will not make it, Neto said, adding that he has already asked the Bolsonaro government for more resources in order for his city to tackle the crisis.

This is a really, really tough fight, Neto added.

As of press time, the COVID-19 pandemic has claimed 211,609 lives, and infected 3,065,000 more, across 185 countries.

Sources include:

News.Yahoo.com 1

APNews.com

BusinessInsider.com

NPR.org

News.Yahoo.com 2

DailyMail.co.uk
On the Frontline Against China, the US Coast Guard Is Taking on Missions the US Navy Can't Do

Competition with China has drawn more Pentagon resources to the Pacific, but the most visible U.S. military presence there...
New Delhi/IBNS: India's lead counsel on the Kulbhushan Jadhav case, Harish Salve, has said New Delhi might need to go back to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its bid to get directions for Pakistan to implement the judgment in the crucial case on the Indian national languishing in their jail on espionage charges.

He said Pakistan has not taken a step so far on the issue.

"We have reached the point that we may have to go to ICJ for consequential direction. Because Pakistan has not moved," Salve was quoted as saying by WION.

''I know the current situation," he said and added, India and Pakistan have had 7-8 exchanges and New Delhi was hoping that via backchannel.

"We will persuade Pakistan to let him go. Even if it is a humanitarian ground, we want him back. Because it has become a big ego problem in Pakistan," he was quoted as saying by the Indian news channel.

Ending all speculations, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), last year, in a 15:1 judgement ruled in favour of India as it passed its verdict in the case related to Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav, who was sentenced to death in Pakistan on charges of espionage. The international court thus stayed the execution of Jadhav by Pakistan.

The verdict was read out in a public sitting of the United Nations court in The Hague.

A Pakistani military court in April 2017 sentenced Jadhav to death on charges of espionage and terrorism.

The International Court of Justice had earlier asked Pakistan to hold off the execution till it reaches its final verdict in the case.

Even as Jadhav, 48, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court in April 2017, following the Indian government's move to the international court, the 10-member bench of the ICJ on May 18, 2017 had given a stay order and 'restrained' Pakistan from executing Jadhav till adjudication of the case.

In its written pleadings, India had accused Pakistan of violating the Vienna Convention by not giving consular access to Jadhav arguing that the convention did not say that such access would not be available to an individual arrested on espionage charges.

India had said the so called trial of Jadhav by a military court in Pakistan was "farcical".

Later in December, 2017, Kulbhushan Jadhav was allowed to meet his wife and mother but the MEA in Delhi had said it appeared Jadhav was under considerable stress and speaking in an atmosphere of coercion.

Timelines in ICJ Case:

8 May 2017 i. India instituted proceedings in the International Court of Justice against Pakistan for egregious violation of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, 1963;

ii. India asked ICJ to issue 'Provisional Measures';

iii. India asked Court to issue immediate instructions to Pakistan to not take any action on the sentence awarded to Jadhav till India's request for

Provisional Measures was considered.

9 May 2017 Court sent an urgent communication to the PM of Pakistan, and called upon Pakistan, to act in such a way, pending Court's decision on India's Request for Provisional Measures (stay order) as will enable any Order the Court may make on this Request to have its appropriate effects.

15 May 2017 ICJ heard India's request for Provisional Measures

18 May 2017 ICJ unanimously issued a binding order indicating Provisional Measures asked by India to take all measures to prevent execution of Jadhav pending final judgment of the Court.

13 Sept 2017 India filed its Memorial (first round of written pleadings)

13 Dec 2017 Pakistan filed its Counter Memorial (first written pleadings)

19 Dec 2017 India sought 3 months to file Reply (2nd pleadings)

5 Jan 2018 Pakistan opposed India's request

17 Jan 2018 Court accepted India's request and gives time of 3 months each to India and Pakistan to file 2nd round of written pleadings

17 April 2018 India filed its Reply in the Court (2nd round of written pleadings)

17 July 2018 Pakistan filed its Rejoinder (2nd round of written pleadings)

18-21 Feb 2019 Final Oral Hearings in the ICJ

17 July 2019 Judgment by the ICJ goes in favour of India



Jadhav Case - Key Facts



1. On 8 May 2017, India instituted proceedings in the International Court of Justice in relation to egregious violations by Pakistan of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, 1963 in the matter of arrest, detention and trial of an Indian national Shri Kulbhushan Sudhir Jadhav.

2. Article 36 of the Vienna Convention, applied to the facts of the Jadhav case, mandated:

(a) As Pakistan "arrested" Jadhav, they should have notified the Indian Consular officers without delay;

(b) that India's consular officers were (are) free to communicate with, and have access to Jadhav;

(c) that Jadhav had (has) similar freedom with respect to communication with, and access to India's consular officers;

(d) Pakistan was (is) bound to inform Jadhav of his rights to communicate with, and access to India's consular officers;

(e) any communication addressed by Jadhav to India's consular post, while under arrest, in prison, custody or detention, was liable to be forwarded by Pakistan to India's consular officers without delay;

(f) India's consular officers had (have) a right to visit Jadhav, to converse and correspond with him and to arrange for his legal representation.
Students have changed their plans as summer programs have been canceled due to the coronavirus. When they lose internships, students say they miss out on work and resume-building experiences.
PRATO, Italy, May 2 (Xinhua) -- Facing such a rampant pandemic like the novel coronavirus disease, less infection means more lives are saved and a bigger chance of winning by the human side.

While mourning every loss of life, people also need to draw lessons from the less infected regions, in order to know ways of better protection and to see through deceptive claims.

A successful story much reported recently comes from Prato, Italy. According to many European media such as Reuters, Politico Europe, and la Repubblica, it is a town densely populated with ethnic Chinese, many of whom returned from China in the early days of the pandemic, but maintaining zero infection in the local Chinese community so far.

Renzo Berti, a key local health official, as reported by Reuters, credited the ethnic Chinese with "bringing down the entire town's infection rate to almost half the Italian average."

They "had a positive impact also on our citizens and therefore we were better prepared when the storm arrived here," Prato Mayor Matteo Biffoni said in an interview with Xinhua.

Looking back at what happened there since the outset of the outbreak, one can not only discover the prompt preparations made by the Chinese, but also debunk some deceptive claims attacking China's response to the epidemic.

The accusation that China intentionally hid the epidemic from the rest of the world is an utter lie as China was the first to report the COVID-19 outbreak to the World Health Organization and other countries, and invited foreign experts to have field studies in Wuhan.

Shortly after China put Wuhan, a central Chinese city with over 10 million population, on lockdown on Jan. 23, strict measures of social distancing and mask-wearing soon followed nationwide.

The preparation against the spread of the epidemic made by Chinese residents in Prato was based on the news out of Wuhan and the broader China. One difference worth noting is that they put their knowledge into action faster than most other ethnic groups. Thus it is hypocritical and ridiculous to blame China for not issuing an alarm.

The second accusation that the figures released about the infections and casualties in Wuhan were vague, letting Chinese people irresponsibly spread the coronavirus to places less guarded for the virus attack, is also groundless if one knows anything about the Chinese people's strict self-discipline and determination to defeat the virus.

Since the first confirmed cases were detected, China started its daily updates about the epidemic situation to the WHO and sharing important information with scientists across the world, including those in the United States and Europe. Meanwhile, Chinese governments at all levels repeatedly cautioned citizens about personal protection measures.

In the case of Prato, which is about 232 km away from Milan, one of the hardest-hit metropolises in Europe, though hundreds of Chinese returned from China between the end of January and February, no infection was reported in the community.

"Many important measures, that we learned later, were implemented (in the Chinese community), like isolation, protection and use of the masks. This is the reason why Prato was less affected by the virus if we compare with other places," Berti told Xinhua.

Describing the Chinese community as "auto-controled" when there were no national guidelines in Italy, Berti said, "I had the feeling there was a sort of auto-surveillance, so if a Chinese citizen was coming back from China, the first to tell him to be in quarantine were his compatriots."

Many Italians in Prato shared similar views that the behavior of ethnic Chinese was anything but irresponsible and was even considered overreacting at that time. What they have achieved clearly demonstrates the corelation between proper precautions and infection prevention.

Moreover, their unselfish assistance to the local community has also pierced the lie that masks in Prato were depleted by the Chinese.

There was no secrecy that overseas Chinese sent personal protective equipment back to the Chinese mainland at its most testing moments and their affection for their beloved ones in their motherland is widely understood by most of the international community.

Mayor Biffoni told Xinhua, "I was aware about that because we received a communication from them about that. I understand that at the early stage our Chinese community felt the need to send the medical equipment."

Nevertheless, the ethnic Chinese' love for the places where they live should not be erased.

As Biffoni said, "On the other side, the Chinese community brought here hundreds of thousands of masks, hand sanitizers, and other things. All these medical materials are still coming and the flux will continue also in the future."

Helping others will usually help oneself. This piece of ancient Chinese wisdom is what the Chinese people believe and follow.

"As of Apr. 20, China had provided the U.S. with over 2.46 billion masks, meaning 7 masks for each in the U.S.," according to a tweet by the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunyin. Meanwhile, Chinese customs data showed that China exported 3.86 billion masks between March 1 and April 4.

Last but not least, the solidarity among different communities in Prato helped the city emerge from the pandemic stronger. As the battle against the coronavirus continues, more stories about the Chinese community in Prato will gain it better notice and admiration.
Bright, sunny skies and temperatures soaring into the mid-70s  the warmest of the year  had swarms of people descending on the Connecticut coastline this weekend, despite ongoing warnings from health officials to keep a safe distance amid the coronavirus outbreak.

On Saturday, cyclists, joggers and beachgoers  some wearing masks  crowded along roads and sidewalks in Westport near Longshore Club Park.

On Sunday, at least one group drew a line in the sand  literally  to mark their area and prevent others from getting too close at a mostly desolate Cove Island Beach in Stamford.

The scene was more crowded at state parks, prompting the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to close all 11 of them to new visitors by Sunday afternoon when each of their parking lots reached capacity.

The closed parks included Westports Sherwood Island State Park and Sleeping Giant State Park in Hamden, both popular destinations that have been repeatedly closed on nice weekends since the start of the pandemic.

Our parks are open for solitary recreation, were inviting folks to come and enjoy the parks either by yourself or with members of your family, DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes said in a video shared to the departments Facebook page.

She said the parks are requiring visitors to stick to groups of five people or less, and noted the department is instituting lower capacities for some locations to prevent crowding.

Two state parks, Kent Falls in Kent and Seaside State Park in Waterford, have been closed for the duration of the pandemic, according to DEEP.

Heavy foot traffic along the shoreline comes as other states have drawn criticism for allowing beaches to remain open during the pandemic. Last month, the hashtag #floridamorons began trending on Twitter after photos showing crowded beaches were posted on social media.

Local health experts have been warning against interacting with others too soon. Sofia Pendley, clinical assistant professor of Sacred Heart Universitys Public Health program, said social distancing has been working in Connecticut, pointing to the declining number of hospitalizations related to COVID-19.

This downward trend is due to the fact that people are limiting their interaction with one another, she said. If we prematurely become more relaxed, we will see increases in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths.

Fairfields First Selectwoman Brenda Kupchick credited the towns police for reminding residents about social distancing at places like Jennings Beach that became crowded this weekend.

Im happy to say that for the most part our residents were following social distancing, with polite reminders from Fairfield Police Department, Kupchick wrote in a Facebook post.

A spokesman for Fairfield police said many are complying with social distance requirements, but they continue to see people congregating in parks.

We have seen a significant increase in call volume since the nice weather, and Im sure this is only going to continue as the weather gets warmer and people seek to go outside more often, Police Capt. Robert Kalamaras said.

Staff writer Josh LaBella contributed to this report
Bioethicists warn against potential COVID-19 vaccines using cells from aborted babies

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Christian bioethicists in the United Kingdom and the United States are warning against a potential coronavirus vaccine in which British scientists are using fetal cells from aborted babies.

According to CruxNow Tuesday, some ethicists are concerned the vaccine being developed at Oxford University is using cell lines that were obtained from an aborted child in the early 1970s.

Both the HEK 293 used at Oxford and the PER C6 cell line from the 1980s trace their origin from tissue from an aborted child, the outlet reported.

The push to develop a vaccine that will stem the deadly virus has intensified as infection rates and deaths have spread around the globe, particularly as some are warning of a second wave coming later this year. Given the attention, Catholic bioethics centers have recently published papers on the subject.

Simply as a matter of fact, use of such cell-lines in COVID-19 vaccine production is likely to create problems of conscience for some of those to whom the vaccine is offered, and who become aware of its history  Conscientious objection on the part of potential vaccine recipients creates its own ethical demands for decision-makers, including those who do not themselves share the objection in question," the document from the Anscombe Bioethics Centre, which is based at Oxford, said.

"Such concerns should be viewed with particular sympathy in the area of abortion, bearing in mind that even those who do not object to all abortions may well object to the particular abortion from which a fetal cell line was derived."

In the United States, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra led a coalition of states in late March, urging President Trump to end his ban, which was enacted in June, on federally-funded research on fetal tissue that was procured from abortions in order to help scientists find a vaccine. Becerra argued that scientists at the National Institutes of Health had been hampered by the restriction and the attorneys general in his coalition said that fetal tissue research led to the development of vaccines for other diseases such as polio, rubella and measles.

Religious leaders and bioethicists in the U.S. are also denouncing the prospect of a COVID-19 vaccine developed with cell lines from aborted fetuses.

Citing Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI's words in a 1987 letter, Catholic Bishop Joseph E. Strickland wrote in an April 23 pastoral letter that what is technically possible is not for that very reason morally admissible.

"Just because the crime of abortion is considered legal in our nation does not mean it is morally permissible to use the dead bodies of these children to cure a global pandemic. Emphatically, this practice is evil," Strickland wrote, stressing that other ethical means are available and can prove to be just as effective in developing vaccines.

"Scientists Ive spoken with assure me that there is no medical necessity for using aborted children in order to develop the much-needed vaccine to protect us from this particular strain of coronavirus," he said.

Joseph Meaney, president of the Philadelphia-based National Catholic Bioethics Center, said in an interview with Crux that it should be insisted that ethical scientific research have no links to abortion or the destruction of embryos.

Using cell lines obtained from aborted babies for a coronavirus vaccine is a cause of serious theological scandal, the NCBC said in a paper of its own on the topic.

Appealing to good aims and an urgent need will foster the deeper penetration of unethical research and development into medicine, politics, law, and culture, the paper said.

According to a January 2017 article from the Bioethics Observatory Institute of Life Sciences at the Catholic University of Valencia, some vaccines "consist of dead or attenuated live viruses that are introduced into a patients body to activate the bodys defenses against that virus without becoming ill. Thus, if the patient subsequently enters into contact with the live virus, it will be unable infect him, since he has the necessary defenses to cope with it, i.e. he is immunized."

When preparing vaccines, the viruses have to be cultured in cells in the labs, the article explains.

"The ethical difficulty appears when these cells come from surgically-aborted human foetuse. Similarly, the viruses themselves can be obtained from aborted foetuses that have been infected with a particular virus.

"The most widely used foetal cells are WI-38 and MRC-5. The WI-38 cells were derived by Leonard Hayflick in 1962 from the lung of a 3-month female foetus [2].The initials WI refer to the Wistar Institute, a body of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and number 38 to the foetus from which the cells were obtained. The MRC-5 cells were obtained in 1966 from the lungs of a 14-week male foetus [3].The initials MRC indicate Medical Research Council, a body from London."
State authorities shall collect fares after distributing tickets among stranded migrants and students who are boarding special trains to return to their hometowns, and hand over the amount to the Indian Railways, the railways ministry said in fresh guidelines on Sunday.

After allowing the running of the Shramik Special trains on Friday, the railways said it will charge sleeper class fares and an additional 50 for one point-to-point journey, while it also added that states can coordinate and pay on passengers behalf.

The railways shall print train tickets to specified destinations on the basis of the number of passengers indicated by an originating state, and give the tickets to the local government authority. The local state government authority shall hand over the tickets to the passengers cleared by them and collect the ticket fare and hand over the total amount to the railways, the fresh guidelines said.

The railways also said these trains were being run only for those who have been identified and allowed to travel by the states sending and receiving them, and not for the general public. The railways reserves the right to discontinue the special train operations if safety protocols are flouted at any stage, the ministry said.

The originating state will inform the exact number of passengers travelling in a train, which should be 1200 (or at least 90%) considering the capacity, the guidelines said.

The move to charge fares for these trains ferrying migrants --- many of them have lost their jobs --- students and others stranded in different parts of the country due to the ongoing lockdown has met with opposition.

Rajasthan deputy chief minister and state Congress president Sachin Pilot said on Sunday the central government should bear the expenses. They have no earnings. In such a situation, they should not be charged fares, he said.

On Saturday, Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren said the government should roll back the fare for these special trains, adding that it was an injustice to our labourers who are returning home.

Shramik Special trains are bound for a single destination without any stoppages. Usually, they have 24 coaches with each carrying a little over 50 in place of the total capacity of 72. These trains will run for distances of over 500 km.

We have informed that trains will not be stopping at any station in the middle, and states must make it clear to the passengers as there have been incidents where they thought they could get off, an official said on the condition of anonymity.

The guidelines also said local authorities will give food packets and drinking water to passengers at the originating station. The railways will provide one meal on the train for a journey of over 12 hours.

The railways ministry also asked states to encourage passengers to download the Aarogya Setu app for checking the health status of passengers.

It will also be the responsibility of the governments sending people to bring such individuals to designated stations in sanitized buses, following social distancing norms. All passengers will have to mandatorily wear masks. Passengers will have to be screened by the sending states and only those found without symptoms of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) will be allowed to travel.

States are also scrambling to arrange payments for the railways in order to ensure the running of these trains to bring their residents back home. Jharkhand is one of the few that has made an advance payment to the railways for deploying 31 special trains, according to officials aware of the developments.

Five Shramik Special trains were run on Friday and 10 on Saturday. According to officials, railways is unlikely to run trains originating from red zones such as Delhi, Mumbai and Ahmedabad, at least for now.

There are no trains planned for now, but we are running (trains) in nearby placeslike in Maharashtra trains, are being run at Bhiwandi and VasaiTrains will only run to these places (red zones) when the demand from the state government comes, said the official quoted above
WARNING  GRAPHIC CONTENT: A woman who has been described as a loving mother has been found naked in a street allegedly with her daughters severed head in a plastic bag.

Tatiana Pyanova, a 38-year-old cleaner, would move a mountain for her only child, 13-year-old Kristina, a close friend said.

There were also unconfirmed claims the woman acted secretly as a psychic or medium.

Police in Ukraine are now seeking to understand the circumstances surrounding the incident that happened earlier last week.

Pyanova was detained in Kharkiv city allegedly with a knife in one hand and a plastic bag containing the severed head of her teenage daughter in the other.

The severed head of 13-year-old Kristina (left) was allegedly found in a bag being carried by her mother (right). Source: East2West News/Australscope

The mother allegedly threatened police with a knife and the body of her daughter had 20 stab wounds in the macabre killing during the coronavirus lockdown, reports say.

A video shows Pyanova naked on a city road as police officials and patrol cars surrounded her.

Another shows her in court when she was remanded in custody.

Appearing confused and denying her identity, she told journalists: I do not want to communicate, leave me alone.

Her 40-year-old brother, Anton, had called police to report he had found the beheaded body of his niece in a house they shared.

The uncle, from Podvirki village, said Pyanova had a job as a cleaner and while the family was poor, the girl was not socially deprived.

Neighbours in shock over brutal killing

The family seemed "happy" and she was a "loving mother", locals said.

There were no strange noises on the night when Kristina is believed to have been killed, they said.

The woman was detained by police and a court later remanded her in custody pending a murder investigation.

I don't believe that Tatiana could do that, I don't believe it, an unnamed woman described as the dead girls adoptive grandmother said.

She is a great mother, she would move a mountain for her daughter.

Something must have happened in the house.

They must have drugged her or something, she couldn't do that.

Story continues

Her body was reportedly found with 20 stab wounds. Source: East2West News/Australscope

A neighbour said the mother was normal, adding: She was not drug addict or alcoholic.

She drank a bit on public holidays, but we all do.

The girl was cheerful, good, went to school.

What can I say?

A law enforcement statement said when [officers] arrived at the scene, police found a citizen in an inadequate condition.

In one hand she held a knife, in the other a package containing a severed female head, it said.

The woman refused to explain anything to police officers.

A neighbour said the mum worked as a cleaner.

Sometimes people came to their house both from the village and from Kharkiv, the neighbour said.

I know that Tatiana seemed to be either engaged in magic, or was a psychic.

Other neighbours say that she sometimes performed some rituals. But all this is only rumoured.

 Australscope

Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@yahoonews.com.

You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and download the Yahoo News app from the App Store or Google Play.
While Ballard hasnt had to layoff any employees, hes had to shut in about a dozen wells. That hasn't happened since the company started in 1992.

No one saw plummeting oil prices coming, Ballard said.

I didnt think there was anything like that possible in the markets  that youd ever have to pay people to take your oil away, Ballard said. That was new for a lot of us.

Most oil operations involve some sort of bank debt, Ballard said. Its an expensive business to start operating in, and when oil prices fall, banks are less likely to lend money to an operating company.

Depending on the type of well, completing a well and purchasing a pump can cost $5 to $9 million.

A change in cash flow and what banks will lend affects future plans.

When both of those variables change  the amount of cash flow you have and the amount the banks will lend you  it puts a pinch in the go-forward plan for these companies, Ballard said. Virtually all of these companies are working through those conversations with their bankers and working out a plan to be able to get six or 12 months down the road.
As Governor Greg Abbott begins to relax stay at home orders and opens the state to business, testing for the coronavirus has just ramped up in Liberty County.

County officials expect numbers to increase even though cases in the county may have plateaued, County Judge Jay Knight said. The county is hosting a mobile test collection site today in Liberty. The results from the collections could help determine if the area will have a longer plateau, or even a shorter one, he said.

Knight said there is also a long delay in receiving some of the results.

The time thats spent in interviewing the person who has just been diagnosed with the virus could be days before they release the information, he said.

Once the tests have been taken, depending on where the test is taken, it could go to the Texas Department of State Health Services lab in Houston or as far as a lab in California.

It took 13 days for one of the tests taken by a lady in Dayton and during that time it was suspenseful as we waited the results, the judge said.

With the release comes either a trickle of new cases identified, or a flood.

Three times over the last two weeks, the count has reached five reported cases making April 6 - April 22 the worst two weeks of the virus thus far in Liberty County. During that period alone, at least 32 cases were reported.

We had a bump there one day and then two days with no reports, but I still think were at the plateau, he said.

The procedure

For a resident who feels like they might be showing the signs of the Covid-19 virus, the judge said those patients should call their primary care doctor first before they do anything.

He will ask you a series of questions to determine whether you should come in or not and if you are told to come to the doctors office, they will test you there, he said.

The test will be sent from that doctors office to get verified.

For residents who may not have a primary care physician, they can call 2-1-1 and select option No. 6, which is DSHS.

The phone rings directly to them and they too will ask a series of questions. They may decide that youre a person of interest, or a (person under investigation), and they will give you a number and send you to a testing site, he said.

Once at the site, they will ask for the number and give the PUI a test.

One of the problems originally found was tests results were attributed to the county where the testing took place.

Now it goes to the county of origin so were getting better numbers, quicker and more accurate, the judge said.

This thing came on quickly so DSHS was scrambling to get direction from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and we were scrambling to get accurate numbers. It took time to get everything set up, he said.

Knight says they still see some mistakes with double reporting for some reason.

DSHS in Austin and Houston had to hire additional personnel, train them, and put them to work immediately helping with the crisis.

For the Liberty County area, which is Region 6/Region 5 South, they are guided by Carlos Plasencia, MD, MSPH as Regional Medical Director.

Hes a very nice man. He will call and tell me we have maybe four new cases. Then he gives me the age range, their location, and whether theyre male or female, he said. I then call (Emergency Management Coordinator) Crista (Beasley) and report the information to her, Knight said. Beasley then disseminates the information to the media and posts on the Office of Emergency Management Facebook for the public.

The what if factor

With a fragile healthcare system in the county, the concern for hospital beds became a focus. Currently, the county only has less than 100 hospital beds with the combined hospitals. If conditions worsened, the county could be in trouble trying to find hospital space to take on more patients.

Knight said early on when the number of virus cases began to increase in Harris County, he and former Harris County Judge Ed Emmett had talked about possibilities.

What if we had an onslaught of cases? We talked about securing hotels and putting patients in there, he said. One of the benefits is that each room is on their on HVAC system and that would help prevent any spread, the judge said. Before making that kind of move, the judge said they would have to go to the state to ensure they would pay for the expense.

There are alternate buildings in the county that could be converted, but there also negatives to that plan. The hope continues that the general public will remain vigilant and flatten the curve early, he said.

The new orders

Following the executive orders issued by the governor, Knight issued a new order that reflected the same and cleared up some minor language in the previous order to reflect the changes in the closing of schools (buildings). The new order can be found on the countys website at https://www.co.liberty.tx.us/.

Folks really need to go to the site to read it because it answers a good number of questions, Knight said.

While the governor is reopening restaurants and retail businesses to a 25% capacity, the judge is more guarded.

I would like to say yes, but Im still going to be guarded. The governor could come behind us and redo it all and open everything, he said.

Originally, the governors office allowed county judges across the state to make their own decisions and write their own executive orders, but that changed. Now everything comes out of Austin. County judges are still allowed to be more stringent with their orders, but they must follow the letter of the law with the governors edict.

Going forward

It might seem that Liberty County has been spared the massive spread of the virus thanks in part for being a rural county and citizens who are actively participating in the social distancing. But, according to medical experts, the number of undiagnosed is usually significantly higher.

Should the county reach 600 cases, that would change the dynamic with 60,000 possible cases and kick in what is known as herd immunity.

Herd immunity is a natural phenomenon when enough of a given number of a population has had the disease and has immunity, then it limits the transmission of the disease, said County Attorney Matthew Poston.

Judge Knight emphatically said that there absolutely would not be a requirement for citizens to wear masks, but they were a good idea when out and about.

dtaylor@hcnonline.com
Laws rushed through by the Andrews government to protect renters have blocked tenants from moving out before their lease ends, unless they hand over their bond or go to the state planning tribunal to prove they are in financial hardship.

Previously, renters could simply give their landlord 28 days notice before leaving a property.

The changes were made under a raft of laws pushed through by the government in April to deal with the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.

The government has conceded the error, and a spokeswoman said new regulations would be passed to provide clarity to the laws. She said those laws were intended to increase options for tenants who wanted to end a lease early during the coronavirus pandemic.

Natalie Smith wants to move out of her four-bedroom rental in Mernda. Credit:Eddie Jim

Natalie Smith has been trying to get maintenance done at her Mernda rental property since she moved in with her husband and two young children nine months ago.

With no resolution, the youth worker last week asked to mutually agree to end the lease but was told that wouldn't be possible.

"I think it's a basic right that we should be able to choose where we live, and that we don't have a choice in that is particularly stressful," Ms Smith said.

Read the full story.
One piece of information I didnt see in your article about dental offices (Apprehension, excitement greet Oregons reopening of dental, medical and even Botox clinics, April 28) is the position of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about COVID-19 in the dental setting. The CDC recommends treatment to be limited to emergencies only and for elective care to be postponed, (details at bit.ly/2zAnwz0).

It appears the governors decision to allow dentist offices to reopen to elective care is not following the CDCs recommendation. Further, while testing is available for hospitals to offer/require of their patients before treatment, COVID-19 testing is unavailable for dental offices. How will dental providers screen patients effectively with the absence of testing in dental offices? Are N95 masks available for dental offices from the state PPE coordinator?

Dental providers and the public have been given the impression its safe to go back to business as usual for elective procedures without access to adequate PPE for aerosol-generating procedures or pretreatment testing. Of course its a tremendous hardship to close for so long. If youre going to ask us to open, give access to the tools needed to do the job safely: testing and PPE.

Jonathan Smart, D.M.D., Corvallis
As the bailout-seeking billionaire Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker resists lawsuits saying his lockdown order extension exceeds his authority and is unconstitutional, his wife jets to their estate in opened-up Florida to enjoy life without being arrested for leaving the house. Meanwhile Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot keeps barbershops and hair salons closed under penalty of imprisonment as she visits her own hair stylist on the grounds she is the public face of Illinois and must look her best. Both deem themselves more important than the people they represent. Laws are for the little people. Its good to be king and queen

Despite his slogan All In which he preaches to Illinois residents under virtual house arrest, Pritzkers wife isnt content to hunker down with the peasantry and watch Netflix:

M.K. Pritzker, the billionaire wife of Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D), is reportedly skipping out on her husbands stringent lockdown orders, jetting off to their $12.1 million equestrian estate in South Florida -- a state that has refused to implement what Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) described as draconian measures as a response to the coronavirus pandemic. While Pritzker finds himself in the middle of a legal battle over his extension of his lockdown order, extending it until May 30 and promoting his All-in Illinois initiative, his wife is nowhere to be seen, at least in the Prairie State.

No draconian existence for this royal couple. Like our absentee House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, Mrs. Pritzer probably is enjoying $13-a-pint gourmet ice cream as we speak. As Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting and Emmy-nominated producer, reports on local news outlet Patch:

In Crain's Chicago Business columnist Greg Hinz's day-in-the life tale of Illinois' rookie governor amid the pandemic, we learned Pritzker watched "Tiger King" on Netflix, and how he usually ends his day -- "a little dinner, then he chats with his son and makes more calls" -- but nothing of the first lady or his daughter As things turn out, as the governor makes regular public pleas for Illinoisans to be "All In" during the extended stay-at-home fight to slow the spread of COVID-19, Mrs. Pritzker has been out of state, sources told Patch. Specifically, the first lady has been spending time at their $12-million equestrian estate in Wellington, just down the horse trail from Bruce Springsteen, Bill Gates and Billy Joel, the family purchased shortly after J.B. was elected governor last year She has no obligation to sequester herself in their Astor Street mansion in the Gold Coast when her family can hop on a private plane to stay-at-home in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, the family estate in the Bahamas (close to the governor's off-shore bank accounts) and, of course, their place in the "winter equestrian capital of the world" in Florida.

Lawsuits have been filed claiming Pritzers lockdown does what protestors all over the country have claimed -- unconstitutionally infringe on our basic constitutional rights such as freedom of assembly, the right to petition for redress of grievances, freedom of religion, the right to keep and bear arms, and even freedom of speech. Pritzker claims he is just violating our rights for our own good:

Pritzker finds himself in the middle of a legal battle over his extension of the lockdown order. Clay County Circuit Court Judge Michael McHaney sided with State Rep. Darren Bailey (R), who filed a lawsuit alleging that Pritzker exceeded his authority. While McHaney issued a temporary restraining order pausing the extended lockdown orders, it only exempts Bailey, leading to action from State Rep. John Cabello (R). He plans to issue a similar lawsuit, but in a way that will apply to everyone in Illinois.

Illinois, like New York, California and other blue states, were hemorrhaging population and jobs and wringing up huge debt long before the Wuhan virus escaped from a Chinese lab. Yet, believing firmly in the admonition by former Chicago Mayor and Obama White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, Pritzer, like other blue state governors, seeks a federal bailout of the states debt which would include a huge pension bailout:

Illinois Democrats are demanding $41 billion from the federal government for coronavirus relief, including $10 billion for Illinoiss cash-strapped and underfunded public pension plan. The most fiscally mismanaged state in the union, which has criminally neglected funding its public pension fund for two decades, wants Washington to pull its chestnuts out of the fire?... There should be no bailout of the public pension fund in Illinois. For two decades, which have seen Democrats largely in control, the state refused to fully fund its pension system. Now, with the stock market in the toilet and the shortfall becoming critical, the bill for Illinois politicians criminal negligence and shady dealings is coming due.

As toilet paper becomes a crypto-currency all its own, dubbed butt-coin by some, it is worth remembering how Pritzker once pulled all the toilets out of a mansion he owned so he could get a huge property tax break on the grounds his mansion was uninhabitable The Chicago Sun-Times called it Pritzkers Game of Thrones:

Cook Countys chief watchdog has concluded that more than $330,000 in property tax breaks and refunds that Democratic gubernatorial candidate J.B. Pritzker received on one of his Gold Coast mansions -- in part by removing toilets -- constituted a scheme to defraud. Cook County Inspector General Patrick Blanchard also recommends in the confidential report that Cook County should try to recover the money from the billionaire.

Making the taxpayers pay for his mistakes is a habit for Pritzker, and this was a cheapskate move by a guy flush with cash:

In 2007, Pritzker and his wife bought a second mansion next to the one they live in on Chicago's Astor Street, for $3.7 million. As The Chicago Sun-Times reported, that mansion remained vacant and was allowed to fall into disrepair. And then in October 2015, according to a report by Cook County Inspector General Patrick Blanchard, the Pritzkers had five toilets removed from the second house so that it would be classified as "uninhabitable" in a property tax appeal filed by the Pritzkers. Cook County assesses vacant properties at 10 percent of the market value. The toilets were removed shortly before the affidavits in the property tax appeal were submitted. The county assessor's office "lowered the 6,378-square-foot mansion's assessed value from $6.3 million to about $1.1 million," The Chicago Tribune reports.

This sense of above-the-law entitlement is shared by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the current caretaker of the third-world city Chicago is rapidly becoming. Lightfoot decided a pandemic was a perfect time to get a trim and style her hair -- all those press conferences under the hot lights, you know. She, like New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, is important and we are not, she tells us by her words and actions:

Democrats are hypocrites, especially when it comes to "rules for thee but not for me." New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio decided to use a public gym minutes before public facilities were ordered to close to prevent the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus. Apparently the order was important enough for every other New Yorker to follow but not for him. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot decided to follow in de Blasio's footsteps and put herself above Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker's stay-at-home order. Even though salons and barbershops across the state are currently closed, Lightfoot decided to get a haircut, the Chicago Tribune reported.  Im a person who, I take my personal hygiene very seriously. As I said, I felt like I needed to have a haircut, Lightfoot said. Im not able to do that myself, so I got a haircut. You want to talk more about that?

I want a haircut too, as do many of my brethren in the Peoples Republic of Chicago. There are many barbers and hair stylists who would gladly take our money in order to do silly things like keep their businesses open, pay their rent, pay their mortgage, and put food on the family table. But they dare not under penalty of Pritzkers and Lightfoots shut-up-and-stay-at home orders:

After a judge in Southern Illinois ruled that a state representative was exempt from Governor J.B. Pritzkers extended stay-at-home order, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot says the city intends to continue enforcing the restrictions. Continued compliance will be needed to keep flattening the curve and ultimately lead to a decrease in cases, she said. Contrary to what this ruling suggests, we must all be in this together, and only through cooperation and collaboration can we contain and limit the effects of the virus.

Except that we are not all in this together. Lockdowns are for the little people. Pritzker is not. Lightfoot is not. De Blasio is not. They do what they want when they want and to whomever they want. Maybe when this is over, if they let it be over, they can all meet for drinks and giggles and $13-a-pint ice cream at Mrs. Pritzkers equestrian estate in Florida. Oh wait: They can do that now.

Daniel John Sobieski is a former editorial writer for Investors Business Daily and free lance writer whose pieces have appeared in Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.
Dhaka: Dozens of Rohingya believed to be from one of several boats stuck at sea landed on the coast of southern Bangladesh on Saturday, an official said, as concerns grew over hundreds stranded for weeks on trawlers because of coronavirus restrictions.

A small boat carrying 43 people came to shore today, the government official said, declining to be named because they were not authorised to speak to media.

Some of the arrivals were sent to Bhasan Char, a remote island off the coast where authorities previously planned to house Rohingya, the official said.

Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project monitoring group, said the group that landed on Saturday had likely come on a small boat from one the larger vessels still at sea, believed to be carrying hundreds of people.

Hundreds of Rohingya, members of a Muslim minority from Myanmar, are stranded on at least two trawlers between Bangladesh and Malaysia, rights groups say, as Southeast Asian governments tighten borders to keep out the new coronavirus.

Another boat, carrying hundreds of Rohingya who were starving and emaciated after weeks at sea, landed in Bangladesh in mid-April. Survivors said several dozen died on board.

The United Nations has urged authorities to let the boats land, but anti-refugee sentiment is surging in Malaysia and governments say borders are sealed to keep out the coronavirus.

For years, Rohingya from Myanmar and Bangladesh have fled by boat for Thailand and Malaysia when the seas are calm between October and April. Hundreds died in 2015 after a crackdown in Thailand led smugglers to abandon their human cargo at sea.
New Delhi: Rishi Kapoors wife Neetu Kapoor and son Ranbir Kapoor paid their tributes to the late actor at a prayer meeting organised at his Mumbai residence on Sunday. A picture of Neetu and Ranbir sitting next to a framed photo of Rishi Kapoor with garlands on it has circulated on social media widely and shared by fan clubs. It will surely make you teary-eyed. Ranbir can be seen wearing a saffron turban in the picture.

Rishi Kapoor died on April 30 after a two-year-long battle with leukemia. His last rites were held on the same day in the presence of family and close friends. However, his daughter Riddhima couldnt pay her tribute to her father as she was in Delhi and couldn't get permission to fly to Mumbai due to lockdown restrictions. She was, however, given a pass to travel to Mumbai via road. Riddhima reached her parents place on Saturday night along with her daughter Samara.

On Saturday, Neetu posted a heartwrenching tribute for her husband with an old picture of him smiling. She captioned the post as, End of our story, adding a heart emoticon.

Rishi and Neetu Kapoor were married for almost 40 years. They starred in several films together also. Riddhima and Ranbir are their two children.

Rishi Kapoor was last seen in the 2019 film The Body. A couple of months ago, he had signed up for the Hindi adaptation of Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway's The Intern with Deepika Padukone.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 13:24:45|Editor: huaxia

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WASHINGTON, May 2 (Xinhua) -- MLS team DC United is in talks with midfielder Paul Arriola regarding a contract extension, local media reported on Saturday.

The team is trying to sign a two-year extension contract with Arriola, who's current contract runs through 2021, local media said.

Arriola is currently rehabbing a torn ACL, which he suffered during a preseason match just before the start of the 2020 season.

The 25-year-old started his professional career in Liga MX with Tijuana before joining United in 2017, where he'd emerged as a productive attacker and a versatile piece capable of filling in at multiple roles. Overall, Arriola has 14 goals and 12 assists across 68 career MLS games.

He's also been a regular part of the US men's national team rotation since getting his first senior cap in 2016, scoring five goals in 33 appearances for the team.

An extension would lock up another piece of DC United's core, as the club has also agreed to long-term deals with Julian Gressel, Steven Birnbaum and Russell Canouse. Enditem
We chatted briefly with Southern Connecticut State University police Lt. Richard Anderson, who is one of the few employees left on the universitys New Haven campus. The university has been closed since March 10, but university police, facilities and mail service staffs are considered essential and are still reporting to work.

Q: What is the atmosphere on campus?

A: Its obviously very, very quiet, you know, with no students and no faculty. Were starting to get a little busier right now, with faculty coming back to get the stuff that they need for the summer sessions. I believe a lot of people didnt think it was going to go this long, so there are a lot of employees that need to come back to get materials they need.

Q: What is the mood in the police department?

A: As far as the police department, weve kind of changed our game plan. Obviously, our call line has gone way down. We have had a couple of people affected by COVID-19, so weve had to pick up shifts and step up a little bit.

Q: How has social distancing affected your daily routine?

A: We dont do briefings like we used to. Briefings consist of you come in, grab your gear and the sergeant will talk. We dont have actual briefings. We stand away from each other and talk about whats going on on campus.

Q: So, some police officers have had COVID-19?

A: Yes, and there have been family members affected also. Obviously, a lot of people are out of jobs and, you know, several officers here have wives or husbands who currently arent working because of it.

Q: What does an average day look like for you now since the pandemic?

A: Day shift is really just allowing people into buildings and making sure people arent coming on campus that arent supposed to. We have the hospital set up here across the street that the National Guard set up. There was a lot to do with that as far as getting them access to it.

Q: What has been the most challenging part of being an essential worker during this crisis?

A: Its not knowing how far this is going and where were gonna end up. I mean, you know, obviously theyve canceled all the summer sessions. But we want the students to come back. Its a different place to work right now. The challenge is getting through a non-normal day, and people are stressed. People are concerned about whats going to happen, and I think its fear of the unknown.

Q: Is it strange not seeing thousands of students and faculty on a daily basis?

A: Very strange. Working through the summers you say, Oh, gosh, the summers are really slow. This makes the summers look busy, honestly. For instance, now the midnight shifts are almost the same thing every night. Its really just securing buildings and checking buildings all night long because there really are no people on campus. Very little traffic driving around.

Q: What safety precautions are you following to ensure your own safety?

A: Any time we deal with the public, we wear masks. So we all have masks, were all issued gloves. We have covers for our boots. Weve been issued PPE suits just in case we have to get into the hospital across the way and if we need to deal with someone who has COVID-19. We try to avoid contact with any outsiders unless its absolutely necessary. We do all of our meetings by phone and Zoom, which has become really popular.

Q: Whats the protocol you follow if someone may have been exposed to COVID-19?

A: Theres a protocol New Haven has put together, where AMR will actually go and handle all the medicals. We dont actually go in unless they call us in or they need us for an emergency.

Q: Looking forward, what do you expect to happen during the summer and fall?

A: As far as what I think will happen, obviously the summer will stay like this until the governor makes a decision. Were going to treat it like were going to open in the fall, but that doesnt mean its going to happen. Its up in the air until the governor makes the decision as to when and how well open  if we open.

Q: Do you expect things will resemble normalcy as we progress toward the fall?

A: I think because the area were in has been hit so hard, the tri-state area, I think its going to be a very slow progression. I think thats the proper way to go right now.

Kaitlyn Regan is a student at Southern Connecticut State University.
Freeman received another pleasant surprise. The government came up with hundreds of billions of dollars for loans and aid, including tax breaks, to ease the financial pain to companies and workers. One program promised to reimburse employers for roughly 80 percent of monthly wages  or as much as about $3,100 per worker  for those they furloughed. Freeman submitted his request to cover the three furloughed employees, and on April 27, he saw roughly $9,000 in government funds had been transferred into Freestak's account. "I applied, but I never thought it would work out," Freeman said. "The money gives us a reason to keep fighting."
As if 2020 weren't terrifying enough, now we have to worry about "murder hornets."

The world's largest hornet - the size of a matchbox - is known for invading honeybee hives, decapitating all the bees in a matter of hours and carrying the mangled thoraxes back to feed their young.

And now they're in the United States.

The Washington State Department of Agriculture is trying to track down the fearsome insects, also nicknamed "yak-killer hornets" or "giant sparrow bees," after officials received and verified four reports of them in December in the northwestern part of the state. They were also spotted in two sites in the Canadian province of British Columbia in the fall.

In a New York Times story that made the term "murder hornets" trend on Twitter on Saturday, Conrad Berube, a beekeeper and entomologist in Nanaimo, Canada, described being stung by an Asian giant hornet as "like having red-hot thumbtacks being driven into my flesh."

The hornets primarily attack insects but will direct their aggression toward people if they're threatened. Their quarter-inch stingers, which can penetrate beekeeping suits, deploy a venom potent enough to dissolve human flesh.

Absorbing multiple stings can be deadly. The nervous system can shut down, and an allergic reaction may occur and cause anaphylactic shock. The insects kill 30 to 40 people each year in Japan, where they're most common.

But the giant hornets are primarily a danger to bees. Scientists are now hunting for the insects, whose queens can grow to two inches long, in hopes of rounding them up before they become rooted in the United States and destroy bee populations that are crucial to crop pollination.

"This is our window to keep it from establishing," Chris Looney, an entomologist at the Washington State Department of Agriculture, told The Times. "If we can't do it in the next couple of years, it probably can't be done."

Some insects native to the northwestern United States have been confused for the invasive hornets, but real Asian giant hornets have distinctive qualities: large orange and yellow heads with teardrop eyes, black and yellow striped abdomens and papery wings that span up to three inches.

A colony of Asian giant hornets can kill nearly 30,000 bees in a few hours. The attack begins when a scout finds a new hive and marks it with a pheromone secreted from glands in its back legs, signaling to other hornets that they should gather.

As the bees try to defend their colonies, worker hornets use powerful mandibles - appendages near their mouths - to chop up the bees and chew them into gooey "meatballs" before carrying the protein-heavy remains back to their young.

Asian giant hornets mostly fly under the radar in the winter, when queen hornets hibernate in soil or other covered places. Mated queens emerge when the temperature warms between mid-March and May and eat sap for energy to start a new colony. The hornets launch most of their attacks on bees in the late summer and early fall.

Scientists don't know how Asian giant hornets found their way to the United States, but Looney said in a video presentation that they may have been hibernating in a ship's ballast or in a product that was transported from Asia to North America.

In a less likely scenario, Looney said, someone might have transported the hornets here to cultivate them as a food source. Some people in Asian countries eat the meaty hornets, and their juice is sometimes used as a performance-enhancing supplement.

Washington state employees plan to try to trap hornets and destroy their nests this spring and summer before the population gets out of hand.
Donald Trump pushed back on Sunday against recent reporting that intelligence officials were issuing classified reports to his administration as early as last November warning about the early outbreak of coronavirus in the Wuhan province of China.

The president also claimed the restrictions he placed on travel to the US from China in January have saved "tens of thousands" of American lives, which he has used as a data point to defend against criticism that he did not take the threat of the coronavirus seriously.

"Intelligence has just reported to me that I was correct, and that they did NOT bring up the CoronaVirus subject matter until late into January, just prior to my banning China from the U.S.," Mr Trump tweeted. "Also, they only spoke of the Virus in a very non-threatening, or matter of fact, manner," the president added.

Intelligence has just reported to me that I was correct, and that they did NOT bring up the CoronaVirus subject matter until late into January, just prior to my banning China from the U.S. Also, they only spoke of the Virus in a very non-threatening, or matter of fact, manner...  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2020

Mr Trump appeared to be responding to recent reporting by ABC News and other outlets that his administration had been warned for weeks and even months about the budding health crisis in China, even as White House officials and congressional Republicans downplayed the severity of the coronavirus through much of the first three months of 2020.

The US military's National Center for Medical Intelligence compiled a classified report on the spreading contagion in November 2019 through analysis of wire and computer intercepts in the Wuhan region, ABC News reported in April.

"Fake News got it wrong again, as always, and tens of thousands of lives were saved by my EARLY BAN of China into our Country. The people that were [sic] allowed were heavily scrutinized and tested U.S. citizens, and as such, I welcome them with open arms!" the president tweeted, without providing any evidence that ABC News or other outlets' reporting was erroneous.

Story continues

....Fake News got it wrong again, as always, and tens of thousands of lives were saved by my EARLY BAN of China into our Country. The people that were allowed were heavily scrutinized and tested U.S. citizens, and as such, I welcome them with open arms!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2020

ABC News' reporting also contradicts the president's tweet on Sunday that the early intelligence briefings he received about Covid-19 were "very non-threatening."

"Analysts concluded it could be a cataclysmic event," one of ABC News' sources told the outlet of the military intel report from November.

The Pentagon issued a statement at the time that said the intel report did not exist.

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Were in a public health and economic crisis. We all know the impacts of this crisis will be felt for years. While we are all busy protecting our families and communities from COVID-19, the Trump Administration is taking advantage of this time to push through its agenda of weakening environmental regulations critical to safeguarding our public health.

Once again, the Trump Administration isnt considering peoples health, just industry profits.

In the past three years, Trumps overhauled Environmental Protection Agency has been repealing industry requirements to reduce methane and air pollution from oil and gas wells. And now, the EPA  whose mission is to protect the American peoples access to clean air and water  announced it may not penalize industry for violations or require monitoring for the indefinite future, claiming the COVID-19 pandemic will prevent the industry from complying with environmental laws. These are the very laws that protect our public health.

When we are already showing such deficits in that regard, is now the time to loosen public health protections? The last thing our strapped medical institutions and personnel need is increased pollution directly impacting respiratory health, as oil and gas emissions do.

The oil and gas industry is the single largest source of methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas released along with harmful chemicals during oil and gas operations. More troubling, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration discovered methane has reached a new record high, with this year being the third-largest increase going back 20 years.

And just last week, the Environmental Defense Fund with its scientific partners released new data from the Permian Basin of West Texas and southeast New Mexico revealing methane emissions from the oil and gas industry in the basin are triple the national average reported by the EPA. These findings make the EPAs blanket refusal to enforce basic environmental laws aimed at reducing such emissions and pollution during this pandemic even more egregious. COVID-19 has highlighted an inextricable link: a healthy economy relies on a healthy population.

We at Climate Advocates Voces Unidas (CAVU) understand the oil and gas industry is vital to New Mexicos economy and that it too is suffering during this crisis.

However, this doesnt constitute a license to pollute.

In order for oil and gas companies to operate, they should abide by their responsibility to protect health, safety and the environment. By allowing the industry to pollute to compensate for their losses, they put everyone else at risk, including the industrys own long-term economic outlook. The current COVID-19 crisis underscores the critical need for the EPA to do its job, protecting the economy and public health by serving the people.

At CAVU, we have been working diligently for the past three years as part of a broad coalition of New Mexicans to put commonsense methane rules in place for the oil and gas industry. Gov. Lujan Grishams pledge to enact nationally leading methane rules in New Mexico shows her wisdom and leadership in the face of national rollbacks.

And we applaud New Mexico Environment Department Secretary James Kenney for taking a more strategic approach by evaluating companies requests to suspend monitoring or environmental reporting on a case-by-case basis. We encourage state regulators to make it clear that cutting corners on environmental safeguards will not be tolerated in New Mexico!

Visit our website, CAVU.org, and tell the EPA to support environmental protection as an essential service, and demand that the people who fulfill these vital roles be given the tools they need to work safely.

Jordan Smith is the executive director of Climate Advocates Voces Unidas, a nonprofit that uses visual storytelling and community engagement to support local solutions to the global climate problem.
General views of California Lockdown Protestors on May 01, 2020 in Los Angeles, California.

gotpap/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images

The California Highway Patrol arrested 32 people at the state Capitol Friday at a protest against the state's stay-at-home order, meant to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Around 1,000 people came out to protest California's stay-at-home order, even though such rallies are temporarily prohibited at the Capitol building.

On Friday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the state was "days" away from changes to his order that would allow more businesses to re-open.

There are at least 52,238 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 2,136 resulting deaths in the state.

Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Dozens of people in California who protested the state's stay-at-home order were arrested Friday at a demonstration outside the state Capitol in Sacramento.

California Highway Patrol said they arrested 32 people for disobeying a lawful order, demonstrating without a permit and resisting or delaying a police officer, according to KCRA.

Newsom said Wednesday he respected protestors' right to disagree with his stay-at-home order but said his decision to re-open shuttered businesses would be based on "data and health" and not pressure from demonstrators.

According to the report, police had established a barrier on the ground and began to push protestors away from the Capitol about three hours after the protest began. The protest lasted until about 4 p.m., KCRA reported. On April 22, police had banned rallies at the state Capitol and at other state facilities because the demonstrations violated Newsom's stay-at-home mandate. The Friday protest had not received a permit, police told KCRA.

Similar protests have occurred nationwide as residents demand their leaders relax the orders put in place to stop the spread of COVID-19, which has so far infected 1,107,815 people in the US and killed 65,244 others, according to data analyzed by Johns Hopkins University. There are at least 52,238 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 2,136 resulting deaths in California. Leaders in some states appear to be listening to protestors.

Story continues

"I have a concern with it (COVID-19). I don't want to push it off as if it's nothing," Lisa Michael, who traveled to the state capital form Fresno  about 170 miles south of the state's capital  told KCRA. "I think it's been overblown, according to the numbers and the data that I'm seeing coming out of Italy and out of America."

The protest occurred during Newsom's daily new conference about the state's response to the ongoing pandemic.

"All I ask for is this  and this is take care of yourself. Wear a face covering, do justice to physical distancing. You don't want to contract this disease," Newsom said to protestors during his Friday briefing. "This disease doesn't know if you're a protester, Democrat, Republican, support the election of one candidate or the ouster of another. It just knows one thing  and that is its host. And it has a remarkable ability: people with asymptomatic conditions to transfer to someone else."

Newsom also said Friday he expected it would be days  not weeks  before he announced changes to the state's social distancing order to allow some closed sectors of the state economy to re-open, according to CNBC.

"If we can hold the line and continue to do good work and just avoid the temptation to get back and congregate with people in ways where we can see an increase in the spread, we'll get there much sooner than many people perhaps think," he said.

Read the original article on Insider
The South Korean military has said that North and South troops exchanged fire on May 3 along the tense land border. According to reports, this was the first such incident between troops from both sides since they took unforeseen steps in late 2018 and lowered the friction on the front-line. According to reports, the worlds most heavily armed border, several violent confrontations have taken place occasionally but the recent exchange of artilleries implies that the tensions between both, North and South Korea are persistent. However, the incident did not result in any deaths in South Korea and reportedly observers have said the situation will not escalate further.

According to the international news agency, the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Seoul has said that it was North Korean troops that fired multiple bullets at the guard post of its rival in South that lies inside the border. In retaliation, South Korea fired two bullets towards North only after warning a broadcast. While there were no casualties in the South, it remains unknown if there were any in North. North Korean agencies have not yet reported the incident. Moreover, South Korea even said that it was trying to reach out to North Korea through military landline in a bid to avoid any escalation.

Read - WATCH: Kim Jong-Un Attending Fertilizer Factory Opening Event In North Korea's Pyongyang

Read - US: Trump Won't Discuss Reappearance Of North Korean Leader

A day after Kim appeared in public

The exchange of fires between both sides came just a day after North Korean leader Kim Jong Uns public appearance was broadcasted by media after nearly being absent for 20 days leading to intense speculation about his health. On May 1, Kim was spotted smiling and walking around the factory facilities at a ceremony marking the completion of a fertilizer factory near Pyongyang.

Speculations over the condition Kims health and his sudden lack of public appearances grew intense when an American media cited US intelligence monitoring North Korea to claim that Kim was in grave danger after cardiovascular surgery. However, hours after that report sent shock waves, two government sources of international media outlet from South Korea said on April 21 that he was "not gravely ill".

Read - North Korea's Kim Jong-un Makes First Public Appearance Since 'surgery', SEE PICTURES Here

Read - 3 Held For Illegally Using Car With S.Korean Consulate Number Plate

(With AP inputs)

(Image Source: AP)
Copyright  2020 Albuquerque Journal

Fourteen years ago this month, during the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Indianapolis, Laura Glass, a 15-year-old Albuquerque High sophomore, laid out her plan for slowing the spread of pandemics.

It was very much to the point. Close the schools and keep the kids at home.

It spreads like crazy once it gets in the teens in the schools, Glass told Albuquerque Journal science reporter John Fleck, who was covering the event.

Glass was one of 1,500 students, 24 of them from New Mexico, attending the science and engineering fair in May 2006.

Her project, based on computer simulations of human interaction, impressed the judges enough to win her third place in the medicine and health category at the Intel fair that year.

But amazingly, and much more significantly, her work motivated research that resulted in the social distancing and self-isolation policies now being used to curtail the spread of COVID-19.

The inspiration, the sparks came from my daughter, said Robert J. Glass, a retired Sandia National Laboratories senior scientist. Glass was among those who built on Laura Glasss project to develop the vital strategies that are employed today.

What about diseases?

In an exchange of emails with the Journal, Laura Glass, now 29, declined to be interviewed for this article.

Her father, however, spoke to the Journal by phone from northern Idaho, about 30 miles from the Canadian border, where he now spends part of each year.

Robert Glass, 63, retired from Sandia in 2013. But 15 years ago, he was working with the National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC) at Sandia.

He said he often worked from home, and Laura would be looking over his shoulder while he was at his computer.

Her project was a multiyear kind of effort, and it dovetailed with work I was doing  complex systems modeling. You could define a person and put them in a grid, move them around and find who they would come into contact with.

She said, What about diseases? 

Washington calling

Person-to-person contact is the most common way infectious diseases are spread. Laura, with some guidance from her dad, devised a computer simulation that showed how people  family members, co-workers, students in schools, people in social situations  interact.

What she discovered was that school kids come in contact with about 140 people a day, more than any other group.

Based on that finding, her program showed that in a hypothetical town of 10,000 people, 5,000 would be infected during a pandemic if no measures were taken, but only 500 would be infected if the schools were closed.

Even before that staggering revelation earned Laura Glass third place at the 2006 Intel fair in Indianapolis, it was creating a stir on a much bigger stage.

On Halloween 2005, NISAC received a call, Robert Glass said. Could we prepare a brief for Secretary (Michael) Chertoff of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security?

Something important

The George W. Bush administration, concerned about bioterrorism in the wake of 9/11 and also worried about the next contagious disease outbreak, was looking for a plan to respond to pandemics. The NISAC brief was needed for a Cabinet-level tabletop exercise at the White House.

The question posed, Robert Glass said, was what could be done to avoid disaster if there was no vaccine and limited antiviral supplies.

I thought, Thats exactly what Laura is working on,  he said. Her model was right there on the computer. I realized that was something important. I discussed it with her. She said, Why dont you close the schools? I was taking advice from my (high school) daughter.

Glass ran Lauras study through Sandias computers and worked the results into reports he sent to Washington.

It looked like a solution if we could get people to prepare for it, he said.

Logic and science

The refined research suggested that in the case of more intense infections, closures might have to extend beyond schools to workplaces and social situations.

Concerns about the economic and social upheavals caused by insisting people stay at home led to tough opposition.

But after rigorous review and development by more than one agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made social distancing  called Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions, or NPIs  official U.S. policy in February 2007.

I was so happy, Glass said. I thought we had done an incredible job. We were trying to avoid policy that was based on who you knew. We wanted a policy that was based on logic and science.

Now, implemented extensively for the first time, that policy is this countrys main weapon in the battle against the coronavirus scourge.

Very effective

Glass remembers that when discussing science projects with his daughter, he always treated her as if she were a graduate student  even when she was in eighth grade.

I would ask her questions about data, what you could draw data from, what she would do differently the next time, he said.

And he recalls that sometimes she was already a step ahead, planning the next stage of her project as soon as she had completed the last, one idea spreading to the next like an epidemic.

Laura did not, however, pursue a career in science after high school. She earned an undergraduate degree in religious studies from a college in the Midwest and a masters in divinity from a large eastern university.

She is on the staff of an interdenominational Protestant church at a prestigious American university.

But her science studies in high school are paying off now.

It has been very effective, Glass said of the approaches inspired by his daughters high school science projects. We would have been in a terrible state if we had not implemented these policies. The death tolls would have been so high. If we had done it sooner, we would have saved more lives.

A tough road

Glass is well aware that social distancing and self-isolation is tough on people, that it is grinding down peoples spirits as it continues.

Anything new is difficult, he said. You have to train people to do this well, without freaking out and calling each other names. But (coronavirus) is preparing us to deal more effectively with future pandemics.

And there will be more.
Margaret Pfander used to make a trip to her sons house for dinner nearly every Sunday.

She hasnt done that in a while.

The 91-year-old lives at Villa Hermosa, a retirement community on Tucsons east side. Pfander lives independently and has her own car, but shes staying put for now  with the exception of doctors appointments and getting some fresh air to peek at wildflowers.

In response to the coronavirus pandemic, Villa Hermosa has tightened its visitor policy to medical and hospice care providers only, in addition to adult visitors of residents who are nearing the end of life. Many other retirement communities and assisted living homes have implemented similar policies.

Nonetheless, residents of senior living communities around Tucson have found ways to stay connected to loved ones and engaged in daily life.

Pfander lives on the first floor at Villa Hermosa and has a patio, which means her son, Mike Pfander, is still able to communicate with her face-to-face from a distance  even though he can no longer go inside her apartment.

For the last several weeks, he and his wife Jeanne Pfander have pulled up folding chairs in a driveway, distancing themselves far enough away from Margaret Pfander as she sits on the patio, obeying CDC guidelines, but close enough to talk without screaming. He and his wife visit a few times a week.

It just maintains your connection and your feeling of family and love and commitment and all the things that go with having a longstanding, healthy relationship, Mike Pfander says.
The raid came days after the Egyptian armed forces said Thursday that 10 military personnel were killed or wounded in an IED attack

Egypts police killed 18 terrorists" in a shootout in North Sinais Bir El-Abd city, the interior ministry announced Sunday morning, days after an Islamic State group claimed a terrorist attack in which 10 Egyptian military personnel were killed or wounded in the same area.

According to the interior ministry statement, the terrorists" were killed after raid on a hideout in the southern city of the North Sinai governorate.

The "terrorist elements" used the house as a staging point from which to launch hostile operations, the statement added.

The ministry said it seized 13 automatic weapons, three explosive devices and two suicide belts.

The Egyptian Armed Forces said Thursday that 10 of its military personnel were killed or wounded when an improvised explosive device (IED) was detonated in North Sinai.

An officer, a non-commissioned officer, and eight soldiers were killed or injured when their armoured vehicle was blown up in Bir El-Abd city.

This was the first such attack since February when the armed forces thwarted a terrorist attack on a security checkpoint in North Sinai, killing 10 terrorists participating in the attack.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the North Sinai attack Friday, the groups Amaq news agency said without providing evidence.

Fridays claim of responsibility came hours after the Egyptian armed forces said it had killed two dangerous takfiri elements during a raid.

The military has been carrying out Operation Sinai, a counter-terrorism campaign, since February 2018. The campaign involves land, naval and air forces, as well as police and border guards.

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OUT OF TOUCH by Haleh Agar (W&N 14.99, 320 pp)

OUT OF TOUCH

by Haleh Agar (W&N 14.99, 320 pp)

Five months after the death of her alcoholic mother, sales assistant Ava is hit by a car. The driver, Sam, is soon bringing her flowers in hospital, but romance isnt at the forefront of Avas mind.

After an estrangement of 20 years, her philandering father has contacted her with a bombshell: hes dying and wants to meet. Across the pond in Manhattan, Avas academic brother, Michael, has received the same request.

But he, too, has other concerns: his Lebanese wife, who is struggling with anxiety after their sons serious illness, and the attractive artist neighbour on whom he cant help spying.

Spanning a year, this thoughtful debut tackles both emotional and physical vulnerability while bravely challenging the orthodoxy that we can overcome anything if we only set our minds to it.

Its a sensitive portrait of the prickly awkwardness of relations in a fractured family that finds a way of combining down-to-earth realism with compassion and hope.

EXCITING TIMES by Naoise Dolan (W&N 14.99, 288 pp)

EXCITING TIMES

by Naoise Dolan (W&N 14.99, 288 pp)

After leaving Dublin for an English teaching post in Hong Kong, whip-smart but broke twenty-something Ava finds herself in a complicated relationship with a posh young banker called Julian.

They live together and sleep together but are far too ironic to be a couple, even though Ava gets on rather well with Julians dad. But when Julian leaves Hong Kong on business, Ava finds herself drawn towards Edith, a glossy, Instagram-addicted lawyer.

Sally Rooney is a fan of this diverting Irish debut and there are obvious points of comparison, as the drifting Ava agonises over unsent texts and how to square what becomes a love triangle.

While this lacks Rooneys emotional depth and range, it in fairness reaches after neither. Dolan instead provides an effervescent snapshot of millennial, attachment-avoidant dating while weaving in a succession of cracking one-liners and some sharp observations on class, national identity and the oddities of the English language.

LITTLE EYES by Samanta Schweblin (Oneworld 14.99, 256 pp)

LITTLE EYES

by Samanta Schweblin (Oneworld 14.99, 256 pp)

Two-time Man Booker International nominee Samanta Schweblin has a considerable cult following, but fans may feel a little disappointed by this rather inconclusive tale.

The little eyes of the title are in fact cameras, embedded in a new breed of uncanny cuddly toys, kentukis.

For the kentukis operator, these eyes provide a window onto the world of its owner, who may be on the other side of the globe.

Accordingly, short sections leap frenetically around from Oaxaca to Zagreb and beyond, and while some characters recur, as kidnappings, blackmail plans and freedom bids take shape, there are also discrete vignettes: in one instance, a man in a hospital camp in Sierra Leone momentarily escapes to Hong Kong, where his kentuki is embraced by an ecstatic mosh pit.

This has a propulsive, Dave Eggers-ish readability, but its a shame that, for all her invention, Schweblin only ever gestures at larger questions of freedom, privacy and power.
The prisons department of Maharashtra has released more than 5,000 inmates from various prisons of the state till Saturday

Mumbai: The prisons department of Maharashtra has released more than 5,000 inmates from various prisons of the state till Saturday, an official said.

To prevent the spread of coronavirus infection in overcrowded jails, the prisons department is releasing those inmates who are serving sentences of less than seven years on bail, he said.

At least 11,000 prisoners were expected to be released to decongest prisons, and so far 5,105 have been released on bail, the official added.

582 prisoners have been released from Arthur Road prison in Mumbai, 443 from Thane Central Jail, 498 from Taloja Central Jail in Navi Mumbai, 388 from Yerawada prison in Pune, 214 from Amaravati prison, 216 from Nagpur prison, 187 from Solapur district prison, 177 from Aurangabad Central Prison and 134 from Nashik Central Prison, he said.
- The officers were ambushed by Rwandan rebel soldiers living in the DRC forest

- The 13 slain rangers were returning to the national park headquarters when attackers waylaid them

- One of four survivors remained in very critical condition even as doctors continued to monitor him at a local health facility

A group of 13 rangers based in Vuruga National Park under elite anti-poaching and combat trackers unit have been killed in the Democratic Democratic of Congo.

The officers aged between 23 and 40 years old, were ambushed by rebel soldiers on their way to the park headquarters whereupon they encountered a civilian vehicle that had been attacked.

READ ALSO: Coronavirus: 24 more people test positive raising tally to 435

Funeral service for the slain officers was conducted on April 27. The motive behind the military ambush remained unclear. Photo: The Elite AntiPoaching Units And Combat Trackers.

Source: Facebook

READ ALSO: DCI detectives gun down 2 robbery suspects, recover over KSh 350k in Mumias

According to the management, the attackers who were members of a group of armed Rwandan militants known as FDLR-FOCA, turned guns on the officers.

The militia men live in the Congo forest.

"Today, 12 brave rangers and a civilian driver were killed when their convoy was ambushed in Rumangabo at Virunga National Park, as we learned from multiple direct communications. The attackers belong to the FDLR, a group of armed Rwandan militants living in the area. Another vehicle missed the ambush by five minutes," the anti-poaching unit said.

READ ALSO: Rais wa Madagascar adai kupata dawa ya kuponya virusi vya corona

READ ALSO: 13kgs piece of moon that fell on earth up for sale at KSh 250M

During the military ambush, 13 died on the spot while four colleagues sustained injuries.

The authorities said one ranger remained in very critical condition even as doctors continued to monitor him at a local health facility.

The motive for the attack was not immediately established even though the forest is home to several militia groups making one of the most unstable countries.

Created in 1925, the magnificent eye-catching watershed, are the mountain gorillas which are listed as endangered. Photo: The Elite AntiPoaching Units And Combat Trackers.

Source: Facebook

The national park was created in 1925 and is among the first protected areas in Africa with over 600 rangers.

Inside this magnificent eye-catching watershed, are the mountain gorillas which are listed as endangered.

In 2019, two gorillas named Ndakasi and Ndeze struck an amazing woman-like pose with rangers capturing the incredible human side of the gigantic apes.

One stepped about a metre away from the ranger keen to pose for the camera while the other crouched right behind for a memorable selfie moment.

Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news.

Kenyans come through for elderly couple kicked out by landlady over rent arrears | Tuko TV.

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Linkedin Yuyun Wahyuningrum (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, May 4 2020

Every May 3, we are reminded of the importance of press freedom for the enjoyment of human rights. Press freedom constitutes one of the cornerstones of a democratic society as it can ensure the governments transparency and accountability.



World Press Freedom Day is also a reminder to governments around the world on the need to fulfill their commitment to the principles of press freedom. Unfortunately, the battle for press freedom is still the reality of our daily life in Southeast Asia.



In the past three years, the region showed an increasing number of journalists killed, attacks on the media and growing concerns over disinformation. As journalists work to uncover abuse of power, shed light on corruption and question opinions, they often face the specific risk of intimidation and violence.



As Indonesias representative to the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR), I have often received reports concerning the harassment and intimidation against journalists, efforts to criminalize them and labeling them as terrorists and enemy of the state, as well as the closure of independent media. Some countries in the region have also passed new laws to limit online speech and make it harder to report.



In the context of COVID-19, the state of press freedom is far from better. The AICHR Indonesias daily monitoring on human rights in ASEAN during the pandemic has showed that COVID-19 has been used as a pretext to censor the press and suppress opponents; websites and social media accounts have been blocked on the grounds of circulating fake news.



In the name of containing the pandemic, some countries have applied state emergency laws, including provisions that allow surveillance, media control and restrictions on freedom of assembly. Criminal defamation laws have also been used to crack down on criticism of the governments response on COVID-19. In some countries with a closed media environment and political systems, people have been left uncertain about the response and how to protect themselves from being infected.



This is a counterproductive approach and must be changed. In the time of crisis, we need press freedom, internet access and people participation more than before. Journalists and the media should be able to report on the pandemic, including coverage that is critical of government responses without censorship. Press freedom can help to save lives.



Besides COVID-19, press freedom has been challenged by a framework of disinformation and misinformation. The consequences of this information disorder are not only discrediting journalism but eventually would create political polarisation in society and reduce their ability to uphold values of humanity, pluralism, justice and equality.



Diverse, free and independent media are the key to realizing freedom of opinion and expression as protected by Article 23 of the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (AHRD). This right includes freedom to express and impart information in whatever form regardless of media.



Any restriction that prevents the flow of information offline or online must be in line with permissible limitations as set out in international human rights law: legality, legitimacy, necessity and proportionality.



In 2016 during the ASEAN Summit Conference in Kuala Lumpur, there was an idea to establish a regional media body which could play a central role as a clearinghouse for news reports generated by the agencies. One purpose was to help change narratives of Southeast Asia and making it more localized instead of relying on international media for stories.



Indonesian senior journalist Bambang Harymurti has said ASEAN needs a regional body that can act as a human rights institution with the power to protect press freedom, and among others, facilitate the establishment of media code of ethics and supervise its enforcement, monitor the media freedom dynamics and to recommend measures to improve it and assist efforts to increase media accountability and open journalism.



He proposed this idea in the regional dialogue on freedom of opinion and expression that was organized by AICHR in December 2019 in Bali.



I support Bambangs idea. Having a regional body for media is crucial to improve press freedom in ASEAN. We need to ensure an environment that journalists in the region can perform their work without fear and favor.



Participants in that regional dialogue also suggested AICHR establish a special rapporteur mechanism to monitor state compliance in respecting, protecting and fulfilling freedom of opinion and expression in the ASEAN region.



State efforts to protect journalists should integrate gender perspectives and include the support for citizen journalists, bloggers, social media activists, human rights defenders and those who use new media to reach a mass audience. It is also important to address impunity for crimes against journalists and other media.



Based on civil societys recommendation, AICHR is working on a common language for freedom of opinion and expression, as part of human rights cooperation in ASEAN and as intended by the AHRD.



The goals of building ASEAN community that is politically cohesive, economically integrated, socially responsible, as a rules-based and people-centered organization, will not be achieved without the guarantee of freedom of opinion and expression as well as the guarantee of press freedom.



The experiences of Indonesia in overcoming (and still fighting) momentous challenges in democracy and human rights for over twenty years reveal the fact that free, diverse and independent press and civic platforms are an essential component toward a just and open society.



Happy World Press Freedom Day!

______

Representative of Indonesia to the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights for 2019-2021

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Hollywood star Chris Hemsworth has thanked everyone for loving his digital movie Extraction, which is on its way to become Netflix's "biggest film of all time".

Hemsworth took to Instagram to post a video to express his gratitude about the response to the film.

"Hey, what's up guys, I hope you're doing well. I just want to say a massive thank you to everyone who checked out Extraction, you've made it the number one film on the planet right now," said the actor from his gym.

"And it looks like it's going to be Netflix's biggest feature film of all time, which is absolutely mind blowing" he added.

The Thor star went on to say: "We are blown away by the response and the support. On behalf of myself, the Russo Brothers, Netflix, our director Sam Hargrave, thank you so so much. We love you guys".

He also addressed the rumors of a sequel to "

Extraction.

"There's been a lot of talk and questions about sequels and prequels and all sorts of things, and all I can say is who knows," said the actor, adding: "But with this amount of support, it's something I will be pretty stoked to jump back into."

The action thriller released on Netflix on April 24, and attracted viewership from "an estimated 90 million households in the first four weeks" of its release, according to Hemsworth's previous Instagram post.

With Extraction, Hargrave graduated from being Chris Evans' stunt double in Captain America: The Winter Soldier for fight scenes and stunt coordinator in Captain America: Civil War to a feature director.

Hargrave was an additional second unit director in Avengers: Infinity War.

For his first film, Hargrave reunited with his Avengers family. He got Thor star Hemsworth to lead the film, screenplay of which is done by Joe Russo. The film is produced by Russo Brothers (Joe and Anthony Russo), Mike Larocca, Chris Hemsworth, Eric Gitter, and Peter Schwerin.

It revolves around Tyler Rake (essayed by Hemsworth), a fearless, black market mercenary, who embarks on the most deadly extraction of his career when he is enlisted to rescue the kidnapped son of an imprisoned international crime lord.

It has been shot extensively in India, along with other places around the world.

Originally titled Dhaka, the film also stars Indian actors Randeep Hooda, Pankaj Tripathi, Priyanshu Painyulli, and Rudraksh Jaiswal.

Follow @News18Movies for more
A female resident at a coronavirus-riddled nursing home has died in hospital, despite testing negative to the deadly disease twice.

Ann Fahey, 76, died surrounded by family in Nepean Hospital in Sydney's west on Saturday afternoon to take the nation's death toll to 94.

She was rushed to hospital on Thursday after a nurse found her collapsed on the floor of her room at the coronavirus-riddled Newmarch House in Sydney.

Despite previously returning two negative results for the deadly disease, Ms Fahey tested positive to coronavirus that afternoon as her condition deteriorated.

The number of cases linked to the aged care home has grown to 61 cases and 14 deaths within three weeks.

Ann Fahey, 76, (pictured) is the latest Newmarch House resident to die from coronavirus

Ms Fahey's son Mark recalled how he received a call from her early Thursday morning, saying she's felt felt tired and dizzy and had laid down on the floor.

'She had a 38.9 degree temperature so she was a bit off with the fairies, but all she kept saying was that she was tired. She just wanted to get off the phone and sleep,' Mr Fahey told The Guardian hours before her death.

Staff confirmed later that day his mother had contracted the virus, a month after the aged care facility had gone into lockdown due to strict federal government guidelines.

'I don't understand. She was a model patient, did everything right, she's shut herself in her room the entire time,' Mr Fahey said.

'There's s***loads going through my mind. Why is it still happening?  How can they still be getting new cases after this long. I mean it's not rocket science. It's coming in from the outside because she's been meticulous following all their guidelines.'

Anglicare Sydney says it's working with the NSW Public Health Unit to investigate to cause of the new cases at the coronavirus-riddled aged care home near Penrith

The Anglicare-run nursing home confirmed Ms Fahey's death on Sunday morning.

CORONAVIRUS CASES IN AUSTRALIA: 27,244 Victoria: 20,269 New South Wales: 4,273 Queensland: 1,161 Western Australia: 692 South Australia: 473 Tasmania: 230 Australian Capital Territory: 113 Northern Territory: 33 TOTAL CASES: 27,244 ESTIMATED ACTIVE CASES: 269 DEATHS: 897 Updated: 5.31 PM, 11 October, 2020 Source: Australian Government Department of Health Advertisement

'This is a very sad time for the family and a distressing and challenging time for residents and staff as we deal with the impact of this dreadful virus,' Anglicare said in a statement on Sunday.

An investigation has since been launched into whether infection control methods were breached at the facility which has become a coronavirus cluster.

Anglicare says it will raise the possibility of extracting residents from the aged care home.

Anglicare Sydney chief executive Grant Millard said 'it would seem that's fairly obvious that there have been failings'.

'The use of PPE (personal protective equipment) is foreign to a lot of people,' Mr Millard told Seven News on Saturday.

When asked whether there would come a point where Anglicare would decide to remove some residents from the aged care home, Mr Millard said the option would be brought up with those living at Newmarch House.

Australia's death toll from coronavirus has risen to 94 following the death of Ann Fahey. Pictured are health officials in protective gear in Adelaide

'In small numbers to date that we've had discussions and this is something that we're going to raise with residents in our communication shortly,' Mr Millard said

NSW Health has since deployed two infection control nurses to the facility to review its procedures after two more staff at the home tested positive on Saturday.

'We've clearly seen transmission that on the surface looks like there's been breaches of infection control among particularly the staff,' NSW chief medical officer Kerry Chant told reporters.

'And that's obviously a concern. There are have been some elements where consistent application of infection control practice has not occurred.'

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard defended the staff who had spread infection, saying dealing with the virus was 'like almost going to the moon'.

NSW Health will be sending two infection control nurses to Anglicare's Newmarch House (pictured) after two staff tested positive to coronavirus

But he conceded there had been breaches of health protocols.

'Some of those people may or may not known exactly how to use the equipment in the most appropriate way,' he said.

'It only takes a moment. Our doctors are highly trained, but like everybody else you can make a mistake.'

Earlier this week, a group of family members published a scathing open letter to Mr Millard, saying communication from within the home had been 'far from satisfactory'.

'Phones went unanswered day after day. Calls were not returned. Details about our individual loved ones were not provided regularly,' the letter read.

'The residents were reporting that the care was inadequate and they were becoming distressed. Many of them were sick and frightened and did not have regular access to their family on the outside which increased their levels of anxiety as well as ours.'

Louise Payne, who has a family member living at Anglicare's Newmarch House outside the facility last Wednesday, where 61 cases of coronavirus have been recorded so far

NSW Opposition Leader Jodi McKay called on the government to give all Newmarch residents, even ones who were healthy, the option of being moved to the public hospital system.

The NSW government announced on Sunday it will be further easing coronavirus restrictions with onsite property auctions and inspections to recommence after a six-week shutdown.

The changes will be implemented from next weekend with real estate agents urged to limit the number of people viewing properties and attending auctions and to follow stringent cleaning guidelines including ensuring people don't touch surfaces.
Within 48 hours both Facebook and then Youtube have deleted the accounts of David Icke for posting content that disputes the existence and transmission of Covid-19 as described by the WHO and the NHS. Other platforms may soon fall in suit, as they did with Alex Jones in 2018.

This article is not about David Icke. I will say it again in italics for the especially dense: this article is not about David Icke. This article is about why we shouldnt be okay with monopolistic billionaire-owned Silicon Valley tech giants with extensive ties to US government agencies controlling human communication.

I know next to nothing about David Icke, and I have done exactly zero research into his views for this article; for all I know hes every bit the raving lunatic the narrative managers say he is. It doesnt matter. What matters is that were seeing a consistent and accelerating pattern of powerful plutocratic institutions collaborating with the US-centralized empire to control what ideas people around the world are permitted to share with each other, and its a very unsafe trajectory. Making this conversation about Icke and his views distracts from the very important topic we need to actually focus on discussing.

Journalist Matt Taibbi recently wrote an excellent essay about the dangers inherent in the increased demand weve been seeing for more censorship and deplatforming during the coronavirus pandemic, correctly arguing that more authoritarian control over the ideas people are allowed to discuss is vastly more dangerous than the ideas themselves.

The people who want to add a censorship regime to a health crisis are more dangerous and more stupid by leaps and bounds than a president who tells people to inject disinfectant, Taibbi writes. Its astonishing that they dont see this.

Instead of asking calmly if hydroxychloroquine works, or if the less restrictive Swedish crisis response has merit, or questioning why certain statistical assumptions about the seriousness of the crisis might have been off, were denouncing the questions themselves as infamous, says Taibbi.

Taibbi argues against the increasingly normalized trend of elevating authoritative content while silencing content which does not wear that magical label in an attempt to fight disinformation. If you examine which content is considered authoritative, youll find a bunch of outlets who have consistently lied to the world about war after war, who spent years promoting the baseless conspiracy theory that Vladimir Putin had infiltrated and secured control over the executive branch of the US government, who consistently normalize a status quo which is wholly incompatible with the surviving and thriving of life on this planet.

Google, who owns Youtube, has been financially intertwined with US intelligence agencies since its very inception when it received research grants from the CIA and NSA for mass surveillance. Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg has called on the government to take a more active role in regulating harmful content, and has been actively collaborating with government agencies and government-funded think tanks to decide what content to remove. Social media executives are now routinely called before government hearings and lectured about the need to increase censorship under the implicit threat of antitrust cases being brought to bear. These massive corporations now consistently censor with an extreme bias against governments which refuse to bow to the demands of the US government and its allies.

In 2017, representatives of Facebook, Twitter, and Google were instructed on the US Senate floor that it is their responsibility to quell information rebellions and adopt a mission statement expressing their commitment to prevent the fomenting of discord.

Civil wars dont start with gunshots, they start with words, the representatives were told. Americas war with itself has already begun. We all must act now on the social media battlefield to quell information rebellions that can quickly lead to violent confrontations and easily transform us into the Divided States of America.

Whenever anyone objects to censorship on these massive platforms theyre always told that those platforms are private companies who are free to do what they like on their private property, but how private is a corporation that is interlaced with government power with increasing inseparability? The reality is that in a corporatist system of government with vanishingly few meaningful distinctions between corporate power and state power, corporate censorship is state censorship.

Proponents of increased internet censorship have already openly conceded this point. A recent Atlantic article by two legal professors subtitled In the debate over freedom versus control of the global network, China was largely correct, and the U.S. was wrong, the case is made that western internet censorship will necessarily involve a collaboration with private corporations and government power.

As surprising as it may sound, digital surveillance and speech control in the United States already show many similarities to what one finds in authoritarian states such as China, the articles authors favorably argue. Constitutional and cultural differences mean that the private sector, rather than the federal and state governments, currently takes the lead in these practices, which further values and address threats different from those in China. But the trend toward greater surveillance and speech control here, and toward the growing involvement of government, is undeniable and likely inexorable.

Apart from the fact that they are here claiming that increasingly authoritarian speech control is good and necessary, these two bootlickers are absolutely correct. Human communication is indeed being controlled using the so-called private sector to circumvent constitutional limitations which prohibit the government from censoring speech directly.

These Silicon Valley tech corporations have ensured their continued monopolistic dominance by demonstrating their willingness to collaborate with establishment power structures, so there are no platforms of anywhere near the same size and influence that people can move to if they dont feel like letting government-tied plutocrats police what thoughts are permitted to enter into their minds. This has given this corporate-government alliance the ability to control the thoughts that people are allowed to share, discuss and think about in the same way totalitarian governments can, with the false mask of freedom plastered over it.

A truly free being does not need an alliance of plutocrats and government agencies to protect their mind from David Icke. A truly free being does not want an alliance of plutocrats and government agencies to exert any control whatsoever over what ideas they are permitted to share and what thoughts they are permitted to think. A truly free being opposes with all their might any attempt to lock in a paradigm where human communication (and thereby thought) is controlled by vast unaccountable power structures which benefit from the absence of dissent.

Be a truly free being. Oppose this intrusion into your mental sovereignty.

________________________

Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics onTwitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what Im trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else Ive written) in any way they like free of charge.
Copyright  2020 Albuquerque Journal

The elephant herd at the ABQ BioPark zoo is more than just a collection of lumbering, plant-eating pachyderms.

They are on the cutting edge of how herds live, learn and care for one another in a zoo setting, thanks largely to the efforts of just-retired elephant manager Rhonda Saiers.

Saiers, who in 1996 started working at what was then the Rio Grande Zoo, began initiating programs and protocols designed to get the elephants to mimic the same behaviors they would exhibit in the wild. Many of the measures she instituted at the BioPark Zoo regarding elephant exercise, behavioral enrichment and herd structure have been adopted by zoos across the U.S. and around the world.

Rhonda is moving on, but shes still an expert at what she does and I expect she will continue to be called upon nationally and internationally for her expertise, said Shelle Sanchez, director of the citys Cultural Services Department.

The elephant program is a hallmark program, and Rhonda has been innovating and pushing the edges of how zoos take care of elephants, really for more than 20 years, Sanchez said.

Back in the day elephants were walked a lot. That was their exercise, Saiers said. Since then, we created a cross-fit for elephants, where they can voluntarily participate to train with us and do exercises to develop strength, flexibility and endurance.

Because the zoo adopted a protective contact model, the keepers remain outside a barrier, and the elephants have the choice to come to the keeper to participate in the training, for which they get rewarded.

When you watch the work that they do at the BioPark Zoo, you cant help but be inspired, said Bob Lee, general curator and elephant manager at the Oregon Zoo, which has adopted many of the measures.

Those animals seek out the team and want to participate, which is extremely important to keeping a healthy herd, he said.

Unlike other animals that you can anesthetize easily if they get sick, elephants have to cooperate in their care. Its not easy to anesthetize these guys, and to have the kind of relationship where theyll come right over and allow you to take a blood sample when you need it, or accept a shot if medicine is required, or get them to open up their mouths so you can look at their teeth, is just an amazing thing to watch, Lee said.

Behavioral enrichment is another area that is now understood to be vitally important to the physical and mental health of elephants, but it wasnt always regarded that way.

When Saiers began working at the zoo, she ended her 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. shift by throwing a bale of hay on the ground for the elephants before I went home  and that was it.

Today, we use puzzle feeders to keep the elephants foraging and to challenge their brains, she said. We might put peanuts in a ball and they have to roll it around to get the peanuts to fall out, or we will put hay in a net above their heads so they have to reach and stretch for it. By utilizing a rotation system, we keep the elephants moving and get them to display every behavior you would see in the wild.

The zoo has also moved away from keeping elephants in separate stalls at night, Saiers said. They now have the choice to be inside the behind-the-scenes elephant barn or outside on 5 acres of land that contains comfortable ground spaces on which to lie, pools of water to get in as they desire, and automatic feeders strategically placed around their activity-based habitat.

Saiers was also at the forefront of rethinking how to strengthen a multi-generational herd structure among elephants in captivity, in part by allowing members to view elephants giving birth.

Twenty-seven year old Rozie is the poster child for that, Saiers said. I started working with her when she was about 3 and continued working with her at each birth from her first one at about 16, all the way through to Thorn, who was born two years ago.

So not only did Rozie learn how to become a mom, the goal ultimately was to create a multigenerational herd where females, when theyre having babies, are teaching the next generation how to have babies, Saiers said.

The birth of baby Thorn proved that it could work, that we didnt have to intervene so much with baby elephants being born. As Rozie gave birth to Thorn, her daughter, Jazmine, then 4, was present and will presumably retain that knowledge, she said.

The herd at the BioPark Zoo today consists of six elephants, four females, including Rozies mother, Alice, and two males, including Thorn, and Albert, who is the brother of Thorns father, Samson, now residing at the Oregon Zoo.

Saiers, 47, a native of Albuquerque, attended Sandia High School and later the University of New Mexico, where she earned a degree in biology.

I expected that I might get a job in animal research, or maybe work for the Fish and Wildlife Service doing research and population density studies and that sort of thing, she said.

While still at UNM, Saiers volunteered as a zoo docent but never considered a career there until she saw an ad for a job opening.

I thought it might be kind of fun, so I applied and got very lucky, was offered the position and had a great career.

Saiers said she looks forward to spending more time with her own family and knows the team she left behind to care for the elephants is carrying on the cutting edge work that they began.
A split in the Green Party over whether to enter coalition talks with Fianna Fail and Fine Gael is threatening efforts to form a new government and Eamon Ryan's leadership.

There is also growing anger in Fine Gael and Fianna Fail this weekend over the Greens' procrastination. Fine Gael ministers have slammed the Greens' climate demands, while a group of Fianna Fail senators have attacked the Greens' housing policies.

Mr Ryan is coming under pressure from deputy leader Catherine Martin whose attack on Fine Gael over its failure to commit to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 7pc per year is seen within the Green Party as evidence of an effort to undermine Mr Ryan, who wants to enter government talks with the Civil War parties.

Ms Martin said last Friday on RTE that comments by Tanaiste Simon Coveney, in which he cast doubt over the 7pc emissions reduction target, were "shocking" and "disturbing" and had set off "alarm bells" in her party. There is huge grassroots anger in the Greens over the possibility of the party entering talks with FF and FG.

The Sunday Independent understands Mr Ryan has spoken to Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin in recent days to seek clarification on their commitment to the 7pc target. But his failure to seek clarification on the two parties' commitment to Green priorities on affordable housing and abolishing Direct Provision has annoyed some Green TDs.

"It's definitely not good," a senior Green Party source said of the divisions in the party this weekend. Mr Ryan's position in the party is at risk with Green Party rules stipulating it must hold a leadership election within six months of the general election.

The party's national executive is likely to open nominations for the leadership before the end of this month with a postal ballot members taking place over June and July. A decision on whether or not to enter formal talks with the civil war parties could come down to a vote of party's 16 TDs, Senators and MEPs with any decision requiring a two-thirds majority.It comes as Fine Gael ministers are increasingly pessimistic about forming a new government with the prospect of a second election now being discussed. However, the Covid-19 crisis presents serious logistical challenges for any such poll with most believing a vote would not be possible until September at the earliest.

One senior Fine Gael Minister hit out at the Greens. "Is any party allowed to hold the country to ransom over one policy? The country needs a government, there has to be a degree of give and take. This 'we're not even willing to sit down and talk unless you sign in blood up to this' that's not how mature political negotiations work, that's not how senior hurling works."

Business Minister Heather Humphreys said Fine Gael was anxious for the Greens to be part of a government that would be "ambitious in terms of our climate targets".

However she later told this newspaper: "In doing so we want to make sure we don't cause carnage".

A dozen outgoing Fine Gael junior ministers held a conference call last Friday where it was "unanimously" agreed that the 7pc target was not achievable for the agri sector, according to a source on the call. They said ministers were told that Fine Gael should be ready for a second election.

Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe confirmed that two elements of the Government's Covid-19 rescue package for business will require legislation to be passed. But this cannot be done with the Seanad having 11 nominees from a newly-elected Taoiseach.

The Sunday Independent understands one option being floated at senior levels in Fine Gael is a technical solution whereby all parties or a majority agree to elect a Taoiseach for a day for the sole purpose of nominating 11 senators, agreed between them, to the upper house. This would then allow it to pass the legislation to help businesses during the pandemic. "It's a legal and constitutional possibility if there genuinely is a need to pass legislation and break the gridlock. But it really would have to be legislation that is essential not just desirable," a senior Fine Gael source said.

Fianna Fail TD Barry Cowen said a new government must be formed as soon in order to ensure that the extraordinary budget measures to deal with the crisis are funded. "The caretaker government or present Dail cannot pass such legislation or go beyond provisions of funding allocations made in Budget 2020.

"I'm not sure people - some political parties appear oblivious to the fact - realise how difficult and potentially dangerous a predicament that is or could be. Therefore whether we like it or not, parallel to caretaker governments ongoing efforts, a new government has to be formed as soon as possible."

He added: "For some entering government with Fianna Fail is a last resort, whether it's the same for us or whether we all have to hold our noses, so what. When you think of the solidarity and compliance of the last few weeks and what's now necessary you have to get the hell on with it."

Meanwhile, a group of Fianna Fail senators have criticised what they view as the Green Party's favouring of renting over home ownership.

The senators are also concerned that core Fianna Fail principles will be compromised in any coalition talks with the Greens.

Fianna Fail Senator Malcolm Byrne said: "We have always advocated affordable home ownership and it is an issue that differentiates us from others. It is particularly noticeable that the Greens seemed to move away from this and that several of their councillors and activists are tweeting against the principle of home ownership or the use of public lands for affordable home ownership programmes.

A number of Fianna Fail senators have made clear that any Programme for Government must have a clear commitment to a major affordable home building programme.

Fianna Fail Senator Pat Casey said home ownership is a "core principle" for Fianna Fail. "It would be one of our key principles whereas we believe the Greens would be more accepting of the cost-rental model," he said.

"We need to assert our core principles, as identified in our manifesto, on these negotiations as opposed to being told what everyone else's core principles are and us having to adhere to them. Housing is one of the key ones."

Another senator, Fiona O'Loughlin said: "To see a situation where any political party would say that renting is more of an option is not good enough and I think that needs to be a priority for any party going into government.

Mr Byrne also said Fianna Fail members must be given a vote on any programme for government that is agreed.
Huntington Beach Protest Shows Thousands Weary of Newsoms Measures

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif.Protesters across Southern California have demonstrated a growing weariness with Gov. Gavin Newsoms restrictive measures, as the state grapples to balance reopening with safety.

Recent protests indicate that a growing number of citizens believe that the damage caused by Newsoms restrictions to commerce has become worse than the problems that might arise due to the continuing spread of COVID-19, if measures were to be relaxed.

Many people who gathered at a May 1 protest in Huntington Beach told The Epoch Times that they feel its time for Newsom to reopen Orange County businesses and beaches now, and that statistics regarding the disease support their belief.

Newsom: your cure is worse than the disease, said a sign held by one protester.

Nearly 3,000 protesters flocked to Huntington Beach to combat Gov. Gavin Newsoms stay-at-home orders, many carrying signs and waving flags. They were joined by thousands of additional protesters in Los Angeles, Sacramento, Ventura, and San Diego.

The statewide demonstrations were organized by the activist group We Have Rights, which was born out of frustration toward Newsoms mandatory COVID-19 regulations. The group is dedicated to the restoration and protection of the rights and freedoms provided under The Constitution for All Americans, according to its website.

Newsom issued the initial stay-at-home order on March 19, requiring all Californians to remain in their residences unless transacting essential business. The order was made to preserve the public health and safety, in the face of the burgeoning COVID-19 pandemic.

But as the states unemployment rate skyrocketsover 3 million Californians filed for unemployment benefits following the order in the first month alonethe economic ripple effect has resulted in a growing number of people who feel its time for the state to loosen its restrictions and reopen its businesses.

A motorcycle policeman tells a woman with a flag to go back inside her vehicle at a protest gathering in Huntington Beach, Calif., on May 1, 2020. (Jamie Joseph/The Epoch Times)

A Day at the Beach

Shortly after noon on May 1, a flock of protesters congregated near the Huntington Beach pier. They gathered along sidewalks, while dozens of law enforcement officersincluding SWAT personnelpatrolled up and down the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH). Some officers rode on horses, others on motorcycles.

At the same time, cars embellished with American flags drove along the PCH, honking harmoniously in support of the protesters. A number of Trump 2020 flags could be seen flying above the crowd as well.

Social distancing measures seemed to be ignored as gathering protestersthe majority not wearing maskscreated gridlock on the streets, beginning at Beach Boulevard and continuing up the PCH.

Many signs held by protesters reflected their desire to reopen California immediately, including messages that read Newsom is Non-Essential, Only Sheep Dont Question Tyranny, and Let the Healthy People Be Free.

The protest took place just one day after Newsom ordered a temporary hard closure of all Orange County beaches. The order was given in response to the weekend of April 25-26, when an estimated 80,000 people flocked to Orange County beaches, and photos of frolicking beachgoers on Newport Beach rocked the internet.

Protesters march down Main Street in Huntington Beach, Calif., on May 1, 2020. (Jamie Joseph/The Epoch Times)

Protesters wave flags and carry signs in Huntington Beach, Calif., on May 1, 2020. (Jamie Joseph/The Epoch Times)

Protesters gather in a demonstration in Huntington Beach, Calif., on May 1, 2020. (Apu Gomes/Getty Images)

One protester told The Epoch Times that the best place to be is outdoors, and argued that Newsom is clamping down on our freedoms.

Its just as a punitive measure, it has nothing to do with science, said the protester. People are on the verge of bankruptcy. If we dont reopen soon, 70 percent of these businesses will be shuttered.

The protester, who requested to be referred to as just a concerned citizen, said this was the first protest hed ever attended.

Another participant, a Huntington Beach resident named Anne, told The Epoch Times that the facts shouldnt be ignored.

We need to get out, and its time to reopen the country, she said. The businesses shouldve opened yesterday.

I think that if we ever open up, then the same exact number of deaths will occur, unless theres some miracle of a cure of some kind, another Huntington Beach resident, Dave, told The Epoch Times.

So all of these kind of measures are really for nothing. All theyre doing is kicking the can down the road. All the same deaths are going to happen, he added.

Retired nurse Becky Ettinger points to a chart of COVID-19 statistics in Huntington Beach, Calif., on May 1, 2020. (Jamie Joseph/The Epoch Times)

The Protesting Nurse

Among the protesters was Huntington Beach resident Becky Ettinger, a retired nurse of 46 years. She is currently a professor of nursing at Santa Ana College, and believes the COVID-19 data doesnt support what were doing in Orange County.

Especially because we have 3 million people, and only 46 deaths, Ettinger told The Epoch Times. To have peoples businesses locked down, for people to be told to stay homeits all wrong.

As of May 3, Orange County health officials had reported 52 deaths from COVID-19, and 2,743 confirmed cases.

Ettinger attended the protest with a cardboard sign showing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID-19 projections. She highlighted where she felt the predictions were incorrect.

We dont do this for the flu every year, so we get the economy killed, she added.

Ettinger, a published author with multiple college degrees whose specialty is community health, believes isolation is having a detrimental effect on peoples mental health, and their immune systems.

The mental health issue now supersedes the numbers of this epidemic, Ettinger said. We need to be outside, to build our immune systems, and get back to normal.

She added, We dont want these people to continue losing their jobs  it leads to people dying. And I know that, because Ive studied population health.

Protesters hold signs at a gathering in Huntington Beach, Calif., on May 1, 2020. (Jamie Joseph/The Epoch Times)

Newsom Closes the Beach

Orange County has among the lowest per capita COVID-19 death rates in California, Huntington beach Mayor Lyn Semeta said in an April 30 press release.

She and other local Orange County officials were miffed at the governors edict to close their beaches, and said they were not consulted prior to the decision. Huntington Beach, along with the city of Dana Point, filed an injunction to temporarily halt Newsoms action, but their request was denied in Superior Court.

Aware of the protest beforehand, Newsom suggested that participants adhere to recommended safety guidelines. He urged protesters to at least wear a face covering, do justice to physical distancing.

You dont want to contract this disease, the governor added.

Orange County Supervisor Michelle Steel, via email, told The Epoch Times, I encourage all residents to comply with state orders and to practice proper social distancing while expressing their first amendment right to peaceably assemble.

Overall, the May 1 protest and the crowds remained peaceful, according to Huntington Beach Chief of Police Robert Handy. No arrests or citations were made.

Were proud of the way our department handled it, our partners handled it, and were also grateful to the crowd, Handy said during a press conference later that day. It was peaceful, and they really obliged a lot of our requests.

Reopening Orange County

Newsom has been insistent that residents continue adhering to social-distancing requirements, saying in recent days that the state could begin lifting some restrictions in weeks, not months, if people continue to stay at home. But he said that could change quickly if people get complacent.

On April 28, California Department of Public Health Director Dr. Sonia Angell, along with Newsom, outlined a four-stage roadmap to ending the states stay-at-home orders and reopening businesses. The state had already entered phase one, she said, which deals with safety and preparedness.

The next stage of the roadmap includes the opening of some lower risk workplaces, with safety adaptations and precautions. During this stage, the roadmap indicates that counties may choose to relax stricter local orders at their own pace.

At a meeting on the same day, the Orange County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a plan to reopen their businesses, and return them to a normal state of activity.

These guidelines do not supersede any conflicting or more restrictive orders issued by local governments, the State of California, or the Federal Government, the document said.

As we transition back to business as usual, we must do so in a manner that is conscious of the public health, but also addressing the needs of businesses and their employees who need to put food on the table, said Chairwoman Steel.

When we talk about the business impact of COVID-19, were not just talking about money, were talking about people and their ability to provide for themselves and their families.

Orange County officials, along with a growing number of citizen protesters, are aiming to end Newsoms stay-at-home restrictions sooner rather than later.
Former Madhya Pradesh chief minister and senior Congress leader Kamal Nath said on Sunday that many Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders are still in touch with him and things would come to fore at an opportune moment.

Nath, who addressed a video press conference on Sunday, said Several of BJP leaders are still in my touch and the present cabinet, led by BJPs Shivraj Singh Chouhan, would have to face it all soon.

Nath was forced to resign on March 20 as the chief minister a couple of hours before a floor test in the Assembly for which the Congress did not have the numbers days after senior party leader and former MP Jyotiraditya Scindia crossed over to the BJP with over 20 of his loyalists.

Soon after Chouhan was sworn in as the chief minister of the state that has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. Days ahead of Naths resignation, both the camps had claimed that they were in talks with a number of party leaders.

The veteran Congress leaders remark on Sunday came when asked if such BJP leaders were still in talks with him. Nath had earlier taken a dig at Chouhan cabinet which functioned without any minister for days.

Recently, five ministers were sworn in and they have been temporarily given charge of particular areas in the state in the wake of the pandemic.

Nath said it is not yet clear who and which districts would finally get representations in Chouhans cabinet once the health crisis normalises.

Despite an economic meltdown amid the COVID-19 outbreak, why cannot this government have a cabinet? Nath had said.

Madhya Pradesh is due for bypolls in at least 24 Assembly constituencies and both the camps are eyeing as many number of seats.
Three Indian nationals working in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have reportedly been sacked by their company for allegedly sharing Islamophobic posts on social media. According to a Gulf news report, the three employees joined the nearly half a dozen of hate-mongers who have landed in similar trouble in recent weeks.

As per reports, the three expats who faced action include an Italian chef Rawat Rohit, storekeeper Sachin Kinnigoli and a cash custodian whose name has been withheld by his firm. The suspension of the three Indian nationals also comes after Indias Ambassador to UAE Pavan Kapoor reminded Indian nationals in UAE that discrimination is against the moral fabric and rule of law of both the countries.

READ: Quebec Designer Launches Mask Line Inspired By Star Skaters

India and UAE share the value of non-discrimination on any grounds. Discrimination is against our moral fabric and the Rule of law. Indian nationals in the UAE should always remember this. https://t.co/8Ui6L9EKpc  Amb Pavan Kapoor (@AmbKapoor) April 20, 2020

Indian expats sacked in recent weeks

Earlier this month, several other Indian nationals were either sacked or suspended after allegedly insulting Islam on social media. Recently, Bala Krishna Nakka from Hyderabad, who was working as Chief Accountant at Dubais Moro Hub Data Solutions Company was also reportedly sacked after his Facebook post went viral. His social media post triggered demands on Facebook and Twitter for action against him after which the company decided to fire him immediately.

READ: Air Travel Wanes, But Bodies Still Fly To Israel For Burial

In another similar case, Rakesh B Kitturmath, who worked as a team leader at Emrill Services, an integrated facilities management (FM) headquartered in Dubai was also fired as his post also sparked outrage on several social media platforms. Within the same week, Abu Dhabi resident Mitesh Udeshi was sacked for posting a cartoon mocking Islam on his Facebook page.

The UAE outlaws all religious or racial discrimination under legislation passed in 2015. According to the law, all acts that stoke religious hatred and/or which insult religion through any form of expression, be it speech or the written word, books, pamphlets or via online media, are prohibited.

(Image: ANI)

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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- After the White House economic adviser said another round of coronavirus relief might not be necessary, Mayor Bill de Blasio called it outrageous and disrespectful, in an appearance on CNN Saturday evening.

De Blasio told CNN it is not the city or states fault the virus came to the United States.

Its the federal government who did not provide testing to us," he said, and now we may have to lay off healthcare workers and the essentials.

The mayor was responding to comments White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett made in a Fox News interview Saturday morning.

I think right now, because theres been good news really, that the opening up is starting to happen faster than we expected, appears to be doing so safely, then there is a chance that we wont really need a phase four, Hassett said.

Phase four refers to a fourth federal stimulus legislation currently being negotiated in Washington.

Without federal support, de Blasio said it is those who are on the front lines and have been heroes since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic that will be unsure whether or not they will have jobs in the coming months.

Its outrageous and disrespectful towards the heroes," de Blasio said.

And, the mayor insisted, the crisis is far from over. New York City, alone, the mayor said, still sees thousands testing positive daily, and hundreds dying each day.

SOCIAL DISTANCING

De Blasio also commended New Yorkers during his CNN interview for doing their job to social distance and wear face coverings while out and about in city parks on Saturday.

The mayor said he and the NYPD expected New Yorkers to head out and enjoy the weather, and they prepared for it, by deploying officers to parks to educate and enforce social distancing.

If you want to go out for a while get fresh air and exercise, its understandable, just dont linger for too long, and get back home.

NYPD officers were also giving away free face masks for New Yorkers, as part of the initiative.

Officers from Staten Islands four precincts could be seen at Willowbrook Park, Clove Lakes Park, Silver Lake Park, Midland Beach, South Beach, Conference House Park, Bloomingdale Park, and Wolfes Pond Park.

For New Yorkers who resist the rules, gathering in public or playing group sports, de Blasio stated the NYPD will give a hefty summons, and they will be very uncompromising with it.

A FEROCIOUS DISEASE

While de Blasio couldnt answer whether the worst is over, he called the coronavirus a ferocious disease," and said the only way to ensure the worst is behind us is to keep the rules of social distancing.

De Blasio noted New Yorkers should not be in a rush to get back to the norm, and said that testing and contact tracing are key to understanding and beating the disease.

Which all comes back to federal funding.

The antibodies test is imperfect; it tells us exposure, thats all. Diagnostic testing is more valuable, and tells us who needs to be isolated while transmitting the disease, he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-04 04:20:26|Editor: huaxia

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DAMASCUS, May 3 (Xinhua) -- Two civilians were killed on Sunday when an explosive device went off in Syria's southern province of Quneitra, state news agency SANA reported.

The explosive device exploded in the village of Hadar in the northern countryside of Quneitra, said the report.

It added that the explosive device was from the leftovers of the rebels who were in the area ahead of their defeat.

Dozens of people have been either killed or wounded by similar explosions in formerly rebel-held areas in the country. Enditem
And how to we solve issues of alleged discrimination in 21st Century America? Thats right - we ensure the entire population is subjected to that same discriminatory behavior, however ridiculous that might be.

NYPD officers - many of whom have already contracted the virus themselves - have the power to issue summonses and even make arrests if they encounter individuals who flagrantly or repeatedly flout the social distancing rules.

"This is the nicest weather weve seen this year; we encourage people to come out and enjoy this weather," Terence Monahan, Chief of Department for the New York Police Department, told NBC News. But "You cannot gather; you cannot barbecue. Were going to give you a summons. Theres been enough warnings."

Monahan said the NYPD would have bike teams and mounted units on horseback throughout the parks, as well as aviation units working to spot "problem areas" (i.e. the Jews in Brooklyn and New Yorkers across the 5 boroughs who rush to gather an impromptu barbecue on a nice day).

Officers wont issue summonses to those who arent wearing masks; instead, they will carry packs of clothe masks to distribute.

Monahan said he hopes his officers wont need to issue summonses, but the NYPD has encountered no shortage of stubborn noncompliant individuals.

"The vast majority of times people have complied," Monahan told NBC News. "But theres been some people who think they can do whatever they want. They endanger my cops; they endanger each other."

Lt. Adam Mellusi, a patrol commander in the Bronx, said his squad - consisting of a dozen officers on bikes - will be issuing summonses if they find "large-scale barbecues and drinking."

He added that most New Yorkers support the patrols and "have actually thanked us for being out here."

Somehow, we doubt most communities of native New Yorkers, who take the tradition of springtime barbecuing more seriously than Brooklyn hipster transplants, will be thanking the officers who write them a $300 ticket, or a court summons, for standing too close to their brother-in-law.
A COVID-19 testing kit made in Vietnam (Photo: vov.vn)



The newly-produced testing kit has recently been recognised by the British Department of Health and Social Care which issued paperwork confirming that the product complies with European standards, along with a certificate of free sale.

The approval will help the Vietnamese COVID-19 test kit to be exported far more easily around Europe, therefore creating opportunities for other Made-in-Vietnam medical diagnostic products to enter the international market.

The COVID-19 test kit has been created after research was conducted by scientists at the Vietnam Military Medical University, and it was produced by the Viet A Technology Joint Stock Company. The kit has been tested for sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy, with the product being similar to the biological kits produced by the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and WHO.

Prof. Dr. Le Bach Quang said the recognition given by Britain for the countrys COVID-19 test kit proves the nations scientific level and its ability to master production technologies on the same level as other developed countries globally.

He emphasised that the country is more than capable of exporting medical biological products that have the ability to diagnose diseases early, both infectious diseases and other serious ailments.

Adding to this viewpoint, Trinh Thanh Hung, deputy director of the Science and Technology Department under the Ministry of Science and Technology, noted that the nations medical diagnostic kits have been researched and manufactured through strict technology processes and have been made following standard production lines.

Hung went on to advise local medical facilities, research institutes, and enterprises to strive to improve their research capacity, continue to master technology, and invest further in modern production lines in order to realise the export potential of other medical diagnostic products.

Moreover, Hung underlined the importance of participating with relevant ministries to create favourable conditions for testing and licensing domestically-produced items as a means of facilitating the further penetration of Vietnamese products in foreign markets./.
Q: I have a 96 four-wheeler that I got from a rancher. I rebuilt it from the ground up but there is no title. If there ever was one it is gone, and no registration. I have called the local DMV and they said I have to wait until April for the state inspector to check the VIN (it has never been licensed so other than maybe check if it was stolen?). I called the local dealership and all they could give was OHV advice. This is a complete headache Help!  Pst Taylor

A: I can see how this could be a headache since it was never registered with the state then there would not be title information or the ability to get a duplicate title.

If it was ever registered with the state and had not been registered in state system when the times came up then it would be totally out of the system too.

If you could find the dealer who sold it to that rancher, you might be able to get a copy of the title if that dealer carried the loan as a lien holder. Once again if the information was never in the system or timed out then any lien holder information on the four-wheeler would be near impossible to find. If you could find a lien holder on the four-wheeler that lien holder could still have a copy of the title.

As far as OHV advice, if you are just wanting to use it for off-road (most are for that anyway) then these are the requirements for ATVs: a valid IDPR OHV certificate of number sticker. IC 67-7122; a helmet under age 18. IC 49-666; a muffler and Forest Service approved spark arrestor (Your muffler must be at or below 96dB at the half-meter test, SAE J1287. IC 67-7125).

I believe that once you get a VIN check done (does not return as stolen) on the four-wheeler that would allow you to get an OHV sticker to put on your four-wheeler.

You could also do what the rancher might have done and put a slow-moving sign on the back and use it as a implement of husbandry (fancy name for farm use).

That would not allow you to ride it on Idaho parks maintained trails though.

I do know there is a process to get a vehicle retitled but Im not sure how that process works. You should be able to contact the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation at 800-247-6332 and see if they have a better answer which Im betting they do.

Officer down

Please put these officers, killed in the line of duty, and their families in your prayers. They fought the good fight, now may they rest in peace. God bless these heroes.

Detective Alex Ruperto, Union City Police, New Jersey (COVID-19)

Police Officer Justin Putnam, San Marcos Police, Texas

Police Officer Christopher Ewing, Smyrna Police, Georgia

Probation and Parole Agent Kaitlin Cowley, Louisiana Dept. of Public Safety and Corrections

Police Officer Dan Walters, San Diego Police, California

Have a question for Policeman Dan? Email your question(s) to policemandan@cableone.net or look for Ask Policemandan on Facebook and click the like button. Mail to: Box 147, Heyburn, Idaho 83336

Dan Bristol is the City of Heyburn Chief of Police.

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New Delhi, May 3 : Offering condolences on martyrdom of five security personnel, including a decorated colonel of the Indian Army, in an encounter with terrorists Jammu and Kashmir's in Handwara, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said on Sunday that their sacrifice and bravery will never be never forgotten.

He said, "The loss of our soldiers and security personnel in Handwara (J&K) is deeply disturbing and painful. They showed exemplary courage in their fight against the terrorists and made supreme sacrifice while serving the country. We will never forget their bravery and sacrifice." The minister said that he offers his tributes to the soldiers and security personnel who fell in action. "My heart goes out to the families who lost their loved ones today. India stands shoulder to shoulder with the families of these brave martyrs," the minister tweeted.

Saluting these personnel, the Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat said that operations in Handwara highlight the determination of the security forces to safeguard the lives of the people.

"Commanding Officer leading from the front along with other personnel of the unit and J&K Police have laid down their lives, living upto the motto; Service Before Self," General Rawat said He also said that the Armed Forces are proud of their courage as they have successfully eliminated the terrorists. "We salute these brave personnel and express our deep felt condolences for the bereaved families," he said.

In a statement, Indian Army said that based on the intelligence input that terrorists were taking the civilian inmates of a house in Changimulla at Handwara of Kupwara district hostage, a joint operation was launch by Army and Jammu and Kashmir Police.

"A team comprising of five Army and J&K Police personnel entered the target area occupied by the terrorists to evacuate the civilians. The team of Army and JK Police entered the target area and successfully extricated the civilian," Indian Army said.

The force stated that during the process, the team was subjected to heavy volume of fire by the terrorists.

"In the ensuing fire fight two terrorists were eliminated and the team of five army and J&K personnel comprising of two Army officers, two Army soldiers and one J&K Police Sub Inspector attained martyrdom," Indian Army said.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
During a think tank webinar, experts and business leaders from China and European countries stressed using multilateralism and global governance to cope with the social impact and economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.



The webinar was held on April 23 by the Center for China and Globalization (CCG) under the theme "The year of Europe on hold amid a pandemic: Perspectives on European Integration and China-Europe cooperation."

"Vertical multilateralism"

Justin Vaisse, director-general of the Paris Peace Forum, started the discussion by underscoring global interdependence, especially during the pandemic. "We are all interlinked by many ties, and viruses are one of them," he said.

Vaisse noted that there is currently a lack of collective efforts among international organizations. He also described the situation in Europe as "a battle of narratives, exchanging barbs," which, Vaisse believed, "has probably contributed to weakening the collective response to the novel coronavirus."

In response, Vaisse called for the international community to build "vertical multilateralism."

"It is not only among the more or less 200 countries, forming the international community, but also all of these efforts that associate: foundations, the private sector, citizens, NGOs and others around common goals," Vaisse explained.

Building on Vaisse's idea, Cui Hongjian, director of the Department for European Studies, China Institute of International Studies, stressed the importance of resuming the value chain and supply chain between China and European countries.

Cui elaborated on the difficulties the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the world and reinforced that China and Europe share growing number of common interests and goals despite of differences.

"Now it's time for us to go back to the very basic point and think about how could we find the common understanding," Cui said.

The crisis behind the crisis

Jean-Christophe Bas, CEO and executive board chairman of the Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute, pointed out the domino effect of the crisis facing mankind.

"What we are witnessing today is lots of jokes and lots of, in a way, speculation about what we could call eventually the crisis behind the crisis," Bas warned. "The sanitary crisis would generate an economy crisis that would generate a geopolitical crisis."

Bas likened the ongoing finger-pointing around the world to kids in a courtyard denouncing each other for misbehaving.

In order to address these crises, Bas believed that countries should not deny weaknesses in the existing international architecture.

"I think it is time to move from words to concrete evidence of our willingness to cooperate," Bas appealed.

Paolo Magri, executive vice president and director of the Italian Institute for International Political Studies, warned that the world would likely experience further division before countries are able to better cooperate in the future.

Recalling the dramatic changes that have happened since the 20th century, Magri reinforced the significance of cooperation through a historical perspective.

"We emerged from those dramatic times, and we are fully aware that multilateral cooperation was crucial," Magri said, referring to World War I and World War II. "Let's hope we have learned the lesson and then we don't need to go through the entire drama again to understand the gain."
London: Expressing fear of danger to his life, Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader Altaf Husaain said that he can be murdered anytime as a result of informing workers and people about the truth. He added that his muder could be spun in any way but it will have been premeditated murder.

Altaf Hussain said that "He was arrested thrice in Pakistan and he was subjected to the worst mental and physical torture, various temptations and when no tactic could stop him from his struggle, the Establishment and ISI was bent upon killing him.'' He added that on extreme pressure from his colleagues he had to come to London but he still continued to stick to his ideology and continued to inform the people about the truth of Pakistan.

While addressing the leaders of the UK, USA, Canada, South Africa, Germany, Belgium, and Australia among others over the telephone that his life was in 'grave danger' and that his death.

He further said that there is no leader in Pakistan except for himself who rose from the poor and middle class despite not having a political background and then went on to form an organised movement whose discipline is recognized by the world.

Altaf also spoke about the robbery incident which took place at the MQM International Secretariat in London last week and said that several important documents including video, files were robbed from the place and the main door was broken.

The MQM was founded in 1984 as the party of Muhajirs or Urdu-speakers who migrated from India at the time of Partition in 1947. The party has dominated politics in Karachi for three decades because of its support in the densely populated working-class neighborhoods of Urdu-speaking Muhajirs.
~This assistance was requested due to foreseen challenges with the COVID19 Crisis.~

PHILIPSBURG:--- On Friday, May 1, 2020, Philipsburg, the Honourable Minister of Justice Anna E. Richardson, welcomed and swore in a number of Royal Netherlands Marechaussee Officers, Police Officers, and Royal Dutch Marines who arrived on April 27th, 2020 from the Netherlands and will be here in St. Maarten until August 2020. All had been tested for COVID-19 before their departure from the Netherlands and again once they arrived in Sint Maarten.



The request for military assistance was made to ensure that public order and public safety are further maintained. Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs, Chair of the Emergency Operations Center (EOC), was consulted in the request which was formally submitted through His Excellency Governor Eugene Holiday. Additionally, military assistance will serve to support our local law enforcement officers, who have all been working diligently to maintain a strong presence throughout our districts enforcing compliance with the lockdown measures.

As such, the assistance will also help to bolster current efforts by our local police force in maintaining a zero-tolerance approach to those who show blatant disregard for the lockdown regulations. It must be emphasized that under the current measures amidst this global public health crisis, congregations of people in large groups as well as driving on the public road without authorization on lockdown days will not be tolerated and those in violation will be dealt with according to the law.

Minister Richardson expressed her appreciation on behalf of the Council of Ministers (COM) and by extension the people of Sint Maarten, to all those involved in supporting the request for assistance, in particular the Dutch Minister of Defence Ank Bijleveld. In addition, Minister Richardson thanked the officers who have come to assist our country during this very challenging time.



I commend and applaud the efforts of law enforcement, whom despite working tirelessly each and every day understand their civic duty and continue to make the best out of our current situation. It is therefore important that all citizens and residents return the favor by continuing to persevere and do their part by adhering to the measures put forth by CPS and the EOC during this lockdown period, said Minister Richardson.
A man in Raleigh, North Carolina, confronted armed anti-lockdown protesters who were gathered outside a cemetery near his home on May 1, video shows.

The man, who says in the video that he does not want the protesters in my neighborhood with their weaponry, confronted the group of protesters outside Oakwood Cemetery. He was named as Jim Schaeffer by Jason deBruyn, a local reporter who filmed the video.

The protesters, some of whom were wearing camouflage and face coverings, stood facing the man as he spoke to them.

If youre really for real, will you let me know who you are? the man asks the protesters in the video. No  okay, well theres my answer, he says, before beginning to walk away.

I hope you knuckleheads get out of here soon, as quickly as possible, Schaeffer adds.

This incident follows days of anti-lockdown protests in numerous states, including Michigan and Minnesota. Local media reported that armed activists planned to protest at the General Assembly in Raleigh on Friday. The Triad City Beat said the demonstrators mobilized supporters to show up fully armed as a show of force. Credit: Jason deBruyn/WUNC via Storyful
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said there are "enormous" signs that the novel coronavirus outbreak originated a biomedical laboratory in Wuhan, China -- the city where cases first exploded.

"I can tell you that there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan," Pompeo said on ABCs "This Week" Sunday.

"Do you think they intentionally released that virus, or it was an accident in the lab?" Co-Anchor Martha Raddatz pressed.

"I can't answer your question about that," he said, "because the Chinese Communist Party has refused to cooperate with world health experts."

NEW: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tells @MarthaRaddatz China "did all that it could to make sure the world didnt learn in a timely fashion" about COVID-19. "It was a classic communist disinformation effort," he adds and they will be held "accountable." https://t.co/EKV20Fhx2H pic.twitter.com/YrQRGkeYNk  This Week (@ThisWeekABC) May 3, 2020

The White House last week ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to look into whether China concealed information early on about the novel coronavirus, two administration officials told ABC News last week.

MORE: White House orders intel agencies to investigate China, World Health Organization

Pompeo on Sunday agreed the virus was not manmade.

A recent press release from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) that said, "The Intelligence Community also concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified."

Pompeo said that he has "no reason to disbelieve" the intelligence community, adding, "I've seen their analysis. I've seen the summary that you saw that was released publicly. I have no reason to doubt that that is accurate."

Story continues

PHOTO: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, accompanied by State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus(L) speaks at a news conference at the State Department on April 29, 2020, in Washington,DC. (Andrew Harnik/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

The ODNI statement said the intelligence community was investigating whether the outbreak was the result of a lab accident.

The announcement that the ODNI is investigating a possible lab accident as the source of the pandemic is a boost for the unproven theory that President Donald Trump, Pompeo and many senior U.S. officials have pushed for weeks now, even as epidemiological experts say its likelihood is rare.

Several public health and epidemiological experts have told ABC News it is "vastly more likely" that the first infection -- what's called "zoonotic spillover" -- occurred in the wild, given the "huge barriers between people and viruses in the laboratory setting," according to Dr. Christine Johnson, director of the U.S. Agency for International Development's Predict project and a professor at UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.

Pompeo has been central to the administrations pushback against the Chinese government for weeks, earning him vitriol from Chinese state media, which called him an "enemy of mankind" last week.

"China behaved like authoritarian regimes do, attempted to conceal and hide and confuse," Pompeo said.

Xinhua, China's state-run news, reported late Saturday that there are neither rational nor legal grounds for U.S. politicians' accusations regarding China's response, "it is only an absurd claim featuring typical U.S. bullying."

"Like the rest of the world, China is a victim of the pandemic, not an accomplice with the virus," the report said.

China said they have done what "should be and needs to be done" in the face of a pandemic.

A report from the Department of Homeland Security claims that "the Chinese government intentionally concealed the severity of COVID-19 from the international community in early January while it stockpiled medical supplies by both increasing imports and decreasing exports."

"China likely cut its exports of medical supplies prior to its January WHO notification that COVID-19 is a contagion," according to the report, which was shared with law enforcement and government agencies on Friday.

MORE: Trump admin pulls NIH grant for coronavirus research over ties to Wuhan lab at heart of conspiracy theories

Pompeo also spoke to reports Sunday about North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, who appeared to surface in new images on Friday after a three-week absence from the public eye.

"We've seen the same images from yesterday that the world saw. It looks like Chairman Kim is alive and well. Regardless of any of that our mission has remained the same. To convince the North Koreans to give up their nuclear weapons," Pompeo said.

Sec. of State Mike Pompeo tells @martharaddatz it's "not unprecedented" for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to have extended periods away from public view. "We've seen the same images from yesterday... It looks like Chairman Kim is alive and well." https://t.co/q423tKpqHn pic.twitter.com/BtXEIPGPiL  This Week (@ThisWeekABC) May 3, 2020

Talks to dismantle North Koreas nuclear weapons program have been all but dead for months and Kim has announced his intention to pursue new nuclear and missile testing. Working-level negotiators last met in October, but neither side has been willing to move first, leaving them deadlocked.

In the meantime, North Korea continues to advance its nuclear weapons program. But Trump continues to tout his relationship with Kim and point to a lack of long-range missile testing as signs of a successful policy.

Amid speculation about Kims health, Trump was among those pouring cold water on the apparent rumors of his being in "grave condition," telling reporters he didnt want to share what information he had and that he simply wished him well.

"We don't know why he chose to leave at that moment. We know there are other extended periods of time which Chairman Kim's been out of public view as well so it's not unprecedented," Pompeo added.

MORE: How reports of Kim Jong Un's health spread and what they tell us about what comes next for North Korea

The leader was shown in photos and videos distributed by North Korean media cutting the ribbon at the opening ceremony of a new fertilizer plant.

ABC News' Josh Margolin and Christine Theodorou contributed to this report.

What to know about the coronavirus:

How it started and how to protect yourself: Coronavirus explained

What to do if you have symptoms: Coronavirus symptoms

Tracking the spread in the U.S. and worldwide: Coronavirus map

Tune into ABC at 1 p.m. ET and ABC News Live at 4 p.m. ET every weekday for special coverage of the novel coronavirus with the full ABC News team, including the latest news, context and analysis.

Pompeo says 'enormous evidence' for unproven theory that coronavirus came from lab originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
Toyota-backed self-driving company Pony.ai demonstrates an autonomous electric vehicle delivery from local e-commerce platform Yamibuy in Irvine, Calif., April 28, during the coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19). Reuters-Yonhap



By Kim Yoo-chul



Despite Samsung SDI's "not-that-impressive" first-quarter results, senior fund managers said Sunday they will further strengthen their positions in the company given its expected positive business outlook.



"I would say although short-term headwinds remain, SDI's long-term electric vehicle (EV) focus is still intact," a fund manager from a U.S.-based investment bank in Seoul said.



But the manager said the bank is yet to address coronavirus-related supply chain concerns after Samsung SDI's assessment on the outlook for its business in its first-quarter earnings announcement. SDI said it was expecting to see a "substantial impact" in the second quarter from the uncertainty brought on by COVID-19.



"But that doesn't mean we will lower our target on Samsung SDI," he said, asking not to be identified as he wasn't officially authorized to speak to the media.



"It's no doubt that the second quarter should see some negative impact from the reversal of pulled-forward orders, with the operating loss possibly widening. However, the second half will see growth. We don't worry too much about SDI's expected 2020 performance."



A fund manager at another U.S.-based investment bank predicted SDI's share price would reach 390,000 won by the end of this year, up from its Friday close of 286,000 won.



"EV battery demand will be good after the second quarter," he said. "While SDI has been hit by weak demand for energy storage systems (ESS) in South Korea, we expect the second quarter will be much better as SDI is hoping to win more ESS orders in the United States."



He also expects revenue from the company's electronic materials and small battery divisions will remain flattish this year.



The manager said SDI's order backlog for EV batteries would increase by $45 billion in 2020, a comparable amount to Panasonic. SDI's chief local rival LG Chem is aiming to expand its global share thanks to a new contract with Tesla, while SDI is pursuing profitability rather than market expansion.



"The electronic materials division will face challenges going forward," the manager said. "But margins and profits will see a modest mix improvement thanks to increasing demand for OLED and semiconductor materials."



SDI reported 2.39 trillion won in revenue for the three months to March 31, up 4.1 percent year-on-year. But operating profit in the period was down by 54.6 percent to 64.8 billion won.




Google has dismissed claims it has not worked constructively with Australian news organisations and rejected calls for it to directly pay publishers, as the search giant looks to safeguard its business from a major regulatory overhaul.

Melanie Silva, Google Australia's managing director, on Sunday claimed in a blog post that the tech giant struggles to make money from news content as she attempted to break down "misconceptions" on the firm's relationships with publishers.

Facebook and Google are being forced into a code of conduct with Australian media companies. Credit:Bloomberg

The comments come as the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission ramps up industry consultations after it was charged by the Morrison government two weeks ago to create a mandatory code to oversee the commercial arrangements between digital platforms and news publishers. The deadline for submissions to the ACCC is June 5.

Sources involved in the talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity said Rupert Murdoch's News Corp Australia wants publishers to be able to individually strike payment deals with the digital giants, with the ACCC code of conduct serving as a backstop if they refuse to negotiate.
A woman who quit her job in high fashion has revealed she is now spending six days a week sewing homemade face masks - and has made at least 300 so far.

Amanda Riley, from west London, set up a business teaching beginners how to sew after rejecting a top job at the retail group Arcadia, which owns high street chains Topshop and Dorothy Perkins.

She and is currently using her skills to make elaborate, colourful masks out of various fabrics.

Writing for The Telegraph, Amanda revealed that she began 'studying' the structure of the N95 face mask - favoured by healthcare workers - at the start of the pandemic, as it blocks the majority of airborne particles.

The designer makes masks for family, friends and carers as well as older people who have requested them and has been teaching others how to make them online.

Amanda Riley, from West London, (pictured) set up a business teaching beginners how to sew after rejecting a top job at the retail group Arcadia, owners of Topshop

Amanda is now spending six days a week sewing homemade face masks and has made at least 300 so far. Pictured wearing one of her masks

'Obviously mine hasn't been tested in a lab,' Amanda admitted. 'But it contains three layers of fabric and a disposable filter, so I hope it offers some protection.'

Amanda told how after doing 'lots of research' into the mask, the most important elements are 'fit, efficacy and breathability'.

'I wanted to try and do something to help', Amanda explained in a YouTube tutorial. 'So I went online and did lots of research for the best possible scenario for making a face mask at home.

'I looked on lots of different websites and I think I've put together something that is probably the best it can be. '

Amanda began 'studying' the structure of the N95 mask, favoured by healthcare workers, at the start of the pandemic as it blocks the majority of airborne particles

Amanda told how, after doing 'lots of research' into the mask, the most important elements are 'fit, efficacy and breathability'

She added: 'The most important thing about the face mask is fit, efficacy and breathability.'

Amanda began sewing at the age of eight, and by the time she was 14 had started her first business selling clothes made from curtains.

When she was 21 the designer moved from London to Milan after studying fashion, and landed a job with a luxury Italian brand before moving to Hong Kong in 1992 to work in mass-produced fashion.

She told how the 'greedy' fast fashion industry meant she quickly moved back to the UK where she worked as freelance designer until 2003, when she set up her own business after rejecting a top job at Arcadia that she was headhunted for.

Amanda set up Fashion Rebellion, a platform to teach creating sewing patterns for beginners who want to learn to upcycle as an 'antidote to fast fashion'

It was then Amanda set up Fashion Rebellion, a platform to teach how to put together sewing patterns for beginners who want to learn to upcycle as an 'antidote to fast fashion'.

The company site states that Fashion Rebellion is a 'contemporary design and make resource for those who want to learn a life super-skill and create stylish, useful and 100 per cent sustainable items at home while helping to save the planet'.

Amanda told that while things have slowed down due to the coronavirus, she hopes the pandemic can help people become more eco-conscious.

'Of course, everything is on hold now with coronavirus', said Amanda. 'It's a nightmarish time, but I do hope that it might make people slow down their consumption.'
Lets look at some recent comments, one from the states medical professionals, others from the Idaho Freedom Foundation:

Fred Birnbaum, IFF: I am not worried about a hospital bill Steve. I am responsible for my own health.

And heres a IFF follower: an the officer does need to be targeted.. Just not at his house.. but at his work.

And heres a post from Parrish Miller, the IFF guy who scores: bills and legislators. He says law enforcement is evil, as are those who support local police:

There is absolutely no room for equivocation on this matter. If you support the states mercenaries detaining, chaining, and caging a mother for taking her children to the park, you are on the side of evil. You are an enemy of liberty and you are therefore my enemy. Miller Facebook, 4/22)

Got that? To their twisted thinking, our dedicated law enforcement is the enemy. IFF wants civil disorder. Theyve wormed their way into Idaho politics, the GOP party structure and legislative seats through money from out-of-state oligarchs (Statesman, 3/13) and what they can extract from hard-working folks who get behind in their medical bills.

How is this good for Idaho? They dont give a rip about whats good for Idaho; its all about power, chaos, loud-mouth radio rants about state tyranny. Nonsense.

Then there are the hard-working health care professionals, grocery workers, truckers and thousands of others on the front lines, keeping us safe in a pandemic, and a thoughtful, balanced, caring governor who balances the health of all of us with the individual freedoms we all cherish which some now want to abuse.

Rr. James Souza, St Lukes medical director, says this: to fight a threat we all have in commonthe right thing on behalf of all of us.

See the pattern here? The IFF kooks say, in effect, its every person for himself in this dangerous world. Im responsible for my own health, one pouts. In addition to the incredible hubris of his claim, he tells the rest of you to take a hike. Public Health? Not my concern. Safe community? Forget it. Shared responsibility? Not me. Ive got mine. Youre on your own.

And then from an IFF follower. Target police officers doing their jobs. Harass them at home, at work. Right out of the 1930s. Gov. Brad Little, asked about the protest outside the officers home, had only one word: Disgusting.

Thats what you get when you empower malcontents in the IFF who moan about their so-called loss of civil liberties. Theyre just strident complainers, radio-blabber-mouth drifters.

Economies come back. Sure, it takes time. Im not alone in thinking this, but in my view, Gov. Brad Little has done a good job of balancing public safety and economic recovery.

The kooks think only of themselves, their petty worlds, their rightist ideology. To them, you dont mean Jack. If one of their bots loses in a legislative race, they recruit another patsy.

To them, its a Hobbesian Leviathan world in which the fittest/richest survive. You? Heck, you dont count. You get sick or die? Too bad. Your loved ones sicken or die? Hey, tough.

Where does this hatred of others come from? Eric Hoffer, in The True Believer almost 70 years ago (1951) in the McCarthy era, pinpoints this fanaticism in the dissatisfactions of modern life, stress, economics.

If you listen to IFF bots a bit, thats what you hear. Not constitutional theory, not love of mankind, just hatred of the common good, of the modern world.

We can go with the guys who say theyre have a right to target law enforcement officers at their homes. (Did you notice how chicken-clucked they were when other officers blocked their way? Now that was a true Thin Blue Line.) Civil disobedience? Nah, just selfish me-ism. East Idaho News, 4/28)

We can quit following the angry radio blabbers who drift from town to town, telling us how to live. They wrap themselves in the soothing language of freedom and liberty, but theyre really just ideological frauds on our civic body and politics. Just loud-mouths, verbal bullies. None of them could govern anything. Just petty would-be tyrants.

Or we can vote for common-sense and lawful, respectful discourse which recognizes, as the St. Lukes doctor puts it, that we all have a threat in common which we must defeat together. The god doctor puts it simply. A threat we all have in commonThe right thing on behalf of all of us.

Rarely has a political primary in Idaho politics provided such a sharp contrast. We can vote for the better angels of our nature, as Lincoln called it, or for the fear and hate-mongers and shrill malcontents. We get to choose.

Stephen Hartgen, Twin Falls, is a retired five-term Republican member of the Idaho House of Representatives, where he served as chairman of the Commerce & Human Resources Committee. Previously, he was editor and publisher of The Times-News (1982-2005). He is the author of the new book Tradition & Progress: Southern Idahos Growth Since 1990. This column was first published in www.idahopoliticsweekly.com. He can be reached at Stephen_Hartgen@hotmail.com

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(Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve revamped its Main Street Lending Program in ways that will allow battered oil companies to qualify for the aid after industry allies lobbied the Trump administration for changes.

Larger, more heavily indebted companies can now qualify and use the money to pay off prior loans under the changes the central bank announced Thursday.

The move opens the door to more oil and gas producers, said Senator Kevin Cramer, a Republican from North Dakota, who had pressed the administration on the issue as energy companies struggle to survive an epic collapse in fuel demand and crude prices.

With the decrease in demand and oversupply due to the global oil price war creating a valley for these highly leveraged companies, this expansion will help them bridge the gap as we look to reopen America, Cramer said in an emailed statement Thursday.

Environmentalists blasted the shifts they said rewarded oil companies that took on too much debt and were overproducing crude even before the coronavirus pandemic caused demand to plunge.

These changes directly reflect demands from polluters and their favorite members of Congress, said Lukas Ross with the environmental group Friends of the Earth. Long before the coronavirus, the drillers were in deep trouble. Now frackers want to pay back their debts with our money. Trumps big oil bailout must be stopped.

For weeks, oil industry advocates have warned the original program structure would prevent beleaguered drillers from accessing capital under the program.

Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, and the Independent Petroleum Association of America argued oil companies needed more flexibility to use Main Street loans to repay existing debt -- something that was previously off limits but will now be allowed under some conditions.

Maximum loan totals under the Main Street program are also being hiked to $200 million -- from an earlier $150 million cap viewed as too low to help oil producers.

Great news out of the Fed today in support of struggling U.S. energy companies, Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette said in a tweet Thursday. He added that he would continue his work with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to provide other relief to the industry.

The Fed said the changes were not targeted to the oil and gas industry or any industry in particular but followed additional research into what slice of U.S. companies dont have ready access to capital markets.

Nevertheless, the new terms are likely to open it up to a wider group of energy firms, and overseers worried the Fed was bending to pressure.

The major changes announced today mirror the top requests of the oil and gas industry, said Bharat Ramamurti, a member of the congressional panel appointed to scrutinize implementation of the Feds and part of the Treasurys virus-relief programs.

That raises questions about how the changes promote the broader public interest -- especially when these companies will still have no real obligation to retain or rehire their workers, Ramamurti said on Twitter.

Credit Ratings

Even before the changes, oil and gas companies with investment-grade credit ratings could secure funding through a separate program, the Feds Primary and Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facilities.

However, under term sheets released April 9, funding was restricted to firms that had credit ratings of at least BBB-/Baa3 as of March 22 -- a cutoff date that could come too late for some oil producers, such as Occidental Petroleum Corp., which had its debt cut to junk by Moodys on March 18, with Fitch and S&P following on March 20 and March 25, respectively.

Republicans have argued that funding should be available to oil companies with credit ratings that slipped amid the coronavirus pandemic and a surge in crude unleashed by a Russia-Saudi Arabia battle for market share.

On Thursday, the Fed said lenders now will be able to apply their industry-specific expertise and underwriting standards to best measure a borrowers income.

Highly leveraged companies also can take advantage of a new, third loan option that comes with increased risk sharing by lenders.

It was not clear Thursday whether the changes would allow Occidental to qualify for aid -- or whether potentially newly eligible oil companies would seek it. Occidental declined to comment on the matter.

The Feds approach to tweaking the Main Street loan program avoids creating an oil industry-specific initiative that could be unpopular with the public or require approval from Congress, where Democrats are deeply opposed.

Fed emergency facilities are by law required to be broad-based, which in the central banks view prohibits lending aid to specific industries.

The oil industry itself has been split over government aid targeted to the sector. While some smaller, independent producers and their trade groups have clamored for government loans, the idea of industry-targeted aid has drawn resistance from larger, multinational oil companies better able to ride the rout as well as their top lobbying group, the American Petroleum Institute.

Industry opponents of targeted loans are concerned that taking taxpayer money now could cost them political capital in Washington and be used by drilling foes against the sector later.

You cant have capitalism on the way up and socialism on the way down, said American Petroleum Institute Senior Vice President Frank Macchiarola. The role of the government is to provide appropriate economic stabilization across the economy. We do not think the role of the government is to become the private economy.

2020 Bloomberg L.P.
APPLE, MEET ORANGE

Yeah, on this coronavirus, here we go. Were shutting down the whole country because of flu-like symptoms and youre talking about people dying. Over 600,000 people die of cancer in the United States every year. That amounts the 1,600 people a day. Now why arent we doing anything to try and solve this? Why havent they done it? Because theyre not putting the time into it. Thats what it is. So lets do this. Over 12 million people live in Pennsylvania, and 40,000 have the virus. We shut the whole damn place down. Its ridiculous. This is totally out of hand. These governors and mayors are overstepping their legal boundaries. Its unconstitutional, the stuff thats going on. People better realize it and get back to doing what they do best. Get out there and get to work.

EXPERIENCE COUNTS

We hope its clear to everyone including the Kool-Aid drinkers what the whole story of Bidens alleged sexual assaults is all about. Wonder how these stories originated. Could it be from the GOP, a group who was very experienced in defending their low-life leader and his numerous sexual assaults and all of the many lawsuits that are pending against him? And lets not forget his porn stars in Playboy. If the GOP is listening, Biden denied the allegations. And it wasnt Biden who wrote the check for $130,000. Was it Donnies flunkies? They hope people will forget draft dodger Dons many crimes against women. Nice try, GOP, but its not working. Its crystal clear to people what youre trying to do.

ALL LIES, ALL THE TIME

Why must Trump lie? Why is it he cannot open his mouth, even once, without stupid coming out? Why is he so delusional that even his own staff questions his mental stability? It is economics 101 that this country is headed for a recession and perhaps a lengthy one, not so much because of COVID-19 but because Trump preferred to ignore and lie about how the severe the virus was when he was actually told about it in January by leading scientists in the medical community. It amazes me that he is supporting demonstrators that want to reopen now, when it was because of his lack of leadership that we did not protect ourselves sooner so that the economic crises would not last as long and these very people could go back to work sooner. Nov. 3 cannot come soon enough to get rid of this bum!

VOTE

DEFINE NORMAL

Nancy Pelosi is a joke. She said Congress cant come back to work. She is disgraceful. States are opening up, stores are stocking shelves, farmers are working. But the elite-chosen Congress cant go back to Washington. Are they really serious ? They get big paychecks, but they dont have to work. People in our country are suffering, but Pelosi doesnt care. She can sit in San Francisco and eat her expensive ice cream. I hope the American people remember all this at election time. We have to get rid of Pelosi and her big-mouth friends in Congress and then get rid of Joe Biden the people who are endorsing him are also the evil left. Why cant we have a normal country again?

TRUST SCIENCE

People like Lowman Thomas, in his guest column of April 28, must belittle the seriousness of the pandemic as confirmed by actual scientists. After all, he is head of a free enterprise organization. His agenda is quite obvious, and its not to improve the science and the statistics. Its to get the economy going, despite the risks. And yes, almost all of us would like to get it going as well. However, whats the agenda of scientists to lie and inflate statistics? Lets put on our tin hats. For research grants? Because they are conspiring to destroy capitalism? Being paid by George Soros to get Trump? Just for the amusement of it? Ill take my chances with actual scientists.

JB

USE RESTRAINT

Today marks the 72nd anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel. And there are no parties. There are no barbecues. There are no get-togethers. No one in Israel is permitted to go over from their home by law. This virus thing is a worldwide thing and the sooner people exercise caution and restraint the sooner well have a handle on it.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-02 20:09:50|Editor: huaxia

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More than 3,000 prehistoric relics have been unearthed at a limestone hill in Sanming, China, which suggest human activities may have occurred some 180,000 years ago. This site of the Old Stone Age was saved from demolition, thanks to efforts made by Xi Jinping.
North and South Korea exchanged gunfire around the South's guard post early this morning, raising tension a day after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ended an almost three-week absence from public life causing speculation he had died.

North Korean troops fired multiple gunshots towards the South in the Demilitarized Zone dividing the peninsula early on Sunday, prompting South Korean forces to fire back.

Gunfire broke out between the two nations when North Korea fired a series of shots towards a guard post in South Korea that borders the North at 7.41am local time, the South's Joint Chiefs of Staffs said.

The JCS in Seoul said in a statement today that the guard post was hit by several shots from the North.

The rare exchange of gunfire comes a day after North Korean state media reported that leader Kim Jong-un had made his first public appearance in nearly three weeks following an absence that triggered intense speculation about his health and fears about the stability of the isolated nation.

Reports around the world speculated if Kim Jong-un had died during a medical procedure.

South Korea responded by firing two shots back towards North Korea, the JCS said.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on May 1 when he resurfaced following reports he had died. North Korea has fired multiple gunshots towards South Korea, the South's Joint Chiefs of Staffs said in a statement

Military guard posts of North Korea (rear) and South Korea (bottom) are seen in Paju, at the border with North Korea, South Korea, today

The South is taking action to try to 'grasp the detailed situation', it said.

'We are taking actions via inter-Korean communication lines to grasp the detailed situation and to prevent any further incidents,' the JCS statement read.

'And we also maintain a necessary readiness posture.'

It is not clear why the gunfire erupted, but no injuries have been reported on either side.

'Our military responded with two rounds of gunfire and a warning announcement,' the JCS said.

The South Korean military later said the North Korean gunshots were 'not deemed intentional', according to the Yonhap news agency.

In a lengthy briefing held later on Sunday, an official at South Korea's JCS said the gunshots did not seem a planned provocation, as the area where it ocurred was farmland, but declined to provide a clear conclusion about the incident.

'In absence of vision [for the target] and in the fog, would there be an accurate provocation?' the official said.

South Korean army soldiers patrolling along the barbed-wire fence in Paju, South Korea, near the border with North Korea last December. Today there was an exchange of fire at the border

A North Korean flag fluttering in the wind at a military guard post in Paju, at the border with North Korea, today

But Choi Kang, vice president of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, said he believed the timing of the 'grey area' provocation shows it could been planned to show that Kim was still in charge of the North Korean military.

'Yesterday, Kim was trying to show he is perfectly healthy, and today, Kim is trying to mute all kinds of speculation that he may not have full control over the military,' Choi said.

'Rather than going all the way by firing missiles and supervising a missile launch, Kim could be reminding us, ''yes I'm healthy and I'm still in power''.'

The two neighbours regularly open fire on each other and technically remain in a constant state of war after the Korean War ended in a truce in 1953, but not a peace treaty.

Despite its name, the Demilitarized Zone is one of the most fortified places on earth, replete with minefields and barbed-wire fences.

Both sides have troops poised along the 155-mile border ready to open fire on the other side at any point.

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Easing military tensions on their border was one of the agreements reached between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in at a summit in Pyongyang in September 2018.

But most of the deals have not been acted on by North Korea, with Pyongyang largely cutting off contact with Seoul.

North Korea's discussions with the United States over Pyongyang's nuclear arsenal are also at a standstill, despite three meetings between Kim and US President Donald Trump.

Increased tensions between the two nations comes as Kim Jong-un was seen for the first time in three weeks on Friday.

Speculation concerning the controversial leader's health began to gain momentum after he failed to turn up at the celebration of his grandfather's birthday on April 13, one of the country's biggest calendar events.

A watch tower in North Korea pictured in 2017: A series of gunshots were fired from North Korea at 7:41 am local time towards a guard post in South Korea that borders the North, the JCS said

North Korea soldiers near the border in 2017: South Korea responded by firing two shots back towards North Korea, the JCS said

Rumors and reports grew that he had died.

But North Korea's supreme leader then emerged alive, as he was pictured cutting the ribbon at the opening of a fertiliser factory Friday.

He 'attended the ceremony' at the Sunchon Phosphatic Fertiliser Factory on Friday and 'all the participants broke into thunderous cheers of 'hurrah!'' when he appeared, the Korean Central News Agency said.

The dictator was seen smiling and talking to aides at the ceremony and also touring the plant, but the authenticity of the photos could not be verified.

The uncertainty around the peace process would have increased had Kim been incapacitated or dead as rumoured in recent weeks.

He was accompanied by several senior North Korean officials including his younger sister Kim Yo Jong, Korean Central News Agency said.

There continues to be speculation over why he has not been seen in such a long time, including that he had complications after heart surgery or was suffering from the coronavirus.

South Korean soldiers patrol along a barbed wire fence in the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea

According to medical experts who viewed footage of the dictator's return, Kim Jong-un's wrist suggests he could have had heart surgery.

US-funded NK News reported that marks on Kim's arms show he has had a 'cardiovascular procedure'.

What appeared to be needle marks could be seen on his wrists while he rode in a golf cart that looked a lot like the one he used in 2014, when he returned to the public eye with a cane after some time away.

Kim has not been seen with marks on his wrists before.

Ewha University international affairs professor Leif-Eric Easley in Seoul said the shooting incident could be aimed at boosting morale in the North Korean military.

'The Kim regime may be looking to raise morale of its frontline troops and to regain any negotiating leverage lost during the rumor-filled weeks of the leader's absence,' said Easley.

'South Korea and the United States should not take lightly such North Korean violations of existing military agreements.'

President Donald Trump celebrated the dictator's apparent return to the public eye in a social media post Saturday, stating he is glad to see him back in good health after rumors he had died.

The president retweeted pictures of Kim at the fertilizer factory and wrote: 'I, for one, am glad to see he is back, and well!'

It is unclear whether the White House has authenticated the pictures released by North Korean state media.

Before Kim's reappearance, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last month that he remained hopeful a nuclear deal could be clinched with North Korea.

'Regardless of what transpires inside of North Korea with respect to their leadership, our mission remains the same - to deliver on that commitment that Chairman Kim made with President Trump...[the] verified denuclearisation of North Korea,' Pompeo told reporters.

'We are still hopeful that we'll find a path to negotiate that solution to get the outcome that is good for the American people, good for the North Korean people and for the whole world.'



Has Kim Jong-un had heart surgery? Medical experts say 'needle' marks on his arms in newly released pictures could hint at procedure





Marks on North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's wrist suggests he could have had heart surgery, say medical experts.

The despot made his first alleged public appearance for 20 days yesterday when he cut the ribbon at the opening of a fertiliser factory in Sunchon, according to state media.

Medical experts have assessed video footage of the visit and claim marks on Kim's arms show he has had a 'cardiovascular procedure', US-funded NK News reported.

The dictator was seen smiling and talking to aides at the ceremony and also touring the plant, but the authenticity of the photos could not be verified.

He was accompanied by several senior North Korean officials including his younger sister Kim Yo Jong, Korean Central News Agency said.

Medical experts have assessed video footage of the visit and claim marks on North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's arms (pictured) show he has had a 'cardiovascular procedure', US-funded NK News reported

When Kim last appeared in public on April 11 (pictured) he did not have any marks on his wrists

What appeared to be needle marks could be seen on his wrists while he rode in a golf cart that looked a lot like the one he used in 2014, when he returned to the public eye with a cane after some time away.

Asked about the KCNA report, US President Donald Trump said: 'I'd rather not comment on it yet. We'll have something to say about it at the appropriate time.'

Speculation about Kim's health has been rife after he missed the birth anniversary celebrations of state founder Kim Il Sung on April 15.

The day is a major holiday in North Korea and Kim as leader usually pays a visit to the mausoleum where his grandfather lies in state.

He last made a public appearance on April 11 attending a meeting of the ruling Workers' Party politburo.

Kim has not been seen with marks on his wrists before.

Following his absence from the anniversary, a South Korean news outlet specialising on the North reported Kim was recovering after undergoing a cardiovascular procedure.

The despot (pictured with his younger sister Kim Yo Jong) cut the ribbon at the opening of a fertiliser factory in Sunchon, state media reported, and released pictures supposedly showing the event

A flurry of other unconfirmed reports about his condition and his whereabouts followed including from vice director of Hong Kong Satellite Television Shijian Xingzou who claimed he was dead. Officials in South Korea and the US were sceptical.

The former top US diplomat for East Asia Daniel Russel said the pieces of the puzzle of Kim's disappearance would take time to assemble.

His reappearance showed authoritative information about the well-being and whereabouts of a North Korean leader were very closely guarded, and rumours about him needed to be regarded with considerable skepticism, Russel said.

The rumours had, however, served to focus attention on North Korea's succession plan, which 'in a monarchical and cult-like dictatorship is filled with risk, and the absence of a designated adult heir compounds that risk many times over,' Russel said.

Earlier, a source familiar with US intelligence analyses and reporting said US agencies believed Kim was not ill and remained very much in power.

'We think he's still in charge,' the source said on condition of anonymity. The source could not immediately confirm the KCNA report. The State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Kim 'attended the ceremony' on Friday and 'all participants broke into thunderous cheers of 'hurrah!' when he appeared, the Korean Central News Agency said. Pictured is an image shared by the agency on Saturday

South Korean Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul, who oversees engagement with Pyongyang, said it was plausible Kim was absent as a precaution over the coronavirus pandemic, in view of the stringent steps taken to head off an outbreak in the country.

Harry Kazianis, senior director of Korean studies at the Center for the National Interest think tank in Washington, said this still could be the case.

He said: 'The most likely explanation for Kim's absence is with North Korea declaring the coronavirus pandemic an existential threat... he most likely was taking steps to ensure his health or may have been impacted in some way personally by the virus.'

In his appearance at the fertiliser factory, Kim expressed satisfaction about the production system and said the plant made a significant contribution to the progress of the country's chemical industry and food production, KCNA said.



Memes surfaced across social media in the West today in response to the report that the dictator has been out and about.

This image released by Korean Central News Agency supposedly shows Kim Jong-un (centre) attending the ceremony next to his sister (pictured third from left) and other senior officials on Friday

This picture from state media supposedly shows the mass celebrations as Kim opened the fertiliser factory in Sunchon

One said 'Kim Jong-un with the best comeback of 2020', while another posted a picture comparing the dictator to the wrestler the Undertaker. A man wrote 'so Kim Jong-un is alive and well' above a picture of Spiderman looking unsure.

Kim Jong-un's last known movements April 11 - The dictator presides over a meeting of the ruling Workers' Party committee of policymakers. His most recent public appearance April 15 - Kim is absent from celebrations for North Korea's founding father and Kim's grandfather, Kim Il Sung April 21 - First reports surface claiming the dictator has received heart surgery from South Korean-based publication Daily NK April 23 - Kim's private train is spotted near his holiday resort in Wonsan on satellite images. It is at a station reserved for use by the Kim family, prompting rumours that he has travelled to the destination April 23 - Chinese doctors reportedly arrive in North Korea around this time to treat the dictator. China is yet to confirm or deny the reports May 1 - Pictures emerge of the dictator apparently at a fertiliser factory in Sunchon with his sister Advertisement

While another added 'North Korean state media release photo of Kim Jong-un' with a picture a man being held up by two others.

The news appears to fly in the face of a report earlier on Friday from a North Korean defector claiming he was '99 per cent sure' Kim was dead.

Ji Seong-ho claimed to South Korea's Yonhap news agency he had been 'told Kim died last weekend' after cardiovascular surgery.

The defector said Kim's sister Kim Yo-jong was in line to succeed her brother but said the secretive state was 'grappling with a complicated succession issue'. State-controlled media in North Korea had not provided any definitive proof Kim was alive.

But there was a sign of life earlier on Friday as Daily NK reported the regime had issued a directive signed by Kim himself, the first in two weeks.

Ji, a defector who was elected to the South's parliament earlier this year, is the latest to suggest Kim might have died after heart surgery.

'I've wondered how long he could have endured after cardiovascular surgery. I've been informed that Kim died last weekend,' he said.

'It is not 100 per cent certain, but I can say the possibility is 99 per cent. North Korea is believed to be grappling with a complicated succession issue.'

Pyongyang has never made any succession plans public, but experts say Kim's sister has been the most visible presence around the dictator in recent years.

Kim (pictured) expressed satisfaction about the production system of the fertiliser factory, saying the plant made significant contribution for the progress of the country's chemical industry and food production, KCNA said

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center right, his wife Ri Sol Ju, right, Chinese President Xi Jinping, centre left, and his wife Peng Liyuan taken on June 20, 2019

She was named an alternate member of the ruling Workers' Party's powerful Central Committee Politburo last month.

North Korea is the world's most secretive country and reports about Kim and his family, including the suggestion he recently had heart surgery, are nearly impossible to verify.

But other defectors have cast doubt on whether such sensitive information would ever leak out from Kim's inner circle.

Some defectors say their relatives in North Korea did not know Kim had been missing from public view for three weeks.

One said people had been talking about Kim's whereabouts in very private circles after he failed to appear at the ruling party showpiece on April 15.

Kim's unprecedented absence from the Day of the Sun ceremony honouring his grandfather prompted the major speculation about his welfare.

South Korean people watch a TV broadcasting a news report on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Seoul, South Korea, April 21. China has dispatched a team to North Korea including medical experts to advise on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, according to three people familiar with the situation

Defector Lee Soon-hee said: 'I talked to my sister and my niece this morning and they had no clue about these reports and rumours about Kim Jong Un's health.

'When I told them, they were so cautious about discussing it. North Koreans have a very limited knowledge of these things.' Lee defected to the South in 2009.

North Koreans are keenly aware they could face punishment for discussing the Kim family, said Sokeel Park, of Liberty in North Korea, a group that works with defectors.

Who could take over the reigns of power from Kim Jong-un when he dies? Kim Yo-jong, dictator's sister The dictator's sister has been widely tipped as a likely successor. However, much about her remains a mystery. 'Among the North's power elite, she has the highest chance to inherit power, and I think that is possibly more than 90 per cent,' an analyst told the Associated Press. Her age is unclear, though she's believed to be in her 30s and a few year's younger than her 36-year-old brother. She's kept a low profile, only making her first public statement last month in which she mocked South Korea as a 'frightened dog barking' after the country protested against a live fire military exercise. She also has a reputation for aggressively pushing North Korean propaganda and, in 2017, was blacklisted by the US Treaasury Department. Ri Pyong-chol, top general and related to Kim's wife The general has also been listed as a possible successor. As supervisor of the country's ballistic missile program, he has the credentials to command the military, the ultimate power-brokers inside the country. He is also seen as a credible heir to Kim Jong Un's ambitions, and could be regarded as offering a balance between the hard-liners and Kim dynasty. He also holds a high position in the Worker's Party of Korea. Other possible successors include Ri Yong-ho, foreign minister, Kim Yong-chol, top diplomat, and No Kwang-chol, defence minister. Advertisement

He said: 'That doesn't mean people don't take that risk, some people do. But it's still a super sensitive issue. It's a little like the pope not showing up for Christmas,' he said of Kim's absence from the April 15 celebrations.

South Korean officials say they have not detected any 'unusual movements' north of the demilitarised zone.

The South's minister in charge of North Korean affairs said on Tuesday fear of coronavirus could have kept Kim away from the April 15 ceremony.

President Trump said yesterday: 'I understand what is going on, I cannot just talk about him right now, just hoping that everything will be fine. But I do understand the situation very well'.

Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe has said he was aware of reports on Kim's health and was paying close attention to developments.

Still, experts said it was strange North Korea had not quickly release a picture of a healthy-looking Kim if there was no truth to the rumours.

Official media has not provided any verifiable proof of life since April 11, other than reporting he had sent messages to North Korean workers and to South Africa's president Cyril Ramaphosa and the pictures of him in Sunchon.

Another defector-turned-politician, Thae Yong-ho, warned only a small handful of people would know the full story.

He also cautioned clues about Kim's whereabouts - such as an apparent sighting of his personal train in the city of Wonsan - could be deliberate diversion tactics.

Pyongyang officials know the train can be seen from satellites and have previously sent it around the country to confuse outsiders, Thae said.

The sighting of the train was followed by further satellite images from Wonsan showing boats often used by Kim and his entourage.

North Korea has never announced who would succeed Kim Jong Un in the event he is incapacitated and with no details known about his young children, analysts say his sister and loyalists could form a regency until a successor is old enough to take over.

Each change at the top in North Korea has raised the prospect of a leadership vacuum or collapse of the Kim dynasty, which has ruled the country since its founding in 1948.

So far, each of the three Kims to rule North Korea has defied expectations, holding on to power with an iron grip.

But under Kim Jong Un, North Korea's arsenal of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles has grown substantially, raising concerns over who would control them.

US President Donald Trump and North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un stand on North Korean soil while walking to South Korea in the Demilitarized Zone on June 30, 2019

In the event of any leadership transition, Kim Jong Un's younger sister Kim Yo Jong is likely to play a central part.

In the past two years, Yo Jong has risen quickly through North Korea's leadership hierarchy, serving officially as a vice director of the Workers' Party's powerful Central Committee, but also unofficially as her brother's chief of staff.

Kim Yo Jong, who is believed to be 31, has a firm control of key party functions, setting herself to be the main source of power behind a collective leadership.

She has regularly been observed at her brother's side, leading South Korean Media to dub her the 'Ivanka Trump of North Korea'.

'Kim Yo Jong will be for the time being the main power base with control of the organisation and guidance department, the judiciary and public security,' said Cho Han-bum of the Korea Institute for National Unification, a government-funded think-tank in Seoul.

Experts have suggested that Kim's sister Kim Yo-jong (pictured together in Pyongyang in September 2018) could be in line to succeed her brother if necessary

Still, relatively little is known of of Kim Yo Jong. The dictator's younger sibling has routinely kept a low profile, having only made her first public statement last month, in which she mocked South Korea as being a 'frightening dog barking', for opposing a live-fire military demonstration.

But sources say Yo Jong's work behind the scenes suggests she would rule with the same iron-fist as her predecessors, should she be announced leader, temporarily or otherwise.

Along with several other North Korean officials, Kim Yo Jong was blacklisted by the US Treasury Department for 'severe human rights abuses' in 2017.

She also incurred a reputation for her aggressive propaganda pushing, regarded a one of the main officials who worked to enact 'rigid censorship policies and conceals its inhumane and oppressive behavior'.

'Among the North's power elite, Kim Yo Jong has the highest chance to inherit power, and I think that possibility is more than 90 per cent,' an analyst said.

Yo Jong first began working in the ruling party in 2007, but in the last few years she has 'gotten a lot more serious' about the role she's playing, government consultant Michael Madden told the New Yorker.

'When you see footage of her on the receiving lines, she is smiling, a nice friendly young woman, but when she is out of those lines, the smile vanishes and she even looks like Kim Jong Il,' Madden remarked.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un pictured on December 4, 2019. The trip by the Chinese doctors and officials comes amid conflicting reports about the health of the North Korean leader

Should she be announced as ruler, Yo Jong would become North Korea's first female leader since her Grandfather Kim Il-Sung founded the nation in 1948.

In the event of Kim Jong Un's death, party Elders Choe Ryong Hae and Pak Pong Ju would likely find themselves at Yo Jong's side, helping to weather any leadership storm.

Ryong Hae was announced as North Korea's nominal head of state last when he rose to become president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, following decades of service within the party for the ruing Kim family.

Choe and Pak Pong Ju, a fellow politburo member and former state premier who oversaw the North's push to introduce more free-market functions to revive its economy, are likely to be the figureheads leading a collective leadership, analysts say.

Unlikely to emerge as a major presence is Kim Jong Un's estranged older brother, Kim Jong Chol, who has not been a part of the country's leadership instead opting for a quite life away from politics playing music.

Though according to North Korea's former deputy ambassador in London, who has since defected to the South, Jong Chol does maintain ties with his siblings and could play a more public role in any contingency plans.

Kim Jong Un is believed to have three children with Ri Sol Ju, the youngest born in 2017, according to the South's National Intelligence Service.

The oldest is a 10-year-old son, meaning any of the three would need the assistance of their relatives or political guardians if they were to become a fourth-generation hereditary leader.

Kim Jong Il had been groomed for 20 years to lead the country, while Kim Jong Un had just over a year to prepare, due to his father's sudden death from a heart attack.

This social media user found inspiration for Kim's reappearance from the 55-year-old WWE Wrestler Mark William Calaway, better known as The Undertaker, who makes a dramatic entrance to the ring

Go Myong-hyun, a research fellow at the Asian Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, said: 'Kim Yo Jong is unlikely to take over the helm but could help build a caretaker regime as a power broker until the kids grow up, and Kim Jong Chol might return to help for a while.'

This is not the first time Kim has disappeared from the public eye. In 2014, Kim was not seen for 40 days, before he reemerged appearing to walk with a limp and using a cane, after he reportedly suffered from an ankle problem.

His father Kim Jong-il disappeared from view for months in 2008, prompting speculation that he had a stroke. A French doctor later confirmed the reports, and the then leader died three years later.

But North Korea's ruling elite have vanished from the spotlight before prompting rumors of their death only to re-emerge seemingly unscathed.

In 2015 it was claimed by a North Korean defector Kim ordered his own aunt to be killed by poison. The aunt, Kim Kyong-hui, re-appeared smiling in January.

A delegation led by a senior member of the Chinese Communist Party's International Liaison Department left Beijing for North Korea last month, two of the people said. The department is the main Chinese body dealing with neighbouring North Korea.

Others compared Kim Jong-un's reappearance like the resurrection of Jon Snow in Game of Thrones

Daily NK, a Seoul-based website, reported earlier last month Kim was recovering after undergoing a cardiovascular procedure on April 12. It cited one unnamed source in North Korea.

South Korean government officials and a Chinese official with the Liaison Department challenged subsequent reports suggesting Kim was in grave danger after surgery. South Korean officials said they had detected no signs of unusual activity in North Korea.

North Korea is one of the world's most isolated and secretive countries, and the health of its leaders is treated as a matter of state security. Reuters has not been able to independently confirm any details on Kim's whereabouts or condition.

North Korea's state media last reported on Kim's whereabouts when he presided over a meeting on April 11. State media did not report he was in attendance at an event to mark the birthday of his grandfather - an important anniversary in North Korea.

Kim, believed to be 36, has disappeared from coverage in North Korean state media before. In 2014, he vanished for more than a month and North Korean state TV later showed him walking with a limp.

Speculation about his health has been fanned by his heavy smoking, apparent weight gain since taking power and family history of cardiovascular problems.

When Kim Jong Un's father Kim Jong Il suffered a stroke in 2008, South Korean media reported at the time that Chinese doctors were involved in his treatment along with French physicians.

Last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping made the first state visit in 14 years by a Chinese leader to North Korea, an impoverished state that depends on Beijing for economic and diplomatic support.

Another users suggested those who predicted Kim's death should now be very worried

China is North Korea's chief ally and the economic lifeline for a country hard-hit by U.N. sanctions, and has a keen interest in the stability of the country with which it shares a long, porous border.

Kim is a third-generation hereditary leader who came to power after his father Kim Jong Il died in 2011 from a heart attack. He has visited China four times since 2018.

Trump held unprecedented summits with Kim in 2018 and 2019 as part of a bid to persuade him to give up North Korea's nuclear arsenal.

'The North Korean version of Undertaker': Internet reacts to claims Kim Jong-un is alive after photos of dictator are released for the first time in 20 days following rumours he had died

ByDarren Boyle for MailOnline

Twitter users rejoiced following the return to public life of North Korean despot Kim Jong-un.

Several reports from the hermit state suggested Kim, who is believed to be in his late 30s, could have undergone major surgery or even possibly died.

He had not been seen in public since April 11 and missed the national celebrations for his grandfather and founder of North Korea, Kim Il Sung on April 15.

However, North Korea's state news agency KCNA released photographs of a smiling Kim inspecting a fertiliser plant outside Pyongyang.

The report said Kim cut a ribbon as the crowd 'burst into thunderous cheers of 'hurrah!' for the Supreme Leader...'.

Twitter users questioned the authenticity of the photographs, with memes ripped from The Simpsons and Weekend at Bernies.

One twitter user posted a publicity shot from the 1989 buddy movie Weekend at Bernie's which involves two friends carrying around body of their dead boss pretending he was still alive

Another comedy fan used a Simpsons meme where a patient's condition is upgraded from 'dead' to 'alive' after being transferred to a better hospital, while another used an image of WWE wrestler The Undertaker

Kim was seen in photographs smiling and talking to aides at the ribbon-cutting ceremony and also touring the plant. The authenticity of the photos, published on the website of the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper, could not be verified.

Many in the large crowd of people, described as officials of the army, the ruling party and the community who worked on the project, were wearing face masks and standing some distance from the podium where Kim and his aides took part in the ceremony.

North Korea has not reported any cases of the coronavirus and has said it has been taking tough measures to prevent an outbreak. One reason for Kim's absence has been the suggestion he may have been taking precautions against coronavirus.

Kim was accompanied by senior North Korean officials, including his younger sister Kim Yo Jong and top aides vice-chairman Pak Pong Ju of the State Affairs Commission and cabinet premier Kim Jae Ryong, and KCNA said.

This twitter user predicts Kim Jong-un will seek retribution on those who claimed he had died

This social media wag posted an image of a man in an iron lung which was previously used to treat patients suffering from tuberculosis

Asked about the KCNA report on Kim, U.S. President Donald Trump said: 'I'd rather not comment on it yet.'

'We'll have something to say about it at the appropriate time,' he told reporters at the White House.

Speculation about Kim's health has been rife after he missed the birth anniversary celebrations of state founder Kim Il Sung on April 15. The day is a major holiday in North Korea and Kim as leader usually pays a visit to the mausoleum where his grandfather lies in state.

This person appears to be sceptical about the announcement from North Korea

This social media wag posted an image of a man in an iron lung which was previously used to treat patients suffering from tuberculosis

He last made a public appearance on April 11 attending a meeting of the ruling Workers' Party politburo.

Following his absence from the anniversary, a South Korean news outlet specialising on the North reported that Kim was recovering after undergoing a cardiovascular procedure. A flurry of other unconfirmed reports about his condition and his whereabouts followed.

Officials in South Korea and the United States expressed scepticism about the reports.

State TV footage on Saturday showed Kim's leg movements appearing stiff and jerky and one of the images showed a green golf cart in the background, similar to one he used in 2014 after a lengthy public absence.
The Andhra Pradesh government's



first priority will be to bring back stranded migrant workers, tourists, pilgrims and students even as thousands of citizens stuck in foreign countries and various states of the country are seeking to return after the Centre relaxed norms on their movement during the lockdown, a senior official said on Sunday.

The state government has identified over 10,500 AP citizens currently caught "in distress" in various foreign countries for a variety of reasons, including expiration of visa duration.

In the Gulf region alone there were 6,000 of them, waiting to return to the state.

And, thousands more are held up in various states across the country.

There are 9,000 persons stranded in Rajasthan and another 5,500 in Madhya Pradesh.

Another 1,100 persons are in Odisha.

"The Rajasthan government has informed us about our citizens who are seeking to return. We are collecting their details and giving consent accordingly by coordinating with the Rajasthan government," Principal Secretary (Transport) M T Krishna Babu said here.

The NRIs and other visitors abroad have been asked to register with the Ministry of External Affairs to facilitate their return.

"These people have to be quarantined upon their return and we are making arrangements accordingly," Krishna Babu said.

Regarding those stranded in other states, the Principal Secretary said their first priority was bringing back migrant workers, tourists, pilgrims and students.

"Those willing to return could register their details at the portal - "spandana.ap.gov.in" and we will facilitate their movement after getting the consent from the state they are currently in. We are also coordinating with other states to ensure hassle-free movement of our people," Krishna Babu added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The death toll from the novel coronavirus in UK hospitals, care homes and the wider community rose by 315 to hit 28,446 on Sunday, the latest government figures revealed.

The latest figures indicate that the UK's toll is now edging closer to that in Italy, one of the worst hit countries in the pandemic where the figure stands at 28,710 this week.

UK C



abinet Office minister Michael Gove announced the figures at the daily 10 Downing Street briefing as he also confirmed that Prime Minister Boris Johnson will be laying out a detailed plan next week to start easing the economy out of the current lockdown.

We're consulting with employers and unions, professionals and public health experts, to establish how we can ensure that we have the safest possible working environments, and the Prime Minister will be saying more, the minister said.

He also confirmed a pilot in the Isle of Wight region of Britain of a new contact tracing app created by the digital arm of the state-funded National Health Service, NHSX, that could alert users when they have come into contact with someone who has coronavirus symptoms and should seek a Covid-19 test. After the pilot of the "test, track and trace procedures" on the island, the app is expected to be made more widely available later this month.

Gove went on to pay tribute to Muslims currently celebrating Ramzan during lockdown.

He said: "For those experiencing the first Ramzan without a loved one, this will be a particularly painful time.

"As with Christians who could not celebrate Easter together in church, and the Jewish community whose Passover rituals were affected by social distancing, our thoughts are with Muslim neighbours who cannot break their fast together and must adapt their religious and cultural practices because of the crisis."



Professor Stephen Powis, the National Medical Director of NHS England, who joined the minister at the daily briefing said the number of hospital admissions for coronavirus, as well as the number of occupied critical care beds were "continuing to fall" across the country.

He reiterated that the falling number of deaths also indicated that we were past the peak of the virus in the UK.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Wellington: Pressure is building on New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to ease the nation's successful lockdown measures.

Nowhere is the call to action stronger than the regions where cases are low but plenty of Kiwis are out of work.

Four of New Zealand's 20 district health regions report no active cases, including Wairarapa which has logged no new cases in 31 days.

On South Island's rugged West Coast, it's been 28 days since a new case, and local mayor Tania Gibson said frustration was growing.
Matthew Matthiessen, chief executive of John C. Fremont hospital, has his temperature taken by EMT Doug Michael in Mariposa, Calif. All employees at the hospital are screened before they are allowed to go to work. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Dr. Eric Sergienko was already in his office early last Tuesday when his cellphone pinged with the message he had been both expecting and dreading.

A 23-year-old woman in Mariposa County  the scenic, lightly populated mountain community Sergienko serves as health officer  had tested positive for COVID-19. It was 7:13 a.m., a time that has become seared in Sergienkos memory the way others mark the birth of a child or the initial tremors of an earthquake.

More than 53,000 Californians have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, but in Mariposa County, Tuesdays result was the first.

Though the case marked the arrival of a potentially deadly pathogen, it also allowed Sergienko to launch a contact-tracing system he had been working on for weeks, one of the final planks of a well-constructed response platform the county has been building for months.

I like the idea of zero, Sergienko said hours after the county had lost its perfect record, its initial COVID-19 patient in isolation at home. But I also like the idea of one because I really do think its validation that what you were planning for actually worked.

Hailey Boland, 20, a certified nursing assistant at John C. Fremont hospital, is swabbed for a COVID-19 test at a Mariposa school gym. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

If the pandemics rapid and deadly spread across the U.S. has exposed government incompetence and lack of preparation in other communities, in Mariposa County the tiny Health and Human Services Agency has offered a textbook example of how to handle a crisis. The county's first confirmed infection comes at a time of growing protests over stay-at-home orders and demands by other rural California counties that Gov. Gavin Newsom reopen the state.

Mariposa County's health agency began tracking the virus in December, before many in the country even knew it existed. By mid-January, nearly a week before the first confirmed COVID-19 case in the U.S, a countywide response plan was in place.

And when Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in mid-March that all Californians were being required to stay at home as much as possible, the Mariposa County Sheriffs Office, utilizing lessons it had learned during the Detwiler fire that swept through the area nearly three years earlier, immediately alerted the county's 18,000 residents, spread over more than 1,400 square miles, to heed the order.

Story continues

Joy Shultz, a shopkeeper at the Sierra Mercantile in Mariposa, said she has tried to remain optimistic amid the state's coronavirus shutdown. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Within two hours, said Joy Shultz, a shopkeeper in Mariposas historic city center, there was no one in town.

Much of the credit for that goes to Sergienko, a tireless 56-year-old former Navy captain who regularly commuted to his former job in epidemiology at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta by running the seven miles from home to work. Like Mariposa County's own version of leading infectious-disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, he has loomed large over the local fight against the coronavirus' spread.

We were ready for this, said Chevon Kothari, director of the county's Health and Human Services Agency. We worked together as a team during previous disasters, so we already had some of this planning process in place. But in addition, weve had the luxury of time to not have cases early on. So we had the ability to plan.

Sergienko said he first read of COVID-19 on New Years Eve, when an international organization that monitors infectious diseases sent an email alert about a strange virus that had emerged in Wuhan, China.

While others ignored the warning, Sergienko alerted Kothari, and two weeks later they informed county supervisors of what could be a danger for a community that sees 4.5 million visitors pass through each year, most on their way to Yosemite National Park, 31 miles to the east.

A lone figure makes his way past closed shops along Highway 140 in the heart of Mariposa. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Most storefronts in Mariposa have been closed since the state stay-at-home order went into effect. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

The important thing was early recognition. We were already leaning forward and saying, OK, what do we need as a county to be prepared? Sergienko said.

I threw out a bunch of ideas, and people said, Lets run with this.

Mariposa is among Californias smallest counties, and its also one of the oldest, dating to 1847 when an agent for John C. Fremont, who would go on to become one of California's first two senators, mistakenly purchased the desolate Rancho Las Mariposas, then part of Mexico.

A year later, when gold was discovered in Northern California, Mariposa became the southern end of the mother lode and blossomed.

The town has kept that pioneer feel, with the stretch of Highway 140 that splits the center of town resembling a western movie set more than a central business district. Some of the local politicians still wear cowboy hats and bolo ties, but tourism, not gold, drives the economy now.

And that was shut down when Yosemite was closed because of the pandemic in mid-March.

I like the idea of zero. But I also like the idea of one because I really do think its validation that what you were planning for actually worked.

Dr. Eric Sergienko, Mariposa County health officer

Mariposa County Health Officer Eric Sergienko, left, and health services director Chevon Kothari stand in front of a whiteboard listing COVID-19 stats  with just one case in Mariposa at the time. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Its a ghost town, said Joan Gamble from behind the counter at Sierra Mercantile, where protective masks are now for sale alongside Yosemite hoodies and tiny carved black bears. The park closed, the stores closed. Everything. Its just something we felt we had to do.

Credit Sergienko for that too. Social distancing wasnt a difficult sell in a county where the minimum parcel size in rural areas is 5 acres, but he also won people over on the need to wear face coverings and repeatedly wash their hands.

So when the order came to close down business and schools, most people were already on board.

They are pretty lockstep in [that] they dont want to open up too soon, Travis Medlock, who operates a ramen restaurant out of a closed 1950s-style diner, said of the business community. While the businesses dont like it, they completely understand.

They are very concerned of opening the park back up. That is just going to bring the Bay Area, the valley, L.A. up here. Weve been locked down pretty secure [but] as soon as they open the floodgates there, were concerned its going to open the floodgates here.

Travis Medlock, owner of Little Shop of Ramen, looks over a row of empty stools inside his restaurant along Highway 140 in Mariposa. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Medlock said the county has had his back in other ways too, sending office staffers for takeout meals to help his fledgling restaurant stay afloat.

Sergienko, whose quirky, slightly nerdy personality is as infectious as the coronavirus hes battling, likes to refer to protective bubbles. A bubble can cover a single person or an entire community, but if anything pierces that bubble, it breaks and leaves everyone inside exposed.

That Mariposas bubble was strong was evidenced by the fact it is surrounded on all sides by counties with more than 200 cases and half a dozen deaths combined.

Minutes after that bubble finally burst Tuesday morning, Sergienko moved to patch the hole, dispatching a contact-tracing team including two health professionals and a sheriffs detective as well as a probation officer and an investigator with the district attorneys office.

Bill Evans, a 72-year-old retired computer programmer who has been living in Mariposa since 2004, walks home along Highway 140. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Calvin Kimbro and his nephew Kaden go to pick up a pizza at one of the few restaurants offering takeout along Highway 140 in Mariposa. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

They began searching for anyone who may have come in contact with a Mariposa resident who tested positive in a hospital in neighboring Madera County after traveling internationally.

We really recognized early on we needed to build up a team that was beyond what we had in public health capacity to do, Kothari said of contact tracing, a key tool in halting the spread of infectious disease. Who better than people who are used to investigating? So probation officers, D.A. investigators all got trained in contact tracing pretty early.

Now a lot of counties are emulating that, a lot of counties are pulling in their law enforcement partners to help with that. Theyre really good at contact tracing.

Within hours, 25 people had been identified. When half of those tested positive over the next three days, Sergienko's team already had them in quarantine, protecting the rest of the community and validating his plan.

We know where everyone is. So weve nipped off that bud of transmission, said Sergienko, whose county now has 13 confirmed cases. The team was ready for it. The team stepped up and did what they needed to do.

With COVID-19 now present in the community, Mariposa County is shoring up other defensive measures. Thursday it opened a testing center in a middle school gym with a goal of administering 132 free tests a day, about five times the recommended number for a population of 18,000.

A woman peers out from the second story of the Mariposa Hotel Inn along Highway 140. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Another protective measure requires county employees to enter vital information such as body temperature and other symptoms into a phone app each morning, giving the health department more data points to track. Kothari hopes to have all county businesses using the app when the stay-at-home order is lifted.

When that happens, and Mariposas main roads again become clogged with summer vacationers headed for Yosemite or weekend visitors taking in the scenery, that will be the next test for the protective bubble Kothari and Sergienko have designed.

Their team is working on a plan for that too.
New Delhi: India continued to see a spike in the number of coronavirus COVID-19 infections within the past day with the total count crossing at 40,263 cases and 1,307 fatalities, the total includes 10,887 recovered cases.

As many as 2,487 fresh cases and 87 deaths have been reported by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in its latets update on Sunday (May 3, 2020). This has been the sharpest increase in the number of COVID-19 infections for the country. Though, Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan has maintianed that India`s COVID-19 mortality rate of 3.2% is the lowest in the world.

In Mumbai, 441 new COVID-19 infections and 21 deaths were reported on Sunday taking the city total to 8,613 with the death toll at 343 and the state's tally to 12,296 cases and 521 deaths. While the state government has decided to allow shops selling non-essential items including liquor shops to open in green, orange and red zone areas, which are non-containment zones.

While Delhi has reported 384 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday taking the total number of infections to 4,122 with 64 fatalities. The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) headquarters in Delhi has been sealed for sanitisation after the personal staff member of a top-ranking officer was found COVID-19 positive.

In Uttar Pradesh the number of cases rose to 2,645 with 158 fresh cases on Sunday the virus has claimed 43 lives in the state so far.

Meanwhile, the Indian Army, Indian Air Force and Indian Navy joined hands on Sunday to express their gratitude to the healthcare workers, police, and forces who are battling the COVID-19 pandemic. Synchronised flypasts, lit-up ships and musical tributes by army bands outside hospitals were organised in Delhi, Mumbai, Srinagar, Hyderabad, Itanagar.

As India gears for the third phase of lockdown, several restrictions have been lifted and many states have announced the opening of shops selling non-essential items like clothes, shoes, stationery, paan, ciggarettes and liquor from Monday.
Councilman Jeff Larson, R-At-large, said LaPorte County is way out in front of us in seeking federal and other assistance.

There are some releases on some of that funding that we kind of missed, he said.

In other funding matters, the Porter Council accepted $22,000 from the Porter County Council on Aging. It doesn't currently doesn't need the money to offer transportation to senior citizens and gave out all but $2,000 of it to the County Council to meet needs that have arisen as a result of the pandemic.

All of the $20,000 given by the council was intended to help feed Porter County residents.

Meals on Wheels of Northwest Indiana was allocated $5,000, the amount the agency requested.

They do great work. Theyre in desperate need, said council Vice President Mike Jessen, R-4th.

Meals on Wheels is serving senior citizens who cant get meals from the Bonner Senior Center in Portage during the stay-at-home order, Jessen said.
London, May 3 : While over 100 vaccines are currently under pre-clinical trials and a couple of those have entered human trial stage, leading health experts have raised alarming questions about what if the world never sees a COVID-10 vaccine, as in the case of HIV and even dengue where there is no vaccine even after years of research.

According to a CNN report, "there is another, worst-case possibility: that no vaccine is ever developed".

In this outcome, "the public's hopes are repeatedly raised and then dashed, as various proposed solutions fall before the final hurdle", the report said on Sunday.

Nearly four decades and 32 million deaths later, the world is still waiting for an HIV vaccine.

An effective vaccine for dengue fever, which infects as many as 400,000 people a year according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), has eluded scientists for decades.

A vaccine to prevent dengue (Dengvaxia) is available in some countries for people ages 9-45 years old. But the WHO recommends that the vaccine only be given to persons with confirmed prior dengue virus infection.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the vaccine manufacturer, Sanofi Pasteur, announced in 2017 that "people who receive the vaccine and have not been previously infected with a dengue virus may be at risk of developing severe dengue if they get dengue after being vaccinated".

"There are some viruses that we still do not have vaccines against. We can't make an absolute assumption that a vaccine will appear at all, or if it does appear, whether it will pass all the tests of efficacy and safety," Dr David Nabarro, professor of global health at Imperial College London, was quoted as saying in the report.

According to Dr Anthony Fauci, Director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the vaccine could happen in 12-18 months.

However, "we've never accelerated a vaccine in a year to 18 months," Dr Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, was quoted as saying.

The COVID-19 disease could be with us many years into the future and lockdown are not sustainable economically.

"It means the culture of shrugging off a cough or light cold symptoms and trudging into work should be over. Experts also predict a permanent change in attitudes towards remote working," said the report.

Currently, a vaccine candidate for COVID-19 was identified by researchers from the Oxford Vaccine Group and Oxford's Jenner Institute. The potential upcoming vaccine, ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, is based on an adenovirus vaccine vector and the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.

According to the WHO, from a total of 102 candidate vaccines in the race, eight leading vaccines are in human testing phase.

What probably separates ChAdOx1 - known as recombinant viral vector vaccine - from the rest is the time it has promised to take in order to deliver mass quantities.

However, no one is 100 per cent sure, yet.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Former US president George W Bush has called on



the Americans to keep the virtues of empathy, compassion and kindness intact amid the coronavirus pandemic, saying that these are the powerful tools that would help combat the deadly disease.

In the nearly 3-minute video message tweeted on Saturday, Bush encouraged people to be their best during the pandemic.

The tweet was posted by Bush's presidential centre. It was part of The Call to Unite event that featured well-known celebrities and public figures making encouraging videos to inspire people to overcome the challenges posed by the global health crisis.

The 24-hour event, which was livestreamed on various online platforms, including Facebook, Youtube and Twitter, was organised by the Chairman of Special Olympics, Tim Shriver.

Besides Bush, former US president Bill Clinton, American media executive and philanthropist Oprah Winfrey, Hollywood actress Julia Roberts and Indian-American author Deepak Chopra were among those who took part in the event.

"We serve our neighbour by separating from them. We cannot allow physical separation to become emotional isolation. This requires us to not only be compassionate but creative in our outreach," Bush said in his message.

"Let us remember empathy and simple kindness are essential, powerful tools of national recovery. Even at an appropriate social distance, we can find the way to be present in the lives of others.

"In the final analysis, we are not partisan combatants. We're human beings, equally vulnerable and equally wonderful in the sight of God, we rise and fall together," he said.

Bush said he saw the nation "embrace unavoidable new duties" after the 9/11 terror attacks, and that "spirit is alive and well in America."



The former president also said that the impact of the pandemic will not be felt equally.

"Let's remember that the suffering we experience as a nation does not fall evenly. In the days to come, it will be especially important to care in practical ways for the elderly, the ill and the unemployed," Bush said.

According to the Johns Hopkins University data, the pandemic, which originated in China, has infected over 3.3 million people and claimed over 240,000 lives across the globe.

The US is the worst-affected country from the virus with over 1.1 million COVID-19 cases and more than 66,000 deaths.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Sumi Sukanya Dutta By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: The Centre in a meeting with state chief secretaries on Sunday expressed deep concern over COVID-19 affected 20 districts in the country. Nine among them are short on the required medical infrastructure to tackle the pandemic crisis.

These 20 districts that include Mumbai, Ahmadabad, Chennai, Central Delhi, Kolkata, North Delhi, Kanpur Nagar, Krishna, Kurnool, Thane, Agra, Indore, Pune, Surat among others, which account for 68 per of active cases and 72 per cent of all COVID-19 deaths in India.

A PowerPoint presentation that was shared by the Union health secretary Preeti Sudan with the chief secretaries and accessed by this newspaper also said that 8 of these 20 districts have case doubling rate faster than 10 days and 7 districts have case fatality rate more than the national average of 3.2 per cent.

In terms for testing for coronavirus, Centre is also worried that 7 districts Mumbai, Ahmadabad, Indore, Thane, Agra, Kurnool, Kolkata have confirmation rates twice the national average of 4.4 per cent and Kanpur Nagar is carrying out lesser tests (507 per million) than the India average.

ALSO READ | Indore on recovery path? Recovered COVID-19 patients outnumber new cases for second day

In the meeting, the states were also directed for further aggressive planning for containment areas and have been asked to monitor total and active cases, calculate the doubling rate on a weekly basis, calculate case contact ratio ( total number of contacts/total confirmed cases), calculate testing ratios (total tests conducted per population zone and total tests conducted per total positive cases.)

The Centre also asked states to analyse bed occupancy in terms of number of occupied beds per total number of beds.

The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare also pin pointed key issues like high case doubling rate and high case fatality rate and suggested specific measures to curb them.
JD Greear answers: 'Is COVID-19 evidence of a specific judgement from God?'

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As the number of confirmed coronavirus infections in the United States surpasses 1 million, pastor J.D. Greear weighed in on the question of whether Christians should view the pandemic as evidence of a specific judgment from God.

In a recent episode of his Ask Me Anything podcast, Greear, pastor of The Summit Church in Durham, North Carolina, first acknowledged that, like other natural diseases and disasters, the coronavirus is a consequence of living in a fallen world.

Additionally, the pastor noted that in both the Old and New Testaments, Scripture clearly says that sometimes God uses disease or death as a specific punishment for sin whether of individuals or societies as a whole. He referenced Acts 12:23, John 5:14, 1 Corinthians 11:30, and the entire book of Revelation.

There are times when sickness and death is a specific judgment on sin, he said. But that is a level of interpretation about an event that the Bible does not encourage us to exercise in specific situations.

In fact, more often than not  [Jesus] is pointing people away from that conclusion, he said. He infrequently ties a sickness to something ... its not wise for us to say, This is happening because of this.

Greear said that in the Old Testament, Job's friends blamed his extraordinary suffering as the punishment of God for sin. However, God called Jobs friends wicked for saying his suffering was judgment, even calling them stupid for doing so.

Its not for me to know, he said. I think this is especially problematic to do right now with the coronavirus. Perhaps there are some situations out there where God is individually giving a specific punishment, but I think in general this is a call to the whole world to wake up.

We see now that there are some communities in our own country that are suffering more, and perhaps thats because of unjust situations theyve been put in, Greear continued. So to turn around and say, Youre suffering more because of your sins,' when its actually because of the sins of others that theyre suffering, that would seem especially grievous.

Still, the pastor said that when he is sick or suffering, the first question he asks is, Is God trying to get my attention about something?

I do believe that if there is something, like a good Heavenly Father, God will let me know quickly, he said. If He doesnt reveal anything, then I assume its suffering like Job was suffering.

Greear concluded by citing Luke 13 where a tower falls and kills 18 people. Somebody asks Jesus, Was this because these 18 people were more wicked than the rest? Jesus says no, but, unless you repent, you will all perish.

You need to be asking what the implications are for you, he stressed. What is God trying to say to me? Hes using this, and Hes using it to say sin is serious, and youve got to wake up to the severity of sin and the urgency of salvation.

More than 1 million cases of coronavirus have been reported in the U.S., and more than 30 million Americans have filed initial unemployment claims since mid-March, according to the Labor Department.

In recent weeks, a number of prominent pastors and Christian leaders have weighed in on what God is saying to the world amid the pandemic.

Gods message to the world during times like this always is, Youre not really in charge, Tim Keller, the retired pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, told The Christian Post. You may think you are going to get ready for the next one, but you never will. The world isnt under your control; its under my control. You need to turn to me. You are not sufficient to run your own life. You need my wisdom and you need my help.

In every disaster, whether its 9/11 or COVID-19, God is saying to people, Eventually, Im going to put an end to all of this. But for the time being, this world is broken, and every time you think you dont need me and that you can get on top of it, something like this will come along to remind you that, no, you do need me, he continued.

Prominent pastor and televangelist David Jeremiah reiterated that God might be using COVID-19 to remind people of their reliance on Him.

He told CP: We are a great country, there's no question about it. We have the greatest economy in the history of the world. We are a nation of self-made people, according to them. If were not careful, we can begin to think we are the master of our own souls, in charge of our own fate.

God, he said, sometimes just reaches down to remind us, You think you've got this thing under control, but I can take a germ you cant even see and bring it to your knees.
Wikimedia Commons

New Delhi/IBNS: In a humanitarian gesture, India has allowed 193 Pakistani nationals, who are stranded in the country due to COVID-19 lockdown, to be allowed to exit the nation via the Attari-Wagah crossing next week, media reports said.

They are reportedly stranded in 10 states across the country.

Happiness was evident on the faces of Pakistani nationals, Shama Sher e Bano and her children after India allowed them to go back to their home during #Lockdown2. Pakistani nationals thanking the Indian government for the humanitarian gesture.@MEAIndia pic.twitter.com/ATujYuo7S9  Ravinder Singh Robin aaaaaa aaaa UUUUUU UU (@rsrobin1) May 2, 2020

According to media reports, the Indian external affairs ministry has told state police chiefs and asked them to facilitate their travel.

The Pakistani nationals have been told to reach the Attari-Wagah border by early Tuesday, May 5, when formalities for their return would begin at the immigration and border checkpoint, reported Hindustan Times.

People familiar with the development told the newspaper that the Pakistan high commission had requested India to help to facilitate movement of their nationals from different parts of the country.

The repatriation exercise on Tuesday covers 193 individuals living in 25 districts of 10 states: Maharashtra, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab and Delhi, reported the Indian newspaper.

These stranded people will reportedly proceed towards the border this weekend.

It is requested that all returning Pakistan nationals may be screened as per international norms and existing provisions of the Government of India and only asymptomatic individuals may be allowed to return, Dammu Ravi, additional secretary at the external affairs ministry said in his communication to the state governments, as reported by Hindustan Times.

India extended the CPOVID-19 lockdown for two more weeks on Friday.
Cops are investigating the sale of UDA terror flags on Facebook which were advertised in a twisted bid to raise money for the NHS.

Alan 'Young Bert' Stewart posted a picture of the banners last month, flogging them for 10 each.

Stewart, who claimed to work for Causeway, Coast and Glens Borough Council, proudly announced that 40% of sales would be donated to health workers battling the deadly coronavirus pandemic.

After Sunday Life exposed him, Stewart's Facebook account disappeared from public view and the PSNI is now investigating the matter.

A spokesman for the force said: "Police have been made aware and inquiries are ongoing."

The post was circulated on social media last month, with many people expressing outrage and incredulity.

But one post read: "Posting on behalf of a mate. Whatever ur religion, belief or hatred towards any organisations are, please keep any negative comments or reactions to yourself or you'll be blocked straight away. He's trying to do a good deed here.

"He ordered loads of these to sell for 10 each but has decided 40% of all money collected from sales will be donated to the NHS."

On Stewart's Facebook page there were several pictures of him posing with UDA flags as well as pictures of armed men in paramilitary dress.

His profile also carried the caption: "F** off snow flakes, this ain't the page for you."

Independent councillor Padraig McShane said he had been contacted by alarmed residents and branded the episode a "disgrace".

He later wrote to the chief executive of Causeway, Coast and Glens Borough Council demanding the matter be investigated since Stewart had claimed to be a council employee.

However, a spokesman for the council denied he worked for them.

"I can confirm that Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council has no employees or agency workers with that name," they said.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday described as "deeply disturbing and painful" the killing of five security personnel including two senior Army officers, a colonel and a major, in an anti-terror operation in the Handwara area of north Kashmir.

Singh said the security personnel showed exemplary courage in their fight against the terrorists and that their bravery and sacrifice will never be forgotten.

"The loss of our soldiers and security personnel in Handwara (J&K) is deeply disturbing and painful. They showed exemplary courage in their fight against the terrorists and made supreme sacrifice while serving the country. We will never forget their bravery and sacrifice," the defence minister tweeted.

The operation at a village in Handwara began on Saturday and continued till late last night.

"I offer my tributes to the soldiers and security personnel who fell in action. My heart goes out to the families who lost their loved ones today. India stands shoulder to shoulder with the families of these brave martyrs," Singh said.

Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, who laid down his life in the encounter, was a decorated army officer.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The annual rotation of BSF and ITBP soldiers along the Pakistan, Bangladesh and China borders has been shelved till March next year because of the coronavirus outbreak, the top commander of the two forces has said.

Surjeet Singh Deswal, the director general of the two forces, told PTI that only battalions deployed in "extremely hard areas" of these three important Indian frontiers will be rotated after an assessment of the outbreak situation post July.

"We have postponed the annual routine rotation of all battalions in BSF and ITBP to next year till March 31," he said.

Deswal, a 1984-batch Indian Police Service officer of the Haryana cadre, heads the BSF in an additional capacity.

Talking about the Border Security Force, he said 12 battalions were to be replaced along the Indian fronts with Pakistan and Bangladesh, but only four units deployed in high-altitude and harsh weather conditions will be taken out if conditions permit post July.

The BSF guards the 4,096-km-long Indo-Bangla border and about 2,280 kms of the front with Pakistan.

Asked about the situation along the two borders, Deswal said the force is ensuring strict sealing of the frontiers.

Along the International Border with Pakistan, he said, there has been no incident of infiltration by terrorists till now but "we are very vigilant" and any such attempt will be dealt much beyond the IB".

We will ensure that all infiltration attempts are foiled along any part of the India-Pakistan IB, the DG said.

Asked about the annual changeover of Indo-Tibetan Border Police battalions along the 3,488-km-long Line of Actual Control with China, he said the number of soldiers for this exercise in the mountain-warfare trained force was less.

There are two ITBP battalions deployed in extremely hard areas and their replacement will be decided post July, Deswal said.

As per practice in the two forces, a border battalion (over 1,000 troops) is replaced every three years while those posted in hard areas are changed after two years.

A similar rotation of two ITBP battalions deployed for anti-Naxal operations in Chhattisgarh has also been shelved this year.

The BSF and ITBP chief added that the forces were augmenting manpower across all formations by recallinga limited number of those on leave till now due to the nationwide lockdown.

"About 4,500 BSF personnel and around 2,000 officials in ITBP have already joined back," the DG said.

This was required as we needed to rotate our men and women who were doing duty for long hours (since the lockdown began on March25), he said.

Some of these personnel also need to go on leave in emergency cases, he said.

Deswal said personnel residing in 'green zones' (COVID-19safe areas) have only been asked to return and join the nearest unit or battalion to avoid long travels.

"We have sent our own sanitised vehicles to collect such personnel. All precautions will be taken once they report back and they will be put under compulsory 14-day quarantine before they start," he said.

The chief of the two forces added that routine transfers and postings in these forces have also been put on hold and there was "no urgency" on this front.

"Transfers already issued will be brought into effect once situation is normal and public transport facilities are available. We are not in urgency to do this," he said.

"We will not allow any hardships to our troops," he said.

Asked about concerns of the officers regarding a possible delay in their routine promotions and holding of departmental promotion committee (DPC) meetings, the DG said these processes were on course.

"There is no halt in DPCs and even MHA (Ministry of Home Affairs) is approving all such proposals sent by us. DPC is a regular process and we are carrying it out.

"No promotion will be delayed. All offices are functioning and it is our priority to ensure that all personnel get their promotions on time.The COVID-19 situation will not hinder the process of promotions," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's air force flew aircraft low over more than a dozen cities on Sunday, part of a nationwide campaign by the armed forces to thank healthcare workers and other essential services personnel fighting the coronavirus outbreak.

So far India has recorded nearly 40,000 coronavirus cases and more than 1,300 deaths amid a weeks-long nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of the virus.

In the southern city of Bengaluru, a helicopter showered flowers over Victoria Hospital, as doctors and other medical workers in hospital gowns and masks cheered on, local television showed. A military band played alongside.

In the financial capital of Mumbai, television showed fighter jets roaring over the famous Marine Drive, which runs parallel to the Arabian Sea, as some residents craned for a view from their balconies.

Later on Sunday, navy and coast guard ships will line up along more than 30 locations on the Indian coast, with some vessels lit up and firing flares.

But the celebrations were dampened by news of the death of four Indian army personnel, including two officers, as well as a police official during a gun battle with militants in the northern Kashmir region on Saturday.

The five were killed while freeing hostages in Kashmir's Kupwara district, an Indian Army spokesman said. Two militants were also shot dead, he added.

(Reporting by Devjyot Ghoshal in NEW DELHI, additional reporting by Fayaz Bukhari in SRINAGAR; Editing by Himani Sarkar)
Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has sent an urgent appeal to President Muhammadu Buhari urging him to urgently instruct the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice Mr Abukabar Malami, SAN to work with appropriate ministries and agencies to identify, publish and use confiscated stolen assets as isolation centres.

SERAP said: Using confiscated assets as isolation centres would provide safe and enabling environments for the treatment and care of people, improve the authorities ability to respond to COVID-19, reduce the risks to Nigerians and to public health.

The Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire had last week reportedly begged Nigerians to donate and temporarily make their buildings available as isolation centres. According to him, more buildings would be needed, as the Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC) aims to test two million people in the next three months.

In the urgent appeal dated 2 May, 2020 and signed by SERAP deputy director Kolawole Oluwadare, the organization said: While it is important to ramp-up testing for COVID-19 to prevent the spread of the virus, asking Nigerians to donate their buildings as isolation centres would be counter-productive, as it would put them at greater risk of contracting and spreading COVID-19.

SERAP also said: Rather than begging Nigerians to donate their buildings as isolation centres, the authorities should identify, publish and use confiscated assets as isolation centres, as a temporary measure. Using confiscated assets as isolation centres would be proportionate, necessary, and serve a legitimate objective, namely to protect public health and public order (ordre public).

According to SERAP, The proposed measure would be lawful, and more effective, as it would be in the public interest. Using the confiscated assets as proposed would neither violate the accuseds right to property nor entail a duty to compensate. The proposal by the Minister of Health would pose unnecessary risks to public health.

The urgent appeal, read in part: SERAP urges you to ask Mr Malami to urgently work out the details and modalities for implementing these recommendations with the Ministry of Health, Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC), the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC).

SERAP urges you to ask the Minister of Health to drop the idea of begging Nigerians to donate their buildings as isolation centres, and to move swiftly to focus on implementing these recommendations as a step towards effectively reducing the spread of COVID-19, treating and caring for people, and fulfilling the right to health, in line with Nigerias human rights obligations and the sustainable development goals.

Our recommendations, apart from being entirely compatible with Nigerias international anti-corruption obligations including the UN Convention against Corruption, which has been ratified, would also enhance the ability of the authorities to effectively and satisfactorily respond to COVID-19.

Reducing health risks associated with Nigerians donating their buildings as isolation centres would complement the authorities objectives of ending COVID-19.

As the right to health is closely related to and dependent upon the realization of other human rights, including the right to private and family life, asking Nigerians to donate their buildings as isolation centres may also violate this fundamental human right.

The recommendations would also enhance the ability of the authorities to effectively implement the countrys international human rights obligations particularly regarding to take effective steps to prevent, treat, and combat epidemic, endemic and other diseases, such as COVID-19.

SERAPs request is also in line with the repeated public commitment by your government to provide details and locations of all recovered stolen public funds.

Publishing confiscated assets would also be entirely consistent with the judgment by Justice Hadiza Rabiu Shagari of the Federal High Court, Lagos, which ordered your government to tell Nigerians about the stolen assets it allegedly recovered.

The judgment was delivered in July 2017 following a Freedom of Information suit number: FHC/CS/964/2016 brought by SERAP. Your government has refused to obey the judgment, despite Mr Malami publicly promising to do so.

We hope that the aspects highlighted will help guide your actions in acting to ensure enabling environments as isolation centres to treat and care for Nigerians, as the NCDC takes steps to ramp up testing for COVID-19.

Copied in the urgent appeal are: Mr Abukabar Malami; Dr Osagie Ehanire; Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, Director General, NCDC; Professor Bolaji Owasanoye, Chairman, ICPC; and Ibrahim Mustafa Magu, Acting Chairman, EFCC.

Kolawole Oluwadare

SERAP Deputy Director

3/05/2020

Lagos, Nigeria

Emails: [email protected]; [email protected]

Twitter: @SERAPNigeria

Website: www.serap-nigeria.org

For more information or to request an interview, please contact Kolawole Oluwadare on: +2348160537202
In Nigeria, Africa's largest economy, businesses across the country have been shut down their offices and people are asked to work remotely from their homes. The shutdown has been especially hard on the wedding industry, because of its dependence on crowds and physical gatherings.
In a time of dismal experiences and dark stories about COVID-19, its nice to hear a tale that is inspiring and a bit amazing.

June Almeida was an essentially self-taught, brilliant scientist who discovered coronaviruses in the 1960s with electron microscopic techniques she developed and pioneered.

Interest in her history has been revived through recent stories published about her worldwide.

She became an internationally renowned virologist, whose skills in electron microscopy enabled her to identify new viruses and their structure, shed light on viral infections effects and pioneer methods for viral diagnosis.

She was born June Hart in 1930 in a Glasgow, Scotland, tenement building apartment. Her father was a bus driver.

Although she shone academically, she had no money for college and left school at age 16 to become a laboratory technician at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary for 25 shillings a week.

To further her career, she moved to St. Bartholomews Hospital in London doing the same job. There she met and married a Venezuelan artist Enriques Almeida in 1954.

They and their young daughter emigrated to Ontario, Canada, where she found a vacancy at the Ontario Cancer Institute in Toronto as an EM technician. It was easier to gain scientific recognition there being female without formal qualifications.

In Canada, her skills blossomed. She co-authored numerous impressive scientific publications relating to viral structures, which previously could not be visualized.

She pioneered a technique called immune EM. Into the preparation she mixed antibodies that had been developed against the viruses with the viral particles. This caused them to clump together or aggregate, making it easier to analyze.

A well-known professor A. P. Waterson from St. Thomas Hospital Medical School in London visited her lab, and persuaded her to join him in 1964.

In 1967, she moved with Waterson to the Royal Post Graduate Medical School. In that period, she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science or DSc degree because of her publications. Even today, her EM pictures of viruses appear in textbooks and review articles.

She collaborated with Dr. DAJ Tyrell, director of the Common Cold Research Center, who was culturing newly identified nose viruses from volunteers.

One sample came from a pupil at a boarding school in 1960. It couldnt be grown outside people. Specimens were sent to Almeida, who examined them with her immune EM method.

She described them as similar to, but not the same as, influenza viruses. She and Dr. Tyrell saw the main particles surrounded by a ring or crown of spikes, and coined the name coronavirus.

When they submitted the pictures for publication, initially the reviewers decided they were bad photographs of flu viruses and refused to publish them. Finally in 1967, they were published in the Journal of General Virology.

Her other viral discoveries included describing the hepatitis B virus exterior protein component, to which the vaccine was later made, and the inner genetic material portion.

She also was the first person to see the rubella or German measles virus with immune EM technique.

Dr. A.Z. Kapikian from the US National Institute of Health visited her lab. She taught him her EM methods, which he used on his return to identify small round viruses from stools of patients with gastroenteritis, one from Norwalk, Ohio.

It was named the Norwalk virus, which became the norovirus, the first viral cause of diarrhea found.

She finished her virology career at Londons Wellcome Research Laboratory, where she was named on several patents in the field of imaging viruses. In 1985 she retired, with her second husband, also a virologist. She became a Yoga instructor and china restorer, leading to a fun career trading in antiques. But she couldnt quite give up her scientific interest (I know the feeling), and returned to St. Thomas Hospital in an advisory role.

A 2008 British Medical Journal wrote: Junes success resulted from a combination of originality of thought, looking for and often finding simple explanations for what appeared to be complex problemsAny discussion with June was not only stimulating but full of fun: she had a lively and occasionally wicked sense of humor.

She died in 2007 at age 77. Now, 13 years later, she is finally getting the recognition she deserves as a pioneer, whose work is helping us today.

Dont you agree hers is an inspirational tale of perseverance and moxie in a male-dominated world?

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Three more persons, including



two drivers who returned from Punjab, tested positive for coronavirus in Maharashtra's Nanded district on Sunday, an official said.

With this, the total number of COVID-19 cases in Nanded has gone up to 29, he said.

"This morning, three persons tested positive for coronavirus. Out of them, two are drivers who returned from Punjab after providing a vehicle service," Nanded's civil surgeon Dr Neelkanth Bhosikar said.

The third new patient is a female from Deglur Road area of Nanded, he said in a release.

"Now, the number COVID-19 patients who returned to Nanded from Punjab has gone up to five," the official said.

The total number of COVID-19 cases in Nanded has now reached 29. Two of these patients died during treatment, the release said.

On Saturday, 20 pilgrims currently residing at Nanded's Gurdwara Langar Sahib tested coronavirus positive.

After this, Nanded Guardian Minster Ashok Chavan said the possibility of the drivers, who had ferried pilgrims from a gurdwara in Nanded to Punjab in buses, spreading the coronavirus infection among them cannot be ruled out.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
While governments, health care workers and the Canadian public are uniting to take on the COVID-19 pandemic, some critics have seen this as an opportunity to capitalize on public fear and promote a profit-driven health care system over Canadian medicare.

Would Canada  as some claim  really have been better prepared for a pandemic in a health system where care would be delivered to those who can afford to pay for it, rather than based on need?

Lets look at the evidence.

No country could have been fully prepared for a crisis of this scale  indeed, no country has been. No country in the world has an on demand health care system with limitless capacity. That would mean building empty rainy day hospital beds and stockpiling unused ventilators and personal protective equipment (PPE) for decades, in the event they would be needed some day.

But Canadas single-payer health system has allowed us to impressively ramp up our surge capacity to expand in a time of crisis  while still ensuring universal access.

In a matter of just weeks, Canadian hospitals have increased staffing for critically ill patients, reduced in-patient loads by 30-40 per cent to make room for a surge of COVID-19 admissions and bolstered our supply of PPE and ventilators.

These measures were taken so that every patient who requires hospital care for COVID-19, or for any other medical emergency, can continue to access the highest quality of care possible, no matter who they are or what they earn.

Our health care system is not traded on the stock exchange.

Fans of the American health system praise it for having lower average hospital occupancies of 64 per cent, leaving lots of room for surge capacity in a crisis. But what they fail to recognize is that these half-empty hospitals are a result of the most expensive profit-driven health care system in the world, in which hospitals are all competing to attract customers, overselling tests and treatments just to keep themselves in business.

Tragically, those empty hospital beds are of no use to the roughly 30 million uninsured Americans with no access to care, or the millions of underinsured Americans who risk financial ruin if they seek care or choosing between paying crippling hospital bills or having a roof over their heads.

This is even more concerning in a viral pandemic where those with no access to medical care can put the rest of the community at risk.

Health care profiteers persistently and intentionally conflate health care delivery with health care financing. Canada does not outlaw private for-profit delivery of health care. There is no monopoly on health care delivery.

What Canada does not allow is private payment  whether out-of-pocket or through private insurance  for care already covered by our provincial plans. Physicians cant bill the government for publicly insured medical services and charge patients extra money on top of that.

Having just one payer in each province means we dont waste money on paying overhead to private insurers, like in the U.S. model.

COVID-19 should not be exploited to make the case for a private pay health care system. In fact, the reverse should ring true. Now is a good time to think about expanding our universal health system.

As hundreds of thousands of Canadians face job loss as a result of this crisis, it highlights the need for more publicly funded health care to keep our citizens safe and healthy. Many Canadians will face financial struggles through this crisis and may also lose their job-linked extended health benefits.

They will not lose their access to physician and hospital care, but a loss of work-related health benefits will have a huge impact on their ability to access prescription medications and dental care.

Of course, our health system is not perfectly prepared for a pandemic.

When this COVID-19 crisis ends, we will have an opportunity to reflect on the challenges our health care system faced and take steps to adapt for the future. Creative solutions that have come out of this pandemic, such as the widespread use of telemedicine and novel triage systems, might be continued to improve access to care.

But one thing that should not change is our commitment to equitable access to health care for everyone in Canada.

This is no time for greedy profiteers to be distracting us from saving lives. As front-line health care workers, we will continue to show up every day, throughout this pandemic and beyond, to protect our human right to health care. We are counting on everyone to do the same.
Hyderabad, May 3 : As a symbol of thanksgiving to medical professionals and others involved in fighting the coronavirus pandemic, a helicopter of the Indian Air Force showered petals on them at Gandhi Hospital and Medical College here on Sunday.

Flying over the hospital, Chetak helicopter showered the petals on doctors, nurses, other paramedical staff, sanitation workers and policemen who had gathered in the hospital premises for this rare honour.

Led by Gandhi Hospital superintendent Dr Raja Rao, doctors, nurses, technical staff, sanitation workers and police personnel in their uniform stood in front of the hospital building.

Hyderabad Police Commissioner Anjani Kumar and other senior officials were also present on the occasion.

The chopper, which took off from Indian Air Force Station, Hakimpet, showered the petals under the leadership and command of Group Captain K.S. Raju (Medical) and Group Captain Pankaj Gupta.

The state-run Gandhi Hospital is the state nodal centre for treatment of Covid-19 patients. About 500 people have been treated and discharged from this hospital while 560 are undergoing treatment.

Police Commissioner Anjani Kumar told media persons at Gandhi Hospital that showering of petals was a symbolic act to thank doctors, nurses, technical staff and safai karamcharis for their services as the frontline warriors in the war against Coronavirus.

"This is the salute by warriors protecting the country's frontiers to those fighting for internal safety of the country. This battle has been going on for the last six weeks and everyone is busy fighting this battle 24x7," he said.

He also thanked all police constables who are rendering valuable services in this battle. "They are performing their duties in 42 degree Celsius heat during day time and in dark and silent nights," he said.
The Coalition of Concerned Citizens, Upper West Region, Wa is surprised with reports and speculations that, the petition demanding Dr. Osei Kuffour Afreh outgoing regional director of health service to be investigated on misappropriation of funds, abuse of office and bad leadership has been withdrawn.

The group is entreating the general public to regard such reports as falsehood, malicious, and lack of substance that has been peddled to undermine the credibility of the group.

1. We emphatically state that the group petition to the Ministry of Health, Ghana Health Service, Ghana Medical and Dental Council, Police CID, and BNI has not been withdrawn.

2. Also, we have only called on the appropriate bodies to investigate Dr. Osei Kuffour Afreh to exonerate him or make him face the law if found culpable.

3. Contrary to reports and allegations, the group is not persuaded or planted by the Upper West Regional Minister and or any persons or politician as a personal vendetta against Dr. Osei Kuffour Afreh.

4. We must indicate that Dr. Osei Kuffour Afreh hasn't made any attempts aimed at persuading us to take a compromised position. All allegations leveled against him must be thoroughly investigated to the later.

5. We have also not received any form of communication from the Upper West Regional Minister on the state of progress of our petition. Especially now that, Dr. Afreh has been transferred.

6. We entreat some of the media houses to be circumspect in their reports by engaging the group for clarification on allegations.

7. We state categorically that, there have not been criminal charges against the convener of the group.

We remained confident that, the appropriate state agencies and bodies that have commenced investigation would be proactive to complete on time.

Thank you.

Yours faithfully,

Issahaque Suleman

Co-Convener

Tahiru Lukman

Co-Convener
The Dubai Airport Freezone Authority (Dafza) has launched a set of economic incentive packages to support companies based in the free zone, in order to ensure business continuity across various sectors and help them mitigate the severity of the economic impact and precautionary measures the world is currently facing.

The initiative includes postponing lease payments for up to three months and facilitating financial payments into easier monthly installments.

It also supports retailers operating within the free zone by exempting them from lease payments for a period of up to three months, said a statement from Dafza.

The free zone will refund security deposits on leased spaces and labour guarantees to companies, as well as exempt new companies from registration and licencing fees. It will also cancel fines issued to companies.

On the key initiatives Chairman Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum said: "It reflects our commitment to provide the ideal environment for companies to ensure business continuity and help develop and grow their operations, despite the fluctuations and global economic conditions."

"This package will support companies through these exceptional circumstances, which have unexpectedly affected various businesses sectors and activities," noted Sheikh Ahmed.

"Dafza is a key partner for many companies operating in more than 20 vital sectors within the free zone. This package will guarantee continuity and commercial movement within the free zone," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
Manjul Misra By

Ever wondered what the worlds biggest brands are doing at a time when the world is under lockdown and nobodys out buying their luxury goods? Plenty, actually. Forever since COVID-19 began sweeping the globe, and upending life as we know it, several of the worlds biggest luxury fashion, jewellery and beauty companies have come forward to join the relief efforts.

While some are recalibrating their factories to produce face masks, hand sanitisers and medical gowns, instead of the usual luxury apparel, handbags and perfumes, others are donating millions to help hospitals buy medical equipment and to nonprofits reaching aid to the needy. Heres a checklist, updated as of this week.

LVMH: The owner of brands such as Louis Vuitton, Dior, Dom Perignon, Givenchy, Guerlain, Bulgari, Moet & Chandon, Loewe and Fendi, has converted its perfume and cosmetic factories into those producing hand sanitisers for French public hospitals. It has also employed 300 additional artisans to make non-surgical face masks for individuals in need.

RALPH LAUREN: In the largest donation yet by an American conglomerate to the COVID-19 fight, the brand has pledged $10 million to the WHOs Solidarity Response Fund and the companys Emergency Assistance Foundation (for its own employees and partners). The company is also manufacturing 2,50,000 face masks and 25,000 gowns for healthcare workers.

BURBERRY: The British heritage brand is funding coronavirus vaccine research at Oxford University. It has also provided 1,00,000 masks for doctors and nurses of the UKs National Health Service and is using its Yorkshire factories to make non-surgical masks and gowns for patients as well.

CHANEL: The maison has donated $1.2 million for French emergency services and Parisian hospital systems, and stepped up production of a planned 50,000 masks for medical professionals, police officers and firefighters.

GIORGIO ARMANI: The designer has donated $2 million to various hospitals in Italy. Besides, all the brands Italian factories are being used to make single-use medical overalls for healthcare workers.

SALVATORE FERRAGAMO: In partnership with the Italian Red Cross, the company is financing the renovation of two wards for coronavirus patients at a Florence hospital. In addition, it has donated hand sanitisers and masks to Tuscanys healthcare workers.

BROOKS BROTHERS: The American clothing brand has pledged to make 1,50,000 masks per day in its New York, North Carolina and Massachusetts factories to donate to healthcare workers.

PRADA: After donating complete intensive care units to some of Milans biggest hospitals, Italian house Prada has produced 80,000 medical overalls and 1,10,000 masks for healthcare personnel.

TIFFANY: The luxury American brand has announced an aid of $7,50,000 to the WHOs Solidarity Response Fund and $2,50,000 to the New York Community Trusts NYC COVID-19 Response & Impact Fund.

HERMES: The French luxury goods manufacturer is donating $20 million to Paris public hospitals, along with the 30 tonnes of hand sanitisers and 31,000 masks produced in its factories.

TODS: The Italian luxury leather company has set aside $5 million for the family members of healthcare workers who lost their lives fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

VERSACE: The flamboyant fashion house has pledged $5,00,000 to two Italian hospitals for ventilators and other medical equipment. Donatella Versace has personally donated $2,00,000 to the intensive care unit of a Milan hospital.

DOLCE & GABBANA: Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana have made a sizeable donation to Italys Humanitas University for a research project seeking solutions to contain the coronavirus.

PVH COR: The owner of Calvin Klein, DKNY and Tommy Hilfiger, has pledged $1 million to COVID-19 relief, and is supplying more than two million units of personal protective equipment to New Yorks Montefiore Health System.

ESTEE LAUDER: The American beauty products brand is producing hand sanitisers for medical workers and other high-need groups. It has also donated $2 million to Doctors Without Borders.

MICHAEL KORS: The American brand has donated $2 million to various organisations engaged in relief efforts in New York City. This also includes A Common Thread, created by the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund to support the fashion community.

FENDI: Along with a $2,50,000 donation to the Lombardy region, the Italian fashion house has collaborated with suppliers to produce non-woven masks for medical workers in Tuscany.
She's homeschooling her brood of four children, while pregnant with her fifth.

But Hilaria Baldwin has revealed that she doesn't let this stop her staying in shape - fitting in daily workouts once her family are all in bed.

Sharing a video to Instagram of her bathroom workout routine, the yoga instructor wife of actor Alec explained: 'Every night, when my family is finally asleep, I go into my bathroom and exercise. Even if I'm tired, it makes my day feel more complete. It connects me with my body and allows me to check in with my breath during this stressful time.'

No excuses: Hilaria Baldwin shared a video to Instagram Sunday in which she revealed she works out in the bathroom 'every night when my family is finally asleep'

At home workout: The video took her followers through her routine, with a barefoot Hilaria leaning on her bathroom sink while working out in her pajama trousers and a bra

Hilaria is using her Instagram account to educate her followers, giving suggestions for at home workouts.

She explained of her bathroom regime: 'I love this exercise because it works the arms, the legs, the butt and the abs. It also blends stretching with toning with cardio-what I believe are the "perfect 3" to a complete exercise program.

'First 5 pushups, the heels are on the floor. Then lift on to the ball of the foot on one side, while the other stretches high enough behind to engage your butt. Activate the core to not strain your back. 5 of these, then go back to heels downthis will stretch the backs of the calves. Do 5 here, then switch feet. Do 2 more sets.'

Healthy life: Hilaria is using her Instagram account to educate her followers, giving suggestions for at home workouts

Mom to be: She explained of her bathroom regime: 'I love this exercise because it works the arms, the legs, the butt and the abs. It also blends stretching with toning with cardio-what I believe are the "perfect 3" to a complete exercise program

The video took her followers through her routine, with a barefoot Hilaria leaning on her bathroom sink while working out in her pajama trousers and a bra.

Following two miscarriages, the 36-year-old is currently expecting her fifth child with her husband Alec Baldwin - with whom she has Carmen, six, Rafael, four, Leonardo, three, and Romeo, 22 months. He is also father to model Ireland Baldwin, 24.

Last week Hilaria marked the due date of the baby, a daughter, she lost in November.

Staying in shape: On her seventh pregnancy, Hilaria is aware of what works for her body

Yoga lover: Hilaria uses the facilities available to her

Posting a video of white flowers blowing in the wind, she wrote on Instagram: 'Today was your due date and we wanted to meet you so much. I have been afraid of this day to comebut it is here and I will be brave.

'You were so loved and you always will be. I think of you every day and I wish so much that our path had been different. Mommy loves you, my sweet girl.'

The tragic loss came as Hilaria's second miscarriage in 2019, as she had previously lost another baby at 10 weeks pregnant in April.

Family comes first: Hilaria, Alec and their children Carmen, six, Rafael, four, Leonardo, three, and Romeo, 22 months

Growing family: The yoga instructor and her actor husband will welcome their fifth child together in September

While she is grateful for a healthy baby, Hilaria has talked of wanting a daughter, to give oldest child Carmen a sister.

She said: 'After the last experience, I do really dream about giving [Carmen] a sister at some point. And who knows? Maybe this is going to be the last baby I have and maybe there will be another; I don't really know at this point. I don't really care to plan too much anymore. A healthy baby is such a blessing.'

Hilaria has not yet announced the gender of her fifth child, who is due in September.
During his visit, on the occasion of the 45th anniversary of Southern Liberation and National Reunification, the Deputy PM inquired after their health and affirmed that the Party and State will always remember their immense contributions to the nation.

He stated that their sacrifices have brought eternity and prosperity to the Vietnam of today.

On the occasion, Deputy PM Binh wished them good health and asked local authorities to continue taking better care of heroic mothers, veterans and other national contributors.

* The Hanoi Youth Union published a video on its Facebook fan page on the 45th anniversary of southern liberation and national reunification featuring the thoughts of young people on the great sacrifices and contributions of their forefathers during wartime.

Meanwhile in Ho Chi Minh City, the Youth Union held a contest on Vietnamese history to promote patriotism among young people and help them learn more about the nations history and culture.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 3)  The Office of the Solicitor General warned on the eve of the expiry of the legislative franchise of ABS-CBN Corporation that National Telecommunications commissioners may be slapped with graft charges if they give the broadcast giant a provisional permit to operate pending the renewal of its franchise.

The NTC commissioners risk subjecting themselves to prosecution under the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act should they issue the unlawful PAs (provisional authorities) to ABS-CBN Corporation and ABS-CBN Convergence in the absence of franchise, Solicitor General Jose Calida said Sunday in a statement.

The governments top lawyer, whose office also serves as the NTCs legal counsel, said there is no law delegating Congress power to grant legislative franchises to the regulatory body.

He said the letter from House Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano and House Legislative Franchises Committee chair Franz Alvarez, and a Senate resolution cannot be used by the NTC as basis for it to grant ABS-CBN a temporary permit as they only express the sentiments of the legislature.

He added that the legal opinion issued by the Department of Justice, which the Office of the Solicitor General is under, could also not be used by the NTC as basis, citing a 2003 Supreme Court ruling which struck down a DOJ legal opinion on a similar matter.

Citing a 2014 Supreme Court case involving GMA Network, Calida said broadcasting companies can only get provisional permits from the NTC if they secure franchises from Congress and apply for certificates of public convenience from the NTC.

He added that a provisional authority to operate should only be issued while broadcast companies await the NTCs issuance of certificates of public convenience and not when a company has no valid and existing legislative franchise.

He also said that the NTC can only issue an order for ABS-CBN to stop operations.

The NTC, during the House Committee on Legislative Franchises first and only hearing on ABS-CBNs franchise, said it has agreed to issue the network a provisional authority to operate pending its franchise renewal.

The commission said this was based on the advice of the Department of Justice to let ABS-CBN operate based on equity, which Calida rejected in his statement.

Calida had earlier asked the Supreme Court to nullify the network's existing franchise, citing grave violations of the terms set by Congress back in 1995. He had also asked the high court for a gag order on his office as well as on ABS-CBN and its executives, actors, and employees.

The Supreme Court, whose deliberations have been affected by the COVID-19 crisis, has yet to act on the petition.

Numerous bills seeking to grant ABS-CBN Corporation a fresh 25-year franchise remain pending in Congress.

Media outlets, as well as electricity companies and cable TV providers, are required to secure legislative franchises. Such bills must first be approved by the House of Representatives before they are acted upon by the Senate.

President Rodrigo Duterte has been publicly ranting against ABS-CBN since assuming office, saying that the network refused to carry his campaign commercials even if they have been already paid for.

In 2018, Duterte said he will block the renewal of the network's franchise. Last year, he told the Lopez family to just sell the company to a new owner to boost its chances of staying in business.

However, the President accepted the apology offered by ABS-CBN President Carlo Katigbak during a Senate hearing for airing an anti-Duterte ad during the 2016 campaign which was paid for by the opposition.

CNN Philippines Anjo Alimario and Melissa Luz Lopez contributed to this report.
As its neighbouring states struggle to control the Covid-19 spread, efforts made by Himachal Pradesh (HP) to flatten the curve could become a template to contain the outbreak.

With just one active case till Sunday, HP has reported 40 cases, including one fatality and 34 recoveries. Four have been moved out of the state for treatment.

No case has been reported in the state in the last 10 days. Also, six out of 12 districts have reported no cases in the green zone.

The state will be officially declared coronavirus-free if no new case is reported up to May 5.

Initial cases and the surge

The first two cases, a 32-year-old man and a 64-year-old woman, were from the Shahpur sub-division of Kangra, HPs most populous district. Both had a travel history to an affected foreign country.

The third case, a US-returned Tibetan man from McLeodganj in Dharamsala, who tested positive on March 23, died of acute respiratory distress in hospital.

No fresh case was reported till the end of March, but on April 2 three Tablighi Jamaat workers from Una district who attended the Markaz at Delhis Nizamuddin tested positive. The situation seemed to be spiralling out of control as the number rose to 24 within a week with Una and Solan identified as hotspots.

However, after the count reached 40 on April 23, no new case was reported.

The response

The state got into war mode the day it reported its first two cases, chief minister Jai Ram Thakur, who also holds the health portfolio, told the Hindustan Times. Though section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code prohibiting a gathering of more than four people was already in force in vulnerable pockets, a statewide curfew was imposed on March 23, a day before Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a countrywide lockdown.

Schools and religious institutions had been closed earlier with hospitals only treating emergency cases.

Six hospitals were designated for Covid-19 treatment, Thakur added. Rigorous contact mapping of all the positive cases was also done.

A new challenge emerged when those with Jamaat links started testing positive. After a warning that all Markaz attendees disclose their status or face action, more than 1,000 such people and their primary contacts were quarantined.

Strict vigil was maintained at the borders and anyone entering HP was kept in institutional quarantine for 28 days. Panchayati raj representatives were entrusted with the task to inform the authorities about anyone concealing information about outsiders in hiding.

Authorities in HP shared contact numbers of their counterparts with people stranded outside the state who called the Himachal helpline number for help.

Strict curbs were imposed on the movement of vehicles and persons even during curfew relaxation with a curfew e-pass system launched.

Identifying cases

The health department adopted a three-pronged strategy, said director, National Health Mission (NHM) Nipun Jindal. It activated an integrated disease surveillance programme to strengthen and decentralise laboratories, allowing authorities to monitor the disease trend and response to the outbreak.

Four labs conducted Covid-19 tests. Rapid response teams were pressed into service after years.

The government also launched a massive active case finding campaign. More than 8,000 two-member teams moved door-to-door to screen people for influenza-like illness (ILI), connecting with about 70 lakh people.

Of this, authorities identified 10,000 with ILI symptoms, who are now being tested for Covid-19.

The strategy even found favour with PM Modi, who told other states to emulate the same.

Testing was also ramped up due to 15 mobile sample collection vans.

The authorities also arranged for home delivery of essential items including medicines, through 1,706 authorised shops and vendors, and were able to reach out to about 12.82 lakh people.

Ration was also provided to migrant labourers and poor people with the help of various NGOs.

Threat not over

However, the war is not yet over, especially after HP opened its borders allowing residents stranded outside to return.

More than 95,000 people were estimated to have entered the state in the last one week, with the situation again seeming to spiral out of control for three days as inter-state borders remained choked with thousands queuing up to cross the border.

They have been ordered to self-quarantine for 28 days.

As many entered without routine screening the government was forced to suspend more e-curfew passes. People entering the state now will be screened with the help of infrared scanners at the border.
The protest on Friday in Sacramento urging Californias governor to reopen the state resembled the rallies that have appeared elsewhere in the country, with crowds flocking to the State Capitol, pressing leaders to undo restrictions on businesses and daily life.

But the organizers were not militia members, restaurant owners or prominent conservative operatives. They were some of the loudest antivaccination activists in the country.

The people behind the rally are founders of a group, the Freedom Angels Foundation, which is best known in California for its opposition to state efforts to mandate vaccinations. And the protest was the latest example of the overlapping interests that have connected a range of groups  including Tea Party activists and armed militia groups  to oppose the measures that governors have taken to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Activists known for their opposition to vaccines have also been involved in protests in New York, Colorado and Texas, where they have found a welcome audience for their arguments for personal freedom and their suspicion of government. But their growing presence at the protests worries public health experts who fear that their messaging could harm the United States ability to turn a corner following the pandemic if Americans do not accept a future vaccine.
New Delhi: Dealing with the problem of dipping revenues and falling of economy, the Delhi government announced on Sunday (May 3) that the time has come to re-open the city-state as it will not be able to sustain further lockdowns.

"Delhi is ready to re-open now...We will not be able to sustain the lockdown for long as the economy is in peril. The revenue has fallen from Rs 3500 Crores in April month of previous years to Rs 300 Crores this year. How will government function?" Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said while addressing an online media briefing.

He said that people in Delhi will have to be ready to live with the novel coronavirus and announced the implementation of all lockdown relaxations prescribed by the Centre for the 'Red Zone' in the national capital. He said that state government will suggest to the Centre that only containment areas in the city be declared as red zones and not the entire district.

At present, all 11 districts in the city have been declared as red zones.

The chief minister said the novel coronavirus is going nowhere and it is impossible that cases of coronavirus will be zero. "It is impossible that there will be no cases of coronavirus because it has not happened across the country. We will have to be ready to live with coronavirus. We will have to get used to it," he said.

Delhi has been under lockdown since March 23.

He said the government's earnings and economy have been badly affected due to the coronavirus-induced lockdown, adding that Delhi is ready to lift the lowdown. He cited figures saying in April 2019, the government earned Rs 3,500 crore while in April this year, it only received Rs 300 crore. "The centre has put the entire Delhi under red zone due to which markets, malls cannot open. We have suggested the Centre to seal those areas where cases of coronavirus have been reported and rest of areas can be allowed for the operation of all activities," he said.

Kejriwal said the Delhi government will also take strict action against those who spit in public. He added that the movement of people from 7 pm to 7 am will not be allowed, as suggested by the Centre. The government and private offices will open from Monday but the suspension of travel by flight, metro and bus will continue, he said. Delivery of essential goods through e-commerce portals will continue in the national capital.

Malls, cinemas, salons, market complexes and Delhi Metro will remain shut while shops selling essentials will continue will be open, the CM informed.

Delhi government offices engaged in essential services will function with full strength while offices of non-essential services and private offices can operate with 33 per cent strength.
Former Air Force base in Gettysburg on market for $4.5 M

A former air force base near Gettysburg is up for sale. The base is listed as having 50 beds and 15 bathrooms on a 42-acre parcel of land.
Ahead of World Press Freedom Day on May 3, activists are warning that the coronavirus emergency has seen governments around the world crack down on journalists ability to do their jobs, even in established democracies  at a time when transparency is more vital than ever. Henry Ridgwell reports.
We often see insiders buying up shares in companies that perform well over the long term. The flip side of that is that there are more than a few examples of insiders dumping stock prior to a period of weak performance. So before you buy or sell BCI Minerals Limited (ASX:BCI), you may well want to know whether insiders have been buying or selling.

What Is Insider Selling?

It is perfectly legal for company insiders, including board members, to buy and sell stock in a company. However, such insiders must disclose their trading activities, and not trade on inside information.

Insider transactions are not the most important thing when it comes to long-term investing. But equally, we would consider it foolish to ignore insider transactions altogether. As Peter Lynch said, 'insiders might sell their shares for any number of reasons, but they buy them for only one: they think the price will rise.

View our latest analysis for BCI Minerals

The Last 12 Months Of Insider Transactions At BCI Minerals

While no particular insider transaction stood out, we can still look at the overall trading.

You can see the insider transactions (by individuals) over the last year depicted in the chart below. By clicking on the graph below, you can see the precise details of each insider transaction!

ASX:BCI Recent Insider Trading May 2nd 2020

There are plenty of other companies that have insiders buying up shares. You probably do not want to miss this free list of growing companies that insiders are buying.

Insider Ownership

Another way to test the alignment between the leaders of a company and other shareholders is to look at how many shares they own. We usually like to see fairly high levels of insider ownership. Our data indicates that BCI Minerals insiders own about AU$4.0m worth of shares (which is 7.2% of the company). Whilst better than nothing, we're not overly impressed by these holdings.

So What Does This Data Suggest About BCI Minerals Insiders?

The fact that there have been no BCI Minerals insider transactions recently certainly doesn't bother us. But insiders have shown more of an appetite for the stock, over the last year. We'd like to see bigger individual holdings. However, we don't see anything to make us think BCI Minerals insiders are doubting the company. While we like knowing what's going on with the insider's ownership and transactions, we make sure to also consider what risks are facing a stock before making any investment decision. For example - BCI Minerals has 3 warning signs we think you should be aware of.

Story continues

If you would prefer to check out another company -- one with potentially superior financials -- then do not miss this free list of interesting companies, that have HIGH return on equity and low debt.

For the purposes of this article, insiders are those individuals who report their transactions to the relevant regulatory body. We currently account for open market transactions and private dispositions, but not derivative transactions.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
The Irish College of General Practitioners is warning heart attacks and strokes are being missed during the Covid-19 crisis.

President Dr Mary Favier is urging people to still contact their doctor, even if they are not sick with coronavirus.

She said: "We are missing heart attacks, we are missing strokes, we are missing diabetes, other lumps that should have been seen,

"And what we don't want is took back in a year's time and say more people suffered illness and death from non-Covid illnesses than from Covid itself."

That is a particular concern.

Earlier today Dr Favier welcomed a further fall in the number of people being treated with Covid-19 in intensive care units.

The latest figure is 98, only the second time it has been less than 100 in the last month.

She said: "If people spend time in intensive care, whether they have had a serious operation or something has happened to them, it's often only a couple of days, this (coronavirus) can be a couple of weeks.

"So we'd expect there to be quite a substantial lag from the time people get the disease, to being admitted to hospital, to going into intensive care, to being discharged.

"So it is very good that we are starting to see that line starting to come down, because it means that infections of, say, a month ago or six weeks ago were dropping."
New Delhi, May 3 : Warren Buffett-led Berkshire Hathaway's move of selling its airline shares at substantial losses is likely to have a ripple effect among the investor sentiments, not just in the US, but globally, analysts said.

Market experts said that investors in India too might have got concerned by the move and the implications may be seen in the Indian stock markets too.

They said that stocks of several industries, including airlines, might get hammered in the days to come, since retail investors would be weary of investing in them after Warren Buffet dropped off from the scrips of the airline industry.

Retail investors globally, including those in India follow the 'Oracle of Omaha' and his statements and market moves carry a lot of weight for the market and the other market participants.

Investors in Indian airline stocks may well follow his movement as the country's airline sector is struggling to survive under the lockdown.

Rahul Sharma, Research Head at Equity99 Advisors said: "Because Warren Buffett himself is such a big name, any action he takes, other investors do follow him. Airlines are anyways shut now and even before that airlines were not in a good shape, so I think selloff will be witnessed in global and Indian markets." He said that oil stocks are also likely to take a hit, as the demand for aviation fuel also has hit rock bottom.

Sharma said that both global and Indian indices may open in the red on Monday. The Nifty50 may open 200-250 points lower on Monday.

Deepak Jasani, Head of Retail Research at HDFC Securities said that the negative impact on airline stocks in India will be seen for the next couple of days. He noted that government support is required by the sector.

Buffett's statement during the annual shareholders' meeting on Saturday showed a grim picture of the aviation sector.

Addressing the virtual meeting, he said: "We made that decision in terms of the airline business. We took money out of the business basically even at a substantial loss." "We will not fund a company that... where we think that it is going to chew up money in the future," he added.

Berkshire Hathaway had an 11 per cent stake in Delta Air Lines, 10 per cent in Southwest Airlines, 10 per cent in American Airlines, and 9 per cent in United Airlines.

Since COVID-19 took the world in its grip, commercial aviation industry has been totally halted hampering their business and even leading several airlines globally to file for bankruptcy.

According to a recent report by International Air Transport Association (IATA), the revenue of the sector in India may fall by $11,221 million this year compared to 2019.

Further, as many as 29.32 lakh jobs are likely to be at risk in India's aviation sector during the year 2020.

According Conrad Clifford, IATA's Regional Vice President for Asia-Pacific, had said airlines in the region face a liquidity crisis with a $61 billion cash burn in the second quarter of 2020.
Orlando: Florida deputies arrested a man who had been living out his quarantine on a shuttered Disney World island, telling authorities it felt like a "tropical paradise".

Orange County Sheriff's deputies found Richard McGuire on Disney's Discovery Island on Thursday. He said he'd been there since Monday or Tuesday and had planned to camp there for a week, according to an arrest report.

Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom in Orlando has been shut since last month. Credit:AP

The 42-year-old said he didn't hear numerous deputies searching the private island for him on foot, by boat and by air because he was asleep in a building. He told the deputy he didn't know it was a restricted area, despite there being numerous "no trespassing" signs.

"Richard stated that he was unaware of that and that it looked like a tropical paradise," according to the arrest report.
A passenger plane has returned to the UK with ten million pairs of surgical gloves for NHS staff on the coronavirus frontline.

The flight landed at Bournemouth Airport on the south coast of England on Sunday, having picked up the medical supplies in Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur.

The Airbus, owned by Bournemouth company European Aviation Group, had "Thank You NHS" written on its side.

The gloves were given to the NHS supplier that commissioned the flight.

A medical professional in PPE / AFP via Getty Images

The flight is the second to arrive at Bournemouth with personal protective equipment (PPE), after another plane delivered 120,000 medical gowns from China.

More PPE delivery flights are expected to leave from the airport in the coming weeks.

Paul Stoddart, chairman of European Aviation, congratulated everyone involved in the delivery.

He told the PA news agency: Todays flight was a total success. Twenty million gloves, thats 10 million pairs of gloves, delivered to Crest Medical and on their way to the NHS."

PPE has been a controversial issue in the UK for several weeks.

A coronavirus tester wearing PPE / AFP via Getty Images

A major survey by doctors' union the British Medical Association found that nearly half of NHS doctors had been forced to buy their own PPE, or rely on donations from others.

The Government said it has delivered more than a million items of PPE and pointed out that there is huge global demand for medical equipment in the worldwide coronavirus pandemic.
Two months into quarantine, Emily Ratajkowski is finding her own fun.

And the model really went for it on Saturday - hosting a wedding for her pet dog.

'Quarantined together so why not marry our children? They love each other so much. Congrats Happy and Colombo,' she captioned.

Pup wedding: Emily Ratajkowski found her own unique quarantine fun... hosting a wedding for her pet dog with husband Sebastian Bear-McClard and the couple's quarantine partners

Celebration: As for her hilarious 'pup wedding,' Emily documented everything from the ceremony to the reception on her Instagram Story - before dedicating an entire post to it on her page

For the backyard ceremony, Emily, Sebastian, and the couple's dog Colombo were joined by two of their closest pals and their pup Happy.

Ratajkowski purchased bouquets and numerous bottles of champagne for the joyous occasion.

For the wedding, Emily slipped into a stunning silk mini-dress with bell sleeves, while Sebastian kept it casual in a white button up and jeans.

'In laws,' she wrote in one post, while clanking glasses with her female pal.

Cheers: 'In laws,' she wrote in one post, while clanking glasses with her female pal

Why not: 'Quarantined together so why not marry our children? They love each other so much. Congrats Happy and Colombo,' she captioned

Both couples and their dogs appeared to have a blast as they posed for a family photo post-nuptials.

Emily and husband Sebastian Bear-McClard who wed in 2018 - left their New York home in April to hunker down in Los Angeles amid COVID-19.

The pair adopted Colombo in June of last year and have since made the gentle giant a part of their home.

Along with her wedding celebration, the 28-year-old was also working hard on Saturday, posting photos to promote her Inamorata swimwear line.

Colombo: Emily and Sebastian's pup Colombo was the groom in the hilarious backyard ceremony

Dressed to impress: For the wedding, Emily slipped into a stunning silk mini-dress with bell sleeves, while Sebastian kept it casual in a white button up

Ratajkowski stood in one of the various door frames located within her Los Angeles home, while flashing her signature bedroom eyes at the camera.

Her brunette tresses - that she recently cut herself - flowed down naturally from an asymmetrical part.

The swimsuit came from Ratajkowski's new 'Mesh Collection,' which she toted as being her 'favorite collection to date.'

Emily chose one of the collection's more psychedelic patterns that featured shades of brown, orange, and beige.

Self promo: Emily Ratajkowski proved to be her own best advertisement on Saturday, when she graced Instagram in the brand's famous Wilcox Top and Orpheus Bottom

The Wilcox top covered the model's slender arms and the majority of her toned midsection, while the bottoms allowed her to flaunt ample leg.

'Summer sheerness. The Wilcox Top and Orpheus Bottom makes for the perfect pair - online now,' captioned Emily on the post seen by her over 26million followers.

In a portrait shared to Inamorata's official Instagram earlier in the day, Emily showcased the collection's versatility and the myriad of options available.

Her second look was a blown up version of the first suit and featured a mesh skirt with a strap that she tied around her abdominals.
Medical experts have assured Australian parents a coronavirus cluster at a New Zealand school that has so far infected 94 people is no reason to fear sending their children back to classrooms.

The cluster began at Marist College in Auckland, a Catholic girls' school, with a teacher who tested positive on March 22. The New Zealand Herald reported she had not been overseas or in contact with any returned traveller, and the origin of her infection is still unknown.

The 750-pupil Catholic girls' school in Auckland was the centre of New Zealand's second-largest coronavirus cluster. Credit:Ricky Wilson / Stuff

The 750-pupil school closed immediately, for what was initially expected to be three days. But on March 25 the entire country went into lockdown, and by the following day the Marist caseload - by then officially a cluster - had grown to 11 cases including the principal, six other staff members and four students, "mostly seniors" according to the Herald.

The chair of the school's board of trustees, Stephen Dallow, speculated that the "very small" staffroom may have been the main point of transmission, rather than the larger classrooms.
Gunfire has been exchanged over the demilitarised zone that divides North and South Korea, with no casualties reported on Seouls side.

The Souths military said that multiple gunshots fired by North Korea at 7.41am local time hit a South Korean guard post in the border town of Cheorwon.

South Korea responded with two rounds of gunfire and a warning announcement, said a military statement.

The exchange took place a day after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un made a public appearance for the first time in three weeks, with state media showing him visiting the launch of a fertiliser factory.

The reason for the gunshots remains unclear, and an official from the South Korean joint chiefs of staff said the gunshots did not appear to be a planned provocation, as the area where it occurred was farmland.

In a briefing held later on Sunday, the official said: In absence of vision [for the target] and in the fog, would there be an accurate provocation?

Choi Kang, vice president of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, said he believed the timing of the grey area provocation shows it could have been planned to show that Kim was still in power.

Yesterday, Kim was trying to show he is perfectly healthy, and today, Kim is trying to mute all kinds of speculation that he may not have full control over the military, said Mr Choi.

Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Show all 20 1 /20 Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un rides a horse during snowfall in Mount Paektu in this image released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency on 16 October 2019 Reuters Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un visits the newly built Pyongyang Orphans' Primary School on 2 February 2017 AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un inspects a women's company under Unit 5492 of the Korean People's Army in November 2019 AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un inspects the test-fire of intercontinental ballistic missile Hwasong-14 at an undisclosed location in July 2017 AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un celebrates the successful test-fire of the intercontinental ballistic missile Hwasong-14 at an undisclosed location in July 2017 AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un inspects a potato at the Samjiyon Potato Factory in North Korea in October 2018 AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un rides a horse through a forest in this image released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency on 16 October 2019 EPA Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un inspects a block of frozen fish at a processing facility in North Korea in November 2018 Reuters Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un celebrates the succeful launch of a strategic submarine-launched ballistic missile in August 2016 AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un shakes hands with Donald Trump as they meet for the first time at the Capella Hotel on Sentosa island in Singapore in June 2018 Reuters Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump share a glance as they meet in the Demilitarised Zone in Panmunjon, Korea in June 2019 AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un inspects mushrooms at Pyongyang Mushroom Farm AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un inspects a super-large multiple rocket launcher ahead of a test in September 2019 Reuters Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un inspects an apple farm in South Hwanghae Province in September 2017 AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un inspects an apple farm in South Hwanghae Province in September 2017 AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un inspects dental wares at a newly built factory in June 2017 AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un visits Farm No 1116 in September 2017 AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un visits a motor factory in November 2017 AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un rides a horse during snowfall in Mount Paektu in this image released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency on 16 October 2019 AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un inspects the Command of the Strategic Force of the Korean People's Army at an undisclosed location in August 2017 AFP/Getty

Rather than going all the way by firing missiles and supervising a missile launch, Kim could be reminding us, Yes, Im healthy and Im still in power.

Mr Kim was seen in photographs at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the plant. The authenticity of the photos, published on the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper website, could not be verified.

The exchange was the latest confrontation between the rival Koreas, which technically remain at war.

Additional reporting by Reuters
Life isnt normal right now.

That seems self-evident. While some businesses have begun to reopen, many others remain closed. So do our schools, churches and city and county meetings. Many Wyomingites are still working remotely and wearing masks in public.

Even as the state begins to ease restrictions, many of us are still contending with unemployment, furloughs or reduced work hours. Some are still navigating the social safety net for short-term support.

In short, we have a lot to contend with, even as if feels like the worst might be behind us. With that in mind, the decision by the Bureau of Land Managements Rock Springs office to move forward on a management plan for 3.6 million acres of public land in southwestern Wyoming is puzzling.

The Rock Springs Resource Management Plan is a critical document that has been in the works for nearly a decade. It will guide future activities on public lands including energy development and wildlife corridors. It will influence our economy, our environment and recreation for years to come. Thats why it makes sense to wait until after life returns to normal to fully vet the document and consider its ramifications.

But thats not what the federal government plans to do. Instead, its planning to move forward on releasing the plan this spring, even as Wyomingites are focused on more pressing economic and medical matters.

That decision is contrary to the wishes of the Sweetwater County Board of Commissioners, who formally asked the BLM to postpone the plans release due to the pandemic. Put more simply, the federal government is pressing forward with its plans over the objections of local officials who represent the citizens in the communities with the most at stake. Thats simply not the way public comment periods are intended to work.

Yes, a 90-day public comment period will still happen. And yes, there are other means to communicate, including online meetings. However, those meetings are more difficult to participate in  they require, at the very least, a computer and a high-speed internet connection  and they can be confusing for folks who arent comfortable with the latest in technology.

And just as important, many people have more immediate concerns. Even someone who cares deeply about public land issues still has to think first about having enough money to provide for themselves and their families. They need to be healthy enough and have the time necessary to study the document before they can provide adequate feedback.

Even past proponents of completing the plan with haste have come forward seeking a delay.

Its an extremely important document, not only to Sweetwater County, but to the state, said Sweetwater County Commissioner Wally Johnson. I dont think we should at this point rush it along, and that is why I made the statement I did.

It appears that the federal government, after taking years to get to this point, intends to ram the document through while the public is at home, looking for work or otherwise tied up. Under the Trump administration, the federal government has prioritized moving projects through the system faster than before. As an editorial board, weve long supported quicker assessments of projects. But these unique circumstances demand a slowdown, not the status quo.

Fortunately, Wyoming has some of the most powerful leaders in Congress. Wyoming needs its senators and congresswoman to act quickly on behalf of her citizens and against federal bureaucrats in seeking a delay on the plan until the pandemic has ebbed. If they believe in local control, if they believe that Wyoming voices should be heard, now is the time for our delegation to demand a delay that will keep the publics voice heard in this vital process.
Somewhere in North America, a man watches through a diner window as the moon crashes into Earth. In Italy, a womans scream is stolen by a ghost. In Spain, a man is turned into a tree while ash rains down around him. In the UK, a stone giant strains to hold up an overflowing dam. In our dreams, we are chased and kidnapped, shot at and rounded up by military personnel. We go back to the past. We get lost.

Since the lockdowns began, all around the world we are dreaming vividly, and on an unprecedented scale. Dreams are everywhere, and everywhere, people are talking about their unconscious lives. Whats new is the international global nature of it all, and countries taking action all at the same time. So it is a global phenomenon in ways that [were] never perceived quite as such before, says Sally Shuttleworth, a professor of English Literature at University of Oxford who has worked extensively on how sleep and stress has been viewed historically.

We can find parallels, however. Berlin-based journalist Charlotte Beradt risked her life documenting dreams of fellow Germans dreams under the Nazi regime. In 1966, this collection was published as The Third Reich of Dreams. In it, she found that, as was her own experience, Nazi rule not only invaded their waking life, but trespassed into their dreaming life too. The only person I know who dared to talk back to Hitler, even in a dream, was a woman, Beradt writes.

Today, we find ourselves in unknown territory. Instead of a dictator and a war, there is an invisible threat that lurks everywhere we turn  we are faced with its omnipotence every time we leave the house, and dogged by it at home on the news and social media.

With the pandemic, we are experiencing a different kind of authoritarianism: we must relinquish what we have associated with independence (physical freedom) to save lives. The viruss spread often feels out of control, and our only means of controlling it is for our movements to be controlled by it.

And its this that is creeping into our dreams.

Since the lockdowns began, a glance at the internet shows the conversation about vivid dreaming is not confined to a country or continent. Everyone is talking about dreaming. Dreams become more important for people during times of crisis because its still very deeply rooted in culture the world-over that dreams somehow give us an insight which were not capable of in ordinary waking life, psychotherapist Matthew Bowes says.

Dreams have long been recorded en masse through traumatic and seismic events: 9/11, Trumps presidential election and, during the Second World War, as well as Beradts effort, the Mass Observation Archive was set up and peoples dreams were monitored to keep an eye on the countrys morale.

Nightly, I was having vivid dreams. So I put out a call on the internet asking if anyone else had been having similar experiences since the lockdowns began. Within a couple of days, I had received over 300 detailed accounts. Like Beradt, I organised the dreams in regards to recurring motifs and scenarios to better understand how this situation is affecting us as a whole.

There are potential neurological explanations for this wave of vivid dreaming. If we wake from REM sleep, we remember our dreams. So part of it may be that were sleeping longer, and that we then wake naturally, says Russell Foster, professor of circadian neuroscience at the University of Oxford. Other factors could include a lack of robust morning light exposure; drinking less alcohol (not my experience); and disrupted sleep.

But an outpouring of vivid dreaming throughout society is not solely connected to somatic sources, bodily perceptions and physical stimuli; it is also symptomatic of collective psychic trauma. When we sleep, our bodies undergo essential maintenance and process information, and during REM sleep (when the majority of dreams take place) this includes emotional information. The theory of dreaming is that it essentially metabolises underlying emotions about the situation were currently in.

In the dreams I was sent, the most common motifs and scenarios were: being lost and confused; and the presence of military camps and military personnel, often checking ID cards, with dreamers often forgetting them.

George Lakoff put forward the theory that our lives are influenced by central metaphors that we use to explain complex emotional phenomena. Rape victims, for example, have been known to have dreams about battles, Foster explains.

Protesters at anti-lockdown rallies in America demand to be set free, stars and stripes are waved while people scream freedom is essential. This week we even witnessed armed anti-lockdown protesters storming Michigans State Capitol building. The protest was a potential hotbed for the virus as social distancing was willfully disregarded; the mentality also demonstrates a lack of hindsight: this is not the first time quarantines have been imposed, and it is unlikely to be the last.

But maybe these demonstrations arent solely the result of concerns over liberty; maybe they also have to do with the power of metaphor, and what Susan Sontag described in 1978 as punitive notions when it comes to diseases. The militarised language being used to describe this pandemic has certainly punctuated our dreams. With Covid-19, we are at war and we are all directly enlisted, key workers are on the front line, we have to fight it, and beat it. Not only does this language provoke the already frustrated into increasingly dangerous levels of action in their waking lives, the equivocation aims to excuse each avoidable death as an unavoidable casualty of conflict while aware that if this really were a war, we would have been prepared for it.

Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan Show all 11 1 /11 Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan A demonstrator shouts next to two masked security guards at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan during a protest against stay-at-home orders AFP via Getty Images Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan Armed members of a milita group at the state Capitol building in Lansing, Michiga, during a protest against coronavirus lockdown measures REUTERS Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan A protester at the state Capitol in Lansing holds a sign comparing Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer to Adolf Hitler during a demonstration against coronavirus lockdown measures AFP via Getty Images Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan An armed protester takes part in a demonstation against lockdown measures at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan AP Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan A protester holds a sign saying 'Bill Gates is evil' at a demonstration against stay-at-home orders at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan. Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and a billionaire philanthropist, has warned of the dangers of viral pandemics AFP via Getty Images Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan Protesters take part in a demonstration at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan against stay-at-home orders AFP/Getty Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan A protester holds a pro-Trump sign at a demonstration against lockdown measures outside the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan AFP via Getty Images Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan Armed protesters take part in a demonstration at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan against lockdown measures during the coronavirus pandemic AFP via Getty Images Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan A protester holds a sign reading 'Every job is essential, get workers back to work safely now' during a demonstration at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan over lockdown measures AFP via Getty Images Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan A protester with a US flag painted on her face takes part in a demonstration at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan against lockdown measures during the coronavirus pandemic AFP via Getty Images Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan A protester wearing a Guy Fawkes mask holds up a sign reading 'Stay Free' during a demonstration against lockdown measures at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan AP

For many of us, the best way for us to fight the virus and help the key workers out there risking their lives on a daily basis is to be impotent. Its a strange paradox to feed our subconscious mind, and it could help explain why in March, sales of guns in America reached an all-time high since background checks began in 1998. It could also explain why many of us are dreaming so vividly: its messing with our heads.

This invisible enemy is causing chaos and stirring up profound emotions while many of us sit at home doing very little. At night it would seem that our dreams give physical form to that invisible threat, enabling us to act out the fight or flight emotions we have been experiencing throughout the day.

Although our dreams at this time are frequently unsettling, there is a positive theory. It could be that being put through demanding scenarios while we sleep is a means of us finding emotional resources we didnt know we had.

The emotion underlying even superficial threats in most of the dreams I read was loss. We are grieving the very real, physical loss of life and, since the lockdown, our old way of life. We can walk around like stone giants during the day, but at night will come the flood. Our dreams give shape to the concerns we have been either feeling or suppressing throughout the day. When the lockdowns are lifted, the world we return to will be disorientating and probably a little frightening. And though we may find that we have lost our grip on normality, while we have been sleeping, our unconscious has helped prepare us for that loss and the unknown dimension we are walking into.
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Venerable Sir Thich Chon Nguyen has been working hard to perform magic on children of Vietnamese households who moved from Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia to a hydroelectric reservoir in southern Vietnam, by offering them tuition-free literacy and life skill classes together complimentary meals on rafts that hopefully will benefit them in the long run.

Amid a floating village atop Tri An Reservoir and Lake, a hydroelectric dam and lake on the Dong Nai River in the eponymous province about 70 kilometers south of Ho Chi Minh City, is a special class run by Venerable Sir Nguyen.

Attending these free-of-charge classes are mostly children of the villagers, the majority of whom are returnees from Tonle Sap, the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia, where they struggled to put food on the table as fishers.

After returning to their home country in the hope of building a better life, the villagers in Thanh Son Commune, Dinh Quan District are finding they have simply traded in a world of poverty for another.

Nguyen, from Lien Son Pagoda, began running the classes with one goal in mind: spreading the gift of education to these impoverished children, who might otherwise have never seen the inside of a classroom.

Enlightenment

On a recent morning, kids arrived in class on six motorized sampans which Nguyen had lent to them.

The boat riders are sometimes the students themselves, some of whom are as young as eight years old.

The 41-year-old teacher shared his heart sank seeing the children, who are denied a proper education and do angling and odd jobs around the lake to help their families during a visit to the floating village.

It was then that he decided to teach them how to read and write and put life skills into practice so that they could reach out and make it in the modern world.

I began with tutoring five children on a fishermans raft and later came to buy another big raft  the main venue  and two smaller ones to open my own school as more students have joined my class, Nguyen said.

More than 20 students attend his regular classes on average, which run from 8:00 am every day except Monday, at one time, the oldest student being 15 and the youngest six years old.

Nguyen has his hands full shuffling from desk to desk to teach math and Vietnamese literature to the students from first to fifth grades.

A female teacher comes over from Ho Chi Minh City to help him on weekends.

The clergyman also prepares lunch and milk for the kids after the morning sessions so that they will continue the afternoon lessons on a full stomach, using his own money and donations from philanthropists to cover meals, study tools, and medical treatment.

With no placement test, Venerable Sir Nguyen said the challenging part was individually following the learning pace of each student.

I tailor my lessons to my students different abilities and integration while assessing their improvement after each session instead of giving weekly or monthly tests, he explained.

But the charity classes have not always been smooth sailing, as harsh reality seems to be the biggest roadblock in most of his students lives.

The monk does not set rules on punctuality, regular attendance or homework submission as his students are too busy taking care of household chores or helping their parents with casting nets for fish.

Many of the villagers would not let their children go to his classes, considering them an unnecessary distraction from daily work.

Shortly after the classes were launched, the monk even gave each student two kilograms of rice so that they would make it the following day as a way to slowly convince the villagers to reconsider their childrens future.

Brighter future

Venerable Sir Nguyen shared his classes are not just about ending literacy but also about providing students with core life skills that will allow them to find jobs and smoothly integrate into society.

I try to tap the students communication ability to help them shine. If they are weak at life skills, Ill help them improve day by day, he said, adding he takes the children to his pagoda twice every month to put the life skills they have acquired into practice.

I give them individual attention and adjust my teaching approaches to their own mindsets and family impacts. I love them dearly as if they were my own kin, the monk shared.

Venerable Sir Nguyen makes it a point that love comes with discipline, insisting that his students abide by his stringent code of conduct, including not swearing, littering and being naughty.

Those who fail to do so despite stern warnings will be suspended from class.

Thanks to his lessons, students who may otherwise have never learned to read and write and do basic computation are given a real shot at literacy as well as life skills.

Once they are ready, they can find a job, or choose to continue their studies, the monk said.

The classes are packed with fun and easy to follow. I can ask the teacher to explain whatever Im at a loss, said Nguyen Van Nam, 15, who joined the fifth-grade class upon its launch, adding he plans to find a blue-collar job at a factory.

In addition to his childrens classes, Venerable Sir Nguyen also hosts study sessions for adults. There were times when the number of students topped 70 in a single session.

The students, who come in all age brackets, including fathers and children, were divided into three classes and sat on three rafts.

Rangers from Dong Nai Wildlife Reserve, nestled in neighboring Vinh Cuu District, lent a hand with adult classes.

With his charity classes going seamlessly and his efforts highly appreciated, Venerable Sir Nguyen thought there remains a long way to go to help alleviate poverty that has struck the fishing village for years.

He has given away rice and other necessities to many local fishermen households.

Thanks to his help, several have recently switched to other jobs on land.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Google has made its premium video calling application Meet free for all Google account users.

The company has seen daily usage of Meet increase 30-fold since January and as of April, the service hosts 3 billion minutes of video meetings and adds around 3 million new users every day.

In the past, the application was only available for paying customers as part of Googles G Suite productivity tools.

Starting 1 May, any user with a Google account will be able to sign up and use Meet for personal video chats or meetings at no charge.

Google said availability will continue to be rolled out in the coming weeks, in the event you cannot access the service immediately.

Features  Free Meet vs Free Zoom

Meet offers an alternative to the increasingly popular Zoom video conferencing app, which has also seen a massive increase in usage.

Users of the free version of Google Meet will be able to host and partake in meetings with unlimited duration until 30 September.

After this, the length of meetings will be limited to 60 minutes. By comparison, Zooms free tier has a limit of 40 minutes per group session.

Both Meet and Zoom meetings can take up to 100 participants per video call session, and screen-sharing is also available for free on both platforms.

Meet is supported on various browsers  including Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge  and is available as an app for both Android and iOS devices.

Security is key

One of the main features of Meet is its superior security.

Zoom has faced backlash over its apparent lack of proper security policies, which has caused concerns over the privacy of its users.

Google said Meet is designed, built, and operated to be secure at scale.

As it requires the user to be signed into a Google account, it eliminates the possibility of Zoombombing.

Zoombombing allows unwanted users to intrude on meetings, gaining access to meeting codes shared publicly.

Additionally, Meet complies with IETF security standards for Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) and Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP).

Google said implements the following security measures in Meet:

Host controls the ability to admit or deny entry to a meeting, and mute or remove participants.

No anonymous users can join meetings created by individual accounts.

Meeting codes are complex by default, which makes them resilient to guessing.

Meet video meetings are encrypted in transit, and all recordings stored in Google Drive are encrypted in transit and at rest.

No plugins are required to use Meet on supported web browsers.

Additionally, Meet users can enroll their account in Googles Advanced Protection Program for additional protection against phishing and account hijacking.

Getting started

To use Google Meet, you will require a Google account  which includes a Gmail address.

Once you have an account set up, head to meet.google.com on your browser.

From the main page, click on Start Meeting to create a new session or Join Meeting if you have a code for an existing video call.

Meeting hosts have the option of creating a nickname for a meeting so that people can quickly join it, too.

To add participants to a meeting, click Copy joining info and paste the details into an email or messaging app to send to people you would like to add.

Alternatively, you can click Add people and type in an email address to send an invite, or a phone number to call a participant.

The video below shows how the process works.



Layout options

Once users have entered the meeting, they have four options of layouts  Auto, Tiled, Spotlight, or Sidebar.

To access the options, users click on the three-button menu in the lower-right corner of the display.

Auto lets Meet choose the layout for you, while Tiled shows up to 16 people when no presentation is being shown.

In Spotlight, the presentation, active speaker or pinned feed fills your window, while Sidebar lets you view the active speaker or presentation with other participants on the side.

Other features

Meet also allows users to pin, arrange, remove, and mute participants in a video meeting.

In addition, users can turn on captions for English speech to make it easier to follow conversations.

You can also send text messages and attach files for participants to download in the meeting.

For full descriptions on how to use these and other features in Meet, visit the Google Meet Help Centre.

Now read: Major companies warn employees against using Zoom
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Friday was an emotional day for an Oklahoma family as Melissa Lissner returned home after spending nearly two months stuck at sea.

"The ship was docked in the Philippines, the Manila, Philippines, in the bay," she said.

Lissner told our sister station KOCO 5 that she was working on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship with her husband as entertaining ice skaters when the coronavirus crisis took over the globe.

"They said, 'OK, you are all non-working crew because we can't afford to keep paying everybody,' and they tried to get us home," Derek Lissner said. "The problem is, almost all the countries around the world are very hesitant to let any of the crew use their airports."

Fearful and with some people on board testing positive for the virus, Melissa Lissner tried her best to keep the faith.

"You have to remember, we're not able to get the supplies now," she said. "I think they said there are 120 ships in the United States that are just floating around in the waters. The food's going to start dwindling. Mental health is going to start dwindling."

Now home, Melissa Lissner said she plans on spending time with her loved ones and skating  something she's known for across Oklahoma.

"Royal Caribbean has 12 ships with ice rinks out there  very small ice, a lot smaller than what you're used to seeing at any of our local ice rinks," she said.

Despite the struggles, Melissa Lissner said she knows things could have been worse.

Watch the video above to learn more about this story.
Is ManpowerGroup Greater China Limited (HKG:2180) a good dividend stock? How can we tell? Dividend paying companies with growing earnings can be highly rewarding in the long term. Yet sometimes, investors buy a stock for its dividend and lose money because the share price falls by more than they earned in dividend payments.

Some simple analysis can reduce the risk of holding ManpowerGroup Greater China for its dividend, and we'll focus on the most important aspects below.

Explore this interactive chart for our latest analysis on ManpowerGroup Greater China!

SEHK:2180 Historical Dividend Yield May 3rd 2020

Payout ratios

Dividends are usually paid out of company earnings. If a company is paying more than it earns, then the dividend might become unsustainable - hardly an ideal situation. As a result, we should always investigate whether a company can afford its dividend, measured as a percentage of a company's net income after tax. ManpowerGroup Greater China paid out 39% of its profit as dividends, over the trailing twelve month period. This is a middling range that strikes a nice balance between paying dividends to shareholders, and retaining enough earnings to invest in future growth. Besides, if reinvestment opportunities dry up, the company has room to increase the dividend.

In addition to comparing dividends against profits, we should inspect whether the company generated enough cash to pay its dividend. ManpowerGroup Greater China paid out 85% of its cash flow last year. This may be sustainable but it does not leave much of a buffer for unexpected circumstances. It's positive to see that ManpowerGroup Greater China's dividend is covered by both profits and cash flow, since this is generally a sign that the dividend is sustainable, and a lower payout ratio usually suggests a greater margin of safety before the dividend gets cut.

With a strong net cash balance, ManpowerGroup Greater China investors may not have much to worry about in the near term from a dividend perspective.

Story continues

We update our data on ManpowerGroup Greater China every 24 hours, so you can always get our latest analysis of its financial health, here.

Dividend Volatility

Before buying a stock for its income, we want to see if the dividends have been stable in the past, and if the company has a track record of maintaining its dividend. With a payment history of less than 2 years, we think it's a bit too soon to think about living on the income from its dividend. Its most recent annual dividend was CN0.25 per share.

It's good to see at least some dividend growth. Yet with a relatively short dividend paying history, we wouldn't want to depend on this dividend too heavily.

Dividend Growth Potential

The other half of the dividend investing equation is evaluating whether earnings per share (EPS) are growing. Growing EPS can help maintain or increase the purchasing power of the dividend over the long run. Earnings have grown at around 8.9% a year for the past five years, which is better than seeing them shrink! It's good to see decent earnings growth and a low payout ratio. Companies with these characteristics often display the fastest dividend growth over the long term - assuming earnings can be maintained, of course.

We'd also point out that ManpowerGroup Greater China issued a meaningful number of new shares in the past year. Trying to grow the dividend when issuing new shares reminds us of the ancient Greek tale of Sisyphus - perpetually pushing a boulder uphill. Companies that consistently issue new shares are often suboptimal from a dividend perspective.

Conclusion

To summarise, shareholders should always check that ManpowerGroup Greater China's dividends are affordable, that its dividend payments are relatively stable, and that it has decent prospects for growing its earnings and dividend. Firstly, we like that ManpowerGroup Greater China pays out a low fraction of earnings. It pays out a higher percentage of its cashflow, although this is within acceptable bounds. We were also glad to see it growing earnings, although its dividend history is not as long as we'd like. Overall we think ManpowerGroup Greater China is an interesting dividend stock, although it could be better.

It's important to note that companies having a consistent dividend policy will generate greater investor confidence than those having an erratic one. Meanwhile, despite the importance of dividend payments, they are not the only factors our readers should know when assessing a company. For example, we've picked out 2 warning signs for ManpowerGroup Greater China that investors should know about before committing capital to this stock.

Looking for more high-yielding dividend ideas? Try our curated list of dividend stocks with a yield above 3%.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Putting Our Trust in Gods Sovereignty

When we understand that God loves us, we can see his sovereignty in a whole new light. Instead of seeming unpredictable and turbulent, Gods all-encompassing power takes on a new beauty. Every time we pray, we can turn to His might. Any problem we face can be brought to Him.

Jeremiah 32:17

Ah, Sovereign LORD, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you.

Psalm 121:2

My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.

Matthew 19:26

And looking at them Jesus said to them, With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.

Gods Sovereign Will

Of course, this does not mean that Gods great power is meant to be a giant wishing well, granting our requests. Gods plans are greater than our plans. While we view life through a window, he has the entire street view. He is the author of our lives and He knows where He wants to take us. While we may be concerned with our comfort, His primary focus is on our soul and the souls of those within our sphere of influence. Jesus taught his disciples to pray, thy kingdom come; thy will be done; on earth as it is in heaven. When we focus on the sovereignty of Gods will, we can trust that ultimately his Will is for us to be with Him for eternity.

Proverbs 19:21

Many are the plans in a persons heart, but it is the Lords purpose that prevails.

Acts 5:39

But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.

James 4:14-15

Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, If it is the Lords will, we will live and do this or that.

Photo credit: Crosscards.com
KYODO NEWS - May 3, 2020 - 21:53 | Sports, All, Japan, Coronavirus

The Japan Sumo Association is making arrangements to cancel the Summer Grand Sumo Tournament, which was scheduled to open May 24 due to the new coronavirus pandemic, multiple official sources said Sunday.

The JSA has said its decision to hold or cancel the 15-day event at Tokyo's Ryogoku Kokugikan would consider the government's position. But with Japan's state of emergency now likely to be extended to the end of May, it becomes increasingly difficult to hold the tournament.

According to one source, the JSA's board of directors will make a formal decision on Monday once receiving word that the state of emergency will be extended. A cancelation would be the third time in history and the first since the March 2011 grand tournament was shelved due to a match-fixing scandal.

In order to help stem the spread of the virus, March's Spring tourney in Osaka was the first grand tournament in history held behind doors. The tourney took place with the understanding that it would be suspended should any wrestler or JSA member test positive for the virus.

Related coverage:

Sumo stablemaster, 5 wrestlers contract new coronavirus

1st sumo wrestler tests positive for coronavirus

On April 7, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared a state of emergency for Tokyo, Osaka and five other prefectures. Nine days later, the order was extended to the entire nation.

As of Sunday, seven people within the JSA had tested positive for the pneumonia-causing virus, including stablemaster Takadagawa, second-tier wrestler Hakuyozan and five lower-ranked wrestlers.

"The situation is radically different from the spring tourney," a senior association executive said. "People within the association have now become infected. We can't hope to stage the summer tourney."
Brian Austin Green has been spotted with his wedding ring back on.

The 46-year-old who has recently fueled speculation that he's split from his wife, Megan Fox, 33, was seen with the band while out solo on Saturday.

The actor kept things casual and masked up to protect himself and others amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Back on with Megan? Brian Austin Green was spotted with his wedding ring back on during a solo outing in Malibu on Saturday

Brian opted for a graphic white T-shirt and a pair of knee length denim shorts.

He teamed the look with black sneakers and accessorised with a fedora style hat on his head.

The 90210 star was seen wearing a gold band on his wedding finger while out and about on Saturday.

Wedding ring? The 90210 star was seen wearing a gold band on his wedding finger while out and about on Saturday

Casual: Brian opted for a graphic white T-shirt and a pair of knee length denim shorts

Brian's appearance comes after rumors of a separation from wife of ten-years, Megan Fox, have continued to circulate.

Many of the Anger Management star's outings have seen him solo and not wearing his wedding ring.

The duo have yet to address split rumors, however a source told E! Online last week that they 'don't plan to file divorce right now.'

Family: Brian and Megan are parents to sons Noah, seven, Bodhi, six, and Journey, three

Brian and Megan were also spotted last month swapping their kids and a car seat in a parking lot in Calabasas.

Megan is currently residing in there while Brian has been living in Malibu.

The duo married in 2010 after six-years of dating, however their relationship has not been without its ups and downs.

Megan and Brian split in 2009, three years after getting engaged, only to reconcile and get married the following year.

Separation? Brian and Megan were spotted last month swapping their kids and a car seat in a parking lot in Calabasas

They welcomed eldest sons, Noah Shannon, seven, in 2012, and, Bodhi Ransom, six, in 2014, before the Transformers star filed for divorce in 2015 citing 'irreconcilable differences'.

However, the following year Megan announced she was pregnant with their third child and the couple got back together. They welcomed son, Journey River, three, in 2016.

Megan dismissed the pending divorce in April 2019 and in December they made their first joint red carpet appearance together in five years.
AIB chief executive Colin Hunt was confident and assured in his presentation to the bank's virtual annual general meeting during the week. The balance sheet is strong. The bank is in a good position going into this crisis. It will extend the mortgage break for struggling customers by another three months if people need it.

But there were also clear indications of how this crisis will ultimately leave its mark on banking and the role of the banks in helping small businesses in particular to get through it.

Hunt flagged how the payment breaks would require banks to set aside provisions to cover the changed circumstances. The bank is expected to unveil a provision for an expected rise in bad loans in its first-quarter trading statement, due to be published next month.

If the crisis drags on, the scale of bad loan provisions may well have to rise. This isn't just about mortgages but business loans going into default. As retailers, cafes and others fail to pay their rent, commercial landlords are likely to default on their loans in some cases.

European banks - including Santander, UniCredit and HSBC - have announced billions of euro in bad debt charges in the last week or so.

Irish banks will inevitably have to move in the same direction. European credit ratings firm Scope said in a report on Thursday that it expects some payment breaks to evolve into loans moving into default.

"We expect a rapid deterioration in mortgage defaults as household income significantly shrinks, especially among re-performing loans," Scope said.

Ultimately, the direction of the crisis will affect assessment of loan applications and risk appetite for the banks, too.

Hunt alluded to this when he said the bank has a "responsibility to be prudent" in its lending to protect the customer and the bank.

"We have not confirmed any changes to our credit criteria at this point, but it is fair to say that our lending criteria remains under review given the very uncertain environment in which we are operating."

Honest, hardly surprising, and perfectly logical, but it isn't music to the ears of anyone who might be in dire need of a loan from their bank. So if you are looking for your bank to dig you out, don't bank on it.

Now put it in the context of the Government's announcement earlier in the crisis about freeing up liquidity through loans. Businesses in real trouble do not want to borrow more money even at below typical commercial rates.

Government schemes have not had the level of take-up they might have. The 200m Covid-19 working capital fund for small businesses has seen a muted level of drawdowns so far. SBCI administers the scheme and since March 10, when it was announced, just 17m in loans have been granted to 100 borrowers. So no wonder there is a major push towards a different grant-based, or loan guarantee scheme which the Government is now working on.

The bankers would prefer to see some kind of State guarantee scheme. This means they could lend the money to SMEs without having to take the risk. The State would take up that slack. The Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (BPFI) called on the Government to set up a scheme offering up to 90pc guarantees against lending to SMEs to aid a recovery of the economy from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Talk about a win/win for the banks, which would get to lend the money, collect the interest and yet not have to worry about whether it was paid back or not. The State would take 90pc of the risk.

Hunt summed it up when he talked about lending and risk in a tougher environment, telling one newspaper: "There's no point in making unsustainable loans to people."

Pity bankers didn't take that view before and during the property boom.

You may have given Michael O'Leary an interest-free loan

If you are one of those people who booked flights on Ryanair or Aer Lingus some months back and the flight has been cancelled, you may have actually given the company an interest-free loan.

As the airlines seek to have a temporary change in European law, which currently entitles you to a cash refund, they are seeking to buy time before having to deplete their cash even further by offering vouchers.

The amounts of money held by airlines in pre-paid flights is vast. It runs into billions of euro for some airlines. Ryanair has not said how much cash it would have to hand back to passengers but it is likely to be very substantial.

Industry sources say the amount held by an airline might be around two months of revenues. In Ryanair's case that would come to well over 1bn, given revenues were over 7bn.

Even if it was 10pc of revenues, it would be around 700m for Ryanair. It had around 4bn of cash available on its balance sheet going into this crisis.

Around 700m to 1bn is a huge amount of cash to give back at a time when you don't have any planes in the air and recovery is likely to be slow.

For some European airlines giving back the cash, as opposed to a voucher, would be the difference between having to restructure, receive a bailout or even go under.

Both Ryanair and Aer Lingus owner IAG are in better shape than this because they have been better run. Plus, they are having to look as governments across Europe bailout their competitors with billions of taxpayers' money.

The Government lent its signature to a letter to the European Commission seeking to temporarily amend the law so that cash refunds would not have to be given.

It was a strange decision for the Government to take a position that would be so unpopular with so many travelling punters - or not travelling in this case.

When asked about it in the Dail, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar defended backing the airlines, saying he wanted to see Ryanair and Aer Lingus operating later in the summer and doesn't want to be in a position where the State has to bailout airlines. The seriousness of the situation was highlighted on Friday with news of job losses at both airlines.

Ireland is one of 12 countries that have put their names to the letter. The lobbying across Europe on this issue must be ferocious.

But we have been assured by both Ryanair and IAG that they are among the best capitalised and cashed-up airlines in Europe.

Those in the industry say giving back the cash would endanger some European airlines but not Ryanair and IAG. However, they say it would have a material impact on their cash reserves as they go through the crisis and beyond.

If you have lost your job, you might like your money back now. It is yours and under law you are entitled to it.

If you haven't lost your job, and your income has not been badly impacted, you might ask what would you do with the cash in the meantime. Put it in the bank and book a holiday with it later? Taking a voucher and using it sometime next year, isn't such a huge price to pay for some people but it is infuriating for everybody.

Bear in mind if an airline goes under, punters lose the cash refund and the voucher is practically worthless. Airlines would argue that the guy who lost his job wants to find another one. And the best way to do that is to enable the economy to recover and that includes keeping businesses like airlines strong.

If these airlines are so financially strong and want to come back stronger than their competitors, why not give the cash back, and borrow that amount when it all blows over? Ryanair owns 70pc of its own planes. It could borrow 1bn no problem if it were needed.

One of the keys is to get people back travelling again. When countries and flying opens up many might still be reluctant about travelling. What better way to hook them in than having vouchers sitting at home in a drawer?
Rishi Kapoors Daughter Riddhima Arrives In Mumbai With Samara To Be With Neetu And Ranbir
Over the past month or so, as governors across America have attempted to address coronavirus concerns within the nuanced confines of their states' borders, the question of just how far we should allow the government to intrude upon our rights in the name of public health concerns has continued to surface.

We have seen what many consider to be the needless overstepping of boundaries on issues including the use of state and national parks, with the National Park Service's website stating that 150 of the 419 locations in the national park system were either partially or fully closed as a result of COVID-19, despite the relative ease which with these locations can be enjoyed while fully complying with government-mandated social distancing guidelines.

After a difficult six weeks or so that saw unemployment spike nationally while Congress scrambled to put together multiple relief packages for businesses and private citizens, states like Texas, Tennessee, and Georgia are now beginning to lead the charge toward the eventual reopening of the American economy.

While America begins to take its first steps toward the normalization of human interaction, the methods used to track any subsequent surges in new coronavirus cases geographically  not only in the U.S., but also internationally  are being developed in real time.

According to the website OneZero, at this point in time, "at least 30 governments around the world have instituted temporary or indefinite efforts to single out infected individuals or maintain quarantines." The "indefinite" part should be cause for concern in many countries, some which fail to place any premium on an individual's right to privacy.

These countries, which include the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, Italy, Israel, Pakistan, Iran, and Germany, are all employing new surveillance tactics under the guise of "the greater concern of public health interests."

In the U.S., surveillance of the citizenry is nothing new. Part of the fallout of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks was the institution of the PATRIOT Act, which gave government sweeping new surveillance powers with limited oversight. These powers included the ability to demand customer data and communication records from telecommunication companies without the need for a proper warrant.

Now, in light of the coronavirus outbreak, the already intrusive mobile advertising industry will supply location data to local, state, and federal government organizations to help determine whether citizens are complying with stay-at-home directives and if parks are being frequented. In addition, the app Foursquare, which people use to "check in" at various locations, is said to be in talks with numerous government organizations regarding aiding the government's effort to track potential carriers of COVID-19, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Other Examples of governmental tracking efforts internationally include:

Iran: The Iranian government has developed an app that has recorded millions of users' location data as part of a questionnaire that claims to detect their likelihood of infection with the coronavirus. A message promoting the app was sent to tens of millions of Iranians, with instructions to take the questionnaire prior to being tested for COVID-19. According to the Iranian government, this tactic netted the location data for at least 3.5 million people.

Australia: Although the Australian government has opted to not use cell phonebased location-tracking, people diagnosed with COVID-19 and forced into quarantine may either have surveillance devices installed in their homes or be forced to wear an electronic device, according to a new law in the state of Western Australia.

Poland: An new app named Home Quarantine requires Polish citizens currently under quarantine to randomly check in with the government by sending a picture of themselves while at home within 20 minutes or face the possibility of a fine. This app employs the use of facial recognition to determine whether it is actually the person under quarantine orders, and additionally, the phone's location information is used to ensure that he's really at home.

With all the new tracking applications being rolled out internationally, it is also very important to make sure you aren't interacting with rogue applications designed to steal information for hackers looking to make a profit on the coronavirus frenzy. Libyan hackers have recently developed a remote access trojan (RAT) known as SpyMax, which poses as a tool to aid users in following the latest news regarding COVID-19 and imitates the popular Johns Hopkins University coronavirus dashboard. The creators of SpyMax are currently spreading the RAT to victims via text messages.

The progressive deterioration of individual privacy rights has found an accelerant in the frenzy surrounding our current pandemic. Like with many other major events in history, when provided justification in "the interest of public safety," the statists within governments globally were more than up to the task of finding new ways to keep track of their "subjects."

Julio Rivera is a business and political strategist, the editorial director for Reactionary Times, and a political commentator and columnist. His writing, which is focused on cyber-security and politics, has been published by websites including The Hill, Real Clear Politics, Townhall, and American Thinker.
When the Louisiana Legislature gavels back into session at 9 a.m. Monday, the only issue that lawmakers can come close to turning into law will be the only one on which they wont vote: whether the Gulf Fritillary becomes the official state butterfly.

Both chambers were set to vote on near-identical bills when the Legislature suspended March 16 its 85-day annual session, only five legislative days in, to help stem the community spread of the novel coronavirus. A couple of word changes on one or the other bill, and that legislation could be headed to the governors desk by the end of the week.

I dont think were going to do any butterfly bills, said Senate President Page Cortez, R-Lafayette.

Lawmakers have more important work and only 28 days to get it done. Legislators are going to have to focus on measures that respond to COVID-19 and to the economic issues caused by closing casinos and other businesses.

COVID-related bills that we have, economy-related bills that we have, and the budget; those are the priorities, said House Speaker Clay Schexnayder, R-Gonzalez.

John Bel Edwards responds to petition to cancel emergency order: 'Silly is not the right word' Gov. John Bel Edwards on Thursday blasted a movement by some GOP state lawmakers to cancel his emergency declaration on the new coronavirus in

Not all the legislators are on board with showing up Monday  Democrats, the Legislative Black Caucus and others want to wait until May 15 when the stay at home directive is set to be lifted.

But Cortez and Schexnayder say waiting that long would require too many committees to meet at once. Instead, they plan to spread out hearings so that more than one committee room can be used and thereby keep social distancing.

The Senate needs to consent on appointments and lawmakers need to renew a handful state agencies to allow them to continue operations. The Department of Transportation and Development and the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries are among those on the list this year.

Mostly legislators will be dealing with the roughly $30 billion budget that pays for public schools, health care for about 1 out of 4 residents, supplements law enforcement salaries and all manner of other state services.

The next coronavirus crisis could be Louisiana's government budgets, but leaders hoping for aid As Gov. John Bel Edwards signs an extension of the states stay-at-home order until May 15, Louisianas state and local governments Thursday f

Houma Republican Rep. Jerome Zee Zeringue, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, is the chief sponsor of the states annual operating budget for Fiscal Year 2021, which begins July 1.

He wants to start hearings Monday. But the heavy lifting cant begin until May 11, after the Revenue Estimating Conference meets. The REC is charged with determining just how much money the legislators are allowed to spend.

Making those estimates will be difficult.

Sales tax receipts undoubtably are down for the month April, but just how much wont be known until collections are completed near the end of May and reported in June after the scheduled session adjourns. Oil prices have collapsed, and the collection of severance taxes has been discontinued for the time being. Plus, the closure of casinos will cut deeply into available revenues.

Legislature to reconvene Monday, focusing on coronavirus, tort reform, economy and budget measures Though hints had been dropped and speculation parsed, Louisiana legislative leadership made official Thursday afternoon their plans to reconve

Most of the budget is made up of federal government grants and dedications in the law that direct where the money comes from and how it should be spent. Only about $10 billion of the $30 billion comes from Louisiana-based taxes and sources, which leaves budget architects little wiggle room to absorb a shortfall.

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Best guess estimates are that state government revenues will fall about $450 million to $500 million short, Zeringue said.

Government should be able to weather the lower numbers for rest of the current fiscal year, Zeringue tells anyone who asks. Well be OK (for the current year). All bets are off for FY21, Zeringue told the Pelican Institute last week.

Most big departments should be ready for some cuts. Its just a fact of life, said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Bodi White, the Central Republican who gets the budget legislation, House Bill 105, upon House approval.

Legislators have to pass a balanced budget by July 1 or the state will have to stop spending. Zeringue said he thinks it can be done by 6 p.m. June 1 when the annual session is scheduled to adjourn. So does Schexnayder, though he left an out.

A new budget has to be in place by July 1, which means a special session may be required on that and other issues, Schexnayder said.

Budget architects also need to account for all that money coming in from the federal government  $1.8 billion from the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, along with millions more from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other sources. But that picture is muddled.

Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne said last week he believes local governments might not have enough eligible expenditures to spend all $810 million because the state has coordinated much of the spending on coronavirus resources and because it cant be used to offset lost revenue.

Cortez and Schexnayder asked legislators to prioritize their bills in order to focus more on the budget and other COVID-19 measures. About a third of the 1,548 bills and resolutions will be heard.

But that still leaves a lot of other issues on the table, from changes in the controversial Industrial Tax Exemption Program, in which the state forgives some local taxes for companies, to tort reform, which would place limits on people going to court to seek damages for their injuries.

Lawmakers also will consider clinical assessments for drivers convicted a second time of Driving While Intoxicated. Other measures would set a retirement age for judges and provide pathway for retired teachers to return to the classroom.

No doubt a resolution terminating the governors order from which the stay at home directive was extended could come up if its conservative House sponsors can get anywhere near the 53 votes necessary for passage.

Not all the legislators are enthused about returning. One of the 144 lawmakers died from COVID-19: Rep. Reggie Bagala, R-Cut Off. Two, Cortez and Baton Rouge Democratic Rep. Ted James, contracted the virus but survived.

Rep. Ted James rethinking his legislative job State Rep. Ted James came out of his near-fatal bout with COVID-19 with a different outlook life that included far less tolerance for colleagu

Louisiana's senate president has recovered after testing positive for coronavirus Senate President Page Cortez said Thursday that he tested positive for the novel coronavirus last month, had a mild case and is healthy today.

James posted a photo Saturday of a protest to the Stay at Home extension and noted that nobody seemed to be wearing masks or was social distancing. I wont be entering the Capitol on Monday, James said.
64% of professionals prefer to continue working from home after the coronavirus restrictions lift

71% of Amazon professionals prefer to continue working from home after the coronavirus restrictions lift

Over 60% of Microsoft, Uber, Salesforce, Lyft and Intel professionals prefer to continue working from home after the coronavirus restrictions lift

64% of professionals are less likely to use shared/common spaces

71% of Microsoft professionals are less likely to use shared/common spaces

90% of professionals expect a flexible WFH policy to persist

More than 90% of professionals at Amazon, Google, Uber, Salesforce and Oracle expect a flexible WFH policy to persist

93% of finance industry professionals expect a flexible WFH policy to persist

Yes, and was (usually) working from home before the pandemic  33%

Yes, and was (usually) working from the office before the pandemic  57%

No, one of the few still working at the office  holding down the fort  5%

No, I was furloughed or laid off because of the pandemic  2%

No, I was unemployed before the pandemic  2%

In the next month  24%

In the next two months (by July 1)  34%

Sometime this summer, but after July 1  21%

Probably this fall (Sept - Dec), if there is not a second wave of COVID-19  11%

I'm not moving back to that office this year  plan to telework longer-term (perhaps forever)  8%

Yep! Bring on James Bond  19%

Probably, but there might be a few holes  49%

We've got some improvements to make  19%

Not really, minimal guidance and I am just hoping no one notices  10%

Get ready for data breach headlines  1%

Step-by-step guides for setting up a pandemic response team

Cleaning and disinfection procedures

Staggering shifts and lunch breaks and other social distancing strategies

Onsite health screenings

Protocols for isolating employees who become ill at work

By any measure, the number of professionals working from home (WFH) has skyrocketed during the pandemic. Public and private sector organizations quickly adopted telework practices for many staff, and in most cases, the results have been better than expected.So will we ever go back to the way things were before the pandemic? New studies suggest the answer is no, and expanded telework may be a lasting positive result from this global pandemic. Even for those who are heading back to the office in coming months, get ready for massive changes and many months of social distancing between people, wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) and much more.Here are some recent media headlines and snippets of relevant stories on this surge in telework and coming next steps:Another interesting aspect flowing from WFH during this pandemic has been a change in employee expectations regarding work from home programs moving forward.In a new survey by Blind , the anonymous professional network with 3.5MM+ verified professionals, it is clear that the majority of professionals prefer to work from home. Here are the key findings from 2,500 responses in late April:On Friday May 1, 2020, I moderated a global webinar ( available to view with free BrightTALK registration at this link ), titled: Back to the Office  or Not? Next Steps in Pandemic Technology Response. The participants were:During the webinar, I found the answers to the webinar poll questions to be very intriguing. With a global audience of over 330 people, here were the results from participants:Q: Are you working from home now?Q: If you are still employed and working from home temporarily, when do you currently expect to move back to the office?Q: If you are working from home temporarily, is the cybersecurity you have in place for your technology good enough?During our BrightTALK webinar, Earl Duby, the CISO at Lear, offered this helpful resource called the  Lear Safe Work Playbook . Heres a brief excerpt from the Lear playbook content overview:While it is not a one-size-fits-all approach, the Safe Work Playbook includes practical recommendations, based on guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and World Health Organization, that could be tailored by businesses to address various scenarios they may face when returning to work. Regular updates will be made to the playbook based on real-time feedback.The manual covers a wide range of topics, including:This has been a difficult time for everyone, and re-establishing a workplace where employees feel comfortable performing their jobs safely is a multi-faceted challenge. It is our hope that by sharing this resource we can help your organization accomplish the same goals, as everyone adapts to new operating protocols in todays still challenging conditions. as working from home became more widespread, many now say they dont want to go back to former practices.Once the economy reopens, 24% say theyd like to work either entirely or more from home compared to how they worked before, while 55% plan to head back to the office.Some 60% report being either as productive, or more productive, than they were working from the office. also ran this headline story stating that the coronavirus will change how we work forever.In conversations with numerous CISOs, CTOs and CIOs in the public and private sector over the past month, I keep hearing a common theme that we are never going back to the ways things were before the pandemic.One aspect of this has been overcoming the huge reluctance that many middle managers felt toward their staff working from home. But now, because there was no other option during the pandemic, many of the reasons (or arguments to not allow telework) have been overcome by necessity. Those former arguments are not only invalid, many managers now enjoy teleworking themselves.No doubt, every organization is different and the future will look very different after a vaccine is widely available worldwide  likely before the end of 2021 at the latest. Another huge change will be how we approach business (and leisure) travel and attending conferences for the foreseeable future.The reopening of schools also seem to be in flux across the country with NYC saying there is only a 50-50 chance of schools opening in September , while California Gov. Newsom suggesting L.A. schools may open in July . Colleges and universities are also struggling with answers for their campuses safely reopening . These school situations will also impact parents expected to be home with children.But over the next year, the new normal regarding working from home is being rewritten within business areas based on a long list of factors. And despite government restrictions being lifted, many staff have already decided that they dont want to go back to the office anytime soon.
A driver allegedly involved in a three-car crash that claimed the life of a senior South Australian police officer has been charged over the incident.

Harrison Kitt remains in Royal Adelaide Hospital in a serious condition after the crash at Urrbrae in the city's south on Anzac Day, killing two women.

Major crash officers charged the 20-year-old with two counts of aggravated causing death by dangerous driving and one count of aggravated causing harm by dangerous driving.

He was granted bail to appear at Adelaide Magistrates Court at a later date.

Detective Chief Superintendent Joanne Shanahan, 55, was one of two women who died at the scene following the crash at about 1.40pm on April 26.

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Harrison Kitt (pictured) remains in Royal Adelaide Hospital after the crash at Urrbrae in the city's south on Anzac Day, killing two women

Chief-Supt Shanahan, a veteran of more than three decades with South Australia Police, received a police medal last year as part of the Australia Day Honours

Supt Shanahan was a passenger in a car driven by her husband Peter, a retired police detective who is currently the general counsel for SA Police.

Tania McNeill, 53, a married mother-of-one and the driver of a silver BMW involved in the crash, also died at the scene.

'Words cannot describe the pain our family is feeling at this time,' her family said in a statement.

The 20-year-old was allegedly driving the third vehicle involved in the crash, a VW ute.

His sister - who is also a police officer - arrived on the scene of the horrific crash just moments later.

Witnesses claimed one of the cars ran a red light moments before the deadly collision at the intersection of Cross Road and Fullerton Road.

Mr Shanahan, who now holds a senior leadership role as the general counsel for SA Police, was taken to Royal Adelaide Hospital with minor injuries and has since been discharged.

SA Police Commissioner Grant Stevens held back tears as he told reporters after her death that Det Chief Supt Shanahan was a 'dear friend'.

Harrison Kitts, who was involved in a three-car road crash that claimed the life of a senior South Australian police officer has been charged over the incident

High-ranking police officer Joanne Shanahan (left) has been named as one of two women killed in a horrific car crash in Adelaide on Saturday afternoon. Her husband Peter Shanahan (right) survived the collision

'Sadly, the real tragedy of road fatalities has been brought home to South Australia police when we lost one of our finest senior police officers,' he said.

The mother-of-two joined the force in 1981 and was appointed the inaugural officer in charge of the family and domestic violence branch.

Chief-Supt Shanahan joined SA Police in 1981 and she received an Australian Police Medal last year as part of the Australia Day Honours.

She was only the third woman in the history of the state's police force to rise to the rank of chief superintendent.

'Coming from quite a strict Greek background and going into the police force as a female was quite significant for my family,' she told The Adelaide Advertiser in January 2019 about her Australia Day award.

Chief-supt Shanahan (pictured) was described as a 'beautiful person' and a 'detective with a wealth of knowledge' by SA Police commissioner Grant Stevens on Sunday

Scene of the crash pictured. Chief-supt Shanahan died at the scene along with another woman

'They were totally shocked that their daughter wanted to be a police officer. But when I was accepted they were proud as punch.'

Witnesses had told the ABC a Volkswagen four-wheel drive flew into the air before hitting a streetlight.

Another witness told 9News he saw one of the cars speed through the suburban intersection without its brake lights on seconds before the collision.

Pictures taken after the collision showed wreckage and debris strewn across the road and a car on its side.

South Australia Police Superintendent Craig Wall said it was a 'horrific scene and tragic for everyone involved'.

'The scene is  tragic for not only the families but for the emergency services attending here today.'


And now, Words and Their Stories, from VOA Learning English.

The last Friday in April is National Arbor Day in the United States. Arbor Day celebrates the role of trees in the world around us. Each year, organizers call on Americans to plant trees and care for them.

In 1872, a Nebraska man named J. Sterling Morton proposed the first Arbor Day. It became a legal holiday in the state 13 years later.

Today many states observe Arbor Day on different dates throughout the year based on best planting times in their area. In North Dakota and Vermont, for example, Arbor Day is celebrated on the first Friday in May.

A non-profit group called the Arbor Day Foundation operates the ArborDay.org website. It notes that tree planting festivals are as old as civilization. The tree has appeared throughout history and literature as the symbol of life.

Trees do a lot for the environment. They clean the air around us. Some trees, such as apple and pear, give us fruit. Trees also provide shade for us and other creatures.

Some animals build their homes inside trees or on strong tree branches. People and animals can use the wood from trees for building materials.

You might find this strange, but trees can be fun to watch. You can just sit back and watch birds high up in the trees. If you live in an area with squirrels, watching them run up and around trees, jumping from one to the next can be a lot of fun.

And that brings us to our expression for today: to bark up the wrong tree.

In fact, this expression is more like an idiom.

Now, you might think that bark in to bark up the wrong tree means the strong, outer covering of a tree. But that is not the right bark.

In our expression today, bark means the sound a dog makes.

Dogs bark a lot. They bark when they want to go outside for a walk. They bark with they see other dogs. They bark when they chase other animals, such as cats and squirrels.

Now, imagine that a dog chases a squirrel up a tree. That is a lot of work  for the dog, that is. Dogs cannot climb trees. Squirrels, on the other hand, are expert climbers -- of trees and just about anything else. A squirrel may go up one tree but then jump to another. The dog simply cant follow the squirrel. So, it stays on the ground barking and barking up the wrong tree.

And that is where we get our idiom.

When a dog barks up a wrong tree, they are barking up a tree that no longer has their prey  the squirrel.

For people, barking up the wrong tree means following a mistaken plan of action. If I bark up the wrong tree, I am doing something that will not get the result I want. I am wrong about the reason for something or possibly the way to get something.

For example, at a party I notice that my co-worker Jonas is interested in a good friend of mine named Ursula. But Ursula is happily married, which is bad news for Jonas. So, I say to him, Jonas, I know you want to ask Ursula out on a date. But you are barking up the wrong tree! She is very happily married.

Now, let me tell you about another person who used the wrong way to get something.

A friend of mine, Sharon, needed money for her new business idea. So, she went to an event to meet possible investors. However, the only people she met were other people looking for money. She spent the whole time barking up the wrong tree!

Now, keep this in mind when using this expression. While Americans do say bark up the wrong tree, we would not say bark up the right tree.

So, if you came to the VOA Learning English website to learn English, I would not say you are barking up the right tree. I would just say, Welcome! Youve come to the right place!

Join us again next week when we explore words and expressions in American English.

Until next time  Im Anna Matteo.

Anna Matteo wrote this story for VOA Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

role  n. a part that someone or something has in a particular activity or situation

festival  n. a time of celebration marked by special observances

symbol  n. an action, object, event, etc., that expresses or represents a particular idea or quality

shade  n. an area of slight darkness that is produced when something blocks the light of the sun

idiom  n. an expression that cannot be understood from the meanings of its separate words but that has a separate meaning of its own

prey  n. an animal that is hunted or killed by another animal for food
Juliet Daly

For a 12-year-old juvenile whose parents couldnt wait to see grow into a vibrant young woman in pursuit of big dreams, Juliet Daly didnt think that what had started out as mere stomach ache would later leave her bedridden and gasping for breath.

The healthy little girl nearly died after COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, seemed to trigger multiple organ failure and a rare heart condition that caused her heart to stop for two minutes.

I died for two minutes, Juliet told Good Morning America on Wednesday while recounting how her near-death journey began three weeks ago when she was airlifted to Ochsner Medical Center (OMC) in New Orleans with heart failure.



My stomach would not stop hurting. I didnt want to move. I didnt want to live. I wanted for it all to stop.

It was gathered that she spent four days unconscious on a ventilator at the intensive care unit (ICU) after Jake Kleinmahon, a pediatric cardiologist at OMC, who treated Juliet, attributed her rare heart condition to an inflammation which was triggered by COVID-19.

Before she tested for COVID-19, the little girl had complained about severe abdominal pain  which was not a typical symptom of other COVID-19 patients such as a fever, cough or breathing difficulties.

Jennifer Daly, Juliets mother, had also recounted driving home from the New Orleans hospital where her daughter was rushed to, saying shes the sweetest girl in the whole world. And she does not deserve this. I was praying to God  just please, please help, help me!



After they put the breathing tube down her throat, her heart stopped, Jennifer said.



They had to do two minutes of CPR on her. At that point, my whole world just crumbled.

Juliets mother also warned other parents that the virus can be fatal to some children.



I think its really important to get the message out. I mean we nearly missed it, she said.



If we hadnt taken her to the hospital on time, I dont think things wouldve turned out okay.

The young girl was discharged on April 15, after her heart function had become normal, although her doctor expressed fears that she likely has a little trauma to her heart that should decrease over time.

Juliet came in as one of the sickest children weve taken care of with COVID-19. The top chamber of her heart was not working correctly with the bottom chamber. She was developing multisystem organ failure, said Kleinmahon.

COVID-19 can infect the heart and it can cause the cells in the heart to be unhappy and actually start to die.
Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and his deputy Sachin Pilot on Sunday condoled the deaths of Army personnel in an encounter with terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir.

Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, who hailed from Jaipur, was killed in the encounter in Handwara in Kupwara district of Jammu and Kashmir, along with Major Anuj Sood, Naik Rajesh, Lance Naik Dinesh, and police Sub-Inspector Sageer Ahmad Pathan alias Qazi.

"Salute the martyrdom of our four army personnel including Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, Major Anuj, a Lance Naik, a rifleman & a police sub inspector in an encounter with the terrorists in J&K'sHandwara. My heartfelt condolences to their families and prayers that they find strength, Gehlot said.

I salute the martyrdom of our army personnel, including Colonel Ashutosh Sharama ji, Major Anju ji, taking on terrorists in Handwara of Jammu and Kashmir. My deepest condolences are with the family of the martyrs in this difficult time, deputy chief minister Pilot tweeted.

Meanwhile, a defence spokesperson said the mortal remains of Colonel Sharma would arrive Jaipur on Monday.

Colonel Sharma, who is survived by wife Pallavi Sharma, was leading a team to rescue civilians who had been taken hostage by the terrorists hiding in a house in the Chanjmullah area of Handwara in frontier Kupwara district of north Kashmir on Saturday.

The mortal remains of Naik Jogendra Singh Solanki, who was killed in Jammu and Kashmir on May 1, arrived in a military aircraft at Jaipur airport on Sunday.

The mortal remains were taken by road to his village in Karauli district where the last rites were performed.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Kimberley Abbott was one of the people stabbed inside the shopping centre. The young mother told Nine News Perth she screamed out to police after she was stabbed in the back as she walked past Mr Fildes. "I just felt the blood rush down my back and straight away I felt my back and all I could feel was blood. "[My baby] was in a trolley, I pushed her into the corner and protected her, she's my everything. "He was just blank in the face, nothing came out of him, no expression, no nothing."

Premier Mark McGowan described the two officers involved in stopping the rampage as heroes. "I spoke to both of the officers involved in the incident this morning and passed on the states gratitude and thanks to them for their heroics in dealing with an extremely dangerous situation in the shopping centre," he said. "It was extraordinary actually and they carried themselves with such courage and followed all the procedure and alike ... it may well be the case they saved many lives through their actions the other day and Id like to thank them for what theyve done." Witnesses described the moment Mr Fildes began running through the shopping centre wielding a knife as unbelievable.

One, who did not want to be named, said he had Tasers in his back. "I couldnt believe what I was seeing," the shop employee said. He was running pretty fast, I dont know how many Tasers he had in his back, it looked like a lot. He pushed one of the police officers on the ground and I think he was about to lunge at another one of the police with the knife. Police were shouting, 'stop drop, stop drop, stop drop', screaming at him just to drop the knife, it was a big knife, a big knife."

The witness said the man was shot three times as horrified shoppers watched on in shock. A horrified shopper photographed Ashley Fildes as he ran through South Hedland Square with a knife. Credit:Nine News Perth Police Commissioner Chris Dawson said the deceased had stabbed a man at a motel and another who was in a car at the local McDonald's before entering the shopping centre and attacking a further two men and three women. Two officers attempted to subdue him and fired a Taser before he lunged at them with a "very large" knife. "While being confronted by this person who was called upon many times to drop the knife - this is after the series of stabbings that had occurred  one of the officers is believed to have fired several shots," he said.

Witness, Kenlee Kelly, 42, said she was shopping in Coles when she suddenly heard screaming. "The guy was standing there, at first it looked like he was trying to block somebody but then I realised he had a knife and was lunging at police," she said. "You could hear police telling him to drop the knife. "Then I heard a 'bang' and then nothing, and then 'bang, bang'. "All the Coles staff starting running to shut the roller doors down.

"There was a lady standing there who was a nurse and she was shouting: 'Do you need a nurse?' She had a baby and she handed the baby over to Coles staff and went running to help. "It all happened so fast." The man was shot dead by police in front of terrified onlookers. Ms Kelly, who is nine months pregnant, was treated for shock in hospital shortly afterwards. Commissioner Dawson said there was no indication the attack was politically or ideologically motivated, describing the incident as a tragedy.
Centre Alliance senator Rex Patrick has told the government to change the way companies are assessed for Commonwealth projects to ensure Australian businesses have a better chance to secure contracts in a move to help the domestic economy recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

Senator Patrick has written to Finance Minister Mathias Cormann suggesting economic considerations should be one of the primary considerations for officials determining which company wins a government contract.

South Australian senator Rex Patrick. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

He also recommended Senator Cormann put all contracts yet to be finalised through a "reconsideration phase".

Currently, achieving value for money is at the core of the Commonwealth Procurement Rules, which requires the process to be non-discriminatory and to promote competition. The regulations also require officials to consider the economic benefits such as job creation for non-construction projects valued above $4 million and construction services above $7.5 million.
Outlining an ambitious post-pandemic agenda for agricultural reform, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked his top ministers and bureaucrats to start working on a new set of reforms to cut down on archaic regulations, raise farm-gate prices, unify domestic markets as well as integrate the farm economy into global value chains. Meanwhile, the number of samples tested for the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in the country has crossed a million.

Here is a preview of important Covid-19 news today from India and the world.

Govt plans major agricultural reforms post-coronavirus

The PM suggested these reforms at a high level review meeting on the agricultural sector, which was also attended by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, home minster Amit Shah, agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar and senior officials. Read more.

Covid-19: What you need to know today

May 1: 69; April 30: 76; April 29: 69; April 28: 74; April 27: 58; April 26: 51; April 25: 46; April 24: 57; April 23: 38; April 22: 39.These numbers are the death tolls of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in India on the 10 days between April 22 and May 1.On May 2, the number was 98.The total death toll in India was 1,319 on Saturday. Read more.

1 million tested for Covid in India; 10k recover

We have made a quantum jump in testing. We plan to ramp it up further to move towards a situation where we can test everyone who needs it. The number of labs doing Covid-19 tests has gone up, with 406 labs -- of which 105 are private ones -- now testing for Covid-19, said C K Mishra, secretary, environment, and co-chair of the PMs high-level committee on preparedness for a medical emergency. Read more.

Second economic stimulus package likely soon: CEA

The second economic stimulus package can be expected very soon, Chief Economic Adviser Krishnamurthy V Subramanian said in an interview on Saturday, although he declined to put a time-frame or a magnitude to it. Read more.

Experts raise concerns over Aarogya Setu

The governments decision to make it mandatory for people to install its Aarogya Setu mobile application has inadequate legal basis and exposes users to possible surveillance, according to experts who are now appealing for the directive to be rolled back or stronger safeguards to be introduced, even as the tool triggered a political spat between the government and the opposition Congress on Saturday. Read more.

As migrants return, states guard against Covid surge

States receiving migrant labourers from across India are gearing up for a massive challenge: a spurt in Covid-19 cases. And, some states such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Odisha, have already unveiled unprecedented steps.Read more.

States issue guidelines for extended lockdown

A day after the Centre extended lockdown till May 17, most states decided to follow the home ministrys guidelines allowing several activities in the green and orange zones to kickstart economy and official work, with a few exceptions. Read more.

When self-isolation led to great works of science and literature

Quarantine and self isolation need not be monotonous and stifling. They can be the gateway to work, be it in the arts or the sciences, that define the history of the world.Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, John Milton and Lord Byron used such time to add to their formidable body of work in science and literature. Read more.

Over 16k visited Tablighi Jamaat markaz in Delhi from March 13-24

At least 16,500 people visited Tablighi Jamaats headquarters in Nizamuddin around the time it emerged as a Covid-19 hotspot between March 13 and 24, according to a Delhi police report that an officer said has been compiled after the biggest exercise the force has ever undertaken.Read more.

Punjab to test over 4,000 Nanded pilgrims for virus

The Punjab government is scrambling to test and isolate 4,012 people who returned from the Hazur Sahib gurudwara in Nanded town after 504 pilgrims tested positive for Covid-19, prompting authorities in Maharashtra to seal one of Sikhisms holiest shrines. Read more.

135 CRPF troopers in Delhi test positive for Covid-19, set off alarm bells in MHA

Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) officials claimed on Saturday that 135 of its troopers from the 31st battalion have tested positive for coronavirus which is worrying for the paramilitary force. Four hundred and eighty troopers of the battalion have been quarantined. Read more.

Bengal CM, guv spar over Covid figures

Amid a raging controversy over mismatch in the states data of Covid-19 infections, the West Bengal government on Saturday changed the format of its daily bulletin.The day also saw chief minister Mamata Banerjee sending a 13-page letter to Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar in response to his letters, accusing him of dreaming of a dyarchy in the state. Read more.

Lokpal member justice Ajay Kumar Tripathi dies of Covid-19

Judicial member of Lokpal and former judge of Chhattisgarh high court Ajay Kumar Tripathi, 62, who had tested positive for Covid-19, died late Saturday evening. He had been admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) trauma centre on April 3.Read more.

US okays remdesivir for emergency Covid-19 use

The US drug regulator has allowed emergency use of experimental antiviral drug remdesivir for Covid-19 treatment based on early clinical data that showed it helps coronavirus patients recover faster. The drug is made by Gilead Sciences and is the first to be approved globally as a treatment for the viral pandemic. Read more.

41 test Covid positive in Kapashera building

Fifty-six people, including a three-year-old, from two clusters in Kapashera and Tughlakabad Extension tested positive for the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in two days, according to the Delhi government. Forty-one cases were reported from a double-storey building in southwest Delhis Kapashera. Read more.
Police: At least 10 killed in shooting rampage in Canada

TORONTO (AP)  A 51-year-old man went on a shooting rampage across the northern part of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia Sunday, killing at least 10 people, including a policewoman. Officials said the suspected shooter was also dead.

The man was identified as Gabriel Wortman and authorities said he disguised himself as a police officer in uniform at one point and mocked up a car to make it seem like a Royal Canadian Mounted Police cruiser.

He was arrested by the RCMP in a gas station in Enfield, Nova Scotia, northwest of downtown Halifax. Police later announced that he had died.

In excess of 10 people have been killed, RCMP Chief Superintendent Chris Leather said. We believe it to be one person who is responsible for all the killings and that he alone moved across the northern part of the province and committed what appears to be several homicides.

Leather said they dont have a final death count.

It almost certainly will be more than 10. How much more than 10, I do not know, he said.

Brian Sauve, President of National Police Federation union, said a police officer was among those killed in a shooting and another was injured.

The dead officer was identified as Const. Heidi Stevenson, a mother of two and a 23-year-old veteran of the force.

Police have not provided a motive for the attack. He said many of the victims did not know the shooter.

That fact that this individual had a uniform and a police car at his disposal certainly speaks to it not being a random act, Leather said.

Leather said they would investigate whether it had anything to do with the coronavirus pandemic. We have not yet determined whether there is any link to the COVID-19 crisis, he said.

He said at point there was an exchange of gunfire between the suspect and police.

There were half a dozen police vehicles at the scene of a gas station where the suspect was shot. Yellow police tape surrounded the gas pumps, and a large silver-colored SUV was being investigated.

Story continues

The incident started in the small, rural town of Portapique, with police advising residents to lock their homes and stay in their basements.

Police found many dead inside and outside the home of the first scene.

Several structures were on fire in the area as well.

This is one of the most senseless acts of violence in our provinces history," said Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil. He said it was an additional heavy burden amid efforts to contain the new coronavirus.

Mass shootings are relatively rare in Canada. Canada overhauled its gun-control laws after the countrys worst mass shooting in 1989, when gunman Marc Lepine killed 14 women and himself at Montreals Ecole Polytechnique college. It is now illegal to possess an unregistered handgun or any kind of rapid-fire weapon. Canada also requires training, a personal risk assessment, two references, spousal notification and criminal record checks.

Police stated earlier Sunday the suspect in Sunday's shootings was driving a car that looked like a police vehicle and wearing a police uniform, but later said he was believed to be driving a small, silver Chevrolet SUV. They said he is not an RCMP employee or officer.

Cpl. Lisa Croteau, a spokeswoman with the provincial force, said police received a call about a person with firearms at around 10:30 p.m. Saturday and the investigation evolved into an active shooting investigation.

My heart goes out to everyone affected in what is a terrible situation, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said.

Christine Mills, a resident of the town, said it had been a frightening night for the small town, with armed officers patrolling the streets. In the morning, helicopters flew overhead searching for the suspect.

I feel better now to know hes in custody, Mills said. Its nerve-wracking because you dont know if somebody has lost their mind and is going to beat in your front door.

Tom Taggart, a lawmaker who represents the Portapique area in the Municipality of Colchester, said the quiet community has been shaken.

This is just an absolutely wonderful, peaceful quiet community and the idea that this could happen in our community is unbelievable, Taggart said by phone from his home in Bass River, near the lockdown area.

A Gabriel Wortman is listed as a denturist in Dartmouth, according to the Denturist Society of Nova Scotia website. A suspect photo issued by the RCMP matches video footage of a man being interviewed about dentures by CTV Atlantic in 2014.

Mills also said that Wortman was known locally as a denturist who divided his time between a residence in Halifax and a residence in Portapique.

Taggart said he didnt know Wortman well, but spoke to him a few times when he telephoned about municipal issues.

Taggart described knowing Wortmans lovely big home on Portapique Beach Road. He said Wortman owned a few other properties and was believed to divide his time between Portapique and his business in Dartmouth.
Chennai, May 3 : The nation's security warriors on Sunday saluted the inland corona warriors or the healthcare officials by showering flower petals over them from helicopters.

On Sunday morning at the Rajiv Gandhi Government Hospital and Tamil Nadu Government Multi Speciality Hospital, doctors, nurses and conservancy staff stood in an orderly line, maintaining social distance looking up at the sky.

Soon they heard the approaching helicopters of the armed forces which showered flower petals on them as a mark of salute for the selfless service.

The corona warriors at the hospital accepted the aerial salute by clapping their hands and looking up at the copters.

"It was an emotional moment for all of us to get the military salute. It was a high honour for all of our staff. The Navy gave a memento. The armed forces gave a gift hamper with sweets which were distributed," Jayanthi Rangarajan, Dean, Rajiv Gandhi Government Hospital told IANS.

She also expressed her condolences to the bravehearts who lost their lives in Kashmir fighting terrorists on Saturday night.

As part of showing solidarity towards fight against the Covid-19, Dakshin Bharat Area under Indian Army distributed gift hampers to Government Hospitals, Military Hospitals, Police Stations and Headquarters, Corporation Office here on Sunday.

It is done as a mark of respect and gratitude to the warriors in the difficult times - healthcare professionals, hygiene and sanitation staff, police officials and corporation employees.

On its part, the Indian Navy's two ships Sahyadri and Kadmat anchored off Chennai coast were illuminated to express gratitude from not only the Indian Navy but mankind at large, said an official statement.
Prosecutors who allege Bradley Edwards is the Claremont serial killer will wrap up their case this week, ending with the playing of his 6 hour police interview from the day of his arrest.

As the trial enters its seventh month, lead prosecutor Carmel Barbagallo said the video would show the 51-year-old Telstra technician was a blatant liar.

Bradley Edwards.

It will be the first time the Supreme Court trial will hear Mr Edwards speak, with the accused only ever uttering a few words while in the dock to confirm his name, or enter a plea.

During the course of the interview the accused provided an overview of his life including his family life, friendships, sexual relationships and employment history, Ms Barbagallo said.
With 49 more people testing



coronavirus positive, nine of them in Ujjain, the number of infected persons in Madhya Pradesh climbed to 2,837 on Sunday, health officials said.

As the virus claimed five more lives in the state since Saturday night, the tally of victims went up to 156, they said.

Three of the fatalities were reported in Ujjain and two in Indore, the officials said.

Of the total number of deaths reported in the state so far, Indore, which is one of the COVID-19 hotspots in the country, accounts for 76. Indore has 1,568 confirmed cases, with 23 new cases reported since previous night.

Nine patients were detected in Ujjain since Saturday night, followed by six in Bhopal, four in Dhar, three in Jabalpur and one each in Hoshangabad, Panna, Niwari and Mandsaur, the officials said.

Besides, two new districts Panna and Niwari added in the list where one each COVID-19 positive case was found on Sunday.

So, the number of affected districts has gone up to 34 in Madhya Pradesh.

The district-wise number of cases are as follows: Bhopal 532, Ujjain 156, Jabalpur 96, Khargone 77, Raisen 57, Dhar 55, Khandwa 47, Hoshangabad 36, Mandsaur 36, Barwani 26, Dewas 26, Burhanpur 18, Ratlam 16, Morena 16, Vidisha 13, Agar Malwa 12, Shajapur 7, five each in Sagar, Gwalior and Chhindwara, four in Sheopur, three each in Alirajpur, Harda and Shahdol, two each in Shivpuri, Tikamgarh, Anuppur and Rewa and one each in Betul, Dindori, Panna, Niwari and Ashok Nagar.

Two patients undergoing treatment in the state are from other states.

So far 76 deaths have been recorded in Indore, 30 in Ujjain, 15 in Bhopal, seven each in Khargone and Dewas, six in Khandwa, three in Hoshangabad, three in Mandsaur, two Raisen and one each in Jabalpur, Dhar, Shajapur, Agar Malwa, Burhanpur, Chhindwara and Ashok Nagar.

The condition of 1,883 patients is stable while that of 61 was serious. Total 798 patients have recovered.

The total number of active cases in MP is 1,883.

The virus figures from MP, thus, are as follows: Total cases 2,837, active cases 1,883, new cases 49, death toll 156, recovered 798, total number of tested people is 46,874.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Sunday said that there has been a continuous improvement in COVID-19 situation in the state.

"The pace of the infection is slowing down continuously and patients are recovering and returning home in in large numbers," he said.

He said that 50 patients were found positive in the state on Sunday and 174 patients were discharged after recovery.

As a result, the number of pandemic active cases has declined by 129 in the state.

Chouhan made these statement while taking stock of the COVID-19 situation at the Mantralaya here.

He informed that a proposal to run 31 trains to bring back the stranded labourers from other states has been sent to the Railway ministry.

"Our labourers will soon return to the state by trains," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Amid the unprecedented outbreak of deadly coronavirus, the United States has urged the Taliban for reduction of violence and instead, shift their focus to the global health crisis. US Special Forces Afghanistan (USFOR) spokesperson Col Sonny Leggett called out Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid a day after the report by Pentagon was released that noted spike in the attacks on America's Afghan allies even though, US Taliban had signed a peace deal in February. In a tweet, Leggett has said: now is the time to stop.

@Zabehulah_M33 You asked for clarity on Gen Millers calls for the Taliban to reduce violence. Let's clarify: The people of #Afghanistan want #peace. The world has asked the #Taliban to cease violence and focus on #COVID19. Now is the time to stop the violence. @suhailshaheen1 pic.twitter.com/9EUrUh67Bt  USFOR-A Spokesman Col Sonny Leggett (@USFOR_A) May 2, 2020

Read - NATO Mission In Afghanistan Withholding Information About Taliban Attacks: US Watchdog

Read - US Stops Releasing Info On Taliban Attacks

Over 500 civilians killed in Afghanistan

As the world is battling with coronavirus outbreak since the start of 2020, the United Nations mission has said that over 500 civilians were killed in the first quarter of this year in war-stricken country, Afghanistan. According to the UN mission report released on April 27, civilians had to take a severe blow of the armed conflict in the country and it killed over 150 children. The organisation had documented nearly 1,300 casualties that occurred in the first three months of 2020 in Afghanistan, out of which 533 were killed 760 were injured. However, there was still a 29 per cent decrease as compared to the same period in 2019 and is also the lowest figure for fatalities in the first quarter of the year since 2012.

While UN noted the disturbing increase in casualties in the reduction of violence period mentioned in the US-Taliban peace treaty, the militant group has shared a list of at least 50 attacks carried by American troops and Afghan forces accusing them of 'violating' the terms in the treaty. Taliban shared a three-page document only with TOLO News to back their claims with substantial information. The Taliban political office in Doha has claimed that at least 33 drone attacks have been directed by the US against the targets of the extremist group in 19 provinces between March 9 and April 10.

Read - Watchdog Group Says US Not Releasing Data On Taliban Attacks

Read - Taliban Rejects Afghan Govt's Call For Ceasefire During Month Of Ramadan
Brasilia, May 3 : Brazil's Supreme Court has issued an injunction suspending the Foreign Ministry's move to expel 34 Venezuelan diplomats.

According to the injunction issued on Saturday, Judge Luis Roberto Barroso gave the government 10 days to explain why it set May 2 as the deadline for the diplomats' departure, reports Xinhua news agency.

Brazil withdrew its diplomats from Venezuela's capital city Caracas on April 17.

The Foreign Ministry notified the Venezuelan embassy this week that if its diplomats remained in Brazil until Saturday, they would be declared "personae non gratae".

The injunction request was presented by Deputy Paulo Pimenta of the Workers' Party.

"Forcing Venezuelan citizens to leave without adequate logistics, legal procedure, and responsibility in the midst of a pandemic is an act of cruelty," said Pimenta.
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Linkedin Lisa Richwine (Reuters) Los Angeles, United States  Sun, May 3, 2020 17:05 625 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd5a0891 2 Lifestyle Tim-Gunn,quarantine,lockdown,fashion,coronavirus,COVID-19,Project-Runway,Making-the-Cut Free

Even Tim Gunn, the immaculately dressed fashion mentor from Project Runway and Amazon's new competition show Making the Cut, is finding it hard to get out of his pajamas these days.

As much of the world shelters at home to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, Gunn said he too has given in to comfort over style when he's at home in his New York apartment.

Reuters spoke to Gunn by telephone about how the ongoing quarantine has changed fashion and what might come next on Making the Cut.

Q: What do you think will happen to fashion now that people have gotten used to working in sweatpants or even their pajamas?

A: I have to confess to you I'm one of those people. And it's really unusual for me. For years I've been saying, "if you want to dress to feel as though you never got out of bed, don't!"

But there's a silver lining to this, at least for me. I now have a great deal of empathy for people who do dress for comfort. I've not been wearing sweats, but I have been wearing my pajamas, thinking "well I have no place to go."

When I actually got into regular clothes, and I did because of video conferencing, I felt as though I was wearing a wet suit. I felt so constrained and confined and tethered. I think the psychological and even physical effect of going back to normal clothes makes you just squirm.

I have a good deal of empathy for people who really subscribe to the comfort trap. It's easy to get trapped. But I do have a pact with myself. When I'm wearing pajamas and a robe, I won't even go down the hall of my apartment building to the trash chute. If I'm leaving the apartment, I get dressed. I'm not in a suit, but I'm wearing proper clothes.

Read also: Confinement chic? All change for business wear during lockdown

Q: So what is proper clothing for you right now when you do go out in the hallway?

A: I'd wear a turtleneck and a pair of jeans.

Q: Do you think that once we are all allowed out into some kind of new world that there might be a huge embrace of fashion, that maybe people are tired of their sweatpants?

A: I fully believe that. I know people who are dressing up every day. They're not leaving their apartment, but they're dressing up because they feel that they have infused their lifestyle with some normalcy.

Q: Do you know if you'll have a season two of Making the Cut and what it might look like?

A: We're certainly talking about a season two. The plan for doing it this summer is, of course, off. And we are carefully, thoughtfully, recalibrating all of our thinking about the show in regard to social distancing and interactions.
MALVERN, Ohio -- Fifty years ago, the events of May 4, 1970, at Kent State University became imbedded in the consciousness of a nation that sends its sons and daughters to fight and die in insidious wars.

Memories of that tragic day, when members of the ill-prepared Ohio National Guard unleashed a volley of gunfire that killed four Kent State students and wounded nine others, are being commemorated on this anniversary. The schedule, now made virtual, still includes programs on the historical impact of the Kent shootings, special videos, online exhibits and more.

These are well-conceived undertakings that promise to enlighten those who learn from history and who value the freedoms extolled in the First Amendment.

But what about those of us who fought in the Vietnam War? You know, the men who were subject to the military draft that so many anti-war protesters opposed, the ones they called upon the government to bring home and, yes, the ones that some extremists vilified as baby killers. What does this commemoration of events that so dramatically impacted our lives offer for me and my fellow veterans?

On May 3, 1968, when I was completing my freshman year at Kent State University, presidential candidate Hubert H. Humphrey gave a campaign speech in KSUs old Memorial Gym. I looked on as about 50 anti-war protesters made their way into the gym, but I declined to join them. As Vice President Humphrey began to speak, the activists stood up, turned their backs on him and walked out. They were roundly booed.

Because I had recently dropped a calculus class and was losing my full-time student deferment, I knew that my draft notice soon would be arriving in the mail.

I wrote this in my 2018 memoir: The peace movement that was gaining steam on other college campuses had barely touched a nerve at Kent State. When I had my chance to reach out and touch it, I turned and walked away. And when my freshman year reached its shaky conclusion, I turned and walked away from the college I loved and from the delightful intoxication of juvenility.

I was 19 years old when I arrived in Vietnam nine months later, serving with the U.S. Navys riverine forces. When my return flight landed at Travis Air Force Base in California in February 1970, there were no protesters waiting to spit on me. But I was called a baby killer once.

On May 4, 1970, I was deployed on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal. It wasnt until a couple weeks later, when we pulled liberty in Athens, Greece, that I learned from two American tourists about the horror that had struck my beloved Kent State. Soon thereafter, packets from my mother arrived with newspaper clippings of letters to the editor praising the National Guard and contending that more students should have been massacred.

Thats when it hit me, I wrote in my book. I thought Id gone to Vietnam for freedom. I thought I was on the front lines of the Cold War for liberty. I was proud to serve my country. But my country was infested with leeches sucking the lifeblood from freedom and maggots swarming over liberties like a pile of reeking garbage.

After my military discharge in December 1971, I returned to Kent State and majored in journalism, which led to a 40-year newspaper career. My fellow students at Kent, less than two years after May 4, 1970, knew that I was a veteran of the Vietnam War. Yet they welcomed me among them, and none of them ever denigrated my military service.

I know veterans have mixed feelings about anti-war protesters in that era, but I believe the vast majority were on our side. Kent State should remember that.

Vietnam veteran Dave Lange, formerly of Bainbridge, now lives in Malvern, southeast of Canton. He was editor of the Chagrin Valley Times for 25 years prior to his 2017 retirement. His memoir, Virginity Lost in Vietnam, was published in 2018.

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* Send a letter to the editor, which will be considered for print publication.

* Email general questions, comments or corrections regarding this opinion article to Elizabeth Sullivan, director of opinion, at esullivan@cleveland.com.
The Covid-19 outbreak has exacerbated the fears of expecting mothers. Muireann Davis, whose second baby is due in August, talks to Helen OCallaghan about how the virus has brought new worries and about how she battled and beat post-natal depression after her first baby.

Pregnant and due in August, Muireann Davis was meant to attend ante-natal groups for women who had previously suffered post-natal depression (PND), as she had after the birth of her first child. But the groups arent happening now. Covid-19 has seen to that.

Ill just have to plough on and stay indoors, says the Limerick-based 33-year-old, whose son, Finn, is 22 months. When Muireann found she was pregnant this time, she wondered if she was in way over her head. Im fine now, but at the start I had a feeling of, Oh, God! How am I going to cope? What was I thinking?

Immediately after Muireann had Finn, in July 2018, she just wasnt right. She and her husband, Luke, had been trying for a baby for two years, but after a traumatic birth that involved a grade-three tear and significant blood loss, Muireann wasnt feeling the way shed assumed she would.

I wasnt feeling utter joy at bringing home my newborn baby. I had wanted him for so long and I couldnt understand why I wasnt feeling over the moon, Muireann says.

Instead, she felt she wasnt bonding with little Finn and she was scared to be on her own with him. I was just so anxious. I was a wreck, crying all the time. I was good when Luke was there, but when he went back to work, I was so scared. I was worried about keeping Finn alive. What if something happened? Would I be able to manage? Of course, Im well-able and I was then, too, but my mindset wasnt the same, Muireann says, recalling a day when her mother took the baby to give Muireann a chance to sleep. But I just sat there, crying. I couldnt switch off. My mind was in overdrive.

Muireann had heard at ante-natal class about watching out for low mood on day three post-birth. I felt every day was day three for me. My friends with babies said the blues are normal, but that my blues were going on an awful lot of the time, she says.

Thanks to a concerned public health nurse (PHN), who called over a lot and who could tell I wasnt right, and thanks to a free counselling service at the maternity hospital in Limerick to which her GP referred her  she saw a psychiatrist for a year  Muireann was diagnosed with PND and has emerged from its dark tunnel. Im much more aware now, so Id know if things took a turn, and the psychiatrist says I can ring him if I need, she says.

Baby Finn.

But  as it has for other expecting mothers  Covid-19 has brought worry and uncertainty. You hear stories about husbands not let into the labour ward. Im worried this will happen, when I come to have my baby. I dread that Ill be on my own, Muireann says.

Dr Krysia Lynch, chairperson of the Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services (AIMS), says potential Covid-19 restrictions for who is present during labour/birth are causing anxiety for expecting mothers. Some hospitals are saying partners can come from the get-go  business as usual. At the other extreme, one unit in Ireland isnt allowing partners in if the mothers having a C-section, and for normal delivery partners will be phoned to come in 30 minutes before the birth. And you have everything in between on the spectrum, Dr Lynch says.

Dr Lynch says that the best midwife cant replace the womans partner, the person with whom she has planned this baby. Her partner has been with her every step of the nine months. This is the person whos going to be parenting this baby alongside her, Dr Lynch says.

Aside from offering emotional support, partners are also womens pain-coping mechanism. In ante-natal class, the partner will have been taught massage techniques, how to keep the mum fed and hydrated, what positions might help her, how to encourage her with her breathing. And, suddenly, now, a woman going into this intense environment doesnt have that, Dr Lynch says.

If the partner isnt there to advocate for her, to be the womans voice when shes intensely in labour  about birth approaches theyd decided on pre-labour  there will be a rise in the rate of medical intervention, which wont be good for mothers or for babies, Dr Lynch says.

But Covid-19 is impacting pregnant women in other ways. Concerned for their welfare, most expectant mothers are cocooning. Theyre not going to Tesco or walking in the park, Dr Lynch says.

The hospital  for ante-natal visits  might be the only place theyre going. Theyre going into a hospital environment  where youd feel anxious anyway  and they know there are germs.

And their partners not with them, but waiting outside. Certainly, theres an element of ante-natal anxiety existing at this Covid-19 time, Dr Lynch says, adding that research shows a correlation between ante-natal anxiety and PND. Mums anxious before labour are more likely to be anxious and depressed after the birth.

And the net that would usually catch women afflicted with PND isnt now as strong as it would have been. Public health nurses screen every new mum they meet for potential perinatal mental health problems. Theyd be indirectly asking: How are you feeling in yourself? How are things going? They might knock on the mums door, say they were in the area and thought theyd pop in to see how shes doing. These visits arent happening now. Some women are getting one PHN visit, some not even that, Dr Lynch says.

Any woman who has concerns at the ante-natal stage, or if theyve had a difficult birth experience, should contact support@aimsireland.com. We will email or phone them back. They will be supported, Dr Lynch says.

Mums urged to speak up about feeling down

To mark World Maternal Mental Health Day this Wednesday, the BabyDoc Club parenting community has launched #Askheragain. The campaign aims to raise awareness of just how common mental health issues are for women who are pregnant or in the first year of motherhood, also known as the perinatal period.

#Askheragain reminds partners/family members/friends/professionals to keep asking a pregnant or new mum how theyre feeling and coping during this uniquely vulnerable time.

In a survey of more than 1,800 mothers in BabyDoc Clubs digital parenting community, incidence of maternal mental health struggles surpassed the global average of one in five, with results somewhat elevated due to Covid-19:

55% of mums experienced baby blues in first three months of motherhood (low moods occurring about two days after birth, lasting about two weeks)

35% experienced perinatal depression while pregnant/in the first 12 months of motherhood (diagnosed when symptoms persist for more than a month)

39% said their maternal mental wellbeing was never assessed or addressed by medical professionals they met during pregnancy/as a new mum

Most common symptoms included: tearful (80%), low mood (79%), feeling overwhelmed/anxious (66%), negative body image (53%), believing they werent a good enough mother (51%), sleep difficulties (43%), feeling angry at self/partner/baby (41%). Fifty-five percent found it hard to ask for help, a further 33% blamed themselves for not coping, and 17% felt asking for help was a sign of weakness.

Laura Erskine, parenting expert with BabyDoc Club, says depression in the perinatal period mustnt be underestimated. Its up to all of us to talk more about the challenges we face when coping with the emotional, physical, and hormonal changes that becoming a mother involves. From the time a woman becomes pregnant to her childs first birthday, she is uniquely vulnerable.

BabyDoc Club has partnered with national parenting helpline Parentline during the #Askheragain campaign and encourages people to donate 4 to Parentline  text PARENT to 50300. Real-life mum stories are included in an eGuide for #Askheragain campaign this week  free to download at https://www.babydocclub.ie/.

Follow BabyDoc Club on www.facebook.com/BabyDocClubIRL/ and www.instagram.com/babydocclubirl/.
The waiters wear plastic gloves and masks. The menus might be disposable, or even on customers' phones. Diners might not be allowed to sit with anyone who doesn't live in their household. Perhaps there's a faint whiff of bleach in the air, or dividers between booths. The dining rooms can look mostly empty, with six feet or more between tables and restaurants limited to as little as 25% of their capacity.

This is what's not normal about the dining scene this week in Georgia, Tennessee and Alaska, where restaurants were given the go-ahead to resume serving patrons in-house, weeks after the coronavirus shuttered eateries, from farm-to-table bistros to greasy-spoon diners.

But here's what is: patrons settling into tables and booths, ordering the "Summertime Setback" cocktail at Hugo's Oyster Bar in Roswell, Georgia, the chiles rellenos at Chapultepec in Tyrone, Georgia, or the burgers at Matanuska Brewing Co. in Anchorage. They're greeting servers they haven't seen in weeks.

"I kept saying 'I promise I'm smiling under this mask,'" says Mikaela Cupp, general manager at Hugo's, which began dinner service on Monday, the first day allowed under Republican Gov. Brian Kemp's order. "It's exciting to see so much support from the community, but it's strange not to interact with guests - I wanted to give them a hug, but I can't."

In these three states, governors have issued guidance to try to maintain the balance between jump-starting their economies and protecting the public from covid-19. In some cases, municipalities have issued even tougher restrictions, while restaurant associations have offered guidelines, too. Restaurant owners are working with no shortage of limitations.

In Alaska, where restaurants could open on April 24, some are bristling at the restrictions. Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy's limitation of dine-in seating to 25% of capacity means owner Alla Gutsul can fill only five of the 16 tables at her Eastern European eatery Soba in Fairbanks, and she said that won't begin to pay her bills. "It's going to be really tough," she said.

Because of the restrictions, less than 5% of Alaska's 1,500 restaurants are expected to reopen, said Sarah Daulton Oates, president and chief executive of the Alaska Cabaret, Hotel, Restaurant and Retailers Association. "It's just not feasible for most of our restaurants," she said.

In Georgia and Tennessee, many owners have also opted not to reopen or resume dine-in operations, saying that even if they adhere to the guidance, they can't yet ensure the health and safety of staff and customers.

Kemp's announcement, a week before the reopening date, might have come as a surprise to many restaurateurs. But others say they had long been developing plans to reopen with stricter safety measures and social distancing, eagerly awaiting the official nod.

That was the case for Ryan Zink, CEO of Good Times Restaurants, whose 39 locations of Bad Daddy's Burger Bar around the country include four in the Peachtree State and one in Tennessee that opened on Monday. He said his company had drawn up plans and checklists, making sure that they comported with official state orders as well as a 10-page best-practices brochure from the Georgia Restaurant Association.

"We had to bounce all these against each other," he says. " Some of what we had was consistent with Gov. Kemp's orders, but we're trying to go above and beyond that."

John Metz has been working on reopening plans "since the day we closed." He's the CEO, executive chef and co-founder of Marlow's Tavern, which has locations around Georgia. Three of those will welcome customers again this week, and diners will see such changes as plexiglass dividers between booths and taped-out distances on the floors. "It seems like we've had to rewrite the plan almost every single day," he says.

Still, even those who had been champing at the bit to reopen had to scramble to get ready. The Georgia executive order outlining required precautions for restaurants opening Monday was released the previous Thursday night.

Kasey Carpenter, who owns Oakwood Cafe and Cherokee Brewing + Pizza Co. in Dalton, Georgia, broke out a yardstick to measure out the distance between tables. At Hugo's, Cupp and her team rented out a storage unit over the weekend to stash the tables and furniture they had to take out of the dining room.

Even the well-prepared Zink was confronted with a logistical challenge: finding liquid hand sanitizer to offer customers, which is mandated by the governor's order. "It's hard to get," he said, in what might be the understatement of the pandemic. Luckily, some of his alcohol vendors, like many around the country, have been producing it.

Some restaurateurs are taking precautions beyond the mandated ones. Matt Tomter, managing partner of Matanuska Brewing Co. in Alaska, says he has installed air scrubbers in ventilation systems at all three locations. The scrubbers clean the air every hour, he says. The upgrades cost him $7,500, he said, but it's all part of the new normal of living and working in a pandemic.

"The real reason to open the restaurant up is, first of all, to see if you can do it safely," Tomter says. "Then it's just getting people used to being able to go out again. It's going to take time. . . . People are nervous. Some people are ecstatic, and some people won't come in for a year. There's both sides of the spectrum."

In Tennessee, where restaurants in all but the most populous counties were permitted to resume dine-in service as of Monday, Andy Marshall oversaw the reopening of six restaurants in his hospitality group, including several locations of Puckett's Grocery & Restaurant. He considered wiping down menus between uses, as mandated, but decided he had to do more to build up customers' confidence. So staff printed disposable paper menus, and in what has become popular with patrons, established a QR code customers can scan to pull up the menu on their phones. "That's probably going to stick around," he said, even after the virus's threat has passed.

Marshall hasn't had problems getting supplies yet, but his wholesalers - who themselves are only now ramping up again - are warning him shortages might come. " We're burning through the gloves," he said, with workers using up to a case in a single lunch service. Customers (who are not required to wear them themselves) have hand-sewn masks for workers, and the owner of the Nashville Predators has promised to send over more with the team's logo and colors.

Rehiring and training staff has been a challenge for some. Many laid-off workers have been receiving unemployment benefits that pay more than they might pull in serving fewer customers. Carpenter says he offered some furloughed staff less than 20 hours a week so they could still maintain some unemployment benefits.

Tomter at Matanuska Brewing says he has had to pay employees well above Anchorage's minimum wage of $10.19 to get them back to work. His cooks, he says, earn $20 an hour, and his front-of-the-house staff between $15 and $20 an hour, before tips. But Tomter did receive money from the controversial Paycheck Protection Program, which requires 75% of the funds to go toward payroll.

"We are paying people more, because we have to right now," Tomter says. "It's going to last until we run out of the PPP money" in a couple of months.

Getting the staff used to the new protocols requires some vigilance, too. "Restaurant people are pretty outgoing people," Carpenter says. "By nature they're social, and they're excited, because it's like the band's back together, but I have to remind them to break it up, and everybody go back to their corners."

Georgia Restaurant Association CEO Karen Bremer says that more than half of the some 19,000 restaurants in the state have remained open in some capacity, such as for delivery or takeout. She called the reopening to diners a "slow roll" that could take weeks or even months. Seeing the industry bounce back will take a lot, she says, and a recession could mean it won't, entirely. " People have got to trust leaving their house and going out in public," she says. "It's going to take people having more confidence in the information they're receiving."

Bremer felt confident enough herself to return on Monday night to one of her favorite spots, Chapultepec in Tyrone, where she had her favorites, including a skinny margarita and cheese dip with jalapenos.

Most restaurateurs interviewed said their return to serving diners shouldn't be read as a political statement. Some view it as almost an obligation to their community. Others see it as a business necessity, to try to hash out ways to deal with a pandemic with no end in sight.

"You're going to have to figure out how to live with that thing, because it's not going away, right?" Tomter says.

In Georgia, restaurateurs frame it as a personal choice, for customers and owners.

Metz called the governor's order an "opportunity" that everyone has to consider from their angle, even those who choose to stay closed. " They have the right to do that, and I'm excited for them to do that in their own best way," he says.

Carpenter offered a beach analogy: "It's like after a shark attack - some people don't want to get in the water ever, some are ready to jump in right away, and others want to wait a while and come back with precautions," Carpenter says. "We had a group of people who were ready. They know their risk tolerance."

Whether customers will return and whether revenue will be enough remain to be seen. Many owners plan to keep offering carryout and delivery - operations that might have kept them afloat - even as they resume serving diners in-house.

Marshall says he is seeing only 20 to 30% of his normal volume, even at half capacity, which is mandated by the state. He's counting on PPP loans to help until the restrictions are ultimately lifted. That, he says, will depend on restaurants making sure they're reopening safely, and convincing customers of it. " Making money is down the list of priorities," he said. "Right now, it's getting people back to work, and doing this right so there's not a setback. Most people in the hospitality business won't survive a second round of this."

At Soba in Fairbanks, owner Gutsul has been open for nearly a week. But in the first five days back in business, she says she had not filled more than four tables in an entire day. Part of the problem, she says, is the state's demand that all customers have a reservation. But part is just about diners getting comfortable again with social activity. "They have to develop this habit again of going out," she said.

At Hugo's, Cupp says that even if they aren't pulling in the revenue of pre-pandemic days, "opening at limited capacity means we'll be able to be at full force once we're back to the new normal."

And what would a "new normal" look like? For customers, getting used to a restaurant experience that looks far different might take time. While Zink says he found the masked and gloved servers a bit jarring himself at first, " I'm getting used to it, and I think customers will too," he said. "They might have to experience it a few times before it feels normal."

Aside from all the new protocols - sanitizing tables before and after use, wearing masks and gloves, assessing employee health daily - the hardest part of reopening may be the human element.

"People walk in the door, and you haven't seen them in a month and a half, and everybody just wants to give everybody a hug," says Tomter of Matanuska Brewing. "No one can right now. So they're giving hugs from 10 feet away."
By Larry Gordon

EdSource

Colette Han, a high school senior from the Los Angeles area, originally thought of attending Wesleyan College, a small liberal arts school in Georgia. That institution had awarded her a substantial merit scholarship that added appeal.

But then the coronavirus pandemic hit.

Besides shaking innumerable lives and industries, the health crisis also has altered or at least confused college futures for many of the estimated 300,000 California high school seniors like Han who were expected to begin higher education in the fall. In turn, that has created immense uncertainty for colleges about fall enrollments.

Some students are doing the unthinkable - turning down their first-choice schools.

Han dropped the Georgia school because she was unable to tour it during the lockdown and feared getting stranded across the country if another outbreak occurs. Accepted at several other schools, she has decided to attend UC Irvine as a business information management major and hopes to live on campus, which is about 45 miles from her Monterey Park home.

"It was a difficult decision, but safety always comes first," said the senior at Mark Keppel High School in Alhambra. "If I am alone in a college out-of-state, it would be really hard to come back home. And if I got sick in another state, it would be really hard for my family to take care of me."

Decisions like hers are adding to what California college officials say is unprecedented uncertainty about how many new freshmen will turn up in the fall and how many current students will return. Some of that depends on whether regular face-to-face classes will resume, a big unknown as the May 1 deadline approached at many schools for students to send commitment deposits.

For every Californian who elects to stay home, officials worry there are many others from other states and countries who also elect not to leave home or are unable to obtain visas to come to the United States. Family unemployment may drive students from private colleges and the University of California to less-expensive options, like community colleges and the California State University, or to skip school for a year altogether.

"The enrollment question is probably the biggest question for the fall. And it's probably the thing that gives me the most anxiety," Lande Ajose, Gov. Gavin Newsom's senior policy adviser for higher education, told EdSource. This time of year, campuses usually start planning for fall classes and dorm space. Now many colleges, public and private, "are not able to count on the assumptions they usually use," she said.

In case things don't improve, some colleges are modeling scenarios with 10 to 20 percent enrollment drops, even after dipping deeply into their waiting list of applicants. At the same time, more students will be seeking boosts in financial aid. Those nightmarish projections suggest significant declines in tuition and other revenues, leading to layoffs and cuts in programs and services for the 2.3 million students at California's public colleges and universities and the 470,000 or so at its private campuses.

"Of course, kids are scared and don't know what to expect," said Yesenia Aguilar, director of the College Bound counseling program at the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Los Angeles Harbor, which is helping students obtain additional scholarship grants. The overall goal is to calm them down, keep them on track to their "dream schools" if possible, and to ensure they do not abandon higher education in a panicky moment. "Most kids are resilient and they are not giving up," Aguilar said.

Jacqueline Islas decided not to attend Cal State Sacramento because it is too far from home. She is choosing among Southern California schools.

Besides many colleges giving students an extra month, to June 1, to send in enrollment deposits, some are offering enrollment deferrals until the spring. Officials always worry about so-called summer melt - students who put down deposits yet don't attend in the fall - but are very concerned that those numbers could be much higher this year.

Colleges were rattled by a recent national survey by the marketing and research firm SimpsonScarborough that showed that 8 percent of high school seniors who had planned to attend a four-year college are now unlikely to do so and that 14 percent are considering not going to their first-choice school because of the pandemic.

UCLA's vice provost for enrollment management, Youlanda Copeland-Morgan, said that deposits from California students actually are somewhat higher than normal this year but that some international students - who this year comprised 11 percent of UCLA's 31,500 undergraduates - are not likely to return to UCLA or UC's other eight undergraduate campuses because of visa problems related to the crisis.

UCLA is likely to dip more deeply into its admissions waiting list and offer spots to more Californians and students from elsewhere in the United States, she said. "This is a very difficult and unprecedented year in terms of our ability to predict what's going to happen," she said. UCLA admitted only about 13 percent of its 109,000 freshmen applicants so far this year, she said. Traditionally, a very high percentage of those admitted wind up attending - 43 percent last year.

UCLA is seeing a significant increase in appeals from future freshmen who say they need more financial aid than they did a few months ago. The university will use private donations, the portion of federal stimulus funds earmarked for students and campus money to offer additional aid where possible, Copeland-Morgan said. "Our focus is on eliminating the barriers for students and families," she said.

Similar uncertainty may last into next spring throughout the 23-campus CSU system, according to Edward Sullivan, assistant vice chancellor for institutional research and analyses. With so much in flux, Sullivan said he did not know whether CSU will enroll close to the 66,000 freshmen it had this school year. The proximity of CSU campuses to their homes may appeal to California freshmen even as international students are lost.

Some CSU campuses will seek to supplement fall enrollment with a large group of new freshmen and transfer students in the spring, when the health situation is likely to be more settled, Sullivan said. Some students already enrolled at CSU may skip the fall semester if fully online classes continue and then return in the spring, he added. Others have become so comfortable with distance learning that they will not want to interrupt their education, no matter what happens, he said.

"What we have learned through this is that we have to be flexible and we have to recognize that things are different than they have been historically," Sullivan said. For example, CSU and UC are allowing students to submit pass/fail grades in their required high school courses, something impossible last year.

Concerns about family resources and safety may be the most important factors, particularly for students very dependent on financial aid.

Jasmine Ramirez is an example of a student who probably will bolster the CSU enrollment at the expense of UC. A senior at Long Beach Polytechnic High School, she was attracted to UC Merced, but a campus tour was canceled and she felt she could not "commit to a place where I haven't felt it out in person." And she was worried about being 300 miles away from home if another virus outbreak occurs.

"It would be difficult for me, not just financially, but also emotionally. I would feel I have to be with my family," said Ramirez, who is active in the Californians for Justice organization and wants to major in sociology. So now she is choosing between CSU campuses in Long Beach and Dominguez Hills, both within easy commuting range.

Jacqueline Islas, a senior at the Port of Los Angeles High School in San Pedro, was set on Sacramento State, which she figured would be perfect for state government internships in her criminal justice major. Then her mother, a housekeeper who is the family's main source of income, lost a lot of work in the emergency and finances suddenly tightened. Even with college grants promised, Islas became anxious about being far from home during a health crisis and less able to help her mother.

So now, with the counseling help of the College Bound program at the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Los Angeles Harbor, she is choosing between CSU campuses closer to home, in Northridge and Dominguez Hills, where her older brother attends. "I'm a little disappointed because there was so much potential for me to grow in Sacramento," she said. "I know it's nobody's fault, but now I have to go to a different route, to someplace more local and more affordable." But no matter what, she said she will maintain her plan to start at a four-year university.

Chico State, a Northern California university that mainly enrolls students from other areas, is working hard to keep admitted students on track to enroll, according to admissions director Kim Guanzon. With its "Choose Chico" on-campus events canceled earlier this month, the school is holding virtual meetings, sending emails and making phone calls, trying to reach its goal of enrolling 2,700 freshmen in the fall.

The campus admitted more applicants than usual because "we wanted to hedge our bets a little bit," Guanzon said. Chico State extended its deposit deadline by a month until June 1 and is reviewing financial aid appeals.

Calling this "an unprecedented time," Guanzon said the campus is "doing the best we can to serve students and help them work through their decision-making process." She said the school wants to keep the door open to students who may stay close to home for the fall and then realize they want to try Chico again later.

Education experts predict that California's community colleges are likely to see an enrollment rise from two sources: students who decide not to start at more expensive four-year schools and people who have lost jobs and want retraining.

"When there is a downturn and people are out of work, what they do is come to the community college because the costs are low and the value high, and we're particularly aimed at where the jobs are," said Bill Scroggins, president of Mount San Antonio College, in Walnut, 25 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.

With increased unemployment among retail and hotel workers and others, he said he expects more demand for vocational instruction in home health care, biotechnology, cybersecurity and other fields that will need graduates during the pandemic.

If the crisis continues into the fall, community colleges' challenge will be to meet that demand while maintaining social-distancing orders and offering remote-learning options, he said. "It'll be even more important in an environment where family income has taken a hit," he added.

EdSource reporter Ashley A. Smith contributed to this article.

This story was originally published by EdSource. https://edsource.org/2020/even-if-california-college-campuses-reopen-will-most-students-still-come/630272

Copyright  2020 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.
GREENWICH  A few weeks ago, some neighbors in the Glenville-Pemberwick section of town were talking about the severe economic disruptions that were hitting the community and the region as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

They decided to do something to make a difference  and held an online food drive.

Just neighbors getting together to help, said an organizer, Jeanette Clonan. Everyone has been talking about how we can help the community, since people arent getting paychecks and getting food.

The food drive set a goal of collecting 600 pounds of food, through a national organization, #GiveHealthy, that allows people to donate fresh fruits, fresh vegetables and other healthy food to hunger-relief organizations, all on a laptop or home computer. The East and West Lyon Farm neighborhoods have so far raised enough to donate 4,500 pounds of food.

Donors have been contributing fruit and vegetables, as well as shelf-stable goods like rice, pasta and peanut butter.

It just kept going up and up and up, said Clonan, Theres such a generous spirit out there. She said it was also a community-building exercise, and a way of fostering neighborhood pride. It also harkens back to the communitys roots as farmland, providing produce and livestock to the wider world.

Donors, 72 of them so far in the neighborhood, have been picking out items to contribute, and they are being prepared for distribution by Neighbor to Neighbor of Greenwich. That organization has set up a special distribution site at Arch Street Teen Center, where stringent public-health protocols are in place to protect staff and clients.

Neighbor to Neighbor has been experiencing a rapidly soaring demand for groceries, as a result of business closures caused by the coronavirus outbreak. The organization is now providing approximately 600 households with weekly grocery bags of three days of food, for three meals for every member of the household, it says. The Transportation Association of Greenwich has been driving the grocery deliveries throughout town.

The food coming in from the East and West Lyon Farm neighborhoods has been a big boost.

So kind and so generous, said a spokeswoman for Neighbor to Neighbor, Bobbi Eggers.

The food drive is continuing through May 6, through the website givehealthy.org.

rmarchant@greenwichtime.com
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 14:59:14|Editor: huaxia

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Afghan security force members inspect the site of a bomb attack in Mehtarlam city, capital of Laghman province, Afghanistan, May 2, 2020. Three civilians were killed and four others wounded in a bomb attack in Mehtarlam city on Saturday, a provincial government spokesman confirmed. (Photo by Saifurahman Safi/Xinhua)
As many as 63,000 crew members and passengers on board vessels mostly from China have been denied disembarkation at Indian ports so far, as part of efforts to curb the spread of coronavirus, a shipping ministry official said.

These crew members and passengers reached Indian ports on board about 1,990 vessels between January 27 and April 30, the official added.

"A total of 62,948 crew and passengers reached India's ports on board about 1,990 ships, mostly from China. Thermal scanning of all these crew and passengers were done as per the WHO (World Health Organization) guidelines. Besides adhering to all precautions and laid-down protocols to prevent any further spread of COVID-19, no shore passes or daily passes were issued to these people, and EXIM cargo was handled with care," the official told PTI.

Of the total 1,990 ships, 1,621 reached major ports and were allowed anchoring at designated places for loading and unloading of export-import (EXIM) cargo.

Of these 63,000 crew and passengers onboard these ships, 56,000 reached the major ports, the official said.

India has 12 major ports -- Deendayal (erstwhile Kandla), Mumbai, JNPT, Mormugao, New Mangalore, Cochin, Chennai, Kamarajar (earlier Ennore), V. O. Chidambaranar, Visakhapatnam, Paradip and Kolkata (including Haldia). These ports handled nearly 705 million tonnes (MT) cargo in 2019-20.

For maintaining smooth operations across ports, the shipping ministry has initiated a number of steps that include waiving of rentals.

The government has asked all major ports to ensure that no penalties, demurrage, charges, fees and rentals are levied on any port user (traders, shipping lines, concessionaires, licensees, etc) for any delay in berthing or loading/unloading operations or evacuation of cargo caused by the reasons attributable to lockdown measures from March 22.

Besides, for existing and operational PPP (public private partnership) projects, major ports can permit waiver of all penal consequences on a case-to-case basis along with deferment of certain performance obligations.

The official said hospitals across the major port trusts have been supplied with personal protective equipment (PPE), and the arrangement of sufficient staff round the clock has been made.

Ports and PSUs under the Ministry of Shipping have contributed over Rs 52 crore from the corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds towards PM-CARES Fund.

Besides, employees of ports, public sector undertakings (PSUs) and other offices of the ministry have contributed over Rs 7 crore from their salaries towards the PM-CARES Fund. The number of vessels handled by ports during 2019-20 was around 20,837 as against 20,853 vessels in 2018-19.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-02 01:12:18|Editor: huaxia

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THE HAGUE, May 1 (Xinhua) -- Ernst Kuipers, chairman of the Dutch National Coordination Center for Patient Distribution (LCPS), announced at a press conference on Friday that the number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units declined by 48 to a total of 735.

The peak of Dutch COVID-19 patients was on April 7, when 1,378 people were admitted to intensive care units in The Netherlands and 46 in Germany.

"If this decline continues, there will still be 500 coronavirus patients in intensive care in about a week," Kuipers said. "That means that normal programs in healthcare can be resumed. We see that this is already happening, but that process may accelerate in the near future."

The National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) on Friday announced that 98 people were reported dead from COVID-19 in The Netherlands in the past 24 hours, bringing the death toll to 4,893.

And the number of confirmed infection cases grew by 475 to a total of 39,791, while the number of people who are or were admitted to hospital increased by 85 to a total of 10,854. Enditem
By Express News Service

KOCHI: The Indian crew members of PSU Seventh, a very large Ore Carrier Vessel operating on Singapore flag have approached the Bureau of Immigration seeking permission for signing off from duty at Cochin Port. International Transport Workers Federation Inspector Thomas Sebastian has written to the Foreigner Regional Registration Officer seeking permission for the 11 crew members who have completed their contract period and are continuing onboard the ship for the past 10 months. The ship is proceeding from Brazil to China with iron ore. RGL Shipping, the vessel operator, has consented to reroute the ship to Kochi if India grants permission for crew change, said Thomas Sebastian.
Children wearing face masks to help protect against the spread of the coronavirus watch soap bubbles fly at the Chogyesa temple in Korea, April 24, 2020. AP



The government is set to soon announce dates for students to return to school in line with the country's relaxed social distancing guidelines as the coronavirus pandemic shows signs of waning here.



"South Korea will implement the everyday life quarantine scheme starting Wednesday," Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said Sunday during a meeting on the government's response to COVID-19.



The government earlier said it will move on to the everyday life quarantine scheme when the number of new infections remain below 50. South Korea has been seeing that for the past 25 days.



"We will sequentially push for our children to take classes at school. The education minister will announce the detailed schedule and method tomorrow," Chung said.





S. Korea reports 8 more cases of coronavirus infection, total at 10,801 Korea to loosen social distancing campaign from Wednesday Korea to relax social-distancing campaign starting Wednesday The shift to everyday life quarantine raises hope that students may be able to return to school this month.



While the exact date is set to be unveiled in the press briefing, some hold the view that school may resume around May 18-20, which would give health and education authorities enough time to gauge the impact of the so-called golden holiday.



South Koreans are on an extended holiday, with key calendar events such as Buddha's Birthday, Labor Day and Children Day's falling between April 30 and May 5. Many people are expected to travel or meet relatives during this period, making social distancing difficult.



There is, however, the possibility that high school seniors may return to school a week earlier due to schedules related to the national college entrance exam that takes place in November each year. This year, the exam has been postponed to December.



South Korean kindergartens and elementary, middle and high schools  which usually start the new school year in March  have remained closed for the past two months.



The government postponed the new school term by five weeks to April, when grade school students resumed classes online for the first time in the country's history of education.



Online classes opened gradually, with high school and middle school seniors taking classes starting April 9, followed by grades 1-2 at middle schools and high schools and elementary grades 4-6 on April 16. Online classes for lower grades at elementary schools opened on April 20.




Aihik Sur And Naveen Kumar Tallam By

Express News Service

HYDERABAD/KARIMNAGAR: Around 7.5 lakh people from the Telugu States, including 3.7 lakh from Telangana, are awaiting their return to India from the Gulf countries  namely, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Iraq. Activists estimate that after the lockdown is lifted, around 2,000 migrants would arrive at the RGI Airport every day for the next two to three months.

Amnesty scheme

Indian immigrants in Kuwait are perhaps the worst-hit. Nearly half of the countrys total Covid-positive patients hail from India. This means that over 1 lakh Telangana natives are at high risk of catching the disease. Recently, the Kuwaiti government had announced an amnesty scheme for (illegal) migrant workers. This has been availed by 3,000 from the State, said a Telangana Jagruthi member. Speaking to Express, Muralidhar Reddy, a migrants activist from Kuwait, appealed to the Kuwaiti government to extend the application deadline so that more TS citizens could avail the scheme.

The Covid-19 situation for immigrants is equally bad, if not worse, in the UAE, where four Telangana natives had lost their lives to the disease. A few days ago, Syed Dastagir Ali from Hyderabad passed away due to Covid. Further, in a recent video, a migrant had alleged that a group of them were forced to stay in a quarters where a Covid-positive patient was put up.

Things look better in Oman, says Ravikiran, a Vishakapatnam native. Oman is unlike the other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The government treats us like its own, he told Express. Like Ravikiran, many from Telangana have registered with Muscats travel back to India portal. However, they have not been updated of any development for the past two weeks. The 10,000 Telangana natives residing in Iraqs Erbil were on the verge of starvation until recently. The Telugu Gulf Employees Welfare Association recently began supplying essential commodities to them with the Indian Embassy.

Trials and tribulations

A majority of Gulf immigrants from Telangana hail from either Hyderabad, Karimnagar or Nizamabad. Nearly 40,000 people from Karimnagar have been confined to their rooms for the last one month in Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Iraq, said Gulf Returning Welfare Society president Shaik Chandpasha. One of them, B Nagaraju from Chinnabonala village (now merged with the Sircilla municipality), went to Dubai six months after his wedding. His wife Padma said she frequently speaks to him over video call. He told her that some people in the Gulf were forced to eat leftovers due to shortage of food.

M Srikanth, from the same village, went to Dubai recently. His mother Narsavva has been requesting the Telangana government to bring her son back. Most of the victims were starving, sources said.According to Shaik Chandpasha, a majority of the migrants went to the Gulf nations on a visit visa through job placement firms. This was because companies were selecting candidates with a visiting visa to avoid providing them with facilities  which they would have to for those on a work visa. Legal agents, who helped these migrants get the jobs, also washed their hands off them during these trying times, he alleged. In Jagtial district, nearly every village had about 10 people going to the Gulf in search of employment.

One of the them, Srinivas, told his family that for the last two months his company paid him only half his salary. The 2-lakh Nizamabad natives in the Gulf are in constant touch with Telangana-Gulf NGOs. They allege that the governments of the respective countries they work in were denying them adequate facilities.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: Commercial passenger flights at Delhi airport will initially operate from Terminal 3 after the lockdown ends, said a senior official of its operator DIAL on Sunday, adding that entry gates, self check-in machines and check-in bays will be allocated to airlines to avoid overcrowding by air travellers.

The airport will keep all food, beverage and retail shops open to avoid overcrowding at one place and use "ultraviolet disinfection tunnels" for all incoming baggage, according to a plan prepared by the GMR group-led Delhi International Airport Ltd.

The plan said the passengers of Vistara and IndiGo would enter the airport through gates 1 and 2 only. These two airlines will have check-in rows A, B and C among them, it said.

AirAsia India and Air India passengers will use entry gates 3 and 4. These passengers will then go to rows D, E and F where the staff of these two airlines would assist them check-in, according to the plan.

SpiceJet and GoAir passengers would enter through gate 5 towards the staff of these two airlines at rows G and H for check-in.

Passengers of all other domestic airlines will enter through gate 5 and will head to row H, the plan said.

All international airlines' passengers would be entering the airport using gates 6, 7 and 8.

The staff of these airlines would be sitting at rows J, K, L and M for check-in at Terminal 3.

The DIAL's exit plan stated that entry gates, self check-in machines and check-in bays would be allocated to airlines to ensure smooth flow of passengers from forecourt into check-in hall and security thereafter.

India has been under a lockdown since March 25 to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, which has infected around 40,000 people and killed more than 1,300 people in the country till now.

All commercial passenger flights have been suspended for the lockdown period.

However, cargo flights, medical evacuation flights and special flights permitted by the aviation regulator DGCA are allowed to operate.

"Initially, once the lockdown is over, the commercial passenger fights will be operating from Terminal 3 only.

Later, once the number of flights increase, other terminals will be used," the DIAL official said.

The DIAL would be preparing stringent standard operating procedures (SOPs) for food, beverage and retail shops in order to ensure social distancing, the exit plan noted.

The operator will promote digital payments and digital menus at various outlets to minimise human contact.

Moreover, DIAL would encourage usage of self-ordering kiosks at the food court to reduce queues.
Members of the Arizona National Guard helped set up a Federal Medical Station on the Navajo Nation reservation in Chinle, Arizona, on Saturday, May 2, where authorities were fighting to contain the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

The Arizona National Guard deployed more than 800 citizen-soldiers and airmen to help provide support to grocery stores, food banks, and other community needs.

During the previous week, the Arizona National Guard delivered 60 tons of fresh produce to three of Arizonas Native American Nations  the Navajo, the Hopi, and the White Mountain Apaches, according to reports.

Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez said the nation had partnered with the US Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA, and the Arizona and New Mexico National Guard to set up several care sites in Arizona and New Mexico. Credit: Arizona National Guard via Storyful
Kim Jong Un has been seen in public for the first time since 11 April, according to North Korean state media.

KCNA reported that the North Korean dictator attended the completion of a fertiliser plant in a region north of Pyongyang, the country's capital city.

It comes after speculation that Mr Kim, who is obese and a heavy smoker, was gravely ill after surgery last month.

According to the state media's report, the 36-year-old had expressed satisfaction about the factory's production levels, cut a ribbon, and was met with "thunderous cheers of 'hurrah!'".

He was with several senior officials, including his younger sister Kim Yo Jong, who is expected to take over if her brother is suddenly unable to rule.

In comments reported by South Korean news agency Yonhap, KCNA said: "All the participants broke into thunderous cheers of 'hurrah!' extending the greatest glory to the Supreme Leader who has brought about a new change in the development of Juche-based fertiliser industry and has led the grand revolutionary advance for strengthening self-supporting economy to a victory with his outstanding leadership."

Juche is the idea of self-reliance.

It was also reported that Mr Kim was undertaking official duties in private - sending official notes to the leaders of Syria, Cuba, South Africa, and expressing thanks to workers building tourist facilities in the coastal town of Wonsan.

There were questions about his health after he missed the anniversary of the birth of Kim Il Sung on 15 April.

This is a major holiday in North Korea and he would usually visit the mausoleum where his grandfather lies in state.

Instead, he was absent for the first time since taking power in 2011.

It is not known why he has been absent from public view for so long, but he did a similar thing in 2014 - disappearing for nearly six weeks before reappearing with a cane.

South Korea said at the time that he had been recovering from the removal of a cyst from his ankle.
She's the former Survivor Australia star known for her enviable curves.

And on Sunday, Felicity Egginton, who recently appeared on this year's All-Stars series, looked every inch the beach beauty as she flaunted her eye-popping figure.

Sharing a photo of her pert derriere to her Instagram stories, and another on her feed, the 27-year-old certainly had fingers 'double tapping' her latest post.

If you've got it! Survivor: All-Stars beauty Felicity Egginton (pictured) left little to the imagination as she flaunted her pert derriere in a backless floral swimsuit on Sunday

In one photo, Felicity is seen looking back at the camera in a floral backless swimsuit while she stood on an empty beach.

'How good has this iso been to have some downtime?' Felicity gushed.

She went on to encourage her Instagram followers to start new hobbies and look after themselves.

Peachy! Sharing a photo of her pert derriere to her Instagram stories, and another on her feed, the 27-year-old certainly had fingers 'double tapping' her latest Instagram post

It comes after Felicity revealed the surprisingly easy way she shed an impressive 15 kilograms before returning to the challenging reality show this year.

Speaking to NW magazine, Flick explained she developed a passion for the gym and became a huge fan of F45 workouts.

'As soon as I started working out four years ago, I lost 10 kilograms,' she told the publication.

Transformation! It comes after Felicity revealed the surprisingly easy way she shed 15 kilograms before returning to the challenging reality show this year. (L) 2016 (R) 2020

Changes: Flick, who previously weighed 78 kilograms, slimmed down to a svelte 63 kilograms

'I got into F45, I lost another five kilograms,' she added. Flick, who previously weighed 78 kilograms, slimmed down to a svelte 63 kilograms.

The reality TV star finished by saying that she has never felt better mentally.

Felicity said she suffered a mental breakdown following her elimination from Survivor in 2016 - where she placed fourth.

Speaking to OK! Magazine previously, she said: 'I've suffered from anxiety and mental illness in the past, and I did fall back into that.'
Plus, Bill's Message of the Day, who are the most admired people in America?

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
An employee works at a textile factory in Handan in China's northern Hebei Province, on April 29, 2020. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

No Sign of Recovery for Chinese Economy as Virus Cripples Export Orders

Before the virus hit, the woodworking machines at a Chinese furniture factory never stopped humming, even overnight on the weekend, as orders from Europe and Japan flew in.

Now, workers get two days off each week and count themselves lucky if they have two hours of work on the other days.

This has never happened before, Chen, who oversees the factory in Shenzhen, said in an interview.

Chinese factories are ramping up production as the country struggles to get back on its feet from the pandemic-induced recession. Around 80 percent of the small and medium-sized businesses, and nearly all large firms have returned to work, according to Chinas commerce authorities. But analyses of recent data from the country suggests a quick rebound is nowhere in sight.

Export orders, including to Chinas top export markets of the United States and Europe, have shriveled up as the virus shatters the world economy and workforces continue to shrink, and companies are uncertain about the outlook ahead.

Chinas Purchasing Managers Index (PMI), an indicator of manufacturing industry confidence, slipped to 50.8 from 52 in April, barely passing the 50 point mark that divides expansion and contraction.

According to a China Beige Book (CBB) survey of 547 companies released late April, 81 percent of executives expressed concerns of the virus making a comeback in the fall.

Local Woes for Small Business

The private sector, which contributes to 60 percent of Chinas GDP, is feeling the pain of the virus crisis. Over two-fifths of the mostly private-owned companies participating in the CBB survey reported operating under half capacity, with merely 4 percent reaching full capacity.

One of every four companies have reported output declines.

Unlike state firms, private and small enterprises have no access to free credit during difficult times, making them especially important indicators for gauging the state of the countrys economic recovery, said the data analytics firms managing director Shehzad Qazi.

Theres no sign of recovery over there at the moment, he told The Epoch Times.

A worker produces baby carriages at a factory in Handan in Chinas northern Hebei Province on April 29, 2020. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Manufacturers and service firms continued to see declining sales in April, and three-fifths of the firms attributed their loss of revenue to the lingering virus impact, according to the survey. Around 69 percent of the companies interviewed considered the past month as good as it gets, with business conditions either staying the same or becoming worse, it stated.

Bao, who runs a popular sausage shop with his wife in Mudanjiang, a city in northeastern China, has furloughed all employees to cut costs.

The shop had been making only one-tenth of its pre-outbreak revenues since reopening about five weeks earliernot even enough to cover rent and utility costs. Meanwhile, nearly half of the restaurants in the area have gone out of business.

Even 100 yuan is still better than nothing, he said, adding that they are just hanging in there.

Tang Renjian, governor of north-central province of Gansu, made a plea to help small businesses through the harsh winter in an April 27 press conference. While not many companies in his province have closed since January, he cautioned that the outbreaks impact is now just beginning to show.

Some are hanging by a thread, he said.

If we dont walk past this hurdle, the risks it brings will definitely create a butterfly effect, he said, naming social unrest and political crises as very likely consequences.

A Chinese juice vendor wears a protective mask as she waits for customers in the heat during the May holiday in Beijing on May 2, 2020. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

No One Stays Intact

China, the worlds largest export economy, saw nearly half a million firms going under in the first quarter of 2020a telling sign of the pandemics economic toll. Among them, 260,000 are export-related businesses.

The unemployment rate for March was 5.9 percent by official accounts, 0.3 percent down from the previous month. But independent analysts warn that such data could be unreliable.

As many as 205 million workersnearly one in every 15 peoplemay have lost their jobs owing to the outbreak, according to early April estimates by Liu Chenjie, chairman of the Shenzhen-based hedge fund Upright Capital.

Surveys across nearly 4,000 firms between February and April also showed that layoffs have outpaced new hires, Qazi said.

We are looking at massive amounts of negative growth  contractions happening across every major business performance indicator, he said.

In Harbin, the northern Chinese city that has become the focal point of fears of a second wave of outbreaks, produce and food stands have popped up as people struggle to make ends meet.

A shoe factory in Chinas southern province of Guangdong has stopped its three production lines and furloughed all except the CEO and a few managers, according to a worker. He recently learned that he needs not come back this year.

A cab driver from Hunan, the province immediately south of Wuhans Hubei Province, said his business has plummeted by 30 to 40 percent in the wake of the virus.

No one can stay intact or keep out of it, he said.

This is not just a Chinese problem, this is really a global problem, Qazi said. Unless we see Europe get back to business, and unless we see the United States really get back to business, China is not going to see that recovery, regardless of what the official narrative might be.
Amnesty: Somalia journalists face abusive means of suppression

A recent Amnesty International report says harassment and intimidation of journalists are so deeply entrenched, it makes Somalia one of the most dangerous places to report from.




Haiti - News : Zapping...





The opposition distributes masks

Friday, May 1, 2020, the local branch of the radical opposition of the so-called "democratic and popular" sector in Petit Goave, proceeded to the distribution of hygiene kits and nose pads. Several Goavians and opposition activists and sympathizers took to the streets to urge the population to follow the instructions aimed at combating the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus. Going through several neighborhoods, they delivered an awareness message and took the opportunity to distribute masks

HL/ HaitiLibre / Guyto Mathieu (Petit-Goave Correspondent).



10 years later, water is flowing in the Latandrie canal

On Friday May 1st, water started to flow again in the Latandrie Canal in the North, which had been without water for more than 10 years. Farmers in the region are asking Patrix Severe, the Minister of Agriculture, to work so that all high channels and all extensions can bring water to all farmers.



Cap-Haitien : A historic process

Friday at the Town Hall of Cap-Haitien, the municipal authorities met the Committee of the Merchants of the place rue 3. The two parties agreed on the need to remake the image of the Christophienne City, to arrange a large space which must accommodate mercants within 5 weeks and rebuild the Square Toussaint Louverture. Pending the completion of the development of the new space, the merchants asked the Mayor for permission to display their goods during the days of operation of the public markets in Cap-Haitien. This authorization has been granted, but a meeting will be held shortly to establish a temporary location. The Municipal Authorities thank the Capois and invite them to support this historic process.



2 new Dominican consuls in Haiti

Friday By decree 155-20, President Danilo Medina appointed two new consuls general Gustavo Lembert Cano in Port-au-Prince and Edixon Mateo Quezada in Cap-Haitien. In addition to its embassy in Port-au-Prince, the Dominican Republic has 4 consultats in Haiti: Anse-a-Pitres, Belladere, Cap-Haitien and Ouanaminthe.



Mask mandatory...

"From Monday, May 11, 2020, wearing a mask will be mandatory in all public places. My Government will intensify distributions during this week, particularly in the markets. I strongly encourage private companies to distribute them to their employees," said Prime Minister Joseph Jouthe See also : https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-30679-haiti-notice-mask-wearing-mandatory-in-public-places.html



HL/ HaitiLibre


















By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 05/03/2020



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[ Spoilers Warning: This report contains spoilers revealing if Lisa and Usman are still together and whether the : Before the 90 Days couple got married].

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So are Lisa and Usman still together? Did the : Before the 90 Days couple end up getting married?

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Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.

star Lisa Hamme was just shown flipping Usman Umar the middle finger after an argument on Season 4 of : Before the 90 Days, so were they really done at that point or did they stay together and maybe even get married? Is the couple still together?Lisa, a 52-year-old hospice caregiver from York, PA, and Usman "SojaBoy," a 30-year-old rapper from Nigeria, are currently starring on : Before the 90 Days' fourth season, which premiered in February on TLC.Lisa previously divorced an unfaithful and verbally-abusive man, so she worked hard to support her 15-year-old daughter. Lisa wasn't sure if she'd fall in love again, but then she met Usman, an entertainer in Nigeria who has over 20,000 followers on Instagram.Usman had contacted her on Facebook two years before filming began, but Lisa didn't understand why a Nigerian celebrity would be interested in her.However, Usman said he wrote Lisa a love song, and that solidified their relationship and Usman's intentions in Lisa's mind.Once they got to know each other a little bit better, Lisa planned a trip to Nigeria -- her first trip out of the United States -- so they could meet face to face.Although their relationship was supposedly built on trust, Lisa had an issue with the "thirsty" women who followed him on social media.Lisa didn't like women constantly reaching out to and calling Usman. She therefore asked him to tighten up his social-media profiles after seeing some flirty comments had been left by fans, such as heart emojis."I just have to try to tolerate her," Usman said in a confessional, before telling his pals he had already decided to be with Lisa forever and always.Lisa and Usman were already engaged, so they planned to wed during her stay in Nigeria and then apply for a spousal visa so Usman could move to the United States.Lisa was warned by friends and family Usman would tell her anything she wanted to hear in order to come to America and receive a Green Card. After all, Usman admitted to cameras his dream was to become the king of hip-hop and R&B in America.But Lisa believed otherwise and thought this was her opportunity to experience a love like never before."If my life is one week [or] one month with this man, I've lived a full life," Lisa told her friends before she left America.Lisa's friends were worried about her safety in Nigeria and being kidnapped or something along those lines.But Lisa gushed, "If I die in Nigeria, I'll die a happy woman because I'll be with the man I love... He's absolutely the man of my dreams. If this is a scam, it's going to break my heart and I will not recover from it."Once Lisa arrived in Nigeria, Usman told the cameras he was "in heaven" and in "paradise" holding his love, and Lisa expressed how Usman was "so damn hot."But Usman admitted Lisa had "a bit more belly" than he was expecting. He said he would've liked her to have a bigger chest with a little waist and big hips, but he said Lisa had a big heart and that's what mattered most.Once Lisa and Usman made it to the hotel, a producer asked Usman if he was looking forward to having sex with Lisa for the first time.Usman admitted Lisa is not the kind of woman he's typically attracted to, and after the pair made love for the first time -- unprotected -- Usman said the encounter was "70 percent good," which was enough for him.The pair later drove over to Kaduna, a big city in Nigeria where Usman actually lived and worked in the music industry, and Lisa didn't appreciate people blowing up Usman's phone all the time.Usman pointed out Lisa was "very jealous" and "even more controlling in person." He claimed he didn't even know who was calling him at one point.Usman spoke to his friends about how he needed to address Lisa's attitude because he didn't want her to do anything that might jeopardize his career or relationship with co-workers.For instance, Lisa hated that Usman used a young female model in the music video for the song he had written for her, and she didn't like the video director as a result.Lisa therefore asked Usman to edit the model out of the video, which frustrated people who worked with Usman."Changing my video could be bad for my career. I wish Lisa could understand what I sacrifice for her," Usman said in a confessional.And it turned out his music video was not well-received at the world-premiere party, and Usman began fearing his career was slipping through his fingers.A couple of Usman's friends thought Lisa was too controlling, too jealous and essentially not obedient enough for a Muslim man, but Usman still carried on with their relationship.Usman said ideally, he would marry Lisa, have children with her and "maintain that status [of] superstar" in the United States -- so he was willing to do whatever it took to make her happy.Lisa and Usman then flew to Sokoto to visit with his mother, whom Lisa needed approval from in order to marry her son.While in the hotel one night, Usman suddenly disappeared after he told his fiancee he was going to walk a friend to his car and say goodbye.Lisa wasn't okay with Usman leaving her alone in a foreign country, but he said it wasn't okay for him to apologize to her day and night for things."You are not a god," Usman said. "You are not up to 10 days in Nigeria and how many times have I said, 'I'm sorry?' I can't even count."Lisa told Usman not to be a "drama queen," but he wasn't about to let Lisa control his life.Usman thought it was ridiculous Lisa got mad at him for just escorting his friend out of the hotel, and he told Lisa they had a serious problem."I guarantee you tomorrow we'll have [another] problem. I cannot live in that kind of life," Usman told Lisa."Because it's better to live in prison... I can't put myself in prison just to make you happy all the time. If this is how you want me to be, then I think it's better for you to just go your way and let me go my way."Usman said in a confessional he had been complying with Lisa and finally had enough. Usman was ready to make a decision about the future of his relationship, and he wasn't sure his future included Lisa being his wife."If this is how it's going to continue, we don't need to get married," Usman told the cameras.After their big fight, Usman took off for a while and wouldn't speak to Lisa. He said Lisa was bossier than he had ever expected. He dreamed of being a famous musician in the United States, but he didn't want to sacrifice too much just to make his dream come true.Lisa felt everything she did for Usman wasn't enough, and she insisted no one is perfect and Usman had to make up his mind about her quickly.Usman told Lisa that he never insulted her for two years and he had so much respect for her but he worried about how she would treat him in the United States when he'd have no family or friends to run to.Lisa called her stay "very stressful," but Usman was scared to move to America because of how Lisa had been acting.Lisa said her behavior was a result of not sleeping well and being in a foreign country, so she asked Usman for another chance and to move on with the next chapter of their life together."I love Lisa and I want to make her happy, but if we get married, we need a plan to fix our problems," Usman said in a confessional.Lisa had taken a risk for love and feared returning to America alone. She said the breakup would destroy the both of them.However, Lisa and Usman talked through their issues, and Lisa was proud of how they were able to handle arguments and adversity.After Lisa dressed in traditional Nigerian attire called Hausa and bought a goat as a gift, she finally met Usman's mother Fatimatu, hoping to receive her support and blessing to marry Usman.When Lisa finally met Fatimatu and his elders, they were shocked to see how old Lisa was. Usman told his mother that Lisa was a doctor in America although she's a hospice caregiver.Fatimatu ideally wanted him to marry a local Muslim woman, but Usman assured his mother that Lisa loved him and they wanted to get married. Usman revealed his intentions to move to America, and his mother shook her head, "No."Fatimatu excused herself from the conversation, and Usman said her walking away was one of the worst signs that she didn't approve of his relationship."I disagree with his choice to marry Lisa. That's why I left the gathering earlier. It scares me because Lisa is obviously much older and also that she will take him abroad," Fatimatu told the cameras."I'm afraid of how they will treat him since the whites don't like the blacks over there."At this point, Lisa and Usman couldn't get married, and Lisa wished Usman had better prepared himself for this conversation with his mother.Lisa was very frustrated and noted, "At this point, our relationship could be over."The couple therefore resorted to Plan B and decided to meet with Usman's brother's Muhammed for some advice on how to proceed.Usman said Fatimatu always listened to Muhammed because he's the eldest of her children. Usman felt he was under some serious pressure and hoped Muhammed would talk to their mother and convince her everything was going to be okay.Usman assured Muhammed he loved Lisa and the economy in America is "so strong" and he wanted to move to "the No. 1 country in the world."And Lisa said she was desperate to marry her "destiny, [her] everything," so Muhammed decided to defend their love and try his best to win his mother over.However, Muhammad was not able to convince his mother to give Lisa and Usman her blessing, so Lisa was stressed about the clock ticking. She and Usman were running out of time.Muhammad suggested Usman and Lisa should pray at a mosque since Fatimatu is a devout Muslim, and Fatimatu did eventually show up and join them. Fatimatu told the camera she was worried Lisa would turn Usman into a servant in America.The religious experience was quite different for Lisa, who did everything in her power to blend in and follow the rules, including dressing the part.But Usman's mother continued to insist Lisa was too old for him after the service, and Lisa admitted that was "heartbreaking." Lisa said she couldn't approve of her son marrying an older woman for that reason."It's looking grim, and at this point, our relationship could be over," Lisa told the cameras.Lisa and Usman eventually had only one day left to receive Fatimatu's blessing because Lisa had to leave Nigeria. Lisa felt like she had done everything possible to win Fatimatu over and she was out of options.Lisa and Usman then headed to see Fatimatu again, and Usman griped about how they probably only had a one percent chance of receiving his mother's blessing to have a wedding.Usman promised his mother that Lisa was going to help him find work in America after getting married and he'd still visit her in Nigeria often."I will have more chances of success there," Usman assured his mother, adding that he'd be safe in the United States with Lisa and loved her."I will think about it," Fatimatu replied."Mommy, you should have accepted it by now," Usman noted.Lisa could tell by the look on Usman's face he was not receiving good news, but then suddenly, Fatimatu -- after a long moment of silence -- said, "I have accepted it now.""She said, 'Yes!'" Usman told Lisa, who celebrated with joy and couldn't believe it.Fatimatu told the cameras, "It had become clear to me she and Usman will love together in love and peace. I'm thinking he will come with Lisa here to Nigeria, and I'm happy about it."Usman said he felt totally relieved but he and Lisa still had problems they needed to discuss and work out before getting married. Usman, for example, wanted Lisa to work on her jealousy and controlling ways.Later on, Usman picked out a wedding ring for Lisa, who wanted something simple. Usman said rings in Nigeria tend to be large and flashy, so he anticipated Lisa was going to complain about his pick.Usman purchased the simplest ring he could find and seemed happy with it, but she said he didn't want to spend his marriage fighting.Usman therefore told Lisa that a Hausa man controls the house and he wanted to be in control of their relationship. Usman was tired of Lisa commanding him to do things, saying that's the husband's role in a marriage.Lisa said a man telling her what to do would be "disrespectful," but Usman wanted to be in charge. Lisa told the cameras an American woman is not going to be obedient."If there are two kings in a kingdom, there will definitely be war," Usman said in a confessional.Usman said Lisa could advise him or suggest ways to act -- but not tell him what to do, and with that being said, Lisa walked away from him and flipped him the middle finger.Based on posts Lisa has made on Facebook, she and Usman reportedly began dating in June 2018.And the couple did reportedly get married during Lisa's stay in Nigeria!Photos of what appeared to be Lisa and Usman's wedding ceremony leaked online last year by Starcasm, and it appears they tied the knot on August 30, 2019.One picture appeared to show the couple holding their Nigerian marriage certificate.Lisa reportedly chose not to wear any makeup on her wedding day at Usman's request, and Lisa changed her name to Usman's mother's name when she got married.Lisa also reportedly converted to a different religion.Lisa admitted to In Touch Weekly in late April that Usman was really mad at her and the world on April 21, which resulted in Usman claiming on Angela Yee's Lip Service podcast Lisa had previously threatened to commit suicide. ( Lisa totally denied the claim ).However, days later, Lisa posted a video on Instagram of Usman dancing with her and captioned it with a kissing emoticon. It therefore appears Lisa is still together with and loves Usman.Going back to April 16, Lisa also hinted she and Usman are still a couple through an Instagram post.Lisa shared an image that read, "If another woman steals your man, there's no better revenge than letting her keep him. Real men can't be stolen."She captioned the image, "Since all the negative Nelly's have put me in a snarky ass mood if you think you can take my baby love @officialsojaboy just remember it will turn around and the exact same thing will happen to you but I don't think he's gonna do that to me so hate on hate on and hell yes I'm turning off the comments.""Karma's a bad ass bitch my sisters remember that BGL," she added.Not only did Lisa call Usman her "baby love," but she also insisted Usman would never leave or hurt her, which suggests they are still an item.She also posted a message to fans about staying strong during difficult times on April 1 amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and her location was tagged as Kaduna, Nigeria, implying she's either visiting Usman or living with him in Nigeria.While rumors have circulated that Lisa and Usman split and got divorced some time after their wedding, Lisa also posted a collage of photos of Usman and herself on March 20 on Facebook.In addition, it also appears Lisa converted to Islam.Usman shared a post on Facebook in December 2019 that showed a screenshot of a text message Lisa had sent him in which she talked about converting to Islam, Starcasm reported."Wasn't for your mom or anyone in our lives, not even you," Lisa allegedly wrote, "this was a decision that I made for myself."Lisa reportedly received her fair share of backlash on social media after revealing she's married to Usman, and some people are claiming Usman has cheated on her. But it doesn't seem to phase the feisty Lisa!When one fan reportedly wrote to Lisa, "I wish you were faithful tho," she reportedly replied, "What do you mean my husband is faithful to me. Keep moving."Lisa then went off at the online troll and, according to Starcasm, wrote, "She is a typical Nigerian b*tch an ppl from my husband area wonder why he married a WHITE AMERICAN WOMAN. FACT STANDS I AM A GOOD WOMAN SO LET MY HATERS COME @USMAN SERIOUSLY ILL F**KING MAKE HER CRY."The commenter continued to allege Usman had been "f-cking around" on her, advising Lisa to get checked for sexual transmitted diseases."Jealous much b*tch? Get in line to kiss my white a**," Lisa reportedly responded."You mad bc I married Usman Sojaboy no wonder Nigerian men are choosing to marry anyone but a Nigerian woman like you."Want more spoilers or couples updates? Click here to visit our homepage!
Nagpur civic body on Sunday issued



a revised order on par with the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) and the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) to ensure stricter enforcement of the third phase of the coronavinavirus-induced lockdown beginning on Monday.

As per the order, the restrictions in place till May 3 will remain in force during the lockdown period till May 17.

Nagpur civic chief Tukaram Mundhe stated that many people expected that offices will open with 33 per cent staff from Monday but even those offices located outside containment zones will remain closed during the third phase.

Meanwhile, Nagpur MP and Union minister Nitin Gadkari said during a video interaction with reporters that such measures are not needed outside the containment zones. He said he would speak with the municipal commissioner on this issue.

Nagpur city is categorised as a 'Red' zone in view of which stricter measures are needed to check spread of the coronavirus, Mundhe said.

Besides the red, orange and green zones, the Maharashtra government has created Mumbai-Pune-Malegaon zone and containment zone on the basis of the number of the COVID- 19 cases and accordingly issued instructions on relaxations.

In a notification, the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC)called for "stricter lockdown measures taking into account the total number of the active cases, doubling rate of the confirmed cases extent of testing and surveillance feedback".

"I am of the opinion that it is necessary to implement stricter measures in the Nagpur municipal limits during the extended lockdownperiod up to May 17, which would be on parwith the measures announced for the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), Malegaon Municipal Corporation (MMC) and Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) by the state government order dated May 2," Mundhe stated.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- SILive.com reported on April 4 that Staten Island artist James Cox, 23, set out to pay homage to the frontline soldiers of the coronavirus pandemic with a painting of healthcare workers and first responders holding up the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge.

A month later, Cox is happy to report he has raised $10,000 from the sale of his limited edition prints to be donated to Staten Island Not For Profit Association (SINFPA) -- which comprises more than 40 of the boroughs not-for-profit organizations -- and was responsible for the distribution.

Cox is grateful for all the support.

*** CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF CORONAVIRUS IN NEW YORK ***

Thank you to all who have donated so far, he said. The poster version will continue this great collaboration between the Borough Presidents Office, myself, Lukes Copy Shop, and the SINFPA to raise money for the people that need it most."

Two hundred prints, numbered and signed, were sold for a donation of $50.19 each. The prints were donated by Lukes Copy Shop, which has further donated 500 more posters to be sold at $25 each by SINFPA.

Cox, 23, a West Brighton resident, conceived the idea when picking up pizza at Cafe Milano on Forest Avenue, West Brighton, when he realized how fortunate he was to still be able to pick up dinner at his favorite restaurant during the coronavirus pandemic.

This whole experience is proving art can make a difference! added Cox.

To order a poster, visit SINFPA by clicking here.

James Cox holds up his poster, the sale of which has raised $10K for SINPA. (Courtesy James Cox)

About the author: Dr. Gracelyn Santos, a part-time life & culture columnist for Advance/SILive, is a dentist in private practice on Staten Island and mother of three daughters. Read her past columns by clicking here.
Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital reportedly rejected plasma samples from gay and bisexual patients. (Getty)

A London hospital has been accused of prejudice by not allowing gay or bisexual men to donate plasma for a coronavirus trial.

Doctors at Guys and St Thomas Hospital are attempting to use a groundbreaking convalescent plasma treatment to cure coronavirus, according to ITV News.

But the hospital is reportedly rejecting plasma samples from men who have had sex with another man within the past three months, similar to the current rules for donating blood.

Gay rights activist Peter Tatchell tweeted: Gay & bisexual men in the UK are being excluded from a new blood plasma trial to help treat coronavirus = PREJUDICE!

A bag containing a plasma sample for use in attempting to treat coronavirus. (Getty)

The ban is based on the mistaken assumption that they are all at risk of HIV. Not so. Many have only safe sex & have tested HIV negative.

While Gay Times journalist Tom Knight said: The government reminding us once again they see gay men differently by imposing a ban on us donating plasma in the fight against COVID-19 if weve been sexuality active within the last 3 months.

Latest coronavirus news, updates and advice

These policies are outdated and completely discriminatory, just like donating blood.

The NHSs current blood donation guidelines state that "men who have sex with men are at an increased risk of acquiring certain infections through sex".

Current Department of Health guidelines also exclude any man who has had sex with another man within the past three months from donating their plasma.

A spokesperson for the NHS Blood and Transplant service said: We will initially be using the current donor selection guidelines although we will keep this under review."

A spokesperson added: "The guidelines are there to protect the health of the donor and the recipient.

"Under the current guidelines, men must wait three months after having oral or anal sex with another man. We appreciate this deferral can feel disappointing if you want to save lives.

Story continues

"Separately to the convalescent plasma trial, we are working with LGBT+ groups to explore whether we might be able to introduce a more individualised risk assessment for blood donation.

Yahoo News UK has contacted Guys and St Thomas Hospital for comment.

Coronavirus: what happened today?

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: A patient admitted to Indira



Gandhi Government Medical College Hospital here for COVID-19 was discharged on Sunday after recovery from the infection, taking the total number discharges to three so far.

Health Minister Malladi Krishna Rao told presspersons that with the discharge of the patient from neighbouring Tirubhuvanai village, the number of active cases in the Union Territory has come down to three - two in the medical college hospital in Puducherry and one in Mahe.

JIPMER has three active cases from neighbouring Cuddalore district in Tamil Nadu.

Of the three active cases admitted last week, one is a woman and the two others are her relatives and have had contact history, sources said.

Last month, a patient, hailing from neighbouring Ariyankuppam village, was discharged from a hospital here after recovering.

Puducherry had eight active patients. While three patients have been discharged, one hailing from Mahe succumbed to the infection in a hospital in Kerala some days ago.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India prepared for the third phase of the national lockdown from Monday with "considerable relaxations" in several districts but curbs will continue in containment areas even as Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said people will have to be ready to live with coronavirus and that time has come to re-open the city.

As coronavirus cases jumped by 2,487 in the highest ever 24-hour spike and the fatalities rose by a record 83, officials cautioned against any violation of the lockdown curbs so that the gains achieved so far in the battle against COVID-19 are not "squandered away.The lockdown was imposed on March 25 and is slated to last till May 17 after two extensions putting the total period of restrictions at 54 days.

Retailers and traders expect to re-open more shops under the new relaxed guidelines although they are still seeking clarity from local authorities.

As he announced the implementation of all lockdown relaxations prescribed by the Centre for the 'Red Zone' in the national capital, Kejriwal said coronavirus is going nowhere and it is impossible that the positive cases in the country will be zero.

" Corona(virus) has come. It is impossible that there will be no cases of coronavirus because it has not happened across the country. We will have to be ready to live with coronavirus. We will have to get used to it," he told an online media briefing.

"Time has come to re-open Delhi, the AAP leader noted, as he said the Delhi government will suggest to the Centre that only containment areas in the city be declared as red zones and not the entire district.

At present, all 11 districts in the city have been declared as red zones.

According to the Union Health ministry on Sunday, the death toll stood at 1,306 while the total cases climbed to 40,263 on Sunday. The recovery rate was nearly 25 per cent.

Health Minister Harsh Vardhan urged people to observe the extended two-week period of lockdown in letter and spirit and treat it as an effective intervention to cut down the chain of transmission of COVID-19.

We are on the path of success and we will win this war against COVID-19, he asserted.

According to the health ministry, as on Friday, there were 130 'Red' zones, maximum of 19 in UP, followed by 14 in Maharashtra. The number of 'Orange' Zones was 284 and 'Green' was 319.

Vardhan said the rate of growth of new COVID-19 cases has been steadying for a while and the recovery rate improving, adding that India is on the path of success and will win the war against the pandemic.

According to the data received on Sunday, for the past three days, the doubling rate of the virus is 12.0, for seven days it is 11.7 and for 14 days it is 10.4, the minister was quoted as saying in a statement.

We have crossed over 10 lakh tests till date and are performing over 74,000 tests in a day presently.

He said India is on a "better footing" as compared to other nations, adding the country is capable to pull off any eventuality with more than 2.5 lakh beds in dedicated COVID-19 hospitals and health centers.

Echoing Vardhan's views, Niti Aayog member V K Paul said the continuous rise in the number of people testing positive for coronavirus is expected to stabilise anytime soon,



He also said the rationale behind the government's decision to extend the lockdown by two more weeks after May 3 is to consolidate the gains of the first and second phase of restrictions.

In an interview to PTI, Paul said a sudden spurt in number of coronavirus cases is still amenable to containment strategy.

"The rationale (behind extending the lockdown till May 17) is that the gains of lockdown need to be consolidated in the country...Real goal of lockdown was to suppress the chain of transmission of the virus. So, we will lose that, if we abruptly end it," said Paul, who is heading an Empowered Group on medical equipment.

Retailers Association of India (RAI) said it will have to be seen how the third phase of lockdown works out at the ground as there is confusion, and many states are yet to come up with guidelines to follow the Centre's decision.

Similarly, Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) also claimed they will be in a "dilemma" as there is confusion over "what constitutes a neighbourhood shop and a standalone shop", while organised retailers such as Future Group and V-Mart Retail said they are also seeking permissions from local authorities.

"Some parts of the businesses will reopen. What we see is that there is the possibility of opening of some standalone stores...We will open wherever we can and we will talk to the local authorities to open. We will have to see how it works out.

Expressing similar concerns, CAIT Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said, "The traders will be in a dilemma".

National General Secretary of the Federation of All India Vyapar Mandal, V K Bansal said, "The biggest problem with the guidelines is that it all depends on the states. The states frame their own policies and do not want to take any responsibility. The Centre wants relaxation but states are restrictive".

Fighter jets and transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force (IAF) carried out fly-pasts over major cities and towns while military choppers showered petals on leading hospitals across the country as part of a mega exercise to express gratitude to lakhs of doctors, paramedics and other front-line workers battling the coronavirus pandemic.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed the mega exercise, calling It a great gesture.

"Saluting those who are at the forefront, bravely fighting COVID-19. Great gesture by our armed forces," Modi tweeted.

Concerned over scores of frontline security personnel catching the COVID-19 disease, the Centre has suggested to states to prepare an effective second line of defence by deploying home guards, civil defence and NCC cadets among others wherever feasible to contain the spread of the deadly virus.

In a communication to all states and UTs, the Ministry of Home Affairs(MHA) said the police chiefs may consider the option of 'work from home' for personnel not deployed on the frontline, and wherever possible. In another communication.

The MHA also made it clear that the relaxations given for the inter-state movement of people during the lockdown was available only to distressed migrant workers.

Railways also pressed more Shramik Special' trains for the third day to ferry stranded migrants back to their native places in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Odisha among other states.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Nasarawa State Government has fumigated and sealed off the states house of assembly after a member, Hon Suleiman Adamu, died of the deadly bug.

The late member represented Nasarawa Central in the assembly.

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The number of COVID-19 cases shot up in the Border Security Force (BSF) on Sunday, with 25 more personnel testing positive for the disease, taking the tally in the force to 42, an official said.

The new cases were reported from a unit of the 126th battalion of the force, deployed in the Jama Masjid and Chandni Mahal areas of the national capital on law-and-order duties under the command of the Delhi Police.

"A total of 25 troops from this unit deployed in Delhi tested positive for the disease on Sunday. Six from the unit had tested positive for COVID-19 on Saturday," a spokesperson of the border guarding force said.

The unit has a total of 94 personnel and five test reports are awaited, he added.

So far, 42 BSF personnel have been found infected with the coronavirus infection, including some cases from a unit hospital in Delhi's R K Puram and two in Tripura, the spokesperson said.

The 2.5-lakh-personnel-strong BSF is primarily tasked with guarding the Indian borders with Pakistan and Bangladesh, apart from rendering a variety of duties in the country's internal security domain.
Commercial passenger flights at Delhi airport will initially operate from Terminal 3 after the lockdown ends, said a senior official of its operator DIAL on Sunday, adding that entry gates, self check-in machines and check-in bays will be allocated to airlines to avoid overcrowding by air travellers.

The airport will keep all food, beverage and retail shops open to avoid overcrowding at one place and use "ultraviolet disinfection tunnels" for all incoming baggage, according to a plan prepared by the GMR group-led Delhi International Airport Ltd.

The plan said the passengers of Vistara and IndiGo would enter the airport through gates 1 and 2 only.

These two airlines will have check-in rows A, B and C among them, it said.

AirAsia India and Air India passengers will use entry gates 3 and 4. These passengers will then go to rows D, E and F where the staff of these two airlines would assist them check-in, according to the plan.

SpiceJet and GoAir passengers would enter through gate 5 towards the staff of these two airlines at rows G and H for check-in.

Passengers of all other domestic airlines will enter through gate 5 and will head to row H, the plan said.

All international airlines' passengers would be entering the airport using gates 6, 7 and 8. The staff of these airlines would be sitting at rows J, K, L and M for check-in at Terminal 3.

The DIAL's exit plan stated that entry gates, self check-in machines and check-in bays would be allocated to airlines to ensure smooth flow of passengers from forecourt into check-in hall and security thereafter.

India has been under a lockdown since March 25 to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, which has infected around 40,000 people and killed more than 1,300 people in the country till now.

All commercial passenger flights have been suspended for the lockdown period. However, cargo flights, medical evacuation flights and special flights permitted by the aviation regulator DGCA are allowed to operate.

"Initially, once the lockdown is over, the commercial passenger fights will be operating from Terminal 3 only. Later, once the number of flights increase, other terminals will be used," the DIAL official said.

The DIAL would be preparing stringent standard operating procedures (SOPs) for food, beverage and retail shops in order to ensure social distancing, the exit plan noted.

The operator will promote digital payments and digital menus at various outlets to minimise human contact. Moreover, DIAL would encourage usage of self-ordering kiosks at the food court to reduce queues.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 15:52:30|Editor: huaxia

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BANGKOK, May 3 (Xinhua) -- The Association of Thai Travel Agents (ATTA) has called on the government to provide financial support for the tourist industry which has been hardly hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.

ATTA President Vichit Prakobkosol confirmed on Sunday that he had recently discussed with Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha the current pandemic situation, which has considerably affected tourism and travel firms, and asked for help from the government.

The ATTA president asked the government to provide a sum of 10 billion baht (about 309.59 million U.S. dollars) in soft loan for hotels, resorts and other tourism-related businesses in addition to the same amount of a loan earlier offered by the Government Savings Bank.

The ATTA president also asked the government to cut or temporarily lift the 7 percent value-added tax collectible from tourism-related businesses, extend the three-months period for the government-given compensation pay amounting to a maximum of 62 percent of the daily wages of employees, who have been hired by hotels and other tourism-related businesses and currently jobless due to the pandemic.

In addition, Vichit asked the government to allow travel firms to make extra earnings by organizing seminars, conferences and tourism-related activities for government agencies and local administrative organizations throughout the country.

Most government units and local organizations have earlier conducted such events on their own, the ATTA president added. Enditem
San Francisco protesters gather at City Hall on May 1, 2020, to call for reopening California. (Ilene Eng/The Epoch Times)

San Franciscans Protest California Lockdown

SAN FRANCISCOAfter people in Sacramento protested against the statewide shelter-in-place order, people in San Francisco organized a similar protest in front of City Hall.

On May 1, over 100 people gathered with signs and flags in their hands, chanting, Open California.

They are part of a statewide movement called We Have Rights. They want to reopen California so that they can resume a normal lifestyle.

Freedom is extremely important, and we need to go live our lives, Eve Librtone, a therapist, told The Epoch Times. Im very concerned for peoples mental health. Im very concerned [about] the impact of people losing their jobs.

The cure is worse than the disease, she said. Our economy being destroyed is going to ruin the lives of millions of people and cause a lot of harm and suffering.

We cant work. So Im to the point where we cant pay our rent, Vanessa Madrid, founder of Latinos for Medical Freedom, told The Epoch Times. All jobs are essential. Putting food on a childs table is essential; providing shelter is essential.

Without any disrespect to the patients that lost their lives to the virus, at this point, isolation is the worst for the majority of the people and their mental health and physical health, Emily Hindsman, a registered nurse, told The Epoch Times.

Were worried about people getting sick from this, but we can reopen California safely, said Hindsman. We can use masks, we can wash our hands, we can keep a little bit of distance, and we can safely reopen everything.

San Francisco protesters hold signs near City Hall on May 1, 2020, to push for reopening California. (Ilene Eng/The Epoch Times)

A protester at San Francisco City Hall on May 1, 2020, calling for the reopening of California. (Ilene Eng/The Epoch Times)

In an exclusive interview on American Thought Leaders, Dr. Roger McIntyre, a Professor of Psychiatry and Pharmacology at the University of Toronto, explained how leaders can help minimize CCP-virus-related suicide and depression.

In late April, the San Francisco Bay Area extended its shelter-in-place order through the end of May. At the same time, it announced it will loosen some restrictions to allow recreation, outdoor businesses, and construction.

However, some people believe the pace needs to speed up with precautions.

John Dennis, former congressional candidate for Californias District 12, was present because he believes San Francisco needs to reasonably reopen.

People need to work, not just for pay so that they could afford to live, not just for sustenance, but because it gives them a sense of purpose, and it connects them to the community, said Dennis.

In terms of California as a whole, he believes the state should move to phase 3, allowing higher-risk environments like hair salons, theaters, and in-person religious services to open, with limits on the size of gatherings.

I would allow most businesses to open, and then identify people who are vulnerable and ask them to take protections, either stay at home, work at home, or wear materials that protect them, said Dennis.

San Francisco protesters show signs as cars pass by City Hall on May 1, 2020. (Ilene Eng/The Epoch Times)

San Francisco protesters gather at City Hall on May 1, 2020. (Ilene Eng/The Epoch Times)

The protesters also believe that the current regulations go against what the countrys values are founded on.

Its a matter of our God-given rights as enshrined in the Constitution and the First Amendment to pursue happiness, organizer Clint Griess told The Epoch Times. So the right to work is not up to the city or state to take away from us.

He thinks the lockdown is being done in an arbitrary way by assigning some jobs and businesses as essential and others not.

According to Griess, their permit for the protest was denied, but they congregated anyway before walking around the block. Law enforcement officers were nearby to keep people safe, and they did not issue any citations.

The consequences of the shutdown are going to be widespread and incalculable in terms of the health and wellbeing of the people, said Griess. You dont shut down the economy and expect no consequences.

I just feel like my humanity has been taken away, Zoli Johnson, a Bay Area web developer, told The Epoch Times. I feel anxious when Im near people, like Oh my God, Im actually closer than six feet or Oh my God, is it illegal to show my face?

I just think its pretty much overblown, Jeff Ratti, a Bay Area resident, told The Epoch Times. The rules [Governor Gavin Newsom] puts on are too stringent for us.

The people did what they were told to do, they stayed inside, but now its time to end that and start opening up, smartly, little by little. You dont have to open it up all at once. But people are ready to get out and do things, said Ratti.

We cant stay home forever. We cant stay in isolation until this is eradicated, because at this point theyre saying that everyone will get it, said Hindsman.

We deal with flu season every year; there are infectious diseases, but we have to recognize that we cant function and live in a world where people cannot go out and live their lives, said Librtone. I believe that the majority of people, if they do catch it, theyre going to recover, and its going to be okay.
China's PR nightmare has gotten worse as shocking evidence from the 'Five Eyes' Western Intelligence Dossier outlines the duplicity that China embarked as they lied about the coronavirus.

It says that the claims of the dossier are nothing short of a cover-up that made the pandemic worse than it should have been.

To be brief, China blatantly covered up the human-to-human transmission of coronavirus, made whistle-blowers disappear and refused to help nations develop a vaccine, which is denied even up to now.

It is a 15-page document drawn up by the Five Eyes security alliance that reveals many bombshells over Beijing secrecy and attempts to cover up all the holes of it staggering duplicity, which extends rewriting the narrative and sowing confusion to deflect the truth.

Over the past months, many whistleblowers and critics were silenced or never seen alive. Next came a purge of non-government approved posts online, all information about the coronavirus was funnelled through state media.

China knowingly allowed the coronavirus to spread and keep other nations from reacting fast enough. Beijing is wiping its hands and blaming others, even suggesting the Wuhan virus is not theirs and deflect it.

Members of the Five Eyes are the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, that is revealing the length the Xi Jinping administration went to lie about it. A memo was procured by the Australian Saturday Telegraph.

Leading the western backlash on mainland China is Donald Trump, and Downing Street who both believe that there are questions to be answered about the origin of Covid-19.

China will get the bullet from a smoking gun, as evidence points to the Wuhan Institute of Virology that cannot be denied anymore and it's hard to redirect to deflect blame.

All the evidence were destroyed from lab samples to the bleaching market stalls by Beijing's orders and everything connected to it is silenced.

Also read: US Warships Challenge People's Liberation Army in South China Sea as Tensions Escalate

A study in 2015 confirmed that the coronavirus can be transmitted from bat to humans.

Their risky research found in 2015 says that the disease was transmissible from bats to humans.

Early on information about asymptomatic carrier was kept under wraps by the state.

All search engines were scrubbed by state censors starting December about anything related to the virus.

The WHO connived with China but denying important information till late January and important concerns of other countries to protect themselves.

Five Eyes calls China out for anger over travel bans, but Hubei got locked down and they were keen on sending tourists abroad in particular.

Whistleblowers were either killed or silenced because they cannot be found, but the crematoriums still burn people who died from the virus.

One more accusation is "hiding or destruction of evidence of the outbreak and a refusal to hand over live virus samples to other countries to enable them to develop vaccines."

Reports of a partnership between Chinese and Australian labs where research, with research done on an 'a bat-derived coronavirus that could not be cured'.

Another is the cover-up in early December according to the dossier which suspects China of misdeeds.

It took till January 20 for the Chinese to confirm evidence of human-human transmission from early December. Beijing still deflects this claim until now.

Evidence points out that the World Health Organization is complicit from day one, and discredited Taiwan at Beijing's instructions.

Beijing may have deliberately seeded the virus abroad while having a restriction in mainland China that led to thousands of deaths.

Huang Yan Ling, a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, is missing and there is no trace about his whereabouts. Because of this, it is harder to gather evidence and information about the origin of coronavirus since people who are possibly involved are either dead or missing.

Related article: China Crying 'Blackmail' After World Leaders Accuse Them of Creating Pandemic

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A shopper looks for toilet paper at a Stop & Shop supermarket during hours open daily only for seniors in North Providence, R.I. Federal law enforcement is warning that scam artists are preying on older people's fears by peddling fake tests for the coronavirus to Medicare recipients. Read more

The state of Maryland on Saturday terminated a $12.5 million contract for personal protective equipment with a firm started this spring by two well-connected Republican operatives.

State officials said the company, Blue Flame Medical, failed to deliver masks and ventilators as promised and that the matter has been referred to Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, a Democrat, for review.

Blue Flame received a nearly $6.3 million down payment from Maryland in early April - after promising to provide within weeks desperately needed personal protective equipment for front-line medical personnel dealing with the novel coronavirus.

Ethan Bearman, the Los Angeles attorney for Blue Flame Medical, said Saturday he was unaware the state was unhappy with the firm.

"This comes as a surprise," Bearman said when told that the attorney general had confirmed receiving a referral about the company from the state General Services Department. "This does not comport with what I know of Blue Flame Medical."

However, a letter sent to the firm Thursday by Danny Mays, Maryland's director of procurement, revealed deep frustration.

"Despite numerous requests for information and order status, Blue Flame Medical has yet to deliver any items under this order, or provide any pertinent data as to a pending shipment," Mays wrote. "As Blue Flame Medical LLC has failed to honor its delivery commitment under the terms and conditions, [the Department of General Services] is now formally requiring Blue Flame Medical to cure this deficiency."

Bearman acknowledged that delays had occurred in filling the order but said such problems have become commonplace this spring during the chaotic rush to locate masks and other protective equipment.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the contract's cancellation Saturday.

 READ MORE: Coronavirus has consumers making an extraordinary number of price-gouging complaints

Blue Flame was started in late March by Michael Gula, a Republican fundraising and lobbying consultant in Washington, and John Thomas, a California political consultant.

Before moving in to the medical supply business, Gula was known in GOP circles for his political fundraising prowess. His firm has raised campaign funds for Sens. Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania, Steve Daines of Montana, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and dozens of other influential Republicans. He startled some longtime clients in March when he announced he was quitting the fundraising world during an election year to start the medical supply business with Thomas.

Thomas recently worked as a strategist and fund-raiser for Republican Don Sedgwick, who sought to run against Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., but lost in the March primary.

The two Republican consultants incorporated their firm in Delaware on March 23 and a week later received the contract from Maryland.

Gula used a connection to a staffer in the administration of Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, to initially make a pitch for the sale, according to a Maryland official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive legal matter. After Gula started using that staffer's name on a reference sheet to seek contracts with other states, the official said, the staffer referred the matter to the chief legal counsel for Hogan, Mike Pedone.

Pedone then referred the matter on April 9 to Frosh's office, the official said.

Gula and Thomas did not respond to requests for comment.

 READ MORE: Pat Toomey for governor? As he weighs in on Pa. coronavirus plans, insiders see a marker for the future

The April 1 purchase order, which was obtained by The Washington Post, identifies June 30 as the delivery deadline. But the Maryland official said that is only because June 30 is the end of the current fiscal year. The agreed upon shipping date for the masks and ventilators was April 14, this person said. Bearman did not respond to a request for comment on this complaint.

The order shows that Blue Flame agreed to provide 1.5 million N95 masks and 110 ventilators, and that the state wired the company nearly $6.3 million as a deposit.

Michael Ricci, a spokesman for Hogan, said in an interview Friday that none of the masks and ventilators had arrived.

"We placed this order on April 1, and we haven't gotten anything," Ricci said. "We received no shipping confirmation. Obviously, that's a concern. That's not been the case with any of our other vendors."

The price Blue Flame was charging at the time for N95 masks - $4.52 each - was much higher than the list price provided by manufacturers.

Frosh confirmed Saturday the matter had been referred to his office.

Frosh would not comment on the contract, the investigation or what precipitated the referral.

Asked about the delays in fulfilling the contract, Bearman said: "I know Blue Flame Medical wanted to deliver the shipment [masks and ventilators] in April. I know, too, of actions by the Chinese government. Their supplier in China wrote a letter to Blue Flame Medical informing them that the Chinese government interfered with the supplier's ability to ship."

Bearman said his client "has done everything in its power to fulfill, and has alternate suppliers to fulfill the order as written. And they so informed the state of Maryland."

The Hogan administration has been aggressively working to shore up the state's supplies of equipment needed to fight the pandemic, including the purchase of 500,000 coronavirus tests from South Korea last month.

Local officials in Maryland were frustrated that those tests were not made available for their use, in part because of a lack of swabs, reagents and other testing supplies.

- - -

The Washington Posts Desmond Butler, Alice Crites and Ovetta Wiggins contributed to this article.
Twenty central public health teams have been constituted and are being deployed in as many affected districts having high case load of COVID-19 in nine states and Delhi to identify the gaps and support them in proper implementation of cluster containment plans and surveillance measures.

According to the Union Health Ministry, these teams will be deployed in 20 districts -- Mumbai, Thane, Pune in Maharashtra; Bhopal, Indore in Madhya Pradesh;Ahmedabad, Surat and Vadodara in Gujarat; South East and Central Districts in Delhi;Jaipur and Jodhpur in Rajasthan; Agra and Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh;Hyderabad in Telangana; Chennai in Tamil Nadu; Kolkata in West Bengal; and Kurnool, Guntur and Krishna in Andhra Pradesh.

These teams comprising experts from National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), AIIMS, JIPMER and All India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health among others will submit reports to additional chief secretary/principal secretary/secretary (health) of respective states detailing their observations, areas for improvement and recommendations, according to an office memorandum issued on May 2.

"A decision has been taken in the Ministry of Health to deploy public health teams to assist health departments in managing COVID-19 outbreaks in selected districts," said an official.

The regional directors under the ministry of health in these nine states and one Union Territory will coordinate the deployment of these teams with the state health authorities.

All the 20 districts are in the red zone.

The ministry has listed 130 districts in the country in 'red'zone, 284 in 'orange'zone and 319 in 'green'zone on the basis of incidence of cases of COVID-19, doubling rate, extent of testing and surveillance feedback.

This classification of districts is to be followed by states and UTs till a week post May 3 for containment operations.

The list will be revised on a weekly basis or earlier and communicated to states for further follow-up action.

India registered a record jump of 83 deaths and 2,487 cases in 24 hours as the number of COVID-19 fatalities rose to 1,306 and total cases climbed to 40,263 on Sunday, according to the Union health ministry.

The number of active COVID-19 cases stood at 28,070, while 10,886 people have recovered and one patient has migrated, it said. The total number of cases also include 111 foreign nationals.

According to the health ministry data updated in the evening, the highest number of confirmed cases in the country is from Maharashtra at 12,296, followed by Gujarat (5,055), Delhi (4,122),Madhya Pradesh (2,846), Rajasthan (2,772), Tamil Nadu (2,757) and Uttar Pradesh (2,626).

The number of COVID-19 cases has gone up to 1,583 in Andhra Pradesh and 1,063 in Telangana. It has risen to 922 in West Bengal.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- The coronavirus may mercifully pass over the very young, but of all the age groups that emerge from this crisis, they will be most marked by it. The longer schools are closed, the deeper those marks will be. Yet reopening is both urgent and fraught, because theres no simple way of going back to the way it was.

Even if this particular pandemic is novel, history has taught us that the effects of interrupting education can be profound. During World War II, the last crisis that is remotely comparable to todays, bombing damaged about one in five schools in London, while another two-thirds were requisitioned for government use. Millions of children were sent to the countryside for safety. There were shortages of books and stationary supplies; rural schools had to share classrooms with evacuees, so groups of students were staggered between morning and afternoon learning sessions. By January 1940, only a quarter of children in London were receiving full-time education.

The war had an impact not only on education quality but on childrens future career paths and earnings. One study compared two cohorts of students who reached the age of 10 during or immediately after the war  one in Austria and Germany, the other in Sweden and Switzerland, where civilians faced far less disruption. It found educational attainment lagged in children whose learning was interrupted by war.

Nobody had Zoom or ShowMyHomework during the Blitz, its true. The world of learning has changed dramatically over the past several decades, but not all children are benefiting from that in the same way. Some happy homes are buzzing with video learning, homework scanning and board game-playing industriousness. For students from less privileged backgrounds, however, the routine and structure of classroom learning is difficult to replicate at home.

Its not just a matter of equipping children with laptops or tablets and internet access. Having a dedicated work space, family stability and support, and good nutrition and sleep habits can be the difference between children who maintain some level of productive learning and those who fall further behind or lose interest in schooling altogether.

Story continues

In homes where abuse, alcoholism, depression, disability or marital breakdown  not to mention unemployment and Covid-19 illness  are prevalent, concentrated learning becomes almost impossible. The interruption can also have a devastating effect on children with mental health issues and those with special education needs.

Teachers at Marlborough Science Academy, a well-run state-funded senior school in a largely middle-class part of Hertfordshire, had one week to prepare for the move to digital teaching. Jo Bustin, who has taught at the school for 22 years and has a senior leadership role in safeguarding, figures that most of the children in her school will be fine, but its already apparent that those who are in unsupportive or unstable homes lose out.

The school remained open for students of front-line workers and students seen as vulnerable, but most of those invited to attend in person dont. This is one of the greatest experiments Ive ever seen in education, because we are basically saying, Here it all is, and its up to you to decide whether you want to engage, she told me.

The level of affluence seems to make a difference on students experiences as well. An April report by the U.K. charity Sutton Trust found an alarming gap in remote learning experiences, with privately schooled kids twice as likely as publicly schooled (in the American sense of state-run) students to receive daily remote instruction.

Even those teachers who have adapted to digital instruction say they cant connect with students in quite the same way. One former teacher explained that once you get a group of kids on Zoom, one will always misbehave  it doesnt matter how privileged the family. Sometimes kids just dont want to learn or stay on task. Some councils advise against live video teaching because of the potential for inappropriate dress, language or other problems, so classes are recorded. And teachers say its hard to enforce assignments; they cant exactly hand out detentions.

For Britain, school closures compound preexisting problems. The U.K. education system is a hodgepodge of schools running the gamut from failing to first rate. Deprivation is more common than many realize. About a fifth of children between the ages of four and 15 are entitled to free school meals, generally because their families receive some kind of income support.

A 2017 analysis found that pupils from economically disadvantaged backgrounds were on average 18.9 months behind the rest of their peers at the end of secondary school. This education gap  which translates into outcomes such as poorer health, lower average earnings and a greater propensity to be involved in crime  is often cited as a major contributor to Britains stagnant productivity and low levels of mobility.

The public health implications of restarting school amidst the coronavirus crisis have been much debated, but the weight of evidence is now leaning toward finding a path to reopening sooner rather than later. Schools are not major vectors for the virus spreading  as a recent study from University College London researchers, as well as research in Iceland and experience in Asia, suggests. And much of the labor force returning to work depends on parents being able to send their kids to school.

That doesnt mean schools can return to their pre-virus normal. Denmark started with primary schools and kindergartens. Desks are placed further apart. Pupils are separated by the requisite two meters (though how that works for very young children isnt clear), drop-offs and pickups are staggered, parents are not allowed in the building and toys are all rigorously washed.

More new guidelines will surely be needed, along with plans to help close the educational gaps that widened during this period. For children in homes with vulnerable adults  those with underlying health conditions who have been told to continue self-isolation, for example, even after some businesses reopen  alternative provisions may need to be made. Schools also have what U.K. law calls a duty of care to provide safe working conditions for teachers, and teachers unions have threatened strikes if schools reopen against medical advice.

The longer it takes to work out a way back to school, the greater the risk that inequalities that have long bedeviled Britains education sector will widen. Families that stretched to afford private education may be unable to do so, putting additional strain on an already resource-poor state sector and forcing private schools to lay off staff. The demands on the U.K. Treasury are great, and education could lose out as the economy contracts.

If so, this virus is likely to have a very long tail indeed.

Elaine He contributed graphics to this piece.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Therese Raphael is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. She was editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe.

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion

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By Trend

Azerbaijani assets will ensure healthy balance for the Hungarian Mol Group, which has recently closed the transaction with the US Chevron on acquiring its share in Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) and Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC), the company told Trend.

Mol Group said that in the frame of the successfully closed deal with Chevron Global Ventures, Ltd and Chevron BTC Pipeline, Ltd it acquired their non-operated exploration and production and mid-stream interests in Azerbaijan.

"Regarding the planned activities it is the operator, BP who can give further information," said Mold Group. Furthermore, following the closing of the deal, around half of our production will come from outside the Central and Eastern Europe region, giving us a healthy balance," said the Hungarian company.

Jay Johnson, executive vice president of upstream at Chevron said that this sale is an important part of the companys divestment program, which is targeting before-tax proceeds of $5 billion to $10 billion between 2018 and 2020.

"Chevron regularly reviews its global portfolio to assess whether assets are strategic and competitive for capital," added Johnson.

MOL has successfully closed the previously announced deal with Chevron Global Ventures, Ltd and Chevron BTC Pipeline, Ltd regarding the acquisition of their non-operated E&P and mid-stream interests in Azerbaijan, including a 9.57 percent stake in the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli ("ACG") oil field, and an effective 8.9 percent stake in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan ("BTC") pipeline that transports the crude to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan for a total consideration of $1.57 billion with an effective date of 1 January 2019.

The contract for development of ACG was signed in 1994. The new contract for development of the ACG block until 2050 was signed in Baku Sept. 14, 2017.

The total length of the BTC pipeline is 1,768 kilometers, of which 443 kilometers run through the territory of Azerbaijan, 249 kilometers run through Georgia, and 1,076 kilometers go through Turkey. The construction of the pipeline began in April 2003, and it was first filled with oil on May 18, 2005.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
In this April 20, 2020, file photo, resident physician Leslie Bottrell stands outside a room at an Intensive Care Unit as a nurse suctions the lungs of a COVID-19 patient at St. Joseph's Hospital in Yonkers, N.Y. COVID-19 could have stamped someone "uninsurable" if not for the Affordable Care Act. The ban on insurers using preexisting conditions to deny coverage is a key part of the Obama-era law that the Trump administration still seeks to overturn. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

COVID-19 could have stamped a person "uninsurable" if not for the COVID-19 and tried to purchase an individual health insurance policy could be turned down, charged higher premiums or have follow-up care excluded from coverage. Those considered vulnerable because of conditions such as respiratory problems or early-stage diabetes would have run into a wall of insurer suspicion.

Yet as defenders of the ACA submit written arguments to the Supreme Court next week countering the latest challenge to its existence, the Trump administration remains adamant that former President Barack Obama's health law, known as "Obamacare," must go.

"A global pandemic does not change what Americans know: Obamacare has been an unlawful failure and further illustrates the need to focus on patient care," White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement.

Deere asserted that the law limits patient choice, has premiums that are too expensive and restricts patients with high-risk conditions from going to the doctors and hospitals they need. Trump has said he would protect people with preexisting conditions, as have other Republicans, but he hasn't spelled out a plan.

Some GOP lawmakers in contested races this fall are unnerved by the prospect of Trump administration lawyers asking the Supreme Court during the coronavirus outbreak to toss out a law that provides coverage to at least 20 million Americans.

"The ACA remains the law of the land, and it is the Department of Justice's duty to defend it," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. "That is especially true during the current public health crisis our country is facing due to COVID-19."

In this April 28, 2020, file photo a nurse practitioner Capri Reese talks to a patient and holds her hand while a doctor administers an IV at Roseland Community Hospital in Chicago. COVID-19 could have stamped someone "uninsurable" if not for the Affordable Care Act. The ban on insurers using preexisting conditions to deny coverage is a key part of the Obama-era law that the Trump administration still seeks to overturn. (Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Chicago Sun-Times via AP, File)

She is among those urging the administration not to get rid of the law but instead make broader use of it to cover uninsured people during the pandemic. Collins is considered among the most endangered incumbents as Republicans try to keep their Senate majority.

It's unclear whether the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments before the November election. A group of GOP-led states contends that because Congress repealed an ACA tax penalty, the law's requirement for individuals to carry health insurance is unconstitutional. If the insurance mandate is unconstitutional, their argument goes, then the rest of the law must collapse like a house of cards.

The administration agrees, but has also suggested that federal judges could decide to keep some parts of the law. The Supreme Court took the case after a federal appeals court in New Orleans said the ACA's insurance mandate is unconstitutional, but did not rule on the rest of the law.

From nearly 12 million people to 35 million could lose their workplace coverage due to layoffs in the coronavirus shutdown, according to an estimate by the consulting firm Health Management Associates. They have more options because of the Obama-era law.

They are entitled to a special sign-up opportunity for coverage through HealthCare.gov or their state insurance market, and may qualify for financial assistance with premiums and other costs. They cannot be asked about health problems. In states that expanded Medicaid, some may qualify for that program, usually at little or no cost.

In this April 20, 2020, file photo a ventilator waits to be used for a COVID-19 patient going into cardiac arrest at St. Joseph's Hospital in Yonkers, N.Y. COVID-19 could have stamped someone "uninsurable" if not for the Affordable Care Act. The ban on insurers using preexisting conditions to deny coverage is a key part of the Obama-era law that the Trump administration still seeks to overturn. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

Before the law, people who lost their jobs and wanted to keep their employer health insurance could do so under a law known as COBRA. It's still on the books, but it requires them to pay the full premium, plus an administrative fee. That's often cost-prohibitive.

Karen Pollitz of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation said people seeking an individual health insurance policy "would have been very much at risk in today's pandemic" were it not for the health law.

"The conditions associated with a more complicated case of COVID-19 would have been especially radioactive," she said.

For Republicans, the Supreme Court case "has to be the ultimate in 'be careful you don't get what you wish for,' " said health industry consultant Robert Laszewski.

Part of the reason Trump failed to repeal and replace the law in 2017 was that Republicans didn't have a plan they could agree on, he said.

In this April 20, 2020 photo, Catherine Hopkins, Director of Community Outreach and School Health at St. Joseph's Hospital, handles test samples at her desk in a COVID-19 triage and testing tent at St. Joseph's Hospital in Yonkers, N.Y. COVID-19 could have stamped someone "uninsurable" if not for the Affordable Care Act. The ban on insurers using preexisting conditions to deny coverage is a key part of the Obama-era law that the Trump administration still seeks to overturn. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

"Before COVID, if they won the suit, then what?" asked Laszewski. "And now with COVID ... in the face of a major medical crisis, and depression-level unemployment, and people losing their health insurance? Yikes!"

Last week the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and some 30 health groups called on Congress to help maintain health insurance coverage during the economic shutdown caused by the pandemic. They urged a broad approach that includes subsidies for COBRA, opening up the ACA to more people and allowing those with tax-sheltered health accounts to use that money for premiums.

But the White House is resisting anything that includes "Obamacare." Instead the administration is using a health system relief fund created by Congress to reimburse hospitals for treating uninsured patients with COVID-19.

That "is way less than adequate," said Richard Pollack, president of the American Hospital Association. "What we need to do is provide coverage in a more comprehensive way for people."

Explore further Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak

 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
An Indian Air Force squadron leader was brutally attacked by seven men following a road rage in northern Bengaluru last week, according to a police complaint.

Amod Sanjay, 30, posted at the Yelahanka Air Force Station, was driving to the market along with his wife when a scooterist allegedly rode rashly and almost brushed against his car around 8.15 pm on April 24. Sanjay applied sudden brakes. Although there was no accident, the two men had an argument and moved on.

Sanjay and his wife subsequently went to the market, did some shopping and drove back to their flat in Dwarakanagar, Kattigenahalli, around 8.40 pm. But just as they reached the entrance of their apartment complex, the same scooterist was waiting there along with six other men.

The group intercepted the car, and the scooterist punched Sanjay in the face. He then snatched the car key and pulled him out. Three members of the group then rained blows on Sanjay for the next 20 minutes.

The group left only after breaking the car key and damaging his cars bumper.

Sanjay later learnt that the scooter rider is one Madhu who lives in the same apartment. He filed a complaint with the jurisdictional Bagalur police on April 30 after receiving treatment for his injuries.

Bagalur police said they had registered a case of assault causing grievous hurt and causing damage to the car against Madhu and six others.

Some of them have been detained and further investigations are underway, the police added.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the South Asia Media Solidarity Network (SAMSN) and its affiliates launch the 18th edition of the South Asia Press Freedom Report  States of Control: Covid, Cuts and Impunity. The report was launched in a webinar hosted by the IFJ and UNESCO New Delhi on May 1, 2020.

The IFJ said: The media had the task of reporting the growing humanitarian crisis, working in difficult circumstances and amidst unprecedented physical curbs due to lockdowns and restrictions, particularly in containment zones. The Covid-19 crisis has exacerbated existing fault lines in the precarious freedoms that the South Asian media has fought for and the most vulnerable are now taking the first beating.

In India and Bangladesh, journalists came under fire while covering civil disturbances and protests. In Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, the fight for safe access to information continued amid tumultuous elections. In Nepal and Pakistan, the battle against a heavy legislative hand was waged. While in Bhutan and the Maldives, the challenge for survival of a small but critical media was never so great.

Plummeting media revenues saw the mass shedding of more than 3,000 journalist jobs in Pakistan too, while harsh online controls saw Kashmir take the mantle for the worlds longest communication shutdown in a democracy.

In the period under review, the IFJ and its affiliates documented 219 violations against the media. This includes 52 jailings or detentions, 90 threats to the lives of journalists, 65 non-fatal attacks, 35 threats against media institutions, 8 gender-based attacks and 82 threats or attacks on rural, regional or minority journalists.

The lack of safety for journalists over the last year, particularly noted by the increased controls during the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the existing inequalities and poor working conditions that exist for journalists in South Asia. However, as the report shows, amid Covid-19, cuts and controls, South Asias media and the unions and networks that defend it continue persevering, standing together in solidarity to disrupt authoritarian narratives.

Read the full report here

Read the full report in high quality

Read the foreword and overview

Read the Covid-19 report: The Pandemic And The Press

Read the country reports: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka

Download the JSIs and detained list here

Read the media rights monitoring report
Louis Theroux attends the Build Series to discuss the documentary 'My Scientology Movie' at Build Studio on March 9, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Daniel Zuchnik/WireImage)

Louis Theroux has revealed he sliced off part of his finger in a cooking accident.

The 49-year-old took to social media to tell fans how the accident happened while making a Jamie Oliver recipe.

The documentary maker posted a photo to his 259,000 Instagram followers on Saturday showing his finger heavily bandaged.

Read more: Louis Theroux says filming Jimmy Savile documentary was the 'most upsetting' experience of his career

He captioned the photo: "Cut a small slice of my finger off while chopping a red onion for a Jamie Oliver recipe for carrot and coriander pancakes.

"Briefly went pale and had to lie down.

"Family not impressed by my lack of stoicism. Me too frankly.

In a grim ending to the post, he said: "Still haven't found the missing piece of finger."

The post prompted over 27,000 likes and more than 600 comments, many of which poking gentle fun at Theroux.

Mocking his friend, BBCs Matt Baker commented: I think the recipe says Ginger not Finger.

One follower suggested the accident may have been a blessing in disguise: Youve probably saved yourself further upset by doing that than eating something of Jamie Olivers.

Another joked: Im expecting a lockdown with Louis documentary at some point just for the record.

Theroux has recently been in the headlines again due to his association with Joe Exotic, the subject of popular Netflix documentary Tiger King.

He recently invited followers to ask questions about Exotic, who he spent time with while making the 2011 film Americas Most Dangerous Pets.

One fan asked Theroux if he enjoyed Exotics company, to which he responded: Yes I liked spending time with him. He wasn't always relaxing to be around though.

Story continues

Read more: Louis Theroux says the murder allegations about Tiger King's Carole Baskin seem "very unlikely"

He was worried about the angle of our documentary. He pulled access for a bit, then we talked him back.

Another follower asked what the funniest thing to have happened during the making of the documentary was.

He answered: The keepers sometimes used to give the chimpanzees colouring books with crayons. I once saw a chimp flick through a book, do a little light colouring, and then calmly eat the whole crayon.

Watch the latest videos from Yahoo UKs Up Close and Socially Distant
British show Gangs of London has been cooking up quite a storm since its debut  but nobody outside of the UK can understand what anyone is saying.

The violent drama from The Raid director Gareth Evans tells the story of rival gangs and criminal organisations in present-day London.

But, people attempting to watch the show on Cinemax in the US are calling for subtitles as they have no idea what is being said by the shows cast.

Still looking for subtitles for Gangs of London so I can fully take in all the British slangs and enjoy it 110 per cent, one person tweeted.

Another person wrote: Why cant I find the Gangs of London subtitle file anywhere on the internet. British English so annoying.

One person added: Really wanted to watch Gangs of London right now, but without subtitles and the British accent, its a no no from me.

In response to a post about the Sky Atlantic show on Reddit, one user commented: I watched the first episode and it was great but I felt like I couldnt understand half the dialogue.

Im waiting for subtitles to be released before I continue, but I cant find them anywhere.

Co-created by Matt Flannery, the show stars Joe Cole and Game of Thrones actors Lucian Msamati and Michelle Fairley.
Thiruvananthapuram, May 3 : Children might have to wear masks in the next academic session in the state, Kerala Health Minister K.K. Shailaja said, here on Sunday.

"Covering of nose and mouth will not go on endlessly. But as precaution against the coronavirus infection, children may need to wear masks in the next academic session," said Shailaja.

Wearing masks had become the norm for school students in several countries, she added.

"It's a good culture. We will have to follow it in Kerala as well, if Covid-19 prevails till the time of school reopening. Masks helped us lowern the rate of Covid-19 spread and resultant deaths. Kerala has been battling the disease, earning good results," the Minister said.

Kerala has 96 coronavirus cases in 11 of the 14 districts and around 20,000 people under observation at hospitals and homes.

Even though schools are shut till the last week of May on account of the summer break, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said the Education Department was working on new schedule.
The coronavirus pandemic might have brought the film industry to a halt but Andrei Konchalovsky, one of Russia's most renowned film and theatre directors, is as busy as ever. He wants to make a documentary about daily life under quarantine, exploring the poetic side of the mundane, and he has invited ordinary Russians to work with him on the project. "All of us have ended up on a desert island and that's the most interesting thing," the 82-year-old told AFP in a video interview. In late March, Konchalovsky issued a call on social media to his fans to make short videos for a project he has called "Quarantine Russian Style". "Take your smartphones, film your new routines, your favourite spot at home, or even your work web conference. And we'll make movies!" he said. Every week the celebrated filmmaker, who is followed by more than 400,000 people on Facebook, asks his co-creators a number of questions. He wants them to speak about their fears or new rituals or even tell him about the "craziest" thing they have purchased during the lockdown. Konchalovsky, who has earned multiple international awards and worked with renowned filmmaker Andrey Tarkovsky, has already received thousands of video clips and photos to choose from. "They shoot them from their room, a decrepit window sill or a favourite old sofa," he said. Sometimes contributors read out a text or wax philosophical about Russians' coping mechanisms. Scenes have included Russians sharing a vodka bottle at a makeshift table connecting two nearby balconies or riding a bike to a neighbour's door. Konchalovsky, who lived in the United States for many years and whose Hollywood movies include "Tango and Cash", also asked aspiring filmmakers to reflect on the nature of the quarantine in Russia and how it may be different from lockdowns in China or Europe. The film director said his countrymen might adapt better to crises than people in the West. "Specifics of life in Russia have fostered in man an enormous ability to resist sanctions," he said. "That is why we will be able to tough it out." - 'Tales from Quarantine' - Konchalovsky is not the only filmmaker to have found new inspiration during the lockdown. Director and producer Timur Bekmambetov, who is regarded as one of the inventors of the "Screenlife" format, in which movies take place entirely on computer screens, wants to produce a film about the lockdown in the new genre. Like Konchalovsky, he has invited Russians to contribute short videos and script pitches for a project he has called "Tales From The Quarantine". The crowd-sourced stories could be real or fictional. "Today we live more and more on our screens rather than in real life: it's where we fall in love, get angry, where we find and lose work and understand who we are," Bekmambetov told AFP in a video interview from the city of Kazan more than 800 kilometres (500 miles) east of Moscow. The first episode is called "Telecommuting" and features professional actors in a web conference. "Confinement speeds up usage of a new audiovisual language," said Bekmambetov, 58, who shot to fame in the 2000s when he directed Russian fantasy thrillers "Day Watch" and "Night Watch". "Traditional cinema, which has come to a standstill during the crisis, is outdated," he said. "We no longer want movies about bank heists in the era of electronic payments or balcony serenades in time of social networks." - 'We must survive' - Due to the epidemic the Russian film industry is likely to lose around 60 percent of revenue this year, according to preliminary estimates from the culture ministry. But online platforms still offer an opportunity to earn an income. This is what Galiya Fatkhutdinova, who makes short films, hopes to do. The 35-year-old was giving acting classes in China when the coronavirus epidemic struck. Stuck in quarantine, she decided to launch a series of short films to document the experience upon her return to Russia. She invited dozens of her actor friends -- who had all lost their jobs due to the contagion -- to participate in a project dubbed "The Isolated". "'The Isolated' talks about everything that goes on in isolation: love, betrayal, politics," Fatkhutdinova told AFP. She is now looking to sell her film to an online platform -- one of the few distribution possibilities left during the lockdown -- to be able to pay her actors. "We must survive these strange times," she said.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 4)  The legislative franchise of ABS-CBN Corporation expires today, May 4, leaving in limbo the fate of the broadcast giant and its 11,000 workers.

It remains to be seen whether the National Telecommunications Commission will follow through with its promise before the House Committee on Legislative Franchises that it will grant ABS-CBN a provisional authority to operate pending a grant of a fresh 25-year legislative franchise to the network.

The Office of the Solicitor General had warned on the eve of the lapse of the networks franchise that the NTCs commissioners may face graft charges if it issues ABS-CBN a provisional permit, saying it has no power to do so in the absence of a valid franchise.

This runs counter to the earlier opinion of the Department of Justice, which said that the network can be granted a temporary permit in the spirit of equity while Congress continues to tackle its franchise renewal.

Congress, however, has barely touched on ABS-CBNs bid for a fresh franchise, with the House  where all franchise bills must first pass  only holding one hearing on the matter where they largely set ground rules on how to proceed with future hearings.

Aside from its battle in the legislature, ABS-CBN also stands to duel with the Office of the Solicitor General before the Supreme Court, where a petition seeking to nullify the networks existing franchise is still pending.

President Rodrigo Duterte has repeatedly lambasted ABS-CBN since assuming office, saying that the network refused to carry his campaign commercials even if they have been already paid for. In 2018, he said he will block the renewal of the network's franchise. Last year, Duterte told the Lopez family to just sell the company to a new owner to boost its chances of staying in business.

However, the President accepted the apology offered by ABS-CBN President Carlo Katigbak during a Senate hearing for airing an anti-Duterte ad during the 2016 campaign which was paid for by the opposition.
For those of us who enjoy being outdoors during spring, whether bird watching, morel mushroom gathering, hiking, biking, turkey hunting or doing something else, the gobble of the male wild turkey is at its essence.

To Jeff Lusk, wildlife biologist, ecologist and biometrician for the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, it means excitement and that love is in the air.

The gobbles purpose is to announce the male wild turkeys presence to all hens within earshot and hopefully to summon their company, plus repel competing males, Lusk said.

With the month of May being celebrated as bird month in Nebraska, and with the states wild turkey hunting season continuing through May 31, there is no better time to recognize and analyze this unique bird sound in nature.

The hunting experience is about communicating, interacting and connecting with the turkey. And, that gobble is the bridge between the turkey and the hunter. What is truly unforgettable is a male wild turkey vociferously belting out a loud, boisterous gobble. The exhilaration felt by that noise fills the body with adrenaline.
The United States has recorded its deadliest 24 hours after more than 2,900 people died from coronavirus as America loosens its lockdown restrictions, according to data published by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Within the last two weeks, several states have started reopening their stores, restaurants, malls, museums and libraries despite the US reporting more than 1.1 million confirmed cases with at least 68,000 deaths.

According to data from WHO, the US recorded 2,909 deaths in a single day between Thursday and 4am on Friday bringing the total death toll to 55,337 that day. So far, that number is the highest daily COVID-19 death toll that the US has seen since the pandemic hit America, according to the WHO.

But according to statistics compiled by DailyMail.com taken from tracking site 1PointAcres.com, the deadliest day in the US occurred on April 15 with 2,524 deaths. Deaths for Thursday were 2,239 and Friday were 1,872. The total death toll on Friday stood at 65,708 deaths.

It is not clear how the WHO measures its data but DailyMail.com has reached out for comment.

According to data published by the World Health Organization (WHO), the US recorded 2,909 deaths (depicted above) in a single day on Friday

Currently there are more than 68,000 deaths in the US as of Sunday afternoon

According to statistics compiled by DailyMail.com from 1PointAcres.com, the deadliest day in the US occurred on April 15 with 2,524 deaths

Federal guidelines call for the number of cases to fall for 14 straight days before relaxing lockdown measures, but Texas and several other US states have forged ahead with reopening regardless.

Texas began relaxing coronavirus lockdown measures on Friday despite reporting a single-day high in deaths, the largest and latest US state to ease restrictions without a clear drop in the number of confirmed virus cases.

Stores, restaurants, movie theaters, malls, museums and libraries were allowed to reopen in the Lone Star State but with limited occupancy - just 25 per cent of their capacity.

Public swimming pools, bars, gyms, beauty salons, massage parlors, bowling alleys, video game arcades and tattoo shops remain closed.

And Texas Governor Greg Abbott sounded a note of caution, tweeting that 'Texans should continue to practice social distancing' and follow health guidelines.

'Face coverings are not mandatory, but encouraged to protect the lives of individuals at high-risk,' Abbott said.

Federal guidelines call for the number of cases to fall for 14 straight days before relaxing lockdown measures, but Texas and several other US states have forged ahead with reopening regardless

President Donald Trump, with the election just six months away and the economy in a shambles, has sent mixed messages about the reopening of the country.

He has promoted the guidelines - while at the same time expressing support for protests in several states demanding a faster easing of stay-at-home orders.

Trump weighed in Friday on protests the previous day in Lansing, Michigan, where demonstrators, some of whom were armed, stormed the state legislature to demand the Democratic governor lift lockdown orders.

The president tweeted that Governor Gretchen Whitmer should 'give a little, and put out the fire'.

'These are very good people, but they are angry,' Trump said. 'They want their lives back again, safely! See them, talk to them, make a deal.'

White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany, speaking at her first press briefing on Friday, said Trump 'wants a safe reopening'.

'He encourages all states to follow the data-driven guidelines to reopening,' McEnany said. 'But ultimately, it's the decision of the states.'

Though experts have warned against reopening the economy too soon, thousands of Americans have taken to the streets to protest against the lockdown orders.

Other states, that have seen protests include North Carolina, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Tennessee and Washington.

In California, Governor Gavin Newsom reversed an order allowing some beaches to open after they were packed last weekend.

While Newsom was re-closing beaches, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that schools in New York state, the epicenter of the US outbreak, would stay closed for the rest of the academic year.

The number of cases has been on the decline in some of the hardest-hit states such as New York and New Jersey.

But the daily count of new cases nationwide has been holding steady at nearly 30,000.

'It looks like US-style lockdowns are enough to freeze transmission in place,' said Jeremy Konyndyk of the Center for Global Development.

'But not enough to drive it down. Which suggests that without further measures, we could remain on this plateau for quite a while,' said Konyndyk, a member of the World Health Organization's Independent Oversight and Advisory Committee.
A bottle of Covid Organics, a herbal tea, touted by Madagascar President Andry Rajoelina as a powerful remedy against the COVID-19 coronavirus, that the authorities gave each student and encouraged them to drink it before the start of classes is seen on a student's desk at the J.J. Rabearivelo High School in downtown Antananarivo. (AFP)

Bissau: Madagascar on Saturday delivered to Guinea-Bissau a shipment of a herbal tea that president Andry Rajoelina has touted as a powerful remedy against the novel coronavirus and hopes to distribute across West Africa and beyond.

Baptised Covid-Organics, the drink is derived from artemisia -- a plant with proven efficacy in malaria treatment -- and other indigenous herbs.

Guinea-Bissau's self-proclaimed president Umaro Sissoco Embalo was at the airport to oversee reception of the cargo donated by Madagascar.

After Equatorial Guinea on Thursday, Guinea-Bissau is the second country to take delivery of the potion that Madagascar claims cures COVID-19 patients within 10 days.

The World Health Organization has said that the herbal tea's effects had not been tested, and there are no published scientific studies of the potion.

Embalo's chief of staff Califa Soares Cassama told reporters that part of Saturday's shipment was to be passed along to the other 14 members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

Rajoelina had on Friday thanked Embalo for taking charge of the distribution in West Africa.

There was no indication of how Guinea-Bissau, poor even by African standards and chronically unstable politically, would handle the required logistics.

The country of 1.8 million has reported 200 coronavirus cases, including prime minister Nuno Gomes Nabiam and four other cabinet members, and one virus death.

Embalo has said that he will test the potion from Madagascar on leading government members, including the premier.

Equatorial Guinea meanwhile announced that it will distribute the potion to infected people in hospitals during two weeks and, in its preventative version, to everybody else.

Back in Madagascar, unarmed soldiers have been going door to door in the capital Antananarivo handing out Covid-Organics.

When launching the distribution last month, Rajoelina said two people had already been cured thanks to the potion, and added: "We can change the history of the entire world."

There is currently no scientifically proven cure for coronavirus, which has killed more than 240,000 people worldwide according to official figures compiled by AFP.
In the last week of April, India lost not one but two of her favourite actors - Irrfan Khan and Rishi Kapoor - in quick succession. The entire nation was plunged in sadness and messages of condolences flowed in from all quarters. Actor Meenakshi Seshadri, who retired from Hindi films long back, released a message to express her grief at their deaths.

In the video, Meenakshi said: Its with a very heavy heart that I am talking to you today in memory of two fantastic actors the Bollywood industry  Rishi Kapoor and Irrfan Khan. We have lost both these great personalities just the last few days. It is a tremendous loss not just for the audiences and fans, but for the film industry itself. We have lost such talented artists and such wonderful human beings. I have been fortunate to work with Shri Rishi Kapoor, in five films, especially the most famous  Damini. It was a wonderful experience working with him. He was a very considerate co-star, a great co-star brought the best in me. I will remember you Rishi ji always.

While Meenakshi had no professional connection with Irrfan, with Rishi she acted in five films - Vijay, Sadhna, Damini, Bade Ghar Ki Beti and Gharana. Damini remains their most famous film together.

In 2015, Rishi was in for a surprise when Meenakshi paid him a visit. He had tweeted a picture with her and mentioned how he had failed to recognise her. He ha written: Any guesses who this is? I didnt recognise her for a moment. What a lovely surprise. Name in 30 mins no hints. A middle-aged Meenakshi in a short crop of hair stands next to Rishi.

Any guesses who this is? I didn't recognise her for a moment. What a lovely surprise. Name in 30 mins no hints. pic.twitter.com/RbYfF1l7Wx  Rishi Kapoor (@chintskap) June 30, 2015

Also read: Anushka Sharma birthday: Did you know Aditya Chopra told her she was not the most good-looking before signing her?

Rishi died in Mumbai on April 30, after battling with Leukaemia for two years. Confirming his death, his family had said in a statement: Our dear Rishi Kapoor passed away peacefully at 8:45am IST in hospital today after a two-year battle with leukemia. The doctors and medical staff at the hospital said he kept them entertained to the last.

He remained jovial and determined to live to the fullest right through two years of treatment across two continents. Family, friends, food and films remained his focus and everyone who met him during this time was amazed at how he did not let his illness get the better of him.

(With IANS inputs)

Follow @htshowbiz for more
Terrance Whitten rests in the shade at Pan Pacific Park on Friday in Los Angeles. The 67-year-old has been waiting in the queue for nine days to get into a hotel room. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

Not long after L.A. County reported more than 1,000 new coronavirus cases on Friday, Davon Brown decided he was done putting himself at risk. So he put on a blazer and went to the Ritz-Carlton Los Angeles.

Joined by activists from Street Watch L.A., he told hotel staff they were interested in renting several rooms but wanted a tour first. The concierge happily obliged, he said, and took the group to room 2221.

Then he revealed his plan: Im homeless in Echo Park and Im not leaving this hotel.

Brown, who was later arrested and released, told The Times that he had planned to stay until government officials had commandeered enough hotel rooms to house every homeless person in Los Angeles.

If I stayed outside," he said, "I could die.

The protest  the latest of several increasingly defiant demonstrations over housing and rent during the pandemic  comes as homeless activists have stepped up their calls for Mayor Eric Garcetti and the county Board of Supervisors to use their emergency powers to seize hotels and motels that are all but empty because of fears over the novel coronavirus.

"If you can tell the entire city of Los Angeles that we can shelter in place, then you can tell the hotels they are commandeered and they need to open their doors to the residents of skid row," said Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles attorney Shayla Myers, during a recent federal court hearing in a lawsuit on homelessness.

With about 60,000 homeless residents, Los Angeles County is falling behind on its previously stated goal of moving a portion of them -- 15,000 -- into hotel rooms. It had only about 2,200 rooms leased as of late last week.

On Friday, county officials said they had signed leases for an additional 507 rooms, and on Monday, Garcetti announced that a downtown hotel with 460 rooms also had been leased. But even with nearly 1,000 additional rooms under lease, the county is still not on pace to reach 15,000 rooms until the end of August, a Times analysis found.

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L.A. County, participating in an ambitious statewide effort known as Project Roomkey, got off to a quick start by leasing nearly 2,000 rooms in the first two weeks of April. Progress has been slow since then, though. Of the 700 rooms that had been leased through the end of last month, 500 were removed from the program over issues with insurance and contract terms.

Despite the discouraging numbers, county officials say they are conducting complicated negotiations at an accelerated pace, with staffers of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority filling rooms only a few days after they become available. On Monday, county officials reported that about 1,500 of the rooms under lease were occupied.

But negotiating with hotel owners is still preferable to the more confrontational approach of seizing hotels that is favored by some activists, they added.

Omar Spry pushes a cart of bags into a West L.A. hotel that has been turned into housing for homeless people during the pandemic. (Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Such powers, while rarely used, can be wielded during wildfires, with government agencies taking private land to build a fire break, for example. In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, lawyers from the county, city and state looked at whether commandeering hotels for a short time would be legal as well and determined that it would be.

"Commandeering is very seldom used by government," said David Howard, an assistant county executive officer who heads the negotiating team. "It's only done in the event of disaster."

Still, some legal experts say a move to seize hotels could actually add to the time it takes to secure rooms. Forcing a hotel owner to lease rooms to a third party would trigger state and federal eminent domain laws, said attorney Christopher Sutton.

To comply with the law, a government agency would need to allow an unwilling hotel owner to make their case during a public hearing. Any unresolved dispute over price would ultimately wind up in the courts, said Sutton, who represents property owners and businesses in such cases.

In the best-case scenario, it would take 60 to 90 days for a government agency to take control of a hotel, Sutton said. However, a more typical timeline would be 150 days, he said.

"The government can't simply willy-nilly seize personal property without the consent of a judge with a value set by a jury," he said. "So as a practical matter, it's going to be easier to do a negotiated deal. You'll be able to claim success more quickly."

County Supervisor Kathryn Barger said officials should instead focus on helping owners become comfortable with housing homeless people.

"We need to be more aggressive," she said. "But we also need to recognize that we still live in a country where you've got the ability to say 'I refuse.'"

Despite the problems, officials are not backing off the plan to fill 15,000 rooms  a number that reflects the estimated number of homeless people in L.A. County who are 65 or older or who have health conditions that make them susceptible to dying of COVID-19.

"We know it's what the need is," said Heidi Marston, interim executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which is responsible for operating the hotels once they're leased. "And that need is not going to change and, in fact, it could potentially grow."

But some politicians say the city and county are missing a prime opportunity to quickly move thousands off the street and into safe spaces.

Councilman Mike Bonin said hotels are far superior to the recreation centers the city has converted into congregant shelters  both for those who move in and for those assigned to work there. There have been a string of coronavirus cases in shelters on skid row, particularly Union Rescue Mission, and a few cases in the city's recreation centers.

Terrance Whitten, 67, dries his face after washing in the public restroom at the Pan Pacific Park on Friday. (Kent Nishimura/Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)

The fact that the city and county haven't made more progress is "really frustrating and dispiriting," Bonin said.

Bonin said he has received conflicting information about why so few hotels have opened their doors. But the slow pace has resulted in a backlog of homeless people waiting to be placed in hotels.

Terrance Whitten, a 67-year-old homeless man with intestinal bleeding, received a text from his case worker on April 23 telling him he was on the queue for a hotel room. In the more than a week of waiting, he said, it's been profound silence. Each day, he waits under a tree in Pan Pacific Park, then catches a bus to an undisclosed place where he sleeps in his unit.

Some blame government bureaucracy, while others have said L.A. hotel operators have expressed interest, only to have the idea vetoed by their corporate owners, shareholders or lawyers. Barger has attributed it to political opposition from some suburban communities.

"If hotels being unwilling [to participate] are the holdup, then yes, I think commandeering is something we need to do," Bonin said. "We need to be moving before the damn crisis is over. But right now, I don't know for sure that the hotels are the holdup."

As California begins to ease stay-at-home orders and businesses resume operating, it may become more difficult for the county to persuade hotel operators to enter into 90-day leases. Still, one official said some owners who were initially resistant to the program are now calculating that some revenue is better than none, given the economic uncertainty of the coming months.

Currently, the the vast majority of Los Angeles hotel stock is idle. Only 30% of hotels in the Los Angeles and Long Beach market were occupied as of late April, according to STR Global, a company that tracks hotel data. That's a 64% drop from the same week a year ago.

Hotel owners and their representatives who spoke with The Times have said that Project Roomkey has been a valuable financial lifeline. And some have said the county has been slow to acknowledge their offers for leases.

After initially working with owners of small hotels, county officials are now trying to land larger properties, including more downtown closer to skid row, such as the one Garcetti announced on Monday. Locking down rooms in that part of the county had proved more difficult.

These additional rooms will completely change the shape of the curve, said Phil Ansell, director of the county's Homeless Initiative.

Appearing in federal court last month, Myers said homeless people should be moved into downtown hotels, particularly those that have benefited from generous taxpayer subsidies.

According to a report prepared in 2018 by City Controller Ron Galperin, four hotel projects with a combined 2,633 rooms have opened with the city's financial support over the past decade.

The 1,001-room L.A. Live complex, which houses a J.W. Marriott and a Ritz-Carlton, received an agreement for up to $270 million in taxpayer aid over a 25-year period. The 889-room InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown Hotel, located in the Wilshire Grand tower, is slated to receive $250 million in public assistance over 25 years, the report said.

Two smaller properties  Hotel Indigo next to the 110 Freeway, and a Marriott complex on Olympic Boulevard  have deals to receive a combined $86 million in subsidies over the life of their agreements with the city, Galperin found.

Bonin wants the city's policy analysts to determine whether any of those hotels are housing homeless residents  and if not, why not.

Representatives of the hotels at L.A. Live did not answer questions from The Times. But a spokesperson for the Hotel Indigo said operators of that facility had "fully evaluated every request" and that "most of the guests currently at the hotel are front line caregivers."

Garcetti on Friday said that officials reached out to hundreds of hotels, including those that have received taxpayer support.

"I hope that [hotel owners] will do it for their bottom line, and that they will also do it because it's the right thing to do," he said.
The prime minister told MPs that the government is extending the state of emergency as a necessary tool to stand up to threats targeting the security of Egypt

Egypts Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said that Egypt and the Arab region are still facing threats and troubles that target their security and stability.

Addressing MPs on the governments decision to extend the state of emergency for another six months, Madbouly said you should all be aware of the threats and troubles which still target the Arab world, the Middle East and even the world as a whole.

Madbouly said Egypt is not afraid of these threats and troubles that target our homeland.

They will never shake our strong belief that we live on a land preserved by God and that its soldiers are some of the best in the world, said Madbouly.

Madbouly added that we have full confidence in our military and police forces who have shouldered for years the burden of defending our homeland against rogue elements supported by some malicious forces to target Egypt.

These forces will be vanquished and Egypt will stay living in peace and security as it used to be over the ages, said Madbouly.

Madbouly began his statement by referring to the heinous terrorist attack which hit Bir Al-Abd town in North Sinai on 30 April, and at the hands of a wicked group which kills even during the holy month of Ramadan.

This is part of the threats we still face, but we are strong and we are confident that the people of Egypt support its leadership and army which have never been intimidated by these terrorist acts, said Madbouly, adding that regardless of any threats, the wheels of life in Egypt will go on turning, the implementation of economic development plans, the programmes of raising the standard of living and the policies of social protection will continue to achieve the interests of the great Egyptian people.

Referring to the spread of the coronavirus across the world and its negative impact, Madbouly said Egypt came ahead of most world countries in taking early preventative and precautionary measures, and as a result God saved us from the astronomical numbers which many countries now suffer in terms of infections and deaths.

God also helped us support all citizens who suffered from the repercussions of the pandemic and also support factories whose production stopped or dropped due to the crisis.

Madbouly indicated that the government has drawn up several scenarios in a scientific way so that the country can get out of the crisis.

These scenarios go in line with the medical and protective norms set out by the World Health Organisation (WHO), and all we hope is that citizens abide by these norms and by measures taken by the Ministry of Health in this respect in order to preserve lives and maintain the safety of our country as a whole, said Madbouly.

In light of the above, Madbouly said all members of the cabinet decided to approve the presidents decree (168/2020) on extending the state of emergency for another three months, beginning on 1am, 28 April, 2020.

The government renews its pledge that it will use the exceptional powers granted by this decree in a way that will strike a balance between the protection of public freedoms and the necessities of national security, said Madbouly, asking MPs to approve the new extension in line with Article 154 of Egypts 2014 constitution.

Madbouly said the extension of the state of emergency will help the military and police forces do their job in combating terrorists and also allow the state to implement its development plans across Egypt.

Parliament speaker Ali Abdel-Aal said the decree will be studied by the Houses general committee in line with Article 131 of the internal bylaws and a report in this respect will be discussed and voted on in a plenary session.

The state of emergency was declared in Egypt in May 2017 following two terrorist attacks that targeted two churches in Tanta and Alexandria, leaving 22 dead.

The new extension is expected to gain an easy approval, particularly as it comes after three days of bloody clashes between the Armed Forces and terrorist groups in North Sinai where Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis, an affiliate of the Islamic State group, has been operating.

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Air Canada (TSX:AC) used to be a millionaire-maker stock. In 2012, shares were priced at $0.80. By the end of 2019, they surpassed $50. Yet the coronavirus crash has pulled the stock back below the $20 market. As the recent market rally heats up, this could be your best chance to capitalize.

The opportunity is clear. The same factor that made Air Canada a millionaire-maker stock last decade is about to get even stronger thanks to the coronavirus pandemic.

Youll need to remain patient, but if you want to bet on the market rally, choose Air Canada.

Air Canada will survive

Heres the most important thing to know: Air Canada will survive the current crisis. That may not sound like the most bullish stance, but it actually is, even if we werent in the middle of a market rally.

For decades, operating an airline was a surefire way to lose money. Warren Buffett famously hated on the entire industry. If a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favour by shooting Orville down, he famously quipped.

But times change. By 2017, Buffett had become one of the largest shareholders in four different airlines, including Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, American Airlines, and Southwest Airlines. What exactly changed? Its the same factor that makes Air Canadas survival so compelling: industry consolidation.

Running an airline was unprofitable for so many years because of industry oversupply. There was simply too much competition. Post-9/11, however, the industry got serious about its own survival. Capacity was reduced and competition became more rational. Finally, profits emerged.

As well see, the same dynamic should allow a rapid airline market rally for businesses that can outlast the coronavirus pandemic.

The market rally isnt fair

Thus far, the market rally hasnt been kind to airline stocks. Air Canada shares remain close to their pandemic lows. If youre patient, this could be a great time to invest.

Story continues

Post-coronavirus, we could see even more consolidation. If weve learned anything from history, its that even more profits will result, but only to the survivors.

With billions in cash, providing it with a runway through the rest of 2020, Air Canada should have no problem outlasting the current crisis, especially if it taps into government bailout funds in the form of new equity of low-interest debt. In 2021 and beyond, it could capture additional market share from its financially defunct competition.

Like the U.S., Canadas airline sector has experienced rapid consolidation. Today, Air Canada has a 46% domestic market share, with WestJet controlling an additional 34%. The next largest competitor only has a 5% market share. The next largest after that controls just 2%.

Dominated by small and fragmented players, the 20% of Canadas domestic market that Air Canada and WestJet dont control should be up for grabs. That means post-pandemic, Air Canada could instantly become one-fifth larger, assuming it splits the gains with WestJet. With more capital to play with, its possible that Air Canada grows even quicker than that.

Who knows what will happen to airline stocks in 2020? The market rally in recent weeks hasnt rewarded the space at all. If youre willing to take a long-term view and bet that additional consolidation will result in higher profits for incumbents, Air Canada stock looks like a clear buy.

The post Market Rally: Time to Buy Air Canada (TSX:AC) Stock appeared first on The Motley Fool Canada.

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The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Delta Air Lines and Southwest Airlines. Fool contributor Ryan Vanzo has no position in any stocks mentioned.

The Motley Fools purpose is to help the world invest, better. Click here now for your free subscription to Take Stock, The Motley Fool Canadas free investing newsletter. Packed with stock ideas and investing advice, it is essential reading for anyone looking to build and grow their wealth in the years ahead. Motley Fool Canada 2020
Premier Gladys Berejiklian is clearly happy to ask for help managing the coronavirus pandemic including Atlassian billionaire Scott Farquhar, who provided modelling which informed the states strict early lockdown.

But Dominic Perrottet has his own heavyweight advisers to help manage the economic repercussions of a lengthy shutdown. In late March, the Treasurer discussed the coronavirus pandemic with ANZ chairman David Gonski, Merivale billionaire Justin Hemmes, Mirvac chief executive Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz, Pacific Private Equity managing director Tim Sims and QBEs local boss Vivek Bhatia.

Also in on the meeting? Former UBS banker Matthew Grounds, recently-departed Virgin Australia chief John Borghetti and ex-Macquarie executives Michael Carapiet and Nicholas Moore.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Dominic Perrottet in Canberra last year. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

Perrottet has convened this business advisory group several times since it was established in April 2018  three times that year and once last August. And while Gonski, Grounds, Carapiet and Hemmes have been regular attendees, Moore is a recent addition.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 3)  The city of Manila has teamed up with the private sector to increase testing capacity amid the COVID-19 crisis.

Manila Mayor Francisco Isko Moreno Domagoso said that over 1,000 residents in Tondo were tested Sunday morning, in addition to the 854 individuals earlier tested in the Sampaloc district.

"We have tested 1,409 through rapid testing kits provided by Project ARK and we now have 109 [positive cases]," Moreno said in a media briefing.

Moreno clarified that patients who yield positive results from the rapid testing will be subjected to nose and throat swabbing, which will be submitted to laboratories for confirmatory tests.

The city of Manila received 3,000 rapid testing kits from Project Antibody Rapid Test Kits (ARK), an initiative by the private sector to aid COVID-19 testing at the barangay level. These specific kits were donated by motorcycle ride-hailing platform, Angkas.

The Department of Health prefers the use of Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction or RT-PCR tests since it gives a definitive diagnosis. While it is the gold standard test," it takes at least 24 hours to process, sometimes even longer.

According to the Inter-agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases, persons under monitoring (PUMs) and healthcare workers who have no flu-like symptoms and no history of travel can be tested using the rapid antibody test kits.

RELATED: LIST: Who can be tested using rapid COVID-19 test kits?

If we didnt have the hard lockdown, we wouldnt have these numbers, Moreno added.

The entire first district of Manila, known as Tondo 1, was placed on a 48-hour total lockdown starting Sunday morning, a move to contain the spread of COVID-19 in the city.

RELATED: Entire District 1 in Tondo, Manila on 48-hour hard lockdown starting Sunday morning

Moreno said that carrying out the rapid tests is among the ways to identify who may be possible carriers of the virus in the densely populated city.

"Kapag ikaw ay naging matino at talagang sinusunod niyo yung social distancing, and yung quarantine and other protocols, we will open your barangay," Moreno said.

[Translation: When you really follow social distancing, quarantine and other protocols, we will open your barangay.]

"Discipline must be put in the right place," he added.

When asked if the local government is considering a possible extension of lockdown measures in parts of Manila, Moreno said it is in the pipeline but "we will be more surgical."

"We started with a district, then we created a new mindset that [there is the] gravity of the situation. But for now, I cannot afford to have it extended and extended," Moreno said.

Moreno expressed his gratitude to the private sector for their support, and said the city is now preparing for the possible scenarios once the enhanced community quarantine is lifted, among them the possible resurgence of COVID-19 cases.

"We, together with JCI, are now building a COVID-19 facility in the community, utilizing public school. We are now building a 40-bed capacity in one of our schools, Araullo High School," Moreno said.

Meanwhile, authorities apprehended 176 violators since the start of the lockdown in Tondo 1, 80 percent of which came from one barangay, Moreno confirmed.

As of Saturday, there is a total of 573 COVID-19 cases in the city of Manila. Of this number, 102 were recorded in Tondo 1.
Every May 1, before sunrise, several thousand members of the religion known as the Valley of the Dawn gather in silence at a temple outside the Brazilian capital of Brasilia. They come from around the world to synchronize their spiritual energies.

As the Suns first rays appear over the horizon, the members, in fairy-tale-like garments, chant their personal emissions  a ritual invocation of cosmic forces that fills the air with a collective drone.

Valley of the Dawn adherents manipulate cosmic energies to heal themselves and others. They describe themselves as members of a spiritual tribe called the Jaguars, who are the reincarnated descendants of highly advanced extraterrestrials sent by God some 32,000 years ago to jump-start human evolution.

Normally, the May 1 Day of the Indoctrinator ceremony attracts Jaguars from across the globe, as well as spectators and journalists.

This year, the ceremony has been postponed because of the coronavirus  dismaying Valley of the Dawn members, who believe their spiritual force field could really help in this global crisis.

Jaguars past and present

Valley of the Dawn, called Vale do Amanhecer in Portuguese, is a recognized religion in Brazil. It has over 700 affiliated temples worldwide and nearly 139,000 registered members.

According to Valley of the Dawn doctrine, the Jaguars inspired some of humanitys greatest achievements, including the great pyramids of ancient Egypt and Mesoamerica, before eventually straying from their mission.

Their spiritual tribe was reunited in Brazil in 1964 by a woman called Aunt Neiva, who foresaw the world as we know it ending within decades.

My research indicates that Valley of the Dawn members are mostly middle- and working-class Brazilians, of all races. Many live in the town that has grown up around the Mother Temple; others travel there for ceremonies.

To redeem the bad karma they believe they have accrued over the millennia, Valley of the Dawn members perform spirit-healing rituals called trabalhos, or works. These are offered to the public at the Mother Temple nearly 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

In Brazil, which has hundreds of spirit-based religions, such healing is widely accepted.

According to anthropologist Emily Pierini, who has studied spirit healing at the Valley of the Dawn, thousands of Brazilians suffering from health problems, mental illness, grief or addiction visit the Valley of the Dawn each month to remove negative spiritual influences and channel healing forces. Most patients have had unsuccessful experiences with both Western medicine and other religions.

Meaningful work and education

The Valley of the Dawn has grown steadily since the founders death in 1985, spreading from Brazil to Portugal, the United States and England.

Outsiders often dismiss the Valley as a cult. A BBC journalist who visited the community in 2012 called it a refuge for lost souls.

But my research offers an alternative explanation of why some people might find the Valley of the Dawn appealing: It offers a more progressive, egalitarian version of modernity.

Brazil, with its corruption scandals and savage social inequalities, has not always lived up to the motto order and progress as inscribed on its national flag. It is not alone. Across much of the West, the promise that modernity would bring higher living standards, greater personal freedoms and a more just society remains largely unfulfilled.

Instead, the 21st century has created low-wage jobs with little security and government institutions that too frequently benefit the richest and most powerful. Individualism has supplanted community, leaving people increasingly isolated and lonely  and that was before coronavirus and social distancing.

The Valley of the Dawn, in contrast, offers a collective life that members find gratifying.

By living out the doctrine, you see what you can improve in your life and how you can repair the errors of the past, a member named Ilza told me. You see the results of your dedication.

Rejecting capitalist values, Valley of the Dawn members refuse to work for money. Healing trabalhos are offered freely as an expression of unconditional love.

In Brazil, where poverty prevents many from completing their education, the Valley of the Dawn has its own education system premised on merit, not privilege.

It offers free courses on personal development, moral conduct and mediumship taught by trained instructors. Educational advancement earns members a title, like Master or Commander, and the right to wear specific clothing, participate in new rituals and take on leadership duties.

Restorative justice

Justice in the Valley of the Dawn likewise offers a progressive alternative to contemporary criminal justice systems that emphasize punishment and incarceration. In the Valley of the Dawn, justice means reconciliation for past harms  not retribution.

According to Valley of the Dawn doctrine, much human suffering and wrongdoing is the work of spirits called cobradores, or debt collectors. A cobrador is the spirit of a person  usually a family member or friend  who was harmed by a Jaguar in a past life.

When the spirit attaches itself to its living debtor  causing depression, for example, or aggression  the afflicted Jaguar spend a week gathering signatures from fellow Valley members who wish them positive energy to pay off their spiritual debt.

The week-long prison ritual  conducted in a colorful dress or, for men, black shirt with a leather sash  culminates in a courtroom trial. There the cobrador, channeled by a fellow Jaguar, explains the wrongdoing that caused the karmic debt. After the prisoner expresses regret, balance is restored.

He forgives me, I forgive him, he leaves and I am released, as a Jaguar named Master Itamir explained.

Fantastical solutions to real problems

I find no evidence, by the way, that this New Age group has an unsavory underbelly, or that its leaders are exploiting members. People are free to join or leave the Valley of the Dawn at any time. For Jaguars who cannot afford training, the community provides food and housing.

My research indicates members find real meaning in the Valley of the Dawns egalitarian work, education and legal systems, all structured on the principles of equality and justice.

In that sense, despite their mystical nature, the social practices of the Valley of the Dawn arent alien at all: They are a reaction to the very real deficiencies of modern secular society  with some flamboyant costuming on the side.

Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversations newsletter. Kelly E Hayes received funding from the Fulbright U.S. Scholars Program in 2012.

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L.A. County Department of Public Health director Barbara Ferrer addresses a news conference in March in Los Angeles. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

Los Angeles County public health officials on Sunday reported 21 additional coronavirus-related deaths and 781 new cases overall, pushing the county's total number to more than 25,000.

The people lost to COVID-19 are mourned by all of us in L.A. County, and to their loved ones, we wish you peace and healing, Barbara Ferrer, the county health director, said in a statement.

Long Beach, which has its own health department, reported 15 additional cases, bringing the countys total to 25,677 cases and 1,229 related deaths.

The highest death rates per 100,000 people continue to be seen among black people, those who identify as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, and people who live in communities with high levels of poverty, the county Department of Public Health said in a news release.

Nearly 159,000 people in L.A. County have now been tested and have received their results, with about 14% testing positive.

Statewide, more than 54,000 cases of coronavirus infection have been reported in California, and more than 2,200 people have died.

Ferrer urged L.A. County residents to continue to be vigilant against the spread of the virus.

We have all worked together in ways that have saved lives and slowed the spread of COVID-19," she said. "As we continue to plan for and move into recovery, we will need to continue using the best tools at our disposal, which includes isolating at home if sick, quarantining for 14 days if youre a close contact to a person positive for COVID-19, always physical distancing, wearing cloth face coverings when in contact with others, and washing hands frequently.

Meanwhile, in neighboring Orange County, coronavirus-related deaths topped 50 as of Saturday, officials announced, along with two new fatalities, bringing the death toll to 52.

The county also reported 99 new cases, bringing the total to 2,636. The total number of people hospitalized stood at 202.

Gov. Gavin Newsom closed local beaches over the objections of Orange County officials after crowds turned out the previous weekend.

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Many local officials have pushed back, saying there has been enough progress in the fight against the coronavirus to allow people at the beach.

Newport Beach, Dana Point and Huntington Beach filed for an injunction to block Newsoms directive to close their beaches.
North Korean leader ends 20-day absence



North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ended his 20-day absence Friday, ridiculing all rumors and speculation about his health. The North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Saturday that Kim attended a ceremony to mark the completion of a fertilizer factory in Sunchon, north of Pyongyang, the previous day.



Given the photos released by the KCNA, Kim has proven that all the rumors and media reports about his health were wrong. The photos depicted Kim, in a dark Mao suit, cutting a red ribbon and talking to accompanying officials. Some of them showed Kim smiling with no signs of illness.



Kim made his first public appearance since he presided over a Politburo meeting of the North's ruling Workers' Party, April 11. He was absent from an annual event observing the April 15 birth anniversary of his late grandfather Kim Il-sung who is revered as the founder of the socialist country.



His drawn-out disappearance from public view had triggered the spread of rumors and speculation that he was seriously ill. Some pundits even made false claims about his death. The Daily NK, a Seoul-based news outlet specializing in North Korea issues, added fuel to the fire by reporting that Kim was under medical recovery treatment after undergoing a cardiovascular procedure.



Then, U.S. cable news channel CNN went too far in reporting last week that Kim was in "grave danger" after surgery. Making matters more complicated, North Korea had remained silent about Kim's whereabouts and health condition until the KCNA report about his activity and release of his photos.



Unconfirmed news reports and speculation usually become rampant when there is a lack or absence of information. This also causes "infodemics" of fake news and rumors. The case of Kim came amid the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some press reports said that Kim stayed at his villa in the eastern coastal city of Wonsan because one of his bodyguards showed suspected symptoms of COVID-19. But this is still hard to confirm.



More worrisome was that many media and pundits at home and abroad disregarded U.S. and South Korean intelligence assessments that Kim was alive and safe. U.S. President Donald Trump denied the CNN report. And Seoul officials repeatedly said there had been no unusual movements detected in the North regarding Kim's health.



It was reckless and irresponsible for two North Korean defectors, who were elected as lawmakers in the April 15 general election, to suggest Kim was ill and even dead. They are former North Korean diplomat Thae Yong-ho and human rights activist Ji Seong-ho. In an interview with CNN, Thae said that Kim could not stand up by himself or work properly. Ji went so far as to claim that he was "99 percent sure" of Kim's death. They should be held accountable for their baloney.



The media are required to go back to the principles of journalism. They should strengthen their fact-checking functions. They must not provide incorrect and unconfirmed information, especially about Kim's health which is sensitive to national security. Do not forget that fake news is the enemy of democracy.






In the long 8-hour gun battle between the army and terrorist, an army Colonel, Major among 5 killed in the Chanjumullah area of Handwara in Kupwara district. However, the operation has been successfully led as civilians are being safely evacuated from the place.

After 8 hours of intense gunfight between security forces and terrorists in the Chanjumullah area of Handwara in Kupwara district has come to end. According to PTI on Sunday, one commanding officer, 3 army jawans, major of 21 Rashtriya Rifles unit, 2 soldiers, one police jawan lost their lives.

Reports said Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, Major Anuj, a Lance Naik, police sub-inspector Shakeel Qazi, and a rifleman was killed while performing the operation, their bodies had been recovered from the site of encounter. Army officials said that colonel Ashutosh had been part of several successful counter-terrorism operations.

On May 2, the army got the lead of some terrorists is hiding in the Rajwar forests area living. The encounter started by 3: 30 pm but before that Internet services were temporarily shut- down in the Handwara area.

Check PTI and ANI:

4 Indian Army personnel incl the Commanding Officer, Major of 21 Rashtriya Rifles unit along with 2 soldiers &one Jammu and Kashmir Police jawan lost their lives in an encounter in Handwara in Jammu and Kashmir. Two terrorists also killed in the encounter: Indian Army officials pic.twitter.com/nmUCtrN88X  ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020

The team of 21 Rashtriya Rifles and special operations group of police surrounded the place, and entered the house of a civilian to avoid a hostage situation, the battle continued 8 hours. The latest report came in, some civilian had been evacuated safely where 2 terrorists were killed.

One Colonel, one major, two Army jawans and police sub inspector killed in encounter with terrorists at Handwara in North Kashmir: Officials  Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) May 3, 2020

An official statement said the anti-terrorist operation team abled to evacuate several civilians from the place. Based on the tip given by the intelligence bureau that some militants took the civilian inmates of a house in Kupwara district hostage, a team of 5 army personnel and K Police personnel entered the area and rescued several civilians from theirs. It further reads: During performing the operation heavy volume of fire done by militants, but the mission to extricate civilians was successfully done.

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The Lagos State Police Command on Sunday said 2,310 violators were arrested in the state during the lockdown, while thousands of vehicles and motorcycles were impounded.

Bala Elkana, the Lagos State police spokesperson, in a statement on Sunday, said the police are fully prepared for the next phase of enforcement which will commence on Monday.

The next phase was announced by President Muhammadu Buhari last Monday. He said there would be a gradual easing of lockdown in Lagos, Ogun and Abuja.

The gradual easing permits residents of these states to move freely from 6 a.m.  8 a.m. when a daily curfew commences.

Mr Elkana said the police in the state is ready to strictly enforce the curfew and violators will be arrested and charged to court.

Providing an update on the enforcement of the full lockdown in Lagos State between March 30 and May 3, Mr Elkana said a large number of violators were arrested, while vehicles were impounded in their large numbers.

The Deputy Superintendent of Police said 14 identified boundaries with neighbouring states were adequately manned and tactical units were deployed to reinforce the conventional patrol teams in the state during the lockdown.

During the lockdown period, the command successfully arrested 2,310 violators. Some of the violators were arrested in clubs, some organised parties, or engaged in group exercise, etc.

2,185 suspects were charged to court while 125 suspects who are mostly minors, were warned and released. The suspects were awarded various degrees of punishments by the court, ranging from 2 hours to 6 months community services and fines between N5,000.00 and N100,000.00. Some where asked to write undertakings to be of good conducts/apology letters, he said.

Mr Elkana added that 2,092 vehicles were impounded within the same period for violating the lockdown order.

Out of the figure, 800 are private vehicles while 1,292 are commercial vehicles. 1,535 motorcycles and 369 tricycles were also impounded, he said.

The Commissioner of Police in Lagos, Hakeem Odumosu, enjoined residents to adhere strictly to the guidelines issued by the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 and the Lagos State Government to stop the spread of the virus.

The battle against coronavirus is not over yet, the use of face mask is compulsory and social distancing principles must be maintained, he said.

Mr Odumosu emphasised that businesses and markets must stick to the approved opening and closing times and commercial vehicles must not carry more than the approved passengers.

The 8pm to 6am curfew imposed on residents by the Government will be strictly enforced. The enforcement teams are fully out to apprehend violators and arraign them in court. We must all take responsibility for our safety and the safety of our communities. Together we can stop the spread of COVID-19, Mr Odumosu said.
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Britons continued to flock outdoors today despite the ongoing lockdown measures - as a new poll revealed that 75 per of people fear a return to the office.

The streets of the popular Broadway Market in Hackney, East London, were flocked with revellers on Sunday even though most shops were closed.

One group of friends were pictured laughing as they each held a pint of beer while walking down the middle of the street.

Elsewhere, sun-seekers headed to parks around the country, including many who took advantage of the weather by sitting on the grass in Crystal Palace Park in South-East London.

Traffic data from TomTom showed a two per cent increase in the number of cars on the road yesterday, compared to the previous Saturday in London. A similar pattern could be seen in Manchester which also saw a one per cent increase in traffic compared to the previous Saturday.

Lengthy queues of also customers began lining up outside B&Q outlets on Sunday morning. The DIY chain last week said that all of its 288 stores are now open to the public.

People could also be seen outside Homebase stores as the business followed suit with its competitor and opened all of its 164 nationwide branches.

Other businesses such as Burger King, KFC and Nandos have also started opening select stores, with strict social distancing measures in place.

But despite the busy scenes, polling released today indicates that just one in four Britons would feel safe at work amid the coronavirus crisis and more than half are opposed to schools reopening.

Revellers were seen with pints of beer in hand at Broadway Market in Hackney, East London, on Sunday, as they ignored orders to stay home amid the coronavirus outbreak

The market was bustling with people, some of whom were standing outside shops while others used bicycles to get around

The arrival of warmer weather has contributed to the increase in the numbers of people heading outside. Pictured: A mother shepherds her two children down the middle of the street at Broadway Market on Sunday

In Crystal Palace Park in London, people were seen making the most of the reasonable weather as they sat on the grass with food and alcohol

The latest traffic data from TomTom showed a dramatic fall in traffic since the lockdown started in late March throughout the capital. But there was an increase of 2 per cent in traffic levels London compared to the previous Saturday

Data published by Opinium found only 17 per cent of Britons believed conditions had been met to considering reopening schools on May 8, with 67 per cent of those polled believing the opposite.

There was also opposition to the reopening of restaurants and pubs - with only 11 per cent agreeing Britain is at a place to open eateries and 9 per cent supporting a return to pubs.

Which business have started to reopen? Nandos - has opened six restaurants - four in London and two in Manchester - for delivery only The restaurants to reopen are: London (Clink St, Camberwell, Canary Jubilee, Gloucester Road) Manchester (Fallowfield, Printworks) Burger King - has opened eight restaurants for delivery in Dundee, Aberdeen, Reading, Hillington (Norfolk), Southampton, Merto, (London) Springfield Quay (London)

- has opened eight restaurants for delivery in Dundee, Aberdeen, Reading, Hillington (Norfolk), Southampton, Merto, (London) Springfield Quay (London) Wagamama - is to reopen its kitchens to deliver food to customers' homes from Thursday from its kitchens in Peckham and Hackney Greggs - will be opening 20 shops in the Newcastle area as part of a 'trial' Five Guys - the burger chain has opened 20 of its 104 restaurants The stores open for delivery are: Cambridge Leisure Centre, Norwich, Colchester, Chelmsford, High St. Kensington, Reading, York, Southampton Timpsons - will be slowly opening stores, starting with those located in supermarkets. KFC - the chicken chain is opening 100 branches for delivery only. Pret a Manger - has re-opened 10 London take-aways B&Q - The DIY chain has now opened all of its branches Costa Coffee - has opened four stores for delivery only Homebase - opened 20 of its stores last weekend as part of a trial, and has now opened all of them Advertisement

Britons more strongly opposed a return to stadium events and nightclubs, with 7 per cent saying conditions have been met for both to resume, compared to 84 per cent who did not.

The data, collected between Wednesday and Friday last week, came as a YouGov poll found only one in four adults would feel safe returning to work amid the current state of coronavirus.

The second poll, carried out on behalf of The Sunday Times, also noted 48 per cent of Britons opposed the reopening of schools in the next few weeks, compared to 28 per cent who did not.

And 59 per cent of people polled by the Sunday Express said they would not feel comfortable going out and do not plan to resume a normal life next month.

Some 56 per cent of those polled approved of how the Government had handled the crisis.

Two men were arrested in Glastonbury, Somerset, today after group Free Love Cannabis attempted to stage a protest to 'raise awareness' of the drug.

Officers also issued three people with 60 fixed penalty notices under Covid-19 regulations - although the value to be paid drops to 30 if this is paid within three weeks.

Avon and Somerset police said they had warned the protesters not to go ahead due to the coronavirus outbreak.

'The right to protest and the protection of freedom of expression are vitally important but we are in the midst of a public health emergency which has claimed the lives of more than 28,000 people,' they said in an open letter.

'This has to take precedent. We have a clear and pressing need to make sure the rights of the public to be protected and kept safe are prioritised and the government measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus are followed.

'We're aware a small number of people are planning to protest in Glastonbury town centre at lunchtime today and we've been engaging with the protest organisers to outline their responsibilities to the general public around not doing anything which could spread coronavirus.

'This includes following restrictions on unnecessary travel, public gatherings, social distancing and leaving home without a reasonable excuse.'

A man was pictured being arrested by two police officers in pictures taken at the scene today.

It comes as the Prime Minister is expected to reveal his roadmap of proposals to slowly lift the restriction in place since late March, but come down hard on any secondary hotspots that emerge.

The first easing of restrictions is not expected to come into force until June, and will be accompanied by the stricter enforcement of breaches of the remaining rules, with fines rising from the current 60 to more than 3,000 for repeat offenders.

Whilst many of the shops in Broadway Market were closed as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, many people still took to the streets

The streets were busy despite continuing lockdown measures ordering people to stay home except for essential reasons or to exercise once a day

One man used his bike to travel around Broadway Market on Sunday

Some those out and about at Broadway Market wore masks while one woman pulled her coat over her mouth in an attempt to guard against the virus

Two people sat on the grass in Crystal Palace today. Police were seen at the park warning people to abide by lockdown measures

Police were pictured patrolling Crystal Palace park today and speaking to members of the public, reminding them of the lockdown rules

Another group looked at their smartphones while sitting on the grass in the London park

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps warned that Britain will not return to 'business as usual' this month.

He told Sky's Sophy Ridge On Sunday: 'I don't think we should expect us to go from this situation that we have at the moment of social distancing back to where we were in February - that's clearly not going to happen and I don't think anyone imagines that for one moment.'

Ministers are concerned that the public have gone beyond the letter of the law introduced when the pandemic began to sweep the nation, according to the Sunday Times.

A senior Whitehall source told the paper: 'What you are going to see this week is a restatement of what we thought would happen right at the beginning when we first issued the lockdown.

'But it's going to be repackaged as a slow opening up of the economy. Please will construction sites reopen, please will you go to work if you can without hurting people, please if you are a key worker will you send your children to school.

'We've gone round the houses to get back to where we started.'

One couple splashed in shallow waters on the sandbanks Lee-on-the-Solent in Hampshire

Members of the public follow social distancing guidelines as they queue outside a B&Q warehouse in Loughborough as the UK continues in lockdown to help curb the spread of the coronavirus

People queue outside a B&Q store in Greenwich as the DIY giant opens all their stores ahead of an expected easing of the lockdown restrictions in the coming weeks

DIY enthusiasts queuing outside the B&Q in Greenwich this morning at a safe social distance

The police pictured patrolling Crystal Palace Park and speaking to members of the public reminding them of the coronavirus lockdown rules

A Costa Coffee drive-thru at Cameron Toll in Edinburgh which has re-opened for take away only and contactless payments

A long queue maintaining social distancing outside a Tesco supermarket in north London as the UK continues in lockdown to help curb the spread of the coronavirus

An empty Tay Road Bridge in Dundee, as the UK continues in lockdown to help curb the spread of the coronavirus

Despite the warm weather this weekend, Britons should prepare for a wet summer ahead.

April was one of the top five hottest on record  but the five hottest Aprils were all followed by wetter-than-normal summers, with some also cooler-then-usual.

Met Office computers in March said a warmer-than-average summer was a 60 to 80 per cent probability  but now say it is just a 20 to 60 per cent chance.

Bookmakers Coral cut odds on summer being wetter than normal from 6/4 to 1/2. Coral spokesman John Hill said: 'It looks like brollies, not sunblock. We could be set for a washout summer.'

'Alarm bells' are ringing as bad summers follow hot springs in 'weather's way of evening things out,' The Weather Outlook forecaster Brian Gaze said.

Cool temperatures are due at times in May, the Met Office said. No prolonged heat is due this month, ex-BBC and Met Office forecaster John Hammond of weathertrending said.

The UK has announced 315 new coronavirus deaths today, bringing total fatalities to 28,446 and putting the country on course to become the hardest hit in Europe

Mobility trackers show the number in people in public places is steadily creeping up

It comes after Britain announced 315 new coronavirus deaths today, bringing total fatalities to 28,446 and putting the country on course to become the hardest hit in Europe.

This increase puts the UK's death toll just 264 behind Italy, which was the original epicentre of the continent's outbreak.

Michael Gove revealed at the daily Downing Street press conference that the overall number of cases has climbed to 186,599 following an extra 4,339 positive tests.

The cabinet office minister said 76,496 tests had been performed yesterday, dipping below the 100,000 daily target set by the government.

Although figures are typically lower on Sunday's and Mondays, the 315 fatalities reported by the Department of Health across all care settings marks the fewest daily deaths recorded in over a month.

Shoppers headed to The Range store in Leicester in the hope of picking up some home comforts during lockdown. One couple, pictured above, carried away a set of balcony furniture

Another woman left the shop with a trolley packed full of items, including cushions and a metal vase filed with flowers

Others left the shop with posters and chairs as they apparently tried to make the most of a less busy shopping environment

And in Edinburgh, there were queues of people in their cars waiting to get a hot drink from a Costa Coffee Drive Through outlet which had just re-opened

There were so many cars that Costa employees had to wear high-visibility jackets and direct the flow of traffic

Costa employees wore masks as they dealt with customers' orders from behind the drive-thru counter

Before Mr Gove announced the Department of Health's UK total, the public health bodies from the four nations revealed their individual death tallies which totalled 358.

The difference in totals reflects varying data gathering methods and time-frames.

England suffered the lion's share of today's reported deaths with 327 patients, aged between 46 and 101, passing away in NHS hospitals.

A further 12 died in Scotland, 14 in Wales and five in Northern Ireland, bringing each nation's total toll to 1,571, 983 and 381, respectively.

Today's death figures for England also shows the gulf in deaths between the regions, with the Midlands reporting 69 fatalities and the South West 19.

Shoppers at B&Q in Loughborough were seen waiting in queues caused by the store's social distancing measures

Two men were arrested in Glastonbury, Somerset, on Sunday after they staged a protest to 'raise awareness' of cannabis

Officers were pictured arresting a man and removing him from the town centre. Three other people have been issued with fixed penalty notices

The interactive ONS map shows the bulk of virus deaths are in densely populated cities and their transport routes to one another, while, towns furthest away from cities appear to be avoiding the worst of the crisis.

In the East of England, at least 23 local authorities have not recorded any coronavirus deaths in Suffolk, and 21 in Norfolk.

There are nine towns and villages where residents are yet to fall victim to the disease in the Welsh county of Conwy, seven in Pembrokeshire, five in Gwynedd and five in Ceredigion.

In the New Forest national park in Hampshire there have been no recorded deaths in the Milford and Lymington south area, while in neighbouring Dorset, places such as Bovington, Wool and Lulworth have no recorded Covid-19 deaths.
A missing toddler who wandered away from her Florida home was found dead in a lake just hours after she vanished, according to authorities.

The search for two-year-old Lorie Thermidor began Friday around 3:30pm near Redwood Point Drive in Tampa.

She was last seen wearing a pink onesie with grey polka dots.

It's possible Lorie left home and accidentally walked into a wooded area located nearby,' police said.

Lorie Thermidor (pictured) was reported missing by the Tampa Police Department when she disappeared May 1

But officers dispatched to the scene after her father soon realized he couldn't find his daughter.

An intense search for Lorie quickly sparked, with officers and dozens of volunteers combing the area for leads.

Two bloodhounds and a police helicopter aided in the search, Tampa Bay Times reports.

Authorities said they found her dead in a lake around five hours after she initially went missing

The search for Lorie included officers, dozens of volunteers, two bloodhounds and divers who searched a nearby lake

Additionally, divers were sent to search a lake across from the family's home.

That's where authorities found the body of the little girl around 8:30pm that evening.

'Sadly, the child was found in the lake deceased,' authorities said in a Facebook post.

The comment section has since flooded with condolences and prayers for the family.

No additional details about the incident were released by authorities.

DailyMail.com reached out to the Tampa Police Department for further comment.
Last week, with the countrys infection rate declining, the Education Ministry announced that grades one through three would return Sunday in most schools, with grades 11 and 12 to follow later in the week. Classes would be divided into smaller groups, and some schools would stagger start times. Teachers over the age of 65 and those with underlying health concerns would remain at home. Local school systems could choose not to reopen. Each family could decide whether to send their child.
In late January, President Donald Trump announced a task force to combat the coronavirus threat  and as COVID-19 began to take a major toll on the U.S. economy, Trump launched his Opening Up America Again plan, with a number of bipartisan groups to provide guidelines for a step-by-step reopening of the country.

In New York, which quickly became the epicenter of the countrys outbreak, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio have formed their own advisory councils to restart the economy and rebuild the region. Heres a rundown of the various federal, state and city task forces  and what you need to know about each of them.

FEDERAL

Presidents Coronavirus Task Force

On January 29, President Donald Trump announced the Presidents Coronavirus Task Force, which was charged with coordinating and overseeing the administration's efforts to monitor, prevent, contain, and mitigate the spread of the coronavirus. When announced, the task force was comprised senior federal officials, coordinated by the National Security Council, and headed by Health and Human Services Secuary Alex Azar. Last month, the task force joined the president for the rollout of Opening Up America Again, a plan to provide guidelines for a step-by-step reopening. The ultimate decisions, however, are left to individual governors.

Notable members: Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health; Deborah Birx, White House Coronavirus Task Force response coordinator

What you need to know: Although Azar was announced as the leader of the task force, he has been sidelined as Vice President Mike Pence has taken the lead. Azar now may even be replaced at the Department of Health and Human Services. And he hasnt been the only controversial figure on the task force. What's more, Trump suggested in May that he would disband the task force - only to back off a day later.

The Great American Economic Revival Groups

Trump announced the formation of the Great American Economic Revival Industry Groups, a number of business advisory groups, on April 14. These 17 separate industry groups, which include nearly 200 corporate executives, economists, scholars and industry leaders, will work together with the White House to chart the path forward toward a future of unparalleled American prosperity. Participants include major Trump donors, such as Sheldon Adelson, and even one of the presidents business partners, Phil Ruffin, a billionaire casino owner and part-owner of the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas.

Notable members: Las Vegas Sands Corp.s Sheldon Adelson; Amazons Jeff Bezos; JPMorgan Chases Jamie Dimon; Blackstones Stephen Schwarzman; Apples Tim Cook; Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg

What you need to know: Some companies  including Cisco Systems, McDonalds and Pfizer  didnt even know their executives would be named to a group, according to The New York Times, and the White House downplayed the efforts, saying no new task force was actually being created.

The White Houses Congressional Task Force

On April 16, the White House announced the formation of a congressional task force to assess when the nation should begin lifting restrictions implemented due to COVID-19. The bipartisan group is composed of nearly 100 members of the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. According to The New York Times, the congressional group only learned of its existence shortly before it was announced to the public. The White House said the group is working on expanding access to diagnostic and anti-body tests, ventilators, facemasks and other personal protective equipment.

Notable members: Every Republican U.S. senator except Mitt Romney; Democratic U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois, Dianne Feinstein of California and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota; and four New York House representatives: Republicans John Katko, Elise Stefanik and Lee Zeldin, and Democrat Tom Suozzi

What you need to know: At the time of the announcement, the groups purpose was unclear, and several lawmakers were caught off guard by their selection, even wondering why they had been selected by the president at all. Whats more, none of them are from New York City, the epicenter of the outbreak in the United States.

STATE

Regional council

On April 13, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the governors in New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Delaware announced the creation of a regional task force as a collaborative effort against the coronavirus outbreak. Massachusetts joined the bipartisan effort the same day. Each state will assign a public health official, chief of staff and health and economic development experts that are tasked with when and how to re-open the region after weeks of virtual shutdown.

Notable members: Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, Gov. Ned Lamont of Connecticut, Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island, Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, Gov. John Carney of Delaware and Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts

What you need to know: Cuomos multi-state approach was announced the same day that Trump made the dubious claim that he, as president, had total authority to lift restrictions put in place by governors. In the end, it was Trump, not Cuomo, who backed down (sort of). Raimondo, the governor of Rhode Island, had her own run-in with Cuomo, but she ultimately backed down too.

Reimagine New York Task Force

As the numbers of COVID-19 deaths across New York steadily decreases, Cuomo has described a reimagining of life. On April 20, he called for the creation of a Reimagine New York Task Force  a downstate coalition of regional leaders including New York Citys Bill de Blasio, Nassau Countys Laura Curran, Suffolk Countys Steve Bellone and Westchester Countys George Latimer  to improve transportation, housing, education and health care systems for the most vulnerable. Lets use this situation, this crisis, this time to actually learn the lessons valued from the reflection, Cuomo said. Lets reimagine what we want society to be.

Notable members: Mayor Bill de Blasio, Nassau County Executive Laura Curran, Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone, Westchester County Executive George Latimer

What you need to know: Three of the elected officials named to the task force  Curran, Bellone and Latimer  are Cuomo allies, while de Blasio has famously clashed with the governor in a feud that has not abated during the pandemic.

COVID-19 Maternity Task Force

On April 20, Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa and the New York State Council on Women and Girls announced the creation of a new COVID-19 maternity task force that would authorize and certify additional dedicated birthing centers and take pressure away from already overwhelmed hospitals. The task force, chaired by DeRosa, is a collection of obstetrical providers, pediatricians and family planning agencies in conjunction with the State

Department of Health.

Notable members: Founder of Every Mother Counts Christy Turlington Burns

What you need to know: By the end of April, the task force submitted a number of recommendations to the governor, all of which he adopted. DeRosa made headlines for supporting a move by the governor to ensure that women could be joined by a partner while giving birth  which some hospital systems had banned.

NEW YORK CITY

Fair Recovery Task Force

The coronavirus has exposed inequalities separating New Yorkers, so on April 26, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the creation of the Fair Recovery Task Force. Much like Cuomo, de Blasio has referred to the crisis as a clarion call and as a unique opportunity to build something new. In June, the group will introduce a recovery road map laying out the citys recovery efforts.

Notable members: Open Society Foundations President Patrick Gaspard, Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies CEO Jennifer Jones Austin, former Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch, Senior Advisor of HR&A Advisors Carl Weisbrod, DC37 Executive Director Henry Garrido, Maria Torres Springer, vice president for U.S. programs at the Ford Foundation

What you need to know: Two of the appointees  Weisbrod and Torres Springer  served in the de Blasio administration. (Or three, if you include Gaspard, a former agent of the city.)

Sector Advisory Councils

De Blasio also announced that the city will form a number of Sector Advisory Councils to guide the gradual reopening of the city. The councils are to include representatives for large and small businesses, public health and health care, arts, culture, tourism, labor, nonprofits and social services, faith-based and education and vocational training. The de Blasio administration will meet with them immediately to coordinate the citys recovery.

Notable members: Terra Holdings' William Zeckendorf, Benenson Capital Partners' Lawrence Benenson, PR executive Ken Sunshine

What you need to know: De Blasio named at least 80 of his political donors to the councils, according to a Daily News analysis.

Administration Taskforce on Racial Inclusion and Equity

The de Blasio administration also convened a task force to address the hardest-hit communities. The group, comprised of officials from the administration and led by first lady Chirlane McCray and Deputy Mayor J. Phillip Thompson, will monitor response and recovery efforts in affected neighborhoods and consult with minority- and women-owned businesses, community health care providers and city officials and agencies to minimize racial and economic disparities.

Notable members: First lady Chirlane McCray and Deputy Mayor J. Phillip Thompson

What you need to know: McCray, who is reportedly eyeing a run for Brooklyn borough president, has come under another round of criticism over her appointment.
Matt Hancock has fanned a wave of confusion over the government's instructions to elderly people during the coronavirus lockdown.

The Health Secretary last night rubbished reports that healthy over-70s were among the 'clinically vulnerable' who had been told to shield for 12 weeks.

But he later published a link to NHS guidance which puts all over-70s, regardless of medical condition, into the 'clinically vulnerable' category.

His remarks were branded 'contradictory' and further drew accusations of 're-writing history' because Boris Johnson said over-70s should brace for 12 weeks indoors.

A GP even urged Mr Hancock to delete his tweet, branding it 'incorrect' and 'confusing'.

Sources said the minister was referring to the 'clinically extremely vulnerable' - a different category who have been sent letters urging them to practice shielding.

Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick was later drawn into the furore as he was accused of 'moving the goalposts' by claiming that Mr Hancock had initially used this term.

It comes as many elderly fear being left behind when the government begins loosening restrictions.

Mr Hancock fired off a flurry of tweets hitting out at a Sunday Times article which described doctors' concerns for the wellbeing of over-70s, who they said were under a 'blanket ban' from leaving their homes.

Matt Hancock has fanned a wave of confusion over the government's instructions to elderly people during the coronavirus lockdown

Government advice lists over-70s with no medical conditions as clinically vulnerable people

Responding to the 'false' report, the minister said: 'The clinically vulnerable, who are advised to stay in lockdown for 12 weeks, emphatically DO NOT include all over 70s.'

He added: 'We have strongly advised all over 70s to follow social distancing measures.

'However, there is no 'blanket ban', and the suggestion that the clinically vulnerable include people aged 70 or older regardless of medical conditions is wrong & deeply misleading.'

Yet he later posted a link to the NHS guidance which specifically puts all over-70s in the 'clinically vulnerable' category, regardless of any underlying issues.

And advice published by the government on May 1 describes 'aged 70 or older (regardless of medical conditions)' as clinically vulnerable who 'should take particular care to minimise contact with others outside your household'.

Sources said Mr Hancock's tweets referred to the 1.28million 'clinically extremely vulnerable' who were sent letters telling them to practice social shielding.

Mr Hancock fired off a flurry of tweets hitting out at a Sunday Times article which described doctors' concerns for the wellbeing of over-70s, who they said were under a 'blanket ban' from leaving their homes

A GP even urged Mr Hancock to delete his tweet, branding it 'incorrect' and 'confusing'.eet as it was highly confusing

NHS advice for vulnerable people during lockdown The NHS lists two at-risk groups: those who are 'clinically vulnerable' and those who are 'clinically extremely vulnerable'. Clinically vulnerable includes people who are: Over 70

Pregnant

Obese

Suffer a range of conditions including diabetes, heart disease and lung problems. These people are advised to only leave home if it's essential, for example, to get food or medicine. Clinically extremely vulnerable includes people who: Have had an organ transplant

Are undergoing cancer treatment

Have a severe heart condition

Are prone to infections These people have been told to not leave the house for any reason - known as shielding - and will have received a letter from the NHS. Source: NHS Advertisement

The Health Secretary's clumsy language prompted his cabinet colleague Robert Jenrick to clarify.

The Communities Secretary tweeted: 'An important clarification: the 'shielded', those identified by the NHS as extremely clinically vulnerable, does not mean all those over 70.'

Mr Hancock took aim at the Sunday Times' suggestion that over-70s were in the group who were initially told to isolate for 12 weeks.

But people pointed out Boris Johnson's Downing Street address on March 16 lumped the over-70s with those suffering the most serious health problems.

The Prime Minister then said: 'In a few days time, by this coming weekend it will be necessary to go further and to ensure that those with the most serious health conditions are largely shielded from social contact for around 12-weeks.

'Again, the reason for doing this in the next few days rather than earlier or later is that this is going to be very disruptive for people who have such conditions.'

'This advice about avoiding all social contact is particularly important for people over 70, for pregnant women and for those with some health conditions.'

The Department of Health has been approached by MailOnline for comment.

Baroness Ros Altmann has said a requirement for older people to remain in lockdown longer as restrictions are lifted for the rest of the country would be 'age discrimination'.

Speaking to Sky News, she said: 'Using an age-based criteria would be fundamentally wrong and could potentially cost the lives of many people, and risk social unrest.'

The life peer and former work and pensions minister added that 'many' older people have told her 'they would rebel and they would risk going to prison' if they were asked to isolate for longer than the rest of the population.
Over 150,000 Indians in the UAE, who wish to return home amid the coronavirus lockdown, have applied through the online registration process to the Indian missions here, according to media reports.

The Indian missions in the country last week opened online registration for the expatriates who wish to fly back home after getting stuck in the country amidst the lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.

As of 6 pm on Saturday, we received more than 150,000 registrations, Consul General of India in Dubai Vipul told the Gulf News on Saturday.

A quarter of them want to return to their homeland after losing their jobs, he said.

According to a report in the Khaleej Times on Sunday, about 40 per cent of the applicants who have registered are blue-collared workers and 20 per cent are working professionals.

Roughly 20 per cent have suffered job losses and about 55 per cent of the total applicants are from Kerala, Neeraj Aggarwal, Consul, Press, Information, Culture was quoted as saying in the report.

Aggarwal said that the figures would change as they are expecting registrations from workers from other states, including Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar.

About 10 per cent of the applicants are visit and tourist visa holders who got stranded here due to the ongoing lockdown in India.

India extended the ongoing lockdown by two weeks from May 4 to contain the spread of the coronavirus that has affected nearly 40,000 people in the country.

Aggarwal said that a small number of the applications constitute those from pregnant women and other medical cases.

Since the online registration process was launched, the Consulates website crashed several times due to the heavy rush of applicants wishing to register to fly back home.

The site has been working fine now though it took a lot of time for it to stabilise in the initial phase due to the heavy traffic, the counsel general said.

He said that the missions here have not yet received any information from the Indian government about the mode of transport of the stranded citizens, the prices of the tickets or how the COVID-19 test results of applicants would be assessed for their journey.

There are high-level discussions going on regarding these things, he said in the report.

Meanwhile, Norka (The Non Resident Keralites Affairs) said it has received a total of 398,000 applications from Keralites across the globe who wish to return home.

Of which, the highest numbers are from the UAE. At least 175,423 applicants have signed up from the UAE, Norka said in an official statement on Saturday.

It also received 54,305 registrations from Saudi Arabia, 2,437 from the UK, 2,255 from the US, and 1,958 from Ukraine from those who wish to return to India, the Khaleej Times reported. The coronavirus has infected 13,599 people and claimed 119 lives in the UAE, the Ministry of Health and Prevention said on Saturday.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 00:51:10|Editor: huaxia

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A man walks past an epidemic themed mural in downtown Los Angeles, the United States, April 10, 2020. (Xinhua)

There is no place today for politicians to endanger bilateral ties by spreading conspiracies or insulting language about virological origins, scholars on public health from the United States and China said in a letter.

WASHINGTON, May 2 (Xinhua) -- More than 70 scholars on public health from the United States and China have urged, in a signed letter, the two countries to coordinate responses to COVID-19.

"Officials in Washington, Beijing and beyond should stride cautiously, however. Avoid infusing the politics needed to quell COVID-19 with tactics designed to serve partisan interests," read the letter published by The New York Times on Friday.

"Your power should be focused on caring for others and marshaling resources for disease prevention -- not on deflecting blame, shoring up approval ratings, settling scores or demonizing people because of ethnicity or nationality," read the letter.

Diseases know no borders; supply chains are internationally-embedded; and crisis management necessitates intergovernmental collaboration and data sharing among scientists, the scholars said in the letter.

"Leaders should deploy their political capital wisely against COVID-19 for another reason. Relationships can take years to nurture and seconds to destroy, especially when a tweet circulates globally in an instant, a lesson we teach our students regularly," it read.

There is no place today for politicians to endanger bilateral ties by spreading conspiracies or insulting language about virological origins, it read.

Now is the time to rebuild global public health alliances, such as the World Health Organization, renew scientific exchanges and communicate respectfully across borders, the scholars noted.

The letter was initiated by Matthew Kohrman, an associate professor of medical anthropology at Stanford University; Chen Xi, an assistant professor at the Yale School of Public Health; and Scott Rozelle, a senior fellow at Stanford University. 
Billionaire US investor Warren Buffett said his company Berkshire Hathaway completely exited its stakes in the four major US airlines, as the coronavirus pandemic pushed the vaunted investment firm to $US49.7 billion ($77 billion) quarterly loss.

The sales of shares of Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines, American Airlines and United Airlines made up most of the company's $US6.5 billion in equity sales in April.

Warren Buffett speaks during the virtual Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting Credit:Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

During his live-streamed annual meeting, Buffett said the business has fundamentally changed following the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. He declined to blame the performance of the airline executives, saying they've done a good job of raising money to get through the crisis.

"The world changed for airlines and I wish them well," Buffett said Saturday. He clarified that he made the decision and that he lost money on his investments. "That was my mistake."
The Australian state of Queensland has recorded just one new positive COVID-19 test while having just 53 active cases across the state which is embracing its second day of stay-at-home restrictions being eased.

Health Minister Steven Miles announced on Sunday that the total was now 1,035 confirmed cases with 976 having recovered from the virus.

The patient from Brisbanes south is currently a case of unknown origin as authorities continue working to trace the source of infection.

Of the 53 active cases, 46 are located in the southeast of the state, four are in Cairns, two in Townsville, and one in the Wide Bay region. Nine people are in hospital with four in intensive care.

He said Queensland Health had purchased an additional 35 anaesthetic machines to deal with a worst-case scenario like New York in the United States.

We ordered these machines as part of our surge planning when we were anticipating the worst and Queensland could look like New York City today, Miles said.

We are fortunate it doesnt and we are going to continue that planning, so if the worst happens and we do have an outbreakwe can ensure every single Queenslander can access the care that they need.

He said the government would consider a staggered re-opening of schools, which remain closed until May 22 other than for students of essential workers and vulnerable children.

A return would be based on whether the current easing of stay-at-home restrictions had an upward effect on case numbers. The review is timed to occur by May 15.

In some ways, the restrictions that we eased this weekend will help inform that decision because..those restrictions were related to mobility, he said.

Once schools open up more, we will create a lot more mobility  parents taking kids to school, teachers in the classroom, kids going to and from school.

Its important for us to understand how that movement of people could affect the spread of the virus.

Queenslands first day of freedom on May 2 was not without its problems with police issuing more than 30 infringement notices for breaches of COVID-19 directions.

From Saturday, residents could travel up to 50km from their home to shop, visit a park or even go to the drive-in.

However, they could only move about with members of their household and they also had to retain social distancing measures.

Yet police still handed out 32 on-the-spot fines for $1,334 (US$856) on May 2.

So far 1,664 on-the-spot fines for CCP virus related infringements have been issued, totaling more than $2.19 million (US $1.41 million).

Meanwhile, passengers on a Qantas flight to Brisbane were being urged to contact Queensland health officials after one person was diagnosed with the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus commonly known as coronavirus.

Passengers on flight QF614 from Melbourne to Brisbane on April 22 are being told to call 13 HEALTH to speak to officials, who will ask about their health and give some advice.

We ask that passengers seated in rows 19, 20, 21, 22 and 23 of this flight, who have not already been contacted by Queensland Health call 13 HEALTH and advise that you were a passenger on this flight, a statement from the health department said.
Though Vanessa Herron is still working as a news editor at iHeartMedia and has side hustle as a screenwriter, her part-time job as an "essential employee" delivering food for DoorDash has been an important source of income for her family during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Still, Herron, who is in her 40s and has worked as a so-called "Dasher" for three years, has seen her hours wane. Before the pandemic, the mom of four, who lives in Thousand Oaks, California, worked up to 30 hours a week making deliveries and earned $20 to $25 an hour on average.

Herron and her family used the extra money she made from deliveries to pay for her kids' college expenses, cover monthly expenses and to add to their savings, she tells CNBC Make It.

Before the pandemic, "I would either wake up really early to write or write late at night when I got home. I would Dash between 10:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m.  hit the lunch rush. Then I would head into work for the evening shift as a news editor," she says.

However since "stay at home" orders went into effect, most restaurants have either closed or adjusted their hours, impacting the amount of time Herron can deliver and ultimately make money.

"I'm working fewer hours," she said. "That's in part because the restaurants are closing much earlier."

"A lot of places aren't open late."

The pandemic has also affected the work schedule of Herron's husband, Rick.

Herron says he previously worked as a Lyft driver but is not able to do so anymore. "That's been a huge issue for us significantly with our cash flow and our income," she says.

Herron and her husband had been saving up to start a production company, "but that definitely had to take a back seat to paying bills and surviving right now," she says. Since Rick can't drive right now, "he has virtually no income so the savings that we have, we've had to re-appropriate that toward making ends meet."

Rick has worked for DoorDash before and started to make deliveries again on Monday, Herron says. But she and Rick share one car, which limits time delivering for both.

"It's been a blessing though to have a bit of a cushion" from delivering food, she says.

Covid-19 has also impacted the way Herron makes her deliveries, she says.

Although Herron personally does not know of any DoorDash colleagues getting sick, many in the industry fear getting sick and have struggled with taking sick leave.

"I'm definitely much more aware of who is around me and taking precautions," she says. "I think all people who are still working in any way are going to be concerned about exposure and being extra careful."

To ensure safety, Herron practices social distancing when able, and while making a delivery, she wears a mask and gloves. (According to DoorDash, it has ordered over 5 million consumer-grade face masks as well as hand sanitizer, gloves and wipes for its employees.)

"You've got people who are still coming into the restaurants while I'm in the restaurant [waiting for a pickup], and they don't stand six feet away, standing right behind you," Herron says.

But "most customers are asking for no-contact deliveries and that has been a godsend for me. It makes it much easier, as far as the concerns we have about exposure."

Leaving deliveries on the doorstep and texting customers is also more efficient, Herron says.

"I do miss being able to smile at people and one moment of conversation with them, but you can still text and call and smile through the phone and let people know that you are a friendly person and you do care and you're a human being," she adds.

And while making deliveries during this time may be frightening, most customers have shown their appreciation  even at a distance.




Police resumed Sunday their search for the remains and personal belongings of victims of a fire that killed scores of workers in Icheon, south of Seoul.







The fire that broke out at a warehouse in Icheon, 80 kilometers south of Seoul, on Wednesday at 1:32 p.m. killed 38 and injured 10 others. Among those killed are one Chinese and two Kazakh workers.







Authorities believe the fire started on the second underground floor during construction work involving urethane, a combustible chemical used for insulation work, and the installation of a freight elevator.







Earlier on Sunday, investigators at Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency resumed their search to remove ashes and locate remains and belongings.







Police said they plan to focus on the basement floor during Sunday's search. In the previous search, police managed to find two pieces of remains and a mobile phone.







Police, meanwhile, said that this search is aimed at finding additional remains rather than identifying the exact cause of the accident.







"We may be able to find evidence that point to the cause of the fire but the key focus is finding remains. We have not yet set a date on a probe to identify the cause," an official said.







Icheon is home to SK hynix Inc., the world's second-largest maker of DRAM chips, as well as a large number of warehouses and storage facilities for retailers. (Yonhap)


As you might know, Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft (ETR:DBK) just kicked off its latest quarterly results with some very strong numbers. Results overall were solid, with revenues arriving 8.6% better than analyst forecasts at 6.2b. Higher revenues also resulted in substantially lower statutory losses which, at 0.01 per share, were 8.6% smaller than the analysts expected. Following the result, the analysts have updated their earnings model, and it would be good to know whether they think there's been a strong change in the company's prospects, or if it's business as usual. So we gathered the latest post-earnings forecasts to see what estimates suggest is in store for next year.

Check out our latest analysis for Deutsche Bank

XTRA:DBK Past and Future Earnings May 2nd 2020

Taking into account the latest results, Deutsche Bank's 16 analysts currently expect revenues in 2020 to be 21.6b, approximately in line with the last 12 months. Losses are predicted to fall substantially, shrinking 64% to 1.00. Before this earnings announcement, the analysts had been modelling revenues of 21.3b and losses of 0.96 per share in 2020. Overall it looks as though the analysts were a bit mixed on the latest consensus updates. Although sales forecasts held steady, the consensus also made a to its losses per share forecasts.

As a result, there was no major change to the consensus price target of 5.60, with the analysts implicitly confirming that the business looks to be performing in line with expectations, despite higher forecast losses. That's not the only conclusion we can draw from this data however, as some investors also like to consider the spread in estimates when evaluating analyst price targets. Currently, the most bullish analyst values Deutsche Bank at 8.00 per share, while the most bearish prices it at 3.00. Note the wide gap in analyst price targets? This implies to us that there is a fairly broad range of possible scenarios for the underlying business.

Story continues

Of course, another way to look at these forecasts is to place them into context against the industry itself. We would also point out that the forecast 1.5% revenue decline is better than the historical trend, which saw revenues shrink -8.6% annually over the past five years

The Bottom Line

The most important thing to note is the forecast of increased losses next year, suggesting all may not be well at Deutsche Bank. On the plus side, there were no major changes to revenue estimates; although forecasts imply revenues will perform worse than the wider industry. There was no real change to the consensus price target, suggesting that the intrinsic value of the business has not undergone any major changes with the latest estimates.

Following on from that line of thought, we think that the long-term prospects of the business are much more relevant than next year's earnings. We have forecasts for Deutsche Bank going out to 2023, and you can see them free on our platform here.

And what about risks? Every company has them, and we've spotted 1 warning sign for Deutsche Bank you should know about.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Neither Mairead McGuinness nor her European Union colleagues could ever have predicted the rapidly unfolding political shift of the last five years.

The drawn-out Brexit process, which stemmed from the United Kingdoms 2016 decision to depart the EU, was as tough a legislative battle, it seemed, as the majority working in the public sphere would encounter in the lifespan of their careers. It continues to rumble amid the ever-more looming likelihood of there being no winner at the end of it all.

Yet political decision-makers are now having to negotiate an indiscriminate cross-table threat which has worked its way through populations at a clinical rate. Like Brexit, the EUs elite have no prior experience of dealing with such an active beast.

But, contrary to the talks pertaining to the UKs withdrawal, McGuinness and co have had to treat the recent explosion as though fighting a bloody war.

There are always unforeseen events in politics, but not quite to the scale and magnitude of what were dealing with now, she says.

For many industries, including those which she has a strong grasp of, such as agriculture, Covid-19 couldnt have struck at a worse time, its claws acting as a destructive agent on an already struggling sector.

Beef and dairy producers have been at loggerheads with the Irish government for months over pricing and general impositions, while sheep meat farmers are gradually falling into the crevice too.

But, in the name of solidarity, McGuinness expects a strong stance from the European Commission on such matters, with the Brussels body continuing as per normal in far from typical conditions, video conferencing et al.

Our work continues, but it is very different. When youre in a room with people you make eye-contact and you can leave the room for a few minutes to have a chat about something. The dynamic is very different when youre physically present.

Health is clearly a more pressing concern and McGuinness rues the EUs lack of control over their nations domestic structures in this regard.

It was interesting that the Commission, in January, did try to pull together public procurement for PPE, but, at that stage, within member states, it wasnt seen to be a problem, she adds.

We have now escalated the activity to ensure that all member states get the help they need and when they need it because there was some concern originally that the European Union was slow to respond.

Our Spanish and Italian colleagues have had a really difficult number of weeks and one of the things weve been doing in our political group meetings is listening to the experiences of this disease - and its horrific. The numbers that have died are just appalling.

Its tragic in Ireland and I think were all really upset about the number of older people, in nursing homes, who are dying and theres a great sense of sadness across the country, but theres also a great sense of solidarity - people are doing what theyre being asked, even if it is very difficult. People are to be commended for that.

Even myself, after five weeks you begin to wonder what life will be like ever again. Will we have normality? People crave the ordinary things, going across the street to say hello to somebody as opposed to running away from them. It goes against all our natures.

******

For an organisation which promotes cooperation and in particular unity within the term community, there has been quite a bit of friction and a sense of desperation which could also be construed as selfishness.

Czech Republic seized medical equipment at Prague Airport which had been destined for Italy, while France did likewise in relation to a Swedish- purchased shipment. Meanwhile, the United States of America acquired goods bought by Germany just because they upped the stake.

The situation had threatened to spiral out of control, thus calling into question the future of the European Union and the principles upon which its built.

McGuinness has a strong opinion on how the affair played out.

To be fair, the President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, did pull rank on the matter and I suppose if there is an excuse to be made for that, I did hear a German Minister say that when a plane is in danger youre advised to put on your own mask first and then help others.

To some extent we could forgive the early response of people trying to look after their own, but I think where it lacked solidarity is where we didnt care about the others, where we only looked after ourselves.

There is no doubt that people are beginning to question in some member states the future of Europe, but on the other hand the real weakness at European level is not with the European Union itself, rather when it comes to public health its the member states who hold the power.

The European Union doesnt have responsibility for public health and were now seeing that if it had more responsibility it would have been better able to coordinate and direct from the centre with the member states.

We do have a conference in May on the future of Europe and I think one of the top items on the agenda will be how do we deal with public health crises which dont adhere to borders.

But, in terms of the EUs existence, on foot of the vitriol expressed towards the prospect of corona bonds and the potential for shared responsibility of the debt built in countries where Covid-19 has impacted vigorously, there is doubt.

The Netherlands, for one, are vocally against such a scenario and many others, including Hungarys controversial Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, feel the Unions structure ought to be overhauled.

Yet even at a time where there is such public dissension, McGuinness is heartened by certain samples of partnership, specifically Germanys acceptance of Italian patients.

The European Union, its credibility and the support it gets from countries does ebb and flow, she says. Certainly during the economic crisis there was great anger at the austerity we were put through in Ireland, but it has changed since because things have picked up and the Brexit solidarity shown to us was very important.

Europe has gone through many crises over the decades, including the meat and bone meal crisis which saw the establishment of food safety authorities and related regulations. We now have to replicate that in the health sector.

I think well come out of this wiser, but probably a little bit chasent as well. I raised the issue of pharmaceuticals before Christmas because I knew myself that there were some product lines that were becoming scarce.

It turns out that all of the basic ingredients for paracetamol come from either India or China. One of the things we were meant to be discussing was how were going to change that and there will be a new pharma strategy.

I have absolute conviction that well not be relying on third countries for what is a basic medicine, which is much needed.

******

There will, though, McGuinness admits, also have to be an investigation into how exactly the chronic virus manifested itself on such a broad scale. As of now, the understanding is that Covid-19 is a zoonosis in that it was passed from an animal to a human and subsequently transmitted person to person.

Speculation supposing other sources are unhelpful, she reckons, with all the EUs concentration focussed on the development of a vaccine which can cater for the disease worldover, as well as minimising the effects of the virus before such a juncture.

Leadership is so important, says McGuinness, and it has to address how we kill the flames of the pandemic and develop the vaccine that will keep us safe. But the vaccine has to be available to everyone.

These are steps along the way, were not there yet, but we need to bring them up and talk about them, rather than the President of the United States having a view on the WHO (World Health Organisation), which damages them, and the European Union having another view.

This plague of coronavirus, if it takes hold in Africa and other parts of the world where there are huge problems, it will go through those continents and peoples and show no mercy. Theyre ill-equipped, they dont have the tap, the water or the soap.

As (EU Commissioner for Health and Safety) Stella Kyriakides said, well have time to analyse and reflect on what we did well and did not do well. The focus today is on saving lives; theyre not statistics, theyre people.
Married At First Sight is Australia's most controversial reality show.

But it seems viewers are no longer surprised by the drama, with this year's season sparking just six complaints to the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

Whereas season six in 2019, featuring the likes Jessika Power, led to a slew of complaints, season seven failed to stir the same reaction or outrage.

Has the bubble burst? MAFS sparked just six complaints to the Australian Communications and Media Authority this year, suggesting viewers are no longer surprised by the drama. Pictured: Elizabeth Sobinoff and Seb Guilhaus

The ACMA, which monitors the regulation of broadcasting, confirmed they'd only received half a dozen complaints this year to The Sunday Telegraph.

Each complaint has been forwarded to Nine, with none investigated by the ACMA.

'Under the co-regulatory system, the ACMA will refer complainants to the broadcaster in the first instance,' the ACMA said in a statement.

'If the complainant does not receive a response from the broadcaster within 60 days, or is not satisfied with the response, they may refer their complaint to the ACMA. We have not yet received any complaints that have returned from the broadcaster.'

Complaints: It's understood that the six complaints ranged from the program's PG age classification to the mental health of the participants. Pictured: Hayley Vernon

It's understood that the six complaints ranged from the program's PG age classification to the mental health of the participants.

'Married At First Sight is a classified program. Some complaints have been about whether the program had been accurately classified,' the ACMA said in April.

They added: 'The ACMA has also received complaints expressing concern for the welfare of the contestants on the program.'

Are fans no longer surprised? This year's MAFS featured plenty of drama. Most memorably when David Canon used ex-'wife' Hayley Vernon's toothbrush to clean the toilet

Despite the lack of complaints, this year's MAFS featured plenty of drama.

Most memorably, David Canon used ex-'wife' Hayley Vernon's toothbrush to clean the toilet, which she tearfully admitted to using after the vile revenge act.

Although the scene prompted outrage on social media at the time, it appears not many felt compelled enough to officially complain, and quickly moved on.

It comes after viewers started to tune out of the ratings hit this year, with the finale delivering 1.951m viewers in April, down from 2.611m from the year before.
Just one in four Britons would feel safe returning to work amid the coronavirus crisis and more than half are opposed to schools reopening, three new polls have found.

Data published by Opinium found only 17 per cent of Britons agreed conditions had been met to considering reopening schools on May 8, with 67 per cent of those polled believing the opposite.

There was also opposition to the reopening of restaurants and pubs - with only 11 per cent agreeing Britain is at a place to open eateries and 9 per cent supporting a return to pubs.

Britons more strongly opposed a return to Stadium events and nightclubs, with 7 per cent saying conditions have been met for both to resume, compared to 84 per cent who did not.

Pictured: An elderly couple walk past a police patrol car in Greenwich Park, London on May 2

The data, collected between Wednesday and Friday last week for the Observer, came as a YouGov poll found only one in four adults would feel safe returning to work amid the current state of coronavirus.

The second poll, carried out on behalf of The Sunday Times, also noted 47 per cent of Britons opposed the reopening of schools in the next few weeks, compared to 28 per cent who did not.

And 59 per cent of people polled by the Sunday Express said they would not feel comfortable going out and do not plan to resume a normal life next month. Some 56 per cent of Britons approved of how the Government had handled the crisis.

An earlier poll of 1,500 people published by Redfield and Wilton Strategies on April 19 also found 54 per cent of Britons would not feel comfortable returning to work, with only 13 per cent agreeing they would feel safe travelling to London on May 7.

A majority 88 per cent of Britons added they would be comfortable attending a sporting event, compared to 12 per cent who would.

Psychologist Professor Dame Til Wykes of King's College London told the Guardian that 'it is likely that most people will feel anxious' as lockdown restrictions are lifted.

Pictured: A man wearing a face mask walks past rainbow graffiti in support of the NHS in Soho, central London

Pictured: Two people keep their distance as they walk past a Boots Pharmacy in London on May 2

Data published by Opinium for the Observer found only 17 per cent of Britons believed conditions had been met to considering reopening schools on May 8

She said: 'We have been given strict behavioural advice for more than five weeks, and when that is removed people will feel pressured, and individuals who had pre-existing anxiety, particularly about their health, will be worst hit. It will take quite a lot of psychological treatment to get over this.

'Different groups will be more affected than others, in particular the elderly and also parents, who will worry about their children bringing home the virus from schools.'

Boris Johnson said on Friday that Britain is 'past the peak' of coronavirus - which has killed 28,131 in the UK amid 183,500 confirmed cases.

Heading his first Downing Street briefing since falling ill, the Prime Minister said the UK is now on the 'downward slope' and praised Britons for having avoided an 'uncontrollable and catastrophic' epidemic.

But Mr Johnson dashed hopes of an imminent loosening, after making clear that a new flare-up of the deadly disease would be worse than the current crippling impact on the economy.

Boris Johnson said on Friday that Britain is 'past the peak' of coronavirus - which has killed 28,131 in the UK amid 183,500 confirmed cases

Data from Opinium also found 47 per cent of Britons polled approved of the Government's handling of the crisis, compared to 34 per cent who disagreed

Three in five Britons also disapproved of how the Government had handled access to PPE for NHS staff and essential workers, with only 16 per cent praising their response

An overwhelming 79 per cent of Britons said they have been following strict lockdown rules since they were introduced by Boris Johnson on March 23

He claimed that efforts to bolster the NHS had avoided a 'reasonable worst-case scenario' of 500,000 deaths if no action to combat the pandemic had been taken, likening it to digging a tunnel under an alpine mountain.

But in the strongest hint yet that restrictions will run into June and beyond, he added: 'It is vital that we do not now lose control and run slap into a second and even bigger mountain.'

The premier said a 'huge amount of work' was going into an 'exit strategy' with the first draft to be published next week. While it will offer a 'road map, a menu of options' for how the curbs could be eased in future, he cautioned that it would not give any timings as they would depend on the science.

He gave a strong hint that it will involve advising people to wear face coverings in some circumstances, saying they 'will be useful' as the situation evolves.

The Department of Health stopped giving a breakdown of how many COVID-19 deaths occurred in different settings, such as hospitals or care homes, yesterday

Mr Johnson also said he was 'not going to pretend' the government had not made any mistakes in the handling of the crisis, pointing to PPE supplies. He admitted they were learning lessons every day.

The Opinium poll found only 47 per cent of people approved of how the Government had responded to the coronavirus crisis.

Three in five Britons also disapproved of how the Government had handled access to PPE for NHS staff and essential workers, with only 16 per cent praising their response.

An overwhelming 79 per cent of Britons said they have been following strict lockdown rules since they were introduced by Mr Johnson on March 23.

However, 23 per cent admitted to heading to the shops for non-essentials and 21 per cent said they have left the house more than once per day for exercise.
Veteran actor Rishi Kapoors ashes were immersed in Banganga tank here on Sunday, his elder brother Randhir Kapoor said. Rishi Kapoor died at the age of 67 on April 30 at H N Reliance hospital in south Mumbai, after a two-year battle with leukaemia.

In pictures and videos doing the rounds online, Rishi Kapoors wife Neetu Kapoor, son Ranbir Kapoor with girlfriend Alia Bhatt, daughter Riddhima Kapoor Sahni and filmmaker Ayan Mukerji were seen immersing his ashes.

Randhir Kapoor said a prayer meet for the actor was held on Saturday. We did prayer meet yesterday. Today we immersed his ashes in Banganga as we havent received permission from the authorities to go to Haridwar, Randhir Kapoor told PTI.

Watch | Ranbir, Neetu immerse Rishi Kapoors ashes in Banganga, Alia Bhatt in attendance

A picture has gone viral on social media, where Rishi Kapoors actor-son Ranbir and wife Neetu are seen sitting next to his photograph. According to family sources, the actors daughter Riddhima Kapoor Sahni, who was unable to attend the funeral as she was travelling from Delhi by road, was present at the prayer meet. There were not many people, Only five-six family members, the insider said.

Also see | Rishi Kapoor prayer meet: Neetu Kapoor and Ranbir Kapoor pay tribute to veteran actor, see pic

Rishi Kapoor had returned to India last September after undergoing treatment for cancer in the US for almost a year. In February, he was hospitalised twice.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
The Court of Appeal in London has dismissed an application filed by ArcelorMittal seeking permission to appeal against the London High Court's judgment that refused a worldwide freezing order against the parent company of Essar Steel Ltd and members of promoter family.

"The Court of Appeal's decision given by Lord Justice Newey on April 21, 2020, concluded that Arcelor Mittal USA's (AMUSA) appeal had no real prospect of success and there was no other compelling reason for the Court of Appeal to hear it," Essar said in a statement.

The high court order of March 30 came as steelmaker ArcelorMittal looked to enforce a USD 1.5 billion arbitral award stemming from a soured supply agreement.

In an 81-page judgment, High Court Judge Andrew Henshaw had found no merit in the case being brought by ArcelorMittal to enforce a worldwide freeze on Essar's assets to protect them from "dissipation" while the former pursues parallel legal remedies.

"The (March 30) Judgment concluded that AMUSA had not even made out a good arguable case as regards its underlying claims. Further, the Judgment confirmed that there was no real risk of dissipation by Essar Global or the individuals of their assets and that Essar Global's prior dealings with regard to certain assets within the Essar portfolio had not been undertaken by it with the objective of defeating AMUSA's claim against other Essar entities," the statement said.

AMUSA had petitioned the court that the Essar Group which owed the former USD 1.5 billion in an earlier arbitration award had moved assets around in such a way as to take them out of the hands of the judgment creditors.

AMUSA's key argument that the Ruia family reclassified assets of Essar Steel in India so as to take them out of the balance sheet of the judgment debtor's books did not find favour with the court.

"We have consistently maintained that the judicial proceedings and the underlying claims of wrongdoing brought by AMUSA were totally ill-conceived and lacking any basis in fact or reality. We are relieved that the threat of wide-ranging and ill-conceived injunctions has been finally removed by the Court and that the underlying claims by AMUSA have been found, at this early stage, to be less than arguable," said Essar spokesperson.

The origins of the present dispute arise from an arbitration award that AMUSA obtained against Essar Steel Ltd, a Mauritius company, and a subsidiary of Essar Global. Essar Steel went into insolvency in Mauritius in 2019.

"AMUSA has repeatedly sought to frustrate the Essar Steel insolvency process and has launched spurious proceedings against other Essar entities and individuals in various jurisdictions, which have been equally unsuccessful," the statement said. "AMUSA's latest proceedings in England, are its third failed attempt to use foreign courts to circumvent the insolvency process in Mauritius."

It remains to be seen if AMUSA continues to pursue the proceedings in England given the recent injunction ruling. It has indicated that it intends to amend its present claim and has been permitted a short period to do so by the Court.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 3) Former senator Jinggoy Estrada was brought to the San Juan police station on Sunday over alleged violations of the COVID-19 community quarantine rules.

Estrada told CNN Philippines that he had been distributing relief goods to residents of the city when policemen in two patrol cars arrived at the scene and invited him to the local precinct.

The former lawmaker questioned why he had been "singled out" for the quarantine violation, when other organizations also supposedly conducted relief operations sans permits from the local government.

He added he has been distributing food assistance to San Juan residents for the past two weeks.

"Why are they singling me out? I think that is unfair. I've been a mayor here for nine years before. Gusto ko lang tumulong sa aking kababayan (I just wanted to help my countrymen)," Estrada said in an interview with CNN Philippines' Newsroom Weekend.

Estrada maintained he had been following health protocols including wearing a face mask and practicing social distancing rules while conducting the relief operation.

'No authority to be outside'

San Juan City Mayor Francis Zamora, for his part, said Estrada has not secured authority or permit to head out and conduct such activity.

Citing regulations from the Interior Department, Zamora said organizations or groups seeking to roll out relief operations must first coordinate with the local government.

"Why is this? So that the local government can help them in terms of monitoring and controlling the crowd, maintaining social distancing, and maintaining peace and order," Zamora told CNN Philippines in a separate interview.

Zamora revealed he has previously released a similar certificate for former San Juan Vice Mayor Janella Estrada, Jinggoy's daughter, when the latter expressed interest in conducting distribution of free medicine in the city.

"So it is not difficult for any group or person to apply for a certification," Zamora noted.

In a statement, Zamora also called the manner by which Estrada had been distributing bangus (milkfish) as unsanitary," with the fish not being put in any plastic or wrapper and thus possibly adding to the spread of the virus.

Citing videos and photos circulating online, the mayor also noted that Estrada did not observe social distancing while he handed out fish.

"This is not a local government directive. These are IATF (Inter-Agency Task Force) and DILG directives which we should all follow. And being a former lawmaker, being a former senator, he should be the first to follow the law," he told CNN Philippines.

'Politics behind arrest'

Estrada, however, pointed to local politics as the reason behind his arrest.

"Politics, local politics. That's about it," Estrada said. "Time and again, I've been telling him, wala munang pulitika (let's not delve into politics) at this time. Malayo pa ang eleksyon (the election is still far away), this is not the time to play politics. We are in a pandemic, we are in a crisis."

Moving forward, Estrada stressed that this will not prevent him from helping out fellow San Juan residents even if he has to go to the police station again.

"If that is the price I have to pay, so be it," he said.

Zamora promptly denied the politicking allegation in a statement, saying that the arrest has everything to do with law and order.

We are focusing all our efforts on eradicating COVID-19 in San Juan, not on politics, he said.

No criminal charges have been filed against the former senator or the residents who obtained the relief goods, according to the Philippine National Police.

PNP spokesperson Police Brigadier General Bernard Banac said, however, that they issued a stern warning to Estrada, reminding him to coordinate with the local government first and strictly adhere to physical distancing protocols if he intends to continue distributing relief goods during the enhanced community quarantine or ECQ.

The ECQ in the capital region and other COVID high-risk areas and provinces has been extended for another two weeks, with the number of cases still climbing by the day.

Hundreds of thousands of quarantine violators have been reported nationwide following the implementation of COVID-19 lockdowns, according to police data.

Philippine National Police chief Archie Gamboa also previously said that those found in violation of measures will face "immediate arrest without any warning." Gamboa said violators may be charged under a number of laws, including the Bayanihan to Heal as One Act.
DES MOINES  Betty Andrews is reminded these days of a well-known saying in the black community.

When white America catches a cold, black America gets pneumonia.

That phrase has become all too accurate during the global coronavirus pandemic, across the U.S. and in Iowa. Minority communities are bearing a disproportionate burden of COVID-19.

Latino Iowans make up just 6% of the states population but 23% of confirmed cases. Black Iowans make up just 4% of the states population but 13% of confirmed cases.

Those figures are according to U.S. Census and state public health data.

We tend to take on a large brunt of whats happening, said Andrews, who serves as president of the Iowa and Nebraska branch of the NAACP.

Outbreaks at food processing plants, where high shares of minority workers are employed, and a variety of socioeconomic factors are causing higher infection rates in minority communities, experts and advocates say.

In Iowa, the food processing plant outbreaks are the primary driver of spikes in the Latino infection rates. Outbreaks have occurred in at least a half-dozen plants throughout Iowa and just across the states borders, leading to hundreds of infections. Many plants  including Tyson in Waterloo  shut down to disinfect work areas and take steps to protect workers from further outbreaks. Some are back online.

Typically, employees at food processing plants work in close proximity along production lines. Such conditions are ripe for spread of the virus, which is highly contagious, especially when people are gathered close together indoors.

More than a third of animal slaughtering and processing workers in the U.S. are Latino, according to federal statistics.

It has nothing to do with DNA, said Joe Henry, political director for the Iowa chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens. It has everything to do with these buildings that are sweatshops. Theyre incubators for the virus. Its a death march for these workers every day going into these buildings.

Top officials at the companies that operate food processing plants say they are taking steps to protect the safety of their workers, and Gov. Kim Reynolds has said those leaders have assured her of the same. Companies say they have slowed production to allow workers to stand farther apart, installed barriers between workers, and staggered shifts and breaks so fewer workers are gathered at the same time.

But workers privately continue to share concerns about working conditions.

We need a coalition of Iowans to speak up about this, Henry said. We need to fight for the rights of these workers, for their safety and health and higher wages.

The black community was vulnerable before the coronavirus hit, making its impact, Andrews said. Black Americans have higher rates of obesity and diabetes, for example, according to federal statistics. Such health issues make individuals susceptible to the virus worst complications. Black Americans also experience higher rates of poverty, which also is tied to poorer health.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports other factors may include minority Americans living in densely populated areas and multi-generational homes, and a higher share of minorities in jails and prisons, all places where the virus can more rapidly spread.

A number of social reasons exist because of the dynamics of our country prior to this situation, and obviously we as Americans generally need to do a better job taking care of our health, Andrews said. And that is exacerbated when you have communities that are poor, which communities of color tend to be.

In minority communities, when a person contracts the virus the problems only multiply, advocates said. Getting tested and getting proper health care can be challenges.

Minority Iowans report difficulty getting tested, and some  especially those living in poverty  who become infected may not get proper care because they cant afford it or dont have a primary care doctor.

When youre talking about the communities that have access to less financial resources, that means they also have less access to consistent health care, Andrews said. So (theyre) not necessarily being able to communicate that (health care concern) initially because they dont necessarily have a relationship with a provider.

The CDCs first recommendation for public health officials to address the disparate impact is to ensure that communications about COVID-19 and its impact on different population groups is frequent, clear, transparent, and credible.

The NAACP in early April requested the state public health department report the racial and ethnic breakdowns of coronavirus cases. The state has been reporting those numbers.

But the state does not report the racial and ethnic breakdowns of coronavirus-related deaths, making it impossible for the public to know whether minority Iowans are dying at a higher rate than their neighbors.

Nor is the state reporting the racial and ethnic breakdowns of coronavirus testing, making it impossible for the public to know to what degree minority communities are being tested.

State officials said last week they may start reporting the breakdowns in virus-related deaths once they have sufficient data. They have not made a similar pledge about the testing numbers.
As Education Minister it is my job to take a national view of education and do everything possible to ensure our children are getting the best possible opportunities. I will continue working constructively with my state counterparts as they run their state school systems to support them with the best medical and education expert advice the federal government can offer. Mr Andrews is relying on the advice of Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton, who has warned restarting teaching in classrooms could jeopardise efforts to stop coronavirus transmission. Mr Tehan said Professor Sutton's advice was more cautious than that of the Australian Health Principles Protection Committee, which has recommended schools remain open. Like many of my colleagues  state and federal, no matter their political party  I have heard countless stories of families struggling to cope with juggling remote learning and remote working, as well as children in vulnerable circumstances suffering because of the situation the COVID pandemic has created, Mr Tehan said.

He had earlier said the Victorian Premier's reluctance to reopen schools was a clear "failure of leadership" and that he should be called out for his lack of a plan on returning children to classrooms. Ms Mikakos hit back at the federal frontbencher and called on Prime Minister Scott Morrison to clarify his government's position. Loading Mr Tehan's intervention comes after an expert group convened by Australia's chief scientist has found that almost half of Australia's students will have their educational outcomes damaged if existing remote learning arrangement continue long term. The attack threatened to derail the national consensus on a range of coronavirus issues, with Mr Morrison and Mr Andrews previously praising each other's leadership.

Ms Mikakos said schools would remain closed for a vast majority of students and teachers and that her government was following the advice of Professor Sutton. "I think Victorians understand who's been leading the effort in Victoria, how to keep them safe, to suppress the number of cases that we're seeing in Victoria, and that's certainly not been Dan Tehan," Ms Mikakos said. "We look forward to the Prime Minister coming out today and explaining whether Dan Tehan's comments reflect the position of his government. I refer you to the comments the Prime Minister himself made recently where he encouraged Victorian parents to take the advice of the Victorian Premier." Mr Tehan's attack on Mr Andrews came an hour before Ms Mikakos revealed a teacher at Meadowglen Primary School in Epping had tested positive to COVID-19, and that the school would be closed until Wednesday.

"I'm sure Dan Tehan would like to have that knowledge ... before making those remarks earlier today," Ms Mikakos said. "Everybody wants to see kids back in the classroom as quickly as possible  what we don't want is the mixed messages about whether it is safe." Mr Tehan said Professor Sutton was a part of the national expert panel that had advised it was safe for children to return to school with the correct protocols. "This is a question for Dan Andrews," Mr Tehan told the ABC's Insiders program. "Our national medical advice has been consistent right throughout this: it's safe for schools to open and it's safe for teachers to be in the classroom when the right protocols are in place.

"That same chief health officer is on the national medical expert panel, and that national medical expert panel says that it's safe for children to be at school and it's safe for teachers to be at school with the right protocols." Mr Tehan said other state and territory leaders  including South Australian Premier Steven Marshall, West Australian Premier Mark McGowan and Northern Territory Chief Minister Michael Gunner  had taken a sledgehammer to COVID-19 without doing the same to the schools system, like Mr Andrews. He said NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk also had plans to reopen their schools in the coming weeks. "We have one premier in particular who is jeopardising the national consensus on this," Mr Tehan said.

"What has Gladys done? She now has a plan to open her schools and she has started opening her schools. Yet here in Victoria, we don't have one. We have nothing. And it is the children ultimately in the end, and those most disadvantaged, who are suffering. "And I think it's time that we seriously call Dan Andrews out on this. "What we've seen is outstanding leadership from Michael Gunner, from Steven Marshall and Mark McGowan. They're two Labor and one Liberal  this isn't political. What they should do is listen to the medical experts, and then the premiers should listen to the medical experts." Victorian Opposition Leader Michael O'Brien said Mr Andrews should explain why the state was not following in the footsteps of the rest of the country in easing strict stay-at-home restrictions, or explaining when restrictions could be wound back. "Daniel Andrews might try to make a virtue of having a very tough position when it comes to restrictions, and I don't know that he knows how to walk back from that even when the circumstances permit," Mr O'Brien said.

"The national cabinet decision has been brought forward to Friday and Daniel Andrews is still saying, I don't care what's decided there, I'm not going to be making decisions until Monday. That's stubbornness, that's pigheadedness." Mr Andrews on Sunday refused to weigh in, but Victorian Education Minister and Deputy Premier James Merlino took a swipe at the federal government on Twitter. "13 new cases of coronavirus in Victoria, including one at school," he posted. "The federal government should spend less time playing politics and discrediting the amazing work our teachers, staff and parents are doing during this challenging time." "We are facing a national health crisis - it would be better if they turned their attention to that." Federal Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese called for the Morrison government to leave the responsibility of when to reopen schools to the states and territories.

"My concern here is the Prime Minister one day is saying it's up to the states and territories, and the next day offering advice and making suggestions that are contrary to the advice of the states and territories," the Labor leader told Sky News on Sunday morning. "I think what parents want, and what they tell me, is they want clarity. They want clear advice about when schools will go back so they can plan their own lives. "I think we should listen to the medical advice, I dont think what we should do is have political leaders giving different advice [on] different days. "I think what that does is create confusion; it makes it impossible for parents to plan in terms of their own work patterns." Federal opposition education spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek said parents should follow the medical advice, but "we don't need the federal education minister trying to bully and harass state education ministers and state governments".
Florida Police: Body of Missing Toddler Found in Lake Close to Home

A missing 2-year-old girl who was the subject of an intense search in Florida was found dead in a lake close to her home, said the Tampa Police Department.

Lorie Thermidor was last seen at about 3:40 p.m. on Friday near the Hillsborough-Pasco county line, officials told the Tampa Bay Times. Authorities said she may have left her home and walked into a wooded area across the street from her home.

Sadly, the child was found in the lake deceased, wrote Tampa police in an update.

Minutes after the girl went missing, her father realized she was gone and began a search for her, police told WTSP.

After she was reported missing, a search quickly grew.

>>UPDATE>>

Sadly, the child was found in the lake deceased.

******

**MISSING CHILD ALERT**2 yr old Lori Thermidor. Last seen 5/1/20 at approx. 3:30 P.M. in the 19400 blk of Redwood Point Dr. Tampa FL. Last seen wearing pink w/ grey polka dot pajamas. She is 30 tall / 40 pounds. pic.twitter.com/Q4SsGQSRUr  TampaPD (@TampaPD) May 2, 2020

Dozens of volunteers joined officers, who also deployed two bloodhounds and a police helicopter. Divers were sent into the lake near the home, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

No other details are available at this time.
Part of the original six Avengers, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow has one of the most important roles in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The actor is headlining her own stand-alone film that was supposed to land May 1 but has been delayed due to coronavirus pandemic.

However, not many know that Scarlett was not the first choice to play Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow. In an interview with Parade magazine, she has accepted that she was not the first choice to play thee iconic character. The Oscar-winning actor said she had a wonderful meeting with Iron Man 2 director Jon Favreau but the role went to Emily Blunt. I was really excited to work with him, Johansson said about Favreau. So I said, If this doesnt work out, Im an actor for hire, so call me anytime. 

Emily Blunt, however, could not play the part due to a scheduling conflict with another film -- the Jack Black starrer Gullivers Travels. She also bowed out from playing Peggy Carter in Captain America: The First Avenger later.

Scarlett added that when she got the role after being passed over initially, she appreciated it more, The best call you can receive is after you are rejected for something and then you get it. You appreciate it more. Ive basically made a career out of being second choice.

She also spoke about that exact moment when she realized what a phenomenon Marvel Cinematic Universe was turning out to be. While filming a scene in 2012s The Avengers, Black Widow, Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye and the Hulk stand in a circle while gearing up for battle.

Its the iconic hero shot, she said. We were all thinking, This is crazy!, because these worlds were coming together. Were still processing how much of an impact these movies have had.

Her ninth and final Marvel film is Black Widow, which has now been postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Now its scheduled for a November 6 release.
US President Donald Trump on Saturday said he is glad to see that North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, who was reported to be suffering from some serious health complication, was "back and well"."I, for one, am glad to see he is back, and well!" Trump tweetd.

I, for one, am glad to see he is back, and well! https://t.co/mIWVeRMnOJ  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 2, 2020

The US president also retweeted photos of Kim attending a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Sunchon Phosphatic Fertilizer Factory. The photos were tweeted by North Korean medai on Saturday. It is to be noted that Kim was not seen in public for the 20 days leading to several speculations about his well-being. Kim, who was last seen on April 11, attended a ceremony marking the completion of a fertilizer plant in Sunchon to put all speculations to rest.

Earlier, South Korean and US officials had said that Kim is missing from public life because he is sheltering himself from the coronavirus pandemic. Interestingly, North Korea claims it has yet to identify a single case of COVID-19.

South Korean unification minister, Kim Yeon-chul, said that Kim decided to skip anniversary event, which is the most important public event in North Korea, as a precautionary measure against coronavirus. Kim did not attend a ceremony held on April 15 to mark the anniversary of the birth of his grandfather  and North Koreas founder  Kim Il-sung.

We have intelligence capacity that allows us to say confidently that there are no unusual signs [in North Korea], Kim Yeon-chul told a parliamentary hearing.

US officials had also claimed that Kim had taken his private train to the east coast resort town of Wonsan to protect himself from coronavirus.
Deviating from the Centre's



order granting certain relaxations in 'Red' zones during the third phase of the coronavirus-induced lockdown beginning on Monday, the Gujarat government has decided against giving any relief in six cities and as many municipalities due to high number of cases.

A senior official said on Sunday that Chief Minister Vijay Rupani had decided against granting any relief in the municipal limits of Ahmemdabad, Surat, Vadodara, Gandhinagar and Bhavnagar--all in 'Red' zone, and Rajkot municipal corporation which falls under 'Orange' zone.

"No relaxation will be allowed in the lockdown rules for another two weeks in municipal corporations of Ahmemdabad, Surat, Vadodara, Gandhinagar, and Bhavnagar, as well as six municipalities of Botad, Bopal, Khabhnat, Bareja, Godhra and Umreth which are under red zone (as per the Centre's notification).

"No relaxation will be allowed in Rajkot municipal corporation as well, which is under orange zone. This was decided by Chief Minister Vijay Rupani at a high-level meeting held on Saturday," said Ashwani Kumar, Secretary to Chief Minister, in a press briefing via video conferencing.

As on Saturday, Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Surat together accounted for over 4,500 of the total 5,054 COVID-19 cases in Gujarat.

Though the Centre has allowed standalone shops and private offices (with 33 per cent staff) to remain open in 'Red' zones outside containment areas, the state government has decided against such relaxation within the limits of the above six municipal corporations and as many municipalities.

"Except the shops selling essential items, no shops will be allowed to remain open in the above-mentioned areas. No offices will also be allowed to remain open," Kumar said.

No paan shops selling cigarettes, paan masala, gutkha, or permit liquor shops will be allowed to operate in any part of the state irrespective of the zones during the lockdown period, he said.

The state government has, however ,allowed industries to resume operations in rural areas, two municipal corporations and 156 municipalities on the condition of adhering to social distancing norms, Kumar added.

The government has allowed opening of salons, beauty parlours and tea shops in 'Orange' and 'Green' zones, the official said.

Taxis and cab services are also allowed in these zones on the condition that only two passengers, besides driver, can travel.

Kumar further said the government had decided to restrict people from coming out of their houses between 7 pm and 7 am in the areas placed under the strict lockdown.

State transport buses have been allowed to operate in green zones with 50 per cent capacity, Kumar said.

"Drivers and conductors will face action if they ferry more than 30 passengers in one bus," he said.

Relaxation has been given to industries to operate in rural areas as well as municipal corporations of Junagadh and Jamnagar.

"They will have to operate in a staggered manner, and have to screen workers and maintain social distancing norms," he added.

Kumar also said that permissions and passes will not be required to be renewed for the third phase of the lockdown, which is slated to remain in force till May 17, as they will be considered valid without the need to apply afresh.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Kate Middleton supported a family friend by opting for a 70s inspired chevron jumper by her brand as she chatted with midwives and new mothers in a virtual call.

The Duchess of Cambridge, 38, made the virtual visit to the maternity unity in Kingston earlier this week, with a clip of her virtual calls released on the Kensington Royal Instagram yesterday.

The mother-of-three, who is currently isolating with her husband Prince William, 37, and their children, George, six, Charlotte, five, and Louis, two, in Anmer Hall in Norfolk, selected a jazzy baby blue 275 jumper by British designer Tabitha Ward as she took part in the video call.

The royal has showcased Tabitha's designs on several occasions, most recently in January during her Five Questions survey, with the designer a close friend of her sister Pippa, 36.

Kate Middleton, 38, opted to support her family friend Tabitha Webb, donning a jumper from the designer's brand during a virtual call with a maternity unit in Kingston

Kate made the virtual visit to the maternity unit in Kingston on Friday, with a video of her virtual calls released on the Kensington Royal Instagram yesterday.

The natural beauty wore her hair in a bouncy half up-do, and kept her make up natural for the occasion.

The royal complemented the bold jumper with a simple set of gold hoop earrings.

The jumper, which is still available to buy online, is described as 'a gorgeous knit in a baby blue' with a chevron design.

The cosy baby blue 275 knit is described online as 'the perfect little Spring addition to your wardrobe'

The brand describe it as 'the perfect little Spring addition to your wardrobe', advising shoppers 'wear with your favourite denim or a skirt for an evening out'.

The royal has showcased Tabitha's designs on several occasions, most recently wearing a jazzy electric blue 295 blouse while launching her Early Years survey in January.

Meanwhile she also wore her flower print Penelope dress for her visit to the tiny island of Tuvalu on the last day of the nine-day Diamond Jubilee tour of the South Pacific with husband Prince William in 2012.

The designer is a close friend of Kate's sister Pippa, who teamed up with Tabitha to create a two-piece limited edition collection to raise funds for the British Heart Foundation in 2015.

Kate (right) gushed her congratulations to Rebecca Attwood and John Gill (left) and took great interest in how the birth had gone

Footage of the call to Kingston Hospital, South-West London, where the Duchess worked last November, has been released to highlight mental health issues that can affect new mothers.

Kate gushed her congratulations to Rebecca Attwood and took great interest in how the birth had gone during the morale-boosting 'virtual' return visit to the NHS maternity unit where she previously spent two days on a work placement.

Rebecca, from Raynes Park in South-West London, said: 'Having a surprise conversation with the Duchess of Cambridge after two hours' sleep was particularly surreal.

'The Duchess asked us about having a baby at such an unusual time, and our experience on the maternity ward was that all the midwives made it as normal as possible  apart from the masks!'

After being told that Rebecca's son Max (left) had arrived at 10pm the previous night, Kate (right) exclaimed: 'My goodness, you must be exhausted'

To demonstrate the conditions they are now working under, lead midwife Sam Frewin appeared on the video call wearing a mask and plastic apron. 'I'm smiling, can you tell?' she joked.

Taking a closer look, Kate laughed: 'With your eyes, I can.'

Kate asked the midwives: 'What are the main concerns that mothers and potential mothers feel?'

Jo Doumouchtsi, a mental health midwife, told her there had been an increase in referrals for anxiety and extra worries about catching Covid-19 while in hospital.
Egypts prestigious Al-Azhar mosque said it would live stream the evening Tarwaeeh prayers on Facebook and Youtube amid a suspension of communal prayers over coronavirus fears.

Taraweeh prayers  typically performed at mosques after the fast-breaking meals during the holy month of Ramadan - will be performed at Al-Azhar mosque during the last ten days of Ramadan but will only be restricted to the mosques imams and workers.

The prayers will be streamed live on the mosques official Facebook page and Youtube channel, Al-Azhar said in its statement.



The last ten days of Ramadan are considered the holiest and most spiritual by Muslims. During them, believers observe Laylat Al Qadr which marks the night on which God revealed the Quran to the Prophet Mohammed for the first time.

Egypt is seeing a Ramadan like never before this year with restrictions to contain the coronavirus pandemic in place including an extended nighttime curfew.

Egypt has banned all congregational religious activities, including the regular communal prayers at mosques, since 21 March.

Other traditional public activities that used to take place in Ramadan, such as charity iftar tables for the poor to break their fast, have also been suspended. The ban also applies to itikaf ritual in which believers seclude themselves in mosques for an extended period.

On Saturday, Egypts religious endowments ministry said it would start Sunday the radio broadcasting of the evening and the Taraweeh prayers from Cairos famous Mosque of Amr Ibn Al-As.

According to the ministry, the prayers will only be attended by the mosques imam and two mosque workers, and will be broadcast on Al-Quran Al-Kareem radio station.

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Over the past day, two troops were injured amid almost two dozen shellings.

Russian occupation forces in eastern Ukraine 23 times violated the ceasefire on May 2.

Two Ukrainian troops were injured in enemy shelling, reads the morning update by the Joint Forces Operation Command.

The enemy employed 120 mm and 82 mm mortars, proscribed by the Minsk agreements, as well as grenade launchers of various types, UAVs, heavy machine guns, and small arms.

In a resolute response, Ukrainian forces brought the attack to a halt.

Read alsoUkrainian soldier wounded in Donbas as enemy drops grenade from UAV on JF positions

According to intelligence data, one invader was killed and at least two were injured over the past day.

Since day-start on Sunday, the enemy opened fire near Shyrokyne and Bohdanivka. Ukrainian forces returned fire, the report reads.

No losses were reported in Joint Forces on May 3 and neither were there any coronavirus cases.
Dozens of Rohingya believed to be from one of several boats floating in the Bay of Bengal for weeks have landed on the coast of southern Bangladesh, according to officials, as fears grow over hundreds of people stuck at sea on vessels because of coronavirus restrictions.

Security officials quoted by news agencies said on Sunday that a small boat carrying about 40 people, including starving women and children, had come ashore the previous day.

Local people tipped off the coastguard and 29 people were arrested and about 10 fled, police and security officials said.

Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project monitoring group, said the group that landed on Saturday had likely come on a small boat from one of the larger vessels still at sea, believed to be carrying hundreds of people.

The two trawlers  carrying an estimated 500 Rohingya women, men and children  were stuck in the Bay of Bengal after being rejected by Malaysia, which has imposed restrictions on all boats in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

Bangladesh has refused to let the fishing boats land on its territory despite United Nations calls to allow them in as a powerful storm bears down on the region.

Shobbir Ahmed, a Rohingya at one of the refugee camps in southeast Bangladeshs Coxs Bazar told AFP news agency that two of his daughters who had been on the stranded boats were among those who landed on Saturday.

He said the women, aged 19 and 17, had boarded a trawler two months ago trying to get to Malaysia. Ahmed said he paid a Rohingya intermediary about $2,230 for them to make the trip.

Rohingya refugees walk to the shore with his belongings after crossing the Bangladesh-Myanmar border by boat through the Bay of Bengal in Teknaf, Bangladesh [File: Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters]

Security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the rescued Rohingya would be sent to the island of Bhashan Char in the Bay of Bengal where Bangladesh has built shelters for some 100,000 refugees.

The proposed relocation to the island in the cyclone-prone coastal belt has drawn criticism from rights groups and sparked protests by the Rohingya.

There are about one million Rohingya in camps in Bangladesh, the majority of whom fled a brutal military crackdown in Myanmar in 2017.

Bangladesh Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen said last month that the country would not allow the Rohingya boats into its territory.

His declaration came after more than 60 Rohingya died on a boat that waited at sea for two months before it could dock.

For years, Rohingya from Myanmar and Bangladesh have fled by boat for Thailand and Malaysia when the seas are calm between October and April. Hundreds died in 2015 after a crackdown in Thailand led smugglers to abandon their human cargo at sea.
A Connecticut man wanted by Waterbury police is facing 11 charges in connection with two shootings in the Brass City.

Joseph Grimsley, 29, is accused of shooting at an occupied vehicle at 7:54 a.m. on Friday in the area of Pine Street and Cliff streets.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 07:17:09|Editor: huaxia

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Herdsman Zhaxi (1st R) chats with friends on an alpine pasture at Zangpu Village in Zhaxizom Township of Tingri County, southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, April 23, 2020. Zhaxi and his family live in the plateau village Zangpu, which is the nearest administrative village to the world's highest peak Mount Qomolangma. Back to 2008, then 26-year-old Zhaxi, fell in love with Deden, a girl six years younger than him. Zhaxi decided to marry Deden while living apart from his original large family that owned a family asset of more than 200 yaks. Splitting from the family, Zhaxi only got seven yaks. For herdsmen like Zhaxi who mainly make a living by grazing yaks, owning less than ten yaks heralds a difficult time for future. Dwelling in a rented small house that could only fit a bed, Zhaxi and his wife barely made ends meet by merely grazing livestock. In order to support the family, Zhaxi applied for a loan to buy a truck to carry out transport business. For years, Zhaxi worked very hard and often drove around the clock to make money. Several years ago, the local government lent a helping hand to Zhaxi's family. In 2015, Zhaxi and his family had got a chance to move into a new house built by the local government for the low-income families in the village. The village also set up a cooperative to integrate local herdsmen's yaks so as to provide orderly yak services to mountain climbers. This service brings in more than 300,000 yuan (about 42,492 US dollars) of revenue to the village annually and pays dividend to herdsmen including Zhaxi. Thanks to his hard work and local poverty alleviation efforts, Zhaxi's family has shaken off poverty. (Xinhua/Jigme Dorje)
The coronavirus pandemic could jeopardise vaccination campaigns in the Middle East and North Africa, UNICEF warned Sunday, saying millions of children could miss out on polio and measles immunisations.

The UN agency said most countries in the region were continuing with routine campaigns, under strict controls to prevent the spread of the virus.

But it warned that some vaccination campaigns had been suspended as health workers were diverted to fighting the COVID-19 illness.

For latest updates on coronavirus outbreak, click here

"As a result, one in five children or 10 million children under the age of five risk missing their polio vaccination," it said in a statement.

"Nearly 4.5 million children under the age of 15 risk missing their measles vaccination."

Follow DH Coronavirus page for all the latest updates

Ted Chaiban, UNICEF's regional director, said it was "absolutely critical that every child gets immunised against deadly diseases including polio, measles, diphtheria and hepatitis".

He said measures including disinfection, protective clothing and social distancing meant that "immunisation for children is possible even in the time of COVID".

UNICEF and the World Health Organization warned in mid-April that around 117 million children worldwide risked contracting measles as dozens of countries curtailed vaccination programmes to battle the pandemic.

The head of the global organisation fighting polio told AFP in early April that the novel coronavirus had dealt an unprecedented blow to mass immunisation drives, risking a resurgence of the disease.
'It's crazy because she is my child': Rochelle Humes reveals her daughter Valentina, 4, has asthma but 'wouldn't know what to do' if she had an attack
WASHINGTON, May 3, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- U.S. Small Business Administration Administrator Jovita Carranza and U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven T. Mnuchin today issued the following statement on the success of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP):

"The Paycheck Protection Program is providing critical support to millions of small businesses and tens of millions of hardworking Americans.

"Since Round 2 of PPP loan processing began on April 27, 2.2 million loans have been made to small businesses which surpasses the number of all loans made in PPP Round 1. The total value of these 2.2 million loans is over $175 billion. Notably, the average loan size in Round 2 is $79,000, yet another indicator that the program is broadly based and assisting the smallest of small businesses.

"Nearly 500,000 of the loans were made by lenders with less than $1 billion in assets and non-banks. These lenders include Community Development Financial Institutions, Certified Development Companies, Microlenders, Farm Credit lending institutions, and FinTechs. Over 850,000 loansabout one third of the 2.2 million loanswere made by lenders with $10 billion of assets or less.

"Since the launch of PPP on April 3, SBA has processed over 3.8 million loans for more than half a trillion dollars of economic support in less than one month.

"SBA systems are processing loans so lenders can disburse funds quickly. We encourage all eligible lenders to participate and all eligible borrowers that need this assistance to work with an approved lender to apply.

"We are fully committed to ensuring that American workers and small businesses continue to get the resources they need to get through this challenging time."

Click here to view the data

About the U.S. Small Business Administration

The U.S. Small Business Administration makes the American dream of business ownership a reality. As the only go-to resource and voice for small businesses backed by the strength of the federal government, the SBA empowers entrepreneurs and small business owners with the resources and support they need to start, grow or expand their businesses, or recover from a declared disaster. It delivers services through an extensive network of SBA field offices and partnerships with public and private organizations. To learn more, visit www.sba.gov.

Contact: [email protected], (202) 205-7036

Follow us on Twitter , Facebook , Blogs & Instagram

Release Number: 20-37

SOURCE U.S. Small Business Administration

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Yuliaa Andreichenko, 26, of Citrus Heights, California, was arrested in Hawaii along with her newlywed husband after allegedly flouting state's mandatory quarantine rules

A California couple honeymooning in Hawaii were arrested by local authorities for allegedly violating mandatory 14-day quarantine rules for out-of-state visitors.

Borice Leouskiy, 20, and his new wife, Yuliia Andreichenko, 26, of Citrus Heights, California, were arrested for allegedly flouting quarantine rules repeatedly while staying at a hotel in Waikiki.

The couples arrest was announced in a statement released by the Hawaii attorney generals office titled From the honeymoon suite to cell block.

Hawaii authorities said the couple scoffed at the hotel manager who warned them of the states mandatory quarantine rules for visitors.

Leouskiy, a Ukrainian national, and his wife, a naturalized American citizen who grew up in Ukraine, were first informed of the quarantine requirements by the hotel manager when they checked in just after 10pm on Wednesday, authorities said.

They reportedly disputed the manager, saying they were told by airport screeners that they were under no such obligations to shelter in place.

The couple said they planned to visit friends and go to parks and beaches and that the airport screeners told them this was acceptable, investigators said.

But when the hotel manager informed them of the quarantine rules, they allegedly left the hotel.

After midnight, they returned to the hotel with pizza. They then told the manager they were allowed to wander outside to buy food.

The hotel then asked the couple to sign a statement acknowledging they understood the quarantine regulations, but they refused, according to the statement.

Newlyweds from California were arrested in Hawaii for allegedly violating the state's mandatory 14-day quarantine for visitors. The above image is a stock photo of Waikiki

State authorities identified the couple as Borice Leouskiy, 20, and his new wife, Yuliia Andreichenko, 26, of Citrus Heights, California

With the majority of Hawaiis COVID-19 cases linked to travel, it is critical that we further mitigate the spread of the virus by both residents and visitors who are coming from out-of-state, state officials said in their statement.

This plan was developed in collaboration with our county mayors and Hawaiis business, community and visitor industry leaders.

The next morning, the hotel managers learned the couple had once again left their rooms.

Upon returning to the hotel, they were once again told about the rules.

After allegedly protesting, the hotel notified investigators, who arrived at the hotel and placed the couple under arrest.

Leouskiy and Andreichenko have been charged with unsworn falsification to authority and violation of the 14-day quarantine.

They face maximum penalties of a $5,000 fine and up to a year in jail.

There have been 619 cases of coronavirus in Hawaii and 16 people have died.

Governor David Ige has extended the states stay-at-home order through May 31. A 14-day quarantine for travelers arriving in the state also remains in effect.

Hawaii Lieutenant Governor Josh Green said Friday the state is moving into 'Phase 2' of its effort against the coronavirus now that it has successfully reduced the rate of new infections and 'flattened the curve.'

Green said in a video posted on social media that low-risk activities like elective medical procedures are resuming and officials in the next few weeks will consider authorizing medium-risk activities.

'Can our gyms open? Can restaurants that do social distancing open? Thats what were working on,' Green said.

The next step after these activities would be 'higher risk stuff' like large gatherings of people and bars, he said.
A professor at Imperial College London claims there may never be a coronavirus vaccine and that governments will be left to respond to future outbreaks of the pathogen with regional or national lockdowns.

Dr David Nabarro, a special envoy to the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Covid-19, said no 'absolute assumption' can be made 'that a vaccine will appear at all'.

The global health professor argued that 'high hopes' are 'dashed' because scientists are 'dealing with biological systems, we're not dealing with mechanical systems'.

He added that restrictions to movement 'may apply to parts of a country, or it may even apply to a whole country' in the face of another outbreak.

Dr David Nabarro, a special envoy to the World Health Organisation, said no 'absolute assumption' can be made 'that a vaccine will appear at all' (pictured, in Geneva, January 2017)

The professor said lockdowns 'may apply to parts of a country, or it may even apply to a whole country' in a future outbreak (pictured, an Aylesbury shop selling face masks, May 1, 2020)

Dr Nabarro's intervention comes as the British public increasingly turn to scientists under huge pressure to develop a vaccine for an end to the pandemic.

Already a team at Oxford University are racing to test a vaccine made from a chimpanzee virus. In the US, scientists are trying a different vaccine.

Ministers have signalled that the quarantining of the elderly would only occur if a vaccine were developed. It is estimated this could take at least one year.

Dr Nabarro, who has warned that people can expect to wear face masks in the future, told CNN:' There are some viruses that we still do not have vaccines against.

'We can't make an absolute assumption that a vaccine will appear at all, or if it does appear, whether it will pass all the tests of efficacy and safety.

Dr Nabarro of Imperial College London argued 'high hopes' are 'dashed' because scientists are 'dealing with biological systems, not mechanical systems' (pictured, in Geneva, May 2017)

Dr Nabarro's intervention comes as the British public increasingly turn to scientists under huge pressure to develop a vaccine for an end to the pandemic (pictured, a car driving through a coronavirus test centre at Leicester City's King Power Stadium, May 2, 2020)

'You have high hopes, and then your hopes are dashed.

'We're dealing with biological systems, we're not dealing with mechanical systems. It really depends so much on how the body reacts.'

Dr Nabarro suggested that lockdowns, many of which are in the process of gradually being lifted by governments, could be implemented at any moment.

'From time to time there will be outbreaks,' he said. 'Movement will be restricted and that may apply to parts of a country, or it may even apply to a whole country.'

Michael Gove told a coronavirus press briefing of the Government's so-called 'whack-a-mole' policy, which involves gradually easing the lockdown.

Restrictions can be quickly snapped back into effect in light of future outbreaks.

The UK has announced 315 new coronavirus deaths today, bringing total fatalities to 28,446

A new interactive map lays bare the coronavirus postcode lottery and reveals sprawling areas in Wales, the South West and East England which have recorded zero deaths

Imperial College London encouraged the Government to pursue a lockdown after it projected that half a million people could die if no action was taken.

It has led to the furloughing of millions of workers and the closure of huge swathes of the economy - chiefly in food, retail, hospitality, travel, and manufacturing.

Cabinet Ministers are quick to say that the lockdown has saved lives. So far, no concrete proof backing the claim has been presented.

Meanwhile, economists have estimated that the policy could be costing Britain 2.4billion per day. Others say the economic crisis is the most severe in 100 years.

Economists have estimated that the policy could be costing Britain 2.4billion per day (pictured, a deserted Oxford high street during Week Six of lockdown, May 2, 2020)

A Bank of England official recently warned that the UK economy is facing an extreme contraction, the likes of which may not have been felt in centuries.

The spiralling crisis has led to the repeated intervention of Lord Sumption, one of Britain's most distinguished historians and jurists.

In a piece for the Mail on Sunday, Lord Sumption called the continued locking up of the elderly a 'cruel mockery of basic human values'.

He criticised the Government's 'blind panic following the delivery of Imperial College London's Professor Neil Ferguson's statistical projections'.

A Bank of England official has warned that the UK economy is facing the most extreme crisis in centuries (pictured, a woman walking her dog on Oxford Street, May 1, 2020)

Lord Sumption also took to task the 'money question'. 'People decry attempts to measure the mortality of Covid-19 against the economic cost of reducing it,' he writes. 'But this too is rhetoric, and hypocritical rhetoric at that.

'Money is not just for plutocrats. You and I and the editor of The Guardian and the driver of the No 9 bus and the Archbishop of Canterbury and the cashier at the supermarket all value and depend on money.

'Not just in the sense that it pays our wages or pensions. Hundreds of thousands of businesses are going under. Millions are moving from jobs to universal credit. A thriving economy, of the kind that we are now throwing away, is the source of our security and the foundation of our children's future.

'We would do well not to sneer at it. Poverty kills too. And when it does not kill, it maims, mentally, physically, and socially.'
The oil market has gone through some insane volatility this year. Prices nosedived from more than $60 a barrel to negative territory. Crude oil has since bounced back from that unbelievable low point as speculators bet that demand will pick back up as the COVID-19 lockdowns abate.

However, with oil prices in the U.S. still below $20 a barrel, and major storage issues ahead, oil stocks face a long road to recovery. Several have already gone under, while many more will likely join them in the coming months. With the risk of a bankruptcy wave, investors need to tread carefully in this sector. Here are five oil stocks I'd avoid at all costs.

1. Chesapeake Energy

Chesapeake Energy (OTC:CHKA.Q) is dangerously close to filing for bankruptcy protection. Reuters reported earlier this week that it was preparing a potential filing as a way to restructure its massive debt. The company owes lenders nearly $9 billion, including $300 million of debt that matures this summer. While the company may restructure its debt outside bankruptcy, it's still not worth buying. Its management team has done an atrocious job over the years of stewarding shareholder capital because of its sole focus on growth.

2. Occidental Petroleum

Occidental Petroleum (NYSE:OXY) is another poorly managed oil company. The executives who run the producer so desperately wanted to buy Anadarko Petroleum last year that they outbid Chevron by $5 billion, allowing the oil giant to walk away with a $1 billion breakup fee. They also went around shareholders to complete the deal, which saddled the company with a mound of debt and a costly financing deal with Warren Buffett. That strategy has since backfired because of the oil market crash. Occidental had to slash its dividend and start paying Buffett in stock, diluting existing investors. The company dug such a deep hole that it might never recover.

3. Continental Resources

Continental Resources' (NYSE:CLR) founder, Harold Hamm, helped drive America's oil revolution by leading the development of the Bakken Shale. However, he's allowed his bullishness to blind him to the volatility of oil prices. He cashed in the company's oil hedges way too early during the oil price crash of 2014 and entered the current market downturn without any price protection. As a result, Continental recently had to shut in nearly its entire operation in North Dakota because its wells were losing money. Hamm's moves have hamstrung the company time and again, destroying shareholder value in the process.

4. Transocean

Transocean (NYSE:RIG) is one of the world's largest offshore drilling contractors. Unfortunately, it has a debt profile to match. It currently has $8.6 billion of long-term debt, including $4.3 billion coming due over the next two years. Those near-term maturities will be hard to refinance, given its junk-rated credit and the fact that one rival recently declared bankruptcy, while another seems likely to follow. These issues could plunge the offshore driller into bankruptcy with its peers.

5. U.S. Oil Fund

The U.S. Oil Fund (NYSEMKT:USO) is an exchange-traded fund that attempts to follow the daily gyrations of the main U.S. oil price benchmark. However, it does a lousy job. Instead of holding physical oil, it trades oil futures contracts. It often needs to pay money to roll them into the future, which eats into its returns. Unsurprisingly, then, the fund has lost nearly all its value over the years. Another crude-oil price nosedive into negative territory could cause this oil ETF to implode.

While oil prices might rally, these oil stocks are likely to fall short

There's a lot of interest in oil stocks these days. The general thesis is that what went down must go back up. While I, too, hold that oil prices will eventually rebound, I think there will be a lot of carnage in the oil patch before that happens. That's why I think investors should tread cautiously, since many oil stocks -- including most of this list -- probably won't make it through this downturn.
Australia's top doctor has backed economists pushing for schools to be reopened amid COVID-19 lockdowns, but powerful teachers unions are refusing to back down.

Parents around the nation have been forced to abandon their jobs to educate their children from home after Australian states and territories largely shut schools for almost two months as part of efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19.

As the curve flattens with no new cases recorded in multiple states on Saturday, experts have warned the economy could plummet if schools stay closed and parents are unable to return to work.

NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet said schools needed to be reopened as soon as possible in a staggered approach in a bid to kickstart the economy.

'It will help re-start the economy as children head back to school and parents back to work, but this has to be done in a staggered approach with health and safety a priority every step of the way,' Mr Perrottet told Daily Mail Australia.

NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet said statistics show the amount of labour available to keep the nation's economy afloat has dropped by a massive 12.5 per cent

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Treasurer Dominic Perrottet believe schools should open as soon as possible

Mr Perrottet said statistics show the amount of labour available to keep the nation's economy afloat has dropped by a massive 12.5 per cent.

'When you look at every area which is going to drive economic and productivity growth, getting kids back in school is top of the list,' he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

'It is not just the productivity of the parents, it is the future productivity of the kids.'

He said children could potentially lose a year of education if they are not able to return to school.

But teachers unions have pushed back on proposals to reopen schools for health and logistical reasons.

NSW Teachers Federation president Angelo Gavrielatos described NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian's plan as 'incomprehensible' due to organisational and timetabling issues.

Ms Berejiklian plans to return children to school at a staggered rate from May 11 in preparation for full-time schooling to re-start in July.

Under the plan, 25 per cent of children would rotate through the school week one day at a time so that no more than a quarter of a school cohort will be on campus at any one time.

Mr Perrottet backed the staggered approach and said health and welfare are paramount.

But Mr Gavrielatos told The Today Show: 'Trying to timetable 25 per cent of our kids one day a week, at staggered times, with staggered lunches and staggered recesses, we can't see how that can work.'

NSW Teachers Federation president Angelo Gavrielatos described Gladys Berejiklian's plan to return children to school as 'incomprehensible' due to organisational and timetabling issues

He also expressed numerous safety concerns on behalf of children, parents and teachers, despite health experts claiming there is no evidence to suggest children are at risk of infection.

Union bosses in Queensland have echoed Mr Gavrielatos' concerns.

Return to schools state-by-state Victoria and Tasmania: Parents continue to be encouraged to keep their children at home if possible. New South Wales: Students will have a slow return to classrooms from May 11 Western Australia: WA has made a 'soft start' to schooling with year 11 and 12 students strongly encouraged to attend in person. South Australia: The school term resumed as normal on Tuesday but the premier estimated just under two-thirds of students attended. Advertisement

Queensland Teachers Union general secretary Graham Moloney insisted schools remain shut for 85 per cent of children until May 22 in a fiery letter to teachers, The Courier-Mail reported.

The QTU is a powerful authority in Queensland, collecting about $22million in membership fees per year.

Data revealed that 48 of the state's 1.2 million children had contracted COVID-19 - less than five per cent.

Only 13 children under the age of ten and 35 between ten and 19 have tested positive.

But Mr Moloney told primary and secondary school teachers that homeschooling is 'second to none' and said schools should not be reopened for economic reasons alone.

'We will not accept a call to transition all students back to school for economic reasons alone  schools must also be deemed safe for the adults that work in them'.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk stressed in April that schools will only open for vulnerable children and children of essential workers who are unable to learn remotely.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk stressed parents should only send their children to school if they cannot educate them from home

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews is the only state leader without an immediate plan to reopen schools as the nation battles to beat coronavirus.

Mr Andrews has been adamant in not opening schools for fear of spreading the virus, while Scott Morrison and Australia's chief medical officer Brendan Murphy have urged all schools to open.

Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan blasted Mr Andrews on Sunday, accusing him of going against the advice of the Morrison government.

'The question to Dan Andrews is, sure, take a sledge hammer to defeating the coronavirus but why are you taking a sledgehammer also to your schools system?' he told ABC's Insiders program.

'This is a failure of leadership from Dan Andrews. And it is the most disadvantaged children who are being most affected,' he continued.

'The premiers should listen to the medical experts, the panel that was put together by all state and territory leaders to advise on schools.'

'Are you saying that the system, through the National Cabinet, is not delivering the right result?' host David Speers asked.

'It's not. Because we have one premier in particular who is jeopardising the national consensus on this,' Mr Tehan shot back.

Mt Tehan said Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory hadn't had to quash their education system and have a 70 per cent attendance at their schools.

An investigation found that of nine school students and staff members who tested positive for the virus, none passed it on to other members of the school community. Pictured: Students being homeschooled in Brisbane

A report commissioned by the federal government found that almost half of children are falling behind as a result of the closures.

The report found that learning from home could be disadvantaging children in low socio-economic backgrounds, with English as a second language or from remote areas.

'If this is not addressed promptly and directly, learning gaps can emerge and widen,' contributing author and UNSW professor Andrew Martin said.

'It is vital that students who are at academic risk receive the necessary instructional and other supports required for them to successfully engage in remote or blended learning.'

Blended learning is a combination of face-to-face teaching and remote learning.

Furthermore, Australian research on whether children are at risk of catching COVID-19 returned results suggesting schools are safe.

'Schools are among the safest places that we have,' Professor Kristine Macartney of the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance told The Sun-Herald.

The investigation found that of nine school students and staff members who tested positive for the virus, none passed it on to other members of the school community.

'Our investigation found no evidence of children infecting teachers,' the report said.

The initial cases in schools also came from staff, not children.

While most states and territories have followed suit in switching to homeschooling during the pandemic, Scott Morrison has long maintained schools were a safe place for students and said they would remain open.

Last week, he urged states to reopen schools on advice from Australia's top health adviser following the country's success in flattening the COVID-19 infection curve.
Since the start of the pandemic, this newspaper has reported on ways different religions are responding. One group that has not been featured is Indigenous people. This isnt because nobody wants to. Its just its not easy to do.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 2/5/2020 (626 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Since the start of the pandemic, this newspaper has reported on ways different religions are responding. One group that has not been featured is Indigenous people. This isnt because nobody wants to. Its just its not easy to do.

For one thing, there are no Indigenous spirituality offices you can call for official comment. And even if you could, there are thousands of Indigenous nations, which makes any generalization impossible.

For another, there is no sense of a division between spirituality and the rest of life for Indigenous Peoples. Even asking the question seems foreign to how they live.

As for COVID-19, its a very real threat to Indigenous people. How are they integrating their traditional practices and beliefs with social distancing, wearing masks, washing hands and modern medical technology? With help from Niigaan Sinclair, who teaches native studies at the University of Manitoba and writes about Indigenous issues for the Free Press, I decided to find out.

First off, its important to note COVID-19 is not the first pandemic faced by Indigenous people.

Since their first contact with Europeans, Indigenous populations encountered new and devastating diseases. Most notably, smallpox wiped out entire communities, leading Indigenous Peoples to develop practices and medicines to battle the sickness.

Indigenous people were also hit hard by the deadly 1918 Spanish flu. In northern Manitoba, communities like Norway House experienced the sickness nearly six months after the south had finished with their first wave. They lost a fifth of their population.

Meanwhile, tuberculosis and other outbreaks were common at residential schools. Children were regularly quarantined and many died.

Indigenous nations know about sickness and pandemics, in other words, and developed practices to deal with them.

For example, when sicknesses historically entered communities, medicine people incorporated quarantine practices and social-distancing practices. These could involve creating controlled movement zones in communities, signified by hanging an individuals or familys possessions in a tree.

Communities would often work together to combat the sickness, sometimes putting aside centuries of conflict. The dead would be buried together in burial mounds, and medicines would be shared.

Indigenous Peoples also included European medicines in their practices. Treaty Six, signed by Crown representatives and Cree, Assiniboine and Ojibwa leaders in 1876 in Saskatchewan, included requirements for a "medicine chest" to be provided to help Indigenous communities combat sickness.

As for COVID-19 today, Terry Nelson, former chief of the Roseau River reserve, is talking to people in his community about ways to address the virus.

In addition to following practices such as social distancing, he suggests using traditional medicines such as bark from fir trees, yarrow and sage, which treat various ailments such as coughs and colds.

In addition, he is talking to younger people about the science behind traditional medicines, how to find and collect them, and their connection to spiritual practices.

"Its part of the revival of traditional knowledge," he says, pointing out that traditional societies like the Midewiwin are specialists in medicinal practices, incorporating dance, song and story into a sense of health.

This is important, he notes, since knowledge of traditional medicines have been lost in communities due to the Indian Act and residential schools.

"Because of the persecution of our people, this knowledge went underground," Nelson says, adding now it is being shared widely.

Terrys brother Charlie, a Midewiwin elder, is also speaking to young people about how ceremonies and traditional teachings can give them a framework for dealing with COVID-19.

This includes gathering and using natural medicines to promote "wellness" and address various ailments.

One of the biggest challenges Indigenous peoples will experience during this pandemic is an inability to feast and attend large gatherings, such as funerals and sundances, he says.

"These will have to be greatly restricted," he explains, "but when this is over we can look forward to gathering again."

Jen Zoratti | Next A weekly look towards a post-pandemic future delivered to your inbox every Wednesday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

For Wanda Levasseur, a member of Ebb and Flow First Nation and elder in residence at the University of Manitoba, this is the time for staying home and "burning our medicine, sage and cedar"  anti-bacterial and cleansing agents for the air.

She also advocates drinking boiled pine and cedar bark and needles, which are high in vitamin C. While drinking them, people should also "pray to the Creator for protection" from the virus. This not only creates a sense of connectedness but mental well-being, she notes.

For Indigenous people, Levasseur points out, the plant world "is sacred," helping Indigenous communities build their relationships with the universe and each other.

"When people go out into the woods and forests to find these medicines, they reconnect themselves with the Creator," she adds.

For Sinclair, all of this adds up to a "sense of community that bridges space, time, and the worst of conflict, something that brings light and hope during the darkest of times. That is the best medicine of all."

faith@freepress.mb.ca
Honouring the corona warriors,



Defence forces on Sunday showered flower petals on four government hospitals treating the Covid-19 patients here.

Helicopters of the Indian Air Force (IAF) and the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) were deployed for this effort, undertaken by the country's armed forces to express their gratitude to the front-line personnel involved in the battle against the deadly virus across the nation.

An IAF chopper strew flower petals on the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital and the Tamil Nadu Government Multi-Super Speciality Hospital at Omandurar Estate in the heart of the city.

Later, a Coast Guard helicopter carried out a similar activity honouring personnel at the Government Stanley Medical College and Kilpauk Medical College in the city.

The armed forces on Friday announced conducting fly- pasts, light up ships at sea, display military bands and shower flower petals on hospitals in a grand display of gratitude to lakhs of "corona warriors" like doctors, paramedics and police personnel.

One of the worst affected states in the country with 2,757 coronavirus cases as of Saturday, Tamil Nadu has deployed thousands of front-line workers including health professionals, police and sanitary workers among others in its fight against the pandemic.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Incident of woman who refused to wear face mask at Shunfu Market. (SCREENSHOT: YouTube)

UPDATE: Statement from police about incident at Shunfu Mart

SINGAPORE  A woman who was seen in a video being approached by several members of the public for not wearing a face mask at Shunfu market was apprehended by the police on Sunday (3 May).

In a statement, the police said preliminary investigations revealed that a 40-year-old Singaporean woman, who had previously breached safe distancing measures, was not wearing a mask and allegedly assaulted a 47-year-old woman who advised her to put on a mask.

The incident was mentioned in a Facebook post by Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC MP Chong Kee Hiong on the same day who said that many are rightly concerned about the incident of a repeat offender who defiantly refused to don a mask at Shunfu Market this afternoon. The person was caught in a previous incident and fined, Chong added.

Thanking the police officers for swiftly apprehending the offender on the spot, Chong said, Rest assured that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated and offenders will be dealt with according to the law.

In the video, the woman and a man can be seen grabbing on a phone. She was arguing with another person who was off-screen. At one point, the woman said, I am a sovereign. This is something people are not going to know even what it isIt means I have nothing to do with the policeThey have no say.

A voice can be heard saying, That does not even make any sense. If you are a person in Singapore, you have to follow the rules in Singapore. The woman replied, Im not a person. I am we the people.

Statement from police

The police said they received a call for assistance on 3 May 2020 at 12.16pm at 320 Shunfu Road, which is the address of Shunfu Mart.

The Police are investigating the woman for voluntarily causing hurt, causing public nuisance and breaching safe distancing measures under the COVID-19 (Temporary Measures) (Control Order) Regulations 2020. The Police take a serious view of such abusive and irresponsible behaviour, especially in the current COVID-19 situation.

Story continues

Earlier incident

In the video, the woman also claimed that I will show you a video of the police, here, same thing, trying to stop me and then walk off, without a warning, without a fine.

The National Environment Agency previously said a woman who violated circuit breaker rules at Shunfu hawker centre on 14 April and was uncooperative with SG Clean ambassadors and police officers would be fined $300. The woman was not named.

In a separate video of the earlier incident, the woman who was not wearing a mask was seen being approached by two police officers. Netizens had slammed her for her defiant attitude and filming the police officers on duty with her mobile phone.

The NEA said then, "We will not hesitate to take strong actions against such egregious offenders, including criminal prosecution if necessary.

Stay in the know on-the-go: Join Yahoo Singapore's Telegram channel at http://t.me/YahooSingapore

Other Singapore stories:

Former Workers' Party Secretary-General Low Thia Khiang in intensive care unit

COVID-19: Singapore to ease some circuit breaker measures starting next week

COVID-19: Singapore confirms 657 cases, total at 18,205

COVID-19: Work-from-home for majority even after circuit breaker - Chan Chun Sing
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1

In the spirit of April Fools Day, I accidentally selected the wrong make-up in the Good Morning Britain studio at 5am today (were self-facially-decorating now) and painted myself bright orange.

I only realised when viewers bombarded me on Twitter with pictures of my head next to one of perma-tanned President Trump with mocking TANGO TWINS! style captions.

How bad is it? I whispered to Susanna Reid.

Viewers bombarded me on Twitter with pictures of my head next to one of perma-tanned President Trump with mocking TANGO TWINS! style captions

Its not great, she giggled. There are some blending issues.

Ive had a lot of uncomfortable moments on live TV, but trying to present the most serious news story of my lifetime while knowing I was resembling a human pumpkin is possibly the most excruciating.

THURSDAY, APRIL 2

My parents began self-isolating down at their Sussex home three weeks ago and have shown commendable stoicism, given that their house is usually engulfed with their children and grandchildren.

But tension mounted this week when my dad ran out of his preferred stress-relieving tipple, a (surprisingly good for the price) 7-a-bottle Spanish Vina del Cura rioja from Tesco.

The last time I saw him, just before the lockdown, we both agreed we could cope with just about anything during this crisis except going short of alcoholic sustenance.

So, my sister was tasked with a mercy mission and managed to track down two bottles, while she was out getting essential supplies, that she dropped off at our parents house.

Once shed gone, my mother went out to pick them up, and brought them back inside as my father jumped up with the ravenous thirst of Tom Hanks at the end of Castaway when he spies the rescue boat.

My mother walked towards him clutching the carrier bag of liquid treasure  ironically, it was one of Tescos reusable bags for life  and as she passed it to my father, the handle broke and both bottles fell to the stone floor, smashing into smithereens.

FRIDAY, APRIL 3

Simon Cowell rang me from Los Angeles where he is self-isolating with his family.

Crazy times, he said, which, given how insane Simons life normally is, was truly saying something.

We shared scornful tales of self-promoting stars using this crisis to make even bigger idiots of themselves, particularly those whove been loudly lecturing people how to behave and then doing the complete opposite themselves.

Hypocritical preachy celebrities are bottom of the list of things the world needs right now, he said.

I couldnt agree more.

The rules for any star at a time like this are very simple: park your ego, dont moan about all the trivial stuff you normally whine about, stop posting Instagram pictures of your luxury lifestyle, resist the temptation to make the global pandemic all about yourself, raise money and awareness for people who really need it, and if youre able to entertain everyone as we sit around watching endless TV, then do so.

Simons put his money where his mouth is, taking on 500,000 of debts at the childrens hospice charity Shooting Star (so many charities have been plunged into desperate financial straits) and pledging a further 800,000 to two other organisations that feed the poor.

Hes also successfully persuaded ITV to air the pre-taped audition shows from the new series of Britains Got Talent now (it began last night), even if it might be many months before the live finals can be filmed.

People are all stuck at home worrying about this virus and what it means for their familys health and financial security, he explained. They need some escapism and fun, and BGT can provide that. It doesnt matter when we do the live shows. I mean, in the general scheme of things, who bloody cares?

Exactly.

SATURDAY, APRIL 4

I posted a photo from a FaceTime session with two of my boys and their dog Conor (named after UFC superstar Conor The Notorious McGregor due to his fiery temperament).

The Sun reported this bombshell with the headline: Piers Morgan FaceTimes hot sons Spencer and Albert from coronavirus isolation.

Fake news.

It was my sons who FaceTimed their hot dad.

MONDAY, APRIL 6

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex today announced plans to launch a new organisation named Archewell (after their son Archie, who they insist they want to keep private) that were told aims to do something that matters.

Aside from the grotesquely tone-deaf inappropriateness of doing this immediately after the Queen addressed the nation about coronavirus, I imagine the total number of f**** the British public currently gives about these two narcissistic brats announcing their plans as they do nothing that matters in a Hollywood mansion is this: zero.

TUESDAY, APRIL 7

Theres an amusing viral Twitter game doing the rounds where you reveal a list of ten famous people youve met but include one lie  and people have to guess which one youve never encountered.

Given Ive met just about everyone, as my serial name-dropping confirms, I reckon I can stump you, so heres my list and Ill reveal the fib next week.

Princess Diana

Michael Jackson

President Clinton

Muhammad Ali

Professor Stephen Hawking

The Dalai Lama

Beyonce

Warren Buffett

Sir Paul McCartney

Nelson Mandela

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 8

Talking of Mandela, as we all come to terms with home quarantine, its worth remembering he spent 27 years in prison, including 18 of them inside a tiny 8ft x 7ft concrete cell.

Yet he never lost his optimism, nor let the experience break his spirit, and he eventually emerged to change the world immeasurably for the better. His mantra was: It always seems impossible until its done.

Well beat this bloody virus. It will take time, and a lot of fortitude, but well beat it. So, hang in there everyone, like Mandela did for all those years.
Here are some of the top photos of the week, as selected by the Associated Press.
US-based Sabre Corporation, a leading travel technology company and software firm Farelogix said they have agreed to terminate their merger agreement following antitrust opposition in the UK.



Sabre and Farelogix have agreed to terminate the parties merger agreement, which expired at midnight on April 30, said Sean Menke, Sabre president and CEO.



We continue to believe that the transaction was not anti-competitive, a result confirmed by the US federal district courts decision in Sabres favour. Unfortunately, the United Kingdoms Competition and Markets Authority (CMA)  acting outside the bounds of its jurisdictional authority  has prohibited the transaction. We strongly disagree with the CMAs decision, he added.



"We remain committed to our long-term goal of creating a new market for personalized travel. Positioned at the centre of the business of travel, Sabre is a critical component of the travel ecosystem.



We are uniquely situated to create solutions that expand the distribution access of rich content via the Global Distribution System (GDS) marketplace and also help airlines create personalized offers for their customers, including the development of NDC-enabled solutions, Menke concluded.  TradeArabia News Service
Patients who develop swollen toes and red and purple lesions should consult their primary care doctor or a dermatologist to rule out other possible causes. But, experts said, they should not run to the emergency room, where they risk being exposed to the coronavirus or exposing others if they are infected.
The Jammu and Kashmir Congress on Sunday expressed shock over the killing of five security personnel, including three officers, in an encounter with terrorists in Handwara town and demanded effective action to save precious lives.

It also condemned Pakistan for its continued support to militancy and increased ceasefire violations to facilitate infiltration of terrorists into the Union Territory.

"The martyrdom of five jawans including a colonel, a major and a police sub-inspector is shocking," J&K Pradesh Congress Committee (JKPCC) chief G A Mir and other senior leaders said in a joint statement here.

"We strongly condemn the Pakistan-sponsored militancy, which is against the basics of humanity and would achieve nothing except death and destruction."



Saluting the sacrifice of the security personnel and expressing sympathies with their families, relatives and colleagues, the party said: The loss of precious lives of our officers and jawans is unbearable and the nation shall ever remain indebted to them and their families.

The frequent incidents of militant attacks and increased ceasefire violations on our borders have led to a number of sacrifices of our jawans and civilians in recent years, which is a matter of grave concern for all, the statement said.

It said such an activity cannot be tolerated and the government must take effective actions to save precious lives of the jawans and the civilians.

The entire rank and file of the Congress pays homage to the martyrs and all those who sacrificed their lives for the nation and ensure safety of common citizens, it said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Last Monday, when top officials of the human resource development (HRD) ministry returned to Shastri Bhavan for a key meeting after a weeks-long lockdown hiatus, two issues were on the top of their mind.

The first was rescuing the academic calendar from the Covid scourge, which had hit not just one but two academic years: The 2019-20 session that was winding to a close and the 2020-21 one that was to begin .

At stake was the future of more than 10 million students across India who had written their school-leaving examinations (some were still to finish it because examinations in a few subjects are yet to be held) and another few million who were in their final year of college education and preparing for jobs.

But with the 21-day initial lockdown getting extended to May 3, finishing exams and evaluating answer sheets, a complex logistical exercise involving thousands teachers, appears daunting now.

Completing the exam process is foremost on our minds. But at this moment, it is just wait and watch, said a top official on condition of anonymity, hinting that declaring results using criteria like past performance in class or internal assessment was a real possibility now.

The second issue was even more tangled: Fees

With schools and colleges shut for the foreseeable future and the lockdown battering middle class incomes, the demand for a fee waiver has united political parties and civil society alike. But any such decision could be thorny both economically and legally.

On March 31, the Akhil Bharati Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student arm of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, wrote to the ministry demanding that fees not be charged, especially from the poor. The rival National Students Union of India, the student wing of the Congress party, made an identical demand.

A second senior HRD official admitted that the issue was examined but added that the ministry had to take into account the concerns of educational institutions, who had a large number of people on their payrolls and couldnt be supported by the government. To complicate matters further, the Delhi high court ruled last week that tuition fees of schools should not be waived because classes were still continuing online.

NOT BUSINESS-AS-USUAL

March and April are always busy months in the education calendar with millions of students transitioning out of school into college, and millions more getting out of the education system into jobs.

Moreover, for months, top officials in the ministry were putting finishing touches to two flagship programmes of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government, the New Education Policy (NEP) that mooted sweeping changes in the board examination format and the Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat (EBSB) campaign to promote national unity. A number of key consultations on the 500-page recommendations for the NEP were scheduled in March and April.

But as the coronavirus ripped its way through India in the first week of March, minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank and top officials quickly realised that it was not business as usual and that scheduled meetings needed to be pushed on the back burner.

This should have been a time when we ought to have rolled out the New Education Policy. Instead we are looking at reworking the upcoming academic calendar. Now, everything will have to be relooked at, said a third top ministry official.

Wearing masks and looking like surgeons in an operation theatre, the minister, higher education secretary Amit Khare and nearly a dozen top officials have repeatedly held meetings to discover prescriptions on the future of the upcoming year. But given the multitude of problems, there are no ready-made prescriptions available, said a fourth top ministry official.

Many of those meetings have discussed the politically sensitive issue of fees.

The number of representation on the fee issue, directly or through social media, have been huge. And representations have come not just from students or parents but even from schools and colleges. The AICTE [All India Council for Technical Education], HRD, CBSE [Central Board for Secondary Education], and even the PMO [Prime Ministers Office], people have written to us. This has been one of the toughest issues on which the ministry has been trying to take a balanced view, said a fifth official on condition of anonymity.

Indias engineering education regulator, AICTE, has issued detailed instructions asking colleges not to pressure students for fees in the upcoming session. It also directed more than 10,000 colleges under it to not remove any staff member.

We received complaints that some colleges especially those imparting the Post Graduate Diploma in Management were demanding fees. Therefore, AICTE decided to give these directions, said the councils chairperson Anil Sahasrabuddhe.

UNCERTAIN FUTURE

The pandemic has seeded anxiety and uncertainty in millions of students, their parents and teachers, as they oscillate between waiting for the academic year to end and preparing for college or job interviews.

Arsh Malik, a Class 12 student at a government school in north east Delhis Yamuna Vihar, said that the wait for board exams was exhausting. There are so many rumours on the internet about board exams. Some say they will happen, some say they will get cancelled. I have five exams pending.

Samridhi Sinha has another problem: Preparing for the JEE that is considered among the toughest examinations in the country. We are facing the pressure of a competitive exam. And the uncertainty is only adding to our pressure. How much to study, how much test practice to take. These are all factors, she said.

The uncertainty has left schools in a fix.

Students and parents are worried if exams will be conducted and under what circumstances. Will they be conducted if there is still a hot spot or containment zone in the city? If yes, how will students reach there? asked Ameeta Mulla Wattal, principal of Delhis Springdales Public School.

Jyoti Arora, Principal of Mount Abu School in Rohini, said the school has started revision classes for Class 12 students for exams. We want them to be ready for the exam whenever the CBSE announces the fresh dates, she said.

There is a view within the ministry that the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) should reduce the curriculum load on students in the next session to make up for the lost time. A similar view was articulated by Delhi education minister Manish Sisodia at a meting last week. However, we are in the midst of the crisis and still dont know how much time would be lost, said a senior CBSE official, who wished not to be named.

A second challenge is reshaping the college calendar.

In addition to the pressure to complete the unfinished academic tasks due to lockdown, students face uncertain future temporarily due to COVID-19 situation. Teachers should maintain a positive and reassuring behaviour with students to draw their attention away from scary thoughts of future, said M Jagadesh Kumar, vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University.

A panel of vice-chancellors has given broad recommendations  online tests, assignment-based or open book exams, common entrance test for varsities, six-day working weeks and deemed attendance during the lockdown period  but policy makers fear a single or even a few solutions may not meet the needs of a diverse set of Indian varsities.

There are varsities near hot spots and those in green zones. There are big ones and small ones. One set of instructions may not be enough, said a top UGC official.

ONLINE LEARNING

A section of the ministry is of the opinion that campuses are not opening anytime soon. Yet, they have to remain prepared. Online is the apparent solution. However, not everyone is online ready. There is lack of online content in regional languages, said a sixth ministry official.

Textbooks are available online. Yet, the feedback from the ground reflected that many students needed physical copies. Consequently, after discussions with the ministry of home affairs (MHA), shops selling students books were allowed to open.

Many have raised questions about the digital divide and it hurting learning outcomes. Internet connectivity is not same across India and many fear that students from economically and socially weaker sections may not have the resources during these constrained times to spend extra money for purchasing data or internet services.

Three fourth of students come from socially and economically weaker sections, who are facing serious challenges in terms of accessibility of network and availability of hardware, said Delhi University executive council member Rajesh Jha. But we are committed to compensate the deficiencies as and when this lockdown gets over, he added.

The ministry admits that no clear course has been charted yet. These aspects have been discussed. There are no easy solutions though, admitted a seventh ministry official.

The idea of conducting examinations online has found few takers owing to problems of students in vernacular medium and concern over unfair practices.

It seems universities can promote intermediate students based on other evaluation criteria than just exams. However, I feel, for final year students, who are passing out, an exam is desirable, said Pankaj Mittal, the secretary general of Association of Indian Universities.

Online classrooms have also pose other challenges. Most schools were using the Zoom app to hold classes till the MHA warned that the site was not secure.

The Indian Institutes of Management, meanwhile, have a different problem.

Several IIMs depend on executive education and training to generate revenue. The biggest challenge will be generation and continuity of executive education revenue. At IIM Rohtak, we are fully prepared to offer any general or customised executive education and training programs online, said the institutes director Dheeraj Sharma.

CHANGED SCENES

Within the ministry, even as officials spend extended hours in meetings, talking over videoconference to colleagues working from home, the mood is sombre.

Every few days, news that someone in an important establishment -- be it the armed forces, medical fraternity or a key government functionary -- has tested positive for Covid-19 sends everyone into shock. Plus, cases in the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Niti Aayog and the civil aviation ministry have put everyone on edge.

The day-to-day functioning of the ministry has also changed considerably. The endless stream of tea and water offered to senior officers and important visitors is gone, and so is the long line of people outside the chambers of top secretaries and the minister.

The meetings are fewer, attended by lesser number of people, and even officials of NCERT and CBSE, regulars in normal circumstances, come in fewer numbers. Videoconferences are the norm, the second official added.

As education falls in the concurrent list of the Constitution, the HRD ministry is planning to hold a series of consultation with states to brainstorm on issues. But officials admit that the focus is on firefighting and managing the current crisis and all future planning has been put on hold. This is a time when all planning has come to a standstill, said the second official quoted above.

But he held out hope. Education is a sector that deals with the young. We hope that with the energy of the youth we will manage to overcome this issues while ensuring that teaching learning activity is not hindered.
Students at the University of Montana who are struggling to pay bills or buy essential school supplies have a growing number of options available for emergency relief funding. In addition to federal funding for student relief, at least two additional funds have been built to help students meet their basic needs.

The most recent fund to pop up is one started by the faculty union, which has raised $20,000 to fund small grants to students that can be deployed quickly and with few requirements.

The University Faculty Association spokesperson and sociology professor Daisy Rooks said within the first week of announcing the fund, the union had already received 201 applications from students, and the board overseeing the fund, composed of retired faculty, would begin sorting out the first round of grants Friday, May 1.
Michael Weatherly rose to stardom on the back of NCIS. Playing the wise-cracking, quick-witted, devil-may-care agent with a heart of gold for over a decade, he and Tony DiNozzo grew intimately connected. Michael Weatherly was Tony DiNozzo to fans of the series. And, though he is now the leading man in the CBS show Bull, many still identify him as DiNozzo and anticipate the day he returns to the show that catalyzed his career.

Michael Weatherly as Anthony DiNozzo in NCIS | Sonja Flemming/CBS via Getty Images

Michael Weatherly and Tony DiNozzo may seem like a match made in heaven  Weatherlys Hollywood good looks, unyielding sense of humor, and charming disposition are perfect for Gibbs second in command. However, Michael Weatherly had some reservations at the start, and he didnt know if he was a fit for who he expected DiNozzo to be. However, he and the character grew together.

Weatherly came to be the actor right for the role, even though he initially felt the two couldnt be more polar opposites. So, lets dive into what Michael Weatherly said about DiNozzo back in the day, and why he felt he and the character were an unlikely match.

Michael Weatherly compares himself to his initial Tony DiNozzo character expectations

During an interview with The Futon Critic back in NCISs early days, Michael Weatherly explained why he and Tony DiNozzo were a bit of clash personality-wise. He told the interviewer what made them different, stating:

the funny thing was that my characters name was Anthony DiNozzo and hes clearly supposed to be [an] Italian homicide cop from Baltimore whos like gritty and edgy and street. So maybe Eddie Cibrian wasnt available but I am not your first pick for the Italian homicide cop whose instincts can only come from the street. [Laughs.] Im the WASP from the boarding school whose instincts could only come from how to slip out when the dorm master has shut out the lights for the night. Im School Ties, not Homicide. The Futon Critic

Growing up, Michael Weatherly was the preppy boy  akin to the kid from boarding school with a typical suburban life and no edge whatsoever. Thus, the name Anthony DiNozzo became worrisome for the actor when he first heard about the role; was he going to play a guy familiar with the mob  a guy who plays for the good guys, but knows how to talk to the bad guys? What was the plan?

He wasnt edgy; he wasnt slick. As he says, he was School Ties: a movie that takes place at a prestigious prep school where all the kids wear uniforms, and one student struggles with antisemitic classmates. In other words, the character description he expected to fulfill  bad*ss Baltimore cop  didnt exactly ring true.

As the show developed, he and the character became a perfect mesh, as the writers went for humor over hostility, and cleverness over unbridled courage. And though everything worked out in the end, there was a period of time Weatherly saw this show  like the many Fox shows he previously starred in  leading to disaster.


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As of May 3, the Armed Forces of Ukraine recorded 49 cases of infection with the coronavirus Covid-19. The press service of the Command of the Medical Forces reports.

"49 people among the Armed Forces of Ukraine were affected by acute respiratory disease Covid-19 caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. During the pandemic, 30 people recovered and 2 fatal cases," the report said.

295 people are in isolation, including self-isolation. For 91 soldiers, isolation ends in the next three days.

"Over the past day, four new cases of acute respiratory disease Covid -19 were registered. Patients are treated at home under the supervision of medical service. Patients are in satisfactory health condition, there are no symptoms of the disease," the message reads.

The command of the Medical forces of the Armed forces of Ukraine calls for adherence to quarantine and personal hygiene.

As we reported before, OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) observers noticed anti-personnel mines at the Armed Forces of Ukraine checkpoint in Donbas, although a representative of Kyiv announced their destruction.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday there was a significant amount of evidence that the new coronavirus emerged from a Chinese laboratory, but did not dispute U.S. intelligence agencies conclusion that it was not man-made, Trend reports citing Reuters.

There is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan, Pompeo told ABCs This Week, referring to the virus that emerged late last year in China and has killed about 240,000 people around the world, including more than 67,000 in the United States.

Pompeo then briefly contradicted a statement issued this week by the top U.S. spy agency that said the virus did not appear to be man-made or genetically modified. That statement undercut conspiracy theories promoted by anti-China activists and some supporters of President Donald Trump who suggest it was developed in a Chinese government biological weapons laboratory.

The best experts so far seem to think it was man-made. I have no reason to disbelieve that at this point, Pompeo said. When the interviewer pointed out that was not the conclusion of U.S. intelligence agencies, Pompeo backtracked, saying, Ive seen what the intelligence community has said. I have no reasonto believe that theyve got it wrong.

The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for clarification on Pompeos comments.

Thursdays report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said it concurred with the wide scientific consensus that the disease was not man-made.

U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reporting and analysis have said for weeks that they do not believe Chinese scientists developed the coronavirus in a government biological weapons lab from which it then escaped.

Rather, they have said they believe it was either introduced through human contact with wildlife at a meat market in the central city of Wuhan, or could have escaped from one of two Wuhan government laboratories believed to be conducting civilian research into possible biological hazards.

Pompeo on Thursday said it was not known whether the virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a meat market, or somewhere else. Trump said the same day that he was confident it may have originated in a Chinese virology lab, but he declined to describe the evidence.
Two people in their 50s with



comorbidities died over the past three days in Indore in Madhya Pradesh, taking the death toll from COVID-19 in the state's commercial capital to 76.

Indore, with 1,568 cases as on Sunday afternoon, is among the urban areas worst hit by the outbreak in the country.

Chief Medical and Health Officer (CMHO) Praveen Jadia on Sunday said a 55-year-old woman and 59-year-old man died of the infection over the past three days.

"The woman was also suffering from diabetes and thyroid ailments while the man was a diabetic with high blood pressure issues," he said.

With 23 new cases in the last 24 hours, the number of COVID-19 cases in Indore rose from 1,545 to 1,568, he said, adding that 350 had been discharged after recovery so far.

Officials said the death rate from the infection in Indore as on Sunday morning was 4.85 per cent, which while being higher than the national average, had seen a sharp decline over the past 24 days.

The urban areas of the district have been under curfew since March 25 when the first coronavirus case was detected.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In 1881, five Earp brothers gathered in hopes of finding their fortunes in Tombstone, Arizona, the last boomtown in what was still left of the untamed American West. They were relatively young men  Wyatt, the middle brother, just 31  when they joined a growing community of shopkeepers, prospectors, gamblers, prostitutes and rustlers drawn by a silver strike in the nearby Dragoon Mountains.

As some popular accounts, including Tombstone, the 1993 movie starring Kurt Russell, would have it, Wyatt and his older brother Virgil had forsaken their previous profession as lawmen, but thats not exactly true. Virgil was still a deputy U.S. Marshal, and he remained a lawman for nearly all of his time in Arizona.

Myths surrounding the Earps, Wyatts pal Doc Holliday (who was far from the deadeye shot hes been made out to be), and the gunfight at the O.K. Corral are not the only obstacles facing a writer intent on telling the true story of Tombstone. Primary sources, including witness testimony in court proceedings and reports in the boomtowns two rival newspapers, are contradictory and laced with lies. And other accounts by observers and participants, including several books, are largely self-serving.

But in researching Tombstone: The Earp Brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Vendetta Ride to Hell, western historian and former newspaperman Tom Clavin had a lot of additional material to draw on including previous histories of the town and well-researched biographies of many of the participants.

Readers who have a passing familiarity with the story will recognize the names of the key players including Billy and Ike Clanton, Frank and Tom McLaury, Johnny Ringo, Frank Stilwell, Curly Bill Brocius, Texas Jack Vermillion, Sherman McMasters, Henry Hooker, Bat Masterson, Fred White, John Clum, Big Nose Kate Elder and John Behan. Clavin explores where they, and many others, came from and what they were doing before they arrived in Tombstone. He also describes the cultural and political climate of Arizona that contributed to the towns troubles.

With a former newsmans nose for the truth, Clavin has sifted the facts, myths, and lies to produce what might be as accurate an account as we will ever get of the old Wests most famous feud.
Photograph: Ahmadullah Ahmadi/EPA

The US military has warned the Taliban it must curb attacks inside Afghanistan and revealed that a US troop withdrawal agreement signed in February included an informal commitment for both sides to cut violence by 80%.

The previously secret arrangement was revealed in a Twitter spat between the US military spokesman, Col Sonny Leggett, and his Taliban counterpart, Zabihullah Mujahid. It comes after a sharp escalation in militant attacks since the agreement was sealed.

Related: Civil war, poverty and now the virus: Afghanistan stands on the brink

In a rare open letter to militants published on Twitter, Leggett warned: If the violence cannot be reduced  then yes, there will be responses.

The Taliban had asked for clarity after the top US commander in Afghanistan, Gen Scott Miller, called for a reduction in violence and warned that if the Taliban continue to attack they should expect retaliation.

The militants have mounted more than 4,500 attacks across Afghanistan in the 45 days since they signed the agreement for a US troop drawdown, Reuters reported.

These have mostly been in rural areas, with no high-profile suicide missions targeting cities or foreign troops. But overall attacks are up 70% from the same period last year. Leggett said that broke the terms of the withdrawal deal.

During those long negotiations, there were written and spoken commitments. Some commitments are being observed, while others are not, he wrote. We recognize the reduction of violence against cities and against coalition forces. But we spoke of ALL sides reducing violence by as much as 80% to pave the way for peace talks.

It has been widely reported that the peace deal included secret annexes, but this is the first time the US has provided any details publicly of these side agreements.

The 80% figure may have been reached because the Taliban have consistently rejected calling a ceasefire, worrying it could damage their operational ability and the morale of their fighters. If four in five attacks stopped, the Taliban would still fight but Afghans would notice a slower tempo of conflict.

Story continues

The Taliban spokesman attacked the US statement as pointless and provocative and said the path to resolving the war lay in the agreement signed in Qatar in February.

We are committed to our end, honor your own obligations, Mujahid said.

The Taliban have claimed attacks have fallen since the signing of the withdrawal deal and accused the US of breaking its commitment to secure the release of 5,000 of Taliban prisoners held by Afghan authorities.

Adding to Afghanistans troubles, the increase in violence has coincided with the rapid spread of the coronavirus. The four provinces reporting the highest number of cases have also been the ones hit the most by Taliban violence in recent weeks, according to the Reuters report.

There are fears that the virus may already be widespread, especially after tests in Kabul appeared to show almost a third of people selected for a random trial were infected, according to New York Times reporters.

Afghanistans divided government is meant to embark on political talks with the Taliban soon, to pave the way to a negotiated end to the war. Leggett warned that if violence levels did not go down, those peace talks might never begin.

[Gen Miller] urges you to recognize that if all military sides do not act now to reduce violence, he wrote, the cycle of violence will continue to escalate and prevent the start of the political process.

The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, who was in Doha for the signing ceremony, seemed more cautious in his assessment of the Talibans future behavior.

The agreement will mean nothing  and todays good feelings will not last  if we dont take concrete action on commitments stated and promises made, he said.
ALIVE AND SNIPPING: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, centre, cuts a ribbon, watched by his sister Kim Yo-jong, during his visit to a fertiliser factory in Sunchon, South Pyongan province, near Pyongyang, North Korea last Friday

Most ribbon-cutting ceremonies are unremarkable affairs, the stuff of local newspaper photographs at most.

But this one was different. It involved North Korea's supreme leader Kim Jong-un in his first reported appearance in 20 days, during which there has been intense speculation about his health and even whether he was still alive.

The newly released footage of Kim glad-handing at a North Korean fertiliser production plant north of Pyongyang last Friday would appear to have put an end to that. He was pictured standing in front of a banner reading May 1, to drive home the point.

The date is also written in the Latin alphabet, in case there were any doubts about which audience this "proof" is for. The choice of backdrop may be another hidden message to the West. The fertiliser plant has been the subject of attention for years because of its potential dual-use in the process of uranium extraction from phosphoric acid, allowing North Korea to conceal its nuclear activities from the outside world.

According to state news agency KCNA, which released the images, Kim was accompanied by his younger sister Kim Yo-jong. Those attending "burst into thunderous cheers of 'hurrah!' for the Supreme Leader," the agency said.

Speculation about Kim's health began after he missed the birth anniversary of his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, on April 15, when he usually pays a visit to the mausoleum where the nation's founder lies in state.

The possibility of high-level instability raised troubling questions about the future of the secretive, nuclear-armed state that has been steadily building an arsenal meant to threaten the US mainland while diplomacy between Kim and President Donald Trump has stalled. Some experts say South Korea, as well as its regional neighbours and ally Washington, must begin preparing for the possible chaos that could come if Kim is sidelined by health problems or even dies. Worst-case scenarios include North Korean refugees flooding South Korea or China or military hard-liners letting loose nuclear weapons.

"The world is largely unprepared for instability in North Korea," said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul. "Washington, Seoul and Tokyo need tighter coordination on contingency plans while international organisations need more resources and less controversy over the role of China."

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump declined to comment about Kim's reappearance but said he would "have something to say about it at the appropriate time".

Robert E Kelly, professor of political science at Pusan National University, in South Korea, said: "We can't know, of course; it's North Korea. But I do think he's OK at the moment. The evidence is fairly convincing."

It wasn't immediately clear what caused Kim's absence in past weeks. In 2014, Kim vanished from the public eye for nearly six weeks and then reappeared with a cane. South Korea's spy agency said he had a cyst removed from his ankle.

Analysts say his health could become an increasing factor in years ahead: he's overweight, smokes and drinks, and has a family history of heart issues.

If he's suddenly unable to rule, some analysts said his sister would be installed as leader to continue Pyongyang's heredity dynasty that began after World War II.

But others question whether core members of North Korea's elite, mostly men in their 60s or 70s, would find it hard to accept a young and untested female leader who lacks military credentials. Some predict a collective leadership or violent power struggles.

Following an unusually provocative run in missile and nuclear tests in 2017, Kim used the Winter Olympics in South Korea to initiate negotiations with Washington and Seoul in 2018. That led to a surprising series of summits, including three between Kim and Trump.

But negotiations have faltered in past months over disagreements in exchanging sanctions relief and disarmament steps, which raised doubts about whether Kim would ever fully deal away an arsenal he likely sees as his strongest guarantee of survival.

Telegraph

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021]
VICTORIAProvincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry is urging continued vigilance even as British Columbia prepares to begin loosening restrictions in response to COVID-19 next week.

The province confirmed a new outbreak Saturday at Fraser Valley Specialty Poultry, where three workers have tested positive. There are now 52 cases linked to Superior Poultry and 35 with United Poultry, Henry said.

It is far too easy to tip the scales against us and undo the hard work and sacrifice that everybody here in B.C. has made, she said during a public briefing Saturday.

We cannot afford any missteps as we look to ease our restrictions in the coming days and weeks.

Officials are also concerned about workers returning to B.C. from the Kearl Lake project in Alberta, as the number of cases linked to that outbreak continues to grow, she said.

Its vitally important that anyone returning from Kearl Lake self-isolate for 14 days and that their families practise physical distancing, she said.

British Columbia recorded 26 new cases Saturday, bringing the provincial total to 2,171.

Two more people have died and 1,376 have fully recovered.

The provincial government will release dynamic modelling for infections on Monday, including information about who is getting infected and where. It will also reveal what reopening plans will look like in the province next week.

The timing is in line with Alberta, Ontario and Quebec, Henry said, although she noted that restrictions have been different in each province.

If we look at what we have put in place and the orders and restrictions in B.C., they have not been as draconian, you might say, as some other places, she said.

British Columbia also cant mimic jurisdictions like Sweden, where a focus has been on building so called community or herd immunity, nor New Zealand, which has received global praise for its response.

Those countries do not share a border with a country hard hit by the virus, she noted.

We are very close to a very large country that is having itself a very large outbreak. As we know, early on, Washington state had a dramatic increase in cases that affected us quite dramatically here in B.C., Henry said.

So its a balance, we all have our own approach.

Testing will be a vital part of entering the next stage of pandemic response, especially identifying any cases that dont have identifiable links to existing outbreaks or clusters, she said. Public health is also putting resources toward contact tracing and ensuring testing is available for anyone who shows any symptoms, she said.

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Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Sunday paid an emotional tribute to five security forces personnel, including a colonel, killed in an encounter in Jammu and Kashmir's Handwara town.

"Five jawans of the Army along with senior officers were martyred in Jammu and Kashmir's Handwara while fighting terrorists. Tearful tributes to the martyred soldiers. May god grant strength to the family members of the martyrs in this hour of grief," she said in a tweet in Hindi.

Col Ashutosh Sharma, a decorated Armyman who was the commanding officer of the 21 Rashtriya Rifles battalion, was among the five security personnel killed in the encounter late on Saturday night. Col Sharma was part of a number of successful counter-terrorism operations in Kashmir.

The other personnel killed in the encounter are Major Anuj Sood, Naik Rakesh Kumar, Lance Naik Dinesh Singh and Sub Inspector of Jammu and Kashmir Police Shakeel Qazi, officials said.

Expressing anguish over the killings, Congress leader Ahmed Patel said, "Our thoughts and prayers are with their families and friends. The nation is determined to fight and win this war against terrorism."



Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala saluted the supreme sacrifice made by the brave soldiers.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck stands with one his company's Electron rockets. Rocket Lab

Many companies in the space industry have seen operations grind to a crawl in the past two months because of the coronavirus crisis, a problem compounded by frozen venture capital that used to be readily available. Worse, Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck told CNBC that this is only the "early days" of the crisis for an industry that saw a boom time over the past decade. While he remains hopeful that some creative and well-funded companies may continue pushing forward, Beck warned that this "is going to be a really challenging time." "This is a year-and-a-half slog, maybe even longer," Beck said. Beck is one of the most experienced leaders among the latest generation of space ventures, having built Rocket Lab into a multifaceted company. Begun in 2006, the company is backed by a host a VC firms and, in recent years, has grown its valuation to more than $1.2 billion. It's based in Long Beach, California but was founded by Beck in New Zealand. Rocket Lab has launched its Electron rocket to space 11 times from its New Zealand launchpad, since first reaching orbit in January 2018, and is closing in on the first mission from its second launchpad in Virginia later this year. Additionally, the company last year expanded into the spacecraft building business itself with its Photon satellite platform. Last week, it closed its acquisition of Canadian space systems company Sinclair Interplanetary, which builds satellite hardware. To top it all off, Rocket Lab recently passed key milestones in developing a system to reuse its rockets  by snagging them out of the sky using parachutes and a helicopter.

An Electron rocket lifts off from the company's launchpad in New Zealand. Rocket Lab | gif by @thesheetztweetz

Here's what Beck had to say about the current fundraising situation for space companies, as well as his view of any possible government stimulus actions and his takeaway from Virgin Galactic going public last year.

The VC environment

Simply put, Beck thinks the availability of venture capital is the complete opposite of what it was a few months ago. He said VCs are not looking to invest in any companies that are "pre-revenue" for at least a year. After talking to Rocket Lab's investors, the general consensus for Beck was that it will take VC firms "a very, very long time to return to the space industry." For context, the first quarter of 2020 alone saw $5.4 billion of equity investment in U.S. space companies. "If you don't have revenue and you don't have at least 12 to 18 months of runway, it's a scary place to be," Beck said. "Things are going to fail ... and it's going to be tough." Beck reflected on his first time raising capital in Silicon Valley. In essence, VC investment in space companies has gone through three phases: Little investment before 2009, an explosion of growth for nearly a decade, and then today's chilled environment. "It was a totally different environment, none of them were into space at all," Beck said. "I was the crazy guy wanting to build a launch vehicle, trying to raise $5 million."

Top 25 VC-backed space companies  Quilty Analytics Company Total equity raised (millions) Time since last round (months) Revenue generation SpaceX $3,896 1 Yes Planet $444 16 Yes Rocket Lab $257 17 Some Spaceflight $253 5 Some Mapbox $229 30 Yes Tarana $204 2 Some Kymeta $197 37 Yes Relativity $185 6 No Spire $178 7 Yes Astroscale $149 12 No Orbital Insight $129 5 Yes Skylo Tech $116 3 No Kineis $111 2 No Satellogic $110 4 Some AST & Science $110 1 No Astranis $104 2 No Synspective $100 9 No Astra $100 N/A No Hawkeye 360 $99 8 Some Ispace $95 26 No Capella $80 5 No Spinlaunch $78 3 No Reaction Engines $68 24 No ICEYE $65 16 Some Descartes Labs $58 6 Yes

With investment in pre-IPO space companies cooled off, Beck believes those on the hunt for capital should consider banding together to survive. "If you're one of these space companies that doesn't have a big runway and a product, perhaps it's time to think about consolidation," Beck said. "Who are the partners that I can leverage with my particular piece of technology and join forces, rather than go completely extinct? "I'm hopeful that this is not a time of just waste laying," he added. "I'm hopeful that this is a time of consolidation, where these amazing teams and amazing technologies get absorbed under different umbrellas, rather than disband and the technologies go to the graveyard.

Getting government stimulus to 'the highest node'

Both civil and military agencies are already stepping up funding for corporate space partners. NASA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Defense Innovation Unit are a few government agencies that are accelerating funding to space companies during the crisis. While Beck acknowledged that he doesn't "have the golden solution" for how government can further aid the space economy, he said the industry has "to start talking about it to try and figure a way through." "As the government, you're in a really tricky spot, because which ones do you save and which ones do you not?" Beck asked. "I see so much stimulus talk and it really worries me." He fears the disappearance of space capabilities provided by companies to the U.S., as well as funding being distributed ineffectively. "Don't just do stuff for the sake of doing stuff and keeping an industry alive. Do things that do that but at the same time build capabilities that we've never had before," Beck said. "Ultimately, this is an opportunity for nation building." Ellen Lord, the Pentagon's acquisitions leader, said last month that companies building small rockets  like Rocket Lab's Electron  are among the most impacted by the crisis. But Beck doesn't think the defense department should be prioritizing funds for small rocket builders, and not because it might bring new competition to his company. "You could pour a whole lot of money into a number of other small launch companies and bring them to market. But my argument is that if there's nothing to be launched then everybody's standing around," Beck said. "If you start down at the bottom somewhere, like small launch, it's pointless if your satellite industrial base is dead."

Rocket Lab engineers prepare a "kick stage" with several payloads attached before a mission. Rocket Lab

Beck thinks any government stimulus for space should go "to the highest node," with funds prioritized for spacecraft. Rocket Lab, its competitors and its supply chain "will be healthy as long as there are spacecraft to build," he said. "Then everybody's happy." He believes prioritizing funds for spacecraft should be based upon the question: "What are things that have really good benefits for the country?" "When I think of America as a nation, I look to the things that have really disproportionate economic outcomes. One of the good examples is the GPS constellation  the cost of the constellation has a massively disproportionate benefit both for wealth and the economy," Beck said. While demand for space services may be resilient, as companies are largely business-to-business or business-to-government models, Beck believes the industry's supply chain "is very fragile." He noted Rocket Lab's acquisition of Sinclair Interplanetary, saying it gave "insight into a number of programs." "The Sinclair acquisition for us was born out of the fact that the supply chain for those components is incredibly fragile. It helped secure a supply chain of critical parts," Beck said. As an example of which technologies he thought the government should prioritize, Beck pointed to companies building synthetic aperture radar satellites. It's a technology that has seen some applications already, such as analyzing oil storage from space, even though a SAR company has yet to complete a constellation of the satellites. "SAR has great military utility but no one has really brought commercial SAR to the market. There's a number of international efforts going on and I think that's an area that the U.S. should remain leaders," Beck said. Beyond SAR, Beck said he will "always be encouraging investment into sciences." "Here's an opportunity to build some spacecraft to explore other planets and other worlds in the universe. If it's done well, the outcome has the ability to be totally disproportionate to the investment," Beck said.

Public market demand for space companies

Beck also highlighted last year's public market debut by Virgin Galactic, which notably happened before this unprecedented pandemic began. The space tourism company's stock has been a favorite among speculative traders, especially in the final few months of the bull market earlier this year. But Beck said Virgin Galactic going public was "a really interesting thermometer" that showed how much investor interest exists for space assets. "You gotta hand it to Richard Branson, that was a masterful piece of finance," Beck said.

Virgin Galactic's spacecraft Unity fires its rocket engine and heads to space on Feb. 22, 2019. Virgin Galactic
It is a photograph all young journalists should pin to their cubicle walls: the iconic image of the 1970 Kent State shootings, in which a teenage girl grieves over the body of a slain student.

Forget for a moment that the picture is among the most famous in US history, or that the photographera 21-year-old Kent State journalism student named John Filorisked his life to document the tragedy.

Consider what the photo captures: Our own military occupied a public university and then opened fire on a crowd of unarmed citizensstudents no lesskilling four and wounding nine. One student was killed while walking to class.

Filos photo is a striking reminder of how quickly the world can turn upside down and how people in trusted, powerful positions can commit the most horrendous acts.

I was a student at Kent State in the early 80s, a decade after the shootings. Even then, it was difficult not to be shaped by the deaths and Filos renowned photo. Questions about the shootings lingered: Why did the guardsmen fire? Were certain student protesters targeted?

A central part of the Ohio campus seemed to me like a giant crime scene, and I often wondered: Am I walking over the very spot where someone was shot? Am I parking my car where someone died?

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The answer to both questions was yes, but I didnt know any better. Most students didnt. There was no proper memorial. There was no museum. There were no signs. School officials wanted to move on.

Student Alan Canfora waves a black flag at Ohio Army National Guardsmen as they kneel and aim their rifles on a KSU football field. Shortly after this picture was taken (though from a different location), the soldiers fired upon students, killing four.

But we did have one thing: We had Filos photograph. Like the police shooting videos of today, it provided a sliver of justice, proof that what happened really happened, and hope that the events would not be whitewashed.

When I called Filo, now 67 and vice president for photography at CBS, he recalled his concern that authorities would confiscate his film that day and concoct a false version of events. Early radio reports, he says, characterized the tragedy as a shootout between students and the Ohio National Guard, with guardsmen also being killedall untrue.

After the shootings, Filo was startled to see guardsmen cutting telephone wires on a main road out of town. He hid his film under the hood of his red VW bug and drove straight to Pennsylvania. Only when he was over the border did he pull into a rest stop, put his film in a canvas bag behind the front seat, and use a pay phone to call his hometown paper near Pittsburgh.

Did you get any pictures? a photo editor asked.

I think so, Filo responded.

His picture of the girl screaming over the slain student went out over the Associated Press wire and was published on the front pages of hundreds of newspapers worldwide. But the backlash, Filo recalls, was immediate. I started getting hate calls. I got tons of hate mail. They said, This never happened. This is obviously a posed photo. It didnt really happen.  Even some other professional photographers were skeptical, suggesting he sign an affidavit.

People were in denial, Filo says. This was a shock to America. The photo went on to win the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for spot news photography and become a fixture in history books.

Filos photo is a striking reminder of how quickly the world can turn upside down and how people in trusted, powerful positions can commit the most horrendous acts.

There are really only a handful of photographs that singularly have frozen a historic moment in time that almost everyone can instantly recall in their mind, says Pete Souza, chief official White House photographer for President Barack Obama. John Filos photograph of the Kent State shootings is certainly one of those. All you need to do is mention that episode in American history to anyone, and they remember that photograph. The details may be a bit foggy of what actually happened that day, but no one will ever forget that image.

The irony is that Filo, at the time a senior majoring in photo illustration, didnt want to take any pictures that fateful spring day.

Four days earlier, President Richard Nixon had announced on national TV that US troops were moving into Cambodia, in effect widening the Vietnam War. The news sparked student anti-war protests the next day on campuses across the country, including at Kent State. That night, protesters in downtown Kent, Ohio, broke windows, set bonfires in the street, and hurled bottles at police cars. The following day, guardsmen were called to campus, only to find the wooden ROTC building being burned to the ground.

But Filo was 200 miles away, in the forests of central Pennsylvania, finishing the requirements of his senior portfolio by photographing extreme close-ups of tiny flora, such as moss and teaberries.

When he arrived back on campus and learned of the unrest, he was convinced he had missed the biggest story of his life. Making matters worse, many of his classmates had signed on with major publications, such as Life and Newsweek, to photograph any additional protests. No one needed Filos help. I was totally, totally dejected, he says. I dont think I could have felt any lower.

The following morning, May 4, the day of the shootings, he reported as usual to the journalism building, where he worked in the photo lab mixing chemicals and handing out equipment to students. When two professors spotted Filo moping around, they encouraged him to use his lunch break to photograph a student rally. Filo grudgingly picked up his camera, stuffed six rolls of black and white film in his right pants pocket, and headed out.

He was surprised to see the Commons, a field adjacent to the journalism building, packed with about 3,000 demonstrators and spectators. Guardsmen fired tear gas canisters to try to get them to disperse. Several photographers set up their cameras on tripods on the edge of the field, but Filo followed some guardsmen to the other side of the journalism building. Students hurled rocks at the troops.

A few moments later, Filo started up a hill, where dozens of guardsmen carrying high-velocity M-1 rifles had gathered. As I was walking up the hill, I saw students turning and fleeing and almost running me over, he recalls. So Im dodging bodies fleeing, and then you hear guns going off, and you realize the guard has started firing.

National Guardsmen and demonstrators gather around the body of student Jeffrey Miller. Three other students were also shot and killed by guardsmen during the incident.

At first, Filo thought the guardsmen were just trying to scare the students by shooting blanks. I said, Well, I got to get a picture of this. 

He kept walking toward the guardsmen, coming within about 30 yards, not imagining they were firing real bullets. I could see no reason to be firing from the top of the hill, shooting downhill at fleeing students, Filo says.

He stood by a metal sculpture and trained his camera on a guardsman, who fired toward him. A bullet slams into the metal sculpture, and it erupts in a cloud of rust, and the bullet hits the tree thats next to me, and a chunk of bark comes off. And I went, Oh, God! Someone is using live ammunition!  Filo says.

Twenty-eight guardsmen fired between 61 and 67 shots over 13 seconds. When the firing stopped, Filo checked his thighs and stomach to see if he had been shot. He was OK. I go, This is crazy! I got to flee. I got to run. 

He took three large steps down the hill, and then remembered the shooting was over and that he should be taking photos and not running. A few yards in front of him, face down on an access road, lay the body of 20-year-old student protester Jeffrey Miller. Blood was streaming from his mouth.

Filo recalls that the student was clearly dead, and he started taking pictures of him. A few seconds later, a girl with long, dark hair ran up and knelt over the body. Filo says he thought: OK, this is a good picture. But Im running out of film.

He inched closer to the girl. Im trying to focus, and all of a sudden she lets out this screamand thats when Filo captured his acclaimed picture. I advance the camera, and I shoot another picture, and I advance one more, and Im out of film.

Like the police shooting videos of today, it provided a sliver of justice, proof that what happened really happened, and hope that events would not be whitewashed.

By the time he reloaded his camera, the girl was gone. Filo continued to photograph other peoples reactions to the body, angering some students. They yelled: Why are you doing this? and What kind of pig are you, taking pictures of this? Filo says he yelled back: No one is going to believe this happened!

The image of the girl kneeling over the student has often been compared to the Pieta, the depiction of the Virgin Mary holding the body of Jesus. Filo says he sees similarities, but didnt at the time. When its happening, he says, youre reacting to a scream, a movement.

Only two weeks later did Filo learn that the girl was not a Kent State student but 14-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio, a runaway from Florida. There were plenty of other women around who were 18, 19, and 20 years old who didnt react like she did, Filo says. So youre saying, My God, I had this child react to this gore and horror in front of her. Had she been a student, would she have screamed? Would she have done that? And would the picture have been different? 

Although several photos were included in Filos Pulitzer entry, the picture of the runaway over Millers body has been most remembered. The Pulitzer award lists Filos affiliations as The Valley Daily News and Daily Dispatch of Tarentum and New Kensington, Pennsylvania, a combined newspaper that developed Filos photos and helped send them over the wires. He says he took his film there as opposed to a larger publication because he had interned at the paper since high school and trusted the editors.

I felt cocky for about two days, says Filo about winning the Pulitzer. Then he received a letter from another Prize-winning photographer, Eddie Adams. It read: Dear John, You have my deepest congratulations. Hold your head up high. Now, lets see what you can do tomorrow.

He remains one of the youngest people to win a Pulitzer, and one of the few students. He learned he had won by watching the news come over the wire machine in the Kent State journalism building, just feet from where he took his winning picture.

I felt cocky for about two days, he says. Then he received a congratulatory letter from mentor and Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Eddie Adams, who wrote: Now, lets see what you can do tomorrow.

Filo says that for years he felt very fortunate and very guilty about the shootings, particularly when he considered the trajectory of the bullets. An arms length to my right, a guy was shot. An arms length or two to my left, thats where Jeffrey Miller was shot. I got this photo and Im alive and its relatively famous. They are dead or wounded. Were talking a few feet, either way. The randomness is what drives you crazy.

The fallout from the shootings has been a messy mixed bag of government inquiries, court actions, and weak apologies. President Nixons Commission on Campus Unrest concluded the shootings were unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable. The guardsmen testified that they fired in self-defense, and criminal charges against them were dropped. A civil suit was settled for $675,000, with the soldiers offering tepid words of regret but no admission of wrongdoing.

The university, however, has come to terms with the event. A massive granite memorial resembling four caskets now stands near the shooting site. You can no longer park where the students fell. A visitors center and walking tour with trail markers are compelling and comprehensive.

Forty-four years after Filo took his picture, in Chicago, the city where I work, a white police officer shot a 17-year-old African-American, Laquan McDonald, 16 times, killing him. The city portrayed the shooting as an act of self-defense but refused to release a police dashboard camera video of the event. Only after 13 months, a public outcry, and a court order did authorities release the footage, which contradicted the official narrative. Just hours before the footage was made public, the officer was charged with first-degree murder. The teenager became a symbol of police brutality.

In many ways, Filos photo prefigures the McDonald video and other dramatic images of police violence that have captured the nations attention in recent years. Filos picture and the Kent State shootings have become vivid symbols of oppression. But the photo also represents hope and truth.

That photo screamed for justice, says Dean Kahler, who was shot by the guardsmen and paralyzed from the waist down.

Filo agrees. You really couldnt deny the photo, he says. Thats what it boils down to.

In 2007, while working on an investigative series about unsafe toys, the Chicago Tribune rented a device that screens objects for lead. It looked, Sam Roe says, like a pricing gun on steroids. Roe took the device home and headed downstairs to his 3-year-old twins basement playroom. He held the gun against trucks, balls, and other toys, reading lead levels and jotting down notes.

Among his targets were plush Baby Einstein blocks decorated with vinyl ducks and other animals. The testing gun suggested a high lead level. Extensive lab analysis showed the vinyl affixed to the blocks contained hazardous amounts of the toxic metal.

The work of six reporters on two continents, the Tribune series led retailers and manufacturers to pull popular toys from shelves and sparked an overhaul of the US Consumer Product Safety Commission. The Prize was announced in April 2008, four months after Sam Zell bought the Tribunes parent company, at a time when the paper was in turmoil. The Pulitzer provided a bit of sanity amidst the chaos, Roe says. When you get down to it, its you, your phone, your documents, and your computer. If you can just put blinders on and ignore the distractions, you can do great work.

He still keeps several yellow Baby Einstein blocks on his desk as a reminder.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Sam Roe is an investigative reporter at The Chicago Tribune. A Pulitzer Prize winner and three-time Pulitzer finalist, he most recently collaborated with data scientists at Columbia University Medical Center to uncover prescription drug combinations that are linked to a serious heart condition.
Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves with President Donald Trump.

Leah Mills/Reuters

The Governor of Mississippi admitted he would backtrack on plans to partially end the state's coronavirus lockdown after seeing its largest single-day increase in both cases and deaths on Friday.

Mississippi reported 397 new cases of coronavirus and 20 new deaths Friday, both of which were the highest daily numbers in the state. There have been 291 deaths from the virus in the state.

Those figures prompted Governor Tate Reeves to pull back on plans to reopen non-essential businesses.

More than 66,000 people have died, , and the virus has infected over 1.1 million in the US, which is now the global epicenter of COVID-19.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The Governor of Mississippi said he would backtrack on plans to partially end the state's coronavirus lockdown after seeing its largest single-day increase in both cases and deaths on Friday.

Mississippi reported 397 new cases of coronavirus and 20 new deaths Friday, both of which were the highest daily numbers in the state since the virus first appeared there. By Saturday the number of new cases had fallen to 229, while there were 10 new deaths.

The spike in cases caused the state's governor, Tate Reeves, to pull back on plans to allow some non-essential retailers to reopen under strict guidelines for their operation.

"Things can change quickly. We have to stay flexible. Today, I was prepared to announce further reopenings. That was the plan and I was excited to get more of our people back to work," Reeves said in a briefing Friday.

"This was a large enough change to make me take a step back," he said, referencing the large number of new cases. "I have come to the conclusion that I must hold on for now."

Mississippi, the US' poorest state on a GDP per capita basis, has reported 7,441 cases of COVID-19, and 291 deaths, the state's department of health says.

There have been some 1.1 million cases across the US, and around 66,000 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Story continues

Mississippi was set to be one of a handful of states to begin easing lockdowns by reopening some non-essential businesses and allowing some workers to return to work.

Children wait in line at a ice-cream shop as the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, in Biloxi, Mississippi U.S., April 17, 2020.

Reuters/Carlos Barria

Reeves had planned a so-called "safer at home" initiative, whereby non-essential retail businesses like clothing stores and bookstores could reopen, while following strict guidelines. Those guidelines included lowering capacity, practicing social distancing, and ensuring high levels of hygiene.

"The increase was a large enough change to make me take a step back, reexamine things and must hold on and reconsider at least over the weekend," Reeves said.

He stressed his desire, "not to recklessly put people in harm's way."

At a federal level, President Donald Trump has pushed for a reopening of some businesses after several weeks of lockdown, citing a desire to protect the US economy from the damage that a prolonged period of low activity would cause.

The president has frequently yo-yo-ed between pushing for a reopening at the behest of business leaders, and urging caution amid advice from public health officials.

Health officials warn that reopening the economy too quickly could lead to a second wave of new cases, much like was witnessed during the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918.

The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) warned this week that the most likely, and worst-case scenario going forward is a "one in which the first wave is followed by a larger wave in the fall or winter of 2020, and one or more smaller subsequent waves in 2021," Business Insider' Aylin Woodward reported Saturday.

Read the original article on Business Insider
To all the retailers who are giving something back  we salute you!

Mugs, 25 for two, oliverbonas.com

H&M

A big bravo for getting its supply chain to produce protective clothing for hospitals and healthcare workers worldwide, and also for using its social media platforms to help the Red Cross reach a wider audience.

Kurt Geiger

Its stores may be closed but the company is continuing to pay its staff and has asked them to use their paid time volunteering for Age UK and NHS departments. And thats not all  store managers working with their local NHS hospitals will be giving out 100 gift cards to NHS workers in critical care departments. Plus NHS workers will receive a 50 per cent discount for a year in all Kurt Geiger stores when they reopen.

Pronovias

#loveconquersall is a message we should all be channelling during these challenging times, and in an act of support to brides-to-be working in hospitals  from doctors to cleaners  luxury bridal store Pronovias is providing a free wedding gown to those who are engaged, until 31 August. For more details, visit the Heroes Collection at pronovias.com.

Net-a-Porter

Big love to the high-end shopping site for keeping its delivery vans at work. While its distribution centres are closed, the company is supporting Age UK by ensuring the most vulnerable have food items and medical supplies.

Allbirds

Lets hear it for sustainable footwear brand Allbirds for offering 2,000 NHS frontline staff  who are working around the clock on their feet  a free pair of shoes.

John Lewis

The high-street legend is striving to make any small breaks in a long and hard-hitting day a little more comfortable for those working on the front line. We love that it is supporting NHS workers downtime needs by providing hospitals with comfort items such as pillows, phone chargers, eye masks and hand cream, not to mention 50,000 Easter-food treats.

Marks & Spencer

We are #allinthistogether says the national treasure, which is practising what it preaches by promising to support communities continuously as events unfold. It has donated 200,000 to its Neighbourly Community Fund and the National Emergencies Trust, both of which support charities that help the most vulnerable. Plus it has added them to its list of Sparks charities, so that we too can donate to them as we shop.

Lisou

The luxury label is donating to the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Foundation to help provide hardship grants for nurses who are unable to work due to infection or have families who may be ill. It will also be giving 20 per cent of profits on sales for three months to the RCN Foundation COVID-19 Support Fund to help it provide practical and psychological support to frontline healthcare workers during this emergency.

Wildabout Flowers

Due to social distancing, the independent florist was forced to close its studio. However before it did so it made sure that it threw some happiness in the direction of NHS staff across London. Rescuing flowers from its suppliers that would otherwise have been burned due to the crisis causing a reduction in demand, it sent 500 posy bouquets to workers at six hospitals in a show of appreciation.

Miller Harris

The perfumer has donated its entire stock of 11,000 hand washes, hand lotion and hard soaps in a bid to get vital cleansing products to the most vulnerable and in need at this time. It is joining forces with Age UK, providing soaps to food banks and encouraging other companies to do as much as they can to help too.

Oliver Bonas

The lifestyle store is showing how grateful it is to our NHS, teachers, care workers and the emergency services by offering a 25 per cent discount online. I think we can all agree that they deserve some home comforts at this time.

Mango

The Spanish label is donating an amazing two million protective face masks and using its logistics system to distribute them among the countrys hospitals, many of which are experiencing shortages of essential medical supplies.
As the coronavirus pandemic rapidly spread across the United States in March, Bill Gates peppered his longtime friend Jeff Raikes with the science behind testing for the disease during dinner at his home in Medina, Washington.

The two men ate sushi  at an appropriate social distance, Raikes said  while Gates detailed the challenges of using nasopharyngeal swabs that reach deep into nasal passages to test for the novel coronavirus. Instead, Gates offered that self-testing with simpler, shorter swabs could be more effective and wouldnt require health-care workers to risk infection themselves, said Raikes, a former senior leader at Microsoft who went on to run the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

He is in his element right now, said Raikes, who has worked closely with Gates for four decades.

As the virus has spread, killing more than 239,000 people globally, Gates has used his fame and wealth to push for science-based approaches to end the pandemic. Having studied infectious diseases for the past 20 years as part of his philanthropic work, Gates has warned about the potential for a pathogen-spread pandemic since 2015, in a TED Talk, lectures and medical journal articles. Since February, the foundation he runs with his wife has given away $250m (199m) to expand testing for the coronavirus and find a cure for Covid-19, the disease it causes.

But the coronavirus is unlike any global health challenge Gates has faced. Hes spent years trying to address health threats vexing the developing world, such as malaria, polio and HIV. Those diseases have either vaccines or therapies, but the countries where they remain a major threat lack health systems to deliver them to people, something the Gates Foundation is trying to fix. When it comes to the coronavirus, though, there is neither a vaccine nor a therapy, and its spread to both rich and poor countries.

With the coronavirus afflicting rich countries as well as developing ones, Gates also needs to navigate the thickets of US politics. One new challenge for Gates: pressing messages that often run headlong into comments by President Donald Trump that lack scientific basis. In an interview, Gates noted past global health achievements by the United States, such as President George W Bushs support for drugs to address the Aids epidemic sweeping across sub-Saharan Africa nearly two decades ago.

People are hoping for US leadership. Its still an opportunity we havent seized, Gates said. The vacuum of waiting for the US to step in and help out with that, theres still a huge opportunity there.

Gates hasnt directly criticised Trump, and he remains largely apolitical. But research he has cited has undermined some of the presidents claims. The Gates Foundation, for example, is funding a clinical trial on hydroxychloroquine, the drug Trump that tweeted could, when combined with azithromycin, be one of the biggest game-changers in the history of medicine. Gates, though, focused on the data, writing in a 23 April blog post that early indications from the trial suggest the benefits will be modest at best.

Gates also took aim at the presidents plans in April to suspend payments to the World Health Organisation in response to the UN agencys handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Halting funding for the World Health Organisation during a world health crisis is as dangerous as it sounds, Gates tweeted on 14 April, arguing that the no other organisation is capable of replacing the agency. The Gates Foundation is the second-biggest donor to the WHO, after the US government.

Bill is a guy who believes in science and technology and the positive impact that can have in the world, Raikes said. I think at least subconsciously, like many of us, hes been disturbed by the attack on science, though Raikes acknowledged that he hasnt talked specifically with Gates about the topic.

Despite politicians calls to quickly reopen society that arent backed by science, Gates is not likely to become more political now, said Sue Desmond-Hellmann, the former chief executive of the Gates Foundation. Gates philanthropic work  addressing the vexing inequities in global health and US education systems  requires the support of governments.

You have to pick your spots, Desmond-Hellmann said. Obviously, the WHO comment was of the magnitude that Bill and Melinda spoke out and said that the world needs the WHO.

Gates famously dropped out of Harvard University to found Microsoft with his high school buddy, Paul Allen. But he is a voracious reader, and over the past two decades of his charitable focus on global health, hes taught himself the science of infectious diseases.

When I spend billions of dollars on something, I have a tendency to read a lot about it, Gates said.

As Gates began to move away from Microsoft in the early 2000s, he gave a fireside chat to senior leaders at its Redmond, Washington, conference centre, discussing his foundations efforts to address malaria. Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, in particular recalled Gatess encyclopedic assessment of mosquitoes, and how they behaved and transmitted the disease.

I will always remember listening and thinking, Oh, my gosh, he can go just in deep in talking about mosquitoes, as he did in talking about software code, said Smith, who has worked closely with Gates for 26 years.

Since the coronavirus first emerged in China late last year, Gates has consumed medical journal articles about testing, treatments and vaccines for the virus. Hes talked at length with immunologists, epidemiologists and social scientists about slowing the coronavirus spread.

When Bill takes on an issue, he doesnt seek to become just generally familiar with it, Smith said.

Gates has met with presidents from both parties, including Trump. He has made campaign contributions to both Democrats and Republicans. Even when the federal government sued Microsoft for violating antitrust laws in the late 1990s, Gates refrained from publicly attacking the Clinton administration, which brought the suit.

With a net worth of $105bn (83.9bn), Gates is the worlds second-wealthiest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, behind his Seattle neighbour Jeff Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post. Gates has poured much of his wealth into the foundation he runs with his wife. It has become one of the worlds largest philanthropies, with an endowment of $46.8bn (37.4bn) as of 2018.

Over the past two decades, he has gradually shed his Microsoft responsibilities to focus on philanthropic work. In March, he gave up the last of his formal Microsoft titles, stepping down from the companys board, though he said he would continue to provide technology advice to its leadership.

A pillar of Gates philanthropic thrust has been addressing the infectious diseases, such as malaria and polio, that continue to devastate the developing world. His foundation helped create a market for drugs for those diseases, which were often ignored by a pharmaceutical industry that has a financial incentive to develop medication for ailments common in the more lucrative markets of the developed world.

His knowledge of infectious diseases led him to the conclusion in 2015 that a pathogen-based pandemic could sweep over the globe, killing indiscriminately and destroying economies.

Bill Gates has been warning world leaders about the possibility and threat of a global pandemic for years (Getty)

If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, its most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war, Gates said in his TED Talk, which seems eerily prescient today.

He expressed concern that governments hadnt invested in systems to stop a pandemic in the same way they financed nuclear deterrents. He encouraged the development of strong health systems in poor countries where he expected the outbreak to first emerge. He pushed for stepped-up research into and development of vaccines and diagnostic testing apparatus. And he called for germ games, akin to war games, to simulate a pandemic to help identify shortcomings.

We need to get going because time is not on our side, Gates said in the talk.

Its an issue he has regularly raised with government leaders around the world. That warning largely fell on deaf ears. The lack of response is something Gates laments as unfortunate.

I often think, Could I have been more persuasive? Gates said.

The foundation invested in efforts to prepare for a pandemic even before Gates TED Talk. Leaders including Gates worried about the impact the Ebola outbreak in 2014 had on its global health work and spent hundreds of millions of dollars building scientific infrastructure that is now helping slow the spread of the disease.

In 2017, it gave $279m (223m) to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, a group to which it had previously given funds. IHME has since developed a widely used forecasting model to predict the need hospital beds, ventilators and other medical equipment in every state and in countries around the globe.

The same year, the foundation committed nearly $100m (79.9m) to help launch the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, which has been financing experimental research into coronavirus vaccines.

The 18-month-old, Gates-funded Seattle Flu Study research project tracks the spread of infectious diseases such as influenza. As the coronavirus outbreak was beginning to hit the United States, researchers with the project tested for the coronavirus even though it wasnt what they were certified to do. They found one of the first US cases in a teenager who tested positive for the virus.

The projects mission has evolved into the Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network, which is conducting coronavirus testing with self-swab sampling kits that wont expose health workers to the virus. That testing is now certified, and received approval for emergency use by the Washington State Department of Health.

As the coronavirus spread, Gates has taken to the talk-show circuit, making his case for science-backed approaches. He chatted remotely on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, lamenting the missed opportunities to have prepared for the pandemic. A few days earlier, he and his wife, Melinda, recorded a message aired during the One World: Together At Home global charity event expressing hope that a vaccine for the virus could emerge by the end of next year. That followed his video call with Ellen DeGeneres on her talk show in which he discussed the criteria for a return to normalcy.

His foundations global health efforts have allowed Gates to work with officials including Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. Gates said hes in frequent communication with both.

Im talking, actually quite a bit, to both Tony and Francis about what theyre seeing, what were seeing, Gates said.

My primary value add is finding out who the innovators are in understanding the system of scaling delivery that is necessary, like testing and contact tracing, which some countries are doing very, very well, Gates said, bringing together scientists and researchers with whom the foundation is working and the government.

The Gates Foundation has faced past criticism for the outsize influence it wields in areas such as global health and public education. The massive sums that the foundation has put towards global health challenges has threatened to distort the way governments address those threats, encouraging them to adopt its priorities to receive its grants, according to research by Jeremy Youde, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and global health politics researcher at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Bill Gates has become a prominent face in the celebrity-backed fight against coronavirus (Getty)

Youde acknowledged that the coronavirus pandemic is different. One reason: Theres so much money being poured into the public health crisis-from other philanthropies as well as pharmaceutical giants-that the Gates Foundation alone wont determine the vaccine winners and losers. The pandemic illustrates why its important to have these international collaborations, Youde said.

Theres one group with whom Gates isnt popular: the social media mob pushing conspiracy theories that the billionaire engineered the pandemic, and is mining it for profit and leveraging it for global surveillance and population control. His tweet about WHO funding cuts generated a flood of more than 75,000 comments, many questioning Gates motives and patriotism. Protesters at rallies pushing to end government lockdowns have waved signs railing against Gates.

Some conspiracy theories are being amplified by the Russian government, which is spreading misinformation about the coronavirus through state proxy websites, according to a State Department report. One article from early March on the website of the Zvezda television channel, a Russian state-controlled network run by the ministry of defence, claims that Gates played a role in creating the virus

I got a note of sympathy from George Soros, so it must be getting serious, Gates joked, referring to the liberal billionaire philanthropist who is a frequent target of conspiracy theories.

Gates, though, did have an early window into the spread of the virus. The foundations operations in China experienced firsthand the impact of the virus outbreak there, said Mark Suzman, the current chief executive. And it gathered information from the Seattle Flu Studys work regarding the US spread.

We got an early heads-up about that, Suzman said. That led to the recognition that we should be cranking up as a foundation very rapidly to see what we can do to help support efforts to combat the outbreak.

In February, the foundation committed $100m (79.9m) to improve detection, isolation and treatment efforts; to accelerate the development of vaccines, drugs and diagnostics; and to protect at-risk populations in Africa and South Asia. On 15 April, the foundation added an additional $150m (119.9m) to that effort.

Gates recognises the need to spend billions of dollars to develop facilities to develop and manufacture vaccines, many of which wont pan out. It makes most sense, Gates said, to waste money building for approaches that dont ultimately work so that the vaccine that ultimately proves successful can be made and distributed rapidly around the globe, and end the economic devastation of the pandemic.

Theres a need to spend billions to save trillions, Gates said

The foundation wont cover all of the cost of developing vaccines, Suzman said. But it can provide financing to quickly spin up manufacturing facilities.

Were a distinctive kind of capital. We can be risk-taking. We can be catalytic. We should never be in there substituting for public or private money, which could be doing the job just as well, Suzman said.

While the foundations scope is broad  from eradicating polio to boosting college completion rates  Gates is now spending the predominant amount of his time on the pandemic, Suzman said. Non-coronavirus efforts have shrunk to about 10 per cent to 15 per cent of the discussion at the foundation. Emails from Gates dive deep into technical details about epidemiological modelling, vaccine constructs and what the cost of production per unit might be, Suzman said.

All of the deep learning and expertise over the last 20 years of the foundation going into global health is very applicable to the current moment, Suzman said.

And Gates doesnt believe the call for pandemic preparedness will go unheeded any longer.

I think this time people will pay attention, Gates said.

The Washington Post
People in many parts of the world are emerging from their homes as coronavirus-related restrictions begin to ease and springtime temperatures climb.

The global pandemic took a turn for the worse in other places, however, with India reporting more than 2,600 new cases on Sunday, its biggest single-day jump.

In Russia, new cases exceeded 10,000 for the first time. while the US continues to have tens of thousands of new infections each day, with more than 1,400 new deaths reported Saturday.

(PA Graphics)

On the eve of Italys first steps toward easing restrictions, the Health Ministry reported 174 Covid-19 deaths in the 24-hour period ending on Sunday evening  the lowest day-to-day number since the national lockdown began on March 10.

Parks and public gardens are expected to reopen on Monday.

In Spain, many ventured outside for the first time since the countrys lockdown began March 14 but social distancing rules remained in place and masks will be mandatory on public transport.

New Jersey in the US reopened state parks, though several had to turn people away after reaching a 50% limit in their parking lots.

Russias latest tally of infections was nearly double the new cases reported a week ago.

More than half of Russias new cases were in Moscow, where concern is rising about whether the capitals medical facilities will be overwhelmed.

Pope Francis leans out of the window of his private library overlooking St Peters Square (Alessandra Tarantino/AP)

Indian air force helicopters showered flower petals on hospitals in several cities to thank doctors, nurses and police at the forefront of the battle against the pandemic.

The countrys number of confirmed cases neared 40,000 as the population of 1.3 billion marked the 40th day of a nationwide lockdown.

The official death toll reached 1,323.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis for international collaboration in the search for a vaccine and treatment for Covid-19 and invited people of all religions to spiritually unite in prayer, fasting and works of charity on May 14.

The virus has infected 3.4 million people and killed more than 244,000 worldwide, including more than 66,000 dead in the United States, according to a count by Johns Hopkins University.
Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer on Sunday lent her support to Joe Biden in the wake of sexual assault accusations against him.

In March, Tara Reade came forward to allege that the former Vice President had sexually assaulted her when she worked for him two decades ago aged 29.

Democratic presidential candidate Biden finally broke his silence about the allegation to deny it on Friday.

Gov. Whitmer argued not 'every claim is equal' in an interview with CNN Sunday. She said: 'We need to give people an opportunity to tell their story. But then we have a duty to vet it. And just because you're a survivor doesn't mean that every claim is equal.'

Whitmer added: 'I have read a lot about this current allegation. I know Joe Biden, and I have watched his defense. And there's not a pattern that goes into this.

'And I think that, for these reasons, I'm very comfortable that Joe Biden is who he says he is. And I will tell you this. I don't believe that it's consistent with the Joe Biden that I know. And I do believe Joe, and I support Joe Biden.'

Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, pictured, on Sunday lent her support to Joe Biden in the wake of sexual assault accusations against him

Democratic presidential candidate Biden, pictured, broke his silence about the allegation to deny it on Friday. Gov. Whitmer argued not 'every claim is equal' in an interview Sunday

We owe it to every woman who has a story to, to listen to that story and then vet that story I dont believe that its consistent with the Joe Biden I know and I do believe Joe Biden, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer reacts to Tara Reade's allegation against Biden. #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/5h0fvzgV4K  State of the Union (@CNNSotu) May 3, 2020

There are now at least four people who have corroborated Reade's allegations.

Despite that, Biden was further supported on Sunday by Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez, who dismissed calls for an independent investigation into the accusations leveled at Biden.

Likening Tara Reade's claims to 'the Hillary emails', because 'there was nothing there', Perez told This Week: 'The most comprehensive investigation of the vice president was when he was vetted by Barack Obama in 2008.'

Some Democrats have expressed concern the accusations will be used against Biden, much as Republicans spoke in 2016 on Clintons private email server.

But critics in both parties are saying that Democrats and the media have brushed off the standard of 'believe all women' that they set in the hearings on sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said: 'It has been appalling the hypocrisy as to how Brett Kavanaugh was treated versus Joe Biden.

'Brett Kavanaugh -- every accuser was put on TV, it was wall-to-wall coverage, they went into his high school yearbook, they said they needed an FBI investigation.'

'It went from 'me too,' 'me too,' 'me too,' to 'move on,' 'move on,' 'move on' in a nanosecond because he's a Democrat and hypocrisy is appalling.'

In March, Tara Reade, pictured, came forward to allege that the former Vice President had sexually assaulted her when she worked for him two decades ago aged 29

Whitmer told CNN Sunday: 'I'm very comfortable that Joe Biden is who he says he is. I don't believe that it's consistent with the Joe Biden that I know. And I do believe Joe'

And Reade has slammed Democrats for 'hypocrisy' as she revealed the intense online abuse she has received since making the accusation.

But Reade herself has admitted she is 'not sure' of the words she used in her complaint against Biden. She told NBC Saturday: 'I filed a complaint re sexual harassment and retaliation but I am not sure what explicit words on that intake form until we all see it again.'

New images have emerged of Reade showing her as a young actress dressed in a flapper costume. The pictures show her as a young dancer after she sent them to producer Oliver Stone in December last year.

Gov. Whitmer appeared on CNN Sunday amid increased pressure to lift coronavirus lockdowns

Gov. Whitmer on Sunday also decried protests staged inside the states Capitol building last week - which featured demonstrators with assault weapons, swastikas and Confederate flags - saying the event acted as a reminder of some of the most awful parts of US history.

Some of the outrageousness of what happened at our capitol depicted some of the worst racism and awful parts of our history in this country, Whitmer said on CNNs State of the Union on Sunday.

The Confederate Flags, and nooses, the swastikas, the behavior that you have seen in all of the clips is not representative of who we are in Michigan, she continued.

The 'American Patriot Rally', organized by Michigan United for Liberty, was staged Thursday in contempt for Whitmers statewide stay-at-home orders put in place to stop the spread of coronavirus.

Hundreds of protesters - waving pro-Trump banners and carrying assault rifles - descended on the state capitol to oppose the shutdown, which is currently in place till May 15.
Guest Column On World Press Freedom Day, a Nod to the Role of Journalists in a Time of Crisis

A press freedom activist in Yangon in 2018. / Myo Min Soe / The Irrawaddy

Today is World Press Freedom Day 2020. Although the global struggle to deal with COVID-19 prevents us from coming together to celebrate this day with our partners in journalism, government and civil society, we would like to take a moment to reflect and remind ourselves of the invaluable work journalists do in a time of crisis.

In all societies, information is the lifeblood of a healthy political system, a vibrant civil debate and a prosperous economy. We all need quality information to make good decisions. In this time of crisis, when we have to trust our governments with our lives, journalists are our frontline defenders to ask the difficult questions, comparing information with what they observe on the ground. They contextualize, prioritize and verify. We need them, just as we need experts, doctors and nurses.

Moreover, the free expression of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious human rights. In full respect of peoples dignity, the journalist must be able to freely perform all the acts of his or her profession, investigating, providing commentary, or recording image and sound, with the guaranteed protection of the confidentiality of sources.

Yet, all over the world, we see disinformation spreading like wildfire, feeding prejudice and hate and threatening peaceful coexistence. Internet shutdowns are preventing people from accessing vital health care information to prepare for an outbreak and protect themselves, their families and their community. Under the pretext of state security, journalists and activists are intimidated and accused.

While it may seem tempting for those in power to demonstrate that they are indeed in control, all it does is to undermine public trust in these leaders. Journalists are not the enemy of any government. In times of crisis, an independent media and journalists can reinforce the credibility of democratic institutions. A government that is transparent and willing to be scrutinized by journalists and its people will gain trust and public support. We do not expect leaders to have all the answers, but we need them to be open to public scrutiny.

In her Freedom from Fear speech, State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi referred to this when speaking of her father, the national independence leader General Aung San: Always one to practice what he preached, Aung San himself constantly demonstrated couragenot just the physical sort but the kind that enabled him to speak the truth, to stand by his word, to accept criticism, to admit his faults, to correct his mistakes, to respect the opposition, to parley with the enemy and to let people be the judge of his worthiness as a leader.

As ambassadors and heads of mission of the member states of the European Union based in Myanmar, we embrace these wise words and join everyone in celebrating World Press Freedom Day 2020.

Hana Mottlova, Ambassador of the Czech Republic, John Nielsen, Ambassador of Denmark, Kristian Schmidt, Ambassador of the European Union, Riikka Laatu, Ambassador of Finland, Christian Lechervy, Ambassador of France, Thomas Neisinger, Ambassador of Germany, Alessandra Schiavo, Ambassador of Italy, Wouter Jurgens, Ambassador of the Netherlands. Bibian Zamora Gimenez, Charge dAffaires of the Embassy of Spain, Frida Zaric, Head of Embassy of Sweden Section Office
Stopping older people leaving their homes when the rest of the country surfaces from lockdown would amount to age discrimination and risk 'unrest', a former minister warned yesterday.

Baroness Ros Altmann, 64, said many healthy over-70s would risk going to prison rather than continue isolating if younger generations did not have to.

The campaigner said using age-based criteria to lift restrictions would send a message that older people's lives 'don't count in the same way as others'.

Baroness Ros Altmann, 64, said many healthy over-70s would risk going to prison rather than continue isolating if younger generations did not have to

The warning came amid confusion over what the current official guidance actually is, with Health Secretary Matt Hancock denying that over-70s were being asked to stay in their houses 'unless absolutely necessary' - then directing people to a Government website appearing to suggest just that.

Professor Stephen Powis, national medical director for NHS England, said on Friday that officials are considering whether stricter measures will still apply to the elderly when the lockdown is eased.

With Boris Johnson expected to set out his 'road map' for lifting restrictions this week, Baroness Altmann warned of the consequences of singling out the over70s.

Current guidance states that all over70s 'should take particular care to minimise contact with others outside your household'. It classes the age group as 'clinically vulnerable' regardless of individuals' general health, and advises them to 'only leave your home if it's essential, for example to get food or medicine'. A further category of those with underlying health conditions - the 'clinically extremely vulnerable' - are advised to stay at home at all times until the end of June in a practice described as 'shielding'. The wording of the advice was changed on Friday. It had previously stated that over-70s should be 'particularly stringent' in following social distancing rules. Advertisement

Speaking to Sky's Sophy Ridge on Sunday, she said: 'I think using an age-based criteria is fundamentally wrong and would potentially cost the lives of many people, and risk social unrest.'

The Tory peer said many over-70s have accepted restrictions only because everyone else has got to say they would 'risk going to prison' rather than continue to isolate.

She said 'nobody would dream' of applying restrictions on the basis of skin colour, despite a higher death rate among black, Asian and minority ethnic people, adding: 'It's not okay to discriminate on grounds of gender, or obesity, or colour of skin, but everybody is saying, let's think about somehow discriminating on the basis of age.'

TV presenter Sir Michael Palin, 76, also warned against restrictions on the basis of age, telling the BBC's Andrew Marr Show: 'To treat them all as people who have to be sort of kept out of sight is going to be very difficult and very wrong and very unfair.'

The warning came amid confusion over what the current official guidance actually is (stock)

Mr Hancock sowed confusion over the guidance yesterday when he tweeted that the over-70s were not classed as the 'clinically vulnerable' who should strictly follow social distancing measures.

He then posted a link to official Government guidance which described the over-70s as 'clinically vulnerable'.

It followed a Sunday newspaper report that around 1.8million 'clinically vulnerable' over-70s were being advised to stay at home for 12 weeks.

Mr Hancock wrote in response: 'We have strongly advised all over70s to follow social distancing measures. However, there is no "blanket ban". The clinically vulnerable, who are advised to stay in lockdown for 12 weeks, emphatically DO NOT include all over-70s.'

The British Medical Association called for the lockdown to be eased for the healthy over-70s because it is affecting their mental health, saying a ban would be 'discriminatory and unacceptable'.
Will & Grace star Debra Messing has been forced to delete a tweet suggesting Joe Biden accuser Tara Reade 'stole from a non-profit'.

Former staffer Reade called the actress out directly, telling her the post which linked to a controversial blog post by Brian & Eddie Krassenstein, was 'slander and untrue'.

Others rushed to Reade's defense in the wake of Messing's tweet, with one accusing her of 'shaming survivors'.

In March, Tara Reade came forward to allege that the former Vice President had sexually assaulted her when she worked for him two decades ago aged 29. Biden finally broke his silence about the allegation to deny it on Friday.

There are now at least four people who have corroborated Reade's allegations.

Critics in both parties are saying that Democrats and the media have brushed off the standard of 'believe all women' that they set in the hearings on sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Biden accuser Tara Reade, right, called Debra Messing, left, out directly, telling her the post which linked to a controversial blog post, was 'slander and untrue'

Messing's tweet read: 'Biden Accuser, Tara Reade, Allegedly Stole from Non-Profit Organization'. It shared the Medium blog post. The post sparked a furious backlash

Former staffer Reade's tweet to Messing. The actress appears to have deleted the tweet as of Sunday. She has continued to share tweets in support of Biden

Messing's tweet read: 'Biden Accuser, Tara Reade, Allegedly Stole from Non-Profit Organization'. It shared the Medium blog post.

The post sparked a furious backlash. Journalist Katie Halper wrote: 'This has been debunked and you're quoting people who have been permanently banned from Twitter.'

Joe Biden finally broke his silence about the allegation to deny it on Friday

Glenn Greenwald, also a journalist, added: 'Gee, I wonder why a woman might be reluctant to come forward with allegations against a powerful male Democratic politician.'

One Twitter user said: 'This is disgusting to post. Tara is a human being and deserves to break her silence without being dragged through the mud and lied on.'

Messing appears to have deleted the tweet as of Sunday. She has continued to share tweets in support of Biden.

Calling out the perceived hypocrisy in standards, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said: 'It has been appalling the hypocrisy as to how Brett Kavanaugh was treated versus Joe Biden.

'Brett Kavanaugh -- every accuser was put on TV, it was wall-to-wall coverage, they went into his high school yearbook, they said they needed an FBI investigation.'

'It went from 'me too,' 'me too,' 'me too,' to 'move on,' 'move on,' 'move on' in a nanosecond because he's a Democrat and hypocrisy is appalling.'

One Democratic strategist who requested anonymity told The Hill: 'We set up a standard we can't live by. No one likes to discuss it but it's the reality.

'It looks terrible for him and for the party. You can't say you believe women and then take it all back because it doesn't apply to you.'

Anita Hill, long critical of how Biden handled her accusations against Justice Clarence Thomas, issued a statement highlighting the complexities across the political spectrum.

Noting Reade, Kavanaugh's accuser Christine Blasey Ford, and Trump's many accusers, Hill called for an investigation of 'outstanding claims of sexual misconduct' against Trump and Biden, warning that otherwise 'the public is left to figure out the truth on its own.'

The post sparked a furious backlash. Journalist Katie Halper wrote: 'This has been debunked and you're quoting people who have been permanently banned from twitter'

On Saturday, the New York Times joined the growing calls for a formal investigation of Reade's allegations.

'As is so often the case in such situations, it is all but impossible to be certain of the truth. But the stakes are too high to let the matter fester  or leave it to be investigated by and adjudicated in the media. Mr. Biden is seeking the nation's highest office,' a column by the Times' Editorial Board said.

Reade has also slammed Democrats for 'hypocrisy' as she revealed the intense online abuse she has received since making the accusation.

She hit out in an interview with Fox News on Saturday night as she said that 'creepy' voice messages were being left for her as part of a torrent of abuse following her claim against the presumed Democratic presidential candidate.

'I find it astounding - the hypocrisy that Democrats are talking about women being able to tell their story safely,' Reade told Fox.

'I'm a Democrat, a lifelong Democrat, but yet here I am trying to talk about my history with Joe Biden and I'm just the target of online harassment.'

She also said the treatment of Anita Hill acted as a deterrent in her coming forward with her allegations.

Reade posted an image on social media of what she looked like in 1993, the year she alleged Biden sexually assaulted her. She has detailed how she did not specifically use the words sexual harassment or assault in her initial report about Biden to the Senate in 1993

Hill accused then-Supreme Court-nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment when Biden led the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Reade told Fox News: 'I really believed Anita Hill and I thought she was treated badly. I think a lot of women felt the same way. They were watching that, that were professionals, you know, I was a young professional at the time.'

'And I didn't like the way Joe Biden dealt with her, but I also didn't like how she was dealt with in general, right? And what it did was that it made us more silent.

'What it did was show us was, 'Okay when you try to go up against this, this is basically what you're gonna face. So it was an example of... a deterrent.'
TDT | Manama

Bahrains Ministry of Health yesterday announced 12 more recoveries from Coronavirus (COV- ID- 19) infection, bringing the total number of recovered cases in the Kingdom to 1568.

The ministry statement said it decided to remove the recovered people from isolation after conducting various laboratory tests to ensure that they are free of the virus.

According to the latest update on the MoH website, Bahrain has tested 139354 people here for COVID -19 infection, which has resulted in identifying 1708 active cases. Ministry said it also identified 103 new cases of Coronavirus yesterday.

Sixty-Eight of the infected cases were expatriate workers and 35 active contact cases. The ministry further confirmed that of the total active cases 1697 patients are in stable condition and one person is in critical condition. So far, eight people died fighting the infection.
Tunis, Tunisia (PANA) - Press workers in Tunisia currently face huge difficulties due to the spread of the new coronavirus (Covid-19), including late payment of salaries, reduction of salaries and breach of contracts, according to a statement issued on Saturday by the Tunisian General Federation of Information (FGTI)
Students in Kashmir are keeping up with their academics by taking to the online mode of amid the coronavirus-induced lockdown, even as the clamour for the restoration of high-speed internet services has grown in view of the difficulties faced by them to access the study material.

In Kashmir, school has been affected severely over the last few months. First, there was no schooling in the valley for six months last year because of the situation following the abrogation of Article 370 by the Centre. The schools reopened briefly in March only to be closed days later because of the coronavirus scare.

However, to salvage the academic session, schools in the valley took to various means, including online classes, to impart to the students.

Teachers from both the government as well as private schools have started delivering online lectures through various platforms like WhatsApp, Zoom and Google Classroom among others.

Irfan Ahmad, a government school teacher in Ganderbal district in central Kashmir, uses WhatsApp and Zoom applications daily to connect with and deliver lessons to his students.

"It is the only option we have to replace the physical classes. I use these applications on a daily basis to deliver my lectures to the students and to try to answer their questions," Ahmad said.

He said the students have already been affected due to the situation since August last year and there was a need to salvage the academic session so that they do not lose much.

Touqeer Javaid, a student of Class 7 at a private school in Ganderbal, logs on to Zoom application at 11 am daily to connect with his classmates and teachers.

"We start the class at 11 am. A few of my classmates, who have smartphones, are there and our teacher comes online to deliver lessons," Javaid said.

He said while it does not feel like an actual class, it was important to keep the education going.

"Education is important and in these times of competition, we can hardly afford to miss our lessons. At least, we are getting something," he added.

Sehar Jan, a student of class 6 at a private school in Srinagar, said apart from the video-conferencing application Zoom, her school also uses WhatsApp to deliver lessons and assignments to the students.

"We get regular assignments from the school which we work on and then submit back to the school. It keeps us involved at home as well as helping in our education," she said.

However, some parents complain that the schools were putting the students under tremendous pressure by way of too many assignments.

Recently, an audio clip went viral on social media where a parent complained that the schools were putting the students under too much pressure.

"This is just a formality by the schools. They send too many assignments on a daily basis. It is not humane. They are putting too much pressure on the children as well as their parents. They are giving them more work than they actually do at the schools," the parent complained.

Assignments are not the only issue of complaint by the students or the parents. Many of them lament the slow network speed which hamper the online classes and delivery of assignments.

"The internet speed at 2G is very low and it becomes very difficult to attend the online classes. Sometimes, we do not even see the teacher clearly and often we miss whatever he says," Irtiqa, a student, said.

A private school owner in the city here acknowledged the difficulties faced by the students as well as teachers and went on to say that the online classes were just for the sake of formality.

The problems are more in far flung or rural areas where broadband internet penetration is very low and the people have to rely on erratic 2G mobile internet.

"I have a broadband connection at home which makes my life a little easier while delivering lectures. However, many students in my school face problems due to slow network speed. Most of the times, I do not understand what they say," Ahmad, the government school teacher in Ganderbal district, said.

In a tweet recently, principal secretary School Education department, government of Jammu and Kashmir, Asgar Samoon acknowledged that low internet speed was hampering online education as the department released funds for distributing books among the students of Classes 1 to 8 in the union territory.

"kids have no ipads/no access to desktops; cant download text books as internet is slow; Rs 2030.87 lac released for 1st-8th classes; DSEJ Rs 1105.44 lac & DSEk Rs. 925.43 lac; kmr div/ distributed books; remaining Jmu districts-dsej/ ceos/zeos to expedite in 2 wks (sic)," Samoon said.

Private Schools Association Jammu and Kashmir (PSAJK) has filed a petition in the Supreme Court contending that the lack of 4G connectivity for internet in Jammu and Kashmir is infringing the fundamental right to education.

PSAJK president G N Var said while about 70 per cent of 2,675 private schools in the valley have started online classes for their students, they were facing problems due to connectivity issues.

To deal with the problems due to internet speeds, Directorate of School Education, Kashmir, is starting educational broadcast (audio classes) for the students of the valley, the officials said.

They said the broadcast is being organized in collaboration with All India Radio, Srinagar.

Director, School Education, Kashmir, Mohammad Younis Malik said these platforms have been kept available for the children so that they do not feel isolated and can continue with their studies while staying at their home due to the lock down.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The strategy to blame China for the coronavirus outbreak began weeks ago in Washington, D.C. Now its spread to the rest of the country.

In Wisconsin, a state senator introduced a bill criticizing the negligence and hostile actions of the Chinese government. In Virginia, a conservative talk radio host debated ways the Trump administration could punish China for inflicting a pandemic on the world. And in Colorado, an activist protesting stay-at-home orders confronted a health care worker on a busy street. Go to China if you want communism!" she yelled. "Go to China."

President Donald Trumps decision to focus his coronavirus anger on China, Americas top economic rival, is part of a pivot for Trumps reelection team as it scrambles to revise a campaign message that had been focused on financial prosperity. Now, with the economy in a coronavirus-induced coma, Trumps team is working to instead make the 2020 race a referendum on who will be tougher on China  Trump or Joe Biden. In recent days, Trumps campaign has even dubbed the presidents likely Democrat opponent Beijing Biden."

The message appears to be resonating. John Fredericks, the Virginia talk radio host and Trump supporter, said his callers, many out of work in rural areas, trust Trump to retaliate against China.

My callers know what China has done, he said. Theres blood on their hands.

But while Republican pollster Frank Luntz predicted China will be the biggest issue in the presidential campaign, second only to the coronavirus itself, he said its not clear the issue will benefit Trump.

The question pollsters can't answer right now is whether this helps Trump or Biden, Luntz said More precisely, both candidates will be criticized for past and current comments they've made. It's not clear which candidate will be hurt more by China.

Indeed, both the Trump and Biden camps seem to think they have a winning hand on China.

Polls conducted for the Trump campaign and Republican senators show China will be an effective issue for Republicans in November, according to three people who have seen the numbers, leading the GOP to buy a flurry of TV and Facebook ads, dash off emails to supporters and increase their tough rhetoric.

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Unlike Sleepy Joe Biden and the rest of the Crooked Democrats, President Trump keeps his promises, which is why we're not letting China get away with using America as a scapegoat, one Trump campaign Facebook ad read.

But Biden and the Democrats, too, think focusing on China will lift their chances in November. Theyre criticizing Trump for initially praising the countrys response to the pandemic and accusing him of caring more about his trade deal with China than American lives. The Democratic group American Bridge just launched an ad accusing Trump of trusting China.

Both candidates also have perceived weaknesses on the issue.

Biden last year appeared to downplay China as a geopolitical competitor and is fighting claims that the business partners of his son, Hunter, landed a $1.5 billion deal days after they traveled to China on official business when he was vice president, even though theres no direct evidence of impropriety.

For his part, Trump has wavered repeatedly on Chinas culpability for the pandemic. He initially praised the country and its leader, President Xi Jinping, more than a dozen times in the early days of the outbreak, often stressing the recent trade deal the two countries had signed.

Trump later reversed course, though, and started excoriating the country for its handling of the virus. The pivot came as Trump faced criticism that he initially downplayed the outbreak and failed to quickly produce and ship tests and medical supplies to states. America has now passed 1 million coronavirus cases, with more than 60,000 people dying from the disease.

He understands his presidency rises and falls on the very pandemic he denied was a pandemic and he is desperate to try to counteract the narrative that has set in that he wasnt up to the job, said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), who cited coronavirus when he endorsed Biden last month. Thats a devastating critique. You dont get re-elected with that narrative.

In response, Trump has touted the narrative that China, not him, is at fault. Its a message that plays into Americans current feelings about China. About two-thirds of the country has an unfavorable view of China, the highest number in 15 years, according to a poll by Pew Research Center. That figure is also up nearly 20 percentage points since Trump was inaugurated in 2017.

The desire for China to be held accountable for the spread of Covid-19 is no longer limited to Trump supporters, said Brian Swenson, a Republican strategist in Florida who worked for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), referencing the disease that results from the coronavirus. There is a growing bipartisan call at the local level for China to be held accountable for their lack of transparency with the world community, their spreading of propaganda and misinformation and for failing to diminish the spread of Covid-19.

Kyle Hupfer, chairman of the Republican party in the red state of Indiana, said residents expect Trump to get to the bottom of the pandemic. Theres certainly a level of distrust related to what China has done and how theyre approached this, he said.

In recent weeks, Trump has tried to take advantage of those growing feelings of animosity  nicknaming the virus the Chinese virus, accusing China of lying about its number of cases and boasting he contained the outbreak by restricting travel from China in January, even though many public health experts say the ban merely bought the U.S. time that Trump did not use to prepare adequately.

This week, Trump said his administration was investigating whether China covered up what it knew about the early spread of coronavirus. His aides are discussing ways to penalize the country.

We are not happy with China, Trump told reporters Monday. We are not happy with that whole situation because we believe it could have been stopped at the source, it could have been stopped quickly, and it wouldn't have spread all over the world. And we think that should have happened.

Peter Navarro, Trumps economic adviser, has pushed the president to reduce the governments dependency on imports from China when it comes to medical supplies and drugs. Trump supporters around the country have latched onto Navarros efforts.

To make America great again, we need to be dependent on ourselves, said Ralph King, a Trump supporter in Bedford, Ohio, who co-founded the conservative group Main Street Patriots. We should not be dependent on other countries.

Trumps allies say going after China is a particularly compelling issue for the president because he constantly criticized Beijing while on the campaign trail in 2016, accusing the country of taking U.S. jobs, spying on U.S. businesses and stealing U.S. technology.

He should stay on the message he has had for many years, said a Republican who speaks to Trump.

So far, Trumps surrogates and aides have stayed on that message, talking about China daily in online campaign events. America First Action, a pro-Trump super PAC, released a new TV ad attacking Biden on China Friday in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

In the coming weeks, Trumps campaign is expected to launch a similar ad blitz.

Our internal data shows that Joe Bidens softness on China is a major vulnerability, among many, said Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh, though he declined to release the polling numbers.

There are growing signs Trumps strategy is working.

Last week, Missouri became the first state to sue the Chinese government for its role in the pandemic, accusing it of failing to warn other nations of the virus and allowing people to travel outside the country, among other things. Mississippi followed with its own suit.

Legislators in other states are considering their own actions while some conservative activists protesting stay-at-home orders are mentioning China.

Some Republican senators, including Rubio, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, have pushed for additional actions to hit China. Rubio wants to halt Chinas hold on the pharmaceutical supply chain. Hawley wants to prove the virus started in Wuhan, China. And Cotton wants to ensure Americans can sue Chinese officials for the pandemic.

Senate Republican strategists also recently distributed a memo advising GOP candidates to focus on China and blame the country for covering up the virus, accuse Democrats of being soft on China and stress that Republicans will push to sanction Beijing.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis is encouraging medical companies to stop doing business with China and has explored divesting the states interests out of China. He wants everyone to know hes tough on China  just like Trump.

I have not forgotten about China, DeSantis told reporters recently. In fact, some of you guys may want to look this up, but there was a Chinese Communist Party think tank that did a report in February, and they analyzed the governors in the United States  who was hardline, who was friendly and who was unknown. There were five governors that were hardline against China. Where do you think I was?

Arek Sarkissian contributed to this report.
It had the makings of an adventure straight from Disneys Swiss Family Robinson: being on an uninhabited island and living off the land.

But for one Alabama man, the adventure  on a former island attraction at Walt Disney World in Florida  was short-lived and ended in an arrest.

The man, Richard McGuire, 42, of Mobile, Alabama, was accused of trespassing at the theme park after he tried to camp on Discovery Island, a former zoological park that was closed in 1999, authorities said.

On Thursday, an Orange County sheriffs deputy responded to a report of a trespasser on the island, which is east of Disneys Contemporary Resort, in Bay Lake. A security representative for Disney told deputies that she had seen a man using a boat earlier that day and that the area was closed to the public, with signs warning against trespassing.

As a deputy arrived, Disney staff members were helping a small boat with McGuire aboard to shore, according to an arrest report.

McGuire told authorities that he had reached the island Monday or Tuesday to go camping and that he planned to stay there for approximately one week, the report said.

Told that the area was restricted, McGuire said he was unaware of that and described the island as looking like a tropical paradise, the report said.

Since mid-March, all Disney theme parks worldwide have been closed, including Disney World in Florida and Disneyland in California, because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Discovery Island, which was originally called Treasure Island, was an 11-acre zoological park that featured aromatic foliage, trees and flowers and walk-through aviaries with more than 500 species of birds.

Online maps show that the park, which opened in 1974, had a flamingo lagoon, a turtle beach and alligator swamp. It closed 25 years later, and photos and a 2017 video show the remnants of the abandoned attraction: deteriorating buildings, overgrown trees, a former animal hospital and an abandoned dock.

Jake Williams, creator of Bright Sun Films, who makes short documentaries about abandoned places, resorts, ships and bankrupt companies, narrated the 2017 video using footage from two other filmmakers.

On the curiosity aspect, I think for many years people have been enthralled by the idea of an abandoned attraction within Disney, the prestige and premier theme park location, Williams said. I myself have been interested in it since 2010, citing the mystery of why Disney left it there.

Law enforcement authorities told McGuire that they had been searching for him on foot and by boat and air. Deputies used a public-address system to warn him to leave the island, the report said.

McGuire told deputies he had not seen or heard them because he was sleeping in one of the buildings on the island.

He was charged with a misdemeanour count of trespassing and was banned from Disney properties. He could not be reached for comment Sunday, and it was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer.

This serves as a reminder that trespassing is not permitted at Walt Disney World Resort, a Disney representative said Sunday. We appreciate our security team and the Orange County Sheriffs Office for assisting in this matter.
Strategies for coping with life since the arrival of COVID-19 Glenwood Springs-based Mind Springs Health has published the following information to help m

Mental health professionals from Denver to Glenwood Springs to Aspen say there was a slowdown in the demand for therapy just after the onset of the COVID-19 crisis seven weeks ago.

But, they also point out, demand began rising in April, and even busier times may lie just around the corner for counselors as local governments lift stay-at-home restrictions, more businesses reopen and individuals attempt to navigate their way through the uncertain landscape of a new normal way of life created by the global pandemic.

Friday not only was the first day of May, it marked the start of Mental Health Awareness Month, which has been observed in the United States for seven decades. In Denver on Friday, state officials joined other industry professionals in recognizing the need to protect and promote mental health resources as the physical health threat from the novel coronavirus subsides  hopefully  as a result of government-mandated strategies involving social distancing, business closures and relative isolation.

In the midst of this global pandemic, we are all facing many uncertainties, said Vincent Atchity, president and CEO of statewide advocacy group Mental Health Colorado. But what is certain is that all Coloradans, and everyone in the world, now have a much keener awareness of the fact that our mental and our physical health are closely connected.

We also know that the people for whom Mental Health Colorado has advocated  will be feeling the consequences of this pandemic more painfully than others, making our advocacy work more important as we head into the second half of the year, he continued.

However, in the same online gathering, Michelle Barnes, executive director of the Colorado Department of Human Services, pointed out that one need not have a diagnosed mental health condition to be struggling during this time.

We are all struggling right now, Barnes said.

Last week, the Aspen Daily News reached out to Atchity and mental health professionals in the Roaring Fork Valley for their thoughts on the effect of the COVID-19 crisis on the communitys mindset, coping strategies and the resources that may be available to those in need.

Christina M. King, an Aspen counselor specializing in cognitive behavioral therapy  and founder of the mental health advocacy nonprofit Aspen Strong  said there is no doubt most everyones mental health has been challenged, regardless of whether people are still working their regular jobs, working with children at home, working remotely with no human contact (aside from an online meeting) or not working.

The challenges can be effectively addressed, she said, despite the current stresses and the uncertainties of the future.

We are in a crisis, but we do not have to be in crisis mode, King said. We can react to this or we can respond to it.

Opportunity for growth

King said in overcoming the challenges of the times, it may be important to understand how the brain works.

Were wired for connection, she said, adding that in order for humans to self-regulate, the four Ss typically come into play.

We need to feel safe, seen, soothed and secure, King explained. Simply, the word pandemic itself is fear-driven. So thats an emotional threat and possibly a physical threat for some of us. For the longevity of this, its going to be an emotional threat. Were going to be pushed into this survival instinct: fight, flight or freeze.

But people have a choice to step back and not go into survival mode, opting for a healthier option.

Situations in life do not create pain or sadness or disappointment or anxiety, King said. Its our interpretations of a situation that causes those feelings. Our job is to break down those interpretations and ask, Is this realistic? Is it rational? Does it serve me to continue to be in this state of mind and feel this way?

The key to overcoming those negative feelings caused by interpretations is to work through them, King said. That can be handled in a variety of ways: writing down thoughts, meditating, talking with family, friends and co-workers  or visiting a mental health provider.

Make a choice: Do I want to stay here, or do I want to be in a different mindset? King said.

She believes the gradual reopening of society and the economy will eventually support overall health: financial, emotional, spiritual and physical.

Yet, that is also determined by each individual, she said. Some people can continue to act in crisis mode when they go back to work. As a community, or as an individual, we need to think about where we are at and break this down. How have we been, how are we right now and how do we want to be?

She used the analogy of when a parent dies, the son or daughter is so busy making arrangements and handling various family affairs, the grief process is delayed.

And at some point, when the funeral is over and a month goes by, we are crying our eyes out, she said. I think its predictable for our bodies to want to get out of fight, flight or freeze to sort of just have this powerful emotional experience.

That type of response can be a good outlet for people, but it also can be a scary emotional explosion for people who arent used to having such feelings, King said. A better way to handle the COVID-19 crisis would be to see it as a chance to make improvements in life and to connect with others in more meaningful ways.

The perspective I would like to impress upon people is that this is an opportunity for growth and for change, and for seeing and hearing differently than weve ever seen and heard before, she said.

Its healthy to feel, especially in myriad ways, King said. She recently read that statistically, people across the world identify their emotions with three words  happy, sad and pissed off.

If we really want to be the resilient humans that we are capable of being, we need more feelings in our emotional tool kit, she said. If I only had three words to describe my [condition] when I walk into a doctors office with an eye infection, I dont know if theyre going to be able to help me in the best way. Our emotional literacy is whats going to allow us to be as resilient as we can be.

Plea for compassion

Glenwood Springs-based Mind Springs Health is one of many valley nonprofits engaged in behavioral-health services thats doing as much as it can to assist those in need during the crisis, according to clinical operations manager Jacque Skramstad.

All offices, and the services within those offices, are open and doing business, albeit some of the duties, including outpatient counseling, are handled via the online ZOOM platform or by telephone, she said.

We were able to get all of our staff up to speed really quickly, Skramstad said of the adjustments.

The nonprofits facilities include West Springs Hospital in Grand Junction, detox facilities in Frisco and Grand Junction, and the residential Womens Recovery Center also in Grand Junction. All have remained open, she said. Mobile crisis services continue via televideo or in-person services.

Everything remains open, although some services have more of a virtual platform than others, she said.

While Mind Springs continues to serve its regular clients, the mental health service provider also is involved in serving the community at large. To that end, a live, informative Facebook series called Peace in the Pandemic was launched in March.

Weve had multiple offerings per week but the recordings are on our Facebook page for those who want to go back and watch them, Skramstad said.

The nonprofits website has a comprehensive COVID-19 resource section as well, accessible through this link: mindspringshealth.org/treatment-services/covid19resources/. There, one can gain access to various services offered by municipalities and counties, as well as those provided by the state and federal governments. Traffic to the website and Facebook page has been picking up in recent weeks, a sign that people are becoming hungrier for information.

A 24/7 COVID-19 support line, 877-519-7515, has been established just for people who need someone to talk with.

Its not for people with acute stress, its for people who are struggling and just need someone to talk to, and they can get tips on coping skills and connections about other resources that are available in the community, Skramstad said. Its really a good place for people to start to get some support and help. You dont have to be a client to call.

Mind Springs also has been distributing fliers in English and Spanish that list contact information for certain services. About 1,000 fliers have been distributed at Roaring Fork Valley food drives.

Skramstad said the nonprofit saw a dramatic decrease in formal service requests when public health orders in the region were first issued in mid-to-late March. She believes that was a case of people thinking the crisis would be short-lived and so they didnt yet feel the need to seek help.

While the floodgates have yet to open, we expect an uptick in demand soon, she said, adding that its becoming clear that the effects of the pandemic are going to continue for many months.

People are wrestling with depression and anxiety, but a lot of clients have other longstanding mental health issues that are being exacerbated by the coronavirus crisis, Skramstad said.

While Mind Springs ramped up its telehealth services amid public health stay-at-home orders designed to keep people from moving around the area, she said she expects in-office therapy to resume soon as counties shift to different orders that arent as stringent.

Financial barriers to therapy are being resolved valleywide, she said, through partnerships among providers such as Mind Springs, Aspen Strong and Aspen Hope Center. Mind Springs takes Medicaid and private insurance, and utilizes a sliding-scale fee system for the uninsured.

Some of the other valley providers take private insurance as well, she said. [Lack of] money shouldnt be a barrier.

Skramstad said its important for everyone to have compassion and grace for others in the community, as well as for themselves.

Everyone is doing the best that they can, she said. Everybody copes with stress differently.

Rest is vitally important to good mental health, Skramstad added. Using drugs or alcohol as a coping mechanism is a bad idea, for many reasons, but in part because it can negatively impact sleep.

When you dont get enough sleep you are more irritable, she said.

Storm of concerns

Discussing the COVID-19 situation on the day before he participated in Fridays virtual meeting of officials to promote mental health awareness, Atchity said Mental Health Colorado has two broad areas of primary concern.

The first is for people already living with mental health conditions who may be abusing substances. Our concern for them has always been that access to care is limited, he said. A lot of people fall through gaps in a faulty system of care and end up suffering extreme consequences from unmanaged mental health, and those people are at even greater risk now that we have such limitations on our ability to get out and obtain access to care.

At the same time, behavioral-health providers across the state have been working since state stay-at-home orders were issued in March to increase access to care through telehealth services  a much-welcomed move, Atchity said.

People who are already struggling often depend on whole networks of support that are disrupted thanks to this isolation that were practicing, he said.

The second category of concern relates to people who may never have had serious mental health concerns, or perhaps never thought about their mental health. Suddenly, given worries over contracting a potentially fatal disease, that takes a toll on your mental health, Atchity said.

The uncertainty that were living with, regarding not knowing when or how this is going to end, and watching the economy take this downturn and the surge in unemployment, and the consequent instability of individuals and families that comes along with that  this is a storm of mental health concerns that is new to many, and it will take a toll down the line, he said.

Atchity said its too early to say whether the crisis will lead to an even higher suicide rate in a state where many communities are already experiencing high rates. The official data on suicides tends not to present itself for many months, he pointed out.

County coroners dont release their reports that quickly, he said. We can only track suicides in the big picture several months down the line.

Hes hearing anecdotal information across the state about increases in domestic violence but a decline in reported incidences of child abuse.

Thats concerning, because we dont know what confinement is doing with regard to families and stressors that create those kinds of dynamics that can lead to abuse, Atchity said. And since the kids arent out in schools where there are mandated reporters with eyes on them, thats an explanation behind why the number of reported cases of abuse may have gone down.

He said he understands that retail alcohol sales have risen dramatically since mid-March at the state and national level, which could mean an increase in alcohol abuse.

That comes as no surprise; there seems to be a prevalent culture of self-medication with alcohol as a survival strategy across social media, and other cultural expressions of that, Atchity said. Alcohol is the most harmful substance we have. We often overlook that as the elephant in the room.

On a positive note, telehealth services are being embraced by mental health providers, he said, whereas previously there was reluctance on their behalf to try it. Often, providers cited regulatory or bureaucratic hurdles as reasons why they couldnt expand mental health services in that way.

But with COVID-19, some of those rules have been relaxed, and in nearly every community provider organizations have stepped up almost overnight to provide remote access to care, Atchity said. If that is working for people, that is a very promising sign, as its better to meet with a therapist virtually than not at all if somebody has that need.

Financial barriers to mental health services remain a reality for many low-income residents. The Colorado General Assembly voted last year to put more teeth behind enforcement of the nations parity law that requires insurance companies to cover mental health in the same manner as physical health, he said. But implementation of the state measure is behind schedule.

Atchity said he believes the lifting of stay-at-home orders and the reopening of the economy could contribute artificially to better mental health, at least in the beginning.

Its hard to tell, he said. There may be some increased need for mental health services as the consequences of the economy start playing themselves out in peoples lives. And there may be an increased need on the part of folks who have been providing health care in the pandemic to people with the virus. The providers themselves may need to process this with some clinical assistance.

However, if the decisions designed to restart the economy this month end up resulting in a new wave of coronavirus spread, the effects on physical and mental health being experienced today could continue for quite some time.

Theres not a cure and theres not a vaccine, Atchity said. People who are already inclined to be a little bit dismissive of the stay-at-home orders may get casual and sloppy, and we could see a resurgence of this in pretty short order.

Its going to be a tricky balance of trying to be more economically active without being foolish. This could drag out  and that will take another toll on peoples mental health.
The construction worker who went on a stabbing rampage in South Hedland, injuring seven people, had stopped taking prescribed anti-psychotic medication before he was shot dead by police.

Police sources say Ashley Fildes suffered from serious mental health issues and had been noticeably deteriorating at work in the months leading up to Fridays horrific stabbing frenzy.

Ashley Fildes was shot dead by police. Credit:Facebook

Detectives have uncovered no evidence of illicit drug use, after searching his accomodation in South Hedland.

A recent drug test Fildes completed for work also came back negative, but the results of a post mortem toxicology report have not yet come back.
1 . After decaffeinating the coffee beans, the collected caffeine is sold to soft drinks and pharmaceutical companies.

2 . 52,000 tonnes of gold is still underground, worth $ 2 trillion.

3 . In Russia, beer was not considered an alcoholic drink. From 2011 onwards it was rated as an alcoholic drink from soft drinks.



4 . The US military spends 20 million dollars on Iraq and Afghanistan on average. This is more than the budget of NASA.



5 . A chemical comes out of the dead ant, which tells the other ants its death. If this chemical falls on a live ant, then other ants consider it dead and pick it up and remove it, considering it dead.

6 . There are an estimated 2 million gold rooms (steam-taking rooms) in Finland. 99 percent of Finland's residents take gold baths at least once every week.



7 . 90 percent laugh more loudly while giving reasons for their laughing.



8 . Even after spending $ 1 million every day, Bill Gates will take 218 years to spend all his money.



9 . According to the Harvard School of Psychology, the length of a person's tongue can show awareness in their sex. Those whose tongue is long and those who can touch the elbow with the tongue are always ready to do new experiments.



10 . There is a cat cafe in Korea and Japan where one can spend time with cats drinking coffee.

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ZOEYS EXTRAORDINARY PLAYLIST 9 p.m. on NBC. While this musical dramedy has a quirky plot  Zoey (Jane Levy), a computer programmer in San Francisco, hears others thoughts in the form of pop songs  the last few episodes have revolved around death and grief, hinting that Zoeys ailing father (Peter Gallagher) wont be around much longer. In this season finale, Zoey hears a dark tune in her head, essentially a warning of things to come, and tries to prevent a terrible incident. (Its unclear whether the show will be back for a second run.) The third season finale of GOOD GIRLS follows at 10 p.m.

WESTWORLD 9 p.m. on HBO; stream on HBO platforms. There was plenty to follow in last weeks episode of this sci-fi drama, including a reveal, a rebellion and more than one showdown. (Spoilers ahead.) Caleb (Aaron Paul) discovered his memories had been altered. Charlotte (Tessa Thompson) opted out of Doloress plan, instigating a deadly battle between Musashi (Hiroyuki Sanada) and Hanaryo (Tao Okamoto). And most importantly, we learned that Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) wants Caleb to lead the revolution that she started, though its unclear whether that was her vision all along. The third season wraps up Sunday, but fans can breathe a sigh of relief  the series was recently renewed for a fourth run.
English French

MONTREAL, May 03, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Teamsters Canada Foundation will give over $300,000 to charitable organizations across the country. The officers of the Teamsters Union held emergency meetings last week to discuss how the Foundation could help the most vulnerable in our society.



Funds raised by the Teamsters Canada Foundation through its charitable activities comes from private donations, not from the dues of Teamsters members. The Canada Revenue Agency also requires that foundations donate funds directly to charitable organizations rather than individuals.

Our union representatives, local union officers and Teamsters Canada personnel have been deployed across the country since the pandemic started to ensure our members health and safety, explained Francois Laporte, Chairman of the Teamsters Canada Foundation. The second step of our action during COVID-19 consists of involving the Teamsters Canada Foundation in all regions across the country to meet the most urgent needs of our fellow citizens.

The Foundations mission is to help societys most vulnerable through charities that are already active in Canadian communities. The COVID-19 pandemic will be our first large-scale action.

Despite the programs put in place by the various levels of government, hundreds of thousands of Canadians are facing major challenges right now, said the union leader. The Foundations help could make the difference for a friend, a neighbour, an elderly, and others you cross paths with daily.

Teamsters Canada Foundation actions will combine with those of the many Canadians who have shown remarkable solidarity in recent weeks. Together, we can lighten the burden shouldered by many men and women in every corner of the country.

The pandemic isnt over. We will continue the fight, and we will emerge stronger than ever, said Mr. Laporte.

The Teamsters Canada Foundation also accepts individual donations through its Web site, ftcf.ca.

The mission of the Teamsters Canada Foundation is to help the most vulnerable of our society through charities present in Canadian communities. The Foundation also supports workers who want to improve their lives by retraining or by taking courses to change or advance their career. Visit ftcf.ca to find out more.

Information:

Stephane Lacroix, Public Relations Officer

Cell: 514-609-5101

slacroix@ftcf.ca
The 2020 version of the United States Trotting Associations rule book is now available online.

The rule book can be accessed by clicking here.

Additionally, the rule book will be available via the USTA Rule Book App, which will be able to be found on the Apple iTunes and Google Play stores by searching 'USTrotting' in the coming weeks.

Some highlights of new rules in the updated 2020 rule book appear below.

An extended pari-mutuel meet is now defined as a meeting with no agricultural fair in progress with an annual total of six days or more with pari-mutuel wagering.

Gene doping is defined and prohibited.

Extensive language regarding racetrack maintenance has been added.

A renewing trainer whose license has been expired for more than three years will be required to submit supplemental information prior to licensing approval.

Drivers will be required to register driving colors prior to being upgraded from a qualifying/fair to a provisional license.

The rule regarding the registration of Non-Standard horses has been modified.

To ensure the fitness of riders participating in Racing Under Saddle races, each rider must qualify or go an official workout at least once each calendar year prior to the start of any Racing Under Saddle race. Likewise, a horse must qualify or go an official workout each calendar year prior to racing.

The entire list of adopted rule changes, which became effective on May 1, 2020 may be found here.

(With files from the USTA)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 18:21:30|Editor: huaxia

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KAMPALA, May 3 (Xinhua) -- The Ugandan military on Sunday said it has issued measure to stop the spread of COVID-19 among its troops in Somalia and Equatorial Guinea after one of them tested positive for the virus.

Richard Karemire, Ugandan military spokesperson, told Xinhua by telephone that guidelines for prevention, surveillance, case management and treatment for COVID-19 have been established to protect the troops serving under African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and capacity building in Equatorial Guinea.

He said the military medical teams will handle and treat any confirmed cases of COVID-19 within the Horn of African nation and western African country respectively.

"Should we get any additional cases, medical teams will handle (them) as per now established procedure. There is no need to worry," said Karemire.

The army on Thursday said one of its troops in Somalia tested positive for the disease.

As a result, UPDF high command, according to Karemire, with immediate effect suspended the rotation of its peacekeeping troops to Somalia and capacity building in Equatorial Guinea.

Uganda has some 6,000 troops serving under AMISOM and over 100 officers in Equatorial Guinea helping to build capacity and professionalization of the west African nation's army.

The east African country deploys troops to Somalia and Equatorial Guinea on a one year rotational basis. Enditem
A boy of 11 is feared to have suffered life-changing injuries after he was shot in the arm by burglars posing as deliverymen.

The gang forced entry into his familys semi-detached house after the boys father  businessman Ray Hawkins, 45  had opened the door believing it was a parcel delivery at 9.30pm on Friday.

Mr Hawkins, who suffered a cut to his head from a machete, and his son were rushed to hospital after the raid in Upminster, East London.

A gang forced their way into 45-year-old Ray Hawkins's home after posing as deliverymen on Friday at 9.30pm. Mr Hawkins and his son were rushed to hospital after the raid

The Metropolitan Police said the 11-year-old boy may have 'life-changing injuries' but that neither him or his father had life-threatening injuries. No arrests have been made. Father Ray Hawkins, 45, is pictured above

The Metropolitan Police said neither had life-threatening injuries but the boys may be life-changing. He had been playing videogames when the gang broke in.

A spokesman added that there had been no arrests at this stage. A police helicopter had been scrambled to hunt for the robbers.

Mr Hawkinss wife Laura had a knife held to her throat, reports the Sun on Sunday. She is uninjured.

A neighbour said Mr Hawkins runs a designer flooring company. Refurbisher Lee Wingate, 52, who has lived at a neighbouring property for 18 years, said the cul-de-sac is 'dead quiet'.

'The only reason why anyone would want to come by here is if they're going to the park,' he said.

'The problem police will have is that these are all bungalows. The bedrooms are at the front and the lounge is in the back. No one will hear anything with their TVs on.'

Officers pictured at the scene in Upminster, east London, on Saturday

A road block remained in place on Saturday. Police said no arrests have been made

Neighbour Marilyn O'Connor, 70, said on Friday: 'I heard loads of police cars last night but I didnt know what was going on.

'I then read on Facebook that a small boy has been shot this morning.

'It's just so unnerving. This is a quiet place, it's a leafy suburb. You wouldn't expect something like that to happen in a place like this.'

Peter Frost, 71, retired, said: 'We didn't hear anything as we've got double glazing.

'There's been a lot of confusion. First we thought a woman's been attacked, then someone's been stabbed, and now a boy's been shot.

'This is a quiet road, lots of retirees around here. It's a nightmare for that poor boy to be left with injuries like that.

'You just hope he'll be able to live as best a life as he can, get by, and hopefully he'll recover. I'm sure everyone will be behind him.'

A Scotland Yard spokesperson said: 'Residents can expect to see an increased police presence in the area as part of reassurance patrols over the weekend and are encouraged to approach officers to speak about any concerns.'
India expects bad debts at its banks could double after the coronavirus crisis brought the economy to a sudden halt, a senior government official and four top bankers told Reuters.

Indian banks are already grappling with 9.35 trillion rupees ($123 billion) of soured loans, which was equivalent to about 9.1% of their total assets at the end of September 2019.

There is a considered view in the government that bank non-performing assets (NPAs) could double to 18-20% by the end of the fiscal year, as 20-25% of outstanding loans face a risk of default, the official with direct knowledge of the matter said.

A fresh surge in bad debt could hit credit growth and delay Indias recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

These are unprecedented times and the way its going we can expect banks to report double the amount of NPAs from what weve seen in earlier quarters, the finance head of a top public sector bank told Reuters.

The official and bankers declined to be named as they were not officially authorized to discuss the matter with media.

Indias finance ministry declined to comment, while the RBI and Indian Banks Association, the main industry body, did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

The Indian economy has ground to a standstill amid a 40-day nationwide lockdown to rein in the spread of coronavirus cases.

The lockdown has now been extended by a further two weeks, but the government has begun to ease some restrictions in districts that are relatively unscathed by the virus.

India has so far recorded nearly 40,000 cases of the coronavirus and more than 1,300 deaths from COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus.
NY archbishop Dolan tells Trump we need you more than ever, then gets slammed by Catholic paper

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The National Catholic Reporter, a progressive independent voice for Catholics and people of faith, has slammed Archbishop of New York Timothy Dolan for cravenly and inextricably linking the Catholic Church in the United States to President Donald Trump and the Republican Party.

The rebuke from the Kansas City, Missouri, news outlet came in a Tuesday editorial, which called Dolan out along with Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston, Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez and other Catholic leaders for joining Trump and hundreds of others on a call Saturday. During that call, Dolan revealed himself as a great friend of the president, whom he told we need you more than ever.

Without a whimper from any of his fellow bishops, the cardinal archbishop of New York has inextricably linked the Catholic Church in the United States to the Republican Party and, particularly, President Donald Trump, the publications editors said.

With hundreds of others on the call, including Catholic educators, the bishops were once again masterfully manipulated. They previously gave Trump certain campaign footage when they delivered Catholics to his speech at the March for Life rally in Washington early in the year, the editors lamented. Now Trump will have Dolan's language from the call, telling everyone that he considers himself a great friend of Trump, for whom he expressed mutual admiration as a great gentleman.

In a report on the call by Crux, President Donald Trump called himself the best [president] in the history of the Catholic Church and warned the Catholic leaders that issues such as abortion and religious liberty, which have never been more important for the Church, were at stake in the upcoming presidential election.

He also pledged support for Catholic schools whose leaders pressed him about the need for continued funding amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Never has the outlook financially looked more bleak, but perhaps never has the outlook looked more promising given the energetic commitment that your administration has to our schools, Dolan said after Trump made about 15 minutes of opening remarks on the call. We need you more than ever.

Trump reportedly responded by reminding attendees of his reelection efforts, saying the situation coming up on Nov. 3, the likes of which have never been more important for the Church.

He warned that if he is defeated in November, the Catholic Church will be "very different."

I hope that everyone gets out and votes and does what they have to do, he then said.

The National Catholic Register noted in their editorial on Tuesday that the kind of relationship on display between a president with an uncontrollable propensity for lying and Catholic leadership is unprecedented.

Friendships have existed in the past between U.S. presidents and princes of the church. How those affected the church's involvement in politics and policy, negatively or positively, differed from one circumstance to another. But it is rare, if not unprecedented, that the church's leadership apparatus would be co-opted to the degree seen in the case of Trump, the publication said.

Certainly, it is without precedent that the leadership would cozy up so cravenly to a president whose most consistent attribute is an uncontrollable propensity for lying, continuously and about everything. He is dangerously disconnected from reality and is defined by characteristics that normally are condemned from pulpits.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Wales has passed 10,000, health officials have announced.

Public Health Wales figures show the total amount of Covid-19 cases grew by 183 to 10,155 on Saturday, while a further 44 deaths brought the number of people who have died after testing positive to 969.

Dr Chris Williams, incident director for the Covid-19 outbreak response at PHW, said Wales appeared to have passed the peak of new cases, but repeated the warning that the public had to stay at home.

The latest number of confirmed cases of Coronavirus in Wales have been updated.



Data dashboard:



https://t.co/zpWRYSUbfh



https://t.co/HSclxpZjBh



Find out how we are responding to the spread of the virus in our daily statement here: https://t.co/u6SKHz0zsG pic.twitter.com/Z3S6T3S8Zy  Public Health Wales (@PublicHealthW) May 2, 2020

Dr Williams said: We seem to have passed the peak and flattened the curve of new cases of Covid-19 in Wales, which appears to be an indication of the effectiveness of lockdown measures.

We are currently working with the Welsh Government to determine the best approach for when the lockdown is eventually eased.

In the meantime, social distancing rules remain in effect. Public Health Wales fully supports Welsh Governments revised stay-at-home regulations. The message has not changed  anyone can get coronavirus, anyone can spread it. Stay home, protect the NHS, and save lives.

Earlier on Saturday, health minister Vaughan Gething said the decision to extend tests to asymptomatic people in care homes which experience an outbreak was made to help manage the spread of the virus, after the PA news agency reported the governments change in testing criteria on Friday.

You're saving lives by staying at home Thank you ! #StayHomeSaveLives pic.twitter.com/Yf0o0sQVPw  Public Health Wales (@PublicHealthW) May 2, 2020

Mr Gething said: We are learning more about coronavirus every day  the evidence is constantly changing and emerging and we keep it under constant review.

At the moment, the evidence does not support the blanket testing of everyone who does not have symptoms.

But, in a care home setting, where there are some people who have symptoms of coronavirus and others who do not, testing everyone, including those who do not, does have a purpose  we will be doing this to help manage outbreaks.

The Welsh Conservatives said they welcomed the U-turn on extending testing, but called on the Welsh Government to follow Englands lead and make tests available to all care homes regardless of whether there has been an outbreak.

Shadow social care minister Janet Finch-Saunders said: Just two days ago the First Minister said he saw no value in testing everyone in care homes. This U-turn by the Welsh Government is very much welcomed by not just residents and staff in care homes but by their families and loved ones.

Testing can help to reduce the spread of this deadly and horrid virus that is having a devastating impact on the most vulnerable in society. It is a shame that the extra capacity in the Wales Covid-19 testing programme couldnt have been used sooner.

Yesterday, the UK Government announced that they were carrying out more than 100,000 tests per day. In Wales, we have capacity to do just over 2,000 tests per day but were doing half that. We urge the Welsh Government to continue their U-turn and expand testing to all care home residents and staff.

Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price called on the government to publish evidence supporting its position to not automatically test those in care homes.

Welsh Government says the evidence does not support blanket testing. They should publish that evidence swiftly so that it can be scrutinised to see how and why it differs from international evidence and best practice that promotes universal testing of all care home staff and residents, he said.

The change in testing criteria is part of the governments new three-stage plan to help care homes deal with outbreaks, with mobile units being sent to facilities and conduct tests on all residents and staff and potentially in neighbouring care homes, with a repeat testing the following week.

The plan also includes mobilising eight new mobile testing units from May 3 and home testing kits when they become available, as well as increasing guidance on cleaning, providing hand sanitiser and infection control measures.
Kourtney Kardashian has been enduring the coronavirus lockdown at home with her three kids.

But it seems the Keeping Up With the Kardashians star had an old Italy vacation on her mind Sunday morning.

The Poosh founder looked chic in a baby blue suit in the photo she captioned 'stop time,' she shared to Instagram.

Reminiscing: Kourtney Kardashian had an old Italy vacation on her mind Sunday morning as she took to Instagram

The 41-year-old sat on a carved grey bench, against a peach wall in the wide-leg pantsuit that she paired with white sneakers.

Positano, Italy was marked as the photos location, a favorite spot of the star.

The United States has cautioned residents to avoid all international travel, with airlines limiting flights, as the pandemic continues to rise as global cases has surpassed 3million, with over 1million in The States.

Cousins: On Saturday, Kourtney shared a snap of her daughter Penelope, seven, with her cousin North West, six, enjoying time outside

Missing it: Kourtney shared another pajama photo later in the day

The Kardashians seem to be reconnecting as California Governor Newsom hints that eases will be made to the Safer at Home order.

On Saturday, Kourtney shared a snap of her daughter Penelope, seven, with her cousin North West, six.

Though North's parents Kim and Kanye didn't seem to be around, the girls enjoyed time outside on an empty street in the neighborhood.

Both donning pink bottoms, Penelope, who Kourtney shares with ex Scott Disick along with Mason, 10, and Reign, five, stepped off her bike while North hung out near by.

Quiet weekend: Also over the weekend, the eldest Kardashian daughter seemed to enjoy a nice quiet day at home and snapped her dog sleeping in the backyard

Kourtney captioned the snap 'these conversations,' seeming to enjoy the cousins time together.

Also over the weekend, the eldest Kardashian daughter seemed to enjoy a nice quiet day at home and snapped her dog sleeping in the backyard.

Though, her son Mason continues to make rounds on social media and a recently resurfaced TikTok video from February the youngster is seen dancing with a fistful of 100 dollar bills which he uses to fan his face with in true 'baller' style.

Mason is seen playing around with the wad of cash with painted nails as he and pal Travis Barker's son Landon, 16, make up a dance to the song Animal by rappers rappers Stunna 4 Vegas and DaBaby.

'He is rich, rich': Mason Disick was seen in a resurfaced TikTok video dancing with a wad of 100 dollar bills ...after mother Kourtney Kardashian made him quit social media

The video went down a storm with fans who saw the funny side - with one user commenting: 'He is rich, rich.'

TikTok had previously deleted his account for violating their Terms of Service as users must be at least 13-years-old, while his parents Kourtney Kardashian and Scott Disick shut down his Instagram.

Mason joined the social network without his parents' permission last month and started chatting with followers on Live.
By Guy Faulconbridge LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is due next week to present a possible way out of the coronavirus lockdown to get the world's fifth largest economy back to work without triggering a second spike in cases.

By Guy Faulconbridge

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is due next week to present a possible way out of the coronavirus lockdown to get the world's fifth largest economy back to work without triggering a second spike in cases.

The government is obliged to review the lockdown by May 7 and Johnson has said he would like to set out a roadmap and a menu of options for easing restrictions.

However, Johnson has also outlined five tests that must be met before the restrictions can be lifted in the country with the second-highest death toll in Europe after Italy.

TEST ONE

"The National Health Service (NHS) has sufficient capacity to provide critical care and specialist treatment right across the United Kingdom."

Government scientists say the number of infections is coming down. Hospital admissions are declining too, as is the number of patients in critical care. In London, there is clear decline in the number of people with COVID-19 in hospital but the decline is less marked in other regions such as Scotland, the North East of England and the East of England.

TEST TWO

"A sustained and consistent fall in daily deaths from coronavirus."

The worst days for deaths were April 21 when 1,172 deaths were reported and April 10 with 1,152. Since April 21, the daily toll went as low as 338 on April 27 and as high as 1,005 on April 24. On May 1, 739 deaths were reported. Government scientists say that while the daily death tolls show a downward trend they expect them to plateau for a while.

TEST THREE

"Reliable data to show that the rate of infection is decreasing to manageable levels across the board."

Johnson has said keeping the reproduction number - R0 or "R nought" - down is absolutely vital. That's the average number of people that one person with the coronavirus infects. Scientists say the R number is in a range of 0.6 to 0.9 whereas it was 3.0 in March. That means each infected person is now, on average, infecting less than one other person.

TEST FOUR

"Operational challenges including testing and personal protective equipment (PPE) are in hand with supply able to meet future demand."

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Friday that the United Kingdom has hit its target of carrying out 100,000 COVID-19 tests a day. He said 122,347 tests were conducted in the 24 hours to 0800 GMT on Friday. There have been problems, however, in getting PPE to some front line health workers and care homes.

TEST FIVE

"Confident that any adjustments to the current measures will not risk a second peak of infections that overwhelms the NHS."

This is the hardest test to fathom and the most dangerous for Johnson. Scientists will be watching the R number very closely to ensure it does not rise above 1.0. There is no specific treatment for the new coronavirus nor is there a vaccine as yet.

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by David Clarke)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Robin Wright enjoyed some quality with her daughter Dylan Penn, 29, on the beach in Malibu, California on Saturday.

In addition to being joined by her eldest child, who she shares with ex Sean Penn, the 53-year-old Golden Globe winner was accompanied by her husband Clement Giraudet, 35.

The House Of Cards star's man, who works as a Saint Laurent VIP relations manager, bared his chiseled chest ahead of a surf session with friends.

Fresh air: Robin Wright enjoyed some quality with her daughter Dylan Penn, 29, on the beach in Malibu, California on Saturday

Twinning: As the mother daughter duo made their way down the shore with their pups, they carried a number of snacks and a picnic basket

The lovebirds, who tied the knot in France nearly two years ago, appeared in high spirits, as they soaked up the fresh air amid California's coronavirus lockdowns.

Dylan, who shared a picture of her sunburn on Instagram a day prior, wore a white t-shirt and cutoff Daisy Dukes.

Robin, who is also a mom to 26-year-old Hopper Penn, twinned her daughter in a longer pair of denim shorts, a white button-down and a chic fedora.

As the mother daughter duo made their way down the shore with their pups, they carried a number of snacks and a picnic basket.

Out and about: In addition to being joined by her eldest child, who she shares with ex-husband Sean Penn, the 53-year-old Golden Globe winner was accompanied by her hunky husband Clement Giraudet

On Thursday, California's Governor Gavin Newsom made an order to close all beaches in Orange County, in addition to LA Countys beaches, through May 15, to further prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

However those living on the beach still have access.

Wright has been actively promoting social distancing and wearing masks.

On social media, the actress has encouraged her followers to also try at-home workouts.
File Photo

Chandigarh: On behalf of PGIMER, I am extremely thankful to our Armed Forces for appreciating and commending the efforts of health care workers, the front line warriors battling the global pandemic of Covid-19.

CoronavirusIt is hugely motivational and has filled our hearts with gratitude for their kind gesture, stated Prof. Jagat Ram, Director PGIMER as the helicopters ceremonially flew past and showered petals on the health care workers comprising doctors, nurses, housekeeping, sanitation and other allied services staff of PGIMER gathered in the Kairon Block of PGIMER today.

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Lauding the initiatives of the others in this fight against Covid-19, the Director, PGIMER further said, The other front line warriors, our police personnel, also deserve our whole-hearted admiration for their commitment and tireless work. Even the role played by media in these challenging times is praiseworthy.

PGIIn fact, the healthcare workers, police and media, all three of them are front line warriors, who are risking their own lives to save the lives of others in their own capacities and carrying forward their own responsibilities. Our salute to all of them.

Prof. Vipin Koushal, in-charge Covid Hospital, while interacting with media on the occasion, said, Today, our Armed Forces lost five of their distinguished officers and soldiers in Handwara (J&K) who showed exemplary courage in their fight against the terrorism and made supreme sacrifice. It is extremely painful and disturbing.

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Despite that loss, the Armed Forces expressed their gratitude to front line corona warriors. It is gratifying but at the same time, a lesson to be learnt in fortitude and service to the nation from our Armed Forces.
Actor Sanjay Dutt on Sunday paid homage to his mother, legendary actor Nargis, on her death anniversary and said even though it has been close to four decades, he still misses her.

Nargis passed away on May 3, 1981, three days before Sanjay's debut film Rocky hit the theatres.

"It's been 39 years since you left us but I know you're always by my side. I wish you were here with me, today and everyday. Love you and miss you everyday Mom," the actor wrote on Instagram alongside a black-and-white photograph of him with his mother.

The post saw many from the industry paying tributes to the cinema icon, including Sanjay's friends actors Suneil Shetty, Abhishek Bachchan and daughter, Trishala, who wrote, "I love you dad."



Sanjay will be next seen in Ranbir Kapoor-starrer "Shamshera" and the second installment of "KGF".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
ATCC Instructor Tom Larson looks on at the outside Law Enforcement Memorial on the south side of the ATCC Law Enforcement Facility. Larson was an officer for nearly 30 years before becoming an instructor at the school.
When you live in a place where nothing is stable and the ground is shaking under you all the time, you live in a state of urgency, said Charbel Haber, 41, a musician, giving the usual explanation for why the nights here can go on for days. You have to live in the moment.

Beirutis have few spaces to share. Parks are scarce, and Mediterranean beaches are swallowed by private resorts. It is in the seaside cafes, the restaurants, the hookah spots and the sidewalks of the drinking districts on a Friday night  and, at 5, 6 or 7 the morning after, in the nightclubs  that city life whirls on.

Or used to. The truth is, Beirut has not been itself for many months, slowly asphyxiating as the currency plunges in value, banks withhold depositors own savings and the government goes hat in hand to international donors.

But nightlife survived the summer of 2006, when war erupted between Hezbollah and Israel. And it went on last fall, when more than a million people, about a quarter of the population, surged into the streets in countrywide antigovernment protests as the economy crumpled.

At first, many bars and clubs closed in solidarity with the thawra (Arabic for revolution), urging customers to demonstrate. But then they discovered that revolutionary energy was good for business. Crowds of protesters fizzed into nearby bars every evening to refuel, shouting antigovernment slogans on the street, negronis and beers in their hands.

When they returned to the demonstrations a few drinks later, they danced to local D.J.s. The protest hub in downtown Beirut thudded with music from a half-dozen different stages as if to compete with the citys famous nightclubs. At the actual clubs, revolutionary chants sounded between techno beats.
The Ghana Association of Bankers has donated GHC300,000 to support the Feed the Frontline initiative of the Ghana Covid-19 Private Sector Fund.

A member of the Association, John Awuah, presented a cheque for the amount at a brief ceremony in Accra. He urged other individuals and organisation to support in whatever way they can in the battle against Covid-19.

Theres a crisis we are facing as a people so the Ghana Association of Bankers, which is a composition of all the banks in the country, came together to set up a fund to assist in the fight against the [coronavirus] and in whatever way we could as a body corporate, Mr. Awuah says. What we are doing now is to ensure that at least from our perspective, the people who are at the frontline, facing the patients and making sure that the treatment is going on as recommended; the people facing the crisis are well fed, are well taken care of.

Under the Feed the Frontline initiative, the Ghana Covid-19 Private Sector Fund is providing daily lunch and dinner packs to doctors, nurses and other health professionals at the frontlines in the battle against Covid-19.

The project has already taken off at the Ga East Hospital, which is currently the main national Covid-19 treatment centre. It will be expanded in due course to other facilities.

Receiving the donation from the GAB on behalf of the fund, the managing trustee, Mr. Senyo Hosi, expressed gratitude on behalf of the nation for the gesture and also called for more donations towards all of the initiatives being undertaken by the Ghana Covid-19 Private Sector Fund.

This war against covid-19 is being waged on multiple fronts and we are complimenting as many of the governments efforts as we can to help stop the spread of the disease, treat those who may be infected and as much as possible alleviate the economic impact of this pandemic, Mr. Hosi said.

Mr. Hosi added: We are building infectious disease isolation and treatment centres across the country and we need your help to bring them all to fruition not just to treat the current pandemic but future ones as well. It is equally important that we take very good care of the frontline health workers who are taking care of our brothers and sisters who have already been infected. These doctors and nurses are doing a yeomans job for long hours everyday and we dont want them to worry about where the next meal will come from while they are at work and thats why we introduced this Feed the Frontline initiative. We are grateful to the Ghana Association of Bankers for being among the first to donate to this initiative and we are looking forward to more support from individuals and other corporates out ther.

The Ghana Covid-19 Private Sector Fund is an initiative by private business executives who set it up with a seed fund of One Million Ghana Cedis. The trustees of the fund continue to campaign to raise at least One Hundred Million Ghana Cedis from local and international businesses as well as the general public to aid the fight against Covid-19 in Ghana. For more information on how to donate/contribute, please visit: www.ghanacovid19fund.com
State Police Investigate Fatal Motorcycle Crash in Florida

Update May 3 at 3:05 p.m.: The motorcyclist has been identified as Lucienne Montgomery, 26, of Nashua, N.H. She was originally identified as being from Clinton, Mass. The article has been updated to correct that.

FLORIDA, Mass.  A 26-year-old woman from Nashua, N.H., was killed Saturday afternoon when she was thrown from her motorcycle on Route 2.

State police from the Cheshire barracks responded to the scene at about 3:45 p.m.

Preliminary investigation indicates the woman was operating a 2009 Harley Davidson XL 883 motorcycle eastbound when, for reasons still under investigation, she lost control after navigating a sharp curve near the 22-mile marker. The motorcycle then struck a guardrail ejecting the operator. The woman was determined deceased at the scene.

The name of the victim will not be released at this time. The crash remains under investigation with assistance from the Collision Analysis Reconstruction Section, and Crime Scene Services Section. Troopers were assisted on scene by the state Department of Transportation
More stranded Russians head home

PHUKET: More Russian tourists stranded in Phuket headed home yesterday evening (May 2) as 220 people boarded a special flight organised by Russian embassy officials in coordination with the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

RussiantourismtransportCOVID-19

By The Phuket News

Sunday 3 May 2020, 07:30AM

The passengers boarded a Ural Airlines Airbus A320, designated flight U63646, reported Airports of Thailand management at Phuket International Airport (AoT Phuket).

According to FlightRadar24, flight was bound for Shymkent in Kazakhstan.

The flight was organised to provide assistance to travellers stuck in Phuket due to the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, AoT Phuket noted in a post on its official Facebook page.

Airport staff, immigration officers and airlines staff jointly provided services at the International Passenger Terminal, the post added.

The first airlift after the airports closure was performed by Aeroflot, Russias flag carrier in civil aviation, on April 10. An Airbus A330-300 plane departed Phuket at 3.20pm. Ten hours later the plane landed in St Petersburg and after disembarking some of the passengers headed further to Moscow.

A second airlift from Phuket organised by Russian officials on Apr 24 helped 193 stranded tourists to get back to their home country.

Meanwhile, the ban on all inbound international passenger flights into Thailand remains in effect. The ban was introduced on Apr 4 and extended several times, and will remain banned until at least May 31.

Limited domestic flights in Thailand resumed on Friday (May 1), but not to Phuket, where the Governor has extended the closure of the airport to all but essential flights until May 15.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Paramedic Paul Cary, 66, of Colorado, was described by a co-worker as humble, caring and devoted to helping others.

Those character attributes are likely what led Cary to become part of a contingent of paramedics with the State of New York COVID Response team for Ambulnz, an on-demand ambulance service provider.

Cary arrived in New York, and was stationed in the Bronx -- one of the biggest hotspots in the city for coronavirus cases -- in April.

Just 11 days later, he died of COVID-19 on April 30.

Paramedic Paul Cary came to help New Yorkers and died of coronavirus. (Photo provided by Ambulnz)

Paul was a humble man, a caring man, who was devoted to serving other people, said Royce Davis, a fellow paramedic from Colorado. We [paramedics from Ambulnz] were all assigned to the Bronx Zoo area. ...Paul was just doing his job, like he does his job every other day.

Davis said the Ambulnz team, including Cary, was responsible for facility transfers.

When one hospital would get overwhelmed, wed transfer patients to other hospitals, where they had more room for patients. We were doing that throughout the city, said Davis.

He noted that he and Cary worked many long shifts when they first arrived in the Bronx.

It was so busy when we first got here. ...We had a few long days, said Davis, noting Cary worked in the Denver area for Ambulnz. We would see each other every day, check up on each other, make sure we were rested, and doing good."

*** CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF CORONAVIRUS IN NEW YORK ***

PROCESSION FROM STATEN ISLAND

On Sunday an honor guard and a large emergency responder vehicle procession left Bidell-Pizzo Funeral Home, Tottneville to travel to Newark Liberty International Airport, where Carys body will be flown home to his family.

There were at least 50 Amblunz ambulances at the funeral home for the transport. More than 100 first responders, including those from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), FDNY and NYPD, gathered for the procession.

A transfer ceremony was held at the airport.

Paul Cary, 66, was part of Ambulnzs State of New York COVID Response team who volunteered for assignment at the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City. Pauls career is best defined by his kindness and service to others during his time as a paramedic at Ambulnz, and before that as a firefighter/paramedic of more than 30 years with the Aurora, Colorado Fire Department, said Ambulnz in a statement.

Paul made the ultimate sacrifice for his country and will forever be remembered as extremely dependable and completely devoted to his work, the statement added.

The airplane, along with several dignitaries is scheduled to arrive in Denver at 7 p.m. Sunday. A procession is scheduled in Denver Sunday night, with a final ceremony to honor Cary on arrival at Olinger Funeral Home in Denver.

This man came here of his own choice. ...Thank you to Pauls family. We will remember him and memorialize him. Its so important to remember this great example of heroism," said Mayor Bill de Blasio at his Sunday morning press conference:

Ambulnz said Cary is survived by two sons and four grandchildren.

Jason Paderon contributed to this report.

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It doesnt have to be this way. With adequate funding from government and charitable sources, we could pay caregivers to live on-site at the nursing homes and assisted living centers where they work. This would ensure that they do not interact with infected people and then bring the virus into our centers. I instituted this policy on March 22.

The result has been promising; we have yet to have a confirmed case of Covid-19 among our residents or staff. But I cannot afford it for much longer, and many other senior care centers could not afford to even start such a program.

Currently, most senior homes rely on checkpoints to screen staff as they arrive to work, mainly by asking them questions and taking their temperatures. But these checkpoints can easily fail, because people without symptoms can carry and transmit the coronavirus. Moreover, many staff members work at multiple homes or have family members who work at other facilities. Many senior homes also have been preparing for the pandemic by hiring extra staffers. So it is hardly surprising that the contagion has spread like a chain reaction in senior care homes.

A better approach is to pay front line aides and nurses to live on-site through the period when the disease is surging  meaning right now. This is hardship work, requiring staff to work 60 to 80 hours a week without seeing family members. But it could be the best way to protect our elderly. Lowering the number of infections at our senior homes would also allow us to conserve protective equipment, reduce the need for hospital beds and prevent the spread of the disease into communities where staff members live.
T J S George By

Is there an untold story behind the corona pandemic that is changing our world? When a crisis of this kind hits mankind, it is natural for all kinds of stories to circulate. Most of the stories now being heard about the origin and nature of the pandemic are alarming. The central point of the stories is that China may be sitting on secrets that not only give frightening dimensions to the crisis, but also make its role and intentions suspicious.

One factor emphasised by most observers is that, while the damage done around the world has been massive, China seems to have not been hurt too badly. Across the globe more than 3 million people have been infected and more than 2 lakh lives lost. In the United States, the disease hit 1 million people and killed over 60,000. But in China, he number of infections has been below 83,000 and the death toll about 5,000.

China appearing in a favourable light can be for one of two reasons. First, China is not revealing the real figures, which may be much more devastating. Second, there might have been something the Chinese authorities knew and the rest of the world did not, which helped them keep things under control. Australia has called for an international investigation into the pandemic and everything related to it. Australia implied that China was hiding facts, and China accused Australia of political manipulation.

What facts could China hide? Perhaps Donald Trump knew something when he called it, again and again, the Wuhan virus. The general version is that the virus was the product of bad and irresponsible handling of meat and animal waste in the public market in Wuhan. But there was another version too  that the virus came from a laboratory that was trying to develop a biological weapon. The West had always harboured the theory that communist China, intent on world domination, would not hesitate to use desperate measures to achieve its ends.

The head of the Wuhan Institute of Virology said the coronavirus did not originate there. But no one gave any conclusive answers as to where it originated. A generally accepted scientific view is that the virus evolved naturally. The Chinese Foreign Ministry completed the picture by saying that the virus might have emerged in the US and reached Wuhan through the World Military Games held there in October 2019 with the US also participating.

While denouncing Australia, China did say that investigations would be conducted into how and where the problem originated. It gave no details about how it proposed to conduct the inquiry which added to international skepticism about any Chinese inquiry. This was natural because Chinas official conduct when the crisis began was unbecoming. Two doctors who sounded early warnings about the disease they confronted in their wards should have been heard and precautionary measures launched without loss of time. Instead, the doctors were condemned for acting without taking clearance from the party. One of the doctors himself caught the virus and died. This caused widespread anger among the people. But the authorities did not care.

The WHO itself seemed overawed by China. Its early reactions were half-hearted, allowing China to take advantage of it. American politicians openly criticised WHO, but China remained a beneficiary. The situation created by the crisis calls for an international inquiry by competent experts. This will not be possible without Chinas active participation. Since that participation is not likely to be forthcoming, the world will continue to be at the mercy of the pandemic instead of subjugating it for good.

China has been facing international criticism for its non-cooperation. By not releasing information about the spread of the virus in its early phase, said American author Shadi Hamid, China has imperilled not only its own country and its own citizens but also the more than 100 nations now facing their own potentially devastating outbreaks. It may well be that China wants to dominate the world. But what is the point in dominating a world that is crippled by a pandemic that has gone out of control? We need to credit China with more common sense. We need to avoid the temptation to blame enemies for the dilemmas we face. By blaming China for virus-related problems, can we find an early way out of a crisis that has got us all completely foxed?
GREENWICH  The front lawn of First Congregational Church of Greenwich looks different as the community pays tribute to the lives lost during the pandemic.

Senior Pastor the Rev. Patrick Collins has been spending many hours planting small white flags in the grass. Each flag is in memory of a life lost to the coronavirus in Connecticut. As the numbers of victims have grown, so has the number of flags planted.

The flags are a powerful visual reminder of how this pandemic has impacted our community and our state, says Collins. The flags also give the community an opportunity to grieve together what we have lost during this time, which is important. This is not an attempt at bringing the community down, but rather providing a bridge that mirrors the reality of the situation so that we cross that bridge and get to the other side of this pandemic.

If we are really going to move on from this situation, it is crucial to take the time to remember our loss and acknowledge the pain we feel, he said.

There will be more flags to be planted in the upcoming days.

First Church continues to live stream all worship services online. Collins also shares thoughts and comforting words every Friday at 3 p.m. on Facebook at visit www.facebook.com/fccogct. Visit www.fccog.org to connect with First Church.

Interested residents can also sign up to receive Music on Mondays, a newsletter about music by Craig Scott Symons, minister of music; Wisdom on Wednesdays, a live vlog by Collins; and Faith Formation for All, a family-oriented weekly email from Rosemary Lamie, director of faith formation. These are weekly newsletters that bring information, encouragement and activities to anyone on the mailing list. Email dalindar@fccog.org to sign up.

The church and its thrift shop, the Rummage Room, remain closed until further notice.
Israeli politicians and media seemed to ignore an announcement April 30 by prosecutor Fatou Bensouda of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, maintaining that she still has the authority to investigate Israel Defense Forces (IDF) war crimes in Palestinian territories. Her statement looks like it slipped completely under their radar.

Under normal circumstances, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not miss a chance to attack the ICC and its prosecutor in the harshest possible terms, even claiming that it was motivated by anti-Semitic, pro-Palestinian sentiments. This time, however, he ignored the new development. In all of his dynamic statements over the last few days, especially on social media, he focused instead on Israels successful efforts in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Inevitably, he also brought up the slew of congratulations he received in honor of Israels Independence Day. The one thing that was conspicuously absent was any mention of Bensoudas announcement.

This certainly is unusual. By way of comparison, when Bensouda announced in December that there were grounds to open an investigation against Israel for serious war crimes in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, Netanyahu was the first to respond. And he did it from every possible podium.

This is a dark day for truth and justice. The prosecutor completely ignored the weighty legal arguments we presented to the court. It is scandalous and baseless, Netanyahu said sternly in a video clip he released in response. Addressing world leaders, he went on to say, New edicts are being cast against the Jewish people  anti-Semitic edicts by the International Criminal Court telling us that we, the Jews standing here next to this wall ... in this city, in this country, have no right to live here and that by doing so, we are committing a war crime. Its absurd.

Back then, Netanyahu waged a diplomatic campaign against the court. He wasnt the only one either. Israels integrated, multifaceted attack on Bensoudas decision also involved senior ministers and leading legal experts. All of them claimed that the prosecutors arguments had no merit. Her motives had been politicized, they claimed, and should, therefore, be dismissed out of hand. Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit released a brief contending that the ICC had no legal authority in the territories, since the Palestinian Authority is not a sovereign state.

At the time, the Israeli media also dealt extensively with the dramatic decision, analyzing all of its possible implications. One of the most serious implications could be the possible arrest of a number of senior Israeli security officials when (if) leaving the country, including former chiefs of staff and other senior IDF officers. This could have included the current leaders of the Blue and White party, Benny Gantz and Gabi Ashkenazi. At the same time, several media outlets published all sorts of in-depth investigations into Bensoudas allegedly problematic past. Some of them described her as power-hungry, as a woman who served loyally the military dictatorship in her home country, Gambia, and even claimed she was involved in systematic violation of human rights there.

This time, the only minister to respond to Bensouda was Minister of Energy Yuval Steinitz of the Likud, who coordinates the inter-ministerial efforts to deal with the ICC. As someone who keeps close tabs on developments in the International Criminal Court in The Hague, I am forced to conclude that the prosecutor continues to pursue a clear anti-Israel policy, under the influence of the Islamic nations and BDS [boycott Israel] movements around the world. Steinitz also wrote, The prosecutors decision to ignore the legal opinions of some of the top experts in international law anywhere in the world indicates how determined she is to hurt and defame the State of Israel. To that end, she has reformulated the rules of international law and invented a Palestinian state before the conclusion of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process and negotiations. He went on to say, Israel will continue to take pride in the fact that it is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. It firmly rejects any baseless efforts to defame the country and harm its soldiers and citizens.

In December, Bensouda called for the investigation of Israel on three separate issues: IDF war crimes in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge (2014); the expansion of West Bank settlements in 2014; and the IDFs firing at Palestinian demonstrators along the Gaza border. She also called for the investigation of Hamas crimes against the Palestinian residents of Gaza in 2014. In her brief, she wrote, "There is a reason to believe that war crimes were committed in the context of the 2014 hostilities in Gaza. Bensouda added that there are also grounds to believe that the IDF "intentionally launched disproportionate attacks in relation to at least three incidents which the ICC has focused, as well as intentionally directing an attack against objects or persons using the distinctive emblems of the Geneva Conventions."

On April 30, Bensouda responded to an amicus brief by groups opposed to the investigation of war crimes in the territories, including Israeli nongovernmental organizations. She said she still demands the launch of an investigation, and asked the court to decide on its parameters. In other words, she hasnt altered her position.

What, then, would explain Israels unusually tepid response to developments in The Hague? According to Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul in New York, the reason is simple. International attention is focused elsewhere, at least for now.

Pinkas told Al-Monitor, The question of whether Palestine is a state is legally ambiguous. De jure, it is a state, given that it has been recognized as such by the United Nations. On the other hand, it does not have internationally recognized borders or absolute and sole sovereignty. Ostensibly, it could file charges against Israel, both in theory and in practice. On the other hand, the essence of the issue here is political, not legal. What this means is that it is more a matter of public relations than any real legal considerations. As such, Israel can certainly find itself facing Palestinian charges in The Hague, should it decide on the unilateral annexation of parts of West Bank Area C without explicit Palestinian consent.

A senior Likud minister in the emerging coalition, who usually looks forward to opportunities to attack the ICC, explained why he has not responded to Bensoudas announcement this time. Echoing Pinkas remarks, he said, on condition of anonymity, The world isnt paying attention. Everyone is focused on COVID-19 and the economic crisis. The same is true of Israel. No one is interested. Besides, we are already caught up in a political imbroglio. There is still no government, and there are plenty of other things on the agenda.
Nederland High School seniors Will Denson and Hallie McMains went on spring break expecting to return to school March 23.

But as COVID-19 spread, the district extended the leave for an additional week. That turned into a period of distance learning, until an executive order signed on April 17 by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott closed all schools for the remainder of the 2019-20 year.

I was telling people before spring break we were coming back and it helped me stay positive. I didn't think they were going to do it, Denson said. It is hard to have it taken away. I do think many of us took (senior year) for granted.

In lieu of the uncertainty brought on by the coronavirus, Misty Butler and Shonda Weaver created the Bless a Bulldog program to allow members of the community to celebrate Nederland seniors.

Our main focus is making sure that all our seniors are included. We thought we needed to do this for the seniors and community, Butler said.

Through the campaign, community members wanting to participate are assigned a senior at random to adopt. That student is then given a card or letter of encouragement, and a gift card up to $20.

Weaver said they made sure to limit the gift cards to keep it fair and equally blessed because people in the community are struggling.

As part of the schools 100th graduating class, Denson and McMains were looking forward to senior activities such as prom and graduation  both suspended until further notice.

Some school organizations did not get to have their last banquets, McMains said. It got real when I realized that we potentially wont get to see half of our senior class. It hit home after that.

To maintain privacy of all the seniors, those wishing to adopt a student through Bless a Bulldog only will receive the first name of the senior, and will be given drop-off options. Afterward, the letters will be mailed out to the corresponding seniors.

With permission from the Nederland High School administration, Butler and Weaver posted notices on social media and set up an email address for those wanting to inquire about the program. In just three days, all 340 graduating seniors had been adopted  two times over.

I think its going to be beneficial, Weaver said. (Community members are) going to feel that they are doing something productive. There are kids going to have tons of encouragement, and this may be the thing that gets them out of rut.

But Bulldogs arent the only ones being blessed.

Just across the tracks, Kelly Plante, mother of Port Neches-Groves senior Jack Plante, is overseeing the Adopt a PN-G Senior Facebook group.

Like Plantes counterparts in Nederland, she too wanted to find a way to celebrate the districts seniors. Plante is an active member of her community whether its dressing up for an Easter egg hunt or helping out with the annual Riverfest. Collaborating with PN-G High School to celebrate seniors is just another way for her to be involved.

I needed to do something else for the community, Plante said.  I thought, what if the community could adopt a senior to boost their spirits.

Plante thought of the idea on the morning of April 14, and by the afternoon she had permission from district administrators and a list of all 365 PN-G seniors to be adopted.

Plante created the Adopt a PN-G senior Facebook group, allowing her to identify the senior and how to get in contact with the parents for the sponsor to mail a gifts.

Similar to Adopt a Bulldog, Plante randomly paired sponsors and seniors, keeping a $20 limit on gift cards. But as people started to send more than required, she decided to lift restrictions.

It was not my place to stop a blessing from happening, Plante said. It just kinda took off and I have people now adopting a senior once a week.

In just a short time, every single PN-G senior had been adopted three times over, and community members are still signing up for the program.

Other schools in Southeast Texas, such as Bridge City High School and Little Cypress-Mauriceville High School, have implemented similar programs to celebrate seniors.

Even though this isnt what McMains expected for her final year of high school, she said it is important to keep everything in perspective.

It's really special to be 100th class and we didnt see it ending this way. It seems like it got taken away, McMains said. We have to put in perspective that people are still dying. God has a plan for us (seniors) and we just cant see that yet.

jorge.ramos@beaumontenterprise.com

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HOLLOW IN THE LAND by James Clarke ( Serpents Tail 12.99, 272 pp )

HOLLOW IN THE LAND

by James Clarke (Serpents Tail 12.99, 272 pp)

Lancashire: a neglected space caught between the twin poles of tourist magnets the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales  two places, incidentally, that are also richly imagined in literature.

Now comes James Clarkes collection of loosely interlinked stories set in an overlooked Lancashire valley that determinedly refuses to romanticise a landscape blasted by foot and mouth, lack of opportunity and widespread economic deprivation.

Theres Harry, whose wife is drinking herself into oblivion following an ectopic pregnancy. Theres Molly, a sadistic tree surgeon who gets his kicks from tormenting his young apprentice. Theres Nessa, who works at a care home for vulnerable (for which read ferociously damaged and delinquent) children.

These are largely unpretty lives and Clarkes prose is appropriately unvarnished, able to get to the truth of things without fanfare but with plenty of compassion. A promising debut.

WHATS LEFT OF ME IS YOURS by Stephanie Scott (Orion 14.99, 352 pp)

WHATS LEFT OF ME IS YOURS

by Stephanie Scott (Orion 14.99, 352 pp)

Sumiko has been mourning her mother for 20 years, following her death in a car crash, when she receives an inconclusive phone call from the Ministry of Justice, mentioning her mothers name.

A newly qualified lawyer brought up by her protective grandfather, Sumiko is determined to discover more and before long has unearthed a paper trail that leads to the truth: her mother was in fact murdered by her lover, an undercover wakaresaseya agent, initially hired by Sumikos father as part of a seduction scam to allow him to sue her for divorce.

Inspired by a real murder in Tokyo in 2010, this hotly tipped debut examines the hidden human dramas behind Japans murky marriage break-up industry, with the dead woman reclaimed as a vivacious, loving mother trapped in an unhappy marriage.

But its a slow-burn read, and while much of the writing, particularly on memory, is lovely, Scotts extensive research keeps jarringly poking through.

BARN 8 by Deb Olin Unferth (And Other Stories 9.99, 304 pp)

BARN 8

by Deb Olin Unferth (And Other Stories 9.99, 304 pp)

If Easter has left your stomach in revolt against chocolate eggs, this oddball heist novel may well leave you feeling equally revolted by the real thing.

Set against an ominously flat Iowa landscape, its the story of a botched attempt to rescue nearly a million wretched battery hens by a group of mismatched animal activists. They pitch up at Happy Green Family Farm armed with trucks and good intentions but not enough of a plan.

If this sounds like a madcap eco-caper, then its a weirdly unexciting one: Unferths deadpan prose, which plays with linear time, is an acquired taste and her story is crammed with far too many misfit characters to properly care about any of them.

Her novel is, though, a slyly effective absurdist comment on a country that consumes a staggering 75 billion eggs a year, with the real heroes of the hour the hens themselves.

Who knew these creatures can recognise not only up to 100 fellow chooks but also the face of the enemy?
Hi, my name is Scott C. Waring and I wrote a few books and am currently a ESL School Owner in Taiwan. I have had my own UFO sighting up close and personal, but that's how it works right? A non believer becomes a believer when they experience their first sighting. You witnessed it, your perceptual field changes, so now you need to share it.





I created this site to help the UFO community get a little bit organized. I noticed that there was a lot of chaos when searching for UFO sighting reports, so I hope this site helps. I wanted to support those eyewitnesses who have tried to tell others about what they have seen, yet were laughed at by even closest of friends.





More and more each day the governments of the world leak bits and pieces of UFO information to the public. They have a trickle down theory in hopes of slowly getting citizens use to the idea that we are not alone in universe and never have been. The truth is being leaked drop by drop until one day we look around and find ourselves neck high in it.





The discovery of alien species in existence is the most monumental scientific event in human history, suppression of that information is a crime against humanity.





About me:

I live in Taiwan. I OWN MY OWN ENGLISH SCHOOL, AND ONCE HAD 5 SCHOOLS.

Am Former USAF at SAC base (flight line).

Age: 42

Educ: BA in Elem ed. Masters in Counseling ed.





I had two UFO sightings, (30+bus size orbs) in military and in 2012 personally saw the UFO over Taipei 101 building on New Years Day (and recored it).
A prominent Hindu religious body and a Muslim cleric have asked the Uttarakhand government to allow the reopening of religious places of worship with restrictions and added that peoples religious needs should not be considered secondary, when a graded resumption in activities is taking place after nearly 40 days of nationwide lockdown, which was put in place to combat the coroonavirus pandemic.

The premier body of all the major Akhadas, Akhil Bharatiya Akhada Parishad, has sought to know why places of worship seemed not to be on the governments priority list when permission had been granted for the reopening of authorized liquor shops in the Orange and Green Zones.

Mahant Narendra Giri Maharaj, the president of the Akhada Parishad demanded that portals of religious places of importance should be opened up for priests, saints and devotees while following precautionary measures like social distancing.

As relaxations are being given, its imperative that shrines, temples, ashrams and muts are also included in the list of exemptions with compulsory enforcement of social distancing norms and use of facemasks for both seers and devotees. Religious and spiritual aspects cant be ignored for long as they provide immense spiritual, mental and physical solace to people, said Mahant Hari Giri Maharaj, general secretary of the Akhada Parishad.

Similar demands were made by priests who conduct ash-immersion rituals at Haridwar. They said the restriction imposed on the rituals of last rites during the lockdown was unprecedented.

Ganga Sabha president Pradeep Jha pointed out that ash immersion rituals are performed within a specific timeframe as per Hindu and Vedic traditions and added that a memorandum has been given to the state government for allowing ash immersion rituals in the holy city of Haridwar.

Religious rituals are an integral part of all peoples lives, irrespective of their sect or community. With specific restrictive, preventive guidelines, surely temples and Har-Ki-Pauri can be opened up for devotees as has been done for Gangotri, Yamunotri and Kedarnath, said Pradeep Jha, president Ganga Sabha.

Muslim cleric Maulana Iqbal Ahmed has also urged the state government to allow the offering of prayers at mosques while promising adherence to social distancing and other preventive measures.

For Coronavirus Live Updates

Reacting to the demands, cabinet spokesperson Madan Kaushik said that all aspects were being considered by the Central and state governments but ensuring the safety of human beings was their first priority.

The government is opening up or relaxing restrictions, but majorly it depends on Covid-19 containment and figures from the area concerned, he said.

The HT Guide to Coronavirus COVID-19

Prior to lockdown, temple committees had ensured that pilgrims wore facemasks and use sanitizers. We will apply even stricter safety measures if the government allows the shrines to open to the public, said Mahant Ravindra Puri, head of Shri Mata Mansa Devi temple trust.
The Alameda County District Attorney's Office and the Union City and Livermore police departments are criticizing a judge's decision to release without bail a suspect who's accused of assaulting two women in 1997 in a case that wasn't solved until last year.

Last Friday, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Thomas Reardon, a veteran judge who formerly was a prosecutor, granted Gregory Paul Vien, 61, of Livermore, a reduction of his bail from $2.5 million to zero, defense attorney Melissa Adams said on Thursday.

Adams said Reardon issued that ruling after she filed a motion to reduce Vien's bail because his health issues make it unsafe for him to remain at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin because of the risk he might be infected by the coronavirus if he remains there.

Adams said she believes Vien has risk factors that health officials say make some people more likely to die if they contract the virus.

Adams said Reardon agreed to reduce Vien's bail and release him but also required him to wear an ankle monitor and not to leave his home except to go to court or to meet with his attorneys.

Vien, a maintenance worker, was charged last November with three counts of sexual penetration by a foreign object and two counts of forcible oral copulation for allegedly sexually assaulting a 41-year-old woman in Union City on May 6, 1997, and a 22-year-old woman in Livermore on Sept. 15, 1997.

DNA samples from a plastic Baskin-Robbins ice cream spoon that Vien discarded in Livermore that summer finally connected him to the two cases, authorities said.

In announcing the charges, District Attorney Nancy O'Malley alleged that Vien attacked the 41-year-old woman in Union City as she walked to BART after work and dragged her to a secluded area, where he sexually assaulted her.

O'Malley alleged that Vien attacked the 22-year-old woman while she was on a walk near Livermore High School and sexually assaulted her.

In a statement this week, O'Malley said, "We argued vehemently against his release, and we are strongly opposed to releasing people charged with serious and violent felonies such as rape and sexual assault."

Union City police said in a statement that they were "shocked" to learn that Reardon had released Vien from jail.

The department said Reardon's decision to reduce Vien's bail "effectively released the suspected serial rapist back into the community."

Union City police said they are releasing information about Vien's status to the community to "let you know that we, like Livermore police and the District Attorney's Office, do not support this decision and feel it places our communities at greater risk."

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WINNIPEGRick Sterzer was lying at home struggling to breathe. Each day it was harder to get air into his lungs.

The 65-year-old retired Winnipeg firefighter had tested negative for COVID-19 after returning from a hellish journey on a cruise ship filled with infected passengers.

I said you better get me to the hospital because Im not going to die at home, Sterzer says he told his wife on April 2.

Thats where Ive been ever since.

A second test determined that Sterzer did in fact have COVID-19. He is one of more than 56,700 people in Canada to have contracted the virus. More than 280 have been in Manitoba.

Two days after he was hospitalized, he was transferred to an intensive-care unit and hooked up to a special oxygen machine. He was able to leave the unit this past week but is still unable to go home.

I dont feel sorry for myself. Im very lucky. I am very fortunate I beat this thing, Sterzer says.

He takes a moment to let air fill his lungs between his sentences as an oxygen machine buzzes in the background.

I know what this thing can do.

Sterzer and his wife boarded a ship in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on March 5 for what they thought was going to be a 25-day cruise to Europe. It quickly became clear that the deadly novel coronavirus was circling on board.

A few sick passengers were removed from the ship during its first stop in Puerto Rico. The boat wasnt allowed to dock at the next planned stop in Antigua, but continued its five-day voyage to Europe. Its pools, casinos, gyms, spas and restaurants were still open.

Police wearing haz-mat suits and holding guns were waiting for the ship when it docked in Spain, Sterzer says. They took sick passengers into waiting ambulances. No one else could disembark.

As the ship sailed to France, it was clear COVID-19 was transmitting between passengers, Sterzer says People were confined to their rooms and staff took their temperatures twice a day.

Sterzer began to feel ill but says he never had a high temperature. By the time the ship arrived in Marseille, the cruise line had arranged for Canadians and Americans to fly home. Sterzer says passengers, many who were clearly sick, were put on buses, then onto a crowded plane.

The man beside me was so sick ... and he wouldnt keep his mask on and had difficulty breathing, Sterzer says. He later learned through social media and other passengers that the man died from COVID-19.

Sterzer and his wife arrived in Winnipeg on March 20. They self- isolated and tested negative for COVID-19. Sterzers health, however, continued to decline.

A firefighter for 36 years, he is normally healthy and active. He knew that something was wrong so he went to the hospital.

Its been four weeks of serious health struggles, but Sterzer feels optimistic.

He says hes grateful he was never put on a ventilator. And he gets emotional speaking about doctors and nurses in the intensive-care unit who gave him strength and celebrated each little victory he had.

It was especially important since Sterzers family was unable to visit him.

A visit from his firefighting comrades was also a game changer, he says.

On April 11, a parade of fire trucks parked outside the hospital. Three crew members climbed up a ladder and taped a firefighter flag outside Sterzers window.

A nurse handed Sterzer a phone so he could thank them. He didnt know there were more than a dozen other firefighters below. If he had known, he says, he would have lost it.

Looking ahead, Sterzer is hopeful his oxygen levels will improve enough that he can go home with an oxygen tank within two weeks.

As Manitoba prepares to lift some public health restrictions and reopen some businesses Monday, Sterzer says his story shows why its important for people to stay vigilant.

Smoke alerts people to the dangers of a fire, but COVID-19 is a battle you cannot see, he says.

Everybody has to take this seriously.

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The Jharkhand government has decided to extend the lockdown across the state by two weeks beginning May 4 and will not allow the area-specific relaxations provided by the Union home ministry in red, orange and green zones.

Chief minister Hemant Soren announced the decision after a high-level meeting at the state secretariat on Sunday.

Migrant workers, students and others are returning home from other states. As a precautionary measure, lockdown would continue in Jharkhand for next two weeks. The new directions of the Centre regarding relaxations would not be implemented in Jharkhand for now, Soren said in a Twitter post.

Around 2,500 migrant workers from Hyderabad and students from Kota have till now returned to the state on two special trains. Another train from Kota will be reaching Dhanbad later on Sunday.

As per the state labour department estimates, around 950,000 people including migrant workers, students and others, who are stranded outside Jharkhand, have approached the government.

The total number of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) cases in the state stands at 115 with 12 of the 24 districts being affected. However, only state capital Ranchi is in red zone; 11 districts are in orange while the rest 12 are in green zone. Three people have died of the disease in the state, while 22 have recovered.

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In a bid to express their gratitude towards coronawarriors, Indian armed forces on Sunday are holding fly past and showering flower petals across the country.

All eyes are in the sky today as Indian armed forces salute COVID-19 frontline workers across the country by holding fly past and showering flower petals. In the visuals coming in from across the country, IAF aircrafts and choppers can be seen mapping the skyline to express their gratitude towards all the real life heroes who have been fighting novel coronavirus-COVID-19 fearlessly on ground zero. Delhi witnessed a fly past over Rajpath where three IAF aircrafts flew in a formation. A similar visual was observed over Mumbais Marine Drive, Srinagars Dal Lake, Chandigarhs Sukhna Lake, Jaipurs Sawai Maansingh Hospital.

On Sunday morning, the representative chiefs of Airforce, Navy and Army, i.e  CDS Bipin Rawat, COAS Manoj Mukund Naravane, Air Chief Marshal Rakesh Kumar Singh Bhadauria and Navy chief Admiral Karambir Singh paid their tribute to coronawarriors at National Police Memorial in Delhi. Indian Naval Ship Jalashwa in Bay Of Bengal saluted coronawarriors by standing in a Thank You formation.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi shared a video of Armed Forcess salute to coronawarriors and called it a great gesture. Home Minister Amit Shah also saluted the coronawarriors and assured them that him, the Narendra Modi government and the entire country is with them. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh also thanked the armed forces

Saluting those who are at the forefront, bravely fighting COVID-19. Great gesture by our armed forces. pic.twitter.com/C5qtQqKxmA  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) May 3, 2020

               @narendramodi                        ,              ! pic.twitter.com/ncPszTqMhX  Amit Shah (@AmitShah) May 3, 2020

Also Read: Armed forces set for aerial salute, musical tribute to coronawarriors today, flypast details revealed

#IndiaSalutesCoronaWarriors

Aerial Salute by #Airwarriors to #CoronaWarriors. Su-30MKI fighter aircraft presenting aerial salute over Mumbai to express gratitude towards #CoronaWarriors . pic.twitter.com/VLDMJGpz2T  Indian Air Force (@IAF_MCC) May 3, 2020

#IndiaSalutes #CoronaWarriors#IndianArmedForces thanked the #CoronaWarriors by laying tri-service wreath at National Police Memorial, Military Band Display, Aerial and Naval salute. pic.twitter.com/89cMZ7ot8B  ADG PI  INDIAN ARMY (@adgpi) May 3, 2020

Delhi: Representatives of Tri-Service Chiefs- Maj Gen Alok Kacker, Rear Admiral McCarthy and Air Vice Marshal PK Ghosh paid tribute at National Police Memorial today. pic.twitter.com/eHtQhtsIBm  ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020

INS Jalashwa in the Bay of Bengal saluting the #CoronaWarriors including doctors, nurses, other health workers, sanitation staff and police personnel fighting against the COVID19 pandemic. pic.twitter.com/OslZSCuATS  ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020

#WATCH Indian Air Force pays aerial salute to all frontline workers for their contribution in the fight against COVID19 pandemic#Delhi pic.twitter.com/2Tq43UdujU  ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020

Also Read: Coronavirus update: Total cases in India nears 40,000 with the toll at 1301

The Indian Air Force aircrafts will cover the major cities of the country like Delhi, Mumbai, Jaipur, Ahemdabad, Guwahati, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Srinagar, Thiruvananthapuram to Kutch. Followed by which, naval ships at the coasts of major sea ports, i.e Mumbai, Vizag, Port Blair, Kochi will light up in solidarity in the evening.

Also Read: Army Colonel, Major among 5 killed in action in encounter in J&Ks Handwara; 2 terrorists gunned down

For all the latest National News, download NewsX App
COVID-19 contact tracing apps are frequently voluntary in those countries that have rolled them out so far, but Indias is effectively mandatory. The countrys home ministry will require that all workers, public or private, use its Aarogya Setu app starting May 4th. Company and government leaders will be responsible for enforcing adoption, officials said, and there will be punishment if theres negligence.

The app has already been downloaded 80 million times, and the aim is to not only reach every smartphone user in the country (about 350 million) but reach basic phone users through an interactive voice system.

Like in other countries, widespread adoption of contact tracing apps could prove vital to curbing the spread of the new coronavirus. They might reduce or eliminate the need for further lockdowns while humanity waits for a vaccine. However, governments have generally shied away from requiring these apps, in part to assuage fears they might be used for mass surveillance. India clearly isnt as worried about public perception.

Privacy activists arent happy, to no ones surprise. Although the app relies on anonymous device identities and stores encrypted records of Bluetooth interactions with other devices, the Internet Freedom Foundation said the app doesnt meet data protection standards or provide enough transparency for algorithms. Mozilla warned that it wasnt certain how Aarogya Setus data would be used, and that there werent sufficient privacy laws to protect the public. This wont necessarily lead to abuses of power, but there might not be much to stop those misuses if they do occur.
HHS Proposes Removing Vaccine-Related Shoulder Injury From Federal Compensation Program

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is proposing to remove shoulder injury related to vaccine administration (SIRVA) from the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), denying compensation for thousands of adults suffering from shoulder pain after receiving a vaccine.

SIRVA is an injury to the shoulder that occurs within 48 hours after a vaccine is given to individuals with no prior history of a shoulder disorder. The injury may cause intense pain, weakness, stiffness, and other shoulder-related injuries like bursitis or ulnar neuropathy.

In a departure from its established legal procedure to modify the vaccine injury table (VIT), the HHS mailed a confidential document to all of the commissioners of the Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines (ACCV) before the committees regular meeting in March, to solicit individual feedback on its proposal to remove SIRVA from the table by May 21, when the comment period would end.

This is a critical issue and it affects a number of different levels of the program, John Howie, a vaccine-injury attorney in Dallas and an ACCV member, said at the commissions March meeting. As somebody whos on the frontline representing people who have suffered shoulder injuries, I read that packet, and quite frankly, I was stunned at some of the comments and suggestions that have been made in support of this idea.

Howie also addressed his concerns about the HHSs questionable approach in his letter to the ACCV (pdf), which has the responsibility to recommend changes in the Vaccine Injury Table. The VIT (pdf) lists the covered vaccines, its associated adverse reactions, and the time of the onset of reaction after vaccination.

The ACCV was created as an independent committee to provide oversight and recommendations in how the compensation program could function more efficiently, Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, told The Epoch Times.

The HHS argues that SIRVA should be removed from the compensation program to ensure enough money is in the trust fund (that currently has $4 billion) to compensate children injured from vaccines, and that the shoulder injury is not a result of the vaccines themselves, but to the incorrect administration of the needles.

SIRVA mainly occurs when the vaccine is improperly injected, either too high or too deep into the shoulder. The influenza vaccine is the most common cause of SIRVA in adults as it is administered annually to millions of people, with 73% of petitions filed in the last 2 fiscal years claiming an injury from the flu shot, according to the Human Resources & Services Administration.

According to the CDC, the flu vaccine is only 46% effective for this years 2020 flu season.

Several of the ACCV members who supported HHSs claim for SIRVA to be taken out of the compensation program, was Dr. Cody Meissener, the chairperson of the commission. Shoulder injury is not from the vaccine, Meissener said at the March meeting, but rather due to some deviation from the standard of care thats recommended for a vaccinated person.

Howie questioned the legality and scientific argument of the HHS, noting that in the creation of the VICP, nothing was written to exclude injuries caused by improper vaccine administration. I have yet to see anything from anybody that says that this program was not designed to compensate people that were injured as a result of a mechanistic-type injury as opposed to a component of the vaccine, he said.

Dr. Uma Srikumaran, an orthopedic surgeon at the John Hopkins School of Medicine, in an open letter (pdf), urged the HHS to not remove SIRVA since evidence supports that both vaccine antigen and injection into or near the bursa or synovium are required to cause SIRVA.

SIRVA does not result from the trauma of the needle being close to or within the bursa or synovium; rather bursitis and synovitis are directly caused by the vaccine antigen delivered by the needle.

Compensation Program

In 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act into law in response to the overwhelming lawsuits vaccine manufacturers were facing in the 70s and 80s by parents whose child was injured by the DTP vaccine or the oral polio vaccine.

The Act was passed to protect the vaccine supply and to provide parents of vaccine-injured children the ability to file a claim for compensation as an alternative to the civil court. It also included regulations regarding informed consent and the creation of a system for healthcare professionals to report vaccine-related injuries, known as the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.

Two years after the Act was passed, the VICP, was established as a no-fault system, to compensate individuals injured by a vaccine (listed on the vaccine table) fairly, quickly, and efficiently.

The program is funded by a $0.75 excise tax that is charged to each vaccine. Its billed into the cost, Randy Knutson, a vaccine-injury attorney in Minnesota, told the Epoch Times. A clinic gives out a vaccine, they collect that $0.75 and send it to the vaccine court fund.

As for the HHSs claim that the fund will run out of money, Knutson says: I dont think its a money question, although thats what theyre claiming, that theyll go broke. Thats not happening. I think its the processing problem, which is another government issue.

Tamara Overby, Acting Director, DICP, said at the ACCV March meeting that the trust fund not only pays the costs for petitioners and their lawyers fees, but also needs to pay the administrative expenses for the Health Resources & Services Administration, for the Department of Justice, and for the court.

A Flawed System

According to Fisher, who had worked with Congress to add in the safety regulations to the 1986 Act, amendments were added to the Act in the succeeding years, taking away liability for vaccine makers and healthcare workers administering vaccines.

Individuals injured from vaccines covered on the vaccine injury table were no longer able to file a lawsuit against negligent manufacturers or physicians in a civil court without first filing a petition with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, or vaccine court, and have their claim be denied or they reject the compensation.

The exterior view of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims that houses a special vaccine court in Washington on Oct. 21, 2014. (Susan Walsh/AP Photo)

After the U.S. Supreme Court declared that vaccines were unavoidably unsafe (pdf) in 2011, this further removed all liability from the vaccine makers and took away all incentives for the pharmaceutical companies to do the kinds of prelicensure studies, Fisher said. Youve taken away all incentives to improve an existing vaccine or to have a very high standard for the licensing of new vaccines.

For SIRVA cases to be removed from the compensation program, Knutson says there may be fewer people getting the flu vaccine if there are no courses of action for them to take since vaccine manufacturers are protected from lawsuits under the 2011 supreme court decision.

I dont really understand the governments position on this, he said. They want to give out all these flu shots, but take away anyones remedy for getting injured by it.

As for filing lawsuits against doctors or nurses, Knutson says most attorneys will not undertake a medical malpractice case due to the potential cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring the case to court. He said a medical malpractice case is the most expensive kind of case to bring as an attorney, in that, I have to hire a medical expert, Im going to have to pay $50,000 in costs to bring it.

Both Knutson and Fisher say that there are not enough attorneys at the justice department to handle all the petitions that are being filed every year.

The vaccine court is bogged down with SIRVA cases, Knutson said. According to Human Resources & Services Administration, for the last two years, 54 percent of the cases in vaccine court were SIRVA-related.

Michael Milmoe, a former Department of Justice attorney, said to NBC Washington, The only thing thats changed has been the number of cases filed, and I think thats the real reason behind the proposed regulation.

Knutson says that it takes six months to a year to get a response from the justice department attorneys of whether a petition will go through or not, when it is supposed to take no more than 30 days. He says it takes three to four years for his client to now get through the system.

All of Knutsons vaccine-injured clients are SIRVA cases, who are in their 60s or 70s. He says that not all of his cases will get compensated (although they are solid and strong) because in the vaccine court, two-thirds of the petitions are denied.

Fisher, who works with many parents of vaccine-injured children, says that the compensation program has not fulfilled the promise of what it was created for. There is a pattern that [has] become very familiar; they try to deny compensation to two out of three petitioners, Fisher said.

They have over the last 30 years, gutted the vaccine injury table, so theres almost nothing on the table that would fulfill the spirit and intent of the law that was supposed to award compensation in the absence of a more biologically plausible explanation for the injury or death.

The compensation program was also set up where petitioners do not have to pay their attorney fees as the program would pay for it regardless of the result. The reality is, if we take a case and we lose it, we usually dont get paid even though theyre supposed to pay the attorney fees win or lose, Knutson said. They basically say if you lose, you brought it in bad faith.

Knutson says that attorneys are not bringing petitions for no reason. He says the compensation program has not delivered what it has been set up to do. Its supposed to be fast, expeditious, easily compensated, but what it is, is its hard to get compensated, slow, and not easy.
Tara Reade, the former Senate staffer who says the former vice president sexually assaulted her 27 years ago, is disputing a story that quotes her regarding the report she allegedly filed with a congressional personnel office. On Saturday afternoon, the Associated Press published a piece claiming that Reade said the report she filed does not explicitly accuse the then-senator of sexual assault or harassment. I remember talking about him wanting me to serve drinks because he liked my legs and thought I was pretty and it made me uncomfortable, Reade said in an interview Friday. I know that I was too scared to write about the sexual assault. The piece quotes Reade as saying that she knows she didnt use sexual harassment, but rather the word uncomfortable and that she feared retaliation.

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Shortly after the piece was published, though, Reade wrote a tweet that only said, This is false, with a link to the AP story. Reade did not immediately elaborate but later said she was disputing the headline of the piece. Reade later told Fox News that while the story itself is correct, the headline was wrong. The headline initially read, Tara Reade says a Senate report she filed against Joe Biden didnt refer to sexual harassment or assault. An Associated Press spokesperson said that it stands by its story. The AP later changed the headline to Reade: I didnt use sexual harassment in Biden complaint. But Reade said she wasnt happy with that change either, saying that it was still incorrect and misleading. Reade added that theyre standing by the fact  that I said I dont think I used the term sexual harassment. We didnt use it as much back in 1993, so I dont know, but thats not to say that there isnt a box that I didnt check. Until we get that form, we dont know. Talking to NBC News, Reade said she was not sure what words she used in the complaint. I filed a complaint re sexual harassment and retaliation but I am not sure what explicit words on that intake form until we all see it again, Reade told NBC News in a text message.

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Correct and the headline was quite misleading. I filed the intake form regarding sexual harassment and retaliation however that was articulated on form in 1993.

I filed with Senate Personnel. Perhaps Joe Biden knows where that form is located. Ask him. https://t.co/vvA4OC717p  taratweets ( Alexandra Tara Reade) (@ReadeAlexandra) May 3, 2020

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Separately, the AP also reports that two additional people have spoken up anonymously to say Reade told them about at least some aspects of her allegations against Biden. One friend said Reade told her about the alleged assault when it happened in 1993, and another one said she told her in 2007 or 2008 about how she experienced sexual harassment from Biden.

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The report Reade claims she filed with a congressional office has become an important element in her accusations against Biden. On Friday, Biden said he didnt know of any complaint against him but called on the Senate and National Archives to search their records to see if they can locate a complaint from Reade. But what Reade allegedly told the Associated Press suggests that even if a document were to be found, it would not confirm her allegations because she did not detail them at the time.

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The Associated Press asked Reade about the complaint after uncovering notes from an interview last year in which she said she chickened out of filing a report. They have this counseling office or something, and I think I walked in there once, but then I chickened out, she said, according to a transcript of the interview last year. At the time, Reade had accused Biden of touching her inappropriately but did not detail the sexual assault allegations until this year. Reade says that her chickened out comment referred to the way she did not fully detail the assault allegations in the report.

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Earlier in the day there were reports that Tara Reade canceled a planned appearance on Fox News Sunday. We never confirmed the interview or the New York Times story and we dont provide details on the booking process, a Fox News spokesperson said. The New York Times Lisa Lerer tweeted that Reade said she canceled the interview because she received death threats. Reade later retweeted that tweet.

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NEWS - Tara Reade abruptly canceled the interview she was scheduled to record on Friday afternoon with Chris Wallace for @FoxNewsSunday, to air Sunday morning.



Reade told Fox on Friday, sometime after @JoeBiden's interview with @morningmika.  Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) May 2, 2020

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Tara Reade tells me she canceled the interview with Fox News because death threats received by her and her child made her nervous about being in the public eye. https://t.co/HtuxI9dJXC  Lisa Lerer (@llerer) May 2, 2020

This story has been updated with new information since it was first published.
COLUMBUS, Ohio  A small group of demonstrators gathered outside the house of Ohio Health Department Director Dr. Amy Acton on Saturday, protesting restrictions the state has placed on residents in accordance to with the advice of health experts to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.

A group of about 25 demonstrators were outside Actons home in Bexley, a suburb of Columbus, according to Katie Forbes, a photographer who captured images of the scene.

Their mission: to express their deep displeasure at the states stay-at-home orders, which Acton signed, and other restrictions on businesses meant to prevent more people from contracting the virus and to not overwhelm emergency rooms. Many have said the economic impact could be worse than the virus itself, a claim with which many experts and officials have repeatedly disagreed.

A group of demonstrators gathered outside the home of Ohio Health Department Director Dr. Amy Acton on Saturday, protesting the state's restrictions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. (Katie Forbes with KRForbesPhotography)

Protesters have been a near-ubiquitous presence at Ohios Statehouse for the past couple of weeks. Some are armed with long rifles and refuse to stay 6 feet apart from each other and those passing by, as recommended by health experts. The groups have been small but spirited and peppered with signs professing support for President Donald Trump, the anti-vaccination movement and a conspiratorial, prejudiced distrust of Jewish people.

Acton is Jewish.

While receiving significant attention in some corners, multiple polls have made clear that the vast majority of residents in Ohio and the rest of the U.S. are in favor of such restrictions.

Demonstrations at Actons house appear to be a relatively new occurrence. The demonstrators on Saturday carried Ohio and U.S. flags. Forbes said.

They protesters were very conscious to stay on the sidewalk and Actons tree lawn, Forbes said. She did not see anybody step on the health directors property.

Some held up signs. One said DR. AMY OVER-RE-ACTON HAIRSTYLISTS ARE ESSENTIAL. Another said LET FREEDOM WORK.

A group of demonstrators gathered outside the home of Ohio Health Department Director Dr. Amy Acton on Saturday, protesting the state's restrictions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. (Katie Forbes with KRForbesPhotography)

Still, the group was not shouting on the residential street, and Saturdays gathering was not like anything Id seen at the Statehouse," said Forbes, who has photographed several protests in recent weeks.

Forbes, who runs KRForbes Photography, said about 10 counterprotesters also showed up, many of whom wore face masks. The whole event had a slapdash feel to it, she said.

The protests in Ohio have been smaller than those in Michigan and Virginia, states with Democratic governors where Trump has trained his ire. Gov. Mike DeWine has imposed many restrictions similar to those in states with Democratic leaders, yet has not drawn the same backlash from the president.

There did not appear to be major issues with demonstrators at Actons house.

A dispatcher for Bexley police said officers were not called, though Forbes said she saw two police cars on separate sides of the street.

Sgt. Nathan Dennis of the Ohio State Highway Patrol, which includes the states Executive Protection Unit for security for the governor, lieutenant governor and others, said it was not involved in policing Saturdays demonstration.

A spokeswoman for the Health Department did not return a phone call.
Until three months ago, the oil industry was pinning its hopes on aviation, alongside petrochemicals, for continued growth in oil demand for at least another decade. The aviation industry, however, was dealt a near-deadly blow by the coronavirus pandemic, which upended all plans for fleet utilization for years to come. Airlines and aircraft manufacturers do not expect global airline traffic to return to 2019 levels for several years, while air carriers are set to retire the older, larger, less fuel-efficient aircraft earlier than planned.

This could speed up the arrival of peak oil demand, considering that jet fuel demandalbeit with a small overall share of oil demandwas expected to be the key driver of oil demand growth over the next two decades, alongside petrochemicals.

The crisis in the aviation industry and the early retirements of older wide-body planes suggests that the expected growth in global jet fuel demand through 2040 may not occur, Bloomberg Opinion columnists Liam Denning Brooke Sutherland write.

According to BPs latest oil demand outlook through 2040, aviation and marine transport were set to account for nearly half of the increase in energy used in transport in the 2030s, even though their combined share of total transport demand today is only 20 percent. Aviation was also expected to be the key growth driver of oil use in transportation through 2040, rather than road transport.

Before the pandemic, the oil industry, in general, had this message to all those who were arguing peak oil demand is imminent and would occur this decadeoil demand is not gasoline only, so jet fuel demand and petrochemicals will give us license to operate for decades to come.

Now the crisis in the aviation industry has upended the assumption that jet fuel demand growth could stave off peak oil demand for at least a decade and a half.

The retirements are going to be significant, and investments by airlines will continue to be made to get more fuel-efficient airplanes, Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun told CNBC this week.

Replacements will not be uniform as airlines will focus on the oldest and least efficient to retire, Calhoun told analysts at Boeings earnings call on Wednesday.

Related: Shale's Decline Will Make Way For The Next Big Thing in Oil

Currently, passenger traffic in the U.S. is down 95 percent compared to a year ago, Calhoun said, noting that airlines are cutting operations dramatically.

As they assess their businesses, theyre making difficult decisions that result in grounding fleets, deferring airplane orders, postponing acceptance of completed orders, and slowing down or stopping payments, Boeings top executive said.

We believe this industry will recover but it will take two to three years for travel to return to 2019 levels and it will be a few years beyond that for the industry to return to long-term growth trends, he added.

According to IAG, the owner of British Airways, Recovery to the level of passenger demand in 2019 is expected to take several years, necessitating Group-wide restructuring measures.

So far into the pandemic, jet fuel was the oil product with the largest decline in demand relative to 2019, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its Global Energy Review 2020 report this week. Related: How Trump Convinced Saudi Arabia To End The Oil Price War

Rystad Energy also sees jet fuel demand being hit the hardest, assuming as a base case that the common summer air travel peak will not occur at all this year.

Jet fuel demand globally is set to plunge by 33.6 percent on the year in 2020, or by at least 2.4 million bpd from last years demand for jet fuel of about 7.2 million bpd, Rystad said in its latest assessment on oil and fuels demand this week.

Despite the fact that jet fuel demand overall represents around 8 percent of normal annual global oil demand, jet fuel demand was widely expected to support the growth in oil demand through the next decade at the very least, also because jet fuel transportation is not threatened by electrification the way road transportation is.

But the global crisis following the pandemic, the crisis in the aviation industry, and expectations that people and companies could permanently change their behavior in a post-virus world are throwing all previous assumptions away. A complete overhaul of the aviation industry and a lasting change in air travel habits and patterns could indeed accelerate the arrival of peak oil demand.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Opposition parties here have accused Lucknow administration of targeting Muslims by naming some coronavirus hotspots after local mosques, a charge rejected by officials who said the authorities were just following a set practice.

In the initial list of hotspots in the Uttar Pradesh capital, eight mosques were mentioned by the administration while identifying the areas. For example, the list in Hindi said, In police station Kaisarbagh, area around Phoolbagh Masjid.

The administration has named hotspots after mosques in Lucknow. This is unfortunate, state Congress president Ajay Kumar Lallu told PTI.

This is a pandemic which did not attack a particular religion. It has nothing to do with a particular religion or sect. The government should focus on increasing testing facilities. The government is hiding its failures with such moves," he said.

Samajwadi Party legislator Rajpal Kashyap also criticised the administration.

"What message does the administration want to give to the people by naming the hotspots after mosques, he asked.

Coronavirus did not target any particular community. The focus should be on treating patients, making people aware and taking measures like sanitisation to check the spread," he said.

He alleged that the way the list was made is discriminatory and "suits the political agenda of the government".

Officials, however, rejected the charge that a particular community was being targeted. They said the mosques were mentioned because coronavirus cases were detected in their vicinity.

This is just to pinpoint an area where more cases have been found, nothing else. This is an old practice and there is no political colour to it," a senior official said.

Lucknow has so far reported 226 cases and one death due to coronavirus.

The mosques named to identify areas around them include Masjid Ali Jaan in Sadar Bazar, Mohammadiya Masjid in Wazirganj, Khajoor Wali Masjid in Triveni Nagar, Nazarbagh Masjid in Kaiserbagh and Rajauli Masjid in Gudumba.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had on Saturday blamed Tablighi Jamaat members for the spread of COVID-19 after their return from a congregation in New Delhi.

"Being infected with a virus is not a crime but to hide it is definitely one," he said.

According to official figures, 1,138 coronavirus cases out of the 2,579 detected in the state so far are linked to Tablighi Jamaat members and those who came in contact with them.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A supermarket worker has revealed a shoplifter threatened to spit in her face and 'give her coronavirus' as she called for greater respect for frontline staff.

Claire Saunders, from Essex, is an employee of the Co-op and a union representative for USDAW (Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers).

Appearing on BBC Breakfast earlier today, she told how she and some of her colleagues have been subjected to verbal and sometimes physical abuse from customers.

She told hosts Naga Munchetty and Charlie Stayt: 'When the initial panic buying started we saw customers verbally abuse ourselves, verbally abuse each other, because they couldn't get what they wanted.

Claire Saunders, from Essex, is an employee of the Co-op and a union representative for USDAW (Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers)

'They didn't want to queue, so obviously their anxieties were high, as everyone's is at the moment, and obviously they were taking it out on us because we were limiting what they were buying so everyone had a fair chance of getting what they needed.'

Claire said she noticed a spike in the number of aggressive customers over the Easter weekend, admitting it was particularly 'tough' in store.

'Obviously the weather was nice and people were having to queue, they didn't want to queue, they wanted to get what they wanted,' she explained.

'We were still having shoplifters that were coming in that are abusing us as well now.

Claire said she noticed a spike in the number of aggressive customers over the Easter weekend, admitting it was particularly 'tough' in store

'Personally myself I've been told if I come any closer to a shoplifter he'll spit at me and give me coronavirus.'

Claire said she understands people are anxious and scared, but stressed that shop workers are putting themselves at risk every day to provide a vital service to local communities.

'We don't deserve to get any disrespect, verbal and in some cases physical abuse whatsoever,' she added.

Claire claimed she is 'lucky' her employer is 'very supportive' and she and her colleagues have sufficient protective equipment including masks, screens and hand gel to keep them safe.

However, she added: 'Speaking to other people when I've been doing some research, they're not getting the same from their companies. So it's something the government really does need to address.

Claire said she is 'lucky' her employer is 'very supportive' and she and her colleagues have sufficient protective equipment including masks, screens and hand gel to keep them safe

'There needs to be harsher penalties for shoplifters and for customers that are abusing and physically assaulting shopworkers.'

A recent survey by USDAW suggested incidents of shop workers being abused while on duty have doubled in the past month, up from once a fortnight last year.

One in six of the almost 5,000 workers surveyed said they had been abused on every shift, while almost two in three of those questioned said they had suffered verbal abuse. Around a third said they had been threatened by a customer.

Professor Mike Holmes, a GP in York, also appeared on the BBC Breakfast segment and claimed he has seen an increase in abuse towards staff at his surgery.

Acknowledging that support from the public on the whole has been 'amazing', he admitted: 'We have had a handful of incidents with one of our practice nurses where patients have refused to see her, asked to see other staff or thought she was increasing their risk of infection because of a perception around her heritage.'

Professor Mike Holmes, a GP in York, also appeared on the BBC Breakfast segment and claimed he has seen an increase in abuse towards staff at his surgery

Explaining that the nurse is British-born but her family come from Hong Kong, he went on: 'She felt really upset by this, then came to us for support. We were absolutely happy to stand beside her and support her.'

Dr Holmes said he is keen for patients to work with them to counter this sort of behaviour.

'We understand at unprecedented times like this, people are worried. But I think we feel that even with that level of worry, that's no excuse for discrimination,' he said.

'We feel NHS workers should not be discriminated against on any basis, whether that be race, gender, age, class.

'What we want to do is work with out patients to call for respect for diversity in the NHS and society and to raise the awareness that this happens, reflect on this and ask people to call it out to reduce the number of times it happens.'
Uttarakhand is considering issuing sanitisation certificates to hotels and lodges in tourist destinations and pilgrimage sites to ensure safe stay for tourists when traffic resumes after the lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the states tourism minister Satpal Maharaj said on Sunday.

The move is being planned on the lines of a similar exercise in Singapore, the minister said.

Uttarakhand attracts over 3.5 crore tourists and pilgrims every year.

Follow coronavirus latest updates here.

After the lockdown ends, tourism will again gradually start in the state. We have to be prepared for that amid this pandemic. We have received various ideas to tackle it including one to issue sanitisation certificates to hotels and lodges in and around popular tourist and pilgrimage sites.

Maharaj said, The idea of issuing sanitisation certificates is being contemplated on the lines of Singapore where it has been implemented. The certificate will assure the visitors that the hotel is completely sanitised as per guidelines and is safe to stay.

The minister said such a measure was necessary because even after the lockdown ends, people will still be cautious because of the deadly virus.

We cannot adopt a lenient approach. We will have to be cautious even after the lockdown ends. The precautionary measures being taken now by the people in the ongoing pandemic are going to continue in the coming days also because of the deadly effect of the virus. We will have to be always very cautious without taking any risk as much as possible, he said.

The minister said whatever steps the government takes will be in line with the Centres guidelines.

A final decision is yet to be taken. Any step will be finalised while adhering to the Centres guidelines and approval of the government.

Earlier Sunday, chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat said that the state government could allow pilgrims from districts in the states green zone for Char-Dham yatra which includes the four highly revered shrines of Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri and Yamunotri.
Have a hankering for some pizza pie in the midst of the pandemic?

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 3/5/2020 (625 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Have a hankering for some pizza pie in the midst of the pandemic?

Maybe your zeal for zesty zas has increased in these times and youre seeking solace in the comforting combination of dough, sauce, and cheese. As Andrew W.K. once said, "anyone who says that money cannot buy happiness has clearly never spent their money on pizza."

Maybe you want to show support to restaurants that are reeling because theyve had to shut down their dining rooms due to COVID-19. Theres been a push from the Canada Takeout campaign to get people to make every Wednesday a "Takeout Day."

Maybe your maiden attempt at homemade pizza was outright awful.

Pizza is perhaps the most popular food of all time to pick up or get delivered to your door. Whatever type youre craving  from light, thin-crust offerings to hefty pies piled with toothsome toppings, and everything in between  Peg City pizza joints have you covered.

Wall Street Slices Pepperoni Prince pizza. (Daniel Crump / Winnipeg Free Press)

At Wall Street Slice, you can call ahead for pickup, curbside service, or contactless delivery of big, wide, foldable slices just like the ones served up in the Big Apple pizza parlours.

Co-owner Steffen Zinn  also the president of Flatlander Hospitality, the folks behind the Red Ember wood-fired pizza concepts  describes the dough for the New Yorkstyle slices as "medium-thick crust thats about four millimeters thick under the toppings."

That dough serves as the foundation for a variety of thoughtful toppings. The West End joint, which opened last May, gets all of its pork products from Manitoba-based Zinn Farms and grinds their sausage and dry-cures their pepperoni in-house.

"In the summer, we buy as many local vegetables as we can for our toppings," Zinn says. "Some items have to be imported  we havent found local pineapple yet  but we approach everything with a from-scratch effort."

Michael Sung (left) and Edelma Miranda are co-owners of Wall Street Slice. (Daniel Crump / Winnipeg Free Press)

WSSs menu is fairly concise and features eight specialty pies from the Whiteout  featuring ricotta, mozzarella, pecorino Romano, parmesan, roasted garlic, garlic oil, Sicilian oregano, olive oil, and parsley  to the Hot N Honey, featuring that house-cured pepperoni, pickled jalapenos, mozzarella, parmesan, and garlic honey.

As a pizza-by-the-slice place, WSS allows customers to mix-and-match individual slices to make a whole 18-inch pizza "so everyone in the family can have their favourite." Zinn recommends phoning ahead to ensure the slice you want is available. Delivery is available for six-plus slices.

For something a little different, Zinn recommends the Sicilian Square, which he describes as a "super thick-crust pizza that is light as a cloud with a super crunch at the edge." Its only available Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday at lunchtime until its sold out.

Wall Street Slice has been using a bright orange electric bicycle, affectionately known as Sparky, to deliver pizzas since mid-April. (Daniel Crump / Winnipeg Free Press)

If you do get delivery, dont expect the courier to show up in a van or sedan. In mid-April, WSS began delivering on a bright-orange electric bicycle dubbed "Sparky." Its already "made a splash" in the community, Zinn says.

"The smiles we see when people see that their pizza was delivered via a more environmentally friendly method than what is typical is energizing for us," Zinn explains. "I felt it first hand as I was the delivery driver peddler. Its also a blast to ride a bike for work."

The antithesis to thin-crust New York pizza is Chicago-style deep-dish. Youll find the latter at Bulldog Pizza, one of the few spots in Winnipeg to serve the thick, high-edged pie stuffed with meats and veg and topped with sauce.

Denizens of the two respective cities have warred over which is superior since deep-dish was invented, either in 1943 at Pizzeria Uno or in 1926 at Rosatis Authentic Chicago Pizza, depending on whom you believe.

Bulldog Pizza owner Marc Vercuysse with a meat lovers deepdish pie. (Daniel Crump / Winnipeg Free Press)

The Main Street spot features no fewer than 10 specialty deep-dish offerings deluxe, chicken/bacon/ranch, cheeseburger  in addition to various other deals for multiple traditional pizzas. You can also customize your own.

The most popular, "hands down," owner Marc Vercruysse says, is the Meat Lovers, which is packed with pepperoni, salami, beef, Italian sausage and bacon.

"Its always been a favourite of mine because Ive always been a toppings guy and you get a lot with a deep-dish pizza," Vercruysse says of why he prefers the style.

Bulldog has seen an increase in business at their restaurant since COVID-19 came to Manitoba but has had to shut down their two live music spaces that frequently play host to punk and metal shows.

Daniel Crump / Winnipeg Free Press Bulldog pizza on Main Street is one of the few spots in Winnipeg that offers thick, high-edged pie stuffed with veggies and meat. Here, a Bulldog Pizza meat lovers deep dish pizza.

"To date weve cancelled or postponed over 100 events to the end of May," Vercruysse says. "However, a lot of our restaurant increases have come from supporters (of our) music scene. We have loyal customers and I cant emphasize how amazing they are. "Bulldog offers takeout and delivery and is available through Door Dash, SkipTheDishes, and Uber Eats.

At Dianas Cucina and Lounge, youll find a huge menu of hefty, off-the-wall pies.

The St. Annes Road restaurant, open for pickup and contactless delivery, features outrageous concoctions dreamt up by five-time award-winning pizza chef Diana Cline.

How does a pizza with  are you ready for this?  Cajun chicken, dry-cured pepperoni, Capicola ham, bacon strips, all-beef salami, Cajun barbecue pulled pork, spicy Italian sausage, mozzarella and Monterey Jack cheese on a Moosehead beer crust sound?

That one, dubbed the Diana-Saurus Rex, came about when customers asked Cline for a pie with "more meat" than the all-meat pizza already on the menu.

How about one inspired by Trailer Park Boys character Ricky LaFleur, topped with pepperoni, chicken fingers, and jalapenos?

That one, dubbed Rickys Revenge, came about when Cline and her then-husband, fans of the show, wondered what Ricky would like on a pizza.

Rickys portrayer, Robb Wells, along with John Paul Tremblay and Mike Smith  who play Julian and Bubbles, respectively  actually came to the restaurant to try it back in 2007.

"I love ingredients, and I love pizza, I love to play with them together," Cline says of her creative process. "Sometimes I get an inspiration where Ill begin to make one thing and I hear another ingredient whisper, and voila, something new comes together."

Diana Cline, of Dianas Cucina and Lounge, has traveled internationally to take part and judge pizza competitions. (Daniel Crump / Winnipeg Free Press)

Whether the customer selects from the menu of 40-plus combinations or creates their own  three of Clines other recommendations are the Sweet & Spicy Divine Swine, the Kung Pao Chicken, and the Country Fire  they can be sure theyre made with top-notch ingredients.

Dianas makes five types of dough and marinara from scratch. They grate all their cheese by hand as well (theres lactose-free and vegan options in that regard.)

"Theres a lot of fake food and Franken-ingredients used these days, but you wont find those on my menu," Cline says.

Cline says business has been "pretty steady" lately  sales on Fridays and Saturdays have actually increased.

"We certainly miss seeing our dine-in guests in the lounge, and I had to lay off my main server, but were lucky that we still see those regulars as pickup and delivery clientele," she says.

As a bonus, Dianas is offering a 19 per cent discount off any pickup order. Cline calls it her "dark humour" special.

To many, A Little Pizza Heaven  especially its Osborne Village location  is an excellent spot to get a couple of inexpensive late-night slices after a night of revelry and imbibing beverages at surrounding bars.

While their soft, thin-crust slices and signature garlic butter crusts are indeed heaven in the wee hours, dont sleep on ALPH as a viable option for whole pizzas much earlier in the evening.

Dave Fox, owner of A Little Pizza Heaven, at his Madison Square location. (Daniel Crump / Winnipeg Free Press)

ALPHs four locations  Ness Avenue, St. Annes Road and Regent Avenue East in addition to Osborne  are still turning out plenty of pies for delivery and takeout. While only whole pizzas are available for delivery, you can still pop in and take a slice or two to go.

"Pickups and deliveries have been successful and the support for local businesses has been amazing," Dave Fox, one of ALPHs owners, says. "Were so thankful to be a part of such an amazing community."

However, like all restaurants right now, ALPH is facing challenges. Its food truck will sit mostly idle this summer as most festivals and events have already been kiboshed. Its Shaw Park stall likely wont be open this year as the odds of the Goldeyes having a season looks slim (although the American Association is holding out hope for an 80-game schedule beginning in mid-July.) Its office and group catering have also taken big hits.

A large tomato and feta pizza from A Little Pizza Heaven. (Daniel Crump / Winnipeg Free Press)

Despite that, ALPH still offers their buy one, get one half price special every day. As for recommendations, Foxs are two-fold.

If youre looking for specialty pizzas, try the chicken clubhouse with ranch dressing or the bacon double cheeseburger drizzled with barbecue sauce. Fox also recommends ALPHs most popular pies: tomato and feta, and "if youre of the opinion that pineapple belongs on pizza," the sweet-and-salty pineapple/feta.

ALPHs goal is to give their customers "a little bit of normal," Fox says.

"Whether its their regular Friday-night pizza night with the family or a late-night craving, were here for them."

At Pizzeria Gusto, the chefs literally play with fire. The fresh-daily, hand-stretched dough is topped with a combination of "innovative and traditional" combination of toppings, manager Amanda McGrath says, and baked in a wood-burning oven that reaches up to 900 degrees and gives the crust those crackly charred bits.

Greg Cavers, pizza chef at Pizzeria Gusto on Academy Road, slides a pizza into a wood-fired oven. (Daniel Crump / Winnipeg Free Press)

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The Academy Road restaurant "thrives off of community and relationships," McGrath says, and strives to emulate the family dinner experience; loud, fun, and accepting.

While there are no customers at their tables right now, Gustos pizzas are still hitting tables around the city as theyre open for curbside pickup and delivery.

"It was important for us to find a way to maintain part of our business while being able to offer the same great food that our guests have always enjoyed," McGrath says.

Pizzeria Gustos chef Connie Klassen (left) and restaurant owner Amanda McGrath with pizzas. (Daniel Crump / Winnipeg Free Press)

Her personal recommendations include The Don  porchetta, Italian sausage and Calabrese salami; The Waterloo  arugula pesto, prosciutto, roasted potatoes, mozzarella, house-made ricotta and pistachios; and, of course, the simple-but-classic Margherita  San Marzano tomatoes, Bufala mozzarella (buffalo-milk mozzarella, for the uninitiated) olive oil and basil.

If you desire to pair your pie with an adult beverage, Pizzeria Gustos staff will even offer beer or wine suggestions and deliver that too.
Two colleagues working on new global financial strategy plan using tablet and laptop.

Typically, income investors can rest comfortably in a bear market as steady dividends lessen the blow. This crisis, however, is proving different. That usually reliable income stream is anything but, as top dividend stocks are cutting payouts at a record pace.

Since the start of the COVID-19 crisis, there have been more than 50 TSX-listed companies that have cut or suspended dividends. Not even Canadian Dividend Aristocrats are immune. Some with dividend-growth streaks in the double digits are making the tough decision to cut or suspend their payouts.

It is no different south of the border. Leading oil major Royal Dutch Shell cut the dividend by 66%  the first time the dividend has been cut since World War II.

It is time for income investors to re-think their approach to dividend investing. At the top of the list is the safety of the distribution. With that in mind, here the top dividend stocks on the TSX Index to own today.

The countrys top dividend stock

Utilities are some of the most reliable income stocks in the country. At the top of the Canadian Dividend Aristocrat list, you will find several. In fact, three of the top five longest streaks in the country belong to utility stocks.

Near the top is Fortis (TSX:FTS)(NYSE:FTS), which holds a 46-year dividend-growth streak. Since utilities typically generate negative free cash flow, the safety of the dividend is best compared against earnings. At only 50.40% of earnings, Fortiss dividend is well covered.

Utilities have performed quite well during the COVID-19 crisis and have re-established themselves as some of the most defensive stocks in the country. Why choose Fortis over some of the others? For starters, 99% of the companys earnings come from regulated earnings. This provides stable cash flows regardless of economic activity.

To go along with the long dividend-growth streak, this top dividend stock is also one of the most consistent in terms of growth. A safe and growing dividend relies not only on a strong payout ratio as a percentage of historical earnings, but the company must also be able to grow the business. The company has consistently grown earnings in the mid- to high single digits and is expected to do so again over the next five years.

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Thanks to a clear path to growth, Fortis is targeting 6% annual dividend growth through 2024. Arguably, Fortis is Canadas top dividend stock.

The safest bank stock

We cant talk safe and reliable income stocks without talking about Canadas big banks. Although international banks are cutting dividends at request of federal governments, dont expect such actions here in Canada.

Canadas banks have the longest uninterrupted growth steaks in the county. Spanning more than 100 years, retirees and pension plans rely on Canadas banks for income. As such, the Feds arent likely to get involved. All they ask is that banks not raise dividends during this time.

This is not out of the ordinary, as they all kept dividends steady during the Financial Crisis. My pick for the safest of the bunch is Toronto-Dominion Bank (TSX:TD)(NYSE:TD). There are two main reasons why TD Bank stands out over its peers as a top dividend stock.

First, the company has been the fastest-growing bank. Post 2020, the expectation is for mid-single-digit earnings growth. Once again, this places it among the best banks in terms of growth. As the U.S. looks to re-open the economy ahead of Canada, TD Bank will be among the first banks to benefit from a return to normalcy.

Second, TD Bank has the lowest payout ratio (47.95%) of all the Big Five banks. TD Banks payout ratio has been among the lowest for years, which has allowed for outsized dividend growth. At 10% on average over the past five years, it also has the highest dividend-growth rate.

Bottom line: investors can rest assured that Canadas big banks are among the top dividend stocks in the country.

The post Top Dividend Stocks to Buy on the TSX Index appeared first on The Motley Fool Canada.

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Fool contributor Mat Litalien owns shares of FORTIS INC and TORONTO-DOMINION BANK.

The Motley Fools purpose is to help the world invest, better. Click here now for your free subscription to Take Stock, The Motley Fool Canadas free investing newsletter. Packed with stock ideas and investing advice, it is essential reading for anyone looking to build and grow their wealth in the years ahead. Motley Fool Canada 2020
Everyone grows up, and, unsurprisingly, so have the teen idols from the 90s and early 2000s. Some pop stars from those days, such as Justin Timberlake, have done well for themselves, but others havent been as successful. Many of those old pop stars have in fact gotten themselves into hot water with the law. Thats particularly true for Aaron Carter and Nick Carter, two pop stars who were a bigger deal 10 or 15 years ago. Heres a look at the Carter brothers and that time they broke the same law.

Aaron Carter and Nick Carter | Jean-Paul Aussenard/WireImage/Getty Images

A brief look at the career of the Carter brothers

Nick Carter, whos 40 years old now, is, of course, a member of the Backstreet Boys. While his solo career hasnt been as successful as someone like Justin Timberlake, its still active to this day. Aaron Carter is his younger brother, and hes 32 years old. Unlike his older brother, hes been a solo musician for the majority of his career.

While Aaron Carter has been successful by himself, his fame and popularity was helped by the fact that he got to tour with the Backstreet Boys. And, while Nick Carters career has largely been in the shadows lately, his younger brother is getting a lot of play in the press, usually for his antics. For example, very recently, Aaron Carter started an OnlyFans account, even though he doesnt really need the money.

The Carter brothers DUIs

To my brother: I love u no matter what & if u feel the need to reach for help, I am here and willing to help you get better.  Nick Carter (@nickcarter) July 16, 2017

Drinking and driving isnt exactly rare, especially among the rich and famous. So, its not too surprising that the two brothers have had a history of getting DUIs and committing other alcohol-related offenses. For example, Delish wrote that, back in 2005, Nick Carter was caught drunk driving after leaving a restaurant in California. He was arrested and released shortly after.

Fast-forward 12 years and his baby brother got arrested for the same thing, according to Delish. In 2017, Aaron Carter got arrested in Georgia for drunk driving as well as possession of a small amount of marijuana. This wasnt actually the first time that he got arrested for having weed in his car, either. In 2008, in Texas, he was arrested for speeding and having a small amount of weed in his car. That said, at the very least, he wasnt drunk at the time.

Outside of cars, his older brother has also had a criminal history related to alcohol abuse. For example, in 2016, Billboard reported that Nick Carter got arrested in Florida after he got into a bar fight. The reason why he was involved in that bar fight was because he was so drunk that the bar wanted him to leave, but he didnt want to leave. In any case, rather than bringing the family together, this shared history of substance abuse has helped tear the family apart.

Nick Carters strained relationship with Aaron Carter

As Delish said, after his baby brother got arrested for drunk driving in 2017, Nick Carter tweeted about his unconditional support for his little brother. Aaron Carter didnt take his big brothers tweet well, though, as he would have preferred having a conversation with his brother, rather than a public tweet about it.

Things have only gotten worse between the two brothers since then. For example, in late 2019, Nick Carter got a restraining order against his brother after he made some threats against Nick Carters wife. Then, Aaron Carter returned the favor and threatened to sue his older brother.

That said, one thing that will always remain constant is a familys bond with each other. While there are exceptions to that rule, its entirely possible that the Carter family recovers from these tough times in the future.
A poll conducted by community social media platform LocalCircles suggests that 78 per cent of the respondents want e-commerce firms to sell all items, essential as well as non-essential. The survey covered 12,343 unique consumers located in 210 districts across India.

The respondents said that they prefer e-commerce to deliver non-essentials in red zones too or at least expand the lockdown essentials list. The feedback indicated that consumers would soon be shopping for secondary essentials including items like books, stationery, tablets/laptops, printers, phone accessories, batteries, coolers, air conditioners, etc. The poll also suggested that even post lockdown, crowded malls would not be an immediate choice for shopping and majority would prefer buying items of need via local stores (in-store or delivery) and ecommerce sites.

Also read: Coronavirus India Live Updates: Lockdown 3.0! Highest 1-day jump with 2,644 cases; IAF salutes corona heroes

In the LocalCircles polls conducted in mid-April, 68 per cent parents said their children need textbooks for online school classes to be effective while 24 per cent parents said they did not have a screen (desktop/laptop/tablet) for children to access online classes. Similarly, 43 per cent households said they needed office/school supplies while 33 per cent said they needed some gadget or other urgently.

At the moment, none of these demands can be met as ecommerce is delivering only essential goods. Even during the next phase, where zones other than red would be allowed to sell all products, the problem is likely to persist as red zones cover most major cities and 33 per cent of India's population.

Also read: Major milestone! India conducts 1 million coronavirus tests

The respondents hence wanted ecommerce firms to be permitted to sell all goods, even in the red zones. In addition to government's permission to ecommerce platforms to deliver essentials, local retailers and traders must also be permitted to take orders on phone/whatsapp and deliver them, they pointed out. As an alternative, respondents suggested that at least there should be an expansion of the essential goods list by adding secondary essentials items.

On the question of how they would shop post lockdown, 26 per cent said they would buy it from ecommerce sites, while 41 per cent said they would go to the local retail stores/markets. Another 24 per cent said they would try to get it delivered from local retail stores, while 4 per cent said they would go to the mall and buy what they need.

In a statement, LocalCircles said it would submit these findings to all key central government stakeholders.

Also read: Lockdown 3.0: PM Modi discusses plan to spur growth in MSMEs as India heads for partial reopening

INDIA CORONAVIRUS TRACKER: BusinessToday.In brings you a daily tracker as coronavirus cases continue to spread. Here is the state-wise data on total cases, fatalities and recoveries in one comprehensive graphic.
By PTI

DUBAI: Over 150,000 Indians in the UAE, who wish to return home amid the coronavirus lockdown, have applied through the online registration process to the Indian missions here, according to media reports.

The Indian missions in the country last week opened online registration for the expatriates who wish to fly back home after getting stuck in the country amidst the lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.

"As of 6 pm on Saturday, we received more than 150,000 registrations," Consul General of India in Dubai Vipul told the Gulf News on Saturday.

ALSO READ | Three Indians in UAE lose jobs for 'Islamobhobic' social media posts despite ambassador's warning

A quarter of them want to return to their homeland after losing their jobs, he said.

According to a report in the Khaleej Times on Sunday, about 40 per cent of the applicants who have registered are blue-collared workers and 20 per cent are working professionals.

"Roughly 20 per cent have suffered job losses and about 55 per cent of the total applicants are from Kerala," Neeraj Aggarwal, Consul, Press, Information, Culture was quoted as saying in the report.

Aggarwal said that the figures would change as they are expecting registrations from workers from other states, including Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar.

About 10 per cent of the applicants are visit and tourist visa holders who got stranded here due to the ongoing lockdown in India.

India extended the ongoing lockdown by two weeks from May 4 to contain the spread of the coronavirus that has affected nearly 40,000 people in the country.

ALSO READ | COVID-19: Indian doctor in UAE overwhelmed as policeman salutes her for her service

Aggarwal said that a small number of the applications constitute those from pregnant women and other medical cases.

Since the online registration process was launched, the Consulate's website crashed several times due to the heavy rush of applicants wishing to register to fly back home.

"The site has been working fine now though it took a lot of time for it to stabilise in the initial phase due to the heavy traffic," the counsel general said.

He said that the missions here have not yet received any information from the Indian government about the mode of transport of the stranded citizens, the prices of the tickets or how the COVID-19 test results of applicants would be assessed for their journey.

"There are high-level discussions going on regarding these things," he said in the report.

Meanwhile, Norka (The Non Resident Keralites Affairs) said it has received a total of 398,000 applications from Keralites across the globe who wish to return home.

"Of which, the highest numbers are from the UAE.

At least 175,423 applicants have signed up from the UAE," Norka said in an official statement on Saturday.

It also received 54,305 registrations from Saudi Arabia, 2,437 from the UK, 2,255 from the US, and 1,958 from Ukraine from those who wish to return to India, the Khaleej Times reported.

The coronavirus has infected 13,599 people and claimed 119 lives in the UAE, the Ministry of Health and Prevention said on Saturday.
But as hospitals begin to reincorporate more surgeries and procedures into their daily workloads, they must balance the business of providing regular medical care with preparing for a possible future surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations that may have been delayed by statewide restriction measures that have encouraged social distancing.

How its done will likely vary from hospital to hospital and region to region, said Julian Walker, vice president of communications for the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association.

Each hospital and health system will approach this process in a responsible fashion that emphasizes best practices and considers a range of factors including treatment capacity, available supplies, the hospitalization status of COVID-19 patients and many other variables, Walker said in an email.

For some hospitals, this will include testing surgery patients for COVID-19 before the procedure, reviewing the latest COVID-19 hospitalization numbers before scheduling surgeries, and keeping careful stock of the available protective equipment. Northam has also directed all hospitals to keep at least 25% of their bed capacity open in case of a sudden surge in COVID-19 patients.
Lafayette College this week announced its first case of the COVID-19 coronavirus illness.

The case was confirmed Wednesday in a student whod been living off campus for the prior two weeks with very limited contact with any individuals on campus, wrote Dr. Jeffrey Goldstein, the Easton schools director of health services.

"The individual is doing well and we wish the student a full and rapid recovery," Goldstein wrote Wednesday to the campus community.

Lafayette says it is following protocols for testing, isolating and contact-tracing on campus, in coordination with the Pennsylvania Department of Health.

State health officials Saturday announced 1,334 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 64 additional deaths, bringing the total, cumulative case count to 48,305 with 2,418 deaths.

According to Lafayette's campus communication:

"Students who have been in close contact with the individual who tested positive have been identified and they will transition to off-campus, college-owned housing for two weeks, which is the upper range of the incubation period for COVID-19. There were no employees on campus who had close contact with the student, defined by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) as being within six feet for a period of at least 10 minutes.

"Positive cases on our campus further underscore the importance of continued vigilance in adhering to the protocols which have been widely disseminated. I will continue to keep the campus updated with any new information that becomes available."

Lafayette in March moved to remote learning for the rest of this semester.

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Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com.

For more information on the coronavirus, consult your state health department at health.pa.gov or covid19.nj.gov and the website of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Tell us your coronavirus stories, whether its a news tip, a topic you want us to cover or a personal story you want to share.
A secret military operation to overthrow Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro Moros was simple, but perilous.

Some 300 heavily armed volunteers would sneak into Venezuela from the northern tip of South America. Along the way, they would raid military bases in the socialist country and ignite a popular rebellion that would end in President Nicolas Maduros arrest.

What could go wrong? As it turns out, pretty much everything.

The ringleader of the plot is now jailed in the US on narcotics charges. Authorities in the US and Colombia are asking questions about the role of his muscular American adviser, former Green Beret Jordan Goudreau.

And dozens of desperate combatants who flocked to secret training camps in Colombia said they have been left to fend for themselves amid the coronavirus pandemic.
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Linkedin Ayenat Mersie (Reuters) Nairobi, Kenya  Sun, May 3, 2020 09:09 625 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd58f4be 2 Lifestyle Nairobi,Kenya,hair-salon,coronavirus,COVID-19,pandemic,salon Free

Through winces and grins, two girls wearing face masks and surrounded by posters of different hairstyles bowed their heads for their hairdressers. But the spiky look they were getting  "the coronavirus"  was still too new to appear on any poster.

In Kibera, Kenya's largest slum, hairdressers have created a new style, designed to emulate the prickly appearance of the virus under a microscope.

It's the latest example of service industry workers finding ways to appeal as stay-at-home rules and collapsing incomes reduce customer numbers.

The three braiders at the Mama Brayo Beauty Salon start by parting their clients' hair into about a dozen sections. They then twist and wrap each one with thick black thread, so it can stand out straight in defiance of gravity. The resulting tresses resemble the spike proteins on a coronavirus membrane.

"It's just simple and very cheap for every person to do it," stylist Diana Andayi told Reuters. The look is adapted from similar styles she has seen from Nigeria.

Its price - less than $1 - has been set with virus-depleted budgets in mind.

Read also: Malang designer finds inspiration in COVID-19 pandemic

Coronavirus has infected 384 and killed 15 in Kenya and wreaked havoc on the economy, especially for informal and low-wage workers.

Hair salons can stay open under Kenyan restrictions and closing voluntarily was out of the question, said Andayi.

"It's a hard life. We need to hustle every day so we can get food on our tables."

But business has all but collapsed. Pre-outbreak, a good day brought in 3,000 shillings ($28). Now, it's a quarter of that, salon owner Leunita Abwala said. But she hopes the new style will boost business.

"We are still suffering because demand is very low," Abwala said.
Elderly coronavirus patients could be given anti-ageing drugs to restore their 'young' immune system and help them fight the coronavirus, scientists say.

Over 80 per cent of COVID-19 hospitalisations are those over 65 years of age with a greater than 23-fold increased risk of death.

As a person ages, their immune system becomes suppressed and it takes longer for their body to recognise and attack the virus.

It gives the virus time to replicate and cause serious disease - which may be heightened by pre-existing health conditions.

But Harvard scientists say this could be fixed with NAD boosters, a relatively new class of anti-ageing supplements.

Lower levels of NAD+ in the body as a result of ageing are thought to impair biological functions important to health, which might contribute to age-related diseases.

One of the paper authors sees NAD as the 'closest weve gotten to a fountain of youth'.

The Harvard paper described how the immune system of the young and elderly differ. In a young person (left), immune cells directly kill the virus in the upper respiratory tract, preventing the spread of disease. In an old person (right), the viral alert signals are slow, resulting in replication and spread to the lower respiratory tract. The knock on effect leads to a range of unwanted processes, such as inflammation

Elderly coronavirus patients could be given anti-ageing drugs to restore their 'young' immune system to fight the coronavirus, scientists say. Pictured, an old patient in Italy, May 2

The Harvard paper, which is yet to be peer reviewed by other scientists, said: 'The most exciting and potentially impactful technologies to treat Covid-19 are those that activate the body's defences against ageing.

'It may even be possible to reset the age of cells and tissues so currently high-risk individuals can respond to viral infections as though they were young.'

Even though the science is still developing, the available evidence supports the notion that older people are more at risk of the coronavirus.

For example, NHS data shows of hospitalised COVID-19 patients, 72 per cent are over the age of 60 - 58 per cent of which are men.

And more than 91 per cent of people who have died from the virus in England (total 20,853) are over the age of 60, data shows.

More than half of deaths have been in those over 80.

The Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School team said the severity of coronavirus symptoms experienced by a patient depend on how their body responds to the virus when it enters the body.

The presence of already existing health conditions, such as heart disease and diabetes, fail to explain exactly why the elderly are less resilient, the team said.

An effective immune system response is to recognise the virus, alert the body to it and then destroy it with speed and then clear it from the body.

In a young person, immune cells recognise the SARS-CoV-2 virus when it first enters the upper respiratory tract.

The immune cells act appropriately to directly kill the virus and infected cells, preventing the spread of the virus.

These mechanisms are 'known to be dysfunctional' in the elderly, the paper, authored by three scientists, said.

Viral alert signals are slow, resulting in greater viral replication and the movement of the virus into the lower respiratory tract where it can infect more cells.

During ageing, the immune system changes in two fundamental ways which are 'major drivers of the high mortality rates in older patients', according to the research.

Firstly, there is a gradual decline in immune function, called immunosenescence, which hampers the body's ability to recognise pathogens and respond to them effectively.

The second immune change is a chronic increase in inflammation. It means the body overzealously registers the presence of a pathogen but fails to effectively respond to it.

The team added that in half of fatal COVID-19 cases, the patient experienced a cytokine storm - 82 per cent of whom were over the age of 60.

A cytokine storm is when chemical-signalling molecules which guide a healthy immune response become overactive and go haywire.

COVID-19 patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome experience a cytokine storm that features high level circulation of inflammatory cytokines in the body.

It exacerbates symptoms and triggers inflammation in major tissues such as the lungs, kidneys, liver and brain.

Immune response mechanisms are 'known to be dysfunctional' in the elderly, the paper said. Pictured, a patient carried from a nursing home into an ambulance in Rome, May 2

David Sinclair, an author of the recent Harvard paper, said at the time: 'NAD+ is the closest weve gotten to a fountain of youth'. Pictured: an elderly COVID-19 patient in Spain

Why the elderly are more at risk of a cytokine storm is not known, but there are some ideas - one of these being a decline in levels of NAD+, or nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide.

'STIFF' LUNG TISSUE HELPS VIRUS REPLICATE IN OLD 'Stiff' lung tissue seen in the elderly may be why the novel coronavirus is more deadly to older patients, a new review article suggests. The virus invades mucosal cells - cells that produce mucus - before multiplying and spreading throughout the body. Researchers say the virus replicates itself better in these stiff cells, found in the lungs and upper respiratory tracts of older people, which allows the disease to spread faster. The team, led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says its findings indicate the prevalence of the virus may not be due to the weakening of the elderly's immune systems as many scientists suspect. When humans are infected with the new strain, known as SARS-COV-2, the virus first attacks cells that secrete mucus in the respiratory tract. After the virus invades a cell, it 'hijacks' the machinery of the cells to replicate itself thousands of times. These copies infect other cells the body or are expelled via droplets from a cough or sneeze that then infect other cells. In older people, tissue in the lungs and respiratory tract are stiffer due to a larger supply of protein fibers, according to the researchers. The researchers say stiff cells 'favor the multiplication of the virus' meaning they replicate themselves easier. 'Biopsies or cell culture experiments could now be used to determine whether this is indeed the case,' they wrote. The team says this could help scientists determine where to focus their efforts as they research and develop drugs to fight against the virus. Advertisement

NAD+ lowers as we age, which results in the depression of other important proteins and enzymes, and the surge of others.

NLPR3, centrally responsible for the activation of inflammatory responses, are thought to be hyperactivated when NAD+ levels drop.

It doesn't help that NAD+ levels are depleted during the course of COVID-19, according to early research.

And, there is 'increasing evidence that lower NAD+ levels in the lung and vascular endothelium contribute to poor Covid-19 outcomes'.

The team envision a 'two-step model' whereby inflammation increased due to ageing, and the hyperactivation by SARS-CoV-2 triggers a cytokine storm.

'Maintaining NAD+ levels may therefore alleviate COVID-19 symptoms,' the authors of the paper said.

NAD boosters are supplements that contain nicotinamide riboside, a form of vitamin B3. When taken as a supplement, the body converts the nicotinamide riboside to NAD+ - the prized coenzyme in youngsters.

There is scarce evidence that NAD boosters work. They have only started to creep onto the market in the last 10 years or so.

But a 2017 study published in the journal Science found that boosting NAD+ levels in mice reversed the signs of aging in the tissue and muscles of older mice.

The reversal was so drastic that researchers could no longer tell the difference between four-month-old mice and two-year-old mice, Futurism reported.

Though it was on animals, the study strongly suggests that boosting NAD+ levels in humans could have health benefits by optimising cellular health.

David Sinclair, an author of the recent Harvard paper, said at the time: 'NAD+ is the closest weve gotten to a fountain of youth.

'Its one of the most important molecules for life to exist, and without it, youre dead in 30 seconds.'

The team also said NAD boosters and other techniques may be needed to improve the effectiveness of vaccines, which typically are weaker in the elderly.

They write: 'In the aged, immune responses to vaccination are often weak or defective...Therefore, in designing vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, it will be important to consider that older people may not respond as well to vaccines as young people.'

The academics concluded that research into older people will be essential for understanding the threat of the virus among different ages.

There is still 'much to be elucidated' about the varying effects of Covid-19 on people of different ages.
COLUMBUS, Ohio  The Physicians Action Network held a socially distanced demonstration Sunday at the Ohio Statehouse, showing their support for Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton.

The demonstration comes one day after another small group gathered outside Actons home in the Columbus suburbs, lamenting the states stay-at-home order and pushing for the state to re-open in full.

About 25 physicians donned their scrubs and lab coats Sunday and stood a safe distance apart as a show of support for Acton, a video posted on the Physicians Action Network Facebook page shows.

In the video, one masked physician - Anita Somani, an OB-GYN based in Columbus - notes that many doctors are in similar positions to those protesting the stay-at-home order thats kept hundreds of thousands of Ohioans out of work for weeks. Not all doctors work in hospitals, and some own small businesses too.

We understand the economic difficulties that people are in, Somani said. You can watch the full video below.

Katie Forbes, a photographer who attended both the Saturday protest at Actons home and Sundays gathering at the statehouse, said the scene Sunday was peaceful overall. A few Columbus police officers stationed themselves in front of the statehouse to monitor the situation, Forbes said.

Forbes spotted only one counter-protester, a man who rode his motorcycle by the scene several times, yelling at the doctors and asking why they werent helping patients. The same man was also at the Saturday protest in Actons neighborhood, Forbes said.

Sundays statehouse demonstration was a notable switch from the omnipresent protests at the same location over the past several weeks. Those spirited groups  including some protesters armed with long guns and ignoring social distancing guidelines  have frequently vocalized support for President Donald Trump, the anti-vaccination movement and a prejudicial, conspiratorial distrust of Jewish people.

Acton is Jewish.

On Sunday, many physicians held signs backing Acton, like We fully support Dr. Acton  Masks + Social Distance to keep Ohio safe and Dr. Acton, We Have Your Back.

See more photos from Sundays gathering below:

Members of the Ohio-based Physicians Action Network gathered at the Ohio Statehouse Sunday afternoon in a show of support for Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton. (Katie Forbes of KRForbesPhotography)

Members of the Ohio-based Physicians Action Network gathered at the Ohio Statehouse Sunday afternoon in a show of support for Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton. (Katie Forbes of KRForbesPhotography)

Members of the Ohio-based Physicians Action Network gathered at the Ohio Statehouse Sunday afternoon in a show of support for Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton. (Katie Forbes of KRForbesPhotography)

Members of the Ohio-based Physicians Action Network gathered at the Ohio Statehouse Sunday afternoon in a show of support for Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton. (Katie Forbes of KRForbesPhotography)

Members of the Ohio-based Physicians Action Network gathered at the Ohio Statehouse Sunday afternoon in a show of support for Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton. (Katie Forbes of KRForbesPhotography)

Members of the Ohio-based Physicians Action Network gathered at the Ohio Statehouse Sunday afternoon in a show of support for Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton. (Katie Forbes of KRForbesPhotography)

Members of the Ohio-based Physicians Action Network gathered at the Ohio Statehouse Sunday afternoon in a show of support for Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton. (Katie Forbes of KRForbesPhotography)

More coronavirus news:

Ohio coronavirus death toll is 1,038, with nearly 20,000 infected: Sunday update

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Westlake company springs surprise packages on two Cleveland Clinic emergency departments
A total of 71 deaths were reported from across the country

Migrants from various northern states of India wait to board a special train for Gorakhpur in Bhiwandi on May 2, 2020. (PTI)

New Delhi: As special trains continued to transport stranded migrants workers, students and others, India recorded 2,411 new cases in 24 hours, taking the total number of positive novel coronavirus cases in the country to 37,776. A total of 71 deaths were reported in the last one day from across the country, taking the total death toll to 1,223.

As per the Union Health Ministry, of the total cases, 26,535 are active, 10,017 people have recovered. The total count also includes 111 foreign nationals. Maharashtra continued to be the worst-hit state with 11,506 cases and 485 deaths.

Gujarat, the second most affected state, has 4,721 positive cases so far, followed by Delhi with 3,738 cases. The other states which have seen a sharp rise in cases are Madhya Pradesh (2,719), Rajasthan (2,666), Tamil Nadu (2,526) and Uttar Pradesh (2,455).

Meanwhile, a day after the Railways rolled out the first such passenger service during the national lockdown, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and other states braced for the return of their natives as more non-stop Shramik Special trains were flagged off on Saturday to ferry thousands of stranded migrant workers. The first train to Bihar carrying 1,187 stranded migrant workers reached Danapur railway station on the outskirts of Patna from Jaipur on Saturday afternoon after a 16-hour journey.

Most of the train services originated from Kerala, Maharashtra and Gujarat. In Chennai, workers, housed at various facilities in the city converged at three different locations, defying social distancing rules, leading to anxiety for a while. The police eventually pacified them and sent them back to their respective places of stay.
By Associated Press

GUATEMALA: Thousands of desperate migrants are trapped in limbo and even at risk of death without food, water or shelter in scorching deserts and at sea, as governments close off borders and ports amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Migrants have been dropped by the truckload in the Sahara Desert or bused to Mexico's desolate border with Guatemala and beyond.

They are drifting in the Mediterranean Sea after European and Libyan authorities declared their ports unsafe.

And about 100 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar are believed to have died in the Bay of Bengal, as country after country pushes them back out to sea.

Many governments have declared emergencies, saying a public health crisis like the coronavirus pandemic requires extraordinary measures.

However, these measures are just the latest efforts by governments to clamp down on migrants, despite human rights laws.

"They just dumped us," said Fanny Jacqueline Ortiz, a 37-year-old Honduran travelling with her two daughters, aged 3 and 12.

Ortiz reached the US, but American authorities expelled her to Mexico.

The Mexican government in turn abandoned the family on March 26 at the lonely El Ceibo border crossing with Guatemala.

Ortiz and other migrants on the two-bus convoy were told to avoid the Guatemalan soldiers guarding the border, which was closed due to the pandemic.

"They told us to go around through the mountains, and we slept in the woods," she recalled.

Over the next few weeks, an activist helped Ortiz and others in her group of 20 find a ride to the next border, in Honduras.
Flower petals were showered by Indian Air Force and Navy helicopters on hospitals while a fly-past and steam-past conducted in Kerala on Sunday in honour of the front-line workers fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

At around 10 am, the Sarang helicopter of the IAF flew past the Government Medical College Hospital and the General Hospital here as part the nation-wide initiative by the armed forces to honour doctors, paramedics, sanitation staff and other front-line workers battling coronavirus.

It hovered over a statue of 'mother and child' at the medical college hospital and moved towards the main entrance showering petals.

The lightweight chopper flew past over the hospital once again and left for the General Hospital to honour the COVID-19 warriors there.

A Defence release said the "Indian Coast Guard will honour the front-line workers by illuminating the Coast Guard Ships (Dress Overall) at Shangumugom Area on May 2 and 3 from 6.15 p.m to 8.30 p.m."



In Kochi, Naval aircraft carried out the fly-past over the Marine Drive while seven Fast Interceptor Crafts undertook a steam-past in the channel along the city's iconic spot.

A Defence release said a number of activities were organised by the Navy in Kochi, headquarters of the Southern Naval Command, to express appreciation of the entire nation towards the relentless efforts of the medical professionals, health workers, police personnel, government staff and media against COVID-19.

Navy's representatives, including Commodores N Anil Joseph, Arti Sarin and G K Dutta, met doctors, paramedics, police personnel, firemen, sanitation workers and other frontline workers at the Ernakulam General Hospital and applauded their efforts.

"The naval team conveyed that the nation is looking up-to the continued success of COVID warriors so that normalcy is returned at the earliest", a defence spokesman said in the release.

A Chetak helicopter of the Navy showered flower petals on the district hospital.

Subsequently, the flypast consisting of two Dornier aircraft, one SeaKing helicopter, two Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) and two Chetak helicopters was conducted.

It was immediately followed by steampast by seven Fast Interceptor Crafts of the Navy in the channel, displaying a banner India thanks Corona Warriors.

Rajendra Maidan at Ernakulam was open to the public for a limited time with social distancing protocol to witness these activities and show their support.

Earlier in the day, the SNC band played some famous numbers on a warship berthed opposite the Cochin Shipyard Limited and near the Vikrant-Venduruthy Bridge, epochal landmarks of Kochi.

The ships of Southern Naval Command, anchored in the centre of the Ernakulam Channel, would undertake traditional ceremonial illumination, along with the firing of green flares and sounding of siren, in the evening as part of the Navys activities expressing solidarity with the corona warriors, the release added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
03.05.2020 LISTEN

The Electoral Commission is unwavering to compile a new register to run the 2020 general elections. The compilation of the register and its revision is part of the functions of the Commission.

Currently, there are some challenges that the Electoral Commission finds particularly difficult to control as they are beyond their power. This will affect its 2020 schedules in preparing for the general elections. The coronavirus pandemic that has currently halted social activities is a challenge to deal with.

There are no signs to indicate that the virus will soon leave for normal social gatherings to commence. It is likely that the turnouts for the registration will be low, given the nature of the spread of the disease.

Though if a small number of people register to vote, it can still serve the purpose of the 50% plus one demand, of the valid votes cast, to win a Presidential election, the elections need a nation-wide representation. Then, the Commission needs to use the other state agencies that disseminate information to get people rightly informed about the need to willingly avail themselves for such an activity.

The unforeseen emergence of the virus at this time has affected every activity: social, economic, administrative, political etc in every part of the globe. The virus has presented us with lives full of uncertainties until a vaccine is developed or treatment is found. With these uncertainties, the Commission and the other stakeholders need to have a meeting to deal with this difficulty.

The compilation of a new register is vital as the Commission indicated the obsolescence of its equipment. The stance taken by Civil Society Organisations to prevent a waste of state financial resources is right but the Electoral Commission has an important function to perform to save lives by preventing electoral challenges with quality work.

The fact is, if the Commission reverts to use the old register, the main opposition party will consider it a win for its fight with the Electoral Commission. Some Civil Society Organisations will definitely conclude there was an attempt by the Commission to waste funds. Really, circumstances have changed entirely and the need to reassess the possibility of using the old system and register should be done. This is because the legal requirements that the instruments that give the Electoral Commission backing must be met early.

It is reported that the Constitutional Instrument (CI) that should give the Commission legal backing is not matured yet. Such occurrences and many others should be factored into the decision-making process of the Commission. All political parties and institutions must acknowledge the necessity to use a clean and credible register for the general elections.

Time is far spent in preparing for a document which the fate of a new President and Members of Parliament hinges on. If other political parties stubbornly reject the yet to be compiled new voters register, the purpose of the Commissions endeavor will still not be achieved. The time, in the present circumstances, for compiling the register is a key factor that is superior to the constitutional mandate of the Commission. The Commission should still be allowed to perform its function independently.

The Presidential elections are taken seriously than any other elections and that is why the main opposition party gave a harbinger of war. Electoral challenges create wars for many countries and ours cannot be exempted from such catastrophes. The recent troubles we have had with regard to by-elections should be a forewarning in order to take serious caution.

If it is possible, given the circumstances, the Commission should assess fully the situation and the equipment available to it, to make a final resolve for it and the general public on this issue. The function of the Commission to conduct elections is key in determining the peace and stability of the State. This function equally affects the chance of an outbreak of war as well as the cause of electoral challenges and their dire consequences.

If the function of the Commission in conducting free and fair elections is properly done, it will improve the quality of its work and it will firmly establish the Peace and Stability of the Country. Therefore, with legal requirements to meet, which will affect the conduct of the general elections, the Commission should reach a very bold decision to use the old register if it can be used or expedite its activities to meet the requirements of the law.

The lives of Ghanaians, our property, and the general stability of the state depend on the extremely delicate activities of the Electoral Commission of Ghana. It is very clear that the Commission owes the people of Ghana a very diligent duty in conducting its functions in the December 2020 elections.

Emmanuel Kwabena Wucharey

Economics Tutor Kintampo SHS.
Jon Arton, an accomplished photorealism artist from Birmingham, England, is winning acclaim for his hilarious portraits of customers who didnt want to pay for their commissions.

Sadly, I have to fund my expensive pencil habit, Jon joked, speaking to Bored Panda. Art isnt really seen as a job [or] career, so people assume you would be happy to do it for a little bit of exposure.

Jon has, nonetheless, made art his full-time vocation.

He has loved drawing since he was a child, saying its all he has ever wanted to do. In the school classroom, the budding artist would pass the time doodling insulting images of the teachers to the sheer delight of his classmates.

It got me in trouble a few times, he admitted, but was worth it for making people laugh.

Over the years, Jon honed his craft, and the work he produces today has earned him a dedicated fanbase. However, Jon admitted feeling a little affronted when people expect him to fulfill commissions free of charge.

The good-natured artist thought outside the box and came up with a way to deal with the many requests he receives for free work. Ironically, what started out as a gag has ended up earning him a supplementary income.

One day, after far too many of these freebie requests, I mentally snapped and decided to send a poor-effort silly doodle instead of the masterpiece they were expecting, Jon wrote on his JustGiving page. I laughed to myself so much that I began to do this with every request for free art, trying to find interesting and humorous ways to illustrate these ungrateful freeloaders.

Sadly the requests kept coming, so there was only one thing to do, Jon continued. I would post these silly drawings online to raise awareness of my plight  The response to this was huge!

Jon became an overnight viral sensation, posting his best doodles on his Instagram page and quickly amassing upward of 100,000 followers.

My free art doodles were overwhelmingly popular, receiving tens of thousands of likes online, the young artist reflected. Far more than my actual art that Id dedicated so much time to!

Jons free art takes the form of childish, crudely drawn figures in black ballpoint pen. The artist takes creative license with many of the finer details and humorous speech bubbles; doodles like the ones that used to exasperate his teachers have been happily resurrected.

The talented photorealist sorely wishes that he could fulfill every genuine commission without having to charge. But for the small fraction of people who dont fully appreciate his livelihood, Jons sarcastic doodles are the perfect comeback.

As Jons humorous side-project started to gather fans from far and wide, people started offering to pay for his funny sketches as well. However, thinking of others, Jon decided to trade the cool hard cash for karma points and donate the proceeds to charity.

Jon now sells his doodles to raise money for Birmingham Childrens Hospital, gifting a commissioned doodle to anyone generous enough to donate 10 pounds (US$12.50) or more. To date, Jons fund has raised 3,394 pounds (US$4,243), far exceeding his original 250 pound (US$313) goal.

The artist is still having fun having at his freebie-chasing fans. Sometimes I use my left hand, he joked, talking to BBC News. A parent wouldnt put it on their fridge!

We would love to hear your stories! You can share them with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.nyc
Ticket Monster CEO Lee Jin-won poses in this 2019 file photo. / Courtesy of Ticket Monster



By Kim Jae-heun



The country's first social commerce operator Ticket Monster (TMON) recently stated its objectives of achieving a surplus this year and going public next year. If it fulfills its goals, it will be the first player in the sector to do so.



TMON showed a gain for the first time in March since its establishment in 2010. It is uncertain whether the company will remain in the black for a second straight month, because it paid bonuses to employees in April. But it does not appear too difficult for the firm to finish the year in profit.



The COVID-19 pandemic is helping TMON's finances.



It has focused on a lucrative strategy of offering time-limited discounts for different items every hour. This has attracted consumers and sellers alike. In particular, vendors who wish to sell a large quantity of products quickly have been offering special prizes for their items on TMON. This guaranteed the best price for consumers and sales for vendors.



The number of vendors by the end of last year soared 42.4 percent compared to the first quarter of 2019, and those who made over 100 million won increased by 16 percent.



The company's business restructuring also played a part in improving returns. TMON ended its supermarket and logistics businesses and strengthened competitiveness in its main business, e-commerce.



If TMON's initial public offering (IPO) next year is successful, it could change online retailing, and challenge the present powerhouse Coupang.



It recently signed a contract with Mirae Asset Daewoo for the local brokerage to be the lead underwriter of the planned IPO. TMON is aiming for a special listing, which is a system to help firms with potential go public despite their unfavorable financial status.



"We will achieve an annual surplus this year and show that our management is stable to prepare for the IPO," a TMON official said. "All the company's financial details will be revealed with transparency."



Among local online e-commerce operators, only eBay Korea is posting stable gains in revenue. It operates G-Market, Auction and G9 here. Eleven Street had an operating surplus for the first time last year but it has to prove its consistency for at least another year.




Punjab chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Sunday announced a Rs 10-lakh financial aid and a government job for the kin of Rajesh Kumar, an army jawan hailing from Mansa district, who was among five security personnel killed in an encounter with militants in North Kashmirs Handwara.

The CM described the incident as a ghastly and cowardly act by the militants.

According to a government release, the CM announced a financial assistance of Rs 10 lakh, including Rs 5 lakh as ex gratia and Rs 5 lakh in lieu of a plot, to the next of kin, besides a government job to one eligible member of his family.

Extending his heartfelt condolences to the family of Naik Rajesh Kumar of 21 RR (Rashtriya Rifles), who belonged to Rajrana village in Sardulgarh tehsil of Mansa, the CM said his heart went out to the martyred soldiers.

Meanwhile, a pall of gloom descended on Rajrana village as the news of the soldiers death reached there.

Baljinder Singh, former sarpanch of village, said that Rajesh is survived by his parents, two brothers and two sisters. He was the only earning hand in the family.

Mansa deputy commissioner Gurpal Singh Chahal said the body of the soldier will arrive in the village on Monday.
H ealth Secretary Matt Hancock has dismissed reports that there could be a "blanket ban" on over 70s leaving home when lockdown is eased.

Mr Hancock made the comments after senior doctors said excluding any section of the population from lockdown easing based solely on age would be "discriminatory".

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, British Medical Association council chair, said a blanket ban would be unacceptable.

"Any proposal to impose stricter social distancing for those at higher risk  essentially quarantining  based solely on age would be both unethical and illegal," he said.

Mr Hancock responded to the reports on Twitter / via REUTERS

After the Sunday Times reported the BMAs call under the headline Set free healthy over-seventies, say doctors, Mr Hancock posted on Twitter: We have strongly advised all over 70s to follow social distancing measures.

However, there is no blanket ban, and the suggestion that the clinically vulnerable include people aged 70 or older regardless of medical conditions' is wrong and deeply misleading.

It appears to contradict advice issued on the Government website which says that "clinically vulnerable people include anyone aged 70 or over, as well as those under 70 with an underlying health condition".

But, when contacted on Sunday, the Department of Health and Social Care said that the over 70s "are not included in the most at risk group (extremely clinically vulnerable), who have been told to isolate for 12 weeks.

It comes as NHS Englands national medical director Professor Stephen Powis said on Friday that officials will be studying whether stricter measures will or will not have to continue to apply to the elderly when the lockdown is eased.

He said: The over-70s can be absolutely fit and healthy, its not the case that everybody over 70 has a chronic health condition or underlying disease.

As we look forwardI think its a perfectly reasonable question to say how would that work in age groups and age bands?

Although we do know that complications and unfortunately deaths are more common in the elderly even without complications, I think thats for consideration and thats work that we will need to do as we move forward.

Europe takes it's first steps out of Coronavirus lockdown 1 /25 Europe takes it's first steps out of Coronavirus lockdown People queue at a hardware store during a partial reopening after the Austrian government eased lockdown restrictions Reuters A worker checks the temperature of a customer at the entrance of a supermarket in Itay Reuters Customers hold flowers in front of a DIY store in Graz, Austria, after it re-opened on April 14, 2020, following a "shutdown" in a measure to limit the spread of the new coronavirus APA/AFP via Getty Images People wearing protective face masks and gloves walk in the streets as the Italian government allows the reopening of some shops while a nationwide lockdown continues following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Venice, Italy, Reuters People queue to enter a hardware store during a partial reopening after the Austrian government eased restrictions following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Eisenstadt, Austria Reuters Camilla Cocchi wears a face mask and gloves as she sorts out clothing in her children's clothes shop after it was allowed to reopen following lockdown measures to contain the spread of Covid-19, in Rome AP A man wearing a face mask shops in a hardware store during a partial reopening after the Austrian government eased restrictions following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Eisenstadt, Austria Reuters "Respect the 2 meters distance" banner is seen at a fish stand as the Italian government allows the reopening of some shops while a nationwide lockdown continues following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Venice, Italy, Reuters Customers wearing face masks push shopping carts in front of a DIY store in Vienna, Austria, after it re-opened on April 14, 2020, following a "shutdown" in a measure to limit the spread of the new coronavirus APA/AFP via Getty Images A worker checks the temperature of a customer at the entrance of a supermarket, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, in Turin, Italy Reuters Customers line up in front of a DIY store in Graz, Austria APA/AFP via Getty Images Gianfranco Mandas wears a face mask as he sorts out clothing in his children's clothes shop after it was allowed to opens following restriction measures to contain the spread of Covid-19, in Rome AP Customers wearing face masks push shopping carts in front of a DIY store in Vienna, Austria, after it re-opened on April 14, 2020, following a "shutdown" in a measure to limit the spread of the new coronavirus APA/AFP via Getty Images Customers queue at the Trastevere market, as new restrictions for open-air markets are implemented to prevent the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Rome, Italy, Reuters Customers wearing face masks push shopping carts in front of a DIY store in Vienna, Austria, after it re-opened on April 14, 2020, following a "shutdown" in a measure to limit the spread of the new coronavirus APA/AFP via Getty Images A man wears a protective face mask and gloves at the newsstand as the Italian government allows the reopening of some shops while a nationwide lockdown continues following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Venice, Italy Reuters People wearing face masks work in a hardware store during a partial reopening after the Austrian government eased restrictions following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Eisenstadt, Austria Reuters Customers queue at the Trastevere market, as new restrictions for open-air markets are implemented to prevent the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Rome, Italy Reuters A general view of the parking area of a hardware store during the partial reopening of shops after the Austrian government loosens its lockdown restrictions during the global coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Vienna Reuters

Any proposal to include the elderly in continuing restrictions regardless of their state of health is likely to trigger fierce resistance.

Former minister Baroness Ros Altmann, 64, said on Sunday that using age-based criteria to lift restrictions would send a message that older peoples lives dont count in the same way as others.

Comedian Sir Michael Palin, 76, agreed in a separate interview that age restrictions would be very difficult and very wrong and very unfair.

Shapps: more testing would have meant fewer deaths

Speaking to Skys Sophy Ridge On Sunday, Baroness Altmann said: I think using an age-based criteria is fundamentally wrong and would potentially cost the lives of many people, and risk social unrest.

The life peer said many elderly people have only accepted lockdown conditions because everyone else has got to do it, and lots of them have said they would risk going to prison rather than continue isolating.

She added nobody would dream of applying restrictions on the basis of skin colour, despite a higher death rate among BAME people.
As the coronavirus pandemic rages on, journalism around the world seems to face increasing difficulties. In my country, Denmark, local media outlets are suffering major economic set-backs and are already seeking state support. Such is the fragility of media operations that even in one of the most affluent countries in the world, with ample resources for public and private outlets, the disruption of social and economic life has immediate repercussions.

So, it comes as no surprise that independent media and local outlets in a majority of the world are running on life support amid this global crisis. No part of the world and no economic sector has gone unscathed.

Amid indefinite border closures, restricted entry and grave health risks, getting a full picture of this pandemic is no easy feat, even for media giants.

Meanwhile, community reports from local journalists with unique access, have become essential tools in fighting a growing information vacuum. It is indeed a paradox that, while hundreds of millions of people across the globe scramble for factual information to navigate the crisis, media outlets themselves are fighting for their existence. As we mark World Press Freedom Day, it is more urgent than ever that we support independent media platforms, especially those organically emerging within their local eco-systems.

As we, at Copenhagen-based International Media Support (IMS) transitioned into crisis management mode in this period, our media partners across the global south reacted with remarkable composure. While the western world is learning to hunker down in home offices, adaptability is in the very DNA of independent journalism.

The results of our partners work, from Syria to the Philippines, are clear. They are playing vital and at times life-saving roles in this pandemic period.

Amid persisting conflict, community radio stations like ARTA in northern Syria are relaying information about symptoms and prevention measures to local populations. Amid panic and paranoia in Pakistan, outlets like Humsub (All of Us) are producing a combination of citizen testimonies and expert insights. In the Philippines, there has been a proliferation of podcasts, like PUMA, that are dispelling coronavirus-related myths, with significant reach. Amid restricted media landscapes, all of these outlets are helping overlooked communities to combat the spread.

As a direct result, independent media across the world are also experiencing increased trust among their viewers. This is particularly true in countries where state media is failing to deliver timely information and where partisan media is creating biased coverage. For example, in Lebanon, Daraj Media, a pan-Arab platform that provides in-depth reporting, experienced a 46 percent audience growth in this period. In the Philippines, Rappler, a social news network, had 2.5 million viewers during a live Facebook session on COVID-19 awareness. In Iraq, al-Menasa, one of the few independent media in the country, experienced a 25 percent growth in audiences.

While the pandemic has instilled a renewed sense of purpose among media of all sizes, it has also wreaked havoc on the field of journalism. We are seeing a palpable increase in attacks on the press across the globe. The International Press Institute has been recording the intensified violations since the pandemic, from physical assaults in the US, to greater censorship in the Middle East, to arrests and false charges in several African and Asian countries.

For this very reason, accountability journalism has never been more important on a global scale. The accountability is twofold. First, journalists are investigating government responses to the pandemic, and holding officials and institutions accountable when they have failed to protect their citizens. Second, newsrooms are challenging authorities that manipulate COVID-19-related emergency legislation to curb freedoms.

The unique access and in-depth coverage of our media partners prove that a well-working prototype for community-based reporting that can plug into the larger global media picture already exists. It is a matter of strengthening the capacity and longevity of these outlets.

Poignantly, this pandemic has revealed that despite our seemingly connected world, a one size fits all remedy simply does not work. Whether it is in combating the disease, the economic and social consequences of the lockdowns, or relaying life-saving information, each country and its context warrant different approaches.

For example, South Koreas approach of contact tracing and aggressive testing might suit some of the densely populated countries of the world, while a shelter-in-place mechanism is more feasible in Scandinavian countries. Only through transparent information sharing can countries learn from each others experiences while keeping in mind differences in their circumstances.

This is an opportune moment for governments, international foundations and citizens to financially support independent media across the globe as an investment in our collective futures. Amid shrinking newsrooms and restricted access due to contagion, there is great value in media of different sizes and capacities collaborating to present a more comprehensive view. I see this as a period of transformation. The current crisis has proven beyond doubt that we cannot turn a blind eye to an event in a faraway corner of the world, as it will eventually make its way to our door-step.

Now more than ever, we need contextual media coverage of this unfolding situation in order to return to some semblance of normal life. We must also be able to link the social, economic and environmental causes of this contagion to combat future instances. Our new normal must include a plurality of voices in news media across the globe.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee hailed the role of the press in a democracy and said that the media should perform its duties fearlessly.

Press is the fourth pillar in a democracy and must perform its duties fearlessly. We respect journalists for their contribution to society. Our government in Bangla has many initiatives for the welfare of journalists. Our government in Bangla has also announced health insurance with up to 10 lakh coverage for frontline COVID workers, including journalists, she said on Twitter.

Press is the fourth pillar in a democracy and must perform its duties fearlessly. We respect journalists for their contribution to society. Our Govt in #Bangla has many initiatives for the welfare of journalists #PressFreedomDay 1/2  Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) May 3, 2020

Banerjee said this with the hashtag #PressFreedomDay which is being celebrated on Sunday.

World Press Freedom Day was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1993, following the recommendation of UNESCOs General Conference. Since then, May 3, the anniversary of the Declaration of Windhoek is celebrated worldwide as the World Press Freedom Day.

India dropped two places on a global press freedom index to be ranked 142 out of 180 countries in the annual Reporters Without Borders analysis released last month.

The Haryana government had last month announced an insurance cover of Rs 10 lakh each for journalists who are reporting in the state during the coronavirus pandemic.

The decision was taken after several journalists tested positive for coronavirus disease Covid-19 in Mumbai and Chennai.

On April 21, the West Bengal government had extended the insurance scheme to accredited journalists in view of Covid-19 outbreak in the country.
Jim Flynn is with the Colorado Springs firm of Flynn & Wright. You can contact him at moneylaw@jtflynn.com.
The rubble at the junction of the 5 and 14 freeways following the 1994 Northridge earthquake. (Jonathan Alcorn / For The Times )

By any standard, the COVID-19 pandemic is one of the great disasters of modern times. A single house fire is calamitous for that family. A flash flood can devastate a town. The 1994 Northridge earthquake killed dozens and damaged businesses that took years to recover.

And then there are the Big Ones, disasters so large they change the fundamentals of the societies they hit.

Think of how New Orleans is now barely half the size it was before Hurricane Katrina, or how the 1927 Mississippi floods caused hundreds of thousands of African Americans to leave the Mississippi basin for northern cities and, ultimately, to abandon the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, that did not protect them.

The question before us now: How will human society be changed by this pandemic?

The American death toll is already many times the 6,000-12,000 lives lost in the 1900 Galveston hurricane in Texas. It will continue to grow. And unlike earthquakes or hurricanes, which strike one region, COVID-19 is stalking the whole planet. The Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 was called the first global disaster because its victims, citizens of 50 different nations, died in 13 separate countries. But the coronavirus pandemic is a disaster everywhere at the same time. In our interconnected world, no corner will be left unchanged.

The impact of major disasters is seen in the decades or longer required to rebuild a broken economy. San Francisco was the premier financial center of the Far West before the 1906 earthquake reduced it to rubble. One could argue that it never regained its status as the West Coast city that mattered. The economic damage from business interruption now is likely to exceed the cost of any possible natural disaster.

History can show us what will matter most as the world passes through this crucible.

After a disaster, we go through two phases. First comes response, when we work together to save lives. It is a time of great altruism and community spirit. In big earthquakes, you are most likely to be rescued from a downed building by your neighbors. Patriotism rises, and we rally around our elected officials.

Story continues

After response comes recovery, when we try to re-create the jobs, systems and the normalcy lost in the disaster. Recovery takes much longer than response, and it does not supply the same level of adrenaline. This is when less-than-charitable human emotions kick in. We start to realize how much is gone and worry about protecting and providing for our families. Our traditional comforts have vanished, and anxieties rise.

Fear is difficult to live with, and we often turn to anger, a more manageable emotion. One of the most prevalent reactions to disasters over time is blame. This may seem odd, but the need to blame, to figure out accountability, is wired into our DNA by evolution.

Human intelligence developed as we competed against predators with stronger muscles and bigger teeth. When we made the connection between waves in the grass and a predator hidden within it, we were more likely to survive and pass on our genes. Our first response to danger, then, is to find the cause-and-effect patterns that provide us paths to safety.

Identifying a pattern that blames the victims  that seems to show they brought it on themselves  gives us the greatest illusion of safety. We believe we will avoid their fate by not making the same mistakes. Blaming the government is not as reassuring in that we are still subject to the disaster, but it gives us the option of voting out officials in the hope of better protection next time. Everyone, whatever their ideology, wants government to function well in a disaster.

In the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. is still in the response phase, witnessing the selflessness of many, from medical personnel to grocery and delivery workers, to those of us who serve by doing nothing and staying home. The transition to recovery will be a patchwork process, as we struggle to return to social engagement with a population still widely susceptible to the virus.

Beyond that, it could take many years to recover from the economic and societal disruption. Just as pipes burst in earthquakes where they are already weak and neglected levees are the ones breached in a flood, we can predict that in a Big One human systems fail where they are already stressed. Income inequality and unequal access to healthcare and housing were already weaknesses in American society, and these are where the devastation will be most acute.

The path we take out of the damage can work for good or ill. When the Great Depression afflicted countries around the world, the United States turned to the New Deal while Germany and Italy turned to fascism. In the next year, if enough of us give in to the human urge to be angry, to lay blame and to see others as a threat, we will face social unrest, damaged democracies and increased devastation.

But being aware of the instinctual drive to find a pattern that focuses on who is at fault can help us avoid those traps. We can manage our emotions and strive for a more evidence-based approach to making decisions in the months to come. We can choose solutions over recriminations. We can address head-on the cracks in the levees protecting society.

We can also recognize that communities are our greatest source of strength. When state government finds ways to help a business retain its staff, when we deliver groceries to an elderly neighbor, volunteer at a food bank, or give blood, we are building a network, making connections we can rely on, that will protect us, carry us forward after a Big One.

Resilience starts with an individual commitment, but only together, in communities, will we be able to create the new society we need.

Lucy Jones, a seismologist at the California Institute of Technology, is the founder of the Dr. Lucy Jones Center for Science and Society and author of "The Big Ones."




Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said there is evidence that links the CCP virus to a laboratory in Wuhan, China, the city where the virus originated.

I can tell you that there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan, Pompeo said on ABCs This Week on Sunday. These are not the first times that weve had a world exposed to viruses as a result of failures in a Chinese lab.

The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, a novel coronavirus, spread quickly across Wuhan and Hubei Province last year, while critics have said the regimes coverup and mismanagement allowed the virus to spread throughout China before it was transmitted worldwide.

Pompeo declined to say whether he believed the virus was intentionally released from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a top-level lab where researchers studied how coronaviruses can transmit from animals to humans.

Theres enormous evidence that thats where this began, Pompeo said of the lab. We have said from the beginning, that this was a virus that originated in Wuhan, China. We took a lot of grief for that from the outset. But I think the whole world can see now.

He added, Remember, China has a history of infecting the world, likely referring to the CCPs cover-up of the SARS outbreak in the early 2000s.

The Chinese regime also has a history of running sub-standard laboratories, Pompeo added. These are not the first times that we have had the world exposed to viruses as a result of failures in a Chinese lab.

On April 30, President Donald Trump also asserted that he saw evidence that linked the virus to the Chinese lab. Yes, yes I have, Trump told reporters after he was asked about the link.

When he was pressed on the details, Trump said, I cant tell you that. Im not allowed to tell you that. Trump also noted it was possible that the CCP either couldnt stop the spread of the virus or intentionally allowed it to spread.

Last week, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that intelligence agencies concluded the CCP virus wasnt manmade or genetically modified, but the agencys head said it is still investigating whether the virus was accidentally released from the virology lab in Wuhan.

In the Sunday interview, Pompeo also did not say whether he believes the virus was manmade, but he ultimately agreed with the Director of National Intelligences report. Ive seen what the intelligence community has said. I have no reason to believe that theyve got it wrong.

Regardless of how the virus originated, the CCP behaved like authoritarian regimes do, attempted to conceal and hide and confuse, Pompeo said during the ABC interview. It employed the World Health Organization as a tool to do the same.

The secretary then pointed to Australian and some European countries calls for an investigation into how the CCP handled the initial stages of the pandemic.

I think the whole world is united in understanding that China brought this virus to the world, Pompeo concluded.

From The Epoch Times
She has been heavily advocating for face mask usage online, and even shared a video of herself making one at home out of a scarf.

But Rachel Zoe seemed to forget hers on Saturday.

The fashion designer, 48, was seen without a covering as she stood pretty close to a female friend in West Hollywood.

No mask: Rachel Zoe was seen without a covering as she stood pretty close to a female friend in Los Angeles, where masks are required to wear whenever out in public

Instead, Rachel and her friend were pretty preoccupied by whatever was going on in their phone.

The women appeared deep in thought and engrossed in their phone as they stood outside in the open air.

Rachel looked as though she meant business in an animal print coat, flared jeans, and black purse.

She styled her hair into loose, romantic waves that cascaded past her delicate double choker necklace.

Office chic: Rachel looked as though she meant business in an animal print coat, flared jeans, and black purse

Let's do this: Zoe may be out in public today, but for the most part she has been hunkering down at home with her family - and in style

Zoe may be out in public today, but she has been hunkering down at home with her family - and in style.

On Friday, she shared a fashionable snap of herself wearing a gorgeous getup with a full face of makeup and flawless head of waves.

'Day #50 of #quarantine mood ..but always happiest in a caftan even with nowhere to go #stayhome #FBF XoRZ,' she captioned the photo.

Doing good: The fashionista's company, the Rachel Zoe Collection, will also be donating 10 face masks to the baby2baby foundation for every covering sold on their site

DIY: On Thursday, she quickly shared how to make a face mask at home using a scarf and hair ties

And on Thursday, she quickly shared how to make a face mask at home using a scarf and hair ties.

'Before my family walk tonight, I made this super easy mask that you can make with almost anything you have at home (swipe to see ),' she wrote in the caption. 'I am #MaskingForAFriend and wearing mine for my parents, heroic healthcare workers, essential workers, my close friend battling cancer and all of those with compromised immune systems. Please for all of us and yourself wear your mask when you leave your house.'

The fashionista's company, the Rachel Zoe Collection, will also be donating 10 face masks to the baby2baby foundation for every covering sold on their site.
Harvest Health & Recreation (OTC:HRVSF) announced on April 28 that it would be divesting some of its retail assets in Calfornia. The multistate cannabis operator will be selling 13 dispensaries to Hightimes Holding Corp. The deal didn't look all that enticing for Harvest, with the company receiving $5 million in cash, a $7.5 million promissory note, and $67.5 million worth of preferred shares.

It's a bit of a puzzling move. Let's take a closer look at this deal -- and Harvest -- to see whether this was a good decision and if investors should ditch the stock.

Company plans to focus on core markets

In its press release announcing the news, Harvest CEO Steve White stated:

This planned divestment of select retail assets in California allows Harvest to focus on optimizing operations and expanding assets in core markets such as Arizona, Florida, Maryland, and Pennsylvania while retaining a smaller retail presence in California.

The Arizona-based company has its largest presence in its home state, with 14 dispensaries located there. Currently, it has four locations in California.

It's not an uncommon move of late for cannabis companies to divest assets or back away from deals. Canadian pot giant Canopy Growth (NASDAQ:CGC) announced in April that it would be divesting from South Africa and Lesotho, and that it would be scaling back operations in New York and Colombia as well as shutting down a facility in Canada.

The moves should help Canopy improve its cash flow and get closer to breakeven.

Simplifying operations can help companies improve their financials. It can bolster their cash flow numbers and bottom lines -- both of which are key areas of concern for investors as the COVID-19 pandemic wreaks havoc on global economies, jeopardizing the performance of cannabis and other industries in the next year or two.

Businesses are saddling up for some tough times ahead, and that's certainly what Harvest looks to be preparing for. While it didn't get a whole lot from the deal that can help it today, the move will likely help Harvest cut back on overhead and expenses, which can go a long way toward breaking even. In 2019, the company posted a net loss of $173.5 million, more than its loss of $67.5 million in the previous year.

Is Harvest Health in trouble?

In its year-end results released April 24, Harvest Health reported cash and cash equivalents totaling $22.7 million as of the end of Dec. 31. That's a fraction of the $191.9 million it had one year earlier. Harvest's burned through lots of cash in just one year, and it wouldn't be a surprise if that was part of the reason behind the deal.

Five million dollars won't save the company, given that it has burned through $99.6 million in the past year just from day-to-day operating activities. But when combined with a decrease in cash burn thanks to the sale of the assets and the resources the company would've needed to manage them, it could have a significant effect on cash flow. It's likely not going to be enough to keep Harvest's operations afloat, though.

In the management, discussion, and analysis (MD&A) segment of its annual report, Harvest stated:

As of December 31, 2019, cash generated from ongoing operations was not sufficient to fund operations and, in particular, to fund our growth strategy in the short-term or long-term. We are required to raise additional funds from debt and/or equity financing. The primary need for liquidity is to fund working capital requirements of the business, including operational expenses, operationalizing existing licenses, capital expenditures, debt service and acquisitions.

The translation for investors: Expect the company to issue more shares this year and take on debt in order to keep operating. And that means its falling stock is likely to head even lower this year. Harvest Health's shares are down more than 60% since the start of the year, which is much worse than the Horizons Marijuana Life Sciences ETF (OTC:HMLSF), which has declined 30% over the same period.

Was the move to sell its dispensaries a mistake?

Given its modest footprint in California and the pressing need to improve its cash flow, it's clear that Harvest did what it had to do in selling those dispensaries. While the company generated impressive revenue growth of 149% in 2019, the priority given current economic conditions has to be getting through this year. And to do that, Harvest needs to get leaner and tighten up its operations.

It wouldn't be surprising if the worst is yet to come. The longer the COVID-19 pandemic drags on, the more perilous the situation will become for all businesses, not just pot stocks. For that reason, management's decision to sell the dispensaries wasn't a mistake, but that doesn't make it a good choice either. It was just something Harvest needed to do.

The sale of the dispensaries will help Harvest Health in the short term, but it shouldn't give investors any comfort as to the safety of the stock over the long term. Harvest's a risky stock to own today, and it's one I'd stay far away from until it starts to show that it can start generating positive cash flow.
Man, dog pronounced dead after early morning explosion, structure fire near Harbor Springs

A man and a dog have both died as the result of an explosion and structure fire early Tuesday morning in West Traverse Township near Harbor Springs.
1. Yes. Too many kids are staying home. They need a virtual learning option to keep up.

2. Yes. Teachers are out sick and subs cant handle the load. Online learning is needed.

3. No. Its too late in the school year to make a wholesale switch in teaching platforms.

4.No. Many parents arent in a position to stay home while their kids learn virtually.

5. Unsure. It may seem like a good idea from a health standpoint, but it has shortcomings.

Vote

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New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses the nation on vital aspects relating to the menace of COVID-19, in New Delhi on March 24, 2020. (Photo: IANS) Image Source: IANS News

New Delhi, May 3 : Paying tributes to the martyrs in Handwara of Jammu and Kashmir, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, here on Sunday, their valour and sacrifice would never be forgotten.

"Tributes to our courageous soldiers and security personnel martyred in Handwara. Their valour and sacrifice will never be forgotten. They served the nation with utmost dedication and worked tirelessly to protect our citizens. Condolences to their families and friends," Modi tweeted.

Paying tributes to the martyrs, Home Minister Amit Shah tweeted, "I bow to our soldiers and security personnel martyred while protecting our motherland during an encounter with terrorists in Handwara in J&K. Nation will always remain indebted to their supreme sacrifice. My deepest condolences to their bereaved families." Earlier, offering condolences on martyrdom of five security personnel, including a decorated army colonel, in an encounter with terrorists in J&K, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said their sacrifice and bravery would never never be forgotten.

"The loss of our soldiers and security personnel in Handwara (J&K) is deeply disturbing and painful. They showed exemplary courage in their fight against terrorists and made supreme sacrifice while serving the country. We will never forget their bravery and sacrifice," Singh tweeted.

"My heart goes out to the families who lost their loved ones today. India stands shoulder to shoulder with the families of these brave martyrs," the Minister tweeted.

Saluting the personnel, Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat said operations in Handwara highlighted determination of security forces to safeguard the lives of the people.

"Commanding Officer, leading from the front, along with other personnel of the unit and the J&K Police have laid down their lives, living up to the motto -- 'Service Before Self'," General Rawat said.

The armed forces, he said, were proud of their courage as they eliminated terrorists. "We salute these brave personnel and express our deep felt condolences for the bereaved families," he said.

In a statement, the Indian Army said based on the intelligence input that terrorists were taking hostage civilians of a house at Changimulla in Handwara of the Kupwara district, a joint operation was launched by the army and the J&K Police.

"A team, comprising five army and J&K Police personnel entered the target area, occupied by terrorists, to evacuate the civilians. The team extricated the civilians," it said.

During the process, the team was subjected to heavy fire by terrorists. "In the fire-fight two terrorists were eliminated and the team of five army and J&K personnel, comprising two officers, two soldiers and one J&K Police sub-inspector, attained martyrdom," the army said.
The dividend drought has begun. For people who rely on dividends for their income, either directly or indirectly through their pensions, the past three or four weeks have been a catastrophe.

Share prices may have clambered back some 20 per cent from their lows of March 23, when the FTSE100 index dipped below 5,000  though the April recovery looked a little wobbly by Friday.

But we all know that capital values are capricious, reflecting the mood of the moment. Dividends are real. Or at least they were. The best guess now is that this year dividends for FTSE100 companies will be halved.

Dividend drought: But share prices may have clambered back some 20 per cent from their lows of March 23

The numbers are very big. Last year, UK companies paid out just under 100 billion in dividends. So that could take out 50 billion in payments  money that would have paid pensions or would have been recycled back into the economy in other ways.

The largest single contributor into that dividend pot is Shell. So it came as a huge shock last Thursday when Shell disclosed it would cut its first quarter payout by twothirds. This was the first time it had cut its dividend since the Second World War.

You can see the reasons for this in the collapse of the oil price. But if you look at what it has come through over the last 75 years  the Suez Crisis, the oil shocks of the 1970s, the dotcom bubble, the crash of 2008/9, the oil price collapse of 2014/5, and so on  you have to ask whether what is happening now is really worse than all that.

BP actually increased its dividend, which is helpful, but it is smaller than Shell and it may have to trim payments if the oil price does not recover later this year.

This blow comes on top of the collapse of dividends from elsewhere. You would expect retailers to be stunned by all this, so the scrapping of this coming year's payout by Marks & Spencer came as little surprise. We will have to see what Tesco decides for next year.

Three weeks ago, it controversially increased its dividend for the year just ended, arguing that the dividend should relate to the trading period in question rather than current conditions.

There is logic in this, but to many people it does not look good to be taking a business rates holiday while jacking up payments to shareholders. And there lies the crux of the problem.

In tough times, paying out large dividends does not look quite right even if companies feel they can afford them. There is a further twist for financial companies.

Now, not only do dividends look iffy in public relations terms, but the Bank of England does not like dividends either. A month ago, the Bank's Prudential Regulation Authority told the banks to scrap their dividends for this year. Even though HSBC, the biggest, makes 80 per cent of its profits from Asia it had to comply.

If HSBC were to choose to move its legal domicile away from the UK, this may turn out to have been a tipping point, but let's see.

Insurance companies have been similarly advised by the PRA to hold back payments. Several of them  including Aviva, RSA, and Direct Line  have complied. Legal & General did go ahead with its payment, and has won some plaudits as a result.

Veteran fund manager Richard Buxton, head of UK equities at Merian Global Investors, said last week: 'It was easy for the financial regulator to go, 'Oh, first sign of trouble, let's just suspend dividend payments and if things pan out not too bad, then you can pay them all back again.'

'I applaud Legal & General for saying, 'Well, we hear you but, no, bog off we still think that we have gone through all our stress tests.'

There is a wider point here. Any regulator's job is to urge prudence. But that decision over bank payouts knocked 7.5 billion off dividend payouts.

Pressure on the insurance companies will, on my quick tally, have pushed the number well above 10 billion.

This week, we get the Bank of England's new forecasts for the economy. We know, of course, that they will be dire. But we know too that what matters in the recovery, as and when it comes, will be consumers' willingness to spend. People are worried.

Savings have shot up, probably to the highest level for a generation. Does it really make sense for pensioners who, directly or indirectly, rely on their income from dividends to have those incomes further cut by Bank of England diktat?

Dividends are vital to economic demand. Adding to the anti-dividend chorus is nuts.
The Czech Republic is looking at opening its borders with four neighboring states from July, aktualne.cz online media outlet said on Saturday citing Foreign Minister Tomas Petricek as saying, TASS reports.

"I would be glad if [the Czech Republic] could open borders with the four neighboring countries - Austria, Germany, Poland, and Slovakia - from July," he said. "We have made biggest progress in talks [on border opening] with the Austrians and the Slovaks. The most difficult talks will obviously be with Poland."

From April 24, Czech nationals are allowed to visit foreign countries but are obliged to observe a two-week quarantine upon return. However foreign trips are possible only in cases of extreme necessity. The authorities recommend people to refrain from visiting foreign countries this year. Nevertheless, an entry ban for foreigners is still in place.

An emergency situation regime is in force in the Czech Republic from March 12 until at least May 17.

Since early March, as many as 7,750 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in the Czech Republic, which has a population of 10.6 million. A total of 245 coronavirus-associated deaths have been registered and 3,446 patients have recovered.

As many as 253,826 people have been tested for the coronavirus infection since early March.
They wipe out entire bee colonies in hours  decapitating honeybees with strong mandibles  and kill about 50 humans every year in Japan, with stingers as long as one-quarter of an inch.

Now theyve made their way to the United States.

A pair of the up-to-2-inch Asian giant hornets, dubbed murder hornets, turned up in the U.S. for the first time last fall in Washington state, The New York Times reported this weekend. The species earned the nickname for intense group attacks that can lead to fatal doses of venom if someone is stung several times, Jun-ichi Takahashi, a Kyoto Sangyo University researcher told The Times.

U.S. researchers, government biologists and beekeepers are working together to trap hornets to determine precisely where they settled and to kill them before they set up shop for good.

This is our window to keep it from establishing, Chris Looney, Washington state entomologist, told The Times. If we cant do it in the next couple of years, it probably cant be done.

Ruthie Danielsen, a beekeeper in Washington not far from where the two Asian giant hornets were discovered, told The Times the honeybee in Japan has learned ways to survive. But our honeybees, the predator has never been there before, so they have no defense.

Japanese honeybees fight back by effectively cooking the hornets. In a video shared by The Times, Japanese honeybees form a ball around a hornet, and the bees work together by vibrating and producing heat, up to 115 degrees, which the hornet cannot withstand, researchers say.

Researchers were also puzzled by the discovery of Asian giant hornets in Canada last fall.

In 2013, The Times reported that giant hornets killed more than 40 people in China and injured more than 1,600.

If beekeepers trap a hornet, they plan to track it to its nest with either radio-frequency identification tags or by attaching a small streamer, Looney told The Times.
Cebu City (CNN Philippines, May 3) - The number of infections in the province of Cebu has surpassed 1,000, as sixty more inmates at the Mandaue City Jail test positive for COVID-19.

The new cases bring the total number of infections in the penal facility to 70, the Mandaue City Public Information Office confirmed.

The first infection at the city jail was discovered on April 24, when an inmate was hospitalized and tested positive for the virus at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center in Cebu City.

The Department of Health in Central Visayas on Saturday reported one inmate had died at the Mandaue City Jail from the disease.

Mandaue City now has a total of 89 COVID-19 cases, including two recoveries, with two fatalities.

The entire province of Cebu now has a total of 1,084 COVID-19 cases, the bulk of which are in Cebu City with 910 infections.

The Cebu City Health Department reported 31 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday. The Cebu City Jail has recorded at least 333 COVID-19 cases while the Cebu provincial jail reported 18 infections.

Meanwhile, Lapu-Lapu City Mayor Junard Chan also confirmed four new cases in his city on Sunday.

CNN Philippines' Stringer Dale Israel contributed to this report.
A prominent dissident jailed in Iran attempted suicide in prison to protest the situation of political prisoners and possibly the harassment of his family by security and intelligence organs.

Mohammad Nourizad signed a petition along with fourteen other dissidents in June 2019 demanding the resignation of Irans Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. They were all arrested and eight individuals were tried in a court without due process of law.They were sentenced to a total of 72 years in prison by a court in Irans second-largest city, Mashhad in February.

Nourizad who is a documentary film maker reportedly cut his wrist in prison but was rescued. His wife, Fatemeh Maleki told Radio Farda on May 2 that her husbands lawyer visited him in prison and saw bandages on his hand and face.

He told the lawyer that his decision to commit suicide was not about himself but for the sake of all political prisonersto highlight the oppression they endure and pressures they are subjected to.

Earlier, Nourizad had talked about his intention to commit suicide in prison, but he had mentioned the pressures his family is subjected to.

The Islamic Republic sentenced his son recently to three and a half years prison on trumped-up charges. Nourizad himself was arrested several times before and had gone on hunger strike.
Most black congregants say faith has grown even as coronavirus ravages community, study shows

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Despite the shuttering of many churches across America and the disproportionate impact the new coronavirus pandemic has been having on the black community, a majority of adults affiliated with historically black churches say their faith has strengthened, a new study shows.

The study, a survey of a nationally representative panel of 11,022 randomly selected U.S. adults, was conducted by the Pew Research Center. Data in the study was collected from April 20 to April 26 and reflects responses from 10,139 members of the panel.

While 47% of survey respondents reported that their faith hadnt changed much and 26% said they werent religious to begin with, 24% of them said their faith had become stronger in the pandemic.

When the numbers were further broken down by religious tradition, a pattern of increased faith emerged in 56% of Protestants affiliated with historically black churches. This was the highest pattern of increased faith of all groups in the study. This group of believers was closely followed by evangelicals, 42% of whom reported that their faith had grown during the pandemic. Some 27% of Catholics reported increased faith while 22% of mainline Protestants said they experienced a surge in their faith as a result of the pandemic.

The study comes as a confluence of factors, including age, poorer health, and access to healthcare, has resulted in the black community being disproportionately impacted by the coronavirus.

Reports of the deaths of dozens of pastors and members of predominantly black churches have not been uncommon during the pandemic. Just over a week ago, the Rev. Johnnie Green of Mount Neboh Baptist Church in Harlem, New York, told The Christian Post that at his church alone, 13 members died in approximately 30 days and all but two of them died due to complications from the virus.

A recent report in The New York Times with preliminary data released by New York City showed how the coronavirus is killing black and Latino people at twice the rate that it is killing white people. Nationwide data also reflect a similar trend.

And churches and researchers have continued to press the White House to address the disparity.

We have gathered as pastors, as faith leaders around this country to simply state that last weeks headlines reminded all of us that racism is a public health issue," the Rev. Frederick Douglass Haynes III, senior pastor of the 12,000-member Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, lamented during a recent press conference, discussing the impact of the virus on the black community.

"It has long been a matter of life and death. Sadly and immorally, we live in a country where skin color is hazardous to ones health and mortality is not determined by ones genetic code but instead by ones zip code.

As pastors who serve in communities that are most impacted by the coronavirus crisis we have come together to issue a moral appeal to the conscience of the nation in a state of emergency in the tradition of the biblical prophets who address nations in crises and prophets in this nation such as  Martin Luther King Jr and many others who fought to redeem the soul of America. We appeal to those in power on behalf of communities in pain and in grief. We appeal to you to channel treatment and resources to those areas in our body politic that have suffered the most from this national infection that has allowed this virus to spread disproportionately.

Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, recent reports by The Christian Post showed how many Americans were increasingly disengaging with their religion as churches grappled to respond. Blacks, as a racial group, meanwhile, maintained the highest percentage of members with absolutely certain belief in God at 83%; Asians showed the lowest at 44%. Among whites, the percentage was 61%, while Latinos stood at 59%.
Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel has written to railways minister Piyush Goyal requesting him for 28 trains from various cities to help migrants from the state stranded in different parts of the country come home.

The chief minister said in his letter that the fight against Covid-19 has gone intense across the country since the last few days. Chhattisgarh state is also fighting this pandemic courageously and has succeeded to a great extent in controlling the infection, he said.

Presently, a large number of labourers from Chhattisgarh is stranded in various parts of the country. Based on the information received from helpline and other sources, nearly 1.17 lakh labourers of the state are stranded in 21 states and four union territories of the country, Bhupesh Baghel wrote.

After the transport facility is resumed, this number is expected to increase. And if we add the number of people apart from labourers, such as students, tourists etc, this number already escalates significantly, he said.

As he welcomed the Centres decision to run the special trains for labourers stranded in other places, Baghel also requested to run these trains free of cost on humanitarian grounds.

The letter issued by the Railway Board on May 1 states that fares have been decided for sleeper mail and express trains. This is not fair as the labourers and people stuck in other states are already distressed. They should be provided with this facility by the railways free of cost, he wrote.

The chief minister said the states administrative system has been directed to coordinate with various states and chalk out an action plan for safe home-coming of labourers and other people stranded there.

I request you to operate a sufficient number of trains for home-coming of labourers and citizens of Chhattisgarh in other states, he said.

Baghel requested for seven trains from Jammu to Raipur-Bilaspur, three trains from Lucknow to Raipur-Bilaspur, two trains from Kanpur to Raipur-Bilaspur, one train from Chennai to Raipur-Bilaspur, one train from Bangalore to Raipur-Bilaspur, two trains from Pune to Raipur-Bilaspur and one train from Allahabad to Bilaspur.

He also asked for three trains from Delhi to Raipur-Bilaspur, three trains from Hyderabad-Secunderabad to Raipur-Bilaspur, one train from Vishakhapatnam to Raipur, from Surat-Ahmedabad to Raipur, one train from Kolkata to Raipur, one train from Jaipur to Raipur and one train from Patna to Durg, in his letter.
At least one suspect was believed to have been riding in a gray four-door vehicle, police said. Police scoured the area for video surveillance to see if that could shed more light on the shooting. There was at least one city surveillance camera at the site of the shooting.
Buses wait at Can Tho Airport to transport Vietnamese citizens returning from UAE to a quarantine camp in Bac Lieu Province in the Mekong Delta, May 3, 2020. Photo by VnExpress/Cuu Long.

297 Vietnamese returning from the United Arab Emirates arrived at Can Tho Airport early Sunday morning and were quarantined in the nearby Bac Lieu Province.

The returnees, including children, students under 18, the elderly and unemployed workers, came on Vietnam Airlines flight VN88. They have been quarantined at the dormitory of Bac Lieu University in the eponymous province by local military authorities.

The province has prepared facilities to place up to 2,100 people under quarantine.

As of Sunday morning, the UAE had confirmed 13,599 Covid-19 cases with 119 deaths.

Vietnam marked its 9th consecutive day with no new Covid-19 infection and 17th day with no community transmission on Sunday morning.

As the pressure on isolation facilities in Vietnam eases, the government is planning to repatriate Vietnamese abroad who want to return home. The country has brought home nearly 5,300 citizens from pandemic-hit areas since early February.

The Can Tho Airport had also welcomed 320 Vietnamese returning from Singapore and Indonesia, who were placed under quarantined upon arrival on April 24 and 26.

On Friday, 276 Vietnamese citizens from Canada landed at the Van Don Airport in the northern province of Quang Ninh Province before being taken to local quarantine centers.

A flight repatriating Vietnamese citizens from the U.S. on Saturday was delayed due to a "lack of license", according to the Vietnamese embassy in the country, which is a Covid-19 hotspot with more than 1.1 million cases and 67,000 deaths. The flight, which was supposed to take off from San Francisco, California, will be operated after all procedures are completed, officials said.

Local carriers said last month they would deploy 13 special flights in the coming weeks to bring home Vietnamese citizens stranded by travel restrictions imposed to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.
You dont just steal a C-130 military transport plane. For starters, theyre heavily guarded. Then, there is the matter of fuel. You need a crew. You need a plan. You dont just climb in and fly away. You dont just steal a C-130.

The old pilot smiles. The face is weathered, cracked from 73 years, but the eyes retain a glimmer of youth. At times, he closes them to recall the spring of 1975, when the world - long before viruses and lockdowns  went crazy.
Rishi Kapoors daughter Riddhima Kapoor Sahni finally arrived in Mumbai after the demise of the veteran actor on Thursday. Riddhima and her daughter Samara travelled from Delhi to Mumbai via road. The duo landed in the wee hours of Saturday and were snapped with masks amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

READ: Riddhima Kapoor Shares Rishi Kapoor's Throwback Picture, Says 'legends Live Forever'

Here are the pictures



Riddhima had earlier shared a update on her Instagram stories from the car, writing driving home ma.

READ: Rishi Kapoor's Death: Riddhima Kapoor Leaves Delhi For Mumbai, Says 'driving Home Ma'

Earlier, there were reports that she was to arrive via a chopper for the funeral. However, she had later expressed her sadness at not being able to be with her family for the ritual.

Riddhima also shared some heartwarming pictures of her father on her Instagram stories. In one from the Karz actor's younger days, her caption read legends live forever, miss you. Another post was of the last family outing that the paparazzi snapped them at, with Rishi-Neetu Kapoor being joined by their children, Ranbir, Riddhima and granddaughter Samaira and wrote, miss you so much.

Earlier, Riddhima had given an emotional tribute to her father, sharing her love for her strongest warrior, missing his FaceTime calls and ruing about missing out on his last moments.

Rishi Kapoor passed away after a two-year battle with leukemia at the HN Reliance Foundation Hospital in Mumbai. He was 67. His last rites were performed at a South Mumbai crematorium, by son Ranbir, while Alia Bhatt, Kareena Kapoor, Abhishek Bachchan were among the others present during the rituals.

READ: Rishi Kapoor's Death:Daughter Riddhima Kapoor Wishes She 'could Be There To Say Goodbye'

READ: Rishi Kapoor's Demise: Daughter Riddhima Kapoor Expresses Love And Respect For Her Father

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The 2010s saw a growing tendency to argue against the principle of mass compulsory schooling.

Different voices from outside the education community continue to chip away at the idea of fixed-schedule, bricks-and-mortar schools. We're warned repeatedly that mass schooling is "broken". We're told that school systems provide a "cookie-cutter" education that fails our best and brightest. It's argued that schools are stuck in an outdated "factory" model based on impersonal and inefficient "batch processing" of students, and that mass schooling needs to be reinvented  if not replaced altogether.

Prominent critics include industrialists and employers who complain that schools no longer produce the workforce skills and aptitudes that they require. These complaints are bolstered by a powerful lobby of IT industry and education technology companies offering "flexible" digital alternatives.

While most educators have tended to shrug off such challenges, these ideas have certainly been gaining traction within policy and business circles. Why not have fully online schools? Why not allow students to learn in self-organised and "personalised" ways, taking micro-credentials and gaining experience within local communities and businesses? Why not let commercial actors "disrupt" the received wisdom that mass schooling is the best way of educating a nation?
My brother Jon was an exceptional human being. He had a sense of the world and life that alternated between skepticism, passionate embrace, disappointment, and hope that things would always move toward improvement, toward the light.

And then, for reasons we wont ever fully know, he turned off that light. He was only 30. There is music that wont be written because of this, celebrations that were cancelled because of this, reunions that were smaller because of this, days that were sadder and flatter, because of this.

Suicide has many victims, and not all of them die by their own hands. The grief of survivors is a smaller, but nonetheless painful death.

I always think of Jon when I hear about someone who has made that ultimate decision to walk away from society, whether deliberately or in an almost if I die, I die sort of desperate negligence. The ones who engage in risky behavior, playing Russian Roulette with themselves and not really caring if the figurative bullet wins.

I thought of my brother a lot during these past weeks. The focus of the pandemic has been on those who succumbed to the actual disease, and that is of course justified. In the midst of sickness, we need to do triage and the ones who are gasping for air are the ones we need to run to.

But that metaphor, gasping for air, has some relevance when we talk about those who might physically be okay, but who are struggling to breathe in other ways. The single mother who lost her waitressing job because the pandemic forced her diner to close. The college student who cant pay his tuition because part-time bar tending he used to do is prohibited as non-essential labor. The immigrants who cleaned houses for a few dollars an hour, told that they were no longer able to enter their clients homes and who cant get unemployment because, well, they dont have papers.

And then there are the high school seniors who have been robbed of their graduations, all the pomp and crazy circumstance of parties and summer houses and yearbook signings. And what about the younger students, the ones who have been cooped up in their homes and havent had a play date that doesnt involve a computer and a camera for the past two months?

What of the introverts who depended on their daily contact with the few friends they trusted? I myself love and embrace my solitude and prefer a good book and sugary, cream-loaded coffee to a raucous and rowdy party. But even I, an introvert by nature, am feeling the strain of the walls closing in.

I take my daily walks, sometimes with a mask and sometimes without, and smile at the dogs who seem to be the only ones really enjoying this forced suspension of our normal lives. I watch TV, and I knit (three blankets so far) and I make silly video parodies of Broadways songs (go to my Facebook page if youre at all interested) and bide my time until the world opens up again. And I write, about all of the things that thrill and that anger me.

But not everyone has a game plan that works, and not everyone has the ability to endure this unnatural paralysis of normality. In other words, not everyone can cope.

Tragically, that has exacerbated pre-existing depression in some folks, and created unbearable and unmitigated sadness in others who believed themselves to be fine. It took this pandemic to break them, or at least show them the cracks and fissures in their own lives.

Some of those people have sought help, whether through professional counseling, prayer, or the support of their family or friends. Others have taken another route, one that my brother took. And they are the hidden casualties of this pandemic, ones we havent considered and who deserve our attention. I dont think that we should bear any guilt for failing to acknowledge depression-related suicides have been on the rise during these past weeks and months.

Weve been so busy trying to breathe ourselves, to notice others who are flailing in the nearby waters.

But its time to take notice. Its time to realize that the doctors who have killed themselves because they couldnt save enough people, or who were afraid they would infect their own families, died of COVID 19 the same as if they were on ventilators. The people who have taken their own lives because their businesses were destroyed, or they lost their jobs, were killed by COVID 19. They are casualties, just as much as any of the ones felled by the virus.

My brother left us too soon, and I will never truly know why. That is my burden. My obligation is to be aware of those who are on that same path, and try to reach out and make them turn around.

We all share it.

Your mental health matters. If you need help coping or if youre experiencing a mental health crisis, please reach out for support:

Telephone National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255

Military medal Veterans in Crisis: 1-800-273-8255 + press 1

Speech balloon Crisis Text Line: Text PA to 741-741

Telephone Disaster Distress Helpline: 800-985-5990

Telephone PA Support Helpline: 855-284-2494

Telephone Get Help Now (substance use disorder): 1-800-662-4357

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a resident of Delaware County. Her column usually appears on Sunday. Email her at cflowers1961@gmail.com.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio says homeless people will be able to get help from outreach workers when the city's subways start to shut down overnight while advocates say the closures will leave the homeless even more vulnerable.

The official shutdown, which will occur from 1 to 5 a.m. nightly starting Wednesday, was announced by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and de Blasio last Thursday.

The downtime will be used for all of the subway's cars to be disinfected every 24 hours for as long as the coronavirus pandemic lasts.

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo tries out a spraying device which is part of a three-step disinfecting process of a New York City subway car

Governor Andrew Cuomo who was seen in Queens on Saturday trying his hand at disinfecting a train car says the task is a 'monumental undertaking'

On Saturday, Governor Andrew Cuomo visited the MTA's maintenance facility in Corona, Queens to see how the cleaning will be done.

He noted that disinfecting every train car would be a 'monumental undertaking.'

'It's smart, it's labor-intensive, people have to wear hazmat suits, they have a number of chemicals that disinfect,' Cuomo said. 'Literally you have to go through the whole train with a misting device where they spray disinfectant literally on every surface.'

Cuomo said the closing of the system was necessary to keep transit and essential workers safe.

Mayor Bill de Blasio says the subway closure will drive people above ground to meet outreach workers. Homeless charities say the outreach is in fact very little and would like to see 30,000 unused hotel rooms to be used to house those most in need

The city is shutting down its subway system each day from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. to increase the cleaning of trains and stations during the coronavirus crisis. Many homeless people ride the subway at nights and use the train cars to sleep

'It's good and smart for the transit workers who have to work in that environment, but it's also right for the riding public,' Cuomo said. 'The essential workers who have kept this entire society functioning have done an extraordinary job. We want them to know we are doing everything we can do to keep them safe.'

De Blasio believes that the shutdown might also help homeless people who ride the subway during that time by forcing them up to the surface.

It's believed between 10,000 and 11,000 people ride the subways during the early morning hours.

'If you're not going back and forth all night on a train, then you actually are coming above ground, where outreach workers are there to help you, where NYPD officers' training in the homeless outreach are there to support homeless people and get them to a better situation,' de Blasio said.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo pictured during his Covid-19 news briefings at the MTA Corona Maintenance Facility in Corona, Queens

Cuomo agrees: 'This will be the first time that I can remember that every homeless person by definition has to get off that train at one point,' Cuomo said. 'I think that is an opportunity to actually engage homeless people, find out what they need, and try and link them up with the services and the help.'

But those advocating for the city's homeless feel differently.

'It's just an outright disaster,' Joshua Goldfein, an attorney at the Legal Aid Society told ABC News.

Goldfein would like to see the city offer people a safe place to go for shelter but many refuse to go to shelters because they fear they could catch the coronavirus once inside.

Giselle Routhier from the nonprofit Coalition for the Homeless, believes 'the situation will really only get worse.'

'By clearing people off the trains, by getting the police involved  We're going to be pushing them further into the shadows,' Routhier said to ABC News.

View of MTA New York City Transit Corona Maintenance Facility in Queens during COVID-19 pandemic. This is one of the facilities where daily cleaning of subway cars and buses will take place overnight starting on May 6

Routhier claims that the options for the homeless are not as helpful as de Blasio described with them simply being told to leave the train but not given a safe place to go.

Despite de Blasio setting aside 6,000 hotel rooms for the homeless in April, 3,500 rooms had already been set aside before the pandemic began.

Routier believes that such a number is far too small to cope with the amount of homeless.

'That had nothing to do with COVID. That was the city utilizing, in some emergency circumstances, commercial hotels to provide shelter to homeless adults when they didn't have enough regular shelter space,' Routhier said.

She believes 30,000 hotel rooms should be opened up specifically for the homeless.

'People are just going up to the streets in the rain, in the cold and are wandering around looking for a new spot to shelter, which is completely counterproductive,' she said. 'Bad for their health, bad for public health.'

She warned that the situation is far from resolved.

There are currently about 19,000 homeless people in shelters across the city with around 800 positive cases of coronavirus and 61 deaths among the population so far. Most of the deaths were from those who were housed in a shelter.

The Department of Social Services say a new testing program will be set up in shelters in the next week.

Routhier believed the pandemic has only worsened the homeless situation.

'We've seen some increases of people on the streets because of the pandemic. Some people who were in very unstable housing to begin with, renting a room on a week-to-week basis, lost their job  People who are leaving the shelters because they feel unsafe,' Routhier said. 'I think it's actually kind of getting worse at this point.'

New York City Transit Interim President Sarah Feinberg said a team of 900 cleaners are already working at cleaning the subway cars 24 hours a day.

'For those who are riding the system during the day, they are going to see an uptick in a lot of cleaners that they probably did not see before,' Feinberg said. 'So you ride the train to the end of the station, or to the end of the line, you get out at the end of line station. Instead of just going off onto the platform and going upstairs, one of the things you are going to see this week is a whole bunch of cleaners boarding that train immediately, starting disinfecting work right then.'
He is now undergoing chemotherapy while Isla is eight months pregnant

Until three months ago Arlo McDiarmid's life revolved around his growing young family, pregnant wife Isla and their beloved two-year-old daughter, Indigo.

Always active and on his feet, the security manager rushed from work to his home in Auckland, New Zealand, to play with his little girl every evening, eagerly diving into whatever mischief and fantasies had been imagined by the toddler he adores.

When the 37-year-old who had 'never been ill' a day in his life scratched the back of his neck and felt a hard, painless lump while driving one evening in May 2019, he saw a doctor to dispel a niggling doubt that something wasn't right.

Tests showed he was suffering from strep throat, a usually harmless bacterial infection that inflames lymph nodes in the neck and causes fever and fatigue.

But after months passed and symptoms lingered, with intensifying exhaustion and swollen masses inexplicably rising and falling beneath his ears, he met with a specialist who referred him for scans and a procedure to remove a node for further analysis.

In January, eight months after leaving his GP with a certificate for a throat infection, Arlo received the devastating news that aggressive adenocarcinoma was growing in his glands, neck, armpit and chest - a sign his cancer had already advanced to stage four.

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Arlo McDiarmid and his beloved daughter Indigo, who has no idea of the battle her brave dad is fighting

When he answered the call that would change his life during a lunch break at work, Arlo's thoughts immediately raced to wife Isla, then five months pregnant with their second child.

'It was a little out of the blue. They asked if I was available to come in straight away. That's when I knew it was cancer, and I knew it must be fairly serious,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

'I don't think anything can prepare you for that kind of news. The world spun for a while as I digested it, but I knew for my wife's sake I was going to have to hold it together a bit.'

Once the initial shock and disbelief subsided, Arlo's over-riding emotion was 'terrible fear' for his young family.

'There's no good timing, but this was just the worst,' he said.

Now eight months pregnant, Isla said she 'still feels sick' when she remembers that day.

Arlo, Isla and Indigo play in the park near their home in Auckland, New Zealand, an almost daily activity before the family's world came crashing down in early January

Doctors are unsure where Arlo's cancer began, but believe it likely started in his salivary glands - specifically the parotid glands in front of his ears - meaning his illness is classified as adenocarcinoma, a type of cancer that develops in glands anywhere in the body.

It most commonly occurs in the lungs, breasts, prostate and bowel, and less frequently in the head and neck as Arlo's did.

Symptoms of salivary gland cancer - A lump or swelling near the jaw, on the neck or in the mouth - Numbness in part of the face - Muscle weakness in the face - Persistent pain around the neck or ears - Difficulty swallowing - Trouble opening the mouth wide Source: Cancer Council Australia Advertisement

The early symptoms most adenocarcinoma sufferers experience are vague and easily confused with everyday complaints, which often leads to a delayed diagnosis by which time cancer has spread to multiple organs.

Symptoms also vary wildly depending on which organ cancer is growing in.

Arlo's only warning signs were alternately swollen but painless lymph nodes and exhaustion that deteriorated as months went by.

'Looking back, I had been really fatigued for a long, long time, but I was working hard and I had a young kid - I didn't really expect that I shouldn't have been so tired,' he said.

Salivary gland cancer is rare, with just one in 100,000 people diagnosed in the United States each year, the vast majority of whom are over the age of 64. No statistics are available for New Zealand.

A lack of domestic support systems has been one of the biggest struggles for both Arlo and Isla, who would take great comfort in sharing their experience with people who can relate to the unimaginable pain.

'So far we haven't found anyone. It's been really stressful,' Isla said.

Adenocarcinoma explained Adenocarcinoma is a type of cancer that starts in mucus-producing glands, which are found in many organs. Common types of adenocarcinoma include breast cancer, lung cancer, esophageal cancer, pancreatic cancer, bowel cancer and prostate cancer, with symptoms varying depending on the organ. Adenocarcinoma accounts for almost all breast and prostate cancers, roughly 96 percent of bowel cancers, 95 percent of pancreatic cancers and 40 percent of non-small cell lung cancers. It is most commonly diagnosed through a biopsy, the surgical removal of an abnormal mass and examination to determine if cancer is present. Source: Healthline Advertisement

Treatment for Arlo's cancer is long, complicated and expensive.

He is currently three months into a six-month programme of chemotherapy and will soon progress to rounds of hormone therapy, with scans scheduled for September to determine whether the disease has been eradicated or persists.

There are no guarantees Arlo's treatment will be successful, primarily because of confusion about where his cancer actually started as well as its rarity in New Zealand.

Everything feels a little finite. You can't help but feel when you do something, there's only going to be a limited number of times you may be able to do it again.'

'This isn't a type of cancer often treated in Auckland, particularly in my age group,' he said.

'Because my primary site hasn't been established, they can't even tell me if this is likely to be terminal or chronic (lasting for many years). We don't know know for certain, all we've been told is it's aggressive, and obviously stage four.'

With uncertainty at every turn, Arlo's main priority is spending time with the family and friends he adores, especially little Indigo.

'Everything feels a little finite. You can't help but feel when you do something that there's only going to be a limited number of times you may be able to it again,' he said.

'It's made time with my daughter extra special. It's difficult because of the fatigue, but I'm trying to carry her around on my shoulders as much as I can, because I know if I have to undergo surgery that will be off the cards for a long time - perhaps forever.'

He worries about the future, most of all about the imminent arrival of his second child and what life might be like for his wife and children without him.

'I'm scared that during treatment, I might be incapable of even simple things like changing or putting the baby in the car seat,' he said.

'I'd like to survive. I'd like to care for my family. I want to see my kids grow up and annoy them constantly with stupid Dad jokes. I want to be there for them.'

Arlo and Isla at a restaurant with friends, months before they received the devastating call that would change their lives forever

Isla's delivery date is Saturday, May 30, but she plans to have a Caesarean section five days earlier in between Arlo's chemo sessions to give him the chance to witness the birth of their bundle of joy.

Despite the agony of her husband's diagnosis, Isla is brimming with gratitude for the support the family has received.

The couple's friend Sam started a fundraising campaign to cover the cost of essential, non-funded treatment, an initiative which has already received generous donations of over $62,000.

'I thought I had problems worth worrying about before, but now I see how much energy I wasted stressing about stupid things,' Isla said.

'I've also seen how compassionate people are. I think my faith in humans has been restored because we've had so much support from loved ones and strangers alike.'

The arrival of their second child will be a beacon of hope to the brave couple as Arlo continues his battle against cancer.
He was just the best, he really was.

This is how Melissa Castiglia describes her brother. Her only brother. The younger brother she lost after he contracted COVID-19.

Looking through a large basket packed full of sympathy cards, she was left wondering how she would write all of the thank-yous.

The vast outpouring has been comforting for the 32-year-old elementary school teacher. Settling into this new reality has been anything but.

The thing that was surprising was just how many people, how many lives hes touched, she said of her 30-year-old sibling, Dan Spano - one of more than 2,000 lives lost in Connecticut after hard-fought battles with the deadly virus.

This global pandemic has devastated families, communities, while striking fear into everything we knew to be normal, down to the very air we breathe.

As painfully overwhelming as it is now, it also opens the way for a different future.

What does the road ahead look like for Melissa, for us, for the country? How can we honor the many who died?

We need to be better, Melissa said.

For her right now, that means knowing how we can care for people who are gravely ill.

Whether it be through the plasma or medicine, these people, they suffered, whether or not we want to believe it or not, they suffered. They are hooked up to these ventilators and yes, they are sedated, but nobody deserves to be suffering like that, she said.

It means facing the heart of the coronavirus crisis. We just need to be better because everythings just so uncertain with it, she said, and we shouldnt be living in constant fear for the rest of our lives because were afraid to walk outside and breathe air.

For all of us, it means more vigilance. More being better. Never. Letting. This. Happen. Again.

At the moment, the crush of the crisis wields its power.

So many, many sympathy cards.

I was trying to sit there and count them yesterday and it was just insane. The basket is filled with cards, she said, speaking with me during her maternity leave as her 3-month-old went down for a nap.

The things that people say about him, it touches you, and its heartbreaking all in the same time because his life was cut so short.

Melissas daughter, Adrianna, will know her uncle by photographs. She wont grow up as his goddaughter. She wont see that smile always lighting up the room when Dan was around.

He was only 30 years old. A personal fitness trainer. The one his parents would joke was the good child, who never got into any trouble.

My brother was my best friend, she said. Hes my only sibling, so I am having a hard time with that. I love him with all of my heart.

If she had to pick one defining memory, it had to be that smile and sense of humor.

He was always joking and he always had these one-liners that he would say, said Melissa, who teaches in Stamford and lives in Ridgefield.

Thats what I am going to remember and miss the most.

No more knocks at the door to see her and his niece, as he would do so often shortly after she was born. No texts, no FaceTime. The last conversation, by text, will stay with her.

Following a doctors advice, she said, Dan was resting up at home in Norwalk after symptoms took hold. She urged him to keep moving, not to lie down too much for fear it wouldnt be good for his lungs. He sent what would be his final words to her.

Well, what should I do? he wrote.

The answer proved to be tragically complicated.

Dan would later find himself in Norwalk Hospital, placed on a ventilator, fighting for his life - all following the initial onset of a cough and fever. Even more shocking given Melissa saying he was healthy, with no known pre-existing conditions.

The family desperately tried to line up donated plasma. But a blood clot formed in his groin, his organs began to fail and, on April 11, Dan died.

Among its many horrors, COVID-19 robs families of a proper goodbye.

On what would turn out to be their last Zoom call with Dan, the screen faced the hospital room ceiling so as not to upset the family for what they might see, but to also help them remember him the way they wanted to. That smile.

We were basically in the beginning telling him to breathe and to keep fighting and at one point the doctor had called and basically said his body is shutting down and theres really not much more we can do, Melissa said.

After we spoke to the doctor, instead of telling him to keep fighting, we basically told him its OK, you tried your hardest, we love you, if you need to let go, let go, we dont want you to be in pain. We love you, were sorry.

We feel like he was by himself, we werent there.

Still, she believes Dan heard his loved ones. The doctor told them they were going to wean him off the drug treatments and give him only pain medications, she said, and before the doctor even went in there to give him the pain medications, he passed.

I truly dont believe in things like that, but just the fact that kind of happened, gave me a little bit  of comfort that maybe he did hear us.

Going forward I still feel like for myself, and I feel like a lot of people, are just going to be scared for a long time because theres just so many unknowns with this.

At Hearst Connecticut Media Group we are devoting todays editions, in our eight daily newspapers and websites, to further exploring some of those unknowns. To look at The Road Ahead: Life After COVID-19.

How do we learn from the lives lost? How can we build a better future - through innovation, preparedness - together? Will the crisis, can it, lead to a better world?

With almost 200 journalists across the state, we have teamed up with some of the foremost experts in key areas that matter most to you. You will find an abundance of stories and expert voices, including our own columnists and student journalists, writing on everything from education to the economy.

We are taking an in-depth look at the lessons learned, the innovation that could lie ahead and the obstacles in front of us. How do we avoid more loss and how do we further honor the lives of thousands in Connecticut, and so many more around the world, who lost theirs?

If one thing is clear, we have to move forward with care - together.

I feel like unfortunately until people have this really hit home they may not be taking it seriously, and they need to because here we have a 30-year-old man who was a fitness instructor who went to his physical and had his doctor tell him that he was super healthy, to have this and then die from it, it can literally happen to anybody, Melissa said, referencing recent protests calling on the state to reopen.

I dont want them to experience that, in terms of where I stand, as having a loved one pass away. But I also dont want to get sick myself. People need to realize that if its not you, it could be somebody you know.

No more sympathy cards.

Wendy Metcalfe is the vice president of content and editor-in-chief at Hearst Connecticut Media Group.
The Department of Education is probing the University of Texas System's dealings with an infectious diseases laboratory in Wuhan, China.The Wuhan lab is a suspected source of the coronavirus that has infected millions of people and killed hundreds of thousands. The virus has also prompted large-scale shutdowns of the world's economy and initiated a global recession.Federal investigators have requested the UT System hand over all documents related to contracts with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and researcher Shi Zhengli, who specializes in bats, according to The Wall Street Journal . The investigation is part of a broader effort to examine UT's potential links to Beijing and about two-dozen Chinese state-owned companies, as well as with Zoom Communications' CEO Eric Yuan.UT is working on a reply to the Education Department's request. Yuan has denied ever working personally with UT.A growing body of evidence suggests that the coronavirus pandemic began in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. President Trump said Thursday that he has seen evidence that gives him a "high degree of confidence" that the virus originated in the Wuhan lab.U.S. intelligence officials have been less forthright about what evidence may or may not suggest about the origins of the virus. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to point to a specific source of the pathogen in a statement Thursday, but the office did confirm that it was looking into the Wuhan lab as a potential source.the ODNI said.The federal government's investigation into UT Systems is part of a wider probe to see how deep foreign influence has crept into the U.S. university system. Universities have disclosed more than $6.5 billion in funding from foreign entities, some of which has come from countries, such as China, that are hostile to the United States' goals.China has campaigned aggressively to expand its global influence in recent decades. Chinese President Xi Jinping launched the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, a plan to construct a massive network of infrastructure spreading out from China across Asia and into Europe. The project would imbed China at the center of much of the global economy and give Beijing more leverage to influence international agreements, norms, and institutions, according to the Council on Foreign Relations Sen. Tom Cotton, who may be the U.S. politician most hawkish on China, has suggested that Chinese failures to contain the virus in the early days of the outbreak stemmed from a deliberate calculation by Beijing that saving the rest of the world from the virus would lessen China's relative global standing.Cotton said in an April interview with Fox News, referring to Chinese attempts to hide the real impact of the virus in January and allowing millions of people to leave Wuhan.
Last Tuesday in Government Buildings, Leo Varadkar set his phone on the table with the stopwatch app open. The Taoiseach called on his Cabinet ministers in alphabetical order, giving each of them two minutes to outline their views on lifting the unprecedented Covid-19 restrictions.

What followed was the first sign that the cross-government consensus on dealing with the pandemic emergency was over.

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Minister after minister made the case for beginning to reopen the country, some more forcefully than others, with many arguing for the relaxation of cocooning for the elderly. "There is a bit of a mood now which says we are going to have to look after the economy," said a minister afterwards.

The roadmap published by the Taoiseach on Friday is a delicate blend of political pragmatism to temper scientific restraint.

Its release was chaotic. The 23-page technical document largely produced by Nphet was given to ministers only 10 minutes before the special Cabinet meeting to approve it. "It's badly formatted, it's written for stakeholders rather than the public," grumbled a minister afterwards. Civil servants weren't mad about the timing of its release, late on Friday, either, while Opposition leaders were briefed mere minutes before the Taoiseach addressed the nation.

According to one expert advisory figure, as time goes on, protecting both public health and the economy is likely to become an increasingly difficult balancing act in the long months ahead.

Some 63 days since Ireland's first case of Covid-19 was confirmed, the curve has flattened. Weeks have dragged by, there have been signs the public mood is shifting, cars are returning to the roads and many worried jobless homeowners are looking to extend mortgage holidays for another frightening three months.

In one two-week period, gardai arrested 76 people for breaching Covid-19 lockdown and there has been a marked increase in house parties.

Government ministers and officials are also concerned that the time it will take for the country to reopen - just under 100 days at least - is too long.

The Department of Public Expenditure roughly estimates the State is spending around 600m extra a week to keep the health service going and the economy on life-support. It will not be sustainable for much longer, the officials privately warn.

One government insider wondered whether Sweden's controversial herd immunity strategy may have been a wiser approach. "We've killed our economy and they haven't. When the inquiry happens into this whole period, I think a lot of people will say: 'Were no other considerations brought to bear other than public health?'"

This is definitely a minority view, but, nonetheless, ministers are already this weekend pushing for the restrictions on pubs to be lifted sooner if they can comply with the public health guidelines, as well as allowing the elderly to do more in the coming months.

Business Minister Heather Humphreys said yesterday: "If we find the coronavirus is abating considerably, well there's no reason why these dates can't be accelerated."

Accountable

These restive politicians have trained their attention on the group of academics, policy wonks, doctors, civil servants and communications advisers, who, as one politician said, "are running the country" these days.

The first chink in the political frontline emerged two weeks ago when the newly crowned leader of the Labour Party, Alan Kelly, expressed a growing mood. To whom is Nphet accountable? Where are its minutes? Does it consult the Taoiseach before announcing to the public its decisions that affect "all of our citizens"? The restrictions might be working, he said, but they were certainly not transparent.

Nphet published its governance document last week, listing scores of members appointed by the group and the collection of sub-groups which mushroomed as the pandemic took hold. Interestingly, it did not list a working group for nursing homes was set up on March 19, when they were already hit.

Tensions have spilled over, too, between Dr Tony Holohan, Nphet and the Health Service Executive (HSE) managers tasked with implementing the experts' advice.

Difficulties have concerned a lack of consultation with the HSE when key decisions are made, according to a source close to the Covid-19 response teams. They are usually centred on the twin fault lines of failed promises on testing capacity (see panel) and the failure to anticipate the rapid spread of infection in nursing homes.

On Friday, April 17, Minister for Health Simon Harris announced testing of all staff and residents in every nursing home in the country. The National Ambulance Service was to be deployed immediately for swabbing. But, according to informed sources, no one consulted in advance with the HSE.

Sophisticated communication systems had been set up to track tests from GP referral all the way to contact tracing. This would take a number of days, a cumbersome manual system was deployed that slowed up the processing of test results. The HSE later raised concerns in letters to the Minister for Health.

The Health Minister's total deference to medical experts is partly a result of the CervicalCheck debacle two years ago. On that occasion, he ignored advice not to offer free smear tests to all women in a move that created a massive backlog and delays in the system. Mr Harris has publicly defended that decision - but privately acknowledged mistakes were made.

Mr Harris's ubiquity during the crisis has also annoyed colleagues. It wasn't just his intervention on schools, which he suggested in this newspaper two weeks ago could reopen for one day a week.

Business Minister Ms Humphreys is said to have been furious when Mr Harris said in the same interview that packed pubs would not return until a vaccine is found - remarks which petrified publicans across the country. "There was f**king murder over that," said one minister of Ms Humphreys's reaction.

There is also deepening unease among ministers over the power wielded by Nphet.

At a teleconference organised for ministers last Thursday, Dr Holohan faced repeated calls to ease the cocooning guidelines for over-70s. While most ministers prefaced their remarks by praising the work Dr Holohan has been doing, Rural Affairs Minister Michael Ring was described as "openly hostile", while Disabilities Minister Finian McGrath was said to have given the chief medical officer "a hard time".

Tanaiste Simon Coveney along with ministers Paschal Donohoe, Josepha Madigan, Michael Creed, and Shane Ross have also been among those to raise the need to loosen the restrictions on the elderly in private exchanges over recent days.

"There is a really big reluctance to publicly challenge what he has to say - but in the meetings that we have they are saying things which go beyond the pleadings," said a Cabinet minister afterwards.

"I think there is a bit of a mood change - that he [Dr Holohan] has got too much power and he is using it too strictly."

Dr Holohan has been described within Government as "the most powerful person in the history of Irish public life". A government source said: "The scientists feel the politicians are taking cover behind them and how sustainable is that? I don't think it is sustainable for them."

Another Cabinet minister said: "I don't accept that they're all gods and they have all the answers, especially when they cocked up over the nursing homes."

One sign that the political deference is waning is in the Taoiseach's roadmap to recovery. The report broadly follows Nphet's advice on lifting restrictions, but for one key element: the dates on which the shutters would start opening. That decision was purely political.

"From an Nphet perspective, we would probably be more cautious about the dates, because there's obviously the possibility that we will need to reimpose restrictions," said Cillian de Gascun, director of the National Virus Reference Laboratory and chair of Nphet's expert group.

"The phases as described would have come from Nphet. The Government has made a decision to give people some certainty, to give people some hope and I think that is not unreasonable."

The decision to review restrictions every three weeks was also a political one.

The Government chose three weeks, having previously been advised on two week or four week review periods by Nphet.

"There is an argument to be made for waiting for two incubation periods, which is four weeks," Mr de Gascun said yesterday.

But the Government has decided to go with a three-week incubation period which Mr de Gascun said is "a happy medium and that is not unreasonable".

Whether dates are stuck alongside the roadmap or not, there are no guarantees the roadmap will go to plan. "We have provided to Government a framework document saying these are the types of things that would happen over these phases in the coming months," he said.

"We are assuming and hoping that we will be in a position on May 18 to lift restrictions but there is no guarantee. We will be keeping all of the data under review. What happens is anybody's guess."

Visit our Covid-19 vaccine dashboard for updates on the roll out of the vaccination program and the rate of Coronavirus cases Ireland

The determining factors will be the numbers of people in hospital in three weeks' time, the numbers in intensive care, and testing in the community.

The expert group still has "significant" concerns about nursing homes and what wider testing in the community will show.

"I can understand from the Government's perspective why they would like to have clarity, because ultimately that's their role. Our role is to provide the health advice but it obviously has to take in the broader picture," he said.

"We do appreciate that they've got a broader picture to take into account. At this point in time, the priority has to be on public health measures. We make our recommendations on that basis."

Majority

The public, it would seem, is behind Nphet in supporting a slow and cautious easing of restrictions.

Pete Lunn, head of the behavioural research unit at the ESRI, also sits on Nphet's behavioural sub-group. According to research conducted by the ESRI last week, those calling for restrictions to be lifted are a "vocal minority".

The results are still being analysed but they clearly show a "silent majority" want "slow and careful" lifting of the restrictions, he said. "They are a silent majority really. You're hardly hearing those people on the airwaves because of course they're not agitating for anything, they're just sitting in their homes and worrying about it."

And although the research shows the return of pubs and restaurants featured highly when people were asked what changes would make most difference to their lives, there was also a high acknowledgement that this shouldn't happen any time soon.

According to Mr Lunn, a large majority of the public can see there is a trade-off between restrictions they are enduring now and progress in the future.

But there are concerns about how long this caretaker government can continue to count on public support.

Yesterday, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe confirmed a 2bn credit guarantee scheme for SMEs and a plan to allow companies to 'warehouse' their tax liabilities for a year after they begin trading again will need legislation.

"There are a number of decisions that have to be made that will require a decision by the Dail and by the Seanad, and it is very clear to me that there are economic decisions that our country will need that are relevant to keeping jobs and creating new jobs that in the coming weeks will require the election of a new Taoiseach," he said.

At present, the Dail and Seanad can sit but because a government has not been formed they cannot pass laws and there are no parliamentary committees set up to hold officials to account.

Mr Donohoe is said to have articulated his strong belief of the need for a new government at Cabinet last Tuesday. A source familiar with his views said: "You have a government without any legitimacy and massive decisions with incredibly wide-ranging repercussions being essentially made by unelected people. It is the combination of those two that is problematic and is not sustainable."

A Cabinet minister was more blunt: "This is not sustainable, it's just not sustainable."

The country's top civil servant, Martin Fraser, is thought to share the unease about a caretaker government dealing with the crisis. He authored a memo to Cabinet last month which noted the issue of government formation and stated that "it would be important that measures are put in place to enable proper political debate and public accountability".

Ministers say Mr Fraser, a highly respected public servant and an affable sort, has been playing a more prominent role of late.

"He is playing an increasingly large role and I get the feeling there are a lot of civil servants making decisions almost without consulting their ministers," said a Cabinet source. "So the civil servants have huge power and you have Nphet having almost total power."

One worrying example of this, cited by a senior government figure in recent weeks, is a statement issued on Friday, April 17, in response to controversy over nearly 200 foreign workers arriving in the country to pick fruit for Keelings.

The statement, issued in the name of the 'Government of Ireland', did not express any concern about the incident but later that night both the Taoiseach and Dr Holohan said they were uncomfortable with what had happened.

"The Government of Ireland put out a statement that was not in line with the CMO, Taoiseach or the Health Minister's position," the senior figure said.

Some political figures are also displeased that Elizabeth Canavan, the Department of the Taoiseach assistant secretary, is delivering a daily briefing to the media on the Covid-19 response. "Who is she?" said one figure. "A minister or the government press secretary should be briefing the media."

Tension

This weekend there are growing fears across the Government that major decisions on massive public spending measures have been made without a paper trail being developed in departments as happens during normal times. "There is a lot of tension about that," a well-placed source said.

The decision to rent private hospitals for the duration of the crisis is costing the State around 115m a month, far more than the Department of Public Expenditure had anticipated.

Meanwhile, more than 1.3bn in extra health spending announced several weeks ago as the crisis took hold was only formally signed off by ministers at Tuesday's Cabinet meeting.

Elsewhere, Fianna Fail TD Thomas Byrne has repeatedly asked the Department of Education for the written public health advice on the closure of schools and the delay in the Leaving Certificate to no avail. He now wants the exam cancelled altogether - and may get his way in the coming weeks.

This wouldn't be the first time there was a lack of documentation on a government's response to a major crisis. When a review is eventually carried out into how the State responded to the Covid-19 crisis, it will almost certainly find shortcomings in the record-keeping for the monumental and costly decisions that were taken. Ministers and officials will argue it was a crisis where they had to move fast.

But for those who remember the bailout years this is a familiar feeling. "It will be a bit like the banking inquiry," one warned ominously.
Curfew will be imposed in Haryana from 7 pm to 7 am with effect from May 4, state Chief Secretary Keshni Anand Arora said on Sunday.

Haryana's neighbouring state Punjab and common capital Chandigarh had imposed curfew before the nationwide lockdown was announced.

"As per the directions issued by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, the curfew will be imposed in the state from 7 pm to 7 am from May 4, 2020," Arora said.

Haryana has given relaxations from April 20 to restart the economic activities like opening of industry and the shops in non-containment zones while following the Centre's guidelines.

An official release issued on Sunday evening said the Haryana government "is working to bring the health and economic conditions of the people of its state back on track and is taking important steps in this direction".

"Following the guidelines issued by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, while some areas will be given relaxation in Haryana during the third phase of lockdown from May 4, there are some areas where gathering of five or more people will remain restricted," the release said.

Haryana Chief Secretary Keshni Anand Arora gave directions regarding lockdown 3.0 to all the deputy commissioners, superintendents of police and other senior officers during a meeting, the release said.

She made it clear to the officers concerned that their districts will be reviewed every week by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs.

"And if it is found that guidelines are not being followed in an area and is declared as red zone, all supplies except the supply of essential goods will be restricted and all permissions (pertaining to relaxations) will cease with immediate effect," she added.

Arora also directed the officers concerned to ensure that the guidelines of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs are followed at all times while starting the industrial units.

Haryana has a total of 442 coronavirus cases with five COVID19-related deaths.

Director General of Police Manoj Yadava directed the SPs to ensure the seamless management of traffic and to check that masks are worn by everyone even in cars and social distancing is maintained.

He said that anyone who spits in public places should be fined as per rules.

Truck drivers returning from long-distance trips from outside the state should be screened at the police checkpoints with the help of a team from the Health Department, he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Most of Italy's nearly 4,000 museums are set to reopen this month, several weeks after they closed at the start of the national coronavirus lockdown on March 10. But for most tourists, seeing some of the world's greatest cultural treasures -- even months after museums reopen -- will require a virtual tour.

Last week, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced a stage-by-stage easing of national lockdown rules. The first part of the so-called "Phase Two" starts Monday, allowing parks, factories, and building sites to reopen.

Two weeks later, museums will be allowed to reopen on May 18.

Initially, the number of visits is expected to be small. Last week, Minister of Tourism Dario Franceschini said he did not expect foreign tourists, who represent the bulk of the country's tourist industry, to return to Italy in large numbers until 2021. At the start, movement within the country will be limited even for Italians looking to travel outside their region.

Additionally, social distancing rules will reduce the number of visitors who can visit any given museum at any one time.

Florence's sprawling Uffizi Museum, for example, will only allow 450 visitors into the museum at a time, half its normal number.

In Rome, the full exhibit to mark the 500th anniversary of the death of Renaissance master Raphael, will most likely end up shortened to just 15 days, since most of the works loaned to it must be returned. The exhibit, the largest collection of Raphael's work ever gathered in one place, had been scheduled to run from March 5 to June 2, was forced to close its doors just days after it opened.

Other museums say they'll only allow tourists in by reservation or through the use of shifts.

But many of the country's greatest museums are already open 24 hours a day for increasingly sophisticated virtual tours.

The Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, for example, had a well-developed virtual presence even before the lockdown. But the museum's director, James Bradburne, said in an interview that after the museum closed he had staffers working from home focused on further improving the museum's high-definition digital presence.

"I have always thought that a museum was more than what it is hanging on the walls, and so a virtual experience must be more than just posting a digital image of the artwork," Bradburne said. "A museum is about the experience, and our task has been recreating that experience online."

Among the initiatives: an interactive tour allows "visitors" to move around the museum as they would in person. Additionally, the museum posts videos of staffers describing their favorites works of art and there are storytelling initiatives in multiple languages. It seems to be working: Bradburne said that daily visitors to the museum's site rose so quickly that the museum had to change its server.

Dozens of other Italian museums and cultural sites -- ranging from the Uffizi in Florence and the Museum of Modern Art in Bologna to the Palazzo Ducale in Venice and the Colosseum in Rome -- have taken similar steps. Even the Scuderie del Quirinale has set up a virtual tour for the Raphael exhibit aimed at those unable to visit.

"When we closed we started planning a rich schedule of online initiatives on our website and on social media including a virtual tour and a backstage video," Mario De Simoni, president of the Scuderie del Quirinale said in an emailed statement.

Though the focus will turn back toward live visitors after May 18, Bradburne, De Simoni, and others said a focus on sophisticated virtual access to museums will continue far beyond the lockdown and the months of limited museum access to follow.

Luca Desiata, an art curator and a management professor at Rome's LUISS University, said that focus will represent a challenge for some.

"Museums have to make an effort to do virtual tours the right way," Desiata told Xinhua. "It's an expensive, serious process that is difficult for smaller museums."

Patrizia Asproni, president of ConfCultura, an association of museum operators, said that a new focus on virtual tours should be part of a wider effort to make access to culture easier.

"After things return to normal I think we will have to rethink the way we look at museums," Asproni said in an interview. "It's no longer enough to show something. A work of art or of historical significance has to be explained in a compelling way and it has to be made available to as many people as possible."
NCP chief Sharad Pawar has said



the Centre's decision to set up headquarters of the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) at Gandhinagar instead of Mumbai is egregious, erroneous and unwarranted", and urged the Union government to reconsider it.

This will not only cause financial damage to the country, but also bring international discredit to it by undermining the importance of Mumbai, which is the countrys financial capital and the best choice for the IFSC authority, Pawar said in a letter written to the Centre on Saturday.

"Inspite of Maharashtras immense contribution to government securities, the decision to establish IFSC (headquarters) in Gujarat is egregious, erroneous and unwarranted," he said in the letter.

"I expect the Prime Ministers Office to take a rational and judicious decision, keeping aside the state politics and consider it as an issue of utmost national importance, the former Union minister said.

Pawar cited a Reserve Bank of India (RBI) report to put forth his point.

He said according to the RBI data as on April 23, the Indian banking sector has deposits to the tune of Rs 1,45,00,000 crore.

Maharashtra's share in the deposits is 22.8 per cent, followed by Delhi (10 per cent), Uttar Pradesh (7.8 per cent), Karnataka (7.2 per cent) and Gujarat (5.4 per cent), he said.

As per the reserve requirements, every bank has to maintain SLR at 18 per cent of its deposits, in the form of government securities, he said.

"Through this G-sec, the central government receives funds to the tune of Rs 26,00,000 crore, and out of it Rs 5,95,000 crore is received from Maharashtra as against Gujarats contribution of Rs 1,40,000 crore, he said.

"Mumbai has been recognised as one of the worlds top 10 centers of commerce in terms of global financial flow, generating 6.16 per cent of Indias GDP and accounting for 25 per cent of industrial output and 70 per cent of capital transactions to the Indian economy," Pawar said.

The city houses important financial institutions and corporate headquarters of numerous companies, and its business opportunities attract many multi-national companies from all over the world, he noted.

Since the IFSC authority is a unified agency to regulate all international financial services centers in the country, and Mumbai, being country's economic, financial and commercial capital, is the best choice and place to relocate IFSC (headquarters), Pawar said.

He, therefore, urged the Centre to reconsider the decision to set up the IFSC authority in Gujarat and relocate it in Mumbai on the basis of merit.

Pawar said he hoped his letter will be taken in the right spirit and a true statesmanship will be shown in considering to set up the IFSC headquarters in Mumbai.

On Saturday, the Union government's decision to set up the IFSC headquarters at Gandhinagar instead of Mumbai led to a verbal spat between the ruling allies Congress-Shiv Sena and the opposition BJP in Maharashtra.

While the two ruling alliance partners alleged that it was an attempt to lessen Mumbai's stature, the Maharashtra BJP claimed the Congress-led governments did nothing to get IFSC in Mumbai when they ruled the state earlier.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pakistani Actor Adnan Siddiqui Mocked On Live Show For The Death Of Indian Co-Stars Irrfan Khan, Sridevi; He Issues Apology
Last week, I accused the progressives and their

av atar, the Democrat Party, of being the anti-Trump. Anything President Trump is for, they are against. Anything Trump is against, they are for. In a complex time, it greatly simplifies the world.

The problem with this reflexive strategy comes when Trump advocates something the anti-Trumpsters want. There are some games that could be played about what they really want, and a debate could rage about the nuances, but when all the smoke clears, their strategies will still come from the same anti-Trump playbook.

This brings us to Joe Biden. Trump has repeatedly said he would love to run against Biden. That would mean the playbook would demand that Trump not be allowed to run against him. All of which would indicate that somehow the party has to get rid of Biden.

They could find a very attractive running mate, but the rank and file has already eliminated most of those who want to be president. They are all too extreme, too socialist, too white, too not-white, too male, too female, altogether too fringy.

Biden was elevated because enough Democrats thought he had a better chance against Trump than the others, but now it appears this will be true only if enough people will vote for anyone but Trump. Anyone being the key word because Biden will have to come out of his basement, and who knows what would happen then.

What to do?

We will get a hint shortly. Biden has been accused of some improprieties in his relationships with the fairer sex. We need only to see how it plays out in the media.

We will see if Biden gets the Fairfax or the Kavanaugh treatment. It doesnt really matter if he is guilty or not. The media has pragmatically redefined truth as an appropriate political outcome.

The lieutenant governor of Virginia, Justin Fairfax, is an up-and-coming politician with his eyes set on being the next governor. Last year he was accused of sexual assault by a female professor, which supposedly occurred about 16 years ago when Fairfax was a 25-year-old adult. No problem. If anything, Fairfaxs scandal has been a resume builder. The female professor, unlike the one who accused Judge Brett Kavanaugh of something he supposedly did as a teenager, was not even referred to as doctor.

The difference between the Fairfax and the Kavanaugh treatment is not the media remaining silent about Bidens troubles. After all, against all evidence, the media believes itself to be fair, and they will want to say, Yes, we covered the story. Nevertheless, the media, being the ultimate anti-Trumpsters, will fall in line. They will mention the story, but the true indicator will be how long they repeat it, and how they interpret it.

If they agonize over it and wont let it drop and keep bringing it up, then it is all over for Biden. Whomever makes these decisions has decided.

The Democratic Convention this summer will be very interesting, if they even have one.

Dennis Clayson is a marketing professor at the University of Northern Iowa. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect those of the University of Northern Iowa.

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Late on May 2, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) pulled the plug on Mumbai-based CKP Co-operative Bank.

The announcement did not come as a big surprise for many in the bank. Over the years, the banks financial position had worsened beyond redemption, bad loans had spiked significantly and the timeframe given by the central bank to work out a credible revival plan had expired. It was a race against time for the bank's management.

As on April 30, only about Rs 4 crore out of the Rs 158 crore loan book was remaining standard on the lender's books, Moreshwar Dhaimodkar, General Manager of CKP Bank told Moneycontrol. In other words, CKP Banks gross non-performing asset (GNPA) level had zoomed to 97 percent of the total loans.

Also read: CKP Co-operative Bank has 97% NPAs; most to real estate developers

As per the latest available details, the banks net worth had eroded to negative Rs 239 crore. At the last count, total deposits stood at Rs 486 crore, a relatively small amount compared to other bank failures.

But, for some of the 1.31 lakh customers of the bank, this will be their lifes savings. Once the bank goes into liquidation, depositors can claim up to Rs 5 lakh under the modified deposit insurance guarantee scheme. But, those having deposits in the bank beyond that ceiling may have a long and uncertain wait ahead.

What went wrong?

Founded in 1915, and headquartered at Matunga, Mumbai, the bank has eight branches spread across Mumbai and Thane districts. CKP Bank's mistake was no different from that of many other failed cooperative banks  it built its business around a few large borrowers in the real estate sector. The strategy helped the small co-operative bank grow its loan book quicker than rivals, but backfired badly when the tide turned.

Almost all NPAs on CKP Banks book are loans given to small real estate developers. Things were good till about 2012 when the real estate business in Mumbai was booming. Banks built its loan book to around Rs 622 crore at one point. But eventually, some of these big ticket loans turned sticky. Things were fine till a point. But, market turned bad and defaults started coming. About 10 builders owe much of the loans to the bank , said the official quoted above.

Starting 2014, the RBI imposed restrictions on CKP on deposit and advance operations. According to the official, the bank managed to recover some amount in the next few years but a meaningful resolution was not in sight. At end of the April 2020, CKP Bank still had about Rs 154 crore NPAs  almost equal to the size of its loan book. With the reserve bank terminating the operations of the bank, there is uncertainty ahead.

Indias co-operative banking mess

Indias weak co-operative banks have been imploding one after the other. Almost every month, the RBI brings some or the other co-operative bank under restrictions. In most cases, the reasons for failure are financial irregularities or frauds that eventually result in huge spike in NPAs, pushing these banks to the point of collapse. The fact that co-operative banks are traditionally poorly regulated as compared to commercial banks, adds to the woes.

Consider this: for nearly two years, there has been no proper scrutiny of the accounts of many cooperative banks, including Urban Co-operative Banks (UCBs), due to dual regulation and political involvement at state-level. You have a problem when you do not have clarity on who does what and you are unwilling to own up mistakes when things go wrong. Too many cooks spoil the broth, an RBI official said on condition of anonymity.

Regulation of UCBs is split between RBI and Centre/state governments, while that of smaller co-operative banks is divided between the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) and state governments. The regulation of multi-state UCBs fall under the Ministry of Agriculture while that of single-state UCBs come under the Ministry of Finance. Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative bank (PMC) is a multi-state co-operative bank.

RBI or government?

The reserve bank does regulate these banks, but only partly. For instance, when it comes to taking the stock of operations, the Registrar of Co-operative Society (RCS) is the primary authority on behalf of government. Typically, an IAS official on the verge of retirement, the RCS is entrusted with conducting regular scrutiny of these banks and compiling the numbers. But politicians at the state level dominate the running of these banks, and the RCSs are either powerless or in cahoots with the powers-that-be.

According to the latest available data on the RBI website, India had 1,551 urban co-operative banks (UCBs) by March-end 2018. These banks managed Rs 4.5 lakh crore deposits at that point of time. At the state level, there are three types of cooperative banks  primary credit co-operative banks, district level cooperative banks and state-level cooperative banks. As on March-end 2017, there were about 33 state co-operative banks with Rs 1.2 lakh crore deposits, 370 district central co-operative banks (Rs 3.3 lakh crore deposits) and 95,595 Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (Rs 1.15 lakh crore deposits).

PMC effect

PMC bank, which was superseded by the RBI in September 2019, after it was found that the bank was allegedly running fraudulent transactions for several years to facilitate lending to HDIL through fictitious accounts and violating single-party lending rules. The bank had Rs 11,600 crore in deposits. The RBI imposed restrictions on deposit withdrawals and superseded its board after the fraud was caught. Last week, the Bombay High Court constituted a committee to sell HDIL assets and repay depositors.

The RBI has now asked UCBs to report details on borrowers with exposure of Rs 5 crore and above, also when the bank writes off loans worth that amount. Banks are advised to take utmost care about data accuracy and integrity while submitting the data on large credits to the Reserve Bank of India, failing which penal action would be undertaken, the central bank said in a recent circular.

After PMC, the RBI imposed restrictions on Bangalore-based Guru Raghavendra Sahakara (Co-operative) Bank Niyamitha, on January 10, from renewing loans and deposits. The bank was also asked not let withdrawals beyond Rs 35,000 per account. Similar restrictions were imposed on Kolkatas Kolikata Mahila Cooperative Bank Ltd. with deposit withdrawal restrictions of Rs 1,000 per account. On April 17, the RBI cancelled the license of Mapusa Urban Co-operative Bank for financial failure. There are several other such examples.

Not just UCBs

The problem of dual regulation or lack of efficient regulation is not limited to only UCBs, but also for rural co-operative banks. Even rural co-operative banks, which are regulated by RCS and National Bank of Agriculture Development (NABARD), are run opaquely. Here too, for the last two years, no data on the business of these banks are available.

These banks are mostly run by politicians and monitored by RCS. There is often a turf war on who does the job. There are no numbers available for the last two years, a NABARD official said on condition of anonymity.

Learning from the PMC episode, the government in February conferred more powers to the RBI to regulate co-operative banks through an amendment in the Banking Regulation Act. With this amendment, the RBI will have more power to audit the books of urban co-operate banks, appoint Chief Executive Officers and audit co-operative banks. But even now, the proposed changes in the Banking Regulation Act will cover only the urban co-operative banks and not the rural co-operatives.

A resolution is not in sight even after six months of the RBI superseding the PMC board. Compare this with the super-quick resolution of Yes Bank by a clutch of private banks and the State Bank of India, with the help of the RBI. There are no takers for crisis-ridden co-operative banks. The reason is that many of these entities have opaque balance sheets. CKP Bank is the latest instance of a cooperative bank failure. But, it is unlikely to be the last.

(This is an updated version of a story published on Moneycontrol earlier)
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday said the time has come to re-open Delhi and people will have to be ready to live with the novel coronavirus as he announced the implementation of all lockdown relaxations prescribed by the Centre for the 'Red Zone' in the national capital. Addressing an online media briefing, Kejriwal said the Delhi government will suggest to the Centre that only containment areas in the city be declared as red zones and not the entire district.

At present, all 11 districts in the city have been declared as red zones. The chief minister said the ...
T he Government is "optimistic" people will download a phone app to trace the spread of coronavirus.

However, it has also conceded the task to get the contact tracing system running remains "significant".

Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick said on Saturday that he thought the "vast majority" of people would download the app and "play their part" - though insisted it was just one element of the plan to stop the spread.

Contact tracing will be central to the Government's efforts in slowing the spread of coronavirus, and will involve alerting people who have been in contact with an infected person and asking them to self-isolate.

It has been used extensively in South Korea, Hong Kong and Germany, where outbreaks have been contained more quickly.

The Government intends to use an app and a phone team to carry out the tracing.

Robert Jenrick said on Saturday that he thought the "vast majority" of people would download the app / PA

Mr Jenrick told the daily Downing Street press conference: "Contact tracing will rely on all of us in society playing our part but I'm optimistic about the prospects for that.

"This has been a national effort so far - if you think of the different measures that we've brought forward, the restrictions, the vast majority of people have got behind it and I think that they will do again when we are able to launch the app on a national scale."

Coronavirus hits the UK - In pictures 1 /81 Coronavirus hits the UK - In pictures A deserted Westminster Bridge PA A man wearing a face mask or covering due to the COVID-19 pandemic, walks past customers sat outside a restaurant AFP via Getty Images Boris Johnson addresses the nation on the Coronavirus lockdown Andrew Parsons Runners pass cardboard cutouts of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and Prince William during the London Marathon in London AP An empty escalator at Charing Coss London Underground tube station Jeremy Selwyn Electronic bilboards displays a message warning people to stay home in Sheffield PA A sign is displayed in the window of a student accommodation building following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Mancheste Reuters People take part in a 'We Do Not Consent' rally at Trafalgar Square, organised by Stop New Normal, to protest against coronavirus restrictions, in Londo AP People sing and dance in Leicester Square on the eve on the 10PM curfew Reuters Hearts painted by a team of artists from Upfest are seen in the grass at Queen Square, following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Bristol Reuters Graffiti reads 'good luck and stay safe', as the number of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases grow around the world, under a bridge in London Reuters A sign is pictured in Soho, amid the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in London Reuters Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures, during a coronavirus briefing in Downing Street, London AP A person runs past posters with a message of hope, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues in Manchester REUTERS Riot police face protesters who took part in a 'We Do Not Consent' rally at Trafalgar Square, organised by Stop New Normal, to protest against coronavirus restrictions in London AP An image of The Queen eith quotes from her broadcast to the UK and the Commonwealth in relation to the Coronavirus epidemic are displayed on lights in London's Piccadilly Circus PA Military vehicles cross Westminster Bridge after members of the 101 Logistic Brigade delivered a consignment of medical masks to St Thomas' hospital Getty Images Durdle Door in Dorset Reuters Captain Tom Moore via Reuters Mia, aged 8, and Jack, aged 5, take part in "PE with Joe" a daily live workout with Joe Wicks on Youtube to help kids stay fit who have to stay indoors due to the Coronavirus outbreak PA An NHS worker reacts at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital during the Clap for our Carers campaign in support of the NHS Reuters Goats which have taken over the deserted streets of Llandudno @AndrewStuart via PA Tobias Weller PA Novikov restaurant in London with its shutters pulled down while the restaurant is closed London Landscapes: Hyde Park and the Serpentine, central London. Matt Writtle A newspaper vendor in Manchester city centre giving away free toilet rolls with every paper bought as shops run low on supplies due to fears over the spread of the coronavirus PA Theo Clay looks out of his window next to his hand-drawn picture of a rainbow in Liverpool, as the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continue Reuters A young man cuts another man's hair on top of a closed hairdresser in Oxford Reuters General view of the new NHS Nightingale Hospital, built to fight against the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in London via Reuters Jason Baird is seen dressed as Spiderman during his daily exercise to cheer up local children in Stockport, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues Reuters A woman wearing a face mask walks past Buckingham Palace Getty Images A man holds mobile phone displaying a text message alert sent by the government warning that new rules are in force across the UK and people must stay at home PA Medical staff on the Covid-19 ward at the Neath Port Talbot Hospital, in Wales, as the health services continue their response to the coronavirus outbreak. PA Prime Minister Boris Johnson taking part in a virtual Cabinet meeting with his top team of ministers PA A shopper walks past empty shelves in a Lidl store on in Wallington. After spates of "panic buying" cleared supermarket shelves of items like toilet paper and cleaning products, stores across the UK have introduced limits on purchases during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some have also created special time slots for the elderly and other shoppers vulnerable to the new coronavirus. Getty Images People on a busy tube train in London at rush hour PA Mia, aged 8 and her brother Jack, aged 5 from Essex, continue their school work at home, after being sent home due to the coronavirus PA Children are painting 'Chase the rainbows' artwork and springing up in windows across the country Reuters Social distancing in Primrose Hill Jeremy Selwyn A general view of a locked gate at Anfield, Liverpool as The Premier League has been suspended PA Homeless people in London AFP via Getty Images A piece of art by the artist, known as the Rebel Bear has appeared on a wall on Bank Street in Glasgow. The new addition to Glasgow's street art is capturing the global Coronavirus crisis. The piece features a woman and a man pulling back to give each other a kiss PA The Queen leaves Buckingham Palace, London, for Windsor Castle to socially distance herself amid the coronavirus pandemic PA A general view on Grey street, Newcastle as coronavirus cases grow around the world Reuters Matt Raw, a British national who returned from the coronavirus-hit city of Wuhan in China, leaves quaratine at Arrowe Park Hospital on Merseyside PA Britain's Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty (L) and Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance look on as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures as he speaks during a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) news conference inside 10 Downing Street Reuters The ticket-validation terminals at the tram stop on Edinburgh's Princes Street are cleaned following the coronavirus outbreak. PA Locked school gates at Rockcliffe First School in Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear PA A sign at a Sainsbury's supermarket informs customers that limits have been set on a small number of products as the number of coronavirus (COVID-19) cases grow around the world Reuters Jawad Javed delivers coronavirus protection kits that he and his wife have put together to the vulnerable people of their community of Stenhousemuir, between Glasgow and Edinburgh AFP via Getty Images A sign advertising a book titled "How Will We Survive On Earth?" Getty Images A man who appears to be homeless sleeping wearing a mask today in Victoria Jeremy Selwyn A pedestrian walks past graffiti that reads "Diseases are in the City" in Edinburgh AFP via Getty Images Staff from The Lyric Theatre, London inform patrons, as it shuts its doors PA A quiet looking George IV Bridge in Edinburgh PA A quieter than usual British Museum Getty Images A racegoer attends Cheltenham in a fashionable face mask SplashNews.com A commuter wears a face mask at London Bridge Station Jeremy Selwyn A empty restaurant in the Bull Ring Shopping Centre Getty Images A deserted Trafalgar Square in London PA Passengers determined to avoid the coronavirus before leaving the UK arrive at Gatwick Airport Getty Images

Deputy chief medical officer Dr Jenny Harries said to get contact tracing "up and running at scale and effectively" is "another significant task but (there is) lots of preparation under way".

She said: "We need the whole population to work with us on this, it's quite an exciting adventure.

A man wearing a face mask walks past a rainbow graffiti in support of the NHS in Soho / PA

"It's a bit like social distancing, everybody has to do it together to get it to work... We need to be trialling it and we will be doing that very soon."

The number of people who have died in hospitals, care homes and the wider community after testing positive for coronavirus in the UK as of 5pm on Friday rose to 28,131, up by 621.

The death toll has edged closer to that of Italy, which now stands at 28,710 and is the highest in Europe, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

And the number of daily tests both concluded and sent out in the last 24 hours dropped to 105,937.

Of those, the number of people tested also fell - down to 63,667.

It comes as questions were raised over how tests are being counted after Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Friday he had met his target for 100,000 Covid-19 tests per day.

Dr Harries said a breakdown of the more than 4,800 new cases exists but was unable to say what proportion were frontline workers, or people catching the virus in the community.

"We do look at this and there are a number of sub-groups nosocomial, so that's infection spread in care settings and in care homes, where we are absolutely focusing on that because we are looking for any opportunities to interrupt transmission and make sure people are kept safe."

Dr Harries also said:

People will have to carefully consider how they travel to outdoor spaces as lockdown restrictions are eased - and should preferably avoid a pub visit on the way.

Officials "don't have enough information yet" to know whether people can catch coronavirus more than once, and signs of immunity could vary from patient to patient.

There are "some signs" that younger children are potentially less likely to transmit Covid-19, although the quality of the evidence for this is "difficult".

Mr Jenrick announced a 76 million package of support for "the most vulnerable in society" including domestic violence victims and rough sleepers.

He said more than 5,400 rough sleepers known to councils have been offered safe accommodation in the past month, and announced that Dame Louise Casey will lead a new taskforce to tackle the issue.
With its first on-air message on July 4, 1950, Radio Free Europe (RFE) began its mission of providing uncensored news and information to people denied the right of access to a free press. Its first broadcast as substitute or surrogate media took place during the early years of the Cold War and was addressed to audiences behind the Iron Curtain in communist Czechoslovakia. But 70 years on, in a coverage region that has expanded to 26 countries, the essential need for a dependable local news source continues. The balloon campaign of the 1950s exemplified RFE/RLs (RFE merged with Radio Liberty in 1976) commitment to reach its audiences on every platform, across frontiers.

The campaign, comprising a series of launches often referred to collectively as the Winds of Freedom, ran from August 1951 to November 1956 and sent 590,415 balloons that carried 301,636,883 leaflets, posters, books, and other printed matter from West Germany over the Iron Curtain to Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland," according to Herbert A. Friedmans detailed study.

The leaflets were meant to augment and promote RFE news coverage. They included a broadcast schedule and short-wave frequencies on one side and, on the other, information about dissident movements and workers rights, satirical commentaries on communist leaders and policies, illustrations and cartoons, and messages of support and solidarity from the West. Among the books carried by the balloons were reprints of anti-totalitarian literature, including George Orwells Animal Farm.

The balloons were a feat of engineering as well as imagination. Plastic pillow-shaped balloons were produced to take advantage of wind speed and direction and then leak at a predetermined rate before falling with their cargo to a designated city. Round rubber balloons were made to explode in the air and scatter leaflets to a targeted location below. The first balloons were sent to Prague, and were printed on one side with the word Svoboda (freedom) in Czech.

Friedman wrote that The leaflets were a part of the post-WWII psychological warfare battle between East and West. In his book Broadcasting Freedom, Arch Puddington recalls the account of a Czech dissident who told him that the leaflets also provided moral support. "I was sitting with three friends in a restaurant. All of a sudden, one of them, a railroad employee, handed me something under the table. I felt some paper in my hand, which I slipped into my pocket. After a while, I went to the restroom and locked myself in. I took the paper out of my pocket...One after the other, friends disappeared into the restroom to read the leaflets...They left deep impressions on our minds. We were enthusiastic and confident that the free world had not forgotten us."

The governments on the receiving end of the campaigns took notice. After 60,000 balloons were dropped during a campaign known as Operation Prospero, Czech communist authorities deployed anti-aircraft guns and MiG fighter jets to shoot them down. In 1954, West German police stopped a Czech intelligence agent at the border who had orders to burn down one of the launch sites.

RFE historian Prokop Tomek has said the balloon campaign was an idea that could be used in the 1950s only. He explained that its strength was in sending over the border pictures and the printed word  Radio could not do that. He observed that the pamphlets had the additional value of targeting ordinary people, not elites.

RFE/RL archivist Ross Johnson has pointed out that the leaflets were the precursor to the book campaign, another storied effort that harnessed the power of the printed word to supplement radio broadcasts in closed societies, and carry RFE/RLs message of hope and freedom.

With thanks to Richard H. Cummings, Balloons Over East Europe: Americas Covert Radio and Leaflet Operations in the Cold War. Falling Leaf Magazine: The Quarterly Journal of the PsyWar Society, Issue No. 197, Summer 2008.
More than six lakh migrants stuck in Punjab due to the coronavirus lockdown have applied with the state government for returning to their respective states, official said on Sunday.

Most of them are migrant labourers from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand, they said.

The state has around 10 lakh migrant workers, of which 7 lakh are in Ludhiana alone.

The Punjab government had asked those who wish to return to their native places to apply online and 6,44,378 migrants have registered.

According to a government data, 3.43 lakh of them are from Uttar Pradesh and 2.35 lakh from Bihar.

Over 10,000 people have registered to return to Jharkhand and West Bengal and 5,000 migrants wish to go back to Jammu and Kashmir, the data said.

Migrants have also registered to return to Andaman and Nicobar, Arunachal Pradesh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Goa, Nagaland, Sikkim, Puducherry, among other states and union territories.

Earlier this week, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) allowed the states to ferry migrant labourers, students and tourists back home in buses or special trains.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Exactly one year since his audacious coup attempt failed spectacularly, self-declared Venezuelan president Juan Guaido is once again trying to overthrow the government of Nicolas Maduro. Today I speak to the patriotic soldiers of our Armed Forces who rebelled against hunger and destruction and sided with the constitution, he announced on social media last night, To the majority of patriotic soldiers who are still in each branch of the Armed Forces: today, more than ever, there are obvious reasons for them to act and support the formation of a National Emergency Governmentwe are going to liberate all of Venezuela. In a separate video published today, Guaido addressed Maduro directly: Every political agreement to save Venezuela begins with your departure from power, he said, demanding his immediate resignation.

You have to be kidding me. Again?? The same tweet  again  on and on and on https://t.co/k9QJVOs5Yx  Julia Buxton (@BuxtonJulia) May 1, 2020

Guaidos call for the military to come over to his side and for Maduro to step down comes precisely one year after his most notable coup attempt, which primarily consisted of him standing on an overpass near a military base, claiming to have taken it over and to lead a huge rebel army. This narrative was rudely interrupted when state media rushed there and filmed the base in a state of complete normalcy, soldiers and even commanders unaware of their supposed defeat. Guaido continued to address the nation via social media, claiming the small group of people around him in non-matching military uniforms were actual defecting soldiers. The day, like his three other coup attempts that year, ended in embarrassing defeat. The government brushed off the action, labelling it a small coup attempt.

However, there are reasons why the U.S. might be able to force their candidate on Venezuela this time. For one, the Trump administration has frozen and transferred $342 million from the Central Bank of Venezuelas Citibank account to Guaido, who is using the Venezuelan peoples collective wealth to pay his supporters $5,000 per month, an enormous salary in Venezuela. He is also offering local medical workers a stipend during the coronavirus pandemic, hoping to increase his base of support. At a time of collapsing oil prices (the countrys major export) the United States has also sent warships to the region to tighten sanctions against the country, all under the guise of an anti-drug operation. Venezuela imports a great deal of food, and much of it is controlled by oligarchical corporations linked to the opposition. For example, over half of the countrys flour is controlled by Empresas Polar, (the countrys largest private company) whose CEO, Lorenzo Mendoza, considered standing as the oppositions presidential candidate in 2018. Mendoza has regularly used his power to starve the country at times of political tension.

On the other hand, Guaido is as unpopular as he has ever been inside the country, even among the opposition, who removed him from his post as head of the National Assembly in January. His own political party, Voluntad Popular, also expelled him from their ranks. Opposition presidential candidate in 2018, Henri Falcon recently attacked his credibility, asking if oil company CITGO is truly in his hands, why is there a gasoline shortage in the country. The most recent polls show he has a 10 percent approval and a 69 percent disapproval rating. He is even unpopular among his fellow coup-plotters; after a failed attempt in January 2019, his co-conspirators fled to the United States, thinking they would be given a heros welcome. Instead, they have spent over a year in an ICE concentration camp for crossing the border illegally. The highest ranking member of the group told reporters that they feel abandoned by Guaido.

While Maduro is often disparaged in Western media because of his working class roots (he was a bus driver and union organizer before entering politics), Guaido is constantly presented as the true humble man of the people. This, despite the fact his father was an international airline pilot, sending his son to private schools and a private university in Washington, D.C. It appears he is unable to travel freely around the country for fear of coming into contact with working class people. In February, for example, he touched down at Simon Bolivar International Airport in Caracas, where enraged crowds of travelers and even airline employees began hectoring, jeering and manhandling him, dousing him in water and other, less sanitary liquids, shouting that he was a traitor and a fascist. The incident was unironically described across Western media as him being greeted by a throng of cheering supporters.

Thus, while the COVID-19 pandemic makes Venezuela more economically weak than ever, it appears unlikely that Guaidos latest action will result in the sudden overthrow of the Maduro government, in power since 2013.

Feature photo | Opposition leader Juan Guaido speaks during a press conference in Caracas, Venezuela, March 9, 2020. Matias Delacroix | AP

Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent. He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, Common Dreams the American Herald Tribune and The Canary.
LifeWay announces temporary budget cuts, staff reductions in response to coronavirus

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Prominent Christian publishing company LifeWay Christian Resources will undergo freezes on the budget and reductions in staff due to the economic impact of the coronavirus.

The Nashville, Tennessee-based company announced Wednesday that they were going to enact temporary budget cuts beginning on Friday, expecting the measures to cut $25-$30 million of recurring expenses from their operating budget.

LifeWay will also reduce their staff, halt all new hiring, and suspend salary raises, with members of their leadership team giving up one months salary starting next month.

LifeWay CEO Ben Mandrell explained in the announcement that this was in response to a steep drop in sales starting in March, as shutdown and quarantine orders were being issued.

LifeWay stands to lose tens of millions of dollars of revenue that the organization would normally generate over the summer months from camps, events, VBS and ongoing curriculum sales, stated Mandrell.

LifeWay is mitigating these losses as much as possible through various expense reduction plans, including staff reductions and cuts in non-employee expenses. Additionally, LifeWay will likely have to use money from its reserves to cover a portion of the lost revenue.

The company explained that before the spread of COVID-19, they were faring well financially, having ended the first quarter 3 percent ahead of budget.

However, with the coronavirus shutdowns, LifeWay experienced five consecutive weeks of steep revenue decline across all sales channels, with revenue being down 24 percent compared to the same time last year.

LifeWay reported that the decline was largely due to a large decrease in bulk orders from churches for resources like Sunday School curriculum and Vacation Bible School.

Since our mission is tied so closely to local churches, we expect the impact of COVID-19 to continue to be felt here at LifeWay as churches slowly and cautiously begin to reopen their facilities and gather in person, added Mandrell.

 the good news is the local church will rebound and recover, but it will take time and will introduce new ways of thinking about ministry.

Earlier this month, some Christian publishing companies reported increases in Bible sales during March compared to the same time last year, likely due to fears over COVID-19.

Tyndale House Publishers reported that their Life Application Study Bible sales went up 44% and sales of the Immerse Bible went up 60%, compared to March 2019.

Jim Jewell, an executive at Tyndale, told The Christian Post in an earlier interview that he believes concerns over the pandemic has upended almost everyones lives in some way.

It's not surprising that people turn to the comfort and clarity of the Bible in times of trouble and uncertainty, he said, explaining that social media engagement also grew.

On [our Facebook page for the] New Living Translation, where we post Bible verse memes, engagement was triple what it was last March and up 72% from just last month.
A cancer patient undergoing treatment at a private hospital in Delhi was discharged after he tested positive for coronavirus, following which his family brought him here and he was sent to AIIMS, Rishikesh, officials said on Sunday.

The man was admitted to AIIMS on Saturday immediately after the administration here was informed that he had tested positive for coronavirus, Uttarakhand Directorate of Health spokesperson JC Pandey said.

The resident of Chaman Vihar area here was admitted to Delhi's Apollo Hospital on April 28 for cancer treatment. He tested positive for COVID-19 on April 30 andwas discharged the same day.

On May 1, his family brought him here, Pande said.

After the patient was hospitalised, his five family members were also kept in isolation as a precautionary measure and the entire Chaman Vihar area was sealed.

His son is in the isolation ward of AIIMS, Rishikesh and four other family members have been admitted to the Doon Hospital here, the official said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Retired police personnel have joined hands to provide safety kits to their juniors, working at the frontline during the Covid-19 outbreak. The retirees include former assistant commissioners of police (ACPs) and senior inspectors of the 1983 batch, who donated face shields, hand sanitizers and gloves, in various districts in the past four weeks. So far, 15 retired police officers have contributed to the cause. Around 2,000 safety kits have been distributed so far. Orders have been placed for 4,000 more kits.

I was in service for 31 years and have seen many critical situations, but nothing can beat this lockdown. When I came to know that some cops have contracted the virus, I decided to distribute the safety gear. I talked to some former colleagues who helped me with the funds. So far, I have distributed over 2,000 safety kits to various police stations like Powai, Sakinaka, MIDC, Sahar, Thane- Rural: Mira Road and Bhayandar division, Palghar etc. My other mates are also joining the initiative and we have placed an order for 4,000 more safety kits, said D D Wadmare, retired ACP from the 1983 batch.

The batch of 1983 has collected around Rs 90,000 to buy the safety kits.

Rajan Ghule, former ACP from Dindoshi division, said, As soon as I came to know about Wadmares initiative, I requested to get kits for the officers in my locality. This initiative will boost the morale of the policemen.

Another retired ACP, Popatmaharaj Tiwatne, said, Policemen have to travel in the deepest areas to along with the medical team. Their safety is as important as those of doctors. Distribution of these kits will assure them to fight Covid-19 in a better way.
Mogadishu, Somalia (PANA)  Marking World Press Freedom Day on Sunday, the United Nations envoy to Somalia called for local journalists to be able to perform their work freely
By Sangmi Cha (Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made his first public appearance in three weeks, state media reported on Saturday, after an unexplained absence fuelled questions about who would take over the nuclear-armed state in the event of his death. Pyongyang has never announced who would lead the country were Kim to be incapacitated, and with no details known about his young children, analysts say his sister and loyalists could form a regency until a successor is ready to take over. Such speculation intensified after Kim, believed to be about 36 years old, missed a key state anniversary event on April 15 and rumours spread that he had become seriously ill or died.

By Sangmi Cha

(Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made his first public appearance in three weeks, state media reported on Saturday, after an unexplained absence fuelled questions about who would take over the nuclear-armed state in the event of his death.

Pyongyang has never announced who would lead the country were Kim to be incapacitated, and with no details known about his young children, analysts say his sister and loyalists could form a regency until a successor is ready to take over.

Such speculation intensified after Kim, believed to be about 36 years old, missed a key state anniversary event on April 15 and rumours spread that he had become seriously ill or died.

Each change at the top in North Korea has raised the prospect of a leadership vacuum or collapse of the Kim dynasty, which has ruled the country since its founding in 1948.

Kim became leader when his father Kim Jong Il died in 2011 from a heart attack.

So far, each of the three Kims to rule North Korea has defied expectations, holding on to power with an iron grip. But under Kim Jong Un, North Korea's arsenal of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles has grown substantially, raising concerns over who would control them.

The following are key figures in the North Korean leadership circle and what role they may play in any transition.

KIM YO JONG

Kim's younger sister has been the most visible presence around the leader in the past two years, serving formally as a vice director of the ruling Workers' Party's powerful Central Committee but unofficially as her brother's chief of staff.

She was again prominently at his side in state media photos published on Saturday showing Kim attending an event to mark the completion of a fertiliser factory.

Kim Yo Jong was named an alternate member of the ruling Workers' Party's powerful Central Committee Politburo this month, continuing her climb through the leadership hierarchy.

The leader's sister, believed to be 31, has a firm control of key party functions, setting herself to be the main source of power behind a collective leadership.

"Kim Yo Jong will be for the time being the main power base with control of the organisation and guidance department, the judiciary and public security," said Cho Han-bum of the Korea Institute for National Unification, a government-funded think-tank in Seoul.

PARTY ELDERS

Choe Ryong Hae rose to be North Korea's nominal head of state last year as president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly.

This capped decades of service with the party for the ruling Kim family, following his role as the influential political head of the military under the young leader.

Choe and Pak Pong Ju, a fellow politburo member and former state premier who oversaw the North's push to introduce more free-market functions to revive its economy, are likely to be the figureheads leading a collective leadership, analysts say.

Kim Yong Chol, a party vice chairman and former top nuclear envoy not related to the Kim dynasty, and Foreign Minister Ri Son Gwon could be tasked with handling diplomatic issues, including stalled denuclearisation talks with the United States, as they played a key role in Kim Jong Un's summits with U.S. President Donald Trump.

ESTRANGED BROTHERS, AUNT

Kim Jong Chol is the leader's older brother but has not been part of the country's leadership, instead leading a quiet life playing music, according to Thae Yong Ho, North Korea's former deputy ambassador in London, who defected to the South.

He is believed to be disinterested in public life and is unlikely to emerge as a major presence, though some analysts say he maintains ties with siblings and could play a more public role in a contingency.

Kim Kyong Hui was once a powerful figure in the leadership circle when her brother Kim Jong Il ruled the country. But she has not been seen since her husband, Jang Song Thaek, once regarded as the second most powerful man in the country, was executed in 2013 by Kim Jong Un. She has long been ill but briefly appeared early this year at a gala performance alongside her nephew.

FOURTH GENERATION

Kim Jong Un is believed to have three children with Ri Sol Ju, the youngest born in 2017, according to the South's National Intelligence Service.

The oldest is a 10-year-old son, meaning any of the three would need the assistance of their relatives or political guardians if they were to become a fourth-generation hereditary leader.

Kim Jong Il had been groomed for 20 years to lead the country, while Kim Jong Un had just over a year to prepare, due to his father's sudden death from a heart attack.

"Kim Yo Jong is unlikely to take over the helm but could help build a caretaker regime as a power broker until the kids grow up, and Kim Jong Chol might return to help for a while," said Go Myong-hyun, a research fellow at the Asian Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul.

(Reporting by Sangmi Cha; Additional reporting by Hyonhee Shin; Writing by Jack Kim and Josh Smith; Editing by Stephen Coates)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
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Since his transformation into a born-again Christian, Kanye West seems intent on changing everything about himself, and the world around him. His music has evolved, his style is shifting to fit his new ideas, and hes even creating a brand-new sense of community with his Sunday services, and on his new ranch in Cody, Wyoming. The billionaire rapper is a dominating force. Hes more than capable of shaping the world and the way others think. And as he recently revealed, West even wants to change the way we communicate.

Kanye West considers words to be the lowest form of communication

As an artist, West knows there are many ways to transmit an idea. Music, body language, and symbols are all effective ways to communicate, even though our first instinct is usually to use spoken language. According to West, however, words should be our last choice.

I think words are one of the lowest forms of communication, he told GQ. Music, sound, food, dancing are all nonverbal forms of communication. We get so wrapped up into words. We got to make things speechless. We have to make things to the level where no one can say anything.

This may sound like a crazy idea, but West is already practicing communication without words in his everyday life. Instead, hes using his music, clothing, and even architectural choices to communicate ideas. And then there are other, less traditional methods, like beeping and swapping memories, which West is experimenting with, as well.

Kanye West uses alternative forms of communication

West envisions a world where ideas are communicated in other ways, and hes starting that transition already with the way he interacts with those around him.

The greatest freedom is to challenge the vernacular, West said, before explaining an example of how hes making that change in his own communication. When he came across Matt Williams, an Alyx designer, in a hotel lobby, it gave West the perfect opportunity to create an alternative exchange.

Right when I saw him, I started communicating in, like, beep sounds, he said, likening the discussion to the beginning of a Bobby Digital song. Its unclear whether Williams understood the beeps, but when asked if he beeped back, West said their conversation transitioned into yet another form of communication.

We hugged and started using memories to attempt to communicate the future, he said. Unfortunately, West doesnt remember what their conversation actually entailed. Instead, he just remembers the way that it felt.

Kanye West is creating a paradigm shift for humanity

Kanye West | Scott Dudelson/FilmMagic

In the last couple of years, West has certainly surprised the public with a number of interesting ideas. His concept of communication is only a small part of the changes that he wants to see take place in the world. Currently, West shares his ideas during his weekly Sunday services, but hes working on another option as well.

Last year, West purchased nearly 4,000 acres just outside Cody, Wyoming. Hes been busy converting the property into an area where he, and many of his followers, can live out the ideals that West proclaims. In the GQ interview, he refers to the ranch as Yeezy campus, and a place where people can focus on creating a paradigm shift for humanity.

In order to bring his ideas into reality, West has recruited several celebrity architects to help design the ranchs buildings and structure, including legendary light-and-space artist James Turrell, Belgian designer Axel Vervoordt, and Italian architect Claudio Silvestrin. Together, West says they are focused on developing a new architectural language for the ranch.

This appears to be another non-verbal way that hes communicating his ideas with the world. It may be hard for some of us to understand, but West appears to have a clear idea of what hes trying to accomplish, and hes very focused on making that a reality. The rest of us will just have to wait to see how Wests ideas unfold.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 20:50:53|Editor: huaxia

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ANKARA, May 3 (Xinhua) -- Turkish security forces "neutralized" at least 12 members of the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) in northern Syria, Turkey's Defense Ministry said on Sunday.

"A harassment fire was opened with vehicles loaded 'Dushka' (heavy machine gun)," said the ministry in a written statement.

It added that "an attempt to infiltrate from another direction was also initiated in coordination with this activity towards our elements in the southwest of Tel-Abyad settlement in the region of 'Operation Peace Spring' on late May 2."

"It was determined that around 10-15 PKK/YPG terrorists participated in the attack. 12 terrorists were neutralized as a result of the accurate fire shootings. No casualties occurred in our troops or friendly elements," it said.

Turkish authorities often use the word "neutralized" in statements to imply the "terrorists" who surrendered or were killed or captured.

Turkey sees the YPG group as the Syrian branch of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

The Turkish army launched Operation Euphrates Shield in 2016, Operation Olive Branch in 2018, Operation Peace Spring in 2019 and Operation Spring Shield in 2020 in order to create a YPG-free zone along its border within Syria.

The PKK, listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the EU, launched a 30-year armed campaign against the Turkish state which caused the lives of more than 40,000 people. Enditem
Boris Johnsons most senior aide is facing fresh allegations he flouted lockdown rules by taking a sightseeing trip on Easter Sunday.

The prime minister is facing mounting calls to sack Dominic Cummings amid claims he made several trips to see his family in County Durham, while the country was being told to stay at home.

Ministers vociferously defended Mr Cummings after it emerged he had made the 260-mile journey, insisting he had obeyed the rules by staying in one place while there.

However, an eyewitness told The Observer and the Sunday Mirror he had seen Mr Cummings on 12 April, 30 miles from Durham in Barnard Castle.

Another eyewitness said they saw the prime ministers most trusted aide in Durham on 19 April, days after he had been photographed returning to Downing Street.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 30 December 2021 Sunrise at Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 29 December 2021 The Very Revd Dr Robert Willis, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, looks at Becket, a six month old red-billed chough as he visits Wildwood Wildlife Park in Kent on the anniversary of the murder of Thomas Becket PA UK news in pictures 28 December 2021 Troops of the Household Cavalry are seen reflected in a puddle during the changing of the Queens Life Guard, on Horse Guards Parade, in central London PA UK news in pictures 27 December 2021 A pedestrian walks past a winter sale sign outside a John Lewis store on Oxford street in London Getty UK news in pictures 26 December 2021 Riders take their bikes through the snow near Castleside, County Durham PA UK news in pictures 25 December 2021 Patrick Corkery wears a santa hat and beard as waves crash over him at Forty Foot near Dublin during a Christmas Day dip PA UK news in pictures 24 December 2021 People stand inside Kings Cross Station on Christmas Eve in London Reuters UK news in pictures 23 December 2021 Christmas shoppers fill the car park at Fosse Shopping Park in Leicester PA UK news in pictures 22 December 2021 The sun rises behind the stones as people gather for the winter solstice at Stonehenge. Getty UK news in pictures 21 December 2021 People take part in a winter solstice swim at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh to mark the solstice and to witness the dawn after the longest night of the year PA UK news in pictures 20 December 2021 An auction employee displays poultry to buyers and sellers attending the Christmas Poultry Sale at York Auction Centre in Murton PA UK news in pictures 19 December 2021 Joao Moutinho of Wolverhampton Wanderers looks on during the Premier League match between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea at Molineux Getty Images UK news in pictures 18 December 2021 Freight lorries queuing at the port of Dover in Kent PA UK news in pictures 17 December 2021 Newly elected Liberal Democrat MP Helen Morgan, bursts 'Boris' bubble' held by colleague Tim Farron, as she celebrates following her victory in the North Shropshire by-election PA UK news in pictures 16 December 2021 Brussels sprouts are harvested by workers as they prepare for the busy Christmas period near Boston in Lincolnshire PA UK news in pictures 15 December 2021 Lewis Hamilton is made a Knight Bachelor by the Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 14 December 2021 The Royal Liver Buildings surrounded by early morning fog in Liverpool PA UK news in pictures 13 December 2021 People queue outside a walk-in Covid-19 vaccination centre at St Thomas's Hospital in Westminster Getty Images UK news in pictures 12 December 2021 People take part in the Big Leeds Santa Dash in Roundhay Park, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 11 December 2021 People arrive at a Covid-19 vaccination centre at Elland Road in Leeds, PA UK news in pictures 10 December 2021 Stella Moris speaks to the media after the US Government won its High Court bid to overturn a judges decision not to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange PA UK news in pictures 9 December 2021 Camels are lead around Salisbury Cathedral during a rehearsal for the Christmas Eve Service PA UK news in pictures 8 December 2021 Margaret Keenan and Nurse May Parsons, a year after Margaret was the first person in the UK to receive the Pfizer vaccine PA UK news in pictures 7 December 2021 Snowfall in Leadhills, South Lanarkshire as Storm Barra hits the UK with disruptive winds, heavy rain and snow PA UK news in pictures 6 December 2021 A person tries to avoid sea spray on New Brighton promenade in Wallasey as the UK readies for the arrival of Storm Barra Getty UK news in pictures 5 December 2021 People release balloons during a tribute to six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes outside Emma Tustin's former address in Solihull, West Midlands, where he was murdered by his stepmother PA UK news in pictures 4 December 2021 People walk through a Christmas market in Trafalgar Square Reuters UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 A pedestrian carries a dog as they dodge shoppers on Oxford Street in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 2 December 2021 Duchess of Cambridge inspects a Faberge egg at the Victoria and Albert Museum Getty UK news in pictures 1 December 2021 Meerkats at London Zoo with an advent calendar PA UK news in pictures 30 November 2021 Workers put the finishing touches to the Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree ahead of the lighting ceremony later in the week PA UK news in pictures 29 November 2021 Home Secretary Priti Patel is greeted by a police dog at a special memorial service for Met Police Sergeant Matiu Ratana Getty UK news in pictures 28 November 2021 Riyad Mahrez of Manchester City battles for possession with Aaron Cresswell of West Ham United during a match at the Etihad during snow Manchester City/Getty UK news in pictures 27 November 2021 Residents clear branches from a fallen tree in Birkenhead, north west England as Storm Arwen triggered a rare red weather warning AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 An aerial picture shows a worker using a quad bike and trailer to transport freshly harvested trees at Pimms Christmas Tree farm in Matfield, southeast England AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 26 November 2021 A shopper browses Christmas trees for sale at Pines and Needles in Dulwich, London Reuters UK news in pictures 25 November 2021 A murmuration of hundreds of thousands of starlings fly over a field at dusk in Cumbria, close to the Scottish border PA UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 A pedestrian carries a dog as they dodge shoppers on Oxford Street in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 24 November 2021 Migrants are helped ashore from a RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) lifeboat at a beach in Dungeness, on the south-east coast of England, on November 24, 2021, after being rescued while crossing the English Channel. AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 23 November 2021 The coffin of Sir David Amess is carried past politicians, including former Prime Ministers Sir John Major, David Cameron and Theresa May, Speaker of the House of Commons Sir Lindsay Hoyle, Home Secretary Priti Patel and Prime Minister Boris Johnson during the requiem mass for the MP at Westminster Cathedral, central London PA UK news in pictures 22 November 2021 The scene in Dragon Rise, Norton Fitzwarren, Somerset where police have launched a murder probe after two people were found dead Tom Wren/SWNS UK news in pictures 21 November 2021 London-based midwife Sarah Muggleton, 27, takes part in a 'March with Midwives' in central London to highlight the crisis in maternity services PA UK news in pictures 20 November 2021 Police officers monitor as climate change activists sit down and block traffic during a protest action in solidarity with activists from the Insulate Britain group who received prison terms for blocking roads, on Lambeth Bridge in central London AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 19 November 2021 A giant installation of Prime Minister Boris Johnson made from recycled clothing goes on display at Manchester Central, as part of Manchester Art Fair, in a 'wake-up call for the Prime Minister to tackle textile waste' PA UK news in pictures 18 November 2021 The scene at a recycling centre in Stert, near Devizes in Wiltshire after a large blaze was brought under control. The fire broke out on Wednesday night the fire service has said and local residents were advised to keep windows and doors shut due to large amounts of smoke PA UK news in pictures 17 November 2021 The sun rises over South Shields Lighthouse, on the North East coast of England PA UK news in pictures 16 November 2021 ancer Maithili Vijayakumar at the launch of 2021 Diwali celebrations at St Andrew Square in Edinburgh PA UK news in pictures 15 November 2021 Forensic officers work outside Liverpool Women's Hospital, following a car blast, in Liverpool Reuters UK news in pictures 14 November 2021 Wreaths by the Cenotaph after the Remembrance Sunday service in Whitehall, London PA UK news in pictures 13 November 2021 Richard Ratcliffe, the husband of detainee Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, is ending his hunger strike in central London after almost three weeks. Ratcliffe has spent 21 days camped outside the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office in London without food. He began his demonstration on 24 October after his wife lost her latest appeal in Iran, saying his family was caught in a dispute between two states PA

Earlier, Downing Street had described the first trip as essential, saying Mr Cummings needed his familys help to care for his young son because his wife was sick with coronavirus and he feared he was next.

Cabinet ministers lined up to defend Mr Cummings, saying he had put his family first and accused critics of trying to politicise the issue.

Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, used the daily Downing Street press conference to suggest that Mr Cummings had not broken lockdown rules because he had stayed put upon arrival in Durham.

But Robin Lees, 70, a retired chemistry teacher, told the papers he had seen Mr Cummings in Barnard Castle on Easter Sunday.

Mr Lees compared him to Catherine Calderwood, Scotlands former chief medical officer, who stood down after visiting her second home twice during lockdown.

Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP have written to Sir Mark Sedwill, the cabinet secretary, calling for an inquiry into Mr Cummingss decision to travel from London to Durham.

They want the probe to include when the prime minister was made aware Mr Cummings had left the capital.

Senior Tories also expressed concern that Mr Cummings's behaviour could encourage others to flout the rules, jeopardising the governments plans to gradually lift the lockdown.

The Independent can reveal that senior MPs are set to question Mr Johnson over Mr Cummings later this week, as pressure grows on the prime minister to explain what he knew about the trip under lockdown.

Parliament is in recess until June, meaning Mr Johnson will not have to face MPs at Prime Ministers Questions.

But members of the Commons Liaison Committee, which is made up of the chairs of other select committees, said they expected Mr Johnson to be questioned about Mr Cummings when he makes his first appearance before them later this week.

Pete Wishart, an SNP MP who sits on the committee and is a member of the "quad" which organises its business, said: If nothing has changed and Dominic Cummings is still in post by Wednesday, it would be very surprising if this was an issue that was not raised.

Another member of the committee said: Im sure one of my colleagues will crowbar the Cummings question in.

In a statement defending Mr Cummings, Downing Street said his trip had been essential to ensure his young son was properly cared for. After an offer of help from his sister and nieces, he travelled to a house near to but separate from his extended family.

A spokesperson for No 10, said: "Yesterday [Friday] the Mirror and Guardian wrote inaccurate stories about Mr Cummings. Today [Saturday] they are writing more inaccurate stories including claims that Mr Cummings returned to Durham after returning to work in Downing Street on 14 April. We will not waste our time answering a stream of false allegations about Mr Cummings from campaigning newspapers."

There was confusion about the involvement of police, however. No 10 also said that at no stage was Mr Cummings or his family spoken to by the police.

On Saturday night Durham Police took the unusual step of confirming they had spoken to Mr Cummingss father.

Steve White, the police and crime commissioner for Durham Police, a former head of the Police Federation in England and Wales, said it was "most unwise" for Mr Cummings to have travelled when "known to be infected".

The SNP accused No 10 of a "cover up" after reports some in Downing Street knew Mr Cummings had made the 260-mile journey during lockdown.

Former Tory cabinet minister David Lidington, Theresa Mays de facto deputy prime minister, told Newsnight: "There's clearly serious questions that No 10 are going to have to address, not least because the readiness of members of the public to follow government guidance more generally is going to be affected by this sort of story."

Professor Neil Ferguson, the epidemiologist whose modelling prompted the lockdown, quit as a government adviser for flouting the rules when he was visited at this home by his lover.

At the time Mr Hancock, the health secretary, said he was "speechless" and that he backed any police action against Mr Ferguson.

Sir Ed Davey, acting leader of the Liberal Democrats, called for Mr Cummings to quit over the allegations, while a spokesperson for Labour said: "The British people do not expect there to be one rule for them and another rule for Dominic Cummings."

Asked by reporters on Saturday if he had considered his position, Mr Cummings said "obviously not".
Covidiots who continually flout lockdown laws could face fines of more than 3,000 under new government proposals.

Government chiefs are considering increasing fines up to a maximum of 3,200 for repeat offenders, and 100 for first time rule-breakers.

The move is part of a crackdown on those breaking strict lockdown laws, which were put in place in March to help slow the spread of coronavirus.

The eye-watering maximum fine would be for an offender caught for a sixth time, with fines set to double for each repeat offence.

It means a sixth time offender would accumulate fines totalling 6,300.

The move comes as some Britons continue to flout the rules, with more than 9,000 fines issued throughout England and Wales in the four weeks to April 27.

Government chiefs are considering increasing fines for those who breach coronavirus lockdown laws to up a maximum of 3,200. Pictured: A police officer speaks with a topless man in St James Park in London

The move is part of a crackdown on those breaking strict lockdown laws, which were put in place in March to help slow the spread of coronavirus. Pictured: Police in Glastonbury Market Place broke up a Free Love Cannabis protest today

More than 9,000 fines were issued for breaches of lockdown laws throughout England and Wales in the four weeks to April 27

Minister for the Cabinet Office Michael Gove revealed to MPs that more than 3,200 fines had been issued to people between March 27 and April 13. Pictured: A group of people on Crystal Palace Park today

Police handed out 400 fixed penalty notices to repeat offenders in the four weeks to April 27 in England and Wales, while one person was even fined six times, the Sunday Telegraph reports.

Last month, Minister for the Cabinet Office Michael Gove revealed to MPs that more than 3,200 fines had been issued to people between March 27 and April 13.

A Whitehall source told the paper said: 'In the next phase of our fight against coronavirus, some of the social distancing measures will be relaxed, others will be toughened up.

'Hand in hand with the new rules will come tougher enforcement powers for the police to crack down on the small minority who break the rules - and stop them putting everyone else at greater risk.'

Downing Street has previously said ramping up the fines was an option but such a course would only be taken if people repeatedly ignored or disregarded the current penalties.

Officers have been told to use their common sense when dealing with gatherings, with fines only used if warnings and persuasion prove ineffective.

But while the vast majority of the country has abided by the rules, some covidiots have continued to act out.

Today, police in Glastonbury Market Place broke up a Free Love Cannabis protest.

Last week, dozens of revellers posed for a picture during a group drinking session in breach of lockdown rules - while shoppers queued outside reopened DIY stores and motorists returned to the streets of London on Monday.

Around 30 people gathered for an outdoor party last weekend in Coatbridge, Lanarkshire.

Around 30 people gathered for an outdoor party in Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, last month, despite rules banning gatherings of people

One of the group joked online that they were 'away for a social distance swally' and that she would 'probs be in the cells for 4'.

Last week, a group of covidiots left behind empty vodka bottles and beer cans after an unauthorised party at a beauty spot' at Whitfield Valley Nature reserve in Staffordshire.

Yesterday, in Basingstoke, Hampshire, groups of people defied government rules by gathering for an anti-lockdown 'protest'.

The protesters held a demonstration in a children's park and have vowed to meet every week to take a stand against lockdown measures, claiming coronavirus deaths have been exaggerated.

And in London, a protest by 5G conspiracy theorists saw a group of people take part in a 'group hug' outside the Metropolitan Police's headquarters, New Scotland Yard.

Yesterday a group of anti-lockdown protesters held a 'group hug' outside the Metropolitan Police's New Scotland Yard headquarters. The group held signs including 'no more lockdown' and 'my body my choice'

The group, which included young children, held up signs which included the slogans 'my body, my choice', 'we do not consent' and 'no more lockdown'.

One man was arrested on suspicion of failing to comply with the direction of a police constable and assault on police. He was taken into custody yesterday.

Since Britain was put into lockdown in March, the public is only supposed to go outside for essential shopping/medical appointments or taking part in one hour's exercise.

Key workers are allowed to commute to and from work.

The rules were put in place to slow the spread of coronavirus, which has infected more than 180,000 people across the UK.

The government announced 621 more people had died from coronavirus yesterday, bringing the total number of deaths to 28,131.
Nine pastors have been arrested in Bayelsa State, South-South Nigeria, for holding church service in alleged contravention of the lockdown order in the state.

The Bayelsa State Governor, Douye Diri, signed an executive order recently barring people from leaving their home for one week beginning from April 27, except those on essential duties, to halt the spread of the novel coronavirus.

The government has banned all forms of religious gathering in the state for now.

The pastors were arrested on Sunday by the Bayelsa State Task Force on COVID-19 , according to the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Information, Freston Akpor, who is a member of the task force.

The information on the arrest is contained in a statement issued on Sunday by the ministry of information.

The arrested pastors are P. B. Barima of the Methodist Church, Obogoro, Timi Aaron of Believers Love World, Akenfa, Adaba Glory of Saint Paul Healing Church, and Chris Ezene of Gods Grace Salvation Ministry, Obogoro.

Others are Plus B. James of Prophetic Grace Love Ministry, Opolo; Alfred Munemune of Halleluyah Deliverance Ministries International; Daniel Owi, Winners Chapel, Obogoro; Sardauna Oguta, All for Christ Zion Church, Akenfa 3; and Tony Justice Samugba, New Covenant Tabernacle Ministry also of Akenfa 3.

Mr Akpor said the pastors are being detained at the police headquarters in the state and would be charged to court for alleged violation of the COVID-19 order.

There are five confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Bayelsa.

There are 2,388 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Nigeria, with 85 deaths. The number of persons discharged is 385 as of May 2.
The CEO of a South Amboy addiction clinic twice sexually assaulted a subordinate while she was in a drunken stupor," according to a lawsuit filed by the woman.

Andrea Pierce, a director of admissions at the Recovery Centers for America at Raritan Bay, says in the lawsuit that James Haggerty had a predatory and rapacious desire for her during her employment at RCA. Pierce, a 38-year-old Long Branch resident, was hired on May 13, 2019, and is currently on administrative leave.

Haggerty, a 61-year-old married man, had an affair with Pierce through the summer of 2019, promising her the two would run away to Florida, according to the lawsuit, which was filed on April 14 in Superior Court in Middlesex County.

NJ Advance Media doesnt typically identify victims of sexual assault, but Pierce decided to make her allegation public to hold RCA accountable, her attorney Peter Valenzano said.

After having the courage to object to this disturbing behavior, Ms. Pierce was subject to a torrent of retaliation meant to drive her out of the company, Valenzano said in a statement. We are proud of Ms. Pierce for her courage in exposing this unlawful conduct.

After she relapsed and then rejected Haggertys advances, Pierce received texts from him requesting nude photos, according to screenshots of the messages included in the lawsuit.

In November 2019, following a short stint at a detox facility, Pierce relapsed again and while intoxicated, called Haggerty for help, the lawsuit said.

Haggerty exploited Pierce and forced her to have sexual intercourse, the lawsuit said.

Given her state, she could not possibly have consented," the lawsuit states. After fulfilling his incessant and infantile sexual needs, defendant Haggerty chivalrously drove (Pierce) to a detox facility.

Haggerty sexually assaulted Pierce while she was drunk a second time on March 9, according to the lawsuit. After this incident, Pierce confided in a friend and her mother, who both urged her to file a police report.

A rape kit was performed on Pierce at the hospital and Long Branch police officers came to her apartment to take photos and take evidence, the lawsuit said. Long Branch Police Chief Jason Roebuck told NJ Advance Media the investigation is ongoing, but no charges have been filed.

In an interview with the New York Post, Pierce, through tears, said, I had this perfect job, and I love what I do. I love helping people and that is just gone now. I stay in bed all day and I cry.

Pierce declined to be interviewed by NJ Advance Media. Her attorneys said she did not want to relive the traumatic experience.

The lawsuit said RCA threatened to fire Pierce after she went public with her allegations against Haggerty in the lawsuit. Haggerty is no longer employed at RCA. His attorney, Thomas P. Scrivo, did not return a request to comment.

Pierce is seeking reinstatement of employment and all benefits, compensatory and punitive damages, and for RCA to undergo training in several areas to prevent harassment and retaliation in the workplace.

RCA is based out of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, and has 11 locations in New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.

The attorney representing RCA, Christopher P. Kelly, declined to comment on the allegations in the lawsuit.

We are confident that the legal process will reveal the truth, he said in an email.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Alex Napoliello may be reached at anapoliello@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @alexnapoNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Here are todays leading news stories:

Society

-- Vietnam reported no new cases of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) on Saturday and Sunday mornings. The countrys tally is still 270, with 217 having recovered.

-- Northern and north-central Vietnamese provinces are expected to be hit by a heatwave from May 3 to 10, with temperatures increasing to up to 40 degrees Celsius, the National Center for Hydro-meteorological Forecasting reported, adding that the rainy season in southern Vietnam will began within the first week of May.

-- Three Chinese nationals and two Vietnamese are facing an indictment for using faked bank cards to withdraw US$300,000 via POS (point of sale) machines in the Southeast Asian country.

-- A construction worker in Hanoi has tested negative for the novel coronavirus after being admitted to the hospital with such symptoms as a fever and difficulty breathing on Friday.

Business

-- Vietnams garment sector will face a host of challenges from the EU - Vietnam Free Trade Agreement, with the greatest being a shortage of raw material supplies. Despite much effort having been made, 90 percent of the sectors imported materials are from markets not covered by the agreement, the Vietnam News Agency reported.

-- The luxury car market is expected to develop strongly this year, despite the automobile industry facing challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic, causing automakers to suspend or reduce production, according to insiders.

Education

-- Middle school and high school students in Hanoi, as well as high school students and ninth-graders in Ho Chi Minh City, will return to school on Monday, following a long break due to the COVID-19 epidemic.

World News

-- The novel coronavirus has infected over 3.48 million people and killed more than 244,700 others around the world, according to statistics. More than 1.1 million patients have recovered from the disease.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 22:18:55|Editor: huaxia

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NANJING, May 3 (Xinhua) -- Pan Hu, a 29-year-old deliveryman, never expected that he would one day be a recipient of the May Fourth Medal, the top honor for young Chinese presented annually before the national Youth Day which falls on May 4.

Young individuals including scientists, medical staff and military personnel were among this year's medal winners for their great contributions to the country. This honor was also bestowed on Pan, the only deliveryman on the list.

"My peers regard me as a role model now, but this honor truly goes to all the 3 million Chinese deliverymen," Pan said.

Pan joined Suning Logistics, a subsidiary of Chinese retail giant Suning Holdings Group, five years ago, and became a deliveryman in the city of Nanjing, east China's Jiangsu Province.

He has completed more than 150,000 delivery orders and driven a total of over 20,000 km, with zero customer complaints.

During the coronavirus epidemic, Pan and his colleagues set up a youth team consisting of 120 logistics staffers. They sent daily necessities, such as cooking oil, meat, vegetables and disinfection products, to residential communities in Nanjing.

Many residential communities across China adopted closed-off management measures to curb the spread of the virus through human contact. As a result, entry of deliverymen was denied.

"We have to walk a long way to deliver parcels in some remote rural areas. For some valuable parcels, we have to wait for customers to fetch them in person," Pan said.

"Every delivery carries plenty of expectations and wishes," he said. "We were constantly touched as many customers would give us water or drinks to express their thanks."

He earned an average of 10,000 yuan (about 1,416 U.S. dollars) a month in 2019, which enabled him to buy a car and an apartment with a mortgage to settle down in Nanjing. He was promoted to a regional manager this year for his outstanding performance.

"It proves that working as a deliveryman, one can also have a promising future," he said.

Fueled by online shopping and takeout fever, China's courier sector handled more than 60 billion parcels last year. There are now more than 3 million deliverymen across the country.

More young deliverymen like Pan have chosen the walk of life as their career. "But the dropout rate of this job is still high, mainly due to the lack of career planning and social recognition," said Jiang Bo, vice director of the provincial postal administration of Jiangsu.

In 2017, Suning Logistics launched a "Courier Day" to uplift the deliverymen. The company and Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications jointly established China's first "courier college" to provide professional skill training courses.

In January, several Chinese authorities including the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security released a national standard of vocational skills for deliverymen.

In February, the Chinese government added delivery riders to its national occupation list, which should lead to improved working conditions and more career opportunities for the group.

"Ultimately, we should seek to empower the young deliverymen," said Yao Kai, executive president of Suning Logistics, noting that it requires concerted efforts from society to strengthen the sense of belonging and happiness of the group.

"Create convenience, work hard and be patient. These are my own working principles. I believe as long as you devote yourself to this line of work, your efforts will pay off," Pan said. Enditem
H arry Dunn's twin brother has told Boris Johnson that he has "had enough of the lies" as his family continue to fight for justice.

The 19-year-old was killed when his motorbike crashed into a car allegedly driving on the wrong side of the road outside a US military base in Northamptonshire in August last year.

Anne Sacoolas, the 42-year-old wife of a US intelligence official based at RAF Croughton, claimed diplomatic immunity following the crash.

She was able to return to her home country, sparking an international controversy and has since been charged with death by dangerous driving.

Harry Dunn (left) with his mother Charlotte Charles (centre) and twin brother Niall Dunn (right). / PA

Mr Dunn's twin brother, Niall Dunn said he and his parents have been "going through hell" since his brother's death in August last year.

He penned a letter to Boris Johnson on Sunday, telling him he is "sick and tired of seeing my mum and dad suffering" and asked him to personally oversee the case.

The 20-year-old said he is confident the Prime Minister will respond personally to his letter.

Harry died when his motorbike crashed into a car outside a US military base in Northamptonshire on August 27 last year.

Anne Sacoolas

His alleged killer, 42-year-old Anne Sacoolas, the wife of an intelligence official based at RAF Croughton, was granted diplomatic immunity following the crash, causing an international controversy.

She was charged with causing death by dangerous driving in December but an extradition request for Mrs Sacoolas, submitted by the Home Office, was rejected by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in January.

Detailing the reasons for writing the letter, Niall said: "I wrote that letter to Boris Johnson because I've just had enough.

"I've had enough of the lies, the deceit. They think they can just walk all over us and get away with it.

"My parents have been and are going through hell. So am I. We all are.

Harry Dunn's mother Charlotte Charles, stepfather Bruce Charles, family spokesman Radd Seiger and father Tim Dunn address the media / PA

"I just don't understand how they think they can get away with it."

He added: "The Prime Minister is the person in charge.

"I'm looking to him to come and help my family, to sort the mess out and to get Anne Sacoolas back so we can put everything behind us and try to move.

"I'm confident he'll respond personally to my letter."

Charlotte Charles stands beside her husband Bruce Charles before a meeting with Dominic Raab / AFP via Getty Images

In the letter, Niall urged Mr Johnson to get involved because his family believe the Foreign Office has "made a mess" of the case.

His letter reads: "I want to issue a direct plea to you. Please Mr Johnson, my parents are having a terrible time.

"They have asked to meet you a number of times and you have refused so far, saying you want Mr Raab to deal with it.

"But we worry he has lost control of this scandal."

It adds: "I love and miss Harry. I am sick and tired of seeing my mum and dad suffering.

"It was bad enough losing Harry. But watching them go through this torture is just awful. It's just cruel."

"Please get involved in our case. Anyone can see that the Foreign Office has made a mess of this.

"Please get a grip of Mr Raab and our case, come and tell us the truth and what you are going to do to fix things.

"We are not the dirt at the bottom of the Government's shoes. We are UK citizens and we have the right to know the truth."
Thousands of?desperate?migrants are trapped in limbo and even at risk of death without food, water or shelter in scorching deserts and at sea, as?governments close off borders and ports amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Migrants have been dropped by the truckload in the Sahara Desert or bused to Mexico's desolate border with Guatemala and beyond. They are drifting in the Mediterranean Sea after European and Libyan authorities declared their ports unsafe.

And about 100 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar are believed to have died in the Bay of Bengal, as country after country pushes them back out to sea.

Many governments have declared emergencies, saying a public health crisis like the coronavirus pandemic requires extraordinary measures. However, these measures are just the latest efforts by governments to clamp down on migrants, despite human rights laws.

They just dumped us, said Fanny Jacqueline Ortiz, a 37-year-old Honduran travelling with her two daughters, aged 3 and 12.

Ortiz reached the U.S., but American authorities expelled her to Mexico. The Mexican government in turn abandoned the family on March 26 at the lonely El? Ceibo?border crossing?with Guatemala. Ortiz and other migrants on the two-bus convoy were told to avoid the Guatemalan soldiers guarding the border, which was closed due to the pandemic.

They told us to go around through the mountains, and we slept in the woods, she recalled.

Over the next few weeks, an activist helped Ortiz and others in her group of 20 find a ride to the next border, in Honduras.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The first 'Shramik Special'



train to Odisha carrying around 1,150 migrant workers stranded in Kerala due to the lockdown arrived in Ganjam district on Sunday, officials said.

The train had left Ernakulam railway station on Friday evening and arrived at Jagannathpur railway station in Ganjam district in the morning. It further proceeded to Khurda Road railway station, where it terminated, they said.

Over 500 passengers, including women and children, alighted at Jagannathpur while the remaining got down at Khurda Road, the officials said.

The passengers were screened and given certification for the journey before boarding the train in Kerala, they said.

Those alighting at Jagannathpur railway station were sent to their home districts of Kandhamal, Ganjam, Rayagada, Boudh, Nabarangpur and Koraput, the officials said.

Steps were taken to ensure that the workers strictly observed social distancing norms after their arrival at the railway stations, they said, adding all workers were wearing masks.

The workers were received by government officials. They were given food packets and stamped with indelible ink on their right hands to highlight that they had returned from another state before boarding special buses for quarantine centres, the officials said.

The travellers, who had registered themselves with the state government's portal, hail from 23 of Odisha's 30 districts.

The highest number of those who returned are from Kandhamal district (382), followed by 283 from Kendrapara and 130 from Ganjam.

The public and journalists were not allowed inside railway stations at the time of their arrival to avoid any health risk, an official said.

The state government has made similar arrangements for the return of more migrant workers stranded in Kerala and Gujarat, he said.

These trains will halt at stipulated railway stations, from where the migrants will go to their villages along with respective panchayat officials and will be placed under quarantine for 14 days, the official said.

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik thanked his Kerala counterpart Pinarayi Vijayan for taking good care of the stranded people during the lockdown and cooperating with the Odisha government to ensure their safe return.

Patnaik also commended the role of the Ganjam district administration and police for the smooth handling of the workers at Jagannathpur railway station.

He thanked different government departments for "meticulous planning and precision" in completing the first leg of 'Operation Subha Yatra', the state administration's endeavour to facilitate the return of stranded migrant workers.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A cultural festival turned deadly on Saturday in Taraba State after soldiers sent to enforce a lockdown allegedly shot dead four residents and injured 16 others.

The Taraba State Government, on April 21, in a broadcast by the states deputy governor, Haruna Manu, announced a lockdown order in the state to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

Taraba currently has eight coronavirus cases, according to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.

The violence occurred at Jen community in Karim-Lamido Local Government Area of the state. The festival turned violent when the residents resisted an attempt by the soldiers to disperse them and prevent the festival from holding.

Residents said the festival, called Minhu hunting festival, is celebrated annually every first week of May. It is the major cultural festival of the Jen community and is recognised by the government as a major festival in the state.

Three residents of the community who spoke with PREMIUM TIMES asked not to be named for fear of arrest during investigation.

One resident said the district head of Jen, Samaila Agwaru, had earlier announced the suspension of the festival based on the governments lockdown directive.

Initially, the soldiers enforced the lockdown on the community market on Friday, the resident said. While trying to prevent the festival on Saturday, a group of youth confronted the soldiers setting ablaze used tyres.

The soldiers fired gunshots into the air to scare the youth. However, the undeterred rampaging youth shot one of the soldiers with an arrow after which the soldiers opened fire on them, the source said.

This newspaper learnt that four people died at the scene while 16 others sustained severe gunshot injuries. Some of the injured are said to be in critical condition.

Two of those killed were identified by their nicknames, Iliya and Black, while the two others are yet to be identified because they came from neighbouring communities to celebrate the festival.

The injured soldier is said to have been taken away by his colleagues.

A resident said the communitys market leader (Sarkin Kasuwa), Jibir Sarkin-Fawa, was critically injured by the aggrieved youth who accused him of colluding with the government to prevent the festival from taking place.

Jen is one of the major communities in Karim-Lamido Local Government Area. It is predominantly occupied by the Janjo tribe although there are other tribes such as Dadiya and Bambuka. The local government shares a land border with Adamawa, Gombe, Plateau and Bauchi states.

When contacted, the police spokesperson in Taraba, David Misal, said the incident occurred when the security agents went to enforce the lockdown after the locals insisted on going ahead with the festival.

Even though the information about the incident, for now, is sketchy, I will get back to you as soon as I get more details, Mr Misal said.

The Taraba State commissioner for information, Danjuma Adamu, also confirmed the incident. He, however, said that he has been preoccupied with other official engagements, being a member of the state taskforce on coronavirus.

I just heard about the incident, the residents insisted on holding their cultural festival despite the fact that there are restrictions. I need more detailed information, Im now in Wukari, I would get back to you later, Mr Adamu said.

When contacted, Sagir Musa, the army spokesperson, said he is yet to be briefed about the development because he is not in Abuja.

Im somewhere around the Northeast fighting the Boko Haram insurgents. Nonetheless, I will get back to you when I get briefing, he said.
An anti-lockdown protester in Illinois has been widely condemned for brandishing a sign bearing a Nazi slogan from the gates of Auschwitz concentration camp.

The woman, who has not been identified, was part of a group protesting to "Re-Open Illinois' in Chicago on Friday.

The sign, reading "Arbeit macht frei, JB" appeared to be addressed to Illinois Governor JB Pritzker - who is Jewish.

The German words translate to "work will set you free", the phrase that was hung above the gates of the Nazi German concentration camp in occupied Poland where more than 1m people died at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust.

An anti-lockdown protester in Illinois brandished a Nazi slogan on Friday (Twitter/Dennis_Kosuth)

The sign was widely condemned including by representatives of the Auschwitz Memorial, who tweeted: "'Arbeit macht frei' was a false, cynical illusion the SS gave to prisoners of #Auschwitz. Those words became one of the icons of human hatred. It's painful to see this symbol instrumentalized & used again to spread hate. It's a symptom of moral & intellectual degeneration."

The photograph of the sign was taken by nurse, Dennis Kosuth, on Friday afternoon, who was at the event as a counter-protester with other frontline medical workers who are battling the pandemic.

Kosuth, who lost a friend and colleague from the coronavirus this week, told The Independent that he was disgusted by the sign.

The gates of Auschwitz, the former Nazi concentration camp which is now a museum. More than 1m people died here during the Holocaust (AFP)

He said: "I dont read German but I knew what that phrase meant and asked if she was a Nazi. She denied that she was and told me that she has Jewish friends, as if that was a legitimate argument."

Mr Kosuth said that anti-lockdown protesters confronted him and other nurses, accusing them of being actors and claiming that the Covid-19 death toll was inaccurate.

He added: "Im glad this picture is out there because we must never forget history. I understand that people are suffering, losing their jobs, health insurance, struggling to pay bills and buy food. I am fortunate to still be working, and think those who cannot right now must be given more help then that have been."
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Accurate antibody tests that are able to tell millions of Britons if they have had coronavirus are set to be rolled out across the UK within a fortnight, it has been claimed.

Testing giant Roche Diagnostics claims it has created a kit accurate enough to be used at scale - and the firm says it has enough stock to provide hundreds of thousands to the NHS every week.

It comes after weeks of disappointment regarding Britain's mass roll-out of antibody tests, which are designed to tell if someone has contracted the virus in the past and indicate whether they may now be immune. They do not accurately tell if someone is currently infected.

Despite promising home antibody tests, the UK has not yet approved any because the Government insists it can't find a DIY finger-prick kit that is accurate enough - despite only evaluating a handful of tests.

Switzerland-based Roche claims its lab-based 'Elecsys' test, which isn't designed to give people a result in their own home, can spot 100 per cent of people who have not had the coronavirus and 99.8 per cent of people who have been infected.

The blood sample kit, which can be processed by machines already used in NHS labs across the country, has been granted the vital 'CE mark' that shows it is safe. Medics can get results in just 18 minutes.

Insiders say it is unlikely the tests will be available to purchase privately, at least initially, because officials wouldn't be able to access the data they desperately need to plot the spread of the virus. It is not clear how much the tests could cost, if and when they can be purchased.

Instead, the test is likely to play a role in the Government's 'surveillance' programme, which will see nurses take blood samples from a thousand households and send them to Oxford University laboratories so officials can work out how far the virus has spread in Britain.

Ministers are currently clueless as to how big the UK's outbreak truly is because of their controversial decision to abandon a widespread testing regime before the crisis began to take hold and spread throughout Britain.

Antibody tests are considered key to easing the draconian lockdown and getting Britain back on its feet because they give the clearest possible picture of how widespread the coronavirus is in the UK.

The breakthrough will fuel Boris Johnson's plans to ease the UK's lockdown, with the PM giving a timeline for when workplaces and schools will reopen in a prime-time TV broadcast to the nation next Sunday.

Roche Diagnostics says it could roll out 100 per cent accurate antibody tests within two weeks (pictured is an antibody test centre in west London)

Boris Johnson is planning to tell Britain to prepare to return to work in a prime-time TV broadcast to the nation next Sunday evening

The UK announced 315 new coronavirus deaths Sunday, bringing total fatalities to 28,446 and putting the country on course to become the hardest hit in Europe

It is hoped the new antibody tests could help the UK ease out of lockdown - pictured are cyclists exercising in Regents Park in London on Saturday

Michael Gove revealed that 76,496 tests had been performed yesterday, dipping below the 100,000 daily target set by the government

WHY IS ANTIBODY TESTING IMPORTANT? WHAT IS AN ANTIBODY TEST? Unlike tests to diagnose diseases, antibody tests show who has been infected and recovered. The body makes antibodies in response to many illnesses and infections, including other coronaviruses. New blood tests are being developed to identify antibodies unique to SARS-CoV-2, the official name of the new coronavirus. The tests look for two kinds of antibodies: immunoglobulin M (IgM) and G (IgG). The body quickly produces IgM antibodies for its initial attack against infections. It makes IgG antibodies more slowly and retains them longer; IgG antibodies suggest possible immunity. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RAPID TESTS AND ASSAYS? Some companies are developing finger-prick tests that get results in minutes. These are called immunoassays and will form the basis of home testing kits. Others are developing far more accurate tests called enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) that require sending blood samples to a lab for analysis. HOW CAN ANTIBODY TESTS HELP END LOCKDOWNS? Antibody tests can help calculate what portion of the population has already been infected, as well as whether infections were mild or severe. Governments and companies could use antibody tests to determine who would most likely be safe to return to work and public interactions, and whether it is safe to lift stay-at-home orders all at once in some regions or in stages based on infection risk. People with negative antibody tests or very low antibody levels would likely have higher risk of infection than people with high antibody levels. DO ANTIBODIES TO THE NEW CORONAVIRUS CONFER IMMUNITY? While antibodies to many infectious diseases typically confer some level of immunity, whether that is the case with this unique coronavirus is not yet known. And how strong immunity might be, or how long it might last in people previously infected, is not clear. With some diseases like measles the immunity can be lifelong. With others, immunity can wane over time. Scientists cannot know with certainty that reinfection is not possible until further research. Antibody tests could inform not just lockdown exits, but the best approach to treatments and vaccines. Advertisement

In other developments in the coronavirus crisis today:

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson announced a package of support worth almost 3billion to help universities weather the coronavirus crisis;

A smartphone app to trace the spread of coronavirus will be trialled on the Isle of Wight this week before being rolled out more widely later this month;

Heathrow Airport has warned travellers could face queues a kilometre long to board flights;

Former Government chief scientific adviser Sir David King has assembled an independent group of experts to look at how the UK could work its way out of the lockdown in response to concerns over the 'lack of transparency' coming from the Sage group of advisers.

Back in March, hopes ran high that tests looking for antibodies - substances made by the immune system could allow people to return to work.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock was so taken by the technology that he ordered 3.5million tests at the time, from nine different companies.

But hopes of a quick end to the lockdown were dashed when it turned out the best of the tests could only spot 70 per cent of those who had been infected.

The new test resolves that problem by using a proven lab-based technology, rather than the finger-prick 'pregnancy-test' style kits that Mr Hancock had initially pinned his hopes on.

As long as it is used at least 14 days after someone has developed symptoms, it has a 100 per cent sensitivity rate.

Sensitivity is the rate of all positive samples that are truly positive. For example, if a test has an accuracy rate of 99 per cent, it means 99 out of every 100 people who test positive have actually been infected. The other one person, however, would have been given an inaccurate result - known as a false negative result.

The new Roche test also has a specificity of 99.8 per cent, meaning it generates very few false positives - which is when it indicates someone has been infected when they have not. For every thousand people who take the test only two will be given a false positive result.

Sensitivity is considered the area that authorities can afford to compromise on because testing errors in that area lead to false negatives  people being told they haven't had the disease when they actually have  which would lead to relatively few consequences for most.

False positives, however, caused by poor specificity, may lead people to believe they are immune when they're not, causing their behaviour to become riskier, or to receive treatment that they don't need.

That is because Roche scientists have managed to develop a test that only picks up the virus that causes COVID-19, scientifically known as SARS-CoV-2.

Previous tests assessed by the Government struggled to differentiate COVID-19 antibodies from four other types of human coronaviruses which cause the common cold.

For every thousand people who take the test only two will be given a false positive result (pictured is an antibody test centre in west London)

Geoff Twist, managing director of Roche Diagnostics UK and Ireland, said: 'We will continue to work closely with the NHS, public health bodies and the UK Government to enable the roll out of the test across the UK'

Health Secretary Matt Hancock ordered 3.5million tests from nine different companies in March, which were unsuccessful

IS THE GOVERNMENT CARRYING OUT MASS ANTIBODY TESTS? Health officials last month finally launched a mass coronavirus antibody testing study to trace how far the killer disease had already spread in Britain. Around 1,000 will have their blood samples taken every month by a nurse or trained medic, the Department of Health announced on April 23. Countries including Germany and the Netherlands have already carried out population sampling to provide an estimate of how widespread the infection was. The UK's scheme is dwarfed by one being carried out in the Italian region of Lombardy, for example, where medics plan to do 20,000 tests per day. All participants in the Government's antibody testing scheme will be asked to give further samples monthly for the next 12 months. Nurses from the private firm IQVIA will carry out the antibody tests, to reduce the burden on NHS resources and personnel. Leaked letters revealed those who were to take part in the scheme would not receive their results to tell them if they have already battled the virus. The antibody surveillance scheme - being co-led by the Office for National Statistics - will see the samples analysed by Oxford University scientists. It was launched alongside a mass swab testing scheme that will see up to 25,000 people provide samples to tell if they are currently infected. Officials aim to scale-up that scheme to include 300,000 people over the next 12 months. Imperial College London experts will oversee a second surveillance scheme. The first part of the two-part REACT programme will analyse swab tests from 100,000 random people in 315 different areas of the UK, to see how many of them are currently infected. Part two will be a roll-out of at-home antibody tests, which can tell whether people have already had the disease and recovered. The kits - which require a finger-prick of blood - will be given to 300 people who have already had the virus for an initial trial and to establish their accuracy. If the home-testing kits are proven to be successful, they will then be rolled out to 10,000 people and then to 100,000. The antibody tests will create a picture of how many people have had the virus already and may have immunity to it, meaning they won't catch it again, at least in the short-term. Advertisement

The blood sample kit is undergoing final ratification at Public Health England's Porton Down facility.

It has also been given 'emergency use authorisation' by the US Food and Drug Administration, with millions of kits to be sent to America.

Roche Diagnostics said it is 'in dialogue' with the NHS and the UK Government about a 'phased roll-out of the test from mid-May'.

A spokesman added: 'We will be able to provide hundreds of thousands of antibody tests to the UK per week.

'Hospitals and reference laboratories can run the test on fully-automated equipment already widely installed by Roche Diagnostics at sites across the UK with results provided in 18 minutes.'

The main benefit of mass use of antibody tests will be the ability to rapidly plot the spread of the virus across the country, by telling who has had it and who has not.

PHE's Porton Down lab already has its own lab-based antibody testing equipment - but it has only managed to test 14,865 people in about six weeks, which is useful for research purposes but not for mass testing.

Insiders say the test is likely to be a major addition to the Government's huge 'surveillance' programme being rolled out, which will see thousands of households randomly sent swabbing tests.

The Government finally announced a mass antibody testing surveillance scheme last month, after several countries including the Netherlands and Germany had already carried out population sampling to provide an estimate of how widespread the infection was.

But the UK's scheme of 1,000 households is dwarfed by one being carried out in the Italian region of Lombardy, for example, where medics have announced plans to do 20,000 tests per day. Participants in the Government's antibody test will be asked to give further samples monthly for the next 12 months.

Nurses from the private firm IQVIA will carry out the antibody tests, to reduce the burden on NHS resources and personnel. Leaked letters revealed those who were to take part in the scheme would not receive their results.

The antibody surveillance scheme, which will see the samples analysed by Oxford University scientists, was launched alongside a mass swab testing scheme that will see up to 25,000 people provide samples to tell if they are currently infected. Officials aim to scale-up that scheme to include 300,000 people over the next 12 months.

It is unlikely antibody tests will be available for individuals to purchase privately - at least initially - mainly because officials would not be able to access the data they need to plot the spread of the virus.

But they might be used as part of the Government's South Korea-style 'contact tracing' programme, which is being rolled out in the coming weeks to help spot new outbreaks.

The idea of 'immunity certificates' - which was initially proposed as a part of antibody testing - has also been shelved, mainly because scientists are still uncertain how long people remain immune after they contract the virus.

Geoff Twist, managing director of Roche Diagnostics UK and Ireland, said: 'We will continue to work closely with the NHS, public health bodies and the UK Government to enable the roll out of the test across the UK.'

Severin Schwan, CEO of Roche Group, said the firm would produce tens of millions of tests in May alone to send around the world.

Nicola Sturgeon to set out 'test, trace, isolate and support' strategy to suppress coronavirus as lockdown eases Nicola Sturgeon is to set out her plans for a 'test, trace, isolate and support' strategy to suppress coronavirus in the months ahead. At her briefing on Monday, the First Minister will explain the Scottish Government's plan to disrupt 'community transmission' of the virus. She has previously said such an approach will help Scotland 'emerge gradually from lockdown'. A paper called Test, Trace, Isolate, Support will be published, setting out the steps individuals are required to take. These will be in addition to the hand-washing and physical distancing guidelines established earlier in the outbreak. The UK's lockdown measures are due to be reviewed on May 7. Last week, Ms Sturgeon said the progress in curbing the infection rate may still be too 'fragile' to allow restrictions to be eased at that point. Ahead of her briefing on Monday, the First Minister said: 'The advice remains the same - staying at home and only making essential journeys is saving lives. 'Keeping physical distance in the limited circumstances when you have to be around people and continuing to regularly wash your hands are still the best way to reduce your risk of infection.' She added: 'Physical distancing has helped to reduce the prevalence of the virus and cut the number of people in serious conditions in our hospitals, however, as and when we make changes to the current lockdown restrictions alternative measures will need to be in place.' 'Test, trace, isolate and support will be one of a number of actions we will have to put in place to maintain suppression of the virus, to interrupt chains of infection and disrupt the spread and will require the support of everyone in our society to be effective. 'At today's briefing I will set out more information on the approach we are taking and what people will be required to do, under this approach.' Advertisement

'I am in particular pleased about the high specificity and sensitivity of our test, which is crucial to support health care systems around the world with a reliable tool to better manage the COVID-19 health crisis,' he said.

Meanwhile Edinburgh firm Quotient said it had also developed an accurate antibody test.

It said it had 12 screening machines available to process the tests. Each machine has capacity for up to 36,000 tests a day and produces results in 35 minutes.

Like the Roche tests, its test has 100 per cent sensitivity and 99.8 per cent specificity.

Chief executive Franz Walt said it had received interest from other countries to purchase the machines but had not yet spoken to UK ministers.

'We realise ministers and the NHS are incredibly busy but are keen to talk given the strong interest from across Europe in the product,' he said.

Antibody tests  the 'have you had it' tests  have been the subject of ongoing debate since the UK's epidemic began.

They are considered by many to be essential for tracking how many people have had COVID-19, evaluating the country's future risk, and helping people get back to work.

But the UK has turned down every commercially-produced home antibody tests it has come across, despite parting with millions of pounds for some from China, including Wondfo's product.

A study by the University of Oxford, published last month, laid out the anonymised results of nine tests the Government had bought. All were deemed too weak to use. Their sensitivity  ability to correctly spot people who had had the disease - ranged from 70 per cent to just 55 per cent.

The news will lead to renewed optimism that Britain is past the worst of the virus, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson also set to detail how the UK will emerge from coronavirus lockdown in a primetime broadcast on Sunday.

Yesterday business organisations including the British Chambers of Commerce and the CBI were given sight of the guidance the Government is planning to give firms on starting to lift the lockdown. It was also shown to trade unions.

It is understood to include advice to stagger employee start times and reconfigure working spaces so staff are a safe distance apart.

It also encourages firms to let as many as possible carry on working from home. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said yesterday that the Government wanted to avoid a return of the rush hour.

Hand sanitiser will be offered on public transport and queuing systems will be introduced on railway station platforms.

Ministers will meet on Thursday to review the lockdown  which will have been in place for more than six weeks  before the Prime Minister gives details of how it will be gradually lifted in his weekend broadcast.

The 315 fatalities reported by the Department of Health is the fewest daily deaths recorded in over a month

Michael Gove revealed the total number of cases jumped to 186,599 following an extra 4,339 positive tests

Michael Gove blames the weekend as coronavirus testing falls to 76,500 just 48 hours after the Government claimed victory in its fight to reach 100,00 by the end of April The number of coronavirus tests carried out fell sharply for the second day in a row on Sunday - the second successive fall since the Government beat its 100,000 target. Chairing yesterday's press conference Michael Gove said there had been 1,206,405 coronavirus tests in the UK as of 9am on Sunday May 3, including 76,496 in the previous 24 hours. This was down from 105,937 on Saturday and 122,347 the previous day. Asked about this decline, Mr Gove said: 'It is the case that you might expect over a weekend, particularly over a Saturday, with fewer people going to work, that you might have a dip in the amount of testing that might occur at that time. 'But I don't think that it in anyway detracts from the amazing achievement of the NHS and of other sin so significantly increasing the amount of tests that are available.' However, data released by the Government today showed that while there have been fewer tests carried out at weekends, none has been such a marked fall of 28 per cent in a single day. Advertisement

Restrictions are also likely to be relaxed to allow Britons to enjoy more outdoor activities, such as picnics, provided they are only with members of their household.

But pubs and restaurants are unlikely to be allowed to open for some time.

The Government will finalise its plans after receiving the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics, which is conducting a huge study with up to 300,000 people to see how far the virus has spread in the UK.

At the Downing Street press conference last night, Michael Gove insisted that the easing of lockdown restrictions would be done in a 'cautious fashion'.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said ministers will seek to restore people's lives to 'as close to normal as possible', but warned that the public would have to live with 'some degree of constraint' until a vaccine was developed.

Mr Shapps told Sky's Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme: 'Obviously, it's very important to avoid those morning peaks and the crushes would be completely at odds with social distancing.

'Of course, I'm concerned about people being able to wash their hands, which is still by far and away the most important advice above anything else.

'We can help with that by trying to have hand sanitiser, one-way systems, spacing on platforms and bus stops clearly marked out.'

Mr Shapps said the country would not be able to return to 'business as usual' immediately and emphasised that any lifting of the lockdown will be gradual.

'I don't think we should expect us to go from this situation that we have at the moment of social distancing back to where we were in February  that's clearly not going to happen,' he added.

'The focus of what the Prime Minister will announce is that what we do doesn't undo the brilliant work people have been doing to get that R number below 1  the all-critical reproduction rate doesn't come back up because that's when we'd see a second spike.'

Mobility trackers show the number in people in public places is steadily creeping up

Three rail unions yesterday wrote to the Prime Minister to warn that plans to start running more train services are premature.

The joint letter  signed by the heads of Aslef, the RMT and the TSSA  said it was 'completely unacceptable' to put the lives of passengers and rail staff at risk.

Boris Johnson urges nations to pull together and brands 6bn vaccine quest 'the most urgent shared endeavour of our lifetimes' Boris Johnson will today warn that it is 'humanity against the virus' as he co-hosts an international conference to drive the race for coronavirus treatments, tests and vaccines. The Prime Minister will urge countries to 'pull together' and pool their expertise as they tackle the 'most urgent shared endeavour of our lifetimes'. He will add: 'We are in this together and together we will prevail.' Today's online pledging conference  co-hosted by the UK and eight other countries and organisations  aims to bring in more than 6.6billion in funding to support the global response to the coronavirus pandemic. The UK has pledged to give 388million in aid funding for research into tests, treatments and vaccines  part of a 744million commitment to help end the pandemic and support the global economy through this period of widespread uncertainty. Mr Johnson, who himself contracted the virus in March, is expected to say: 'To win this battle, we must work together to build an impregnable shield around all our people and that can only be achieved by developing and mass producing a vaccine. 'The more we pull together and share our expertise, the faster our scientists will succeed. 'The race to discover the vaccine to defeat this virus is not a competition between countries but the most urgent shared endeavour of our lifetimes. It's humanity against the virus  we are in this together and together we will prevail.' Coronavirus has claimed more than 244,000 lives worldwide, according to analysis by Johns Hopkins University in the US. International Development Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan said: 'By strengthening developing countries' health systems and working to find a vaccine, the UK is playing its part in stopping the global spread of coronavirus to save lives everywhere and protect our NHS.' Advertisement

Yesterday a poll by Opinium for The Observer showed that fewer than one in five (17 per cent) of the public believe the time is right to consider reopening schools, restaurants, pubs and stadiums.

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson has revealed that the fear of never seeing his newborn son drove him in his battle against coronavirus.

The Prime Minister, 55, spent a week in April at St Thomas's Hospital in London fighting the virus, including three days in intensive care, and admitted yesterday that doctors had prepared to announce his death.

Now, in an interview with the Sun, he has opened up further on his fight against the virus, saying he focused on 'positive thoughts' about pregnant fiancee Carrie Symonds and the impending birth of their child.

He said: 'We've all got a lot to live for, a lot to do, and I won't hide it from you, I was thinking about that, yes.'

His son, Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas Johnson, was born last Wednesday, just over two weeks after the Prime Minister was released from hospital.

Mr Johnson added in the interview that he was 'thrilled' with the birth and also described his hospital experience in greater detail.

He said he jumped on his hospital bed wearing only his boxer shorts to 'clap like crazy' for the NHS  just two hours after leaving intensive care.

He added: 'It was a Thursday when I came out of ICU and with me I had a nurse called Becky and a nurse called, I think, Angel.

'I was just in my boxers, nothing else. We stood up and there was this big window looking out on the Thames and we saw the Met and the Fire Brigade do this display with their boats.

'It was just fantastic.'

He also praised the NHS staff who treated him at St Thomas' Hospital, saying they 'pulled my chestnuts out of the fire, no question'.

Mr Johnson said he was wheeled out of intensive care around 6pm on April 9 and on to a general ward.

He said: 'It was an amazing moment. They clapped me out of the bit I was in. It's something they have done for many patients  but it is really the doctors and nurses who deserve it most.

'I was fantastically lucky. It certainly gave me a really good understanding of the disease and what goes on and how you tackle it.'

And he said he was 'so lucky by comparison' with other victims he encountered.

He said: 'I saw a lot of victims both going in and going out. 'I felt so lucky by comparison. I am lucky because so many people have suffered so much.'

Speaking today, Donald Trump revealed that he and Mr Johnson had discussed the latter's battle with the virus.

He told Fox News: 'He [Mr Johnson] was a victim (of this thing). He thought it was all over.'

Britain's NEW coronavirus hotbed: The North West overtakes London as Covid epicentre with more people in hospital than UK's densely-populated capital

The northwest of England passed London as the epicentre of the UK's coronavirus outbreak yesterday, with more people in the region in hospital with the illness than in the capital.

Data shared at Sunday's government briefing revealed coronavirus patients in London had dipped to 2,033 while patients with the illness in the northwest of England rose to 2,191.

It is the first time a region's total has surpassed the capital since the height of the outbreak - though both totals are significantly lower than their respective peaks.

London's number of coronavirus patients peaked at 4,813 on April 8, the highest daily total in the UK, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson among the patients battling the virus in hospital in the capital at the time.

The northwest of England, meanwhile, peaked at 2,908 on April 3, the third highest in the UK after London and the West Midlands.

The capital remains the area of the UK with the highest number of overall cases at 24,828, while the North West is second with 20,125.

It comes as Britain announced 315 new coronavirus deaths on Sunday, bringing total fatalities to 28,446 and putting the country on course to become the hardest hit in Europe.

The UK's toll is now only 264 behind Italy, the continent's original epicentre, which it will likely overtake later today to have the second highest deaths in the world after the United States.

A new interactive map lays bare the coronavirus postcode lottery and reveals sprawling areas in Wales, the South West and East England which have recorded zero deaths

Minister for the cabinet office Michael Gove fronts the government's daily coronavirus press briefing from Number 10

Before Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove announced the Department of Health's UK death toll at Sunday's Downing Street briefing, the public health bodies from the four nations revealed their individual death tallies which totalled 358.

The difference in totals reflects varying data gathering methods and time-frames.

One in five children will be urged to go back to the classroom from next week One in five children will be urged to return to the classroom from next week as part of a gradual reopening of schools. More than 1.7million pupils who are vulnerable or whose parents are key workers will be asked to go back. Students in year six will be first through the doors - potentially from June 1 - to help them prepare for the transition to high school. Ministers will target the first week of next month for a wider reopening of primary schools, before secondary schools allow pupils in years ten and 12 to return. Key workers have been entitled to keep sending their children to class throughout the lockdown, but when schools shut six weeks ago they were urged to look after them at home where possible. The Government is now preparing to issue guidance that will instead encourage these parents to send their children to school. Just one parent needs to be a key worker for their child to be eligible but parents will not be fined for not sending them in. The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, which counsels the government, is understood to be targeting June 1 for year six pupils. These children are seen as the priority to get back in class due to them transferring to secondary school in September. A Whitehall source told the Guardian: 'The focus is getting primary school pupils back first but only if the R [a measure of how the virus is spreading] is at a safe level. After primary schools have returned we will then look at years 10 and 12.' Advertisement

England suffered the lion's share of Sunday's reported deaths with 327 patients, aged between 46 and 101, passing away in NHS hospitals.

A further 12 died in Scotland, 14 in Wales and five in Northern Ireland, bringing each nation's total toll to 1,571, 983 and 381, respectively.

Of those reported Sunday to have lost their lives, 56 died on May 2, 125 died on May 1 and 43 died on April 30.

The reporting lag also meant 95 of the new deaths took place between April 1 and April 29. The remaining eight deaths occurred in March, with the earliest new death taking place on March 28.

Sunday's death figures for England also shows the gulf in deaths between the regions, with the Midlands reporting 69 fatalities and the South West 19.

Mr Gove praised the stoicism of the public in mostly adhering to strict rules in place for the past five weeks.

But, speaking at tonight's press conference, he warned that areas that see a relapse in coronavirus cases when the lockdown slowly begins to be eased face a return to the current restrictions.

He spoke after revealing that the number of tests carried out yesterday fell to just short of 76,500, 48 hours after reaching 122,000 - blaming the weekend for the steep fall.

Mr Gove said it was important to speak to firms and trade unions 'in order to make sure people understand the guidance about working safely'.

But he added: 'It is also important that we make clear that any approach we take is staged ... a phases approach is one which allows us to monitor the impact that those changes are having on public health and if necessary, in a specific and localised way, that means that we can pause or even reintroduce those restrictions that might be required in order to deal with localised outbreaks of the disease.'

The Prime Minister will this week reveal his 'whack-a-mole' strategy to ease the lockdown and put the UK economy back into gear.

He is expected to reveal his roadmap of proposals to very carefully and slowly lift the restriction in place since late March, but come down hard on any secondary hotspots that emerge.

It comes as a new interactive map revealed just how different areas of the UK were affected differently by the virus.

The 315 fatalities reported by the Department of Health is the fewest daily deaths recorded in over a month

Certain regions such as London and the Midlands have suffered the brunt of the pandemic while larges swathes of the country have escaped relatively unscathed.

A new interactive map lays bare the coronavirus postcode lottery and reveals sprawling areas in Wales, the South West and East England which have recorded zero deaths.

The map, from Office for National Statistics data, shows outside of London, twenty-four towns in Cornwall have not incurred any Covid-19 deaths, with the county suffering just 14 deaths per 100,000 people.

One expert told MailOnline the data lends weight to a growing chorus of voices urging the government to ease curbs in areas with the least infections first.

The interactive ONS map shows the bulk of virus deaths are in densely populated cities and their transport routes to one another, while, towns furthest away from cities appear to be avoiding the worst of the crisis.

In the East of England, at least 23 local authorities have not recorded any coronavirus deaths in Suffolk, and 21 in Norfolk.

There are nine towns and villages where residents are yet to fall victim to the disease in the Welsh county of Conwy, seven in Pembrokeshire, five in Gwynedd and five in Ceredigion.

Michael Gove revealed the total number of cases jumped to 186,599 following an extra 4,339 positive tests

The cabinet office minister said 76,496 tests had been performed yesterday, dipping below the 100,000 daily target set by the government

The number of people being treated for coronavirus in hospitals is falling as is the number of patients in critical care beds

Mobility trackers show the number in people in public places is steadily creeping up

In the New Forest national park in Hampshire there have been no recorded deaths in the Milford and Lymington south area, while in neighbouring Dorset, places such as Bovington, Wool and Lulworth have no recorded Covid-19 deaths.

There have been growing calls for lockdown to be eased on rural communities that have not been impacted by the pandemic.

Mr Gove last week there was some 'scientific justification' for trialling the easing of lockdown measures in island communities, such as the Outer Hebrides - although this has sparked a backlash from locals furious at suggestions they be used as the nation's guinea pigs.

Piers Morgan tweets he is taking time off 'out of an abundance of caution' while he awaits results of a Covid-19 test after feeling unwell Piers Morgan will be taking some time off Good Morning Britain while he awaits the results of a coronavirus test. The presenter, 55, started feeling unwell over the weekend and will stay off the programme 'out of an abundance of caution'. He had been going into the London studio every morning and doing his own make-up to abide by social distancing rules. Mr Morgan tweeted on Sunday night: 'UPDATE: On medical advice, and out of an abundance of caution for a mild symptom that arose in past 48hrs, I've had a test for COVID-19 and so won't be working on @GMB until I get the result back, which should be tomorrow.' The GMB host has been one of the strongest voices holding the government to account throughout the crisis. Since the country was put in lockdown on March 23, he has become the interviewer ministers fear most due to his ruthless scrutinising of the facts. He has spoken truth to power at every turn, including fiercely questioning decisions made by both the British and US governments. In an article for MailOnline on Thursday the columnist branded Prime Minister Boris Johnson's first press briefing back after beating Covid 'complete and utter bullsh*t'. He said Mr Johnson's speech had made US President Donald Trump seem credible and that his Brexit strategy cannot be used to beat the virus. Mr Morgan wrote: 'When Boris fans, the vast majority of them with union jack flags and Brexit slogans in their profiles, scream abuse at me all day long on Twitter for challenging their hero's coronavirus strategy, they do so because to them, any criticism of the government over this crisis is a re-run of the viciously toxic and partisan Brexit campaign.' He added: 'None of Boris Johnson's political skills that won him the Referendum and December's election are working like they did before the virus struck.' The journalist pointed to a chart that was shown at the end of the briefing on the 'Global Death Comparision'. He spotted how it showed the UK was trending to be the second worst hit country in the world for Covid-19 deaths Advertisement

Prof Paul Hunter, Professor in Medicine, University of East Anglia told MailOnline there is an argument for relaxing the lockdown in more rural areas that have been less impacted by the pandemic.

He said: 'There are a number of factors that impact R0 (the average number of people an individual can expect to infect) and one of those is population density.

'In the countryside you may only see five people a day, but in London if you could spend time with several hundreds of people a day such as seeing them on the underground. A lot of the variation is due to the fact R0 is greater in an area of higher population density.'

Professor Hunter added: 'There is something to be said about areas of the countryside not having as intense a lockdown. From that perspective there are technically a number of areas where the spread is not very high, and have not been impacted as severely as the main urban centres. But the problem with that is you see people in rural areas on Facebook having a good time, and you will probably feel quite annoyed.'



The first easing of restrictions is not expected to come into force until June, and will be accompanied by the stricter enforcement of breaches of the remaining rules, with fines rising from the current 60 to more than 3,000 for repeat offenders.

It will include a massive PR blitz urging people who cannot work from home to go in where they can safely, and urging key workers to send their children back to school to free them up for vital tasks.

Public transport will also increase, but will strict social distancing measures at stations and attempts to stagger working hours to reduce the rush hour.

Senior citizens could also lose their free travel during peak times to lower surge numbers further, the Sunday Times reported.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps warned that Britain will not return to 'business as usual' this month.

He told Sky's Sophy Ridge On Sunday: 'I don't think we should expect us to go from this situation that we have at the moment of social distancing back to where we were in February - that's clearly not going to happen and I don't think anyone imagines that for one moment.'

Ministers are concerned that the public have gone beyond the letter of the law introduced when the pandemic began to sweep the nation, according to the Sunday Times.

A senior Whitehall source told the paper: 'What you are going to see this week is a restatement of what we thought would happen right at the beginning when we first issued the lockdown.

'But it's going to be repackaged as a slow opening up of the economy. Please will construction sites reopen, please will you go to work if you can without hurting people, please if you are a key worker will you send your children to school.

'We've gone round the houses to get back to where we started.'

New polls Sunday reveal how reluctant Britons are to return to normal while hundreds of people are still dying every day.

More than four in five Britons are against lockdown restrictions being eased for schools, pubs and restaurants this week, according to a poll by Opinium for the Observer.

Just 17 per cent thought the time was right to consider re-opening schools, with smaller proportions of people thinking conditions had been met to allow cinemas, sporting stadia and nightclubs to open their doors.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps this morning told Sky's Sophy Ridge on Sunday: 'It's no secret that of course we want the kids to go back to school but I'd be over-egging it to say there's a date in place, there's a plan in place'

There was also opposition to the reopening of restaurants and pubs - with only 11 per cent agreeing Britain is at a place to reopen eateries and 9 per cent supporting a return to pubs.

Britons more strongly opposed a return to stadium events and nightclubs, with 7 per cent saying conditions have been met for both to resume, compared to 84 per cent who did not.

In the Sunday Times, a YouGov poll found that just 25 per cent of adults would feel safe returning to work and oppose reopening schools by 48 per cent to 28 per cent.

Doctor who helped save Boris Johnson's life says coronavirus is 'this generation's polio' and warns some patients will suffer long-term effects A leading doctor who helped save Boris Johnsons life says coronavirus is this generations polio and warned it will have long-term effects on patients. In the first week of lockdown, Professor Nicholas Hart, an expert in respiratory and critical care medicine, tweeted: Covid-19 is this generations polio. 'Patients have mild, moderate and severe illness. Large numbers of patients will have physical, cognitive and psychological disability post critical illness that will require long-term management. 'We must plan ahead. On March 22, the day before the UK went into lockdown, Professor Hart had posted: A plea for help. I have been working for 18 hours a day, like many others, to ensure we can protect all our patients and all our fabulous NHS team. Coronavirus is a serious illness and I want everyone to take care and stay safe and this requires you to please stay inside. The Prime Minister credits Professor Hart and consultant Dr Nick Price with helping him to overcome the virus. Advertisement

And 59 per cent of people polled by the Sunday Express said they would not feel comfortable going out and do not plan to resume a normal life next month.

Ministers will aim to tread a fine line between kickstarting economic activity and keeping 'R', the reproduction rate of the virus, below 1.

The Government's main priority is getting the economy going again, amid dire statistics about commercial activity and hundreds of billions of pounds flowing out of the treasury to prop up firms and pay the wages of furloughed workers.

It comes as a leading business group urges the Government to be 'bold' and not shy away from sustaining high levels of public spending.

The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) laid out a series of moves for a phased end to the current lockdown in a letter to the PM.

Steps should include safely reopening public spaces, schools and public transport, as well as workplaces and commercial spaces, said the letter.

Moves should be made to minimise job losses and business failures, putting the UK economy on a 'high-growth, high-wage and low unemployment trajectory' as soon as possible.

The plans due to be laid out this week are reported to focus on those who work outside, including construction workers, because of science suggesting the virus is harder to catch outdoors.

Public transport is likely to return to normal levels and non-food retailers, factories, and warehouses will be encouraged to open.

Work on this has already started: people on Saturday flocked to newly reopened DIY stores and rubbish tips.

Orderly queues formed at branches of Homebase, which opened 164 stores, as well as B&Q and Wickes. Costa Coffee drive-throughs were also busy.

UK ministers were 'fully aware' China had covered up the true scale of coronavirus but still waited months to impose lockdown, MI6 source claims

The Government was told by the UK's intelligence community from the outset that China had concealed the true scale of the pandemic, sources claim.

A senior former MI6 official says that Ministers were told 'not to believe Beijing's claims' and to pour cold water on all information coming out of China.

Britain's intelligence agencies knew what was 'really happening' from the beginning and had made London 'fully aware', according to The Daily Telegraph.

It is likely that Boris Johnson received intelligence briefings on the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, Hubei, before ordering the lockdown.

However, the Prime Minister is already facing accusations of failing to treat the virus as a sufficient threat to public health, following a Sunday Times report.

If true, the new allegations imply that Mr Johnson sat on his hands before March 23, raising further concerns over his competence as Prime Minister.

Britain's intelligence agencies knew what was 'really happening' from the beginning and had made London 'fully aware', according to former senior MI6 sources

An unnamed MI6 source told The Daily Telegraph: 'The idea that the UK would have taken Chinese figures at face value is frankly ridiculous.

'If the Chinese are lying, the role of the intelligence community is to know what the real figures might be if they are being hidden.

'We didn't believe these figures coming from China. The Government would have been fully aware of the true scale of the virus in China at that time.'

The new claims have emerged during a major diplomatic row between Western powers and China over Beijing's alleged cover-up of the outbreak.

International pressure is building on the Chinese regime to come clean after a bombshell intelligence dossier accusing Beijing of lying was leaked.

The dossier, which has been circulated between Western governments including Britain, cites evidence that the virus was passed to humans via a Wuhan lab.

The dossier, which has been circulated between Western governments, cites evidence that the virus was passed to humans via a Wuhan lab (pictured, group handling bats)

It also claims that China persecuted whistleblowers as part of the cover-up, and obstructed efforts by other countries to develop a vaccine.

The classified document, from the Five Eyes security alliance of the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, risks shattering the fragile consensus which has held among the nations - with the exception of President Trump - to avoid direct accusations against the Chinese government over the pandemic.

Leaked to Australia's Saturday Telegraph, the dossier makes scathing criticism of the alleged cover-ups and persecution mounted by the Chinese since the outbreak.

Mr Trump's Five Eyes allies have been reluctant to join in with his criticisms of Beijing - despite having access to the same intelligence briefings - particularly when China is providing vital protective equipment and ventilators to countries such as the UK.

It is likely that Boris Johnson received intelligence briefings on the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, Hubei, before ordering the lockdown (pictured, January 24, 2020)

Mr Trump's Five Eyes allies have been reluctant to join in with his criticisms of Beijing (right, President Xi Jinping) - despite having access to the same intelligence briefings

It is also likely to increase calls for China to pay reparations to other countries if the claims are substantiated with Trump already demanding $1trillion.

The dossier says China moved to cover up the seriousness of the outbreak from early December, claiming: 'Despite evidence of human-human transmission from early December, PRC authorities deny it until January 20.'

US Secretary of State says there is 'enormous evidence' that the pandemic originated in Wuhan laboratory Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said there was 'enormous evidence' that the coronavirus pandemic originated in a laboratory in Wuhan. 'There's enormous evidence that that's where this began. We've said from the beginning that this was a virus that originated in Wuhan, China,' Pompeo said on ABC's This Week . 'We took a lot of grief for that from the outset. But I think the whole world can see now. Remember, China has a history of infecting the world, and they have a history of running substandard laboratories,' he added. Experts believe the virus started spreading as early as February in the United States before it forced states to issue lockdown directives for millions of Americans beginning in mid-March. There are more than 1.1 million confirmed coronavirus cases in the US with at least 68,000 deaths. Advertisement

It called Beijing's secrecy over the pandemic an 'assault on international transparency', and pointed out that China imposed travel bans on people travelling inside its borders as it told the world that travel bans were unnecessary.

Addressing the possibility that the virus had leaked from the Wuhan Institute, the report cites several studies led by scientist Dr Shi Zhengli as concerns.

It highlights the fact that Dr Zhengli - dubbed Bat Woman - and her team have conducted research in the lab into deadly bat-derived coronaviruses - with at least one of the virus samples being a 96 per cent genetic match for Covid-19.

UK security sources said that they were 'checking out' the details in the report.

Xiong Jun, from the Chinese Embassy in London, said: 'The head of the Wuhan Institute of Virology stressed in an interview that the institute is run on a set of strict management rules.

'High-level bioresearch safety labs have sophisticated protective facilities and strict measures to ensure the safety of laboratory staff and protect the environment from contamination.

'There is zero infection within the institute. It is the established general opinion of [the World Health Organisation], and scientists and professionals in the field of public health in the vast majority of countries including the US that there is no evidence showing the virus came from a lab.

'As the pandemic is spreading, the international community should co-operate on fighting against the virus.

'This is the only way to defeat Covid-19. Rumour-mongering as well as slander and smear will only damage international solidarity.'
03.05.2020 LISTEN

A forty-year-old man has been rushed to the Tamale Teaching Hospital after he sustained injuries from a fire accident in Buipe on Sunday.

The victim Asakpena who is a pre-mix fuel dealer sells his fuel to his fellow fisher folks at Bridge a suburb of Buipe for fishing and also owns a drinking spot where the fire started in front of the pub.

According to eyewitnesses he bent over to pour some fuel into a liter can when it ignited and burnt parts of his body from the shoulders to his chest and peeled off his skin.

It is also believed that all the cans and drums full of the pre-mix fuel around him were also burnt in the fire and worth about 5,000 Ghana Cedis.

He was rushed by the National Ambulance Service in a coma to the Teaching hospital for treatment on Sunday.

However, experts from the Ghana National Fire Service are yet to determine the cause of the fire.
Amanda Holden has revealed why prompted her to press her Golden Buzzer on Saturday night's edition of Britain's Got Talent.

The TV judge, 49, chose mother/daughter act Sammy and Honey to sail straight through to the live finals, after being moved by their touching story.

She told MailOnline: 'Sammy and Honey were just so lovely! It was a mummy and daughter singing act and if Im being honest the girl reminded me of my eldest daughter. It just got me straight away.

Amanda Holden has revealed why prompted her to press her Golden Buzzer on Saturday night's edition of Britain's Got Talent

'I think that it's their story, the fact that they had to go through cancer together, that they came on stage and Simon really put them through their paces by changing their songs.

'They came back and they didn't let it phase them.'

The double-act hit a rough patch during the audition, which made Amanda doubt her decision at first - but she eventually went with her instincts.

'I started thinking I was going to press my golden buzzer, and then it started to go wrong for them, Simon waded in and I wasnt sure all of a sudden.

Well deserved: The TV judge, 49, chose mother/daughter act Sammy and Honey to sail straight through to the live finals, after being moved by their touching story

She told MailOnline: 'Sammy and Honey were just so lovely! It was a mummy and daughter singing act and if Im being honest the girl reminded me of my eldest daughter. It just got me straight away'

Doting mum: Amanda is mother to daughters Alexa, 14, and Hollie, 8

'Apparently, all the producers on the show caught me looking at the golden buzzer a few times and were like, Watch out, shes going to blow! And eventually, I did.

'Its just that feeling you get, it almost forces you to press the buzzer, its really hard to explain. I think it was just the entire journey of the audition, their story, and how good I think that we can make them in the finals.

'I think we'll do a really good job helping them and they'll really be able to shine during the live shows.

She added: 'I think that it's their story, the fact that they had to go through cancer together, that they came on stage and Simon really put them through their paces by changing their songs. They came back and they didn't let it phase them'

Golden girl! The double-act hit a rough patch during the audition, which made Amanda doubt her decision at first - but she eventually went with her instincts

Amanda said: 'I started thinking I was going to press my golden buzzer, and then it started to go wrong for them, Simon waded in and I wasnt sure all of a sudden...'

She added: 'Apparently, all the producers on the show caught me looking at the golden buzzer a few times and were like, Watch out, shes going to blow! And eventually, I did'

'I just loved that it was one of those unpolished acts, I just know there will be mums and their daughters across the country who will connect with them.'

Amanda - who sits on the judging panel for BGT alongside Alesha Dixon, Simon Cowell and David Walliams - teased that she would be pressing her buzzer ahead of the weekend's episode.

Speaking last week to MailOnline, she said: 'The act - it's not one that starts all guns blazing. In fact the audition doesnt go their way to start with. But it becomes a moment, later theres a moment, a story...'

Of the fact that the production team were on to her, she elaborated: 'Apparently the producers knew I was going to [press the buzzer]. I kept thinking it, but I didn't know. But the producers knew. They apparently called the man to scramble up the ladder to release the ticker tape!'

She laughed: 'I'd love to tell you it's all very technical but no, it's a man who climbs up a ladder!'

Filling the void: Amanda revealed to MailOnline on Thursday that producers have tentative plans to film the live finals in the autumn, around the time The X Factor - which is not returning this year - should usually be broadcast [pictured: X Factor 2018]

Amanda also shed some new light on when the Britain's Got Talent live shows will take place, after the COVID-19 crisis halted production on the current series.

The show has been airing the pre-recorded audition episodes on Saturday nights, as is always the case this time of the year. But with the global pandemic leading to a UK lockdown, the next stage of the competition had to be put on ice, with public gatherings banned and people being made to stay home.

Amanda revealed that producers have tentative plans to film the live finals in the autumn, around the time The X Factor - which is not returning this year - should usually be broadcast.

'We have got some dates in our diaries,' Amanda said. 'Its difficult because I can't say when because it's all TBC. But it's hopefully looking to be in the early autumn.'

Keeping us informed: Amanda shed some new light on when the Britain's Got Talent live shows will take place, after the COVID-19 crisis halted production on the current series

Amanda stressed the importance of having a live studio audience for BGT, and that the show wouldn't be the same without that atmosphere after the BBC's autumn powerhouse Strictly Come Dancing have reportedly considered going ahead without a crowd.

'We just can't do it without an audience. For this show we need the British public on the stage and behind us in the audience. We need that atmosphere.'

She explained that there will be a catch-up show to remind viewers of the contestants when the show returns later in the year, and that she hopes the world will be 'in street party mode' by then, so it can really be enjoyed.

On ice: With the global pandemic leading to a UK lockdown, the next stage of the competition had to be put on ice, with public gatherings banned and people being made to stay home

Update: 'We have got some dates in our diaries,' Amanda said. 'Its difficult because I can't say when because it's all TBC. But it's hopefully looking to be in the early autumn'

Looking on the bright side of this happening, she admitted that it's nice to have the series drawn out over the course of the year.

'It's always over so quickly. We show the auditions and then we have the live shows that happen in the space of a week. But doing it this way, there's something to look forward to later in the year,' she mused. 'It's nice to have it in April/May and the autumn too.'

Britain's Got Talent continues on Saturday nights on ITV.
Montreal (AFP) - Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Saturday that Canada's approach to reopening its economy from the coronavirus shutdown would be "cautious" and not depend on the development of widespread immunity in the population.

"I don't think there are any of the plans that hinge on certain people or individuals being immune or having immunity to COVID-19," he said at a daily news briefing.

The World Health Organization (WHO) warned Saturday that there was no proof that people who survive infection by COVID-19 gain immunity to the disease.

It cautioned against the idea, being entertained by some countries, of issuing "immunity passports" to such people as one step toward reopening economies.

Trudeau said immunity is "something we need to have clearer answers to. Until we have those clearer answers, we need to err on the side of more caution."

For now, he added, the emphasis would be on continuing to urge social distancing measures and providing more personal protective equipment.

Theresa Tam, Canada's chief public health officer, was even more definitive.

"The idea of sort of generating natural immunity is actually not something that... I think should be undertaken," she said.

"We would, you know, really be extremely cautious of that kind of approach," Tam added.

Authorities in Quebec had last week raised the possibility of gradually building collective immunity -- or herd immunity -- for people in the province.

Trudeau met Friday with provincial leaders to discuss how to wind down weeks of confinement.

Each province will have to make its own adjustments, Trudeau said, while adding that the national government would retain an important coordinating role to avoid confusion.

Also Saturday, the outspoken premier of Ontario blasted a group of about 100 protesters as a "bunch of yahoos" after they rallied in front of the provincial legislature in Toronto to denounce stay-at-home measures and demand businesses reopen.

Story continues

"It's irresponsible, reckless, and it's selfish. It just burns me up. We've worked so hard and we have a bunch of yahoos out there thinking it's right," Doug Ford said at his daily news briefing.

"They're breaking the law and putting everyone in jeopardy... God forbid one of them end up in the hospital down the street."

Ontario, Canada's the most populous province, has seen 13,900 cases of coronavirus and 901 deaths.

The country overall has recorded 45,031 cases and 2,516 deaths.
Actor Irrfan Khan was a unique talent who broke class, caste and religious barriers to reach out to people and make a space for himself in their hearts through his distinct and alive acting style.

This is why, his passing away feels like a personal tragedy for his fans across the globe.

Irrfan, known for "The Warrior", "Maqbool", "Paan Singh Tomar", "The Namesake", passed away on Wednesday after losing his battle with a rare form of cancer at the age of 54.

I met Irrfan in my third year at National School of Drama (NSD). We soon became friends and remained friends till his death.

Irrfan was known in his friend circles as a Sufi-esque man who was never detached from any incident, person or situation. On the contrary, he would try to live through whatever he was confronted with, often seeking out the meaning behind the same.

He was someone who believed in drawing the reality of the man and community through his portrayals.

When one would ask him about his process of picking up his projects, he would thoughtfully say, "A film with a tight structure and characters that are both interesting and highlight the complexities of the society."



London-based filmmaker Asif Kapadia's The Warrior and Tigmanshu Dhulia's feature directorial debut Haasil, established Irrfan as a prolific actor in India as well as world cinema.

In his NSD days, Irrfan was known for striking a balance between the acting techniques of Russian theatre legend Konstantin Stanislavski and German theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht.

While Stainislavski emphasised on method acting, Brecht believed in imbibing the mental and emotional statement of the character and develop a relationship with it.

Irrfan's friends, including Tigmanshu, believe he had gone beyond method acting and had developed his own technique, which could resonate with the public. They believe it is impossible to learn what Irrfan could do.

Tigmanshu said Irrfan stood out because other than his passion for acting, he never behaved like a star.

The most special thing about Irrfan was that apart from his passion for acting he had no other quality of a star. He was like any other normal person around. He was free from the shackles of the glitz and glamour of movie business.

For the actor, social objective was more important than money but he was also someone who didn't believe that cinema is 'pure art'.

Some 'artistes', he thought, made films on social issues for their own satisfaction and when such movies get acclaim from a handful of people, they felt content. But these films never reach their target audience.

The National Award winner, who went on star in Bollywood films and world cinema such as "The Lunchbox", "Life of Pi", "Piku", "Hindi Medium", believed a good film is over and above the boundaries of language, country and cultures and speaks to the audience as someone their own.

Talking about the time when he was selected in NSD, the actor said his family members were not supportive but they had to bend before his passion.

"With a lot of arrogance and a belief that 'I'm embarking on a new journey of my life', I sat in the rickshaw with a holdall to catch a bus from Jaipur. I lied to my mother, I said I will become a professor after graduating from drama school," he once said.

Irrfan's father Shahzade Yaseen Ali Khan belonged to the respected Nawab family of Tonk, Rajasthan and his mother Saeeda Begum was also from a Nawab family. Irrfan has elder sister Rukhsana Begum and brothers Imran Khan and Salman Khan.

During an interview, I had asked him about the moment acting drew him in.

Irrfan said he realised the power of acting as a teenager after watching a film featuring Hollywood icon Marlon Brando.

"There were scenes in the film in which he had no dialogues. But as an audience I could understand his feelings and confusion. I was shocked to see this magic, where without even saying a single word, he could explain everything.

"This was the first step towards falling in love with acting. Looking at Brando I felt as if there was electricity in the air around him. There was an energy which made it possible for him to touch the heart of the audience."



Once I quizzed if NSD made him an actor, to which he replied, "An organisation can never make anyone an actor as acting is like meditation. An actor has to work a lot on himself and needs to build a relationship with anything in front of him without any preconceived notion.

"But every actor should develop his own definition of acting. To be a good actor, one needs to be a good person first. When you sink into the details of a character, then even your silence starts speaking, which connects the audience with you on a spiritual level.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
It was 1793. George Washington was President. Philadelphia was the U.S. capital. Dr. Benjamin Rush, a Philadelphia physician and former surgeon-general of Washingtons army, was the de facto head of the Department of Health of the new country.

When a yellow-fever epidemic hit Philadelphia, President George Washington fled to Virginia. Dr. Rush stayed behind and worked hard to quarantine and treat the sick. But his treatment, according to Ron Chernow in his biography of Alexander Hamilton, probably did more harm than good:

In treating yellow fever, Rush adopted an approach that now sounds barbaric: he bled and purged the victim, a process frightful to behold. He emptied the patients bowels four or five times, using a gruesome mixture of potions and enemas, before draining off ten or twelve ounces of blood to lower the pulse. For good measure, he induced mild vomiting. This regimen was repeated two or three times daily. (p. 449)

Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton stayed in the Philadelphia area, where both he and his wife caught yellow fever. But instead of submitting to Dr. Rushs standard treatment, they found an old friend from the Caribbean, Dr. Edward Stevens, who quickly cured both of them using quinine, a treatment that he had learned about in Scotland and St. Croix. According to Chernow:

Having treated yellow-fever victims in the islands, Stevens dissented from the American dogma of bloodletting and bowel purges, which he thought only debilitated patients. He argued for remedies that were cordial, stimulating, and tonic. To strengthen patients, Stevens administered stiff doses of quinine called Peruvian bark as well as aged Madeira [a drink that has about 1 mg zinc per liter]. (p. 449)

Despite the best efforts of doctors Rush and Stevens, about 10% of the people of Philadelphia died of yellow fever, as compared to less than 1%, so far, in the countries hardest-hit by COVID-19 today: Belgium (0.7%), Spain (0.5%) and Italy (0.5%).

Politicization of Quinine in 1793

On September 11, 1793, after he and his wife had recovered from yellow fever, Alexander Hamilton wrote a letter to the College of Physicians in Philadelphia extolling Stevenss treatment:

His mode of treating the disorder varies essentially from that which has been generally practiced -- And I am persuaded, where pursued, reduces it to one of little more than ordinary hazard.

Benjamin Rush read Hamiltons letter and tried the quinine treatment on his patients for several days, but gave it up when he could not achieve Stevenss results. According to Chernow:

Rush gave Stevenss methods a fair chance for several days, tossing buckets of cold water on patients and injecting quinine into their bowels, but he could not reproduce Stevenss results and reverted to the rigors of bleed-and-purge. (p. 450)

Benjamin Rush and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson were part of a political faction that eventually become the Democratic-Republican Party, so they opposed anything recommended by Treasury Secretary Hamilton, leader of the faction that eventually became the Federalist Party. Chernow writes:

An unfortunate medical dispute erupted between the Republican method of Rush and the Federalist alternative of Stevens. Rush was not averse to casting the controversy in political tones. Colonel Hamiltons remedies are now as unpopular in our city as his funding system [Federal take-over of state debts from the Revolutionary War] is in Virginia and North Carolina, he declared. (p. 450)

Jefferson and Hamilton

Unfortunately for Dr. Rush, the main result of this stand against quinine was that he lost his medical practice. Chernow writes:

Though Benjamin Rush blamed Alexander Hamilton for yellow-fever deaths, the public ended up blaming Rush. After a second yellow-fever epidemic in 1797 and more copious bloodletting, Rush lost so many patients that President Adams rescued him by appointing him treasurer of the U.S. Mint. (p. 451)

The similarity between the drug used by Dr. Stevens in 1793 and the one used by Dr. Vladimir Zelenko in 2020, when COVID-19 raged through a New York Hasidic community, is remarkable. Dr. Zelenkos hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) in 2020 is simply an advanced synthetic form of the quinine used by Dr. Stevens. Dr. Stevens learned about it first hand in the Caribbean. Dr. Zelenko learned about it through Internet research about treatments used in South Korea and France.

Both drugs are zinc-ionophores, meaning that they open cell walls so that zinc can get into them. Once inside, zinc can attach itself to viral strands, and thus slow virus replication, giving the bodys immune system a chance to catch up. Dr. Zelenkos prescribed cocktail only requires 5 days of treatment:

 Hydroxychloroquine. 400mg first day and 200mg per day for four days

 Zinc. 220mg once daily for 5 days

 Zithromax (to prevent bacterial pneumonia) 500mg daily for 5 days

Politicization of HCQ in 2020

On Sunday April 5, President Trump suggested at his daily press briefing that HCQ may be able to work against COVID-19. He said:

We bought a tremendous amount of  hydroxychloroquine, which I think is, you know, its a great malaria drug. Its worked unbelievably, its a powerful drug on malaria. And there are signs that it works on [COVID-19], some very strong signs.

The reaction from Democrats was just as strong as the reaction of Democratic-Republicans when Alexander Hamilton endorsed quinine as a treatment for yellow fever. Democrat state representative Karen Whitsett found this out the hard way soon when she recommended HCQ after it cured her of COVID-19. The Detroit Democrat Party now threatens to censure her and deny her any future party endorsements.

Just as Benjamin Rush did with quinine 217 years ago, todays U.S. health bureaucracy has been throwing cold water upon HCQ. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) sponsored a study in which the Veterans Administration administered HCQ to zinc-deficient patients without simultaneously administering zinc. Making their test of HCQ even less fair, they assigned sicker patients to the HCQ group and healthier patients to the control group. As could be expected, the HCQ group actually did worse than the control group.

At present the U.S. health bureaucracy is not recommending any treatment for COVID-19, so Dr. Zelenkos cocktail could be the best choice for primary-care physicians to prescribe when symptoms first appear.

Research by Benjamin Rush and the NIH shows that there are two non-treatments that primary care physicians should avoid prescribing: (1) injecting quinine into bowels while drenching the patient in cold water, and (2) giving HCQ to zinc-deficient patients without giving them zinc supplements at the same time.
Residents of Uwheru were enjoying the dry season evening breeze when this reporter arrived the community sometime in March. Mostly farmers and fishermen, they had just returned from their daily hustle and were irked by the sight of the stranger.

Their irritation is understandable. Only a few weeks earlier, at least 10 of their kinsmen had been gruesomely murdered by suspected herdsmen.

The residents said the community had been experiencing similar attacks for over two decades, but that of February was the deadliest. The elders responded by banning the consumption of beef to underscore their aversion for cattle whose grazing had brought the assailants to their community.

A resident, Kenneth, is a survivor of many attacks by herdsmen, one of which claimed the life of his sister in 2018.

He said the herdsmen had captured his family and told him to surrender either his sister or mother for gang-rape.

My sister said they should come for her, instead. Not one, not two, not three, not four, not five of them, he said. See my throat and my head. They tied me down and I could do nothing. They wanted to remove my head, the middle-aged man said showing scars on his neck.

His 21-year-old sister died as a result of the gang-rape. The horror of the gruesome murder still haunts Kenneth.

Julius Osieta also lost his elder brother to the rampaging herdsmen in February 2018 and now takes care of the widow and their seven children.

The widow is still crying. We have been trying to calm her down but all to no avail, he said. The seven children have stopped going to school because the family cannot afford the cost.

Philip Emesharuke, described as a successful fisherman and farmer, lost his life. He was shot dead allegedly by herders who had grazed their cows on his farm.

Mr Osieta and many other victims are bitter that the police had failed to bring the murderers to justice.

Similar stories abound across the 21 communities that make up Uwheru, an Urhobo kingdom in Ughelli North Local Government Area of Delta State. The communities include Orhoro, Erovie, Agadama, Urede, Egbo, Owarovwo, Ogode, Oreba, Avwon, Iwhouvbe, Iwhodja, Ode, Oguname, Owarie, Iwhegbo and Iwherhe.

The genesis

Several accounts traced the beginning of the clashes to 2004. They recalled incipient disagreements between farmers and herders escalating into a conflict during which the herders allegedly burnt down Ohoror, one of the communities. In retaliation, locals went after herders whose cattle they said were eating their crops.

During the retaliatory attack, the locals slaughtered some cows. The herders retreated, but soon returned with a reinforcement and allegedly burnt the village to the ground. It took the deployment of soldiers by the government to halt the carnage.

Since the incident of 2004, the conflict became annual. The most affected communities are Ohoror, Agadama, Anwur and Orheba. The pattern since then has been of confrontation and retaliation featuring arson, rape, maiming, torture and killing of cattle.

Several residents who spoke to PREMIUM TIMES alleged that the herders usually trigger the confrontation by grazing cattle on farms. When confronted, the herders would reply with violence, the locals said, and then retaliation would follow from the locals.

Benjamin Ohworeko is the secretary of the traditional council and spokesperson of the Odion of Uwheru Kingdom. He said the communities had made many calls for government intervention but none had stopped the cycle of mayhem. He accused the military of complicity in many of the attacks, alleging the involvement of soldiers from the nearby Bomadi Barracks on the side of the herdsmen.

If it were to be the herders alone, they dont have the capacity to chase us from our homelands. We have what it takes to secure our farmlands and our people if not because of the superior firepower of the Nigerian military.

They are always there to aid the herders. We were made to understand that the top military officers are the owners of those cows, he said.

When contacted, the National Secretary of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN), Othman Ngelzarma, disowned the herdsmen. He called the aggressors criminals.

We are peace-loving people. Criminals are in every part of Nigeria because crime knows no tribe. Let the security operatives finish their investigations before saying our members are the ones terrorising the community, he told PREMIUM TIMES in a telephone interview.

What happened in February

On February 13, armed persons stormed Avwon, one of the villages in Uwheru, while the people were at a town hall meeting. The attack by suspected herdsmen resulted in the killing of two locals whose remains the assailants allegedly burnt and buried in a shallow grave. Many others were also injured that day.

Two days later, some men were attacked while working on their farms in Agadama, a neighbouring village to Avwon. A witness who escaped that attack said that seven people died instantly while six others were injured and taken to Ughelli Central Hospital, Ughelli.

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Those reportedly killed in the two attacks were named as Samson Oghenemine, Philip Emesharuke, Turhoghene Andrew, Ejuvweyere Obaro, Ogheneruse Ochuko, Oghenerumugba Emmanuel, Afoke Freedom, Oghenekparobo, and two others.

Sunday Iniovogoma, the chairman of Agadama community, said the aggrieved community protested the killings by blocking a road linking the community to the Ughelli/Asaba road.

Mr Iniovogoma alleged that soldiers from Bomadi Barracks stormed the community and dispersed the protesters, during which process he said one person was shot dead.

In total, he said 10 people died from the attacks. Two in Avwon, seven in Agadama and one person during the protest. Unlike in previous attacks, recovering the bodies of victims became a problem, Mr Iniovogoma told this reporter.

We could not go there (the hideouts of the herders in the bush) on our own for fear of further attacks because we dont have weapons. We then called the army and the police to help us recover the bodies; it took them three days to recover the bodies.

The bodies were buried in Uwheru on March 19, he said.

The community leaders prevented our reporter from speaking with some female survivors of the attack, saying it would flashback the sad memories of the attacks.

Efforts to get the spokesperson of the Nigerian Army, Sagir Musa, to comment on the allegations against the soldiers in Bomadi were not successful. He requested that a text message be sent, which this reporter did. But he did not respond weeks after acknowledging receipt of the text.

Worsening farmers/herders conflict in Nigeria

According to the 2019 Global Terrorism Index (GTI), attacks from herders killed more Nigerians in 2018 than by Boko Haram, the insurgency group operating in Northern Nigeria.

The GTI report released in November 2019 ranked Nigeria as the third country with the worst impact of terrorism, globally  after Afghanistan and Iraq.

The report said terror-related incidents in Nigeria increased by 37 per cent, from 411 in 2017 to 562 in 2018. Also, deaths from terrorism in the country rose to 2,040 in 2018, a 33 per cent increase.

The increase was due to a substantial escalation of violence by Fulani extremists, whilst Boko Haram recorded a decline in deaths from terrorism, the report said.

Also, Amnesty International, a global rights movement, stated that at least 96 people were killed in violent clashes between members of farmers and herders communities in 2019

This was contained in its review of violation of human rights in Sub-Saharan Africa that was released recently.

Dispute over ownership and usage of land has remained the major cause of the violent conflict between herdsmen and farmers in Nigeria.

Businesses suffer

Life after the February attack has not been easy for the people of Uhweru.

PREMIUM TIMES observed that many no longer go to their farms for fear of being attacked. Some residents have relocated from the area.

Edward Iyamu, 62, said he had planned to plant maize and cassava this year until the February attack scuppered the plan.

READ ALSO:

You know we are farmers, when we plant something like cassava, potato, they enter the farm and destroy everything. They kill anyhow. We have left our farm for them.

The chairman of Odja community, Goodluck Ose, speaking with this reporter, lamented that residents are not allowed to farm again.

Many a time, when they destroy your farm and you ask why they are doing this, the next thing you hear is a gunshot. They (the herdsmen) are still there in the bush.

Many markets in the communities, some of which this reporter visited, have been deserted.

Education not left out

When this reporter arrived at Ohoror Secondary School, the only secondary school serving the ravaged communities, the students were few.

Awin Ubaro, an administrative officer who spoke on behalf of the head teacher, explained that the school has been the epicentre of the unfortunate incidents.

From time to time, we do run here because of their attacks. We run. We are close to the bush so we are close to the gunshots. As a result, some parents took their children away from here.

Also, as a result of the recurring attacks, the school lacks teachers for some important subjects and corps members posted by NYSC usually redeploy to safer communities in the local government area.

Corps member redeploy. They dont want to come here. We dont have a Physics teacher. We dont have a Biology teacher. Nobody wants to come, Mr Ubaro said.

The only corps member in the school, who identified herself only as Julie, said she would leave if the crisis resurfaces.

I have heard a lot about the herders and I am scared. If any attack is launched, that means I will redeploy as well, she told PREMIUM TIMES.

Ban on Beef

In its bid to stop the influx of herdsmen to the community, the kingdom has banned the sale and consumption of beef in the community.

The ban was agreed at a meeting on February 23 attended by prominent people in the Kingdom, including Patrick Muoboghare, a professor who is Delta State Commissioner for Higher Education.

This community leaders hope the ban would nudge the herders to work for peace or leave the community.

Why we banned the cow meat in our area is that we dont want to patronise them any longer. I believe by now, all of them are starving at the moment, Mr Ose said.

The kingdoms spokesperson, Mr Ohworeko, said that the decision was the peoples way of protesting recurrent rape and gruesome murder in their community.

When asked if the suspected Fulani herders are connected to Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, a group promoting the welfare of Fulani pastoralists in Nigeria, Mr Ohworeko said the group had disclaimed the herders on several occasions.

They have told us that they are not part of them. They said these Fulani herders are nomads from Chad and Niger Republic.

He called on the government to provide security for the people and requested that the anti-open grazing law be enacted in the state.

Well be grateful if the anti-grazing law as proposed by the Delta State House of Assembly is put in place, Mr Ohworeko said.

Police yet to nab perpetrators

A month after the February attack, the police were yet to arraign suspects. Although some residents of the community, who were suspected accomplices, were arrested, the security operatives are yet to conclude their investigation.

The spokesperson of the police in the state, Onome Omukuro, said no herder had been arrested.

On measures in place to prevent future occurrence, the police spokesperson said: We have a patrol unit that patrols the vicinity at intervals. We have also given out a (phone) line to be dialed when suspecting any attack.

The Chief Press Secretary to Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, Norbert Chiazor, refused to comment on the efforts of the state governor to end the attacks.

After two weeks of attempts to reach him, he said the state was reluctant to comment on any security issue due to alleged misinterpretation of the governments previous comments by some media houses.

When quizzed on why the anti-grazing bill, a law aimed at stopping indiscriminate grazing by herders, is yet to be passed in the state, he simply said that it is a national issue and declined further comments.

I would not want to talk about that. You know it is a national issue, he said.

Group demands accountability

The country director of Amnesty International in Nigeria, Osai Ojigho, urged government to take responsibility for the recurring conflicts in the community.

Ms Ojigho, in a telephone interview, said it is unfortunate that the perpetrators of the attacks were yet to be brought to book.

If you reflect on the experiences of the people in the community, what they will tell you is that they want peace to reign, they want to go back to their normal life-whether it is farming or fishing  without fear of being attacked.

Our call is that the government should take accountability and justice issues seriously and ensure that the law enforcement agencies are equipped. Until that is done, well continue to witness these conflicts, she said.

Support for this report was provided by Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism with funding support from Free Press Unlimited.
Sheela Jaywant invites you to explore the GoaWriters's interesting look at the lockdown.

IMAGE: Authors Shashi Deshpande, second from left, Jerry Pinto, right, and Damodar Mauzo, second from right, at the GoaWriters's inauguration in 2018. All photographs: Kind courtesy Sheela Jaywant

A bunch of writers compulsorily confined to their homes have started The Lockdown Journals, an entertaining and philosophical blog with various genres and topics related to the planet's present illness.

There are haibun (a combination of prose and haiku, it originated in Japan) and haiga (Japanese style of painting) describing nature, easy-to-read essays that bring out the effects of solitude on human lives, humorous pieces recording the humdrum of daily domestic chores, contemplative pieces, memories of other curfews, the consequences of it on education, etc.

The age group of the writers ranges from the twenties to the nineties.

The blog has sown the seeds of Pandemic Literature.

The members of the extraordinary GoaWriters live on different continents and upload their work in different time zones.

GoaWriters is an approximately 15-year-old informal group of writers (of course!) -- some well-known, others aspiring -- who meet regularly online and physically a couple of times a year.

It is an important part of the annual non-commercial and charming Goa Art and Literature Festival (GALF) held every December at the International Centre, Goa.

Past members have included Amitav Ghosh, Jerry Pinto and Wendell Rodricks.

Present members include Damodar Mauzo, Dr Isabel S R Vas, Vivek Menezes, Victor Rangel-Ribeiro and another 46 or so.

To read The Lockdown Journals is like taking a trip through some of the best minds that have any link to this tiny state on India's west coast.

One young college professor describes her online classes: '... aren't as easy as the world says, not when you live in a village, in one corner of the state, in a third world country.

'...I (have) never seen the 4G symbol on my phone though I'm paying for it, but the perpetual shift from E ...to 2G has me fuming constantly...

'Day after day, my 45 students and I gather in front of our computers, fingers clicking away, waiting for our cameras and microphones to connect.

'Test. Check. Can you hear me?

'We do a roll call to see if all are audible and just as we're about to begin class, I glimpse a red cross over Claire's name.

'Her picture is visible, mouth still moving but no sound emerges.

'Claire, can you hear us?

'Radio silence greets me back.

'Ma'am, I think her microphone isn't connected, a student chirps in.

'I ask him to call her offline and guide her through the process.

'Done ma'am.

'But Claire remains incommunicado.'

IMAGE: A GoaWriters's meet.

A poet tells us about the effect of the lockdown on her grandchildren:

'Expressions that had

'Lost all meaning

'Were tested by new tongues

'And fell upon

'Little ears to pick up

'And learn.'

One member's husband 'locked down' due to (viral?) meningitis when the country did it for another virus.

Whilst fellow Indians ran around for groceries, she chased prescriptions from the ICU to the pharmacy.

One doctor said to her '...We in India are dancing over Corona, when there are a million more dangerous viral infections floating around in our country.'

Another writer's metaphor is striking:

'The grain of wheat,

'It fell into the ground

'They then took it

'And wrapped it in a shroud

'And locked it down

'In a new hewn tomb.

'To keep it safe.

''Cept that the grain

'Had other plans.'

Evolving new routines and quarantine lifestyles, coping with health issues, lack of money, loneliness along with de-cluttering, playing indoor games, listening to music, empathising with and helping stray animals or just observing and bonding through virtual journeys have been typed and uploaded on

https://thelockdownjournals.wordpress.com.

These people are lovers of the written word.

GoaWriters has held workshops by the prize-winning author-member Venita Coelho, artist Savia Viegas, writer Ben Antao, music-historian Victor Rangel-Ribeiro, keeping its activity level high over the years.

The late Wendell Rodricks mentioned in The Green Room that it was a challenge posed by the GoaWriters that triggered off his memoir.

In 2011, GoaWriters published an anthology of original writing by members, Inside/Out  New Writing from Goa, edited by Helene Derkin Menezes and Jose Lourenco.

For its launch, the book was enveloped in banana leaves, encased in yeast-fermented dough and baked.

Amitav Ghosh cut open the edible wrapping to get to the book.

The picture on the cover of Inside-Outside was apt: bread coming out of an oven.

Could you expect any less from highly creative, maverick folk?

IMAGE: Samar Halarnkar (top, left), Salil Tripathi (top, right), Arundhati Subramanium, Amruta Patil and Jerry Pinto (bottom, left).

The writing journeys of these writers -- from an aeronautical engineer to a professional mountaineer to a helicopter pilot -- has been documented in From Mind To Keyboard, published by Goa 1556 with a grant from the government of Goa.

This is the tenth year that the GALF will be held, COVID-19 permitting.

It is known for including lesser known but exceptional writers from the north east, Kashmir, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The atmosphere is non-commercial and intimate.

Noted writers like Teju Cole, U R Anantmurthy, Gulzar, Pavan Kumar Varma, Sethu Madhavan and Landeg White have graced GALF events in years past.

GoaWriters's members are skilled in varied genres: travel writing, commentating on current topics, humour, theatre, short stories, writing for children, poetry of all kinds, food, anything...

The only criteria for membership are: you must want to improve your writing skill and be, in some way, connected to Goa.

It's a rare example of writers coming together with no office-bearers, no structure, no regulations.

They come together 'consistently and enthusiastically', said senior member engineer Jose Lorenco, 'in a genuine spirit of camaraderie, to spur themselves and their literary comrades in the quest of greater writing'.

Their latest exercise is the Covid Alphabet, in which each writer has expressed his/her thoughts through a chosen letter.

For example, a part of what describes the letter Z says:

'...The last letter. The end. Like the sunset, or dessert, or a graduation ceremony.

'A memorable letter.

'Definitive.

'You can't end an entire alphabet with 'why', can you?

'Unless you're listening to The Last Post playing at a sad, quiet gathering?

'Or the chanting of shlokas at an antyesthi?

'Zee or Zed, we need to reconsider its usage.

'Like, when are we going to see the Z of the Covid Lockdown?

'Or, will there ever be a Z of the Covid Lockdown?

'Or is this the Z era of Mankind? Like that.'

The Lockdown Journals is worth visiting to see how GoaWriters is documenting the times in an entertaining and effective way.

Sheela Jaywant is a humour columnist (Navhind Times, Gomantak Times, Goa Today), feature and short story writer.
WASHINGTON - For weeks the Trump reelection effort has diligently cut, catalogued and pushed out viral videos of every verbal stumble Joe Biden makes in interviews, relentlessly pushing the idea that the presumptive Democratic nominee is mentally unfit for the presidency.

"There is something missing," Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said last week in a campaign broadcast. "I feel bad for him. I wish his wife would pull him out of this."

But behind the scenes, the offensive has become a point of contention among some of President Donald Trump's closest advisers, who have spent weeks debating without resolution the best message and strategy to accomplish the Trump campaign's central goal of tarnishing the Biden brand as poll numbers continue to show a rocky road to reelection for the president.

Several political advisers, including White House senior aide Kellyanne Conway, have warned his allies against relentlessly mocking the 77-year-old Biden's mental acuity because the president has already lost ground with senior citizens, people familiar with the matter said.

Senior Democratic and Republican strategists, in private conversations, are in full agreement about the stakes of the discussions now taking place at the White House and in campaign conference calls. If Trump and his political machine don't find a way to drive up Biden's unpopularity with voters, they argue, the president will have little shot at winning a second term.

"We have to introduce people to a different Joe Biden," a Trump campaign adviser said. "One of the reasons we won in 2016 is because so many people hated Hillary Clinton. I'm not sure people hate Biden that much."

Republicans need the election to be a choice between Biden and Trump and not a referendum on the president's performance and rhetoric in office, according to Republican and Democratic strategists. On this score, Democrats said they are - for the moment - more bullish on Biden's prospects than they expected to be just a few months ago.

The debate over when and how to launch a focused and sustained attack on Biden with paid advertising has yet to be resolved inside the president's campaign, according to multiple sources.

"There are advisers telling him to wait until the convention. Other people saying go at it now," said one Trump campaign adviser, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private deliberations. "It is not decided."

Adding to the dilemma for the president's campaign is that the coronavirus pandemic has focused the spotlight brightly on the president and his controversial handling of the outbreak while Biden maintains a relatively low profile, doing interviews and virtual campaign events from a basement office at his home in Delaware.

The pandemic has delayed a widely expected anti-Biden advertising offensive by the vastly wealthier Trump campaign, allowing Democratic super PACs to outspend Republicans in key swing states over the past month. Biden's approval ratings are also far stronger than those of the last Democratic nominee, Clinton, at this point in 2016.

"Our expectation was always that Trump would go on offense early and we'd have to scramble to defend against his attacks," said Josh Schwerin, an adviser to Priorities USA, a super PAC supporting Biden. "The reality has been we've been able to run millions of dollars of thoroughly researched and tested ads, largely unanswered, and Trump's numbers in these states have been eroding badly."

Trump decided last month to delay a decision by his campaign leadership to run ads attacking Biden's policy toward China, after multiple advisers urged him to focus on selling his leadership as president during the pandemic first. As a result, the campaign has said it will spend more than $1 million over the next week on advertising across the country promoting Trump's pandemic response, a move that Democrats have dismissed as a cosmetic move to please the president, who is consumed by what he watches on cable television.

Parscale has argued repeatedly that getting Biden's unfavorable numbers up is key to winning the election, according to people who have heard his comments.

He has told other campaign advisers that positive ads do not do as much for the president's political fortunes as negative ads against Biden, and that is why he wants to focus on campaign ads that are anti-Biden, even as some advisers would prefer a different approach.

"You can't let Biden hide in the shadows," Parscale has told surrogates, according to a person with direct knowledge of his comments.

Parscale has been among the most aggressive advocates for going after Biden, but his standing has become shaky at times with the president, four Trump advisers said.

Trump's team hopes to target Biden particularly over China once the pandemic wanes, along with trade deals and some of the more liberal policy positions he committed to during the Democratic debates, such as health care for undocumented immigrants. The Trump campaign has several ads about China ready to go.

A recent Republican National Committee poll found that 51 percent of voters in 17 swing states - such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin - blame China the most for the coronavirus, according to a person briefed on the results. Some 24 percent blame Trump the most.

The polling on China is so strong that the major Trump super PAC, America First Action, has launched a $10 million campaign casting Biden as "weak" on handling the U.S. rival. The group purchased the Web address BeijingBiden.com in 2019, long before the pandemic.

"It is not that there is one line of attack against Joe Biden. The most damaging thing against Joe Biden is that while he has high name ID, the depth of impression of him is weak," America First Action President Brian Walsh said. "He is relatively a blank slate."

The America First spots have been matched by a similar investment in the same states from the pro-Biden super PAC American Bridge 21st Century, which has been running ads that cast Trump as caving to pressure from China.

"Since November, we've defined Trump in key battlegrounds - outspending him on TV and radio in our target states," said Bradley Beychok, the group's president.

Some Trump allies and campaign surrogates are also focusing on the allegation from Tara Reade that Biden sexually assaulted her in the early 1990s - an accusation Biden denies - as well as the former vice president's tendency to make verbal gaffes. But the latter two arguments are challenging given the president's history of women accusing him of sexual assault, which includes Trump caught on tape bragging about grabbing women's genitals, and his tendency to also veer off script into meandering, untruthful comments.

Trump complicated the matter further week last by repeatedly suggesting in public that Reade's allegation may be false.

"I would just say to Joe Biden, 'Just go out and fight it,' " Trump said Friday during an interview with conservative podcast host Dan Bongino.

A number of Trump's top political advisers said they are frustrated that Biden is "hiding out" in his basement, making fewer gaffes and public comments than they hoped, even if they anticipated this before the pandemic.

"We always thought he was going to play Biden-seek once he got the nomination, leaving it to his ads and his handlers to shape his image. This has given him an ability to do that," Ronna McDaniel, chair of the RNC, said in an interview.

Trump's advisers have taken heart in some recent internal polls that show voters seeing the president as more energetic and more of a "not your average politician" than Biden. Some 20 percent see Trump as not an average politician, according to a recent RNC poll reviewed by The Washington Post, while 69 percent see Biden as more of a normal politician.

Some Trump advisers said they are happy that Biden is basically being a pundit on TV instead of calling troops overseas, working with food banks or doing things that would get him more positive media coverage and draw a contrast with the president during the pandemic.

Conway has been one of the advisers arguing for a delay in attacking Biden on China and along with others has pushed for going after him as an establishment, insider politician.

"To me, it's just sequence. You have the president, you have the secretary of state, you have many Democrats angry with China about the virus," she said in an interview. "You set that groundwork now. And then, later, you say Biden has spent four decades being compliant and complacent. It's about sequencing."

The Biden campaign dismissed the idea that the former vice president is vulnerable on the issue of China.

"Kellyanne Conway should read the Trump campaign's own polling, which shows Joe Biden winning in a landslide after sounding the alarm about coronavirus early, publicly warning Donald Trump not to trust the Chinese government about containment, and calling for testing on the scale we need to overcome this outbreak," said Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the Biden campaign.

Working from the White House while many top campaign aides are at home during the pandemic, Conway has been dispatched to help the president improve his numbers among senior citizens, which have dropped in recent public and internal polling. She helped orchestrate an event at the White House on Thursday where Trump spoke with leaders of senior citizens groups.

Recent RNC polling showed that voters in the 17 swing states - a list that includes Arizona, Florida and North Carolina - see the two men as essentially equal when it comes to being "weak or confused"; 45 percent saw Biden as more weak and confused, while 44 percent saw Trump that way.

Voters view Trump as more of an outsider - 69 percent to 20 percent - and better at getting things done and handling the economy. Some 46 percent say Trump is in better health, while 37 percent say Biden is in better health.

But voters say Biden better understands average people and is more honest, compassionate, calm and committed to making health care more affordable by double-digit margins, the poll showed. Voters also see Biden as more intelligent and competent, the poll showed.

Trump aides have been discussing attacks that range from going after Biden for not supporting the raid on Osama bin Laden to supporting taxpayer-funded health care for illegal immigrants and supporting the Green New Deal and its champion liberal freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., according to Republican officials. Other attacks would focus on Biden's support of the Iraq War or backing the NAFTA trade agreement, Trump advisers said.

They are also looking to exploit divisions in the Democratic Party - from liberals who are skeptical of Biden's more centrist positions to moderates and independents who are skeptical of him promising more liberal positions. Trump advisers say they hope to unearth more contentious Senate votes and want to see his papers at the University of Delaware covering his 36 years as a senator.

In 2016, Trump and his campaign were successful in making Hillary Clinton unpopular, magnifying concerns that predated the campaign by focusing on her government emails, foreign entanglements, speaking fees and long career as a Washington insider.

Like Clinton, Biden has spent decades in Washington as a political insider, but Trump, who withstood a massive negative advertising onslaught in 2016, is now running for reelection as the president, potentially blunting the attack.

"It will be interesting to see if it works," said Amanda Loveday, an adviser to the pro-Biden super PAC Unite the Country. "Because it didn't work against Donald Trump. And I would argue it didn't work against Hillary Clinton because the people who didn't like her already didn't like her."

- - -

The Washington Post's Philip Rucker contributed to this report.
Pakistani anchor Aamir Liaquat was at the receiving end of intense criticism after a joke involving the deaths of Irrfan Khan and Sridevi. After Adnan Siddiqui, the co-star of the two Indian legends, who was the subject of the anchors questions, apologised to the families, now Manoj Muntashir fumed at Liaquat.

READ: Pak Anchor's Comments On Irrfan, Sridevi In 'bad Taste', Says Adnan Siddiqui, Apologises

Liaquat had joked on his show Jeewey Pakistan that Adnan Siddiqui spared the lives of Bipasha Basu and Rani Mukerji by turning down films like Jism and Mardaani 2, after the actors Mom and A Mighty Hearts co-stars passed away.

The lyricist didnt mince his words to ask him how low he had stooped for making fun of the deaths of the deceased. The Teri Mitti artist urged Sridevi and Irrfan to 'keep forgiving the stupid person wherever they are.' He added that forget laughing, he felt disgusted over the joke and asked him to get well soon.

READ: Adnan Sami Emotional With Death Of 'elder Brother' Rishi Kapoor, Rahman, Kanika Mourn Loss

Heres the post:

READ: COVID-19: Manoj Muntashir Compares India's Cases To Pak, Says 'Doing Great Job As Nation'

Earlier, Adnan Siddiqui had reacted to the unfortunate incident and had termed it callous and in bad taste. Regretting his decision to feature on the show, he asserted that he wont tolerate such an event in the future.

Irrfan Khan passed away in Mumbai on Wednesday after a two-year battle with cancer. A day later, Rishi Kapoors demise, also due to cancer, too sent shockwaves across the nation. Kapoor's co-star of many films, Sridevi, had passed away in February 2018.

READ: Maj Gaurav Arya Praises Teri Mitti Lyricist, Shares Unseen Video From Army Camp
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 16:45:43|Editor: huaxia

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Li Zuyi (L), a 31-year-old village official of Wenjia Village, talks with a villager about cattle raising in Baxu Township of Nandan County, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, April 29, 2020. In Guangxi, many young people are entrusted with the task of strengthening the Communist Party of China (CPC) at the grassroots level and aiding in poverty alleviation. They are working on the poverty relief front: going door to door to find about people's livelihood and coming up with ideas to help them shake off poverty. The youth of today shine in the course of poverty alleviation, as they give full play to their abilities in poverty reduction with strong sense of mission and responsibility. (Xinhua/Cao Yiming)
A lawsuit was filed in Nashville on Friday that stinks to high heavens. The Democratic Party is leading a nationwide effort to expand absentee voting. This is not to say any Dem or even one of its more liberal followers would ever cheat on anything, but when it comes to chicanery, there are birds of every color who  since before Honest Abe Lincoln was elected  will try every way under the sun to beat the ballot box. Fridays action was brought by The Equity Alliance in Nashville, the A. Phillip Randolph Institute in Memphis, the state chapter of the NAACP, plus two individuals. It is believed to have the backing of billionaire George Soros and the ever-opportunistic coronavirus.

The virus wasnt in the picture when the absentee ballot scam was hatched, along with the notion of mail-in ballots for everybody, but California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said that in the Super Tuesday voting on March 3, there was definitely double voting by registered voters.

Not only that, the Election Integrity Project-California says there are more than 30,000 duplicate voters in the state, and, like the coronavirus, it has spread across America. Some use their married and maiden names, multiple home addresses and all sorts of other improprieties.

In Tennessee heretofore an absentee ballot has been limited to those who are sick or disabled, traveling or who are over the age of 60. Lawyers for the plaintiffs claim the Tennessee absentee laws are unconstitutional and want the court to change reasons some ballots are disqualified. They also want the rules that limit the ability of groups to assist absentee voters. Charlane Oliver, who is the co-executive director of the Nashville Alliance, told the Nashville Tennessean that voters should not be forced to choose between their own personal safety and participating in our democratic process.

The trouble, of course, is that the democratic process has about 1,600 dead people still voting in New Mexico and  get this  another 1,500 who are all over the age of 100. Another 3,100 duplicate voters have been flagged. In Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) Pa., there are 1,600 dead who have voted, 1,500 over 100 years old, and almost 7,500 duplicate voters. In the city of Detroit, there's about 2,500 of the dead and almost 5,000 duplicate voters. What is most ironic is there is a strong belief that almost all of the 100-year-olds are Democrats.

In other words, tampering with Tennessees absentee voting method is an open door for those who are villains and to vote-by-mail is a bigger mistake.

Absentee ballots in Tennessee can be requested starting this Friday (May 8) and ending July 30. Early voting for the August 6 election will be Friday, July 17, through Saturday, August 1.

* * *

IS THIS THE TIME TO BUY LAPTOPS FOR $7 MILLION?

The Knox County Board of Education received $12.9 million from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act and Supt. Bob Thomas wants to buy all 60,000 students in the county a laptop computer with $7 million of it. I am sitting here wondering if thats the right thing to do when 30 million people in America are unemployed. Of course, I find fault with a lot of ways our tax dollars are wasted, but wouldnt it be better to buy books for the library, pay off student lunches, dedicate a huge chunk of it towards todays urgent mental health needs among school children, help pay for security officers, renovate elementary school playgrounds and the like? Or, even better, share it with Knox County hospitals. Instead of giving a third grader a laptop, give her an education. And use some of the money to establish Another Year program where kids can repeat a grade until they earn the right to advance up to the next grade. Social promotions are the ruination of public education; if little Sally cannot read at the third-grade level, there is no computer in the world that can enable her to read on the fourth-grade level, or the next, or the next.

* * *

THE COVID-19 SCOREBOARD

This as of 6 p.m. Saturday:

WORLDWIDE CASES: 3,397,879

Active cases: 2,087,484 (+65,323/24 hours)

Recovered cases: 1,068,848 (+29,260/24 hours)

Fatal cases: 241,547 (+6,257/24 hours)

- - -

UNITED STATES CASES: 1,148,705 (Number 1 in the world)

Active cases: 931,729 (+11,308/24 hours)

Recovered cases: 150,371 (+13,467/24 hours)

Fatal cases: 66,605 (+1,375/24 hours)

- - -

TENNESSEE CASES: 12,661 (No. 20 in USA)

Active cases: 5,396 (+770/24 hours)

Recovered cases: 5,718 (+172/24 hours)

Fatal cases: 209 (+5/24 hours)

Hospitalized: 1,125 (+12/24 hours)

Tested: 196,276 (+10,114/24 hours)

Test Results: Positive 12,661, Negative: 183,615. (6.9 percent positive)

Race: White: 5,129 cases (131 deaths  62.7 percent); Black: 2,576 cases (65 deaths  31.1 percent)

[NOTE: There are 93 (of 95) counties in Tennessee that have identified the coronavirus and 25 have less than 10 cases each of COVID-19.

- - -

HAMILTON COUNTY, TN. CASES: 175 (No. 8 in 95 counties)

Active cases: 70

Recovered cases: 88

Fatal cases: 4

Negative Test: 3,177

-------

royexum@aol.com
Babita Rai, a 35-year-old domestic help from Zamrudpur in south Delhi, has been without work for over 40 days now. With her depleted savings and an additional loan of Rs 20,000 coming to an end, Babita and her husband are uncertain about their future even as the country readies to get some relaxation from the ongoing lockdown.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) had issued new guidelines on Friday to ease some of the restrictions on essential and non-essential services during the third phase of the lockdown, which starts from Monday.

While the ministry asked the resident welfare associations (RWAs) to take a call regarding allowing the movement of outsiders, several house helps were either told to not come or are not aware about the RWAs' decisions.

"No one has asked me to come back for work. I am without any work for over 40 days now. I did call them to check whether we can resume our work, while most denied one family, who are putting up on rent, said the owners of the house are not allowing them, Rai told PTI.

Before the lockdown came into effect on March 24, Babita was working in three houses in Greater Kailash, earning anything between Rs 6,000 - 10,000 per month.

Another worker, Rekha from Vasundhara, Ghaziabad, is afraid to step out fearing the police may reprimand her and has not heard about any RWA decision in this regard.

There is no work and whatever money I had saved is almost gone. I do not know if societies may allow us to work from tomorrow. I do not know how we will survive if we do not go back to work, she said.

Rekha had returned to Ghaziabad from her daughter's wedding in Bihar just in time before the lockdown restricted inter-state movement.

Not just domestic helps, but home-makers are also in the dark as they await to hear from their RWA secretaries.

We were told that there will be an RWA meeting today about allowing maids to come in, but we have not heard anything so far. While it would be of great help if they are allowed, we will still have to be careful, said Aniket Sharma, a resident of a gated society in Ghaziabad.

The movement restriction has hit the lower income class groups hard as another domestic worker Pinky from Noida sector 39 rued that the lockdown has rendered her jobless and her family hungry.

All my employers had told me that they would call when they wanted me to come to work, but I have not heard from anyone yet. Running the household has become extremely difficult. We are eating one meal a day because I have not got my salary for the last two months, Pinky said.

The confusion over permission to domestic workers has not spared the RWAs either.

Nivedita Upadhyay, a home-maker from Greater Noida, was told by the Resident Welfare Association of her area that they are awaiting instructions from the state government.

The RWA has told us that they are awaiting guidelines from the state regarding the relaxation. Our society had restricted the entry of maids, drivers, newspaper vendors etc from March 25 itself. Besides, allowing maids to work here is risky since most of the domestic help comes from Aicher village, which of late has recorded a lot of COVID-19 positive cases, she said.

On the other side, Anindyo Sengupta, a homeowner from Gurgaon, was relieved to know that her domestic help can resume work, but only after briefing her on all precautionary measures.

I am actually quite relieved that she will be returning. My husband and I had shared the workload, but it was getting very difficult to manage the household without her.

Since my mother lives with us, I have briefed her on all precautionary measures like keeping her nose and mouth covered, and washing hands and feet before getting started, Sengupta said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
They are a crucial lifeline for communities in the bush, giving locals regular access to medical specialists and ensuring links to businesses in Sydney.

Yet airports in regional and rural NSW are facing a sharp drop in revenue due to the coronavirus pandemic, placing councils which own them under significant financial pressure.

Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, at Dubbo Airport about 18 months ago. Credit:AAP

"Financially, we have been smashed. It just continues to hemorrhage income each and every day," Dubbo mayor Ben Shields said.

The council-owned airport, which played host to Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, 18 months ago, derives the vast majority of its income from landing fees. They have virtually dried up since restrictions were imposed last month, and airlines began drastically cutting back.
Michael Goonan is selling his Married At First Sight memorabilia on eBay, which means fans can now own a piece of reality TV history.

The 29-year-old company director listed his wedding ring and a framed photo with ex-'wife' Stacey Hampton over the weekend.

The photo is smashed because Stacey had allegedly thrown it across the room in anger after the couple's break-up.

Want to grab a bargain? Michael Goonan is selling his Married At First Sight memorabilia on eBay, which means fans can now own a piece of reality TV history

Bids for both items have exceeded $600 as of Monday morning.

The listing reads: 'Wedding ring and original photo smashed by the ex. Condition is Pre-Owned. Sent with Australia Post Standard.'

Bidding is set to continue for another four days and it's expected the ring and smashed frame will sell for thousands of dollars.

Place your bids! The 29-year-old company director listed his wedding ring and a framed photo with ex-'wife' Stacey Hampton over the weekend. The photo is smashed because Stacey had allegedly thrown it across the room in anger after the couple's break-up

Expensive: Bids for both items have exceeded $600 as of Monday. Pictured: the eBay listing

The subtle dig at Stacey comes after Michael told Daily Mail Australia on Sunday that the former couple were no longer on speaking terms.

'We haven't spoken since the reunion [in January],' he said. 'That relationship ended for various reasons. It came to an end and two parties moved on.

'Watching it back, it was a genuine relationship, I was invested in it. But it didn't work out. That's life. Appreciate your bad days; they are a measure of the good ones.'

'That relationship ended': The subtle dig at Stacey (right, on their wedding day) comes after Michael revealed on Sunday that the former couple were no longer on speaking terms

Michael has not stated whether the proceeds from the sale will go to charity, which is what several of his co-stars have done in recent weeks.

Josh Pihlak's ring and portrait with ex-'wife' Cathy Evans recently sold for $18,101.

All proceeds from the auction are being donated to the MND Foundation for motor neurone disease support and research.

'This is an organisation close to Josh as he unfortunately lost his cousin in 2019 to motor neurone disease at the age of 33,' the listing read.

Charity: Michael has not stated whether the proceeds from the sale will go to charity, which is what several of his co-stars, including Josh Pihlak (pictured), have done in recent weeks
The Plan aligns long-term incentives across the Company.

Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - May 1, 2020) - Nextleaf Solutions Ltd. (CSE: OILS) ("Nextleaf", "OILS", or the "Company"), Canada's most innovative cannabis extractor, announced today that it has issued shares under its Employee Equity Participation Plan (the "Plan") implemented on April 1st in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to align the efforts and compensation of non-executive employees with the Company's long-term business strategy.

"The Plan is an opportunity for us to give our hardworking team a greater opportunity to share in the upside potential of OILS. With our custom closed loop industrial-scale extraction plant commencing commercial production, and up to 25 metric tons of cannabis biomass under contract through Nextleaf Labs, it is a very exciting time for OILS. I am proud of my team's participation in the Plan, their belief in the long-term opportunity at Nextleaf, and commitment to building Canada's most efficient cannabis refinery!" stated Paul Pedersen, CEO of the Company.

The Plan is fully voluntary and permits non-executive employees to receive common shares in the capital of the Company in lieu of a portion of an employee's cash compensation. The Plan allows the Company to reduce the cash component of employee compensation and further align incentives across the team.

Under the Plan for the month of April, Nextleaf has issued an aggregate of 39,471 common shares at a price of $0.325 per share.

About Nextleaf

OILS is Canada's most innovative cannabis extractor, developing technology for extracting and distilling THC and CBD oils. Nextleaf's industrial-scale extraction plant in Greater Vancouver, BC has a design capacity to process 600 kg per day of dried cannabis biomass into refined oils. The Company owns a portfolio of over 20 issued patents and 50 pending patents for the extraction, purification, and formulation of cannabinoids. Nextleaf Solutions commercializes its patent portfolio through IP licensing, and supplying THC and CBD oils through Nextleaf Labs, a Health Canada licensed standard processor.



Nextleaf Solutions trades as OILS on the Canadian Securities Exchange, OILFF on the OTCQB Market in the United States, and L0MA on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.



Follow OILS across social media platforms: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.

www.nextleafsolutions.com



For further information, please contact:

604-283-2301 (ext. 219)

investors@nextleafsolutions.com



On behalf of the Board of Directors of OILS,

Paul Pedersen, CEO

Story continues

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT

Certain statements contained in this press release constitute "forward-looking statements". All statements other than statements of historical fact contained in this press release, including, without limitation, those regarding the Company's expectations regarding the Plan and the resulting reduction in the cash component of employee compensation, and the Company's strategy, plans, objectives, goals and targets, and any statements preceded by, followed by or that include the words "believe", "expect", "aim", "intend", "plan", "continue", "will", "may", "would", "anticipate", "estimate", "forecast", "predict", "project", "seek", "should" or similar expressions or the negative thereof, are forward-looking statements. These statements are not historical facts but instead represent only the Company's expectations, estimates and projections regarding future events. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve assumptions, risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. Therefore, actual results may differ materially from what is expressed, implied or forecasted in such forward-looking statements. Additional factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially include, but are not limited to the risk factors discussed in the Company's MD&A for the most recent fiscal period. Management provides forward-looking statements because it believes they provide useful information to investors when considering their investment objectives and cautions investors not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Consequently, all of the forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements and other cautionary statements or factors contained herein, and there can be no assurance that the actual results or developments will be realized or, even if substantially realized, that they will have the expected consequences to, or effects on, the Company. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release and the Company assumes no obligation to update or revise them to reflect subsequent information, events or circumstances or otherwise, except as required by law. The CSE has not reviewed, approved or disapproved the contents of this press release.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/55251
New Delhi: The post-COVID19 world order will be "markedly different" and it will be in Pakistan's own interest to change its actions like supporting terrorism, BJP General Secretary Ram Madhav said on Sunday, asserting that India knows how to handle such countries.

The high-profile BJP leader also said it would not be fair to blame an entire religious community for "perceived mistakes" of some members of a group, in apparent reference to Muslims being allegedly blamed for the spurt in coronavirus cases after a Tablighi Jamaat congregation in Delhi.

"It doesn't help the community and country at large," he told PTI in an exclusive interview.

Strongly rejecting allegations of "Islamophobia" in India, Madhav said Prime Minister Narendra Modi is enjoying support of all communities in the fight against the coronavirus and that those suffering from "Modi-phobia" are trying to communalise the country's discourse.

He also said there will be a flight of capital from China in the post pandemic phase and India will be an attractive destination for investments by the global corporate giants.

On Pakistan, Madhav said the country has not relented on its anti-India and pro-terror campaigns even when the entire world is focusing on dealing with the coronavirus crisis.

?It shows that somewhere something is hugely amiss in Pakistan's leadership. It doesn't want to improve relations with India,? he said.

Madhav said Pakistan itself will be forced to decided what place it wants in the post-COVID19 global order. ?It is as much a question to Pakistan as to China.?

He further said: ?It will be in Pakistan's own interest to change its actions in the emerging new world order and India knows how to handle such nations.?

Pakistan has been unrelenting in its efforts to push militants into India as there have been rising incidents of unprovoked firing by Pakistan military along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir in the last few weeks notwithstanding the coronavirus crisis, according to military officials.

In the post-COVID19 period, Madhav said the priorities for the world could be health care, climate change and liberal democratic values. "India will have a bigger role to play. India is leader in all this."

Talking about China, Madhav said he felt many companies will move out of the neighbouring country in the wake of the coronavirus crisis and India will be an attractive destination for them.

?In the post COVID period there will be a flight of capital from China, and India will certainly be an attractive destination for them,? he said.

The senior BJP leader said it will be interesting to see what course China takes in the post-pandemic phase.

"In Communist Party of China's parleys, there is a word called 'Line Struggle'. From time-to-time, this line struggle results in leadership change in the country. That is how Xi Jinping became leader in 2009 and subsequently became supreme leader in 2013. But line struggle also means change in party's line of thinking," he added.

"In 2013, Xi Jinping gave new direction of outreach and increasing Chinese influence," he said.

On allegations of Islamophobia, he said they "were nothing but some sort of propaganda and were not based on the ground reality".

There has been a wave of angry reactions on Twitter by leading citizens and rights activists from various Arab countries following allegations that Muslims are being blamed for spreading coronavirus in several parts of India.

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, a powerful bloc of 57 countries, recently accused India of "Islamophobia". India rejected the charges as regrettable.

Crediting Modi's leadership with effective handling of the pandemic, Madhav said: "India has set a shining example that how visionary leadership, democratic governance and popular support can work together to face such challenges.

He said one of the major reasons for successful handling of coronavirus crisis is that the country is "unitedly" standing behind the government.

Referring to surveys showing higher approval ratings for Modi among global leaders, Madhav said they reflected that he is enjoying the support of Muslims, Christians and all other minorities.

?Look at the way the country has responded to his clarion calls to light lamps or clap for corona warriors. But some elements are trying to communalise the discourse as they are suffering from Modi-phobia,? he said.
A prison riot has left at least 47 dead and 75 wounded in western Venezuela, a country where NGOs and inmates' families regularly denounce unsanitary conditions, violence and overcrowding behind bars. The Venezuelan Prison Observatory (OVP) rights group provided the figures for the riot, which happened Friday afternoon at the Los Llanos prison center in Guanare city. Parliamentary Deputy Maria Beatriz Martinez, who represents Portuguesa state where the prison is located, said: "At the moment we have been able to confirm 47 dead and 75 wounded." Martinez and the NGO said all of the dead were detainees. According to an army report on Friday, the disruption started when inmates began destroying "the security fences around the perimeter" in a "massive escape attempt." It also said the prison's director was wounded. Martinez refuted that account, stating the uprising was staged by a group of prisoners "because they did not have access to food." According to OVP, guards opened fire following the incident at the facility, which has a capacity for 750 inmates but houses some 2,500. With the coronavirus pandemic raging, visits from family and friends -- who often bring food and medicine to inmates -- have been greatly reduced. "What is happening right now is because of the guards. They don't transfer the food" brought by families to the inmates, Yessica Jimenez, who knows someone inside the prison, told AFP. The identities of those killed were verified "through the morgue, thanks to relatives who recognized the dead in photos that were shown to them on a computer," said Carolina Giron of OVP. She added inmates' family and friends "don't have access to the hospital." According to the organization, 97 deaths occurred in Venezuelan prisons last year, 70 percent of which were due to diseases such as tuberculosis and a lack of medicine. More than 330 cases of coronavirus, including 10 deaths, have been recorded in Venezuela, but authorities say there have been no cases in the country's jails. Opposition leader Juan Guaido has refuted Venezuela's official count, accusing the government of Socialist President Nicolas Maduro of "shamelessly lying." The initial toll Friday from the riot was 17 dead and nine wounded. A screenshot shows members of the National Guard deployed outside Los Llanos prison, in Guanare on May 2 after a riot A screengrab shows inmates' relatives reacting outside Los Llanos prison in Guanare on May 2 A screengrab shows inmates' relatives reacting outside Los Llanos prison in Guanare on May 2
Bengaluru, May 3 : Accusing the ruling BJP government of cheating hundreds of migrant workers by first over-charging and collecting single journey fare from them, the Karnataka Congress donated Rs 1 crore to the state-run transport service to send the stranded workers to their native place free, a party official said on Sunday.

"Our party's state unit president D.K. Shivakumar gave Rs 1 crore through cheque to the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) towards the cost of bus fare for sending the migrant workers to their native places across the state from Bengaluru," party's spokesman Ravi Gowda told IANS.

In a damage control exercise, state chief minister B.S. Yediyurappa on Saturday directed the KSRTC to charge only single fare for ferrying the migrant labourers to their home and not to charge to and fro, as the state would bear its operational cost.

"The state government has been insensitive to the plight of the migrant workers belonging to our state itself, as they have been left in the lurch with no local transport to reach the intra-bus/inter-bus terminal in the city centre and enough buses to send them to their native place," Gowda lamented.

With the extended lockdown norms further relaxed, the state government has allowed the migrant workers in the cities across the southern state to return to their native place in special buses within the state and special trains to other states since Saturday.

"Though hundreds of migrant workers rushed to the terminal in the city centre in private vehicles, KSRTC failed to arrange enough buses to send them to their native place across the state. Many waited till late night without food and water to board the special buses to their native place," Gowda alleged.

The party's state unit cadres arranged free food and water to all the migrants who boarded the buses belatedly to their home towns and villages.

On the reported delay in arranging buses for the migrant labourers, a KSRTC official told IANS that due to operational and logistic reasons, some buses were late in reaching the terminal as they were parked in different depots during the nearly 40-day lockdown since March 25, enforced to prevent the coronavirus spread across the state.

According to the state labour department, about 2 lakh migrant workers have been stranded in relief camps in cities and border areas across the state, with 80,000 of them in this tech city as buses and train services were suspended since March 25 due to the lockdown.
Egyptian courts resumed work on Sunday following suspension since mid-March as part of measures to stem the spread of the coronavirus, the website of the National Media Authority said.

The head of the Cairo Court of Appeals has decided to resume work at courts to uphold human rights of those held in pre-trial detention in many shelved cases.

More than 8,000 criminal cases have been postponed due to the suspension of court proceedings, many of them involving people in pre-trial detention, according to the report

Criminal courts, meanwhile, will operate two days a week, instead of six, and will look into detention renewals, deciding whether to release defendants or keep them in custody.

They will also issue sentences in cases whose final rulings had been postponed, namely in major cases of death sentences or referral to Egypts religious authority, the grant mufti, who should give an opinion on any capital sentence.

Courts will fulfill their legal and national duty by resuming work while taking all precautionary measures to protect public health. These include regularly sanitising courtrooms and only allowing the defendant and their lawyer to attend the session.

Other courts were to resume work as of Sunday.

The family court will issue sentences only in cases whose final rulings had been deferred over the coronavirus crisis.

The misdemeanor cassation courts will be back to holding hearings, with 60,000 appeals having been suspended since mid-March. However, neither the opponents nor the public will be allowed to attend the sessions.

Egypt has suspended proceedings at all courts on 15 March to limit the large number of people who gather at courts nationwide. Other steps taken by the country to curb the spread of the virus include halting air traffic, shutting mosques and churches, banning public gatherings and suspending classes at universities and schools.

As of Saturday, Egypt had 6,193 confirmed coronavirus cases, with the death toll standing at 415.

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With over a million Covid-19 patients and more than 60,000 deaths, the United States continues to bear the brunt of the coronavirus outbreak. Europe is the worst-hit continent accounting for more than 1 million cases. An analysis of the Covid-19 mortality rate among European nations suggests that Germany has considerably low numbers Covid-19 fatalities as compared to other countries in the continent like France, Italy, the UK, and Spain.

While the UK, Spain, Italy and France have reported more than 25,000 coronavirus fatalities, for Germany the figure rounds up at over 6000 deaths.

According to the latest data, Spain has reported 216,582 Covid-19 cases, Italy is at 209,328, followed by the United Kingdom (183,500), France (168,518) and Germany with 164,967 coronavirus cases.

Johns Hopkins University suggests Covid-19 countries across the globe have reported very different coronavirus case fatality ratios. It is the number of deaths divided by the number of confirmed cases.

Also read: What is Remdesivir? How can it help in Covid-19 treatment

The University states that the number of fatalities can differ across regions owing to the following factors:

- Differences in the number of people tested: With more testing, more people with milder cases are identified. This lowers the case-fatality ratio.

- Demographics: For example, mortality tends to be higher in older populations.

- Characteristics of the healthcare system: For example, mortality may rise as hospitals become overwhelmed and have fewer resources, among other factors.

Going by case fatality ratios, the university data suggest the US to have 5.9% Covid-19 fatality ratio (over 65,000 deaths on more than one million cases) while Germany stands at 4.1%. India is projected to have over 3% Covid-19 mortality ratio with more than 1300 deaths of total 39,980 Covid-19 cases.

Johns Hopkins case fatality ratios exhibits the burden of Covid-19 across various countries. Countries at the top of the figure have the most deaths proportionally to their Covid-19 cases or population, not necessarily the most deaths overall, it says.

According to the data, the list of countries with highest Covid-19 fatality ratios - most deaths proportionally to their Covid-19 cases or population - has Belgium on top with 15% Covid-19 death rate. The country has around 50,000 coronavirus patients and nearly 8,000 fatalities.

The United Kingdom comes second with over 15% fatality ratio followed by France (14.7%), Italy (13.6%) and the Netherlands (12.3%)

(Inputs from Johns Hopkins University)
These nuclear arms have been in Germany for decades since the Cold War

The parliamentary leader of the SPD, the junior partner in Germany's coalition government, has called for U.S. atomic weapons to be withdrawn from the country. But other parties remain opposed to such a move, DW reports.

Mutzenich, whose party is a junior partner to Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative CDU/CSU bloc in Germany's coalition government, told the paper Tagesspiegel am Sonntag that "atomic weapons on German territory do not heighten our security, on the contrary."

"It is time that Germany ruled out their deployment in future," he added, stressing that such a move would not call Germany's membership in NATO into question.

He justified his call largely by referring to the change in US nuclear strategy under President Donald Trump, saying that Trump's administration saw atomic weapons not solely as deterrents but as weapons of aggression, making the risk of escalation "incalculable."

The US has had nuclear weapons in Germany for decades, many dating back to the Cold War when they were seen as a deterrent against Russia.

The comments by the SPD lawmaker were criticized not only by CDU politicians but also by the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP).

"The demand from SPD parliamentary leader Mutzenich is the wrong signal at the wrong time," said the FDP defense affairs spokeswoman Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann. She said that the ongoing quarrel in the coalition about foreign and security policy was damaging Germany's reputation in the world.

"It is naive to believe that Germany would have the same influence on NATO's nuclear strategy if US nuclear weapons were withdrawn," she said, adding that Germany must quickly decide on a successor to the Tornado if it was to fulfill its responsibilities as part of the alliance.
Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine.  Lord Gordon Byron

In a world where everyone is caught in a rut to meet their goals and turn desires into reality, World Laughter Day comes as a reminder to take a break and ease the load.

From some of the greatest poets, writers that the world has ever seen to the 21st-century business tycoons and billionaires - the world, from time to time, has come around to recognise the power of laughter and has always recommended it as one of the cheapest drugs to most things that plague the mind.

Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, in one of his heartfelt blog entries, shared how his friendship with Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffet - spanning over 2 decades now - has been all about  learning and laughter.

Gates said that Warren has always helped do two things that are impossible to overdo in one lifetime: learn more and laugh more.

Also read: Fight Covid-19 with 30 minutes of laughter every day

Im always impatient for the plane doors to open because I know Warren will be waiting with a new story or a joke and Ill be learning and laughing with him all over again, Gates wrote in a blog piece in 2016.

Breaking into a fit of laughter is one of the best and easiest ways to ease the stress temporarily and thus goes the popular saying, laughter is the best medicine.

The benefits of laughter are many. It automatically infuses a sense of connection among people, almost instantly. Laughing can bust stress, relieve tension and scientifically speaking, it is known to boost brain activity, alleviate pain, improve mood and activate the stress response.

Laughter is what comes to us naturally, instinctively. Nothing else is as pure and real as a good laugh, the easiest way to placate a troubled soul.

World Laughter Day was founded in the year 1998 by a Mumbai-based doctor, Madan Kataria, who was also the founder of the worldwide Laughter Yoga movement. The day dedicated to laughter is celebrated every year on May 3.

Kataria was resolved to start a global laughter yoga movement based on the premise that facial expressions can affect human emotions.
By Express News Service

CUTTACK: A team of officials from World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNESCO, who had visited the State Governments designated Covid hospital managed by Ashwini Hospital here recently, inspected its preparedness and appreciated the healthcare facility for adhering to all the protocols.

The team found the hospital to have been operating with 96 per cent of compliance with all parameters and adjudicated it as the best one among the 11 Covid hospitals of the Government. WHO and UNESCO appreciation is no doubt a proud for us. The recovery of a 70-year-old Covid patient with the efforts of Ashwini Trauma Care Unit is too commendable, said Cuttack Collector Bhabani Shankar Chayani.
Police and forensic service officials inspect the site believed to be the origin point of a blaze in Goseong, Gangwon Province, Saturday, after it took 12 hours to put out the forest fire in the county. / Yonhap



By Jun Ji-hye



The overheating of a wood-fuelled boiler at a house in Goseong, Gangwon Province, is believed to have started a fire that destroyed an estimated 85 hectares of forest in the county, according to police and the fire authorities, Sunday.



On Friday at 8:04 p.m., the fire started in the house and is believed to have spread to nearby forest land due to strong winds. The forest fire forced the evacuation of over 2,000 people including local residents and soldiers stationed in the northeastern border town.



Local firefighters called for help from nearby cities, and it took 12 hours to put out the fire. No casualties have been reported.



About 40 officials from Gangwon Provincial Police Agency, Gangwon Fire Headquarters and Korea Electrical Safety Corp. began examining the fire site Saturday, placing weight on the possibility that the boiler caused the forest fire.



Police set up a separate facility for inquiries and the investigation into the incident.



"We will concentrate on finding out the direct cause of the fire promptly," a Gangwon Provincial Police Agency officer said. "We will also work to support the victims of the fire in cooperation with the Goseong County Office."



Investigators are collecting evidence from the site to send to the National Forensic Service for analysis, they said, adding that they are not ruling out the possibility of another cause for the fire.



With the fire growing quickly in gusts of wind, 329 residents and 1,876 soldiers belonging to the Army's 22nd Infantry Division were evacuated to nearby elementary schools.



The fire burned 85 hectares of forest, a military guard post, a cowshed and two greenhouses.



The residents and soldiers returned to their homes and barracks, Saturday, after the fire had been put out.



"I express my gratitude to the local authorities for their efforts to evacuate the residents quickly and extinguish the fire throughout the night," Interior and Safety Minister Chin Young said. "I ask the authorities to spare no efforts to prevent re-ignition."



The fire in the mountainous county of Goseong came about a year after the region suffered another catastrophic forest fire that also spread far and quickly due to strong winds.



At the time, the devastating blaze that affected around 250 hectares of forest caused one death and at least 11 injuries, as well as damage to numerous buildings and houses.


Former President of African Court on Human and Peoples Right, Justice Augustino S. L. Ramadhani, has passed on, a statement by the African Continental Court said on Saturday.



The statement, copied to the Ghana News Agency, said: It is with the deepest sorrow that we have learnt of the death of Justice Ramadhani, who served as the Judge of the African Court from 2010-2016 and as its President from 2014-2016.



Justice Sylvain Ore, current President of the Court, described Justice Ramadhani as an exemplary leader and unshaken in his pursuit of justice and protection of human rights on the African Continent.



Justice Ramadhani was consistent and mentored many Judges and Staff. He foresaw good in everybody he was like a father, big brother and above all a man of good faith and vision.



The Late Justice Augustino Ramadhani held a Bachelor of Laws Degree from the University of East Africa (1970), a Master of Laws from the University of Dar es Salaam (1978) in International Law (the law of armed conflict) and a Bachelor of Divinity from the University of London (2004).



Immediately after obtaining his first degree Justice Ramadhani joined the Tanzania Peoples Defence Forces.



After training in the Tanzania Military Academy, he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant and reached the rank of Brigadier General when he was voluntarily released in 1996 when Tanzania resumed multiparty democracy.



Prior to being appointed Judge of the African Court, Justice Ramadhani was a Justice of Appeal of the United Republic of Tanzania from 1989 to 2010 when he retired after attaining the compulsory retirement age of 65.



In his last three years on the bench, he was the Chief Justice of Tanzania from 2007 to 2010; Chief Justice of Zanzibar from 1980 to 1989 and served as a Judge of the East African Court of Justice from 2001 to 2007.



From 1993 to 2003 Justice Ramadhani was the Vice Chairman of the Tanzania National Electoral Commission, and held the same position in the Zanzibar Electoral Commission from 2002 to 2007.



He was also the Chairman of Executive Council of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Electoral Commission Forum in 2006 and 2007.



He has published articles on Human Rights such as Promoting a New Economic Order in Developing Countries: A Role for Human Rights Organizations, published in the Vol. XI No 3/1996 of the Speaking about Rights (Canada Human Rights Foundation Newsletter).

Source: GNA









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Officials within the Trump administration believed that the White House's medical experts were causing the president to overreact in pushing for extended shutdowns amid the coronavirus pandemic, questioning whether the death toll would reach over 60,000.

According to the Washington Post, a coalition of skeptical officials led by the Vice President's Chief of Staff Marc Short believed that the moves for mitigation of coronavirus were only damaging the economy and Trump's chance at reelection, instead of saving any more lives.

The group - which also included senior economic adviser Kevin Hassett, the president's son-in-law Jared Kushner, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow  were unhappy at the idea that health experts were influencing the White House response.

One former senior administration official told the Post that the bloc looked at the health experts 'like the school nurse trying to tell the principal how to run the school'.

Their skepticism came despite projections presented by the coronavirus task force which said as many as 1.6 million to 2.2 million Americans could die without social distancing efforts and that even with a continued lockdown, there would be an estimated 100,000 to 240,000 fatalities.

As of Saturday night, there have been 67,173 deaths from the coronavirus in the United States and 1,160,519 confirmed cases.

Officials within the Trump administration believed that the White House's medical experts were causing the President to overreact in pushing for extended shutdowns

Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci and White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx (pictured) warned that the coronavirus death toll would be high but Trump administration officials believed otherwise

In late March, as Trump talked about reopening the country in time for Easter Sunday on April 12, two physicians on the White House coronavirus response task force presented data from public models such as the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation that included grim figures for the number of Americans who could die as a result of the outbreak.

Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci and White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said that without continued social distancing and other mitigation efforts, as many as 1.6 million to 2.2 million Americans could die.

Even if the lockdown continued from March, the death toll was still high, showing that there would be an estimated 100,000 to 240,000 fatalities.

While the administration at this point moved to persuade the president to take the pandemic more seriously, the Post reports that some officials remained skeptical that deaths could ever reach that high.

With Trump impatient to reopen the economy and get people back to work, a separate team was established to build an econometric model to guide response operations.

Led by Kevin Hassett, a former chairman of Trump's Council of Economic Advisers, who has no background in infectious diseases, the team's analysis showed that the country's daily death count would peak in mid-April and drop off substantially after that.

While the country did record its most deadly day on April 15 with 2,524 deaths, the daily death toll continued with force, dropping off slightly only to soar above 2,000 daily deaths again.

By the end of April, the daily death tolls were still reaching over 2,200 - showing that Hassett's optimistic model was far too good to be true.

A former senior administration official brief on the data described Hassett's oversight a 'catastrophic miss'.

As reported by the Washington Post, Hassett has denied ever projecting the number of Americans who would die from the outbreak, but the new predictions were said to have been embraced by the likes of Kushner who remained skeptical about how severe the virus could be.

'I have never, ever said that that's my projection of what the death count was going to be, and no administration policy has been influenced by my projections,' he said, adding, 'It's an utterly false story that I've been a rosy-scenario guy inside the White House.'

Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci and White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx during a meeting with President Donald Trump about the coronavirus response on Wednesday

White House senior adviser Kevin Hassett listens during a roundtable with industry executives on Wednesday. Hassett, who has no background in infectious diseases, established to build an econometric model to guide response operations that predicted fewer deaths

The new predictions, as well as grim estimations of the effect the shutdown would have on the economy, however, bolstered Trump in searching for an end to the social distancing, as he became the main cheerleader for economic revival.

Hassett confirmed that the charts were shared internally and showed fewer deaths than other publicly available projections but claims it was because he was drawing a curve based on real-time mortality data versus what the charts predicted would happen for the same days.

The charts were also said to have encouraged the group unhappy with the medical and health experts, as tensions grew between the science and politics factions of the administration

It is reported that members of the task force with medical degrees, including Dr. Birx, Dr. Fauci, CDC Director Robert Redfield, Surgeon General Jerome M. Adams and Brett Giroir, who leads the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, began to meet separately from the other members of the team from late March.

They are said to have been concerned with what was dubbed as the 'voodoo' being discussed in the larger group.

'There's a little bit of a God complex,' one senior administration official told the Washington Post of the group.

'They're all about science, science, science, which is good, but sometimes there's a little bit less of a consideration of politics when maybe there should be.'

The 'voodoo' mentioned may have referred to Trump's frequent touting of hydroxychloroquine as a cure, which he now refrains from publicly supporting.

More recent conflicts between the science-led and politics-led parts of the administration have come as a pathway to reopening has been announced that will rely heavily on widespread testing.

Trump has come under fire for not reacting quickly enough to the virus threat and not setting up a system of testing on a federal level.

Yet, Kushner said Wednesday he hopes the US will have carried out around five million coronavirus tests by the end of this month.

He told Fox News: 'We figured out how to really stimulate that supply. We believe by the month of April we will have close to five million tests that will be performed.

'We're anticipating for the month of May, the number we were originally asked to do, we can exceed it...we think we can double that number and we should have more than ample amount of tests in the market for the month of May.'

Kushner said the White House, alongside the Department of Health and Human Services, has been working with governors to develop their own testing strategy on a local level.

He added: 'The limiting factor is not going to be swabs or reagents or transport media, it's going to be the different states' ability to collect the samples and do it in an efficient way.

'We feel really good. We've eliminated a lot of problems when it comes to testing and I think we will continue to see it do better and better over the coming weeks.'

According to the Washington Post, however, Dr. Birx said 'she knows they are far behind on testing, no matter what the president says.'

The sidelining of opinions from medical experts on the task force can also be seen in the White House's coronavirus press briefings themselves.

Both the Washington Post and the New York Times found the daily meetings were dominated by the president, with much less time given to the medical experts.

Even Vice President Mike Pence, who heads the White House Coronavirus Taskforce, has so far got less than half the time Trump takes up at the podium, using around 60 per cent of the briefings for his own rambling diatribes.

The Post analyzed the 35 briefings held since March 16 and discovered the president spoke for more than 28 hours across all those conferences.

Between April 6 and April 24, Trump spoke for 13 hours - more than twice as long as Dr Deborah Birx, who oversees the administration's virus response, at six hours.
When Khader Abu Alia, an English-language professor at Al-Quds University, boarded United Flight 90 from Newark to Tel Aviv, he had no idea that he wouldnt be able to return home. He had traveled to the United States for a family emergency and was returning April 14 after a one-month stay. Upon arriving at the passport control of Ben Gurion Airport, he was told he is not an Israeli citizen and he was being deported. He showed them his Jerusalem residency card, his Israeli drivers license and a returning resident visa valid until 2022. However, he was deported back to the United States on the same plane before having a chance to contact his employer or a lawyer.

Abu Alia has not been the only Jerusalemite who has found himself in a legal blackhole. Palestinian university students from Jerusalem with valid Israeli-issued residency documents were barred from boarding a plane back home. They were separated from Israeli citizens who were allowed to board an Israir Airlines flight back to Tel Aviv. Another group of students trying to return from Turkey were also not allowed to board their flight. In all cases, they were asked if they had an ishur, a permit issued by the State of Israel that takes precedence over any travel documents. No such permits were asked of Israeli citizens.

Since July 28, 1967, Israeli civilian law has been implemented in occupied East Jerusalem and its residents were given permanent residency. They are legally allowed to apply for citizenship  less than 5% have  but for the most part requests for citizenship are delayed for years.

Mohammad Maki, a second-year medical student in Russia, told Al-Monitor that he and others had bought a ticket on an Israir flight from Moscow to Tel Aviv on April 24. But at the gate, the airline would only allow Israeli citizens to board. We were told that we were not allowed to travel and that we needed a special permit from the Israeli Embassy or Israeli Foreign Ministry, Maki said.

Munir Nuseibah, head of Al-Quds Universitys Community Action Center, took up the case of Abu Alia and assigned the centers lawyer to follow up on the case. Attorney Muhammad Shihabi, coordinator of the centers legal aid unit, told Al-Monitor that unclear directives were issued following the coronavirus outbreak that allow for the possibility of differentiation between citizens and residents.

Shihabi filed a pre-petition appeal to the Israeli High Court on April 18; the Israeli government replied on April 20 to follow up on the case of the professor with the Israeli Embassy in Washington. Failing to get any information in the United States, the lawyer sent a request to the office of the Israeli attorney general on April 29 and threatened a lawsuit in the High Court demanding the right of his client to return home and that compensation should be paid.

Ahmad Tibi, a veteran member of the Israeli Knesset, told Al-Monitor that upon hearing of the cases of the professor and the students his office intervened. Both groups of students from Moscow and Istanbul successfully boarded a plane. The Jerusalem Alliance to confront the coronavirus outbreak provided them space at an East Jerusalem hotel. The St. George Hotel, owned by the PADICO group, has agreed to cover the cost of all quarantined Palestinians at the hotel.

Tibi told Al-Monitor that he has succeeded in getting a permit for Abu Alia to return, and that the problem was the lack of clarity in the directives by the Israeli Ministry of Health. There is no change in regulations and the rights of all East Jerusalems residents have been preserved, he said.

The university students from Moscow had also contacted Tibi's office and the Israeli Embassy in Moscow and were able to catch the next flight on April 28 after paying a $70 transfer fee and accommodation costs in Moscow. We really felt the racism and hatred toward us as Jerusalemites. It was as if they want us never to return to our homeland, but we will not give up our rights in Jerusalem.

Jessica Montella, executive director of the HamoKed Center for the Defence of the Individual, a Jerusalem-based human rights and legal aid center, told Al-Monitor that she is not aware of any changes in the status of East Jerusalemites. We have heard of the case of the Jerusalemites being sent back at the airport, but we have not had any other complaints and we are not aware of any changes in the status of East Jerusalem residents.

Nuseibah told Al-Monitor that the way that Palestinian Jerusalemites are being treated is very worrisome. It is scary what is happening, he added.

Nuseibah said that unlike people who enter a country and seek residency, the case of Jerusalemites is different. We didnt go to Israel, but in 1967, Israel came to us and forced themselves on us. We have rights as people under occupation regardless of what Israel decides.

Another group of students and others stuck in Jordan appear to have solved their return problems. A Jordanian-Palestinian agreement reached on April 30 will allow some 500 Palestinians stuck in Jordan or having reached Jordan to return via the King Hussein Bridge, which will be temporarily opened on May 3.

For years, Israel has said that Jerusalem is united and the capital of Israel, but when the coronavirus crisis happened, they abandoned the people of East Jerusalem and denied their basic rights. The pandemic appears to have exposed the fault line that has existed in Jerusalem for over five decades. Despite the claims by Israel of having united the holy city, there is no doubt that there are deep divisions and discriminatory policies applied to Arab-Palestinian residents living in the eastern half of the occupied city.
Much of our economy has come to a standstill. For the past month, millions have been out of work, and millions more have been cloistered in their homes.

Chris Provost has been working in the oilfield since he was 17 years old. He said hes taken a 55 percent pay cut, and hes worried about supporting his family; his father was recently laid off from Chevron. Record low oil prices and the coronavirus caused at least 2,500 oil and gas layoffs in 10 days.

The easing of stay-at-home restrictions in Texas this weekend doesnt change the fact that the world has, in many ways, simply stopped. Yet for all the deserted highways, closed factories and shuttered schools, global carbon emissions are believed to have fallen by about 5.5 percent, according to newly released estimates from the United Nations World Meteorological Organization. But UN climate scientists believe the reduction needs to be about 7.6 percent every year to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

To put it another way, weve drawn much of the economic activity in the industrialized world to a standstill, and were not even close to preventing calamity. Last week, I pointed out that its a good first step, and it is, but it isnt a sustainable one.

As it is, it may take years for the global economy to recover. Some companies never will. For millions of people, trying to stay healthy and alive has come at the price of prolonged financial hardship.

Which makes it hard to even ask what we would have to do to reduce carbon emissions the rest of the way. Would we ban the use of air conditioning? Limit delivery days to twice a week nationwide? Eliminate all gasoline or diesel engines?

The last thing people who have already sacrificed so much want to hear is that it isnt nearly enough. This is the part that environmentalists dont like to talk about, but the reality is that buying a Toyota Prius was never going to save the planet. Personal choices are admirable, but by themselves they arent enough.

Which is why whatever we do to reduce emissions  and we need to do something  it needs to focus on the supply side of the economy, not the demand side.

We need systemic change. Make affordable electric cars that are reliable and fun to drive, and more people will stop using gasoline  eventually. But it may be too little, too late. Most U.S. delivery companies already switched their fleets to compressed or liquefied natural gas, significantly lowering their emissions. In January, the global shipping industry adopted cleaner standards for bunker fuel  one of the dirtiest forms of transportation fuel. Both of these are large-scale changes, pre-pandemic, that have had at best a modest impact on global carbon output.

Were already making a massive move by transitioning more of our electricity generation from coal to natural gas. By 2012, we had met the terms of the Kyoto protocols that the United States refused to endorse seven years earlier. Back then, with oil and natural gas appearing scarce, President George W. Bush feared the commitment would cripple the U.S. economy. Now, armed with abundant natural gas reserves unlocked through hydraulic fracturing, the market drove compliance. The economy not only wasnt harmed, it thrived.

By 2019, natural gas was the preferred generating fuel, accounting for more than 38 percent of all electricity generation, compared with 23 percent for coal. (Renewables  wind, solar, biomass, hydropower and geothermal combined were only 18 percent.)

Switching away from coal on a global scale would reduce carbon output by 1.2 gigatonnes and cut power sector emissions by 10 percent, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. As more renewables scale up, and as their economics benefit from that scale, the downward trend would likely continue.

Renewables are cheap, clean and efficient until the clouds roll in or wind dies down. Then, we need something that can jump in quickly to pick up the slack. And that something, at least for now  until better battery technology or some other innovation comes along  is natural gas. Gas plants ramp up and down more quickly than coal or nuclear facilities, offsetting renewables intermittency, and its the abundance of U.S. natural gas that has spurred much of the growth in renewables so far. Its not a stretch to say the wind farms of the Panhandle owe their existence to the frack jobs of the Permian Basin.

Of course, as natural gas production has increased, so has the amount of methane leaking from pipelines and storage facilities, which has undermined some of the progress. And the West Texas drilling boom focused on oil. Much of the gas  enough to power the entire city of Houston  is burned off, which is both wasteful and a climate change accelerant. The boom also caused companies to get sloppy, which has led to more instances of water contamination, and the sheer volume of wastewater that has to be reinjected into underground storage areas has been tied to a rise in earthquakes.

Ive made the point before that George Mitchell, the Houston oil man who perfected fracking and who, as a pioneer of sustainable development, was also concerned about its impact, would have said these are fixable problems. The bust will take the edge off of companies worst practices for now, and innovation will play a role in the future. Researchers are developing lasers and drones that can spot methane leaks, for example, and gas thats currently being flared may eventually be converted to liquid fuel such as methanol. But we also need better oversight. The Texas Railroad Commission has the authority to regulate it, but rarely enforces the current rules.

As for wastewater, Houston-based companies such as Halliburton and Baker Hughes have developed processes to treat wastewater from wells enough that it can be reused, which reduces the amount of freshwater needed for fracking, as well as the need to dispose of it underground.

Producing energy  even wind and solar  has environmental impacts. But as the population grows, we will need to find a way to produce more energy while reducing its carbon footprint and improving efficiency.

The only realistic way forward involves tradeoffs, and we need to focus on big gains that are both ecological and economically sound. We dont have easy choices. We cant afford to continue living in lockdown indefinitely. And we cant afford to return to the way we were.

Steffy is a former Chronicle business columnist and the author of three books about the oil business, including George P. Mitchell: Fracking, Sustainability, and an Unorthodox Quest to Save the Planet. Erin Douglas contributed to the reporting.
Brazil's virtually uncontrolled and unaddressed coronavirus surge continues to fuel fear among citizens as the country's health officials record hundreds of burials daily.

Manaus Mayor Artur Vigilio called the country's pandemic situation as scenes from a horror movie. The city reported more than 100 burials a day in April, forcing authorities to conduct mass graves in improvised cemeteries. Virgilio believes his city is now under a state of utter chaos, saying it is in a war that is already lost.

The city's health care system has already collapsed. There are no more available bed spaces in intensive-care units. Doctors are also forced to leave hundreds of people untreated.

The victims are all buried collectively, leaving relatives wondering whether or not their loved one was among those buried. Corpses are stacked on top of each other in the graves. Their official causes of death are often listed as unknown or severe acute respiratory failure. Experts believe the situation is leading to a massive under-count of COVID-19 cases and deaths.

Brazil's government reported 118 coronavirus-related fatalities from April 21 and April 28 in Manaus. However, there were more than 200 people buried that same week. The bodies were put in graves without a determined cause of death. Over 395 other victims also died due to respiratory failure or suspected COVID-19.

According to one model, the city may see 4,200 burials by the end of May.



Turn for the Worse

Conditions in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are not as dire as Manaus'. Experts believe the country could face a surge similar or worse to those devastated by the virus, including the United States and Italy. As of Sunday, Brazilian health officials recorded 97,100 cases and 6,761 deaths, making it the ninth hardest-hit country in the world.

Edmar Santos, Rio's secretary of health, believes the nation's health care system could happen this month. He cites the thousands of people waiting to be given proper medical attention, with more than 361 in critical conditions.

Brazil's borders remain open despite sharing borders with nearly every other country in South America. There are no quarantines or curfews in the country. Testing is also limited, raising concerns over the real number of deaths and infections in the country.

The government is weighing a possible nationwide stay-at-home policy. However, getting people to follow the social distancing guidelines is proving to be difficult.



"What do you want me to do?"

Brazil's president, Jair Bolsonaro, has continuously sabotaged state and local governments' efforts to curb the virus. He recently fired his health minister, who defended the shelter-in-place measures.

Bolsonaro believes the media and the opposition are creating a hysteria using the COVID-19 pandemic. A reporter recently asked the president about the country's rising death toll, prompting him to say: "So what? What do you want me to do?"

While many in the medical community expressed outrage at his lack of empathy, his supporters are following his lead. A study conducted by an independent organization showed many of Bolsonaro's supporters violated social isolation protocols following his speeches, where he repeatedly dismissed the threat of the virus.

In answer to the backlash he faced, he falsely accused the World Health Organization of encouraging same-sex relationships and urging children to commit sexual acts as a reason to justify ignoring the federal health organization's advice about the coronavirus pandemic.



Read the latest news from the U.S. and Latin America:
WE BEGIN AT THE END by Chris Whitaker ( Zaffre 14.99, 464 pp )

WE BEGIN AT THE END

by Chris Whitaker (Zaffre 14.99, 464 pp)

This heart-rending story set in one of the poorest parts of rural America is among the most powerful and moving I have read in years.

Three decades ago, Vincent King killed a young woman, but now he has served his time and returned to his hometown of Cape Haven, California.

Unsurprisingly not everyone is pleased to see him, especially his deeply troubled ex-girlfriend Star Radley, sister of the girl he killed. She is being looked after by her 13-year-old daughter Duchess  who calls herself an outlaw, but is also caring for her mentally challenged younger brother.

All these major characters are immaculately drawn. The intrepid Duchess wants nothing more than to protect her mother and brother, but sadly succeeds only in bringing them and the town to the brink of destruction.

Written with the panache of James Lee Burke, its so gripping that I read it twice  with tears in my eyes.

MORTMAIN HALL by Martin Edwards ( Head of Zeus 18.99, 416 pp )

MORTMAIN HALL

by Martin Edwards (Head of Zeus 18.99, 416 pp)

The multi-award-winning Edwards launched a distinctly sparky female detective, Rachel Savernake, daughter of an Old Bailey judge, in his last book and here she reappears in even more spectacular form.

Set in 1930, this opens with a trial at the Old Bailey and a man accused of the so-called blazing car murder unexpectedly being found innocent.

Theres also a suspicious death on the Necropolis Railway which transports bodies to Brookwood Cemetery, the largest in England.

Enter young journalist Jacob Flint, reporting the trial for his paper  only to find himself framed for murder  as well as an idiosyncratic female criminologist with an estate on the North Yorkshire coast, Mortmain Hall. Inevitably the story culminates there, with the discovery of a body at the foot of the cliffs, and the suspects staying as guests. This is an old-fashioned mystery with a string of very modern twists, making Ms Savernake a Miss Marple for the 21st century.

WHEN ANGELS SLEEP by Mark Griffin ( Piatkus 7.99, 416 pp )

WHEN ANGELS SLEEP

by Mark Griffin (Piatkus 7.99, 416 pp)

A second outing for Griffins troubled yet brilliant criminal psychologist Holly Wakefield does not disappoint. Here she confronts a serial killer working on the edges of London, who likes to hide in plain sight.

A boys body is discovered in Epping Forest. He has been posed, with a pillow under his head and an angel pendant clasped in his hand. DI Bishop of the Met calls in Wakefield to help him understand the killers motivation and ensure he does not strike again.

She fails to do that and puts herself in harms way as she tries to catch a man who likes nothing more than to manipulate the police.

Once an LA-based screenwriter, Griffin nods to Hollywood in his creation of the killer, but adds layers of depravity for Wakefield to confront in her search for him. Not bedtime reading perhaps, but this stark and haunting story lives on in the mind.
A phone call to Colonel Ashutosh Sharma that was answered by a terrorist, in all likelihood by one of the two men found dead at the end of the 13-hour-long encounter, changed the course of the bloody gunfight in north Kashmirs Handwara. That phone call told the scores of soldiers and police officers waiting around the house in Handwaras Chanjmulla locality that they had probably taken a hit.

Col Ashutosh Sharma, the 44-year-old commanding the 21 Rashtriya Rifles battalion, had entered the house with company commander Major Anuj Sood, 30, Naik Rajesh Kumar, 29, Lance Naik Dinesh Singh, 24, and J&K Police Sub Inspector Sageer Pathan aka Qazi, 41, a little after 5.30 pm. They succeeded in getting the family that was stuck in the house out, but were trapped. But there was no sign of the security personnel.

Also read: Last Holi, he came unannounced. It turned out to be his last visit: Col Sharmas family

Between 6 pm and 10 pm, we tried every way we could think to get in touch with him or other members of the team. But couldnt, a senior Jammu and Kashmir police officer told Hindustan Times.

Four hours later, at about 10 pm, someone finally answered.

Assalamualaikum, the man on the other end of the line said.

Our officers figured that there was only one way they could have gotten hold of his phone, a top Jammu and Kashmir police officer told Hindustan Times on conditions of anonymity.

Also read: Went in to rescue civilians: Colonel, Major among 5 killed in action in Handwara

The firing, which had been suspended, resumed.

It continued all night till the early hours of Sunday. This time, there was no reason for the security forces to hold themselves back.

In the early part of the encounter, they had their hands tied behind their back as they had to ensure that the family, that according to intelligence inputs was being held hostage, wasnt harmed. Once Col Sharma and his team got them out, their safety was their prime concern.

Also Watch| Handwara encounter: Army Colonel among 5 martyred, 2 terrorists gunned down

The firing stopped only around daybreak.

When security forces finally entered the house, they found the two terrorists; dead. One of them has been identified as Haider, a Pakistani national who had been a top commander of the Lashkar-e-Taiba in Kashmir.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the nation in paying tributes to the soldiers.

Also read: Tributes to courageous security personnel martyred in Handwara, tweets PM Modi

Tributes to our courageous soldiers and security personnel martyred in Handwara. Their valour and sacrifice will never be forgotten. They served the nation with utmost dedication and worked tirelessly to protect our citizens. Condolences to their families and friends, PM Modi said in a tweet.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh described it as deeply disturbing and painful.

Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat stressed that the anti-terror operation highlighted the determination of the security forces to safeguard the lives of the people of Kashmir.

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Georgia state health officials on Saturday said there have been 1,174 people in the state who have died from the coronavirus, nine more since Friday.

The confirmed cases are now at 28,332, up by 841 in the last 24 hours.

Hospitalizations are at 5,389, up 82 since Friday.

Whitfield County now has 118 cases, up seven from Friday, and remains at four deaths.



Walker County is reporting 60 cases and no deaths. Dade County has 16 cases, and remains at one death.

Catoosa County has two more, at 51, and Chattooga County remains with 16 cases and two deaths.

Bartow County south of Chattanooga at Cartersville now has 324 cases and 31 deaths from the virus.

Floyd County (Rome) has a total of 145 cases, and remains at 11 deaths.

Gordon County (Calhoun) remains at 113 cases and 12 deaths.

The cases remain centered around the Atlanta area, with Fulton County with 2,925. There have been 122 coronavirus deaths in Fulton County. Cobb County has 1,749 cases and 96 deaths. There are now 2,148 cases in Dekalb County (Decatur) with 52 deaths. Gwinnett County has increased to 1,932 cases and 58 deaths.

Dougherty County (Albany) now has 1,534 cases and 124 deaths.
Some parents are questioning why schools arent back up and running in Manitoba when some businesses are getting ready to re-open on Monday, and have expressed concerns about kids falling behind or experiencing adverse mental-health effects from being out of the classroom for months.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 2/5/2020 (626 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Some parents are questioning why schools arent back up and running in Manitoba when some businesses are getting ready to re-open on Monday, and have expressed concerns about kids falling behind or experiencing adverse mental-health effects from being out of the classroom for months.

Brenda Brazeau, president of the Manitoba Association of Parent Councils, told CBC News other parents are worried about the danger of contracting COVID-19 if their kids are sent back to school too soon.

To read more of this story first reported by CBC News, click here.

The Winnipeg Free Press and CBC Manitoba recognize each other as trusted news sources. This content is made available to our readers as part of an agreement to collaborate to better serve our community. Any questions about CBC content should be directed to: talkback@cbc.ca
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 22:27:33|Editor: huaxia

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HANOI, May 3 (Xinhua) -- A total of 79 people were killed and 76 others injured in 133 traffic accidents across Vietnam during a four-day holiday that ended on Sunday, according to the country's Traffic Police Department on Sunday.

The major causes of the accidents included drunk driving, speeding and driving in the wrong lane, according to the department.

The traffic police forces nationwide are reported to have dealt with 29,172 traffic law violations during the holiday, imposing a total fine of 13.6 billion Vietnamese dong (591,000 U.S. dollars) and revoking 1,512 driving licenses.

Vietnam celebrated a four-day holiday from Thursday to Sunday, including the Liberation-National Reunification Day.

More than 17,600 traffic accidents took place in Vietnam in 2019, killing over 7,600 people, severely injuring some 13,600 and lightly hurting about 8,500 others, according to the country's General Statistics Office. Enditem
Information Minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah says a billboard communicating the importance of wearing a face mask which also features President Akufo-Addo without wearing a face mask will be pulled down.

The Minister, however, asked persons wanting to help in educating Ghanaians on the coronavirus to engage the government to avoid mishaps.

We appreciate all who seek to help the government communicate at this time. But please do well to engage with the government on imaging and messaging. This billboard of the President without a mask is not from the government. Note that at his last public appearance the President wore his masks till his speech. We have asked city authorities to pull this down. he said in a tweet.

We encourage the well-intentioned advertisers to engage with us directly to avoid such mishaps in the future, Mr. Oppong Nkrumah added.

---citinewsroom
- Anne Curtis posted an adorable photo of her bundle of joy, baby Dahlia Amelie, who turned two months old on May 2

- In the photos caption, the Kapamilya actress expressed how much she enjoyed being with her daughter

- She said she is cherishing every moment with her little child who seemed to grow so fast

- Annes heartwarming post for her daughter also garnered a lot of reactions from netizens

PAY ATTENTION: Click "See First" under the "Following" tab to see KAMI news on your News Feed

Anne Curtis took to social media to express how much she enjoyed being with her bundle of joy, baby Dahlia Amelie.

The actress also posted an adorable photo of her daughter who turned two months old on May 2.

"My Little Autumn Baby. Yesterday, was 2 months of getting to cuddle and kiss this sweet, sweet little girl," Anne wrote.

The Its Showtime host she is cherishing every moment with her little child as she held that Dahlia Amelie grows so fast.

"Its insane how shes growing so fast. Cherishing her days of being this tiny. Love you so much our cheeky little possum, Dahlia Amelie," said the Kapamilya star.

Annes heartwarming post for her daughter also garnered reactions from netizens.

Looks like Erwan in this angle! So beautiful!

Such a cute little baby. God bless ate Anne, stay safe.

Awww happy 2 months bebe!!! Stay healthy and fluffy.

Hello Baby Dahlia. I can see Erwan's feature in this area... Wait kita few more months Baby. Para makita your Mommy Anne's feature too.

Loving the set design! You are just too cute, baby Dahlia. Happy 2 months!

Dahlia Amelie is Anne's first baby with celebrity YouTube influencer husband Erwan Heussaff. The couple welcomed her on March 2 in Melbourne, Australia.

PAY ATTENTION: Enjoyed reading our story? Download KAMI's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major Filipino news!

In a previous report by KAMI, adorable video of Anne Curtis singing to Baby Dahlia Amelie goes viral.

Anne Curtis is one of the most admired celebrities in the Philippines. She is one of the main hosts of the ABS-CBN noontime variety show Its Showtime.

Please like and share our amazing Facebook posts to support the KAMI team! Dont hesitate to comment and share your opinions about our stories either. We love reading about your thoughts and views on different matters!

In this new episode, we explain to you the symptoms of COVID-19 that everyone should be aware of amid the pandemic. Check out all of the exciting videos and celebrity interviews on our KAMI HumanMeter YouTube channel!

Source: KAMI.com.gh
The lockdown has pushed the people into the confines of their homes. However, mundane the indoors might seem after over a month of restrictions, the pet owners are among the lucky ones to have company.

But for Tahseen Khan of Shaheen Bagh in Delhi, the problem knocked when she realised that she had ran out of food for her pack of eight cats. She couldnt avail the online services to refill the food for her cats owing the restrictions.

She ultimately took police help her restore the supplies and contacted SHO Vijay Pal Singh. The cop got in touch with an owner of a pet shop in adjoining New Friends Colony and then sent his deputy to collect the cat food which was delivered to Khans house.

In a similar case of heart-warming gesture last year in Kerala, the court provided special permission to a pet owner to go out to buy food for his cats amid nation-wide lockdown to control the spread of coronavirus. Cat owner N Prakash filed his petition after his request for a pass to travel to Kochi was rejected by the police. He also pointed out that since he eats only vegetarian food, he is unable to cook non-vegetarian for his three cats.

Substantiating his claims, he, along with his petition, put up the pictures of his cats and also the statement of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan who has asked for feeding of stray animals.

The court, after going through his petition, gave him the green signal to proceed. The funniest bit has to be the pun the court included in the footnote. The order reads, "We helped avoid a CATastrophe in the petitioner's home."
Cuomo addresses the media while holding an n95 mask during his daily press briefing on COVID-19 at the State Capitol in Albany, N.Y.

Darren McGee/Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo via AP

Seven northeastern states will work together to buy medical equipment and coronavirus testing supplies, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Sunday.

"The consortium, I think, will help us get the equipment and get it at a better price," Cuomo said, comparing it to the current system where states are bidding against each other.

The Regional State Purchasing Consortium includes New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island.

The seven states spend about $5 billion per year on medical equipment and supplies, Cuomo said.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Seven states in the northeastern US are banding together to buy medical equipment and testing they need to fight the coronavirus.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the consortium Sunday, saying the seven states combine to spend about $5 billion per year on medical equipment and supplies. By combining their purchases, the participating states hope to better compete in the international market for medical supplies at better prices, Cuomo said.

Related: Ways Companies Around the World Are Creating Ventilators

In the absence of a coordinated federal government purchasing effort, the states have largely been on their own in attempting to track down and buy this equipment. Many governors have commented that they feel like they are bidding against each other.

New York, for instance, has paid as much as 15 to 20 times the usual price for routine medical gear like masks and gloves, ProPublica reporters Lydia DePillis and Lisa Song found.

New York is the largest state of the group, accounting for about $2 billion in annual spending on medical supplies, Cuomo said. The six other participating states in the Regional State Purchasing Consortium are New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island.

"The consortium, I think, will help us get the equipment and get it at a better price," Cuomo said, adding it will focus on buying personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators, medical equipment, and coronavirus tests.

Story continues

The consortium will aim to better prepare for future outbreaks, including trying to buy more from American vendors instead of China.

"I'm afraid this is still just beginning," Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont said. "We are planning for the next round of this, if there is a next round, making sure we control our own destiny going forward and we do it much better together."

The group is also looking to establish sufficient testing capacity for the virus, which is widely seen as a critical element on the path to reopening the economy.

"Part of this is testing, it's not just equipment," said Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf. "We really need to work together to build the capacity to test, or we're not going to be able to give our citizens the confidence they need to go back to work. They're not going to have the confidence to go back to school, or back to the store, or back to worship."

Business Insider
Chairman Tom Perez on Sunday dismissed calls for the Democratic National Committee to launch an investigation into a former Senate staffer's allegation that Joe Biden assaulted her 27 years ago, saying the former vice president was already an "open book."

Biden had already undergone a "comprehensive investigation" when he was selected as Barack Obama's running mate in 2008, Perez told ABC News "This Week" host Martha Raddatz.

"They looked at the entire history of Joe Biden, his entire career," Perez said. "And Ill tell you, if Barack Obama had any indication that there was an issue, Barack Obama would not have had him as his vice president. Barack Obama trusted Joe Biden. I trust Joe Biden. And those investigations have been done."

After weeks of silence, Biden denied the accusations publicly for the first time Friday: "No, it is not true. I'm saying unequivocally it did not happen," he said.

But it's unclear whether the presumptive Democratic nominee's interview on MSNBC's Morning Joe did enough to extinguish the controversy as allies of President Donald Trump seized on the allegation.

By opposing the release of records stored at the University of Delaware  Biden says the school's collection doesn't contain personnel records  he might have provided more fuel for Republicans to keep the issue alive, experts said.

"Weve seen him really be challenged for the first time in five weeks on allegations that many in the media have ignored, and finally, those are coming to light," Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chair, told Raddatz.

McDaniel argued that the assault allegation  combined with what she called a "far-left" policy shift  revealed the veteran politician, first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972, was actually an unknown commodity.

"He hasnt been vetted. People havent seen the 2020 version of Joe Biden," McDaniel said.

Story continues

Still, even after the rise of the #MeToo movement, not all political experts are convinced the allegation will hurt Biden, despite him needing strong support among suburban women to beat Trump in November.

More: 'This never happened': Joe Biden denies sexual assault allegation, calls on National Archives to release records

"For many years, these sorts of allegations would kill off a candidacy, partly because people didn't know all the gory details about everybody else," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "That's gone."

Sabato pointed to the multiple sexual assault allegations against Trump and the infamous video where Trump describes grabbing women's genitals that came out one month before the November election. Trump, who has denied all allegations related to sexual impropriety, won the presidency.

"It tells you it doesn't matter," Sabato said. "What makes that even more true is the pandemic and the economic collapse. That's all people care about. They're focused on what's happening in their lives, and right now it's a disaster."

Analysis: Biden's denial was unequivocal. That doesn't mean he's put this issue to rest.

The #MeToo factor

Tara Reade, a former Biden Senate staffer, has alleged that while bringing a gym bag to Biden in a Capitol Hill office building in 1993, Biden pushed her against a wall, groped her and digitally penetrated her without consent. She was 29 years old at the time.

The allegation has gained increasing media coverage since Reade discussed them in a March podcast. It comes at a time when Biden leads most national and swing-state polls, while Trump has had to defend his response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Former President Bill Clinton, like Trump, was not thwarted by sexual misconduct allegations during his reelection bid. But complicating things for Biden: He's a Democrat running in the #MeToo era, where top Democrats and liberals have said women should be believed when they come forward with sexual assault claims.

More: Before the White House, Trump faced an array of sexual misconduct accusations. As president, he faces another

Biden was among the Democrats who came to the defense of Christine Blasey Ford when in 2018 she accused Brett Kavanaugh, then a nominee for the Supreme Court, of sexually assaulting her decades ago. Kavanaugh was eventually confirmed and now sits on the high court. In the MSNBC interview Friday, Biden didn't directly answer a question about the difference between Ford's allegation and Reade's.

"(Women) should start off with a presumption they're telling the truth," Biden said. "Then you have to look at the circumstances and the facts. And the facts in this case do not exist. They never happened.

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks at the 2019 Democratic women's leadership forum, Oct. 17, 2019, in Washington.

A dampening effect?

Political experts said Reade's allegation could complicate Biden's support among two crucial voting blocs  liberals who backed U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary and are not sold yet on Biden, and independent women in suburbs who were key to Democrats regaining control of the House in the 2018 midterms.

A USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll last week found Biden ahead of Trump 50% to 40% in a head-to-head race. But the same poll found 22% of Democrats who supported Sanders in the Democratic primary don't necessarily plan to support Biden in November.

"I wonder if the sexual-allegations issue is something that is holding maybe even Sanders voters back. I don't know," said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center. "But certainly, you cannot afford to lose independent women or Democratic women on an issue like this."

Although either group might not vote for Trump as a result of Reade's allegation, Paleologos suggested their enthusiasm for Biden could wane if the issue continues to draw attention.

More: USA TODAY/Suffolk Poll: Six months out, Biden jumps to lead over Trump amid coronavirus concerns

Grant Reeher, a political science professor at Syracuse University, said Biden and Trump are both ensured a similar percentage of voters regardless of any allegations or missteps on the campaign trail. The race is about the fight for the middle.

"Both of these candidates, no matter what allegations come forward, or no matter what strange and bizarre thing they do in a press conference, they're both going to get 43% of the vote because the country is so polarized," Reeher said.

However, he warned of a possible "dampening effect" for Biden if more comes out about Reade's allegation.

Reeher also suggested the controversy could complicate Biden's ability to win over Sanders' supporters  many who have argued the Vermont senator should be the Democratic nominee because he doesn't have these "kind of skeletons in the closet that we worried about with Biden."

More: Nearly 1 in 4 Bernie Sanders backers not supporting Biden

'He has more to do'

Democrats, for the most part, have remained united behind Biden amid Reade's allegation. That includes two women considered contenders to be Biden's vice presidential pick: Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and former George state Rep. Stacey Abrams, who narrowly lost a bid for Georgia governor in 2018.

"I believe women, and I believe survivors of violence always deserve to be supported and to have their voices heard," Abrams told CNN's Don Lemon this week. But she pointed to a New York Times report on Reade's allegation that Abrams said she believes exonerates him. "I believe Joe Biden."

Other potential running mates, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., have not commented on the accusations. On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she was "satisfied" with how Biden has responded.

"The happiest day for me this week was to support Joe Biden for president of the United States," Pelosi said. "He's a person of great integrity."

More: 'A person of great integrity': Nancy Pelosi defends Joe Biden over Tara Reade allegation

Biden's interview came after liberal activists  including Alexis McGill Johnson, acting president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and Shaunna Thomas, co-founder and executive director of the women's advocacy group UltraViolet  called on Biden to address Reade's allegation.

Advocates from the left face a dilemma: Wanting to support Biden against Trump while not ignoring an issue important to their supporters.

It was right for Joe Biden to directly address this issue, and he has more to do," Thomas said later Friday, adding that those seeking power have an "obligation to support policies and practices" that put the needs of survivors first.

"We need a leader who can show humility, own the harm that people have experienced as a result of their behavior, and take meaningful steps to facilitate healing," she said. "We know that leader cannot be and will not be Donald Trump."

Republicans  but not Trump himself  seize on allegation

Despite the multiple sexual misconduct allegations against Trump, the Trump campaign and other Republicans have worked to draw attention to Reade's allegation. They've argued the situation underscores a double standard when compared with how Democrats and members of the media handled the sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh.

Following Bidens MSNBC interview, the Trump campaign released an ad attacking Harris, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J.

The double standard exhibited by Biden, prominent liberal womens groups, and Democrat elected officials  some of whom want to be Bidens running mate  is glaring and cannot be allowed to stand, Trump ampaign Deputy Communications Director Erin Perrine said in a statement.

The president, usually quick to attack his adversaries, has largely refrained from going on the attack himself, telling reporters Thursday Reade's accusation could be false.

"I know about false accusations, Trump said. Ive been falsely charged numerous times  and there is such a thing. He then pointed to the accusations against Kavanaugh, whom he said was falsely charged.

But Trump's top campaign surrogates, including his son Donald Trump Jr., have not avoided the issue.

"Whats #BidenHiding?" Trump Jr. said Friday in a long series of tweets on Reade's allegation.

The strategy could be aimed at eroding one of Biden's strengths: trust. Only 31% of Americans in the USA TODAY/Suffolk poll said Trump is trustworthy and honest, compared to 47% for Biden.

But the tactic could also renew scrutiny of the numerous allegations leveled against the president, as well as the Access Hollywood tape that emerged in 2016 in which Trump can be heard bragging about groping women. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany bristled at the suggestion, telling reporters Friday that the president had denied the allegations against him and the matter had been put to rest after his election.

Leave it to the media to really take an issue about the former vice president and turn it on the president and bring up accusations from four years ago that were asked and answered in the form of the vote of the American people, McEnany said.

Alex Conant, a GOP strategist and former spokesman for Sen. Marco Rubios 2016 presidential bid, said its too early to tell how the allegation against Biden will affect the election in November.

Conant said while its possible the president doesnt want to get into a back-and-forth with Biden over #MeToo issues, Trump is not afraid to invoke Kavanaugh as a campaign issue. Kavanaugh's contentious Senate confirmation hearing had a rallying effect that united Republicans before the 2018 election.

I think these sort of scandals will occupy media attention and fire up the base in both parties. But given how many people are worried about their job, its hard to imagine anything other than the economy dominates not just the presidential race, but down ballot races as well, Conant said.

If were still talking about these allegations in six months, things have gone very off the rails for the Biden campaign.

Contributing: Rebecca Morin

Reach Joey Garrison on Twitter @joeygarrison.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Joe Biden addresses Tara Reade assault allegation; voter reaction still unknown
When March began, Sarah Treat was within striking distance of reaching her monthly revenue goal for her business  an amount that would allow her and her husband and three children to live comfortably.

Treats husband, Jason, left his work a year ago so the couple could focus entirely on Local Health Market, the healthy food and lifestyle business theyd opened four years ago off Huebner Road.

Then the pandemic hit.

Treat has been able to maintain about half her sales through pickup and curbside service, but she still had to lay one employee off.

We were completely reliant on a business that is still in an infancy growth stage, Treat said. This was just a big blow, a huge blow.

But thanks to a $43,000 loan through the federal Paycheck Protection Program, Treat has been able to keep six employees on full time through the economic shutdown.

It was a choice we made to stay open because we dont want to have to completely start over, she said. We do have such a good core following of people, but we are bleeding money because it takes a certain amount to be able to pay your fixed expenses.

The massive federal loan program has kept thousands of small businesses afloat and workers with an income in San Antonio as the economy has sputtered.

But immense demand for the loans and a system unable to keep up have marred the Paycheck Protection Program. The first round of funding, totaling $349 billion, ran out April 16  exhausted in 13 days.

Congress reupped the fund with $310 billion.

Treats Local Health Market was one of the small businesses that worked with local lender LiftFund to secure PPP funding. Treat said she initially worked with Wells Fargo on a loan for the first round of PPP, but was unsuccessful.

Banks reported difficulty understanding the PPP guidelines, which changed day-to-day when the program first launched in early April. In that round, many smaller businesses and bankers said their clients were pushed out by larger firms seeking bigger loans.

With Wells Fargo, we were just in line. We were never allowed to apply she said. Once LiftFund opened up their PPP, we were able to move faster.

Robin Jerstad, San Antonio Express-News / Contributor

Business owners have to apply for the loan through a local certified lender, such as a bank or a community financial institution, such as LiftFund or some local credit unions.

As the second round of PPP loans began going out to small businesses last week, lenders said the program again was plagued with technical glitches and rules that flummoxed bankers and business owners alike.

After many large corporations secured the small business loans in the first round, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin sought to direct more funding to smaller enterprises in the second round.

It is so crucial that the small (businesses) get what they need, Treat said. Otherwise, theyre going to have to close their doors for good.

Lenders this week said theyd been unable to submit applications when the portal opened Monday after preparing for days leading up to the reopening of the loan fund.

At Frost Bank, around 3,500 PPP loan applications were denied when the initial $349 billion ran dry.

As the second round of money was made available, bankers at Frost ensured applications that were rejected in the first round were queued up and ready for approval once the second round began, bank spokesman Bill Day said.

But the bogged-down system only could process a fraction of the claims, raising concerns among bankers that their clients again would miss out on receiving a loan.

The Bank of San Antonio estimates the PPP loans it has secured for local businesses have preserved around 25,000 jobs locally. Even so, when the second round began flowing, applications the bank had submitted werent getting processed properly.

Employers are the ones that are bearing the brunt of this frustration of trying to get these funds. They dont know if theyre coming if we cant get applications processed, said J. Bruce Bugg Jr., the banks chairman.

Still, the money has been a lifeline for many local small businesses badly in need of cash. Frost Bank has worked with more than 2,000 businesses across Bexar County to secure more than $528 million in loans since the Paycheck Protection Program began. About two-thirds of those applications were for loans of less than $150,000, Day said.

Ed Curran is the bookkeeper at Dr. Nora Walkers solo pulmonary medical practice. Curran, Walkers husband, said that when alarm over the virus heightened in March, there were almost immediately no more people coming to the office.

While Walker was able to continue practicing via telemedicine and bring in some revenue, Curran applied for a paycheck protection loan through Frost Bank on April 3, the first day business owners could apply.

With the $26,000 federal loan, Curran and Walker have been able to continue paying their three office employees through the pandemic.

The loan was essential, Curran said, noting that payroll is the practices largest expense. We want to keep our office staff employed, so were excited and happy if we can do that because then they dont have to go through unemployment.

The PPP loans can be forgiven if business owners meet certain requirements, like retaining workers or rehiring laid-off workers, spending three-quarters of the loan on payrolls. Business owners also have to spend the money within eight weeks of receiving it.

Curran said that after applying, it took two weeks to receive the loan. And he doesnt expect a problem meeting forgiveness requirements  he plans to use nearly all of the loan to pay employees.

LiftFund, meanwhile, has doled out 86 loans to San Antonio small businesses since Monday, totaling $4.8 million. Each loan has been about $40,000 on average, CEO Janie Barrera said. Statewide, the organization has made 290 loans for $11.5 million this week.

While the federal governments small business loans have been far-reaching, there remain many small businesses that lack easy access to the money, Barrera said.

That includes cash-only businesses that dont have their financial information readily available. And business owners who may have a criminal record in the past five years also are locked out. Others have been rejected for not being current on their student loans, Barrera said.

One way to ensure loans go to businesses that most need them might be to lower the threshold for owners who can access the funding, she said. Currently, small businesses generally are defined as having fewer than 500 employees.

But many large and some publicly traded companies faced backlash for receiving the government funding and crowding out smaller enterprises. Throughout last week, organizations such as the Los Angeles Lakers, Shake Shack and Ruths Chris Steak House chain announced they would return the multimillion-dollar PPP loans theyd received.

Dallas-based Fiesta Restaurant Group Inc., owner of Taco Cabana, also said last week it would return $15 million in PPP loans.

I think weve got to allow smaller organizations that work with these really mom-and-pop shops an opportunity to get access to funding. If this money runs out, its running out because the big banks can use it for larger loans, Barrera said. Maybe they could think about people that make revenue of $2 million or less, or $1 million or less. Those are the people we serve.

Gov. Greg Abbotts order to gradually reopen the Texas economy is welcome news for some business owners eager to see cash flowing again.

Beyond the immediate horizon, small business owners worry that closures could spike later this year as the federal aid propping businesses up runs dry  especially if consumer confidence hasnt returned.

I do know that, yes, some businesses are not going to make it, Barrera said. But thats not going to be the end of the world. Were going to find out a way to rise above this.

For now, business owners are focused on the short term and staying alive. For people like Treat, thats been complicated by the added task of trying to home-school three children.

While the landscape of commerce and the economy in a post-pandemic world almost certainly will look different, Treat said she's just relieved to keep her doors open for now.

Its very difficult to focus on day-to-day tasks. Theres so much concern with the business being able to make it in the next year or two, Treat said. We really have to shift thinking and do the absolute best to be in the moment and tackle whats in front of us.
At least three Madhya Pradesh police personnel including a sub-inspector sustained injuries in stone pelting by labourers in Barwani district on Sunday morning. The labourers from Maharashtra were agitated at not being allowed to enter Madhya Pradesh on their way to Uttar Pradesh, said police.

While sub-inspector Omkar Lal sustained head injuries, two constables sustained minor injuries. A heavy police force deployed at Bijasan in Sendhwa rural police circle controlled the situation, said Sendhwa police.

At least 4000 labourers, who had gathered at Bijasan looking to proceed to Uttar Pradesh, blocked the traffic on Agra-Mumbai national highway on Saturday evening.

They lifted the blockade around midnight but again blocked the traffic on Sunday morning. When police didnt allow them to proceed, a section of agitated labourers indulged in stone-pelting, resulting in injuries to the cops.

The labourers withdrew from the highway on an assurance from the Barwani district collector that the issue was being discussed with the Uttar Pradesh government. The labourers said they were giving two hours time to the administration to meet their demand.

Sendhwa rural police station in charge, Vishwadeep Singh Parihar, said, Medical treatment of the sub-inspector is going on. An FIR is being lodged against unidentified persons involved in the attack. However, no arrest has been made so far in this connection.

Another administrative official in Barwani said, On Saturday, Uttar Pradesh didnt open its border for hundreds of labourers sent from here in more than 200 buses. Thats why movement of other labourers coming from Maharashtra was blocked. Uttar Pradesh government is perhaps conscious that these people are coming from Maharashtra, one of the worst Covid affected states.

Barwani District Collector Amit Tomar said they were awaiting instructions from the state government for further action. However, labourers are satisfied after having a talk with us. We are providing food and other facilities to them, he said.

Similarly, about 7000 to 8000 people, mostly labourers from various parts of Maharashtra assembled near Joharia village at the MP-UP border in Datia district on Saturday since Uttar Pradesh didnt allow them to enter.

Datia District Collector Rohit Singh said that the situation didnt deteriorate there.

There was no road blockade like situation or any other law and order problem at the border. Since a large number of people had assembled here; it was a matter of concern for us, but we managed to control the situation. They entered Uttar Pradesh after the latter granted permission to them, Singh said.
The Pope to donate 100,000 to help migrants on border of Belarus and Poland

Fourth vaccine against COVID-19 is not enough for Omicron

World is on verge of country defaults

French Foreign Ministry considers unacceptable Azerbaijan statements about Pecresse

US to return two valuable artifacts over 4,000 years old to Iraq

Germany may consider halting Nord Stream 2 if Russia attacks Ukraine

Israel successfully completes test of anti-ballistic missile system

Plane landing in Sochi struck by lightning

Putin and Aliyev discuss Ukraine situation

Greek PM Mitsotakis threatens Turkey with sanctions

Handelsblatt: US and EU abandon idea of disconnecting Russia from SWIFT international payment system

Artsakh President meets representatives of non-governmental organizations

Avalanche kills person in Iran

Erdogan says he is pleased with decline in volatility of lira

NEWS.am daily digest: 18.01.22

Turkey and Azerbaijan to start laying gas pipeline to supply Nakhichevan

UK begins to supply Ukraine with anti-tank weapons

Armenian PM holds meeting on Armenia's Transformation Strategy until 2050

Nagorno-Karabakh: Remains of another Armenian soldier found in Jrakan region

Tehran to not accept any border change in South Caucasus

Dollar holding relatively steady in Armenia

Armenia special representative: Future process depends on Turkeys constructiveness degree

Erdogan: Gas from Mediterranean to Europe can only be pumped through Turkey

Iranian Consul General discusses customs cooperation in Nakhijevan

Inecobank brings Apple Pay to customers

Parliament vice-speaker says he is familiar with Armenia proposals on border demarcation commission work

US Secretary of State to visit Kyiv

Russia, Iran and China to hold joint naval drills

OSCE Chairmanship on Aliyev statement: We reiterate our full support to Minsk Group Co-Chairs

Artsakh NSS denies rumors about penetration of Azerbaijanis into Karabakh villages

Indonesian parliament approves bill to relocate capital

Armenia PM to Bulgaria colleague: Our interstate relations are marked by continuous development of cooperation

Armenian President meets Abu Dhabi Crown Prince

Azerbaijan to ban foreigners from visiting Nagorno-Karabakh occupied part

European Parliament new speaker elected

Armenian National Interests Fund participates in Abu Dhabi Sustainable Development Week summit

North Korea fires missiles for fourth time this year

ECHR recognizes violation of Armenian PM's rights after 2008 elections

Turkey reveals plans to produce combat aircraft

Karabakh official: Azerbaijan presidents impudent behavior is due to OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs silence

Azerbaijan special services force Artsakh resident to intelligence work

Copper price is stable

Minister of State: OSCE MG Co-Chairs must accept exercise of Karabakh people's right to self-determination

Armenia President, UAE Minister of State discuss possibilities of cooperation in science and technology

Investigation into criminal case of several Armenia soldiers returned from Azerbaijan captivity is over

Canada sends detachment of special forces to Ukraine

Armenia ex-President Kocharyan, former deputy PM now MP Gevorgyan case trial resumes

2 more persons die of coronavirus in Artsakh

Armenia family has 10th child

Converse Bank brings Apple Pay to customers

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Ardshinbank Brings Apple Pay to Customers

Armenia President in UAE, meets with Emirati environment minister

Armenia legislature approves changes to several laws

Differences in data on coronavirus deaths in Armenia are corrected

360 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

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Economy minister to head Armenia side of commission on economic cooperation with Kazakhstan

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Scientists discover large breeding colony of icefish in southern Antarctica

China creates low-gravity artificial moon

Tehran welcomes normalization of Armenia-Turkey relations

Russian and Iranian Foreign Ministers discuss regional issues

UN Secretary-General: Vaccinate whole world to end pandemic

Giant asteroid to fly past our planet

Armenian President meets with Executive Director of Mubadala Investment Company

UAE counting on Turkey

Indonesia to move capital by 2024

Passenger traffic at Armenian airports decreased by 30%

Armenian Investigative Committee: Six soldiers captured in November arrested

Turkish government to discuss Rubinyan-Kilic meeting results

German FM threatens Russia in case of aggression against Ukraine

Armenian MFA senior staff meets with ambassadors to European countries

Turkish court acquits German journalist Mesale Tolu

Turkish UAV intercepted over Greek island

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Xi Jinping: Confrontation between major powers can have disastrous consequences

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Welcome to Tech Support, a segment where I, Dan Howley, serve as your intrepid guide through the sometimes confusing, often frustrating, world of personal technology.

Here, I answer all of your most pressing questions about the various gizmos, gadgets, and services you use in your everyday life.

Have a question of your own? Reach me on Twitter at @danielhowley, or email me at dhowley@yahoofinance.com.

Now, on to your questions.

This week's dilemma:

What is smartphone contact tracing?

Smartphone contract tracing is a means of quickly notifying people via their phone that they have been in contact with somebody who has an illness such as coronavirus.

Without smartphones, healthcare officials traditionally perform contact tracing by interviewing infected individuals to determine where theyve traveled and whom theyve contacted. Health officials then reach out to those individuals so they can quarantine themselves.

But traditional contact tracing requires serious human resources, including workers manning phone lines to reach out to potentially infected people, individuals going door-to-door, etc. According to The New York Times, a nationwide effort would likely require somewhere around 300,000 people. Whats more, this kind of tracing takes time  something authorities cant afford with a fast-spreading virus.

A pedestrian waits in silhouette for a Chicago Transit Authority bus as several COVID-19 public service messages are projected on screens at the bus stop Thursday, April 30, 2020, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

In place of such a massive workforce, countries around the world have begun to develop and deploy smartphone-based contact tracing systems.

The Chinese government, for instance, uses an app that residents are required to download if they want to use things like shopping malls and public transportation. Singapore, meanwhile, used a voluntary smartphone app called TraceTogether that measures the distance a persons phone has been from another persons device using Bluetooth technology. Data is stored locally on users phones unless they authorize its upload to the countrys Ministry of Health.

European countries like Germany have sought to have data collected via smartphone apps uploaded to a centralized database that would give the countrys health officials a better understanding of the virus, but at the potential expense of user privacy.

Story continues

The fear is that governments could use the data gleaned from their centralized contact tracing apps to effectively set up a mass surveillance program. Germany has since abandoned this route.

What is the U.S. using?

A number of proposals for apps in the U.S. would allow for smartphone contact tracing, including one developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But the most likely candidate for nationwide smartphone contact tracing is the solution put together by Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG, GOOGL), which they refer to as an exposure notification tool.

The smartphone contact tracing system comes with controversy  user privacy is certainly a concern among some security experts.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - APRIL 22: Two healthcare workers wearing masks look at a photo in front of the Lenox Health Greenwich Village Hospital amid the coronavirus pandemic on April 22, 2020 in New York City, United States. COVID-19 has spread to most countries around the world, claiming over 182,000 lives with over 2.6 million cases. (Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images)

The Apple-Google tool will enable our phones to communicate with each other, and alert us if weve come into contact with someone with the coronavirus.

Rather than depending on a users GPS data, which can identify individuals, the tool will rely on Bluetooth, similar to Singapores solution.

Initially, the companies will require users to download an app from an official health authority, but that will change when they provide operating system updates that allow you to activate it without a third-party app.

When activated, and doing so is voluntary, the tool will randomly generate identifier beacons for you and every user accessing the system. When you come into contact with another person using the tool, your devices will exchange these Bluetooth beacons, which are essentially a string of otherwise meaningless numbers that change every 10 to 20 minutes to thwart malicious actors from tracking individuals using the identifiers.

Any identifiers you come in contact with will be saved in a secure portion of your device, and remain there. If you become infected with the coronavirus, you can use your compatible health authoritys app to update your infection status. Your device will then fire off your randomized identifier beacons to a server where theyll be held for a limited time.

If youre not infected, your device will download a list of randomized identifier beacons associated with infected users daily. Those beacons will then be compared, on your device, with beacons your phone has come in contact with. If they match up, youll receive an alert through your health authoritys app saying you may have been exposed to coronavirus.

Both Apple and Google say this data will be unusable by them, and wont be monetized. They also say the data associated with the randomized Bluetooth beacons will be encrypted.

Apple and Google wont be the ones administering the tracing apps, either. Instead, your local health authority will be in charge of that, though the data protections the companies put in place will still be used regardless of the authority.

Its important to note that this is all voluntary, and Apple and Google say theyll turn off the service as the pandemic subsides. The companies say only health authorities will be able to interface with the data, and that neither Apple nor Google will have access to it.

Both companies are also making their solutions available in all of their markets, including Germany, which has said it will use the tool.

Well find out more about the tracing system when it becomes available this month.

More from Dan:

Got a tip? Email Daniel Howley at danielphowley@protonmail.com or dhowley@yahoofinance.com, and follow him on Twitter at @DanielHowley.

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3 Toys R' Us is Now in the Data-Mining Business

When Toys R' Us collapsed a few years back as a result of vulture capitalists saddling it with enough debt to sink an aircraft carrier, it was watching a part of our childhood bleed out in front of us. The bikes and cars you could ride around the store! The fistfights by desperate parents over that year's must-have holiday gift! All those toys!

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And then, nothing.

"And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Geoffrey, King of Giraffes;

Look on my works, ye parents, and despair!"

So, in 2019, when it was announced that Toys R' Us was getting rebooted, our hearts damn near-exploded. Except, these new Toys R' Us looked different somehow. For one, they didn't smell of cheap plastic and stale Hi-C Ecto Cooler. For another, there were only a few aisles of toys -- with much of each store's floor space being dedicated to specific brands like Lego, Nerf, and PAW Patrol.

It turned out, there's a good (bad!) reason for that. Toys R' Us isn't a toy store anymore, so much as a place where retailers can data-mine kids. In opening these stores, Toys R' Us partnered with technology company b8ta to install sensors in each store's ceiling as a way to "monitor traffic patterns among other metrics" on behalf of those brands mentioned above and clue them in as what's hot, what's not, and what should burn in hell (PAW Patrol).

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After people rightfully hit the roof over the fact that their childhoods didn't die for THIS, Toys R' Us responded by saying that while that is the purpose of these stores, the cameras are designed to ignore "objects, including people, less than four feet tall." That's not reassuring considering that not only have we been burned with this kind of talk before, but they're running a toy store. If they're not monitoring the kids, whose browsing habits are they monitoring?
Mr. Trump has declined to call on his predecessors to help bring the country together during the pandemic, which has now claimed more than 66,000 lives in the United States and put more than 30 million people out of work. Past presidents made a point of enlisting former occupants of the White House from both parties in times of crisis to demonstrate national resolve and unity.

Mr. Bush recruited his father, former President George Bush, and Mr. Clinton to respond to a devastating tsunami in Asia and then to Hurricane Katrina. President Barack Obama asked the younger Mr. Bush and Mr. Clinton to respond to an earthquake in Haiti.

Mr. Trump, for his part, has dismissed the idea of calling his predecessors for help, either to participate or even to offer advice. I dont think Im going to learn much, he said when asked about the idea in March. I guess you could say that theres probably a natural inclination not to call.

Mr. Bush has never been a fan of his fellow Republican president. Mr. Trump defeated his brother, Jeb Bush, for the nomination in 2016 and has lambasted the 43rd presidents record repeatedly. Mr. Bush refused to support Mr. Trump that fall, saying he had voted for none of the above instead. While disturbed by Mr. Trumps leadership, Mr. Bush has largely kept quiet since then with a couple of notable exceptions, such as a speech in New York and a eulogy for Senator John McCain that were seen as implicit rebukes of the incumbent.

In his video message on Saturday, Mr. Bush recalled the difficult days after Sept. 11. Let us remember, we have faced times of testing before, he said as images flashed on the screen of him comforting relatives of those killed in the attacks. Following 9/11, I saw a great nation rise as one to honor the brave, to grieve with the grieving and to embrace unavoidable new duties. And I have no doubt, none at all, that this spirit of service and sacrifice is alive and well in America.

Mr. Bush also called for compassion, a trait that Mr. Trump has largely eschewed during the pandemic in favor of demonstrating what he considers strength and optimism. Let us remember that empathy and simple kindness are essential powerful tools of national recovery, Mr. Bush said. And he added: Lets remember that the suffering we experience as a nation does not fall evenly.
The Washington Post has long been a Democrat party house organ, but it used to pretend to impartiality. Those days are over. It is so deeply committed to its anti-Trump narrative that its slogan, rather than being Democracy Dies in Darkness, should be Whatever Trumps for, were against it! In this case, Trump stands for blaming China for its unconscionable behavior vis-a-vis the Wuhan virus and for wanting to reopen the economy before America looks like Venezuela.

On Saturday, the WaPo published a lengthy investigative piece entitled 34 days of pandemic: Inside Trumps desperate attempts to reopen America. The five people who wrote the piece boast about having spoken with 82 administration officials, but this is not an objective look at the data. The article's premise is that Trump is a moron who cares only about reelection. Along the way, it misstates and ignores facts, and spins so fast it makes a person motion sick.

There are three useful things to keep in mind before looking at the piece. First, its publication coincides with a Gallup poll showing that Trumps approval rating has gone up six points in two weeks. Second, even anti-Trump stalwarts such as Nate Silver are finding it hard to look at the evidence and then continue to attack Trump:

The fact that many peer countries are struggling with COVID-19 roughly as much as the US suggests there's some naivety to claims such as "the US could greatly improve the situation with [my proposed solution] IF ONLY WE HAD BETTER LEADERSHIP!!!".  Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) May 1, 2020

And all of these countries are struggling with the "reopening conversation" just as much as we are. This might suggest that authors of these plans are not thinking enough about what the actual political (and logistical, etc.) constraints are.  Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) May 1, 2020

Third, WaPos people are generally struggling with reality. For example, a WaPo video acknowledges that the Wuhan virus is found in bats used at labs near Wuhan, but not in bats anywhere near the Wuhan wet market. Nevertheless, the WaPo says its doubtful the virus escaped from a lab. This conclusion would surprise Americas 17 intelligence agencies, which are agreed that COVID-19 originated in the Wuhan lab, although they believe the release was accidental. What was not accidental was the cover-up.

With those facts in mind, the WaPos hit piece against Trump makes more sense. The outlet cannot acknowledge that he handled the virus well, that China is an enemy, and that people are beginning to support Trumps efforts to protect America.

The article argues that Trumps entire focus in March and April wasn't about saving American lives. His focus was saving the economy so he could be reelected.

The authors don't understand that Trump realized immediately that either too many deaths or too much economic disruption would be disastrous for America. He was always threading the needle to save American lives and prevent America from plunging into a devastating and deadly depression.

According to the piece, when Trump was told the best case scenario was 100,000 to 240,000 dead Americans, he insisted on an analysis that would look at the economic risks to America. It turns out Trumps focus was probably correct.

To date, the Wuhan virus (thankfully) has killed maybe 64,283 Americans (the numbers are highly questionable), which is the same as a bad flu season. Meanwhile, flu deaths have plummeted, as have car accident deaths and violent crimes. Americans are dying at a normal pace, just from different things.

Doctors have also learned how best to treat the Wuhan virus which means, among other things, avoiding ventilators. Trump was instinctively correct that they werent that necessary. It turns out they seem to kill people by putting pressure on already fragile lungs.

The reporters berate Trump for believing in hydroxychloroquine, which they call a fantasy cure-all. However, outside of the useless CDC and its obsession with double-blind studies, a successful hydroxychloroquine cocktail proves Trump was probably correct.

For its part, the WaPo is enchanted with the VAs hydroxychloroquine study. That study, though, was fatally flawed, both because it did not use zinc, which seems to be a necessary mediator for the other drugs, and because the VA used it on a handful of patients who were already in extremis.

The reporters claim that, even though Trump is correct that the U.S. is testing more people than anywhere else in the world, were still not testing enough people. This position ignores the fact that, other than providing statistical data, theres no clear benefit from testing every American.

And of course, the authors voice their real gripe, which is that Trump is letting the states make their own plans for returning to normal, something consistent with both federalism and a constitutionally limited executive. How dare the guy who was supposed to be Hitler not act like Hitler?

And though administration health officials produced detailed guidelines for reopening, those released by Trump were intentionally vague and devoid of clear metrics, making it easier for the president to avoid responsibility and harder for local leaders to interpret.

Theres more, much more, all of it spin rather than reporting. Its certainly red meat for the WaPo's core readership. Whether it will change the minds of those people who are beginning to think that Trump did a surprisingly good job in a fluid, dangerous situation remains to be seen.
On Sunday, the Indian Air Force put up a spectacular air show to thank the healthcare workers and other essential services personnel fighting the coronavirus outbreak in the country.

AFP

Across the country, Air Force conducted flypasts and showered flower petals on hospitals across different cities including the national capital of New Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Jaipur Bhopal, and more.

AFP

This is the second time since the COVID-19 outbreak began, India has shown its appreciation for healthcare workers who are at the forefront of the battle against the pandemic. The first was on March 22, the day India observed janta curfew, with citizens ringing bells, banging plates and clapping from their balconies.



But for those at the frontlines, this seems to be more a token appreciation for their effort, far from the real help or action that they maybe need or can use.

AFP

Ever since the COVID-19 cases began reporting in India the healthcare workers including doctors and nurses have been complaining about the lack of personal protective equipment including face masks. For many, the situation has improved recently, but it is far from ideal.

Pay cuts/ deferred salaries

For putting themselves at the risk of contracting the virus due to the exposure, the healthcare workers, in an ideal world should have been paid extra as 'risk allowance'.

AFP

Not only are they not getting paid extra, many doctors and nurses have been left with pay cuts, in some cases of up to 40-50 per cent, claim reports. Several private hospitals have reportedly told their staff that they won't be able to pay the full salary for at least a couple of months due to the COVID-19 outbreak.



While some hospitals have deferred a certain amount of the salary, others have reduced the salaries for the next few months. In some other cases, the staff was paid only for the days that they worked. This meant that the doctors and nurses who had to go into self-isolation for 14 days after being exposed to COVID-19 patients missed out on healthy half of their salary.

No DA and pay cuts for PM Cares fund

The pay cuts of healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic is not limited to the private sector. Last month the Central Government had frozen the dearness allowance (DA) for its 4.8 million employees and 6.5 million pensioners at 17 per cent till July 1, 2021, including for healthcare workers.

AFP

Like other government employees, they too will have to contribute their one day's salary every month till March 2021 to the PM Cares fund.



Want to be tested? Pay for it!

In a shocking case, the Jaipur Golden Hospital in Delhi's Rohini allegedly told its staff refused to test its staff who were exposed to a COVID-19 patient and told them that if they have to get tested they have to pay for it.

Quarantined, somewhere!

The healthcare workers who have come into contact with COVID-19 patients should be sent to a 14-day quarantine as per protocol. But due to a shortage of staff, many hospitals are not allowing their staff to self-isolate.

BCCL

And even if they do, the quarantine facility will be at some rented buildings where there may not be adequate provisions including toilets and food.
If you wanted an example of a classic 19th Century liberal, you would have to point to Deepak. I met him first when he arrived at the World Bank, bow tie and pipe in tow, in 1983.

He was a well-established scholar (and a gentleman) and I was busy in the transition from a 20th Century liberal (socially and economically left-wing) to that broadly represented by Deepak (socially liberal but one who looked for hard evidence to substantiate many so-called liberal economic ideas). Our bond was solidified by the closeness of our views on several subjects, but we did differ on ...
Industry super fund shareholders of boutique lender Members Equity Bank will demand an urgent explanation on Monday following concerning claims of borrowers being cut off from personal funds without their consent or knowledge.

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald reported on Saturday that Melbourne-based ME Bank, owned by 26 industry superannuation funds, had blindsided customers by removing their access to money in redraw facilities in order to pay down home loans.

ME Bank is facing mass complaints from customers. Credit:Luis Enrique Ascui

Bill Watson, chief executive of the $3 billion industry fund First Super, described the news as "concerning".

"I'll be seeking an explanation from the bank tomorrow," he said on Sunday. "Once we've received an explanation, we will determine what action needs to be taken from there. As a shareholder, clearly we don't want to see consumers disadvantaged."
The US which is the worst-country in the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic has strongly criticised China for not sharing important details related to the virus and has even alleged that there is evidence to suggest that this virus was made in Chinese laboratory.

On Sunday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in an interview on American Network television was quoted as saying that there is enormous evidence to suggest that coronavirus originated from the virology laboratory in Wuhan.

"We took a lot of grief for that from the outset. But I think the whole world can see now. Remember, China has a history of infecting the world, and they have a history of running substandard laboratories," Pompeo added.

Last week, US President Donald in an explosive statement claimed that he had seen evidence that the coronavirus started at the virology laboratory in China's Wuhan. When asked by reporters if he had seen the proof of the virus originating from China, he responded with "Yes, I have" but did not reveal anything else.

Trump has time and again insisted that Beijing, on its part, was reckless and concealed important information about the outbreak which has infected more than 1.1 million people and killed nearly 67,000 in the US.

Meanwhile, a spy dossier with inputs from the Five Eyes intelligence agencies of the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand, has stated that China's secrecy surrounding the coronavirus led to an "assault on international transparency".

In a article by The Sun, China has been accused of feeding lies to all the nations about coronavirus outbreak, intentionally suppressing useful information which hampered the efforts to developing a vaccine.

The virus that first emerged in the Chinese city of Hubei at Wuhan in December 2019 has since then spread to more than 200 countries and has now infected nearly 3.5 million people and killed more than 240,000 around the world.
A 60-year-old retired head constable of the ITBP on Sunday succumbed to coronavirus infection as 20 other personnel of the border-guarding force contracted the disease, officials said.

They said the official who breathed his last at Safdarjung Hospital had co-morbid conditions and was living at a camp of the force in Tigri (Khanpur) area of the national capital.

A total of 21 Indo-Tibetan Border Police force personnel, including the deceased, have been found positive for COVID-19 till now, the officials said.

While some of them were assisting the Delhi Police in maintaining law and order, the rest were from the Tigri camp, they said.

A sub-inspector and a head constable-rank official belonging to the 50th battalion were in isolation at AIIMS-Jhajjar in Haryana.

The ITBP is a 90,000-strong force primarily tasked with guarding the Line of Actual Control with China apart from rendering other internal security duties.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Alexis Skyy is not only a television personality known from several series in the Love & Hip Hop franchise  shes also an entrepreneur. In a recent interview, she talked about her new business venture and how her relationship with Fetty Wap derailed a former business she had.

Alexis Skyy in 2019 | Rich Fury/Getty Images for BET

Alexis Skyy on Love & Hip Hop

Skyy is one of the most-known personalities from the Love & Hip Hop franchise because she has appeared in so many shows. She has been a supporting cast member on the New York, Hollywood, and Atlanta series. Skyy made a cameo appearance on a season 5 episode of Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta and later guest-starred in a season 6 episode.

During the fourth season of Love & Hip Hop: Hollywood, she became a supporting cast member in the franchise for the first time. After remaining on the show for one season, she returned to the franchise as a supporting cast member on the ninth season of Love & Hip Hop: New York. For the ninth season of Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta she joined as a supporting cast member.

On Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta, most of her storylines involved her feud with Masika Kalysha, who also dated Fetty Wap and has a child by him. She was also in a relationship with Solo Lucci. While on Love & Hip Hop: New York, most of her storylines were about her music career and being a single mother to her daughter.

The reality star reveals she had to end a business at 19 due to her relationship

In a recent interview with The Shade Room, Skyy talked about her upcoming new business venture, a beauty bar in Long Island, New York called and a new beauty bar in Lux House Beauty Bar. She revealed that this isnt her first business and that she actually opened a salon in her late teens but was distracted by her relationship with Fetty Wap.

Skyy explained, I had a salon when I was 19, and honestly I didnt know anything about having a business. I came straight from the strip club trying to run a spa. And I was so busy running behind Fetty at the time. We were together and I lost focus and the business wasnt doing well so I had to close it.

I felt like failed and it always bothered me, she continued. So I stacked up my hosting money and saved everything and said you know what, let me open up another shop, she said. Im so much more focused and Im ready to become a millionaire.

Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta airs Mondays on VH1.
Want to land one of today's record-low mortgage rates? Follow these 4 tips

You've seen the headlines: With the economy in a COVID-19 tailspin, mortgage rates have been falling and falling, to depths never seen before. Rates last week dropped to the latest in a series of new all-time lows.

But if you're a homeowner who wants to refinance or a homebuyer who's ready to make a purchase, you can't assume that a mortgage lender will always give you one of today's historically low rates.

In some cities, different lenders can offer rates that vary by close to one full percentage point, a recent LendingTree study found.

In other words, Lender X might want to give you a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at 4.25%. But you might discover that Lender Y will offer you the same type of loan at just 3.30%.

Last week's national average for a 30-year fixed mortgage was an all-time low 3.23%, according to mortgage company Freddie Mac, which has been tracking rates since 1971.

A separate survey from the Mortgage Bankers Association also found rates at record lows.

How do you land a mortgage rate that's close to record territory  or even lower? Industry experts offer these four tips.

1. It really pays to shop around

Don't stop your mortgage search at Lender X  because there might very well be a Lender Y out there with a much more attractive rate.

If you look, you can find 30-year mortgages today as low as the neighborhood of 3%, says Alan Rosenbaum, founder and CEO of the New York-based mortgage lender GuardHill Financial Corp.

Homebuyers who say yes to the very first mortgage offer they get will end up paying an average of around $37,500 more in total interest over the run of a 30-year loan than buyers who gather rates from multiple lenders, the LendingTree study found.

In cities including San Francisco and Boston, the lifetime interest savings when you shop around can exceed $50,000.

"It pays to do your research," says Tendayi Kapfidze, LendingTree's chief economist.

2. You'll need a healthy credit score

Story continues

TierneyMJ / Shutterstock

"To get a low rate, the borrower will need to have excellent credit," says Richard Pisnoy, a principal with Silver Fin Capital, a mortgage broker in Great Neck, New York.

This is even truer now than it used to be. Banks have been tightening their lending standards, because they don't want to be left with defaults resulting from the current economic crisis.

For example, JPMorgan Chase is requiring new mortgage applicants to have a minimum credit score of 700  in the middle of the "good" range  and make at least a 20% down payment. Wells Fargo has raised its credit score requirement to 680.

Consumers may not like the new rules, "but they speak to the uncertainty of the times and the difficulty for these organizations to gauge borrowers ability to repay at a time when millions of people are suddenly out of work," says Matthew Speakman, an economist with Zillow.

The best mortgage rates have traditionally gone to borrowers with credit scores in the "exceptional" (800 to 850) or "very good (740 to 799) ranges. If you're not sure what your credit score is, you can take a peek at it for free.

3. It helps if you're refinancing

People in the industry say it's more challenging right now to get a low rate on a so-called purchase loan  to buy a home  than if you're a homeowner who's refinancing.

"In general, we see that it's typically easier to refinance than it is to purchase, given that the borrower has already been underwritten," says Grant Moon, CEO of Home Captain Realty.

"The lender has payments and historical propensity-to-pay information that makes it an easier proposition," Moon says.

An exception is if you're doing a cash-out refinance. Freddie Mac and sibling Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored entities that buy or back most U.S. mortgages, have grown wary of cash-out refis as many of those borrowers have sought to delay their payments during the pandemic, says Pisnoy.

"This is causing higher risk on these types of loans, and lenders are adjusting the rates up because of it," he says.

4. Be ready to move quickly

Jacob Lund / Shutterstock

Mortgage rates are unpredictable, and the amazingly low ones can be available for just a hot minute.

"Even though rates are low, they still move every day," warns Pisnoy. So if you come across a rate that would give you an impressively low monthly payment, try to lock it before it's gone.

But if you lose out on a dreamy rate, experts say it's a mistake to sit around and wait for mortgage rates to go down again. They can go higher just as easily as they can go lower.

So, the advice is similar to what dithering investors are told when they're tempted to wait based on what stocks might or might not do: Don't time the market.

If you're a homebuyer and find the perfect house  maybe through one of the virtual tours that have become popular in the coronavirus era  comparison-shop for your mortgage and try to settle on one quickly. Don't miss out on a great home or a great loan.
New Delhi, May 3 : Doctors at the All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) and Safdarjung Hospital in the national capital said it was a proud moment for them to be honoured by the Indian Armed Forces.

Speaking to IANS they said it was a great gesture by the Armed Forces to boost their morale as it is a very challenging time for the entire country, specially for the frontline warriors in the battle against novel coronavirus pandemic.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) jets and transport planes across India on Sunday showered petals on hospitals and places of national importance to show honour and express their gratitude towards the coronavirus warriors who are battling against the pandemic.

Speaking to IANS, Dr. Adarsh Pratap Singh, president of the Resident Doctors Association (RDA) of All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) Delhi, saidP: "It was a great gesture shown by the Indian Armed forces. The armed forces have always come to the forefront whenever the country is in difficulty. This time, health workers are the frontline warriors in this difficult time of coronavirus pandemic. Despite having limited resources, doctors are giving their hundred percent to save the people of the country. It is their unique way of saluting to the health workers battling coronavirus.

Dr Singh said this is the time when the government must ensure safety of all health workers. "Now we expect the government to provide a safe work environment in all the hospitals across the country. In AIIMS we have sufficient quantities of PPEs etc. but there are other hospitals in the country which have raised this issue. The government should sort this out otherwise if doctors and health workers keep getting infected, the entire health infrastructure will come to a halt." Echoing the same sentiment, Dr Manish RDA President of Safdarjung Hospital told IANS that it was a proud moment for all the doctors at the Safdarjang hospital. "It was a proud moment for the medical fraternity. Not only the flowers were showered but the Army band also performed here. The Indian Armed forces have given a message to the society that health workers should be respected." Dr Manish said that all the frontline workers have been working in very difficult conditions and recent attacks had brought a feeling of disparity in their minds and hearts. "We are working really hard, in difficult conditions. Many doctors are working 12 hours continuously or even more, not because there are less number of doctors, but to reduce the exposure. Suppose if three doctors work in COVID ward in a day, they all will be exposed to the virus but if one works for a longer duration, at least two will be saved. This is our internal management, other hospitals are working as per their own system.

Dr Manish said they all have to wear PPE in hot temperature because the centralised air conditions of the hospital have been switched off in order to avoid the transmission. "There are sufficient quantity of PPE kits, masks, and sanitisers for all, including nurses and support staff, in our hospital. But the major challenge we are facing is of asymptomatic patients, and there is no solution for it as they sometimes do not know that they are infected. Some patients are still hiding their travel or contact history which is posing a huge threat to the health workers resulting in infecting them. No one can wear PPE all the time. The centralised air conditioner is off to minimise the transmission," he said.

He also said, "Another challenge is the sealing of state borders. Lots of health workers live in places like Gurugram and Faridabad and they are facing problem in crossing the border. There are around 500 doctors who have been offered hotel stay but it is extremely difficult to accommodate 12 to 13 hundred health workers in hotels or hostels.

A senior Resident, Dr. Soumyadip Chatterji who was posted in COVID care centre of AIIMS, set up in Haryana's Jhajjar, told IANS, "It feels good to be honoured by the armed forces. I convey my thanks and gratitude to the government and the armed forces." Dr Chatterji, who is now on 14 days of mandatory quarantine, post his duty, said, "the society must realise that things do not end with honouring the doctors and healthcare workers for just one day. From this day the society should begin to restore the honour of the profession that it had taken away. It has to be ensured that there is no violence against doctors in future. Even in normal times law should be strictly enforced to prevent violence against doctors and health workers. The perpetrators should be given exemplary punishment as in many other countries. The society should realise the importance of the profession and remember the sacrifice." (Sfoorti Mishra can be reached at sfoorti.m@ians.in)
Robert Giles, the second-in-command at the Akron Beacon Journal during a fateful moment 50 years ago, recalls what his boss said as he left for an overseas trip in the spring of 1970.

"You are in charge. Don't screw it up."

Giles, who was 37 at the time, did not screw it up.

Days later, the country and the world would look to the local paper for authoritative, exemplary coverage of an event that is still hard to comprehend, five decades later.

Ohio National Guard troops responding to a protest of the Vietnam War on the Kent State University campus opened fire on a crowd, killing four people and injuring nine others.

It was one of those rare hinge-of-history moments. The country, already deeply riven by a war that would take more than 58,000 American lives and millions of Vietnamese lives, would never be the same. This horrific event on May 4, 1970, would be seen as the end of the post-World War II era and the beginning of a new era in American politics and society that has brought us to the current moment of almost hopeless polarization, cynicism and distrust.

"The gunshots still echo in 2020," wrote Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch. "It's no accident that in the months immediately after Kent State, business leaders and other conservatives began looking for ways to quash liberal thinking on campus and counteract it with the conservative web of noise that became talk radio and Fox News."

But as Giles, the Beacon Journal's former managing editor, told me in an interview, the worst of it is that no justice was ever done.

"No one has ever been held accountable, in a country where the rule of law is supposed to prevail."

The Beacon Journal - headquartered just 20 minutes from campus - provided exceptional coverage on May 4 and in the contentious, emotional months and years that followed. Its initial reporting countered a wire-service flash report that erroneously stated that two students and two guardsmen had died.

"We went with our young reporter and we were right," said Giles, whose new book, "When Truth Mattered: The Kent State Shootings 50 Years Later," meticulously chronicles what happened inside the newspaper and how its journalism played out in the reeling nation:

"Tension was at the breaking point as we faced a critical choice: Go with the UPI story from an experienced reporter that two Guardsmen were among the dead. Or trust Jeff Sallot, our own reporter on the scene, who was telling us the four dead were students.

"Englehart turned to me. 'What should we do?'

" 'Let's go with Jeff,' I ordered, almost without hesitation."

Later, the paper investigated false allegations that sought to shift the blame from the National Guard to the students - for example, that there had been a sniper in the protest crowd.

Photography played a role, too. Looking back at the work of three student photographers used in the paper's coverage, Giles saw in retrospect how clear it was that the guardsmen had not been threateningly surrounded by students as some were claiming.

One student photographer, John Paul Filo, took the iconic image that still has the power to bring tears: A young woman's agony as she knelt beside one of the fallen bodies. It is that image - along with Neil Young's great protest anthem, 'Ohio" - that may linger most in our consciousness of the tragedy today.

And although the Beacon Journal's work was sometimes contested, it was accurate. The midsize daily won a Pulitzer Prize the following year for its spot-news reporting. Filo's photograph also won a Pulitzer.

I asked Giles, who later became the curator of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, if such exemplary and commanding local coverage would be possible today.

Of course it would, he said - if a news organization had the resources that the Beacon Journal then had.

Owned then by Knight Newspapers, which was known for its commitment to quality work, the newsroom had a robust 150-member staff, and the advantage of editors with deep knowledge of their community.

"We were really prepared for something like this," Giles said, particularly because the state editor, Pat Englehart, had such an extensive network of sources. He was assigned to run the immediate daily coverage of the shootings.

But Giles, who lives in Traverse City, Michigan, says he's cognizant of what's happened to much of local journalism in recent years.

The Beacon Journal, now down to perhaps 30 in its newsroom, "is gamely trying to do the job for their community," he said - but it's much harder now.

Still, he said, the importance of local journalism is underscored now as an even more polarized nation faces the current health and economic crisis caused by the coronavirus epidemic.

"It's become a sad time," he said. "The virus has demonstrated the need for authoritative reporting on the local level," even as the economy's downturn is delivering a brutal blow to news organizations, with only a few exceptions.

But some values haven't changed. Hence the title of Giles's book.

Even amid the rampant polarization and turmoil, "people do want to gravitate to truthful information." The challenge, at least on the local level, is how to keep the sources of it alive and functioning.
"If a global health pandemic can't stop the demand for sex workers, then we really need to be more realistic in our approach to the industry."

That is the stark message this weekend from the Director of Sex Workers' Alliance Ireland (SWAI) and sex worker Kate McGrew, as she called upon the Government to decriminalise Ireland's sex industry.

Ms McGrew was speaking as she fielded calls from scores of workers who are being pressurised to provide 'in-person' services under the lockdown.

The organisation says many have no savings or ability to go online and are living hand-to-mouth as they wait for the crisis to pass.

The situation is leading workers to risk their health and many clients are willing to flout the 2km ban, while offering double the money for services.

Clients are also threatening workers by warning that if they don't see them during the pandemic, they will not hear from them once the lockdown has been lifted.

As Ms McGrew explains: "When I get asked 'will you come to see me?' and I say no, they offer more money. I have been offered definitely twice my rates, and my rates happen to be high."

She said "for people who are really hard up for cash, it is a scary prospect [to lose a client long term] and they consider taking them on.

"So the reality is that some workers are still in a situation where they are having to take in clients. We are hearing all kind of stories about how clients are finding ways to make this situation land in their favour".

SWAI, the only frontline sex worker-led organisation in Ireland, is now working to provide sex workers with Covid-19 hardship payments, because many are too scared to access State welfare funds.

Although sex workers can apply for the Covid-19 payment, few are willing to take the risk: "Some are afraid to draw any attention to themselves for fear of being evicted, or because they fear their children being taken away, so there are very real consequences, and, in a situation like this, people do not want to [take the risk]. It is really unfortunate," she explained. "If we were allowed to have our work decriminalised, if we were given labour rights, if we could decrease the stigma and [if people would] stop dehumanising us, then things would change, but instead this is the backdrop."

To date, the organisation has given around 70 100 payments to sex workers through crowd-funded donations, while an additional 160 workers are in the process of accessing the fund.

The Nordic Model, a sex purchase ban, was introduced in 2017 and means that anyone found working together within the sex industry could face a jail sentence, even though they may be doing so for safety reasons. Since the law was introduced, SWAI says it has forced sex workers to work in isolation, leading to a 92pc increase in violence against them.
A crowd gathered at the Nevada State Capitol in Carson City on May 2, as demonstrators demanded coronavirus restrictions be lifted and area businesses be allowed to reopened.

This video shows the protesters in vehicles honking horns, many with signs and American flags. Some protesters were gathering signatures for a petition calling for the removal of Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak.

Nevadas statewide stay-at-home order was due to stay in place until May 15, according to local reports. Credit: @TYformyfreedom via Storyful
The run up to Press Freedom Day, on May 3, has seen the Cambodian government make numerous arrests for alleged fake news posts and the arrest an online journalist for reporting the prime ministers speech, with officials justifying these actions in light of the novel coronavirus pandemic.



Media organizations, reporters, editors and rights groups have expressed serious concern over Cambodian governments continuing crackdown on journalists and curtailment of freedom of expression for Cambodian citizens. Soth Sokprathna, a reporter at Voice of Democracy, said since 2017, when the government launched a crackdown on the opposition and independent media organizations, he has been concerned about reporting in a restrictive environment, causing him to be overly cautious in his reporting.



As we have seen that quoting the Prime Minister's speech can result in being jailed and the institution being closed down, he said. So, I am worried to report and, now, I report more carefully.



Soth Sokprathna is referring to Sovann Rithy, TVFB founder and online reporter, who was arrested in April for quoting Prime Minister Hun Sens speech during a press conference.



The reporter reported Hun Sen admitting that the government was unable to help informal workers, suggesting that motorcycle taxi drivers sell their vehicles to buy rice. Sovann Rithy used the prime ministers words in a Facebook post and was charged with incitement.

Additionally, rights groups Licadho and Human Rights Watch have recorded at least 30 arrests linked to alleged fake news about the novel coronavirus. The groups report that 14 of these arrests have resulted in charges and detention. These arrests have included members of the Cambodia National Rescue Party, which was dissolved in November 2017. In early April, Prime Minister Hun Sen said the government would arrest anyone who raised an opinion criticizing the governments handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, even threatening a senior Licadho staffer for speaking to Radio Free Asia about the fake news arrests. The recently promulgated state of emergency law always the government to curtail press freedom and freedom of expression if such a situation was to arise. The law is vaguely worded and open for interpretation, according to rights groups, who have criticized the quick passage of the law. Prohibition or limitation of the distribution or dissemination of information that could cause fear, reads subsection 11 of Article 5 of the law. The government actions over the past two years were reflected in this years Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index, where Cambodia ranked 144 of 180 nations. The group pointed out that the Cambodian government had managed to enhance its system for cracking down on dissent. Government spokesperson Phay Siphan said attacking the prime minister for the arrests linked to fake news and detention of the Sovann Rithy was only a campaign against the prime minister. "We see on Facebook. There has always been a trend of attacking Samdech Techo Hun Sen, Phay Siphan said.



Since 2017, multiple journalists have faced court action as part of their reporting work. In 2017 November, former Radio Free Asia journalists Uon Chhin and Yeang Sothearin were charged for espionage for reporting stories after the U.S.-based broadcaster shuttered its in-country operations.



The two reporters were tried in a Phnom Penh court last year, but instead of rendering a verdict the judge sent it back for further investigation. The investigation period prior to trial had lasted more than 18 months.



Cambodia Daily reporters Aun Pheap and Zsombor Peter were charged with incitement in 2017 during the commune election campaign, for reporting to understand why there was only one opposition-held commune in all of Ratanakkiri province. The case headed to trail in December, but was postponed.

Ratt Roth Mony, a fixer and freelancer, was convicted for incitement and handed a two-year prison sentence for assisting Russian state news agency RT, previously branded as Russia Today, about sex trafficking in the country.



Aun Pheap, who used to work at the Cambodia Daily, has left Cambodia but urged authorities to complete the legal proceedings against him. He was confident that he had not committed a crime in reporting the story.



It is unfair to me and my colleague because we just carried out our role as journalists in interviewing people, he said. The authorities are complaining about us, accusing us of incitement, this is not right. So, I cannot accept this accusation. Nop Vy, media director at the Cambodian Center for Independent Media, said the government was quick to use the criminal code against journalists, when it should instead use provisions of the Law on Press. Journalist are still being prosecuted, some cases are being processed at court, without dropping charges, he said. And there are withdrawals of the licenses for the media reporting the news.
On Sunday, Indian Air Force aircrafts showered flower petals over hospitals treating Covid-19 patients and also held a flypast of the Sukhoi-30 aircraft. The Navys ships will be lit up during the day too. All of this to express gratitude towards coronavirus warriors who are battling the pandemic.

This comes after Chief of Defence Staff, General Bipin Rawat, announced that the Defence Forces will be paying a tribute to those fighting coronavirus from the frontlines.

The gesture began with laying of flowers at the police memorial in Delhi and in other cities this morning to honour police personnel deployed for enforcement of the nationwide lockdown, according to reports.

Several took to Twitter to share visuals of the helicopters showering flowers:

Health workers assembled near #Trivandrum General Hospital gate, to receive honour from Indian Air force. Soon, IAF helicopter will be showering flower petals to honour them. #CoronaWarriors #IAF #covid19kerala pic.twitter.com/19pJ1MHtX2  Aashish (@aash_tvm) May 3, 2020

While some appreciated this gesture and said that it would help boost morale, others felt that this is waste of resources which could have been utilised for something much more important, like PPE kits and protective gear for medical professionals.

Can the IAF planes airdrop testing kits & personal protective equipment across the country during the nationwide fly-past on Sunday? At least thatd justify this otherwise utterly pointless exercise.  Saket Gokhale (@SaketGokhale) May 1, 2020

They excel in wasting money in charades and brazenly! All this while doctors are complaining of salary cuts, conveyance & lodging issues and more.  Swati Singh (@Swati2610) May 1, 2020

Pls dont waste money in this stupidity instead provide ppe to hospitals for doctors safety  Dr.Mayank Varshney (@Drmv007Mayank) May 1, 2020

What have we become? Where is our practical sensibilities? How much money will be wasted for this drama? Would it not be better if people in position of honour and dignity refrained from frivolous display of wastage & instead sponsored PPE and masks for the doctors. Jai Hind.  Humanity Vigilante (@Rebecca71367554) May 2, 2020
A medicinal chemist who found a cure for the viral disease hepatitis C has received a prestigious award from the University of Edinburgh.

Dr Michael J Sofia, who devised the drug sofosbuvir, is the winner of this year's Cameron Prize for Therapeutics.

Hepatitis C is an infectious disease that primarily affects the liver. Without intervention, it can progress into a life-long chronic disease that causes extreme liver damage and liver cancer. Around 71 million people worldwide are affected.

Sofusbuvir works by stopping the virus from reproducing, by blocking a key protein that the virus needs to reproduce its genetic material.

The drug does not have the same harsh side effects as older, less effective therapies and has slashed treatment times from one year to just 12 weeks.

Dr Sofia created sofosbuvir in 2007 and the drug was approved for use in 2013. Greater than 95 percent of patients with the most common form of hepatitis C can now be cured by the treatment. With sofosbuvir as the backbone of combination therapies, all forms of hepatitis C can now be cured.

More recently, researchers have begun exploring whether drugs based on sofosbuvir could also be used to treat Covid-19.

Professor Moira Whyte, Vice Principal and Head of the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, said: "Sofosbuvir is widely regarded as one of the greatest medical advances in our lifetime and I am delighted Dr Sofia has accepted this prize in recognition of his discovery."

Dr Sofia is currently Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Arbutus Biopharma, a US-based biopharmaceutical company dedicated to discovering, developing and commercializing a cure for patients suffering from chronic hepatitis B infection.

Dr Michael Sofia, Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Arbutus Biopharma, said: "I am deeply honored to have been selected to receive the Cameron Prize for Therapeutics from the University of Edinburgh. The Cameron Prize has a long and distinguished history and past winners represent the very best of those who have made important contributions to medicine. It is humbling to be counted among those who have transformed medicine over the years. Today, as we are faced with the specter of a global pandemic, we are reminded that we must continue to commit ourselves to the advancement of medicine on every front. The Cameron Prize for Therapeutics recognizes how science has been able to solve critical medical challenges for the betterment of mankind, and it is for this recognition that I am truly appreciative."

Dr Sofia studied chemistry at Cornell University, received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Illinois and was a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University. He has received numerous awards for his work on the hepatitis C virus including the 2015 Economist Innovation Award, the 2016 IUPAC-Richter Prize, and the 2016 Lasker-DeBakey Award in Clinical Medical Research.

The Cameron Prize for Therapeutics is awarded every two years by the University of Edinburgh to a person who has made a highly important and valuable addition to the treatment of illnesses. The Prize was first awarded in 1879 and lists numerous Nobel and Lasker prize winners amongst its subsequent awardees. The list of winners includes a truly diverse array of innovations from the 20th century: from transplant surgery, bone marrow transplants, and haemodialysis, to ground-breaking vaccines, antimicrobials and novel medicines.

Winners are invited to deliver a lecture about their work at the University of Edinburgh. Owing to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, this year's award lecture has been postponed until further notice.

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An investigation is underway after a jailed child sex abuser - dubbed the lollipop paedophile - managed to write letters to a victims family from behind bars.

Michael Cyril Hyde, 60, molested three young girls, including a child aged just 22-months old at the time.

Despite being convicted in 2019, and slapped with a violence restraining order, Hyde has been sending letters to a teenage girl who still lives at the Perth address where many of his sickening crimes were committed.

He had befriended the girls family while working as the cross-walk attendant for a western suburbs primary school.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-04 01:38:40|Editor: huaxia

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WASHINGTON, May 3 (Xinhua) -- A top White House official tasked with tackling the coronavirus pandemic said Sunday that those who failed to abide by the federal mitigation guidance while protesting against local lockdown measures were engaging in "devastatingly worrisome" behaviors.

White House Coronavirus Task Force coordinator Deborah Birx said Sunday that it was "devastatingly worrisome" that those who protested at state Capitols demanding resumption of normal life didn't wear masks or keep social distance, as they should have been doing according to the White House's guidelines aimed at containing the spread of the virus.

Speaking during Fox News's "Fox News Sunday," Birx warned that in doing so the protesters risked transmitting the contagion to their relatives who are vulnerable to the disease.

"It's devastatingly worrisome to me personally because if they go home and they infect their grandmother or grandfather who has a comorbid condition and they have a serious or very unfortunate outcome they will feel guilty for the rest of their lives," she said. "So we need to protect each other at the same time as we're voicing our discontent."

Birx's remarks came as protests against stay-at-home orders were taking place in several states demanding the reopening of the economy, a process a number of states have already started but is still at the initial phase.

Asked whether it was safe for businesses such as hair salons to reopen for the time being, Birx said it was "safer" if the barber and the customer both wore masks.

She added, however, that it is "clear that that's not a good phase one activity," referring to the four-phase gradual reopening that the White House previously unveiled. Enditem
Chairman Emeritus of the Tata Group, Ratan Tata took to Twitter to debunk another piece of fake news propagated in his name, which has gone viral online. He clarified that a quote about the impact of novel coronavirus on the profitability of businesses which had been attributed to him was, in fact, not said by him.

Ratan Tata tweeted, "I'm afraid this too, has not been said by me. I will endeavour to call out fake news whenever I can, but would encourage you to always verify news sources."

Sharing the quote in the tweet, the 82-year-old philanthropist wrote, "My picture alongside a quote does not guarantee me having said it, a problem that many people face."

I'm afraid this too, has not been said by me. I will endeavour to call out fake news whenever I can, but would encourage you to always verify news sources. My picture alongside a quote does not guarantee me having said it, a problem that many people face. pic.twitter.com/pk0S75FxPA - Ratan N. Tata (@RNTata2000) May 3, 2020

After busting the fake news, former Chairman of Tata Sons, Ratan Tata urged people to always verify news sources.

He had busted similar fakes in the past as well and then too he had posted a message on social media to confirm that it was not said or written by him.

In April, a WhatsApp forward was circulated wrongly quoting Tata as saying, "Experts are predicting huge down fall of Economy due to the Corona. I do not know much about these experts." This forward also quoted Tata as saying, "If these experts are to be believed, Israel should have been wiped out from the world map by the Arabs, but the fact is different."

This post has neither been said, nor written by me. I urge you to verify media circulated on WhatsApp and social platforms. If I have something to say, I will say it on my official channels. Hope you are safe and do take care. pic.twitter.com/RNVL40aRTB - Ratan N. Tata (@RNTata2000) April 11, 2020

He had urged people to verify news received via social media platforms and WhatsApp before forwarding it. He had also said that if he had to say something, he would put it out on his official channels.

On March 28, Tata announced via his official Twitter account that Tata Trusts has committed Rs 500 crore towards the production of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for medical staff, ventilators, testing kits, setting up modular treatment facilities and training the health workers and general public.

Also Read: Coronavirus: Ratan Tata debunks fake news, says viral message not by him
(Newser)  North and South Korean troops exchanged fire along their tense border on Sunday, the Souths military said, the first such incident since the rivals took unprecedented steps to lower front-line animosities. While Sundays incident is a reminder of persistent tensions, it didnt cause any known casualties on either side and is unlikely to escalate, observers say. The Joint Chiefs of Staff in Seoul said that North Korean troops fired several bullets at a South Korean guard post inside the border zone. South Korea responded with a total of 20 rounds of warning shots on two occasions before issuing a warning broadcast, reports the AP. South Korea suffered no casualties, the military said. Defense officials said its unlikely for North Korea to have any casualties either as the South Korean warning shots were fired at uninhabited North Korean territory.

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A preliminary South Korean analysis showed that North Koreas firing wasnt likely a calculated provocation though Seoul will continue examining whether there was any motivation for the action, a South Korean defense official said. Farming activities around the North Korean area where the firing occurred continued throughout Sunday and North Koreas military didnt display any other suspicious activities after the gunfire. The official said there was a thick fog in the area at the time of the incident. Later Sunday, South Korea sent a message to North Korea to try to avoid an escalation, but the North hasnt immediately replied. The exchange of fire comes a day after North Korea broadcast images of Kim Jong Un reappearing in public after a 20-day absence amid intense speculation about his health. The last time there was gunfire along the Korea border was in November 2017, when North Korean soldiers sprayed bullets at a defecting colleague.

(Read more North Korea stories.)
In the wake of the rampaging coronavirus pandemic, a group of researchers at the Federal University of Technology Akure (FUTA) led by Nathaniel Fagbemi a Professor of Food Science Technology , has recommended the regular consumption of a blend of cocoa-zobo-ginger beverage which has the potential to boost immunity of people against communicable diseases and viruses.

The cocoa-zobo-ginger beverage with high antioxidant potential was developed by the FUTA researchers from blends of Hibiscus sabdariffa (zobo) and ginger blends and natural cocoa powder. The cocoazoboginger beverage possesses high antioxidant activities and shows potential as a health security beverage that can boost immunity against diseases and viruses.

The researchers say though oxidation reactions are necessary for life especially during respiration, complex electron transfer and incomplete reduction of oxygen can result into generation of highly reactive and damaging reactive oxygen species leading to oxidative stress. Oxidative stress has been associated with the cause of significant damage to biological molecules such as lipids, proteins, DNA and development of chronic diseases such as cancer, arteriosclerosis, coronary heart disease, diabetes, neurological disorder and weakening of immune system.

They said research has shown that though the human body has physiological defense mechanism, which produces antioxidants to reduce oxidative damage, additional antioxidants may be necessary during severe oxidative stress and for constant maintenance of oxidative balance. Functional beverages that are high in antioxidants like the zobo-ginger-cocoa drink can adequately protect against oxidative stress and boost immunity in case of stress or diseases. They said a better immunity helps to fend off diseases and also improves chances of survival of ill persons. The cocoa-zobo-ginger beverage could be made in cold or hot water extracts making it vital in the hot tropical climate as well as in the cold harmattan seasons obtained in Nigeria. They said its ingredients are easily available and can be made and enjoyed by all strata of the society.

ginger

The university has the cocoa-zobo-ginger beverage blends in sachets which has been developed and exhibited in many NUC organised university trade fairs and scientific exhibitions and would be ready to enter into partnership with Government agencies and other interested stakeholders for mass production. The Vice Chancellor, Joseph Fuwape, said FUTA will continue to respond to emerging national and global trends and challenges through relevant researches and product development.

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Linkedin Laurence Boutreux with AFP bureaus (Agence France-Presse) Madrid, Spain  Sun, May 3, 2020 13:10 625 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd599f72 2 World Europe,lockdown,coronavirus,COVID-19,pandemic,quarantine,Spain Free

Europe on Sunday prepared for a further cautious easing of coronavirus restrictions following signs the pandemic may be slowing, after Spaniards flocked to the streets to jog, cycle and rollerskate for the first time after 48 days of confinement.

More than 242,000 people have been killed and 3.4 million infected worldwide by the virus, which has left half of humanity under some form of lockdown and pushed the global economy towards its worst downturn since the Great Depression.

With signs that the spread of the contagion has been brought under control, parts of Europe and the United States have begun to lift restrictions to try to inject life into economies crippled by weeks of closures and ease the pressure from populations wearying of captivity.

After a two-month lockdown in Italy -- with the second-highest number of virus deaths in the world -- people on Monday will be allowed to stroll in parks and visit relatives. Restaurants can open for takeaway and wholesale stores can resume business.

And in Hungary, some stores and museums, outdoor spaces of restaurants and hotels, beaches and baths can reopen from Monday -- but restrictions will remain in the capital Budapest, which has recorded about 70 percent of the country's cases.

Germany will also continue its easing at the start of the week, with schools in some areas expected to reopen, while Slovenia and Poland will allow some businesses and public spaces to operate again.

France has said it will partially lift its lockdown on May 11.

But with health experts warning the disease could hit hard once again, they are sticking to social distancing measures, the use of masks and more testing to try to track infections.

"We must maintain social distancing, maximum hygiene levels, and masks. We've done our bit to the best of our ability. From Monday, it's up to you," Italian emergency response official Domenico Arcuri said.

Despite the lingering concerns, there was joy and relief in Spain on Saturday, where people were allowed to exercise and walk freely after the government eased seven weeks of strict lockdown in a country with one of the highest number of deaths at more than 25,000.

"After so many weeks in confinement I badly wanted to go out, run, see the world," said financial advisor Marcos Abeytua in Madrid. "Yesterday I was like a child on Christmas Eve."

Read also: Spain readies to ease lockdown, warns will need discipline

'Beyond breaking point'

Across the Atlantic, the pressure to ease virus measures is intense on leaders in the United States, where the economy has been hammered with tens of millions left jobless and anti-lockdown protests erupting in many areas.

Crowds of demonstrators, some armed, denounced the lockdowns in New Hampshire and Kentucky, while at California's Huntington Beach, some surfers defied orders to stay away from the shore.

"Surfing is essential business around here, dude!" 25-year-old Todd told AFP.

The United States has the most coronavirus deaths in the world and President Donald Trump is keen for a turnaround to help reduce the economic pain.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett was optimistic, saying Saturday he's confident the American economy will bounce back because "American magic has always prevailed" -- though it is far from certain if that recovery will come in time to help Trump win reelection in November.

There are signs that the pandemic is slowing down in some parts of the United States.

In New York City, the epicenter of the US outbreak, an emergency field hospital erected in Central Park is set to close, the Christian charity running it said Saturday, as virus cases decline in the city.

But authorities are wary of letting their guard down too fast, with fears the virus could wreak havoc in the most vulnerable communities in the United States.

A massive wave of infections is sweeping through America's prison population -- the world's largest at 2.3 million -- with coronavirus deaths on the rise in jails and penitentiaries across the country.

Riots over inadequate protection and slow responses by authorities have already taken place in prisons in Washington state and Kansas.

"Things are beyond breaking point at this facility," said Brian Miller, an officer at the Marion prison in Ohio. "Right now it's hell."

Read also: Back to school in China as lockdowns start to ease

Emotional toll

In addition to Europe, countries elsewhere are also relaxing some coronavirus measures.

Singapore has announced it would gradually ease some of its restrictions, while Turkey on Saturday said it would lift curbs on the export of medical supplies.

Thailand allowed businesses such as restaurants, hair salons and outdoor markets to reopen Sunday so long as social distancing was maintained and temperature checks carried out.

But experts have warned that some countries are still in the first stages of their outbreaks and things could get worse there.

In a sign of the pandemic's emotional toll, families of coronavirus victims in the Philippines are being denied traditional death rites in favor of hurried, impersonal cremations, with virus restrictions often meaning they cannot take a last look at their loved ones.

Leandro Resurreccion IV, 26, was not allowed to visit his father as he was dying from the virus in hospital, and never saw his corpse -- just the plastic he was wrapped in.

"The fact that... my family wasn't able to say goodbye could probably be the second most tragic thing that happened after my dad's death," he said.
The nationwide lockdown has ensured India's fatality rate from coronavirus remains among the lowest in the world. With fatality rate of 3.3% of total confirmed cases and deaths of 0.09 people per one lakh population, India's record of fighting the infection compares well with South Korea, a top performer in containing the disease and China, which undertook steps like mass quarantine to limit the pandemic.

Coronavirus India Live Updates: Lockdown 3.0! Highest 1-day jump with 2,644 cases; IAF salutes corona heroes

Among the early countries hit by the pandemic, South Korea has a good record of limiting its total count to 10,780 cases and deaths at 250. The country has among the lowest fatality rate of 2.3%, while deaths per lakh of population have been at 0.48, higher than China at 0.33 and India's 0.09, the lowest among all major countries, according to trends captured at the Coronavirus Resource Centre, Johns Hopkins University. China has a case fatality rate of 5.5% with 83,959 cases and 4,637 deaths. India has seen 37,257 total cases and 1,223 deaths.

On the other hand, situation is very serious in some European countries and the US.

Belgium has seen highest deaths of 67.44 per lakh of population, followed by Spain, Italy, UK, France and US at 53, 47, 42, 37 and 20, respectively.

China mocks US' response to coronavirus in short animation 'Once Upon a Virus'

Total deaths out of total COVID-19 cases or case-fatality ratio in these nations is also high, in the range of 12% to 16%, except in US where it is 6% with 65,000 deaths reported so far out of 11 lakh confirmed cases. According to the mortality analysis of the university, the data could represent a different picture if more people are tested.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Transport and Vietnams representative offices in the US are actively joining hands to assist the Vietnam Airlines in clearing necessary procedures

and looking for suitable options to bring Vietnamese citizens in the US back home at the earliest possible date, the foreign ministry said on May 3.

San Francisco International Airport. (Source: Forbes)

The ministry further said that implementing the Prime Ministers instruction and those of Vietnamese authorities, the representative offices in the US have made a list of those in need for Vietnamese authorities to organise flights to bring them back home from the US.

However, as the procedures from the US side are related to various authorities, the Vietnam Airlines has not received sufficient licenses needed to conduct the flights as scheduled, it added.

As many of those citizens have moved to the San Francisco International Airport waiting to fly back to Vietnam, the Vietnamese General Consulate in San Francisco has sent many officials to the facility to help them.

The ministry advised them to keep calm and observe seriously the host authorities regulations and guidance by Vietnamese representative offices. In case they need help, they can contact the Vietnamese Embassy in the US at 001.202.716.8666/ 001.202.999.6938/ 001.202.999.6589, the Vietnamese General Consulate in San Francisco at 001.415.619.2951 or 001.415.319.5446, the Vietnamese General Consulate in Houston at 001.346.775.0555, or the Vietnamese Consular Department at +84.981.84.84.84./.
The Kano state government has disclosed that President Buhari gave his consent for the lockdown in the state to be relaxed.

This order came despite a spike in the number of confirmed COVID19 cases.

Also Read: Ganduje Relaxes Presidential Lockdown In Kano

Governor Abdullahi Ganduje announced on Saturday that Mondays and Thursdays would be lockdown free days, especially between 10am and 4pm to enable residents shop for food.

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This decision led to backlash for the state government because the state has witnessed a spike in the number of COVID-19 patients in recent days.

Reacting to the backlash, the state Ministry of Health via its Twitter handle, disclosed that the lockdown was with the Presidents consent.

See the tweet below:
PJ Carroll, the Irish subsidiary of British American Tobacco, has said over 200 million cigarettes it sells a year will be affected by the upcoming ban on menthol cigarettes.

The menthol cigarette ban, which takes effect on May 20, covers cigarettes which use flavours to relax the airways and make smoking easier on a person's throat. The change follows the completion of a four-year phasing-in period under a 2016 EU directive on tobacco products.

Simon Carroll, country manager of PJ Carroll, said his company has around 50pc of the menthol cigarette market, accounting for 200 million cigarettes. Brands it has control of in this area include Consulate, Vogue and Pall Mall.

"It's going to have a big impact [on output]," he said. "We are just around half [of the menthol cigarette market].

"It is probably just over 200 million cigarettes of ours affected by this a year, so it's a big number.

"It is going to impact us dramatically, but again it is hard to know what the monetary value will be until we see what plays out fully with what consumers choose to do. We can only give them real alternatives that they can choose to have. Hopefully, if they choose to go vaping, they choose ours, but if they choose combustible cigarettes, they choose our brands too. It's a wait-and-see."

Despite the potential impact on the business, Carroll is hopeful that the ban will present an opportunity to further the take-up of his company's vaping devices.

According to Carroll, British American Tobacco has invested in the region of 3bn into its tobacco alternatives.

Brands sold by PJ Carroll in Ireland include Vype e-cigarette pens and Cirro vaping liquids. The company plans on launching around 17 new menthol-targeted vaping products to service those shifting away from menthol cigarettes.

Carroll is hopeful that the business will expand with these products. He said the vaping products under his control in Ireland account for around 16pc of the market, with the plan to hit 35pc over the next 12 months.

"A lot of our energies are heading toward the vaping side of things," he said. "We are hopeful that the choices we are giving consumers are the best. Hopefully, if anything, our business will expand in due time.

"Menthol and tobacco are still a massive part of flavouring within the vape market," he added. "Our target audience is the 800,000 smokers out there; that's how we hope to double our share in the next 12 months, if we can."
From banana bread to gooey brownies and sourdough, many of us have turned our hands to home baking as a way to fill our time while in lockdown.

But, as most avid bakers will have come to learn, getting hold of the basic ingredients needed to make these tasty treats is not always easy.

Flour  a key baking ingredient  has been flying off the shelves in recent weeks, with rising demand leaving many shops and supermarkets struggling to keep up with demand.

As the flour industry attempts to fulfil orders for smaller bags, Morrisons has found a way to ensure its customers do not have to go without.

This week, the supermarket has responded by decanting its own bakery flour into bags to sell in store daily.

The small bags are being made up from the larger sacks used by the in-store bakeries, with customers paying 60p for a 1kg bag of plain, self-raising or white and wholemeal bread flour.

It is also selling larger 16kg bags which cost 9, and 50g bag of bakery yeast for 20p.

So far, Morrisons has sold more than 370 tonnes of flour to Britains bakers and more than 19,000 bags of yeast.

Andy Clarke, bakery buying manager, at Morrisons said: Listening to customers, we know baking is important right now to keep the family busy and entertain kids during the lockdown.

It felt like a no brainer to give customers the ingredients they need to bake at home during this very difficult time."

Customers have been praising the supermarket on social media for making their shopping easier.

I went to the shops today and got flour and eggs. I felt like I'd won the lottery. Thanks to the @Morrisons staff for decanting flour from their sacks into paper bags. It's the little things that cheer you up, one person wrote on Twitter.

Another added: There's enough to go around but not in small bags. Luckily, clever #Morrisons has come up with a solution. Hope other supermarkets follow.

Recommended How to make a sourdough starter and what to do with it

Earlier this month, the National Association of British and Irish Millers (Nabim) said the industry was working round the clock to double production but was still struggling to meet demand.

One flour mill in Oxfordshire said it had started running a 24-hour operation for the first time in its 25-year history to help get flour to shops.

Its unprecedented, Emily Munsey, who runs Wessex Mill with her father, told the BBC. Weve increased production about four-fold but were nowhere close to meeting the demand weve seen.

Alex Waugh, director general of Nabim, said the problem was not being able to mill enough flour, not that the industry lacked capacity to pack the flour into smaller bags for retailers.
UPDATE: One dead, three injured after boat explosion on Lake of the Ozarks UPDATE 5:14 p.m.: Missouri State Highway Patrol said the missing person was found dead and still aboard the boat. LAKE OF THE OZARKS, Mo.- Missouri State Highway Patrol has confirmed an explosion on Lake of the Ozark. MSHP's Troop F confirmed the following information via Twitter on Saturday, May 2, 2020.

Regional news is putting this on blast and it's our daily reminder that an element of danger exists in everything . . . Read more:
What lies beyond the pandemic? MassForward is MassLives series examining the journey of Massachusetts small businesses through and beyond the coronavirus pandemic.

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Owners of Hot Oven Cookies David and Sheila Coon were shocked when their application for the Prime the Pump grant was turned down due to owing payments on loans from the city before the pandemic.

We drove home today to the house we bought last year sobbing as we saw all the businesses who received aid knowing we will get up tomorrow and do it all again without the support of the city who professes to value small, minority, woman, and veteran-owned businesses, praying for a miracle to drop from Heaven to help us.

The city announced that it has awarded 76 more Prime the Pump grants, delivering a total of $500,000 to city small businesses struggling to survive shutdowns related to the coronavirus pandemic.

This is the second set of grants that have been issued by the city totaling $750,000. The idea is to assist businesses as they survive with less revenue and to help preserve jobs.

We applied for as many grants and loans as we were eligible for, wrote Coon in an email to City Council President Justin Hurst and Councilor Tracye Whitfield. [Im] extremely hopeful and confident that the city would honor our hard work and hustle that has continued to bring people to downtown Springfield from as far as Worcester and orders from as far away as Hawaii and California to find out that we were not included was a kick to the gut.

Many businesses have seen issues with the drop-in demand for their products and have relied on grants to weather the pandemic. However, after applying for a previous city grant and struggling to pay it back due to issues with their landlord SilverBrick Lofts and the expenses of having to take them to court, Coon said that they were not able to get the Prime the Pump grant.

I got an email that she missed some bank payments on the loan that she received through the city, said City Councilor Adam Gomez. Theres a couple of businesses there, not only hers, that have been dealing with electrical and water damage.

Coon won the case and the repairs to her store have been carried out by the management company, but it hit her financially. She told MassLive that she feels invisible.

She wrote an email to the Deputy Director of Economic Development Brian Connors to ask why she was turned down for the Prime the Pump grant.

The issue with this grant program as it relates to your request is the city policy not to provide funding to any vendor, business, or resident that is in arrears to the city, wrote Deputy Director of Economic Development Brian Connors in an email to Coon. This is a citywide policy, and each and every contract is checked for owed fines, fees, and payments from anything from back taxes to loan payments to parking tickets. This is not a policy that we as a department have any ability to waive.

Coon said that she has met with Connors to discuss the issues she is having and to ask if the city could help. He told her that there is more money coming and that she should reapply for future grants.

I need the money now and how do I know Im getting the money, Coon said.

We applied for as many grants and loans as we were eligible for, wrote Sheila Coon in an email to City Council President Justin Hurst and Councilor Tracy Whitfield. [Im] extremely hopeful and confident that the city would honor our hard work and hustle that has continued to bring people to downtown Springfield from as far as Worcester and orders from as far away as Hawaii and California to find out that we were not included was a kick to the gut. (Douglas Hook / MassLive)

Hot Oven Cookies, the Holyoke-born startup that also recently reopened in downtown Springfield, announced that it will be opening another location at Bradley International Airport. The opening that was scheduled for March has been delayed due to the virus.

We have been accepted into Boston's Cultivate Small Business Program with an eye on opening there. We have been accepted as a potential finalist in the Mass Challenge Program, said Coon. [We have] always given due to Springfield which is home to our family and our business.

Springfield is now her and her familys home which is why she said she feels so let down by the lack of support she has received.

The stress of the pandemic has affected her husband David who sufferers from post-traumatic stress disorder from his time serving in the U.S. Marine Corps as well as suffering from traumatic brain injury.

Four city council members have taken up the issue and are in the beginning stages looking into the matter. City Councilors Adam Gomez, Tracye Whitfield and Kateri Walsh, as well as City Council President Justin Hurst, are in Hot Oven Cookies corner.

Reading your responses was the first time since this whole nightmare started that we felt validated and seen, wrote Coon. Thank you.

The only way they have been able to get through this is relying on Davids disability check which has been enough to cover the rent.

[Hes a] disabled Marine Corps veteran. I mean somebody who served his country, said Walsh. I just spoke with Councilor Gomez yesterday, Councilor Hurst this morning. We were going to be back in touch with Councilor Whitfield to see if theres something as councilors we could do to help her get through the hump.

Gomez has had a lot of experience working with veterans and said that he could relate to the Coons situation because he knows how hard it is for those with PTSD.

I know how hard it is working with folks to have PTSD and then fall into homelessness and to get them back on track, said Gomez. Knowing the trials in the world that her husband went through to start this business or what he put into it and then for him to get the door slammed in his face again really put me in a place where I had to gather my thoughts and gather my feelings.

After the deaths at the Holyoke Soldiers Home, Gomez told MassLive that he was mortified that veterans are treated this way.

Currently, 52 of the residents of the home have died of the disease. Faced with four investigations and a lawsuit filed by its own superintendent, the Board of Trustees for the Holyoke Soldiers Home voted to hire a private lawyer to represent members in court.

Hot Oven Cookies has led Springfield councilors to also question how the city is dealing with the minority community.

Everything we do and every dime we give out as a result of this pandemic should be done with an eye towards the fact that people of color are routinely left out, wrote Hurst to the Coons. Hence, why Springfields minority community is overwhelmed with positive cases of COVID-19.

Coon and her family are still waiting to hear what will happen with emergency funding for her small business but she said she feels better knowing she is not invisible anymore.

MassForward is MassLive's series examining the journey of Massachusetts' small businesses through and beyond the coronavirus pandemic.

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Open source





Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri signed off on a decision that sanctioned the right of the ministries of oil, energy, and industry to issue "sukuk" Islamic sharia bonds.



In accordance with the annual state budget, Iran will issue bonds worth up to 35 trillion riyals this year ($ 217 million at the free market rate). They will go to finance gas and oil projects.



Since the end of the last century, sanctions have been imposed on Iran by the United States, the UN, and the European Union, but most of the restrictions were lifted almost five years ago in exchange for commitments to end the nuclear program. Iran plans to issue securities worth up to $ 217 million to support oil and natural gas projects. This was announced by SHANA state-run energy news service, Reuters informed. Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri signed off on a decision that sanctioned the right of the ministries of oil, energy, and industry to issue "sukuk" Islamic sharia bonds.In accordance with the annual state budget, Iran will issue bonds worth up to 35 trillion riyals this year ($ 217 million at the free market rate). They will go to finance gas and oil projects.Since the end of the last century, sanctions have been imposed on Iran by the United States, the UN, and the European Union, but most of the restrictions were lifted almost five years ago in exchange for commitments to end the nuclear program.

The nuclear deal was signed in July 2015, it entered into force in January 2016. In May 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from a nuclear agreement with Iran. Anti-Iranian sanctions were reinstated by Washington in November 2018. They include a ban on the purchase of oil.
Fishery collapses can be difficult to forecast and prevent due to hyperstability, a phenomenon where catch rates remain high even as fish abundance declines. In a recent Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences study, researchers conducted a whole-lake experiment to reveal the causes of hyperstability in recreational fisheries. Fish habitat preferences were found to leave them vulnerable to overexploitation.

Chris Solomon, an aquatic ecologist at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, was an author on the paper. He explains, "The few previous studies on hyperstability in recreational fisheries, like those in commercial fisheries, have relied on observational data. By using an experimental approach, we were able to reveal the underlying cause of a problem that has vexed fisheries managers."

By manipulating the abundance of largemouth bass in a northern Wisconsin lake, Solomon and colleagues undertook the first experimental test of hyperstability. Over the span of three months, the research team changed the abundance of bass in Camp Lake on a weekly basis, from over 350 to only 25 fish. Electrofishing was used to temporarily move animals from the lake's main basin to an isolated side basin.

Once a week, three anglers fished for two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening, boating along the shore. They targeted the littoral zone, preferred bass habitat, and recorded the location of each fish hooked. When their catch rates were compared to the known abundance of bass in the lake each week, the team documented that angler success remained high until only a few fish remained.

The mechanisms believed to cause hyperstability are habitat aggregation and effort sorting. Habitat aggregation refers to the tendency of fish species to cluster in areas with preferred habitat features like fallen trees or aquatic vegetation. Effort sorting refers to angler skill, with less skilled anglers moving on as fish decline, resulting in high catch rates for the remaining skilled anglers.

Lead author Colin Dassow, a PhD candidate at the University of Notre Dame, explains, "Previous studies have linked hyperstability to effort sorting. By using a fixed set of anglers, we excluded this variable. Habitat aggregation was the driver of hyperstability collapse in Camp Lake. Hyperstability heightens the risk of fishery collapse because anglers don't get any signal that fish are in trouble until it's too late."

Solomon explains, "We found that hyperstability can occur simply because anglers know where fish like to gather, even at times of year when fish are not densely aggregated for spawning. That's worrisome because most fish species have habitat preferences -- suggesting that many recreational fisheries may be susceptible to hyperstability."

According to the paper's authors, limiting angler effort is the primary way to protect fish that are vulnerable due to habitat aggregation. This could take the form of shortening the fishing season, reducing harvest limits, or prohibiting fishing when and where fish gather to spawn. These aren't always popular policies, but they could prove instrumental to conserving fish stocks and quality fishing opportunities.

"Protecting the economic, social, and ecological benefits of healthy fisheries requires closer monitoring," Dassow notes. "Unfortunately, data reported by anglers is patchy and data collected by researchers and state agencies is too costly to undertake at scale. Both types of data inform our understanding of how the system as a whole is 'working', but we don't have enough of either type."

Solomon concludes, "It's important for anglers to understand that what comes out of the water is not always representative of what lies beneath the surface. Even if the fish are biting, this doesn't mean there are many of them. Anglers, fisheries managers, and other stakeholders must work together to advocate for better monitoring and sensible limits on effort if we want to sustain good fishing opportunities now and in the future."
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 3)  The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) has suspended inbound international flights for a week starting 8 a.m. on Sunday, May 3.

In a statement on Sunday, the CAAP said that it has already issued a Notice to Airmen to suspend all inbound international passenger and commercial flights up to 8 a.m. of May 10.

Nine international airports in the country were covered by the notice. These are:

- Ninoy Aquino International Airport

- Davao International Airport

- Clark International Airport

- Iloilo International Airport

- Mactan-Cebu International Airport

- Zamboanga International Airport

- Kalibo International Airport

- Laoag International Airport

- Puerto Princesa International Airport.

Only cargo flights, medical flights, utility flights, and maintenance flights are exempted from the suspension and will remain unhampered.

International flights intending to land or depart from the country must request for an exemption with the CAAP Operations Center at least 36 hours before the scheduled departure from the airport of origin.

National Task Force Against COVID-19 Chief Implementer Carlito Galvez Jr had sent a letter to Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade saying that the moratorium on flights is being imposed "to ramp up" the capacity of the government to properly process the growing number of Filipino repatriates coming back to the Philippines on a daily basis.

"This will also allow the government's front line agencies and instrumentalities to upgrade their testing and screening protocols and expand existing quarantine and medical facilities to adequately deal with the growing number of repatriates and COVID-19 cases in the Philippines," he said.

The Manila International Airport Authority announced on its Facebook page late Saturday evening that it had to suspend passenger and commercial flights to and from the Philippines, in accordance with the government decision to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

The Philippine Airlines also canceled special passenger flights from the United States bound for Manila from May 4 up to May 8.

The Department of Foreign Affairs said that its repatriation of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) is being adjusted to comply with the directives of the task force.

"OFWs will remain where they are in the meantime - many ship crew members are assisted by their manning agencies, some others register with the embassy then proceed to pick-up points or the airport when a flight is scheduled," it said in a statement.

Tugade earlier appealed to the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines and other airport officials to consider opening airports in areas under the general community quarantine to make commercial flights available to passengers.

He said this will gradually jump-start airline operations hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and "plant the seeds for domestic tourism."

Based on the approved Inter-Agency Task Force Resolution 30, delivery services, whether in-house or outsourced, transporting food medicine, or other essential goods will be allowed via land, air or sea travel.

Public transportation is still banned in Metro Manila and under high-risk areas under the enhanced community quarantine until May 15. Only the transit of essential workers and workers from approved services and industries in these areas are allowed.

The Philippines has recorded a total of 8,928 COVID-19 cases, with 1,124 recoveries. A total of 603 individuals have died from the infection to date.
Professor Joe OOSullivan, clinical director of oncology at the Cancer Centre at Belfast City Hospital, is launching his third music album. Picture: Cliff Donaldson

A top cancer specialist is hoping people will give a shot of love to hard-pressed charities with a new fundraising album.

Professor Joe OSullivans Instead of Many Shades of Blue album will raise money for the Friends of the Cancer Centre, one of the many medical charities whose funding has taken a hit during the crisis.

He said: This crisis is really affecting how charities raise money and normal fundraising events cant take place. I thought I could use my profile to give them a bit of publicity and at the same time, when you have recorded music, you kind of want to get it out there, let people hear it and move on to the next project.

Joe has been based in Belfast for over 16 years, working at the City Hospital and Queens University, but has also served at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London.

Originally from Wexford, he said his genre falls somewhere between Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Coldplay, U2, that kind of vibe.

I recorded this back in November and the plan had been to release it in March but with the Covid-19 restrictions coming in, it didnt look like the right time, said Joe.

Ive also been busy in the hospital but I think things are at a manageable level.

Lending him a hand with the vocals is his 16-year-old son Oisin, with the pair supported by a three-piece backing band.

While the albums release was delayed by the crisis, Joe and his team at the City Hospital are trying to carry on as best they can during the pandemic.

Weve had a mixture of things. One was making sure we had enough capacity and we would have space if me and my colleagues would work on the frontline and our ICU and surgeries were handed over, he said. The second part was keeping our cancer patients safe during the crisis because a lot of them are older and trying to minimise their time outside the house.

Weve tried to keep things as normal as possible but inevitably less and less treatment is being done.

But I would say we are gradually ramping back up now and I think its other health conditions which might be worst affected by this virus  (people with) heart disease, cancer, who have normally been attending for therapy and now they are kind of scared to do so.

We are not going to be normal for a while but at least we can get back to treating people better.

Joe explained that music can help with the often grim side of his job such as treating men with prostate cancer.

In oncology you can have quite tough days but Ive always found music to be a way to ease you through the difficulties in life, he said.

Instead of Many Shades of Blue is available on Spotify and Apple Music, and on CD from sharpemusic.com priced 12.
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A cleaner wears a protective mask as he walks down an empty street in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China, on Feb. 3, 2020. (Getty Images)

Chinas Fuzzy Math on Unemployment

CCP struggles with transparency as 70 million-plus workers could be jobless

News Analysis

China faces widespread unemployment as the nation struggles to emerge from the CCP virus epidemic.

The countrys true economic picture remains hidden, however, as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues its policy of withholding information from the rest of the world.

Officially, the Chinese economy contracted by 6.8 percent during the first quarter. The country was under lockdown during much of that time because of the CCP virus, commonly referred to as the novel coronavirus.

While the real rate of gross domestic product (GDP) deterioration may never be known, its believed to be far higher than the officially disclosed figures.

Beijing said the nations official unemployment rate rose to 5.9 percent in March, from 5.2 percent in December 2019. Thats an increase to 26 million people from 23 million in raw numbers.

Meanwhile, the number of people officially receiving state jobless benefits was unchanged. Chinese Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said only 2.3 million workers were given jobless benefits as of March 2020, the same figure as those receiving benefits three months earlier, before the CCP virus pandemic became widespread and shut much of the countrys economy.

Higher Than 20 Percent

The figures are so incredulous that a report by a major domestic Chinese brokerage firm revealed that unemployment could be four times higher than the official numbers indicate.

As many as 70 million people were jobless in China and the countrys real unemployment rate was 20.5 percent, Shandong-based Zhongtai Securities wrote in an April 24 note.

The urban surveyed unemployment rate is obviously flawed in depicting the unemployment situation, because of Chinas special condition that there is a very large group of migrant workers, the note read, according to a Bloomberg report.

The report was quickly rescinded and was no longer mentioned on Chinese social media by April 27.

It was a rare public rebuke of Chinas sensitive economic data by a major brokerage firm. The stakes were apparent a few days later, when Li Xunlei, Zhongtais head of research, was removed from his post and was replaced by deputy director Dai Zhifeng.

Fuzzy Math

The reality is that Chinas unemployment figures only count urban workers, as Zhongtai pointed out. The vast majority of its 50 million migrant workers likely remained unemployed in March as travel restrictions were still hindering the movement of workers.

Meanwhile, Chinas power generation levels also seem to corroborate a contraction far greater than official Beijing statistics.

Huaneng Power International, Chinas largest publicly listed domestic power generator, revealed in a securities filing that its power output fell by 18.5 percent from December to March on an annualized basis. Most of Huanengs power generation capacity is in Chinas central and eastern regions.

Another listed generator, China Resources Power Holdings, said its output declined by 12.5 percent during the same period.

Morgan Stanleys estimates using consumer consumption also arrive at far higher levels of unemployment than official data suggest.

We estimate the numbers of de facto unemployment (no work due to business suspension) and underemployment (working part time or fewer hours than they desire due to insufficient demand) could peak at 80mn and 100mn, respectively, in the near term, based on our channel check on the resumption status of industrial and service sectors, Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in an April 17 report to clients.

Assuming Chinas jobless figures are north of 70 million, how does that square with the disclosure that only 2.3 million people are receiving benefits?

Again, those figures are cherry-picked. Workers who have jobless benefit insurance are those who work for large, state-owned employersmost of which likely didnt lay off or furlough workers.

The countrys small and medium-sized companies, including privately owned companies, dont have unemployment insurance. So those workers are likely jobless, yet arent counted to receive jobless benefits.

Aside from arguments about numbers, its undeniable that such levels of unemployment pose a threat to Chinas social stability and support of the ruling CCP regime. Regulators are likely forced to continue monetary easing measures to support the job market, including handing cash directly to poorer families.

Yu Jiantuo, deputy secretary-general of the China Development Research Foundation, wrote in an op-ed (in Chinese) on Caixin calling for direct cash transfers, stating that those are more relevant than discounts on travel and consumption.

How many families want to travel when they are worried about buying rice, vegetables, and meat? he wrote.
The UN children's agency on Sunday urged six Middle East countries to greenlight special polio and measles vaccination campaigns put on hold because of the coronavirus pandemic.

UNICEF says the polio campaigns are on hold in Syria, Sudan, Yemen and Iraq, while measles vaccinations are suspended in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and Djibouti.

UNICEF says nearly 10.5 million children under the age of five risk missing their polio vaccinations. Nearly 4.5 million children under 15 could miss their measles vaccinations.

Routine vaccinations for other diseases like rubella and diphtheria are continuing, but special campaigns were put on hold because of overwhelmed health systems or governments wanting to avoid crowding at clinics.

UNICEF's Ted Chaiban says immunization is absolutely critical and possible if safety measures are taken.

The agency says the needed vaccines are available and that it's providing protective equipment.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)




Former Minister of Aviation Femi Fani-Kayode has berated the World Health Organisation (WHO) for planning to begin Coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine trials in Nigeria.

Naija News had earlier reported that WHO had revealed that Nigeria will be part of the global solidarity drug trial to combat coronavirus.

The world health body had launched solidarity drug trials for these specific drugs  hydroxychloroquine, chloroquine phosphate, and remdesivir  in April.

Speaking to newsmen on Friday during the presidential task force (PTF) on COVID-19 media briefing, Fiona Braka, the officer in charge, WHO Nigeria, said drug trials would soon begin in the country.

According to Braka, more than 100 countries have joined the solidarity clinical trial, which was launched by WHO and some partners, to help find an effective treatment for COVID-19.

Reacting in a post on his Twitter page on Saturday, Fani-Kayode described the vaccines as Gates killer vaccine.

He also accused Nigerian leaders of trying to pass a law which will make the use of the vaccine compulsory.

Fani-Kayode wrote: WHO are set to begin Covid 19 vaccine trials in our country.

EVIL! Not only have our people been turned into Guinea pigs to test Gates killer vaccine but our leaders are also passing a law which will make the use of that evil vaccine compulsory.

What a mess! I weep for Nigeria.

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When I asked Sita, on a normal day, why she had stopped coming to school, she said, I am now working in my house every morning and evening, and in the afternoons I carry composts in my neighbourhood, from where I earn decent money like other girls in the community.

This is the reality of the capital of the country, Kathmandu. The question here is what stops girls like Sita from going to schools. Is it a matter of accessibility and affordability? And, what happens when their livelihood is altered by a new enemy in the form of an unanticipated pandemic, like the Covid-19?

Nepal has a relatively short history of privatisation of education, a mere half-century (since 1971) since churches and markets provided alternatives to the citizens. In 2020, an assortment of both private and public school-going masses in the country is largely divided by their socio-economic conditions, which in turn determines how, where, when and why not the children go to school and secure their right to an education.

Every year, at the lower secondary school age, about 32.7 per cent of out-of-school children drop out completely while 44.3 per cent are never expected to enter school (UNICEF, 2016). This is a confounding ratio which one may expect to rise after the recent pandemic.

Global initiatives on out-of-school children are implemented in the country and some strategic compliance is made by the government towards meeting its a Millennium Development Goal of establishing free primary education, strengthening Welcome to School campaigns, monitoring children at risk and extending the provision of midday meals to children in vulnerable areas. Despite these, the unacceptable drop-out rate is continuing, driven by an imbalance between livelihood demands and the right to education. Poverty is the most significant barrier to education, increasing the odds of being out of school, whether considering the whole of Nepal, rural areas only, or urban areas of Nepal as 41.8 per cent of Nepals population live below the poverty line, according to the Nepal Living Standards Survey 2011. So, only when families can fulfil their basic needs, they can think about sending their children to school.

The services sector is the biggest contributor to the economic growth in Nepal, more than agriculture and industry combined (ADB, 2014). But, this sector was the most affected by the 2015 earthquake (UNICEF, 2016). The misbalance can further disrupt the country with the advent of Covid-19, with stagnation in the economy, immobility creating a shortage in income-generating jobs which will impact the most on blue-collar workers families. Again, the children will be out of school; again, other global programmes will be implemented in Nepal, and this cycle will go on.

But, the children who never enrolled in schools or dropped out remain unreached despite these policy measures (UNICEF, 2016). So, until and unless we disseminate the value of education and match the local contexts with needs and rights-based approaches, the drop-out ratio will increase after this pandemic.

Financial literacy programmes can be a strategic measure to make people literate, which also will enable mothers to understand about finances and where to spend money as the famous saying goes when a mother is literate, the whole family is literate. Along with this, the federal and local level governments can partner with telecommunications agencies as the penetration of smartphone is 100% in every family these days. With data packages, children from Mugu will be enabled to access online remote learning strategies. Hence flexible learning programmes in which the children can learn according to their schedules should be enabled. Local governments must now strengthen the monitoring mechanisms and track the families which require more assistance with the flow of basic needs now so the risk of dropping out is reduced and assistance from scholarship and meal schemes would reach to the right person and in right place.

The essence of education is to defeat the learning crisis, to which Nepal has become accustomed to, and usher in a brighter tomorrow, through participatory learning, strategically delivered in accordance with the need. If we look at community compliances in the fight against the Covid-19 outbreak, we may well already have the resolve to overcome the challenges.
BERKELEY (BCN)

A bicyclist struck a pedestrian late Saturday afternoon near the intersection of Hearst and Euclid Avenues adjacent to the UC Berkeley campus, leaving both seriously injured, Berkeley police said.

The accident was reported shortly before 5 p.m. Saturday. Police told Berkeleyside the cyclist was "heading down the steep hill on Euclid" when they struck a pedestrian on the sidewalk.

"Both were knocked out terribly with blood everywhere. Police/fire came quickly. Lots of witnesses stayed despite the horrific scene," a witness told Berkeleyside.

The two streets were reopened through the area about 8 p.m., police said.

No further information was immediately available.

Copyright  2020 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.
KYODO NEWS - May 3, 2020 - 17:58 | All, Japan, Coronavirus, World

The Nagasaki prefectural government said Sunday it is sending 44 Indonesian crew members on an Italian cruise ship docked in southwestern Japan back home after they tested negative for the novel coronavirus.

A total of 148 out of 623 crew members aboard the Costa Atlantica, docked for repairs at a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. plant in Nagasaki city, have tested positive for the respiratory illness caused by the virus. No passengers are aboard the ship.

While 61 Indonesian crew have tested negative, some of them are required to stay on board to maintain the ship's mandatory functions, according to the prefecture.

The 44 crew members will leave Tokyo's Haneda airport early Monday and arrive in Jakarta in the morning the same day, it said.

According to the operator Costa Cruises, crew members of the ship are from more than 30 nations, mostly in Asia.

The company is planning to send home those who have tested negative and is discussing the matter with the Japanese government among other parties.

The first infection among the 623 crew members was confirmed on April 20. Two of the infected crew, a male and female of foreign nationality, have been hospitalized at a designated medical facility in Nagasaki due to severe symptoms.

The rest of the crew members including those with mild symptoms of COVID-19 have remained aboard.

The vessel was originally due to undergo repairs in China but Mitsubishi Shipbuilding Co., a unit of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, eventually received the repair order due to the virus outbreak, which was first reported in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.

Another cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, was quarantined in Yokohama near Tokyo in February with around 3,700 people aboard after a passenger was found infected with the virus.

About 700 people on the cruise ship eventually tested positive, while 13 died.

Related coverage:

Uninfected crew on cruise ship in Nagasaki to be sent home

148 cruise ship crew in Nagasaki test positive for virus

43 more coronavirus cases found among cruise ship crew in Nagasaki
Is there an acceptable level of sickness and death tacitly underlying Government policy in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic? In Northern Ireland, the expression "an acceptable level" has actually been used officially within living memory.

In December 1971, Reginald Maudling, then Home Secretary, publicly stated that the situation in Northern Ireland at that time amounted to "an acceptable level of violence". As the mayhem continued, unionist politicians, in particular, asserted that this term was describing the security policy of British governments prepared to tolerate paramilitary outrage, so long as it remained within manageable limits.

Maudling's comment was made during, arguably, the worst period of the Troubles. By the end of 1972, when he left office, over 500 lay dead here. So far, Covid-19 has not equalled that. And let's hope it never does.

However, Maudling's remark perhaps let slip that lurking within Government policy huddles, whether Sage or Cobra, or the Cabinet itself, there was then - and may be now - a wispy administrative culture of an acceptable national level of anything, from austerity to viral massacre, as long as it was deemed within manageable limits.

If so, this concept did not begin with the Troubles in Northern Ireland. For governments, an acceptable level of deaths may be as old as governments themselves.

This should not surprise. Within the military, which is an arm of government, there exists the concept of acceptable loss, meaning death and injury.

Napoleon once said, "You cannot stop me, I spend 30,000 men a month." For him, that was acceptable in the pursuit of victory, remembering that he was in the end only narrowly beaten at Waterloo by Wellington, a Dubliner, who almost certainly had his own acceptable level of loss.

However, in the 19th century, it is largely unnoticed that the majority of deaths in campaigns were not from flying metal, but from disease.

That extraordinary statistic, quite remarkable to us, made imperceptible impact at the time in any capital of Europe.

One reason was that the ravages of disease were accepted as part of normal life then, military and civilian.

Belfast has its own temple to historic disease disaster. Friars Bush graveyard in Stranmillis, regarded as Belfast's oldest Christian graveyard, contains the mass graves of hundreds who died in the cholera epidemic of the 1830s. It is a mound known as Plaguey Hill.

Rudimentary surgery, incomplete knowledge of how disease spread and too few treatments engendered a fatalistic outlook.

How many are in the mound is guesswork, because statistics, as we see them night after night on TV relating to the present pandemic, had barely been invented in 1815.

Of course, there had always been statistics. The Doomsday Book of 1086 is a rudimentary statistical survey of much of England and parts of Wales to tell William the Conquerer how much money he had to play with and, for the next seven centuries or so, that's how governments used statistics.

That brings us to Florence Nightingale, the Lady with the Lamp. Florence gained the nickname Lady with the Lamp during her work at Scutari during the Crimean War.

The Times reported that, at night, she would walk among the beds, checking the wounded men holding a light in her hand. Her work in nursing is the stuff of legend. That lamp did not illuminate her work as a statistician.

Much of Nightingale's published work, which is considerable, was concerned with spreading medical knowledge, with the idea of making it understood by ordinary people.

When you watch the daily Government coronavirus briefings, newscasts and print reports, you will bombarded with infographics.

Raise a hat to Nightingale, uncelebrated pioneer in data visualisation using infographics, the technique of using graphical presentations of statistical data.

Infographics make complex information easy to digest. They can provide a quick overview of a topic, explain a complex process, summarise a long report, compare and contrast multiple options and display survey data (the Doomsday Book could really have used them). That's what those charts, graphs, histograms and, yes, cartoons are all about.

The success of lockdown depends on those infographics working. In their modern iteration, we have Scotsman William Playfair to thank and Nightingale may have known of his work.

Playfair worked with James Watt, the steam power manufacturer, by making technical drawings of his engines. He realised that his illustration skills could make dry data and statistics in any field come alive. For example, he invented the circular pie chart.

Nightingale was a pioneer in infographics, but not the only one. By the middle of the 19th century, when Nightingale was in Crimea, infographics were used against epidemics.

When cholera ravaged London in 1854, physician John Snow mapped out where it was happening. He noticed a large cluster around a particular water pump.

The authorities closed the pump, the epidemic subsided and Snow's map helped advance the critical notion that diseases could be caused by contact with an unknown contagion - bacteria. Note that all maps are infographics.

Florence Nightingale was intrigued by numbers and, therefore, data. Data told her that too many were dying both on and off the battlefield and prompted her to do something about it.

She must also, therefore, have been wittingly, or unwittingly, familiar with the concept of acceptable levels - and what she was learning through statistics and data was unacceptable.

The Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, has confirmed that mass testing and contract tracing is the strategy once more, a strategy the Government abandoned on March 12, when it decided, albeit for a few days only, to let the virus spread through society.

Statistics quickly told him that depending upon "herd immunity" could lead to an unacceptable level of deaths. Infographics would soon have made that very plain to the rest of us.

Herd immunity is a euphemism. It is really the outcome of herd culling and older people, like me, are the ones most likely to be culled.

Infographics helped tell me that. Thank you, William Playfair and Florence Nightingale.

A level of pandemic deaths is unavoidable. Above that unavoidable level should be unacceptable.

But what is the unavoidable level?

Don Anderson is a writer and broadcaster
Antibody and viral testing for COVID-19 will eventually help New Mexico officials make better decisions as the body of knowledge increases, said Dr. David Scrase, secretary of the state Human Services Department.

The state is gearing up to increase antibody testing, joining other states in what Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham called a mad dash for testing equipment and chemicals.

Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center in Santa Fe announced last week it is offering an antibody test and TriCore Reference Laboratories plans to roll out the platform Monday in Albuquerque and elsewhere.

There are limits to what antibody testing will tell public officials on how to deal with the coronavirus.

We dont know if having antibodies means you are immune to the virus, Scrase said at a recent news conference. Or if they do provide immunity, how long that immunity will last.

He said antibodies to seasonal influenza that provide immunity can last up to a year.

Officials here and around the country point out that the virus has been active in the country for only four months.

A vaccine is the end game, Scrase said. Almost all of us have to be immune to it.

Lujan Grisham also said that some of the antibody tests on the market had high rates of false positives  indicating a person had antibodies for the coronavirus when they didnt.

The state has identified three tests that have been approved for blood/antibody testing out of dozens being marketed.

Getting the supplies for laboratories to use the tests will be a challenge and Lujan Grisham said states will be competing to obtain, not just the tests, but the chemicals to use them.

Biotechnology companies supplying reagents for active COVID-19 tests are having difficulty with the demand, according to state officials.

The state is negotiating with Abbott Laboratories to buy antibody test reagents when they become available.

The state has not announced how it intends to use the antibody tests  whether for a direct medical purpose like finding plasma donors or a widespread random test initiative to determine the number of people who had the virus but were never tested.

Antibodies are proteins that bind to and destroy a virus by preventing it from reproducing and spreading an infection.

Some tests can measure the number of antibodies in a persons system. Others detect only whether antibodies are present in someones system.

The World Health Organization has issued guidance that some of the antibodies the body produces in response to COVID-19 are similar to or the same as antibodies produced in response to other viruses, including some that cause the common cold.

The antibody tests were made available by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration under an emergency regulation called an Emergency Use Authorization.

A test made available under an emergency authorization has not undergone the same type of review as an FDA fully-approved test.

The FDA issues emergency authorizations like this when there are no adequate, approved or alternative tests. Tests must also satisfy criteria for effectiveness in the detection of the virus that causes COVID-19.
(Bloomberg) -- Telefonica SA and John Malones Liberty Global Plc have never been closer to finally creating the U.K.s biggest telecom operator after flirting with various combinations over the years.

Racing for a potential announcement as early as this week, talks hinge in part on striking equal control for the merger of O2 and Virgin Media, while structuring a deal thatll help the Spanish giant pay down its huge debt pile, according to people familiar with the matter, asking not to be identified because the talks are private.

In a statement Monday, Telefonica confirmed that talks are ongoing on a potential integration of their respective telecommunications businesses in the United Kingdom and there is no guarantee that an agreement can be reached.

Liberty Globals New York A-class shares surged 15% on Friday after Bloomberg revealed the talks, the biggest jump since 2009, and were up 6% in premarket trading Monday to $23.62. Telefonica shares rose 4.2% at 2:41 p.m. Madrid time Monday, while rival BT Group Plc rose 1.1%, rebounding from a drop earlier in the day.

Clinching a deal this month amid a collapse in global deal-making would be no small feat. A combination of O2 and Virgin Media could create a business with an estimated enterprise value of about $30 billion, according to analysts at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which could make it the largest deal struck since the coronavirus was declared a global pandemic.

Telefonica may seek a payment from Liberty Global of between 6.2 billion euros ($6.8 billion) and 8.5 billion euros, an amount which may keep its leverage ratio from climbing from pre-deal levels, Deutsche Bank analysts Keval Khiroya and Robert Grindle said in a note to clients. They see 6 billion pounds ($7.5 billion) of synergies, and value O2 at 11 billion pounds and Virgin Media at 16 billion pounds.

Telefonica, currently trading at close to a 25-year-low, is demanding the two companies have equal voting rights in the new venture, one of the people said. Executives and advisers must reconcile that with Telefonicas need to pay down 38 billion euros of debt, which means its unlikely to put cash into the deal, said analysts at New Street Research.

Story continues

Liberty is likely to make a significant cash payment to Telefonica as part of the transaction, two of the people said.

Although the talks are advanced, executives on both sides are being cautious following recent strategic upsets, the people said. Telefonicas plan to sell its U.K. business to CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd. was blocked by regulators in May 2016. It then started working on plans for an initial public offering of O2, but they were shelved by Brexit and the subsequent market turmoil. The company never said officially that it was scrapping the IPO plans.

Liberty Global declined to comment.

New Rivals

Liberty Global Chief Executive Officer Mike Fries said in September that buying a U.K. mobile operator would bring hundreds of millions of dollars in synergies. Extra cash would flow from combining infrastructure and back-office savings, and eliminating the need to pay for access to networks they dont own.

Previous joint ventures have cut costs such as Liberty Globals 2016 deal with Vodafone Group Plc in the Netherlands. As of February that partnership was yielding 85% of a planned 210 million euros in synergies, a year ahead of schedule.

The combined entities would take 34% of Britains telecom service revenues between them, eclipsing the current No. 1 operator BT Group Plc, according to research from Goldman Sachs published Friday. If successful, the new venture would be BTs only rival that owns both fixed-line and mobile services.

BTs leading position in the U.K. communications market would be threatened by a merger of rivals O2 and Virgin Media, we believe. A second, scaled fixed-mobile carrier would pressure BTs consumer-broadband and enterprise-mobile market share, and boost investment in alternative full-fiber infrastructure to rival Openreachs own expansion plans.

-- Matthew Bloxham, BI telecom analyst

Vodafone and Liberty Globals close relationship -- solidified by their Dutch joint venture -- has previously fueled speculation that the two groups could do a U.K. deal. Vodafone recently won BTs contract to wholesale mobile services to Libertys U.K. customers, a deal which would have to be re-examined if Virgin merged with O2.

Vodafone would be the big potential loser from a Virgin-O2 match-up, said New Street analyst James Ratzer in a note Friday, adding they would miss out on the synergies and also lose wholesale payments from Virgin.

Musical Chairs

Matchmaking the U.K.s fixed and mobile operators has been a favorite game of bankers and executives for years as Britain lagged neighbors in a global telecommunication trend of convergence, which has seen companies meld cable and radio networks together. A wave of investors are being drawn to the infrastructure-like returns of fiber optics. Startups are also building U.K. fiber and consolidating.

Executives at the leading U.K. telecom companies have regularly spoken about potential combinations, with advisers pitching Virgin Media as a partner to both Vodafone and Comcast Corp.s Sky unit, in addition to Telefonica, people familiar with the talks said.

Libertys investors have been waiting to learn what the company plans to do with what remains of $11 billion in proceeds from selling its Germany and eastern European operations. In November, Libertys Chief Financial Officer Charlie Bracken said the company is looking at the merits of listing local units to unlock more value, as the companys stock price has wilted.

While Telefonica has never publicly said it wanted to move into the U.K.s fixed market, it has always advocated for consolidation in its markets, and internally the company has been open to considering options for the U.K. O2 was born as a joint venture controlled by BT called Cellnet, before it was bought by Telefonica in 2006 for 18 billion pounds. BT looked at buying O2 in 2014 but opted instead to buy EE, the joint venture built by Deutsche Telekom AG and Orange SA.

For Telefonica, a U.K. merger would advance a sweeping strategy change announced in November. Its focusing on four core markets of Spain, Brazil, the U.K. and Germany and considering all options for the rest of its Latin American units. It also announced the creation of new tech and infrastructure units. Its looking for ways to accelerate growth in those core markets and the latter new divisions through partnerships and deals.

(Updates share prices in fourth paragraph, adds analyst comment in sixth paragraph, detail on O2 history in ninth paragraph.)

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

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The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Japan increased to 15,077 on Sunday as 200 new cases were announced nationwide.

The tally includes people tested at airport quarantine stations, health ministry officials, quarantine officers and individuals who returned to Japan from China on government-chartered planes. It also includes infections among the crew of the Costa Atlantica cruise ship docked in Nagasaki, western Japan.

The addition of 712 cases from the Diamond Princess cruise ship that was quarantined in Yokohama in February would bring the total to 15,789.

The death toll in Japan has risen to 549, including 13 from the Diamond Princess.

By prefecture, Tokyo has 4,568 infections, followed by Osaka with 1,666, Kanagawa with 1,097, Saitama with 898, Chiba with 852, Hokkaido with 848, Hyogo with 668, and Fukuoka with 647.

Health ministry officials say 332 people were in serious condition as of Friday, including four from the Diamond Princess. A total of 4,632 have recovered and had left hospital as of Friday.
A deadly and massive hornet known in Asia as the murder hornet has arrived in the United States and was threatening extensive harm to the country's already-declining honey bee population, according to new research.

The Asian giant hornet was capable of destroying entire beehives in a matter of hours during its slaughter phase  a process in which the hornet decapitates honeybees, takes over a hive and feeds its offspring with the thoraxes it collects from its victims. Its gained the nickname murder hornet in countries like Japan, where it was known to kill a reported 50 people a year.

But the hornet has never appeared in the US until December, researchers said. Washington States Department of Agriculture has since reported at least four verified sightings of the murder hornets, while Canadian officials in British Columbia also reported two sightings.

Entomologists warned the predatory insects could soon multiply across the country, decimating bee populations critical for food production and farm life in America.

This is our window to keep it from establishing, Chris Looney, entomologist Washington States Department of Agriculture, told the New York Times in a report published on Saturday. If we cant do it in the next couple of years, it probably cant be done.

The murder hornets cause their most harm after awakening from winter hibernation during the late summer and early fall, when they are on the hunt for sources of protein to raise next years queens, according to Seth Truscott, a researcher at Washington State Universitys College of Agricultural, Human and Natural Resource Sciences.

They attack honey bee hives, killing adult bees and devouring bee larvae and pupae, while aggressively defending the occupied colony," he told WSUs Insider. Their stings are big and painful, with a potent neurotoxin. Multiple stings can kill humans, even if they are not allergic."

 Holland covers hundreds of bus stops with plants as gift to honeybees

It remains unclear how the murder hornets arrived in the US and multiple parts of British Columbia. Researchers said the distance between the hornets found in Washington and those discovered in British Columbia was too far for them to have originated in the same hive.

However, insects have been known to transport themselves through international trade, occasionally slipping through a countrys inspection processes. Research has not yet confirmed how the hornets made their way to the US.

State officials have encouraged people who believe they spotted any signs of the predatory insects to contact their local department of agriculture.

Dont try to take them out yourself if you see them, Mr Looney told the New York Times. If you get into them, run away, then call us! It is really important for us to know of every sighting, if we're going to have any hope of eradication."
(Natural News) The owner of a company in Utah that sells colloidal silver supplements is under attack by the Department of Justice (DoJ) after a complaint was filed against it alleging fraud.

Gordon Pederson, who owns My Doctor Suggests LLC and GP Silver LLC, is being accused of making false claims about the alleged benefits of colloidal silver in treating the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) since the supplement has never been proven effective against it.

Though anecdotal reports suggest that colloidal silver may help against the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19), the federal government sees things differently and has issued a temporary restraining order against Pederson and his companies demanding that he stop defrauding United States consumers with his products.

Among the claims that the DoJ is taking issue with include the suggestion that colloidal silver will usher out any coronavirus that might be lingering in the bloodstream. Pederson also claimed that Alkaline Structured Silver will destroy the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) once it gets into the body, its silver nanoparticles preventing the virus from attaching to cells.

Because Pederson followed this up with the definitive claim that Alkaline Structured Silver can thus prevent the disease totally and completely, the DoJ is in agreement with the complaint that this is a false and unsubstantiated claim that cannot be made.

The Department of Justice will take swift action to protect consumers from those who would recklessly exploit this public health crisis by offering phony cure-alls for the treatment and prevention of COVID-19, stated Assistant Attorney General Jody Hunt of the DoJs Civil Division.

We work closely with our partners at the Food and Drug Administration and will move quickly to shut down schemes that promote and sell unlawful products during this pandemic.

DoJ actually froze all of Pedersons assets as part of its restraining order

In addition to ordering Pederson to stop selling his silver products, the federal court has also issued a freeze on all of Pedersons assets, including not just his businesses but also his bank accounts and even his website. This is said to be temporary, and a hearing on the governments request for a preliminary injunction has been set for May 12, 2020.

In the meantime, Pederson is basically jobless like millions of other Americans who have been ordered to lockdown at home in order to flatten the curve. This is Big Pharma fascism in action, in other words, and a full-scale assault on free speech and the First Amendment, which is nothing new when it comes to American citizens making health claims about things other than drugs and vaccines.

Earlier in the month, the FDA went after a slew of other companies that also sell colloidal silver products, demanding that they cease operations for selling fraudulent products.

At least a dozen companies were told by the FDA to stop selling their unapproved products because they violate the law. The FDA also threatened these companies with seizures and injunctions against their products and firms for refusing to comply.

Seldom do you hear any complaint from the actual buyers of [these products], wrote one Fox News commenter, speculating on the FDAs true agenda for stamping out natural alternatives to drugs and vaccines.

I wonder about these low-hanging fruit cases when China is trying to biowarfare coronavirus, kill Americans, and wreck the free world economies, and not a slap on the hand.

To keep up with the latest news about the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19), be sure to check out Pandemic.news.

Sources for this article include:

FoxNews.com

NaturalNews.com
This is an opinion column.

Alabama health officer Dr. Scott Harris pulled his mask down to his chin and stepped to the microphone on the day Gov. Kay Ivey announced her Safer at Home campaign last week. He launched into his brief state of the states health, rattling off the numbers of confirmed Alabama coronavirus cases and deaths.

It was 6,600 cases then. More than 240 deaths. It is higher now.

We see that our African American Alabamians are disproportionately represented in those deaths, he said. They represent close to half of those deaths. That is because, we believe, this disease has a predilection for people who have chronic health problems: diabetes and heart disease and seniors and so on We recognize that these are still vulnerable people that we still need to protect.

He moved on from there, but think about what he said, and what it says about us. Black people, who make up 27 percent of the population in Alabama, make up 38 percent of coronavirus cases and 44 percent of the deaths. Because 

This disease has a predilection for people who have chronic health problems.

As if its a law of nature. As if black people, by their very existence, are more likely than others to get sick and die.

It is not a law of nature. Black people, particularly in the South and in Alabama, are more likely to get sick and die because of current and historical affronts, because they have been discriminated against socially, economically, educationally, in banking and housing and access to healthy food and healthcare.

Theyve been redlined and white-flighted, blackballed and pink-slipped by generations. Black people are more likely to get sick and die because in places like Alabama leaders can hear of disproportionate deaths in one press conference and dismiss the need for expanded Medicaid in another, even as studies show it would generate billions for the state and help make the most vulnerable less so.

How can a state that claims officially to love life repeatedly turn away from those who struggle through it?

It did not take a pandemic to see disparity. Anyone with two eyes and a willingness to see has known the stats and consequences.

As Alabama State University political science instructor Robert White puts it, the vulnerable people in the community (during a pandemic) are those who are always vulnerable.

Dr. Robert White is a political science instructor at Alabama State University.

Theres a long history of mistrust between minorities and the healthcare industry and government, White said. The Tuskegee syphilis experiments  when government scientists offered black men free care but instead studied their untreated syphilis for decades  left a mark.

White is an advocate for personal responsibility and self-determination. He pushes for education, and for academics to be part of the solution to educate and inform, to give people the information they need in a world where thought is often driven by algorithm and corporate profit margins.

The post pandemic world has a chance to change, but White is not hopeful.

People want to get back to normal, but they dont want to make the significant changes for the betterment of all.

We know the problem. Black people in Alabama  and America, for that matter -- are more likely to die from coronavirus because they are already more likely to die early. They have higher rates of diabetes and heart disease, and infant mortality, and coronavirus. Because 

This disease has a predilection for people who have chronic health problems.

While Alabama accepts the cost to vulnerable people of all description, it dismisses the notion of expanding Medicaid as too costly.

It is a state of shame, expensive and immoral and contrary to the teachings of any credible religion or sense of decency.

We see people suffer, and again turn away.

John Archibald, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is a columnist for AL.com. His column appears in The Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Register, Birmingham Magazine and AL.com. Write him at jarchibald@al.com.
Prince Andrew has ignored three formal requests to be interviewed under oath about his friendship with serial paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. David Boies, a lawyer who represents more than a dozen of the US financier's victims, claimed Andrew has 'not been prepared to co-operate'.

'We've made at least three formal written attempts sent to his address in London and also to his lawyers in the past few months,' said Mr Boies, whose clients include Virginia Roberts, the woman who claims Epstein forced her to have sex with the Prince on three occasions.

6th Dec 2010. Video grab of Jeffrey Epstein's New York home. Prince Andrew waves goodbye to a brunette he let out the door

In 2011 Prince Andrew was pictured with sex offender Jeffrey Epsteins near his home in New York's Central Park

Andrew, who vehemently denies all claims of wrongdoing, has hired Clare Montgomery, one of the UK's leading extradition lawyers. Her former clients include the Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet. Asked about her appointment, Mr Boies said: 'It's not that I don't appreciate why he wants to lawyer up  I do appreciate that. But if he could step back and look down the road and focus on what's the endgame.

'If I avoid extradition, do I really want to have this hanging over my head and my family's head for the rest of my life? Do I want my epitaph to be I succeeded in escaping justice?'

US prosecutor Geoffrey Berman, who is heading the ongoing criminal probe into Epstein and his associates, has accused the Prince of not helping an FBI investigation, saying Andrew has provided 'zero co-operation'. The duke rejects the claim. However, Mr Boies said he was confident prosecutors would persist.

'I've got quite a bit of confidence that they will not let this drop,' he added. He also suggested the duke may be getting poor advice. 'Often people in his position are surrounded by advisers who sometimes think that they will be more valued if they come across as very aggressive on their principal's behalf and that can lead to somebody not getting very good advice,' he said.

The Duke of York , speaking for the first time about his links to Jeffrey Epstein in an interview with BBC Newsnight's Emily Maitlis, broadcast by the BBC November 15, 2019

Prince Andrew and Virginia Roberts, aged 17 at Ghislaine Maxwell's townhouse in London, Britain on March 13 2001

Photo provided by the New York State Sex Offender Registry, shows Jeffrey Epstein

'It can be hard to tell your principal that he's got to do something he doesn't want to do.' He believes footage of the Prince inside Epstein's properties, including the financier's 70million New York mansion, may exist. 'Whether it continues to exist, has been destroyed, or if it continues to exist and is being concealed is something we're going to have to try to find out,' he said. '

We are quite confident both in physical evidence and from interviews such surveillance tapes did at one point exist.' Mr Boies said he would be prepared to travel to the UK to interview Andrew. Epstein killed himself in jail last summer after being arrested on multiple child sex charges. A spokesman for Prince Andrew declined to comment.
(Natural News) Singapores health ministry reported 528 new cases of coronavirus, including one death on April 30. This puts the city-states total number of cases to 16,169, including 15 people who succumbed to COVID-19. Of the new cases, 511 were from foreign workers living in dormitories and seven are from migrant workers living outside of the dormitories.

VIDEO: Singapore managed to keep the coronavirus outbreak in check in the early stages, but is facing a fast-moving second wave of infections, with the vast majority of new infections in foreign worker dormitories pic.twitter.com/A1Ri3XgHv1  AFP news agency (@AFP) April 27, 2020

Dismal living conditions for Singapores migrant workforce make them more vulnerable

Singapores quick response to the coronavirus outbreak was initially lauded. However, the sudden uptick of new COVID-19 cases sheds light on the nations treatment of its foreign workforce. Singapore has around 323,000 migrant workers, mostly from South Asian countries like India and Bangladesh, with majority of them working in the construction, shipping, manufacturing, landscaping and cleaning industries.

Singapores health system also includes a large team of contact tracers who chase down the close contacts of each person who has been diagnosed with COVID-19. Data analysis shows that many of the countrys infection clusters have come from migrant worker dormitories, with the largest cluster being the S11 Dormitory in the countrys northeast region, which has 797 confirmed COVID-19 cases. (Related: Singapore employs heavy-handed approach to contain coronavirus spread and its working.)

"We are all living in fear" There's a rising wave of coronavirus infections among Singapores massive migrant population About 80% of cases in the city-state have been linked to dormitories where they livehttps://t.co/QVsxdI7upu pic.twitter.com/3zUOXRsEOS  BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) April 23, 2020

The S11 complex and other dormitories like it have awful living conditions. Many of the migrant workers are housed in rooms that accommodate up to 20 or even 30 people. These rooms have no proper ventilation systems, are filled with bed bugs and cockroaches and some dormitories even only have one toilet for every 80 people. These cramped and unsanitary conditions are where diseases like COVID-19 can thrive.

Furthermore, migrant workers in Singapore are struggling due to a lack of proper medical care. This, experts have suggested, may be contributing to the explosion of infections among foreign workers. On April 1, these dormitories only accounted for 19 of the countrys coronavirus cases. By April 5, they accounted for 11,419.

At the beginning of the second wave of the coronavirus outbreak in the country in early April, the government promptly quarantined tens of thousands of migrant workers, telling them to stay in their dorms in order to curb local transmission. This, many experts have commented, may have also helped the spread of the virus. Since then, thousands of migrant workers have been relocated in order to lower the population density of the migrant worker dormitories.

They stay in overcrowded dormitories and are packed like sardines, said Tommy Koh, rector of the National University of Singapores (NUS) Tembusu College, in a widely shared post on social media. The dormitories were like a time bomb waiting to explode.

Death rate is still low, health system is still strong

Despite the fact that Singapore is experiencing a large uptick of new COVID-19 cases, its death rate remains low  one of the lowest in the whole world, in fact. Singapore only has around 0.09 deaths per 1,000 coronavirus infections. For comparison, its neighbors Malaysia and Indonesia have 17 and 84 deaths per 1,000 cases, respectively, and both the U.S. and China have around 56 deaths per 1,000 infections.

Singaporean health experts have attributed the low death rate at least partially to the high number of younger, healthier people being infected with COVID-19 and with the countrys elderly population, many of whom may be more vulnerable to the disease, largely listening to government appeals for them to stay at home.

These younger people, the authorities have stressed, mostly have mild symptoms or are asymptomatic coronavirus carriers. Many of these mild to asymptomatic cases, including those from the migrant worker dormitories, are being treated at specially set-up community isolation facilities. This effective triage system has taken a lot of strain off the countrys hospitals, which has allowed them to devote more of their resources to focus on severe COVID-19 cases.

2 halls in Singapore Expo were converted into a temporary COVID-19 isolation facility for 950 patients in just 3 days. Community facilities allow our hospitals to focus on the more serious cases, and many people worked very hard to make this happen.  LHL https://t.co/iDf9fYtjC3  leehsienloong (@leehsienloong) April 26, 2020

Furthermore, industry players in Singapore have noted that the country is capable of rolling out mass testing initiatives  it can conduct tens of thousands of COVID-19 tests daily. This can allow the country to effectively control the coronavirus pandemic until the crisis dies down.

Jeremy Lim, associate professor and co-director of NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health stated that Singapore has a strong and capable healthcare system, as witnessed by the fact that its intensive care facilities arent being overwhelmed with critical COVID-19 patients.

Our clinical teams do what they always do  provide holistic care to patients, he added, addressing not just the disease-related factors but also being proactive in optimizing other aspects of health like nutrition and [physical activity].

For the latest updates on the COVID-19 pandemic in Singapore and neighboring Asian countries, visit Pandemic.news.

Sources include:

Reuters.com

TheConversation.com

SCMP.com

NYTimes.com

CO.VID19.sg

CNet.com

StraitsTimes.com
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Linkedin Christophe Vogt (Agence France-Presse) Washington, United States  Sun, May 3, 2020 13:36 625 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd59ab4f 2 Business Warren-Buffet,united-states,economy,coronavirus,COVID-19,pandemic,investment,billionaire Free

Billionaire investor Warren Buffet said Saturday he's confident the US economy will bounce back from its pummeling by the coronavirus pandemic because "American magic has always prevailed".

The 89-year-old made the sanguine prediction about the world's largest economy as his holding company Berkshire Hathaway reported first-quarter net losses of nearly $50 billion.

Buffett also announced Saturday that his company had sold all its stakes in four major US airlines last month, as the pandemic clobbered the travel industry.

"It turns out I was wrong," he said of his acquisitions of 10 percent stakes in American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines.

Berkshire Hathaway had paid $7 billion to $8 billion, and "we did not take out anything like that," he said.

Between the purchases that took place over months, and the sale, "the airlines business I think changed in a very major way" and could no longer meet Berkshire criteria for profitability, he said.

Buffett's announcement may further hurt airlines already pushed to the brink by coronavirus lockdown measures, now looking to the US government for $25 billion in relief funds.

Read also: Coronavirus savages US economy in first quarter, bigger hit still to come

'American miracles, American magic'

Berkshire Hathaway, based in Omaha, Nebraska, called its first-quarter setback "temporary" but said it could not reliably predict when its many businesses would return to normal or when consumers would resume their former buying habits.

"We've faced great problems in the past, haven't faced this exact problem -- in fact we haven't really faced anything that quite resembles this problem," Buffett said in a lengthy speech on the country's economic history.

"But we faced tougher problems, and the American miracles, American magic has always prevailed and it will do so again."

"We are now a better country, as well as an incredibly more wealthy country, than we were in 1789... We got a long ways to go but we moved in the right direction," he said, referencing the abolition of slavery and women's suffrage.

"Never bet against America."

Buffett is considered one of the savviest investors anywhere. His fortune of $72 billion is the fourth-largest in the world, according to Forbes, and in normal years, the company's annual gathering in Omaha is a high-point of the calendar for investors, a "Woodstock for capitalists."

But the devastating economic impact of the pandemic has hit hard at Berkshire Hathaway's wide range of investments, and the need for social distancing forced it to hold the annual meeting online.

Buffett addressed his shareholders in a livestream flanked only by Gregory Abel, who is in charge of Berkshire's non-insurance operations.

His business partner for six decades, 96-year-old Charlie Munger, did not appear.

Read also: Warren Buffett donates $3.6 billion to Gates' and family charities

Growth by one measure

Buffett, in a statement, played down his company's bleak-looking net figure. He said a better measure of the company's performance was its operating earnings, which exclude investments and are less subject to sharp fluctuations.

By that measure, Berkshire Hathaway saw growth to $5.9 billion from $5.55 billion a year earlier.

The brutal drop in the net -- to a loss of $49.75 billion from a profit last year of $21.7 billion -- resulted primarily from the virus-related decline in value of its broad investment portfolio, which ranges from energy to transport to insurance and technology.

The annual meeting often has an almost carnival atmosphere, as thousands of fans and investors flock to Nebraska to hear from the celebrated "Oracle of Omaha." Buffett, famous for his relatively modest lifestyle, turns 90 on August 30.

In documents filed Saturday, Berkshire noted that until mid-March many of its companies were posting "comparative revenue and earnings increases" over the same 2019 period.

Many of its companies -- including in rail transport, energy production and some manufacturing and service businesses -- are deemed essential and are able to continue working amid the far-reaching confinement orders.

But their turnover slowed considerably in April, the company statement said.

Moves taken by those companies such as employee furloughs, salary cuts and reductions, and capital spending reductions are "necessary actions" and "temporary," it said.
The Haryana government is considering to impose a variable "COVID cess" on liquor to support the areas or institutions adversely hit by the pandemic, Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala said on Sunday.

Haryana has been suffering monthly revenue losses of Rs 6,000 crore due to the coronoavirus-triggered lockdown.

"The government is considering new COVID cess so that those areas or those institutions which have been adversely hit by the pandemic and need support can be helped," Chautala told a conference here on Sunday.

Asked how much cess the government is contemplating to impose, he said, "Discussions are on. Every product is different, fixed cess is not possible, so it will depend on product and quantity. The cess will be variable".

The deputy chief minister indicated that the cess could be anywhere between Rs 2-20.

Chautala, who also holds the portfolios of Excise, Industry and Commerce Departments, said no decision has yet been taken on when to open the liquor vends.

He, however, said suggestions including from media have been sought so that steps are taken accordingly.

It will have to be ensured that there is no crowding and proper social distancing is maintained at the vends, as and when these are opened, he said.

The state government has also sought report from deputy commissioners on whether vends should be opened or not as COVID-19 situation varies from district to district, he said.

To a question, Chautala said stock of warehouses involved in liquor distribution was checked on three different occasions in the past over a month and irregularities were found in 53 of these and FIRs were registered and fines imposed.

On giving relaxations to industry in accordance with the Centre's guidelines, he said from April 20 onwards they have been easing out restrictions, barring those units which are in containment zones, so that economic activity can be resumed.

"From May 4-10 and from May 11-18, we will give more relaxation to industry, but with more strictness than even what MHA guidelines say so that our industry is revived on one hand, while on the other we are able to check coronavirus infections too on the other," he said.

In the IT sector, workforce with 33 per cent in red zone, 53 pc in orange and 100 pc in green zone will be permitted while in second phase (May 11-18) it will be 50 pc, 75 pc and 100 pc, respectively.

In rural area, for the red zone, industry will be given permission to open with 33 per cent workforce and with 50 per cent for in-situ where units can retain workforce at places of work. Likewise, industry will be given permission to open with 75 per cent and 100 per cent in orange and green zones, respectively.

For e-commerce, for the period between May 11-18, only essential goods will be allowed in red zone, Chautala said.

Shops in rural areas have been opened, he said, while adding in the urban areas, in non-containment zones, especially those in orange and green zones, deputy commissioners have been authorized to decide whether to open shops by odd-even system (on the basis of shop numbers).

With MSME sector being adversely hit, Chautala said the Haryana government will be extending a financial support of nearly Rs 250 crore to them.

On current crop procurement, he said 41.23 lakh metric tonne (LMT) wheat and 3.62 LMT mustard has been procured.

From June 1-30, sunflower will also be procured at the rate of Rs 5,650 per metric tonne, he said.

He said despite the challenges of labour shortage and other difficulties in view of the lockdown, procurement was going on smoothly.

"I am hopeful that we will touch 75 lakh MT target of wheat procurement in next 10 days," he said.

On Congress' criticizing the state government for hiking VAT rate on diesel and petrol and increasing bus fares, he said while people are not complaining as they fully know the present crisis situation, the Opposition is doing politics over the issue.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Egyptian police forces killed 18 militants in a raid on the restive northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, the Interior Ministry said Sunday.

The ministry said security forces exchanged fire with Islamic militants as they stormed a hideout in the small Sinai town of Bir al-Abed.

No casualties were reported among the police. The ministry, which did not say when the raid took place, said police found weapons, three explosive devices and two explosives belts.

The details could not be independently corroborated as Egyptian authorities heavily restrict access to that part of Sinai.

On Thursday, an explosion hit a military armored convoy causing at least 10 casualties among Egyptian soldiers who were participating in a campaign against an Islamic insurgency in the volatile region.

The military spokesman, Tamer el-Refai, did not specify the number of soldiers killed by the improvised explosive device. But other officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said 10 soldiers died, including an officer, and three others suffered shrapnel wounds.

An affiliate of the Islamic State group based in northern Sinai claimed responsibility for Thursday's attack, which took place during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, after sundown when the faithful break their daily fast.

El-Refai said Friday that the military killed two militants who were hiding in a farm in northern Sinai.

Egypt has been battling militants in the northern part of Sinai Peninsula for years, but the insurgency became far more deadly after the 2013 military ouster of Mohammed Morsi, an elected but divisive Islamist president amid nationwide protests against his brief rule.

An Islamic State affiliate based in the Sinai has carried out high-profile attacks in recent years, mainly targeting security forces and Egypt's Christian minority.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
BAMBERG  As the nation battles the coronavirus, the need for telehealth becomes more apparent.

In South Carolina, Palmetto Care Connections, a non-profit telehealth network, has been promoting telehealth to rural and underserved areas for more than a decade. Since 2010, PCC has helped rural health care providers implement telehealth solutions to see and treat patients virtually.

We focus on three areas of work  telehealth programs, broadband and technology for rural health care providers throughout the state, PCC Chief Executive Officer Kathy Schwarting said. PCC leads the South Carolina Health Care Broadband Consortium, filing for federal subsidies that result in up to 65% savings on broadband, internet costs and equipment for rural providers.

In 2019, PCC led for $5,392,741 in broadband savings for S.C. health care providers, through the Health Care Connect Fund, Schwarting said.

One of the health care providers that PCC has assisted is Bamberg Family Practice, a rural health clinic owned by Danette McAlhaney, MD. McAlhaney was one of the first private practitioners to adopt telehealth in rural S.C.

McAlhaney provides telehealth services to schools in her community, and she uses telehealth to connect patients in her office to specialists. In March, PCC helped McAlhaney implement a telehealth platform so she can provide care from her office to patients in their homes.

Telehealth has so many possibilities, McAlhaney said. Especially in our current COVID-19 environment, telehealth is helping us keep patients safe. It allows us to diagnose and treat many illnesses and ailments while the patient is still at home, so they dont have to come to our office waiting room and be exposed to other sick people.

When our patients call for an office appointment, our staff determines whether a telehealth visit would be appropriate. We completed 88 telehealth visits in the first two weeks of implementing the telehealth platform and that number is increasing, McAlhaney said.

Forty-year-old X-ray technician Rebecca Hutto of Bamberg used telehealth for a follow-up visit to prescribe medications.

The telehealth application was quick and easy to set up on my computer. I liked that I didnt have to go to the office, and I didnt have to get dressed, Hutto said. In my job as an X-ray tech, I am potentially exposed to the coronavirus constantly, and even though I dont have any symptoms, I didnt want to put anyone at Bamberg Family Practice in jeopardy. I loved the telehealth visit and I hope they will continue after this crisis is over.

CareSouth Carolina, a system of community health centers in the Pee Dee area, has also been using a telehealth platform that PCC helped implement.

We have had patients who have COVID-19 symptoms and do not want to come into one of our offices. They call for a telehealth appointment, are screened, assessed and we determine whether they needed to be tested for COVID-19, said Jeri Andrews, CareSouth Carolina mobile health and office site services program director. If the patient needs to be tested, we make an appointment at the closest office to the patient. We have a front-door screener, and staff are prepared with the appropriate PPE to conduct the test. The test results are back within three days.

"If the patient does not require hospitalization, we do follow up telehealth visits to treat the patient at home, including behavioral health visits for depression or anxiety for those who are quarantined. One patient actually tested positive for COVID-19 after going through this process and is currently being treated at home, Andrews said.

While telehealths attributes are numerous, there remain challenges with access to broadband and internet connection, particularly in S.C.s rural areas.

We are having firsthand experiences as we provide services via telehealth and telecommunication to our patients in this COVID-19 crisis, CareSouth Chief Executive Officer Ann Lewis said. We have run into significant problems with lack of internet access. It only takes a glance at our service area counties, Chesterfield, Marlboro, Dillon, Darlington and Lee, to see that we are facing serious problems with broadband availability and internet connection.

In 2019, Palmetto Care Connections, South Carolina Office of Rural Health and the South Carolina Hospital Association partnered to commission a comprehensive evaluation of residential broadband capabilities throughout the state. The goal was to determine the gaps in internet access as a first step to making improvements that could impact health care, especially telehealth. As a result, detailed maps were produced depicting the availability and speed of broadband access in each county.

Using Geographic Information System mapping and overlaying FCC Form 477 data, Speedtest Intelligence data and U.S. Census data, two maps were produced for each of our 46 counties, Schwarting said. One map shows the areas of need by indicating the download and upload speeds as well as the density of unserved households per square mile. The second map shows the type and speed of the best technology available in each area.

The maps are posted on the Palmetto Care Connections website, palmettocareconnections.org, and are available to the public.

PCC recently shared the maps with S.C. legislators to draw attention to the necessity for improved broadband, Schwarting said. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, broadband and high-speed internet access are critical to the lives of all South Carolinians  impacting not only health care, but education, public safety, government operations, agriculture, the economy and more. It is our hope that the maps will help lawmakers, internet service providers and others prioritize the broadband needs of our state to help the most citizens, particularly in the rural areas.

The coronavirus has shown us that telehealth is not just the wave of the future -- the time for telehealth is now, she said. We need better broadband and faster internet speeds for more people so that we can make telehealth options available to all.
Indias financial capital, Mumbai, witnessed a spectacular fly-past carried out by Indian Air Force jets in the honour of thousands of Covid-19 warriors. The display was part of a nationwide exercise to express gratitude toward lakhs of corona warriors in the frontline of fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

A shower of flowers on various hospitals in the city, including the JJ hospital, was carried out by the IAF in respect of medical professionals, doctors, paramedical staff, nurses, policemen, among other corona warriors.

Indian Navys Chetak helicopter, followed by Coast Guard, was seen showering flowers on doctors and medical staff of Asvini hospital, Colaba.

In pics: IAFs spectacular thank you show for corona warriors

Fighter plane Sukhoi flew over Mumbais skyline to pay gratitude to the corona fighters of the city.

Fighter plane Sukhoi over the Mumbai skyline. (HT Photo/Vijayanand Gupta)

Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat on Friday announced that the three armed forces services will carry out a series of activities to thank the corona warriors on Sunday.

The IAF-led fly-pasts were also carried out in Delhi, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Srinagar, Chandigarh, among other cities across the country.

Indian Navy Chetak helicopter followed by Coast Guard showers flowers on doctors and medical staff of Asvini hospital, Colaba. (HT Photo/Satyabrata Tripathy)

The Eastern Naval Command and the Western Naval Command will be illuminating several ships at anchorage from 7.30 pm to midnight today.

Fighter aircraft formations, comprising Sukhoi-30 MKI, MiG-29 and Jaguar, also flew over Delhis Rajpath and orbited over the national capital for around 30 minutes from 10 am on Sunday.

This is the third massive display of gratitude to Covid-19 warriors after Prime Minister Narendra Modi previously asked people to clap for them from their balconies and light candles in their honour.
Bria of Geneva Medical Director Phil Branshaw said the number of residents who had contracted the virus skyrocketed within days of the first resident testing positive. He attributed the current high numbers in part to widespread testing at the nursing home, which he said took place soon after learning the first resident had tested positive.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates recently called the United States governments coronavirus testing data bogus because of testing inequality and slow turnaround, with three to four days to get results.

Earlier in the week, President Trump, during a news conference, came under fire from a reporter who claimed that South Korea had tested more people per capita than the U.S. The Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx, who was present, defended the president, saying: I just want to make it clear that South Koreas testing was 11 per hundred thousand [residents], and were at 17 per hundred thousand. This matches the latest statistics at Worldometers, which maintains a constantly-updated database of coronavirus statistics globally, by country, down to the state level.

Seems there's not enough bad to say about testing, and Gates was out front in that effort.

The tech tycoon had previously taken a swipe at the president for publicly castigating China for its cover-up of the coronavirus. During a Sunday interview on CNN, Gates not only argued that it is not time to be questioning the Chinese Communist Partys (CPC) efforts in handling the COVID-19 outbreak, but went so far as to dispel any wrongdoing by the communist regime:

China did a lot of things right at the beginning, like any country where a virus first shows up. They can look back and say where they missed some things. You know, some countries did respond very quickly and get their testing in place, and they avoided the incredible economic pain. Its sad that even the U.S. that you would have expected to do this well, did it particularly poorly. But its not time to talk about that.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly blamed the CCP for its mishandling of the outbreak, criticizing the country for restricting domestic travel to slow the virus but not international travel to keep it from spreading abroad. On Thursday, Trump went so far as to indicate that China may have intentionally released the coronavirus. Based on evidence he claims to have seen, the president is now speculating that the origin of the infectious disease came from a lab in Wuhan, the epicenter of the Chinese outbreak.

He said the U.S. now is finding how it came out. Its a terrible thing that happened. Whether they made a mistake or whether it started off as a mistake and then they made another one, or did somebody do something on purpose.

Besides hanging the testing deficit around Trump, Gates had also found Trumps move to slash funding for the World Health Organization (WHO) a biased mistake:

In the retrospective, well see things that WHO could have done better, just like every actor in this whole picture. But the WHO has a strong connection with one country. That country is the United States. The number of CDC people who are there, people who used to work for the CDC, theres no U.N. agency more connected to a country than WHO is to CDC.

WHO, an agency of the United Nations, has been criticized for its chummy relationship with the CCP, including its role in manipulating a Chinese study that claimed the coronavirus could not spread between humans.

One may ask, why would Bill Gates defend China? The answer is apparently quite clear. Gates is one of many executives whose businesses have been ensnared by the Trump administrations battle with China over technology and trade. In his case, it may specifically be his TerraPower LLC, a nuclear-energy project in China that Gates co-founded.

As reported last year by The Wall Street Journal, TerraPower signed a deal in 2015 with state-owned China National Nuclear Corp. to develop the technology, and, in 2017, agreed to build a demonstration reactor to test the technology in Cangzhou, about 130 miles south of Beijing. The project was to be the first demonstration of TerraPowers technology.

Gatess plan was thwarted last November by U.S. foreign investment restrictions after Trump began taking direct aim at China.

In 2019, under a long-term deal sealed by the Obama administration, a Chinese communist company was set to control Americas second-largest container port behind the nearby Port of Los Angeles. In an unreported Trump administration victory, the Chinese had to withdraw after a drawn-out national security review forced a unit of China-based COSCO Shipping Holdings Co. (Orient Overseas Container Line  OOCL) to sell the container terminal business, which handles among the largest freight of imports into the U.S.

Incidentally, Trump was the first U.S. president to place economic sanctions on Chinese companies for their human rights violations  a fact completely ignored by the mainstream media, to say nothing of Bill Gates. This would give credence to Trumps belief that that Beijing will do anything they can to have him lose his re-election bid in November.

In 2017 Gates was elected as a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), one of the country's top academic institutions. The CAE is Chinas elite society of technology professionals who have proven their service to the CCP. But like many other super-wealthy westerners, such as George Soros and Ted Turner, Gates has shown nothing but sympathy to authoritarian and totalitarian regimes.

When White House trade adviser Peter Navarro was asked about Gates stunning praise of China, he did not mince any words: Bill Gates, Im all for innovation, but we have to hold China accountable and now China is even flooding us with these bad tests. So, Mr. Gates and I will differ on the need to hold China accountable. Thats certainly the case. Because the Chinese communist party basically inflicted this virus on the world. And we should never forget that here in America.

But Gates saw things differently. In early April, Bill Gates had complimented the Chinese for their extreme intervention in terms of reducing [the coronavirus] movement  they were able to crush that epidemic. Those hospitals are gone. Look at the commerce. Stores are open now in China and nowhere else, whereas before, it was the opposite. This could not be any further from the truth.

Yes, the stores have reopened but only under coercion. Despite the CCPs determination to recast the country as a global leader that has conquered the COVD-19 pandemic, such a claim is fictitious or manipulated at best. General Secretary Xi Jinping, in fact, forged a new mythology of the coronavirus in which he claims that he was secretly managing the response behind the scenes the whole time and was let down by local officials who did not follow his perfect plans to the letter. Chinas Central Propaganda Department actually put this story of how the centralized and unified leadership of the Communist Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core defeated the coronavirus into book form and published the book in six different languages.

According to Radio Free Asia (RFA), Xi and his legion of censors are working hard to stamp out anything that contradicts his revised political mythology of the epidemic. RFA pointed out that a major article about an early coronavirus whistleblower named Dr. Ai Fen has been erased. His account is very similar to that of the late Dr. Li Wenliang, who was one of the colleagues she shared her suspicions about a burgeoning epidemic with.

Unless Bill Gates is extremely naivehe is just the opposite  to believe that communist China should be complimented for its so-called good handling of the coronavirus outbreak and that it is a model to emulate is as pretentious as believing in the tooth fairy. One thing is to gripe about Trumps policy towards China  Gates apparent reason is his own financial interests  yet another thing is to absolve the Chinese government officials coronavirus cover-up by praising them, which is borderline treason.

Image credit: Steve Jurvetson, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0
A man charged with the murder of Ian Ogle has been bailed to an address close to the slain dad-of-two's family.

In an unusual move, Glenn Rainey is back living in east Belfast near relatives of the man he is accused of helping to stab and beat to death in January 2019.

The property is not far from the Ogle family home on Cluan Place, outside of which Ian was butchered by a UVF gang while he prayed with a local pastor.

Security sources said it was "problematic" having Rainey back living in the community close to his alleged victim's family.

One explained: "It is problematic for police as there remains a lot of anger in east Belfast over the UVF murder of Ian Ogle. There have been disgraceful threats made against his family and this only heightens tension."

As part of his bail conditions, Rainey - who in the hours after the killing jetted out from Dublin to Thailand and stayed there for more than a month - has to wear an electronic tag.

The 33-year-old is required to observe a 9pm to 7am curfew and sign regularly at a local police station. He is further ordered not to have any contact with Ian Ogle's partner Vera, or his children Toni and Ryan Johnston.

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Rainey must also not associate with loyalists Mark Sewell (41) and Jonny Brown (33), who are also charged with murder.

To secure bail, his mother Isobel Rainey and uncle Brian Geary lodged the deeds of a property they own with the courts.

When Glenn Rainey was last in court, his lawyers claimed that he is at "imminent risk of physical attack". This, they argued, along with the isolated nature of his old bail address, required him to move to the property in east Belfast which is near the Ogle family.

The horrific killing of the 45-year-old sparked fury in east Belfast and led to several anti-UVF protests in an area which the terror gang considers its power base.

It came against a backdrop of 18 months' of intimidation of the Ogle family which started after Ian and son Ryan refused to attend a pre-arranged UVF punishment beating.
Eight people, including six migrant workers on their way back to Odisha, were injured in two separate bus accidents in Maharashtra and Odisha on Sunday.

Five people, including two minors and two bus staff, were injured when the bus ferrying them from Surat in Gujarat fell in a roadside ditch on the Nagpur-Amravati National Highway in Maharashtra on Sunday morning. The bus, with 50 Odia migrant workers, had left Surat on Friday.

The injured, admitted to the Karanja hospital in Maharashtra for treatment, will be brought to Odisha later in another bus along with the other passengers.

In the second incident, another bus carrying 50 migrant workers from Surat to Ganjam, hit a roadside kerb at Kalinga Ghati hilly road, leaving three people injured. This is the second accident on this road.

On Saturday evening, two migrant workers returning from Surat to their homes in Ganjam district were killed and a few others were injured when the bus carrying them swerved off at the same Kalinga Ghati road in Kandhamal district and dashed against roadside kerb. The two deceased were thrown off the vehicle.

In a separate incident, another migrant worker died in a bus on Saturday while he was on his way back home in Odishas Ganjam district. The man had been unwell for some time. When the bus carrying him and others from Surat entered Raipur in Chhatisgarh, he was found unconscious. He was rushed to hospital where doctors declared him dead.

Odishas transport minister Padmanabha Behera said the mishaps seem to be occurring due to reckless driving and lack of enough knowledge about driving in hilly roads. Behera said the drivers would be asked not to drive the buses beyond 40 kmph on those roads.

Meanwhile, the number of positive cases in the state climbed to 160 as Ganjam district reported its first cases with two migrant workers from Surat testing positive for Covid-19. A 17-year-old male and 22-year-old male who had returned from Surat a day earlier were found positive, but without any symptoms.

The state government has prepared close to 3 lakh quarantine beds for the migrant workers returning from other States.
1. Bollywod Vigilante Movie - A Wednesday (2008)

2. Bollywod Vigilante Movie - Ungli (2014)

3. Bollywod Vigilante Movie - Gabbar Is Back (2015)

4. Bollywod Vigilante Movie - Baaghi (2016)

5. Bollywod Vigilante Movie - Kaabil (2017)

6. Bollywod Vigilante Movie - Satyameva Jayate (2018)

7. Bollywod Vigilante Movie - Bhavesh Joshi: Superhero (2018)

Our movies always have shown people taking law in their own hands to procure a rough justice of sorts. It's kind of a norm when it comes to cop films that honest, upright cops will take off the uniform and turn into vigilantes as they cant fight the system from within anymore. The genre was much in use during the 70s and 80s. And has kind of made a resurgence in the last decade or so. We bring you ain focus. This will surely add variety to your movie watching choices this quarantine. Happy viewings!Director: Neeraj PandeyCast: Naseeruddin Shah, Anupam Kher, Jimmy ShergillNaseeruddin Shah plays a common man who turns into a vigilante in this taut thriller by Neeraj Pandey. Unnamed man powers of the police commissioner Prakash Rathod (Anupam Kher) that he has placed five bombs in different locations throughout Mumbai. He demands the release of four terrorists within four hours otherwise the bombs will blast simultaneously. He also calls in the media and creates a huge media frenzy around the event. Police officers Arif (Jimmy Shergill) and Jay (Amir Bashir) are in charge of the case. The police commissioner tries to track the man who made the call with the help of a hacker but is unable to do so. However, the man wasn't a terrorist but a vigilante who wanted the terrorists to be killed. He disappears after finishing his mission. The entire ensemble cast was appreciated for their efforts. It inspired Unnaipol Oruvan and Eenadu (both 2009), made in Tamil and Telugu respectively.Director: Rensil D'SilvaCast: Emraan Hashmi, Sanjay Dutt, Randeep Hooda, Kangana Ranaut, Neha Dhupia, Angad Bedi, Neil BhoopalamFour friends Kalim (Angad Bedi) Gautam (Neil Bhoopalam), Maya (Kangana Ranaut) and Abhay (Randeep Hooda) form a vigilante team called Ungli gang to try to bring societys problems to people's notice in a funny and mysterious way. They want to bring about a change and also have fun doing so. ACP Ashok Kaale (Sanjay Dutt), utilizes the help of maverick colleague Nikhil Abhyankar (Emraan Hashmi) to bring down this vigilante gang. Nikhil gets into the good books of the four and soon becomes a trusted member of thegang. His first priority is to get them arrested but when he comes to know their reason for forming this gang hes moved by their plight and starts admiring their work. He goes against his superiors and helps them escape the police. Later, Kaale, with Nikhils and the Ungli gangs help, manages to capture the corrupt police officers and politicians and brings a sort of peace to the city.Director: KrishCast: Akshay Kumar, Shruti Haasan, Suman Talwar, Sunil Grover, Jaideep AhlawatThe film is based on the 2003 Tamil hit Ramanaa directed by AR Murugadoss. Top government officials are kidnapped but all of them are mysteriously released afterwards -- except the most corrupt amongst them, who is killed. Soon this sort of vigilantism becomes a pattern. These kidnappings are revealed to be masterminded by a former college professor Aditya Singh Rajput (Akshay Kumar). He has been a favourite of his students and uses the connections of his former students to find out who is the most corrupt government official in different government departments and then sets about giving them a taste of vigilante justice. In a backstory, we learn that Adityas pregnant wife Sunaina (Kareena Kapoor Khan) died when the buildings in their colony collapsed due to bad construction. Aditya had collected evidence of the faulty construction but the builder-politician nexus stonewalled his findings. That's when he decided to dedicate his life to bring rough justice to society and get rid of its bad elements. The film was produced by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, who wanted to branch out in a different direction away from his grand musicals.Director: Sabbir KhanCast: Tiger Shroff, Shraddha Kapoor, Sunil Grover, Sudheer BabuThe film is based on the Telugu film Varsham (2004). Tiger Shroff plays Ronnie who knows a bit of martial arts and is sent by his father to Guruswamy (Shaurya Bhardwaj) to mend his rebellious ways and to hone his fighting skills. Ronnie is unimpressed as first by Guruwamy but later takes interest and becomes more disciplined. Guruswamys son Raghav (Sudheer Babu) is also a talented fighter but wants to misuse his power. He kills his father and goes to Bangkok and sets up a syndicate promoting illegal fights and becomes a big shot criminal there. He's after Sia (Shraddha Kapoor) who is Ronnies ex-girlfriend. When Ronnie hears of her abduction he goes and rescues Sia and then in a very Raid: Redemption kind of fight sequence destroys Raghavs entire army of thugs before defeating Raghav himself. In the end, we see him teaching children Karate at Guruswamis centre. Two more films,(2018) and(2020) were made in the same mould after this. Tiger Shroff plays a rebel vigilante in both sequels. All films were blockbusters.Director: Sanjay GuptaCas: Hrithik Roshan, Yami Gautam, Ronit Roy, Rohit RoyHrithik Roshan plays a blind voice-over artist who isn't able to get justice after his wife is raped and killed. He trains himself and becomes a dreaded killer. The police can never fathom that a blind man is behind the killings and hence he is able to perform his vigilante work without any hindrance. He uses his voice modulating skills to lure his victims at secluded spots and kills them one by one. He concocts a story of them turning against each other for the benefit of the cops and gets away scot-free. His blindness becomes his shield and the police are powerless to do anything despite having doubts.was compared to the 1989 ring Rutger Hauer film Blind Fury and Hrithiks character, in particular, was praised for his performance.Director: Milap Milan ZaveriCast John Abraham, Manoj Bajpayee, Aisha Sharma, Amruta KhanvilkarShivansh (Manoj Bajpayee) and Virendra (John Abraham) are both sons of an honest cop. While Shivansh has followed his father's footsteps, Vir hasn't and lives a life on his own terms. Unknown to Shivansh, Vir is actually a vigilante who is killing corrupt cops one by one by setting fire to them. Shivansh is made in charge of the task force set to capture the killer. But Vir is always a step ahead of his brother. In a back story, it is revealed that their father was framed for corruption and ashamed of it he committed suicide. Vir wants to weed out corruption from the police department and hence has been targeting police officers who are openly known to be corrupt. He finally catches up with police commissioner Shukla (Manish Choudhary) and makes him confess about his hand in their fathers downfall. The film ends with a dying Vir managing to complete his target by setting Shukla on fire.Director: Vikramaditya MotwaneCast: Harshvardhan Kapoor, Nishikant Kamat, Priyanshu Painyuli, Ashish VermaThe film is a comic book style vigilante film about a group of three friends Bhavesh (Priyanshu Painyuli), Siku (Harshvardhan Kapoor) and Rajat (Ashish Verma), who set up a website exposing the corruption within the society. Soon, however, Siku and Ashish begin to see their activities as being childish. Their interest in the channel fades. Only Bhavesh is still obsessed with getting justice for the oppressed. He discovers there is a huge tanker mafia operating in the city and wants to expose them. He is killed for his activities and Siku plans to avenge him by carrying forward his work. He takes on the mantle of Bhavesh Joshi and starts targeting the people on Bhaveshs list. He uncovers the deep-rooted conspiracy which his late friend was hinting at. He is able to bring it to the public eye and the humongous support for Bhavesh Joshi forces the government to start an enquiry.
Medical schools around the country are fast-tracking soon-to-be graduates so they can join the fight against the coronavirus.

Why it matters: The move comes amid increasing demand for health care workers as coronavirus hospitalizations peak in various states, and they themselves fall ill. An estimated 1020% of all U.S. coronavirus cases are health care workers.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised health care facilities to reach out to medical students to relieve staffing shortages that are occurring because of COVID-19.

What's happening:

At least five New York schools  Columbia, Weill Cornell Medicine Medical College, New York University's Grossman School of Medicine, the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai  will allow students to graduate early to work in short-term, nonresident roles.

 Columbia, Weill Cornell Medicine Medical College, New York University's Grossman School of Medicine, the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai  will allow students to graduate early to work in short-term, nonresident roles. Nearly 700 students will graduate early from Massachusetts' four medical schools  the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Tufts School of Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine, and Harvard Medical School  following a request from Gov. Charlie Baker.

 the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Tufts School of Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine, and Harvard Medical School  following a request from Gov. Charlie Baker. 52 fourth-year medical students at the University of Kansas have volunteered to graduate early. They will be assigned to areas of the state with the greatest need and receive special permits to practice from the Kansas Board of Healing Arts.

at the University of Kansas have volunteered to graduate early. They will be assigned to areas of the state with the greatest need and receive special permits to practice from the Kansas Board of Healing Arts. Over 100 students from Oregon Health and Science University graduated early, and several will begin their residencies early as well.

graduated early, and several will begin their residencies early as well. Hundreds of students at Michigan State University will be allowed to enter the state's health care systems early after they completed their program requirements, including clinical work.

The big picture: Its part of a broader push to expand the health care workforce to meet the demands of the pandemic. Retired medical professionals have come back into the industry as part of those efforts.

But, but, but: There are complicating factors, including a nationwide shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) thats putting those already at the front lines at risk.

The American Medical Association has offered recommendations for health systems "to protect learners responding to COVID-19."

The AMA recommends that institutions supply the newcomers with proper PPE and training on how to use the equipment, let them choose whether they would like to be involved in direct patient care, and make sure they aren't responsible for testing and treatment if they are sickened while caring for patients.

Go deeper: Young doctors struggle to treat coronavirus patients: "We are horrified and scared"
Mumbai, May 3 : Actor Aparshakti Khurana relived his wedding while shooting for his new song "Teri Yaari", as he wore a 'sherwani' he donned during his marriage in the track's music video.

"'Teri Yaari' is really special and close to my heart. It's such a relatable number which talks about love, bonding, emotions and friendship.

"The song is all the more special for me since I'm wearing my wedding day 'sherwani' in it and reliving all the special moments in a way. In fact, in my own wedding, I didn't have 'haldi' celebrations and couldn't even ride a mare, but I finally did it during the shoot of this song," Aparshakti said.

Sung by Aparshakti, Millind Gaba and King Kaazi, "Teri Yaari" is a friendship song, which was shot in Delhi.

On the film front, Aparshakti will be seen in "Helmet", which also features actress Pranutan.
'Tiger King' tips: Financial lessons from the hit Netflix series

Dont tattoo someones name below the waist. Dont try to steal your competitors brand. Dont sign over your zoo for safekeeping.

The Netflix hit documentary Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness is not just a trashy tragicomedy. You can learn a lot from watching Joe Exotic and the crew self-destruct, whether its how not to run a zoo, how not to run for office or how not to run your personal finances.

Just about everyone who comes into contact with Oklahomas GW Zoo makes a trainwreck of bad decisions that decimates their bank accounts. You can do better.

So listen up, cool cats and kittens, and take these lessons to heart.

1. Dont destroy your finances for family

Netflix

Joe's mother spent all of her money on him.

A lot of misery may have been avoided if Joe Exotics mother, Shirley Schreibvogel, hadn't used her money to pay for her sons mistakes.

Restraint is a foreign concept on Tiger King. Schreibvogel, who died in 2019, was far from the worst offender but did indulge her son to the point of financial ruin. She used up her life savings and even sold her home to help him keep the lights on at the GW Zoo and fight his numerous legal battles with his arch-nemesis, Carole Baskin.

The lesson you can learn from their relationship is that its important to establish firm financial boundaries, even with family. Only lend money if youre OK never seeing it again. And dont be quick to co-sign a loan for a relative; if your family member defaults, youll be responsible for the payment.

Thats a recipe for resentment, and youll see your relationship go up in smoke faster than Joe Exotics recording studio.

2. Moderate your financial risk

Netflix

Big cats are an expensive undertaking.

Anyone who walks with a cane and cuddles fully grown tigers has way too much tolerance for risk.

Joe Exotic treated his finances as delicately as he did his health and safety. At one point, he had a total of 187 big cats on his property, to say nothing of the other animals.

Even if he did get his annual expenses down to $3,000 per cat by feeding them roadkill and expired meats from Walmart, thats a lot of overhead.

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If youve watched Tiger King, you know things can go from bad to worse in an instant. Always have a back-up plan.

Choose safe and slow investments, maintain a solid cache of emergency savings and buy insurance to protect yourself and those you love.

3. Understand your long-term financial plan

Looper / Netflix

Joe didn't have much of a financial plan.

Joe Exotic spent tons of money that didnt end up serving his long-term goals:

He fought a yearslong legal battle that ended in a $1 million judgment against him.

He spent nearly $100,00 on a third-party presidential campaign  despite apparently not knowing what a Libertarian is.

He built an intricate recording studio on the zoo compound, even though it has since come to light that Exotic never wrote his own lyrics or even sang any of those songs. (Which is a shame, because Here Kitty Kitty is a banger.)

Dont spend like Joe. When you buy something, whether its a car or some shares in the stock market, make sure it serves your long-term goals.

A financial adviser can show you how to use your income wisely. By sorting out your savings and investments, you can ensure youre ready for retirement and whatever else comes your way in the years ahead.

4. Do your homework before doing business with anyone

Netflix

Jeff Lowe became Joe's business partner.

Can you trust the contractor you hired for your home improvement project? How about your financial adviser? The guy who manages your mutual funds?

Tiger King is a bottomless pit of cautionary tales, but one of the most important lessons is to do your homework before shaking hands with someone.

Do they have a long list of satisfied clients? Are they licensed and insured? Is that actually their mansion?

In the case of a financial adviser, find out if theyre a fiduciary  meaning theyre bound by law to put your interests above all others.

5. Dont let hobbies become expensive distractions

Canote Films / YouTube

Joe got sidetracked with politics.

Weve all heard about the hobbyists who spend every spare dollar on limited-edition sneakers, collector cars or fancy wines.

Joe made a business out of his hobby of collecting big cats. But he later found a new interest  politics  that would pull his money and attention away from his zoo. He ran for president in 2016 and for Oklahoma governor in 2018. (Uh no, he didnt win.)

If youve got a hobby that you love, dont let it get out of hand. Always stick within your budget and avoid the temptation to splurge on a shiny object that catches your eye.

When you feel a spending urge coming on thats in conflict with your financial goals, find something more worthwhile to buy, like life insurance if you dont already have it. Its affordable and easy to purchase online.

6. Be passionate about what you do

Netflix

Rick Kirkham documented how Joe treated his staff.

Its incredible that Joe Exotic managed to keep anyone on his staff.

The pay and working conditions at the GW Zoo were deplorable. Rick Kirkham, Exotics personal documentarian for 10 years, claimed that Joe would fire people without warning for the smallest perceived slight.

And when a tiger tears off a workers arm, Joe is heard bemoaning that he would never financially recover from the gruesome workplace accident.

Its clear the zoos employees cared deeply about their work. If you dont have any passion for your job, even if it does provide more than $150 per week, it may be time to build up some savings and move on to something better.

7. Stay focused

Netflix

Carole Baskin was Joe's archrival.

Having a game plan is key if you want to achieve a financial goal, whether its maintaining a successful tiger park or just saving up for a big purchase, like a car or a house.

Joe obviously got a bit sidetracked along the way  the music career, the political campaign, his obsession with Big Cat Rescue owner Carole Baskin. OK, maybe a bit sidetracked is an understatement.

If youre saving up for something important, have a strategy. Set aside a regular amount each month and park it in a high-yield savings account. That way itll accumulate interest and youll meet your goal even faster.

8. Keep legal documents up to date

Netflix / YouTube

Carole with her current husband, Howard Baskin.

Carole is now married to her third husband, Howard Baskin, but theories continue to spin over what happened to her second husband, Don Lewis.

The show features a lot of speculation, but heres what we know for certain: Don left only one copy of his will, and that's led to all kinds of confusion and suspicion, especially since his executor was Carole.

Some of the controversy could have been avoided if he had kept his will up to date and had made multiple copies.

Every time theres a major change in your life  like buying a house and taking out a mortgage, having kids or getting married  you should review your beneficiaries, update your will and insurance policies, and give new copies to your executor for safekeeping. You can even have more than one executor.

9. Never stop marketing yourself

Looper / YouTube

Joe Exotic was always selling himself.

Say what you will about Joe Exotics fashion sense  and professional ethics, and general way of life  but you cant deny the man knew how to market himself.

Joe and his arch-nemesis Carole both maintained a daily presence online that allowed them to promote their respective brands, interact directly with their fans and take shots at each other.

They used different strategies, sure. Carole had her classic opening, Hey, all you cool cats and kittens, while Joe took a more strident tone.

But if youre trying to promote a small business  or even just a blog  consistency is key. You need to put out regularly scheduled content that fits your brand and gives people a reason to keep coming back to see what youll do next.

10. Build multiple income streams

Netflix / YouTube

Joe was very creative when it came to making money.

Joe was able to keep his zoo afloat through all the legal battles by adapting the business and starting numerous side ventures  including the breeding and selling of tiger cubs.

The only problem with Joes strategy? Almost all of his plans relied on his primary source of income: the zoo.

Diversification isnt just for investments. Taking on a side hustle will help boost your income and act as a cushion if something happens with your day job.

11. Dont be afraid to start small

Looper / YouTube

The GW Zoo had a modest start.

The man we know as Joe Exotic was not always the Tiger King.

Once upon a time, Joseph Schreibvogel developed his skills with animals as a regular employee at a Texas pet store. He later bought and ran the place, along with his brother Garold.

When his brother died in a trucking accident, Joe used the $150,000 settlement plus a $250,000 trust fund from his grandfather to build the GW Zoo.

Going from a pet store employee to king of the tigers sounds like a Disney plot, but many great stories have humble beginnings. To grow your skills, you have to start with the basics.

If youre just investing for the first time, feel free to start small while learning everything you can. The important thing is to get started.

12. Be safe at work  even when working from home

Netflix / YouTube

The big cats were a danger to the zoo's workers.

Lets be honest: Joe Exotic did not maintain a safe working environment.

Not only is an employees arm torn off in the course of the docuseries, but Joe himself nearly loses a foot as a big big cat drags him around by his shoe. Adding hazard on top of hazard, Joe fires off a gun to scare away that cat and others.

Employers are supposed to follow government safety standards to protect workers from injuries, including potentially fatal ones. If you spot dangerous conditions where you work, report them.

And if youre working from home because of the coronavirus, maintain a safe workspace. Tape down power cords youre likely to trip over, and keep liquids away from your computer and other electronics.

If youre accident-prone at home, consider buying disability insurance that would pay your bills if a mishap leaves you unable to work.

13. Dont mix work and personal relationships

Looper / YouTube

Joe had two husbands, and they both worked with him.

Things can get messy when you dont keep personal relationships separate from work.

Just ask Joe Exotic, who was in a three-way marriage to two men who were working for him. He had to keep jealousies from developing  in the midst of juggling all the other drama swirling around him.

In work situations, its best not to get too friendly with co-workers and especially not with the boss, because it all can become very complicated when things go badly.

If you work with your spouse or significant other, its important to draw boundaries between home and work and for each of you to maintain your own individuality and identity.

If your partner is now your at-home officemate thanks to the coronavirus, keep your workspaces separate and be respectful of one another.

14. Trying to get even can be costly

Netflix / YouTube

Joe ended up in prison.

When you feel that a member or your family or someone at work has done you wrong, avoid the temptation to get revenge. Youre likely to do something youll end up regretting.

Joe Exotic became consumed with trying to get even with Carole Baskin after she won an expensive judgment against him in a copyright case. Hes now serving a 22-year prison sentence, partly stemming from an alleged plot to kill his adversary.

Next time you get furious with a relative, a business rival or a co-worker, take a deep breath and try to channel your rage into something productive, like getting in a rigorous workout at the gym.

It's better for your health  and less expensive than having to pay for the new paint job after you key someone's car.
A woman who assaulted her husband in front of the police has been handed a suspended jail sentence.

Co Down woman Donna Fitzpatrick had to be handcuffed after throwing a bottle at her partner, a court was told.

Newry Magistrates Court, sitting in Lisburn, heard officers had twice called at the Annalong home of 50-year-old Fitzpatrick after she contacted them numerous times on March 14.

She told them to f*** off several times, a prosecution lawyer told the court, adding that police were satisfied she was safe because her husband Martin was there.

At 7am that morning, police again attended her house on the Longstone Road but this time she became aggressive and threw a pint glass against the wall before grabbing a lamp and lunging at her husband.

Police restrained Mrs Fitzpatrick but she was soon on the attack again.

She calmed down but then threw a full, litre glass bottle at her husband, said the lawyer, adding that when cops handcuffed her, Fitzpatrick told them to f*** away off.

Although Mr Fitzpatrick refused to make a formal complaint or statement, his wife pleaded guilty to common assault and improper use of a telecommunication network.

The prosecution lawyer said Fitzpatrick is under a recent probation order for a similar offence.

Defence solicitor Keith Kyle said there was no doubt the multiple calls to police had been a nuisance and something that a public body in the current circumstances could best be doing without.

Imposing a four-month jail sentence but suspending it for two years, District Judge Nigel Broderick said he hoped it would give her extra encouragement not to reoffend because she needs to address the underlying causes.

He warned her, however, that if she fails to do that, or reoffends, she was likely to face a lengthy custodial sentence.
OTTAWA - Ontario Premier Doug Ford is taking aim at the federal government's new gun control measures, saying he believes the feds should focus on smuggling of illegal weapons at the border and strengthening jail sentences for gun crimes rather than targeting legal gun owners.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 2/5/2020 (626 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford answers questions at a COVID-19 briefing at Queen's Park in Toronto on Saturday, May 2, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Rick Madonik - POOL

OTTAWA - Ontario Premier Doug Ford is taking aim at the federal government's new gun control measures, saying he believes the feds should focus on smuggling of illegal weapons at the border and strengthening jail sentences for gun crimes rather than targeting legal gun owners.

On Friday, the Trudeau government outlawed a wide range of assault-style rifles, saying the guns were designed for the battlefield, not for hunting or sport shooting.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has also promised a buyback program for all legally purchased rifles that would fall under the new ban, with owners offered fair market prices for their guns  a program expected to cost up to $600 million.

Ford was animated when asked about the new measures Saturday during his daily COVID-19 press conference.

He said he would rather see the millions planned for the gun buyback program go instead toward beefing up border security to stop guns from being illegally smuggled into Canada.

"I can't help but think that money could be put at a much better use hunting down the violent criminals and stopping the illegal guns at our borders," he said.

Ottawa's priority should be strengthening bail conditions and jail sentences for criminals and gang members who commit gun crimes, he added. Ford said he finds it "frustrating" that weapons offenders are often back on the streets within a few days of being arrested and that some receive sentences of only a year or two.

"The problem is not the legal gun owners, we need to target the smugglers and we need to throw the book at these gangsters out there terrorizing our streets," he said.

"Throw the key away with these people if they get caught with guns, don't give them a slap on the wrist and then try to point the finger at legal, law abiding gun owners."

Ford's comments mark a departure from the approach the Ontario premier has taken with the federal Liberals since the COVID-19 pandemic began infecting Canadians and wreaking havoc in Ontario's long-term care centres.

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The once highly vocal opponent of Trudeau and his policies has been working collaboratively with the Liberal government in Ottawa, striking a particularly close working friendship with Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland. She told the Toronto Star she speaks with Ford often and that they "describe one another as each other's therapists."

Ford didn't target any specific criticisms at Trudeau or the federal government in his remarks Saturday, and did say he would be willing to work in partnership with the federal government on measures to stop illegal gun smuggling.

However, he did question the federal plan to spend "hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of hardworking taxpayers' money."

"For what?" he questioned.

"You think gun violence is going to go down in Toronto? I don't believe gun violence is going to go down in Toronto based on taking guns off legal gun owners."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 2, 2020.
New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham invoked the state's Riot Control Act on Friday to essentially lock down the city of Gallup after its mayor requested that she do so on Thursday. Under the act, all roads leading into Gallup are now closed off "to mitigate the uninhibited spread of COVID-19 in that city."

"Effective at 12 p.m., May 1, all roads into Gallup are closed. Businesses in the city of Gallup will close from 5 p.m. through 8 a.m. Vehicles may only have a maximum of two individuals. Residents of the city should remain at home except for emergency outings and those essential for health, safety and welfare," Grisham's office said in a press release.

Gallup, a city of nearly 22,000 people about 100 miles west of Albuquerque, has been particularly affected by the coronavirus. As of Friday, McKinley County, where Gallup is located, had 1,027 confirmed cases and 19 deaths, according to the New Mexico Department of Health. The county now has the highest number of cases in all of New Mexico, which has 3,411 cases in total.

Virus Outbreak-New Mexico

This photo provided by Patrick Sandoval shows authorities cordon off sections of the roadway in Gallup, New Mexico, on Friday, May 1, 2020. Patrick Sandoval via AP

According to Grisham's press release, McKinley County has "more than 30 percent of the state's total positive COVID-19 cases and the most positive cases in the entire state, outstripping even far more populous counties."

"Its infection trend has shown no sign of flattening," the release said. "The county has reported an additional 207 positive cases in the last two days alone, more than every other county in the state has reported total over the length of the pandemic save three."

COVID-19 UPDATEEffective noon today I am enacting further temporary restrictions to slow the spread of #COVID19, temporarily locking down the city of Gallup at the mayors request. pic.twitter.com/ThtMmZgieo

Story continues

 Michelle Lujan Grisham (@GovMLG) May 1, 2020

In his letter asking the governor to declare a state of emergency within the city limits, outgoing Gallup mayor Jack McKinney described the city's outbreak as a "crisis of the highest order."

"The virus has caused many deaths, stretched medical facilities and resources to their capacity, and adversely impacted the welfare of the city of Gallup," he wrote on Thursday. "Our community is unable to adequately address the outbreak without the imposition of certain restrictions necessary to regulate social distancing, public gatherings, sales of good, and the use of public streets."

McKinney made the request hours before his term officially ended; his successor, mayor Louis Bonaguidi, followed with a near-identical letter on Friday. Later in the day, Grisham granted their request.

In addition to closing roads into the city, under the Riot Control Act, the governor can also prohibit people from being on public streets, among other broad emergency restrictions. Gallup's emergency order will expire at noon on Monday, May 4.

In Grants, New Mexico, a town of around 9,000 people just east of McKinley County, Mayor Martin "Modey" Hicks and a group of supporters rallied Monday to encourage business owners in his community to defy the governor's lockdown order. Hicks has vowed to allow all small businesses to reopen in Grants, despite warnings from Grisham that such a move could put people at risk.

The governor has said the mayor's plan makes "absolutely no sense whatsoever," and warned that State Police would continue enforcing the order. On Thursday, Grisham officially extended the state's emergency public health order through May 15.

"These changes do not make our fight against the virus any easier; in fact, New Mexicans' obligation to our social contract only deepens as we enter the next phase," Grisham said in a press release. "The best defense against this virus, until there is a vaccine, is physical distance from other people."

Saturday Sessions: M. Ward performs "Heaven's Nail and Hammer"

Saturday Sessions: M. Ward performs "Rio Drone"

Saturday Sessions: M. Ward performs Billie Holiday's "For Heaven's Sake"
In a Right To Information (RTI) filed by a Kota-based activist, Sujeet Swami reveals the current NPA account condition of two national banks--Bank of Baroda and Indian Bank.

According to Right to Information data, Indias third-largest public sector bankBank of Barodas Non- Performing Assets (NPA) has now increased to more than six-fold to Rs 73,140 crore in six years. In the report, the NPAs condition of the Indian Bank was also mentioned, where it surged four-times to Rs 32,561.26 crore in the same years.

Calculating the NPAs of Bank of Baroda (BoB) At the March-end, 2014 the NPA was about Rs 11,876 crore which has now staggeringly jumped to Rs 73,140 crore at December-end 2019. RTI report reveals that from March 31, 2014 to December 2019, the NPA account in BoB has soared from 2,08,035 to 6,17,306.

While Indian Banks NPA surged from 8,068.05 to Rs 32,561.26 crores. Within 6 years as of March 31, 2014, to March 31, 2020, the NPA account rose to 5,64,816 comparing to 2,48,921. A Kota-based activist Sujeet Swami filed the RTI to know the current condition and NPAs of Bank of Baroda and Indian Bank.

Given the current #COVID19 situation, we know how difficult times can get for Bank Mitras. To support their courage and determination #BankofBaroda is offering special welfare package which can assist them during such times. #staysafebanksafe pic.twitter.com/PvY26norpY  Bank of Baroda (@bankofbaroda) April 24, 2020

Reserve Bank of India cancels the licence of The CKP Co-operative Bank Ltd., Mumbai #rbitoday https://t.co/BstRUz4S5p  ReserveBankOfIndia (@RBI) May 2, 2020

According to RTI reply, it also disclosed that these banks earn a massive amount of money through SMS alert service fees, minimum balance charges, outward, inward, ledger follow charges, locker charges, debit-credit cards service charges, and from others services.

RTI Community Helpline  Initiative by RTI INDIA https://t.co/zdx3yJjvLS via @rtiindia  RTI INDIA- Online RTI (@rtiindia) April 30, 2020

It said, from April 1, 2018, to February 29, 2020, Bank of Baroda earned Rs 107.7 crore from a single service of SMS alert. Indian Bank collected Rs 21 crore from it during the same period.

It is time to change the way we exchange money. Yes, we need to go digital in order to stay safe! And we at Indian Bank are here to empower you with our digital channels. Bank online, India! #stayhomestaysafe #IndianBank #TwiceAsGood #IBWithYou pic.twitter.com/4ot3CFkGrz  Indian Bank (@MyIndianBank) May 1, 2020

Sujeet Swami said, he filed the RTI to know the in-depth NPAs condition of these two national banks between 2014 to 2020. He further said, in the query, the State Bank of India and Punjab National Bank were also mentioned but the data is yet to provide.

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Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 2)  The Department of Interior and Local Government announced on Saturday they will add five million families in the governments cash subsidy program for those affected by the COVID-19 crisis.

DILG Undersecretary Jonathan Malaya said they are still awaiting for the guidelines from the Department of Social Welfare and Development for the formal implementation of the cash aid distribution to the additional five million families.

Malaya also clarified the additional five million families are apart from the 18 million families who are qualified as beneficiaries of the social amelioration program, which grants 5,000 to 8,000 for each family belonging to the vulnerable sector.

He added that local government units now have additional funds to prioritize the families who are left out by the COVID-19 emergency aid program because of the 30.824 billion Bayanihan Grant, the national funds realigned by the Department of Budget and Management from the Department of Public Works and Highways budget on infrastructure projects.

Provincial governments in the country were also given additional funds by the DILG through the 6.197 billion Bayanihan Grant to Provinces, which is equivalent to half a month of the Internal Revenue Allotment share of 81 provinces nationwide for the current fiscal year.

In the meantime, nananawagan kami sa mga local government units na iprioritize itong mga left out families doon sa food packs na kanilang ipinapamahagi, said Malaya in the Laging Handa press briefing earlier.

[Translation: In the meantime, we are appealing to the local government units to prioritize the left out families in the food packs they are distributing.]

Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque confirmed that President Rodrigo Duterte approved the distribution of COVID-19 cash aid to the additional five million families in the country.

Roque also apologized to qualified beneficiaries who did not receive their COVID-19 cash aid and eligible families who were left out in the cash subsidy program.

Itoy isang pamamaraan din para humingi ng pasensya sa mga di nakatanggap dahil hanggang ngayon po nadedelay ang release ng first tranche, said Roque.

[Translation: This is also a way to apologize to the recipients because the release of the first tranche has been delayed until now.]

The DSWD has started to post the list of social amelioration program beneficiaries on the website of their field offices. The Cordillera Administrative Region and Region 7 field offices have already posted online the initial list of beneficiaries in their regions.

Malaya noted that 11 million out of the 18 million families have received their emergency subsidy from the government as of yesterday.

Hinihikayat po ng DILG ang lahat ng ating local government units na seryosohin po natin ito, tuluy-tuloy na po natin itong ipamigay. Wala na pong ibibigay na extension si Secretary Eduardo Ano at si (DSWD) Secretary Ronnie Bautista. You are given up to May 7 to finish the distribution, he reminded.

[Translation: The DILG is encouraging all our local government units to take this seriously and continue to distribute the cash aid. Secretary Eduardo Ano and (DSWD) Secretary Ronnie Bautista will not give extension to the distribution. You are given up to May 7 to finish the distribution.]

Malaya warned LGU officials who divide the cash aid to distribute to other families, with reports reaching the agency that some barangay captains are splitting up cash subsidies in order to distribute smaller amounts of cash to more families.

Pwede po silang masuspende at makulong pa kung ginawa talaga yan, stressed Malaya.

[Translation: They can be suspended or jailed if they really did that.]

The Interior Undersecretary encouraged citizens to report the illegal cash distribution acts of barangay officials to the departments local and regional offices.

The DSWD also has its Grievance Redress System, managed by their Central Office-Operations Center, to report cash aid concerns such as unqualified families who received subsidy. The public can text 0947-482-2864, 0916-247-1194, 0918-912-2813, and 0932-933-3251 or send an e-mail to atsapgrievances@dswd.gov.ph for their grievances.
Tirupati Balaji temple in Andhra Pradesh, country's richest Hindu temple of Lord Venkateshwara, has reportedly ousted 1,300 contractual workers amid the coronavirus outbreak. The workers, who were engaged in shrine's sanitation and hospitality work, were asked not to come for duties from May 1, citing the suspension of work due to the nationwide lockdown.

The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD) board, the trust that manages the hill abode of Lord Venkateswara, did not renew the contract, which expired on April 30. YV Subba Reddy, the chairman of the temple's trust, said that the firm supplying the manpower was intimated that their services were discontinued. He, however, assured to look into the issue on humanitarian grounds.

"The contract entered into by the TTD with the manpower agency which supplied workers ended on April 30. Normally, fresh tenders would have been called by now for awarding of the contract to the agency which bids the lowest amount for manpower supply. Because of the lockdown, the TTD trust board could not meet and finalise the tender," TTD official spokesman T Ravi told Hindustan Times.

"Everything was done as per the rules. Moreover, there is no work for these workers now, because of the lockdown, all guest houses are closed," Ravi said.

In view of the nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of COVID-19, the TTD board has imposed a total suspension of darshan for pilgrims in Tirumala temple since March 20. Apart from main temple, 50 sub-temples under the administration of TTD have also been closed.

The board had announced the temple's closure till May 3, following the extension of the nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of coronavirus. The temple's trust is yet to take a call on extension of closure of the shrine as the Centre announced the third phase of the lockdown, beginning May 4.

This is the first time in 128 years that the temple has been closed for pilgrims. The temple with a 2000-year-old history only closed for religious rituals and solar moon eclipses but never for a temporary period.
TV presenter Jules Hudson says he once lost 1,600 to a scammer on eBay. Hudson, 50, who has had to stop filming BBC One's Escape To The Country due to the lockdown, also reveals he collects military weapons for a hobby

From his 16th Century farmhouse in Herefordshire, he spoke via phone. His latest book, The Escape To The Country Handbook, is out now.

Appeal: Jules Hudson, who has called for more help for the self-employed, says 2012 was his best year financially because he had four TV programmes on air

What did your parents teach you about money?

To be prudent with it. My parents are careful with money and I have tried to follow their example and not take too many risks. My dad was an engineer and my mum ran a bed and breakfast. I'd say we were comfortably off.

They put me through boarding school, but we were by no means wealthy  we weren't the sort of family who went to Spain every Easter and skied every winter.

Have you ever struggled to make ends meet?

Yes I have, absolutely. When I first started out in TV in 1996, I was a runner  a general dogsbody. I think I got something like 120 a week. To keep my living expenses down, I lived on my dad's old wooden boat. In those days you could park a boat in St Katharine Docks in London for 50 a week.

I was in among all these super-duper yachts while living on Fray Bentos pies out of tins. I lived like that for more than two years. But it didn't feel like a great hardship. It felt like an adventure.

I was 26 by then and was quite used to roughing it because I had been in the Army. I came out because the regiment I was going to join after Sandhurst got chopped in some defence cuts.

A friend of mine, Dan Rivers  who is now an ITV news reporter  told me about the wonderful world of media. I thought it sounded really exciting. And that's how my career came about.

Have you ever been paid silly money?

Yes. I can command quite good sums of money hosting corporate gigs. There have been occasions where I have earned a week's wages in an afternoon. They're good fun and I'd love to do more of them.

What was the best year of your financial life?

It was 2012. I was presenting Escape To The Country, Cash In The Attic and Britain's Empty Homes for BBC daytime  plus a series called Dig 1940. There were days when I was on TV three times on three different programmes.

I would rather not say exactly how much I earned but it was a low six-figure sum. I'm one of those people  and I get this from my parents  who is happier the longer and harder I'm working. Don't get me wrong, I love to switch off and relax  but I do also love going to work.

I think that's what makes this time so frustrating for so many people. It isn't just the lack of income, it's the fact that we are missing the people we work with and the intellectual challenge of what we do. I think, in general, work helps to define us.

What is the most expensive thing you bought for fun?

I've always loved Land Rovers so last year, when I thought I had enough money, I bought our son Jack his own 'mini' Land Rover for Christmas. It cost 2,500 from a company called Toylander.

He drives it every day to get firewood and terrorises our two labradors with it.

What is your biggest money mistake?

I once bought a quad bike for 1,600 on eBay thinking it was too good to be true  and it was. I was ripped off by a scammer in Spain. I transferred the money directly into his account and learnt a hard lesson. That bike never existed.

The best money decision you have made?

Buying my first house in Wales for 29,500 in 1997 when I was 27. It was in Llanddewi-Brefi, a small village in the countryside and dates back to about 1800.

It was a total wreck, I rebuilt it from scratch with the help of a redevelopment grant. I sold it eight years ago for 250,000. As well as being a brilliant financial investment, it helped me get my job on Escape To The Country.

The head of daytime BBC knew about it and suggested I would be the perfect person to get involved with the programme. So it laid the foundations not just of my love affair with property, but also my career.

Do you save into a pension?

No. I have never worked for anybody who's ever provided a contributory pension so I was never incentivised to do it. Plus, both my parents invested in pension schemes which went bust and they lost their money. Having grown up with that, I have always favoured bricks and mortar.

Do you invest directly in the stock market?

I have money invested in stocks and shares Isas, but I have opted for simple investment funds that track the stock market.

I'd love to be one of those people who could analyse the peaks and troughs of the stock market coming and make a fortune. Sadly, I'm not. My investments are probably on the floor right now. I daren't look.

Do you own any property?

Yes, my home on the Herefordshire border. It's a late 16th Century timber-framed farmhouse with five bedrooms. We bought it in 2012 for 600,000 and we have spent about 100,000 on it.

I would estimate it has gone up in value by at least 100,000 since 2012, but it's our forever home, so we're not too bothered if we spend a bit more on it than we think it is worth.

What is the one little luxury you treat yourself to?

Deactivated war weapons. I have a 1910 Maxim machine gun in my hallway and a whole collection of other British and American militaria, including a Sten gun.

I'm a keen military history buff and I add to my collection every couple of years. What I find interesting is the emotional story behind each weapon and the person who carried it  I wonder about what they were thinking, what they saw and witnessed.

The weapons are not worth a fortune, but they don't go down in value and as objects they are great talking points at dinner parties.

If you were Chancellor what is the first thing you would do?

I would do more to help people who are self-employed like me and work in the media. Everybody thinks that just because you're on TV, you're worth a fortune and you earn a huge amount. That's not the case. At the moment, my crew and everybody else is really struggling.

What is your number one financial priority?

To get rid of the mortgage and have enough money to feel secure. We are not there yet, sadly.
Prince William is second in line for the throne, and his wife, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, has been by his side for his entire adult life. Being a royal is not easy; it comes with a lot of pressure and a constant spotlight  and it can be quite the test for relationships. But Kate once revealed that Queen Elizabeths relationship with her husband, Prince Philip, is something she looks toward when it comes to her own marriage to William.

Kate Middleton laughs with Prince Philip as Queen Elizabeth and Prince William look on | Chris Jackson/Getty Images

William and Kate are being groomed to someday take the throne

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are arguably two of the worlds most famous people. William, who is second in line for the throne, has spent his entire life preparing for the role hell eventually take as King of the United Kingdom. And Kate, who married William in 2011, has been working toward the same role for nearly a decade  shell become queen consort when William takes the throne.

William and Kate hold plenty of royal engagements; theyve dedicated their adult lives to serving the public, all while balancing the duties that come with caring for three children. The two are trying to give their kids as normal of lives as possible, since they know what it will be like once all three become working royals. Still, with everything on their plates, theyve managed to completely win over the public.

The two have always had a strong marriage

William and Kate started dating back in 2002, and theyve spent nearly 20 years together. Though they had their ups and downs while dating, including brief breakups in both 2004 and 2007, theyve come out stronger than ever. The couple tied the knot in 2011 at Westminster Abbey, and they almost immediately became one of the most-loved couples around the globe.

William and Kate were at the center of a cheating scandal last year when news broke that William had allegedly had an affair with family friend Rose Hanbury, but there was never any truth connected to the rumors, and its unclear exactly how they started. William and Kate hardly responded to the accusations, and the public generally seemed to believe the rumors to be false.

Kate once said loves that the queen has so much support from Philip

Kate and William work hard to maintain such a close relationship. After all, the spotlight can easily get in the way of some couples happiness. But Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philips long, happy relationship might have served as inspiration to William and Kate.

All the time William and I are so struck by the Queens sense of duty and commitment, Kate once said in an interview, according to Hello Magazine.  To have the support of your husband there by your side on those occasions  and behind closed doors as well  I think is really special. Kate and William have stood by each others side through thick and thin, and she compared their relationship to her mother- and father-in-laws. William and I have got quite a long way to go. But, no, it really, really is fantastic.

William and Kate are certainly fan favorites in the royal family, and its in part because their relationship has remained so strong through the years. But its nice to see that theyre taking a page from their grandparents book.
"Mixed teaching" proposal by Italy's education minister causes controversy among parents.

Italy's education minister Lucia Azzolina has proposed dividing school classes in half from September to reduce numbers in line with the social distancing measures required in the post-lockdown phase of the coronavirus emergency.

The minister's proposed solution involves "half of the students going to school for half a week", then alternating, with the half at home keeping up with their lessons through distance learning.

Azzolina, who announced the proposed measures on SkyTG24 on 2 May, said: "We can't bring students back to school with 28-30 people per class."

The minister also ruled out the possibility of teachers working double shifts, adding that students "have the right to return to school" in September.

Read also:

Azzolina's "mixed teaching" proposal generated a storm of controversy on social media, with parents querying how they were supposed to juggle work with childminding and supervising lessons on the days their children would be at home.

Schools have been closed since 5 March and are not due to reopen until September, with Italian premier Giuseppe Conte stating recently that the average age of Italy's teachers is among the highest in Europe.

Azzolina recently announced that the maturita school-leaving exams will start on 17 June in schools, in an oral format, reports Italian news agency ANSA.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Its the latest edition of Hey, Chris!

The submissions for this post came solely from Subtext insiders, who received a message earlier this week to send one question each. The best were chosen. Want to receive Cavs Insider texts and communicate directly with me? Sign up for a 14-day free trial with your phone number and perhaps one of your questions will be used in the next edition of Hey, Chris! You also can sign up by texting me at 216-208-4499.

Hey, Chris: Is there an adequate replacement in the Cavaliers organization to replace Brock Aller?

The Cavs have done a fine job building a high-level front office with smart people. Some have stayed and worked their way up, groomed to be a general manager (Koby Altman). Others have left for bigger jobs elsewhere. Its not a surprise that the New York Knicks targeted Brock Aller in an attempt to revamp that front office and turn the franchise around. Aller is one of the leagues premier capologists and strategists.

While losing him is a blow given the amount of responsibility he had, essentially serving as Altmans right-hand man, the Cavs are comfortable with their internal options when the Aller move to New York eventually becomes official. Im told the plan is to stay inside the organization, reshuffle responsibility and give one or two executives a bigger role. The person who steps in for Aller, whether it be Jon Nichols or Jason Hillman or someone else, wont have the same experience. So, it could be a choppy initial transition, but the Cavs have been through these departure before.

Hey, Chris: Should the Cavs consider trading down in the draft? How would Devin Vassell fit?

I think it makes sense to explore a trade-down possibility. The top of the draft is loaded with guards and bigs and the Cavs need help on the wing. Aside from mystery man Deni Avdija, its tough to make an argument for any other wing in the top 6, which is the lowest the Cavs could fall based on the current lottery setup and standings.

But moving back is easier said than done. If the Cavs view a three-player tier at the top, which is the current sense I get, would they be willing to move back, away from a chance to grab either LaMelo Ball, Anthony Edwards or James Wiseman? Based on talent and upside, those would likely be three targets for an opposing team in a move-up scenario as well.

The Washington Wizards, with uncertainty surrounding John Wall, would be an ideal fit for Ball. Perhaps the Knicks as well, given their shaky lead guard situation. Would the return package be worth the Cavs willingly missing out on one of those targets? If the Cavs arent in the top 3, then which team would come to their spot in whats considered a bad draft? Who would be worth trading up to get? And how far back would the Cavs drop?

The range for wings is around 10. Of course, Auburns Issac Okoro could go a bit earlier. Avdija will also. In terms of Vassell, he has the tools to be the ideal 3-and-D player. At 6-foot-7, Vassell shot at least 41% from 3-point range in each of his two seasons at Florida State. Trading down and taking him would allow the Cavs to fill their most gaping hole while also adding additional draft capital. Its something to consider.

Hey, Chris: How do you think Anthony Edwards could fit with Darius Garland and Collin Sexton?

Its not ideal. Edwards has a score-first mentality similar to Sexton. Hes at his best with the ball in his hands. Same with Garland and Sexton. And theres only one ball. So, getting the most out of three players individually while trying to align that with whats best for the franchise is a difficult balance.

Because of Edwards talent and an argument that he may be better than both Sexton and Garland in the future, its at least worth exploring how it could work.

There are lots of guard minutes available throughout the course of a game. The Cavs could move one to the bench in a sixth man role. Staggering minutes, splitting up the trio, is another possibility. It also helps that Edwards is bigger than Clevelands current duo. The SEC Freshman of the Year is a burly, well-built 6-foot-5 guard with a long wingspan (around 7-0) that could allow him to play up a position in certain lineups.

The Cavs are in a place where they have to take players with the most upside -- even if its at a position where they are congested. This early into the rebuild, its about acquiring as much talent as possible. Maximizing the value of one of the guards in this scenario could mean a future trade.

Hey, Chris: What do the Cavs plan to do about ticket refunds?

Like everything else when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic, this question is complicated.

Technically, the remaining games on the schedule, including the five home games, one of which is supposed to be LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers, havent been canceled. At this point, those games are considered postponed.

The Cavs have been more flexible because of this tricky situation. Theyve allowed season ticket holders to defer payments, and there will most likely be an official policy coming from the organization in the next week or two. But as is the case for all events at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, if an event is canceled then ticket holders have the option to receive a credit toward a future event or a refund.

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03.05.2020 LISTEN

Fear of defeat tight-embroiled deputy Attorney Generals secret mini-rally held at Bugri; one of the popular voting centers of his constituency amidst the global uncontrollable penetrating novel Coronavirus.

Describing himself as a senior government member in the secret meeting intercepted by this reporter, the incoherent vibrating voice of Hon. Joseph Dindiok Kpemka, New Patriotic partys Member of Parliament of Tempane, depicts that of fear as he scrambles in a one-man talk show expressing his outmost fear of losing his seat to his opponent whom he described as not fit for a ministerial portfolio 

According to inner sources, the Deputy Attorney General was in the area to do some political damage control as signs of defeat are said to be strongly staring at him. Impeccable sources told this reporter that Mr. Kpemka is losing his popularity to the National Democratic Congress Madam Lydia Adakudugu, hence the temptation to ignore the Covid-19 triggered imposed presidential ban on social gathering to politically weep before his party youth.

Mr. Kpemka told his raged party youth gathered at the Bugri Junior High School that from the look of things if we losses this seat, we will never recapture it gain. Currently, I am a senior member of the Government. The entire northern sector, we are only three ministers.

From the Upper East, I am the only minister! So if I cannot provide your needs, the woman [referring to the NDC parliamentary Candidate] cannot equally provide for you. Even if you vote for her and Mahama wins, she would not be made a minister. So please dont vote me out he said in a sobbing voice.

He continued those are fear are those who have made up their minds not to vote or me, but wouldnt let me know. They are dangerous. But if you make me aware that you wouldnt vote for me, I will make sure that, you will be the very person will to cast your vote for me. He said to the cheering and charging party youth.

Mr. kpemka had a hard time explaining to the charged youth over how some of them were not enlisted into the latest Ghana armed forces recruitment. The youth bared at the minister, showing their unwillingness to buy to the his explanation.

Mr. Kpemka won the 2016 parliamentary election on his partys tickets owning to an internal political wrangling within the NDC circles at the time, leading to one Dr. Asana Abraham going solo.

The deputy ministers decision to have a rally at this critical time, received wide condemnation from varied groups and individuals due to the banning of public gathering.

Mr. Kpemka in a telephone interview with this reporter however stated that he was in the community to educate the youth on covid-19. He however could not tell if the gathering exceeded the 25 figure issued by government.
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TRAVERSE CITY  Last week marked over two months since Paul Oliver Memorial Hospital (POMH) and the entire Munson Healthcare (MHC) system began preparing for the onset of Covid-19 in Northern Michigan.

Since that time, many things have changed in the way healthcare is provided in our communities.

At Paul Oliver, weve reviewed everything from the way visitors enter our buildings, to the way we clean patient rooms and the facility, and in some cases, even the location where we deliver care, with the intent of ensuring the safest possible environment for our patients said Dr. Nancy Smith (Reye), chief medical officer for Paul Oliver Memorial Hospital and family physician at the Frankfort Medical Group.

All Munson Healthcare hospitals, including Paul Oliver, created drive-through COVID-19 testing sites for patients that have a physicians order and an appointment to obtain a COVID-19 test. The Emergency Department also initiated whats referred to as a curbside triage process to evaluate patients with respiratory symptoms in their cars.

These processes occur outside the hospital so patients dont have to exit their vehicle, which is best-practice for minimizing exposure to both patients and healthcare workers, explained Smith.

With a surge of COVID-19 testing, State of Michigan laboratories became overwhelmed, causing delays in obtaining results. To improve the turnaround time on testing, Munson Healthcare brought the test equipment utilized by the States testing facilities to our area, reducing turnaround time for critical patients results from 5-7 days to less than 12 hours.

Since COVID-19 is a virus with no vaccine available, treatment primarily focuses on supportive care, rest and fluids.

Most individuals with mild to moderate symptoms recover from the virus at home. Individuals whose condition requires hospitalization are immediately transferred to one of three Munson Healthcare hospitals: Munson Medical Center, Munson Healthcare Grayling, or Munson Healthcare Cadillac. Regionalizing assets provides the best approach to care and is a sound method of limiting the spread of COVID-19 and protecting the health care team, Smith explains. The scientific community across the globe is working to understand the virus pathology and identify alternative treatment methods. In mid-April, MHC joined an emergency Investigational New Drug (eIND) trial to collect and administer convalescent plasma to severely affected COVID-19 patients at the regional care facilities.

In addition, the Paul Oliver Emergency Department has readied itself, should a patient who has tested positive for COVID-19 require emergency support, while they are prepared for transfer to a regional COVID-19 care center. Paul Oliver implemented and trained the team on clinical care guidelines, procured two ventilators, and created a negative pressure hospital room, which prevents cross contamination from room to room.

While many hospitals across the nation are experiencing shortages of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), a key area of focus is making sure all Munson Healthcare teams have access to appropriate PPE. To accomplish this, Paul Oliver centralized its PPE supply to better manage the stock and plan for the future, implemented strategies to conserve and safely reuse PPE, and set up donation sites across the region. To-date, over 500 masks, 5,500 gloves, and 250 gowns have been collected for hospital staff at the donation sites, thanks to generous donations from community members, the Grow Benzie Fiber Shed, Days for Girls at Grow Benzie, and Benzie Bus, who collects and delivers the donated goods on a weekly basis.

We cannot thank our community enough for the compassion and support they have shown our health care team over the last several weeks said Smith.

The impact on non-emergent healthcare services due to COVID-19 that is present throughout our country is also being felt in our region, mainly through delayed or cancelled medical appointments due to closures of non-essential departments. In an effort to continue to provide care, hospitals and primary care clinics across the Munson Healthcare system are now offering virtual visits from the comfort of the patients home. Over 400 providers in 60 physician and physical therapy offices across the system are now offering virtual visits, including Paul Olivers new Frankfort Medical Groupa primary care practice that opened within the hospital on April 15th.

Opening a primary care clinic amidst the COVID-19 pandemic was not what we had planned. However, now, more than ever, it is important that we are here to care for our community, said Mark Kuiper, MD, medical director of primary care for Paul Oliver.

Through all this, protecting long-term care residents has been a priority at POMH.

Kristi Johnson, MSN, RN, chief nursing officer at Paul Oliver explains, weve all heard of the impact COVID-19 has had on long-term care units across the U.S. There is nothing more important to us than ensuring our residents are safe and healthy. We have implemented every possible precaution to ensure COVID-19 does not make it to our unit.

These precautions include limiting visitors to the hospital and long-term care unit long before the executive orders to do so were in place. All hospital staff are also screened when reporting to work, including a temperature check, and wear appropriate masks to protect themselves and the residents. Residents are practicing social distancing as much as possible and engage in activities and exercise in the hallway from their doorways.

As the community becomes more anxious to return to normal, Munson Healthcare continues to work with the Governors office and the Michigan Hospital Association to determine when to gradually reopen services, and how to do so safely. We look forward to bringing our services back to the community when the time is right, said Smith.
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J&K: Colonel, Major among 5 martyred in encounter in Handwara

India

oi-Madhuri Adnal

Srinagar, May 03: An Indian army colonel, a major and two soldiers, along with a Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) police sub-inspector, were martyred in an intense gun battle that lasted for nearly 8 hours, an operation by security forces in Handwara town in Jammu and Kashmir's Kupwara district.

The operation, which took place in Handwara in J&K's Kupwara district, also left two terrorists dead, the Indian army said in a statement.

The joint operation was based on intelligence inputs, which said civilians living in a house in Changimulla area of Handwara were taken hostage by the terrorists.

Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, the commanding officer of the army's 21 Rashtriya Rifles battalion, Major Anuj Sood, Naik Rajesh Kumar and Lance Naik Dinesh Singh and sub-inspector Shakeel Qazi of the Jammu and Kashmir police were killed after the more than 12-hours of a firefight with terrorists in Handwara district.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, in a Twitter post, described the deaths of the security personnel as "deeply disturbing and painful."

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Story first published: Sunday, May 3, 2020, 15:07 [IST]
EDWARDSVILLE  Former Edwardsville Mayor Gary Niebur, 64, died Saturday.

A lifelong resident of Edwardsville, in March he won the Democratic primary for the Madison County Board District 17 seat by defeating Victor Valentine Jr.

Edwardsville Mayor Hal Patton on Sunday confirmed Nieburs death and the Edwardsville YMCA announced it on its Facebook page Sunday morning. In February 2018, Niebur retired as chief executive officer at the YMCA where he was in charge for 35 years.

During his time at the YMCA, Niebur raised $10 million in private donations which allowed the expansion into the three facilities today. By his retirement, YMCA memberships had grown from fewer than 1,000 to nearly 19,200.

Niebur was Edwardsville mayor for five terms, 1993-2013, before choosing not seek a sixth term in office. He was the longest-serving mayor in the citys history. Before becoming mayor he was on the city council 1985-1993 as an alderman and was the citys Parks and Recreation Department Director.

Niebur received numerous community service awards, including the Jaycees Ten Outstanding Young Persons in the State of Illinois; the Rotary Club International Paul Harris Fellowship Award; the Boy Scouts of America Distinguished Citizen Award; the SIUE Religious Center Interfaith Award; and the Edwardsville Glen Carbon Chamber of Commerce Lifetime Achievement Award.

A charter board member of the Greater Edwardsville Area Foundation, he was president of the Illinois Municipal League in 2002, vice-president of the Metro East Park and Recreation District since 2017 and has been a member of the Edwardsville Rotary Club since 1983. In March 2019 he was added to the Anderson Hospital Foundation Board of Directors.

Niebur is survived by his wife, Debby, and their four children. On Sunday afternoon, the family issued a statement acknowledging his death.

Gary was admired by his wife, son, daughters and Papa to his grandchildren, who will miss him terribly, the statement read. We thank the community, which he loved so dearly, for your kindness and support at this time.

Arrangements are pending.
Louis Theroux has chopped off the top of his finger during a cooking accident.

The documentarian, 49, had to bandage himself up on Saturday evening after he had the mishap while chopping a red onion.

The journalist shared a snap of his injury on Instagram while looking rather glum.

Kitchen accident: Louis Theroux, 49, cut the top of his finger off on Saturday night while chopping a red onion

He explained he had been making a Jamie Oliver recipe for carrot and coriander pancakes when he cut the top of his finger.

The father-of-three said he 'went pale and had to lie down' after the accident.

He admitted: 'Family not impressed by my lack of stoicism. Me too frankly.

Throwback: Louis, pictured with Tiger King's Joe Exotic in 2011, said his family was 'not impressed by his lack of stoicism'

'Still haven't found the missing piece of finger.'

In the comments under the post, TV presenter Matt Baker joked: 'I think the recipe says ginger not finger.'

Louis appeared on the Graham Norton Show on Friday night, promoting his new podcast Grounded in which he interviews celebrities.

He also discussed how he was one of the first journalists to shine a light on Joe Exotic, the big cat breeder who came to prominence in the Netflix series Tiger King.

Exotic appeared in Louis's documentary America's Most Dangerous Pets in 2011.

Mishap: He had been making a Jamie Oliver recipe for carrot and coriander pancakes when he cut the top of his finger

During the course of filming, Louis touched on the now-57-year-old's sex life with his two husbands, who were 20 and 31 at the time of their nuptials.

The flamboyant zoo keeper had a three-way wedding with Travis Maldonado and John Finlay in 2014.

John was 31 at the time, while Travis was just 20, while Joe was decades older at 51.

Both husbands had begun working at the zoo aged just 19 - John in 2003 and Travis in 2013.

Joe told the journalist that the men avoided jealously by making love in a group, with all three involved at all times, The Weekend Australian reported on Saturday.

'It works awesome,' Joe told Louis at the time, 'Because we're all too tired to have sex.'
T he Government is "actively looking" at holding people who arrive from abroad in quarantine to help control the spread of coronavirus, Grant Shapps has said.

The Transport Minister told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that it is important that the social distancing "sacrifices" made by Brits "are matched by anybody who comes to this country."

The UK currently does not place the 15,000 people who arrive in the country every day in quarantine - which sets it apart from many other countries.

Instead, passengers are given information leaflets about the virus and told what to do if they become symptomatic.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps / PA

In contrast, several countries are only allowing their own citizens and residents across the border, while others - like Australia and Singapore - quarantine arrivals from abroad in designated hotels for 14 days.

The Government said last week that in future the UK could order people to self-isolate for 14 days when they arrive in the UK from abroad.

They would have to give officials the address of the place where they are planning to spend the two weeks of isolation.

On Sunday, Mr Shapps hinted at stronger measures to come.

He told the BBC: I think it is important that as we are seeing the numbers decrease and the R rate we hope decrease that we do ensure that the sacrifices in a sense  social distancing  that we are asking the British people to make are matched by anybody who comes to this country.

I am actively looking at these issues right now so that when we have infection rates within the country under control we are not importing.

Mr Shapps' comments come as the UK looks for ways out of coronavirus lockdown, which was first rolled out on March 23.

International passengers could soon be quarantined upon arrival in the UK / Getty Images

Factories, shops and offices could reopen on May 26 if Covid-19 cases continue to decline, the Sun reported on Saturday.

And Brits could soon be allowed to exercise more than once a day and drive to the countryside again, according to the Mail on Sunday.
St Johnstone have announced that long-serving manager Tommy Wright has 'parted company' with the club.

Wright joined the Ladbrokes Premiership club in November 2011 as assistant manager before taking the hot seat in June 2013.

The Northern Irishman led the Perth side to their first-ever Scottish Cup success in 2014 and guided the club to several top-six places.

St Johnstone announced that long-serving manager Tommy Wright has 'parted company'

Wright joined the club in 2011 as an assistant manager and took full charge in June 2013

St Johnstone reached the Europa League qualifying rounds on four occasions under Wright but could not make the group stages.

Wright had two years left on his contract but the club admitted that they had planned for the 56-year-old to leave at the end of the campaign and felt that 'now would be an appropriate time' to part company.

Wright said in a statement on St Johnstone's official website: 'I've had a fantastic journey with the club and I would like to personally thank Steve, Stan and Charlie for their continued support during my time as manager.

Wright led the club to their first ever Scottish Cup success back in 2014

'I would also like to thank all the staff and players that have been on this journey during my time at the club.

'Finally, I want to take the opportunity to say that the support I have had from the fans has been incredible and contributed immensely to my experience with the club.

'So, to the club, its staff, players and fans - I'll always hold a very special place for you all and I look forward to coming back to McDiarmid Park - I am so proud of what we have achieved together.

'We have an exciting group of young players and I look forward to seeing their progression with you all.'
They require permission to work and are asked to simplify tax system

May 3, on Independence Square in Kyiv, representatives of small businesses gathered for a protest rally, demanding permission to work for the quarantine period. The RBC-Ukraine news agency reports.

The action was attended by entrepreneurs from six regions of Ukraine: Vinnytsia, Zakarpattia, Lviv, Kharkiv, Khmelnytsky, and Chernihiv regions. The demonstrators demanded small businesses be allowed to work, and also advocated a simplified taxation system for entrepreneurs.

All participants in the action were masked and also kept a social distance.

As we reported before, on May 2, Ukrainian businessmen held a protest near the Presidents Office, during which they demanded authorities allow the summer terraces of cafes and restaurants to operate in lockdown

During the protest, organizers brought and situated tables with a distance of 1.5 meters from each other. All those present were masked, and on each table, there were two bottles of antiseptic.

Also, co-owner of the Tarantino family Dmytro Fedotenkov explained that all the tables on the improvised summer terrace had already been booked, but nevertheless the organizers invited MP Mykola Tyshchenko, whose restaurant, during quarantine, continued to work, representatives of the Ministry of Health and would definitely allocate a table for Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Prominent Civil Rights Advocacy group- HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) has described as unprecedented suffocation and suppression, the dimension of whittling down and the systematic oppression of alternative views and freedoms of Expression generally in Nigeria under President Muhammadu Buhari just as the Rights group said there was the need for the International community to step up the campaign globally to stop the forced disappearances and arbitrary incarceration of Nigerians only because they hold different views from those of President Muhammadu Buhari and some dictatorial governors.

"HURIWA regrets to hereby state that since the last five years, the current administration has turned Nigeria into a big prison yard with all sorts of arbitrariness, extrajudicial executions of persons by security forces and the clamp down on political views that are diametrically opposed to those of the powers that be. It is sad that many critics and journalists have disappeared and or arrested and detained by security forces for years WITHOUT fair trials."

HURIWA has listed Katsina, Abia, Kano and Kaduna States as places whereby Nigerians with divergent political or religious beliefs and views from those of the establishments have had their fundamental freedoms crushed through unwarranted physical attacks and arbitrary detention just as the Rights group said the case of Abia State is uniquely unfortunate given that both the police and the office of the state attorney general have become torture chambers somewhat psychilogically and these offices are deployed illegally to witchhunt persons who hold different opinions from those of Governor of Abia state. HURIWA has also asked the Abia State chief judge to stop the abuses of the judicial process in the persecution of Emperor Gabriel Ogbonna who has been in an illegal detention after he was arrested by the police on the orders of the governor since over a Month and intentionally dragged before a magistrate that lacks the jurisdiction.

HURIWA lamented too that in Kaduna State one Bala Mubarak an Atheist was arrested by the police only because he left the Islamic religion to embrace Atheism just as the Rights group said there are concerns raised that the said Mr. Bala Mubarak may be handed over to the governor of Kano State whereby he might be subjected to a trial by the Islamic Sharia Court- a forum that will inevitably not guarantee hin fair trial since he has since left the Islamic religion and moved from his state of birth of Kano and relocated to the former Northern regional capital of Kaduna. The Rights group said critics of the Kaduna state governor Nassir Elruffai such as Steven Kefas spent months at the Kaduna prisons just as the erstwhile Governing board chairman of the National Human Rights commission Professor Chidi Odinkalu is being persecuted for objectively highlighting the mass killings in Southern Kaduna by armed Fulani herdsmen.

HURIWA in a media Statement by the National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Media Affairs Director Miss Zainab Yusuf said that democracy in Nigeria is bleeding under the suffocating oppression of dictators at both the National and subnational levels just as the Rights group has asked the Abia State governor Mr. Okezie Ikpeazu to order the release of his critic and an Aba based Legal practioner Emperor Gabriel Ogbonna who has since been clamped into prison detention after he was arrested by the immediate past police commissioner Mr. Okon Ene on some framed up charges of cyber bullying the Abia State governor.

"HURIWA is aware that the former Abia State police commissioner conspired with the Abia State governor to arrest the Lawyer Mr. EMPERO GABRIEL OGBONNA and framed up the charges that the Lawyer EMPERO GABRIEL OGBONNA and others now at large within the 18th - 19th day of March, 2020 at 118 Market Road, Aba in the Aba North Magisterial District conspired among ythemselves to commit a felony to wit: an act of cyber terrorism and thereby committed an offence Punishable under Section 27(1)(a) of the Cybercrimes (Prohibition Prevention ETC) Act, 2015.

HURIWA is also aware that the count two of the charge filed before the Magistrate Court in Umuhia who ended up throw5 ing away the matter because of the obvious fact that he lacked the jurisdiction to entertain the charges, the police commissioner alleged that the lawyer and a critic of the Abia State governor EMPERO GABRIEL OGBONNA and others now at large, had on the aforementioned date and place in the aforesaid Magisterial District knowingly and intentionally published false and threat messages to internet that the Executive Governor of Abia state, Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu swore an Oath before the Ancient HARASHIMA (A Hindu god) to abide absolutely by conditions presented by his predecessor in office and subvert the people of Abia state, that he also signed a document between the former Governor of Abia state, Senator T. A. Orji, his son Hon. Chinedum Orji that the spirits they worship should deal with him if he fails in his undertaking, a publication he knows to be false for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, insult, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred and ill-will against Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu and thereby committed an offence punishable under section 18(1) of the Cybercrimes (Prohibition Prevention ETC) Act, 2015."

HURIWA has also accused the governor of Abia state of abuse of power by reportedly ordering the re-arrest of the critic barely hours after he was freed from a Month-long detention at the Umuahia prisons.

HURIWA stated that it is absolutely condemnable that the inmediate past commissioner of police in Abia state intentionally and knowingly planned to arbitrarily prolong the detention of the staunch critic of the police commissioner's paymaster the Abia state governor by dragging the matter to a legal forum that has no jurisdiction to entertain his badly framed CHARGES even as the Rights group said the virtually one Month continuous detention of the lawyer by the Abia State governor through the Abia State police commissioner is totally reprehensible, disgraceful and a wanton violations of the Constitutionally guaranteed Human Rights of Barrister Emperor Gabriel Ogbonna.

HURIWA says whilst it condemns the illegal detention of the critic and lawyer by the Abia State police commissioner on behalf of Governor Okezie Ikpeazu, the Prominent Civil Rights Advocacy group HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) is challenging the Abia state governor to release the lawyer or to properly charge him in the competent court of law so he can be guarnteed fair hearing under the fundamental RIGHTS provisions enshrined in the chaoter 4 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The Rights group said under section 36(5) of the Nigerian constitution the detainee is absolutely innocent before the law until proven guilty by the competent court of law and not the courts if jesters presided over by the Abia State commissioner of police.

HURIWA expressed consternation that the wanton and arbitrary arrests and illegal detention of Nigerians with divergent political or religious beliefs and views from those of the establishments have continued unabated all over the Country even as the Rights group said the action of the Katsina state governor who ordered the police to arrest a 70 year old citizen and two others for insulting President Muhammadu Buhari and the Katsina state governor shows a progressive deterioration of the respect for the fundamental human rights of Nigerians.

HURIWA recalled that the Katsina State police command last week said it has arrested three persons over a viral video on social media allegedly insulting President Muhammadu Buhari and the state governor, Aminu Masari just as those arrested are; a 70-year-old man, Lawal Abdullahi Izala; Bahajaje Abu and Hamza Abubakar all of Gafai Quarters, in Katsina metropolis.

HURIWA recalled that the spokesman of the state police command, SP Gambo Isah, said the attention of the Katsina State police command was drawn to the viral video on social media, showing one Lawal Abdullahi, alias IZALA insulting President Buhari and governor Masari.

HURIWA has therefore condemned the persistent illegal pattern of the government officials to resort to self help measures against critics of government officials just as the Rights group said the police has surely started abusing their powers by rushing up nebulous charges which they hurriedly attribute to the Cybercrime prevention Act of 2015 just so they can clamp down on opposition voices or persons with independent opinions.

HURIWA whilst canvassing the release of the three Katsina persons arrested for insulting President Muhammadu Buhari and the governor has stated that it is shameful that a government that claims to have been democratically elected to now become a fully fledged dictatorship is absolutely condemned. "We will continue to urge World leaders to put pressure on the government of President Muhammadu Buhari to stop forthwith his vicious attacks against Freedoms of Expression and media freedoms."
A San Jacinto County deputy was honored Wednesday for his life-saving efforts for a driver he had pulled over in a traffic stop. Deputy Sheriff Joseph Pellegrino was awarded the Life-Saving Award by San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers for his heroism and selfless act in saving the life of the driver.

Last fall, on Oct. 25, around 10 p.m., Pellegrino was working patrol in his assigned district along US 190 in San Jacinto County.

ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: First responders cant social distance. Some are getting sick. And departments say it could strain responses

Pellegrino had pulled a driver over on the side of the road in the Darby Hill area when he saw a vehicle coming toward his marked patrol vehicle. The unit had the emergency lights activated for safety, but as the vehicle veered closer and closer to where Pellegrino and the driver he had pulled over, he realized that danger was imminent.

The deputy took action to preserve the life of the driver by turning him and using his own body to shield him from the brunt of the impact of the vehicle which struck his patrol car and subsequently the deputy.

The chain reaction of the impact knocked both the deputy and the driver into the ditch approximately 10-15 feet from the point of impact.

MORNING REPORT: Get the top stories on HoustonChronicle.com sent directly to your inbox

Pellegrino was able to call for help and deputies from San Jacinto and Polk counties responded to his call for assistance.

Firefighters and EMS crews arrived on the scene minutes following the crash and evaluated both Pellegrino and the driver he had pulled over.

Pellegrino was transported to CHI St. Lukes Hospital-Livingston for treatment.

He was evaluated and later released from the hospital, bruised and sore, but through Gods grace, alive, the sheriff said.

The driver who had been pulled over was okay and during the interview about what had transpired, kept asking about his hero and the deputy that saved his life and was he going to be okay.

Sheriff Capers thanked the Texas Department of Public Safety Highway Patrol Division, Polk County Sheriffs Office, Point Blank Volunteer Fire Department, Onalaska Police Department, Allegiance EMS, and CHI St. Lukes Hospital- Livingston for their actions taken on behalf of his deputy.

For his actions of heroism that night, Im honored to award Deputy Sheriff Joseph Pellegrino the Life-Saving Award through our office for his valiant service to our county and our citizens, the sheriff said.

dtaylor@hcnonline.com
- Hillary Muriungi was diagnosed with brain tumor after he joined Alliance High School

- He underwent surgery to remove the tumor at Nairobi Hospital but it redeveloped again in 2020

- He was set to undergo surgery outside the country but succumbed to the tumor while in ICU

A family in Meru county is mourning the sudden death of their son, Hillary Muriungi Kaume, who was the best 2018 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) candidate in the region.

Muriungi died on Friday, May 1, at Nairobi Hospital where he had been undergoing treatment after he was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

READ ALSO: City tycoon loses property to state after failing to explain KSh 41M expenditure in 10 months

Hillary Muriungi Kaume died at Nairobi Hospital on Friday, May 1. Photo: The Standard

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Mwathethe azungumza baada ya Rais Uhuru kutangaza mabadiliko kwenye uongozi wa jeshi

His family confirmed the sad news while announcing plans to make arrangements to have the body transported to his home village for burial as soon as possible in line with government directives.

"It is true he has died. We are now making arrangement to bring the body back home for burial," said family spokesperson Elias Mutuma as quoted by The Standard on Sunday, May 3.

Muriungi, who sat for his KCPE exams at Freds Academy in Meru, scored 442 marks and was admitted at his dream school, Alliance High School.

READ ALSO: Madagascar sends COVID-19 "herbal medicine" to 15 African countries

Shortly after joining the school, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor, which was later removed through surgery and radiation.

Early in the year, during the routine MRI tests, it was found that another tumor had developed in the young boy's head.

In February 2020, he underwent another surgery and was discharged awaiting specialised treatment outside the country.

However, he developed complications and was taken back to hospital where he was admitted at the Critical Care Unit where he succumbed to the tumor.

Do you have a groundbreaking story you would like us to publish? Please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690. Contact Tuko.co.ke instantly.

Source: TUKO.co.ke
The ESB's new Corduff plant will help the grid take increasing amounts of wind power

ESB has lodged plans for a 75 megawatt so-called 'peaker plant' in Dublin that will help the electrical grid in the city cope with an increasing amount of renewable energy.

The new plant at Corduff is being developed as a peaking power plant to service the "greater Dublin evening peak demand for power".

The plant - which will use flexible generation technology giving it fast-start capability to allow for the sudden peaks and troughs of wind energy - is one of four such plants that ESB is planning in the Dublin region.

It is part of Eirgrid's Integrated Single Electricity Market (I-SEM) auction system for electricity on the island of Ireland.

"The principle purpose of peaking plants such as Corduff is to provide flexible generation that is capable of ramping up and down rapidly, thereby meeting the variable electricity demand on the system and complementing the variability of wind generation," an ESB spokesman told the Sunday Independent.

Planning documents said that, subject to permission, the Corduff plant was expected to be operational by October 2022.

The spokesman said the plan was fully aligned with the ESB Brighter Future strategy, in transitioning and supporting the move to low carbon electricity. This plan is aimed at removing coal and peat from ESB's energy mix by 2030.

"With the tendering process under way, ESB is not in a position to disclose the value of these projects," he said.
Royal Dutch Shell has maintained or increased its dividend every year since World War II. In 2019, the oil giant paid out 11.6 billion in dividends, accounting for more than 15 per cent of total payouts from FTSE100 companies, according to stockbroking firm AJ Bell.

That made Shell the biggest dividend payer in the UK by a big margin and investors have come to rely on those payments, especially individual shareholders in search of reliable income.

Last week, chief executive Ben van Beurden turned his back on that long track record, slashing the first quarter dividend from 47 cents (37.5p) to 16 cents (12.8p) and suggesting that this scale of payment will be the new normal.

Shell's shares were already in the doldrums before van Beurden's bombshell, as the coronavirus pandemic has savaged demand for oil and prices have tumbled.

Flagging: Shell shares may have underperformed recently but they have delivered big gains over the long term

But the stock sank by a further 17 per cent after the dividend cut was unveiled, closing at just 12.32 on Friday.

This presents investors with a difficult choice, especially those who have been with Shell for years.

The shares may have underperformed recently but they have delivered big gains over the long term. Shell is not alone in cutting its dividend.

To date more than 40 companies in the FTSE 100 index have cut, postponed or cancelled payouts and other firms are likely to follow suit. Even those who have declared dividends recently may change their minds.

Traded on: Main market Ticker: RDSA Contact: shell.com or 020 7934 3363

Midas verdict: 'You can be sure of Shell' was one of the most famous advertising slogans of recent decades. Now you cannot.

The oil producer's share price has almost halved in the past year and now the company has taken a knife to the dividend too. Investors have every right to be both aggrieved and concerned about the outlook for the business.

However, now is not the right time to sell. Even if economic activity remains subdued for months, demand for oil should pick up from its current low, as countries ease out of lockdown.

And Shell's shares still offer a yield of almost 4 per cent  even after last week's cut. Investors should bide their time with this stock, at least for now.
Anthony S. Fauci, 79, has been director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), since 1984. As the face of the nations scientific attack against covid-19, his profile has never been higher. But when asked about his proudest accomplishments, Fauci, who has been called Americas doctor, recalls being sent by then-President George W. Bush to fight AIDS in Africa. The Presidents Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), created by Bush in 2003, is the most important public health, global, international measure that has ever been created for a single disease, in this case, HIV/AIDS, Fauci said. Weve saved already tens of millions of lives.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 21:47:19|Editor: huaxia

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BEIRUT, May 3 (Xinhua) -- The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) on Sunday handed over to the Lebanese army five Sudanese nationals who were arrested in the morning by the Israeli army for trying to cross the border into Israel.

Lebanese military sources told Xinhua that the Israeli army handed the five people over to the UNIFIL operating in Ayta ash Shab, a village in southern Lebanon close to the Israeli border.

The five detainees have been taken to a security center for investigation, the sources said.

Meanwhile, eyewitnesses in the border area told Xinhua that the Israeli army intensified its patrols along the border line, while the Lebanese army raised its deployment in the area.

The past months have witnessed a series of incidents in which people crossed the border to Israel but were arrested and returned to Lebanon through the UNIFIL. Enditem
You might feel in these quarantine times that you need beer, and lots of it.

However, Heineken  or any other beer producer for that matter  is not giving away four free kegs.

People are reporting getting text messages or seeing social media ads that promise the freebies if you click a link and complete a survey, according to Scam Detector. www.scam-detector.com/

This is a phishing effort to either install malware into your computer or persuade you to give up personal information.

Tip: BYOB. (Buy your own beer.)

n n n

Theres a new utility scam making the rounds, and it could ruin your weekend if you fall for it.

These bogus calls appear to come from Public Service Company of New Mexico, and there is a surge of them happening on Saturdays and Sundays, the utility says.

Both residential and business customers are getting the calls, which mimic a real PNM call, a company news release said. Sometimes, the scammers leave false call-back numbers.

The scenario is that you have a past due balance, so your electricity will be disconnected unless you pay up on a pre-paid gift card. You have to do it within an hour. When people return the fake PNM call, they hear an on-hold message thats similar to the utilitys, although it has low sound quality.

Weekends are their target time because PNM is closed then, making it more difficult to verify the scammers claims, the news release said. They are demanding between $200 and $500 for homeowners and more than $1,000 for commercial customers.

PNM says it has gotten more than 930 scam reports this year, 400 of which were reported in April.

Remember that PNM never demands that customers pay with a pre-paid gift card, nor does it shut off power on weekends or holidays.

n n n

If you use a digital wallet app like Venmo, PayPal or Apple Pay, be aware of the latest fraud.

It starts when someone you dont know sends you several hundred dollars via Venmo, then messages you and says it was a mistake and asks you to send the money back.

Dont do it.

Scammers are connecting stolen credit cards to Venmo and using them to make what looks like a payment to unsuspecting users, according to the Better Business Bureau. The stolen card is overdrawn, though, so no actual money has been put into your account.

If you comply with their request, you will have to cover the payment with your own money.

The scammers next step is to delete the stolen credit card from their account and add their own card instead. That way, the money you transferred goes to their personal card.

Protect yourself from digital wallet fraud by transferring funds only to people you know. If you get an accidental payment, ask the payer to cancel the transaction rather than returning the money.

Contact Ellen Marks at emarks@abqjournal.com or 505-823-3842 if you are aware of what sounds like a scam. To report a scam to law enforcement, contact the New Mexico Consumer Protection Division toll-free at 1-844-255-9210a.
Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant



on Sunday claimed that many people from outside the state wanted to come to Goa which is classified as 'green' zone, and appealed to locals against providing them any shelter.

He said only those outsiders with medical emergencies and extremely genuine cases would be allowed in Goa.

"Many people from outside the state are trying to come to Goa as the state has been classified as green zone. I appeal to locals not to provide any shelter to them without informing the government," the chief minister told reporters on the eve of the beginning of the third phase of the coronavirus-induced national lockdown.

He said entry in Goa will be allowed on the basis of a proper permission from district collectors concerned.

Goa shares its boundaries with Maharashtra and Karnataka.

He also said that more than 3,000 Goans stranded in various parts of the country have already applied seeking repatriation to their home state.

"Goans entering the state will be taken to institutional quarantine facility for two days where COVID-19 test would be conducted on them. Only those whose test turns negative will be allowed to go home where they will be placed under quarantine for 14 days," he said.

The state government is also exploring whether a special train can be operated for Uttar Pradesh ferrying labourers stranded in Goa.

"The carrying capacity of such train, if operated, is around 1,000 passengers," he said.

The Railways has been operating Shramik Special trains from various parts of the country since the last two days, after the Union government allowed inter-state movement of stranded labourers, students and tourists on fulfilling certain conditions.

Sawant said migrant labourers in Goa have already started applying to local bodies, including panchayats, seeking permissions for repatriation to their home states.

"Around 71,000 labourers have applied for the permission," the CM said even as he expressed concern over such an exodus.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
May has finally arrived and the feeling and smells of Spring are in the air. We know that Twin Falls is ready to rebound and lead the way to new economic heights in Idaho. I still believe we  as a community  will be stronger and better as we learn to work together.

The City of Twin Falls is working hard for you. We may have had to change how we do business, but we are remaining focused on meeting the needs of our citizens. Twin Falls city employees are continuing to make great strides in the capital improvements we have budgeted for our 2020 fiscal year.

You will see new sidewalks near Rock Creek Elementary and South Hills Middle schools. Helping our children get to and from school safely has always been a high priority. The bid opening was held on Friday, May 1st. After they are reviewed for accuracy the low bid will be presented to the Council for acceptance.

Funded by Federal Aviation Grants, there are new taxi lanes being constructed at Magic Valley Regional Airport to help with future hanger development. This is phase two of the plan and is currently out for bid.

The reconstruction of Locust Street from North College to Falls Ave. has started and should be completed in late August. Phase one is the sidewalk project. Traffic will be allowed during this phase of constructing sidewalks and curb ramps and also repairing concrete. Early in July Phase two will bring a road closure while the roadway is reconstructed.

Water related projects include irrigation station work and water line replacement.

The failing irrigation water station at Sunway Water Complex was replaced in April. The new Perrine Irrigation Station is expected to be operational in May. This station will convert roughly 70 acres of residences from potable water irrigation to non-potable ditch water. It is anticipated to provide pressurized irrigation water to more that 320 acres of land close to the Grandview Falls Ave. West intersection.

Parks and Recreation are working to replace the restrooms at Cascade Park. The old facility has been removed. Staff is working on site improvements for the new precast concrete building should be ready to be installed in 12 weeks.

This year our street maintenance program is concentrating work in zone 8. There is a map on the citys website, www.tfid.org that identifies boundaries for our zone maintenance program. Street maintenance includes friction seal as well as fog and chip seal. In addition, there will be overlay and mill and inlay work where needed. Watch for ADA sidewalk projects in our downtown area as we continue to make progress in our transportation system.

As we start to see signs of Spring and we steadily work towards getting all of our businesses re-opened know that your city team is working hard for you. Together we are Twin Falls strong  shining brightly.

Suzanne Hawkins is the mayor of Twin Falls.
A tentative easing of coronavirus lockdowns has gathered pace around the world, including the reopening of local shops in India that many of the countrys 1.3 billion people rely on.

The US states of Georgia, Oklahoma and Alaska also began loosening lockdown orders on their pandemic-wounded businesses, even as the confirmed US death toll from the coronavirus soared past 50,000 and health experts warned that such steps may have come too early.

The relaxation of the strict Indian lockdown came with major caveats. It did not apply to hundreds of quarantined towns and other hotspots that have been hit hardest by the outbreak that has killed at least 775 people in the country and terrified many poor people who live in slum conditions too crowded for social distancing.

Shopping malls also remain closed nationwide.

Last week, India also allowed manufacturing and farming to resume in rural areas to ease the economic plight of millions of daily wage-earners left jobless by the lockdown imposed on March 24.

Indias restrictions have allowed people out of their homes only to buy food, medicine or other essentials.

(PA Graphics)

Elsewhere in Asia, authorities reported no new deaths on Saturday for the 10th straight day in China, where the virus originated.

South Korea reported just 10 fresh cases, the eighth day in a row its daily total came below 20. There were no new deaths for the second straight day.

In Sri Lanka, however, the lockdown was tightened, not eased, confirming a pattern of one-step-forward, one-step-back also seen elsewhere in the pandemic, as authorities juggle public health against the health of shut-down economies.

Sri Lanka had partially lifted a month-long curfew during daytime hours in more than two thirds of the country.

Italians celebrate the 75th anniversary of their Liberation Day during lockdown (AP)

However, it reimposed a 24-hour lockdown countrywide after a surge of 46 new infections on Friday, the highest increase in a day on the Indian Ocean island. The new curfew remains in effect until Monday.

Story continues

On Saturday, the global death toll climbed toward 200,000, according to a tally compiled by Johns Hopkins University from government figures. The actual death toll is believed to be far higher.

Pope Francis appealed to people to pray for funeral home workers, saying: What they do is so heavy and sad. They really feel the pain of this pandemic.

In Europe, Belgium sketched out plans for a progressive lockdown relaxation starting on May 4 with the resumption of non-essential treatment in hospitals and the reopening of textile and sewing shops to enable people to have face masks.

A customer pays for her groceries in Groslay, north of Paris (AP)

Bars and restaurants would be allowed to start reopening on June 8, although Belgian prime minister Sophie Wilmes also cautioned that a surge in infections could alter the timeline, and that nothing is set in stone.

Children in Spain will get their first fresh air in weeks on Sunday when a total ban on letting them outside is relaxed.

After 44 days indoors, they will be allowed to take one toy or scooter with them but not play together for adult-supervised one-hour excursions no further than one kilometre from home.

Italy announced that free protective masks will be distributed to nursing homes, police, public officials and transport workers, preparing for the return to work of millions of Italians when lockdown restrictions are eased from May 4.

A woman walks a dog at the empty Rivoli street along the Tuileries Garden in Paris (AP)

In France, the government is preparing to ease one of Europes strictest lockdowns from May 11. The health minister detailed plans on Saturday to scale up testing to help contain any new flare-ups.

Testing shortages are a critical problem elsewhere, too, including in Brazil, Latin Americas largest nation, which is veering closer to becoming a pandemic hotspot.

Medical officials in Rio de Janeiro and four other major cities warned that their hospital systems are on the verge of collapse or already overwhelmed.

In Manaus, the biggest city in the Amazon, officials said a cemetery has been forced to dig mass graves because there have been so many deaths. Workers have been burying 100 corpses a day  triple the pre-virus average.

In the US, Republican governors in Georgia and Oklahoma allowed salons, spas and barbershops to reopen, while Alaska opened the way for restaurants to resume dine-in service and retail shops and other businesses to open their doors, all with limitations.

Some Alaskan municipalities chose to maintain stricter rules.

Though limited in scope, and subject to social-distancing restrictions, the reopenings marked a symbolic milestone in the debate raging in the United States and beyond as to how quickly political leaders should lift economically devastating lockdown orders.

During a White House press briefing on Friday, US president Donald Trump spoke optimistically of the economy but also asked people to continue social distancing and use face coverings.

The same day, Mr Trump signed a 484 billion dollar (391 billion) bill to aid employers and hospitals under stress from the pandemic.

Over the past five weeks, roughly 26 million people have filed for jobless aid in America, or about one in six US workers.

Mr Trump also said his widely criticised comments suggesting people can ingest or inject disinfectant to fight Covid-19 were an attempt at sarcasm.
The analysts might have been a bit too bullish on Taseko Mines Limited (TSE:TKO), given that the company fell short of expectations when it released its quarterly results last week. Statutory earnings fell substantially short of expectations, with revenues of CA$62m missing forecasts by 23%. Losses exploded, with a per-share loss of CA$0.20 some 186% below prior forecasts. Following the result, the analysts have updated their earnings model, and it would be good to know whether they think there's been a strong change in the company's prospects, or if it's business as usual. So we gathered the latest post-earnings forecasts to see what estimates suggest is in store for next year.

See our latest analysis for Taseko Mines

TSX:TKO Past and Future Earnings May 2nd 2020

Following the recent earnings report, the consensus from six analysts covering Taseko Mines is for revenues of CA$295.8m in 2020, implying a noticeable 7.8% decline in sales compared to the last 12 months. Losses are predicted to fall substantially, shrinking 32% to CA$0.26. Before this earnings announcement, the analysts had been modelling revenues of CA$325.7m and losses of CA$0.23 per share in 2020. So it's pretty clear the analysts have mixed opinions on Taseko Mines after this update; revenues were downgraded and per-share losses expected to increase.

The average price target was broadly unchanged at CA$0.85, perhaps implicitly signalling that the weaker earnings outlook is not expected to have a long-term impact on the valuation. It could also be instructive to look at the range of analyst estimates, to evaluate how different the outlier opinions are from the mean. There are some variant perceptions on Taseko Mines, with the most bullish analyst valuing it at CA$1.50 and the most bearish at CA$0.25 per share. With such a wide range in price targets, analysts are almost certainly betting on widely divergent outcomes in the underlying business. With this in mind, we wouldn't rely too heavily the consensus price target, as it is just an average and analysts clearly have some deeply divergent views on the business.

Story continues

Taking a look at the bigger picture now, one of the ways we can understand these forecasts is to see how they compare to both past performance and industry growth estimates. We would highlight that sales are expected to reverse, with the forecast 7.8% revenue decline a notable change from historical growth of 5.4% over the last five years. Compare this with our data, which suggests that other companies in the same industry are, in aggregate, expected to see their revenue grow 7.8% next year. It's pretty clear that Taseko Mines' revenues are expected to perform substantially worse than the wider industry.

The Bottom Line

The most important thing to take away is that the analysts increased their loss per share estimates for next year. Unfortunately, they also downgraded their revenue estimates, and our data indicates revenues are expected to perform worse than the wider industry. Even so, earnings per share are more important to the intrinsic value of the business. There was no real change to the consensus price target, suggesting that the intrinsic value of the business has not undergone any major changes with the latest estimates.

Following on from that line of thought, we think that the long-term prospects of the business are much more relevant than next year's earnings. At Simply Wall St, we have a full range of analyst estimates for Taseko Mines going out to 2024, and you can see them free on our platform here..

Don't forget that there may still be risks. For instance, we've identified 4 warning signs for Taseko Mines that you should be aware of.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Five persons were



killed and four others injured when a trailer truck crashed into a roadside kiosk in Hazaribag district on Sunday, police said.

Superintendent of Police, Karthik S said that four persons died on the spot while another succumbed to his injuries at Hazaribag Medical College and Hospital.

The SP said the accident took place around 7 am at Charhi Chowk under Charhi police station, about 20-km from Hazaribag town.

Deputy Commissioner Bhuvanesh Pratap Singh said that the trailer truck crashed into the roadside 'gumati' (kiosk) as the driver tried to avoid another truck and lost control over the vehicle.

The victims had gone to the kiosk to purchase vegetables, milk, newspapers and other essential items when the accident took place, Singh added.

Two of the dead belonged to the same family, the police said, adding the condition of one of the injured was critical and was referred to RIMS, Ranchi.

The other injured persons are being treated at the hospital's trauma centre here, they said.

The deputy commissioner directed the Block Development Officer, Neetu Singh, to pay a compensation amount of Rs 50,000 to families of each of the deceased under the family pension scheme of the state government.

In addition to the monetary compensation, the DC also asked the BDO to sanction a dwelling unit under the Indira Awas Yojana and money to dig wells.

For immediate livelihood, the DC said the families could run shops under the "Mukhya Mantri Daal Bhaat Yojana".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Ogun COVID  19 isolation centre at Ikenne



According to Daily Trust, the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Idi Aba, Abeokuta, Ogun State, was thrown into panic on Saturday after a pregnant woman was said to have died from Covid-19 complications at the hospital.

It was gathered that the deceased, who was tested for COVID  19 alongside two others  a male and a female, died while awaiting result of the test.

A reliable source said when results of the trio returned, two tested positive, a male and the expectant mother who died, while the other female reportedly tested negative.

Daily Trust gathered that the pregnant woman who had visited the obstetrics and gynaecology unit of the facility, was said to have been moved from one ward to the other before her death.

The other patient had been reportedly transferred to Ogun COVID  19 isolation centre at Ikenne, while the deceaseds body was said to have been deposited at the FMC mortuary.

It was further that the development thrown the facility into panic as no fewer four medical personnel had contact with the victims.



As of now, no medical personnel has been quarantined but at least four of them had contact with the victims, the source said.

When contacted, the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the FMC, Segun Orisajo, said, via SMS, I am not in the position presently to confirm or otherwise of your request. Kindly hold on till tomorrow when the Management will make known its official response after due observance of laid down protocols on such a matter.

On her part, the State Commissioner for Health, Dr Tomi Coker while responding to enquiry, said, I am aware of the unfortunate demise of an obstetric patient at FMC. However, I am yet to receive a report from the clinical team at FMC.
WASHINGTON - The streaming video began and, within minutes, the presidents eldest son was musing that Osama bin Laden had endorsed Joe Biden.

Subtle, it was not. Welcome to the Trump campaign, digital edition.

Seven nights a week, President Donald Trumps reelection team is airing live programming online to replace his trademark rallies made impossible for now by the coronavirus pandemic. Hosted by top campaign officials, prominent Republicans and Make America Great Again luminaries, the freewheeling shows offer reality according to Trump. The shows are an effort to stay connected with core supporters and maintain enthusiasm for a suspended campaign that has had to rewire itself on the fly. Trump himself has not yet appeared in his campaigns shows.

A review of one weeks worth of the 8 p.m. broadcasts, ending on the final day of April, reveals a concerted effort to test attacks on Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee. But the inherently limited effort also raises questions as to whether the campaign can replace the gold mines of potentially new voter data that the rallies delivered as it attempts to reverse a recent slide in a number of battleground states.

The shows are a proxy for the Trump TV network the president considered launching had he lost the 2016 election, and they create an echo chamber for true believers. Akin to actors in a beloved sitcom well into its run, the Trump officials warmly speak in shorthand, trusting that their audience knows the plot and its characters and are tuning in to see programs that, at times, made the presidents infamously off-the-cuff rallies look tightly scripted.

Joe Biden had the coveted Osama bin Laden endorsement! Thats sort of a big deal! exclaimed Donald Trump Jr. on April 24, hosting that nights broadcast deemed Triggered after his new book.

Trump Jr. had seized upon an oddly timed recent Fox News story, which in itself was drawn from 2012 reporting that bin Laden, the late al-Qaida leader, had once proposed assassinating President Barack Obama because doing so would thrust Biden into power and the then-vice-president was totally unprepared for that post, in bin Ladens estimation. Trump cackled while sitting on the couch next to his girlfriend, former Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle, and looked into his Skype camera to declare that even bin Laden knew that Biden would destroy America.

After Guilfoyle went to cook dinner  it was the couples second anniversary that night  the presidents son, joined by Republican National Committee official Chris Carr and GOP operative David Bossie, continued to make politically incorrect observations that would draw more scrutiny if they were made anywhere other than a fans-only online broadcast.

China basically screwed the whole world with their lies about the origin of the coronavirus, Trump Jr. said, before addressing the theory that the pandemic began in a live-animal wet market in Wuhan, the epicenter of the Chinese outbreak. The world would be a better place if China cared a little more about feeding their own people so they dont have to eat bats. I dont know, just a casual observation.

Since the Trump campaign went fully virtual on March 13, each video has received at least 1 million hits, according to campaign spokeswoman Erin Perrine. She added that the shows drew more than 300 million combined views in April across all of its platforms: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Twitch, Mixr, and the campaigns own website, with Facebook by far the biggest source of traffic.

Tuesdays installment, which featured House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy of California, had received 10,943 views on YouTube as of mid-Friday morning. The campaign declined to release any information as to what it could glean in terms of the identity or demographics or hometown of its viewers, all of which was mined from rally sign-ups.

Given the current dynamic, there are a lot of things up in the air, said Republican strategist David Winston. Maybe this works, maybe it doesnt. But you have to be creative as you try to address the issue of how are you going to go about reaching voters.

A sense of irreverence, inspired by the presidents lack of filter, permeates the proceedings. On a Saturday night, campaign manager Brad Parscale and Lara Trump, a senior campaign adviser who is married to the presidents son Eric, traded observations about Biden, reinforcing a campaign narrative that the former Delaware senator was not up to the job.

After Lara Trump said Biden cannot form a coherent sentence, Parscale went on to add, I feel bad for him. I wish his wife would pull him out of this and take him to a beach in Delaware.

Parscale said the Trump team moved seamlessly into virtual campaigning after COVID-19 took hold in America and that even after the ground game returns, the campaign will leave its bolstered virtual apparatus in place. He later said his favourite item in his Florida home office was the Hillary Clinton toilet paper that someone gave him in 2016.

I have boxes of it, he said, and I take it into the bathroom and its just enjoyable since she said so many mean things about me and our campaign and our president. Clinton was the Democratic nominee in 2016.

The Biden campaign has said that, since mid-March, more than 63 million people have engaged with their online content, including livestreams, speeches, press briefings and replays of televised interviews. The candidate has done more online events since a makeshift television studio was set up in his Delaware home.

The Trump surrogates were all sent lights and laptops but the proceedings have a do-it-yourself feel, as the talking heads appear on their couches or in front of campaign signs plastered to home office walls. There are different themes nightly: one show during the week was centred around Veterans for Trump, another was Women for Trump and a third was Black Voices for Trump.

All were meant to be an answer to what was being shown at that moment on MSNBC and CNN.

We hope you like it, its an unconventional format, basically me hopped up on caffeine doing a rant, said Trump Jr. But if you like it, well do a lot more of them.

___

Lemire reported from New York. Associated Press writers Aamer Madani in Chicago and Darlene Superville, Deb Riechmann and Kevin Freking contributed to this report.
Leadership plays a crucial role in times of crises. In confronting unprecedented challenges such as the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), proper messaging is essential to galvanise people. In the Indian context, apart from region, language and faith, social diversity also plays an important role. The growing consciousness on social diversity is a significant step in dealing with exclusion and incidents of discrimination on the basis of birth. Therefore, any strategy to contain a crisis of this proportion must be inclusive.

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi used physical distancing instead of social distancing in Mann Ki Baat, it started a debate in India. In a deeply hierarchical society with traditional prejudices, social exclusion may masquerade as social distancing. That made intellectual leaders from the subaltern communities across the country question the term social distancing.

Not only in India, but voices from across the world challenged the usage of the term. Socially marginalised and racially segregated people, who are unfortunately at the bottom of the pyramid, unequivocally discarded the term social distancing. Rising international concerns eventually made the World Health Organization advocate for the use of the term physical distancing.

Caste still remains a fundamental component of the national conversation. It plays an instrumental role in shaping the structures of power and influence. Government data on social atrocities, published by the National Crime Records Bureau, recognises it as a cardinal source of tension in both rural and urban areas. The term social distancing, therefore, smells of archaic practices perpetuating casteism.

Noted thinker on Dalit issues and professor of sociology at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Vivek Kumar, says, There is absolutely nothing as a pristine, pure and universal culture. Terms are culturally-specific and, therefore, cultural constructs should also be society-specific. Social distancing in India was maintained during birth, death and menstruation. Social distance is the totality of interactional distancing barring all cultural and physical engagements. Hence, we must not even unconsciously legitimise anything that ends up intensifying social cleavages and conflicts.

There is an imminent threat of social distancing gaining traction in society. Regressive sections might choose to justify traditional social distancing as an effective tool to counter the pandemic. It will be a big dent to the efforts of those who have dedicated their lives for the cause of fairness and equality. Social reform movements against caste and its privileges are as old as Savitri Bai Phule and BR Ambedkar, and that struggle for equality still continues. We must go back to the Constitutions preamble, which seeks to achieve social justice as the nations ultimate virtue.

Empathy, sense of compassion and efforts aimed at achieving social solidarity to challenge Covid-19 must be acknowledged and encouraged at all levels. Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief, Mohan Bhagwat, too, in his address to the nation, promoted the term physical distancing instead of social distancing. The leadership, both at the government- and the civil society-level, has shown that the crisis needs a socially cohesive and comprehensive strategy.

India has made substantial progress, with a Dalit in the Rashtrapati Bhawan and a person from a socially-backward community as the countrys prime minister. The collective conscience of the country is at an all-time high. The march towards social justice and equality must compliment the efforts to contain the pandemic without losing credence. To crush the virus, this crisis must be transformed into an opportunity that coalesces the collective will of every Indian  irrespective of caste, creed, gender, and religion.

Guru Prakash is assistant professor, Patna University, and fellow, India Foundation

The views expressed are personal
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KALAMAZOO, MI -- A 24-year-old Kalamazoo resident was arrested Saturday for carrying a concealed weapon while police investigated a nearby retail fraud, police said.

Kalamzoo Public Safety officers were called to a business on the 3100 block of Lovers Lane about an incident of retail fraud, where witnesses described a car that suspects may have driven away in, according to a news release from the agency.

Officers found the car on the 1500 block of South Westnedge Avenue, where they recovered the stolen merchandise, according to the release.

Police arrested the Kalamazoo resident on a charge of carrying a concealed weapon. Charges of retail fraud will be requested from the prosecutors office against a 24-year-old Chicago resident, who was a passenger in the car, police said.

Officials did not say the genders of the suspects.

Anyone with information concerning this incident is asked to contact Kalamazoo Public Safety at 269-337-8994, or Silent Observer at 269-343-2100 or www.kalamazoosilentobserver.com.

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Sunday, May 3: Latest developments on coronavirus in Michigan
A press freedom organization has claimed that 55 journalists have died worldwide from the novel Coronavirus in the past two months.



The Press Emblem Campaign (PEC), made this known in a statement ahead of World Press Freedom Day on Sunday.



The organization lamented that media workers often lack proper protection for covering the pandemic and warned that many of them were putting their lives in danger.



Since March 1, the PEC said it had recorded the deaths of 55 media workers across 23 countries from the virus, but admitted that it was unclear if all of them had become infected on the job.



"Journalists are at great risk in this health crisis because they must continue to inform, by going to hospitals, interviewing doctors, nurses, political leaders, specialists, scientists, patients," PEC said in a statement.



It said that in a range of countries "indispensable protective measures" like physical distancing, quarantines, and mask-wearing had not been applied, especially early on in the outbreak.



Ecuador was the hardest-hit country, with at least nine journalists who had succumbed to the virus, followed by the United States, with eight, Brazil with four, and Britain and Spain with three each, it said.



The organization also echoed warnings from the United Nations that the pandemic, which had killed more than 230,000 people out of more than 3.2 million infected worldwide is being used in some countries as an excuse to crackdown on the media.



"Censorship, internet shutdowns, arbitrary detentions of journalists, physical and verbal attacks, and emergency laws that restrict press freedom have occurred in recent weeks," the PEC said.



It added that this was particularly worrying at a time when access to reliable public information was more vital than ever. "Transparency is paramount and can be lifesaving in a health crisis," it said.









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Libertarian presidential candidate Justin Amash dismissed the notion that his entry into the race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden could tip the scales in favour of Mr Trump, a popular argument among some political pundits who want to prevent a second term for the president this November.

We don't know how the additional candidate changes a race, it's too impossible to figure out. Theres too many calculations involved, Mr Amash, a Michigan congressman who defected from the Republican party after he voted to impeach Mr Trump last year, said Sunday in an interview with CNN.

Mr Amash launched an exploratory committee for president last Tuesday.

Political commentators, including former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh, immediately began speculating that Mr Amash could swipe enough independent voters or disaffected Republican voters in swing states such as Michigan and Wisconsin who would otherwise have been inclined to support Mr Biden over Mr Trump, thus increasing Mr Trump's chances at winning a second term.

"If Amash gets the Libertarian nomination and stays in until the end, he could wind up going in the books as the guy who voted to impeach Trump one year, then tipped the election to him 11 months later," Mr Walsh wrote in a Washington Post column last week.

Mr Amash's odds of winning the presidency are dim.

As CNN's Jake Tapper pointed out to Mr Amash, recent polling shows that only roughly 10 per cent of US adults say they would not be satisfied with choosing either Mr Trump or Mr Biden.

Still, Mr Amash believes he can topple the American two-party system by carving out a lane among independents like himself and people disaffected with the Democratic and Republican parties.

"I'm gonna win the election," Mr Amash said.

"When you look at a lot of different polls out there, you'll see that a good portion of the country, probably a plurality is pretty independent, and they are looking for another choice," he said.

No third-party candidate has won a modern US presidential election, although experts believe some have swung elections by siphoning votes that otherwise would have gone to the losing major-party candidate.

In the 2000 election, George W. Bush defeated Al Gore by 537 votes in Florida, where Independent Ralph Nader received 97,421 votes. Exit polls at the time showed more Nader voters in Florida would have voted for Mr Gore than for Mr Bush.

Mr Amash believes he can be more than just a spoiler, though.

For too long we've had the same system, where these two parties go at each other and Washington is totally dysfunctional. Thats why I left the Republican party, he said on Sunday.

We need someone who is going to come in as president, respect our constitution, defend our rights and fix our representative system of government so people will actually feel represented at home, he said.
President Donald Trump called out President George W. Bush for not asking Americans to put partisanship aside during his impeachment late last year.

'He was nowhere to be found in speaking up against the greatest Hoax in American history!' Trump tweeted Sunday morning.

Trump was responding to a rousing video his fellow Republican had put out the day before calling Americans to unite during the coronavirus pandemic.

President Trump, photographed Friday leaving for Camp David, asked Sunday why President George W. Bush didn't ask for partisanship to be put aside during Trump's impeachment late last year

President Trump blasted President George W. Bush for being 'nowhere to be found' during his impeachment late last year

On Saturday, Bush's blast-from-the-past message of solidarity overshadowed much of what President Trump had to say

The current Oval Office occupant was watching Fox News Channel and quoted contributor Pete Hegseth, writing 'Oh, [by] the way, I appreciate the message from former President Bush, but where was he during Impeachment calling for putting partisanship aside.'

Trump chimed in with his own message of Bush being 'nowhere to be found.'

The president was impeached by the House of Representatives in December, where Democrats have a majority, he was then acquitted by the GOP-led Senate in February.

The president is spending the weekend at Camp David after being predominantly cooped up in the White House since early March.

He did take a day trip to Norfolk, Virginia in late March to see the USNS Comfort off.

But his Sunday began like most days at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue - with him tweeting.

'The Fake News doesnt show real polls. Lamestream Media is totally CORRUPT, the Enemy of the People!' Trump wrote, highlighting a tweet he sent out Saturday in which he said he had a 96 per cent approval rating among members of the Republican Party.

President Trump started his Sunday morning from Camp David like most Sunday at the White House - by tweeting

He also lashed out at the Democratic governor of Maine for being too strict with residents during the pandemic.

On Saturday, however, Bush's message of solidarity overshadowed the words of the president.

Bush, who helped the country recover from the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, reminded that American people that 'we are human beings' who'rise or fall together' and are 'not partisan combatants'.

In a video released by the George W. Bush Presidential Center Saturday for the 24-hour Unite benefit, he urged people to 'remember how small our differences are' and come together to fight the 'invisible enemy' and support one another during the crisis.

His call for unity comes as the US political parties are more divided than ever before with Trump battling with Democrat governors, senators and representatives on a near daily basis.

'This is a challenging and solemn time in the life of our nation and world - a remorseless, invisible enemy threatens the elderly and vulnerable among us,' Bush's voice is heard saying against a video montage of various images of American life.

'A disease that can quickly take breath and life. Medical professionals are risking their own health for the health of others, and we're deeply grateful.

'Officials at every level are setting out the requirements of public health that protect us all, and we all need to do our part.'

The footage starts with a reel of images showing the old normal - pictures of children smiling, brides on their wedding days, large celebrations such as the Chinese New Year, men in barber shops and people dancing together.

Bush admits that the current situation is one of 'loneliness' where 'a hug, a touch - can bring the opposite of the good we intend' as social distancing guidelines mean people cannot currently enjoy typical human interaction.

But, though it is 'frustrating', these measures are critical to protecting lives, he points out.

'The disease also threatens broader damage, harm to our sense of safety, security and community. The larger challenge we share is to confront an outbreak of fear and loneliness,' he said.

Former President George W. Bush issued a rousing call to Americans to unite during the coronavirus pandemic

Bush at Ground Zero three days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks: In the video he reminds Americans that the nation has faced times of crisis before, when 2,977 people were killed in the attacks across New York City, Washington DC and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania

A Message from President George W. Bush@TheCalltoUnite pic.twitter.com/FIn9wuOPTF  George W. Bush Presidential Center (@TheBushCenter) May 2, 2020

'And it is frustrating that many of the normal tools of compassion - a hug, a touch - can bring the opposite of the good we intend. In this case, we serve our neighbor by separating from them.'

Bush encourated people to find new ways to connect.

'We cannot allow physical separation to become emotional isolation. This requires us to be not only compassionate but creative in our outreach - and people across the nation are using the tools of technology and the cause of solidarity,' he says.

Bush goes on to remind Americans that the nation has faced and come through times of crisis before, when 2,977 people were killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks across New York City, Washington DC and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

As president at the time of the attacks, Bush led the nation through its last great test.

His approval rating by the American public soared after 9/11 and the nation showed signs of unity.

People rallied behind the phrase United We Stand and patriotism skyrocketed, polls taken in the aftermath revealed.

Bush reminded people of this time in the video as stills of him meeting emergency responders at Ground Zero after the attacks play across the audio.

'In this time of testing, we need to remember a few things. First, let us remember that we have faced times of testing before. Following 9/11, we saw a great nation rise as one to honor the brave, to grieve with the grieving and to embrace unavoidable new duties. And I have no doubt - none at all - that this spirit of sacrifice is alive and well in America,' he said.

Medical workers in New York battle the pandemic: Bush admits social distancing is 'frustrating' but these measures are critical to protecting lives

Images then turn to modern day, of people delivering food to the doors of elderly neighbors, sewing masks to protect people from the virus and food donations being handed out to Americans in need.

Bush calls for people to remember 'empathy' and to be mindful that some groups - 'the elderly, the ill, and the unemployed' - are being harder-hit by the pandemic than others.

'Second, let us remember that empathy and simple kindness are essential, powerful tools of national recovery. Even at an appropriate social distance, we can find ways to be present in the lives of others - to ease their anxiety and share their burdens,' he said.

'Third, let's remember that the suffering we experience as a nation does not fall evenly. In the days to come, it will be especially important to care for the elderly, the ill, and the unemployed.'

'Finally let us remember how small our differences are in the face of this shared threat.'

He added: 'In the final analysis, we are not partisan combatants - we are human beings, equally vulnerable and equally wonderful in the sight of God. We rise or fall together and we are determined to rise. God bless you all.'

The former president's calls for unity comes as the Trump administration has been embroiled in ongoing clashes with Democrats over the country's response to the pandemic.

Analysis released last week revealed the president had spent a total of two hours attacking the media and Democrats over the course of his daily coronavirus press briefings.

Studies from the Washington Post and the New York Times found the daily meetings have been used for the president to praise his own response to the pandemic and attack his rivals.

Outside of press briefings, Trump has almost-daily jibes with Democrats on social media.

He launched yet another spat Saturday - this one targeting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi because of her decision to reject the White House's offer to provide Congress with rapid coronavirus testing.

The former president's calls for unity comes as President Trump has been embroiled in ongoing clashes with Democrats over the country's response to the pandemic

'No reason to turn it down, except politics. We have plenty of testing. Maybe you need a new Doctor over there,' he blasted in a Twitter rant.

'Crazy Nancy will use it as an excuse not to show up to work!'

His outburst came just days after he attacked her in another social media post where he accused her of canceling the House's return because she is 'enjoying [her] vacation'.

Pelosi said the House will not return due to COVID-19 health concerns after Congress' top doctor warned her against bringing members back to Washington, as cases have not started to fall in the area.

In recent weeks, Trump has heaped praise on states with Republican governors for easing lockdowns and singled out states with Democratic governors that have maintained stay-at-home orders.

Thousands have taken to the streets across the U.S. demanding an end to stay-at-home orders, blasting governors for taking away liberty and destroying the job market and the economy.

The US continues to be the hardest-hit nation from the pandemic.

As of end of Saturday, 67,173 Americans have been killed by coronavirus and 1,160,519 people have been infected.
Hell has no fury like women angered, as four women killed an Arizona mother whom they kidnapped as well. Four women were arrested by authorities after they kidnapped a woman from Arizona, but the kidnapped woman was found lifeless about three days later.

According to sources, the victim was spotted with Christina and Mercedes Gomez in Mesa on March 17, based on probable cause statement procured by Oxygen.com.

Victim was a mom of three kids

According to court documents, KPNX made a report that one, Melissa Valenzuela, age 34, was found dead on March 23. She is survived by three children.

Before she was found lifeless, she had guests at her mesa home. These guests were Christina and Mercedez Gomez, who was identified by witnesses at her place. But, some reports added more detail that said two more suspects were seen.

The police identified them as Melissa Servin and Nadine Chavez, they were observed to be in a heated argument with a woman that looked like the victim when she disappeared soon after.

One witness claimed that they saw Chavez, Christina Gomez, Servin, and other unidentified women, ganging up on Valenzuela who was pushed or dragged by the murdering quartet.

In the ensuing scuffle, Valenzuela was screaming for someone to help her and to call 911. The police said, it was Valenzuela shouting to others, so she can escape her kidnappers based on a police statement.

Melissa will soon lose her life and never see her children. Cellphone records obtained on that day indicate that Mercedes Gomez had gone to Phoenix that same day.

Also read: Jealous Husband Shot Wife to Death, Kids Lead the Police to Her Lifeless Body

The murderers of Valenzuela

Christina Gomez, Mercedes Gomez, Nadine Chavez and Melissa Servin are now suspected felons for the murdered Melissa Valenzuela, a mother of three.

These perpetrators are getting charged with a felony, soon after the mother of three was kidnapped by them and ended up dead several days later.

According to Mesa Police Det. Jason Flam, who told Oxygen.com, they will probe the death of Melissa Valenzuela if the women are guilty of murder or not, he added," active, ongoing investigation."

Witnesses confession

After the witness saw Valenzuela screaming and calling for 911, she was never seen alive after that incident. One curious activity that was noticed is the suspects cleaning up, on the front part of the home of Chavez, records state.

Investigators spoke with the brother of Chavez, who mentioned to the police when he came to his sister's house on March 17 and 18. He saw blood all over the bathroom tiles, with one tile not in place based on the probable cause statement.

He added, when asked his sister what transpired, she said that Mercedes Gomez and Christina Gomez had come to visit her with someone else, a third woman. She then told him, Mercedes and Christina with the third female, then killed a woman in the residence.

Later, those who murdered Valenzuela got the body, while Chavez and others destroyed the evidence. The brother told police that his sister showed an article of a missing woman, he then suspected it was Valenzuela who owned the blood.

Another witness said in March, in the Chavez residence, she was shocked to see blood in the bathroom which she helped clean. One other person was Christina Gomez.

Melissa Valenzuela was discovered lifeless on March 23rd, and it is murder according to authorities. All the suspected murderers are on $50,000, the four women will be put on trial for the murder of Melissa Valenzuela.

Related article: Father Who Stabbed His Two Children to Death Arrested During Lockdown

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Haiti - Politic : The UN inaction deprives Haitian victims of cholera of justice





On Thursday in Geneva, a group of independent United Nations human rights experts called on Secretary General Antonio Guterres to urgently step up efforts to keep the United Nations promise to help the victims of the cholera epidemic in Haiti that claimed nearly 10,000 lives.



"The importance of relief is even more urgent in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, which could deal a double blow to victims of the cholera outbreak and their families," the experts said. "We recognise the immense challenges all actors face in responding to the coronavirus, but this new threat cannot mask past failures and ongoing violations."



The experts said more than three years ago, the UN acknowledged the role played by its peacekeepers in causing the epidemic. It has since failed to pay any compensation and its subsequent underfunded aid effort has amounted to little more than a spate of symbolic development projects.



"Serious shortfalls in funding and expenditures make the UNs promises illusory. Despite initially seeking $400 million https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19550-haiti-politics-un-adopts-new-strategy-against-cholera-in-haiti.html over two years, the UN has raised a mere $20.5 million in about three years https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-20204-haiti-cholera-funding-failure-for-the-$400m-un-funds.html and has spent a pitiful $3.2 million [...]"



The experts also raised concerns about the UNs decision to help people affected by cholera through community assistance rather than direct support. "Some victims prefer monetary payments, an option that was once on the table, but the UN has foreclosed that possibility seemingly without carrying out consultations or producing a detailed feasibility assessment," said the experts. Compensation is ordinarily a central component of the right to an effective remedy, and development projects are simply not a replacement for reparations.



The experts have received reports that victims have not been adequately involved in the design and development of community assistance projects. While the UN says it is consulting with multi-stakeholder community platforms to develop projects, it is not clear how those most affected by cholera are being prioritised in these exercises.



"Many of these shortcomings result from the UNs admission of its moral responsibility https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-18376-haiti-cholera-the-untouchable-un-recognizes-its-moral-responsibility.html but not its legal one," said the experts, adding "Asking UN Member States to make a charitable contribution is entirely different from payments linked to a legal obligation"



"Haitis Government has its own options to seek justice for victims, such as requesting an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice," the experts said. "To our knowledge, it has taken no steps in that direction."



HL/ HaitiLibre


















As the central government extended the nationwide COVID-19 lockdown for two more weeks, the Gautam Buddha Nagar district administration on Sunday issued a new set of guidelines regarding what is allowed or restricted in the containment and non-containment zones of the district.

Gautam Buddh Nagar District Magistrate Suhas Lalinakere Yathiraj announced that people living in containment zones, which are high-risk areas, are not allowed to move outside the zones except for medical emergencies and maintaining supply of essential goods and services.

As per guidelines of MHA and State Govt, GBN has been divided into Containment and Non Containment zones Inside containment zone only Supply/Movement of Emergency services, Essential goods/services allowed Nobody from this zone allowed to attend work,move outside this zone - DM G.B. Nagar (@dmgbnagar) May 3, 2020

"All shops inside gated residential group housing complex are allowed. All shops selling essential goods in market and market complexes are allowed. Private offices can operate with up to 33 per cent strength, rest work from home. Government offices can open only as per guidelines (sic)," he said in a series of tweets.

As Gautam Budh Nagar falls under the Red zone category, no vehicles, other than those related to COVID duty, essential services, and carrying bona fide passes, will be allowed to enter or exit the district. Restriction on inter-state and inter-district movement of vehicles stands as before, the District Magistrate said.

Also Read: Liquor shops to open in Delhi, other cities: What to keep in mind when you go to buy alcohol

"For the use of vehicles, restrictions with respect to social distancing as specified by home ministry/state government shall be in force. You are requested to kindly follow. Violators shall be dealt with firmly (sic)," he said.

In the non-containment zone, all activities are permitted except the ones prohibited by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). "All necessary permissions shall be issued immediately and online. For special economic zone (SEZ) and export oriented units (EOU), Development Commissioner, government of India shall issue permission in consultation with incident commander," he said.

Also Read: Lockdown 3.0: Allow industries to resume across all zones, CII tells govt

"In the non-containment zone, for such categories of industry permitted under the guidelines, an online portal is being developed, permissions shall be issued online by respective authorities/UPSIDC/Incident Commanders, as the case may be. Portal should be ready by tomorrow," he said.

In the non-containment zone, only in-situ construction activities, where workers are available on site and no workers are required to be brought in from outside, are allowed. "Authorities shall give permission to the builders. The process shall be published by the authorities," he added.

By Chitranjan Kumar
Punjab saw the steepest rise in the number of coronavirus cases on Sunday with 331 more persons, mostly pilgrims returning from Nanded, testing positive for the disease, officials said.

With the fresh detections, the number of COVID-19 cases in the state now stands at 1,102.

At least 609 of the 4,000 pilgrims who have returned from Hazur Sahib gurdwara in Maharashtra's Nanded in recent days have tested positive for coronavirus, a heath official said.

The pilgrims account for 55 per cent of the total coronavirus cases in the state, he said.

Of the fresh cases, 75 were reported in Amritsar, followed by 62 in SBS Nagar, 46 in Hoshiarpur, 43 in Muktsar, 33 in Bathinda, 24 in Gurdaspur, nine in Rupnagar, three in Mansa, four each in Sangrur, Jalandhar and Fatehgarh Sahib, two each in Mohali, Barnala and Ferozepur and one each in Patiala and Ludhiana, according to a health bulletin.

Meanwhile, a 40-year-old, who was undergoing treatment at the Faridkot hospital, died on Sunday. His test report confirming him to be coronavirus positive came after his death. This is the first COVID-19 related death in the district.

The number of COVID-19 related deaths in the state now stands at 21.

Amritsar topped the COVID-19 tally in the state with 218 cases, followed by 124 in Jalandhar, 111 in Ludhiana, 95 in Mohali, 88 in Hoshiarpur, 86 in Patiala, 85 in SBS Nagar, 50 in Muktsar, 35 in Bathinda, 30 in Gurdaspur, 29 in Ferozepur, 28 in Moga, 25 in Pathankot, 16 each in Mansa and Fatehgarh Sahib, 14 each in Tarn Taran and Rupnagar, 13 in Kapurthala, six in Faridkot and four each in Fazilka and Barnala, the bulletin said.

Of the total 1,102 patients, 117 have been cured and 964 are undergoing treatment.

Two patients are critical and on ventilator support, according to the bulletin.

A total of 26,439 samples have been taken in the state so far, of which 20,197 are negative and reports of 5,140 awaited.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Donald Trump has referred to the coronavirus pandemic as a great and powerful plague in a tweet this weekend, after more than 67,000 people in the US died because of Covid-19.

President Trump returned to the White House on Sunday afternoon on Marine 1 after a "working weekend" at Camp David in Maryland. He was accompanied back to DC by son-in-law Jared Kushner and aide Dan Scavino.

The president began Sunday morning by tweeting out his approval rating, showing he had 47 per cent of support among voters in a Gallup poll conducted in late April.

He wrote: Going well despite the Fake News!

President Donald Trump waves as he walks from Marine One at the White House on 3 May (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images) (AFP via Getty Images)

Mr Trump then turned to the outbreak of the novel virus, beginning in a separate tweet: And then came a Plague, a great and powerful Plague, and the World was never to be the same again!

But America rose from this death and destruction, he continued, always remembering its many lost souls, and the lost souls all over the World, and became greater than before!

The president has stirred controversy in recent weeks over his administrations handling of the coronavirus pandemic as well as his bizarre comments made about Covid-19 online and during multiple White House press briefings.

Mr Trump suggested the possibility of ingesting disinfectants or using sunlight to potentially treat patients infected with Covid-19 during a press conference in late April  comments he later claimed were not actually serious. A number of states subsequently reported a rise in calls to poison control centres.

Larry Hogan, a Republican governor from Maryland who told CBS his state saw hundreds of those calls come in after Mr Trump made the remarks, said in an interview with Face the Nation: I think it is critical that the President of the United States, when people are really scared and in the middle of this worldwide pandemic, that in these press conferences, that we really get the facts out there.

Mr Trump has referred to the pandemic as a plague in other statements. He told religious leaders ahead of the Passover and Easter holidays in a conference call: Were going to beat this plague. Were going to beat this virus and were going to beat it soon.

The president has ramped up his already-frequent Twitter usage during a working weekend at Camp David, attacking Joe Biden and the Democratic Party, as well as Congress, and showing support for Michael Flynn in a series of tweets.
I told Laurie Garrett that she might as well change her name to Cassandra. Everyone is calling her that anyway.

She and I were Zooming  thats a verb now, right?  and she pulled out a 2017 book, Warnings: Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes. It notes that Garrett, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, was prescient not only about the impact of HIV but also about the emergence and global spread of more contagious pathogens.

Im a double Cassandra, Garrett said.

Shes also prominently mentioned in a recent Vanity Fair article by David Ewing Duncan about the Coronavirus Cassandras.

Cassandra, of course, was the Greek prophetess doomed to issue unheeded warnings. What Garrett has been warning most direly about  in her 1994 bestseller, The Coming Plague, and in subsequent books and speeches, including TED Talks  is a pandemic like the current one.

She saw it coming. So a big part of what I wanted to ask her about was what she sees coming next. Steady yourself. Her crystal ball is dark.

Despite the stock markets swoon for it, remdesivir probably isnt our ticket out, she told me. Its not curative, she said, pointing out that the strongest claims so far are that it merely shortens the recovery of COVID-19 patients. We need either a cure or a vaccine.

But she cant envision that vaccine anytime in the next year, while COVID-19 will remain a crisis much longer than that.

Ive been telling everybody that my event horizon is about 36 months, and thats my best-case scenario, she said.

Im quite certain that this is going to go in waves, she added. It wont be a tsunami that comes across America all at once and then retreats all at once. It will be micro-waves that shoot up in Des Moines and then in New Orleans and then in Houston and so on, and its going to affect how people think about all kinds of things.

Theyll reevaluate the importance of travel. Theyll reassess their use of mass transit. Theyll revisit the need for face-to-face business meetings. Theyll reappraise having their kids go to college out of state.

So, I asked, is back to normal, a phrase that so many people cling to, a fantasy?

This is history right in front of us, Garrett said. Did we go back to normal after 9/11? No. We created a whole new normal. We securitized the United States. We turned into an anti-terror state. And it affected everything. We couldnt go into a building without showing ID and walking through a metal detector, and couldnt get on airplanes the same way ever again. Thats whats going to happen with this.

Not the metal detectors, but a seismic shift in what we expect, in what we endure, in how we adapt.

Maybe in political engagement, too, Garrett said.

If America enters the next wave of coronavirus infections with the wealthy having gotten somehow wealthier off this pandemic by hedging, by shorting, by doing all the nasty things that they do, and we come out of our rabbit holes and realize, Oh, my God, its not just that everyone I love is unemployed or underemployed and cant make their maintenance or their mortgage payments or their rent payments, but now all of a sudden those jerks that were flying around in private helicopters are now flying on private personal jets, and they own an island that they go to, and they dont care whether or not our streets are safe, then I think we could have massive political disruption.

Just as we come out of our holes and see what 25% unemployment looks like, she said, we may also see what collective rage looks like.

Garrett has been on my radar since the early 1990s, when she worked for Newsday and did some of the best reporting anywhere on AIDS. Her Pulitzer, in 1996, was for coverage of Ebola in Zaire. She has been a fellow at Harvards School of Public Health, was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and consulted on the 2011 movie Contagion.

Her expertise, in other words, has long been in demand. But not like now.

Each morning when she opens her email, theres the Argentina request, Hong Kong request, Taiwan request, South Africa request, Morocco, Turkey, she told me. Not to mention all of the American requests. It made me feel bad about taking more than an hour of her time on April 27. But not so bad that I didnt cadge another 30 minutes on April 30.

She said she wasnt surprised that a coronavirus wrought this devastation, that China minimized what was going on or that the response in many places was sloppy and sluggish. Shes Cassandra, after all.

But there is one part of the story she couldnt have predicted: that the paragon of sloppiness and sluggishness would be the United States.

I never imagined that, she said. Ever.

The highlights  or, rather, lowlights  include President Donald Trumps initial acceptance of the assurances by President Xi Jinping of China that all would be well; his scandalous complacency from late January through early March; his cheerleading for unproven treatments; his musings about cockamamie ones; his abdication of muscular federal guidance for the states; and his failure, even now, to sketch out a detailed, long-range strategy for containing the coronavirus.

Having long followed Garretts work, I can attest that its not driven by partisanship. She praised George W. Bush for fighting HIV in Africa.

But she called Trump the most incompetent, foolhardy buffoon imaginable.

And shes shocked that America isnt in a position to lead the global response to this crisis, in part because science and scientists have been so degraded under Trump.

Referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and its analogues abroad, she told me, Ive heard from every CDC in the world  the European CDC, the African CDC, China CDC  and they say, Normally, our first call is to Atlanta, but we aint hearing back. Theres nothing going on down there. Theyve gutted that place. Theyve gagged that place. I cant get calls returned anymore. Nobody down there is feeling like its safe to talk. Have you even seen anything important and vital coming out of the CDC?

The problem, Garrett added, is bigger than Trump and older than his presidency. America has never been sufficiently invested in public health. The riches and renown go mostly to physicians who find new and better ways to treat heart disease, cancer and the like. The big political conversation is about individuals access to health care.

But what about the work to keep our air and water safe for everyone; to design policies and systems for quickly detecting outbreaks, containing them and protecting entire populations? Where are the rewards for the architects of that?

Garrett recounted her time at Harvard. The medical school is all marble, with these grand columns, she said. The school of public health is this funky building, the ugliest possible architecture, with the ceilings falling in.

Thats America? I asked.

Thats America, she said.

And what America needs most right now, she said, isnt this drumbeat of testing, testing, testing, because there will never be enough superfast, superreliable tests to determine on the spot who can safely enter a crowded workplace or venue, which is the scenario that some people seem to have in mind. America needs good information, from many rigorously designed studies, about the prevalence and deadliness of coronavirus infections in given subsets of people so that governors and mayors can develop rules for social distancing and reopening that are sensible, sustainable and tailored to the situation at hand.

America needs a federal government that assertively promotes and helps to coordinate that, not one in which experts like Tony Fauci and Deborah Birx tiptoe around a presidents tender ego.

I can sit here with you for three hours listing  boom, boom, boom  what good leadership would look like and how many more lives would be saved if we followed that path, and its just incredibly upsetting, Garrett said. I feel like Im just coming out of maybe three weeks of being in a funk because of the profound disappointment that theres not a whisper of it.

Instead of that whisper, she hears wailing: the sirens of ambulances carrying coronavirus patients to hospitals near her apartment in Brooklyn Heights, New York, where she has been home alone, in lockdown, since early March. If I dont get hugged soon, Im going to go bananas, she told me. Im desperate to be hugged.

Me, too. Especially after her omens.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Amid the current devastation of the arts, Melbourne Digital Concert Hall, which has raised more than $100,000 for classical musicians since its inception less than two months ago, is a rare good news story. This week, Melbournes orchestral players are the focus of a festival of 14 concerts celebrating the breadth and depth of their talent.

Festivities opened with a program led by Melbourne Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Dale Barltrop. Barltrop and colleagues Isin Cakmakcioglu and Gabby Halloran shone in Dvoraks Terzetto in C major for two violins and viola, Op. 74, giving an account that was both robust and refined. The admirably rich blend of the groups tone revealed the composers grander, symphonic ambitions in this work, which was written as a piece of domestic chamber music.

After an introduction with neatly contrasted ideas came a nostalgic Larghetto whose long arc of melody was beautifully spun. A rustic scherzo, typical of Dvorak, was the perfect foil to the finales theme and variations in which Barltrop urged his friends on to an impassioned finish.

A brace of Bachs two-part inventions played by Barltrop and MSO principal cello David Berlin, were well varied in mood and texture and displayed the players agile, keenly responsive ensemble skills.

Barltrop and Berlin were joined by MSO principal viola, Chris Moore for Beethovens String Trio in C minor, Op. 9, No. 3. The quicksilver energy that was evident from all three players at the beginning never flagged throughout the work, except in the Adagio where a beguiling beauty of tone prevailed.
Face coverings are set to become mandatory for airline passengers  even though medical opinion is sceptical of the potential benefits.

Airlines and airports are demanding that internationally agreed measures are in place when aviation starts to recover from the near-standstill caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

The industry fears that many prospective passengers will be deterred from travelling if they believe flying places them at risk of contracting the virus from fellow travellers. The hope is that the universal use of face coverings will restore confidence.

At present, passenger numbers at airports and on most flights are so low that maintaining separation is generally achievable  though not at the security search area, passport control and departure gates.

When numbers increase, imposing a two-metre social-distancing rule would be virtually impossible in an airport or plane without destroying the economics of aviation.

Heathrow airport is calling for a common international standard for safe air travel.

The UK government, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency and the International Civil Aviation Organisation have yet to decide on precautions for flying while Covid-19 remains a threat.

Public Health England is unconvinced about the public use of face coverings, saying: Face masks play a very important role in clinical settings, such as hospitals, but theres very little evidence of widespread benefit from their use outside of these clinical settings.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) goes one step further and cautions: The wide use of masks by healthy people in the community setting is not supported by current evidence and carries uncertainties and critical risk.

WHO warns that wearing a mask can create a false sense of security, leading to potentially less adherence to other preventive measures such as physical distancing and hand hygiene.

Nevertheless, increasingly impatient airlines and airports are set to impose their own rules on hygiene.

Manchester Airports Group (MAG), which owns Manchester, East Midlands and Stansted, will this week set out what it calls various new safety measures to deal with coronavirus.

The Independent understands the pilot programme will include a requirement for passengers to wear non-medical face-coverings while passing through the airport.

A spokesperson for MAG said of the measures: They are designed to help the small number of passengers currently making essential journeys through our airports feel safer and more confident about flying at this time.

We will be providing confirmation of exact guidance for passengers, to allow them to fully prepare for their journey, before the measures are put in place.

An increasing number of airlines have made wearing a face covering compulsory. Canada insists all passengers must carry a suitable covering, though it is not compulsory to wear it during the entire journey.

Some airlines are also leaving middle seats free to keep passengers further apart. But Ryanair  Europes biggest budget airline  has criticised the concept.

This empty middle seat measure is wholly ineffective and does not comply with two-metre social-distancing rules, a spokesperson said. We need effective health measures that work, such as wearing face masks and/or monitoring body temperature.

But the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control describes temperature checks at airports as not very effective in preventing the spread of the virus, especially when people do not have symptoms.

The organisation says: It is generally considered more useful to provide those arriving at airports with clear information explaining what to do if they develop symptoms after arrival.

Separately, passengers on Eurostar will be required to wear face coverings from the start of service on Monday, 4 May.

The international train operator said: Passengers must wear a face mask or face covering at our stations and on board in line with guidelines announced by the French and Belgian governments.

Any type of mask is suitable as long as it effectively covers your nose and mouth.

If you dont have a mask you may be refused travel on our services. Wed like to advise you that fines may be imposed in France and Belgium if youre not wearing a mask.
Delhi Minorities Commission chairman Zafarul Islam Khan, who was booked by the Delhi Police under sedition charges for a controversial social media post, on Sunday asserted that he will continue his fight against "hate politics" without being deterred by arrest or jail.

He also said that it was "erroneously" reported by a section of media that he had deleted his tweet in question, saying he stood by its content.

"I will continue, now and in future, the fight against hate politics in the country. FIRs, arrests and imprisonments do not change this path which I have chosen for myself consciously years ago to save my country, my people, the Indian secular polity and the Constitution," Khan said in a Facebook post on Sunday.

An FIR was registered against Khan on April 30 under section 124 A (sedition) and 153 A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth) after police received a complaint by a resident of Vasant Kunj.

In the FIR, the complainant alleged that Khan's post was "provocative", "deliberate" and seditious and intended to cause disharmony and create a rift in the society, police said, adding that the case is being investigated by the cyber cell.

The controversy erupted after Khan thanked Quwait in a tweet on last Tuesday for taking note of the "persecution" of Indian Muslims and shared a Facebook post which led the BJP to slam him and demanded his removal from the post of the Delhi Minorities Commission chairman.

Khan, who had tendered an apology for his post, said he did so not because of its content, but because it was "ill-timed and insensitive" in the midst of a medical emergency faced by the country.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Photo: Getty Images

Forget about the adorable elephant documentary, this is the juicy stuff weve been waiting for. Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, who are now more than a month into their unceremonious exit from the British royal family, have reportedly cooperated with journalists who penned a tell-all biography about their new life. Deadline reports that Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family, written by Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand, secured an interview with the couple just before they left the United Kingdom for sunnier pastures in Canada (and now Los Angeles). The book, set for an August 20 release, is teased as going beyond the headlines to reveal unknown details of Harry and Meghans life together, in addition to getting participation of those closest to the couple. Our hearts say its a cooing baby Archie, but our minds say Meghans yogi momma.
S ocial gatherings could be limited to 10 people until 2021 to prevent a second wave of coronavirus infections in the UK, scientists have warned.

Senior epidemiologist Adam Kucharski warned the UK could face "exponential growth" in cases if groups of people start gathering at large "super-spreader" events as lockdown measures start easing.

His team at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that Covid-19 infection rates can only be kept low if the number of social contacts people have outside their homes remains tightly controlled until a vaccine becomes available.

"Look at where these super-spreading events occur, it's often at family gatherings and meals and weddings and parties and all these things that socially we want to happen," Dr Kucharski told The Sunday Times.

Europe takes it's first steps out of Coronavirus lockdown 1 /25 Europe takes it's first steps out of Coronavirus lockdown People queue at a hardware store during a partial reopening after the Austrian government eased lockdown restrictions Reuters A worker checks the temperature of a customer at the entrance of a supermarket in Itay Reuters Customers hold flowers in front of a DIY store in Graz, Austria, after it re-opened on April 14, 2020, following a "shutdown" in a measure to limit the spread of the new coronavirus APA/AFP via Getty Images People wearing protective face masks and gloves walk in the streets as the Italian government allows the reopening of some shops while a nationwide lockdown continues following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Venice, Italy, Reuters People queue to enter a hardware store during a partial reopening after the Austrian government eased restrictions following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Eisenstadt, Austria Reuters Camilla Cocchi wears a face mask and gloves as she sorts out clothing in her children's clothes shop after it was allowed to reopen following lockdown measures to contain the spread of Covid-19, in Rome AP A man wearing a face mask shops in a hardware store during a partial reopening after the Austrian government eased restrictions following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Eisenstadt, Austria Reuters "Respect the 2 meters distance" banner is seen at a fish stand as the Italian government allows the reopening of some shops while a nationwide lockdown continues following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Venice, Italy, Reuters Customers wearing face masks push shopping carts in front of a DIY store in Vienna, Austria, after it re-opened on April 14, 2020, following a "shutdown" in a measure to limit the spread of the new coronavirus APA/AFP via Getty Images A worker checks the temperature of a customer at the entrance of a supermarket, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, in Turin, Italy Reuters Customers line up in front of a DIY store in Graz, Austria APA/AFP via Getty Images Gianfranco Mandas wears a face mask as he sorts out clothing in his children's clothes shop after it was allowed to opens following restriction measures to contain the spread of Covid-19, in Rome AP Customers wearing face masks push shopping carts in front of a DIY store in Vienna, Austria, after it re-opened on April 14, 2020, following a "shutdown" in a measure to limit the spread of the new coronavirus APA/AFP via Getty Images Customers queue at the Trastevere market, as new restrictions for open-air markets are implemented to prevent the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Rome, Italy, Reuters Customers wearing face masks push shopping carts in front of a DIY store in Vienna, Austria, after it re-opened on April 14, 2020, following a "shutdown" in a measure to limit the spread of the new coronavirus APA/AFP via Getty Images A man wears a protective face mask and gloves at the newsstand as the Italian government allows the reopening of some shops while a nationwide lockdown continues following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Venice, Italy Reuters People wearing face masks work in a hardware store during a partial reopening after the Austrian government eased restrictions following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Eisenstadt, Austria Reuters Customers queue at the Trastevere market, as new restrictions for open-air markets are implemented to prevent the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Rome, Italy Reuters A general view of the parking area of a hardware store during the partial reopening of shops after the Austrian government loosens its lockdown restrictions during the global coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Vienna Reuters

He added: "As soon as measures are lifted, we risk being back where we started, facing exponential growth."

The study by The Centre for the Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases suggests that social distancing measures would most likely have to stay in place until at least next year.

Its going to be very hard to maintain control of the virus without some form of physical distancing unless your contact tracing is getting people isolated and tested really quickly and getting to their contacts really quickly, Dr Kucharski told The Telegraph.

It comes as Transport Secretary Grant Shapps announced that the NHS contact tracing app will be rolled out later this month if an initial trial in the Isle of Wight is successful.

But Mr Kucharski said easing the lockdown measures would need to include social distancing restrictions in some form, alongside contact tracing.

People exercising in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, east London / PA

He added: I think there is some hope. The optimistic scenario is that well have more targeted and less disruptive measures, but life is going to remain pretty different for the foreseeable future, until a vaccine emerges."

Another study by the Division of Molecular and Clinical Medicine at the University of Dundee said social groups outside of the home, school and work should be limited to five people.

The findings of both studies will be discussed at a Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) meeting this week.
In the latest monologue of the at-home edition of Real Time, Bill Maher talked about the recent disturbing or just weird current events amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and one thing he took particular issue with the way Mike Pence handled a trip to the Mayo Clinic this week.

On Tuesday, Pence toured the Mayo Clinic to get a look at how it is dealing with coronavirus patients, but the vice president inexplicably did not wear a face mask, despite being surrounded by sick people. Face masks are of course mandatory at the clinic, but Pence claims no one told him of this fact. There are some problems with that account, however.

First, the Mayo Clinic has since said that Pence was definitely told about the policy in advance. And second, at least one journalist who accompanied Pence has said they were all told about the policy and instructed to comply with it. Pence was apparently so unhappy with that disclosure, that the reporter was banned from Air Force Two for two weeks in retaliation, according to the Washington Post.

Also Read: Voice of America Reporter Says He Was Banned From Air Force Two Over Report on Mike Pence's Maskless Mayo Clinic Visit

You know who else is not popular this week? Mike Pence. Not popular, Maher said about that. Went to the Mayo Clinic. Everyone was wearing a mask, of course, it was the Mayo Clinic, or everywhere. And he did not have a mask. Mike Pence said, No its okay. Ive been tested. And besides, theyre called barefaced lies.' Zing!

Bill Maher Says Mike Pence Didnt Wear a Mask at the Mayo Clinic Because He Wanted to Tell Barefaced Lies (Video)

Maher also brought up how Trump has responded to the possibility that the supply of meat in the U.S. might be affected by coronavirus outbreaks at meat processing facilities. Trump issued an executive order requiring those facilities to remain open (even though the order doesnt require worker safety to be taken into account).

Yeah, dont dont f with lunch, Maher said. The War Powers Act, which is at his disposal  he could use it for you know masks, ventilators. He used it this week to make sure that the meatpacking plants were kept open. Because meat, now its personal. You step on Donald Trumps meat hose and s just got real.

Story continues

Also Read: Mike Pence Wears Mask to General Motors After Public Shaming Over Mayo Clinic Visit

Maher also talked about the thing everyone has been talking about for a week now  how Donald Trump literally suggested it might be possible for people to fight coronavirus by injecting disinfectant into the body. (As always, absolutely do not do this.)

Yes. This incomparably stupid man actually suggested  and hes the president of the United States, I dont know if you know that  actually suggested this week that people ingest cleaning disinfectants, Maher complained. And his voters started calling poison control centers to see if that was okay. Deplorable? Theyre the unbleachables.

After briefly touching on Hillary Clintons endorsement of Joe Biden, Maher concluded by poking fun at the order to begin reopening Georgia, which began this week and will continue next week. States are starting to open up for business again. Georgia leading the way. They have opened up the tattoo parlors and the beauty salons. In the south, what they call the high-tech sector,' Maher joked.

And its good to see that in Georgia things are becoming normal again. When I say becoming normal, I mean being able to get a tattoo of Jesus wrestling a snake, he continued. Oh and bowling alleys in Georgia. If youre in Georgia, bowling alleys are open, barbershops and tattoo parlors. Because what could be safer businesses than ones involving razors, needles and sticking your fingers in other peoples balls.

You can watch the whole monologue above.

Read original story Bill Maher Says Mike Pence Didnt Wear a Mask at the Mayo Clinic Because He Wanted to Tell Barefaced Lies (Video) At TheWrap
ALBANY  A hospital chaplains connection with a patient is intimate and normally played out six inches apart - not the six feet apart called for during the coronavirus pandemic.

But six feet even feels intimate now when compared to the barriers chaplains face to not only avoid being infected with COVID-19 themselves, but to protect others around them in case they are unknowingly a carrier of coronavirus.

In order to minister, theyre forced to stand outside hospital rooms to bless a patient, or appear outside buildings while their flock watches out the windows. Or, the only connection is virtual through a tablet or an old-fashioned telephone call from miles away.

We are doing it more remotely. Chaplaincy has to do with personal connection. We are doing it in a more remote way especially with the COVID-19 patients, said Aloysius Kabunga, a Roman Catholic lay chaplain and manager of Spiritual Care for St. Peter's Health Partners.

Fear is a constant companion for the chaplains and the patients theyre ministering to inside St. Peters Hospital, Albany Medical Center Hospital and other hospitals. Patients are encountering anxiety and loneliness as they are cut off from family members.

This is something I was not trained for. Some patients, those who are non-COVID, are scared of us when we come in because they have to be protected. Were also being very protective of ourselves. We dont know who has what, Kabunga said standing outside the entrance to St. Peters Hospital.

Prior to this pandemic so much of this was personal connection. The chaplain would come in and the patient wasnt scared you were going to spread something to them, Kabunga said.

The pandemic has shut down churches, pushing weekly services on to social media platforms and streaming services. Its also felt in hospitals, nursing homes, hospice care and private residences, wherever people need spiritual reassurance and guidance not only for themselves as patients but for their families. Funeral services have also been limited to only immediate family members allowed to be physically present.

St. Peters and Albany Meds safety protocols for dealing with the coronavirus led Rev. John Scott, who is the Albany Episcopal Dioceses hospital chaplain in Albany, to change his routines at the two hospitals. Scott switched from visiting Episcopalian patients in their rooms, to dialing in on the phone to speak to them.

But a chaplains physical presence sends an immediate message that is not the same as just hearing a voice, Scott said.

The people take comfort from your physical presence as well as the spiritual presence. The people I talk to have understood and theyve been appreciative of the care that theyve received. Were carrying on as best we can under the circumstances, Scott said.

Scott has worked in hospital chaplaincy since he was first ordained and was in Texas during the AIDS epidemic. Todays coronavirus pandemic brings back memories of his experiences nearly 40 years ago.

At that time, people really didnt know much about it. I can remember suiting up and putting on mask and gloves, Scott recalled about his ministry then.

Verbal communication sometimes has to be basic and loud. Bullhorn and holy water in hand, Rev. Scott VanDerveer recently stood outside The Pines at Catskill Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation to bless the residents inside.

They cant even open the windows because theyre trying to prevent any contamination. I went to the four sides of the building and did that service four times, said VanDerveer, pastor of St. Patricks Roman Catholic Church in Ravena and St. Marys in Coxsackie.

Those inside watched from the windows as VanDerveer made his way around the building blessing each side. Hes also made a video of a blessing and sent it inside.

Im just trying to find creative ways to let them know that were praying for them, VanDerveer said.

While the battle against COVID-19 in the nursing homes is about stopping the virus' spread among the residents, our battle looks a lot different. Were fighting to protect our elders from the outside world, said Rabbi Beverly W. Magidson, director of chaplaincy services for the Jewish Federation of Northeastern New York. She also ministers at the Daughters of Sarah Senior Community and the Nursing Center on Washington Avenue Extension.

Were fighting against depression and loneliness. Youre fighting boredom and confusion caused by dementia and Alzheimers, Magidson said.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

The chaplains are also shepherding families who cannot be with those who are hospitalized or in nursing homes. Magidson uses technology to help family members stay in touch.

We will hold iPads and phones so that loved ones can see their elder and reassure them that everything is ok, Magidson said.

We are fighting frustration of family members not being able to visit and families who feel disconnected and fear for their loves ones. So until this crisis is over we will give comforting words and do our best to create fun activities that can be done safely, Magidson explained.

Some physical connection is being reestablished at Albany Med where the chaplains are being allowed to be in the room with some COVID-19 patients, said Amelia Catone, who is a Buddhist and an interfaith chaplain in Albany Meds Department of Pastoral Care.

The chaplains hadnt been allowed into a patients room in order to preserve personal protective equipment and had turned to technology to communicate.

The ones of us who are going into the room feel very confident in the effectiveness of the PPE. We have a healthy respect for the disease and the infection. We also feel blessed to be able to offer care in that way that is intimate, Catone said.

The Ministry of Presence is the term used to discuss how a chaplains being there in person communicates at a deeper level than through technology. It frustrates chaplains to be kept away.

The most important thing is person-to-person because you make a different sort of connection that feels more valid and has spirituality, Catone said. Its a lot more reassuring to the patient.

Before the extent of the coronavirus was known, Tahlia Hadley, a chaplain at St. Peters who is Catholic, was exposed to a patient who tested positive during her rounds at the hospital. She felt the fear that came with learning about her exposure.

Its really scary to get that phone call and be told you were exposed to a positive patient, said Hadley, whose test came back negative. She worried about her family.

I wouldnt change anything about that visit. That was a very powerful conversation with that man. I helped him in prayer. I felt it was important that I was there as a chaplain at that time, Hadley said.

At the end of life, patients in hospice care also are impacted by coronavirus concerns, said Rev. Jeffrey Palmer, a Presbyterian minister who was a hospital chaplain for 27 years and now works for Community Hospice in Rensselaer. The hospice workers are taking precautions and cant be as close as they would like.

There is a heightened sense of anxiety and fear, Palmer said. Im needed to be a source of comfort, of compassion and peace for the people we are seeing.
Resurrection road

Rahul Gandhi is seriously contemplating an image makeover. The former and perhaps would-be Congress chief wants to utilise the coronavirus crisis to project himself as a policy wonk, and a leader who is patient and ready to listen.

Rahuls interview with former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan was a pointer in this direction. Insiders at 24, Akbar Road, say many more interactions with public policy experts are in the pipeline.

K is the key

Key Rahul aide Kanishka Singh is reportedly the architect of Mission Rahul Gandhi 2.0. Formerly with the New York-based merchant banking firm Lazard Freres & Co, nd son of distinguished diplomat S.K. Singh, Kanishka is addressed as K at the Tughlak Crescent office in New Delhi and in Congress circles.

He has reportedly been schooled in the Ahmed Patel-Motilal Vora mould as someone in the know, fiercely loyal and well-versed with the partys assets, secrets and organisational set-up.

Guess whos inauspicious

Rattled by a growing disquiet and the buzz of an inauspicious tag, BJP leader Jyotiraditya Scindia has started calling up influential persons in Delhi and Bhopal, including media representatives, ostensibly to inquire about their well-being.

Scindias induction in the BJP almost coincided with the coronavirus spread. Some disgruntled party leaders from Gwalior are said to have started a whisper campaign, wondering if his entry would prove productive for the BJP.

Scindias move to call up the media and others is a cue from vice-president Venkaiah Naidu who reportedly called up each and every mediaperson personally known to him.

The Congresss Ahmed Patel has done a similar exercise to check on the well-being of his friends and acquaintances.

Second wave threat

A large number of expats from the Gulf are set to return to India. In Dubai, Muscat, Kuwait, Jeddah and Bahrain, lakhs of Indians, mostly blue-collar workers, are counting the days to return home.

The Gulf regimes have been pressuring the Narendra Modi government to expedite the return of Indian citizens. The move is a logistical nightmare and poses a threat to a second wave of the coronavirus upsurge.

If naval ships in the Gulf are pressed into action, the internal movement of these returnees would lead to many hazards.

Frankensteins monster?

The fake news pandemic amid the coronavirus crisis is posing its own problem. The Narendra Modi government is concerned over growing and wide circulation of fake circulars and notifications that look identical to official orders.

Union home minister Amit Shah has ordered a crackdown, directing state governments and police cybercells to deal sternly with it. In Gujarat, some NGOs have teamed up with lawyers to nail fake news. However, there is lot of political polarisation linked to fake news factories making the policing task much more challenging.

Storyteller Rishi

Actor Rishi Kapoor will be remembered for many things his wit, acting, easy manners and candour. Raj Kapoors son was a great storyteller too. His autobiography, Khullam Khulla. co-written with Meena Iyer in 2017, had many honest confessions.

Rishi wanted to update his memoirs with many more squabbles, squirmishes, and disputes. About mega-star Amitabh Bachchan, Rishi recalled that in the 1970s, many roles were written for Amitabh and remarked, I guess weve been those small rungs in his ladder of success.

Rishi had also admitted that his first serious girlfriend was a Parsi girl, Yasmin Mehta. who had given him a ring. During the making of Bobby, Rishi had given the ring to co-star Dimple Kapadia. Rishi also acknowledged that his wife Neetu Singh felt insecure when Dimple returned to films and did Sagar with him.

Offscreen Rishi Kapoor had an entertaining, sometimes controversial presence on Twitter. He tweeted in the most unfiltered manner about everything from the Gandhis to opposing a beef ban.

When actor Vinod Khanna died, Rishi had lamented film fraternity for failing to attend his funeral. Shameful. Not one actor of this generation attended Vinod Khanna's funeral. And that too he has worked with. Must learn to respect, Rishi had tweeted.
Theres plenty of symbolism is the Breaking Bad universe that only the most perceptive fans will notice. But besides these Easter eggs, there are more obvious details that lend meaning to all three shows: Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie. For example, all the cars in both shows are incredibly meaningful. And El Camino? Thats literally the name of a car.

Walter White, Jimmy McGill (who later becomes Saul Goodman), and plenty of other characters express themselves through their vehicles and send silent messages based on what theyre driving.

From Walt upgrading his ride to Jimmys beloved Suzuki Esteem getting shot up  and ultimately blowing the cover off his alibi to Lalo  heres how cars help shape every event in the Breaking Bad storyline.

Walter White | AMC

Walter White upgrades from a Pontiac Aztec to a Chrysler 300 SRT8

Breaking Bad is, at heart, the story of a man who is destroyed by his greed and quest for power no matter the consequences. To help illustrate just how average Walter White is at the beginning of the series, the writers had him drive a completely ordinary and slightly nerdy Pontiac Aztec. As Walt becomes more and more involved with the drug cartels, his choice of a vehicle becomes more and more ridiculous.

Plus, the ugliness of the Aztec helps drive home just how much Walt gave up when he sold his stake in Gray Matter, the billion-dollar company he helped create. Walt sold his share for a mere $5,000, making it extra tragic that hes driving an Aztec when he should be able to afford a luxury ride.

Eventually, Walt makes enough money  and has enough ego  that he feels the need to upgrade. He opts for a sleek Chrysler 300 SRT8, which suits his drug manufacturer status a lot better. All it takes is a vehicle upgrade to fully usher in the age of Heisenberg.

Walt buys his son a Dodge Challenger, and Skyler freaks out

When Walt was just a high school chemistry teacher, he was a lot more cautious in general, including when he was setting down rules for his teenaged son, Walt Jr. But after Walt enters a life of crime and begins making meth  and making money he throws caution to the wind and purchases a brand new Dodge Challenger for Walt Jr. just because he can.

As expected, his wife Skyler freaks out and makes Walt trade the car in for a much more practical PT Cruiser. But the incident serves to highlight how Walt is no longer thinking clearly when it comes to his family. All he sees is status and power.

Jimmy McGill loses a piece of his identity when he junks the Suzuki Esteem

L-R: Jonathan Banks, Bob Odenkirk | Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television

The spinoff prequel Better Call Saul explores Saul Goodmans backstory, including his piece of crap Suzuki Esteem that he refuses to upgrade even when he starts making more money. The car takes on special significance in season 5 when Jimmy insists hes safe from being robbed while picking up Lalo Salamancas $7 million worth of bail money all because of his car.

There has never been more than 50 bucks in an Esteem in the history of Esteems, Jimmy says while trying to convince Kim that hell be safe with the cash. But then Jimmy does get robbed, his car gets shot, and Mike forces him to abandon his beloved mode of transportation and push it into a ditch.

Later, Jimmy tells Lalo his car broke down and thats why he took so long turning in the bail money. But when Lalo finds the abandoned vehicle riddled with bullet holes, he knows Jimmy is lying and confronts him.

By the time we meet Saul in Breaking Bad hes driving a much different car  a Cadillac DeVille with that custom LWYRUP license plate.

Jesses El Camino is his ticket to freedom

Todd Alquists 1978 Chevrolet El Camino has seen some very shady dealings, including having his housekeepers dead body rolled up in the trunk. But it also becomes one of the most important cars in the show when Jesse uses it to drive through the gates of the white supremacist compound where he was being held prisoner after Walt killed Uncle Jack and his crew.

In El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, Jesse takes the car to Skinny Petes house and has him hide it. Then he has Skinny Pete lure the cops away from his location by having Pete drive it to the Mexico border, knowing the police are tracking it via the Lo-Jack.

The name El Camino references the car, but it also means the road, or the way.

Other cars in the Breaking Bad universe

Walt, Jesse, and Mike | Ursula/AMC/Sony Pictures Television

In Breaking Bad, cars are much more than just cars  theyre reflective of the people who drive them. For example, Mike Ehrmantraut has a dont mess with me Chrysler Fifth Avenue that perfectly suits his personality.

At the beginning of the series, Jesse drives a Monte Carlo with the license plate THE CAPN, which is precisely what leads the DEA to catch him cooking meth with Emilio. He later begins driving the more non-descript 1986 Toyota Tercel to hide his drug dealer status.

Drug kingpin Gus Fring drives a practical, non-descript Volvo V70. This fits his intentions perfectly since hes known for hiding in plain sight as a local business owner by day and murderous cartel boss by night. Theres no way hed drive a flashy, look-at-me car, even though he can afford one.

There are no wasted details in Breaking Bad. Even the cars provide deeper insight into the characters motivations and inner workings. Its all just more proof that the Breaking Bad universe is one of the most complex, well-planned fictional worlds ever created.
The first salvo in the San Francisco skyscraper war was fired  quite literally  by Adolph B. Spreckels.

Spreckels, the son of sugar magnate Claus, was devoted to his father and, evidence would later suggest, more than a bit unhinged. So when M.H. de Youngs San Francisco Chronicle wrote in 1884 that the Spreckels sugar company might be defrauding investors, Adolph went into a homicidal fury.

In the early evening of Nov. 19, 1884 Spreckels trailed de Young into the Chronicle building. De Young was just pushing open a swinging gate into a back room when he heard someone shout his name. As he turned, Spreckels opened fire.

De Young was struck multiple times in the torso and barely survived the encounter. Speckels was charged with murder, but was later found not guilty by reason of insanity. And so, remarkably, life went on for two of San Franciscos richest men.

For de Young, life meant expanding his empire, which he did in grand fashion in 1890 when he opened San Franciscos first skyscraper, the Chronicle Building. Ten stories tall and topped with an almost endearingly hideous clock tower, it was the tallest building ever built on the West Coast.

This, of course, annoyed the Spreckels family who decided, as mega-rich Gilded Age jerks sometimes did, to spend millions buying a newspaper company and building a massive building in their own honor.

---

The San Francisco skyscraper war was vain, ridiculous and so brief that in less than two decades, it would all be invalidated by the 1906 earthquake.

But the halcyon days were remarkable. First erected was the Chronicle Building, which celebrated its opening on Market and Kearny with a massive 60-page commemorative spread  the largest ever printed in the state.

OpenSFHistory / wnp37.10107.jpg

The Chronicle Building was the first and at present the only truly modern building in San Francisco, the paper declared, praising the structure's lack of pretension while also bragging about shapely turret projections, hanging balconies and handsome carving.

A week later, the Chronicle ran another commemorative section, this one just filled with quotes from people and organizations who enjoyed the first commemorative section.

THEY ALL LIKED IT, the headline actually stated, Because It Was a Great Paper, Filled With Information and Not Stuffed With Nonsense.

The Spreckels no doubt disagreed, and they were putting into an action a plan to take news supremacy in the city. A few years after the Chronicle Building opened, Adolphs brother John bought The Morning Call. It was renamed the San Francisco Call, and almost immediately work began on its new home  the soon-to-be biggest skyscraper in the city.

The Chronicle building was the first of what San Francisco has called its modern sky-scrapers. The Mills and Crocker buildings quickly followed. Now all of these will be eclipsed by many stories, the Call wrote in 1895.

The plans were stunning. It was 100 feet taller than the Chronicle Building, absolutely dominating the San Francisco skyline from whichever direction you looked. On the 13th and 14th floors were the newspaper offices. Three swift in motion elevators whisked visitors to the restaurant on the top floor. And passers-by on Market and Third could look down into the basement printing press, busily turning out copies to be picked up by newsboys.

In anticipation of the buildings opening, the Call ran its own self-aggrandizing section headlined EVERYBODY IS PRAISING IT: Everybody Is Talking About It. What followed were dozens of quotes from random San Franciscans (all male), along with politicians and police officers, that almost all alluded in some way to the building being better than the Chronicles.

Unique is a much abused word, but it may surely be used in comparing this magnificent and imposing structure with the handsomest of modern buildings in any part of the world, read one quote.

Ive seen a few buildings, added J.E. Whittier, but none so pleasing to the eye, none so splendid and imposing as THE CALL building promises to be.

It is a peculiarly chaste and beautiful design for such a building, noted John McComb, I think.

San Francisco Call

Whether or not it was chaste is in the eye of the beholder, but it was an incredible success as soon as it opened in 1898. For tourists and San Franciscans alike, it became one of the citys most-visited attractions. Leisure seekers could make an afternoon of it, taking in the sky-high restaurant for lunch before descending into the office levels to watch the newspaper get made.

It is here that perhaps you are wondering where the biggest newspaper magnate of them all, William Randolph Hearst, fits in. He does, but not until 1897.

That year, the notorious owner of the San Francisco Examiner announced he was building his shrine to journalism, nestled between the Call and Chronicle buildings. For a while, rumors went around that he was planning a tower to surpass both. But Hearst needed to think nationally  he had newspapers across the country that all needed grand headquarters. So instead he saved some money for big East Coast projects, and the Examiners home would take a more modest shape.

Chronicle archives

But modest is relative  and subtlety isnt what Hearst was known for. The Examiners coverage of its building opening made no equivocations that it now had the best building in the city.

At seven stories, the Hearst Building was much smaller than the Call or Chronicle, but the Examiner reassured readers it had none of the characteristic heaviness of the massive structures which ... have no proper place in semi-tropic California.

Instead of the ornate baroque styles of its rivals, the Hearst Building was decorated in the model of the Spanish Renaissance. It had cool white halls, terra cotta details, a tile roof and red and yellow accents. It was superior to all on this Coast, the most handsome and well-equipped newspaper building in the world, the paper announced.

But Newspaper Row, as it became known, had less than a decade left before its destruction. On April 18, 1906, the earthquake struck. All three buildings survived the initial shock, but then fire began spreading through downtown. By evening, Market Street down to Seventh was one single wall of flames. The interior of the Call Building burned from the top down, cascading smoke and licking flames down like a deadly fountain.

Next door, the Chronicle and Examiner buildings burned for hours. By the time the fire burned itself out, Newspaper Row was gutted.

OpenSFHistory / wnp27.0134.jpg

---

But if there can be an upside to the destruction, it was the ensuing journalistic harmony.

Bereft of their palaces, employees at the Examiner, Chronicle and Call ferried across the San Francisco Bay to the Oakland Tribune offices. There, they published a joint paper, teaming up to inform and help the citizens of the Bay Area in those terrifying days.

When the smoke cleared, Newspaper Row was never the same. The Chronicle Building was rebuilt, but the company relocated to Fifth and Mission in the early 1920s. The Call moved to 74 New Montgomery Street, where it remained until it was purchased by the Examiner in the 1960s. The Examiner returned to its home at Third and Market; Hearst rebuilt the offices as a 13-story high-rise.

All three original buildings exist in some form today. The Hearst Building is most like its post-earthquake form. The Call Building is unrecognizable; today, its the drab 21-story office building known as the Central Tower.

And the Chronicle Building, no doubt to the well-heeled M.H. de Youngs pleasure, became the luxury Ritz-Carlton Club and Residences sans, of course, the clock tower.

Katie Dowd is a senior digital editor with SFGATE. Email her: katie.dowd@sfgate.com.
The University of Port Harcourt on Saturday denied knowing two of the three persons murdered by suspected cultists in a forest in Eleme Local Government Area of Rivers State.

UNIPORT Spokesman, Dr. William Wodi, who gave this hint to PUNCH, maintained that the only student of the institution was Joy Adoki.

Recall that three persons said to be students of UNIPORT were killed and buried in Eteo forest, Eleme LGA of the state by their assailants.

The State Police Command had exhumed the decomposing bodies of Nelson Nwafor m, Fortune Obemba m, and Joy Adoki f, identifying them as undergraduates of UNIPORT, who were abducted on 7/4/2020 at Choba.

READ ALSO: Why we kidnapped, killed three UNIPORT students  Suspect

In the course of Investigation, one of the kidnappers was arrested on 30/4/2020, and on interrogation, made useful confessions that led to the arrest of two others. One of the suspects by name Friday Akpan, m, took the operatives to a forest at Eteo in Eleme LGA, where the bodies of the victims were recovered.

But UNIPORT spokesman said the two male victims were not undergraduates of the institution.

Only the girl (Joy Favour Adoki) is a student of UNIPORT, the other two are not. The girl is from Management Science Faculty. She resides off-campus at Alakahia, Wodi said.

He also stated that the girl was expected to be with her parents after the closure of the university since March.
An influential academic who writes for a Chinese Communist Party newspaper has accused Australia of 'stabbing China in the back' over its calls for an international coronavirus inquiry.

Shanghai academic Professor Chen Hong, who writes prolifically for the Global Times, said Australia's calls for an independent inquiry were 'a repeated display of hostility'.

'This kind of investigation actually proposed by the Australia side is not an investigation. It's called an independent inquiry talking about the lack of transparency. That is actually what is about,' he told 60 Minutes reporter Tara Brown.

Professor Hong (video at top) said Chinese ambassador to Australia Cheng Jingye (pictured above) had not threatened economic destruction if Australia continued to call for an independent coronavirus inquiry. Instead he was 'describing the sentiments' of some in China

'That is actually the problem as there's no such thing as lack of transparency in the Chinese side.

'Australia is being and acting as a kind of divisive role, trying to point fingers, even stab at the back of China. This is actually not fair.'

Australia has called for the World Health Organization (WHO) to support an independent review into how the coronavirus started and spread, and has been lobbying world leaders.

This has angered China which says is conducting its own investigation through the Chinese Communist Party, which should be enough.

Scientists think the coronavirus passed from bats, through an unknown intermediary species to humans, at an unhygienic wet market in Wuhan, China, where wild animals were kept in cages, slaughtered and sold for food. Bat soup is considered a delicacy in China (stock image)

Global Times editor Hu Xijin (pictured left) with Professor Chen Hong (right). Professor Hong writes prolifically for the Global Times, owned by the Chinese Communist Party

China made its displeasure known last Monday when Chinese ambassador to Australia, Cheng Jingye, warned the Chinese public might avoid Australian products and universities if Australia continued to call for international involvement in the investigation.

AMBASSADOR'S ECONOMIC THREAT TO AUSTRALIA In an interview with the Australian Financial Review, Ambassador Cheng slammed Australia's push for a global inquiry as 'political' and warned Chinese consumers could boycott the country. Answering a question about whether China could boycott Australian iron ore or gas, Mr Cheng instead focused on China's contribution to Australia's agriculture, tourism and education sectors. Mr Cheng said: 'I think if the mood is going from bad to worse, people would think why we should go to such a country while it's not so friendly to China. 'The tourists may have second thoughts. Maybe the parents of the students would also think whether this place, which they find is not so friendly, even hostile, is the best place to send their kids to. 'So it's up to the public, the people to decide. And also, maybe the ordinary people will think why they should drink Australian wine or eat Australian beef.' Advertisement

'Maybe the ordinary people will say 'Why should we drink Australian wine? Eat Australian beef?' Mr Cheng said in the interview on the front page of The Australian Financial Review.

'The parents of the students would also think whether this place which they found is not so friendly, even hostile, whether this is the best place to send our kids.'

This was followed by insults from Global Times editor Hu Xijin who last week described Australia as 'always making trouble... A bit like chewing gum stuck on the sole of China's shoes'.

'Sometimes you have to find a stone to rub it off,' Hu posted on Weibo.

The Global Times newspaper is the English-language tabloid arm of the Chinese Communist Party's newspaper People's Daily, owned by the CCP's central committee.

The tabloid's editorials are widely regarded as the 'voice' of Beijing even when official CCP statements are more reserved.

Professor Hong downplayed the insult, saying it was just a 'figure of speech'.

'I think this remark is metaphoric which I think describes Australia's repeated display of hostility towards China and in spite of all the efforts on the Chinese side trying to call the Australian side back to its senses,' he said.

He said the Chinese ambassador had not been threatening coercion to cripple Australia's economy but had just been reflecting and describing the sentiments of some people in China regarding Australia.

'In Chinese supermarkets we've got Australian beef, we've got Australian stuff everywhere so there's never any indication of stopping that,' he said.

China accounts for 26 per cent of Australia's total trade, worth around $235 billion in 2018/19, and is the biggest single market for Australian exports including coal, iron ore, wine, beef, tourism and tertiary education.

Flying foxes for sale at a wet market in Indonesia. Infectious disease experts such as Dr Anthony Fauci along with organisations such as WWF have called for the shutting down of such markets as they provide an unhygienic cross-contamination ground for viruses

Chinese ambassador to Australia Cheng Jingye (pictured) wrote that the Chinese public might avoid Australian products and universities, which was interpreted as a trade threat

Australia's universities have been transformed over the last few decades from institutions geared to training Australian citizens to instead become an export industry worth more than $37.6 billion in 2018/19, according to figures from education minister Dan Tehan.

Student visas form part of a pathway to permanent residency, and to satisfy the criteria, students must physically be present in Australia, which is why the online distance learning option to cope with coronavirus is not popular.

In an earlier article for the Global Times, Professor Hong said that Australia had a 'malevolent approach' to shutting its borders as it sought to protect the nation from an influx of coronavirus infections in March.

Professor Hong again criticised Australia on 60 Minutes saying it had shut the borders 'too rashly in a way that actually disrupted business activities and students' study plans'.

China's President Xi Jinping knew about the coronavirus on the 7th of January yet China only shut down the epicentre of the outbreak, Hubei province, on the 23rd of January, after five million people had left to travel through China and to the rest of the world, spreading the virus.

China has been accused by some of covering up the severity of the pandemic after it started in a live exotic animal market in Wuhan, costing the world vital weeks of preparation.

Professor Hong said China had been the 'first victim' of the coronavirus and, like a 'meteor striking the earth', nobody was to blame.

This photo taken on April 15, 2020 shows a worker throwing ice into a pool with fish at a shop at a market in Wuhan where the first reports of the coronavirus emerged in December

Australia has called for the World Health Organization to support an independent review into how the coronavirus started and spread, angering China

Australia's trade relationship with China - 2018/19 EXPORTS Iron ores & concentrates: $63.1billion Natural gas: $16.6billion Coal: $14.1billion Gold: $5billion IMPORTS Telecom equipment: $8.8billion Computers: $6.6billion Furniture and mattresses: $3.4billion Refined petroleum: $2.7billion Advertisement

He said China had simply made 'human errors' when the virus first broke out and was slow to respond but had since been resolute and decisive.

As of Sunday night, there were 3,515,177 cases of coronavirus worldwide with 245,607 dead, 2,135,638 still sick and 1,133,932 recovered according to the Worldometers website which tracks coronavirus statistics.

The USA has the largest number of cases with 1,166,098 infected people and 67,596 dead followed by Spain with 247,122 cases and Italy with 209,328.

The Federal Government has called for a ban on wet markets, infuriating Beijing. Pictured: a wet market in Nanming, China
Port Arthur Mayor Thurman Bartie and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, have different responsibilities in this crisis, but they agree on one key point about the reopenings that are happening in Texas and other states: Slow down. This virus isnt defeated yet, and in fact it could linger for weeks or months. Until we know we have turned the corner, caution and self-control are still warranted.

Fauci warned local leaders to avoid leapfrogging important benchmarks in their efforts to reopen their economies. You could get away with that, he said, but youre making a really significant risk.  If you follow the guidelines, theres a continuity thats safe, thats prudent and thats careful.

Bartie was even more direct in his advice to Port Arthur residents, flatly telling them to stay home.

We want to continue this (sheltering in place) because the virus is not contained in our area, he said during the news conference on the steps of Port Arthur City Hall. Matter of fact, its not contained in the world.

That may not be what some people want to read, but consider this: On Thursday, the day before Gov. Greg Abbott partially reopened the state economy, Texas recorded its highest single-day total of coronavirus deaths with 50. That same day, the state had 1,033 new cases of infections, the first time it has been more than 1,000 since April 10. Southeast Texas has more than 500 infected people and so far has lost at least 27 to the virus.

Those numbers dont show a disease in decline. Given the woeful rate of testing, usually below 1% in most cities, its clear that many other people have the coronavirus but do not know it. They may be part of the lucky majority that shows little or no symptoms, and good for them. But they can still pass on the virus to others, to people who could get very sick from it or even die.

So even though the stay-at-home orders have been lifted and some retail businesses are partially reopening, no one should declare victory just yet. If you do go out, continue to practice social distancing. You dont have to wear a mask or gloves, but if you do, you will significantly decrease your chances of getting or spreading the virus. Wash you hands often or use sanitizer. It wont hurt anything, and it could help a lot.

Remember that just because you can go somewhere doesnt mean that you have to. For example, churches can hold public services today, yet many local faith leaders are wisely holding back. They realize that a few more weeks of private worship or meetings via social media are worth the sacrifice. The goal is bring everyone back into our churches, stores and restaurants when we know its safe  or at least much safer than it was in March and April.

The last thing we want is a resurgence of this virus and a return to lockdown. Can you imagine how frustrating that would be  and how devastating it would be to many small businesses that are just hanging on? Lets not risk that. May will not see a return to pre-virus normal. It could, however, be an important bridge to that. If we all move forward carefully, well all get there as soon as possible.
Crystal Serra*, a 27-year-old New York native and single mother of three children age five and under, would have looked like your typical mom when she dropped her oldest off at school on January 20, 2020. What no one knew, or could have possibly known, is that the night before she had been physically abused by the father of her children and partner of almost 10 years. You know, at the beginning everything was beautiful, Serra says. We got along great, and then things started happening. Those things included physical, mental, and emotional abuse, which all became more frequent and more intense as time went on. But the previous nights physical altercation was worse than most, Serra says, and on an otherwise typical morning, a switch inside her flipped.

I decided right then and there that I was going to take control of my life, she explains. I was scared. I was so nervous. I was shaking. I was sweating. But I called the police and I waited for them. Thats when, in my mind, in that moment, I took a turn. He got arrested and I stayed with family.

For four days, Serra and her three children stayed in a spare bedroom at a relatives house. Then, on a Friday morning, she got word there was an opening at a shelter. I got in an Uber with my kids, we literally had one suitcase and a duffel bag, and we abandoned everythingwe had to start over.

Nearly three in 10 women and one in 10 men have been severely physically abused by an intimate partner, according to The National Domestic Violence Hotline. Nearly half of all murdered women are killed by a spouse or romantic partner, and a study published in 2019 found that homicides committed by intimate partners with gun violence are on the rise. Now that the United States is in the throes of a global pandemic that at one point had left one in four Americans sheltering in place, the number of domestic abuse reports are increasing. The necessary steps society has taken to help mitigate the spread of the virusclosing schools, shuttering nonessential businesses, and mandating sheltering in placehas created a perfect storm for abusers, who now have even more power and control over their victims.

Story continues

People are really confined in very tight quarters, and the kinds of releases or respite that a victim might have had in the pastlike going to work or going out to do shopping or anything of that sorthas really been severely limited, Carol Corden, executive director of New Destiny Housing, the largest provider of permanent places to live for domestic-violence survivors in NYC and one of the co-conveners of the Family Homelessness Coalition, says. Now, theres even more opportunity for control and abuse.

Serra was able to leave her abuser before shelter-in-place initiatives were enacted around the country, but she has noticed an increase in the number of people and families who are seeking shelter and safety during this public-health crisis.

I have seen a few new faces, but I havent been able to get to know them because of social distancing, she says. So I dont know their story, but I have seen a few new families and a few more single people come in. And I can understand that, now, during this crisis with the stay-at-home order, where the abuse can grow, because now youre forced to be there with your abuser and you have nowhere to go. You have to stay inside. And you cant even go to work, where maybe work could have been safe for somebody. I know work was safe for me.

Serra and her children have still been severely impacted by the outbreak of COVID-19. For safety reasons, this single mom is not allowed to have outside visitors, and while emergency childcare may be available, she doesnt have any outside help with the kids. Among the millions of students whose classrooms have been closed, her two oldest children are not going to school, and she can no longer work. The family does not go outside, save an infrequent visit to the grocery store, laundromat, or drugstore, and Serras future plans to find an apartment, seek out work, and go to college have all been postponed indefinitely .

Its very frustratingthat my life is on hold and its a waiting game, she says. And its nerve-wracking, honestly. Very nerve-wracking.

Serra receives cash assistance from the government, as well as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. And, luckily, since Im here in the shelter, I dont really have financial responsibilities, like my own necessities and whatnot, she continues. And thank God, because, honestly, if I had my own apartment I would be very scared right now. So, luckily, I am here in the shelter, and theyre able to provide anything that I need as long as I reach out to my social worker. So I can consider myself a little better than most right now.

Still, it is the uncertainty of this unprecedented moment that has Serra worried. In New York City, a person can stay in an emergency shelter for only six months. And while New York governor Andrew M. Cuomo issued an executive order relaxing the 180-day limit, its unclear how much longer those staying in shelters will be allowed to remain, or how theyll be able to secure permanent housing once the crisis passes. As of April 29, 34,648 people reside in a shelter in New York City, according to the Department of Homeless Services, and many of them cannot transition to temporary or long-term housing as a result of the pandemic. Brokers have ceased in-person apartment viewings, mandatory inspections of homes have been postponed, and there have been reports of delayed paperwork for rental-assistance vouchers.

Six days after she spoke to this writer, Serra received a voucher. She has been looking for apartments since. For a family of four, the budget is $1,580 for rental assistance. But theres also a security deposit. How I am going to find a two-bedroom, possibly a three-bedroom, with a budget of a studio? Serra says. So, yeah, everything is really up in the air.

What is not uncertain, Corden says, is the increase of domestic-violence cases communities we will see in the near future. What weve all been bracing for is that there will be an uptick in domestic-violence incidents when this is all over, she says. Again, in the tight quarters that a lot of people are staying in, its more difficult for survivors to reach out. If you have one device in your house, then that might be something thats actually very closely monitored by the abuser. And if you have your own phone, you might not really have the same ability to text or go online. And it could be that people are staying in place not only because of the even stronger power and control that their abuser has but also because of fears of where theyre going and what kind of danger they might be putting themselves in [in regards to the virus], by virtue of going to a shelter. (As of mid-April, 460 COVID-19 cases were identified in shelters around New York City.)

While the current global crisis has exacerbated the already devastating issue of interpersonal and gendered violence, Corden hopes this moment will lead to a necessary change in how we, as a culture, support victims of domestic abuse. Instead of asking, Why didnt she leave? Corden hopes we will be better equipped to provide a menu of options to victims, tailored to meet their specific needs.

There is incredible inequalitythat, we knowand I think the COVID-19 crisis has really shown just how dramatically it affects people. For very low-income victims who are often people of color, the options are much fewer. Its a life-or-death matter; its not just something you discuss at the dinner table. It really has a huge impact on peoples life chances, and whether or not theyre going to be able to survive a crisis, she explains. So I think we do have to start looking at [more options for support]. Those options, Corden explains, should include ongoing rental assistance for low-income victims. Maybe coming out of this disaster, there could be some good possibilities to do a better job in the new normal, which is going to be pretty painful.

As for Serra, she is maintaining hope and looking forward to the future, uncertain though it may be. People used to look at me and say, Why did you stay that long? Why didnt you do this? Why didnt you do that? And the only thing I could say is that if I could have, I would have. Its just not that easy, she says. But I did it. I left. Its still a processI have nightmares sometimes, and I ask myself, Should I have stayed? But the secret is out: Im a domestic-violence victim. And now Im just going to pour my heart out, better myself, and focus on me.

If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, call The National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)

*Some names and information have been changed to protect the identities of those involved.

Originally Appeared on Vogue
Three Chinese and two Vietnamese suspects will soon be indicted for using bank cards made with stolen information to appropriate US$300,000 via POS (point of sale) devices in northern Vietnam.

Police in Quang Ninh Province confirmed on Saturday they had concluded an investigation into the case and would transfer it to the Peoples Procuracy for further legal procedures.

A total of five suspects, including three Chinese and two Vietnamese, are now facing an indictment for the appropriation of property using electronic devices.

The investigation began after officers caught a group of four suspects red-handed using bogus bank cards to appropriate money on December 24, 2019.

The suspects include Wu Yong Jiang, 37, Zhang Huo Sheng, 32, Luo Jian Ping, 43, who are all from Guangdong, China, and Vu Hong Hai, 36, who resides in Ha Long City, Quang Ninh Province, located in northern Vietnam.

The fifth suspect, 37-year-old Nguyen Van Tien, who hails from the northern Vietnamese province of Thai Binh, turned himself in the following day.

At the police station, Wu claimed he had become acquainted with a man name Yang De via WeChat, a Chinese social media platform, about two months earlier.

Exhibits of the case are confiscated by police officers in Quang Ninh Province, Vietnam in this supplied photo.

Yang said he had collected information of many peoples bank accounts and told Wu about his plan to create fake bank cards with such information.

The counterfeit cards would be used to appropriate money via POS machine.

Upon his agreement to join the racket, Wu received a device that could overwrite the stolen information onto existing bank cards.

Wu then planned to travel to Vietnam to steal money through local POS machines.

Via a friend, he was introduced to Zhang, Luo, and Hai, who all agreed to become part of the crime.

Hai then contacted his friend, Tien, to look for a POS device.

Both were promised 40 percent of the money they would steal.

On the day of their arrest, the suspects met at a cafe in Quang Ninh and were about to appropriate $300,000 using one of the bank cards and a POS device.

Officers also confiscated 11 bank cards, a device used to overwrite bank account information, and a computer.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
The Indian armed forces on Sunday



thanked those engaged in the fight against COVID-19 by showering flower petals from their aircraft on various hospitals in Mumbai and carrying out a fly-past over the Maharashtra Governor's house here.

An aircraft of the Indian Air Force dropped flowers on the state-run J J Hospital, KEM Hospital and the Kasturba Gandhi Hospital, which have been treating coronavirus patients here, a defence official said.

The India Navy and the Coast Guard also flew their Chetak helicopters to shower flowers on the J J Hospital and naval medical hospital Asvini in the state capital.

Besides, the Sukhoi-30 fighter planes flew over the city's iconic Marine Drive and carried out a fly-past over the Governor's house here, said the official.

The country's armed forces on Sunday engaged in a nationwide exercise to express gratitude to lakhs of doctors, paramedics, sanitation staff and other front-line workers involved in fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The $5.6 million monument will be built with money from a $103 million government settlement to purge victims in 2017. Ross, a lead plaintiff in that class action, hopes it will be a timeless commemoration of the struggles faced by LGBT Canadians and a recognition of the work left to do to achieve equality  a celebration and almost a call to action, he said. An international design competition has been delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, but builders still hope to complete it by 2024.
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We recently had the chance to catch up with our friend, Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood director turned pro-life advocate. We discussed the pro-life movement, how the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is impacting the abortion industry and what we can do to help women in crisis.



This conversation has been edited for clarity and length:





Whats your take on abortion as essential during this time?



Ive been involved in the abortion fight one way or the other for over 20 years. Ive never in my life seen the abortion movement in such a frenzy as they are right now. Ive talked with many other pro-life leaders across the country who have been in the fight even longer than I have, and theyre saying the same thing. There are so many people that are not able to access abortion as easily as they have been, and it is throwing them into a state of panic.



It is truly evil, in a way that I dont think we get to see that often, this push for abortion. Ive been getting emails and messages from these women abortion supporters sort of taunting me, saying, Just wanted to let you know, Abby, we have a busload of women scheduled to go out of the state of Texas to have their abortion in New Mexico or have their abortion in Oklahoma. They are proud of themselves; they are renting 15 passenger vans, 12 passenger vans, loading up and filling these vans to capacity, taking them over state lines to have abortions, risking the health of these women.



Theyre fundraising to pay for lodging and transportation and food so that these women can have these over-the-state-line abortions. Abortion has become the back-alley abortion they say that they are trying to prevent.



In Texas, theyre saying you cant come in for a regular abortion, but you can still do chemical abortions at home. Whats the prevalence of that and how can we be praying for that?



So on one hand, we have been hearing the abortion movement say, Guys, abortion is no big deal. Abortion is just a routine procedure, its just like having a cavity filled, its no big deal. Its just removing tissue. Its no different than having a mole removed on your back, okay? No big deal. Then, the coronavirus hits, and all of a sudden this no big deal procedure is all of a sudden this essential healthcare service that women cannot live without, and if they dont have it, they are going to die. Okay, so which is it? Is it a no big deal thats really a nothing or is it essential healthcare that women cant seem to live without?



Its the same that were seeing here with the medication abortion. They say we dont want women having at-home abortions and thats the danger in shutting down abortion facilities. So we dont want women having these dangerous, at-home abortions, thats why abortion clinics need to stay open. Yet they file a lawsuit against the state of Texas so that women can have at-home, medicated abortions. So we dont want at-home abortions, yet were going to fight for women to have at-home abortions? This is the lunacy of the abortion movement.



Talk about LoveLine a little bit and why you created it and whats happening with right now.



We have 25,000 pregnancy centers across the country. We have great resources for women in crisis who are pregnant. But I saw a gap in the pro-life movement.



I was hearing from a lot of women who had their babies, but now their children were a little older or maybe they never went through a pregnancy center. Maybe they were in a really stable situation when they had their babies, but now their babies are 6, 7, 8, 9 years old. Maybe they were in a healthy relationship, maybe they were married, and maybe now theyre divorced, and maybe they find themselves as a single parent and times are tough and theyre doing it on their own. Maybe they lost their job, maybe somethings going on thats making times difficult for them and they need support.



So what I found is that we started calling some of those community resources, and many times when we would call the answer was no: No, we dont have anything available for that situation, or No, weve already run out of funding for the month. Or it was a disconnect line because it wasnt open anymore. And I thought, If that were me, if I was a single mom and I was really struggling to put food on the table and every phone number I called was a no, that would be really discouraging for me. And so my vision was, I wanted these women just to hear Yes! I wanted them to be encouraged and to feel hopeful. And so I thought, What if we started a hotline that did just that?: that we became the people that essentially made the phone calls for them. When youre in a bad way, when youre feeling emotionally spent, when youre just down and out, you just dont have the energy to pick up the phone and make 50 phone calls to 50 different resources.



We've got case managers on staff with us, and we made those phone calls and we started connecting with just some of the most amazing clients. They just needed a hand up and we started getting them on their feet. Its not just handouts; its truly case management, so its living life with these women. It is being Jesus to these women, to these families. We want to get them plugged into church, we want to get a loving community plugged in around them, we want them to feel loved, we want them to grow in a healthy, Christian environment. So thats what weve been doing, and now weve helped I think just right at 150 women and almost 300 children find that foundation and that hope.



What are some of the needs youre seeing right now? Are you seeing an influx of women reaching out for help?



Definitely. We had 13 women call just in the last six days. Of course, people are not having work right now because businesses are closed, so we definitely have a need right now. Theres always a funding need. What Ive learned is that the needs of families are truly infinite. This is an opportunity for the church to be the church.



What we didnt expect is that women who have abortion appointments would be calling us, and were getting a lot of those calls now too. Not every community has a pregnancy center in it, so these women are contacting us now. These are women that are saying, I have an abortion appointment; I heard about you. How can you help me? Theyre only wanting to have an abortion because they dont have enough money to pay rent or something like that, and Im like, No, dont kill your baby because you dont have rent money. We can take care of that. Helping women set up a plan, a plan of stability for themselves and their child  we can do that. Thats easy, and sometimes thats all it takes to save the life of their child.



Share with us one final thing: how can we be pro-life in this coronavirus moment when the battle is so fierce and intense and were seeing so much of a need to step up and help with it right now?



We always want to bathe everything in prayer. So absolutely its time to step up our prayer game. But after you pray and in between your times of prayer, I would say now is a really good time for us to equip ourselves on how to be the best pro-life advocates that we can be. What are those lessons that maybe weve been sort of lacking in? How can we speak to people more articulately about the pro-life message? What are those talking points that we hear from abortion supporters that we really dont know how to defend that well and maybe we sort of flub it up and we dont really know what to say? Maybe its a good time for us to sort of brush up on those apologetics skills.



Theres a quote that says, You may be the only Bible that someone reads. So just remember that even in this very hostile political environment that we need to be mindful of how were speaking to people, that we need to be careful when were speaking to people who support abortion. Remember that we never know whats in their past: they may have had an abortion, they may be really hurting because of that abortion, but it may come across as anger. They just may not know the difference.



We cant just say were pro-life  we actually have to be pro-life.



To learn more about Love Line, including ways to stay connected, visit LoveLine.com. Love Line also posts shopping registries on Facebook to help women who are considering abortions because of financial difficulties.



To learn about opportunities to get involved with the pro-life movement, visit myfaithcares.org.



Watch the full interview on My Faith Votes YouTube channel.
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PM Modi pays tributes to security personnel killed in Handwara encounter

India

pti-PTI

New Delhi, May 03: Condoling the death of security personnel in an encounter with terrorists in Kashmir, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Sunday that their valour and sacrifice will never be forgotten.

"Tributes to our courageous soldiers and security personnel martyred in Handwara. Their valour and sacrifice will never be forgotten. They served the nation with utmost dedication and worked tirelessly to protect our citizens. Condolences to their families and friends," Modi said in a tweet.

An Army Colonel and a Major were among five security personnel killed in the encounter at a village in north Kashmir's Handwara area, Director General of Police Dilbagh Singh said on Sunday.

Two terrorists were eliminated by security forces.
The NHS will begin a pilot of its new coronavirus app this week, as a clearer picture of the governments forthcoming roadmap to end lockdown starts to emerge, with staggered start times likely to be on the cards for the first commuters who return to their desks.

The prime minister is expected this week to launch the governments action plan to ease the country out of its current restrictive measures, with the lockdown due to be reviewed on Thursday.

The Isle of Wight was announced as the location for the trial of the new smartphone-based coronavirus contact-tracing system.

However, significant challenges remain in getting the new app working, with ministers warning that 50 to 60 per cent of the entire population will have to use it in order for it to have a real impact. That figure means the app will need to become as ubiquitous as WhatsApp  in the space of just a few months  to succeed.

The Cabinet Office minister, Michael Gove, said at the daily news conference in Downing Street on Sunday evening that the more people who download the app the better and expressed optimism that people would decide to use it.

Its striking how public-spirited people have been throughout the crisis, and knowing that this is a contribution all of us can make to help keep our neighbours and our communities safer is a very powerful incentive, I think, he told reporters.

The transport secretary, Grant Shapps, admitted that for various reasons, not everybody will download the software on to their smartphones  not least because not everybody has one. Nevertheless, he said that installing the programme, developed by NHSX, the health services digital wing, was the best possible way to help the NHS.

Concerns about privacy have reared their head in countries using similar systems, such as Germany, where health authorities belatedly decided to use a decentralised system run by tech companies instead of a single platform as the UK government intends.

However, the British government says data on the app will be recorded under an anonymous ID rather a name. The programme will use Bluetooth technology to work out when other users are close by, so that those who come into contact with someone later deemed to have been infected can be informed.

The approach has been judged successful in countries such as South Korea and Singapore in allowing some relaxation of lockdown measures while keeping the so-called R value  the rate at which the disease spreads among the population  down.

The app seems to be an increasingly important part of the the governments plans, but ministers have said they are still consulting with experts, employers and unions on what the end of lockdown might look like, and some aspects have started to take shape as its unveiling nears.

While previous reports have suggested that most employees who can will continue to work from home for many months, Mr Shapps said workers who do end up heading back to their desks may have to travel in at different times of day in order to aid social distancing and give people more room on crowded commuter trains.

Grant Shapps has suggested a number of measures (Reuters)

Things like staggering work times, obviously are very important to avoid those morning peaks. The crushes would be completely at odds with social distancing, the transport secretary told Sky News.

He also suggested that trains, buses and transport interchanges could be equipped with hand sanitiser, arguing that hand-washing remains more important than wearing face masks  which some countries have mandated. Eurostar said this weekend that all passengers would have to wear face masks, in line with new French and Belgian regulations on public transport.

The Department for Transport is also reportedly considering having commuters take their temperature before boarding trains and buses in order to reduce the chance of ill people mixing with others.

Big political decisions, such as whether to reopen schools, appear yet to have been made. Mr Shapps told Sky News: Its no secret that of course we want kids to be able to go back to school, but Id be over-egging it to say theres a date in place, theres a plan in place.

Addressing the coming roadmap towards the ending of lockdown, Mr Gove said: Were consulting with employers and unions, professionals and public-health experts, to establish how we can ensure that we have the safest possible working environments, and the prime minister will be saying more later this week.

Coronavirus: London on lockdown Show all 29 1 /29 Coronavirus: London on lockdown Coronavirus: London on lockdown A man walks down a deserted Camden High Street Photos Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Goodge Street Station is one of the many stations closed to help reduce the spread Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown An empty street in the heart of Chinatown Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown People in masks in Chinatown a day after the lockdown Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A near-empty Piccadilly Circus during the first week of lockdown Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Sonja, my neighbour, who I photographed while taking a short walk. It was nice to briefly chat even from a distance Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A couple sit on the empty steps of the statue Eros in Piccadilly Circus Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Making sure I stay two-meters apart  DArblay Street, Soho Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A mannequin behind a shop window. UK stores have closed until further notice Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A notice displayed on a shop window in Camden Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown As part of the lockdown, all non-essential shops have been ordered to close.Image from Camden High Street Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A skateboarder wearing a mask utilises his exercise allowance in the Camden area Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Communities have been coming together in a time of need Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A woman stands alone in a deserted Oxford Street. Up until a few weeks ago, on average, half a million people visited the street per day Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A couple walk hand in hand down a street in Soho, a day before the stricter lockdown was announced Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown During the first week of March, shoppers focused on stockpiling necessities ahead of a countrywide lockdown Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Many supermarkers are operating a queuing system to make sure only a limited amount of customers are allowed in at anyone time Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Stay Safe  Curzon cinemas are temporarily closed under the new measures Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Pubs, restaurants and bars were ordered to shut as part of the lockdown Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Camden High Street There are fears that coronavirus could lead to permanent closure of struggling shops Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Camden Town is eerily silent on a normal working day Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Shops and supermarkets ran out of hand sanitisers in the first week of the lockdown. As we approach the end of the second week most shops now have started to stock up Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Empty streets around Soho Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A noticeboard on Camden High Street urges the public to stay at home Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Camden High Street, one of Londons busiest tourist streets turns quiet Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Thriller Live confirmed its West End run ended in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Empty and eerie Soho streets after stricter rules on social distancing announced Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A woman pauses for a cigarette on Hanway Street, behind Tottenham Court Road Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A man steps outside onto Hanway Street, that sits behind what is usually a bustling retail hub Angela Christofilou

He added: Ultimately, unless and until we have a vaccine, then I suspect that we are going to have to live with some degree of constraint because of the nature of the virus.

But we obviously want to, wherever possible  and consistent with the measures on public health  restore peoples lives to as close to normal as possible.

Mr Gove said the government would pursue a phased approach to removing lockdown restrictions rather than a sudden return to the old normal.

A total of 28,446 people have died in hospitals, care homes and the wider community after testing positive for the coronavirus in the UK as of 5pm on Saturday.
Minnesota Woman Reported Missing, Then Found Dead in Her Home: Officials

A 28-year-old Minnesota woman who was reported missing Thursday was found dead over the weekend, officials said.

Maria Fury was reported near Eagle Lake and Pike Lake after a person said she left her home for a walk at around 11 a.m. Thursday, said the local police department on Facebook.

Police then launched a search, and they asked property owners to check their respective properties.

On Saturday, the Maple Grove Police Department wrote that Fury was found dead in her home on Saturday. A suspect is in custody.

This is a devastating time for Marias family and the community, Maple Grove Police Department said, according to the Facebook post.

Officials told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that later, Furys 28-year-old husband was the suspect in the case. They didnt reveal any more details about the incident.

There was a tremendous outpouring of support from the community who volunteered to search for Maria, the Maple Grove Police Department said.

Marias parents, Lissa Weimelt and Bill Pew, sent out a statement and said their daughter was our joy, light, and treasure, KSTP reported.

As our family honors Marias memory, and the immense joy that she brought to us all, we encourage you to focus on all the positive in the world, their statement said. Love your babies as we loved our Maria. Thank you so much for your prayers and support.

According to jail records, a 28-year-old named Joshua Fury was arrested for probable cause and is being held in the Hennepin County jail.

Before her death was confirmed, family members had planned to meet on Saturday to search for the woman, reported CCX Media.
A 44-year-old man died of coronavirus in Tamil Nadu, taking the toll in the state to 30 as the number of positive cases crossed the 3,000-mark with 266 more getting infected by the virus on Sunday.

The man from Coimbatore became the latest victim to the contagion, a bulletin from the health department said.

The state capital continued to contribute the major chunk of COVID-19 cases at 203, the bulletin said.

As many as 266 fresh COVID-19 cases were confirmed in the state, taking the aggregate to 3,023, it said.

Tamil Nadu has been witnessing an increase in the positive cases since last week as the government machinery enhanced testing facilities to identify the COVID-19 cases.

According to health department, the government district headquarters hospital in Ramanathapuram district and a private hospital in Chennai were added to the list of existing testing centres taking the total number of such facilities operating in the state to 49.

The number of samples tested on Sunday stood at 10,617 while 37,206 people were in home quarantine and 40 in government facilities.

As many as 38 people were discharged after treatment on Sunday alone taking the cumulative to 1,379 in the state.

Of the new positive cases, 187 were men and the remaining women patients.

Eight people below the age of 10 years were among those infected.

Earlier, senior IAS officer J Radhakrishnan, appointed as Special Nodal Officer for Greater Chennai Corporation, told reporters that people were found to be 'negligent' by not wearing masks and appealed to them to extend their support to the government's measures in order to control the spread of virus.

The former Health secretary recalled that during an inspection he undertook in North Chennai, he was able to see people moving around without masks.

"Wearing the mask is not only for your protection but also helps prevent the spread of virus," he said.

The government is taking aggressive testing and that is why we are able to see high positive cases. People should extend their cooperation" he told reporters.

Greater Chennai Corporation Commissioner G Prakash, who was also present, said marriage halls within the city limits would be used to accommodate COVID-19 patients.

"There are government and private schools, which come under our purview. Besides, there are about 750 marriage halls in Chennai and they will be taken over by us... it is a national emergency. We will be adding more beds for the corona patients," he said.

Elaborating, the top official said, "It will be a simple and effective strategy so that serious COVID-19 patients would be taken to the hospitals, while mild cases and those requiring rest will be quarantined at the facilities set up at schools and marriage halls."



"It is for this purpose we are planning to procure 50,000 beds, of which 4,000 were already set up..," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hong Kong, May 3 : Hong Kongs ban on groups of more than four per table in restaurants amid the COVID-19 pandemic could be relaxed to eight under a government proposal endorsed by public health advisers, a media report said on Sunday.

The South China Morning Post (SCMP) report quoted sources familiar with the situation as saying that the administration was also mulling the reopening of some premises, subject to precautionary measures.

The four-person table rule and ban on certain businesses will expire on May 7.

But the resumption of operations for karaoke lounges and bars, where infection risks were higher, was not on the cards.

"The relaxation could allow more flexibility for some restaurants as we see the local situation coming under more control," a source was quoted by the SCMP newspaper as saying.

"But there is still need for social distancing in general." The proposal was discussed in a government meeting with medical experts on Saturday.

It was agreed that the spread of the coronavirus locally was slowing down, and therefore some social-distancing measures, such as limiting restaurant patrons to only four per table, could be relaxed this week.

A large number of venues including gyms, cinemas and bars have been closed on government orders since March 28, and public gatherings of more than four have also been banned.

The development comes as Hong Kong recorded no new coronavirus cases on Saturday, the sixth time in seven days that there were no fresh infections, with the city's total at 1,039.
Domestic violence victims are suffering even more under the coronavirus quarantine.

During the quarantine, La Strada-Ukraine, a hotline for domestic violence, receives twice as many calls from victims in desperate need of help.

The NGO says that they have nowhere to send the victims because the shelters around the country are full, and the police are reluctant to kick out the husbands, Euronews reports.

In April, La Strada-Ukraine, received 2,754 calls on domestic violence, compared to approximately 1,590 in March. The quarantine started on March 12, and they had 1,273 calls in February and 1,203 in January.

"It is stories about how the police are not reacting or taking calls seriously," says Yuliia Anosova, who works as a lawyer with La Strada-Ukraine.

She points out that the Ukrainian capital Kyiv only has two womens shelters  in a city with approximately three million people. They were already full before the quarantine.

According to a 2019 report by the organization OSCE from 2019, 7.6% of women in Ukraine have experienced physical or sexual violence in the last 12 months by their intimate partner, which is higher than the 4% average in the EU.

Only seven percent of the women in Ukraine who experienced violence by their current partner reported it to the police, according to the report. Domestic violence was, therefore, also a problem before the quarantine, Anosova, points out.

Read alsoNearly 142,000 cases of domestic violence reported in Ukraine in 2019

"But we have a larger problem now. The police are obligated to find places for these women or evict the husband. Because of the quarantine, they are not willing or able to do that," says Anosova, who also points out that public transportation has stopped almost everywhere, trapping women inside.

"The abuser is also home all the time, making it very difficult to call for help."

A 2017 survey by La Strada-Ukraine among criminal justice practitioners showed that 39% believed domestic violence is a private affair, while 60% think that victims can be partly responsible for provoking the violence. In 2015, La Strada-Ukraine estimated that only 4.5% of Ukrainians report domestic violence.

In their 2019 report, OSCE points out that "discrimination and economic inequalities, including the lack of economic independence," is normal in several Eastern European countries and "can make women more vulnerable to violence."

Euronews reached out to the National Police of Ukraine and the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine without any response.
(CNN)  US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Sunday stepped up administration claims that China mounted efforts to hide the extent of the coronavirus spread, including concealing the severity while stockpiling medical supplies.

"You've got the facts just about right," Pompeo told ABC's "This Week" when asked if China intentionally stockpiled medical supplies in early January while it concealed the severity of Covid-19. "We can confirm that the Chinese Communist Party did all that it could to make sure that the world didn't learn in a timely fashion about what was taking place."

Pompeo's comments come as the Trump administration is formulating a long-term plan to punish China on multiple fronts for the coronavirus pandemic, injecting a rancorous new element into a critical relationship already on a steep downward slide.

Multiple sources inside the administration say that there is an appetite to use various tools, including sanctions, canceling US debt obligations and drawing up new trade policies, to make clear to China, and to everyone else, where they feel the responsibility lies.

While there are serious questions about China's transparency, the Trump administration has escalated its effort to blame China for the global spread of the virus as criticism of its own handling of the pandemic has increased. President Donald Trump repeatedly downplayed the threat from the novel coronavirus and suggested it would not be a problem for the US at a time when it was clearly already spreading around the world. Trump also repeatedly showered Chinese President Xi Jinping with praise for his management of the crisis as he sought to safeguard a trade deal with the Chinese.

On Sunday, Pompeo mentioned that some efforts that the Chinese Communist Party took were not seen, but others were public such as not allowing US medical professionals into labs in Wuhan, the city where the virus originated, and silencing scientists.

"President Trump is very clear, we're gonna hold those responsible accountable and we'll do so on a timeline that is our own," Pompeo said.

Trump administration officials have been pushing the US intelligence community to determine the exact origins of the coronavirus outbreak in pursuit of an unproven theory that the pandemic started because of a laboratory accident in China, multiple sources told CNN. The President on Thursday contradicted the intelligence community and claimed he has seen evidence that gives him a "high degree of confidence" Covid-19 originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, but declined to provide details to back up his assertion.

Asked about the belief expressed by Trump and if he had seen evidence backing that claim, Pompeo said, "There's enormous evidence that that's where this began."

"We've said from the beginning that this was a virus that originated in Wuhan, China. We took a lot of grief for that from the outside, but I think the whole world can see now," he said. He later added, "there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan."

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a statement Thursday that the "Intelligence Community also concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified."

Asked Sunday about that conclusion, Pompeo said he agreed with it. Pompeo said that he has "no reason to disbelieve" the intelligence community, adding, "I've seen their analysis. I've seen the summary that you saw that was released publicly. I have no reason to doubt that that is accurate."

Though Pompeo also echoed Trump's statement last week that he has seen evidence linking the outbreak to the Wuhan lab, which contradicted the statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. That statement said US intelligence was "rigorously" examining whether the outbreak was "through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan."

Pompeo added that China "behaved like authoritarian regimes do, attempted to conceal and hide and confused and employed the World Health Organization as a tool to do the same."

"These are the kinds of things that have presented this enormous crisis and enormous loss of life and tremendous economic loss all across the globe," he said. "The Australians agree with that, you hear the Europeans beginning to say the same thing, and I think the whole world is united understanding that China brought this virus to the world."

CNN reported last month that the US government was looking into the theory that the virus originated in the lab but hadn't yet been able to corroborate it. In April, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the weight of evidence suggests the virus was of natural origin.

Asked about whether China intentionally released the virus or if it was an accident, Pompeo refused to give an opinion.

"I don't have anything to say about that. I think there's a lot to know, but I can say this. We've done our best to try and answer all of those questions. We tried to get a team in there, the WHO (World Health Organization) tried to get a team in there, and they have failed. No one's been allowed to go into this lab or any of the other laboratories...this is an ongoing challenge. We still need to get in there. We still don't have the virus samples we need."

The US-China clash is brewing amid growing suspicion inside the administration over China's rising strategic challenge and fury that the virus destroyed an economy seen as Trump's passport to a second term.

There are serious questions to be addressed about China's transparency in the early days of the outbreak in Wuhan and whether its autocratic system fostered an attempt to cover it up. The United States is not the only nation that wants answers amid a pandemic that has devastated the global economy and cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

In response to building pressure, China has launched a propaganda effort to distract from its own culpability, including blaming US soldiers for importing the pathogen in remarks that infuriated Trump. On Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang accused "American politicians" of telling barefaced lies about the pandemic.

"They have only one objective: to try to shirk responsibility for their own epidemic and prevention and control measures and divert public attention," he said.

On Wednesday, China's state-run news agency Xinhua posted an animated video mocking the US response to the coronavirus pandemic as it described China's response in a flattering way.
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Evocative images of Britons celebrating victory over Nazi Germany have reemerged in the leadup up to 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day.

As the country reveled in triumph on May 8, 1945, the streets of London were packed with overjoyed Britons weary from six years of war with the Axis powers in Europe.

Crowds gathered outside the gates of Buckingham Palace as the King and Queen appeared on the palace balcony, along with Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret.

Elated Britons were pictured celebrating in Trafalgar Square as a message on Nelson's Column read: 'Victory over Germany, 1945... Give thanks by saving'.

Less than a year before, thousands of soldiers stormed the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944, D-Day.

Young men in military uniform joined young women arm-in-arm as they danced and sang down Fleet Street, with their jubilant countrymen waving union flags in triumphant celebration.

Prince Minister Winston Churchill announced the end of the War in Europe from Downing Street, also taking the time to remind the country war was still ongoing in the Pacific.

He said: 'We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing, but let us not forget for a moment the toils and efforts that lie ahead'.

Coronavirus-hit Britons in 2020 will still be celebrating victory over the Axis - but the streets of London will likely be far less jubilant by comparison as the country endures lockdown as we fight the pandemic, with Churchill's message of remaining vigilant remaining seemingly ever-relevant.

Crowds gathered outside the gates of Buckingham Palace as the King and Queen appeared on the palace balcony, along with Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret

 Slide me  Elated Britons were pictured celebrating in Trafalgar Square as a message on Nelson's Column read: 'Victory over Germany, 1945... Give thanks by saving' (pictured right: In more recent times)

Young men in military uniform joined young women arm-in-arm as they danced and sang down Fleet Street, with their jubilant countrymen waving union flags in triumphant celebration

Jubilant crowds at Piccadilly Circus, London celebrating victory in Europe on May 8, 1945. Evocative images of Britons celebrating victory over Nazi Germany have reemerged in the leadup up to 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day

 Slide me  Left, May 8, 1945: Crowds gather outside Buckingham Palace on VE Day, in the hope of seeing the King. As the country reveled in triumph, the streets of London were packed with overjoyed Britons weary from six years of war with the Axis powers in Europe. Right: In more recent times

View of revellers, including local young men and women along with soldiers and sailors from Britain's armed forces, celebrating on top of a lorry as it makes its way through Parliament Square in London on VE Day

Crowds celebrating VE Day, Buckingham Palace, May 8, 1945. Thousands of Londoners outside Buckingham Palace celebrate Victory in Europe towards the end of the Second World War

Crowds cheering Winston Churchill as he appeared on the balcony of the Ministry of Health in Whitehall, and made an official announcement that the war in Europe was over. Mr Churchill announced the end of the War in Europe from Downing Street, but took the time to remind the country war was still ongoing in the Pacific

Crowds gathered in Whitehall as Britain declared victory over Nazi Germany on May 8, 1945, after a grueling six-year struggle

 Slide me  A young woman and a sailor appear to have slept out in Trafalgar Square in preparation for the VE Day celebrations. While she prepares her hair, he washes in the fountain, his uniform and flag crisply folded at his side (right: the fountain more recently)

 Slide me  Left: Some of the huge crowd gathered near Canada Gate at Green Park near Buckingham Palace for the celebrations, May 8, 1945. Right: In lockdown Britain, 2020
Sudanese people walk past a closed mosque in the capital Khartoum during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on April 25, 2020, amid a curfew due to the COVID-19 pandemic. AFP



Sudanese officials said Saturday they are working to criminalize the widespread practice of female genital mutilation after the transitional government approved a landmark draft law.



Under the proposed amendment to the criminal code, anyone found guilty of performing the procedure would be sentenced to up to three years in prison, according to a copy obtained by The Associated Press.



The law must still be ratified by a joint meeting of the Cabinet and the sovereign council, which assumed power after last year's overthrow of longtime President Omar al-Bashir.



Female genital mutilation is a deeply rooted practice in Sudan and other countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, where it is traditionally seen as a way of curbing female sexual desire to reinforce conservative behavior. The practice is carried out with special knives, scissors, scalpels, pieces of glass or razor blades. Anaesthetic and antiseptics are generally not used unless the procedure is carried out by doctors.



A 2014 report by the U.N. children's agency estimated that 87% of Sudanese women and girls between the ages of 15 and 49 have been subjected to the procedure. Most undergo an extreme form known as infibulation, which involves the removal and repositioning of the labia to narrow the vaginal opening.



The government's proposal is part of a set of sweeping amendments that would abolish the death penalty for people under the age of 18 and prevent pregnant women from being imprisoned for minor crimes.



In November, the transitional government overturned an al-Bashir-era moral policing law that criminalized revealing clothing for women and drinking alcohol. The move was hailed by rights groups as ''a step forward for women's rights.''



Dalia al-Roubi, a spokeswoman for Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, said the government hopes to convene a meeting with the sovereign council soon to ratify the law. Rajaa Nicola, a member of the sovereign council, said it has yet to be scheduled.



The proposed law has been brought forward by the country's interim government, which includes four female ministers. If passed it would be an achievement for the technocratic leaders who are trying to steer Sudan toward democratic and economic reforms.



However, rights groups warn that the practice remains deeply entrenched in the conservative society and that enforcement could face obstacles. Female genital mutilation has survived in other countries that have criminalized it.



It's also unclear whether the country's military leaders, who make up a majority of the sovereign council, will approve the law, which could spark a backlash by powerful Islamist groups that backed al-Bashir.



In the past decade, the provinces of al-Qadarif and South Kordofan outlawed the practice in a move that did not make its way to other provinces.



''It's a great victory for Sudanese women,'' said Nahid Gabrellah, director of the Seema center for women's rights, adding that more efforts were needed to raise awareness.



The U.N. children's agency also welcomed the efforts to outlaw the practice.



''This practice is not only a violation of every girl child's rights, it is harmful and has serious consequences for a girl's physical and mental health,'' said Abdullah Fadil, the agency's representative in Sudan. (AP)


By PTI

NEW DELHI: The Union Home Ministry on Sunday made it clear that the relaxations given for the inter-state movement of people during the lockdown were available only to distress migrant workers, stranded tourists, pilgrims and students only.

In a communication to all States and Union Territories, Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla said the home ministry allowed inter-state movement of such stranded persons, who had moved from their native places or workplaces, just before the lockdown period, but could not return on account of restrictions placed on the movement of persons and vehicles as part of lockdown measures.

The facilitation envisaged in the orders is meant for such distressed persons but does not extend to those categories of persons, who are otherwise residing normally at places, other than the native places for purposes of work etc., and who wish to visit their native places in the normal course, the communication said.

Several lakh migrant workers were stranded due to the lockdown in various parts of the country.

Thousands of tourists, students and pilgrims were also stranded in different parts of the country due to the lockdown.

The home ministry on Friday allowed their movement through trains and buses with certain conditions that include the consent of both sending and receiving states, maintenance of social distancing norms besides others.

A 21-day lockdown was first announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 24 in a bid to combat the coronavirus pandemic.

It was extended up to May 3 and again till May 17.
With the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) nod, SMS hospital in Jaipur will start convalescent plasma therapy on COVID-19 patients from Monday, Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot said on Sunday.

He said the government will also start tele-medicines service from Monday so that people can get medical counselling and treatment sitting at home during lockdown.

"The ICMR has given permission to SMS hospital, Jaipur for plasma therapy which will start from tomorrow. We have donors ready and the therapy will be performed in a good manner in Rajasthan," Gehlot told reporters during a video conference.

Under the convalescent plasma therapy technique, plasma from people who have recovered from COVID-19 is transfused to patients who are in critical condition.

The Rajasthan chief minister said the state government has made all preparations for the treatment of critically ill COVID-19 patients. Also, doctors from SMS hospital are also participating in the research work going around the globe on plasma therapy, Gehlot said.

Gehlot informed the newspersons that COVID-19 testing capacity in the state has reached 10,000 samples per day and it would be enhanced further by the end of this month.

About the tele-medicines service, he said a web portal -- www.esanjeevaniopd.in -- will be launched and people can avail medical services for free from home. "Doctors and other staff have been trained for providing the service."



The government's decision to operate over 400 mobile OPD vans has bore fruit as these facilities have provided treatment to 1.60 lakh people across the state, the chief minister said.

Notices have been served to two private hospitals for denying treatment to patients, Gehlot informed the reporters and called upon the private healthcare facilities to come forward and serve people at this time of crisis.

Expressing concern over the economy and declining government revenues, the chief minister said the Rajasthan has suffered a loss of Rs 10,000 crore in March and April due to the lockdown. The state government will have to cut short its budgetary provisions due to the present economic situation and dip in revenue collection, he said.

Reiterating his demand of Central grants to all states and stimulus package to industries, Gehlot said the Government of India need to take these steps to restart the economy. He also demanded that the Centre to pay wages to MGNREGA labourers who are forced to sit at home due to lockdown.

"When the Government of India asks MSME and industries to give salaries to their workers who are sitting at home due to lockdown, then it is also the duty of the Centre to give wages to active registered labourers under MGNREGA, who are sitting at home," he said.

The chief minister accused the opposition BJP in Rajasthan of levelling baseless allegations and said that since the very beginning his government has been taking everyone along.

"We have been taking along, be it opposition, activists and all. The BJP leaders in the state are making statements without facts. I appeal to them to stop doing that. This is not the time," he said.

"The state government's initiatives are being appreciated by all across the country. We are sharing our credit with everyone, but the statements from them (BJP leaders) are provocative and it is not good," Gehlot said.

The chief minister said the Centre has allowed plying of special trains for ferrying stranded migrants and workers on the demand of Rajasthan government, but some states such as West Bengal, Bihar, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Telangana are not ready to send or receive migrants.

He said that discussions were being held with the states concerned at the chief secretary-level so that the issue could be resolved. Gehlot also said that associations of migrants labourers and their leaders should put pressure on their respective state government over the matter.

"Nearly 15 lakh migrants have so far registered in Rajasthan and most of them, close to 70 per cent, are those who want to return to Rajasthan from other states. Making travel arrangements for these migrants is a big task and we are ready to arrange buses also," he said.

Gehlot claimed that the Rajasthan government is leading the country in taking initiatives to fight against coronavirus and all steps taken by it have been successful.

"We have already launched the Nirogi Rajasthan campaign and this helped us in the fight against coronavirus. We have strengthened our medical infrastructure and boosting it consistently so that we can be ready in face of any challenge," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)




Good day, Nigeria, welcome to Naija News roundup of top Coronavirus (COVID-19) news headlines for today Sunday, May 3, 2020.

Below is a roundup of top stories on the COVID-19 disease

The Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) on Saturday at 11:50 pm confirmed 220 new cases of coronavirus in Nigeria.

This brings the total number of cases in the country to 2388.

According to the breakdown by NCDC, 62 new cases were recorded in Lagos, while, 52 in FCT, 31 in Kaduna, 13 in Sokoto, 10 in Kebbi, 9 in Yobe, 6 in Borno, 5 in Edo, 5 in Bauchi, 4 in Gombe, 4 in Enugu, 4 in Oyo, 3 in Zamfara, 2 in Nasarawa, 2 in Osun, 2 in Ebonyi, 2 in Kwara, 2 in Kano and 2 in Plateau.

Governor Abdullahi Ganduje has announced the relaxation of the Presidential lockdown imposed on Kano State to curb the spread of the deadly coronavirus (COVID-19).

Governor Ganduje announced that Kano residents would be allowed to make purchases during the free days.

He stated that the two free days would be on Mondays and Thursdays from 10 am to 4 pm.

The Kano State Governor said no markets will be allowed to open, adding that only a few supermarkets would be allowed to operate.

Like TB Joshua, Coronavirus has disgraced Prophet Odumeje as the pandemic failed to end in April as predicted by the controversial Anambra based prophet.

Naija News recalls that Prophet TB Joshua, the founder of Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) trended in March, for an infamous prophecy in which he claimed the COVID 19 would disappear on March 27.

The SCOAN General Overseer had revealed during a church sermon in February, that the pandemic will be over by the end of March.

This month, 27th, it will be over, by the end of this month, whether we like it or not, no matter the medicine they have produced to cure whatever, it will go the way it came, the Prophet had said.

Just like TB Joshua predicted March ending, Prophet Chukwuemeka Ohanaemere of the Spiritual Director of Mountain of Holy Ghost Intervention Deliverance Ministry World Miracle Center, alias Land of Freedom, popularly known as Prophet Odumeje, said Coronavirus will vanish April ending.

The senior pastor of Awaiting The Second Coming Of Jesus Christ, Pastor Adewale Giwa has accused those against the lifting of the coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown of manufacturing the deadly disease.

In a statement on Saturday, Pastor Giwa stated that creators of COVID-19 want the lockdown to continue so they can perpetuate their evil plans.

According to the popular clergyman, creators of the deadly disease want people locked at home while they carry on with their nefarious activities.

He claimed that the fear of coronavirus has killed a lot of people more than the disease itself.

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Kristina Keneally's call to give Australians "first go" at jobs by cutting temporary migration has won cautious support from unions but divided Labor MPs who are worried the home affairs spokeswoman was freelancing with policy aimed at more conservative voters.

Several of Senator Keneally's colleagues privately voiced frustrations on Sunday about her decision to write an opinion piece arguing against the "lazy approach" used by governments to prop up economic growth through immigration and suggested that the overall migrant intake could be less under Labor. Other MPs publicly defended Senator Keneally, arguing that Australia's use of temporary migrants was a debate that needed to happen as the nation recovered from the coronavirus crisis.

Labor's immigration spokeswoman Kristina Keneally says Australia's post-pandemic immigration program must change. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

In an opinion piece for The Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age on Sunday, Senator Keneally said Australian workers must "get a fair go and a first go at jobs", and the country had an unprecedented chance to overhaul the immigration system, particularly the temporary worker intake which was not capped. It was not the first time Senator Keneally has called for the government to look at temporary migration, but it was her strongest suggestion yet that the overall number of migrants would be lower under Labor.
New Delhi: Late actor Rishi Kapoors daughter Riddhima Kapoor Sahni arrived in Mumbai from New Delhi on Saturday night by road to be with her mother Neetu Kapoor and brother Ranbir Kapoor after fathers death. She was accompanied by her daughter Samara. Riddhima did not get permission to fly down due to the coronavirus lockdown, but she sought passed to travel via road.

(Images Courtesy: Yogen Shah)

Rishi Kapoor died on April 30 at a Mumbai hospital. He battled leukemia for two years. He was cremated the same day in the presence of family and close friends. Riddhima, however, could not attend her father's last rites.

"Papa, I love you I will always love you-RIP my strongest warrior I will miss you every day I will miss your FaceTime calls every day. I wish I could be there to say goodbye to you! Until we meet again, papa. I love you - your Mushk forever," Riddhima posted a heartwrenching tribute for Rishi Kapoor on Instagram while sharing an old photo with him.

Rishi Kapoors mortal remains were directly taken to the crematorium from the hospital and only 20 people were allowed to attend the last rites. Apart from wife Neetu Kapoor and son Ranbir, brothers Randhir and Rajiv, sister Rima and her family, Kareena Kapoor, Saif Ali Khan and other family members, Abhishek Bachchan, Ayan Mukerji and Alia Bhatt (Ranbirs girlfriend) were present at the crematorium.
Basketmouth and Amy

Nigerian Comedian Bright Okpocha popularly known as Basketmouth, is celebrating his first daughter, Amy, as she turns a year older, today, May 3.

Basketmouth posted some really lovely photos of Amy on his Instagram page.

The ace comedian then wrote; Happy Birthday to my beautiful daughter Amy.

Youre talented, youre smart.

You are incredibly smart.

And you know how to make me laugh.

Have a wonderful birthday

Daddy loves you.

Basketmouth had Amy before he got married to his wife, Elsie. He and Elsie have a boy, Jason, and a girl, Janelle, together.
Here are todays top news, analysis and opinion. Know all about the latest news and other news updates from Hindustan Times.

Kerala flattens Covid-19 graph for now, registers no new cases

Kerala has successfully flattened the Covid-19 graph as of now as no fresh cases have been reported on Sunday, state health minister K K Shailaja said. Read more

Assam tweaks curfew hours to 6 pm to 6 am during extended lockdown

The Assam government on Sunday announced a statewide curfew between 6 pm and 6 am starting from Monday on all days during the extended lockdown in view of Covid-19 pandemic. Read more

Using wit and jest, UT adviser clarifies Chandigarhs odd-even rule on Twitter

On Saturday night, Chandigarh residents were pleasantly surprised by UT advisers dry humour, as he sought to answer their queries. Read more

Bike-borne miscreants stab insurance agent outside his house in Ludhiana

Three unidentified assailants stabbed an insurance agent in front of his house in Bachittar Nagar of Jamalpur area on Sunday morning. Read more

Indian businessman dies of coronavirus in UAE

A 62-year-old Indian businessman has died in Abu Dhabi after contracting the novel coronavirus, according to a media report. Read more

Girl from Manipur sings Neil Youngs Heart of Gold, her amazing voice wins people over

If the phrase big things come in small packages had a face, it would be of this little girl S Horyaowon Pheirei. Hailing from Kachai Village, Manipur, she became an Internet sensation after a video of the little one singing a beautiful rendition of a song by Neil Young went viral. Read more

100 Hours 100 Stars: In conversation with Javed Akhtar and Benny Dayal

Famous screenwriter, lyricist and poet Javed Akhtar spoke with RJ Peeyush during the 100 Hours 100 Stars initiative by Fever Network where he explained his quirky Twitter bio which reads: A poet, lyricist, scriptwriter, atheist and a die-hard optimist. Read more

iForIndia concert latest updates: Madhuri Dixit performs song with her son, Jack Black says he is with India

The country is geared up on Sunday for a massive online concert called iForIndia with top Bollywood and global stars, including rock legend Mick Jagger, to raise funds for those affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Read more

Watch: Stranded migrant labourers in Gujarats Dahod pelt stones at cops
With one new coronavirus positive case, the total number of infected persons linked with Asia's largest wholesale market of fruits and vegetable, Azadpur Mandi, reached 17 on Saturday, an official said.

All these 17 cases surfaced after April 20, of which one trader has died.



Adil Ahmad Khan, Chairman, Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) of Azadpur Mandi, told IANS that 28 shops of infected traders have been shut so far and 43 staff and labourers have been quarantined in the market itself. Mandi authorities are providing them food and other necessities.



The district surveillance team is tracing the people who came in contact with the infected persons.





Asked about the test reports of samples collected by the doctors in the past few days, he said they have not come so far.



Meanwhile, two medical teams have been deployed in the mandi for screening of traders, labourers, drivers, and farmers. The medical teams have screened over 775 persons so far and the samples of the suspected patients are also being collected, said the APMC Chairman.
TWRA Wildlife Officers are investigating a fatal boating incident on Cherokee Lake involving a Virginia fisherman who drowned after falling overboard from a small watercraft Saturday afternoon.

Around 2:45 p.m. on Edward McMillan, 71, of Gate City, Va., was fishing with a juvenile male onboard a 1993 14 Gheenoe near Quarryville boat ramp near Mooresburg in Hawkins Co.

The vessel is described as being similar to a flat-transom canoe with an outboard engine. According to witness statements, the vessel was about 60 yards off the bank when it overturned sending both occupants into the water. The juvenile male was able to pull the victim to shore although he did not survive. Neither occupant was wearing a personal flotation device.

Hawkins Co. EMS, Hawkins Co. Rescue Squad and the Hawkins Co. Sheriffs Office assisted TWRA officers with the incident.
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Washington, D.C., May 3, 2020Police in Jessore, Bangladesh, should immediately release journalist Shafiqul Islam Kajol from custody and drop all charges against him, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Kajol, a photographer and editor of the biweekly Pakkhakal magazine, had been missing since March 10, one day after a criminal defamation suit under the Digital Security Act was filed against him and 31 others, as CPJ reported at the time. Today, the Border Guard Bangladesh arrested Kajol at the Benapole Port Police Station on charges of trespassing, saying that he was caught illegally crossing the border from India, according to news reports. CPJ today could not determine the circumstances surrounding Kajols disappearance.

A court in Jessore, the headquarter city of the Jessore district, which encompasses Benapole, ordered that Kajol be given bail, but police rearrested Kajol under Section 54 of the Criminal Procedure Code, which allows police to hold Kajol without a warrant, according to the news reports and Kajols son, Monoron Polok, who communicated with CPJ through a messaging app. Polok said he did not know the reason for the rearrest. The Dhaka Tribune reported police mentioned the case against him under the Digital Security Act.

Bangladesh police must immediately put an end to the long ordeal of journalist Shafiqul Islam Kajol, missing for 53 days, and release him from custody, said Steven Butler, CPJs Asia program coordinator. Kajol is a victim not a criminal. Its an abuse of authority to subject Kajol to detention and interrogation.

Polok was called to the Benapole border police station from his home in Dhaka early Sunday morning, and was later able to see and embrace his father at the Chief Judicial Magistrate Court in Jessore, he told CPJ. When asked about his fathers health, he responded: Hes alive.

A text message sent to the superintendent at the Jessore police station seeking comment was not immediately answered.

CPJ has previously reported on journalist disappearances in Bangladesh, and the atmosphere of fear those disappearances create for members of the press.
A visitor to the "HYUNDAI 50" exhibition looks at Kim Whan-ki's "Universe 05-IV-71 #200," the most expensive Korean painting ever auctioned, at Gallery Hyundai in central Seoul. Courtesy of Gallery Hyundai



Kim Whan-ki's 13.2 billion-won 'Universe' on view



By Kwon Mee-yoo





Gallery Hyundai founder Park Myung-ja / Courtesy of Gallery Hyundai

Do Hyung-teh, president of Gallery Hyundai, said a good gallery liaises between artwork and collectors.



Do, son of the gallery's founder Park Myung-ja who is considered Korea's first modern gallerist, said, "What I learnt from my mother is that the relationship between gallery and artist, collectors and artwork is as important as the ties between people. The HYUNDAI 50 exhibition is the sum of Gallery Hyundai's relationships."



Gallery Hyundai celebrates its 50th anniversary with a two-part exhibition titled "HYUNDAI 50" and a few other projects aiming to take a leap forward in gaining a bigger international presence as well as promoting Korean art abroad.



Part I of the "HYUNDAI 50" exhibition runs from April 17 to May 31 and Part II from June 12 through July 19. The first part of the exhibition is currently available through online preview centers for Korean modern art, including works of household names Kim Whan-ki, Lee Jung-seob, Park Soo-keun and Chun Kyung-ja.



"All of the works on display are related to Gallery Hyundai, either featuring in numerous solo or group exhibitions, or sold through the gallery. Some of them have more stories behind them," Do said during a press preview of the exhibit. "Most of the works on display are from major customers of Gallery Hyundai, emphasizing the relationship between the gallery, the artist and the collector."





Gallery Hyundai at its former Insa-dong location in 1970 when the gallery first opened / Courtesy of Gallery Hyundai



The exhibit begins with a series of photographs documenting the gallery's history, beginning with its first location at 30 Insadong-gil opened April 4, 1970. The photo collection is part of Korea's modern art history, featuring many noted figures.



Gallery Hyundai was the first commercial gallery in Korea specializing in traditional and contemporary art when only antique painting and book dealers were prevalent. The gallery's founder Park operated the gallery with commission fees for selling artworks and supported artists, which was a novel system in Korea back then.



"As a commercial gallery, we always consider commercial value when showcasing a piece of art, which is different from museums," Do said.



The exhibition features 70 works from 40 artists, all related to Gallery Hyundai in some way.



Kim Whan-ki's "05-IV-71 #200 (Universe)," which was sold for a record 13.2 billion won at a Hong Kong auction in November 2019, is on public view for the first time since the historic auction. The most expensive Korean painting ever auctioned was previously exhibited at Gallery Hyundai in 2012 during the "Kim Whanki, Master of Korean Modern Art" show. This is Kim Whan-ki's only diptych and painted in his iconic "Whanki blue" Pointillist style.



Do said he has seen this masterpiece at the previous owner Matthew Kim's house when he was studying in New York. "I am filled with emotions to see this painting here again," Do said.





Lee Jung-seob's "Bull" is on view along with archive materials at the "HYUNDAI 50" exhibition. / Courtesy of Gallery Hyundai



Renowned artist Lee Jung-seob and Park Soo-keun were also rediscovered through a number of retrospectives at Gallery Hyundai.



Gallery Hyundai held three solo exhibition of Lee in 1972, 1999 and 2015. The 1999 retrospective attracted over 90,000 visitors, which was a record number for a gallery exhibition.



"Lee's iconic works such as Bull and Family with Chickens are hung in the exact same position as they were in the 1972 exhibition," Do explained.



Paik Nam-june's "Marco Polo," which consists of a Volkswagen beetle, a refrigerator, TV monitors and flowers, was the proud Golden Lion winner at the 1993 Venice Biennale.



Gallery Hyundai was Paik's representative in Korea and held many exhibitions, introducing the "Family of Robot" series and premiering "Un Pas de Loup de Seoul a Budapest" (A Wolf's Step: from Seoul to Budapest) a shamanistic exorcism performance.



Do said, "'Marco Polo' shows how Gallery Hyundai worked well with Paik. I sold this installation to AmorePacific Chairman Seo Kyung-bae, who gladly loaned it for this exhibition."





Paik Nam-june's "Marco Polo," winner of the Golden Lion at the 1993 Venice Biennale / Courtesy of Gallery Hyundai
US prisons that hold the worlds largest population of incarcerated people have been hit by a wave of Covid-19 infections and fatalities and appear to be particularly vulnerable as an institution, according to multiple experts and bodies tracking their spiraling numbers.

More than 14,400 inmates have been infected by the coronavirus and over 215 have been killed, according to the Marshall Project, a non-partisan news organisation that tracks the US criminal justice system. Official numbers as reported by the Bureau of Prisons, the federal body that runs and manages prison, 1,919 have been infected and 37 killed.

There are 1,41,310 inmates in federally-managed institutions and 10,820 in community-based facilities in all; and 36,000 staff members,

Reasons for the spiraling infections are clear. Inmates live in tight spaces, and mid low levels of hygiene. And they have suffered from the same shortages of essential medical supplies as the rest of the country. Bureau of Prisons Director Michael Carvajal complained of a shortage of testing supplies and said that quarantining remains difficult, AFP news agency reported. We dont have the option to close our doors or pick who or when someone is sent to our custody.

Reports are rising numbers of infections and fatalities in US prions come amidst reopening of the rest of the country as number of new cases have continued to decline, and hospitalization and intubation has dropped.

The death toll rose to 66,415 Sunday morning with 1,426 in the last 24 hours, which is far lower than the more than 4,000 at the peak mid-April, and the number of cases went up to 1.13 million; up by 29,078 .

While pressure have mounted for reopening the country, with President Donald Trump at the forefront, experts are urgently flagging concerns. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the presidents task force on the coronavirus outbreak, told Fox News Sunday, she was disturbed the protestors who swamped the state assembly in Michigans capital, Lansing, last week, some of whom were armed with guns. President Trump has backed them.

Its devastatingly worrisome to me personally because if they go home and they infect their grandmother or grandfather who has a co-morbid condition and they have a serious or very unfortunate outcome, they will feel guilty for the rest of their lives. So we need to protect each other at the same time as were voicing our discontent, she said.

In another development, Republican and Democratic leaders of US congress have jointly  in rare bipartisanship  rejected the White Houses offer of instant testing kits for lawmakers. The senate is scheduled to return to work on Monday.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, said in a joint statement, the testing kits on offer can be used better among frontline workers dealing with the outbreak.

No reason to turn it down, except politics, Trump hit back in a tweet. We have plenty of testing. Maybe you need a new doctor over there. Crazy Nancy will use it as an excuse not to show up to work.
Delhis chief minister Arvind Kejriwal asked the Centre on Sunday to lift the lockdown in the Capital, underlining that both the government and citizens will have to learn to live with the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), and that the lockdown  while necessarily  was now causing a grave economic crisis. Kejriwal acknowledged that this may lead to an increase in cases, but said that Delhis infrastructure was prepared to deal with it.

Outlining the relaxations in the city from Monday, as per central guidelines, the Delhi CM said the state government told the Centre that barring the 97 containment zones in the city, which should remain sealed, the rest of the city should be declared a green zone. This was necessary to ease the suffering of the people, as well as ensure the economy got back on its feet, which was necessary for the government itself to function, Kejriwal said.

All of Delhi is currently a red zone  where restrictions on activities are the most severe. The decision to relax the classification of an administrative jurisdiction rests with the Centre.

Imposing the lockdown was very important. If the Centre had not done so on March 24, there would have been a frightening situation in the country because at that point, we were not ready to deal with the coronavirus disease. We did not have personal protective equipment kits, we did not have testing kits, hospitals were not ready, people were not aware of the idea of social distancing, Kejriwal said. He emphasised that Delhi had followed all the central guidelines  which were good, very good  but it was now time to lift the lockdown.

The CM said that the lockdown had created two major difficulties. The first was that people were facing enormous hardship. People are losing livelihoods. Traders cant open their shops. There is no industrial activity. More jobs are being lost. Many people will leave Delhi soon.

This has shaken the entire economic architecture, which, in turn, caused the second crisis. Since the economy is closed, the government is not getting any revenues. In April, every year, the government used to receive ~3,500 crore in revenues. Last month, we got ~300 crore. How will we pay salaries? How will we run the government?

Kejriwal said it was important to understand that Covid-19 is now here to stay. We will not see a situation now where there are no cases. This is now impossible. The idea of the lockdown was to prepare, and Delhi, he said, had done so optimally. We have made adequate arrangements. We have enough testing kits. We have hospitals.

Delhi currently has close to 3,000 beds reserved for Covid-19 patients in several state and central government hospitals, and an additional 420 paid beds in private hospitals, according to thehealth department.Kejriwal said last month that the government has a plan to gradually scale the requirement of beds -- in hospitals, hotels and guest houses -- to 30,000 depending on the rise in cases.There are 306 ventilators in public hospitals in the city and about 800 more in private, Delhi government officials said.The Capital also has adequate stock of personal protective equipment (PPEs), with around 300,000 lakh PPE kits being delivered piecemeal and at least 15,000 kits received from the Centre, government officials said.

In this backdrop  where Covid-19 could not be eradicated and the city infrastructure was adequate  Delhi, the CM said, had asked the Centre to lift the lockdown. We have advised the Centre that while 97 containment zones in the city should be entirely sealed, the rest of the city should be declared a green zone. All markets should be open. One way is to make it odd-even, with alternate shops opening every day. But it is time to open Delhi.

While a senior government functionary said the Union home ministry will continue to work together with states, another official said the guidelines are for all states/UTs to follow. The developments come days after the Centre said in its order, released on Friday, that states can enforce stricter rules but not dilute them.

Delhi reported 427 new cases on Sunday, taking its total tally to 4,549 including 64 deaths.

Lifting the lockdown, Kejriwal acknowledged, will lead to a possible increase in cases. We are hopeful that Delhis economy will open soon. When this happens, there will be an increase in cases. But we are prepared to deal with it.

If you talk about the number of hospitals and beds for Covid-19 patients, yes, there are more now than there were before. But the ground reality is that there are gaps  non-Covid patients are not getting admissions, many doctors getting infected. The quality of care provided at government hospitals also has to improve. The government needs to address these issues before opening up lockdown, said Dr Jugal Kishore, head of the department of community medicine at Safdarjung Hospital.

Kejriwal also outlined the governments broad public health strategy at the moment. Our first priority is to minimise deaths due to the disease; we have been successful in this. The second is to minimise the spread of the disease. That is why we are testing in large numbers now, to be able to the track the infected and treat them.
MUSKOKAIn his regular update to the media on Friday, Dr. Charles Gardner, the chief medical officer of health for the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit covered some areas of concern as he wrapped up his sixth week of dealing with the pandemic.

There has been a lot of discussion about visitors to the Muskoka area, such as seasonal residents, becoming sick and tying up resources in the area, rather than in the health unit of their primary residence.

Dr. Gardner revealed that as of April 22, there were 33 people who came into Simcoe Muskoka and ended up testing positive.

We have had 33 people come into our area and be tested and then go back to their home elsewhere, Gardner confirmed. So in each one of those cases, we have followed up with regard to those that would have been in contact with in order to put them into self-isolation. We forward those cases back to their health unit to follow up.

No details on infections from those trace investigations is available.

Gardner explained the methodology of tracking patients to their home health unit.

If an individual has another house out of district, then we count them. If they get tested here and they leave, then they are not counted, he said. Their information is passed to their home health unit.

With a number of outbreaks at long-term-care homes in Simcoe County, there has been testing done to determine infection rates. Testing of patients and staff at long-term-care homes has increased, with 1,235 individuals being assessed to date.

The province has invoked a mandate that all staff and residents of long-term-care homes be tested, an order that will be a challenge, Gardner commented.

He is also urging the federal government to adopt a national minimum income to take pressure off Canadians during the pandemic.

A minimum basic income is appropriate if one doesnt have access to work right now, Gardner said. It is something I and this office advocate.
Tasmania has recorded no new COVID-19 cases for another day, but Health Minister Sarah Courtney says that is not enough to ease restrictions just yet.

She told reporters on May 3 that while the latest results are encouraging, it is no reason for complacency and urged people to stay at home unless going out for essential reasons.

We know in other countries we have seen second waves which have had devastating consequences, she said.

So please I ask all Tasmanians, while this is very encouraging, we cannot be complacent and we must continue to ensure we are complying with all the measures.

Restrictions remain across Tasmania and police are going to monitor those.

Twelve of Tasmanias 13 COVID-19 deaths have been in the northwest, and two-thirds of an overall 221 cases have come from the outbreak in the region.

But Premier Peter Gutwein said on May 2 that with the northwest outbreak under control, the tighter restrictions there would be eased from May 4.

Overall, Courtney said as of April 3 there had been 221 confirmed cases, 158 of those people had recovered.
Aerial salute over the capital by IAF's Sukhoi-30MKI, Mig-29, and Jaguar aircraft to be conducted between 10 am to 10:30 am, Helicopters to shower petals over the Police War Memorial at 9 am.

The Indian Air Force is all set to salute coronawarriors today. The aircraft will shower flower petals on all hospitals treating COVID-19 patients and will also hold flypast of Sukhoi-30 aircraft. Moreover, the Navy will express their gratitude for all the frontline warriors by liting up Navys ship. As per the plan, India Army said that a flypast by transport aircraft and the fighter will be carried in multiple locations. The aircraft will cover major towns starting from Srinagar in Indias northernmost Union Territory to Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala.

In the same way, another flypast will be conducted from Dibrugarh, from Assam in the east to Kutch in Rajasthan in the west. Colonel Aman Anand, PRO, Indian Army said in a briefing that both the aircraft will cover all the major towns between Srinagar to Thiruvananthapuram & Dibrugarh to Kutch. The aerial salute over Delhi will be conducted between 10 am to 10:30 am. Fighter aircraft formations include IAFs warhorse Sukhoi-30 MKI, MiG-29 & Jaguar that will be flying over Rajpath and the entire orbit over Delhi.

The Ministry of Defence said that all these formations will be visible to Delhi residents from their rooftops. Moreover, the helicopters will also shower petals over Police War Memorial at 9 am followed by all the hospitals treating COVID-19 patients between 10 am to 10:30 am. The list of hospitals included are Apollo Indraprastha Hospital, AllMS, Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital, Army Hospital R&R., GTB Hospital, RML Hospital, Ganga Ram Hospital, Baba Saheb Ambedkar Hospital, Max Saket, Loknayak Hospital, Rohini Hospital and many more.

Also Read: Lokpal Member Justice AK Tripathi dies due to COVID-19

#WATCH Two IAF C-130J Super Hercules special operations transport aircraft fly over Sukhna Lake in Chandigarh. The aircraft took off from Srinagar,J&K and will fly all the way to Trivandrum in Kerala to show gratitude towards COVID-19 warriors. pic.twitter.com/iFGSrbFGq0  ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020

These activities will be carried out in Mumbais Marine Drive at 10:30 am, Jaipur and Ahmedabad at 10:30 are and 11:25 am. The eastern air command will facilitate in Guwahati at 10:30 am, Patna at 11:37 am and Lucknow at 12:20 am over their State Assemblies.

For all the latest National News, download NewsX App
The Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom has hit the wall with new European projects  Nord Stream 2 will be finished at some point in the second half of 2021, the exact route of TurkStreams second line remains veiled in ambiguity and no other major gas importer voiced their interest in carrying out a new project. Thus, the only remaining prospect for growth lies in Eastern Asia and primarily China. Apart from a tangible gas market saturation in Europe, there are two main premises for a second-phase Gazprom expansion into China: its largely untapped Eastern Siberian gas reserves that would be very costly to move all across Russia onto European markets and the competitiveness of Russian pipeline gas on the Chinese market.

Gazproms current China-bound project, the 38 BCm per year Power of Siberia (PoS) pipeline, started up in December 2019. Surprisingly, the Russian firm halted gas exports via PoS mid-March for a (previously non-indicated) two-week maintenance which turned out to be an elegant way of circumventing the massive demand drop in China. Even with another round of maintenance announced for autumn, Gazprom should be able to meet its export target for 2020  5 BCm, rising steadily to 10 BCm per year in 2021 and 15 BCm in 2022. By 2025 Power of Siberia should reach its nominal capacity and it is the next step after that currently exercises the minds of Russian policy makers and gas traders alike.

The contours of the next major project have been emerging for some time already  the idea to construct Power of Siberia-2 (PoS-2) was flaunted already in the early 2010s, its purpose being of meeting the gas requirements of Western Chinese provinces via Mongolia. This late March Gazproms request of conducting a feasibility study for PoS-2 has found President Putins approval. The projected pipeline would have a throughput capacity of 50 BCm per year and would be traversing Russias Altay region before crossing over to Mongolia and Western China. The first thing that struck market observers was that at some point in early 2020 the capacity of Power of Siberia-2 was upgraded from a preliminary estimate of 30 BCm per year to an officially presented volume of 50 BCm per year.

Story continues

Premium: 2 Stocks To Consider As Oil Nears $15

The framework for Power of Siberia-2 (also known as the Altai pipeline) was laid down in 2015 when Gazprom and the Chinese state-owned company CNPC signed a preliminary gas supply deal, without specifying the technicalities of pricing. Given that Pos-1 pricing talks took a decade to conclude, the tardiness of PoS-2 negotiations is hardly surprising. Yet at the same time Russian authorities are betting heavily on it happening  the recently issued Energy strategy-2035 sees pipeline gas exports reaching 300 BCm per year by 2035, of which 80 BCm per year will go to China, with European pipeline exports effectively stalling for the next decade and half. It has to be noted that the Energy Strategy also surmises a pessimistic scenario, whereby Gazproms gas exports increase from 220 BCm in the base year of 2018 to 255 BCm per year in 2035, meaning a slight decline in European demand and Power of Siberia-1 remaining the only China-bound gas conduit, with no Pos-2 construction taking place.

Graph 1. Russias 2035 Gas Strategy.

(Click to enlarge)

Source: Authors data.

Gazprom needs Power of Siberia-2 for many reasons. First of all, its immense 2P reserve base of 24.3 TCm (which keeps on increasing with time by 0.1-0.2 TCm in the last couple of years) compels it to act upon it whilst Eurasian economies still perceive natural gas as a bridging energy source and do not penalize its utilization. Second, China is the only easy-to-access market outlet whose demand for natural gas has still not peaked  once China reaches that stage, there remain only more adventurous and technologically complex variants (eg.: constructing a pipeline to South Korea, subsea or transiting North Korea). Thirdly, Gazprom might dovetail Pos-2 with one of its long-time ambitions  linking the gas transmission system of Russias Far East to the ones in Western Siberia and Europe. Given that still only 69 percent are connected to the federal gas transmission system, this would be a politically very useful objective.

Graph 2. Map of Power of Siberia-2.



(Click to enlarge)

There is one additional novelty in how Power of Siberia-2 would look like  namely, the inclusion of Mongolia as a transiting country. Heretofore Mongolia has neither produced nor imported natural gas, hence Gazprom could potentially enter a completely new market. This being said, as of today the main reason for including Mongolia lies in the possible bifurcation of the pipeline so that at least some part of it heads towards northeast China. In addition to the above listed commercial rationale, the agreement, as indicated during President Putins meeting with Mongolian Prime Minister Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh in December 2019, might also turn out to be a stepping stone to something much more politically complex. Despite all the benefits that Russia might garner from Power of Siberia-2, Gazprom has to face an array of challenges that will seriously jeopardize its viability.

Above all others, there is the question of Chinese pipeline gas demand  the Western route (from the Chinese point of view) pits Gazprom against Central Asian producers, namely Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, who already have a separate conduit to supply the Chinese market. The 55 BCm/year capacity Central Asia Gas Pipeline was utilized last year to the extent of 87 percent (47.9 BCm), with most of the delivered gas coming from Turkmenistan. China remains the main market outlet for Galkynysh production, therefore unwanted competition in the form of Gazprom vying for a place under the sun would be hardly welcome news for Ashgabat. Thus, it is not only competition against LNG that Gazprom ought to win but also deal with a China-dependent Turkmenistan, all this against the background of tough-as-usual Chinese price negotiations. At least things have started moving after a prolonged lull.

By Viktor Katona for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:

Read this article on OilPrice.com
The Morrison governments economic policy response to the COVID-19 shock has so far been about supporting businesses and workers affected by the downturn.

The number of people lining up at Centrelink offices around the country shocked government officials. Credit:Getty Images

As the government begins to shift from medical emergency management and job stabilisation to plan jobs recovery, it needs to consider the most effective ways to thaw the economy from the deep freeze  the so-called "hiber-cession". It also faces some binding constraints.

Whatever approach the government takes, it cannot rely on further stimulus through either arm of macroeconomic policy. This is because both monetary and fiscal policy levers have effectively been spent in crisis management.

What remains? Essentially, structural reform. That is, improving the mix of taxes and spending along with other market structures in a way that enhances competition and/or productivity. Applied pragmatically and fairly, this can be a no-regrets outcome.
Analysis | 12 January 2022 | News

Why or why not: The dilemma for startup investors

There have been tremors within the startup community worldwide with the latest Theranos scandal. Though startu...Read more
SEYMOUR - A 30-year-old Waterbury man who overturned s truck carrying 80 tons of garbage on Route 8, has been arrested on numerous charges.

The driver, Jose Edwin Vasquez, was charged with operating a motor vehicle with a suspended license, reckless driving, second-degree reckless endangerment and failure to stay in the proper lane.

The accident happened at 12:13 p,m. Saturday on southbound Route 8 at Exit 22 in downtown Seymour.

Route 8 south was shut down for about five hours as crews removed the truck and the spilled trash.

State Police said Vasquez was hauling about 80 tons of trash from Waterbury to Bridgeport. Troopers said he may have been operating his commercial vehicle overweight at the time of the crash.

A witness told state police the truck was operating in an erratic and reckless manner prior to the accident.

As part of the investigation, a full commercial motor vehicle inspection was conducted. It found several serious violations with the vehicle, state police said.

It should also be noted that the operator [Vasquez] was subjected to a full commercial motor vehicle inspection on Feb. 14. During that inspection, he was cited for several violations.

Saturdays inspection of the vehicle showed that Vasquez failed to make the necessary corrections following the February inspection, state police said.

Based on operator statements and physical evidence at the scene the operator [Vasquez] was found to be at fault for the accident.

Crews from the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and Department of Transportation, Seymour police and firefighters assisted state police with the cleanup and traffic control.

The vehicle was later towed by Chippys Towing.

There were no reported injuries.

Vasquez was released after posting a $5,000 bond and will appear in Derby Superior Court on June 26.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 10:48:51|Editor: huaxia

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LIMA, May 2 (Xinhua) -- Peruvian President Martin Vizcarra welcomed on Saturday the commitment and support expressed by his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping for the continued fight against the spread of the coronavirus in Peru.

During a speech at government palace in Lima, Vizcarra said he had spoken by phone on Thursday with Xi, who said that China would continue to offer support to the South American country.

In their phone conversation, Xi said China firmly supports the Peruvian government and people in their fight against COVID-19 and will continue to offer support and help within its capability.

There is great commitment from China, not only in medical supplies but also in scientific information, Vizcarra said, adding that very positive results will be seen in the country in the coming weeks.

Peru, which has declared a state of emergency and implemented quarantine measures and a curfew, has so far reported 42,534 cases and 1,200 deaths from the virus. Enditem
People visit Liberty State Park in Jersey City, New Jersey, on May 2, 2020

Dozens of New Yorkers were fined for violating coronavirus social distancing guidelines as they flocked to the city's beaches and parks to enjoy balmy weekend weather, police said Sunday.

NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea told reporters that officers had issued 51 summonses on Saturday, mostly for social distance violations, as temperatures in America's COVID-19 epicenter registered upwards of 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 degrees Celsius).

Residents of the Big Apple, which has been shut down since mid-March, are allowed outside to exercise providing they maintain six-feet (two meters) of distance and wear a mask when around others.

New Yorkers can be fined up to $1,000 for violating the orders, which many did as they descended on popular spots like Manhattan's Central Park and Rockaway Beach in Queens following a largely rainy week.

Shea said tickets were issued to 43 people in parks and eight others elsewhere as New York leaders warned residents not to spark a second wave of infections.

Governor Andrew Cuomo said he appreciated residents were bored but that they should not take "false comfort" from falling COVID-19 cases or from seeing other states reopen.

He insisted that the outbreak -- which has killed almost 20,000 people statewide -- was far from over.

"How people cannot wear masks is disrespectful. It's disrespectful to the nurses, the doctors, the people who have been frontline workers, the transit workers.

"You wear the mask not for yourself -- you wear the mask for me," he added.

Cuomo reported 280 new deaths from COVID-19 in New York state in the last 24 hours, down from 299 the day before.

More than 700 New Yorkers were dying daily at the peak of the outbreak last Month.

Cuomo announced that new cases and intubations continued to fall.
The 2019-2020 Teen of the Year will be announced Thursday during a virtual event, with the winner receiving a $5,000 scholarship sponsored by MDU Resources Group Inc.

The 32 finalists, all of whom are exemplary high school seniors from Bismarck, Mandan and surrounding areas, have been featured in The Bismarck Tribune this academic year via a series dubbed Teen of the Week. The program is in its second year and is a partnership between MDU Resources and the newspaper.

We're very proud to be a part of the program, MDU Resources Group CEO Dave Goodin said. We are proud to support the youth of the area in highlighting individual stories and the various accomplishments. It's heartwarming to hear the stories.

Naomi Hegwood, a Bismarck High School graduate who is attending Harvard University, is the inaugural Teen of the Year, and said she remains grateful for the scholarship she received.

To know that I don't have to worry about loans when I graduate, or expenses even while I'm in college, because of this (scholarship) -- it's super amazing, she said. I could have never dreamed of this when I was applying for college. I never thought I was going to get into Harvard. I never thought I was going to get as much support and scholarships as I did. I'm still super thankful.

Hegwood, during last year's Teen of the Year reception, received an additional $5,000 from Harry Pearce, a retired chairman of the MDU Resources Board of Directors, bringing her scholarship total that night to $10,000.

In high school, Hegwood, whose dad is incarcerated on drug-related charges, earned straight A's, completed nine Advanced Placement classes and was involved in Envirothon, Science Olympiad and Science Bowl. She worked at Target to supplement her mother's income.

The Harvard freshman is taking numerous science classes and plans, next year, to declare integrative biology her major. She recently wrote the ornithology exam for the university's invitational Science Olympiad competition.

Hegwood is a member of the Harvard College Conservation Society and illustrates for the university's daily student newspaper. She is also involved with Habitat for Humanity, traveling to Laredo, Texas during winter break.

I love college -- it's super cool, she said. Cambridge is super nice. It isn't that big, but it's super easy to go to Boston, and Boston is super cool. I love the people at Harvard and I love my classes.

The Bismarck native returned home from Massachusetts March 14 due to the coronavirus pandemic and is taking classes online to wrap up her freshman year. Students at Harvard were told March 10 they had to leave the campus, according to Hegwood.

I had so many travels and experiences to look forward to, Hegwood said, noting she had to cancel her spring break trip to California and postpone an excursion to Martha's Vineyard. And then we were told we had to leave and classes were going to be online and it was, like, super shocking. Campus was crazy after that. Logistically it was a nightmare, but I got home.

But, honestly, I'm glad I had the chance to leave when I did because I think it got a lot worse pretty soon after we left, she added.

Hegwood's summer plans were also altered due to the coronavirus. Rather than completing research at the Harvard Forest, she will be living near Streeter and studying rotational grazing through the North Dakota State University Extension Service.

The reigning Teen of the Year offered the following words of encouragement to the Class of 2020: I can't even imagine what you're feeling right now  having everything taken away. But make the most of the situation. Stay in touch with your friends. Don't worry so much  I think that's important, especially in these times. There's nothing we can do to change the situation and that's how a lot of things in life are. College is going to be a whole treasure chest of new experiences. It sucks that you have to miss out on these ones, but there are plenty more to come.

Reach Cheryl McCormack at Cheryl.McCormack@bismarcktribune.com

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Following the recent death of migrant worker, Alagu Periyakarrupan who died due to multiple injuries from a fall from height at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, his eldest daughter Roopa has penned a moving handwritten letter to thank volunteers from social enterprise group Itsrainingraincoats.

Since Alagus demise, the non-profit has arranged for friends in India to check in on his family, their well-being and deliver rations to help them tide through this ordeal.

And now, one of their volunteers is said to be in touch with Roopa, according to Itsrainingraincoats in a new Facebook update today (30 April).

Thanked Volunteers with Moving Handwritten Letter

Not only is the volunteer helping Roopa to improve her English, the volunteer has also tasked Roopa with writing a weekly letter to them to report on her progress.

Roopas first letter to Itsrainingraincoats. | Photo: Itsrainingraincoats / Facebook

According to the letter that Roopa sent Itsrainingraincoats, Roopa hails from the Government Senior Secondary School, Bathubasti in South Andaman and is in the 12th standard.

She also revealed that her father liked the fruit banana most.

And above all else, she wrote that she misses and loves him and that he often gave good advice.

At the end of her letter, Roopa also thanked volunteers from Itsrainingraincoats for the help extended.

Daughters Education Will Be Taken Care of

According to Itsrainingraincoats, Alagus wife had no other source of income and pondered over being a coolie to support her aged parents and three daughters.

This would mean that she would have to transport the luggages of others at bus stops or train stations in return for small change.

But now with the help of the volunteer, Roopas education for the next 5 years will be covered at least and there will be less burden on Alagus wife.

She no longer has to entertain thoughts of becoming a coolie due to the support given.

Story continues

We can now safely say she will not need to do that and the education of the eldest daughter for the next 5 years will be taken care of until she can get a job, wrote Itsrainingraincoats.

It was known that while Alagu was still alive, seeing his three daughters be educated was his greatest dream, according to the non-profit organisation.

To which they assured: Alagu, we got this. You can Rest In Peace.

View the full post from Itsrainingraincoats here.

A father and husband gone too soon

Rather than death from COVID-19 complications, Alagu was said to have succumbed to sustained multiple injuries from a fall from height at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, according to an update from the Ministry of Health (MOH).

For nearly 11 years, Alagu had been working as a construction worker with the same employer after arriving in Singapore in September 2009, said the Ministry of Manpower (MOM). He had also been the sole breadwinner of the family.

ALSO READ: COVID-19: Infected Migrant Workers In Singapore Who Died Are Both Sole Breadwinners, Fathers of Young Kids

The post Daughter of Deceased Migrant Worker Pens Moving Handwritten Letter to Thank Volunteers appeared first on theAsianparent - Your Guide to Pregnancy, Baby & Raising Kids.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 3)  As the Philippines marks World Press Freedom Day, the government has hailed journalists as "heroes" too in the raging battle against the deadly coronavirus.

"As the whole world wages war against an invisible enemy, Filipinos have come to realize the importance of the role that journalists and media workers play in this time of crisis," the Presidential Task Force on Media Security (PTFoMS) said in a statement over the weekend.

The PTFoMS, which acts as the inter-agency body tasked to protect members of the Philippine press, noted that the government "is serious in upholding press freedom by ensuring the security of media practitioners."

Presidential Communications Office Undersecretary Jose Sy Egco, who is also PTFoMS Executive Director, said in the statement that the Duterte administration acknowledges its mandate to address threats against the media.

"We honor the media as among the frontliners, but we take cognizance of their vulnerabilities, such as lack of hazard pay and other amelioration," he added.

Presidential Communications Operations Office-Secretary and PTFoMS co-chairman Martin Andanar added that in the spirit of "bayanihan," even media practitioners have also taken part in helping their colleagues by conducting relief operations nationwide for those who have been hit by the pandemic.

In a separate statement, Senator Francis Pangilinan stressed the importance of the press against continuing threats of online misinformation during the crisis.

"Magtiwala tayo sa kakayahan ng mga mamamahayag na magpakalat ng tama at kapaki-pakinabang na impormasyon. Sa panahong lahat ay 'online' at nagpapalipas ng oras sa internet, mas matindi ang paglaganap ng fake at misleading na mga balita," he said in a statement Sunday.

[Translation: Let us believe in the capability of journalists to deliver truthful and useful information. At a time when everyone is online and is spending their time on the internet, the spread of fake and misleading news is much easier.]

US Ambassador to the Philippines Sung Kim also said that he acknowledges the work of the media, including Filipino journalists, as free press is a "cornerstone of democracy, and critical for public health."

Still not safe from repression

Meanwhile, the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication said that while the Duterte administration claims to protect and uphold press freedom, the "sorry state of Philippine journalism" is still present.

"There are clear threats against journalists and media workers. The police and military engage in red-baiting, not just of activists, but also journalists deemed critical of the administration," it said.

It added that a time when the truth is needed about the crisis, "the government has found a way to prevent journalists from directly confronting official sources of information to ask the hard questions" during media briefings, which have become reduced to virtual platforms.

The franchise of broadcasting giant ABS-CBN is set to expire shortly, following claims of the government that it committed grave violations of the law.

No less than President Rodrigo Duterte himself said in the past that he would object to the renewal of the TV network's franchise for not airing his ads during the presidential campaign period in 2016.

News media organization Rappler also received similar accusations and faced legal charges against its editors and staff the past years.

Reporters Without Borders said last April that the Philippines fell two places in the World Press Freedom Index, placing 136th among 180 countries.

The report cited attacks from pro-government activists and the growing presence of "state troll armies using the weapon of disinformation on social media," like Russia, India and Vietnam.

The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed May 3 as World Press Freedom Day to promote and foster an "independent, pluralistic, and free press essential to the development and maintenance of democracy in a nation," consistent with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In a video message last May 1, UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutierres noted that the press provides the "antidote" of verified information as the COVID-19 pandemic has also given rise to "a second pandemic of misinformation, from harmful health advice to wild conspiracy theories."

We call on governments to protect media workers, and to strengthen and maintain press freedom, which is essential for a future of peace, justice, and human rights for all," he said.
The elder brother of the late actor, Bishop Bernard Nyarko, Isaac Darko has urged Ghanaians to end the speculations about the death of his brother.

Isaac Darko speaking to the media to confirm the death of his brother called for an end to speculations about the death of his brother.

Isaac Darko noted that it is God who has invited his brother and called for an end to speculations that have been attributed to the death of his brother.

He confirmed that his brother died at the Ridge Hospital in Accra on Saturday after battling with a sickness for some time.

There are many speculations ongoing about the death of my brother which are untrue I want people to stop it because it could bring a curse on them. What we need now is prayers because our mother is devastated.

Following the death of the budding actor, tribute has been pouring in on Social Media from his fans. The late Bishop Bernard Nyarko has acted in over five hundred movies.

---First1News.com
Voicing concern over reports



of a few migrants flouting COVID-19 guidelines in the state, the Odisha governmet on Sunday said those violating quarantine norms will face stringent action and can even be arrested.

Chief Secretary A K Tripathy said indiscipline and violation of quarantine guidelines by a handful of people must not derail the preparedness put in place to keep the 4.5-crore people of the state secure amid the pandemic.

"Quarantine guidelines will be implemented strictly. Those found creating nuisance, indulging in indiscipline and fleeing quarantine centres will be shifted to facilities far away from their respective areas," Tripathy told reporters.

"The quarantine period of violators will also extended and they can even be arrested," he said.

Some migrants, who were kept in schools in Ganjam after returning from Surat, reportedly fled the quarantine centres earlier in the day.

The chief secretary also asked village 'sarpanchs', who have been granted the powers of a Collector for the time being, to ensure 100 per cent compliance of quarantine norms in their panchayats.

Pre-registration of returnees on the state government portal is compulsory and around 90 per cent of people coming from other states have already got themselves registered, Tripathy said, adding, the particulars of those returning to Odisha will be verified at border check points.

Buses and vehicles ferrying the returnees must have the required permission from the respective states, he said.

"Buses without pass and carrying people more than the prescribed limit will be sent back," Tripathy said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and House speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a rare letter jointly rejecting the Trump administrations offer to supply Capitol Hill with 1,000 rapid-result coronavirus tests, asking that they are prioritised for front-line workers.

The decision by the leaders Saturday to turn down the Trump administrations offer came as the United States neared 66,000 coronavirus-related deaths and at least a dozen states had their first weekend of loosened coronavirus-related restrictions.

The Capitols attending physician, Brian Monahan, had told Senate staffers Thursday that limited testing capacity meant only lawmakers and staff with symptoms could get tested, and that they would need to wait several days for results.

The Senate is set to return to Washington on Monday to a city still on lockdown amid growing death rates. McConnells decision to call senators back to Washington while the District of Columbia is effectively shut down has been controversial. Pelosi has refused to do the same.

The tests offered by the Trump administration could have allowed lawmakers and some staff to preemptively check for the coronavirus and know the results within minutes.

There is tremendous Coronavirus testing capacity in Washington for the Senators returning to Capitol Hill on Monday. Likewise, the House, which should return but isnt because of Crazy Nancy P. The 5 minute Abbott Test will be used, Trump tweeted Saturday morning.

But McConnell and Pelosi agreed the tests should be reserved for those who needed them most.

Congress is grateful for the Administrations generous offer to deploy rapid Covid-19 testing capabilities to Capitol Hill, but we respectfully decline the offer at this time, they wrote. Our countrys testing capacities are continuing to scale up nationwide and Congress wants to keep directing resources to the front-line facilities where they can do the most good the most quickly.

They added that Monahan would use the older testing until these speedier technologies become more widely available.

A senior Democratic aide on Capitol Hill said no request for rapid tests was made by leaders of either chamber or by Monahan. They learned about the administrations offer like the rest of the world: by tweet.

No one asked for this, said the aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly.

The tweet came from Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar who late Friday first shared plans to send Congress three rapid-results machines with the ability to conduct 1,000 tests.

The White House uses these tests on anyone meeting with Donald Trump or Mike Pence, but most health-care workers and first responders dont have access to them.

Of the top four congressional leaders, only House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has been tested because of his attendance at a White House event with Trump when they had instituted a policy of testing those in proximity to the president.

Pelosi, 80, McConnell, 78 and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., 69, have not been tested, according to their aides.

The limited testing available for Congress is a microcosm of the broader issue of insufficient testing capacity across the country. Until there is a vaccine, public health experts have said one of the best ways to contain the virus is with robust testing to determine where outbreaks are occurring.

But the United States is at minimum weeks away from having enough tests to provide any American who wanted one, Anthony Fauci, the nations top infectious disease doctor, said last week. He has also called for at least doubling the number of tests being performed before reopening the country.

More than a dozen states have nevertheless begun to relax coronavirus restrictions. Several others are set to reopen or lift stay-at-home orders next week.

Floridas stay-at-home order expires Monday, and restaurants and retail will be allowed to reopen at 25 per cent capacity everywhere except for in the heavily-populated Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. Other states reopening businesses and loosening restrictions Monday include West Virginia, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas and Indiana.

Protests against stay-at-home orders and other lockdowns continued across the country. In a city in Oklahoma, which has allowed restaurants, movie theatres and gyms to reopen, the mayor of Stillwater withdrew a requirement that people wear face masks inside reopened stores and restaurants amid threats of violence and physical abuse directed at employees, according to a statement from the city manager.

Recommended Nancy Pelosi insists coronavirus oversight panel will be nonpartisan

I hate that our businesses and their employees had to deal with abuse today, and I apologise for putting them in that position, Stillwater Mayor Will Joyce said in a statement. I am not the kind of person who backs down from bullies, but I also will not send someone else to fight the battle for me.

Protesters gathered in the capitals of Nevada, Kentucky and Oregon.

An armed group broke through the fence at the governors mansion in Carson City, Nevada. The #ReOpenNevada protests were an objection to governor Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, extending the states stay-at-home orders until at least May 15. Protesters reached the governors door, chanting, USA, USA, and holding a sign that said: Trust Trump.

That date is also when the federal governments social distancing guidances expire, which Trump said this week will not be extended.

The Washington Post
Hoboken police are investigating an alleged bias incident in which anti-Asian message that was spray painted on ground outside a Clinton Street home Friday night, Hoboken police Chief Ken Ferrante said.

Officers responded to the residence on Saturday and found the graffiti outside buildings garage doors. They obtained surveillance camera footage that showed the suspect spray painting the message just before 11 p.m. Friday night, Ferrante said.

The man, who was described as bald with a medium build and wearing dark clothing, then entered the parking lot of the building. He left the lot shortly after and walked south on Clinton toward Second Street at approximately 11:11 p.m., Ferrante added.

Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla condemned the hate speech in a Sunday morning statement and asked anyone with information on the incident to contact the authorities.

"Hate has absolutely no place in Hoboken  not now, not in the future, not ever. Hoboken is a fair and welcoming city where all are equal and accepted, and I stand with our Asian American community in condemning this racist act in the strongest terms possible.

"I thank our Hoboken Police Department for responding to the scene and taking quick action to investigate this incident. I encourage anyone with information about this act to please call the police at 201-420-2113 or 201-420-5112.
The new Russian assault rifle, the AK-12, is finally being delivered to regular infantry units. The first such unit to receive it is the 150th Motor Rifle Division of the 8th Army in the Southern Military District. The AK-12, which looks like (and is) a much updated AK-47, was finally accepted into service in 2018 and deliveries began. The first to get it were special operations and airborne units in 2019.

The government, after years of pressure and complaints from combat commanders, agreed in 2015 to make the AK-12 part of the new future soldier (Ratnik) set of gear for its infantry. As of 2015 Ratnik was obviously not complete and had not undergone any combat testing. That took place in 2016 by Russian troops newly arrived in Syria. Ratnik is basically the kind of gear American troops began receiving in the 1990s. In particular modern type (and still in use) bullet proof helmets and vests.

Troops began getting Ratnik (minus the AK-12 and some electronic items) in 2015 and by 2017 200,000 sets of Ratnik had been delivered. That was enough to equip all the combat troops because the current Russian Army is, for the first time in history smaller than that peacetime American army. The Russian force has 350,000 troops compared to the U.S. Army with 560,000.

The current Russian ground forces consist of eight armies but most of those armies only have one division and a few brigades. Not all of these units are at full strength. Russia is making the most of this and seeking to equip all these troops with the most modern equipment. That became a lot more expensive towards the end of the Cold War (1980s), and especially after the 1990s when Western forces came up with a growing number of more effective weapons and items of equipment that made their troops much more effective, and expensive to equip.

After 1991 the newly independent (of Russian control) countries of East Europe rushed to join NATO and equip their troops to NATO standards. At the same time, China was also modernizing its ground forces while using the U.S. and NATO as the standard to match. A modernized Chines army was something Russia never had to face. For centuries China had outdated military equipment compared to Russia and that did not begin to change until the 1990s. Now the Chinese are ahead of Russia and that irks Russian military commanders who realize that ultimately China is the major threat to Russia.

China had eagerly adopted the AK-47 in the 1950s and manufactured their own as the Type 56 assault rifle. China has since built over ten million of those and still makes them, mostly for collectors. After the Type 56 China has developed four more generations of new assault rifles. The AK-12 is an effort to at least stay even with Chinese assault rifle developments.

While the AK-12 fires the same 5.45/39mm round as the current AK-74 it replaces, and costs 25 percent more, the new rifle has outperformed the AK-74 in extensive field tests and troops now prefer it. The AK-12 is also available in a version that fires the old AK-47 round (7.62x39mm) that was introduced in 1944 and is still popular in many countries. The AK-12 also keeps the basic design principles of the AK-47 alive into the 21st century and tries to do it better than China.

This all began with a Russian World War II veteran, Mikhail Kalashnikov, who came up with a brilliant rifle design that so impressed his bosses that they named it after him. AK means Avtomat Kalashnikova which literally translates as Kalashnikov Automatic. This was no fluke. Kalashnikov had always been into mechanical things and grew up in Siberia where rural folk could own a rifle for hunting. So young Mikhail was familiar with how rifles operated in addition to being a mechanical genius. Kalashnikov was conscripted in 1938 and because of his small size was assigned to a tank unit. There his ingenuity and mechanical skills came to the notice of his superiors, who praised and encouraged him. During 1941 he was badly wounded in combat and spent six months recuperating. During that time he came up with some brilliant ideas for a new rifle design. This was instigated by complaints he heard from wounded infantry soldiers. He wrote to the senior officers who had praised his skills before the war. That got him transferred to a weapons development organization. Among his many innovations and designs over the next five years was the AK-47, which began replacing all older infantry rifles in 1949. Kalashnikov died in 2013 but, until the end, he hunted and innovated, backing things like the Ratnik concept and the AK-12.

The Ratnik system is the Russian version of an American concept pioneered in the 1980s ("Land Warrior") and resulted in the introduction of new body armor, personal communications, wearable computers, night vision devices, and personal medical equipment. Several European countries have followed, especially the German Infanterist der Zukunft (Infantryman Of The Future) Russia did the same but was stalled by cash shortages and debates over whether a new infantry rifle was needed. Unlike the United States, Russia included a new rifle design (AK-12) as part of its Ratnik gear. There was a lot of opposition to the AK-12 within the Russian high command, but at the troop level, there was an even more vigorous and louder call for something to replace the Cold War era AK-74.

The entire Ratnik collection underwent final acceptance tests in late 2013. All the items of Ratnik (firearms, body armor, optic, communication and navigation devices, medical gear and power supply systems, plus uniform items including knee and elbow pads have been tested and accepted. The new rifle was more of a problem until the government finally backed the AK-12. How the AK-12 came to be was quite an epic undertaking. The Russians have made several attempts to develop and introduce a replacement for the AK-74. Some new designs even made it into combat. For example, some special operations units got the new AN-94 in the 1990s while most troops continued to use the elderly (in design and manufacture) AK-74s. The troops wanted something that could match the improvements in Western assault rifles. The firm that designed most Russian assault rifles since the 1940s had designed a new assault rifle (AK-12) in response to that but the Russian Defense Ministry stalled efforts to even test it. That resistance was finally overcome and the AK-12 recently passed the tests.

The AK-12 uses a lot of the basic AK-47 design principles but adds many new features popular in Western assault rifles. The AK-12 is but the latest in a long line of innovative Russian infantry weapons. Appearing for the first time towards the end of World War II, assault rifles have since become the standard infantry weapon, almost entirely replacing bolt-action and semi-automatic rifles. The first generation AK was the AK-47 followed by the AKM in the 1960s, then the AK-74 (which was somewhat similar to the U.S. M-16) in the 1970s, and limited numbers of the AN-94 (a much improved AK-74) in the 1990s. Over fifty million AK-47s and AKMs were made, most of them outside Russia. Production, on a small scale, continues. It is still the most numerous assault rifle in use.

The AK-12 is a 3.3 kg (7.3 pound) weapon that is 943mm (37.1 inches) long with a 415mm (16.3 inch) barrel. It can be fitted to fire one of four calibers: the original 7.62x39mm of the AK-47/AKM, the 5.56x45mm of the M-16, the 5.45x39mm of the AK-74, or the 7.62x51mm NATO rifle/machine-gun round. The AK-12 can use AK-47/AKM magazines when firing 7.62x39mm ammo.

There are a lot of small but important changes in the AK-12. The stock is adjustable. The charging handle is easily used whether you are left or right handed. There is an improved safety switch, pistol grip, hinged top cover, muzzle break, iron sight and (smaller) ejection port. The AK-12 has Picatinny rails (the U.S. developed standard for attaching all sorts of accessories). The fire control switch now allows for single shot, full automatic, and three round bursts. The AK-12 is inherently more accurate because of improved barrel rifling. The AK-12 handles more easily, has a longer effective range (up to 600 meters), and apparently has the same ruggedness of the original AK-47. That last item was put to the test, as the Russian military has agreed to put some AK-12s into the field, where their performance under combat conditions that could be monitored.

The AK-12 was not the best (from a technical point of view) candidate for Ratnik but the senior generals opposed it. Part of the problem was that there was not a pressing need for a new AK in Russia. For example, in 2011, Russia stopped buying new AK-74 rifles. Since they already have ten million AK assault rifles (most of them older AK-47 and AKM models) in stock and only a million military personnel on active duty (and about as many in reserve units) buying more assault rifles was deemed wasteful. This did not stop the purchase of special small arms for commandos and other specialist combat units.

The new policy did not stop work on the new AK-12 (also called the AK-200). Meanwhile, an improved AK-74M was introduced in 1991, and is still in service. This is a 3.4 kg (7.5 pound), 94.3 cm (37.1 inch) weapon with a 41.5 cm (16.3 inch) barrel. It has rails for sights and such and can use a 30 or 45 round magazine. Rate of fire is 650 RPM on full auto, and max effective range was 600 meters. The AK-74 looked like an AK-47 and used the same technology.

Some five million AK-74s were built, most before the Cold War ended in 1991. North Korea manufactures a copy of the AK-74 called the Type 98. The AK-74M was the basis for the AK-12, and the two weapons are very similar, with the new rifle having more flexibility and capacity for accessories.

Meanwhile, several additional AK-74 variants have been developed and put on the market. The AK-101 fires the 5.56mm NATO round and has a 30-round clip. The AK-103 fires the 7.62x39mm round used in the original AK-47, for those who have concerns about the ability of the 5.45mm round to stop enemy troops. The AK-102, 104, and 105 are compact rifles designed for the export market and are available in 5.56mm NATO, 7.62x39mm, and 5.45x39mm calibers. All have 30-round magazines. This proliferation of models is meant to handle niche markets, which manufacturers of cheap AK-47s are not interested in. The AK-12 will be another something special, in this case a new assault rifle for Russian 21st century infantry, along with all the other Ratnik gear.
ROME  Cooped up, stir crazy and desperate for their lives back, many Europeans and Americans have seized on antibodies and their promise of potential immunity to the coronavirus as the golden ticket to reopen societies and economies.

Not long ago, politicians in Italy  which, as the epicenter of Europes contagion, is further in the pandemics cycle than other Western nations  proposed issuing licenses to those who had beaten the virus and developed the right antibodies to get back to work.

Researchers and politicians in China, the United States, Germany, Britain and beyond have latched onto antibodies as a potential solution to the virus and an outlet from containment measures.

But that talk, always ahead of the science, has grown more muted in recent weeks. With the research refusing to cooperate, experts in Italy say the promise of antibodies may not be what people have imagined. At least for now.
A research work on the presence of phthalates in indoor air in northern provinces has been nominated for the 2020 Ta Quang Buu Award.

Dr Tran Manh Tri from the University of Natural Sciences and his co-workers are studying the appearance of phthalates, called the silent killer in indoor air, which can give predict their impact on human health and indoor air quality in the future.

Dr Tran Manh Tri





Phthalates belong to a group of plasticizers used as additives in plastic materials, added to increase their flexibility. Since phthalates are widely used, they exist everywhere and enter food chains as well.



The toxicity of phthalates has been studied on animals in the laboratory. They change hormones in reproductive and excretory systems of rats and rabbits, and are known as a "silent killer".



In Vietnam, MOH (the Ministry of Health) in 2011 set a regulation on the maximum content of DEHP (belonging to phthalates) in drinks. However, the understanding about phthalate distribution in the environment and the risk of exposure to phthalates remains modest.



The important result of the research is the mapping of phthalate distribution in indoor air and identification of environmental sources. The study also estimates the risks and levels of phthalate exposure through air inhalation for people of different ages.

The important result of the research is the mapping of phthalate distribution in indoor air and identification of environmental sources. The study also estimates the risks and levels of phthalate exposure through air inhalation for people of different ages.

Tri said since this is new research in Vietnam, he and his co-workers have had to spend much time on choosing analytical conditions to optimize the method.

The other difficulty is that phthalates can be easily contaminated from the laboratory environment, so it is necessary to standardize analytical techniques during the experimental process.



Asked about his research plans, Tri said he intends to assess the level of pollution and exposure risks from different environments (ambient air, dust, beverages, food, etc).



He will also continue studying the other compounds which are also agents that cause endocrine disorders and affect public health, such as siloxanes, parabens, alkylphenols, bisphenol A and benzophenone.

The air pollution in Vietnam is mostly PM 2.5 dust pollution. Direct contact with PM2.5 dust can lead to serious respiratory, cardiovascular and neurological diseases.

Gas emissions from vehicles, exhaust from factories and air pollutants from construction sites were identified as the three main causes of the deteriorating air quality in large cities .

The Ta Quang Buu Award is a Ministry of Science and Technology (MST) award that honors scientists with outstanding achievements in research in the fields of natural sciences and engineering.

Thien Nhien

Hanoi air pollution remains bad Air pollution in Hanoi is still bad despite social distancing regulations.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the number of people in hospitals because of coronavirus has dropped below 10,000, a sign of hope after fighting the virus for more than two months.

Another 280 people have died from the virus, which is a steady toll compared to recent days. Twenty-nine of those were in nursing homes and 251 were in hospitals. In New York, 19,189 people have died from coronavirus.

Overall, New York reported just 789 new confirmed cases in the past day, Cuomo said. That, too, he said was promising.

There are 9,786 people in hospitals, he said. The last time hospitalization rates were that low was in mid-March, he said.

Yet Cuomo warned that the crisis is far from over. He spoke about the 1918 flu, which had three waves over two years. The second of those was worse than the initial one, he said.

Reopening is more of an art form, Cuomo said Sunday, not offering any more specifics on when the states economy will restart. But he acknowledged the weather is getting better. And people see the numbers of cases, hospitalizations and deaths are going down.

That can create false comfort, he said. Were not out of the woods, Cuomo said.

Cuomo also announced a multi-state effort to form a consortium to buy and source medical equipment going forward for all hospitals, public and private. The New York governor was joined by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, Delaware John Carney and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf for the announcement out of New York City.

Cuomo also admonished people who arent wearing masks in public, especially in outdoor or indoor spaces where people cant stand 6 feet apart.

You know how you show love?" the governor asked. "By wearing a mask.

MORE ON CORONAVIRUS

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Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com

Got a story idea or news tip youd like to share? Please contact me through email, Twitter, Facebook or at 315-470-2274.
A United States Navy guided-missile destroyer pass through waters near Paracel Islands as freedom of navigation, ruffled the People's Liberation Army (PLA) who just postured as the US warship sailed through.

Trouble in the South China Sea as the PLA have illegally built structures under the nose of Vietnam. As a result, from a similar episode where the PLA backed off from US warships defending rights of free navigation in Malaysian waters. Repeatedly, the PLA has made ominous overtures yet they never went head to head, instead backed off and claims of falsely declaring they pushed back the US war machine.

In this incident, another US warship called the USS Barry, a formidable modern guide missile destroyer sailed last Tuesday and went to the disputed Paracel islands and ruffle the PLA leadership to no end as they sailed unassailed during 'freedom of navigation' cruise. This fully armed destroy went unchallenged and tender the US Navy's right to support Asian allies against the encroaching Chinese threat.

In an official statement, U.S. Navy claimed: "Unlawful and sweeping maritime claims in the South China Sea pose an unprecedented threat to the freedom of the seas, including the freedoms of navigation and overflight and the right of innocent passage of all ships."

Also read: Chinese Warship Readied Guns at PH Navy Vessel in Philippine Seas

Why the US Navy is blunting the PLA in Asian waters

Charges from the US that China is undermining the peace in the South China Sea, as nations weaken by efforts to control a pandemic that is of Chinese origin. Under the cover of the outbreak, Beijing is doing its best to steal territory and strong-arming in areas that is purloined.

Washington and Beijing are in a word war, as America says that Beijing should pony up and admit that the coronavirus is their fault, and pay for reparations also stop beating around the bush.

The US State Department added that China is coercing in time that cooperation is needed, its neighbors are chaffing under the aggressive stance of the PLA in their home waters.

China is indirectly assaulting issues

It is widely known that President Donald Trump is against China, on Wednesday he said China wants someone else to win in the presidential elections in November. His continued presidency will be the wall against Chinese ambitions.

China wants to own the entire South China Sea which is not theirs by right. But, they back down against well-armed navies. Chinese continuing backpedaling against the US navy, shooting impotently with rhetoric not bullets.

The People's Liberation Army website stated that it had assets tracking the formable US Navy, and stay as a safe distance by 'warning them away' while attacking and ramming peaceful fishing boats.

PLA says that the US did provocative acts, that compromise 'international law and threaten China's interests that borders on the domination of areas that are not theirs.

They are deflecting claims and instead blame the US as the trouble maker. China's claims to the SCS was 'deem illegal' in 2016 and The Hague did not rule on their side, China ignored the ruling instead.

With the US Navy guided-missile destroyer passing through the Paracel Islands unhindered, has indeed ruffled the PLA's feathers as the US projects its power in the SCS. With only diplomatic protests and token rhetoric that is flustering them to no end.

Related article: US Warships Challenge People's Liberation Army in South China Sea as Tensions Escalate

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Pastor reacts to shooting of church board member killed over stimulus check

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A 45-year-old woman, who is a U.S. postal carrier and a board member of a church in Indiana, was shot dead as a resident supposedly hadnt received a stimulus check from her deliveries. The pastor of her church expressed shock.

A 21-year-old man, identified as Tony Cushingberry, was arrested in the shooting of Angela Summers, a board member at Unity of Indianapolis church in Indianapolis, according to KCRA3.

Its real hard. This never happened to us before, the churchs pastor, the Rev. Michael Davis, was quoted as saying. To have someone so integral to the community  to have their life taken so quickly and so violently, its hard to take that in; its hard to understand that.

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department is working with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate the circumstances that led up to the shooting, according to Fox59.

Summers, who leaves behind a teenage daughter, was shot in the chest Monday, and the USPIS had offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the case.

She couldnt speak, she was hyperventilating, a neighbor, Alondra Salazar, said, according to The Kansas City Star. I think she said something about her kid and thats when I started crying.

Angela was quick a laugh, Davis recalled. Also she was quick with her opinion. You never questioned what Angela was thinking because she would let you know.

Responding to the arrest, the pastor added, It doesnt stop the tears. It actually brought more today because of the relief on knowing this wont have to go on and on. There can be some closure.

The accused faces a life sentence, as Summers was a federal employee on duty. He was charged Wednesday with second-degree murder, assaulting a federal employee and discharging a firearm during a crime," according to court documents, the Star reported.

Paul Toms, president of the local branch of the National Association of Letter Carriers, said Summers had expressed concerns about certain people living at the house where the shooting occurred, according to WXIN.

He said the person inside the house likely did not receive the familys stimulus check as all mail was required to be picked up by residents for about two weeks. Summers had notified the residents about it. She had also requested the owners of a small dog to keep it away from her while she delivered mail.

Yes, there was a history on this for quite a while, as I understand it, Toms was quoted as saying. I want something like this to never happen again. It should never happen.

The dog is a nasty devil that Ive actually had to spray  twice, Summers wrote in a Facebook post days before she was shot, according to the Star. She also said that mail at the residence was stopped until they signed a letter saying they would keep their dog away during her deliveries.

Melissa Hardy, Summers friend of 15 years, remembered her as a loving person. She loved the people on her route. She worried about the older people on her route during this time. She always carried treats, and she would give the dogs treats on her route, she was quoted as saying.
On the occasion of World Press Freedom Day 2020 and to launch the IFJs Cambodia media monitoring project, supported by the British Embassy in Phnom Penh, the IFJ has interviewed Nop Vy, the founder of the Cambodian Journalists Alliance (CamboJA). Nop Vy, also the media director of the Cambodia Center for Independent Media (CCIM), is a committed press freedom advocate who has a deep understanding of the challenges faced by media workers in Cambodia.

What are the main challenges facing press freedom, particularly since the shutdown of independent media outlets starting in 2017 and the ongoing crackdown on social media?

The safety and security of independent journalists are facing a lot of challenges as they fulfil their duties. These challenges include discrimination, intimidation, imprisonments, accusations, harassment and attacks on journalist. There are court cases against journalists including an editor-in-chief of TV Facebook, who is an outstanding social media broadcaster. There is no media pluralism, all of radio FM frequencies still are under control by the government. So, people living in rural areas cannot access independent information.

Recently new emergency laws in Cambodia have been passed under the Covid-19 pretext, granting Cambodias leadership vast new powers. How will these laws affect press freedom?

The law also allows the government to monitor access to information through all forms of telecommunications, as well as restrict and ban people from spreading information that it deems capable of causing fear to the public, chaos, damage to national security or misunderstandings about the state of emergency. Authorities have already begun targeting, arresting and educating at least 17 social media users from January to the end of March by accused them posting fake news about the Covid-19. At least four Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) activists among them have been accused on the grounds of incitement and were detained in prison. Others were released after they were educated by authorities. Editor-in-chief of TV Facebook has also been arrested because of publishing and commenting on speeches released by Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen.

We have seen an increase in cooperation between China and Cambodia, and in the media space, there is the launch of the Cambodia-China Journalist Association (CCJA). Can you elaborate on the impact of the influence of China on the press freedom in Cambodia?

China has been influential with Cambodia media outlets and journalist associations. A Chinese company provides support to a TV station, the new TV channel Nice TV, which is located in the building of the Ministry of Interior and is under the supervision of this ministry. A Chinese company has joined investment with a tycoon named Kit Meng. Kit Meng is a president of the Cambodian Chamber of Commerce and owns three big TV stations: CNC, CTN and My TV. The TV stations have less coverage on the impact from the electricity dump project at north-eastern Cambodia. Like you have mentioned, the new media association has been established in order to promote trade between Cambodia and China rather than promote press freedom and protect the work of professional journalists.

Vital amendments to the Press Law have been a long time coming. Whats the current status of these amendments?

No progress yet. There is only the willing intent of Cambodias prime minister and this been echoed by officers of the Ministry of Information.
The Mumbai Police on Saturday registered a fresh case against Arnab Goswami, editor and owner of the Republic TV channel.

The case of allegedly creating communal hatred was registered was at Pydhonie police station. The complainant, Irfan Abubakar Shaikh, secretary of Raza Educational Welfare Society, has alleged that the channel and Goswami tried to create hatred against the Muslim community and targeted a mosque from Bandra that had no link to a protest by migrants held on April 14.

Shaikh, in his statement to the police, said that on April 29, Republic TV channel had telecast the protest of migrants gathered near Bandra railway station and Arnab Goswami was anchoring the show.

We have registered a case against Arnab Goswami and the owner of Republic TV. Further investigation is going on. As part of evidence after taking the statement we have collected the footage of the shows with the clips in a pen drive as evidence, said a police officer from Pydhonie police station.

There was no link or issue related to the mosque near the Bandra station. The only issue was that the migrants had gathered in the open space near the mosque. But Arnab purposely highlighted the mosque to create communal disturbance in the city, said Shaikh in his statement to police.

The debate on the channel intended to blame the Muslim community for the spreading of Covid-19. Goswami had made many such hate-filled comments against the community, targeting it, added Shaikh in his statement.

The FIR was registered under sections 153, 153 A, 295 A, 500, 505 (2), 511 and 120 B of the Indian Penal Code.


The state of California released seven high-level sex offenders from Orange County's jails over concerns they might get infected with the COVID-19 pandemic. The inmates were released months early to reduce the population in prisons and curb the spread of the virus.

The move prompted the Orange County District Attorney's Office to issue a warning. According to official reports, all seven offenders were charged with cutting off their tracking devices after they were released for previous crimes, including indecent exposure, sexual battery, and child molestation.

Prosecutors said many of the sex offenders spent just days behind bars, as required by law. The release came after Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes reported they had reduced the inmate population by over 45 percent since March 7.

The newly free men-ages 27 to 52-have a history of lewd offenses and have violated the law multiple times.



Luis Joel Ramirez, 27

Ramirez's last known address was in Costa Mesa. He was charged with sexual battery, assault with a deadly weapon, resisting a peace officer, burglary, and possessing of a leaded cane-a deadly weapon. He violated four paroles since 2019.

Ramirez was released from prison on April 7, 2020, after serving just 20 days credit time on a parole violation. He cut off his GPS tracking device despite a 180-day minimum sentence.

He was once again caught for violating his parole after he failed to report to his parole officer. He was released on April 24 after serving 16 days of credit time.



James Franklin Bowling, 50

Bowling was charged for lewd conduct in a public place. He was also repeatedly convicted for failing to register as a sex offender, as well as for committing lewd acts on school grounds and possession of controlled substance and paraphernalia.

He has two parole violations since February 2020.

He was released on April 9 after serving 14 days of credit time for failing to charge his tracking device. He was unable to report to parole.

His last known address is in Orange.



Rudy William Grajeda Magdaleno, 39

Magdaleno has had five parole violations since 2017. He was convicted for child molestation, indecent exposure, assault, battery, criminal threats, and inflicting injury on an elderly adult.

The court released him on April 13 after serving 142 days of credit time for failing to charge his GPS monitor. He was unable to report to parole.

His last known address is in Anaheim.



Calvin Curtis Coleman, 52

Coleman was arrested for engaging in lewd conduct in a public place and has since committed three parole violations since 2019.

His last known address is in Santa Ana. He was released on April 13 after serving 18 days of credit time for failing to charge his GPS tracking device.



Kyle Albert Winton, 40

According to his profile, his last known address is in Mission Viejo. He was charged with annoying/molesting a child, making criminal threats to cause injury or death, resisting a peace officer, driving under the influence, and hit and run with property damage.

Winton had committed one parole violation before his release on April 17, where he had served ten days credit time. He has failed to report to parole.



Jose Adrian Oregel, 46

Oregel, who lives in Santa Ana, was arrested for unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, oral copulation of a minor, and great bodily injury.

He has violated six paroles since June 2019. The court released him on April 22 after serving 18 days of credit time.



Mario Ernesto Sandoval, 45

Sandoval was jailed on charges of sexual battery, touching for sexual arousal, indecent exposure, assault on a peace officer, and assault. He violated his parole in 2020-failing to charge his GPS device.

Sandoval was unaccounted for as third of the time he was out of police custody. He was released on April 22 and is expected to be living in Stanton.



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By Clifford Kulwin

Ive been reading about an extraordinary doctor, perhaps the greatest infectious disease specialist of his age -- esteemed by his colleagues, lauded by the public, with unparalleled reverence for truth, integrity and the scientific method.

Anthony Fauci? No, Martin Arrowsmith, who lived a hundred years ago as an invention of Sinclair Lewis.

One of the great social critics of his day, Lewis spared no one his pen: businessmen, academics, labor leaders, liberals, conservatives. If he saw hypocrisy he attacked, and Sinclair Lewis recognized hypocrisy pretty much everywhere.

In the mid-1920s, after the success of Main Street and Babbit, Lewis, by then one of the most popular novelists in America, turned his attention from Middle America to the patent medicine industry. Snake oil salesmen - some even actual doctors - were rife at the time. The Carnegie Foundation, alarmed by the dubious quality of medical education and the loose regulation of the medical profession itself, commissioned the Flexner Report, which detailed the glaring inadequacies of early 20th-century healthcare and set the system toward the clear science-based orientation it has retained to this day.

Lewis became friends with Morris Fishbein, a longtime editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association and, through him, Paul de Kruif, a researcher at the Rockefeller Institute and later author of The Microbe Hunters. -- still a popular and important account of the pioneers of microbiology and their impact on medicine. Fishbein and de Kruif believed medical quacks were among the greatest dangers to public health. They made Lewis a believer. The result was Arrowsmith, a novel about a brilliant young doctor, but more importantly, a tribute to objective, dispassionate science. Late in life, Lewis said that of his more than 20 novels, it was Arrowsmith of which he was most proud.

Martin Arrowsmith grows up in the Midwestern village of Elk Mills, keen from an early age on being a doctor. (At 14 he is already assisting the local doc in numerous procedures.) He heads to the state university for college and medical school and falls under the sway of Prof. Max Gottlieb, German-born and trained, one of the worlds great bacteriologists.

Gottlieb inspires Arrowsmith to a life of scientific inquiry and instills in him the utter necessity to be thorough, careful and prudent in his research. One does not claim a discovery as real until it has been tested, retested, and proven.

Martins career tracks from small-town practitioner to local public health official and ultimately to research scientist at New York Citys McGurk Institute. There, after years of arduous toil, he uncovers a microbe he calls phage that appears to have extraordinary powers. Just as he finishes preliminary testing, a bubonic plague breaks out on a Caribbean island.

Arrowsmith heads there to conduct a rigorous experiment, with a control group, to see if phage actually cures the plague. It is a tense moment. Arrowsmith knows that if he concludes that phage truly has curative powers, it may be that people in the control group died who might have been saved. However, he also knows that his first obligation is to find the scientific truth that, in the future, would save the thousands or hundreds of thousands of lives endangered by bubonic plagues inevitable reappearance.

The island is an inhospitable death trap, but Arrowsmith maintains his dispassionate scientific commitment until his wife, who insisted on accompanying him, dies of the plague. A broken man, he began to inject phage into all who wish. The plague ebbs shortly after and in the eyes of the world, Arrowsmith is hailed a hero.

In Arrowsmiths own eyes, however, he failed. He broke scientific discipline, so it was impossible to know if the phage really worked. Or was it simply the bacteria running its course, a naturally developed immunity, or something else?

The novel became, in the words of the late Mark Schorer, Berkeley English professor and Lewis biographer, an instant success. He said: Reviewers and critics, English as well as American, were almost unanimous in asserting its superiority. The commercial and critical popularity of the book is proof that people understood its message: progress demands we take science, and scientists, seriously.

Which brings us back to today and the real world.

In mid-March, President Trump declared the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine a potential game-changer in the fight against the virus, prompting the CDC to issue a health alert March 28 warning about the dangers of chloroquine phosphate, which can cause serious health consequences, including death.

Just a few days ago, during a White House briefing, Trump wondered if there was a way to use disinfectants on the body by injection inside or almost a cleaning.

Several governors have already begun to open their states, even though public health officials are nearly all opposed, insisting social distancing has not yet finished its work. The most egregious example is likely Georgias Gov. Brian Kemp, whose executive order allowing certain businesses to reopen included tattoo parlors and bowling alleys.

Arrowsmith was published in 1925. It feels like weve gone backward. The snake oil salesmen that horrified Fishbein, de Kruif, and Lewis were largely eradicated. But whether in the White House, the State House, or the cable news studio, the ignorance that allowed them to flourish looms larger than ever.

Clifford Kulwin is Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Bnai Abraham in Livingston.

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The Star-Ledger/NJ.com encourages submissions of opinion. Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow us on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and on Facebook at NJ.com Opinion. Get the latest news updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters.
BOTH chambers of Congress are set to resume sessions Monday, May 4, under a new normal in line with the quarantine protocols being enforced in the country to slow the spread of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19).

At the Senate, Senate President Vicente Tito Sotto III said he and members of the Senate Secretariat with primary functions during sessions will be physically present at the session hall.

"Kailangan kong maging physically present sa lahat ng session days, Monday to Wednesday, hanggang June 5 dahil may mga procedures sa session na hindi pwedeng gawin via teleconferencing. Kailangang may mag-preside from the Senate session hall, Sotto said.

(I need to be physically present because there are procedures that cannot be carried out via teleconferencing. Somebody has to preside from the Senate session hall.)

And being the Senate President, I have the responsibility to ensure that all sessions are conducted as mandated by the Rules of the Senate and by the Constitution," he added.

Senators who wish to deliver a privilege speech will also be required to be physically present.

The first agenda on Monday will be the approval of proposed Senate Resolution No. 372 which seeks to amend the Rules of the Senate to allow, among others, the conduct of sessions, hearings and meetings through teleconferencing or the use of electronic platforms.

Once the resolution is approved, senators can attend sessions and hold hearings or meetings even without being physically present at the session hall or the committee rooms for the hearings and meetings.

They can sponsor committee reports, participate during the interpellation and period of committee and individual amendments, and cast their votes.

At the House of Representatives, only up to 25 members will be allowed inside the plenary hall to comply with physical distancing protocols.

The rest will participate in the session via video conferencing platforms.

The session will be streamed live through the official Facebook pages of the House and Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano.

A bill seeking to push for a nationwide extensive job creation program, particularly on infrastructure projects, is expected to be filed on Monday by Deputy Speaker Luis Raymund Villafuerte Jr.

Villafuerte, who is a member of the Defeat Covid-19 Committee technical working group (TWG) on social amelioration, said the proposed Covid-19 Unemployment Reduction Economic Stimulus (Cures) Act of 2020 is aimed at stimulating the economy. (MVI with a report from JTM/SunStar Philippines)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 18:27:15|Editor: huaxia

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by Dana Halawi

BEIRUT, May 3 (Xinhua) -- Several initiatives were launched in Lebanon to alleviate the country's economic crisis by reviving the agricultural sector to ensure food security and self-sufficiency.

These initiatives came as a result of Lebanon's almost total dependence on imports of different commodities, which are expected to end monopolization by some companies that exploit the crisis by threatening to constantly raise their prices.

One of these initiatives was launched by Chadi Hamze, a civil society activist in Mount Lebanon, who gathered a group of people to help citizens living in mountainous areas to cultivate their lands for free.

"We used some of our money and attracted donations from capable people to buy tractors, diesel and seedlings and offer them to farmers and regular citizens who own lands but haven't been using them," Hamze told Xinhua.

He explained that this initiative will help people grow their own vegetables and fruit, meet their basic needs and sell the rest or exchange them for other products from people who are cultivating their lands.

Makram Fayad, an agricultural engineer, told Xinhua that employees or business owners who have lost their work after the outbreak of COVID-19 have gone back to work in their lands.

"There are a big number of lands that were previously ignored but are being cultivated now," Fayad said.

Fayad explained that the agricultural sector has been neglected for too long in Lebanon while farmers have been facing several challenges.

The Lebanese agricultural sector has in the past years faced multiple challenges due to competition by neighboring countries and the war in neighboring Syria which prevented farmers from sending their produce through land to Syria and the rest of the Arab countries.

The cold and stormy weather also destroyed a big volume of farmers' crops.

Moreover, the agriculture sector did not constitute one of the priorities of the Lebanese government in the past and the cabinet did not compensate farmers for any of the losses incurred over the past years.

"We ask the government for more attention for this sector because food security is very essential today," Fayad said.

Amin Ammar, a farmer in Chouf, Mount Lebanon, said he hasn't worked in his land for the past 30 years.

But now, he is putting all his efforts into agriculture given the financial deterioration in the country which led to the bankruptcy of thousands of companies.

"The latest events in Lebanon encouraged us to think of good alternatives. Returning to one's roots is very important," he said.

Another initiative was launched by Riad Fadlallah, head of the municipality of Ainata, a Lebanese village in northern Lebanon.

He decided to revive the agricultural heritage after witnessing long queues of citizens waiting in front of bakeries to secure bread for their families.

"When I saw this scene, I decided to start an initiative aimed at securing some cereals, legumes and vegetables that are consumed on a daily basis by citizens," he said.

Fadlallah added that he cultivated around 12 acres of lands offered to the municipality by using 50 million Lebanese pounds (33,000 U.S. dollars) from the municipality with the support of the ministry of agriculture which sent its engineers to supervise the whole process.

Also, the Ministry of Agriculture distributed 250 tons of soft wheat seeds for free to about 963 farmers as an aid to encourage wheat cultivation in the country.

Lebanese Agriculture Minister Abbas Mourtada has been very supportive for these initiatives while he encouraged, on several occasions, people to use their lands and activate this sector which provides numerous job opportunities for the Lebanese.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, agriculture constitutes 5 percent of Lebanon's GDP.

However, in the poorest regions, such as the northern and southern Bekaa, agriculture-related activities account for up to 80 percent of local GDP. Enditem
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.  If you looked at the weather forecast a couple of days ago, you knew that this weekend would be a real test of the COVID-19 lockdown.

For the first time since the whole coronavirus quarantine began seven weeks ago, New York City was finally in for a run of glorious spring weather.

And Mother Nature did not disappoint: Saturday was clear and sunny, with temperatures in the low 70s. The good weather is expected to last until the middle part of this week.

It was certainly a switch from the rainy, chilly, windy, cloudy, gloomy weather that we dealt with in March and April. That weather felt more like late autumn than early spring.

All the sunshine this weekend meant one thing: People were likely to bust out of quarantine. And who could blame us? Weve been cooped up in our houses for two months now. Even so-called indoor types were no doubt ready for some sun.

But beware: The NYPD and other law enforcement officers are going to be out there too.

I went to Silver Lake Park for a jog around 10:30 on Saturday morning. Parking was already scarce on the Forest Avenue side of the park, and plenty of people were in the park as well.

Including police.

The first member of law enforcement I came across was a state Department of Environmental Conservation officer, standing in front of his official truck, which was parked on one of the parks walking paths.

Then, while jogging around the lake, I saw an undercover police car, its lights flashing. I also saw a city Parks Department Enforcement vehicle. I saw two NYPD squad cars. One was the standard sedan size, while the other was one of those new stubby models. I saw some police officers on foot.

Id only been in the park an hour. Talk about a show of force.

So, seven weeks into the pandemic, its clear that the city is serious about New Yorkers maintaining social distance from each other.

We are past the point of warnings. This is a dangerous situation, NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan told Channel 2 News.

I didnt see any of the officers actually warning or ticketing anybody while I was there, but they frankly could have had their pick. Plenty of people were walking in groups, and coming into close proximity to others. Lots of folks lacked facial coverings, even though were all required to have some kind of covering on our noses and mouths when out in public.

It was part of a citywide effort. I heard the show of force was even greater in Clove Lakes Park. And there were pictures on Twitter of Staten Island police officers in other borough parks, put up on the social media site by the various precincts.

Its a real question how long people will want to stay in their homes once the weather turns spring-like for good. And now that the city is barring vehicles from a bunch of streets across the five boroughs so people can get out and walk or bike, you can expect even more people to be out and about.

Are we really going to start ringing people up for failing to socially distance?

All the numbers that we look at to judge the pandemic are moving in the right direction. We are still seeing deaths and new cases of COVID-19, and new hospitalizations. But the rates are slowing. We are on the descent.

Talk is more and more turning to what comes next. New York City is the national epicenter of coronavirus. Nobody else has been hit as hard. The rest of the country is slowly coming back to life. Counties upstate are going to demand to do the same soon enough.

The more we social distance, the less we have to lock everything down. The less we have to shutter the entire economy. Now is the time to think about how we manage that.
The global upheaval created by the new strain of coronavirus (Covid-19) reminds us that communicable diseases are always a threat to public health. I look at the coronavirus pandemic with a feeling of deja vu  with memories of the deadly spread of HIV/Aids just two decades ago fresh in my mind. It consumed more lives and left many more infected than Covid-19 is likely to before it is tamed and eliminated.

I see similarities in how countries responded to Aids then and Covid-19 now. While, in case of Aids, it was Africa and the third-world countries that were in denial and bore the brunt of the epidemic, this time around, it is the developed world that has messed up the response to the Covid-19 crisis, despite possessing the scientific and technological prowess to challenge it. During the Aids epidemic in the 1990s, African and Asian countries underestimated the spread of HIV, thanks to the lack of sophisticated epidemiological tools and responsive health systems. But there can be no excuse for the developed worlds complacency and a lack of preparedness in dealing with the coronavirus crisis; they, after all, possess the worlds best information technology-enabled epidemiological surveillance systems to track pandemics.

One common challenge that we faced then, and face still now, is to arrive at a credible number of infections. In the case of Covid-19, most countries are tailoring their responses to symptomatic cases or those quarantined for suspected infections. Infectious diseases always have a large number of unreported cases, with people either unaware or frightened to undergo tests. But there are still no organised efforts to bring out a credible number of estimated infections in countries reporting a high number of cases.

During the HIV crisis, the process to arrive at an estimated number was developed quite early with help from the United Nations system. India reported less than one lakh HIV infections 20 years after the first case was reported in 1986. But national-level sentinel surveillance conducted in 1998 yielded an estimate of three million infections. This was further refined using new data, but the number was still as high as 2.4 million, 20 times more than the reported cases. This forced the government to recognise the severity of the epidemic and invest resources into a vastly expanded and decentralised national AIDS response in 1999. In the next 10 years, the infection level was brought down by 56%, and the mortality was reduced through an expanded treatment programme covering almost 1.2 million people.

It should be epidemiologically possible to initiate national-level sentinel surveillance for Covid-19 in India, to locate if any latent epidemics are occurring in rural and remote areas outside the hot zones identified by states. The integrated disease surveillance programme (IDSP) should be given the mandate to undertake such periodic surveillance with technical inputs from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

Testing is another important component of epidemic control. In the Aids programme, rapid kits introduced in 2,000 had enabled the government to quickly expand testing facilities across the country, which allowed people to get themselves tested and, if required, enrolled in the treatment programme.

Similarly, in the case of Covid19, India could easily overcome its initial reluctance to test large numbers. States could gradually expand testing facilities; the numbers, in case they are higher, can be partially explained by scaling up testing. The availability of rapid test kits for quick diagnosis could have enormously helped the programme, but substandard kits from China slowed down the effort. We need to quickly ramp up the indigenous production of rapid kits of standard quality to test the asymptomatic cases. Making kits available for voluntary testing at a very low price will help people access health care services during the early stages of infection.

In the 90s, stigma and discrimination associated with HIV positives greatly hindered the response. Health care providers were reluctant to treat them due to the fear of infection, and a lack of universal precautions for infection control in government hospitals which bore the brunt of the epidemic. The big difference this time around is that health care providers at the forefront of the response are being hailed as heroes.

But stigma is emerging from society due to an inadequate understanding of the dynamics of the Covid-19 epidemic. Disturbing instances of locals resisting last rites of people dying of Covid-19-related infections point towards the need to normalise the disease. Massive awareness campaigns in the late 90s, with community participation, contributed to a rise in awareness levels about HIV and Aids in the population. Similar efforts are needed now, with strong involvement of communities and persons cured of Covid-19.

Unlike HIV, which still infects about 1.5 million persons every year, the immediate threat of Covid-19 may not last more than a year or two. But its impact on the health systems and economies will be more profound than HIV, which was more of a silent tsunami causing unnoticed destruction to vulnerable communities. But even if Covid-19 is controlled, it may not necessarily vanish. Until the mass immunisation of populations becomes possible with a preventive vaccine, we must be prepared for its periodical onslaughts, even if in a less virulent form.

JVR Prasada Rao is a former health secretary and director, National AIDS Control Programme, Government of India

The views expressed are personal
For our free coronavirus pandemic coverage, learn more here.

Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Health Secretary Matt Hancock was midway through a radio interview when the phone call came through live to air. On the line was Intisar Chowdhury, whose father Abdul had made a prescient public plea to Boris Johnson in late March. Through a Facebook post, the 53-year-old consultant urologist for a London hospital had urged the Prime Minister to make sure every health worker in Britain would be given protective equipment during the coronavirus pandemic. Abdul Mabud Chowdhury died just three weeks later, after contracting the disease. In his phone call, the doctor's grieving son asked for answers and an apology: "The public is not expecting the government to handle this perfectly," he told Hancock. "We just want you to openly acknowledge that there have been mistakes in handling the virus, especially to me and to so many families that have really lost loved ones as a result of this virus and probably as a result of the government not handling it seriously enough." Abdul Mabud Chowdhury, a consultant urologist at Homerton Hospital, died weeks after pleading with the government to provide PPE for healthcare workers. Chowdhury seemingly spoke on behalf of a growing chorus of health experts, MPs and members of the public who think Britain's response to the crisis has suffered from a series of deadly mistakes and miscalculations. The charges focus on four areas: that healthcare workers struggled to access personal protective equipment, that Britain was too slow to implement a lockdown, that it bungled testing, and that vulnerable care home residents were not properly protected. Downing Street and key ministers such as Hancock have been reluctant to concede many errors, although their tone has shifted over recent days as the official death toll hit 28,446, one of the highest in the world and well above the 20,000 figure Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance once said the government hoped to not exceed.

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Says Martin McKee, professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and an adviser to the World Health Organisation: "The countries that moved fast have curtailed the epidemic. The countries that delayed have not. It's as simple as that." Dr Richard Horton, editor in chief of The Lancet medical journal, is even more damning: "The handling of the COVID-19 crisis in the UK is the most serious science policy failure in a generation." Hancock and Johnson had their first discussion together about the virus on January 7. The government's crisis committee, COBRA, would meet several times over the following weeks and the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies started crunching the numbers. The government knew a threat existed but did it fully understand just how bad it could get? By March 12 a full-scale outbreak had taken hold in Italy and the illness was spreading across Europe. More than 1000 Italians had already died and thousands more were gravely ill in packed hospitals in the country's hard-hit north. The deadly potential of an invisible killer was becoming more obvious by the hour. That day, Johnson announced Britain would move from the "contain" phase of the emergency to the "delay" phase. This decision would prove a pivotal moment. The shift meant contact tracing would be abandoned, and testing would be restricted to those only in hospital with symptoms. The move was at odds with the WHO, which urged countries to "test, test, test", as well as Germany's much-lauded program of mass testing. The Prime Minister warned at the March 12 press conference that the "worst public health crisis for a generation" was about to hit the country and that "many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time".

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What he did not announce was a lockdown. Or anything close to it. Tougher measures would come but not yet, Johnson said, citing the need to introduce measures when they would have the most impact. But his chief scientific adviser also cast serious doubt on whether closing schools, banning mass gatherings or stopping international flights would ever be effective levers to pull. Instead, Brits were encouraged to wash their hands and stay home for seven days if they had symptoms. Schools remained open, restaurants and bars traded as usual, and visitors were still allowed into care homes. Flights were arriving from mainland China, even though Australia had banned them six weeks earlier. Heaving public events were still allowed. A Champions League match in Liverpool drew a crowd of 52,000, about 3000 of whom came from Madrid, where a partial lockdown was already in force. More than 250,000 tickets were sold for the Cheltenham horse racing festival. Both events are now being investigated by health officials who suspect they may have contributed to the rapid spread of the disease in the areas surrounding the venues. Prime Minister Boris Johnson at a March 16 press conference. Credit:Bloomberg By March 16, the government's advice abruptly strengthened. People were told to stay away from pubs, theatres and clubs, to avoid non-essential travel and to work from home if possible, although the orders were not yet mandatory. Why the sudden change? The government had just been handed a bombshell piece of research by scientists from Imperial College London warning that taking a light-touch approach to the virus would cause 250,000 deaths in Britain and overwhelm the National Health Service (NHS). Any hope of defeating the virus by building "herd immunity" in the community was smashed. The only way to prevent 250,000 deaths was through draconian measures, the researchers concluded. Even then, Johnson would not put Britain into lockdown until one week later on March 23. By that point, many other European countries with a much smaller death toll had already been locked down. Says David Hunter, an Australian-educated professor of epidemiology and medicine at the University of Oxford: "It's very easy in hindsight to state the obvious, which is that the lockdown came too late.

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"The British response so far is not a model to follow. It has one of the worst epidemics in Europe and the world. That may have happened anyway. There's no way to know for sure, but some aspects of the response have almost certainly contributed to the high mortality." A former Australian high commissioner to Britain, Mike Rann, says crucial mistakes were made right when they had the most damaging impact: "The earliest stages were handled negligently," Rann says. "A shambles of mixed messaging, poor organisation and a complacent attitude that what was happening in Italy wouldn't happen here." Loading Hunter says border closures in Australia and New Zealand stood in stark contrast to Britain, which only briefly imposed restrictions on people flying in from Wuhan. Even today, the few passengers still arriving in Britain are under no obligation to self-isolate. "Good public health practice would be to, if not close the borders, then at least have some sort of mandatory self-isolation for people coming in during the very early stages of the pandemic," Hunter says. "The reasons why the UK did not do it are unclear. Australia, albeit at a different stage of the epidemic, has been highly successful in closing its border, as has New Zealand, and that has almost certainly played a role in the much much lower number of cases." Arrivals at Heathrow Airport were half what they normally were in March but still, 3.1 million landed there over the month. Nearly half a million came from the Asia-Pacific; 875,000 were from the European Union, and 711,000 came from North America.

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Home Secretary Priti Patel supported a ban on travellers who had been in hotspots but was slapped down by Downing Street, which cited scientific advice that doing so would have little impact on the spread of the infection. When this spat was under way, Australia's borders had already been closed for a week to all foreign travellers. Australia banned flights from China as early as February 1. The decision on March 12 to abandon mass testing meant the government could only guess who was infected with the virus and how it was behaving. Government experts at one point estimated as many as 55,000 people had contracted coronavirus, even though there were just 2000 confirmed cases. The extent of its spread would not become obvious until hospitals started to fill with seriously ill patients. A patient is taken from an ambulance outside St Thomas' Hospital in London. Credit:AP Of the few tests that were available, the results were initially processed by a small number of government-run laboratories. Private sector labs and universities offered to help but now say they were given the cold shoulder before the government eventually embraced them as the answer to ramping up testing. Nobel prize-winning geneticist Sir Paul Nurse told the BBC's Question Time program that testing was "absolutely critical and hasn't been handled properly". "We know that with this particular disease, you can be infected and have no symptoms. Now, this makes absolutely no sense. We were allowing, potentially, for front-line workers to be on the wards, potentially infecting people, because we weren't testing." Nurse, who is the director of Britains largest biomedical research lab, the Francis Crick Institute, likens the addition of private facilities to the flotilla of small boats that rescued British soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk and says their call-up was long overdue.

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Yves is braving a trip to NYC to see a doctor in late-ish May, the theory being that the city will be safer towards the tail end of the lockdown than when restrictions are eased.

She could very much use some paid, professional help with her three laptop Macs (one workhorse, two backups). If you think you can do the job, here are the requirements:

1. You must be willing to work on a legacy version of the OS and not insist on an upgrade. Yves is running legacy software that is already getting funky on the version she is using.

2. You must be able to untangle a hidden files issue. The workhorse laptop is saving certain data files to Dropbox, rather than locally, even though local files exist. The Dropbox account also has Google login-related issues.

3. You must, as much as possible, synch up the two other laptops to the workhorse laptop.

4. You must come to her midtown hotel, either to do the work there or to get started, haul the laptops away, and return with the work completed.

If interested, please e-mail yves-at-nakedcapitalism-dot-com with Mac consulting in the subject line. We can discuss dates, remuneration and contact details at that point. Thanks!

*****

THE SUN IS UNUSUALLY QUIET, SAY SCIENTISTS Independent (The Rev Kev)

Birdsong has risen like a tide of hope from our silenced cities. Is it here to stay? Guardian

Murder Hornets in the U.S.: The Rush to Stop the Asian Giant Hornet NYT (Dan K)

#COVID-19

Economy/Markets

The Coming Greater Depression of the 2020s Project Syndicate. Nouriel Roubini. From earlier this week; dont recall seeing this in Links but my apologies for the duplication if weve posted it before. Warren Buffett says Berkshire sold all its airline stocks because of the coronavirus CNBC

Science/Medicine

Food Security

Class Warfare

Serfs Revolt

Immigrants Making PPE Strike After a Co-Worker Dies of COVID Payday Report. Mike Elk.

Prisons

A State-by-State Look at Coronavirus in Prisons The Marshall Project

Once a hotspot of #COVID-19 this village in Kerala has come up with a unique idea to enforce social distancing -using Umbrellas. Two opened umbrellas, not touching each other,will ensure minimum distance of 1 meter from one another.The local body has distributed 10,000 umbrellas pic.twitter.com/53iaehZHTd  Supriya Sahu IAS (@supriyasahuias) May 1, 2020

China?

China: We discovered a new virus.

America: So what? China: Its Dangerous

America: Its only a Flu China: Wear a Mask

America: Dont wear a Mask

 pic.twitter.com/Qxugv8z73J  China Xinhua News (@XHNews) April 30, 2020



EU

Europe prepares for more lockdown easing as virus hopes rise Agence France-Presse

United Kingdom

Indonesia

Syraqistan

Donald Trump has the Saudis over an oil barrel Qantara

2020

Dan K:

I have equity in Facebook, so like any shareholder I get periodic notifications about shareholder proposals. The list of what the Facebook Board wants folks to vote against this time around is quite telling. pic.twitter.com/G0fe7U1MQf  John Feminella  (@jxxf) May 1, 2020

Antidote du Jour (via):

See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here.
Calgary, Alberta--(Newsfile Corp. - April 21, 2020) - Hemostemix Inc. (TSXV: HEM) (OTC: HMTXF) ("Hemostemix" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the appointment of Timothy C. Chang to its Board of Advisors.

Mr. Chang is currently a Private Investor and an investment committee member of an Asian-based hedge fund with average total AUM of approximately US$1 billion. He has also been a consultant to Newport Healthcare Advisors and to SSG Capital Management. Mr. Chang is a renowned private equity investor who has a track record of successful special situations and venture capital business investments throughout the Asian region.

Prior to becoming a Private Investor, Mr. Chang was a Managing Director of Citigroup Venture Capital International Asia Ltd., (CVCI) Hong Kong, 2005 - 2008, where he worked on and invested in private equity deals throughout Asia with a focus on Greater China. Prior to CVCI, from 2003 - 2005, Mr. Chang was Managing Director and Head of Greater China for Cerberus, a distressed assets private equity fund based in New York. Mr. Chang was also an Executive Director, Direct Investments and the Head of the Special Situations Group at AIG Investment Corp. Ltd., Hong Kong.

Timothy Chang graduated Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, Summa Cum Laude with a B.A. in Applied Mathematics and Economics. He completed his senior honors thesis (with Professor Jeffrey Sachs as his thesis advisor) researching and modeling the Predictability of Realignments in the European Monetary System.

"The company is commercializing ACP-01 to treat critical limb ischemia in Japan, South Korea, and across Asia," said Thomas Smeenk, President & CEO. "Timothy's foundation is Asia. His relationships are within its financing community. His business experience and knowledge of worthy license partners in the region will be very helpful, as we consummate an agreement wherein we retain scalable production, yet enable our partners to provide sales and distribution on an licensed indication basis," Smeenk said.

Story continues

Timothy Chang reflected: "Despite slogging my way through pre-med classes in college like Organic Chemistry and working at a lab at the Harvard Medical School, I somehow forgot to submit my application to medical school. In the late 1970's and early 1980's there were limited opportunities for Chinese-Americans to excel on Wall Street, in U.S. politics or law, and in most non-science or non-engineering based fields. My "tiger mom" (who had endured the hardships of being a Chinese immigrant in the US in the 1950's) thus decided that medicine was the field for her eldest son. I saw things a little differently, rebelled, and decided to head to New York City and Wall Street to try to break new ground. Many years later, though, I have come to realize that I have never lost my love for math and science (especially the science behind medicine). It is thus with great delight that I now find myself in a position to help Hemostemix break new ground in the autologous stem cell therapies and regenerative medicine markets," Timothy stated.

ABOUT HEMOSTEMIX

Hemostemix is a publicly traded autologous stem cell therapy company. A winner of the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer Award, the Company developed and is commercializing its lead product ACP-01 for the treatment of CLI, PAD, Angina, Ischemic Cardiomyopathy, Dilated Cardiomyopathy and other conditions of ischemia. ACP-01 has been used to treat over 500 patients, and it is the subject of a randomized, placebo-controlled, double blind trial of its safety and efficacy in patients with advanced critical limb ischemia who have exhausted all other options to save their limb from amputation.

On October 21, 2019, the Company announced the results from its Phase II CLI trial abstract presentation entitled "Autologous Stem Cell Treatment for CLI Patients with No Revascularization Options: An Update of the Hemostemix ACP-01 Trial With 4.5 Year Followup" which noted healing of ulcers and resolution of ischemic rest pain occurred in 83% of patients, with outcomes maintained for up to 4.5 years.

The Company owns 91 patents across five patent families titled: Regulating Stem Cells, In Vitro Techniques for use with Stem Cells, Production from Blood of Cells of Neural Lineage, and Automated Cell Therapy. For more information, please visit www.hemostemix.com.

Contact: Thomas Smeenk, President, CEO & Founder

905-580-4170

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Service Provider (as that term is defined under the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward-Looking Statements

This release may contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects," "plans," "anticipates," "believes," "intends," "estimates," "projects," "potential," and similar expressions; or, may include statements and words that events or conditions "will," "would," "may," "could," or "should" occur. Although Hemostemix believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on the reasonable assumptions of Management, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs, estimates, and opinions of Management on the date such statements are made. By their nature forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause actual results, events or developments to be materially different from any future results, events or developments expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to, the Company's ability to fund operations and access the capital required to continue operations, the Company's stage of development, the ability to complete its current clinical trial, complete its futility analysis and the results of such, future clinical trials and results, long-term capital requirements and future developments in the Company's markets and the markets in which it expects to compete, risks associated with its strategic alliances and the impact of entering new markets on the Company's operations. Each factor should be considered carefully and readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. Hemostemix expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Additional information identifying risks and uncertainties are contained in the Company's filing with the Canadian securities regulators, which filings are available at www.sedar.com.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/54700
In 1936, when tensions were rising across Europe, the War Office acquired Monkton Farleigh, a disused quarry near Bath. It transformed the mine into the largest underground ammunition depot in the world, keeping thousands of weapons secure and hidden throughout the Second World War.

The mine fell into disrepair, but in 2008 it was acquired by AIM-listed Restore and converted into a vast underground warehouse. It now holds 1.5 million boxes for 1,300 clients in search of exceptionally secure storage.

There is a link to Monkton's past, because Restore customers include the Ministry of Defence and the Royal Navy, but the company also works with a range of other Government departments and thousands of private firms.

Explosive secret: The quarry, near Bath, has a new role since it served as an armoury in the war  it now safeguards confidential documents

Restore is the second largest data storage firm in Britain and is well positioned in other areas too. A data shredding business makes sure old records are disposed of securely. A digital division helps organisations to turn paper records into electronic documents. A technology arm takes old IT kit from businesses and recycles, refurbishes or resells it. And then there is Harrow Green, the UK's biggest office move company.

The coronavirus pandemic has affected each of these divisions for good and for bad.

The NHS is a major customer and it has used Restore to help set up the new Nightingale hospitals in London and Birmingham. The group has also worked with NHS Trusts across the country, reconfiguring space to make room for Covid-19 patients and creating storage for personal protection equipment.

Restore stores and digitises documents for the NHS too, including patient medical records and information on operations and appointments.

Some of this activity has fallen off since the health service began to focus all its attention on coronavirus patients, but business should pick up sharply as hospitals begin to perform non-urgent operations again.

Data shredding is another service performed for the health service and many other customers. Classed as essential waste collection, it has continued to operate across the private and public sectors.

Volumes have dropped off slightly in recent weeks but when chief executive Charles Bligh shut down the division for just one day because he was worried about staff safety his customers were aghast.

Restore swiftly made sure that its employees were observing social distancing and Bligh reopened the business.

The UK lockdown has also prompted a surge in revenue from the IT business. Restore Technology sells refurbished computers and other technology on eBay, and demand has soared as people have looked for kit to help them work from home.

The group's storage division has proved resilient too. Accounting for about two-thirds of group profits, the business makes most of its money from recurring revenues. These have persisted in recent weeks and are likely to continue in the same vein once the lockdown lifts.

Customers include 88 of the FTSE 100 constituents, as well as 81 per cent of NHS Trusts, more than 80 per cent of the UK's top legal and accountancy firms and numerous local authorities.

Most of these clients are highly-regulated, so they are legally obliged to store data securely, often for decades. In a trading update last month, Bligh withdrew the final dividend of 4.5p and said that top executives had taken a 20 per cent pay cut.

But he also stressed that Restore's balance sheet was strong and the group should bounce back with renewed vigour once the coronavirus crisis has passed.

Reassuringly too, Bligh and his finance director spent almost 45,000 of their own money buying shares in the business just last week.

Bligh joined the business a year ago and was hoping to make a number of acquisitions this year. Those plans have been postponed but are likely to be rekindled when the time is right.

There may even be more opportunities than before, as smaller competitors struggle to cope with the current economic headwinds and put themselves up for sale.

Brokers predict a strong recovery for 2021, with a dividend of at least 8.5p, rising again in 2022 and beyond.

Midas verdict: When it comes to storing, shredding and digitalising documents, trust is paramount.

Over the years, Restore has acquired a reputation for service, security and nimble-footedness, transporting confidential data and keeping it safe.

That reputation should stand the business in good stead through the current crisis and beyond. At 3.80, the shares are a buy.

Traded on: AIM Ticker: RST Contact: restoreplc.com or 020 7409 2420
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Reliance Industries (RIL) met street estimates in its January-March quarter results fueled by stellar growth in Jio, retail and digital businesses. However, an exceptional loss of Rs 4,267 crore due to the fall in oil prices and demand destruction following the coronavirus outbreak capped profits.

Analysts are of the opinion that the stock may witness profit booking on Monday primarily due to a steep fall in equity markets as trade tensions between the US and China resurfaced.

SGX Nifty on Friday was down nearly 500 points whereas benchmark indices rallied nearly 8 percent last week.

Another reason for profit-taking could be the sharp rally seen in Reliance share price recently. The stock shot up 67.5 percent since March 23 to Rs 1,467.05 on April 30 amid growth in the telecom business and Jio-Facebook deal.

"Reliance has rallied more than 60 percent, it could see some sell-off in a couple of weeks due to weak global cues, but that will be a buy or there will be a good time to buy at Rs 1,257, the rights issue price," Prakash Diwan of Altamount Capital Management told CNBC-TV18.

Prashanth Tapse, AVP Research at Mehta Equities also feels technically RIL may see an attempt of profit booking at the current levels as it has seen a rally from Rs 875.65 (March 23) and Thursday's close Rs 1,467.05 (April 30).

But experts maintained a positive stance on the stock given the expected growth in the new-age business of Jio and Retail which are yet to be factored in.

They see tremendous growth in RIL after Q4 FY20 and Q1 FY21, once the lockdown induced pain is soothed.

According to them, there are multiple moats for the company such as the expected growth in consumer businesses, ongoing due diligence with Saudi Aramco, expected hiving off oil-to-chemical (O2C) business, another Facebook-like deal in Jio Platforms. They also expect RIL to become net debt-free ahead of schedule which could drive market capitalisation of the business back above Rs 10 lakh crore soon.

"We still have Saudi Aramco deal on track, so it is a very different premium attached to optionality on the stock. Though there was a disappointment on the pricing of the rights issue, the stock will definitely come back as the new-age businesses will start getting pencilled in," Prakash Diwan said.

"Reliance is not extremely expensive even at Rs 1,400 plus level given the kind of projections of the new-age business of Jio and Retail. O2C may get Rs 3.5 lakh crore of valuations then the stock could cross magical Rs 10 lakh crore market cap again," he added.

SP Tulsian of sptulsian.com also said, "I don't think Q4 numbers or EPS estimates for FY21 are relevant at this point of time. Saudi Aramco due diligence is on track which gives certainty that deal is going to happen."

"The company will be moving before NCLT for hiving off O2C business and its commitment to raising Rs 1 lakh crore by Q1 FY21. Hence, if we add cash flow of Rs 40,000-50,000 crore for FY21, the company will be able to achieve the target of making it debt-free on a net of cash basis, because the net debt as of March 31 FY20 is Rs 1.61 lakh crore," he added.

He too was disappointed with the rights issue pricing but said that the fall in topline, EBITDA and EBIT of Reliance Retail given the lockdown was not disappointing.

The company reported gross refining margin at $8.9 a barrel, which was much ahead of street estimates of $7.2-8.0 a barrel. GRM in Q3 FY20 was at $9.2 a barrel.

Reliance Jio reported a healthy 72.7 percent sequential (177 percent YoY) increase in profit at Rs 2,331 crore with 387.5 million subscribers as of March 2020 against 370 million in the previous quarter, while average revenue per user increased to Rs 130.60 from Rs 128 crore QoQ.

"GRM at $8.9 a barrel is out of the box and far better than expectations. Jio ARPU is a tad lower as we were expecting at Rs 135, but incrementally they also added subscribers, tweak in data pack which will have a strong impact on current quarter's earnings (Q1FY21)," Prakash Diwan said.

The company announced India's biggest rights issue of Rs 53,125 crore, in the ratio of 1 equity share for every 15 equity shares held by shareholders, at a price of Rs 1,257 per share against Thursday's closing of Rs 1,467.05 per share. The proposed rights issue would be the first by RIL in three decades.

"The rights issue is a step towards the company's target of becoming a zero-net debt company by end of current fiscal. Promoters are expected to fully subscribe to the rights issues which will instil confidence in investors mind about promoters commitment to the business in addition to improving the balance sheet strength. We believe investors should take this positively," Ashish Chaturmohta, Head of Technical and Derivatives, Sanctum Wealth Management told Moneycontrol.

Vikas Jain, Senior Research Analyst at Reliance Securities said the rights issue would enable shareholders to increase the holdings at a lower price compared to Thursday's closing of Rs 1,467 per share.

Reliance Industries is expected to complete the capital raising programme totalling over Rs 1.04 lakh crore by Q1FY21, which includes the investment by Facebook in Jio Platforms, the upcoming rights issue and the previous investment by British Petroleum in FY20.

In addition to the Facebook investment, "RIL has received strong interest from other strategic and financial investors and is in good shape to announce a similar-sized investment in the coming months," said the company.

With strong visibility to these equity infusions, RIL is set to achieve net-zero debt status ahead of its own aggressive timeline.

Mukesh Ambani in his AGM speech in August last year said, "We have a very clear roadmap to becoming a zero net debt company within the next 18 months that is by March 31, 2021."

While maintaining a buy call with a target at Rs 1,601, Prabhudas Lilladher said it tweaked estimates for FY21/22 as it believes RIL is well placed to capitalize on growth opportunities in the digital and retail space.

"Fundraising plans of Rs 1 lakh crore will help RIL to tide over the tough post-COVID-19 pandemic situation, especially in the hydrocarbons business," the brokerage added.

Motilal Oswal also maintained buy call on the stock and said, "RIL's Q4 FY20 consolidated and standalone EBITDA was in line with our estimates."

The brokerage valued the stock at Rs 1,618 per share (from earlier Rs 1,589), based on SOTP with equity values of Rs 358 per share for the core business, Rs 500 (earlier Rs 450) for Retail and Rs 760 (earlier Rs 750) for Jio.

"We value the core segment of Refining and Petrochem at 6.0x FY22E EV/EBITDA, factoring in the enhanced delayed coker capacity, the widening of crude blend window for maximizing distillate yields prior to the IMO and the revival in Petchem margins for the company under its flexible feedstock utilization," the brokerage said.

Disclaimer: The views and investment tips expressed by investment expert on Moneycontrol.com are his own and not that of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions.

'Reliance Industries Ltd. is the sole beneficiary of Independent Media Trust which controls Network18 Media & Investments Ltd.'
In 1993, the United Nations General Assembly declared 3rd of May as the World Press Freedom Day to raise awareness on the importance of freedom of the press and remind governments of their duty to respect and uphold the right to freedom of expression enshrined under Article 19 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The UN chosen theme for 2020 is Journalism without Fear or Favour. The spread of COVID-19 across the world since the start of 2020 has indeed attested the importance of having a professional and free press which provides verified factual information. In a climate dominated by fake-news and misinformation, the job of the journalist has become even more complex. Restriction of movement certainly does not help to the cause of journalists, even though everyone agrees that this is the only way to the break the chain in the spread of the virus.

Journalists and the media sector across the world may soon have to ponder on the various scenarios of post-COVID19 journalism. Newsrooms must ensure their personnel observe strict social distancing and other guidelines recommended by the authorities. Some may adopt a Work-from-Home strategy as journalists also experiment other ways of obtaining information and conducting interviews. COVID-19 has proven that the media sector is dynamic and quickly adapts to its ever-changing landscape. Media organisations are also not immune to the troubling financial consequences of the pandemic. Business models may have to be reviewed to ensure continuity.

According to the Swiss NGO, Press Emblem Campaign, at least 55 journalists have died from coronavirus so far. Safety of journalists is at risk in this crisis who carry out their essential duty of providing information on the ground. In Mauritius and Rodrigues, journalists have braved the dangers of the pandemic to ensure the population is well-informed during the lockdown. We have also not been spared by the spread of fake-news on social media. However, our professional press has shown once again that such unscrupulous acts will not carry much weight in the eyes, ears and opinions of the population who have acted responsibly during this difficult period.

Today we pay tribute to all journalists around the world who are risking their lives to keep people well-informed. We reiterate the importance of continuous training for journalists. The Media Trust remains committed to its objectives and will restart its programs as soon as the pandemic has receded and we have necessary clearance from the authorities.

Stay Safe.

The Media Trust Board

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Vice President Yemi Osinbajo says the country and its people will emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic stronger.

The vice president said this on Saturday during his interaction at the 2020 edition of The Platform themed Nigerias battle against COVID-19 organised by the Covenant Christian Centre.

The May 2020 edition featured virtual participants without a live audience as a result of the global pandemic.

Read Also: Buhari Seriously Concerned About Lockdown Challenges: Osinbajo

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In a statement issued by his spokesperson Laolu Akande, the vice president was quoted as saying, We will get through this much stronger economically and much stronger as a people because of our resilience. There are a lot of challenges but they offer significant opportunities for us to turn things around.

I am very confident that Nigerians, with our resilience, our strength and our innovation, we will go through this in great shape.
Trueblood, a critical care lung specialist, had told Halls family she likely would die from the coronavirus.

I dont know that Ive ever seen anyone with acute respiratory distress syndrome this bad who went on and survived it, he said Tuesday afternoon.

At the darkest moment, he leveled with Ronnie Sue Robinson around midnight about the reality of her moms dire condition. I dont see how we are going to get her through the night, he said.

Hall was alive at daybreak, and the medical team continued to try  everything  to save her, including several experimental drugs and turning her face-down, once for two days straight.

We used all the tricks, everything we could think to do, he said. We paralyzed her at one point. We bought her time. And mostly, we didnt give up.

There always was a glimmer of hope, and also an agreement with Halls family to not take futile measures to save her.

Every time her condition worsened, every time a new drug didnt work, each time her oxygen levels would plummet  sometimes to 70 percent with the vent going full bore  Hall would always hang on, sometimes by just a thread.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said Sunday that his order requiring state residents to wear face masks went too far.

DeWine announced April 27 that face masks must be worn in stores  but after some Ohioans found the order offensive, he reversed himself the next day.

It became clear to me that that was just a bridge too far. People were not going to accept the government telling them what to do, he said on ABCs This Week.

DeWine said getting hung up on the mandatory masks just wasnt going to work, though he highly recommends wearing them. Employees will still wear face masks, and DeWine urged customers to protect the folks who are stocking shelves in grocery stores.

On Monday, the states manufacturing and construction businesses will reopen, joined by consumer and retail stores on May 11.

DeWines about-face on face masks drew some sharp criticism that it would endanger the states workers.

The answer isnt to make people risk their health by going to work without adequate protections, Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley tweeted Thursday. No matter where you live or what you look like, we can all agree that no one should have to choose between paying bills and staying healthy.

Ohio  which has seen more than 19,000 coronavirus cases, more than 1,000 deaths and roughly 1 million residents filing for unemployment  joins several other states in starting to reopen sectors of its economy after seeing a brief downward curve in new infections and deaths and protests urging state and local governments to ease lockdown restrictions. Six states are set to loosen restrictions on Monday; 17 did on Friday.

This Week co-host Martha Raddatz asked DeWine why the country is seeing a partisan divide in how Americans respond to the pandemic: ABC News found that Democrats are more concerned with contracting the virus, and Republicans are twice as likely to eat at a restaurant, work-out at a gym and get a haircut.

Generally, Republicans are less inclined to have the government tell them what to do. And thats generally how I am, DeWine said.

His state is in a phase where, yeah weve got a few orders out there, but were starting really pretty aggressively to phase business back in. Now, he said, its a balancing act.

Were going to watch numbers every single day.
Massachusetts State Police temporarily shut down interstate 291 near exit 4 in Springfield after a shooting took place on Saturday evening. It has now been reopened.

State police are currently investigating the shooting that was reported to have been between two vehicles heading westbound. Police recovered ballistics evidence.

The two vehicles reported to be involved in the shooting, which occurred shortly before 5 p.m., have not been located at this time.

To preserve the scene for processing by the State Police Crime Scene Services Section and the State Police Ballistics Unit, Route 291 west was temporarily shut down.

Got a news tip or want to contact MassLive about this story? Email newstips@masslive.com or message us on Facebook orTwitter. You can also call our news tips line at 413-776-1364.
One of the seven high-level sex offenders released from prison in California has been rearrested just 18 days later.

Rudy William Grajeda Magdaleno, 39, was released by Court Commissioner Joseph Dane. He allegedly exposed himself to employees of a parole resource center four days later. Officers were called to the scene, but the offender ran away before they arrived.

Magdaleno refused to charge his GPS tracking device the day before the incident, making it hard for the Santa Ana law enforcement officials to track him.

His release was condemned by Santa Ana police Chief David Valentin who said he was allowed to walk free despite his significant and troubling documented criminal history.

Magdaleno reportedly sexually assaulted a woman with special needs. He was also reported for masturbating at a law firm and breaking into the home of a minor without any clothing.

He was charged with child molestation, indecent exposure, assault, battery, criminal threats, and inflicting injury on an elderly adult. He also had a previous criminal history that included robbery and narcotics possession. He only served 71 days of his 6-month minimum sentence for his last conviction.

He was released on April 13.



Unnecessary Move

Six other high-level sex offenders were released from Orange County's prisons due to the COVID-19 outbreak. The court commissioner released the inmates early in April. The move earned criticisms and warnings from experts and law enforcement officials who claim the order was not necessary as the prisons were not overcrowded.

The seven sex offenders were released despite having been arrested for tampering with their GPS tracking devices.

Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes also denounced the early release, citing his reports that showed a 45 percent decrease in jail population since early March. He also said they imposed strict measures in place to ensure the inmates are following the social distancing protocols released by the World Health Organization.



Controversial mandate

While the issue of a deadly COVID-19 outbreak in overcrowded U.S. prisons has been a cause of concern in recent weeks, the order proved to be controversial. Only a small number of "non-violent" inmates in California, given an early release, were tested for the pandemic.

The California Department of Corrections said they asked all convicts who were released to observe self-isolation. They were also given personal protective equipment to wear while in-transit to their county of release.

The department could not give an exact figure on how many of the 3,500 released prisoners were tested for the new coronavirus pandemic before their release.

A spokesperson for the department said they had protocols to follow. At the time of release, only prisoners who showed COVID-19 symptoms were tested. They said plans are in the works to reach and test all prisoners who were given an early release from state prisons.

The department also set up a temporary housing unit at the prison that can hold sixty inmates. The units will allow more space for physical distancing, as suggested by federal health agencies.

As of late April, over 270 CDCR employees and inmates were found positive with the COVID-19 pandemic.



Read the latest news here:
AccuWeather forecasters are warning chances of snow and other wintry weather to break out across portions of the eastern United States, just after a winter storm spent the weekend making a mess of places from the Tennessee Valley through the Southeast and up the Eastern Seaboard into New England.
Johnson Electric Holdings Limited (HKG:179) shareholders should be happy to see the share price up 14% in the last month. But over the last half decade, the stock has not performed well. After all, the share price is down 54% in that time, significantly under-performing the market.

See our latest analysis for Johnson Electric Holdings

To paraphrase Benjamin Graham: Over the short term the market is a voting machine, but over the long term it's a weighing machine. One imperfect but simple way to consider how the market perception of a company has shifted is to compare the change in the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price movement.

During the unfortunate half decade during which the share price slipped, Johnson Electric Holdings actually saw its earnings per share (EPS) improve by 8.3% per year. Given the share price reaction, one might suspect that EPS is not a good guide to the business performance during the period (perhaps due to a one-off loss or gain). Or possibly, the market was previously very optimistic, so the stock has disappointed, despite improving EPS.

Because of the sharp contrast between the EPS growth rate and the share price growth, we're inclined to look to other metrics to understand the changing market sentiment around the stock.

Revenue is actually up 11% over the time period. A more detailed examination of the revenue and earnings may or may not explain why the share price languishes; there could be an opportunity.

You can see how earnings and revenue have changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values).

SEHK:179 Income Statement May 3rd 2020

We consider it positive that insiders have made significant purchases in the last year. Having said that, most people consider earnings and revenue growth trends to be a more meaningful guide to the business. You can see what analysts are predicting for Johnson Electric Holdings in this interactive graph of future profit estimates.

What About Dividends?

Story continues

As well as measuring the share price return, investors should also consider the total shareholder return (TSR). The TSR is a return calculation that accounts for the value of cash dividends (assuming that any dividend received was reinvested) and the calculated value of any discounted capital raisings and spin-offs. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. As it happens, Johnson Electric Holdings's TSR for the last 5 years was -48%, which exceeds the share price return mentioned earlier. This is largely a result of its dividend payments!

A Different Perspective

While the broader market lost about 13% in the twelve months, Johnson Electric Holdings shareholders did even worse, losing 25% (even including dividends) . Having said that, it's inevitable that some stocks will be oversold in a falling market. The key is to keep your eyes on the fundamental developments. Unfortunately, last year's performance may indicate unresolved challenges, given that it was worse than the annualised loss of 12% over the last half decade. We realise that Baron Rothschild has said investors should "buy when there is blood on the streets", but we caution that investors should first be sure they are buying a high quality business. While it is well worth considering the different impacts that market conditions can have on the share price, there are other factors that are even more important. To that end, you should be aware of the 3 warning signs we've spotted with Johnson Electric Holdings .

Johnson Electric Holdings is not the only stock insiders are buying. So take a peek at this free list of growing companies with insider buying.

Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on HK exchanges.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Recently, the Dona Ana County Commission voted 4-1 to adopt a resolution, without seeking health care expert advice, demanding the governor allow businesses to open prior to the expiration of the May 15a stay-at-home order. This is an ill-advised and dangerous political ploy  not to mention an affront to all of the health care workers, first responders, child care workers and so many others who have sacrificed and risked for all of us as we work together to fight this pandemic, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and all the efforts of her Cabinet, everyone who has sacrificed by schooling or working at home, going on unemployment or temporarily closing their business for the sake of stopping the community spread of COVID-19 and to save lives.

I, along with all legislators, have been in close communication with the Governors Office, and I have sent messages to the members of the Economic Recovery Council, a representation of statewide business owners, and asked them to reach out to businesses in District 37, the east side of Las Cruces, for their input. We can be assured that these council members are working together and that responsible modifications to business closures are forthcoming in the near future.

New Mexico has taken early and absolutely necessary measures to protect the health and safety of our citizens. We cant undermine these sacrifices before we have the statistical information we need, and we shouldnt undo the flattening of the curve that has been gained.

The recovery council is contemplating the careful steps that need to be taken by businesses when it is time to open and assure the protection of patrons from contracting the virus.

I understand the anxiety that small-business owners are going through. I have close family members anxious to get back to work, take care of their employees and generate income. The reason we are investing in unemployment and business relief is so we can beat this pandemic, not just go halfway and give up. We need to see this through, and only data will let us know when it will be safe and with what precautions.

When we have fewer new cases, deaths and can test and track any further outbreaks, we will be able to implement the recovery council plan. Please, New Mexico, dont succumb to the political whims of the uninformed  stand strong with careful consideration of the Economic Recovery Council that joins the science of health with the innovation of business to recommend the rollout of safely opening businesses in our state.
The chancellor Rishi Sunak is under pressure to launch a second wave of furlough payments as the government's scheme is set to be cut off in June.

Industry and manufacturing think-tanks have warned that without further payments up to 35 per cent of jobs could be lost in parts of the UK, as businesses struggle to stay afloat during the nationwide lockdown.

The furlough scheme sees the government covering 80 per cent of the wages of employees stuck at home - up to a value of 2,500.

So far 140,000 businesses have taken advantage of the offer, an estimated 9million staff members, with the cost coming in at around 42billion for the first three months, according to the Office for Budgetary Responsibility.

Boris Johnson is due to set out plans for bringing the UK out of lockdown today, with other European nations including Spain and France warning restrictions could last as late as July.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak has been called on to extend furlough scheme. The CIPD said he should continue the payments until September at the earliest

Industry think-tank the Royal Society for Encouragement of arts, manufacturing and commerce warned that without further furloughs unemployment could rise to levels not seen since the 1930s.

The head of the RSA future Work Centre, Alan Lockey, warned no part of the country will be spared a 'severe recession' but those most dependent on hospitality and tourism will be 'particularly badly hit'.

'The government's response so far has been robust,' he said, 'but it must avoid going back to "business as usual" - including Universal Credit, sanctions and means-testing - if it's to avoid the devastating impact of prolonged unemployment on whole swathes of the population.'

Business association the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development said the Chancellor should extend furlough until September to support crippled businesses.

They warned that without this change the scheme could become a 'waiting room for unemployment and fail to protect significant numbers of the jobs it set out to save'.

'This will provide more certainty for employers and ensure that there is no "cliff edge" exit from furlough straight to redundancy for hundreds of thousands of workers at the end of June.'

Four fifths of manufacturing businesses have experienced a fall in orders due to the coronavirus outbreak as the economy enters the deep freeze

Areas most at risk from coronavirus lockdown, based on furlough data Richmondshire, Yorkshire - 35 per cent of jobs at risk (5,965) Eden, North West - 34 per cent of jobs at risk (7,989) East Lindsey, East Midlands - 34 per cent of jobs at risk (14,509) South Lakeland, North West - 33 per cent of jobs at risk (17,424) Derbyshire Dales, East Midlands - 33 per cent of jobs at risk (10,350) Scarborough, Yorkshire and the Humber - 33 per cent of jobs at risk (14,458) West Devon, South West - 32 per cent of jobs at risk (5,226) Ryedale, Yorkshire - 32 per cent of jobs at risk (7,699) Argyll and Bute, Scotland - 32 per cent of jobs at risk (10,074) Cornwall, South West - 31 per cent of jobs at risk (66,878) Advertisement

The Manufacturers' Organisation, Make UK, called on the UK government to extend furloughing within its sector, where four fifths of companies have seen a fall in orders.

'The prospect that a significant number of companies will not take staff off furlough until they see orders increase, means the government will have to consider extending some form of job retention plan beyond the end of June', they said.

Make UK's chief executive, Stephen Phipson, said: 'The extent of collapse in demand is such it means that the recent OBR forecast could be an underestimate unless there is a quite remarkable turnaround which, to be frank, just isn't going to happen.

'All the indications at the moment indicate that, even if a gradual easing of lockdowns begins soon, the impact of this shock will continue to hit companies and livelihoods for some time to come.

'As such, government may need to be flexible with its future support schemes in the same way that industry is going to have to be flexible with its recovery plans.'

The chief economist at the Institute of Directors, Tej Parikh, told the Observer the government should act to avoid a cliff-edge.

'Getting the economy running again won't be like flicking a switch,' he said. 'Even if lockdown measures were completely lifted, many firms wouldn't expect demand to lift to normal levels immediately.

'A sharp removal of the furlough scheme at the end of June could cause significant problems for some businesses, so the government should explore how it could taper off the system in a flexible way.'

Areas of the UK with a heavy reliance on tourism and hospitality are said to be most at risk from a coronavirus downturn. Pictured above are houses along Swindon's canal

Data published by Monitor says 19 per cent of companies have furloughed between 11 and 25 per cent of employees while 15.9 per cent have furloughed between up to half of their workforce.

Major companies signing up to the scheme include BA, which has furloughed 22,260 staff members, and easyJet.

Rishi Sunak said at the start of this week he was willing to consider extending the scheme to July.

'I am determined to make sure as many people as possible return to work after this crisis,' he said during a Parliamentary economy update on Monday.

'I want to make sure that as we emerge from this crisis, we can bounce back to the lives we once knew.'

Boris Johnson is set to announce an exit strategy out of the lockdown later today.

Manufacturers are also at risk from coronavirus. Pictured above is the Normanton Industrial Estate in Yorkshire

France extended its lockdown measures until July 24 on May 2. Health Minister Olivier Veran announced the further extension to the lockdown, which began on March 24, warning his country was 'going to have to live with the virus for a while'.

Spain allowed people out of their homes for the first time in more than a month yesterday.

Pedro Sanchez's government has announced a tiered lockdown lifting system, that will see regions progress through gradual easing measures every two weeks if the virus doesn't again begin to spread through the population.
Indian army colonel, major, two soldiers and a police officer killed in a firefight after storming a rebel hideout.

Five security forces and two rebels were killed in Indian-administered Kashmir when the army and police stormed a house where rebels were holding hostages, officials said on Sunday.

A five-member counterinsurgency team entered the home in the northwestern Handwara area late Saturday and successfully extricated the civilians, an Indian army statement said.

The government forces came under heavy gunfire from the house, and in the ensuing firefight two rebels and all counterinsurgency team members died, it said.

It did not specify how many civilians were rescued. No rebel group immediately commented and there was no independent confirmation of the hostage-taking.

A police officer said an army colonel and a major, along with a police officer and two other soldiers tried to storm the hideout when they were gunned down by the rebels. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with department policy.

The officer said special forces reinforcements were called in and they shot dead two rebels but two others likely escaped.





Meanwhile, at least eight civilians, including three young children and a teenage boy, were wounded on Sunday in a blast caused by an explosive device just a few kilometres from Saturdays gun battle. Police were investigating the cause of the explosion.

Daily fighting

India has stepped up its counterinsurgency operations across Kashmir in recent months despite a lockdown to combat the coronavirus pandemic. Rebels fighting Indian rule have not ceased their attacks on security forces and alleged informants.

There has also been almost daily fighting over the last several months along the rugged and mountainous highly militarised frontier that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan.

On Friday, two Indian soldiers were killed in border skirmishes. On Wednesday, a Pakistani soldier and three civilians on both sides of Kashmir were killed in another bout of fighting.

India and Pakistan claim divided Kashmir in its entirety. Most Kashmiris support the rebel cause that the territory be united either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country, while also participating in civilian street protests against Indian rule.

Rebels have been fighting Indian control since 1989. India accuses Pakistan of arming and training the fighters, a charge Pakistan denies.

Nearly 70,000 people have been killed in the uprising and the ensuing Indian military crackdown.
When firefighters with the Kenosha Fire Department use surgical masks to protect themselves against the COVID-19 virus while working in the firehouse or riding to scenes, chances are the masks they are wearing were donated by Kenosha-based Jockey.

The company announced in late March that it was donating personal protective equipment to healthcare workers nationally, and focusing on Kenosha and New York for targeted donations for masks. This weekend, the company was a sponsor of Call to Unite, a 24-hour livestream event to raise money and awareness of coronavirus relief efforts.

The companys purpose and guiding principles are all about caring for others, said Mark Fedyk president and chief operating officer of Jockey, saying he felt both the donations of safety equipment and the sponsorship of the Call to Unite event fit with those principals. We thought that that was absolutely in alignment of our values as a company and thats why we chose to get involved.

Fedyk said Jockey has had a focus on community throughout its history, from making parachutes for soldiers during World War II to, more recently, creating a foundation focused on supporting adoption and adopted children.

Made gowns sent nationwide

When the COVID-19 crisis began, Fedy said, company leadership heard there was a shortage of personal protective equipment for healthcare workers including masks and isolation gowns. Fedy said the company reached out to Encompass Group, a manufacturer it works with making Jockey scrubs, to see if the company could provide isolation gowns. We learned that they had made them in the past but had not made them in years, Fedyk said. Within three weeks we were able to restart manufacturing.

The gowns the company had manufactured were donated to healthcare providers around the nation. By the end of this week we will have donated 170,000 gowns, Fedyk said, saying the plan is to ultimately donate at least 250,000 gowns.

Met with city leaders in March

In Kenosha, members of the Waller family that owns Jockey met with city leaders in March to see how they could help, They then reached out to Fire Chief Charles Leipzig to see if the company could donate masks for the department.

Leipzig said the company donated surgical masks, N95 respirator masks and disposable gowns for the department.

We have been in Kenosha for over 120 years, Fedyk said. We really do feel like weve been blessed by Kenosha and we do feel we are just returning the blessing.

Masks donated to firefighters

Fedy said the company donated more than 20,000 masks to the fire department, which has used them both to protect firefighters and EMTs, but also to donate to other city needs including to poll workers on election day.

 To say this was helpful would be an understatement, Leipzig said of the donation. As a public safety department, we plan and prepare for health issues, but a global pandemic certainly is uncharted and the need for these critical items will far surpass what any city or public safety entity could ever supply or keep in their inventory.

Leipzig said firefighters have been using the surgical masks in fire stations and while riding to scenes to try to prevent spread of the virus between staff, while N95 masks are used while at calls.

City, KUSD staff get masks

He said the surgical masks are also being used by other city workers and Kenosha Unified School District staff to try to help keep staff and the public safe while they are working.

With the donation, Leipzig said, the department will likely have enough safety equipment to make it through the fall and into winter without facing a shortage. It was a huge deal, he said of the donation. I cant say enough about them.

Fedyk said Jockey has seen sales decline during the pandemic with retail stores closed. Like any company, weve been affected by the number of stay at home orders in the states and with stores closing, he said. Weve been fortunate that our business online has been strong and we are in a category that is somewhat a necessity so our growth online has accelerated.

He said the company moved most of its employees to remote work as a safety precaution at its offices, including its Kenosha headquarters, before stay-at-home orders were instituted and is working on a plan to bring people back safely in the future. Were certainly putting employee safety first as people begin to return to work, he said. He said the company would start with state and federal guidelines, then work with employees to make sure they are able to communicate and address any worries they have.

We are a family owned company and we really think that when people can come together they can get through challenges and crises and you can conquer fear, Fedyk said.
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Linkedin Ruth L. Navarra (Inquirer.net/Asia News Network)  Sun, May 3, 2020 21:05 625 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd5aacf1 2 Entertainment Choi-Woo-shik,parasite,Time-to-Hunt,Netflix,film,South-Korea,actor Free

Heres a fast fact: Choi Woo-shik first worked on Time to Hunt before he did Parasite.

One can imagine how busy his days were early this year when promotions for both films and awards season overlapped. Parasite made history at the Academy Awards on Feb. 9 when it won in four categories, including Best Picture.

Time to Hunt premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival two weeks later. Lee Je-hoon, Ahn Jae-hong and Park Jung-min attended the international premiere in Germany, but Choi couldnt.

I was jealous. I was working on another film at the time so I couldnt make it, he said. I wished I could have been there with them. The venue where they screened the film looked amazing. I felt so sad that I couldnt be there.

Read also: Time to Hunt to be released worldwide Thursday on Netflix

Mob hits

Choi plays Ki-hoon in the dystopian film written and directed by Yoon Sung-hyun. His character is one of four robbers who hit the mob casino. Things get messier when the mob hits back by sending a ruthless hunter to track them down.

Working with the director for the first time was exciting for Choi. The actor confessed that he loves the crime thriller genre.

Choi talked about the things that impressed him during filming. What was new to him was the use of non-natural light during filming. Lights were manipulated all the time to set the tone and mood.

He couldnt even see his face clearly when he was checking the monitor. Choi said the end result looked fantastic.

The lighting creates a dominant mood, especially when the camera spins during the speedy planning and preparing scenes. I think there were many amazing shots that havent been seen anywhere else, he said.

He chose to do the film because being part of it would make him happy.

Choi said that he has a lot of similarities with Ki-hoon. However, he said that he could relate more to Sang-soo (played by Park Jung-min).

Im always a little passive and can come across as being pathetic, he said with a laugh. Meanwhile, Ki-hoon doesnt have any problem expressing himself to others. I only do that with people Im comfortable with, which is why I think Im more similar to Sang-soo.

Choi said that Ki-hoon is rebellious, but he always takes care of his friends and family. Choi finds this characteristic sweet and admirable.

Read also: 'Time to Hunt' to be released on Netflix after distributing companies reach agreement

Spoiler

Interestingly, he named Han the villain (Park Hae-su) as the role he would like to portray among the other characters.

He possesses such a powerful presence. I probably wont be able to achieve that level of charisma in real life, so if given a chance, I would love to play the character, he said. Id like to create a character that is completely appalling, that it would make the audience tremble.

There was a point when Ki-hoon had to choose between saving his family and going to paradise with his friends.

Super K asked Choi what he thought about the choice his character made. He said that friends are important to Ki-hoon. However, his presence only makes up 30 percent of the trios relationship.

He said that Jang-ho (Ahn) is closer to Joon-seok (Lee) and that the twos friendship is the 70 percent. This is how the actor saw it, thus he feels that the two will be okay even without him.

My character chose his parents. I was happy with the choice. If I were in that situation, I would have to say that family is really important. So I think Ki-hoon made the right choice, he said.

Topics :

This article appeared on the Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper website, which is a member of Asia News Network and a media partner of The Jakarta Post
The antiviral drug remdesivir was shown to be effective in treating COVID-19 in clinical trials at VCU Health, findings that coincide with 179 other medical investigations across the country.

On Friday, the FDA issued an emergency-use authorization for the drug, citing enough evidence to believe the drugs benefits outweigh potential side effects, which could include inflammation of the liver, low blood pressure, nausea and sweating.

There are currently no other approved treatments, and the drug still needs FDA approval.

To qualify for the trial, patients were required to have severe symptoms such as reduced oxygen levels and pneumonia. Within the studys 28-day time frame, 55% to 65% of people recovered and the mortality rate was 8% to 11%.

In a news release Friday evening, Dr. Arun Sanyal, a VCU Health liver specialist, said scientists have learned more about the disease.

When a patient comes in, we can actually tell them this is the drug, this is how it works and this is how effective it is  which we couldnt do a month ago, Sanyal said.
Universities will not be allowed to cram in extra students to plug any funding gaps, ministers will announce today.

But they will get a 2.6billion financial support package to stabilise admissions and safeguard undergraduates.

This will give the Government temporary controls over student numbers, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson will say.

It came as nearly one in five prospective students say they have changed their mind about going to university this autumn because of coronavirus.

The state-funded cash injection will be an early payment of tuition fees and will help to address any cash flow concerns

Nearly one in five prospective students say they have changed their mind about going to university this autumn because of coronavirus

The state-funded cash injection will be an early payment of tuition fees and will help to address any cash flow concerns  along with 100million in Government funding to help protect research activities.

Higher education institutions in England will also have to stick to a temporary cap in numbers of full-time undergraduates from the UK and EU for 2020-21.

It means universities will be unable to take on extra students to make up their financial shortfall.

Admissions will be controlled by the Government via the student finance system, with ministers having discretion to allocate an additional 10,000 places, including 5,000 guaranteed for nursing, midwifery or similar health courses to support UK public services.

UCAS, the admissions body, will also develop a personalised clearing system for students this summer, including a 'clearing plus' service to match youngsters to universities or other opportunities based on their achievements and course interests.

Meanwhile, institutions will also be able to use existing funds, totalling 46million across April and May, to boost their hardship funds for students in financial difficulty.

Pictured: Education Secretary Gavin Williamson - 'We are committed to supporting our world-class universities'

Mr Williamson said: 'We are committed to supporting our world-class universities and students through this unprecedented, challenging time. We are working tirelessly to do everything we can to stabilise admissions and protect a vital part of our country's economy and society.'

In a call with journalists, universities minister Michelle Donelan also addressed concerns over students who want refunds because their courses have moved online, saying it would not be appropriate because virtual lectures have been 'amazing'. She said: 'We've seen over the last few months courses being developed online and virtually to an amazing level.

'We have always said that we don't believe students would be entitled to reimbursements of tuition fees if the quality is there.

'Of course, there are processes that they can follow if they feel the quality isn't there.'

Almost half (48 per cent) of university applicants think the coronavirus crisis will damage their chances of getting into their first-choice institution

Professor Julia Buckingham, president of Universities UK, said: 'The package of interventions indicates a welcome recognition from government of the central role that universities will play in the recovery of the economy and communities and the urgent need to provide support for universities to weather the severe financial storm created by Covid-19.'

Almost half (48 per cent) of university applicants think the coronavirus crisis will damage their chances of getting into their first-choice institution.

The poll from the Sutton Trust of 511 applicants aged 17 to 19 also found 19 per cent have changed their mind about their university attendance this year  or are yet to decide.
Even as a political debate over Aarogya Setu application rages in the country, the NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant on Sunday tweeted that the app has been upgraded further to include facilities for online medical consultations, ePharmacy and home lab tests.

According to information available on the Google Play, the app initially developed for contact tracing of coronavirus positive cases and suspects, has been installed in over 5 crore devises across the country till April 28.

AarogyaSetu now brings to you to Online Medical Consultations (call and video), Home Lab Test and ePharmacy. AarogyaSetuMitr, the stack powering this new feature, is developed in collaboration & partnership of @NITIAayog and @PrinSciAdvGoI, said the first of the two tweets by Kant.

The app developed by the ministry of electronics and information technology was first launched on April 2 and it was initially promoted by the government for voluntary use, pitched as a device meant for advance warning the user and the authorities, in case of contact with a Covid 19 infected person or a suspect. The app uses cellular location mapping technology and Bluetooth to track users and their movements.

Later, the government promoted the app as a tool among several others employed for coronavirus containment efforts and the prime minister himself vigorously stressed on the need for its mass use to increase its efficacy.

The apps formal induction as a containment tool was completed on May 1, when the government made its use mandatory for people in containment zones and for office goers, which led to questions around data protection and privacy raised by the opposition parties and also some experts. While Rahul Gandhi called it a sophisticated surveillance tool being controlled by a private operator, the ruling party slammed the criticism as motivated and ill-informed.

Also Read: Rahul Gandhi leads opposition charge on Aarogya Setu

According to Kant, the app has now been scaled up further in partnership with the NITI Aayog and the Principal Scientific Advisor to the government of India, to provide online medical consultation, online pharmacy and laboratory tests at home. Kant added that more than 200 doctors were providing their services to the app and more were being added.

For Coronavirus Live Updates

AarogyaSetuMitr has voluntary participation from organizations, industry coalitions, and startups. More than 200 doctors available through the day to medically assist you. More doctors being added. We Step In, So That You Dont Have to Step Out, his second tweet said.

Apart from the new features, the app tells users how many people are using the app within a radius of 500 metres to 10 km and how many positive cases or suspects have been detected in the area. It also carries a few government advisories on containment efforts.

The HT Guide to Coronavirus COVID-19
Madrid, May 3 : Masks will be compulsory on public transport in Spain from Monday as the country moves to gradually relax its tough lockdown.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the government would distribute 6 million masks, mainly at transport locations, and give another 7 million to local authorities, the BBC reported on Saturday.

Adults in Spain were able to exercise outdoors on Saturday for the first time in seven weeks.

The lockdown was eased for children under 14 a week ago.

Lockdowns in other European countries are also being eased, though social distancing remains in force. Some countries require mask-wearing in shops and on public transport.

Italy has Europe's highest death toll from coronavirus, closely followed by the UK and then Spain (though experts caution that countries do not record death figures in exactly the same way).

The UK's figures show hundreds of people are still falling victim to Covid-19 every day - on Saturday the deaths of a further 621 people were announced.

Both France and Italy recorded fewer than 200 deaths in a 24-hour period.

Italy announced another 474 deaths on Saturday, a larger number than in recent days, but according to La Repubblica that figure includes 282 deaths outside of hospitals in April which were not included in earlier figures.
As the leading company of the "new technology" sector of China Everbright Group and the core strategic technology platform of China Everbright Ltd (CEL), Terminus has been fully applying its AI and Internet of Things technologies in China, and receiving positive feedback from the market. Meanwhile, more acknowledgment from abroad are saying high of Terminus' corporate responsibility as an international company.

Blueprint for AI CITY

What Terminus has been doing is to build AI CITY one after another around the world, and gather numerous "points of aggregation" of AI CITY into a complete AI CITY "plane" through the iteration of AIOT technologies. From point to plane, Terminus will be able to deploy its global network of AI CITY.

In the Middle East, by cooperating on projects and inviting investment, the United Arab Emirates is bringing the world's leading tech enterprises into the country, hoping to go smart and be powerful in the future with the help of the imported advanced productivity. Terminus is one of the leading tech companies on top of its list. By far, Terminus has reached an agreement with Injazat Data System on the smart city project. The cooperation will focus on smart city, energy, intelligent security among other fields, enabling the two sides to jointly explore the blue ocean market in the UAE and the Middle East. Look deeper, you will find this business partner of Terminus is supported by Mubadala Development Company, the world's largest sovereign investment fund. Such a cooperation is the best illustration of a company's tech strength and its ability to go global.

 Terminus and Injazat Data System reaching a consensus on smart city cooperation and signing the project agreement

However, this is only a glance at Terminus' market reach and its AI CITY deployment in the UAE.

Last year, Terminus signed a cooperation agreement with District 2020 Dubai Expo Special Zone, under which Terminus will provide AIOT solutions in intelligent security, energy, smart city, etc. In addition, Terminus will set up an AIOT industrial R&D center, as well as its incubators and accelerators, in District 2020 Dubai Expo Special Zone to fully utilise local AIOT industrial resources and expand its industrial layout.

 Terminus signing a cooperation agreement with District 2020 Dubai Expo Special Zone

In April this year, China Everbright Group AI Industrial Base officially started its construction in Chongqing, a metropolis in southwest China. It is the first world-class AI CITY created by Terminus and China Everbright. It can be said that Terminus has sketched its grand vision for global AI CITY in Chongqing, and undoubtedly, the multiple AI CITY projects in the UAE are the early stage deployment of the company's global network.

Fighting the pandemic with technologies has expanded the company's global reach.

At the critical stage of the global fight against coronavirus, Terminus' Huolei Initiative has entered its 100th day. It has been upgraded from a simple aid initiative to a two-way communication and assistance platform for the international community to prevent and control the pandemic. Terminus' successful experience in fighting the pandemic with technologies has become a "hard currency" in the overseas market. Not only has it received thumb-up from the Minister of State and formed an alliance with Qatar Airways, but also implied a close tie with Qatar to promote high-quality development. This also brings Terminus an increasing attention from the international community.

As early as the beginning of April, pandemic control supplies were offered by Terminus to the Qatar authorities. By collaborating with Qatar Airways, Terminus was able to send tech products for pandemic control to the country, including back-end control system for pandemic control, all-in-one portrait recognition and thermometer, early warning instrument with thermal imaging temperature screening, thermal imaging thermometer, etc. They were immediately sent to government bodies and ports of Qatar upon arrival, bringing great convenience to the frontline battle for fighting with the coronavirus.

His Excellency Akbar Al Baker, Minister of State of Qatar, Secretary General of the Qatar National Tourism Board, and CEO of Qatar Airways Group, wrote a special letter to Victor Ai, CEO of Terminus. Not only did he delivered the sincere gratitude, but also expressed his commitment to fight against the coronavirus together with Terminus, which as he described, was a precious ally. On 20th last month, His Excellency Ahmad Mohammed A Y Al-Sayed, Minister of State of Qatar and Chairman of the Qatar Free Zone, also sent a letter to Victor Ai, showing Qatar's deep solicitude for the Chinese people in fighting the pandemic, and strongly affirming the heroic performance of Terminus in its Huolei Initiative.

As the world's leading provider of intelligent scene solutions, Terminus has made substantial achievements in AI, data service, smart city construction and other fields. As early as last November, on his trip to China for the 2nd China International Import Expo, Ahmad Sayed, Minister of State of Qatar, also visited Terminus' office in Shanghai with the company of Mohamed Al-Dehaimi, Ambassador of Qatar to China. Back then in the office, the Minister of State said that he had not thought that China's tech companies were far ahead of other countries in intelligent technologies, and that Qatar was willing to conduct in-depth cooperation with Terminus in the related industries.

At this special moment, Terminus has taken concrete actions to expand the tech cooperation between China and other countries to minimize the impact of the pandemic and seek new opportunities. The flourishing project launches at home and abroad have shown the world the great resilience of China's economy. Behind Terminus' AI CITY, it lies the truth that China is bringing new opportunities to and other countries in the form of "new infrastructure", and adding confidence to the stable development of global economy.

SOURCE Terminus Technologies
With 427 new cases, Delhi on Sunday witnessed the highest single day spike in Covid-19 cases  taking the cumulative total of positive cases diagnosed so far to 4,549, said the health bulletin shared by the government.

Delhi, on Sunday, also recorded recovery of 106 Covid-19 patients and no fresh death, which brings down the total number of active cases to 3,123. The total number of deaths stays 64, the government data said.

On Saturday, Delhi had recorded 384 fresh Covid-19 cases which happens to be the second highest single day spike for the Capital now.

Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal had earlier attributed the high number of cases in Delhi to scaled up testing being done in the in the city which, according to the government, stands somewhere around 2600 people per million population.

On Sunday, health minister Satyendar Jain said, Delhi has so far tested more than 58,000 people Delay in arrival of test results at times contribute to bulk numbers on a single day. For a better picture, one should look at the doubling rate. Delhi currently has a doubling rate of 11.5 compared to around 4 recorded one month ago.

Doubling rate is an assessment used to represent the time it takes for the number of Covid-19 cases to double within a given geographic area. Districts in Delhi does the assessment in every seven days, senior officials in the health department said.

Bengali Market to be de-sealed

The Delhi government on Sunday also scaled down containment efforts in New Delhis Bengali Market and a lane in Kailash Hiils neighbourhood in South-East Delhi, bringing down the total number of containment zones to 94 in the city.

The popular Bengali Market, which was the first and only Covid-19 containment zone in Lutyens Delhi, will be de-sealed from Monday. An order to scale down the containment measures in the popular market and surrounding areas was taken on Sunday after no Covid-19 case was reported for 28 days.

The same protocol applies to the other sealed area too.

In an order issued by District Magistrate Tanvi Garg on Sunday, the authorities were asked to scale down the measures, though lockdown provisions will continue to be in force.

The upscale neighbourhood made its way to the list after a surveillance team of the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) found 35 workers of a famous pastry shop living under unhygienic conditions violating social-distancing norms. Two workers who had fever-like symptoms (common in Covid-19 patients) will undergo tests.

The surveillance was conducted after three persons were found positive for the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) from the neighbourhood.

YK Anand, president of Babar road RWA said, It is a huge relief. Though we were provided all services at home, it is a good thing that our area has not reported any new cases.

District magistrate (southeast Delhi) Harleen Kaur did not respond to phone calls and messages.
If some voters already were carrying the disease, they might have spread it to others they came into contact with on Election Day. And those people might have spread it to others, and so on. The potentially deadly ripple effect proceeds.

Citizens should not have to unnecessarily risk their lives and those of others to exercise their right to vote.

Now Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the N.C. Board of Elections, has asked the legislature to consider 15 changes to the states elections procedures to make the November elections as safe as possible.

November might seem a long way away, but absentee ballots go out in September. Gearing up for major changes will require planning, time, money and work. Then it will be key to get the word out to voters and encourage them to use the new procedures.

High on Bells list is all mail-in ballots, and that would require a lot of preparation as well as action by the legislature. Bell would also like to see lawmakers approve sending out mail-in ballots with prepaid postage, and making it easier to request and mail absentee ballots. Other ideas include decontaminating polling places or moving them to places such as former grocery stores, where doors automatically open as people approach.
Now Desk reporter Joseph Gambardello in the newsroom of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News and Inquirer.com on Monday, March 16, 2020. The staff at the newspaper was asked to work remotely to help control the transfer of coronavirus. Read more

Local news has long been a reliable, dependable source of information. National stories have too often been grabbing peoples attention. This focus on national news has, at times, come at the expense of valuable reporting being done by local journalists.

But when we face a collective crisis, the most important information we need is local. How many COVID-19 cases are in my community? Where can I get tested? When will schools reopen? What is considered an essential business? In this moment, local news publishers are delivering the information that is allowing communities across the country to survive and stay connected to one another.

Unfortunately, the business of local news publishing was in a fragile state before COVID-19, and the immediate and intense contraction in advertising in response to the pandemic has imposed severe financial stress on local news publishers at exactly the moment when the public needs their reporting more than ever.

As an industry, we take our role as independent watchdogs seriously, and we dont easily ask for government help, even in the midst of a pandemic. But local journalism is at a turning point, and if we want it to survive this crisis  and be available for the next one  we need Congress to step up and offer assistance immediately. The biggest asks for local news right now are:

Direct current government advertising dollars to local news publishers and broadcasters, and establishing a large, new government advertising campaign around health, education, and economic development.

Change the Small Business Administrations (SBA) rules to allow more small publishers access to the same lending facilities that are available to other small businesses. The original SBA program restricts newspapers that are part of other newspaper groups or non-news business, unnecessarily penalizing thousands of local newspapers across the country. The SBA needs to treat local publishers that are part of larger groups as independent small businesses, which would grant them access to such aid as the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).

Thirty-three thousand news media employees have been laid off, furloughed, or seen their pay reduced since the coronavirus struck. To address the layoffs and furloughs, Congress should consider additional means to support small publishers and maintain newsroom employment just when we need local journalists the most.

Pass legislation that would support local journalism that is already teed up in Congress, including small changes to recently enacted retirement security legislation (SECURE Act).

(The Journalism Competition & Preservation Act would allow publishers to band together to negotiate a better business deal from Google and Facebook.)

Publishers dont take these requests lightly, and many may view it as counterintuitive for news media companies to turn to the government for assistance, given the role media play in speaking truth to power. But the current situation has proven the essential nature of local news.

Local publishers dont just keep the public informed about the actions of its leaders  they keep leaders informed about the realities their constituents are facing. Local news reporters have ties to their communities that make them experts on their governments, their leaders, and their neighbors. Local journalists are reporting on a community theyre living in and are experiencing the same things as their audiences every day.

Social media isnt going to give the public the information it needs right now; local publishers and journalists are, and Congress needs to act to ensure that they dont disappear just when we need them the most.

Politicians have complained about the media since the founding of the Republic. But the Founding Fathers also understood the value of the press for the American people and that it wasnt the role of journalists to be liked by politicians. They wrote freedom of the press into the First Amendment because they knew it was important to have journalists be the eyes, ears, and voice for the people. This is never clearer than in times of crisis.

If we cant come together now to save local journalism when its most essential, we may not get another chance.

David Chavern is president and CEO of the News Media Alliance.
JACKSON COUNTY, MI  The novel coronavirus pandemic has altered plans for many.

Some people are working exhausting hours on the front lines and others are coping with the abrupt cancellations and changes over the last few weeks.

These people have been on the receiving end of a few acts of kindness from loved ones, neighbors and strangers.

Here are things happening in Jackson County that give us hope.

If you have a story of a business, organization or person creatively dealing with social distancing and home isolation, or are going above and beyond to help others, please email Mikhayla Dunaj at mdunaj@mlive.com.

Grass Lake staffers use their senior photos to create 2020 graduate tribute

A recent surprise for graduating seniors had the Grass Lake Community Schools staff digging up pieces of their past.

More than 70 teachers, bus drivers, administrative workers and more sent their senior photos in for a video tribute to the Grass Lake class of 2020. The video was organized by George Long Elementary School teacher Dakota Bahlau.

(Seniors) are going to get some quality pictures from like the late 80s and early 90s with the big hair and the glasses, Bahlau said. I just thought it would be really nice. Its different than how other people ended their senior year, but you still have great memories and your staff still loves you.

The video, which also features some messages to the seniors, was posted to a learning platform that students and teachers use for assignments. Bahlau said parents and teachers have told her they couldnt make it through the video without crying.

Jackson High School teacher surprises students with signs, personalized messages

9 Jackson High teacher takes signs to seniors

Teachers may not be with their students in the classroom, but Maureen Hesslau is determined to be with them somehow.

The Jackson High School teacher has been placing signs with personalized messages at her students doors. Occasionally, she will draw with chalk in their driveways, too.

Maybe this isnt exactly the way that we would have liked this to have happened, but I just wanted them to know that people were thinking good things of them, and just proud of them for what they had accomplished and what they were doing, as they go forward in that next step, Hesslau said.

Hesslau previously taught at the Middle School at Parkside, and this graduating class includes students she is teaching for the second time after having them as seventh or eighth graders, she said. Her goal is to at least do a sign for every student she had in middle school, which is about 70 percent of this years graduating class.

COVID-19 patients family purchases meals for HFAH staff

Ten children have paired with their dad to provide meals for Henry Ford Allegiance Health staff working on the COVID-19 floor while their mom recovers from the virus.

Christi Saenz, of Concord, said her 71-year-old mother Anne Marie Thorrez has been in the hospital fighting COVID-19 since the end of March. The family has brought in meals for nurses on the COVID-19 floor for weeks, altering between the day and night shift. Recently, they decided to start a GoFundMe for anyone else who wanted to contribute.

This has helped family in Concord and others feel involved, Saenz said. With the money raised, the family is providing meals from local Jackson eateries for approximately 20 medical staff each day. Some of the meals include Schlenkers burgers, salads from Night Light and Coney dogs, which the nurses joked made it hard to wear masks the rest of their shift.

Being able to support the nurses and then the local businesses is a huge, huge bonus, Saenz said. I know how stressful it's been for the people taking care of my mom and it's been stressful for us as a family, and we just wanted to do something small to help make it a little less stressful for everybody.

The GoFundMe has raised $1,780 from 35 donors since April 18.

Jackson native donates $10,000 to Lansings Sparrow Hospital

Jamie White, a Lansing attorney and Jackson native, donated $10,000 to Sparrow Hospital to provide meals for staff amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The donation was originally planned for National Hospital Week from May 10-16, but White thought otherwise.

This pandemic is happening now, White said. So I donated immediately, and my hope is that other law firms and businesses will hear about hospital week and also step up with donations to recognize these incredible healthcare workers.

His donation will go twice as far thanks to matching grants from the hospitals food providers and restaurants, said Laura Fellows, the hospitals food and nutrition director.

The generosity is overwhelming, Alan Vierling, President of Sparrow Hospital president, said. We come to work to provide care, we never expect anything in return. Its very humbling when the community goes out of its way to recognize us and be so kind. Thank you isnt really adequate.

Two of Whites friends have suffered COVID-19, he said. One barely pulled through and the other is still in recovery, which he said reinforces how much he appreciates them and those working to help them.

County National Bank donates meals to Hillsdale essential workers

Each employee at Hillsdale County Medical Care Facility will benefit from the donation.

County National Bank partnered with Cottage Inn to provide a meal for staffers at the hard-hit Hillsdale County Medical Care Facility.

Each employee received a voucher for a two-topping pizza, order of InnStix and 2-liter beverage to use whenever works best for them.

With so many patients and staff directly impacted, CNB was inspired to find a way to reach out and show our support for those who are working so hard in caring for the most vulnerable in our community, officials said.

2 more residents die from COVID-19 at Hillsdale elderly care facility, 14 total

Although many ideas were suggested to recognize the employees, the pizzas were selected because it would also likely provide a meal for the staffers families, too.

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These six women, retired sisters from Our Lady of the Angels Convent in Greenfield, Wisconsin, tested positive for the CCP virus after their deaths. (Courtesy of Our Lady of the Angels)

6th Religious Sister at Wisconsin Facility Dies of CCP Virus

A sixth woman who lived at Our Lady of the Angels Convent in Greenfield, Wisconsin, tested positive for the CCP virus after her death, officials say.

Sister Josephine Seier, 94, died on May 1. A medical examiners postmortem examination revealed she tested positive for COVID-19, the disease the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus causes, according to Michael OLoughlin, communications director for School Sisters of St. Francis.

The convent cares for retired religious sisters from the School Sisters of St. Francis and the School Sisters of Notre Dame.

Seiers death is the fourth among former nuns from the School Sisters of St. Francis, according to officials. The others are Sister Marie June Skender, 83, who died April 7; Sister Annelda Holtkamp, 102, who died April 19; and Sister Bernadette Kelter, 88, who died April 26, OLoughlin told CNN. They were all diagnosed postmortem.

Two School Sisters of Notre Dame who lived in the Wisconsin facility were also diagnosed with the virus postmortem, according to Trudy Hamilton, spokeswoman for the School Sisters of Notre Dame Central Pacific Province. They are Sister Mary Regine Collins, 95, who died April 6, and Sister Mary Francele Sherburne, 99, who died April 9.

For many weeks, Our Lady of the Angels has been working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, the Milwaukee County Health Department, infection control specialists, and the Greenfield Health Department for months to protect our sisters and staff against COVID-19; and once the presence of the virus was identified, to prevent further spread, Jane Morgan, administrator of Our Lady of the Angels, said in a statement.

We are also working closely with the leadership of the School Sisters of St. Francis and the School Sisters of Notre Dame to keep them informed, she said.

The CNN Wire and Epoch Times staff contributed to this report
LIMERICK City and County Council says it is happy to discuss any future plans for the development of the Horizon Mall site following the completion of demolition works by the owner.

The site has been an eyesore for more than a decade and last October, the local authority ordered Novelty Icav, to raze the former structure to the ground

The order under the provisions of the Derelict Sites Act 1990, was part of the councils programme of targeting derelict sites with a view to bringing them back into use and reducing eyesores around the city and county.

Work began to knock the metal and concrete shell in early November and continued until recently.

A spokesperson for the local authority has confirmed to the Limerick Leader that the demolition works have been completed to its satisfaction.

The owners of the Horizon Mall have fully complied with the Section 11 notice issued by Limerick City and County Council, so no further action is required. As with all developers, Limerick City and County Council is happy to discuss with them their future plans for the site, said a spokesperson.

Earlier this year Novelty Icav lodged a planning application seeking permission for a 60 million development at the site on the Dublin Road.

The Singaporean investment vehicle is seeking to build a residential and office development on the site which has been vacant since just before the financial crisis.

According to planning documents, the proposed development will feature 245 bedrooms across a range of blocks ranging in height from three to 14 stories.

Four office blocks are in the plan, over basement parking providing 12,262 square metres.

A 152 bedroom, four storey hotel also forms part of the proposed development, alongside a filling station, and a three-storey community building.

This element of the development will include a creche and a multi-use games area, while a public park and playground will also form part of the scheme.

The planning application was lodged in early January and planners are awaiting a response to a request for further information.

The applicant has been asked to carry out an analysis of travel level during peak times at both the Groody and Parkway Roundabouts.

As part of the request for further information, planners have also asked that an amphibian survey and a bat survey are undertaken at the site.

Any plans or proposals for the remainder of the lands owned by Novelty Icav, must also be submitted.

Novelty Icav must reply to the request for further information by the middle of September.




The daily task of saving lives could become more worrisome when certain entitlement are deprived of health worker amidst the challenge of COVID-19 pandemic.

This has been the outcry of many Ogun state resident doctors who believe that the state government has not treated them well with regards to the hazard allowances.

Naija news Understands that this out-cry has resulted in a three- day warning strike by the resident doctors

The President of the Association of Resident Doctors, Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital (OOUTH) Dr. Mutiu Popoola, who announced this in a statement titled: Protect and appreciate doctors who put up their lives online during this pandemic COVID-19 in Shagamu, Ogun State.

He said: We have been on this struggle for appropriate remuneration for over four years and it is unfortunate that the governments unwilling attitude to the welfare of doctors in OOUTH is unbecoming.

Popoola said that there has been no commitment whatsoever from the government on the issue of appropriate remuneration, entry-level, new minimum wage, hazard allowance and life insurance for our members.

He said that despite the inadequate response of Ogun State Government to the health risks confronted by our members during this COVID-19 pandemic, our members went ahead to continue their work diligently in their various departments and at the isolation centre.

We were taken aback by the arbitrary change in only hazard allowance to be given as COVID -19 Special Hazard Allowance to all health workers. The 200% increase in Hazard allowance is just an increase from N5000 to N15,000 for just the month of April, he said.

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Midland County recorded no new positive coronavirus cases Sunday, and its status remains at 62 cases and six deaths, according to the daily state report.

Bay, Gladwin and Isabella counties recorded no new cases and their totals are 157 cases and six deaths, 14 cases and one death, and 61 cases and seven deaths, respectively. Bay County's total shows one less case from Saturday's report; as public health investigations of individual cases continue, there will be corrections to the status and details of referred cases that result in changes to this report.

Saginaw County on Sunday added 20 new cases, bringing its total to 720 cases and 66 deaths.

The state on Sunday added 547 new cases and 29 deaths. Overall, Michigan is at 43,754 cases and 4,049 deaths.

The average death age is 74.9, according to the state website, mich.gov, with the deceased ranging in age from 5 to 107. The state lists 41% of the deceased as 80-plus and 28% age 70-79. State statistics show 54% of coronavirus deaths are male and 46% are female.

The state lists the total recovered at 15,659 cases, as of May 1, which represents COVID-19 confirmed individuals with an onset date on or prior to April 1, 2020, according to the state website, mich.gov. The numbers will be updated every Saturday.

The state lists the majority of races in positive cases as 32% Black/African American; 33% Caucasian and 21% unknown, and the top three races in deaths as 41% Black/African American; 47% Caucasian and 7% unknown

The total positive cases are 46% men, 53% women and 1% unknown.

Midland County Department of Public Health continues to encourage residents to take precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19:

 Continue to practice social distancing as recommended by federal, state and local officials

 Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth

 Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw the tissue in the trash

 Disinfect commonly touched surfaces

 Stay home when you are sick

 Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. If soap and water are not readily available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol.

We cannot stress enough how important it is for our community to be diligent in their community mitigation efforts," said Fred Yanoski, Midland County Public Health director/health officer. "We know that COVID-19 is in our community, and our residents can make a huge impact on slowing the spread of disease by following the recommended precautions."

If you think you've been exposed to COVID-19 and develop a fever and symptoms such as cough or difficulty breathing, call your health care provider for medical advice. If he/she isn't available call MidMichigan Urgent Care in Midland at 989- 633-1350 or MidMichigan Medical Center's Emergency Department in Midland at 989-839-3100.

MidMichigan Health has a COVID-19 informational hotline with a reminder of CDC guidelines and recommendations. The hotline can be reached toll-free at 800-445-7356 or 989-794-7600. Michigan Department of Health and Human Services also has a hotline number for Michigan residents for questions about COVID-19. The number is 1-888-535-6136 and is available seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Residents can also send an e-mail to: COVID19@michigan.gov. E-mails will be answered seven days a week between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.

If you are feeling anxious, stressed, depressed and feel you need to talk to someone, reach out to Community Mental Health for Central Michigan by calling 800-317-0708.
The Volta/Oti Regional branch of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) has donated assorted items to some vulnerable persons at Duta in the Ketu South Municipality to mark this year's World Press Freedom Day.



The items, including; 50kg bags of rice, 50 bottles of cooking oil, 20 bags of sachet water, 75 pieces of nosemasks and 72 bottles of alcohol-based hand sanitisers were given to vulnerable persons identified by the Assembly.



The donation, done on Sunday, May 03 was the Association's way of marking this year's World Press Freedom Day, a day set aside to celebrate the fundamental principles of press freedom, evaluate press freedom around the world, defend the media from attacks on their independence and to pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the line of work.



Mr Anthony Bells Kafui Kanyi, Volta/Oti GJA Chairman said the gesture was to support households hard hit by COVID19 restrictions.



"We are here at Duta, the hardest-hit community in the Volta Region by COVID-19 restrictions (border closure) to support you in our own small way. Today is a special day for us and we are here to put a smile on your face," he said.



Mr Kanyi commended journalists for bracing all odds to provide the public with information and education on COVID19, sometimes without protection and asked that Journalists were respected and their works well valued.



Mr Elliot Edem Agbenorwu, Municipal Chief Executive for Ketu South who received the donation for the people, thanked the Association for the gesture.



He called on residents to adhere to preventive protocols to break the chain of the virus spread, while asking journalists to be circumspect in their reportage on myths about the pandemic as that could do more harm than good.



Some residents who spoke to GNA expressed gratitude for the donation and asked God's blessings for journalists in the Volta and Oti regions.



The outreach by GJA Volta/Oti had support from the Volta Regional Coordinating Council and Honourary members of the Association.

Source: GNA









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Syracuse, N.Y.  A man shot on Syracuses East Side this morning has died.

Police were called to the 200 block of Croly Street around 11:31 a.m., where officers found an adult male with multiple gunshot wounds, Syracuse police Sgt. Matthew Malinowski said.

The man was rushed to Upstate University Hospital, where he later died.

The investigation is very active and ongoing," Malinowski said. Anyone with information is asked to contact Syracuse police at (315) 442-5222.

Contact Jacob Pucci at jpucci@syracuse.com or find him on Twitter at @JacobPucci.
Years before the Covid-19 pandemic, Xi Jinping had already initiated fundamental changes to Chinese foreign policy. While his recent predecessors had been downplaying Chinese power and ambitions, he calculated that the time had come for Beijing to assert its bid for global leadership. This was because, in his reading, China is closer than ever before to being the centre of the world stage, it is closer to achieving its goals, it now has the ability and the self-confidence to achieve its objectives. Over his tenure, China has been on the front foot and pursued these goals at every opportunity: from grabbing disputed islands off its coast to setting up multilateral economic institutions that challenge the West; from underwriting infrastructure development across Asia, Africa and Europe to extending its military power projection to the Pacific, Indian and Arctic Oceans.

It is not surprising that Xi Jinping is seeing the pandemic as yet another opportunity to promote Chinas grand geopolitical interests. Sure, the manner in which Beijing is going about it is rather tasteless, and less antagonising routes to power are available. But realists can hardly blame China for doing what it is doing. Not least when it is scooping up the opportunities created by the mis-steps and lapses of the United States, other Western powers and its neighbours  including India.

Take the case of the World Health Organisation. The United States suspended funding to the WHO after President Trump concluded that the international body was overly under Beijings influence. How can China be blamed for happily stepping into the breach, raising its financial commitments and claiming to promote global public health? In any case, it is spending a lot of money and energy into whitewashing its own sins of omission and commission in the early days of the pandemic and positioning itself as the worlds biggest saviour.

Just like the outcome of this global propaganda effort, it is by no means certain that Chinas bid for global leadership in the post-pandemic world will succeed. Consider this: even before the pandemic, it had already antagonised every one of its big neighbours, save Russia. This antagonism has deepened and crossed political lines as they saw Beijing in no mood to slow its pursuit of territorial claims despite the raging pandemic.

Rightly or wrongly, many countries are holding China responsible for the spread of the pandemic. Recent surveys in the United States and India indicate that Beijing is seen as a culprit in popular opinion. Australia is demanding an investigation into the origins of the outbreak. Some African voices are demanding compensation. More strident voices in the West are toying with demanding reparations. Amid these growing bubbles of resentment worldwide, Chinese diplomats are taking smug, brazen, pugnacious, sarcastic and often juvenile positions in their official and social media statements. If this is an example of the vaunted Chinese strategic acumen, Chinese leaders are either reading Sun Tzu wrong, or that Art is overrated.

It is more likely that China will find abandoning the Deng Xiaoping formula fatal to its great power ambitions. Xi Jinping reversed what Carl Minzer calls Dengs trifectastable, institutionalised Communist Party rule, high economic growth, and an openness to the outside world thereby setting in motion the beginning of the end of Chinas rise even before Covid-19 arrived. In the post-pandemic world, domestic politics in America, Europe and Asia is likely to gravitate toward anti-China positions.

International politics over the next few years will be shaped to a large extent by apportionment of blame and possible demands for reparations. This will colour developments in geo-economics, technology, public health and environment, adding greater sharpness to existing differences. With the United Nations, WTO and other multilateral organisations receding in effectiveness, Beijing will find the external environment much less conducive to its interests.

It is an open question as to what extent China can pursue Xis grand goals if global economic winds change direction. The worlds richest countries have realised that  regardless of the politics  there is a genuine need to shift supply chains away from over-dependence on China. There will be political calls in the West to bring the jobs back from China. While this will be impossibly exorbitant, some combination of on-shoring, near-shoring or friend-shoring will move the factories and jobs out of China and to countries within the circle of greater trust. This will be costly for Western consumers and a blow to China. Beijing can weather the storm by shifting focus to its large domestic market, but at the cost of its international influence.

It is unclear how receptive the world will be towards Chinese technology and investments, or indeed to Chinese immigrants. Xis Belt and Road Initiative will almost certainly encounter some turbulence. Many recipient countries will seek renegotiation of loan arrangements, increasing Beijings dilemmas. If China agrees to softer terms to one, it will face a snowballing situation where all debtors will seek better terms. If China refuses to renegotiate, and the debtors put up their hands, then Beijing will face the nationalist backlash of the kind it saw in Sri Lanka and Malaysia. In other words, to the extent that Beijing expected financial returns from BRI projects, those returns just got riskier.

I cannot say what effect the Covid-19 pandemic and its international consequences will have on Chinas internal politics, but their policy challenges have certainly become a lot more acute. To that extent, Xis China Dream has receded more into the distant future.

In the immediate post-pandemic world, China will remain a challenger for global leadership. The United States will remain the predominant world power, despite its wounds, self-inflicted or otherwise. What a lot of people miss is that the smallest failings of open societies are visible to all, whereas even fatal flaws of closed societies become visible only after their demise.

(The writer is Founder and Director, Takshashila Institution, Bengaluru)
Lagos State Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu says Lagos and the entire Nigeria need data as a very critical component for economic planning and good governance.

A statement signed by the Chief Press Secretary to the governor, Mr Gboyega Akosile, on Saturday indicated that Sanwo-Olu said this while answering questions as a guest on the digital edition of The Platform, a Covenant Christian Centre socio-political programme.

He said that the novel coronavirus pandemic had shown that Nigerian leaders would need to place premium on gathering of data for the country to move forward, socially and economically.

The governor said that absence of data on the identities of residents slowed planning, as the nation grappled with several issues that emanated from the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to him, data is critical to planning during emergencies such as COVID-19, and no nation can maximise its full potential without data.

It is what happens to us post COVID-19 that determines who we are as a people and not what we do at the moment.

We need data. We need the identity of every citizen in this country.

There is nothing like being over prepared in this kind of situation. You can make mistakes in times of crisis but you must learn from them.

We have realised that as a state, we need data in order to plan and proffer solutions to problems, he said.

Sanwo-Olu also said that communication was key in assuring citizens during crises.

The governor said that the experience garnered in the management of COVID-19 in Lagos State had shown that effective communication between government and the citizens was important.

He, however, said that the government must be very transparent with whatever it would communicate to the residents.

Communication is very important, and you must do it transparently. It helps with the level of confidence people repose on you, Sanwo-Olu said.

The Lagos COVID-19 incident commander urged the citizens to be more open with their details to help medical personnel to determine many things.

He said that the state had not made much progress as it should because some patients were not truthful about their details.

Anchored by Pastor Poju Oyemade of the Covenant Christian Centre, the platform 2020, also featured other leaders such as Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and the Chairman of the Governors Forum, Gov . Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti.
Members of Citizens' Coalition for Economic Justice hold a press conference in Seoul, April 2020, to urge the Korea Fair Trade Commission to investigate the Netflix case where the streaming giant is refusing to pay network usage fees. / Korea times photo by Min Jae-yong



By Kim Jae-heun



The Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) said it is investigating American streaming service Netflix for refusing to pay network use fees to local internet service providers (ISP).



The country's antitrust regulator had remained silent on the issue until recently. Due to concerns over the spread of COVID-19, the government has recommended people stay at home, which resulted in the number of Netflix subscribers skyrocketing. This has led to an overload on network traffic and SK Broadband, a unit of the country's top mobile carrier SK Telecom, has demanded the company pay network fees.



In addition, the Citizens' Coalition for Economic Justice (CCEJ) civic group issued a statement April 23, arguing that the government should strongly regulate Netflix. The group urged both the KFTC and the Korea Communications Commission (KCC), the country's top telecom regulator, to intervene and resolve the issue.



"Our stance about the ongoing legal problems between Netflix and SK Broadband is different from that of the KCC, as a concerned agency," a KFTC official said. "We are closely looking into relevant matters reported by CCEJ last year and its recent statement."



Last November, Netflix and SK Broadband requested the KCC to arbitrate the network fee dispute but proceedings were suspended as Netflix filed a lawsuit against the ISP. The KCC released guidelines on network fee contracts in January but failed to give any clear direction for global content providers.



According to CCEJ, Netflix and other international content providers are monopolizing the local internet market so the government should arbitrate and make them pay network fees as domestic content providers have to.



Local players Naver and Kakao have been paying annual fees of 70 billion won and 30 billion won, respectively, to domestic ISPs. Meanwhile, Netflix only pays a network use fee in the United States and France.



The Netflix issue falls under the KCC's jurisdiction but as the matter is considered an unfair trading practice and a case of reverse discrimination between foreign and domestic content providers, the civic group believes the KFTC needs to more actively engage in finding a resolution to the dispute.



The anti-trust regulator is positioned to establish and implement policies to promote fairer competition in a market where there is a prolonged monopoly under Article 3 of the Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act.



The KFTC has previously intervened in other matters involving international technology companies including Facebook, Google and Amazon. In January, the KFTC ordered Netflix to rectify one of the contract terms whereby the online streamer received consent from subscribers in South Korea when they changed their service fee.



Netflix said it has signed a deal to use the network with several domestic ISPs and it has no obligation to pay the network fee as ISPs are already charging consumers for it.



"It is an act of double billing. ISPs have an obligation to provide quality internet service as they receive a fee from consumers, not us," a Netflix official was quoted as saying by local media reports. However, the official refused to comment about any possible government intervention.



SK Broadband argues Netflix has been aggressively expanding its overseas network since the beginning of this year as the number of Netflix subscribers soared on the back of popular new-release TV series, such as Kingdom 2. In March, the local ISP installed three more network systems and an additional one last month. It now processes 400 terabytes of data maximum as a result of the upgrades, doubled from 200 terabytes previously.



The number of Netflix members here was 40,000 in 2018, but it has been increasing at a rapid pace to now reach 2 million subscribers.



Transmitting Netflix content to the massive audience here increases the cost of maintaining the quality of the network service and if content providers like Netflix don't pay, the burden of expense is passed on to consumers.



Currently, SK Broadband and KT are arguing that Netflix should pay the network fee while LG U+ and D'Live have accepted Netflix's offer to install a cache server that saves webpages and content in temporary storage to reduce load on internet traffic.



SK Broadband claims that cache server is not sufficient to solve the problem in reducing the heavy traffic.


Governor David Umahi has confirmed two more cases of Covid-19 in Ebonyi State bringing the total of confirmed cases in n the state to 5.

While four of the patients are returnees from other states in the country, the fifth patient, according to the governor, though a returnee, may have gotten infected at the states temporary isolation centre where returnees and suspected cases are kept until they are tested for the virus.

The governor stated this Saturday when he phoned into the situation room, a programme about coronavirus on the states broadcast stations.

According to the governor, the 4th case returned from Lagos with the virus while the fifth case got the virus from the third case at the Pa Oruta Ngele Stadium Abakaliki temporary isolation area.

The 4th case is a 22 years old boy who leaves in Ojo Lagos. He left Lagos on 26 and entered Ebonyi through Nkalagu border. And from there entered bus to Ezzamgbo junction. Thereafter he entered bus to Ede Ishieke in Ebonyi local government, the governor said.

He said the man was intercepted at Ishieke by the states COVID-19 task force and brought to the stadium where a sample was collected from him which turned out to be positive.

On the fifth case, Mr Umahi said she returned with her family from Enugu State, where she resides, but was brought to the holding area in Abakaliki in line with the policy of the state government that anyone who comes in from outside the state must be tested.

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The fifth case is a 24 years old girl. A hair dresser from Awgu in Uburu in Ohaozara Local Government Area. She resides at No 30 Queens close Okpara Avenue in Enugu.

She was picked from Uburu to stadium. While at the stadium she had contact with the third case and this evening her result came out and she tested positive.

Mr Umahi however noted that the family members that she came back with all tested negative.

He said they will still be kept at the holding area and monitored for the next 14 days.

Mr Umahi said that he has also directed the medical team to go for contact tracing of all the patients contacts.

The governor while urging residents to remain vigilant urged them not to panic as the state government was doing all in its power to prevent the spread of the virus.

He commended some local government chairpersons who he said are doing well in effectively manning their borders.

The governor also lamented the unseriousness of others warning that there will be dire consequences for such persons after the war on the pandemic is over.

He said all the confirmed cases are doing well at the isolation centre.

In the next one week, I am sure that they will be cleared to go home after they must have tested negative twice, he said.
Today (May 3) is 'World Press Freedom Day or World Press Day. The World Freedom Day is one of the calendar events outlined, organised and promoted by the United Nations. The day's significance is to raise awareness of the importance of freedom of the press and remind governments that it their duty to uphold the right to freedom of expression enshrined under Article 19 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

As per UNESCO, celebrations for World Press Freedom Day will take place at national and local level around the world. The events could include online debates and workshops.

It is learnt that UNESCO will launch a global campaign on media and social media channels, with a focus on "Journalism without Fear or Favour".

World Press Freedom Day was proclaimed in December 1993 by the UN General Assembly following the recommendation of UNESCO's General Conference.

The theme for 2020 World Press Freedom Day is Media for Democracy: Journalism and Elections in Times of Disinformation. The concept note for the celebration states: Today, the contribution of free, pluralistic, independent and safe journalism to democracy is under unprecedented stress.

The sub-themes for this year are:

- Safety of Women and Men Journalists and Media Workers

- Independent and Professional Journalism free from Political and Commercial Influence

- Gender Equality in All Aspect of the Media

World Press Freedom Day is also a day of reflection among media professionals about issues of press freedom and is an opportunity to:

- celebrate the fundamental principles of press freedom;

- assess the state of press freedom throughout the world;

- defend the media from attacks on their independence;

- and pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the line of duty.
A highly-decorated colonel of the Indian Army was among five security personnel killed during more than 12-hour operation to flush terrorists out of a house in Handwara in north Kashmir, officials said on Sunday.

The security men were able to kill two terrorists in Changimulla village in Handwara and rescue the civilians but at the cost of their own lives.

The personnel killed in action are the commanding officer (a colonel) of the armys 21 Rashtriya Rifles battalion, a major, two soldiers and a sub-inspector of the Jammu and Kashmir Police.

The colonel, who leaves behind his wife and a 12-year-old daughter, had been decorated twice in the past for bravery in counter-terrorism operations, said one of the officials cited above.

The army-police joint operation was launched on Saturday afternoon to rescue the civilians who had been taken hostage by the terrorists inside a house.

In a statement issued on Sunday, the army said the joint operation was launched on the basis of intelligence that terrorists were holding civilian hostages at Changimulla.

A team comprising five army and J&K Police personnel entered the target area occupied by the terrorists to evacuate the civilians. The team entered the target area and successfully extricated the civilians, the statement said.

The statement added, However, during the process, the team was subjected to heavy volume of fire by the terrorists. In the ensuing firefight, two terrorists were eliminated and the team of five comprising two army officers, two soldiers and one police sub-inspector attained martyrdom.

This comes around a month after five commandos belonging to an elite unit were killed in action along the Line of Control in Kashmirs Keran sector during an intense close-quarter battle with an equal number of terrorist infiltrators who were all eliminated.
That poem was something of a model for the program, Mr. Brogan said, because it condenses and crystallizes an experience, adding: Its a poem about joy and how it comes to you.

The Poetry Society and the M.T.A. have heard from riders who have been moved by poems. Mr. Brogan said that a woman once approached Poetry Society members at the Brooklyn Book Festival and described to them how she helped her young son sound out poems each morning on the train. Ms. Bloodworth said that the poem Heaven by Patrick Phillips, which includes the lines It will be the past./Well all go back together. had elicited a particularly strong response.

Generally, two new poems are introduced into the subway system every few months. The next pair may appear this summer, Ms. Bloodworth said. Mr. Brogan said that he and his colleagues at the Poetry Society would be looking for works that include a sense of solace and, perhaps, that evoke the feeling of having come through adversity.

People are crowded into the subway, theyre going to work and theyve got other things going on in their lives, he said. And were trying to bring a kind of bright moment into their day.
SEVEN LIES by Elizabeth Kay (Sphere 12.99 384 pp)

SEVEN LIES

by Elizabeth Kay (Sphere 12.99 384 pp)

This widely anticipated debut comes surrounded by a lot of hype, sold to 25 countries, plus a hotly contested auction for TV rights. It is the story of an extraordinarily close friendship between two women, Jane and Marnie, who have known each other since they were 11.

In their 20s, both marry but the relationship remains as close as ever until Janes husband, Jonathan, is killed in a road accident. Heartbroken, she turns to her friend, but Marnie is wrapped up in her wealthy husband Charles, whom Jane finds difficult to like.

Dislike turns to hatred, and Jane becomes determined to reclaim their intense friendship, no matter how many lies she has to tell. Slowly Janes journey morphs into an obsession, and it becomes ever more difficult to sympathise with her. She warrants loathing rather than loving, and makes for uncomfortable reading, which makes the hype seem a little overdone.

TO KILL A MAN

TO KILL A MAN by Sam Bourne (Quercus 14.99, 448 pp)

by Sam Bourne (Quercus 14.99, 448 pp)

Bourne is the nom de plume of the talented journalist and historian Jonathan Freedland, who has sculpted a second career as a thriller writer. This is his eighth, and it displays all the inside knowledge and plot twists on show in his bestseller, To Kill The President.

Once again it features his Washington insider, Maggie Costello, who had been working in the White House but now is a freelance strategist. Shes approached by lawyer Natasha Winthrop, a rising star on Capitol Hill, who has become a TV celebrity in a set of hearings in Congress and is now being talked about as a possible presidential candidate in this election year.

One night Winthrop is attacked by a man in her home, who tries to rape her, but she hits him on the temple with a bust of Cicero, killing him instantly. But were there other reasons for the attack? Is it murder?

Costello begins a search for answers, which provide the rich tapestry of this strikingly good thriller with a contemporary feel.

WALK THE WIRE by David Baldacci (Macmillan 18.99, 432 pp)

WALK THE WIRE

by David Baldacci (Macmillan 18.99, 432 pp)

FBI consultant Amos Decker  possessed of a photographic memory  and his colleague Alex Jamison are at the heart of Baldaccis latest atmospheric story set in the remote town of London in North Dakota, at the heart of the famous Badlands.

The naked and mutilated body of a woman is found by a hunter. It looks as though an autopsy has been conducted in the wild.

But why should that interest the FBI? Decker can only speculate, but when he and Jamison reach London they find a town in the midst of a fracking boom, while a mysterious religious sect has set down roots beside a secretive military installation.

As bodies mount and Decker finds himself at risk, he is joined by another of Baldaccis splendidly drawn characters, the fearsome black-ops specialist Will Robbie. Together they realise that there are shadowy forces keen to ensure the fracking fails.

Sinewy, and written with Baldaccis consummate skill, this is a thriller from the top drawer.
In this weeks deep dive into the archives of The Birmingham News, Huntsville Times and Mobiles Press-Register, we celebrate the births of two Alabama icons born less than a year apart.

To Kill A Mockingbird author Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926 in Monroeville and civil rights activist Coretta Scott King was born on April 27, 1926 in Marion.

This weeks installment of old photos includes a mother and child learning together at the Birmingham Museum of Art in 1973; a couple competing in a Montgomery dance competition during World War II; a young man arrested in Montgomerys civil rights movement and later killed in Vietnam; and soldiers getting ready to ship off from Birmingham to the Spanish-American War in 1898.

Theres also the unsolved 1979 bombing of Bessemer City Hall that killed Lt. Cliff Hill and maimed Public Safety Commissioner Max Williams, who lost an eye and a hand, and the mayors executive assistant, Gene Lint, who was a decorated World War II veteran.

This feature regularly includes photographs from the Alabama Department of Archives and History, the Associated Press, Library of Congress and Getty Images.

For more historic Alabama photographs, visit our Alabama Vintage Instagram account and the AL.com vintage photos page.

Any topics youd like us to explore or an old photo you would like us to find? Drop me a line at jgray@al.com.
ST. JACOB  Farmers have brought digital to the dirt, and their large-scale adoption of the latest technology means that growing and harvesting crops is more efficient and cost-effective than it has ever been in the professions 10,000-year history.

One hundred percent of everything we do nowadays has some kind of technology in it, said Jason Michael, a 41-year-old farmer from St. Jacob. I guess we are just used to it because we have been using it a long time. The first yield monitor we got was in the mid 1990s.

Michael and his family farm approximately 6,500 acres in the Metro East region, and youll find as many computers, tablets, monitors and sensors on their farm as you will tractors, planters, sprayers, and combines.

We use it for seed savings, fertilizer savings, chemical savings, Michael said. The seeds are planted precisely, the fertilizer gets put where it needs to be, and we are not over-applying chemicals.

Everything is precise; theres no waste, Michael said. We know exactly what bushel came off of what acre, right to the foot, so we know exactly if there is a bad spot in the field or a good spot. That lets us know how much fertilizer to put in for next years crop.

The newest precision agriculture technology can help farmers precisely plow, plant, fertilize and harvest in the same narrow area year after year, maximizing their productivity and minimizing monetary and environmental expense. It can help farmers apply fertilizer only where its needed, avoid under or over-seeding difficult areas like irregular field edges, accurately measure the productivity of each part of a field, and utilize every square inch of land to generate a profit.

Ross Heepke, a 33-year-old from the Edwardsville area who farms 2,000 acres, said the newest technology is everywhere and in everything on his multi-generational operation.

Im out spraying right now and Ive got an I-Pad, a Case-IH monitor in the sprayer, and the computer is controlling the unit, Heepke said during a recent day in the field. I steer it a little bit going around the edges of the field, but other than that I just push a button and it drives in a straight line for me. That way I dont have over-application; it will apply the correct amount of product to that part of the field.

Heepke uses planters that place seeds at the exact soil depth and distance apart that he specifies, and the software Heepke uses makes adjustments when he turns and prevents an area from being seeded twice. During harvest, Heepkes yield monitors and yield mapping show him to the inch how productive each area of his field was, and helps him determine exactly where fertilizer needs to be applied for the next years crop. The harvest monitoring also helps determine which hybrid seeds performed better on his farm so Heepke can plan his future seed purchases.

Heepke is especially fond of the auto-guidance systems in his farm equipment, which reduce operator fatigue, increase precision, and let him multi-task while in the tractor cab.

When you are on auto guidance you can pay attention to other things around you, watch whats going on with your planter, sprayer, and tillage equipment rather than being focused on driving forward, Heepke said. In farming, whats happening behind us is actually what we are most concerned about. Because thats our job, to plant the seed correctly, fertilize it, and all that good stuff.

One of the main focuses for precision agriculture is real-time data collection, which can be sent wirelessly to any device or person the farmer chooses.

The more data you collect with the technology that is available to you, the more you can analyze both in season and after the fact and see what is working well and what you need to do differently, Heepke said. The more you know how to use it, the more of a resource it can be. A guy can have a computer and only use it for email and to get on the internet, but that computer can also do a whole lot more. Its all about making the system work for the user.

Making sure those systems work is the job of farm implement dealers like Sievers Equipment in Hamel, an area Case-IH dealer. Randy Veatch is Sievers corporate sales director.

The technology exists for as much as you can tolerate, Veatch said. Its no different than the regular world today. Weve got smart phones, tablets and computers. Its all about what you want to see and how you want to do it.

Veatch said that Case IH has a system called AFS Connect that allows farmers to, among other things, remotely watch exactly what is going on in any of their farm machines. This helps in situations where more than one field is being worked at a time, and it lets the farmer contact individual operators and fine tune, for instance, spraying in one field and planting in another.

Many farmers use a cloud subscription service to upload, store and share the data collected by their machines, so if your computer crashes or you drop your smart phone, you dont lose the data., Veatch said.

Farmers are usually skeptical about spending their hard-earned money on something just because its new, but Veatch said once they see the benefits of new technology, farmers of all ages use it to its greatest potential.

The older generation can teach the younger generation what to look for in the data that the technology collects, Veatch said. The 25-year-old on the farm can teach the older farmer how to extract the data. It can work for everyone.

Farming is what might be considered an extreme environment for electronic equipment, but the systems installed in modern farm machinery are well-sealed, weatherproof and reliable. When there is a problem, todays machines can actually help with the diagnosis.

We have tractors that send messages. For instance if an engine is overheating, the tractor sends an alert to our service department so we can reach out and talk to the farmer and see whats going on, said David Cressy, store manager for Sloan Implement in White Hall. It also makes it easier on us, we dont have to make two or three trips out to the farm if we know from the tractors message what the problem is and can bring the right parts.

Sloans White Hall operation is a John Deere dealership, and they sell and service high-tech tractors, planters, sprayers, combines and other pieces of equipment.

These machines have the technology integrated in them from the factory, Cressy said. All we need to do it put a receiver on, make sure the user has a subscription, and the tractor is ready to go.

Cressy said that John Deere places a major emphasis on research and development and the company is constantly striving to maximize what they put into the field. Based on the communications hes gotten from the Illinois-based corporation, Cressy expects continued fine-tuning of the equipment designs to keep improving what the technology can do for the farmer.

Its about machine utilization, from the combine in the field that will monitor itself with cameras while it harvests grain, to auto-steer with the machine driving itself so were not wasting so much fuel, to the seed placement, knowing where the planter is and how fast its going, Cressy said. We can keep making bigger machines, but I think the sizes we have now are fine. Its just making sure that we best utilize what we have.
BIG RAPIDS  When leaving Big Rapids to attend college, Audree and Adrianna Stephens never anticipated their last year at Northern Michigan University would end the way it has.

"I think that I've definitely had a good run here, but I would have liked a little more closure," Audree said.

Both in their final year at NMU, the two sisters would have been walking across the stage at commencement Saturday. Instead, they celebrated together in their apartment in Marquette and finished their finals online.

As theater majors, they said the experience of taking online classes was not something they had ever anticipated as classes typically have been very hands-on.

"They've been really difficult," Audree said.

The Stephens also said there were many events they had looked forward to for years that had to be canceled, such as an awards event for theater students and a leadership event.

"I've held quite a lot of leadership roles in my time at NMU," Adrianna said.

Despite the way the year ended, the Stephens sisters said they were excited to have finished at NMU and grateful for all the opportunities it has allowed them.

"I think just earning a degree is really satisfying," Adrianna said, noting that as first generation college students, they were more excited for their family to see them graduate than anything else.

Additionally, Adrianna said she was pleased with the way the university has accommodated students under the current circumstances.

"They've been doing a really great job," she said, noting NMU has let students stay on campus, has kept dining halls open and started a relief fund for individuals directly impacted by the coronavirus.

While not everything has gone as they originally hoped, Audree said she is ready to head back to Big Rapids and be closer to her roots and to her family during this time.

Adrianna agreed, noting without their time at Big Rapids High School, they would not have had such a successful run in the theater program at NMU.

"Big Rapids was really uplifting for us," she said.
Andrea Circle Bear of the Cheyenne River Sioux will never get to watch her baby grow up. She died more than three weeks after having an emergency C-section while on a ventilator, a victim of the coronavirus and a cruel justice system that saw fit to send a woman eight and a half months pregnant to a crowded federal womens prison in Fort Worth. She had received a two-year sentence on a minor, nonviolent drug charge. She had just turned 30.

The government could have predicted and prevented Andrea Circle Bears death. Federal authorities were put on notice when the president of the union for correctional officers at the Fort Worth prison filed a whistle-blower complaint last month, claiming the medical center knowingly and willingly misled the public by putting prisoners and staff members at risk. According to data published by federal officials, Andrea Circle Bear was the only prisoner to contract the coronavirus at that facility.

But of the roughly 153,000 people being held in federal custody right now, the Bureau of Prisons reports testing only 2,700. Of those tested, nearly 2,000, or 70 percent, have come back positive. This may be just the tip of the iceberg.

It is well known that prisons are significant hot spots for the spread of the coronavirus, due in large part to Americas incarceration crisis. Our country has just 5 percent of the worlds population, but holds 20 percent of its prisoners. We pack people into jails and prisons like sardines, often four to a cell and hundreds to a unit.
By Express News Service

GUWAHATI: The Centres decision to resettle the displaced Brus of Mizoram in neighbouring Tripura has met with an opposition.

The Nagarik Suraksha Mancha (NSM), an organisation of mostly Bengalis displaced from erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) after Partition and the Mizo Convention, have petitioned Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb expressing their opposition to the proposed settlement of the Brus in North Tripura district.

The NSM feared the Brus settlement in the area could cause severe demographic imbalance, crisis of land, social disturbance, communal conflict and damage to the environment.

The historical, social and circumstantial aspects of the migration of the Mizoram Reangs to Tripura and their subsequent anti-social activities after their arrival demand for total avoidance of their settlement in Kanchanpur Sub-Division, the NSM said in a memorandum submitted to the CM.

It warned that it would call for an indefinite strike in the sub-division if the government executed the plan of resettlement.

The state government has already identified places to resettle the Bru refugees who are living in six relief camps in the state. Over 40,000 Brus had fled to Tripura from Mizoram in 1998 in the wake of their riots with the Mizos. Over the past few years, around 5,000 of them returned to Mizoram.

The Centre had signed the Bru pact with Bru leaders besides Tripura and Mizoram governments last year. It was the Tripura CM who had suggested to Union Home Minister Amit Shah that the Brus be resettled in Tripura.
The man wearing an explosive vest emerged from a car and calmly marched toward the gates of the intelligence building in Iraq's northern city of Kirkuk. When he ignored their shouts to halt, guards opened fire, and he blew himself up, wounding three security personnel in the first week of Ramadan.

Days later, a three-pronged coordinated attack killed 10 Iraqi militia fighters in the northern province of Salahaddin the deadliest and most complex operation in many months.

The assaults are the latest in a resurgence of attacks by the Islamic State group in northern Iraq. The first was a brazen suicide mission not seen in months. The second was among the most complex attacks since the group's defeat in 2017. In neighbouring Syria, IS attacks on security forces, oil fields and civilian sites have also intensified.

The renewed mayhem is a sign that the militant group is taking advantage of governments absorbed in tackling the coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing slide into economic chaos.

The virus is compounding longtime concerns among security and U.N. experts that the group would stage a comeback after its caliphate, which once encompassed a third of Iraq and Syria, was brought down last year.

In Iraq, militants also exploit security gaps at a time of an ongoing territorial dispute and a U.S. troop drawdown.

It's a real threat, said Qubad Talabani, deputy prime minister of the northern Kurdish region of Iraq.

They are mobilizing and killing us in the north and they will start hitting Baghdad soon." He said IS was benefiting from a gap between Kurdish forces and federal armed forces caused by political infighting.

Intelligence reports say the number of IS fighters in Iraq is believed to be 2,500-3,000.

In northeast Syria, Kurdish-dominated police have become a more visible target for IS as they patrol the streets to implement anti-virus measures, said Mervan Qamishlo, a spokesman for U.S.-allied Kurdish-led forces.

IS fighters in late March launched a campaign of attacks in government-held parts of Syria, from the central province of Homs all the way to Deir el-Zour to the east, bordering Iraq.

Some 500 fighters, including some who had escaped from prison, recently slipped from Syria into Iraq, helping fuel the surge in violence there, Iraqi intelligence officials said.

IS is shifting from local intimidation to more complex attacks, three Iraqi military officials and experts said. Operations previously focused on assassinations of local officials and less sophisticated attacks.

Now the group is carrying out more IED attacks, shootings and ambushes of police and military. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Multiple factors help the militants. The number of Iraqi military personnel on duty has dropped 50% because of virus prevention measures, the military officials said.

Also, territorial disputes between Baghdad and authorities from the northern Kurdish autonomy zone have left parts of three provinces without law enforcement. The rugged landscape is difficult to police.

The uptick also coincides with a pullout of U.S.-led coalition forces from bases in western Iraq, Nineveh and Kirkuk provinces in line with a drawdown conceived in December.

Before the emergence of the virus and before the American withdrawal, the operations were negligible, numbering only one operation per week, said a senior intelligence official. Now, he said, security forces are seeing an average of 20 operations a month. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.

Coalition spokesman Col. Myles B. Caggins III said IS attacks were increasing in reaction to operations against its hideouts in the mountains and rural areas of north-central Iraq.

Iraqi military officials believe the improved, organized nature of the attacks serves to cement the influence of new IS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Quraishi, who was named after his predecessor was killed in a U.S. raid late last year. One military official said more operations are expected during Ramadan to demonstrate the new leader's strength.

In Syria, one of the most significant attacks occurred April 9, when IS fighters attacked government positions in and near the town of Sukhna. The government brought in reinforcements for a counterattack backed by Russian airstrikes.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Erin Molan has unleashed on NRL stars for flouting measures during the coronavirus pandemic.

The 36-year-old was scathing towards Josh Addo Carr, Latrell Mitchell and Nathan Cleary after footage of them ignoring social distancing measures was posted on social media last week.

Mitchell and Addo Carr defied government sanctions and went on a 12-man camping trip on the New South Wales mid north coast, while Cleary was caught in Tik Tok videos with a group of women on Anzac Day.

NRL stars Latrell Mitchell and Josh Addo-Carr are seen in a group of 12 people on a camping trip - openly flouting social distancing rules designed to keep people safe from COVID-19

Erin Molan has slammed NRL stars for disregarding social distancing measures in the wake of the coronavirus

Molan hosted The Sunday Footy Show panel with former NRL stars Paul Gallen, Peter Sterling and Brad Fittler and gave a blunt assessment of the trio's behaviour.

'I don't care if you don't watch the news or if you don't read newspapers, there is nobody in Australia that does not understand what was required of them. There is nobody that doesn't understand that,' she said.

Parramatta Eels legend Sterling agreed, claiming the group put people's lives at risk by ignoring the rules.

'What's distasteful and the thing that people don't like is the sense of entitlement. It's almost ''we're all in this together, except us'',' he said.

'This stupidity and entitlement is at a time like no other. There's so much more at stake now than what has ever been when we've had player misbehaviour.

'That to me adds to the magnitude of the penalties and the offence because it is putting peoples lives at risk.'

Molan said the actions of individuals can make an enormous impact on the spread of the virus throughout the country.

'I think individually you're saying they're not really putting lives at risk, but if more and more people do it,' she said.

'All it takes is for a few people not to do the right thing. We are human beings and the virus is the same virus all over the world, we're all the same humans and we can be impacted like everywhere else.

'There's a reason we're not and that is because most people are doing the right thing.'

Mitchell and Addo Carr were both given $20,000 fines and both apologised on their respective Instagram pages.

'I just want to apologise for my actions this weekend,' a remorseful Mitchell said.

'I've been up here with my family for the last four to five weeks and practicing that social distancing stuff.

Melbourne Storm star Josh Addo-Carr (pictured) sparked controversy after he posted several pictures of a boys weekend away on the NSW mid north coast on Instagram

'Had a little bit of a slip-up but like I said Foxxy (Addo Carr) reached out, had his cousins are going through a bit of stuff in Sydney and just wanted to get out here to the bush, make sure they're getting cultured and connected again,' he said.

'That's the whole part of the concept of this weekend was, I wasn't here to break any rules or hurt anyone.

'We're not being selfish, I couldn't turn down the brothers in a time of need.

Addo Carr said 'nothing was intentional or deliberate.'

Cleary was fined $10,000 by the NRL on Tuesday after images emerged of him with a group of women at his house in apparent disregard of social distancing measures.

After that penalty was imposed two videos of Cleary dancing with up to five women were then uploaded to social media platform TikTok.

The NRL issued a brief statement on Friday night confirming Cleary has been served with an amended breach notice, which likely relates to the videos.

The 22-year-old originally had 60 per cent of a $10,000 fine and a one-game ban suspended by the NRL.

The NRL is in the process of organising a resumed 20-round competition starting on May 28 with an October 25 grand final.
KAMPALA  Political activist Barbara Annah Allimadi was on Saturday, May 2, 2020 laid to rest at her ancestral home in Bungatira Sub County, Gulu District amid heavy police deployment.

Allimadi, who was the International Affairs Secretary of the opposition Alliance for National Transformation (ANT) party, was found dead in her home in Kiwatule, Nakawa Division in Kampala last Monday.

At her burial, police officers led by the Gulu District Police Commander Emmanuel Mafundo were on hand to ensure adherence to the social distancing rules issued by the Ministry of Health in line with containing the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

A few close relatives and friends of Allimadi were allowed at the burial ground and in the compound to listen to the eulogies and funeral service.

Others were turned away and allowed to follow the burial from a distance.

ANT president Gen Mugisha Muntu, Leader of Opposition in Parliament Betty Aol Ochan and her predecessor Ms Winnie Kizza, ANT coordinator for Finance and Administration Alice Alaso attended the burial.

Rev Francis Ocira, the main celebrant at the burial asked mourners to emulate the exemplary life Ms Alimadi lived while still alive.

Being a true human means standing and fighting to save others not yourself alone. Once you fear God as she did, you will always have the courage and conviction to stand for others, Rev. Ocira said.

Gen Muntu said that the death of Ms Allimadi was a setback to their party.

The passing on of Barbara is so sad for us the party and her entire family. She dedicated herself to fighting for justice freedom and rights of others while serving in the civil society until she recently joined us at the party, Gen Muntu said.

According to the postmortem read at the burial, Allimadi died of pulmonary embolism.

When the doctors in Mulago did a postmortem, they found out that he had a big clot in her lungs. The clot developed from the heart to the lungs and blocked her from breathing, medically that condition is called Pulmonary embolism, the report read.

Pulmonary embolism occurs when a blood clot gets lodged in an artery in the lung, blocking blood flow to part of the lung.

Blood clots most often originate in the legs and travel up through the right side of the heart and into the lungs.

Related
https://www.aish.com/sp/so/From-Illegal-Immigrant-to-Orthodox-Jew.html

The improbable story of one mans Jewish journey. An Aish.com exclusive.

E. Hernandez sat alone, confined to one room in a safe-house for illegal immigrants in Los Angeles. With no family in the U.S., and no one to pay the $300 smugglers fee, there he sat  day after day, month after month. One day, federal marshals conducted an immigration raid in the neighborhood  knocking on every door, with orders to deport anyone illegal.

How Hernandez gained his freedom  and became an Orthodox Jewish convert  is a fascinating story. Aish.com spoke with Hernandez from his home in California, and with his son Yehudah who is currently studying at Aish HaTorah in Jerusalem.

Old Country

Hernandez was born and raised in Guatemala where he enjoyed the modest lifestyle of an elementary school teacher. He considered himself fortunate not to be one of the many thousands of Guatemalan field hands who endure backbreaking jobs and squalid living conditions to earn a few pesos a day.

One day in 1992, Hernandezs friend announced his intent to cross the border into Mexico, where the value of pesos was triple that of Guatemala. Well work, make some money, and then come back, the friend said.

Yehudah Hernandez today in Jerusalem: on the balcony of Aish HaTorah

The Guatemala-Mexico border was infamous as a passageway for migrant workers and military grade weaponry like the RPGs favored by Mexican drug cartels. Hernandez, then age 20, agreed to go along with the plan. It was easy to cross the border, so why not? he says.

In the dark of night, Hernandez and his friend snuck across the Mexican border. They found their way to a southern Mexican coastal town, Pesqueria La Gloria, where they obtained Mexican ID papers. After a few months, Hernandez had earned enough pesos and was ready to return to life in Guatemala. But on the urging of his friend, they moved to Mexico City in order to make more pesos, while settling in an extremely dangerous neighborhood.

Soon, Hernandezs friend revealed his original plan: to move onward to the land of unlimited opportunity, the United States of America.

Hernandez was content to stay in Mexico, but eventually agreed to the plan and found himself on a 3-day bus ride to the U.S.-Mexico gateway: Tijuana. En route, they were stopped twice by Mexican immigration officials who checked their IDs and sent them onward.

Once in Tijuana, Hernandez and his friend arranged to pay "coyotes" to help smuggle them across the border. In a coordinated process involving many operatives, they were placed in a safe-house near the border and waited patiently while the coyotes monitored the movements of the U.S. border patrol  in search of a safe opportunity to cross.

In preparation, the coyote running the safe-house surprised Hernandez and his friend by adding another condition: Once smuggled into the U.S., theyd need to pay $300 each for their freedom.

My friend had an aunt in the U.S., Hernandez explains. The coyote phoned her and she promised to pay the fee. But I didnt have anyone, so I figured Id just stay in Mexico.

The next morning, while Hernandez waited in the safe-house, a group of 10 migrants tried to run the beach  venturing out into the water and past the metal barriers that extend into the Pacific.

The U.S. border patrol pushed them back to Mexico.

That night, the group tried a second time  and again failed to cross the border.

The coyote began investigating what might be causing this string of bad luck. After interrogating Hernandezs friend, the coyote concluded: Its because you abandoned your friend here.

The next night, they took Hernandez along  and crossed the border easily.

Promised Land

Hernandez and the group were brought to Los Angeles and placed in a safe-house that doubled as a drug den.

Everyone had somebody to pay the $300, so they were all quickly released, Hernandez says. But with no one to pay for me, I was confined to one room of the safe-house. I sat there in squalid conditions, day after day, for many weeks, basically imprisoned.

In the wake of the 1992 LA race riots (spurred by the Rodney King verdict), President George H.W. Bush ordered an immigration raid on Hernandezs neighborhood. As federal marshals checked house to house, Hernandez worried hed be deported back to Mexico. Yet the raids turned out to be a blessing in disguise: The coyotes wanted to empty the safe-house and were under pressure to get him out.

I had no money and no family, so the coyotes called my friends aunt and pressured her to help. Eventually, her husband offered $175 to set me free. He told the coyotes: Either take the money or send him back to Mexico. I dont really care.

Hernandez gets pensive and chuckles. $175. Thats all my life was worth.

Once free, Hernandez settled into a neighborhood densely populated by Guatemalan immigrants. Every morning, I would go out and wait near the local Home Depot, he says. People would come and hire me for a few hours.

Hoping for a better future, Hernandezs break came when his friends family in Orange County, 60 minutes south of LA, offered them a place to stay. There, while attending English classes, he met a Mexican woman who had walked across the border easily in 1989. They got married, and after having two boys, became involved in a Christian-Messianic church that incorporated various Jewish traditions.

Torah Connections

In 1999, they were expecting their third child. Inspired by the Jewish teachings he heard at church, Hernandez promised God: If its a boy, I will give him a circumcision.

Indeed it was a boy, and in 2000, Hernandez found himself at a Judaica store on Pico Boulevard in LA, staring at an advertisement for a mohel, Rabbi Yehuda Lebovics. I called and told him that we dont have enough money, but he agreed to do it for whatever we could pay, Hernandez recounts. When he came to do the bris and realized were not Jewish, he did it anyway, without saying the blessings.

The bris of Yehudah Hernandez, 2000: Ezra with the LA mohel, Rabbi Yehuda Lebovics

Hernandez was so moved by the mohels generosity and compassion that he gave his new son the mohels name: Yehudah.

In Orange County, Hernandez found steady work as a welder. Time went by and someone gave him a Sefardic Siddur. From this Siddur, Hernandez taught himself to read Hebrew. I discovered the beautiful morning blessings, he says. With every prayer, I felt closer to God.

Hernandez taught his three sons to read Hebrew and together they shared a budding interest in Judaism as the path to connect with God. At the church, they asked many questions and received unsatisfactory answers.

In 2009, a friend whom theyd known from the Christian-Messianic church  whod converted to Orthodox Judaism  invited the Hernandez family to attend a Simchat Torah celebration at Beth Jacob of Irvine, led by Rabbi Yisroel Ciner.

I was moved by the incredibly joyous dancing, Hernandez says. I was called up for an aliyah to the Torah, but I told them Im not Jewish. I asked Rabbi Ciner to give us opportunity to learn more, and he helped us with patience and kindness.

Beth Jacob  known as a melting pot of immigrants from South Africa, Argentina, Turkey, Mexico, China, Morocco, etc.  welcomed the Hernandez family (along with their youngest, a daughter) into the community.

Immigration Matters

The family resolved to convert to Judaism, yet in their quest to find their place in the world, one major obstacle loomed: Hernandez was an illegal immigrant.

Ezra Hernandez with his first siddur,

received from a friend in 2004

Hernandez heard about a federal program that allowed migrants from Guatemala and Central America to apply for political asylum and receive permanent U.S. residency status in the form of a Green Card. The application process takes years and in many cases is denied.

Hoping to resolve his status, Hernandez visited a lawyer who entered the information from his original Mexican work permit into the computer. The result gave Hernandez a shock: An order had been issued nearly 20 years earlier for his deportation.

That was one of the most difficult days of my life, he says. All those years, I was unaware that the immigration authorities were looking for me. I was lucky because I hadnt been careful.

Hernandez hired a lawyer for $10,000 who gave him a 50-50 chance of becoming legal. The situation was extremely stressful and I begged God to help. Here I was with a household of six and at risk of deportation.

A breakthrough came when the lawyer found the original deportation order sent to Hernandez in 1993. The recipient is supposed to sign the letter verifying receipt, but Hernandez never signed it. So he went to court and convinced a judge to erase the deportation order, clearing the way to apply for political asylum.

Hernandez had the support and letter of recommendation from the rabbi and other members of the synagogue. But the legal process dragged on, with judges deferring a decision on his status  leaving the Hernandez family in despair.

One night, Hernandez dreamed that the court had signed the papers granting him permanent residency. One week later, my Green Card was approved, he says. Miraculously, I was now legal in the U.S.

One of the first things Hernandez did was travel to Guatemala to visit his father, whom he hadnt seen in nearly 25 years. At the airport, border patrol agents checked his fingerprints and pulled him over to the side. I knew something was wrong, Hernandez says. The system showed that Id been deported. Fortunately, I had the papers to prove otherwise.

Meanwhile, the familys Jewish journey had stalled. All of Hernandezs money had gone to paying lawyers to resolve his immigration status, and with America mired in a recession, finances were tight. Moving into Irvines Orthodox neighborhood  a prerequisite for conversion  was not an option.

Hernandez continued to stay connected by driving to synagogue every Shabbat, reading Jewish books, and praying from the Siddur. But it wasnt enough. He recalls driving home one Saturday after synagogue: Right there on the freeway, I cried out to God: I cant do this anymore! There was a fire burning inside and I wanted to convert.

In 2017, economic circumstances improved and the Hernandez family moved into the Jewish neighborhood. They immediately began the conversion process with the Beit Din of Rabbi Moshe Hafuta, driving every Sunday to Los Angeles for classes. (The two older sons opted not to convert.)

In the spring of 2018, a few days before Passover, they drove up to Los Angeles for a final meeting with the Beit Din. They answered a round of questions and dunked in the mikveh. Hernandez was now Ezra, his wife was now Chana Leah and Yehudah was the rare Jewish convert who didnt need a new name.

Re-marriage, 2018 (L-R): Chana Leah, Ezra, Rabbi Ciner, and Aviva Hernandez

Back in Orange County, Ezra and Chana Leah remarried under the chuppah and Rabbi Ciner hosted a celebratory feast, amidst great tears of joy.

This Year in Jerusalem

In January 2020, after completing his sophomore year of college, Yehudah Hernandez arrived in Israel to study at the Aish HaTorah yeshiva. Today, he and 80 other yeshiva students are riding out coronavirus in the Old City of Jerusalem  living and studying in one of the few yeshivas in the world functioning today. The students abide by strict health regulations; a limit of 10 people are allowed in the study hall at one time and the yeshiva has created a number of small study halls to accommodate everyone, and the students are not even permitted to visit the Western Wall, just outside their window.

Yehudah is enjoying a deep dive into the world of Talmud, Hebrew ulpan, and Jewish law. Next year, he plans to return to the U.S. and complete a degree in business administration.

In this amazing true story, its anyones guess what will happen next.
At 4:30 a.m., he said that he sent Wohl a message on the encrypted messaging app Signal saying that he was incredibly uncomfortable and not on board with the plan. But by the time he got out of bed at 11 a.m., Kelly said, the post had been published and was spreading across the internet with the help of fake Twitter and Gmail accounts that Wohl had created under Kelly's name. Kelly said he later learned the post had been published Sunday without his permission.
The Ulster Farmers' Union (UFU) has said it is "bewildered and frustrated" by a proposed tariff increase to the RHI scheme in Northern Ireland. (stock photo)

The Ulster Farmers' Union (UFU) has said it is "bewildered and frustrated" by a proposed tariff increase to the RHI scheme in Northern Ireland.

Tariffs were slashed in the wake of the original botched green energy scheme after it was revealed the government was handing out subsidies so high that it paid users to burn wood pellets. The 'cash for ash' scandal led to the collapse of the Stormont Executive in 2017.

An independent review of the tariffs has recommended increasing the medium biomass tariffs in order to achieve "the appropriate return on investment".

However, the UFU said the increase would not benefit struggling boiler owners.

UFU deputy president Victor Chestnutt said: "The tariff increase that has been proposed by DfE doesn't even come close to what [the UFU] called for last month."

He added: "What is even more confusing is that the recommendation comes on the back of a report by Cornwall Insight which recognised a rise in fuel prices as well as boiler service and maintenance costs.

"Yet DfE have only increased one tariff by 0.7p and the other by 0.1p which could result in many boiler operators moving to oil-centred heating especially with the current price of oil."

The Department for Economy has been approached for comment.
In a novel gesture to thank



frontline coronavirus 'warriors', an Indian Air Force helicopter showered flower petals on the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) here in Chhattisgarh on Sunday.

Doctors, nurses, paramedical and other staff and police personnel assembled in an open area at the government- run AIIMS, as the Mi-17 chopper of the IAF took off from the Raipur airport at around 10.20 am and dropped petals on the hospital.

In videos released by the AIIMS Raipur, the hospital staff members were seen clapping and raising slogans of 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' while the chopper was hovering over the premises and dropping petals.

Some doctors and other staff were also seen recording videos of the activity on their mobile phones.

"We are overwhelmed to receive such an honour by our armed forces. Such an honour and respect motivates our staff, AIIMS Raipur Director Dr Nitin M Nagarkar said.

The medical staff members have been working day and night with full commitment and their aim is to ensure discharge of patients from the hospital after their fill recovery, he said.

"This (COVID-19) is not a normal illness. Doctors and healthcare personnel are also at the risk of getting infected while treating such patients. They are not going home and after a week of duty, they remain in isolation for 14 days," the official said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has decried protests staged inside the states Capitol building last week - which featured demonstrators with assault weapons, swastikas and Confederate flags - saying the event acted as a reminder of some of the most awful parts of US history.

Some of the outrageousness of what happened at our capitol depicted some of the worst racism and awful parts of our history in this country, Whitmer said on CNNs State of the Union on Sunday.

The Confederate Flags, and nooses, the swastikas, the behavior that you have seen in all of the clips is not representative of who we are in Michigan, she continued.

The 'American Patriot Rally', organized by Michigan United for Liberty, was staged Thursday in contempt for Whitmers statewide stay-at-home orders put in place to stop the spread of coronavirus.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has decried protests staged inside the states Capitol building last week - which featured demonstrators with assault weapons, swastikas and Confederate flags - saying the event acted as a reminder of the most awful parts of US history

The 'American Patriot Rally', organized by Michigan United for Liberty, was staged Thursday in contempt for Whitmers statewide stay-at-home orders put in place to stop the spread of coronavirus

Protesters were demanding an end to the state's stay-at-home order which has barred bars, gyms, casinos and cinemas from opening while limiting services at restaurants to takeout and delivery only (pictured, armed demonstrators inside the capitol)

Rifle-wielding protesters pictured inside Michigan's capitol building demanding and end to the shut-down - hours before the state's Democrat governor issued three new orders extending it

Hundreds of protesters - waving pro-Trump banners and carrying assault rifles - descended on the state capitol to oppose the shutdown, after Whitmer attempted to extend the lockdown to May 28.

Most of them appeared to be ignoring state social-distancing guidelines as they clustered together within six feet of each other. Few people wore masks.

Photos from inside the Michigan House Chamber showed elected officials wearing bulletproof vests while men holding guns stood above them. Others were heard chanting: 'Let us in! Let us in!' from outside.

President Donald Trump later urged Gov. Whitmer to 'give a little' to the armed anti-lockdown protesters.

'The Governor of Michigan should give a little, and put out the fire,' Trump wrote. 'These are very good people, but they are angry. They want their lives back again, safely! See them, talk to them, make a deal,' Trump tweeted Friday morning.

The protests came as the second time in as many weeks that conservative state demonstrators have stormed the Capitol.

Despite the fallout, Whitmer doubled down on her stay-at-home orders  which include some of the most strict measures in the nation  and downplayed any unrest, calling the demonstrators a small group and praising the vast majority of residents for doing the right thing by staying at home.

Hundreds of protesters - many waving pro-Trump banners while others carried assault rifles - descended on the state capitol to oppose the shutdown, which is currently in place till May 15

Protestor with a sign that has Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whittmer depicted as Adolph Hitler is seen at an American Patriot Rally

Michgan's governor issued three new executive orders Thursday extending a state of emergency and stay-at-home order until at least May 28, despite armed protesters storming the capitol as Senator Sylvia Santana was pictured wearing a bulletproof vest while sitting at her desk

Demonstrators were seen arguing with officers from the Michigan State Police as they tried to enter the capitol building

The democratic governor reiterated several times to CNN the importance of heeding experts and epidemiologists advice to guide her states response to the on-going novel coronavirus pandemic, rather than partisan rhetoric.

When you think about the fact that this is a state of almost 10 million people, the vast majority are doing the right thing, Whitmer said, crediting the effort as the reason the curve in the spread of the coronavirus has continued to flatten in Michigan.

Weve saved lives in the process. We have to keep listening to the epidemiologists and experts and not listen to the partisan rhetoric, or these political rallies or tweets, for that matter. We have to keep doing the right thing.

The United States recorded its deadliest 24 hours on Thursday, the day of the protest, after more than 2,900 people died from coronavirus.

So far, that number is the highest daily COVID-19 death toll that the US has seen since the pandemic hit America.

Michigan, meanwhile, has the highest coronavirus fatality rate in the United States at 9.3 percent, as deaths increased by 232 across Saturday, bringing state-wide deaths up to 4,021.

We owe it to every woman who has a story to, to listen to that story and then vet that story I dont believe that its consistent with the Joe Biden I know and I do believe Joe Biden, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer reacts to Tara Reade's allegation against Biden. #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/5h0fvzgV4K  State of the Union (@CNNSotu) May 3, 2020

Whether you agree with me or not, I'm working to protect your life if you live in the state of Michigan, Whitmer continued. We're going to listen to facts and science because we've got to get this right.

Whitmer also added her support to Biden Sunday, arguing not 'every claim is equal' in relation to accusations the presumptive Democratic nominee sexually assaulted former Senate staffer Tara Reade in 1993. She told CNN: 'We need to give people an opportunity to tell their story. But then we have a duty to vet it. And just because you're a survivor doesn't mean that every claim is equal.'

Whitmer continued: 'I have read a lot about this current allegation. I know Joe Biden, and I have watched his defense. And there's not a pattern that goes into this.

'And I think that, for these reasons, I'm very comfortable that Joe Biden is who he says he is. And I will tell you this. I don't believe that it's consistent with the Joe Biden that I know. And I do believe Joe, and I support Joe Biden.'

Whitmer has extended a state of emergency declaration including a stay-at-home order that will keep non-essential businesses in the state closed until at least May 28 - despite the armed protests.

She rushed out three executive orders late Thursday just as her previous orders were set to expire, telling a virtual town hall that 'we remain in a state of emergency' while accusing Republican senators of 'burying their heads in the sand and putting livelihoods at risk' by opposing the moves.

Hours earlier, the House and Senate had voted to approve legislation that would allow them to sue Whitmer over her emergency declarations as armed protesters stormed the state capitol.

They also voted on another bill that would extend some of her emergency measures, but crucially not the stay-at-home order. Their bill would also allow restaurants, bars and gyms to reopen. Whitmer said she will not sign it.

Protesters tried to enter the Michigan House of Representatives chamber but were being kept out by the Michigan State Police

People protest against the governor's coronavirus lockdown inside the Capitol on Thursday

One protester wearing a 'Make America Great Again' hat is seen selling at officers inside the Capitol building

Protesters tried to enter the Michigan House of Representatives chamber and were being kept out by the Michigan State Police during the American Patriot Rally organized by Michigan United for Liberty
Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc. (NYSE:FDP), which is in the food business, and is based in Cayman Islands, received a lot of attention from a substantial price movement on the NYSE over the last few months, increasing to US$36.67 at one point, and dropping to the lows of US$24.40. Some share price movements can give investors a better opportunity to enter into the stock, and potentially buy at a lower price. A question to answer is whether Fresh Del Monte Produce's current trading price of US$26.67 reflective of the actual value of the small-cap? Or is it currently undervalued, providing us with the opportunity to buy? Lets take a look at Fresh Del Monte Produces outlook and value based on the most recent financial data to see if there are any catalysts for a price change.

Check out our latest analysis for Fresh Del Monte Produce

What is Fresh Del Monte Produce worth?

Good news, investors! Fresh Del Monte Produce is still a bargain right now. According to my valuation, the intrinsic value for the stock is $41.88, which is above what the market is valuing the company at the moment. This indicates a potential opportunity to buy low. Another thing to keep in mind is that Fresh Del Monte Produces share price may be quite stable relative to the rest of the market, as indicated by its low beta. This means that if you believe the current share price should move towards its intrinsic value over time, a low beta could suggest it is not likely to reach that level anytime soon, and once its there, it may be hard to fall back down into an attractive buying range again.

Can we expect growth from Fresh Del Monte Produce?

NYSE:FDP Past and Future Earnings May 3rd 2020

Investors looking for growth in their portfolio may want to consider the prospects of a company before buying its shares. Buying a great company with a robust outlook at a cheap price is always a good investment, so lets also take a look at the company's future expectations. With profit expected to more than double in the upcoming, the future appears to be extremely bright for Fresh Del Monte Produce. It looks like higher cash flow is on the cards for the stock, which should feed into a higher share valuation.

Story continues

What this means for you:

Are you a shareholder? Since FDP is currently undervalued, it may be a great time to accumulate more of your holdings in the stock. With a positive outlook on the horizon, it seems like this growth has not yet been fully factored into the share price. However, there are also other factors such as financial health to consider, which could explain the current undervaluation.

Are you a potential investor? If youve been keeping an eye on FDP for a while, now might be the time to enter the stock. Its prosperous future outlook isnt fully reflected in the current share price yet, which means its not too late to buy FDP. But before you make any investment decisions, consider other factors such as the strength of its balance sheet, in order to make a well-informed buy.

Price is just the tip of the iceberg. Dig deeper into what truly matters  the fundamentals  before you make a decision on Fresh Del Monte Produce. You can find everything you need to know about Fresh Del Monte Produce in the latest infographic research report. If you are no longer interested in Fresh Del Monte Produce, you can use our free platform to see my list of over 50 other stocks with a high growth potential.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Maharashtra reported 790 new Covid-19 cases, 36 deaths on Saturday

Police question two girls on why they stepped out of their houses during countrywide lockdown imposed due to Covid-19. (DC Photo)

Mumbai: People living in Mumbai and Pune will have to pay for their indiscipline as they have been banned from moving out to other districts in Maharashtra. According to the guidelines issued by the state government, only the migrant labourers in these cities will be allowed to travel outside Maharashtra.

Chief minister Uddhav Thackeray had indicated that some relaxations will be offered in the restrictions imposed on the state after the end of second lockdown on May 3.

However, he had categorically denied giving concessions in the red zone, where the coronavirus patients are more in numbers. Such relaxations are not in the interest of the state and norms will have to be followed more strictly in red zone areas to curb the spread of Covid-19, Mr Thackeray said.

Accordingly, the Maharashtra government has issued guidelines in which Mumbai and Pune metropolitan areas were specifically mentioned in terms of restrictions. The movement of people will not be allowed between the areas under Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority and Pune Metropolitan Region Development Authority and other parts of the state during lockdown, said the statement issued by the state government.

However, permission has been granted particularly to the migrant workers to travel outside Maharashtra from these two regions, it said.

According to the state officials, both the Mumbai and Pune regions fall in the red zone, where more than 15 coronavirus patients have been found, and the situation there is still grave. Despite several appeals, people in some areas in both these cities are not following the social distancing norms carefully, due to which the government cannot afford to offer relaxations to them during the lockdown period.

As many as 790 persons were tested positive on Saturday in Maharashtra, 547 of them in Mumbai, the number of coronavirus cases in the state reached 12,296, the health department said. With 36 coronavirus patients dying, 27 of them in the state capital, the death toll due to the pandemic in Maharashtra reached 521.

However, 121 patients recovered and were discharged from hospitals on Saturday, taking the number of such recovered patients to 2,000. Mumbai and Pune region have the highest number of coronavirus patients in the state. While Mumbai has recorded nearly 8,000 Covid-19 positive patients, Pune region has reported more than 1,500 patients till date.

In the cities with police commissionerates, the state government has allotted the power to a concerned deputy commissioner of police (DCP) to allow inter-state or inter-district journeys.

For permission to travel, one can apply to the nearby police station, submitting required information and a medical certificate. The application will be forwarded to the concerned DCP and decision will be taken after scrutiny of the application and considering the spread of Covid-19, it said.
More than 1,800 families in western Kenya have been rendered homeless after the River Nzoia burst its banks, according to the Kenya Red Cross.

In the Buyuku village of Budalangi, residents loaded their belongings on boats to get them away from submerged homes.

Its been flooding for three days now, said Vincent Ochieng, one of the residents affected by the floods. I think the government is not even aware, but now we are telling them. We are asking them if there are any plans to assist us, only two boats are here for evacuating people.

Heavy rainfall in recent days has led to flooding and landslides across the region.

On April 30, Eugene Wamalwa, cabinet secretary of the Ministry of Devolution, told Citizen TV Kenya that 116 people had died in the country due to the flooding across 29 counties.
LONDON, May 2 (Xinhua) -- Another 621 COVID-19 patients have died in Britain, bringing the total coronavirus-related death toll in the country to 28,131, Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick said Saturday.

The figures include deaths in hospitals, care homes and the wider community.

Chairing Saturday's Downing Street briefing, Jenrick said 182,260 people have tested positive for the novel coronavirus in Britain.

Meanwhile, 105,937 tests were carried out on Friday, Jenrick said. British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said Friday that the country has met the goal of 100,000 tests per day.

The communities secretary also announced a package of 76 million pounds (about 95 million U.S. dollars) to support "the most vulnerable" in society.

The fund would go to charities to address such issues as domestic abuse, vulnerable children and modern-day slavery, he said.

Jenny Harries, England's deputy chief medical officer, confirmed that "the pressure on the NHS (National Health Service) is now moving down" as the number of hospital admissions has been declining.

The number of people in hospitals has decreased by 13 percent in the last week, she said.

The daily death rate is "starting to come down very gradually, very slowly - it's very important we continue to practice social distancing," she said.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Thursday that the country was "past the peak" of the COVID-19 outbreak and a "comprehensive" plan will be published next week on "how we can continue to suppress disease" while restarting the economy.
Thousands head home as Phuket Check Point opens again

PHUKET: Thousands of people started the journey back to their home provinces as the Phuket Check Point leading to the bridge off-island was officially re-opened at 5am today (May 3).

COVID-19Coronaviruseconomicspolice

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Sunday 3 May 2020, 04:46PM

People are screened for elevated body temperature before being allowed to leave the island. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

People are screened for elevated body temperature before being allowed to leave the island. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Thousands of people presented themelves at the Phuket Check Point to leave the island for the home provinces. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Thousands of people presented themelves at the Phuket Check Point to leave the island for the home provinces. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Thousands of people presented themelves at the Phuket Check Point to leave the island for the home provinces. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Thousands of people presented themelves at the Phuket Check Point to leave the island for the home provinces. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Thousands of people presented themelves at the Phuket Check Point to leave the island for the home provinces. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Thousands of people presented themelves at the Phuket Check Point to leave the island for the home provinces. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Thousands of people presented themelves at the Phuket Check Point to leave the island for the home provinces. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Some 7,000 people have been issued their Fit to Travel permits and have been granted permission to leave the island to travel back to their home provinces, said Phuket Provincial Police Chief Maj Gen Rungrote Thakurapunyasiri.

More than 40,000 people have registered to leave the island, mainly due to lack of income as a result of the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions.

Some were allowed to leave on Friday (May 1) before the checkpoint was closed as officers were overwhelmed.

Officers will continue to process people so they can cross the bridge until 8pm tonight, Gen Rungrote said.

Of the 7,000 people issued their Fit to Travel permit, 3,600 people have been allocated travel times so that officers at the checkpoint will not be overrun as had happened on Friday, he added.

We plan to process up to 700 people an hour. People who do not pass the screening by health officials will not be allowed to leave. Everyone who has registered must leave on time, Gen Rungrote said.

It takes time to go through the checkpoint, as everyone has to be screened by health officers, in order to build confidence for those destination provinces that those people [leaving Phuket] have passed the screening process, he explained.

So far, 72 provinces have been registered as the destination provinces. The Royal Thai Police Commander has ordered police in each province to facilitate those people travelling back to their hometown, he said.

People can still register to leave Phuket by completing an online form at https://www.phuket.go.th/FIT-to-Travel

Once people have been approved and issued a Fit to Travel permit, the registrants must complete a Queue registration form on the Phuket Provincial Police website in order to book their preferred departure time. Times can be booked in hourly increments.

The form is available here.

People can register their preferred time to leave the island through the online form from 8:30am to 4:30pm only.

Also, the form allows people to book a period to leave only for the day after they are applying online. For example, today, people could only book to leave tomorrow (May 4).

Once people have registered their preferred time to leave the island, they will be allocated a period to present themselves at the Phuket Check Point in order to be screened and approved to leave the island.

Provincial Police will inform the registrants of what time they are to present themselves at the checkpoint, Gen Rungrote said.

Alternatively people who have completed the queue registration form will be able to check their allocated departure time at the Phuket Provincial Police website, he added.

Gen Rungrote made no comment on the scores of people who presented themselves at the checkpoint yesterday in the hope of being allowed to leave the island, Some reports online claimed that some people were allowed across the bridge.
By Express News Service

HYDERABAD: Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das on Saturday reiterated the need to improve credit flow, particularly extending working capital to MSMEs besides implementing the 3-month moratorium in toto. Interacting with the chiefs of major public and private sector banks via a video conference on Saturday, Das acknowledged the banking officials contribution during the lockdown and discussed the current economic situation in the country.

Reviewing the current situation, he underscored the need to step up credit flow to different sectors including non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), micro finance institutions, housing finance firms and mutual funds. Last week, the central bank even opened a Rs 50,000 crore special liquidity window to enable mutual fund houses to tide over the crisis.

However, the response has been lacklustre with banks borrowing a mere Rs 2,000 crore, implying that the crisis among mutual funds isnt as severe. Despite RBI reducing the reverse repo rate to 3.25 per cent discouraging banks from sitting on cash, they continued to park suplus funds with the central bank, and as much as Rs 7 lakh crore is parked under the reverse repo window.

Some of the other topics discussed during the meeting included post lockdown credit flows including provision of working capital with special focus on credit flows to small businesses, implementation of three months moratorium on repayment of loan instalments announced by the RBI, monitoring of overseas branches of banks in view of the slowdown in economies across the globe and stability of the financial sector, the central bank said in a statement.
Sinn Fein TD Sorcha Clarke said the privacy of the family at the centre of the Mullingar hospital body incident must be respected.

The Longford-Westmeath TD said: "Any information that can identify that person needs be treated with the utmost confidence,

"Unless the family themselves choose to make further details known and put those into the public domain,

"Yes today it's been breaking news across all morning, but you don't know what that family has been involved in coming up to this situation, you don't know the conversations that they've had with the HSE up until then,

"And that is their right not to disclose that until they choose to."

An investigation will be carried out after the family of a person who died from Covid-19 were given the wrong body.

It happened at Mullingar Hospital last week, while the HSE CEO Paul Reid has apologised to the family involved.

The Ireland East Hospital Group said it was an "extremely rare event" and was fixed once the issue was noticed.

Hospital to carry out review after it releases wrong body to family of Covid-19 victim

The family of a person who died from Covid-19 was given the wrong body by a hospital mortuary last weekend.

The incident happened at Mullingar Regional Hospital on Friday, April 24.

Victims of Covid-19 are put in sealed body bags by morticians due to the nature of the disease, with neither families or undertakers allowed to view the remains.

The hospital called the funeral home moments before the service was due to start to notify them of the mistake.

A mortician had noticed the name of the deceased person on a body bag, even though their remains had been signed out.

A full internal review is now being carried out into the incident at the mortuary of Mullingar Regional Hospital.

In a statement, the Ireland East Hospital Group, which operates the facility, said a mistake resulted in the release of incorrect remains to an undertaker.

It says once detected, the issue was rectified.

The hospital group has apologised for the distress the incident caused to the families involved, describing it as an "extremely rare event."

HSE spokesman said: "I can confirm that on Friday 24, 2020, an incident occurred in the mortuary of the hospital which resulted in the release of incorrect remains to an undertaker. Following detection, the mistake was rectified.

"We would like to offer our condolences to the families and sincerely apologise for the distress this has caused during this difficult time.

The spokesman said: "The Ireland East Hospital Group, along with Regional Hospital Mullingar, have convened their Serious Incident Management Team and are conducting a full internal review. Processes and protocols have been reviewed within the hospital and its mortuary in order to mitigate this extremely rare event from happening again."
Anandpur Sahib member of Parliament (MP), Manish Tewari, has called for concerted efforts to safeguard the freedom of press.

On the occasion of World Press Freedom Day, Tewari said that the mediapersons were facing trying times due to the Covid-19 pandemic and it was the duty of the government to help them tide over the crisis.

Anandpur Sahib MP Manish Tewari

He said, Mediapersons are corona warriors, who are doing their professional duty with utmost dedication in the current situation.

Media has an important role to play and it must play this role with responsibility. It is the day to celebrate the fundamental principles of press freedom, to defend the media from attacks on their independence and to pay tributes to the journalists who have lost their lives in the exercise of their profession, he added.
A Victorian teacher has tested positive to COVID-19, with the Melbourne school to be closed for three days for deep cleaning and to enable contact tracing.

Health Minister Jenny Mikakos said the school needed to be shut down and cleaned urgently because the infected teacher had been on site in recent days.

Parents and staff at Meadow Glen primary school in Epping were notified on Sunday morning.

Ms Mikakos said any student who had no other option but to attend school would be able to go to another school during the shutdown.

The teacher is one of 13 new cases recorded in Victoria after more than 9000 tests were conducted in a blitz on Saturday.

The school closure comes as Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews comes under fire over his controversial decision to keep schools closed during the COVID-19 crisis.

Scroll down for video

Meadow Glen primary school (pictured) in Epping, Melbourne, will be closed for three days after a teacher tested positive to coronavirus

Mr Andrews has been adamant in not opening schools for fear of spreading the virus, while Scott Morrison has urged all schools to open.

The prime minister has also previously said parents should listen to their premiers.

Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan took aim at Mr Andrews on Sunday, accusing him of going against the advice of the Morrison government.

'The question to Dan Andrews is, sure, take a sledge hammer to defeating the coronavirus but why are you taking a sledgehammer also to your schools system?' he told ABC's Insiders program.

'This is a failure of leadership from Dan Andrews. And it is the most disadvantaged children who are being most affected,' he continued.

'The premiers should listen to the medical experts, the panel that was put together by all state and territory leaders to advise on schools.'

'Are you saying that the system, through the National Cabinet, is not delivering the right result?' host David Speers asked.

'It's not. Because we have one premier in particular who is jeopardising the national consensus on this,' Mr Tehan shot back.

Mt Tehan said Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory hadn't had to quash their education system and have a 70 per cent attendance at their schools.

Pressed several time on the prime minister's previous advice to parents about listening to their premiers, Mr Tehan said the government's advice is that parents should listen to the medical experts.

'It's safe for schools to be open and it is safe for teachers to be in the classroom when the right protocols are in place,' Mr Tehan insisted.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews (left) has been slammed by the federal Health Minister Dan Tehan (right) for refusing to open schools in his state

Ms Mikakos said the prime minister needed to clarify whether Mr Tehan was speaking for his government.

'(Mr Morrison) asked Victorian parents to listen to the advice of the Victorian premier,' she told reporters.

'I too would urge Victorian parents to listen to the advice of our government. The advice remains unchanged and that is that we will continue to engage in online learning for the foreseeable future. '

Queensland Health Minister Steven Miles said he was unaware of Mr Tehan's comments but said no one should be criticising state leaders.

'It would be pretty disappointing if the Morrison government was using it as a chance to take pot shots at the states,' Mr Miles said.

'The last thing we need right now is levels of government criticising each other.'

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese said he did not want schools to stay closed longer than they have to, but parents needed clarity.

'They want clear advice about when schools will go back so that they can plan their own lives,' he told Sky News.

'I think we should listen to the medical advice, I don't think what we should do is have political leaders giving different advice, different days.'

War of words: Victorian Health Minister Jenny Mikakos has urged parents to listen to the advice of Mr Andrews and keep their kids at home

Deputy Chief Medical Officer Nick Coatsworth said COVID-19 affects far less children than they represents as a proportion of society.

'We know now that COVID-19 is not behaving the same way as influenza,' he told Sky News.

'Whereas influenza children are often primary transmitters in our society, it is clear now for COVID-19 that is not the case.'

The total number of infections across Australia is 1384. Victoria's coronavirus death toll remains at 18.

The government now wants anyone with even mild symptoms of coronavirus to get tested.

Victoria is not expected to relax its measures to suppress the spread of coronavirus before the state of emergency is due to expire on May 11.
A 39-year-old man who was among the seven people stabbed by a fly-in-fly-out worker at a shopping centre is in a critical condition in hospital, while the police union has backed officers who shot the offender dead.

The male victim was airlifted to Royal Perth Hospital to undergo surgery after Friday's attack

Ashley Fildes, 34, was shot dead by police after stabbing seven strangers in South Hedland in Western Australia - including five inside the local shopping centre, plus a man at a nearby motel and another in a car at a McDonald's carpark.

The police union said the fatal shooting of the father-of-one was 'textbook'.

Ashley Fildes, 34, was gunned down by police after stabbing seven people at a shopping centre in South Hedland in Western Australia on Friday

The 34-year-old, wearing high-vis workwear, could be seen pacing through the South Hedland shopping centre in Western Australia on Friday brandishing a large kitchen knife

Five of the victims were treated at the local hospital and have since been discharged.

Another man, 20, did not require medical treatment.

WA Police Union president Harry Arnott said it was a 'textbook shooting' of a frenzied 'madman' by two brave and experienced sergeants, who were shaken by the incident.

'If they hadn't had been there and done this, I think we all understand that there could have been much more dire consequences for the Hedland community,' Mr Arnott told reporters on Sunday.

'He was actively chasing people with that knife. Who knows what his intentions were or if he was even thinking rationally.

'This man had to be stopped.'

A police van is seen outside South Hedland Square (pictured) on Friday. The police response to the stabbing has been described as 'textbook' by union officials

Mr Arnott said the officers had 'done exactly as they've been trained' and applied the correct use of force in the situation.

'They have done an excellent job.

'The coroner will find, in the fullness of time, that these police officers did exactly what they needed to do.'

He said Tasers were not a remedy for all situations.

'It doesn't always work - it's as simple as that.'

Premier Mark McGowan said the officers acted heroically.

The violent rampage began at the Lodge Motel, where he was staying, before moving to the shopping centre

'It was extraordinary, actually and they carried themselves with such courage and followed all procedures,' Mr McGowan said.

'It may well be the case they saved many lives through their actions.'

Mr McGowan also said his thoughts were with the Fildes family.

'This would be an extremely difficult situation for them as well.'

It comes as a relative told a relative told The West Australian Fildes had been suffering from a 'deep depression' and his marriage had fallen apart.

He had an altercation with his supervisor on the morning of the attack.

Fildes, who is the father of a young girl, was on his first week of a new FIFO swing.

His marriage had broken down in recent years and he suffered from depression.

A relative said Fildes was a 'beautiful, beautiful soul' and the violent rampage was out-of-character.

Esther Brooks (pictured) shared shocking pictures of her wound with Daily Mail Australia, after being stabbed in the back by a crazed stranger

'He's just not that kind of person. He's just mellow and lovely. I know he had a lot of trauma in his life. The last few years have been really tough for him, but he's not a violent person,' she said.

'There is just no way on this earth that Ashley could do something like this. He doesn't hurt people  he helps people.

'He was deeply depressed but never ever in my wildest dreams would I ever think he would hurt another human being.'

His parents declined to comment when approached by the publication on Saturday.

Friends and family visited his parents' home throughout the day.

Pilbara district superintendent Kim Massam declined to comment on any potential motive for the attack or whether the offender had a history of drug use or mental health issues.

He said social media videos, as well as footage captured on CCTV and on police body-worn cameras, would form a key part of the investigation.

Up to 60 witnesses could be interviewed.

'Those statements will be detailed,' Supt Massam said.

David Derschow (pictured, right) said his girlfriend Esther Brooks (left) were stabbed by the knifeman on Friday morning at a Western Australian shopping centre

'They are there on behalf of our investigation for the coroner. The coroner will expect a thorough and intrusive investigation is undertaken in relation to the matter.

'I think we'll have a significant contingent of police officers and support staff in Hedland for the majority of this coming week.'

One of the victims was Esther Brooks, who was slashed in the back while the man fled police.

In an exclusive interview, Ms Brooks shared shocking photos of her bloodied T-shirt, and told Daily Mail Australia: 'I'm sore - but I'm OK. I live to tell the story.'

Her stunned boyfriend David Derschow said Ms Brooks had just gone on a coffee run when she was attacked by the crazed man.

The stabbing rampage took place in South Hedland in northern Western Australia (pictured)

'She was just getting iced coffees,' he said on Friday night.

Mr Derschow said he heard screaming coming from the shopping centre and walked up to find carnage.

'She didn't know him,' he said, adding he had no idea why his girlfriend had been brutally attacked.

Ms Brooks was in such a state of shock she didn't even realise she'd been injured in the melee. 'When he stabbed me, he was running from police.'

Mr Derschow said: 'She's good now, she didn't know she was stabbed until she asked if she was stabbed.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 3)  Major train lines in Metro Manila will resume operations with limited passengers by May 16, or after the the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) is lifted in the region.

In a statement on Saturday, The Department of Transportation announced that the Light Rail Transits 1 and 2 (LRT-1 and LRT-2), the Metro Rail Transit-3 (MRT-3) and the Philippine National Railways (PNR) will operate at a reduced capacity to allow passengers to practice social distancing.

The LRT-1 will only operate with 43 passengers per train car (12 percent capacity), the LRT-2 with only 40 passengers (10 percent capacity), MRT-3 with 51 (13 percent capacity), and the PNR with 148 passengers (20 percent capacity), based on the Transportation Department's simulation of passengers inside trains maintaining one-meter social distancing.

"Social distancing of one meter should be strictly observed inside the trains and stations. Presence of markings, signages, tarpaulins and other logistics will be utilized to ensure its firm implementation," the DOTr said in its statement.

Pursuant to the guidelines of the Department of Health, passengers who are not wearing appropriate face masks, are exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms, and have a registered body temperature of 37.8 C will not be allowed to enter train stations.

Senior citizens, persons aged 0-20, and pregnant women will also not be allowed entry "due to their susceptibility to COVID-19."

The DOTr added that regular disinfection and sanitation of train interiors, station premises and facilities will be conducted. Handwashing and disinfectant stations will also be installed to adhere to sanitary measures set by the DOH.

The DOTr and the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases covering road, transport, aviation, maritime and railway sectors previously issued its omnibus guidelines for transportation vehicles that may operate in areas under the general community quarantine while still allowing passengers to observe physical distancing measures.

On May 1, the government allowed some public transport vehicles to operate again in low to moderate-risk areas.

For the aviation sector, only government and military flights, international flights subject to IATF protocols, air ambulance and medical supplies, flight check and weather mitigation flights, maintenance and utility flights, emergency flights, and domestic flights coming to and from provinces and cities under the general community quarantine are allowed.

Walk through x-ray machines, portable scanners and handheld metal detectors will be part of the airports' security screening of authorized passengers. COVID-19 rapid testing facilities are also present.

For the maritime sector, passenger capacity in ships and other passenger vessels has been reduced to 50 percent.

Wearing of personal protective equipment is mandatory upon entry of ports, terminals, and passengers vessels.

Meanwhile, for permitted public utility vehicles, drivers are required to use gloves and face masks.

Passenger load for buses and jeepneys should not exceed 50 percent of the vehicles' capacity. For UV Express and taxis, passenger load should not exceed two passengers per row.

Tricycles must not exceed one passenger in the side-car and backriding is not allowed.

Only private cars and motorcycles operating for the purpose of essential travels are allowed outside, with cars only allowing one passenger in the front seat.

Motorcycles are prohibited from having backride passengers, while the use of bicycles is highly encouraged.

DOTr Assistant Secretary for Road Transport and Infrastructure Mark Richmund De Leon told CNN Philippines on Saturday that public transportation in the road sector will be allowed, but they "will strictly impose health safety standards at all times to ensure the safety of [their] drivers and passengers."

President Rodrigo Duterte has placed the entire Luzon under the enhanced community quarantine last March 17 in a bid to contain the spread of COVID-19 in the region. All necessary modes of public transportation were put to a halt and non-essential establishments were ordered to close down to limit movement.
In this article GILD

The coverage on this live blog has ended  but for up-to-the-minute coverage on the coronavirus outbreak, visit the live blog from CNBC's Asia-Pacific team. All times below are in Eastern time. States across the U.S. are reopening after some coronavirus lockdowns meant to curb the spread of the virus are eased despite the country seeing its deadliest day on record, according to data collected Friday by the World Health Organization. Warren Buffett revealed at Berkshire Hathaway's first virtual annual meeting on Saturday that he sold all of his airline stocks and didn't see any value in any major acquisitions amid the coronavirus pullback in stocks. Global cases: More than 3.4 million

Global deaths: At least 244,911

US cases: More than 1.1 million

US deaths: At least 66,570 The data above was compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

6 pm: Dow futures fall more than 200 points as traders weighed the reopening of the economy

A person stands in the Wall Street subway stop on April 23, 2020 in New York City. Angela Weiss | AFP | Getty Images

Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were down by 245 points, or 1%, and S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures also traded about 1% lower as traders weighed the reopening of the economy along with brewing tensions between China and the U.S. Although states across the U.S. are slowly easing stay-at-home restrictions and reopening nonessential businesses to help the economy rebound, data from the World Health Organization showed the U.S. had its deadliest 24 hours between Thursday and Friday. "The next 2-4 weeks are critical for both the economic crisis and the health crisis," said Marc Chaikin, CEO of Chaikin Analytics. "The biggest risk to the stock market is a premature reopening of the U.S. economy. If rising COVID-19 curves reemerge and economies are shut down again the damage to the stock market's psyche will be dramatic." Fred Imbert

5:30 pm: US intelligence report accuses China of covering up outbreak severity to hoard medical supplies

Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, chairs a symposium at the School of Medicine at Tsinghua University in Beijing, capital of China, March 2, 2020. Yan Yan | Xinhua News Agency | Getty Images

The Associated Press has obtained a four-page Department of Homeland Security intelligence report dated May 1 which states Chinese leaders "intentionally concealed the severity" of the pandemic from the world in early January to stock up on medical supplies. The report from the Associated Press states that China increased imports and decreased exports of medical supplies. The analysis states that China attempted to cover up doing so by "denying there were export restrictions and obfuscating and delaying provision of its trade data." Riya Bhattacharjee, Associated Press

5 pm: Egypt reopens hotels for locals, but with conditions

Egypt will allow hotels to reopen for local tourists, allowing them to operate at 25% capacity until the end of May, and with a maximum 50% capacity from June 1, government officials said according to Reuters. The coronavirus epidemic forced tourism to close down in Egypt, leading to an estimated $1 billion in losses every month. In order to reopen, the government is mandating that hotels have a clinic with a resident doctor, regularly screen temperatures and install disinfection equipment, among other things. Riya Bhattacharjee, Reuters

4:30 pm: Pompeo says 'significant amount of evidence' virus emerged from Chinese lab

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attends a news conference at the State Department, in Washington, March 31, 2020. Andrew Harnik | Pool via Reuters

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told ABC's "This Week" there was "a significant amount of evidence" that the new coronavirus emerged from a lab in China. "The best experts so far seem to think it was man-made. I have no reason to disbelieve that at this point," Pompeo said, but did not provide any specifics about the evidence. However, when the interviewer pointed out that was not what U.S. intelligence services had concluded, Pompeo said, "I've seen what the intelligence community has said. I have no reason to believe that they've got it wrong." The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for clarification on Pompeo's comments. President Donald Trump on Thursday said that he has a high degree of confidence the coronavirus outbreak originated from a Chinese lab. But U.S. intelligence officials said they have concluded that the virus was "not manmade or genetically modified." Riya Bhattacharjee, Reuters

4 pm: NRA lays off employees, cuts salaries across the board

Wayne LaPierre, chief executive officer of the National Rifle Association (NRA), speaks during the NRA annual meeting of members in Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S., on Saturday, April 27, 2019. Daniel Acker | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The coronavirus pandemic is forcing the National Rifle Association to off dozens of employees, cancel its annual convention and abandon fundraising and shooting events which would normally be important to rally its base in an election year, the Associated Press reported. According to the report, the organization, which has about 5 million members, laid off or furloughed dozens of employees, imposed a four-day workweek for some and slashed salaries across the board, including for CEO Wayne LaPierre. "The cancellation of the annual meeting had a significant financial impact but, beyond that, the health crisis has caused us to postpone countless fundraising and membership events along with competitions, training seminars and other revenue streams  those disruptions are the primary drivers of our decision-making process," said Andrew Arulanandam, spokesman for the NRA. "Like every other business and nonprofit, we are forced to make tough choices in this new economic environment." Riya Bhattacharjee, Associated Press

3:20 pm: Number of coronavirus deaths slows in Italy

A Civil Protection member sanitizes the coffin of a victim of COVID-19 in the hangar where 18 coffins wait to be transported to Florence by the Italian Army to be cremated on April 7, 2020 in the village of Ponte San Pietro near Bergamo, Italy. Marco Di Lauro | Getty Images

Italy saw the smallest number of coronavirus related deaths since March 10, the Civil Protection Agency said. The death toll from the Covid-19 slowed to 174 on Sunday from 474 on Saturday. The daily number of new cases also fell to 1,389 on Sunday from 1,900 on Saturday. Italy has been in lockdown longer than any other European country. Maggie Fitzgerald, Reuters

2:54 pm: Warren Buffet gave airlines another chance. Not anymore

Billionaire investor Warren Buffet has given up on his stocks in airlines, divesting from American, Delta, Southwest and United. Buffet had put aside his doubts about the airline industry in 2016, going on to become one of the biggest shareholders in the U.S.'s four largest airlines. The "Oracle of Omaha" even considered owning his own airline at one point.



The coronavirus has changed his tune, however. Annie Nova, Leslie Josephs

2:27 pm: Cuomo calls dependence on China for PPE 'national security issue'

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has called the U.S. reliance on China for personal protective equipment a national security issue, after hard hit states in the northeast like New York had to turn to Beijing for supplies during the coronavirus pandemic. "That's a national security issue to me," Cuomo said. "You have to be able to get masks and gowns and whatever medical equipment you need so this nation can run a health-care system in the middle of an emergency."



"You can't be dependent on China to have the basic equipment to save lives in the United States, that's what this came down to," the governor said.



Cuomo announced a consortium with six other northeastern states to develop a regional supply chain for PPE and medical equipment in a bid to aggregate demand and drive down prices. Spencer Kimball, Emma Newburger

12:53 pm: Spirit Airlines requiring passengers wear face coverings when traveling

Spirit Airlines will require passengers to wear face coverings when traveling, starting on May 11. Passengers without a face covering will not be permitted to board the plane, the airline said. Major U.S. airlines on Thursday said they will require travelers to wear face masks onboard their planes as carriers take steps to try to protect the health of passengers and crew. Melodie Warner

12:26 pm: Skincare company saw record sales in April as demand for wellness products rise

Source: TULA

Tula, a New York-based skincare company, is now trying to keep up with demand as consumers are staying at home and investing even more in health and wellness. Purveyors in the clean beauty market space generally offer products free of toxic chemicals and other undesirable ingredients like sulfates and parabens. Tula posted a 400% increase in April sales compared with the year prior  the best April in its six-year history and double its sales from March. "Clean (beauty) is something already that we were saying is going to be important to watch," said Larissa Jensen, vice president and beauty advisor at NPD, a market research firm that tracks consumer trends. "I believe that the circumstances today have only accelerated that conversation and amplified the importance of it." Melodie Warner

12:05 pm: Southwest Airlines CEO says, 'We're at a low point'

Bob Levey | CNBC

Southwest Airlines' planes are "virtually empty," said CEO Gary Kelly. Still he believes the situation will improve in the coming months. "May will be better than April. I don't think June will be a good month, but hopefully, it will be a bit better than May," Kelly told CBS's "Face of the Nation." "There's bookings in place," he said, "but those could easily be canceled. It's really one day at a time." Southwest Airlines has already received $3.2 billion in federal aid, and Kelly said he's applied for another government loan but, "we don't know if we'll take it." "I think that we've got what we need to see our way through," he said. Not everyone is so optimistic: Billionaire investor Warren Buffet announced on Saturday he was selling all of his stocks in airlines, including his 10% stake in Southwest Airlines. Annie Nova

11:37 am: The space industry is entering at least 'a year and a half slog' due to coronavirus, says Rocket Lab CEO

Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck stands with one his company's Electron rockets. Rocket Lab

Many companies in the space industry have seen operations grind to a crawl in the past two months because of the coronavirus crisis. Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck told CNBC that this is only the "early days" of the crisis for an industry that saw a boom time over the past decade. While he remains hopeful that some creative and well-funded companies may continue pushing forward, Beck warned, "This is a year-and-a-half slog, maybe even longer." Beck is one of the most experienced leaders among the latest generation of space ventures, having built Rocket Lab into a multifaceted company. Melodie Warner

11:20 am: Gilead CEO says remdesivir available for coronavirus patients this week

Gilead Sciences' remdesivir drug will be in the hands of coronavirus patients as early as this week, the biotechnology company's CEO said Sunday. "We've donated the entire supply that we have within our supply chain and we did that because we acknowledge and recognize the human suffering, the human need here, and want to make sure nothing gets in the way of this getting to patients," Gilead Science CEO Daniel O'Day told CBS's "Face of the Nation." Preliminary results from Gilead's own study showed at least 50% of the coronavirus patients treated with a five-day dosage of remdesivir improved. The Food and Drug Administration on Friday granted emergency use authorization for remdesivir to treat Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Melodie Warner

11:06 am: Online schools get their chance to shine as traditional college campuses shut down

Online schools typically serve older students who are balancing work and family responsibilities. Now, these schools are attracting a wider audience, including recent high-school graduates who would have gone to a traditional four-year institution, pre-pandemic. Online colleges have made great strides in their remote learning offerings over the last decade, while other schools are now struggling to get up to speed. Online schools have additional advantages, such as price, as well as shorter sessions, which allow students to begin sooner and finish faster. Melodie Warner

10:37 am: Kudlow doesn't commit to third round of funding for PPP small business loans

Larry Kudlow, director of the U.S. National Economic Council, speaks to members of the media at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Monday, April 6, 2020. Stefani Reynolds | Bloomberg | Getty Images

National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow said the White House has made no decision on providing further funding for the emergency loan program for small businesses impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. Asked by CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union" whether a third round of funding is needed, Kudlow said "it may be" but did not commit to more assistance for PPP or funding for state and local governments. The initial $349 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program in the $2.2 trillion stimulus package passed in March was exhausted in a matter of days. The second round of the program, launched last Monday, has so far provided loans worth more than $175 billion out of the total $310 billion Congress authorized in the latest relief package. Melodie Warner

9:59 am: Americans paying for TV sports they're not receiving shouldn't expect refunds any time soon

More than 80 million American households still have cable or satellite television and are paying for live televised sports they haven't received for almost two months. About $20 of a standard monthly cable bill can be attributed to paying for sports, and New York Attorney General Letitia James argued this week that Americans shouldn't be forced to pay that money. Cable executives may be willing to give refunds to customers, but only if the programmers that they pay for sports give them refunds. If sports seasons are completely canceled, it's possible the leagues will refund programmers for TV fees. In that case, programmers would likely refund distributors and those distributors would credit consumers. Melodie Warner

9:44 am: Small towns and rural hospitals could be weeks away from their coronavirus peak

Men look at cattle at a stockyard in Lexington, Nebraska, U.S., on Friday, April 24, 2020. Nebraska businesses that have laid off workers during the coronavirus crisis could be forced to repay tax credits and other incentives they have received through the states main business-incentive program, the state Department of Revenue said. Dan Brouillette | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Hospitalizations related to Covid-19 have started to decelerate in some cities, yet it could take the virus weeks to peak in more rural communities across the U.S., health officials warn. The virus also has the potential to be more deadly in many rural communities where a larger portion of the population are older and have underlying health conditions like obesity and diabetes that could put them at risk of serious illness or death. It took less than three weeks for Hall County to become Nebraska's biggest hot spot of Covid-19 cases. The area reported its first case of coronavirus in late March, just as the outbreak was surging, and now has more than 1,000 cases of Covid-19 as of Friday. Melodie Warner

7:27 am: Vietnam reports first coronavirus case in nine days

Vietnam reported its first confirmed coronavirus case in nine days on Sunday, bringing its reported positive cases to 271, its health ministry said. Vietnam is said to have implemented strict quarantine and contact tracing measures early on in the course of the pandemic, quarantining towns with suspected cases as early as February, using the help of the military and public surveillance. The country has reported no coronavirus deaths. Natasha Turak, Saheli Roy Choudhury

6:00 am: Roche expects to make more than 100 million antibody tests monthly by end of this year

A photo showing the logo of Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche in Basel. SEBASTIEN BOZON | AFP | Getty Images

Swiss drugmaker Roche said on Sunday it expects to be able to produce "significantly more" than 100 million of its new antibody tests monthly by the end of 2020, doubling its current production. Roche earlier on Sunday received an emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approving its test, which relies on taking intravenous blood samples to identify whether someone has previously been infected with the coronavirus and whether they have the antibodies to defend against it. Roche said its Elecsys Anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody test has a specificity greater than 99.8%, meaning very few false-positive tests, and that it can help assess people's immune response to the virus. The company said it has already started shipping the new antibody test to top laboratories globally. Natasha Turak, Saheli Roy Choudhury

5:59 am: Iran death toll rises by 47 to 6,203
A Chinese paramilitary police officer gestures as he wears a protective mask while standing guard at the entrance to the Forbidden City as it re-opened to limited visitors in Beijing, China, on May 1, 2020. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Beijings Aggressive Tactics Amid Pandemic Response Triggers Global Pushback

The Chinese regimes aggressive diplomacy amid the pandemic is causing blowback around the world as countries double down on calls for a probe of Beijings handling of the outbreak.

In recent weeks, Chinese diplomats have engaged in verbal sparring over issues that include faulty medical products shipped from China, and countries demanding greater accountability from the regime in Beijing for its role in causing the CCP virus to spread around the world.

The confrontational approachdubbed wolf warrior diplomacy after two hit Chinese action films with nationalistic overtones that were released in 2015 and 2017hasnt yielded fruit.

A growing number of countries have summoned Chinese ambassadors over related infractions, from spreading misinformation about the pandemic, to discriminating against African immigrants in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou after several Africans tested positive for the virus.

Meanwhile, countries are increasingly hardening their stance toward the regime, rethinking their manufacturing dependence on China and acceptance of Chinese tech firms that pose security risks.

Tensions between Australia and Beijing spilled over this past week, after Australian officials called for an independent investigation into the origins of the outbreak in China. In response, Chinese ambassador Cheng Jingye hinted that China could boycott Australian goods if Australia didnt back down about the inquiry.

If the investigation was to proceed, Ordinary people might ask: Why should we drink Australian wine? Why eat Australian beef? Cheng said in an interview with local media.

The threat sparked anger among officials across the political spectrum.

Australias Foreign Minister Marise Payne denounced the attempt at economic coercion while reiterating calls for an inquiry.

The Chinese regime has for decades been able to push back on other countries by threatening economic consequences  but I dont think its going to work as well anymore, Helle Dale, senior fellow for public diplomacy at Washington-based think tank The Heritage Foundation, told The Epoch Times, adding that countries are now pulling together in their efforts to confront China over the crisis.

In Europe, lawmakers in Germany, Sweden, and most recently, the president of the European Commissionthe executive arm of the European Union (EU)have called for an investigation into the viruss origin.

Meanwhile, The New York Times reported that the EU watered down its report on pandemic disinformation after pressure from Beijing, a claim that was denied by the EUs top diplomat, Josep Borrell. While acknowledging that Chinese officials objected to the content, he said that the revisions had been part of the normal editing process, and the findings hadnt been softened.

The Chinese regimes sweeping disinformation campaign in recent months, aimed to deflect attention from its coverup of the outbreak, has prompted repeated pushback from Western governments, and further fueled countries to rethink their relationships with the regime.

China is becoming more aggressive, more assertive, and its conduct throughout the COVID-19 episode has illustrated this, Tobias Ellwood, member of Parliament for Britains ruling Conservative Party and chair of the House of Commons Defense Committee, told Epoch Times affiliate NTD.

He said that the regimes lack of transparency during the crisis has illuminated what many people were worried about already over the ability of China to act openly with the international community.

Ellwood is among a growing number of Conservative Party politicians urging a reset of the UKs relationship with the regime, including a rejection of Chinese telecom giant Huawei in the countrys 5G rollout.

Earlier in April, then-acting Prime Minister Dominic Raab said the country couldnt return to business as usual with China after the crisis.

Well have to ask the hard questions about how it came about and how it could have been stopped earlier, Raab said.

Chinese diplomats and state-run media have ratcheted up their criticism of the United States as the Trump administration escalates demands for the Chinese regime to be held accountable for its virus coverup.

After President Donald Trump on April 27 suggested the United States could seek substantial compensation from the Chinese regime for causing the pandemic, Geng Shuang, spokesperson for Chinas foreign ministry, accused politicians in the United States of lying through their teeth.

Geng said at a April 28 press briefing, We advise American politicians to reflect on their own problems and try their best to control the epidemic as soon as possible, instead of continuing to play tricks to deflect blame.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo later called out those remarks as classic communist disinformation. He pointed to the Chinese regimes efforts to silence doctors who tried to sound the alarm about the outbreak during its early stages.

Those are the kind of things that communist institutions do. We all know them from the Soviet days. We know the kinds of things that communist parties do to try and manage information inside of their own country and around the world, Pompeo said in a Fox interview on April 29.
About 100 people, mostly migrant



workers, from suburban Dahisar and south Mumbai, were on Sunday permitted to travel to their native states Rajasthan and Gujarat in five buses, a police officer said.

More than 70 people from Dahisar will travel in four buses hired by them to the two states for which passes have been issued to them, he said.

"The permission was given after following the set procedure in such cases. The buses and passengers were sanitised," said Dahisar police station senior inspector Mohammed Mujawar.

He said three buses will travel to Rajasthan and another to Gujarat.

Meanwhile, MRA Marg police station in south Mumbai also permitted 25 migrant workers to travel to Rajasthan in a bus.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
(Natural News) The Clintons are back in the news to give their take on the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19), of course. And what they want to see happen in order to open back up the country is, you guessed it: more government tyranny.

Speaking to California Governor Gavin Newsom during a recent Clinton Global Initiative University live stream, former President Bill Clinton discussed the need to track people who are positive with the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19), describing the effort in terms of an army of young people.

In Clintons view, the government needs to be able to track where people go and who they come into contact with at all times in order to hem up any recurrence of this. In other words, we need mass surveillance and a total police state to quash the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19), according to Clinton.

Should we have a contract (sic) tracer corps, even if we call it something more elegant (sic)? Clinton asked, skewing and slurring the words from his script in much the same way as Joe Biden.

Newsoms response to Clinton was an affirmative yes, of course. He explained in no uncertain terms that:

The predicate for getting back to some semblance of normalcy is our ability to identify individuals through testing; to be able to trace their contacts; to isolate individuals that have either been exposed or quarantine people that are testing positive.

How this can be accomplished moving forward, according to Newsom, is to hire an army of folks to go around and do all the dirty work, which will only be possibly if people allow for their privacy to be impacted by that kind of acuity of attention based upon where theyve been and who they talked to.

In other words, the Clintons and Newsom are calling for the total abolition of the United States Constitution in the name of fighting the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19), which just so happens to be the perfect catalyst for plunging not just America but the entire world into the planned new order.

Listen below to The Health Ranger Report as Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, explains how Texas covidiots have returned to retail stores without bothering to wear masks:

Hillary says coronavirus would be a terrible crisis to waste

Not to be outdone by her husband, Hillary Clinton has also piped up about the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19), contending that it would be a terrible crisis to waste.

The two-time failed presidential candidate made this statement to failing 2020 presidential contender Joe Biden during a separate virtual appearance, during which she also pushed for abortion clinics to remain open during the pandemic, even as churches and other places of worship remain closed.

This is a high stakes time because of the pandemic, but this is also a really high stakes election, Hillary stated, likening the crisis to some kind of political casino game.

Every form of health care should continue to be available, including reproductive health care for every woman in this country, she added, referring to abortion. And then it needs to be a part of a much larger system that eventually, and quickly I hope, gets us to universal health care.

Like her husband and Newsom both believe should happen, Hillary, too, is on board with wanting to enlist an army of foot soldiers to advance leftist causes on the back of this pandemic. Alluding to what Rahm Emanuel once stated, Hillary does not want to see this unique crisis go to waste in terms of implementing her authoritarian vision for America.

More of the latest news about the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) is available at Pandemic.news.

Sources for this article include:

Twitter.com

DailyCaller.com

NaturalNews.com
Crossvale, a Red Hat APEX Partner, is proud to announce it has been named NA Leading Edge Partner of the Year by Red Hat, Inc., the world's leading provider of open source solutions. This award is part of the annual Red Hat North American Partner Awards, which aim to honor partners for continued efforts to support customers on the path to IT modernization.

Crossvale was honored for its dedication to providing innovative open source solutions to customers in the commercial and public sectors. Specifically, Crossvale was recognized for the outstanding use of the Red Hat platforms and solutions.

This award is a testament to the power of the Red Hat platform and the Red Hat partner program. As customer needs, industries and cloud adoption continue to evolve, open-source technologies will continue to be embraced. We are delighted to be part of that adoption journey with Red Hat, said Conor Brankin, Crossvale CEO. Furthermore, we are thrilled to be recognized as the North American Leading-Edge Partner of the Year and look forward to our continued partnership.

Red Hat's 2019 North American Partner Awards honor both commercial and public sector partners for their dedication to successfully delivering innovative open source solutions to customers. Honorees were recognized for outstanding performance in 2019 across several categories that span Red Hats open source portfolio and their dedication to delivering customer success.

Crossvale is a valued channel partner to Red Hat, and we are pleased to honor them with this well-deserved award, said Ernest Jones, vice president, North American Partner Sales, Red Hat. We look forward to our continued relationship with Crossvale and helping them provide the best in open source solutions to their clients.

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The Delhi government will implement all lockdown relaxations that have been prescribed by the Union home ministry, despite the national capital being completely in the red zone with a high concentration of Covid-19 cases, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Sunday.

All Delhi government offices engaged in essential services will function with full strength and private offices will be allowed to function with 33 per cent strength, Kejriwal announced via a video conference.

The time has come to re-open Delhi. We will have to be ready to live with coronavirus. The lockdown was necessary to contain Covid-19, but Delhi is fully ready to relax lockdown restrictions, the Delhi chief minister said.

ALSO READ | Covid-19 lockdown 3.0: Indias national lockdown extended again. All you need to know

I have been getting multiple calls and queries on what will open and what all are likely to remain shut. All standalone shops in residential colonies, neighbourhood shops not only those selling essential items will be allowed to operate. If you have a four-wheeler apart from the driver only two more people will be allowed. No pillion riders will be allowed on two-wheelers, he said.

Clarity on the relaxations came barely two days after the Centre extended the nationwide lockdown for another two weeks on Friday. The lockdown will now continue till May 17.

The lockdown was earlier scheduled to be lifted today on May 3.

The Delhi Metro will remain shut during the lockdown and shops selling essential items will continue to be open.

I will suggest to the Centre to declare only containment areas in the city as red zones and not the entire district. Suspension of travel by flight, Delhi Metro and bus services will continue in the national capital, Kejriwal said.

The Delhi government will take strict action against those found spitting in public places.

Delivery of essential goods through e-commerce portals will continue but the e-retailers will not be allowed to sell non essential items online nor deliver any such goods to consumers.

Malls, cinemas, salons, market complexes and any such place where crowds can gather will remain shut, the Delhi CM said.
Lili Reinhart has been keeping her pup Milo close after he was attacked by another dog in early April.

But the Riverdale star and her dog appeared to be in good spirits on Saturday, as they enjoyed some time in the sun.

The Hustlers actress, 23, was cautious wearing a CDC recommended face mask for the outing, as Los Angeles remains on lockdown until May 15 amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Sun-kissed: Lili Reinhart her pup appeared to be in good spirits on Saturday, as they enjoyed some time in the sun in Los Angeles

Lili seemed to enjoy getting some sun on her skin, as the lockdown continues and residents are asked to stay home unless essential.

She wore cutoff Daisy Dukes highlighting her toned legs, with a plain white tee, and slide one plaid flats.

Shielding her face from the sun, she added dark sunglasses and a wide beige sun hat.

Lili joined a friend at the park with her little pup Milo, who seemed to be much better after his attack and surgery last month.

Precautions: The Hustlers actress, 23, was cautious wearing a CDC recommended face mask for the outing, as Los Angeles remains on lockdown until May 15 amid the coronavirus pandemic, as she went to a park and grocery store

She then headed to a grocery store and left with a small plant and her white leather backpack on her arm.

Milo has been Lili's isolation buddy as they have been spending it with only each other.

But the canine, who she adopted at the beginning of the year, was attacked by another dog in April and underwent surgery for a large gash on his head on neck.

DInner for two: Later on Friday, Lili shared selfies having dinner with her pup Milo, just weeks after he recovered from a dog attack

Lady and the tramp: Sharing a long spaghetti noodle, the two recreated the Lady and the Tramp iconic scene

He has seem to recovered well, though Lili told W Magazine back in April 'He is ok, hes a little skittish around pretty much everyone that is not me right now. He was my little shadow to begin with, and now he follows me everywhere.'

'His head wound is pretty big and Im trying to make sure nothing gets infected. I am his own little personal nurse, just making sure he is doing ok. He is sitting right next to me so Im giving him some scratches.'

The outing came after she again took to Twitter recently to launch an angry tirade against trolls who she said were 'bullying' her boyfriend and Riverdale costar Cole Sprouse.

Miffed: The outing came after she gain took to Twitter recently to launch an angry tirade against trolls who she said were 'bullying' her boyfriend and Riverdale costar Cole Sprouse

Lili was reportedly furious when the hashtag '#ColeSprouseIsOverParty started trending on the social media platform, so she hit back with a lengthy rant, which she has since deleted.

'Twitter is such a vile place,' Lili wrote. 'It's so easy to say sh** behind your f**king phone, isn't it? This is why people choose to keep their relationships private... this is why people don't have social media.. because of this bullying.'

'Please.... reassess yourself and your ego before you send another tweet into the abyss,' she continued.

Embattled couple: The Hustlers actress was furious when the hashtag '#ColeSprouseIsOverParty started trending, so she hit back with a lengthy now-deleted rant

'I refuse to keep my mouth shut about things like this. You have no idea how destructive this can be to someone. To anyone. It's abusive.

'There is no excuse for this. You need god in your life or some form of help if you participate in cancel culture,' Reinhart concluded.

Lili's tweets come not long after Cole, 27, revealed he had received 'death threats' over his desire to keep his personal life private, which in turn was surely in response to the rumors he had left Lili in order to date model Kaia Gerber.
Saturdays funniest headline was from the New York Times: Investigate Tara Reades Allegations: Americans deserve to know more about a sexual assault accusation against the likely Democratic Party nominee. Just 20 days ago, the Times was imitating the police officer hurrying people past the white chalk outline of a body on the pavement, while saying, Move along, folks. Theres nothing to see here.

Now, though, the Times is concerned about really getting to the bottom of things. Or it wants to ensure that the DNC controls an investigation's timing. If the FBI investigates, it could make things awkward by turning its results into an October surprise.

What was even funnier than the headline was the DNCs unexpected refusal to look into Tara Reades allegation that Biden sexually assaulted her. Instead, a Fox News story shows the usual Democrat phalanx protecting Biden from an accusation consistent with both his sordid reputation and the sordid company he kept:

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) also responded Saturday to a New York Times call for a probe into the allegation, telling Fox News it was an absurd suggestion on its face. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had this week sent a clear signal that she was satisfied with Biden's response on the matter. Biden had not publicly addressed the claims -- although his campaign had denied them -- until Friday morning. After he denied the claims in a statement and in an MSNBC interview, Pelosi repeated her stance. I have said I am proud to have endorsed Vice President Biden, she said on a press call Friday. I thought that he dealt with it, a complete denial, support for women.

Pelosis take is peculiar because, during the interview, Biden seemed unable to remember who Reade was, walked back the unequivocal support he had for women when Blasey Ford made her risible claims against Kavanaugh, lied about documents in the National Archives, and refused to release his own records lest voters see what he stands for. Moreover, Mika's questions ignored the people who remember back to the 1990s when Reade was talking about the assault.

It wasnt just Pelosi who expressed satisfaction, though. So did leftist "womens groups":

After the interview, several top women's groups telegraphed their satisfaction with his response. We have reached a pivotal moment in our nation when candidates for president are accused of sexual assault, Tina Tchen, president and CEO of TIMES UP Now and an ex-aide to former President Barack Obama, said in a statement. Today, Vice President Joe Biden sat down and directly addressed the allegation against him with the seriousness it deserves, something that the current president has never done. Alexis McGill Johnson, acting president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said in a statement Friday that the group is glad to see Vice President Biden take a needed first step in addressing this issue head-on. We now look to Biden to continue to push this conversation, and our country, forward.

One wonders how all these Dems will react to the fact that the AP, in a random act of journalism, just reported that it uncovered two more witnesses who recall hearing from Reade in the 1990s about the assault. At this point, it doesnt even matter what precisely happened. Its enough to know that something happened.

The Democrats are being poked hard in their collective butt by that famous horned dilemma: Do they defend Biden and hope this all goes away, or do they use Reades accusation to push out a candidate whos long past his sell-by date?

As for Biden, hes still gamely plugging away, even if it means revealing body language that strongly implies that his impromptu interviews are scripted, with the questions provided beforehand and the answers scrolling by on a Teleprompter in his Delaware basement:

WATCH: Joe Biden appears to read prepared answers to questions in MSNBC interview. pic.twitter.com/tbUO1SOjiw  Trump War Room - Text TRUMP to 88022 (@TrumpWarRoom) May 2, 2020

President Trump, in the ultimate act of trolling, sided with Biden, telling him he should fight back:

I would just say to Joe Biden, Just go out and fight it,' Trump said in a podcast interview with Dan Bongino. Hes going to have to make his own decision, Im not going to be telling him what to do. Biden is going to have to go out and fight his own battles. Then Trump identified himself with Biden. Ive been falsely accused by people that Ive never even seen, Ive never even seen many of these people. And some of these people, I met them  zero interest, Okay? Like zero, the president said. And all of a sudden you become a wealthy guy, youre a famous guy, then you become president, and people just  people that youve never seen, that youve never heard of make charges. So I guess in a way you could say Im, Im sticking up for him, Trump said of Biden.

Scott Adams characterizes Trumps take on the matter as the most brilliant political trolling ever.

The Trump team, following Trumps lead, isnt attacking the assault claim directly. Instead, its focusing on his and the other Democrats hypocrisy, along with a stealthy reference to Bidens known sick habit of fondling little girls:
In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar slammed the central governments decision to shift the International Finance Services Centre (IFSC) from Mumbai to Gandhinagar in Gujarat. He called the establishment of IFSC in Gujarat as egregious, erroneous and unwarranted.

In the scathing letter that he tweeted on Sunday, Pawar wrote, It will also be perceived as a move to shift financial institutions and business houses away from Maharashtra and will create unnecessary political disturbances. It will not only cause financial damage to the country but also bring international discredit to it by undermining the importance of Mumbai.

He said that the Central government receives government securities (G-sec) to the tune of Rs 5.95 lakh crore from Maharashtra alone as against Gujarats contribution of Rs 1.40 lakh crore. He also said that Mumbai has been recognised as the worlds top ten centres of commerce.

If you see the general psyche of all business communities, bankers and other financial institutions, Mumbai is their natural choice for setting up such a unified authority. The Central governments decision will be taken as an act of undermining the strategic importance of Mumbai that boasts as the Nations Financial Capital, Pawar wrote.

Even the institutions across the world will be taken aback with this shocking decision, he added.

He also said that the Prime Minister must consider establishing IFSC in the financial capital of India i.e Mumbai. He further tweeted, I expect Hon. @PMOIndia to take a rational, judicious decision keeping aside the state politics and consider it as an issue of utmost national importance.

The NCP chiefs reaction also comes a day after former Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said that it was the then Congress-NCP government which is to be blamed for this as it did not consider the option when it first came up in 2007. Fadnavis also claimed that the previous state government, during his tenure, had submitted a proposal to the Centre to allow functioning of two IFSCs in the country  in Mumbai and Gujarat  and added that it was still under consideration.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

The U.S. renewable energy industry is reeling from the new coronavirus pandemic, which has delayed construction, put thousands of skilled laborers out of work and sowed doubts about solar and wind projects on the drawing board.

In locked-down California, some local agencies that issue permits for new work closed temporarily, and some solar companies furloughed installers.

In New York and New Jersey, SunPower CEO Thomas Werner halted installation of more than 400 residential solar systems, fearing for his workers' safety.

As many as 120,000 jobs in solar and 35,000 in wind could be lost, trade groups say.

"There are many smaller companies going out of business as we speak," said Abigail Ross Hopper, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association. "Up to half our jobs are at risk."

Leaders are confident the future is bright. But the worldwide slowdown is delaying a transition to cleaner energy that scientists say is not happening quickly enough to curtail climate change.

Even as some states move toward reopening, executives fear diminished incomes and work disrupted by layoffs and social distancing will do lasting damage.

The wind industry is plagued by slowdowns in obtaining parts from overseas, getting them to job sites and constructing new turbines.

"The industry was on a tremendous roll right up until the last month or two," said Tom Kiernan, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association. "That reversal is stunning and problematic."

Residential solar business has been hit especially hard, Hopper said, with door-to-door sales no longer feasible and potential customers watching their wallets. Deals with commercial buyers also have slumped.

New solar installations could be 17% lower worldwide than expected this year, and wind turbine manufacturing could fall up to 20%, according to consulting firm Wood Mackenzie.

"Pre-pandemic, there were great dreams and aspirations for a record-setting year," said Paul Gaynor, CEO of Longroad Energy, a utility-scale wind and solar developer. "I'm sure we're not going to have that."

Fossil fuels such as natural gas and coal remain the leading providers of the nation's electricity, with nuclear power another key contributor, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

But renewable sourceswind, solar, hydroelectric, biomass and geothermalhave jumped in the last decade as production costs have fallen and many states have ordered utilities to make greater use of renewable energy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Renewables produced nearly one-fifth of the country's energy last year.

The EIA predicts renewable energy, despite recent setbacks, will grow 11% this yearan indication of the sector's strong surge before the economy tanked. Meanwhile, coal-fired power is expected to decline 20% and gas generation to grow just 1%.

The setback for renewable energy still has been painfuleven in California, where residential solar demand took off due to frequent blackouts and state laws requiring to new homes to produce as much energy as they consume.

"A lot of companies are just trying everything they can to just limp along and keep their workforce," said Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of the California Solar and Storage Association.

All 20 employees were temporarily furloughed at Cinnamon Energy Systems, which sells residential and commercial solar systems in Northern California.

"I'm sure we'll bounce back, just smaller," CEO Barry Cinnamon said, adding that people might not spend as much as they once did, because their income will likely be down. "Whether that's months or years, nobody knows."

Luminalt, a San Francisco solar company, furloughed most of its 40 employees. And when work resumes, CEO Jeanine Cotter expects that projects will take longer and cost more to keep installers safe.

"Think about working on a roof with a mask," Cotter said. "And think about not being able to pass a power tool to somebody unless you disinfect it before you pass it on."

Since his furlough in mid-March, Luminalt solar technician Tom Hicks has been collecting benefits but no salaryand he's worried about mortgage payments.

"My 401k got crushed by 30% just like everyone else," said Hicks, 55. "How much time do I have to recover?"

Still, there are hopeful signs. The Boston-based developer Longroad recently began a utility-scale solar project in California and secured new financing for another in Texas.

Sunnova Energy International, a Houston-based residential solar and energy storage service provider, is doing more videoconferencing and fewer in-person dealings with customers. But CEO John Berger said, "Our installations are still moving ahead, service is still moving ahead, we still see customers paying us."

In eastern Kansas, construction has continued at Southern Power's 200-megawatt Reading Wind Facility despite delayed parts shipments, company spokeswoman Helen Northcutt White said. Sixty-two turbines are planned for the facility, scheduled to go online in mid-May.

The wind and solar industries have asked lawmakers and federal agencies for help, including an extension of their four-year deadlines for completing projects without losing tax benefits. Similar assistance was granted during the 2008-09 recession.

The renewable energy industry's health is crucial to improving the climate and to a strong economic recovery, said Matthew Davis, legislative director for the League of Conservation Voters.

"These businesses, these workers deserve immediate relief," Davis said.

It's important to push for more responsible energy use as the economy reopens worldwide, said Andrew Pershing, chief scientific officer with Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland, Maine, which studies climate change and oceans.

"My hope is that we would use this as an opportunity to build toward an economy that doesn't depend on burning coal and oil and that is more resilient to the climate impacts that are heading our way," Pershing said.

Explore further Americans used less energy in 2019

 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe told us last month: "We need to remember that once the virus is satisfactorily contained, all those factors that have made Australia such a successful and prosperous country will still be there."

Maybe. What about migration? More than half the nation's population growth since 2005 has come from overseas migration. High levels of immigration, especially skilled migration, helped sustain Australias 28 years of uninterrupted economic growth.

Illustration: Matt Davidson Credit:

But COVID-19 has closed our international borders. Temporary migrants are going home. No new migrants are coming for the foreseeable future. Borders are likely to stay closed well after all other restrictions ease. When we re-open the borders  in six, 12, or 24 months  migrants will not return immediately.

While Australia's high level of migration played a key role in our economic prosperity, in recent years the shape and size of our intake has hurt many Australian workers, contributing to unemployment, underemployment and low wage growth.
Venezuelan officials said they foiled an early morning attempt by a group of armed men to invade the country by boat on Sunday, killing eight attackers and arresting two more.

Socialist party chief Diosdado Cabello said that two of the attackers were being interrogated by authorities.

Cabello said it was carried out by neighbouring Colombia with United States backing in a plot to overthrow President Nicols Maduro. Both countries have repeatedly denied earlier Venezuelan allegations of backing for military plots against the socialist government.

Interior Minister Nestor Reverol described the attackers as mercenary terrorists bent on destabilizing Venezuela's institutions and creating "chaos." Officials said the attack took place in La Guaira, about 20 miles from Caracas and home to the nation's largest airport.

Authorities say the attackers had vehicles and heavy arms waiting for them in the port city.

Venezuela has been in a deepening political and economic crisis in recent years under Maduro's rule.

Crumbling public services such as running water, electricity and medical care has driven nearly 5 million to migrate.

A coalition of nearly 60 nations back opposition leader Juan Guaid as Venezuela's legitimate leader, saying Maduro's 2018 election was a sham because the most popular opposition candidates were banned from running.

The United States has led a campaign to oust Maduro, increasing pressure in recent weeks by indicting the socialist leader as a narcotrafficker and offering a USD 15 million reward for his arrest.

The US also has increased stiff sanctions, cutting off Venezuela's oil sector to choke Maduro from a key source of hard cash.

In addition to that pressure, Maduro's government has faced several small-scale military threats, including an attempt to assassinate Maduro with a drone and Guaid's call for a military uprising, which was joined by few soldiers.

Maduro and his allies say the Trump administration is determined to end Venezuela's socialist government to exploit the South American nation's vast underground oil reserves.

The Associated Press reported on Friday that an apparently ill-funded attempt to amass an invasion force of 300 men in Colombia involving a former Venezuelan military officer and an ex-Green Beret, suffered setbacks in March when a main organizer was arrested, an arms cache was seized and some participants abandoned its camps. Cabello linked Sunday's attack to key players in that alleged plot.

Meanwhile, Cesar Omana, a businessman who participated in an unsuccessful plot against Maduro a year ago, said some 30 armed commandos from the Sebin intelligence police raided his Caracas home early Sunday.

Omana is not in the country.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Scaled down staffs wore face masks, stringently wiped down surfaces and worked reduced hours as businesses across the region adjusted to partially reopened life amid the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.

Manager Chase Townsend isnt used to the extra space and quiet at the Music Factory in Pearland, which specializes in music gear. Townsend is more accustomed to regulars roaming the 1,600-square-foot shop amid the roar of guitar solos from musicians testing out Fender electric guitars.

Since reopening up his showroom Friday, Townsend spends his time counting heads and straining for the sound of his ringtone.

Were kind of doing things by appointment and telling people that were just doing the necessities now, he said. Customers will call if they need something specific and I try and schedule them so that only two people are inside the business at one time.

With guitars hanging from the ceiling and amplifiers lining the walls, space can be tight, Townsend said, but the 6-foot rule applies, and instruments are off-limits without permission.

If someone wants to try out a guitar, I politely tell them to ask first, Townsend said. If someone wants to play a guitar, we handle the guitar, hook it up and then wipe it down afterwards.

Business owners were optimistic and cautious as they adjusted to Gov. Greg Abbotts executive order allowing all retail stores, restaurants, movie theaters, malls, museums, libraries and places of worship to reopen May 1 at 25 percent occupancy and under recommendations to adhere to social distancing guidelines.

The weekends first phase of reopening came as the state reported 1,196 new COVID-19 cases on Saturday, marking the third straight day of more than 1,000 new cases in Texas. Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo and other officials continue to warn that reopening businesses now could have an adverse effect in mitigating the spread of the virus for the long-term.

Business owners said they are trying hard to strike the right balance.

Social distancing in my little shop here will be difficult but were doing what we can do, Townsend said. My thing is to take care of my business, but I also want to take care of the community.

Cheddars Scratch Kitchen in Pasadena was working with a bare bones staff, according to manager Amber Harvey. While customers were seated on a first-come-first-serve basis, the restaurant, adhering to the 25 percent capacity rule, was allowing diners to be seated at 16 tables strategically spaced more than 6 feet apart. Diners were given numbers and asked to wait in vehicles for tables to be ready.

We (staff) are in constant communication about how many guests are in the building at one time, Harvey said.

The restaurant is also taking extra steps to minimize contact with all objects inside the dining area.

Our tables are bare. Unless you ask for it, were not going to bring it out, Harvey said. We dont want to be a cause of spread of germs, and our wait staff is trained to type in credit cards right now versus sliding them through a machine.

The restaurant will continue to offer curbside services.

Were really seeing this as a trial run because were waiting to see what our community wants to do, Harvey said. People have been really curious about what precautions were taking and were just being very transparent with our guests.

Like the Music Factory, La De Da, a womens lingerie shop in Webster, was taking appointments since reopening, limiting the number of customers to two at a time and wiping down everything as a new customers entered.

The shop sells specialty lingerie, including customized bras for breast cancer survivors, to a loyal clientele.

Business on Friday and Saturday was steady if not up to normal, but that was expected, said assistant manager Kathy Contreras.

The resuscitation of a business takes a little while, but its getting there, she said. I know there are still people staying home thats going to make a difference, but its going to come together eventually.

La De Da prides itself on its loyal client base and small-business feel, but one of the side effects of a pandemic, said Contreras, will be the trepidation when unfamiliar faces walk through the door.

Its the people weve never seen before that were going to be wary of, she said.

Baybrook Mall is scheduled to open Tuesday. The Macroplaza Mall on Pasadenas north side reopened May 1, and according to spokesperson, Maria Garza, management had left it up to tenants whether to open their doors to customers or not.

James Conner, a manager at the Finish Line in the mall, said his store was as busy as it could be at 25 percent.

Following face mask and 6-foot distancing protocol, customers seemed to glad to be there, Conner said.

But the rest of the mall, he said, was like a ghost town.

Most businesses are still closed, so its been pretty quiet, Conner said.

Champs, another sneaker chain at Macroplaza, continued to offer curbside services while remaining closed to customers until further notice, according to a store employee.

Even with the order allowing them to reopen, business was not as usual for most. After nearly two months without her primary income and without online services, Nancy Romualdo, owner of Andreas Bridal in Pasadena, was relieved to be back at work.

Shes really excited and grateful to be able to open back up, said her daughter, Valeria Romualdo.

May is normally a bustling month for the formal dress shop, with senior prom and summer wedding catalogues crammed with orders and reservations.

Fittings used to be family affairs but for now are limited to two family representatives per senior, bride-to-be or dama (quinceanera). With bottles of sanitizer on hand, Romualdo, her mother and another employee kept their masks on and required guests to follow suit.

As of Saturday afternoon, the shop took had taken in a modest flow of customers, and according to Romualdo, the normally celebratory spirit in her mothers shop was muted.

Its been slowI think people are still nervous and scared, but hopefully itll get better, she said. Theres always a risk, but we know were being careful and doing the right things, so I think were going to be okay.

To Townsend, who hadnt even turned on the open sign yet at the Music Factory, the reopening isnt an invitation to open the floodgates, he said, but to get back to work while evaluating and remaining conscious of the risks. The weekend was a litmus test, he said.

Im know that Im being safe, and I hope we all (businesses) do this safely, Townsend said. We stayed closed to protect the community and now that were opening up, Im still sticking with that same mentality. This reopening needs to happen slowly  and patience is a virtue.
Two prefectures have issued orders to a total of four pachinko parlors still operating despite the ongoing state of emergency to shut their doors, reports Fuji News Network (May 2).

On Friday, the Hyogo and Kanagawa prefectural governments issued aclosure ordersa to three parlors in Kobe City, Hyogo and one more in Yokohama Cityas Hodogaya Ward in Kanagawa.

Pachinko parlors were among the businesses asked to close under Prime Minister Shinzo Abeas declaration of a state of emergency on April 7. The request covered Tokyo, Kanagawa and five other prefectures. The state of emergency was later expanded to include all prefectures.

Despite this, many parlors declined to comply. However, since the crowded parlors pose a high risk for infection of the novel coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19, they were made subject to the recently revised New Influenza Special Measures Act.

Under Article 45 of that law, the names of dissenting businesses can be made public. The tactic aims to shame them into closing.

Earlier this week, the Hyogo government released the names of seven parlors in the prefecture that were still operating. However, the government was unable to confirm that the three parlors in Kobe had shut by Friday morning, which led to the issuing of the closure orders.

A similar scenario unfolded in Kanagawa this week. The prefectural government on Tuesday named six parlors that refused to close. By Friday, there remained the one outlier in Yokohama.

Kanagawa Prefectural Governor Yuji Kuroiwa said, aItas unfortunate that this happened. In order to protect the lives of citizens of the prefecture, I strongly hope that [the parlor] will close from now on as it is not too late.a
Some U.S. politicians are making the COVID-19 pandemic a political show, from repeatedly politicizing the disease and stigmatizing other countries, to the lousy cliche of claiming compensation.

The political farce staged again and again by the U.S., a major country that touts itself as an international leader, is astonishing people around the world.

Even American media outlets outlined the need for joint anti-pandemic efforts from the international society, the mission to save lives, and the trend to conduct anti-pandemic cooperation. However, trying to divert peoples attention, the U.S. politicians showed no conscience, and they shall never be tolerated for undermining international cooperation.

The U.S. side once said openly that it greatly appreciates Chinas efforts and transparency, and the data China shared are helpful for the U.S. efforts against the epidemic. However, Washington just had a U-turn, and some U.S. politicians thought they could escape their due responsibilities by doing so.

According to the best practices for naming new human infectious diseases jointly made by the World Health Organization (WHO) and other international organizations, disease names shall not include countries or regions. However, the U.S. politicians blatantly violated the rules and called the novel coronavirus Chinese virus and Wuhan virus. While the international society is generally lauding Chinas contribution made at huge sacrifice, they are forming cliques for blackmailing.

What they have done is an affront to international law and justice. The terms about sovereign immunity in the international law stipulate that the practices and treasure of a country are not bound to the legislation, jurisdiction or administration of other countries. More importantly, the sudden outbreak of an epidemic is a global public health incidence, which is considered force majeure in legal context. China is the first to report COVID-19 infection, but the origin of the virus needs further science-based studies.

Facts indicate that Chinas containment efforts do not have any causality with the outbreak in the U.S. Even former Counselor on International Law Chimene Keitner in the U.S. Department of State couldnt tolerate the practices of some U.S. politicians. She said any professionals with actual working experience about sovereign immunity would find that the U.S. courts have no jurisdiction as long as they take a look at the titles of the lawsuits.

However, some U.S. politicians did not drop the idea at all to claim compensation, and they resorted to exceptions of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. Lea Brilmayer, professor of international law at Yale Law School called such practice a last-ditch effort to do something to respond to the political situation, and Keitner considered it a total nightmare.

China firstly reported the disease doesnt suggest the virus originated in the country. The source of the virus is a serious scientific issue that can only be studied by scientists and medical experts, not the crazy imagination by certain American politicians. In order to reach political goals, the U.S. politicians illogically fantasized about the virus existence in China, and such groundless assumption driven by politics is not even agreed by authoritative infection control specialists in the U.S. who said such blame goes against facts.

It is globally recognized that China has always responded to the epidemic and shared relevant information in an open, transparent, timely and responsible manner, and the country was hailed by the WHO for its moves high speed and massive scale which are rarely seen in the world. Chinas all-out efforts have established a strong line of defense. The political manipulation by certain Americans who ignore facts and fabricate data has no moral baseline and deviates from humanity.

According to U.S. media, the White House National Security Council instigated U.S. officials to shift the blames to China for the coronavirus, and the Senate Republican campaign arm distributed a 57-page messaging strategy that urged Republican candidates to blame China for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Professor Tom Ginsburg of political science at the University of Chicago saw through the plot, saying the lawsuits against China aim to cover up for the U.S. governments own errors and offer political support for the Republicans in the November election.

Blatantly trampling upon the sovereignty of other countries and damaging the international rule of law with supremacy, the U.S. is standing on the totally opposite side of international justice. It deeply worried Georgetown University professor David Stewart who remarked thatAll those folks looking at China ought to be looking over their shoulder saying, 'Wait a minute, can we be sued?' 

The 1918 flu pandemic originated in the U.S. and caused a huge humanitarian disaster, and who is to blame for that? The first AIDS infection emerged in the U.S. and later the virus spread to over 75 million people around the world and led to 35 million deaths, and who should compensate for the loss? The Wall Street is the origin of the 2008 financial crisis, so when will the U.S. compensate the world for the losses over trillions of dollars?

There are also questions that need to be raised to the U.S. Why are the CT images of the patients of electronic cigarette pneumonia that broke out last August in the U.S. resemble those of the COVID-19 patients? What on earth happened in the bioweapons lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland? When did the earliest COVID-19 infection happen in the U.S., since a COVID-19 patient without travel history to China died on Feb. 6? Why are American scientists silenced for publishing COVID-19 studies in the U.S. which always brags about its freedom of speech? Chinese and European scientists have published multiple genetic sequencing results of the novel coronavirus, and why doesnt the U.S. release its studies as the top power in biogenetic studies? The U.S. politicians must give answers.

WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that countries seeking to politicize the Covid-19 pandemic are playing with fire. If you dont want many more body bags, then you refrain from politicizing it, he said.

U.S. politicians should listen to the sincere advice from the civilized world, as the continuing farce would only lead to fewer supports and self-humiliation.

(Zhong Sheng is a pen name often used by Peoples Daily to express its views on foreign policy.)
MONTREAL - Quebec reported 114 more deaths linked to COVID-19 on Saturday ahead of the province's planned phased reopening set to begin Monday.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 2/5/2020 (626 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MONTREAL - Quebec reported 114 more deaths linked to COVID-19 on Saturday ahead of the province's planned phased reopening set to begin Monday.

The province now has 2,136 recorded deaths since the coronavirus pandemic hit the province.

The Health Department said in a statement there were an additional 1,008 confirmed cases, bringing the number of those infected to 29,656.

On Saturday, 1,738 COIVD-19 patients in the province were in hospital, with 222 of those requiring treatment in intensive care.

The province's political and public health officials did not hold an availability on Saturday, but Premier Francois Legault had warned in his last public briefing Thursday that with more than 4,400 long-term care and seniors' homes residents infected with the novel coronavirus, the number of deaths would continue to rise.

About 80 per cent of the province's deaths have occurred mainly in long-term care residences and seniors' homes.

"Obviously, we will do everything to try to save as much as possible, but at some point we have to be realistic," Legault said. "It is certain that there will continue to be many deaths, unfortunately, in the coming days and weeks."

Montreal and the surrounding region has been the epicentre of the province's COVID-19 cases and deaths. Of the number of confirmed cases, 14,559 cases are in Montreal, which has also accounted for 1,312 of the province's deaths  about 61 per cent.

The City of Montreal announced Saturday it was extending a state of health emergency, in place since March 27, until May 5.

Quebec has announced plans to gradually reopen daycares, elementary schools, retail businesses, construction and manufacturing gradually during the month of May  all with physical distancing rules in effect.

The province announced plans Friday to ramp up testing to roughly 14,000 tests per day  100,000 tests per week  in anticipation of the gradual resumption of activities.

Authorities are staggering opening dates between the rest of the province and hard-hit greater Montreal.

Quebec aims to open retail stores outside Montreal on Monday while those in the greater Montreal region are to reopen May 11, as long as they have their own dedicated entrance.

Malls will remain closed and most stores will close Sundays in May with the exception of convenience stores, pharmacies, gas stations, restaurant take-out counters and grocery deliveries.

The government has targeted May 11 as reopening day for elementary schools and daycares outside greater Montreal, with those in the city and surrounding area to open on May 19.

Legault has said student attendance won't be mandatory and the province has ordered high schools, junior colleges and universities are to remain closed until September.

The construction industry is to completely start up May 11, while manufacturing companies are to resume operations on that date with initial limits on the total number of employees who can work per shift.

Legault has said that public health authorities will keep close tabs on the rates of infection and won't hesitate to order businesses closed should they lose control of the contagion.

Roughly 500,000 of the 1.2 million Quebecers who lost their jobs will be able to start working again due to the measures.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 2, 2020.
A 78-year-old murderer who compared his prison wing to a 'holiday camp' and says he doesn't want to leave because he'll be lonely could next month be freed - 34 years after he was first eligible for release.

Thomas Fairfax was sentenced in 1968, under his original name Roger Payne, to a minimum of 15 years for the murder of 20-year-old newlywed Claire Josephs, who was found with her throat cut in her flat in Bromley, south London.

After spending 49 years behind bars The Parole Board will hold a private hearing on June 17 to decide whether he should now be released.

But Fairfax told The Sunday Times he has built a life in prison and doesn't want to leave. 'I just want to be forgotten,' he said. 'The wing I am on is the nearest thing to a holiday camp you can get in a prison  I dont imagine I could replicate it outside.'

The list of activities that keep him occupied include Scrabble, Xbox and a PlayStation. He also owns the complete works of Beethoven on 85 CDs.

Thomas Fairfax was sentenced in 1968, under his original name Roger Payne, to a minimum of 15 years for the murder of 20-year-old newlywed Claire Josephs, who was found with her throat cut in her flat in Bromley, south London. Pictured at the time of the murder

'Id never be lonely here. I have turned my back on the outside world,' he added during an telephone interview from HMP Oakwood in Wolverhampton.

Fairfax, then 26, was one of the first murderers to be convicted solely on forensic evidence when neither a motive or a witness could be found.

More than 60 fibres matching the dress Claire was wearing were found on his clothes and a spot of blood matching Claire's rare blood type was found in his car, but Fairfax insisted he had been framed by investigating police.

Despite being eligible for release in 1983 Fairfax refused to admit to the crime and was kept in jail. His release has continued to be denied during subsequent hearings.

Lawyer Simon Creighton, who has co-authored textbooks on prison law and parole, revealed Fairfax was a victim of evolving attitudes to incarceration.

When he was recommended for release again in 1991, his eighth parole hearing, it was again denied by the Home Office for unknown reasons.

By 2007 he was so frustrated he drew up an annually renewable waiver so he didn't have go to to any more parole hearings.

The former public schoolboy was twice referred to Leyhill Open Prison in Gloucestershire and spent three years on the run after failing to return after day release.

More than 60 fibres matching the dress Claire (pictured) was wearing were found on his clothes and a spot of blood matching Claire's rare blood type was found in his car, but Fairfax insisted he had been framed by investigating police.

Fairfax's mother split from his 'tyrannical' father, an accountant, when he was eight years old.

They went to live with his mother's parents and when his grandfather died Fairfax went to King Edward's School in Witley, Surrey, when he got a free place for boys from one-parent families.

After school he got a job in insurance and worked behind a bar three evenings a week to save up for his three-bedroom semi-detached home in the village of Harrietsham, Kent.

By the time of his arrest he was a bank clerk who had been married for two years. His victim Claire was his wife's friend.

So when he absconded from Leyhill Open Prison, Fairfax had two decades-worth of rental income from his Kent home.

He moved just 10 miles away from the prison, across the River Severn, to the village of Lydney, where he read at the Anglican church, St Mary's, and attended meetings of the Conservative Association.

At one point he was even tipped to become an MP, but had to turn it down because it would be 'too high profile'.

While there he met Ruth Ellis, ten years his senior, who left her unhappy marriage to move in with him.

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When he was arrested on his 53rd birthday in 1994 she stood by him and they spoke every day while he was in prison. She's now 90 and suffers from Alzheimer's.

Fairfax was such a low threat the Home Office issues a media statement that he was 'no risk to the public' when he first absconded.

Over his 49 years behind bars he has spent time in 23 prisons and even went through a Sex Offenders' Treatment Programme, despite there being no known sexual element to the murder.

Mary Lovell and her husband Geoffrey Watts were close friends with Fairfax. Ms Lovell described him as a 'real friend'.

Jane Jewson, who had hired Fairfax at Creative Glass, a company she ran on the outskirts of Bristol, while he was in the open prison, said he was 'always very gentlemanly'.

Fairfax now suffers from osteoarthritis, the most common form of arthritis, after cancer treatment and a series of minor strokes.

Inside HMP Oakwood his good behaviour means his life now compares favourably with a care home.

The National Probation Service said prisoners' personal preferences were not important.

'Legislation dictates that a Parole Board decision is solely focused on whether a prisoner would represent a significant risk to the public after release and whether their risk can be safely managed in the community,' they added.

'The Parole Board will take into account a prisoner's own thoughts and views. However, if the prisoner satisfies the statutory test, the panel will make a direction for his release, which it is compelled to do by law.'

A retired solicitor who represented Fairfax once sent 'extremely snotty letter' to the Home Office to say the taxpayer was paying for the upkeep of someone who would be able to support themselves.
The government is exerting extraordinary pressure on the independent Election Commission to hold parliamentary elections as soon as possible.





By a group of 22 independent professionals who wish to remain anonymous to avoid reprisals both from the Government and the Army. While we do not vouch for its accuracy, it is being published because of its importance and relevance - Editors













1. Health Response





(i) Testing and Morbidity

Despite mounting pressure from public health experts, Sri Lankas pace of COVID-19 testing is one of the lowest of any country with an active outbreak. From the onset of the pandemic, health officials who called for widespread testing were overruled at a political level, and the government only permitted the testing of selected people who were in Quarantine centres. Until 17th April, the maximum number of daily tests was capped at 220 and the criteria for testing a suspected patient remained a closely guarded secret marred by political objectives. Up to now, Sri Lanka has conducted 0.05 tests per 1,000 residents, compared to 0.19 in Indonesia, 0.45 in India, 6.87 in the Maldives and 11.55 in South Korea. As a result of the failure to ramp up testing, independent public health experts have deemed the month long island-wide curfew in Sri Lanka a failure, despite the massive economic damage it has caused. No other country that locked down for over four weeks has failed to flatten the curve of new infections.





Of the 49,800 people sent to quarantine, only 8,110 of them have been tested for COVID 19. Sri Lankan health officials were overruled by the government when they sought to publicize data about national testing as other countries have done. One reason for the secrecy is that authorities regularly test and re-test individuals who come into close contact with the President. For example, On 13th April, the health authorities tested 120 people, of whom 50 were Presidential Secretariat staff, none of whom were positive. This is how the government announced that no new cases were found on that day. On the 24th, after a spike in caseload, 245 government employees based at Temple Trees, the office of the Prime Minister, were hurriedly sent for testing. None tested positive.





By 20th April, due to mounting pressure from the health services, their trade unions and experts, the Government permitted authorities to test up to 440 people per day, still far below the national PCR testing capacity of up to 2,000 tests per day. Due to the sizable increase in testing capacity, the number of known cases has almost doubled since 13th April. Under intense public scrutiny, the government reluctantly agreed to increase the daily test to above 1,100 but the criteria for testing remains unclear. The first day over 700 tests were carried out, 53 patients were diagnosed, a 7.6% positive rate. Health officials worldwide concur that adequate testing will yield a 1% positive rate. Defence officials and the Presidents Office, who regularly overrule health officials, have even refused to sanction the mandatory testing of all patients admitted to hospital Intensive Care Units (ICUs).





(ii) Morbidity

The government has stated that there have been only seven fatalities to date from Covid-19. Health officials are widely agreed that this number is a gross underestimate, as they have been forbidden from conducting Covid-19 tests on any person suspected to have died from the virus. Several persons who have died from ailments ranging from respiratory illness to heart disease have been forcibly cremated without coroners or Judicial Medical Officers being permitted to conduct Covid-19 tests on the remains.

One striking case was the death of a 35-year old navy officer on Saturday. Lieutenant Commander Sunil Dodamwala was based in the Welisara Navy Camp, where over 180 personnel have tested positive for Covid-19. Military officials announced that Dodamwala had tested negative for Covid-19, and claimed that he had died of rat fever (leptospirosis), while undergoing treatment at the Navy General Hospital.





However, local and international medical experts are widely agreed that rat fever is a non-fatal disease when treated in hospital. Medical professionals familiar with the case report that the officers Bed Head Ticket, at page one, and pages five through eight, indicated Covid-19 symptoms such as shortness in breathing and coughing. They were thus alarmed that the navy officers body was cremated under military supervision without following the procedure mandated by the Criminal Procedure Code for conducting a post-mortem examination in the case of a sudden death, which would have included a PCR Covid-19 test.





The Covid-19 test apparently used on the officer was one of the rapid testing kits gifted to the government from China. Officials in countries including the United States, United Kingdom and India have halted use of similar kits for reasons ranging from bacterial contamination to an accuracy rate of only 5%. Sri Lankan health officials have raised concerns about faulty reagents in the Chinese kits but have been instructed by Defence Ministry officials to trust the Chinese kits without quality assurance testing to avoid angering China.





The navy personnel who tested positive for Covid-19 were involved in cordon operations, distributing financial relief packages to people and patient treatment, without any protocols in place for their protection. However, the government has denied that they were engaged in Covid-19 relief efforts and claims that they contracted the virus while going after a group of drug addicts. Senior medical officers had urged the defence ministry to equip military personnel engaging with the public with personal protective equipment but were rebuffed. Instead, the soldiers were forced to engage with patients and civilians whilst armed with automatic weapons, which, through a lack of disinfecting protocols at the armoury, became a major vector for the virus. Medical officers attached to quarantines centres fear that soldiers at the centres may have also been exposed to Covid-19, especially during the last two weeks. The Task Force headed by the Army Commander has prioritised ensuring that military personnel and police officers are heavy armed, rather than provided with and trained on the use of personal protective equipment.





The Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA), which has long been a staunch political ally essential to Gotabaya Rajapakses political rise and electoral success, has been at loggerheads with the government as they found themselves sidelined. The GMOA was once notorious for leveraging the political power of doctors to wage crippling healthcare strikes in support of Rajapakse family political and foreign policy objectives, has slowly found their traditional allies turning against them. The Derana and Hiru TV stations, once safe spaces for the GMOA, have suddenly become instrumental in regularly attacking the association.





When a letter leaked on social media signed by a health official seeking 1,000 body bags from the ICRC, the government first tried to denounce it as a fake, telling reporters that the signature was forged. But extremely senior leaders were furious when the signatory of the letter, an Assistant Secretary at the Health Ministry, confirmed its authenticity to journalists who broke the story. The official was instructed to complain to the police about the leak, and the CID is now investigating several health ministry officials suspected of colluding with journalists. Meanwhile, the Directorate of Military Intelligence has begun surveillance on two journalists, an editor and senior print media executive who they claim published the story to cause public panic.





Health officials told AIP that the request for body bags was extremely unusual, as they are usually used by the military, in mass casualty events, or in combatting diseases like Ebola where corpses themselves are highly contagious. No other country has mandated the use of body bags during the Covid-19 pandemic, nor is such a step recommended by the WHO. The move is seen as part of the governments attempt to artificially suppress the number of deaths attributed to Covid-19 by preventing testing or post-mortem examinations of deceased persons.





(iii) Racial Profiling, inciting racial hatred and discrimination against the poor

The government continues to racially profile Covid-19 patients and their families using two independent systems. (i) digital files maintained by the intelligence agencies and (i) health records maintained at District level collected from multiple sources including local government officials (grama niladharis). The data is shared by the security agencies with selected media outlets and politicians engaged in xenophobic propaganda for the government.





Incitement to racial hatred is carefully architected to condemn the minorities in a subtle manner, blaming monitories for the outbreak of the virus. Some examples follow:





Tamil Pastor Dr. Rev. Paul Satkunarajah (Philadelphia Church, migrated to Europe in 1982) held a service on 15th March in Ariyalia Jaffna and after he went to Switzerland, developed COVID 19 symptoms. Health authorities traced and quarantined over 200 people associated with the service. The vernacular media continue to refer to the suspected patients as Tamils who are aligned with foreign preachers.

Beruwala Divisional Secretariat, in Kalutara District, is 38% Muslim and generally regarded as a Muslim dominant area. Any suspected Covid-19 patients or those who are quarantined in Kalutara District are referred to as Beruwala people. A health officer selected by Derana TV and the station anchor Chatura Alwis said two patients found from Beruwala have deprived Sri Lanka of enjoying Sinhala New Year. When another village, Pavinila, 19 km from Beruwala, was locked down, it was again reported as Beruwala. The media reports, based on military sources, states Thus, Pannila becomes the fourth village to be isolated for 14 days quarantine after Kadayankulum in Puttalam, Atulugama in Kalutara and Kolombugahawatta in Akurana".

The government is careful not to mention the religion or ethnicity of Sinhalese or Buddhist persons contracting the virus. Over 50 patients were detected in Colombo Central (Atluthkade / Maradana / Bandaranayakapura / Kotahena area) as a result of a Sinhala family returning to Sri Lanka from India in mid-March after a Buddhist Pilgrimage. They were not tested at Airport nor has the mother with symptoms disclosed the symptoms to any authority. Government aligned media vilified her and referred to her as a returnee from India, implying that these people were Tamil, without mention of the pilgrimage.

Civil society and human rights groups have not raised objections to the demeaning treatment of the poor people when they are forcibly taken into quarantine. This was observed in Pettah (Colombo 11 and Dematagoda) where impoverished males were partly undressed and forcibly sprayed down with disinfectant in full view of media personnel taking pictures and video recording. In the shanties of Bandaranayake Mawatha, the people were assaulted by military and police while being lined up at night.





Apart from the direct contacts, there no rational checks and balances in forcing people into quarantine. In Akurana, Beruwala and Aluthkade, people were rounded up and sent to quarantine for two weeks despite no physical contact with any known cases. None of these persons tested positive. 141 people sent for quarantine in the second week of April from Akurana came negative. People from minority communities are taken for quarantine in a cordon operation by the military and other officials, who are accompanied by state media and journalists from Hiru and Derana.





One of the most bizarre initiatives taken by defence officials in response to the pandemic is the mobile telephone contact tracing program. Intelligence officials obtain the mobile telephone usage and location records of confirmed patients without obtaining a judicial order and use this information to identify high risk persons and areas to be sent into quarantine. As a rule, no one will use their mobile telephone to contact someone unless they are out of earshot. Several phone calls or text messages between persons would not result in the spread of Covid-19. This method has also been used to select tower areas associated with Muslim communities to be sent into mass quarantine.





On 26th April, officers of the 2nd Military Intelligence Corps (2 MIC) received instructions from the Defence Ministry to scrutinise all Right to Information Requests filed by citizens with public authorities seeking information on the Covid-19 crisis. They have been asked to investigate these persons in search of links to foreign funded NGOs and journalists perceived to be critical of the government. Some of the officers given this task were once part of the 2 MIC unit that was arrested in 2017 for their involvement in the abduction and murder of several journalists in Jaffna and Colombo from 2007 to 2009. The units leader was nominated for a diplomatic posting by then Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapakse.





(iv) Social Stigma - health staff, patients and their families

Frontline healthcare workers have fallen victim to the ignorance and fearmongering around Covid-19 that is fuelled by the media. Unlike in other countries where societies have banded around healthcare workers, the stigma associated with the virus in Sri Lanka has led to over 800 cases of nurses and other medical staff being forced by landlords to vacate their boarding houses and are facing harsh living conditions without any government support or sympathy from the media. Patients and their families have found themselves shunned by society.





When the military and police cordoned off Bandaranayaka Mawatha, which is populated by low income people in shanties, many occupants were assaulted with sticks and were forced to strip naked. They were subject to degrading verbal abuses by the police and military in the presence of health officials who watched helplessly. Despite health officials informing several journalists about the incident, no media organisation reported the incident, fearing reprisals due to the governments arrest of critics. Derana and Hiru TV generally accompanied the Military and Health Authorities to photograph and film the houses of the patients and process of quarantine. It was only after the detection of over 180 Navy personnel as Covid-19 patients that the government directed the media to respect patient privacy and not to film the houses of the patients.





Those critical of the government response have also found themselves shut out of the mainstream press. For example, former Health Minister Dr. Rajitha Senaratne hosted a press conference last week in which he raised many questions about the government response to Covid-19 in contrast to the Sri Lankan practice in previous international health operations and the ongoing crisis around availability of pharmaceutical drugs in Sri Lanka. Despite being well attended by journalists, the event received almost no coverage.





Over 43,000 local migrant workers from other provinces and 11,500 migrant workers from India, Bangaladesh and China are trapped in Colombo district without any income or access to food. The curfew has made them more vulnerable than others. Domestic migrant workers have not received any essential items from the government nor is there any relief granted to protect them nor to provide transport back to their homes. Foreign migrant workers are looked after by their employers, whist special ration packages are given by the government.





2. Continuous political meetings and strategic engagements under the guise of corona deterrence





The SLPP, under the leadership of the President, Prime Minister, Basil Rajapakse and Dallas Alahapperuma are continuing their strategic political meetings with the participation of public servants and their party activists through out the country. Some of the meetings are held in government bungalows and facilities with hundreds of activists planning and managing house-to-house campaign in tandem with government funded relief distribution.





The government did not have any proper plans to distribute essential food items until Basil Rajapakse was appointed to head the Task Force on Economic Revival and Poverty Eradication. This committee has not drawn any strategic plans to revive the economy but is focused on the election. Basil Rajapakse activated the UPFA (now SLPP) electoral network, with the backing of the state machinery. The organisers and candidates, who are leading the distribution process, are insisting on the Candidate Number, prior to the next round of distribution of essential items among the voters. Basil Rajapakse is an accused in two ongoing criminal trials. One involves the embezzling of Rs 3 billion in public funds. In the other, he is accused of using government funds and facilities to support the presidential election campaign of Mahinda Rajapakse in January 2015.





3. Role of Clergy

Significant elements of the Buddhist clergy, including a group of over 4,000 temples that campaigned for the Gotabaya Rajapakse presidency, have called upon the public to support the patriotic government at any cost, even if it means their starvation given the food shortages that have arisen out of the curfew. Other than echoing the Presidents objections to summoning Parliament, and helicopter drops of holy water to exorcise Covid-19 from Sri Lanka, the Buddhist clergy has not been seen deploying their substantial wealth in assisting the population with food and medicine shortages. Some of the Buddhist monks have used the pandemic to seek criminal prosecution of anyone speaking critically of the government. The same monks who spoke against the reconvening of Parliament have also asked the President to take immediate action to stop Muslims from intentionally spreading Covid-19.





The Archbishop of Colombo, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, who has long been a close political ally of the Rajapakse family, has thrown his weight behind the government. Previous AIP reports covered his attempts to convince his followers that the US government was responsible for deliberately sparking the Covid-19 pandemic. These allegations are in lockstep with Chinese government propaganda. As it became certain that any blame lay at the feet of the Chinese government, his tone changed. Cardinal Ranjiths new posture is that if indeed Covid-19 emanated from a laboratory in China, this was not a malicious act, but an unfortunate side effect of well-intentioned researchers trying to make the world a better place.





The Cardinal is a staunch supporter of President Rajapakse and the military, having issued several statements condemning attempts to seek justice for war crimes allegedly committed by the military, including even the abduction and murder of Christian youth. While stating publicly that he forgives the suicide bombers themselves, he has welcomed the military takeover of investigations into the 2019 Easter bombings and supported the governments use of the probe to persecute police officers as well as Muslims who were identified as witnesses by prosecutors. Despite the church leaders in several parts of the country holding prayers for the victims of Covid-19 and health workers, he has resisted calls to deploy church resources towards relief effort. One senior catholic clergyman told AIP that Cardinal feels that such efforts would undermine the public perception that the government and military alone can handle the crisis.





4. Criminal Investigations and the Arrest of Lawyer Hisbullah

The senior and experienced police officers who were conducting investigations into the Easter attack have been removed by the President and replaced with police officers who had been removed from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) on corruption charges, and those with connections to the President and military. The new CID Director, SSP Tilakaratne, is a bodyguard by training, who have never conducted or supervised a criminal investigation, but is a former security guard for the Rajapakse family.





Another police officer returned to the CID is ASP Lamahewa. This officer was removed from the CID in 2015 at the request of then Solicitor General (current Attorney General) Dappula de Livera, following corrupt efforts to sabotage an investigation involving thousands of firearms illegally stored in a floating armoury. One of Lamahewas brothers is a brigadier in the army. Another is facing charges before a trial-at-bar for the 2012 summary execution of inmates at the Welikada prison in 2012. ASP Lamahewa has been placed in charge of the Homicide Branch of the CID, whose officers will be called upon to testify against his brother on murder charges in the ongoing trial.





Tilakaratne, Lamahewa and other officers have transformed the CID into a hotbed of political witch hunts. Three opposition parliamentarians have so far been arrested, on charges ranging from organising a press conference and alleged involvement in a 2016 traffic accident to possession of a lawfully issued firearm. The brother of Muslim MP Rishard Bathiudeen has also been arrested on alleged suspicion of involvement in the Easter bombings, and police issued a politically charged statement bizarrely identifying his relationship to his brother.





Former CID Director Shani Abeysekara was interdicted in January after telephone recordings emerged of him discussing investigations with an MP. The police have launched over a dozen investigations into the officers conduct, seeking to charge him with everything from overusing his official vehicle and relinquishing more rounds of ammunition than he had been issued, to being a conspirator in the Easter terror attacks. Yet after three months of furious probing, Abeysekara remains interdicted despite none of the allegations against him being proven.





The former CID Director is also a critical prosecution witness in the trial of the conspirators in the Easter Attack. After prosecutors warned that a witch hunt against Abeysekara and Muslim witnesses would make a trial of the perpetrators impossible, the Defence Ministry instructed the police to no longer report on the probe to the Attorney Generals Department and to instead seek guidance on whom to arrest from Chief of National Intelligence, General Jagath Alwis.





Under instructions from General Alwis and intelligence officers, the CID proceeded to arrest several persons including those identified by the Attorney General as prosecution witnesses, alleging that these persons, including the Muslim man who sold a bus ticket to one of the bombers, were the true masterminds of the Easter attacks. A critical part of the propaganda campaign is the charge that these new suspects were protected by conspirators such as SSP Abeysekara and his CID officers, who in reality apprehended the real terrorists within six days of the attacks, and are being persecuted for having investigated the abductions and murders involving military officers.





The day after United Nations OHCHR criticized Sri Lankas decision to forcibly cremate Muslims who are suspected to have died from Covid-19, the CID arrested several prominent Muslims who had vocally criticized the decision to forcibly cremate victims. According to the police the arrests were sparked by the sudden discovery of evidence that they were complicit in last years Easter Sunday terrorist attacks. One of those arrested was lawyer and former State Counsel Hejaaz Hizbullah, whose tweets condemning forcible cremation have been deleted since his arrest.





In the two weeks since his arrest, Hisbullah has not been provided access to counsel, been produced before a judge, or told under what provision of what law his arrest has been made, all violations of his fundamental rights. While the move has met with widespread international condemnation including from the International Commission of Jurists, local organisations have been largely silent. When several prominent lawyers contacted Bar Association President Kalinga Indatissa on Hisbullahs behalf, Indatissa told them the arrest had been personally authorised by President Gotabaya Rajapakse. The Bar Association wrote to the Inspector General of Police cordially requesting that the lawyers rights be protected, but has taken no further action on his behalf.





Mr. Hisbullah, a former State Counsel now in private practice is a prominent lawyer who had once appeared for two of the Easter suicide bombers in civil matters in connection to business transactions. His legal case files relating to the Easter Bomb suspect Mr. Mohomed Yusuf Mohomed Ibrahim, No. DLM 05/10 and DSP 236/09, were also seized by the CID. This is the first time a lawyer who had represented a terror suspect has been arrested in Sri Lanka, and that allegedly for appearing for terror suspects prior to their known involvement in illegal activity. At no point during the separatist war against the Tamil Tiger terrorists did authorities ever arrest any lawyer who appeared for terror suspects in courts, even in connection with the terrorist acts themselves.





5. Election

The government is exerting extraordinary pressure on the independent Election Commission to hold parliamentary elections as soon as possible. The commission has also been asked by the President to expedite the assignment of candidate numbers so that these numbers can be used when distributing food and financial relief using government funds. However, the Election Commission has fixed the election for 20th June, and stated that this decision will be reviewed next week.





The fact that Sri Lanka will have been without a Parliament for three months on 3rd June, and may remain without a Parliament until elections can be held, has made it inevitable that a constitutional crisis will further compound the prevailing health and economic crises. The President has refused to resummon the old Parliament under any circumstances, insistent that he is entitled to govern either under a Parliament elected on his watch, or under no Parliament at all.





On top of the numerous constitutional and legal questions that have already been raised, such as the inability to enforce a curfew or spend money without parliamentary approval, the Presidents advisors have warned him that without a comfortable parliamentary majority, the government risks being held accountable by opposition legislators, who may also undo the governments takeover of the functions of the independent commissions such as the police commission and public service commission.





The government made several hasty moves to justify holding an election before 2nd June, including announcing against the advice of Health Ministry experts that schools and universities would be reopened in May, and forcibly gagging the Director-General of Health Services from recommending to the Election Commission that it is unsafe to hold an election in Sri Lanka. These moves have come to naught with the number of Covid-19 cases in Sri Lanka having almost doubled since the announcement of the 20th June election date.





6. Foreign Relations and Repatriation

After substantial lobbying, the government agreed to repatriate a limited number of Sri Lankans stranded abroad including a few students. However, the states priority is bringing back military personnel who were undergoing training abroad. Symbolically, some Sri Lankan students from India, Nepal, Bangaladesh, Pakistan are Australia are being brought home. A large number of military personnel who were stranded in Pakistan have also been returned to Sri Lanka. Government has taken a policy decision not to repatriate migrant workers from the Gulf countries.





The Foreign Ministry remains sidelined and excluded from the committees and task forces on Covid 19. Ministry Secretary Ariyasinha has been stripped of influence and is regularly overruled on ministry affairs by retired Navy Commander Admiral Professor Jayanath Colombage, who is serving as the Additional Secretary on International Relations to the President. To push him out, the Secretary has been offered a diplomatic position in a prominent country where members of his family reside.





Meanwhile, the foreign ministry is preparing nominations for Heads of Missions under strict supervision of the President. Foreign Ministry officials have warned the government against moves to seek diplomatic postings for military officers implicated in the abduction and murder of journalists, such as Colonel Shammi Kumararatne, who is on trial for the 2010 murder of Prageeth Eknaligoda, and Major Prabath Bulathwatte, who is the prime suspect in the 2008 abduction of Keith Noyahr and 2009 murder of Lasantha Wickrematunge. Career diplomats pointed out to that such moves could lead to international backlash and diplomatic embarrassment, however they have been overruled by Admiral Colombage, who has ordered the priority appointments of several military officer and Defence Ministry personnel, as well as a reshuffling of the existing mission head positions.





7. Exposure of Widespread Media Bias

With the exception of the Maharaja Television Network and a handful of newspapers such as the Daily FT, the mainstream media continues to play a subservient role to the government, with many prominent outlets openly inciting ethnic and religious divisions. These divisions are further amplified by social media campaigns by officials and groups connected to the President calling for the abolition of Parliament and for military rule.





No media organisation has challenged the coordinated disinformation campaigns that have been initiated and propagated by the government to politically capitalise on the pandemic, while some journalists, like Deranas Chathura Alwis and the Sunday Times Iqbal Athas, have found themselves embroiled in scandals involving propaganda operations. Alwis has not been censored by his employer or any media organisation for calling for Muslims to learn a lesson for spreading Covid-10. Athas, who was exposed for authoring a mudslinging campaign against a personal rival, has proudly donned the label of the governments hitman for the purpose of defending the government from what he calls unfair criticism.





The news editor of the daily Island newspaper, Shavindra Ferdinandas, has also made his bias an allegiance clear with a number of opinionated and racially charged articles he has authored on nationalist websites, including a false allegation that attorney Hisbullah and Minister Bathiudeens brother were arrested together in Puttalam on 14th April.
Despite the current crisis in the petroleum sector occasioned by a slide in crude oil prices, industry experts and policy analysts foresee that there will be stabilisation of crude oil price.

They however warn stridently that Nigeria must seize the opportunity of the crisis to undertake long-awaited reforms of the sector and a diversification of the economy.

These points, among others, were the resolutions from the maiden webinar series on Post COVID-19 Petroleum Agenda for Nigeria (PoCoPAN) hosted by OrderPaper Nigeria on April 27.

The event tagged COVID-19 Opportunity for Petroleum Reforms in Nigeria was conveyed to aggregate thoughts on the petroleum sector crisis and how Nigeria can benefit from the misfortune of COVID-19.

It featured two highly rated guest speakers  Joe Nwakwue (petroleum industry expert and former government energy advisor) and Tope Fasua (economist and public policy analyst)  and was organised in collaboration with Publish What You Pay Nigeria and DotCivics.

In an outcome document signed by Oke Epia, Executive Director, OrderPaper Nigeria, and Convener, PoCoPAN, the experts noted that the crude oil price stabilisation will occur once the global economy picks up.

Participants of the event were from the petroleum industry, the legislature, the academia, civil society organisations, and the media, among others.

Resolutions from the event read: Crude oil price would eventually stabilize as global economy gradually picks up (this is due to the fact that price volatility is an inherent characteristic of the Oil and Gas industry).

There is however, a pervasive concern that the nation may not learn from this present experience based on patterns deduced from previous oil price crash scenarios.

The present pandemic-induced economic crisis occasioned by the fall in crude oil price is as a result of obsolete and inappropriate policies that regulate the petroleum industry; lack of will by government to use resources from Oil and Gas to facilitate development of industry value chain & other sectors of the economy; over-dependence on foreign technology; and exportation of raw materials rather than refined products.

Funding of the 2020 national budget in the current crisis is a huge challenge attributed to the fact that Nigeria runs a petro-dollar economy (53% revenue of 2019 budget was provided by foreign exchange from Oil and Gas industry).

The countrys Oil and Gas industry has not witnessed new exploration in the last decade as critical stakeholders such as investors, host communities and the government remain unsatisfied with the current path the industry threads.

Diversification and re-invention of the economy from a sole petro-dollar source is highly imperative to insulate the country from the effects of future price volatilities.

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The document further reads: Critical decisions have to be made to determine models that are most suited for efficient running of the nations Oil Gas industry: Joint Ventures (JVs) and Production Sharing Contracts (PSCs) need to be re-evaluated so as to determine if the current arrangements are providing maximum benefits for the country. (A potential capacity of Oil and Gas business to generate between 12 and 15 trillion naira per annum was highlighted).

Revenue from Oil and Gas operations is needed to facilitate the countrys emergence from the Dutch disease hence, it was recommended that Reserve to Production (R/P) ratio should be increased, gas assets developed and the midstream sector enhanced in a string of industry diversification that will impact the economy in general.

The petrol subsidy regime strongly impedes development of the industry and cobbles the participation of private investors and should therefore be abrogated to allow for deregulation of the downstream sector.

The economic crisis presented by COVID-19 era is an opportunity to rethink and re-evaluate the modus operandi of the Oil and Gas sector and the nations economy at large. Opportunities presented in the development of local technology (artisanal refining for instance), deep focus on gas exploration, development of indigenous human capital in critical sectors of the economy, and enactment of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) should not be lost.

The thought leaders urged that the COVID-19 pandemic should present a strong need for increased citizen engagements on transparency and accountability  holding governments feet to fire  both on the management of the petroleum sector specifically and the nations public finance generally.
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Linkedin Dyaning Pangestika (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sun, May 3, 2020 09:31 625 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd58f58e 1 SE Asia COVID-19,ASEAN,AICHR,Southeast-Asia,coronavirus,virus-corona,human-rights,pandemic,outbreak Free

The ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) has called on member states to integrate human rights values into their responses to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.

In a statement issued on Friday, the ASEAN human rights body emphasized the importance of responding to the pandemic humanely. The statement highlighted the human rights aspects of ASEAN's collective response to COVID-19  a topic not mentioned in the statement from ASEAN leadership issued in mid-April.

"We expect all ASEAN sectoral bodies and entities, as well as member states, to integrate human rights values and the principles of non-discrimination, participation and inclusion into their responses to the crisis," the AICHR wrote in the statement.

Read also: Leaders support establishment of ASEAN COVID-19 response fund

Yuyun Wahyuningrum, Indonesias representative to the AICHR, previously expressed concern about Malaysian authorities denial of entry to a boat carrying about 200 Rohingya because of fears that the undocumented migrants would spread COVID-19 in the country.

Yuyun argued that ASEAN member states should show compassion during the pandemic and should not be afraid of Rohingya people in desperate need of assistance, as the bloc had already established COVID-19 health protocols.

The commission highlighted Article 29 of the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (AHRD), which states that every person has the right to the highest attainable standard of health, basic and affordable health services, as well as access to medical facilities.

"Measures taken to protect public health must ensure that all persons at risk [of catching] or infected by COVID-19, including women, children, the elderly, persons with disabilities, migrant workers and vulnerable groups, can access essential health care services," the AICHR stated in the press release.

Johns Hopkins University data showed on Saturday that there were more than 46,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Southeast Asia. Singapore has recorded the most cases of any Southeast Asian country, with about 17,500 cases, followed by Indonesia with nearly 11,000 confirmed cases. (dis)
Open source

Over the past day, May 2, at the checkpoints on the state border, employees of the State Border Service checked about 15,000 people for entry and exit. More than 550 of them returned to Ukraine with special flights. During temperature screening, no signs of disease were found, the State Border Service reports.

Passengers, who arrived on May 1 at Boryspil airport by the evacuation flights, were checked as well. In general, the border guards of the Kyiv Separate Checkpoint have issued four special passenger flights from New York (USA), Lisbon (Portugal), Paris (France), and Zurich (Switzerland).

More than 550 passengers arrived in Ukraine with these airplanes. Among the arrivals, no people with fever or complaints of symptoms of acute respiratory viral infections were found. Passengers of these flights chose the quarantined restrictions using the application Diy Udoma. After checking the registration service in the application, these officers the persons went to a two-week self-isolation at the addresses indicated by them," the statement said.

The State Border Service noted that over the past day no violators of self-isolation at the border were found. Violation of the quarantine rules is fined with $600.

As we reported before, the aircraft of Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) landed at Boryspil Airport: more than two hundred Ukrainians returned to their homeland from the United States
By PTI

KOLKATA: Amid the raging controversy over the actual number of COVID-19 fatalities in Bengal and the need for a committee to audit them, the state government has altered the panel's mandate and it will now not certify whether a patient died due to coronavirus or a pre-existing ailment, a senior member of the team said on Sunday.

He said now the doctors treating COVID-19 patients will certify whether they have died of the viral disease or any other concurrent illness.

The panel formed by the state government on April 3 was in the eye of a political storm, with opposition parties calling it a government's tool to "fudge" the COVID-19 data related to the number of deaths and afflictions.

The West Bengal government had acknowledged on Thursday that 105 Covid-19 positive patients had died in the state till then but insisted the actual death toll from the disease was only 33.

Citing the audit committee findings, Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha had said 72 of the 105 deaths occurred due to severe comorbidities (pre-existing diseases) and that Covid-19 was only incidental in those cases.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the panel member said the committee will now collect random samples from hospitals treating infected patients and study them to find out more about the disease.

"Doctors will follow the recommendations of the audit panel and certify whether a death was because of the coronavirus infection or comorbidities. The experts committee will no longer audit the deaths. It will look into the peculiar cases of COVID-19," he told PTI.

He said the panel had not received any fresh samples since it submitted its report on the 105 deaths.

According to the committee member, the principal objective of the panel was to study the death of COVID-19 patients and find out more about the character of the virus.

"There are several questions in the mind of the common people about the disease. As there is no study or database in this regard, the government wanted set up a treatment and containment protocol to understand the symptoms. And how that kept changing from the preliminary to the aggravated stage."

"And in case of deaths, how many days did the virus take to reach that stage when the infected person finally succumbs," he said.

The panel, he said, has formed a list of dos and don'ts for medical practitioners treating novel coronavirus cases and certifying deaths.

"We analysed, researched and formed a list of recommendations for the doctors to treat and certify deaths because of COVID-19," the member said.

The committee will henceforth collect samples from hospitals for examination, and will give necessary suggestions to the health department if there are new findings.

"This panel will not certify any coronavirus-related death. We will now go for random collection of samples from hospitals. In case of any new or peculiar finding, we will inform the state health department and make our recommendations," he said.

The audit committee had earlier noted that there was scope for improvement in medical record-keeping at COVID-19 hospitals, following which Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha said the health department would soon issue an advisory.

"During our research we found that the death certificates were issued without following the norms set by the WHO and the ICMR for COVID-19 deaths.

"The certificates should have included the immediate cause of death, antecedent cause of death and underlying cause of death. The medical record-keeping requires uniformity and that's the responsibility of hospital authorities," the panelist said.

An advisory, once issued by the government, will definitely help hospitals in understanding the character of the disease and how to deal with it, he said.

West Bengal has officially reported 48 deaths due to Covid-19 till Saturday.

The total number of people infected with the coronavirus stands at 886.

Of them, 624 are active cases and 199 have recovered.

The Union Health Ministry has put the figure of those stricken by the disease at 922.
Report: Virus Pandemic Being Used to Curb Press Freedom

BERLINAn international media rights group said on May 3 the CCP virus pandemic is being used by governments around the world to increase restrictions on press freedoms.

In a report issued to coincide with World Press Freedom Day 2020, the International Press Institute concluded that in both democratic and autocratic states the public health crisis has allowed governments to exercise control over the media on the pretext of preventing the spread of disinformation.

It said authoritarian governments have been abusing emergency measures to further stifle independent media and criminalize journalism, while in democracies efforts to control the public narrative and restrict access to information around the pandemic are on the rise.

A riot police points the pepper spray to journalists as protesters gather outside a shopping mall in Hong Kong, on May 1, 2020. (Kin Cheung/AP Photo)

The Vienna-based organization said it has documented 162 press freedom violations related to the coverage of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus, over the past two and a half months, almost a third of which have involved the arrest, detention, or charging of journalists.

The institutes report came three days after the International Federation of Journalists published a survey that found that the working conditions of news reporters around the globe have deteriorated during the virus pandemic amid job losses and attacks on media freedom.

World Press Freedom Day was proclaimed by the United Nations in 1993.

Ahead of this years event, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the COVID-19 crisis has underscored the importance of a robust and free press.

As the pandemic spreads, it has also given rise to a second pandemic of misinformation, from harmful health advice to wild conspiracy theories, he said. The press provides the antidote: verified, scientific, fact-based news and analysis.

Epoch Times staff contributed to this report
Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar has, in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, called the recent decision taken by the Centre to establish the proposed International Financial Service Centre (IFSC) Authority in Gandhinagar instead of in Mumbai as egregious, erroneous and unwarranted.

Pawar, citing the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data, said that inspite of Maharashtras immense contribution to government securities (G-sec), the decision of establishing IFSC in Gujarat is egregious, erroneous and unwarranted and it will also be perceived as a move to shift financial institutions and business houses away from Maharashtra and will create unnecessary political disturbances.

It will not only cause financial damage to the country but also bring International discredit to it by undermining the importance of Mumbai, which has been recognised as worlds top ten centres of commerce in terms of global financial flow generating 6.16 per cent of Indias GDP and accounting from 25 per cent of industrial output and 70 per cent of capital transactions to countrys economy, Pawar said in the letter.

The data published by the Reserve Bank of India, on April 23, states that the Indian banking sector has deposits to the tune of Rs 145,00,000 crore and the share of Maharashtra alone in the said deposits is 22.8 per cent followed by Delhi (10 per cent), Uttar Pradesh (7.8 per cent), Karnataka (7.2 per cent) and Gujarat (5.4 per cent) as per the reserve requirements, every bank has to maintain SLR at 18 per cent of its deposits, in the form of G-sec.

Through this G-sec the Central government receives funds to the tune of Rs 26,00,000 crore. Out of such funds Rs 5,95,000 crore is received from Maharashtra alone as against Gujarats contribution of Rs 1,40,000 crore, the letter read.

Terming the Centres move as shocking decision, he said the Central governments decision will be taken as an act of undermining the strategic importance of Mumbai that boasts as the nations financial capital and claimed even the financial institutions across the world will be taken aback.

He urged the government to have a look at statistical information which confirms the former decision to set up the IFSC in Mumbai.

I request the Centre to reconsider the decision to shift IFSC in Gujarat and relocate it in Mumbai on merit basis and I expect the Prime Minister will take a rational, judicious decision keeping aside the state politics and consider it as an issue of utmost national importance, he said.
Vietnam announced one new novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patient on Sunday evening, the first case in more than a week.

This is an imported case who was quaratined upon entry this week, the Ministry of Health said.

The national tally currently stands at 271, with 219 having made a recovery and no fatality, according to the ministrys latest statistics.

The new patient is a 37-year-old British expert who works for state-owned Vietnam Oil and Gas Group, better known as PetroVietnam.

He and 12 other experts were allowed to enter Vietnam on April 28 after touching down at Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City on board a charter flight from the UK.

They came to Vietnam to carry out economic projects, the government said on its verified Facebook account.

The Southeast Asian country has barred entry to foreigners since March 22 but it still waives the condition for specific entrants on a case-by-case basis.

The experts were sent to a centralized quarantine center in Can Gio, an outlying district of Ho Chi Minh City, after landing.

They tested negative for COVID-19 on their first day of arrival.

The experts were retested on Saturday, with only the 37-year-olds result returning positive for the virus.

He is being treated at a makeshift hospital for COVID-19 patients in Cu Chi, another outlying district of the city.

The Briton first tested positive in the UK on April 7 and he merely self-isolated at home, according to the Ho Chi Minh City Center for Disease Control.

His retest came back negative on April 21 so he managed to obtain a certificate proving he did not carry the virus before flying to Vietnam.

The country has recorded only three additional cases, all imported and isolated upon entry, since April 17. Two of the patients were confirmed on April 24.

Among the 52 active cases, which include 14 relapses, nine have tested negative at least twice while 12 have had their result come back negative for the first time, the national committee on COVID-19 control and prevention said.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Tourists crowd Hamdeok Beach on northern Jeju Island, Thursday. Yonhap



A larger-than-projected number of tourists visited South Korea's southern resort island of Jeju during the so-called golden holiday, keeping health authorities on alert amid the coronavirus pandemic.



The number of visitors to Jeju between April 30 and May 2 totaled 138,802, roughly 30 percent more than a 106,905 forecast, according to the data by the island's tourism board.



South Koreans are on an extended holiday, with key public holidays and calendar events, such as Buddha's Birthday, Labor Day and Children's Day all falling in late April or early May this year.



Officials projected that roughly 25,000 more will arrive on the island on Sunday ahead of the Children's Day holiday scheduled for Tuesday.






The investors in Beazer Homes USA, Inc.'s (NYSE:BZH) will be rubbing their hands together with glee today, after the share price leapt 22% to US$7.00 in the week following its quarterly results. The result was positive overall - although revenues of US$489m were in line with what the analyst predicted, Beazer Homes USA surprised by delivering a statutory profit of US$0.35 per share, modestly greater than expected. This is an important time for investors, as they can track a company's performance in its report, look at what expert is forecasting for next year, and see if there has been any change to expectations for the business. We've gathered the most recent statutory forecasts to see whether the analyst has changed their earnings models, following these results.

View our latest analysis for Beazer Homes USA

NYSE:BZH Past and Future Earnings May 3rd 2020

Taking into account the latest results, the current consensus, from the sole analyst covering Beazer Homes USA, is for revenues of US$1.92b in 2020, which would reflect a chunky 12% reduction in Beazer Homes USA's sales over the past 12 months. Statutory earnings per share are expected to crater 24% to US$0.70 in the same period. Before this earnings report, the analyst had been forecasting revenues of US$1.89b and earnings per share (EPS) of US$0.65 in 2020. So the consensus seems to have become somewhat more optimistic on Beazer Homes USA's earnings potential following these results.

The average the analyst price target fell 50% to US$8.00, suggesting thatthe analyst has other concerns, and the improved earnings per share outlook was not enough to allay them.

Of course, another way to look at these forecasts is to place them into context against the industry itself. These estimates imply that sales are expected to slow, with a forecast revenue decline of 12%, a significant reduction from annual growth of 6.5% over the last five years. Compare this with our data, which suggests that other companies in the same industry are, in aggregate, expected to see their revenue grow 1.6% next year. So although its revenues are forecast to shrink, this cloud does not come with a silver lining - Beazer Homes USA is expected to lag the wider industry.

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The Bottom Line

The biggest takeaway for us is the consensus earnings per share upgrade, which suggests a clear improvement in sentiment around Beazer Homes USA's earnings potential next year. Fortunately, the analyst also reconfirmed their revenue estimates, suggesting sales are tracking in line with expectations - although our data does suggest that Beazer Homes USA's revenues are expected to perform worse than the wider industry. The consensus price target fell measurably, with the analyst seemingly not reassured by the latest results, leading to a lower estimate of Beazer Homes USA's future valuation.

With that said, the long-term trajectory of the company's earnings is a lot more important than next year. We have analyst estimates for Beazer Homes USA going out as far as 2021, and you can see them free on our platform here.

Plus, you should also learn about the 3 warning signs we've spotted with Beazer Homes USA (including 1 which is a bit unpleasant) .

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Russia on Sunday reported a new record daily rise in coronavirus infections as the number of confirmed cases surged past 130,000. As some European countries were looking to gradually lift restrictions, officials in Moscow -- the epicentre of the contagion in Russia -- urged residents to stay home despite glorious weather. With the number of cases rising by several thousand each day, Russia is now the European country registering the most new infections. Despite the increases, the government has indicated it could gradually lift confinement measures from May 12, depending on the region. According to the government's daily coronavirus update, 10,633 confirmed infections were reported in the last 24 hours, bringing the total to 134,687. President Vladimir Putin has said the situation remains "very difficult" and warned that the country was not yet past the peak of the outbreak. Russia's official fatality rate has remained low in comparison to countries like Italy, Spain and the United States. Fifty-eight people died over the past 24 hours, bringing the total toll to 1,280. The authorities are preparing to set up temporary field hospitals around Moscow including at the VDNKh, the famed Soviet-era outdoor exhibition centre, in case infections continue to surge. Muscovites have been under lockdown since March 30 and in mid-April, the authorities introduced a system of digital permits to reduce violations of the restrictions. They have warned that the rules may be tightened further. Residents of the Russian capital are only allowed to leave their homes to walk their dogs, take out trash and visit their nearest shop although private car journeys have not been restricted up to now. Many complained that it was increasingly difficult to observe the quarantine as the weather was getting warmer. In a sprawling park in southwest Moscow on Sunday, a two-person police patrol asked parents with small children to respect the confinement rules and return home. - 'Threat on the rise' - Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin on Saturday urged residents to continue to respect stay-at-home rules and other measures over the long May holidays. "The threat is apparently on the rise," Sobyanin said on his blog. Earlier this week Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and Construction Minister Vladimir Yakushev tested positive for the coronavirus and were hospitalised. Mishustin's first deputy Andrei Belousov is now serving as acting prime minister. Mishustin's spokesman Boris Belyakov told reporters on Sunday that the prime minister was feeling fine and was in touch with his colleagues. The health ministry said on Friday that the number of infected children was on the rise. Two children had died from the coronavirus and 11 more were in a serious condition. Moscow alone has recorded 5,948 new cases in the past 24 hours, bringing the capital's total to 68,606. Sobyanin said about two percent of Moscow residents -- or more than 250,000 people -- have the coronavirus. According to official statistics, Moscow has a population of 12.7 million but the real figure is believed to be higher. Putin has postponed a landmark military parade to honour the 75th anniversary of Soviet victory in World War II on May 9. He has also postponed an April vote on constitutional reforms that could allow the 67-year-old Kremlin chief to potentially stay in power until 2036.
Country Villa South, the only nursing home in Los Angeles County designated by the county for residents who have COVID-19. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

The nursing home industry has been devastated by the coronavirus, with outbreaks killing thousands of elderly residents and likely setting the stage for both increased regulations and huge legal liabilities.

But the health crisis presents operators with a potential financial upside.

Patients with COVID-19 could be worth more than four times what homes are able to charge for long-term residents with relatively mild health issues.

Some patient advocates and industry experts fear the premium pay available for coronavirus patients  and a simultaneous easing of regulations around transfers  could tempt some home operators to move out low-paying residents to bring in more lucrative COVID-19 patients, despite the obvious health risks to residents and staff.

There are probably some unscrupulous operators who would jump at this, said David Grabowski, a professor of healthcare policy at Harvard Medical School, though he thought most would not.

A new Medicare reimbursement system that went into effect last fall pays nursing homes substantially more for new patients  including those released from a hospital  particularly for the first few weeks. Under those guidelines, COVID-19 patients can bring in upward of $800 per day, according to nursing home administrators and medical directors interviewed by The Times.

By contrast, facilities collect as little as $200 per day for long-term patients with dementia, the industry experts said.

Nursing homes have always had a financial incentive to attract the short-term patients and get rid of low-paying long-term ones, Grabowski said. But the health risks for existing residents and staff are so high with COVID-19, Grabowski said, Id be a little suspicious of a low-quality nursing home thats jumping to the head of the line for this."

Health systems across the country are scrambling for safe places to quarantine nursing home residents with the coronavirus to try to protect those who havent already been infected. Hospitals are also desperate to reduce a bottleneck of COVID-19 patients who no longer need to be in the hospital but who are unable to care for themselves at home.

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To that end, health departments have been looking to set up separate so-called "COVID-19-positive" nursing homes to help deal with the crisis.

So far, only one home in Los Angeles County has been designated COVID-19 positive by the county's Department of Public Health: Country Villa South, an 87-bed facility in Palms. The home has already endured an outbreak, with 81 residents and staff members testing positive for the virus as of last week and 10 deaths reported to county health officials.

The home has a checkered regulatory history, earning only one star  the lowest rating possible  on Medicares five-star rating system. It has also had recent violations for failing to follow infection control protocols, a Times review of inspection and complaint records shows.

And Rockport Healthcare Services, the company that oversees Country Villa South and more than 70 other homes in California, was sued in March by a former employee who said she was fired for refusing to discharge patients insured through the state's Medi-Cal program for the poor to make room for higher-paying patients with private insurance. The alleged practices occurred before the coronavirus outbreak.

In her complaint, Lidice Diaz, who was the director of business development at the Pomona Healthcare and Wellness Center, alleged that managers instructed staff to prepare a list of dischargeable people on a daily basis. The residents on the list, according to the complaint, were Medi-Cal patients.

These patients often would not have a doctors order permitting or recommending discharge, according to the complaint.

At other times, Diaz alleged, she was told to call a patient's family and inform them the resident had to be discharged and to "not take no for an answer."

Diaz and her attorney declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation. Rockport's chief executive, Dr. David Silver, said he was confident the allegations would be proved false but declined to comment on specifics of the lawsuit.

Last month, an executive at Rockport sent an email telling homes within the chain to be prepared to transfer out patients who did not require skilled nursing care to make way for a wave of severely ill patients expected to start arriving from acute care hospitals, which were in dire need of freed-up bed space.

The email informed the staff that a California Public Health Department requirement to warn residents 30 days before an impending discharge had been reduced to 10 days, and that Rockport had hired a placement agency to help find spots for residents.

"We understand it is not easy to find discharge destinations for residents who are at a low income level, but we must be proactive with our discharge planning during this difficult time," the email said.

Silver said the email was his company's way of responding to a warning from state officials to prepare for an expected surge of coronavirus patients.

"We agreed to do our part," Silver wrote to The Times. "The email clearly references ensuring safe and appropriate discharges. This has absolutely nothing to do with payment rates or income levels of patients.

"We are leading the way to meet this moment," Silver added. "No other skilled nursing facility company has stepped forward like we have."

Rockport recently sent a letter to health insurers informing them that the company would bill $850 per day for patients with the coronavirus, according to several nursing home industry experts interviewed by The Times. Silver said that he didn't know what letter they were referring to, and that such negotiations are typically conducted in private. But, he said, his company was prepared to offer discounted rates, and that $850 per day is about a 20% discount on what Medicare would pay.

Dr. Michael Wasserman, a former Rockport CEO, said he was shocked by the email to staff instructing them to prepare to discharge residents to make room for coronavirus patients.

To me, from a business perspective, theres only one reason to do this. Youre replacing the lowest-paying residents in those nursing homes with the highest-paying people, he said.

Its so wrong to tell a frail old person in a nursing home that they have only 10 days to move," Wasserman added. "Half of these people have dementia."

When word began to spread within industry circles in mid-April that Rockports current management was lobbying the county to designate Country Villa South as a COVID-19-positive facility, Wasserman emailed county officials informing them of the homes poor regulatory record and warning that sending patients with COVID-19 there would overwhelm their capacity to care for their existing residents.

Dr. Zachary Rubin, who works in communicable disease control for the county Public Health Department, responded to Wasserman in an email that the countys hands were tied because there hasnt been a big rush of places wanting to do this.

In his email, which was reviewed by The Times, Rubin explained the county was looking for homes that already had an outbreak so they wouldn't introduce the virus to a facility that didn't have infected residents and staff.

The county, Rubin wrote, was also looking for homes that belonged to a larger chain with lots of staff so there would be people available to fill in when workers at the designated facility got sick and had to stay home.

Rubin did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Los Angeles County Public Health Department officials declined to say whether they had reviewed Country Villa South's regulatory history or the recent lawsuit filed against Rockport before designating it as a place for other facilities to send coronavirus patients.

In response to questions from The Times, an unnamed department official said in an email that the designation should not be seen as "an endorsement from Public Health."

But the email acknowledged county officials were consulting with the home and ensuring that it had optimal procedures in place for caring for COVID patients.

That comes as a surprise to at least some people who have loved ones at the facility.

One relative of a Country Villa South resident who has tested negative for the virus said she had no idea the home had been designated a COVID-19-positive facility until a nurse assistant told her and warned that she might want to get her loved one out of there.

"That was upsetting to me to know they made the decision to turn it into a positive place without letting anyone know," said the woman, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation against her family member.

The facility promised it would find a new home for her relative, the woman said, but as of Thursday that still hadn't happened.

That's particularly concerning because, even before the pandemic, Country Villa South didn't seem to have enough hand sanitizer, and at times there was no soap in her family member's room, said the woman, who works in healthcare.

She said she wondered why a facility that struggled with hygiene in the best of times would consider turning itself into a COVID-19-positive facility, "if it wasn't for a paycheck."
Samsung Electronics' Galaxy S20 smartphones / Courtesy of Samsung Electronics



By Baek Byung-yeul



Ahead of the official release of Apple's new budget iPhone SE, and with the country's leading mobile carriers moving ahead with plans to win more fifth-generation (5G) subscribers, Samsung Electronics is helping SK Telecom, KT and LG U+ lower their inventories of its flagship S20 Galaxy by providing them with more subsidies



Industry officials said Sunday that the top three carriers have doubled the amount of subsidies for the S20s  passing on those from Samsung  to boost sales.



SK Telecom, KT and LG U+ have increased their subsidies for the smartphone by up to 500,000 won ($408) since May 1.



The increase comes two months after the carriers began selling the S20, which supports 5G networks, Feb. 27. It is seen as a move to boost sales in the wake of the havoc wreaked on the local smartphone market by the COVID-19 pandemic.



Samsung expects the increased subsidy will help better position itself in the market as its competitors release new models  including the iPhone SE  next week. Expected to be a big hit with consumers, the iPhone SE is the first "affordable phone" released by Apple in four years. Its overall features are comparable to iPhone 8, while it has the same processor as the iPhone 11.



A Samsung official would not comment on S20 inventory, however, industry officials estimate the company has seen 20 percent to 40 percent lower sales compared to those for the Galaxy S10, released in the first half of 2019.



In terms of subsidies, LG originally offered between 97,000 won and 202,000 won for the Galaxy S20, but has raised this to between 326,000 won and 500,000 won. Subsidies differ depending on subscription plans.



On the same day, SK Telecom raised its subsidy to between 285,000 won and 420,000 won, from 100,000 won and 170,000 won; while KT now offers between 250,000 won and 480,000 won  up from 103,000 won to 243,000 won.



Given Samsung is also set to release mid-range priced 5G-enabled smartphones this month, it remains to be seen whether the company can find a breakthrough in the coronavirus-hit market. But the top smartphone manufacturer is expected to expand its alliance with the local carriers to lift sales as it regards South Korea as a litmus test for its "all things 5G" businesses.



The Ministry of Science and ICT said there were 5.77 million 5G subscribers here as of the beginning of April, a 5G penetration rate of 9.7 percent, the highest in the world. In terms of the number of subscribers, the country ranked second after China. South Korea claimed to be the first country in the world to launch full 5G commercial services, last year.



Meanwhile, the pandemic has frozen demand for smartphones worldwide and "idling demand" from consumers toward high-end models has yet to be awakened. Samsung expects to ship between 230 million and 250 million smartphones in 2020.


New York will require all hospitals to build a 90-day supply of personal protective equipment to prepare for another outbreak after states dealt with widespread equipment shortages while battling the coronavirus, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced on Sunday.

Cuomo said efforts to procure masks from China amid state competition for medical supplies were "inefficient and ineffective" and warned against dependence on China for basic equipment.



"That we have to go to China for the PPE? I mean think about that  you couldn't even get it in this nation," Cuomo said at a press briefing. "We started making our own in this state."

"That's a national security issue to me," Cuomo said. "You have to be able to get masks and gowns and whatever medical equipment you need so this nation can run a health-care system in the middle of an emergency."



"You can't be dependent on China to have the basic equipment to save lives in the United States, that's what this came down to," the governor said.

Cuomo expressed frustration that the states of Massachusetts and New York had to rely on New England Patriots owner and billionaire businessman Robert Kraft to send a private plane to China to help procure masks.



"That's how we handle a global pandemic? I have to call Mr. Kraft and say can you do me a favor Gov. Baker, as long as the plane is going can you pick up masks for me?" Cuomo asked rhetorically.

In response, New York is a launching a regional buying consortium with six Northeast states to procure PPE, tests, ventilators and other medical equipment to reduce competition among states and lower prices.

"We put together a de facto public health system," the governor said. "We can't go through this day to day in this mad scramble to move masks to where they were needed."
The central paramilitary forces, involved in internal security duties, recorded a spike in coronavirus cases with 45 personnel testing positive on Sunday, even as the CRPF headquarters here was sealed after two staffers contracted the disease.

The five-storey building is located inside the Central Government Offices (CGO) complex on Lodhi Road and houses the central control room and the office of the CRPF Director General (DG) among other operational and administrative wings to keep the over 3.25 lakh-personnel force moving.

A personal secretary of a Special Director General (SDG)-rank officer working in the headquarters tested positive for the virus on Saturday, officials said.

Also, a bus driver who ferried personnel working at the headquarters, contracted the disease, they added.

"One driver attached with CRPF headquarters has tested COVID-19 positive. The headquarters is closed for sanitisation till the task is completed," said a spokesperson for the CRPF, the country's largest paramilitary force.

An order issued by the force said as "one coronavirus positive (case) has been detected in the directorate (headquarters), all officers and men working in the directorate general are requested not to come to office and work from home till then."



It said the head office will be closed till Tuesday.

A senior official said CRPF authorities have informed the district surveillance officer for "initiating required protocols" as per medical guidelines, for time-bound proper sealing of the building.

"All procedures will be followed. CRPF Director General A P Maheshwari has issued clear directions that all COVID-19 guidelines have to be followed strictly," he said.

They said a contact-tracing exercise was conducted after which over 50 personnel who came in direct or indirect touch with the two infected staffers have been quarantined.

The force has been witnessing multiple cases of COVID-19, with at least 135 personnel of its 31st battalion based in Delhi being infected and a 55-year-old Sub-Inspector of the unit succumbing to the disease last week.

As per latest data, at least 144 CRPF personnel are coronavirus positive in the country.

wo other paramilitary forces, also known as Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs), the BSF and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) registered an increase in their overall infection numbers.

As many as 25 more Border Security Force personnel tested positive for the disease on Sunday, taking the overall tally to 42, an official spokesperson said.

All the new cases were reported from a unit of the 126th battalion of the force, deployed in the Jama Masjid and Chandni Mahal areas of the national capital on law-and-order duties under the command of the Delhi Police.

This unit now has 31 positive coronavirus cases.

The 2.5-lakh-personnel-strong force is primarily tasked with guarding the Indian borders with Pakistan and Bangladesh, apart from rendering a variety of duties in the country's internal security domain.

In the ITBP, a 60-year-old just-retired head constable, who was still living on its campus, succumbed to coronavirus infection on Sunday as 20 other personnel of the border-guarding force contracted the disease, officials said.

They said the official, who breathed his last at Safdarjung Hospital, had co-morbid conditions and was living at a camp of the force in Tigri (Khanpur) area of the national capital.

A total of 21 Indo-Tibetan Border Police personnel, including the deceased, have been found positive for COVID-19 till now, the officials said.

While some of them were part of a unit (50th battalion) and were assisting the Delhi Police in maintaining law and order, the rest were from the Tigri camp, they said.

The ITBP is a 90,000-strong force primarily tasked with guarding the Line of Actual Control with China apart from rendering other internal security duties.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
It looks like Groupe Bruxelles Lambert SA (EBR:GBLB) is about to go ex-dividend in the next 1 days. You will need to purchase shares before the 5th of May to receive the dividend, which will be paid on the 7th of May.

Groupe Bruxelles Lambert's next dividend payment will be 2.21 per share. Last year, in total, the company distributed 3.15 to shareholders. Calculating the last year's worth of payments shows that Groupe Bruxelles Lambert has a trailing yield of 4.3% on the current share price of 72.88. If you buy this business for its dividend, you should have an idea of whether Groupe Bruxelles Lambert's dividend is reliable and sustainable. That's why we should always check whether the dividend payments appear sustainable, and if the company is growing.

See our latest analysis for Groupe Bruxelles Lambert

Dividends are usually paid out of company profits, so if a company pays out more than it earned then its dividend is usually at greater risk of being cut. Groupe Bruxelles Lambert is paying out an acceptable 70% of its profit, a common payout level among most companies.

Generally speaking, the lower a company's payout ratios, the more resilient its dividend usually is.

Click here to see the company's payout ratio, plus analyst estimates of its future dividends.

ENXTBR:GBLB Historical Dividend Yield May 3rd 2020

Have Earnings And Dividends Been Growing?

Companies with falling earnings are riskier for dividend shareholders. If business enters a downturn and the dividend is cut, the company could see its value fall precipitously. That's why it's not ideal to see Groupe Bruxelles Lambert's earnings per share have been shrinking at 4.5% a year over the previous five years.

Many investors will assess a company's dividend performance by evaluating how much the dividend payments have changed over time. Groupe Bruxelles Lambert has delivered an average of 2.7% per year annual increase in its dividend, based on the past ten years of dividend payments. Growing the dividend payout ratio while earnings are declining can deliver nice returns for a while, but it's always worth checking for when the company can't increase the payout ratio any more - because then the music stops.

Story continues

To Sum It Up

Is Groupe Bruxelles Lambert worth buying for its dividend? Earnings per share have been declining and the company is paying out more than half its profits to shareholders; not an enticing combination. This is not an overtly appealing combination of characteristics, and we're just not that interested in this company's dividend.

With that in mind though, if the poor dividend characteristics of Groupe Bruxelles Lambert don't faze you, it's worth being mindful of the risks involved with this business. We've identified 2 warning signs with Groupe Bruxelles Lambert (at least 1 which is significant), and understanding them should be part of your investment process.

We wouldn't recommend just buying the first dividend stock you see, though. Here's a list of interesting dividend stocks with a greater than 2% yield and an upcoming dividend.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health reported there were 49,267 confirmed and probable cases of coronavirus in all 67 counties as of 12 p.m., May 3, 2020. There are at least 2,444 reported deaths from the virus.

Click the image to see a data page including an interactive maps for the state. (Please click the link in the previous sentence if you cant see the image)

Click here for a ZIP code breakdown of cases provided by the Pa. Department of Health.

The state is also providing detailed hospital and respirator data here for desktop users and here for mobile users.

PennLive is monitoring the new cases over a two-week period, part of the Wolf administrations criteria for reopening the state. A map and a database for these are below. If you cannot see either embed, please click here for the map and here for the database.

Below is a map of the current reopening status of Pennsylvania counties. Please click here if you cannot see that map.

Adams County

141 positive cases and 1,605 negative results with 4 deaths.

Allegheny County

1,333 positive cases and 16,646 negative results with 102 deaths.

Armstrong County

52 positive cases and 710 negative results with 2 deaths.

Beaver County

435 positive cases and 2,142 negative results with 68 deaths.

Bedford County

24 positive cases and 214 negative results with 1 death.

Berks County

2,810 positive cases and 5,786 negative results with 118 deaths.

Blair County

23 positive cases and 1,035 negative results.

Bradford County

35 positive cases and 698 negative results with 2 deaths.

Bucks County

3,182 positive cases and 8,881 negative results with 237 deaths.

Butler County

180 positive cases and 2,304 negative results with 6 deaths.

Cambria County

32 positive cases and 1,299 negative results with 1 death.

Cameron County

1 positive cases and 53 negative results.

Carbon County

182 positive cases and 1,096 negative results with 15 deaths.

Centre County

96 positive cases and 950 negative results with 1 death.

Chester County

1,469 positive cases and 5,609 negative results with 117 deaths.

Clarion County

23 positive cases and 493 negative results with 1 death.

Clearfield County

16 positive cases and 455 negative results.

Clinton County

34 positive cases and 252 negative results.

Columbia County

290 positive cases and 657 negative results with 13 deaths.

Crawford County

19 positive cases and 699 negative results.

Cumberland County

365 positive cases and 1,585 negative results with 17 deaths.

Dauphin County

617 positive cases and 3,783 negative results with 25 deaths.

Delaware County

3,999 positive cases and 9,391 negative results with 255 deaths.

Elk County

4 positive cases and 171 negative results.

Erie County

90 positive cases and 2,034 negative results with 2 deaths.

Fayette County

82 positive cases and 1,878 negative results with 4 deaths.

Forest County

7 positive cases and 30 negative results.

Franklin County

325 positive cases and 3,053 negative results with 8 deaths.

Fulton County

6 positive cases and 89 negative results.

Greene County

27 positive cases and 429 negative results.

Huntingdon County

48 positive cases and 307 negative results.

Indiana County

63 positive cases and 755 negative results with 4 deaths.

Jefferson County

6 positive cases and 322 negative results.

Juniata County

84 positive cases and 161 negative results with 1 death.

Lackawanna County

968 positive cases and 2,656 negative results with 83 deaths.

Lancaster County

1,904 positive cases and 8,148 negative results with 112 deaths.

The county is reporting 183 deaths as of 1:45 p.m. May 1. Those deaths are in the following municipalities

Christiana: 12 deaths

Columbia: 1 death

East Cocalico Township: 3 deaths

East Hempfield Township: 8 deaths

East Lampeter Township: 1 death

Ephrata Township: 1 death

City of Lancaster: 3 deaths

Lancaster Township: 94 deaths

Lititz: 7 deaths

Manheim Township: 34 deaths

New Holland: 2 deaths

Paradise Township: 1 death

Penn Township: 4 deaths

Providence Township: 1 death

Rapho Township: 5 deaths

Salisbury Township: 1 death

Warwick Township: 1 death

Three non-residents also passed away in Lancaster County.

Lawrence County

65 positive cases and 758 negative results with 6 deaths.

Lebanon County

710 positive cases and 2,724 negative results with 10 deaths.

Lehigh County

2,896 positive cases and 7,508 negative results with 83 deaths.

Luzerne County

2,211 positive cases and 5,229 negative results with 97 deaths.

Lycoming County

81 positive cases and 1,173 negative results with 1 death.

McKean County

6 positive cases and 175 negative results.

Mercer County

66 positive cases and 772 negative results with 1 death.

Mifflin County

38 positive cases and 700 negative results.

Monroe County

1,165 positive cases and 2,825 negative results with 55 deaths.

Montgomery County

4,487 positive cases and 17,930 negative results with 369 deaths.

Montour County

49 positive cases and 2,966 negative results.

Northampton County

2,182 positive cases and 6,548 negative results with 94 deaths.

Northumberland County

98 positive cases and 615 negative results.

Perry County

33 positive cases and 233 negative results with 1 death.

Philadelphia County

12,948 positive cases and 29,612 negative results with 422 deaths.

Pike County

394 positive cases and 1,294 negative results with 15 deaths.

Potter County

4 positive cases and 84 negative results.

Schuylkill County

104 positive cases and 544 negative results with 5 deaths.

Snyder County

33 positive cases and 204 negative results with 1 death.

Somerset County

29 positive cases and 621 negative results with 1 death.

Sullivan County

1 positive cases and 34 negative results.

Susquehanna County

84 positive cases and 302 negative results with 9 deaths.

Tioga County

16 positive cases and 256 negative results with 1 death.

Union County

38 positive cases and 570 negative results.

Venango County

7 positive cases and 256 negative results.

Warren County

1 positive cases and 180 negative results.

Washington County

118 positive cases and 2,195 negative results with 2 deaths.

Wayne County

104 positive cases and 544 negative results with 5 deaths.

Westmoreland County

396 positive cases and 4,749 negative results with 26 deaths.

Wyoming County

25 positive cases and 175 negative results with 2 deaths.

York County

664 positive cases and 7,327 negative results with 11 deaths.

This data is compiled from the Pa. Department of Health. The state will not be providing recovery data at this time.

Several counties have released their own data maps. Information reported at the county level may not be consistent with the state numbers. Those counties include:

Some medical systems have begun releasing discharge data. Those medical systems include:

Thanks for visiting PennLive. Quality local journalism has never been more important. We need your support. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work.
Representative image

The armed forces have made elaborate arrangements to conduct aerial fly-pasts, light up ships at sea and shower flower petals on several hospitals across the country on Sunday to express gratitude to lakhs of doctors, paramedics, sanitation staff and other front-line workers engaged in fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat on Friday announced that the three services will carry out a series of activities to thank the "corona warriors".

The thanks-giving activities will start with laying of wreaths at the police memorial in Delhi and in several other cities on Sunday morning to honour the police personnel deployed in enforcement of the nationwide lockdown, officials said.

Coronavirus India LIVE Updates

It will be followed by fly-pasts by fighter jets and transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force, covering a sizeable number of cities and towns across the country between 10 am and 11 am, officials said.

COVID-19 Vaccine Frequently Asked Questions View more How does a vaccine work? A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine. How many types of vaccines are there? There are broadly four types of vaccine  one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine. What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind? Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time. View more Show

Officials said fighter aircraft formations, comprising Sukhoi-30 MKI, MiG-29 and Jaguar, will be flying over Rajpath, Delhi's centrepiece boulevard, and will orbit over the city for around 30 minutes from 10 am.

"In addition, C-130 transport aircraft will follow a similar profile as fighters covering the entire Delhi and NCR region. The aircraft will be flying at an approximate height of 500 metres to 1000 metres keeping aerospace safety in mind especially in respect of bird activity," an IAF official said.

He said the fly-past is combined with the training activity of the IAF.

Another official said the fly-past will cover major towns starting from Srinagar to Thiruvananthapuram and Dibrugarh to Kutch.

"Helicopters from the IAF and Indian Navy will fly over hospitals treating coronavirus patients and shower petals as a tribute to the corona warriors," Army Spokesperson Col Aman Anand said.

In Delhi, IAF helicopters are scheduled to shower flower petals on a number of hospitals including AllMS, Deen Dayal Upadhyay hospital, GTB, LNJP, Ram Manohar Lohia hospital, Safdarjung, Sir Ganga Ram hospital, Baba Saheb Ambedkar hospital, Max hospital in Saket, Apollo Indraprastha hospital and Army Research and Referral hospital.

Military bands will play "patriotic tunes" outside various civil hospitals treating coronavirus patients across the country, Anand said.

Separately, Indian Navy helicopters will shower petals on Kasturba Gandhi hospital and naval medical hospital Ashwini in Mumbai, GMC and ESI hospitals in Goa, Ernakulam General hospital in Kochi, Government TB and Chest hospital in Vizag and GB Pant hospital in Port Blair.

Navy officials said the Western Naval Command will illuminate five naval ships from 7.30 pm to 11.59 pm off the Gateway of India in Mumbai.

They would display banners like "India Salutes Corona Warriors" and will sound the siren of the ships and fire flares at 7.30 pm at anchorage. Additionally, the Naval air stations at Goa would organise a human chain on the runway to honour the 'corona warriors'.

The Eastern Naval Command will illuminate two ships at anchorage from 7.30 pm to midnight at Visakhapatnam coast.

Anand said Indian Coast Guard ships will be seen at 24 places including in Porbandar, Okha, Ratnagiri, Dahanu, Murud, Goa, New Mangalaore, Kavarati, Karaikal, Chennai, Krishnapatnam, Nizamapatanam, Puducherry, Kakinada, Paradip, Sagar Island, Port Blair, Diglipur, Mayabundur, Hut bay and Campbel Bay.

"The nation stood together and showed resilience in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. On behalf of armed forces, we want to thank all the corona warriors -- doctors, nurses, sanitation workers, police, home guards, delivery boys and media," Gen Rawat said on Friday.

So far, the coronavirus has infected 37,776 people in India while it claimed lives of 1,223 people, according to the Union Health Ministry on Saturday.

Gen Rawat's announcement about the special activities came shortly before the Union Home Ministry said the the current spell of the lockdown will be extended by another two weeks from Monday.

The lockdown came into force on March 25 and was to end on April 14. It was first extended till May 3.

Follow our full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic here
When a member of the engineering staff in a Delhi hospital tested positive for novel coronavirus recently, the hospital management was taken by surprise because it was a non-Covid--19 facility and, additionally, the infected person had no contact with patients. While the infection was traced to his wife  a nurse in a government hospital  the hospital had to cordon off the basement where the engineer worked.

Fortunately, the hospital did not have to shut down its main operations since the protocols were in place and its floors were segregated. Not all have been so ...
We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on!

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Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip have been married for more than seven decades, which is a lot more than most royal family members can say. These two royals have a very romantic love story, though as it turns out, their entire courtship may have been secretly planned by one of Philips family members.

Ultimately, it doesnt matter why Elizabeth and Philip fell in love  their relationship has withstood the test of time and made it through plenty of trials. But its still intriguing to look back over the years and discover exactly why the teenaged heir ever laid eyes upon the dashing young cadet.

Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh | Topical Press Agency/Getty Images

Philips Uncle Dickie arranged for them to meet

The future queen and young Philip first crossed paths at Princess Marina of Greece and Denmarks wedding to Elizabeths uncle, Prince George, in 1934. Elizabeth was just 8 and its unclear if the two interacted. But the next time these two future spouses laid eyes on each other was unforgettable.

In 1939, Elizabeths family toured Dartmouth Naval College and Philips uncle, Dickie Mountbatten, is said to have ensured that Philip was the escort. He knew that Elizabeth would be taken by his tall, handsome nephew  and he was right.

Elizabeths governess later wrote that her 13-year-old charge never took her eyes off Philip during the tour, according to E News. And even though in return he did not pay her any special attention, this meeting eventually ensured their destiny.

Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten | PNA Rota/Getty Images

Philip and Elizabeth made a great match except for one problem

Philip was a suitable match from the perspective of the royal family  he was a descendent of royalty and even shared an ancestor in common with Elizabeth, making them third cousins. He was born in Greece though his family was exiled at a young age. Philips Uncle Dickie became a mentor, and eventually, a matchmaker.

My uncle Dickie has ideas for me; he thinks I should marry Princess Elizabeth, Philip told the captain of his battleship, according to an officer who overheard the conversation. Are you fond of her? the captain asked in reply. Oh yes, very, Philip confirmed. I write her every week.

Not everyone agreed with the match, however. Philip was of both Greek and German descent and the two began their courtship during the second World War. Three of Philips sisters married high-ranking Nazi officials and were not invited to the royal wedding because of it.

Elizabeths father King George VI did not approve of the union

Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip | Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

As future queen, Elizabeth needed her fathers permission to marry. He and some of the royal courtiers were not pleased with Philip as a match. But Elizabeth was smitten and determined to marry the man she wanted.

The documentary Inside Windsor Castle explained the problem: The King realizes that no matter how much he distrusts Philip, no matter how much he doesnt like him, if he denies Elizabeth her chance to marry him, she will never forgive him. And so he has to do it. He has to let her marry him. So he did.

Philip and Elizabeth overcame the odds and got married

Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip wedding | Keystone/Getty Images

In the end, Uncle Dickies plan worked out perfectly. King George insisted that the couple wait until Elizabeth turned 21 to announce their engagement, perhaps hoping these young lovers would lose interest in each other. But they did not. On Nov. 20, 1947, they got married at Westminster Abbey.

Philip had to give up a lot to marry Elizabeth  his career, his claim to the Greek throne, and even his name. But he got plenty in return. The couple had four children together and both enjoyed long, celebrated careers as working royals.
The Jammu and Kashmir administration has chalked out a plan for the phase-wise return of the residents of the union territory including students and migrant labourers stranded in different parts of the country due to the COVID-19 lockdown, an official said on Sunday.

The administration, however, said all the returnees will be tested for coronavirus upon their arrival, the spokesperson said.

It also announced a 21-day institutional quarantine in Lakhanpur, the gateway to Jammu and Kashmir, in Kathua district for all those who arrive without prior permission of the administration.

The official said that the decisions were taken by Chief Secretary B V R Subrahmanyam during a video conference interaction with Deputy Commissioners while discussing the action plan for allowing local students and migrant labour to return.

The government has already initiated the process of bringing back students and labourers stuck in other states in a very controlled and regulated manner. More than 18,000 locals have reached Lakhanpur between April 25 and May 2, with majority of them arriving from Himachal Pradesh.

In the first phase, students and migrant labourers from Punjab and Himachal Pradesh would be allowed followed by other states.

All those who will enter the UT without prior permission will be compulsorily sent to institutional quarantine in Lakhanpur, Kathua for 21 days, the Chief Secretary emphasised.

Keeping in view the risk of transmission of the virus, it was decided that 100 per cent testing of all such people would be done to ensure their and others' safety.

All the Deputy Commissioners were asked to coordinate with the health department so that medical teams are deployed for the collection of samples, the spokesperson said.

Asserting that nodal officers have been appointed by the administration for ensuring smooth entry and movement of people, the chief secretary asked the divisional commissioners to ensure that proper computerised record of all the returnees is maintained and a system is evolved so that the entire exercise is carried out smoothly.

The chief secretary also reviewed quarantine facilities in the districts and directed the deputy commissioners to create additional quarantine facilities at the village level by utilising all available infrastructure and involving panchayat members and Anganwadi workers.

To arrive at an exact number of the students and migrant labour stranded in different parts of the country, the chief secretary said that data is being compiled and would be shared with the districts so that all necessary arrangements are made for their stay.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)


By Jung Min-ho







The ruling Democratic Party of Korea on Thursday vowed to raise the age of consent to 16 from 13 in its fight against child sexual abuse.





The move comes a week after the Ministry of Justice said a 13-year-old is not mature enough to consent to sexual acts and that the age should be raised to 16.





At a high-level meeting at the National Assembly, the two sides agreed to cooperate to push for parliamentary passage of relevant bills before the end of May.





The age of consent is that at which a person is legally considered old enough and competent enough to consent to sexual activity. An adult who engages in sexual activity with a person under the age could be charged with child sexual abuse or rape.





Korea has long been criticized for keeping the legal benchmark too low. It is one of few major countries where adults can engage in sexual activity with 13-year-olds, as long as it is "consensual." In Finland and New Zealand, the benchmark is 16; in California, it is 18.


A Colonel, Major and 2 Indian Army soldiers along with a sub-inspector of J&K police were martyred after an encounter with terrorists in North Kashmirs Handwara, according to a report in ANI. Two terrorists have been gunned down.

ANI

Based on the intelligence input that terrorists were taking the civilian inmates of a house in Changimulla, Handwara of Kupwara district hostage, a joint operation was launched by Army and JK Police. A team comprising five Army and JK Police personnel entered the target area occupied by the terrorists to evacuate the civilians. The team of Army and JK Police entered the area and successfully extricated the civilians. However, during the process, the team was subjected to heavy volume of fire by the terrorists. In the ensuing fire fight, two terrorists were eliminated and the team of five army and JK personnel, comprising two Army officers, two Army soldiers and one JK Police Sub Inspector, attained martyrdom, the official statement from the army said.



ANI

Colonel Ashutosh Rana, the martyred officer, was decorated twice for gallantry in counter-terrorist operations.



Top Lashkar-e Taiba commander Haider from Pakistan killed in Handwara encounter: IG Kashmir Vijay Kumar pic.twitter.com/OY8YeYMAWQ  ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020

They had gone missing while performing an anti-militancy operation in Kupwara district. According to a police official, security forces had launched a cordon and search operation in Chanjmulla area of Handwara after information that terrorists were present.



ANI

When contact was established, a long encounter began. The civilians were rescued but 5 security personnel had to sacrifice their lives to get it done.


New Delhi, May 3 : An employee of the Delhi High Court tested positive of COVID-19, sources in the Delhi High Court said on Sunday.

"The official was posted as a Junior Assistant (JA) at the original side of the Registry. He was tested positive on May 1, however, he has not been coming to the court since March 20, when the lockdown was announced," a highly placed source told IANS.

The said person is presently hospitalised and receiving treatment at Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital, Delhi. "He is stated to be alright and stable. He is admitted in ward and thankfully recovering well. One senior official has been deputed to enquire about his health on regular basis. He has also been requested to inform Registrar General in case of need or assistance of any kind either for himself or for his family members," sources said.

Sources further informed that Chief Justice D N Patel and Manoj Jain, Registrar General of the High Court enquired about the health of the individual.

A close watch is being kept on the health of the officials of the judicial body and the conditions of all the officials of the high court is being monitored regularly.

It was also informed that the officials have, so far, not been able to find out as to how he got infected.
ITHACA, N.Y. - The next generation of powerful Earth- and space-based telescopes will be able to hunt distant solar systems for evidence of life on Earth-like exoplanets - particularly those that chaperone burned-out stars known as white dwarfs.

The chemical properties of those far-off worlds could indicate that life exists there. To help future scientists make sense of what their telescopes are showing them, Cornell University astronomers have developed a spectral field guide for these rocky worlds.

"We show what the spectral fingerprints could be and what forthcoming space-based and large terrestrial telescopes can look out for," said Thea Kozakis, doctoral candidate in astronomy, who conducts her research at Cornell's Carl Sagan Institute. Kozakis is lead author of "High-resolution Spectra and Biosignatures of Earth-like Planets Transiting White Dwarfs," published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

In just a few years, astronomers - using tools such as the Extremely Large Telescope, currently under construction in northern Chile's Atacama Desert, and the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2021 - will be able to search for life on exoplanets.

"Rocky planets around white dwarfs are intriguing candidates to characterize because their hosts are not much bigger than Earth-size planets," said Lisa Kaltenegger, associate professor of astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences and director of the Carl Sagan Institute.

The trick is to catch an exoplanet's quick crossing in front of a white dwarf, a small, dense star that has exhausted its energy.

"We are hoping for and looking for that kind of transit," Kozakis said. "If we observe a transit of that kind of planet, scientists can find out what is in its atmosphere, refer back to this paper, match it to spectral fingerprints and look for signs of life. Publishing this kind of guide allows observers to know what to look for."

Kozakis, Kaltenegger and Zifan Lin assembled the spectral models for different atmospheres at different temperatures to create a template for possible biosignatures.

Chasing down these planets in the habitable zone of white dwarf systems is challenging, the researchers said.

"We wanted to know if light from a white dwarf - a long-dead star - would allow us to spot life in a planet's atmosphere if it were there," Kaltenegger said.

This paper indicates that astronomers should be able to see spectral biosignatures - such as methane in combination with ozone or nitrous oxide - "if those signs of life are present," said Kaltenegger, who said this research expands scientific databases for finding spectral signs of life on exoplanets to forgotten star systems.

"If we would find signs of life on planets orbiting under the light of long-dead stars," she said, "the next intriguing question would be whether life survived the star's death or started all over again - a second genesis, if you will."

###

Funding for this research was provided by Cornell and the Carl Sagan Institute.
The streaming video began and, within minutes, the president's eldest son was musing that Osama bin Laden had endorsed Joe Biden.

Subtle, it was not. Welcome to the Trump campaign, digital edition.

Seven nights a week, President Donald Trump's reelection team is airing live programming online to replace his trademark rallies made impossible for now by the coronavirus pandemic.

Hosted by top campaign officials, prominent Republicans and Make America Great Again luminaries, the freewheeling shows offer reality according to Trump.

The shows are an effort to stay connected with core supporters and maintain enthusiasm for a suspended campaign that has had to rewire itself on the fly.

Trump himself has not yet appeared in his campaign's shows.

A review of one week's worth of the 8 pm broadcasts, ending on the final day of April, reveals a concerted effort to test attacks on Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee.

But the inherently limited effort also raises questions as to whether the campaign can replace the gold mines of potentially new voter data that the rallies delivered as it attempts to reverse a recent slide in a number of battleground states.

The shows are a proxy for the Trump TV network the president considered launching had he lost the 2016 election, and they create an echo chamber for true believers.

Akin to actors in a beloved sitcom well into its run, the Trump officials warmly speak in shorthand, trusting that their audience knows the plot and its characters and are tuning in to see programs that, at times, made the president's infamously off-the-cuff rallies look tightly scripted.

Joe Biden had the coveted Osama bin Laden endorsement! That's sort of a big deal! exclaimed Donald Trump Jr on April 24, hosting that night's broadcast deemed Triggered after his new book.

Trump Jr had seized upon an oddly timed recent Fox story, which in itself was drawn from 2012 reporting that bin Laden, the late al-Qaida leader, had once proposed assassinating President Barack Obama because doing so would thrust Biden into power and the then-vice president was totally unprepared for that post, in bin Laden's estimation.

Trump cackled while sitting on the couch next to his girlfriend, former Fox host Kimberly Guilfoyle, and looked into his Skype camera to declare that even bin Laden knew that Biden would destroy America.

After Guilfoyle went to cook dinner it was the couple's second anniversary that night the president's son, joined by Republican National Committee official Chris Carr and GOP operative David Bossie, continued to make politically incorrect observations that would draw more scrutiny if they were made anywhere other than a fans-only online broadcast.

China basically screwed the whole world with their lies about the origin of the coronavirus, Trump Jr said, before addressing the theory that the pandemic began in a live-animal wet market in Wuhan, the epicentre of the Chinese outbreak.

The world would be a better place if China cared a little more about feeding their own people so they don't have to eat bats. I don't know, just a casual observation.

Since the Trump campaign went fully virtual on March 13, its programs have averaged about 300,000 viewers an evening and, all told, each video has received at least 1 million hits, according to campaign spokeswoman Erin Perrine.

She added that the shows drew a combined millions more views in April across all of its platforms: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Twitch, Mixr, and the campaign's own website, with Facebook by far the biggest source of traffic.

Tuesday's installment, which featured House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy of California, had received 10,943 views on YouTube as of mid-Friday morning.

The campaign declined to release any information as to what it could glean in terms of the identify or demographics or hometown of its viewers, all of which was mined from rally sign-ups.

Given the current dynamic, there are a lot of things up in the air, said Republican strategist David Winston. Maybe this works, maybe it doesn't. But you have to be creative as you try to address the issue of how are you going to go about reaching voters.

A sense of irreverence, inspired by the president's lack of filter, permeates the proceedings.

On a Saturday night, campaign manager Brad Parscale and Lara Trump, a senior campaign adviser who is married to the president's son Eric, traded observations about Biden, reinforcing a campaign narrative that the former Delaware senator was not up to the job.

After Lara Trump said Biden cannot form a coherent sentence, Parscale went on to add, "I feel bad for him. I wish his wife would pull him out of this and take him to a beach in Delaware.

Parscale said the Trump team moved seamlessly into virtual campaigning after COVID-19 took hold in America and that even after the ground game returns, the campaign will leave its bolstered virtual apparatus in place. He later said his favourite item in his Florida home office was the Hillary Clinton toilet paper that someone gave him in 2016.

I have boxes of it, he said, and I take it into the bathroom and it's just enjoyable since she said so many mean things about me and our campaign and our president. Clinton was the Democratic nominee in 2016.

The Biden campaign has said that, since mid-March, more than 63 million people have engaged with their online content, including livestreams, speeches, press briefings and interviews. The candidate has done more online events since a makeshift television studio was set up in his Delaware home.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Courtesy W&W Energy Services

Oilfield service companies are using every tool in their toolbox to find their way through the economic crash being experienced by the energy industry.

There is no silver bullet to make it through times like this, but having these small advantages help, Jason Waters, president of W&W Energy Services, told the Reporter-Telegram by email. It is all about delivering value to your client and keeping your people safe. In my mind, doing things that way is what gets you through.
Some longtime Asbury Park beachgoers said people were staying away and adhering to social distancing guidelines from the governor, despite temperatures reaching 70 degrees for the first time in a while.

And Asbury Park Police Sgt. Michael Casey would agree.

People have been maintaining the social distancing, Casey told NJ Advance Media Saturday afternoon. Weve been able to monitor the crowds and there havent been too many groups forming.

The city on March 27 announced the boardwalk would be closed to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus. The beach is still open and accessible only from four points, and the city said it would close if social distancing guidelines were not followed.

Saturday, May 2, 2020 - Sunrise at the beach in Asbury Park. Beaches are open but boardwalk is closed.Michael Mancuso | NJ Advance Med

Its empty, said Steve Ratti, who was walking on the sand while wearing a blue handkerchief.

Ratti, who has been coming to Asbury Park since 2006 and became a permanent resident in 2009, was thankful the beaches were open. But he thought boardwalk businesses large enough to socially distance should be allowed to open up, too.

I think certain places can open up now because we all understand and were all trained now," he added.

He isnt the only one who thinks the boardwalk should open.

The boardwalk in Asbury Park remained closed on Saturday. The beach is still accessible from just four points along the boardwalk.Rebecca Panico | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

Phillip Baker and his wife, who live near Princeton, wanted to be able to stroll on the boardwalk. They were standing on the small part of the Sunset Avenue section of the boardwalk and taking photos, one of the few spots where people can enter the beach.

Asbury Park should definitely slowly open the boardwalk up, said Baker, adding that its a wide enough area for people to stand at least six feet apart from each other.

Baker and his wife said they came to Asbury Park because they wanted to window shop and make a list of which businesses were open. The one thing Baker, who also goes by the Rock 'n Roll Painter, misses the most are the concerts.

They wont pack them like they used to, not at first, he said. At least not until theres an antidote for this crap.

The Asbury Park beach is free to access pre-Memorial Day. Metered parking near the Asbury Park Convention Hall was mostly vacant around 10:30 a.m. Saturday.

Saturday, May 2, 2020 - Signs warn that non-residents may not park on Ocean Avenue in Belmar.Michael Mancuso | NJ Advance Med

A beach patrolman on an RV was going up and down the shoreline Saturday afternoon. He once waved his hand to remind people to spread apart, but mostly just rode along and told people, Stay safe.

Asbury Park police slightly increased patrols in anticipation of Saturdays warm weather, Casey said. The department was also concerned people would flock to city-run beaches because Gov. Phil Murphy re-opened state parks.

Melissa Aponte, who was walking her dog Biscuit on the sand and lives in Neptune, said there were generally more people on a warm, sunny weekend afternoon even before beach season hits. Shes been coming to the Asbury Park beach for four years.

I was kind of worried there was going to be an undercover cop who says you cant be that close, she said.

Saturday, May 2, 2020 - An early morning walker on Ocean Avenue in Belmar.Michael Mancuso | NJ Advance Med

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Rebecca Panico may be reached at rpanico@njadvancemedia.com.
Days after the Centre granted



permission to resume construction work in COVID-19 red zones with certain riders, a senior official of the Kolkata Metro Railway Corporation (KMRC) on Sunday said tunneling work for the East-West project in the city will recommence soon.

The corporation is in the process of getting its workers and engineers back to the construction sites, where arrangements would also be made for their accommodation, th official said.

Work for the 16.6-km-long rapid transit system, connecting the twin cities of Kolkata and Howrah, came to a halt after a nationwide lockdown was imposed by the Union government to control the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We will have to ensure a steady supply of materials for the tunnel-boring work. Construction will resume after the logistics are in place. Once the men and materials are ready, we will get on with the work, in accordance with the guidelines issued by the MHA," he told PTI.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), in a directive issued recently, has allowed construction work in the red zones of urban areas where labourers are available on site and no workers are required to be brought in from outside.

Kolkata, Howrah and North Parganas districts, the areas through which the East-West Metro corridor passes, have been declared red zones, in view of the rising number of COVID-19 cases.

Work for the crucial East-West metro tunnel, which was put on hold after a boring machine hit an aquifer, had recommenced in February after a gap of several months.

Several buildings in Bowbazar area of the city had developed cracks and some even collapsed following the accident on August 31 last year.

The project, earlier scheduled to be completed by June, 2021, got delayed by more than six months.

Asked about the impact of the lockdown on the project, the KMRC official said efforts will be made to increase the speed of the construction work.

On February 13, the 4.88 km-long first phase of the East-West Metro line, connecting the information technology hub of Sector V in Salt Lake with Yuva Bharati Krirangan stadium, got functional.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A cold front bringing buckets of rain and damaging winds has sparked a severe weather warning for the Perth metropolitan area, the South West and parts of the Great Southern and Southern coastal districts. The glorious autumn weather Perth has been experiencing is coming to an end, bringing some much needed rain to the state. Credit:Bureau of Meteorology The Bureau of Meteorology said a cold front will move through the state, bringing showers, isolated thunderstorms and winds with speeds of up to 100km/h which could damage properties. The damaging winds are most likely to occur ahead of the leading edge of the storm but thunderstorms but showers and gusty winds will continue through much of Monday morning. Bureau of Meteorology spokesman Neil Bennett said the worst of the storm would hit Perth in the afternoon.

"We are expecting some very localised gusty winds of up to 100 km/h. But the key thing with this front is the rain, we are expecting some decent falls out this one, round about 20 millimetres for Perth," he said. "The strongest winds will probably be about mid-afternoon and continuing with rain right through the afternoon and the evening and then slowly easing off." On Tuesday evening a much stronger cold front is expected to come through, bringing with it more thunderstorms affecting communities in Albany, Bunbury, Busselton, Mandurah, Margaret River, Mount Barker and the Perth metropolitan area. "We are more concerned with a front due to arrive during Tuesday evening, it does look like it will be a particularly strong front," Mr Bennett said. He said the front is due to go through the state from mid-afternoon and winds with speeds of up to 125km/h were possible.
DNA damage in general and DNA strand breaks in particular occur every day in all cells of the human body. This is due to internal influences such as free radicals, which are produced during inflammatory processes and cellular respiration, and external ones, such as cosmic background radiation or X-rays in the course of medical diagnostic measures. DNA strand breaks can lead to cell death or to mutations and thus contribute in the long term to cancer development or the aging process.

DNA repair by PARP1

Cells possess molecular tools to repair such DNA strand breaks very efficiently. One of them is the enzyme poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase 1 (PARP1), which detects DNA strand breaks and thereby initiates downstream repair processes. By binding to a DNA strand break, PARP1 is (catalytically) activated and uses the substrate nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) to produce poly(ADP-ribose) (PAR), a chain-shaped biopolymer. This serves as a signal transmitter in the cell and coordinates the further DNA damage response. In the further course of the process, PARP1 detaches from the site of damage again, thus clearing the way for subsequent steps in DNA repair. This process is of medical importance, even more so as pharmacological inhibitors of PARP1 have recently been introduced into cancer therapy.

Scientists at the University of Konstanz (working groups of Professor Aswin Mangerich and Professor Alexander Burkle, Department of Biology, and working group of Professor Karin Hauser, Department of Chemistry) have now been able to visualize in detail the biochemical processes which PARP1 fulfills at a DNA strand break. To this end, they used a special method of infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR), which had also been successfully used in a previous, recently published study on the interactions of the tumor suppressor protein p53 with DNA and PAR.

Real-time observations using infrared spectroscopy

What is special about our new study is that we can now investigate the molecular processes that PARP1 undergoes at DNA strand breaks in real time. This enabled us to unveil dynamic changes in the protein structure and thus gain further insights into the underlying mechanisms. Dr. Annika Kruger

Dr. Annika Kruger worked on the project as part of her  by now successfully completed  doctoral thesis.

During the work on her doctoral thesis, Kruger was supported by the Research School Chemical Biology, the Zukunftskolleg of the University of Konstanz and the Konstanz Collaborative Research Centre 969 Chemical and Biological Principles of Cellular Proteostasis. She is now pursuing research at the renowned Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.

As a matter of principle, this spectroscopic method can be used to investigate also other enzymatic processes that take place at the DNA, in detail and with molecular resolution. In the long term, this may contribute to better understanding of the mechanisms of cancer development and aging, as well as of the mode of action of anticancer drugs. The study was published in the current issue of the scientific journal Nature Communications.
Brazil's Supreme Court Judge Luis Roberto Barroso issued an injunction on Saturday suspending the Foreign Ministry's move to expel 34 Venezuelan diplomats, Trend reports citing Xinhua.

According to the injunction, Barroso gave the government 10 days to explain why it set May 2 as the deadline for the diplomats' departure.

Brazil withdrew its diplomats from Venezuela's capital city Caracas on April 17, Reuters reported on Saturday.

The Brazilian Foreign Ministry notified the Venezuelan embassy this week that if its diplomats remained in Brazil until Saturday, they would be declared "personae non gratae."

The injunction request was presented by Deputy Paulo Pimenta of the Workers' Party.

"Forcing Venezuelan citizens to leave without adequate logistics, legal procedure, and responsibility in the midst of a pandemic is an act of cruelty," said Pimenta in his request.
Sam Rodriguez, Christian college president urge Calif. to reopen churches

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Hispanic evangelical leader and Sacramento megachurch pastor Samuel Rodriguez and a Christian college president have called on California leaders to allow churches to reopen their doors as places of worship as the pace of new coronavirus cases has slowed down in recent days.

We are mindful of our nations proud heritage of religious liberty, established from its founding as a place of refuge and respect for people of faith, the leaders wrote in an open letter.

Today, we join together respectfully urging Californias governor, county supervisors, mayors and other civic leaders to support the reopening of church gatherings in ways that are sensitive to public health concerns as well as providing for the fundamental freedoms so richly encouraging to personal and societal well-being and ensconced in our founding documents.

Rodriguez, the head of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and pastor of New Season Church, along with William Jessup University President John Jackson published the letter Wednesday to provide an outline for how churches across the state should slowly start to reopen to full capacity once they are able.

The letter comes as countless churches in California and across the nation have halted in-person services and moved services online in recent weeks to obey social distancing orders aimed at combating the spread of the virus.

Some churches in the state have filed lawsuits over California Gov. Gavin Newsomes stay-at-home order banning large gatherings and similar county-level orders that are preventing them from gathering for worship.

We are grateful to our governmental leaders and have been in increased corporate and personal prayer for them throughout these days, the letter from Rodriguez and Jackson says. We understand that various counties in California have different circumstances and are mindful that state, county, and local guidance will provide varying public health frameworks that church leaders can utilize in addition to any national guidelines that are provided.

In the letter, Rodriguez and Jackson say they want to work with the state, county and local leaders. They add that they are mindful of the importance of doing so with mutual respect in alignment with our convictions around Romans 13 and other appropriate biblical passages calling on Christians to obey government authorities.

We believe that churches can and will be responsible as members of our community utilizing the following guidelines here in California, the leaders contend.

The letter suggests that churches utilize drive-in resources for the first part of May as well as minimize public gatherings for the first two weekends of the month. The letter advises churches to move to 50% of building capacity in the last two weeks of May.

We advocate that churches consider, if they gather in auditoriums, expanding their sanitizing procedures and encouraging the wearing of masks where appropriate, Rodriguez and Jackson wrote.

Starting in June, the Christian leaders encourage churches to develop procedures allowing them to reconvene in public worship and classroom settings at 75% of room capacities in addition to maintaining proper sanitizing protocols and deferring to government safety guidelines when necessary.

By July, the leaders say churches should be able to amp up to 100% of building capacities depending on public health guidelines provided leading up to this time period.

The Scriptures tell us that hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life (Proverbs 13:12 NIV), the letter concludes. A return to worship, teaching, shared service, compassion and generosity is in the heart of the people. We believe together that people of faith across the state of California will experience a rebirth of joy, hope and life with these measured and responsible steps in our state.

Their letter comes after the Christian conservative legal group Liberty Counsel launched a campaign last week calling on churches nationwide to resume live in-person and drive-in services on May 3.

The day has been deemed ReOpen Church Sunday and falls on the Sunday before the National Day of Prayer takes place next Thursday. While the campaign calls on churches to resume services, it also advises them to follow appropriate safety protocols when doing so.

We chose May 3 because it is part of that phase one of the Opening America Again [proposal] that President [Trump] issued as guidelines, Liberty Counsel founder and attorney Mat Staver told The Christian Post. That actually begins on May 1 and that is the first phase of the three-phase program and churches are included in that phase.

U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom Chairman Tony Perkins, who was previously critical of churches holding in-person services, told CP at the time that he also thinks it is time.

I think we are seeing the curve flatten out in most places. But there are still a few hotspots, Perkins said. I am hesitant because we need to be careful that we are not drawing a line, saying this is the day and everybody needs to be back in their churches.

Jeffrey J. Barrows, the senior vice president of bioethics and public policy for the Christian Medical & Dental Associations, told CP last week that churches that choose to ignore government social distancing orders during the pandemic are placing their congregants at risk.

We recommend that all churches follow the guidance provided by their government officials during this unprecedented outbreak, Barrows explained.
As San Antonio area residents slowly begin to leave the safety of their homes, Mayor Ron Nirenberg and County Judge Nelson Wolff urged patience and asked people venturing outside to continue maintaining a 6-foot social distance from others and wearing masks to help ensure theres no outbreak of the deadly disease in the community.

There were 108 new cases of COVID-19 reported Saturday, pushing the total to 1,585 since the pandemic started in mid-March.

Of those new cases, 65 came from Bexar County jail, where there are ongoing efforts to test all inmates and county personnel because the virus is sweeping through the facility. But that means the other 43 new cases were in the community, higher than the 12 new cases reported in the community Friday.

No new deaths were reported for the third day in a row. The death toll stands at 48.

On ExpressNews.com: Get the latest update on coronavirus and a tracking map of U.S. cases

Wolff noted that once again many of the inmates who tested positive Saturday had shown no signs they had the disease.

Were testing everybody even those who dont have symptoms, the county judge said, adding that everyone who tests positive is being isolated from those who dont have it. Thats important. You may think youre OK but then  you have it.

Wolff said its still not known how asymptomatic people spread the disease.

Thats why we preach and preach over and over again, Wolff said. Stay 6 feet away. Wear the mask. Everybody just needs to use common sense.

So far, 288 inmates out of about 3,000 in the jail have been tested; 187 have been positive for the virus. Also, 249 employees have been tested; of those, 48 were positive, officials said.

There are other signs that Bexar County is holding its own. The number of people in the hospital with the virus dropped by two to 58 on Saturday. Of those, 37 were in intensive care and only 20 were on ventilators, leaving 79 percent of ventilators available citywide.

And more people are recovering, Nirenberg said, with 725 people now reported to be in good health after falling ill with the virus.

Nirenberg said the city has seen widespread compliance with social distancing measures at businesses that reopened Friday following Gov. Greg Abbotts executive order initiating the first phase of a statewide economic reopening.

Businesses were allowed to reopen at 25 percent capacity on Friday with other safety measures in place, such as mask-wearing and physical spacing. Nirenberg said the city had received a handful of complaints about social distancing at businesses, but there were no egregious violations.

People are really paying attention to the public health guidance and taking this very seriously, which they should, Nirenberg said. We hope they continue that, because thats going to build consumer confidence and get our economy going again.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio health experts at adds with governor on timing of reopening

About 6.2 percent of people tested in Bexar County have come up positive for COVID-19  significantly below the national rate. Since March 1, 18 percent of people tested for COVID-19 nationwide have tested positive.

Bexar Countys rate also is below the state rate, which is 8 percent. Texas records show there were 1,293 new cases reported Saturday, the second-highest increase since the pandemic started. Like Bexar County, though, the state has seen increased testing in recent days.

Statewide, there have been 847 deaths.

Harris County, the states largest population center, has by far the most cases and the most deaths of all counties in Texas. Saturday, the county, where Houston is located, reported 157 new cases for a total of 6,708 cases. There were seven more deaths reported; the death toll now stands at 129 in Harris County.

There are still 42 counties out of Texas 254 that have had no cases of COVID-19.
Louisa May Alcotts Little Women (1868) holds a unique place in the literary annals. It has enjoyed popularity from the time of publication until today and has even inspired numerous interpretations for the stage and silver screen. On the other hand, it is discounted by some as juvenile and preachyonly a childrens book. It doesnt get even a mention in Wikipedias American Literature entry, and is only briefly listed under its Childrens Literature entry.

Little Women also evades the canon of The Great American Novel, a term coined by novelist John William De Forest in his essay written the same year as Little Women. De Forest defined the designation as the picture of ordinary emotions and manners of American existence. Considering academics include on the list Moby Dick, which is about a revenge-crazed whaler, we cant help wonder why Little Women, which portrays exactly the ordinary picture of emotions and manners found in American family life, does not!

It was publicly vindicated in the 2003 BBC survey The Big Read, which polled three-quarters of a million readers. Little Women ranked 18th in the list of the UKs best-loved novels, coming fourth among American novels.

What makes Louisa May Alcotts work inspire such differing responses among critics? It may be its seeming ordinariness that causes it to be overlooked by academics, yet beloved by generations of readers. Perhaps Alcott does have something truly unique to offer, which the academics have missed.

Little Women is more than a book for children. (Simon & Schuster)

Lemonade From Lemons

Alcotts bestseller is often described as an autobiographical work because the author lifts from her own experience much of what we see in the story: a family of four sisters living in New England, guided in their growth by loving parents. The March family has fallen into difficult financial means familiar to the Alcotts. The identities of the storys March sisters (Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy) line up with the Alcott family (Anna, Louisa, Elizabeth, and May).

Alcott certainly based many of the events in the story on the doings of her actual family, but her story is far from an autobiography. Doubtless, she and her sisters enjoyed putting on plays, composing newspapers, and doing general household tasks as did the March sisters of the book. However, her real childhood was not quite the cozy, rooted existence enjoyed by the March family.

While the Marches remember more prosperous circumstances, the Alcotts were sadly accustomed to humiliating poverty and even outright penury and hunger. Their family had to move time after time as Mr. Alcott experienced one failure after another. This upbringing nevertheless provided Louisa not only with material for her stories about a family living in poverty but also with an impetus for writing: making a decent living.

A Time of Change

During her lifetime, Louisa May Alcott witnessed a period of head-spinning growth and change in America and the world. Locally, her parents were members of the Transcendental Movement, which arose in New England at that time. Its adherents grappled through a philosophical fog toward an understanding of human anthropology better than those who followed the tradition of Puritanism or the Rationalism of the Industrial Age, which were then at odds.

A far from exhaustive list of changes in the United States from her birth to the books publication includes the ongoing acquisition of territory and creation of new states, the growth of railroads, the founding of universities, hospitals, libraries, banks, and publishers, wars for territory in the frontier, the temperance movement, a cholera pandemic, industrialization, the gold rush, a surge of immigration, and clashes among abolitionists and proponents of slave labor culminating in the American Civil War, which ended just three years before the publication of Little Women.

Alcotts characters apparently experienced little of this. Mr. March was away from home, having volunteered as a chaplain to the brave men fighting at the front. We are only left to assume, for lack of explication, that this is the Civil War, which would be in the forefront of the minds of her readers, but it is left vague.

Battles Within

Vagueness, rather than vogue-ness, is employed by Alcott and contributes to the books appeal over so many generations. It is not definitely tied to any particular time or set of beliefs but speaks to transcendent human qualities. Its center and focus is the family home and the human heart.

The beliefs of the March family are not explicit. Reference is made to John Bunyans Puritan classic, The Pilgrims Progress, as inspiring games of play-acting in the girls younger days. Mrs. March later exhorts Jo to find consolation in her ever-present Father above when Jo appeals to her mothers aid in conquering her volcanic temper. Amy learned the benefits of solitary meditation aided by a beautiful image of the Madonna and Child, from her aunts French servant, a Catholic.

Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women. (Public Domain)

However, the struggle to grow in virtue and self-control is central to the book. While the Civil War may be somewhere in the background of the story, the main battles are fought within the hearts of the March girls, under the gentle tutelage of their wise mother. Marmee, as they call her, never scolds or nags, but leads and encourages her daughters toward virtuous decisions as they face their individual temptations.

The Marches genteel poverty grates on each of them in different ways. Meg desires the nice things other girls have. Quick-tempered Jo wants to make a name (and fortune) for herself, doing something big. Beth, who is naturally virtuous, feels her little part is not what it should be. Amy wishes to be esteemed as a lady.

Each girl comes face-to-face with her temptation, teeters, and ultimately overcomes it. Meg finds herself among wealthy, fashionable friends and succumbs to the allure of vanity, being dressed up in borrowed fineries and behaving frivolously. Her disgust with herself returns her to the realization that integrity and the regard of those she loves is a greater good than pretty trifles.

Jo battles her choleric temper, which flares up at Amy when the younger sister destroys months of writing work (the pride of her heart) in an act of resentment. Jos disdain for Amy nearly ends in tragedy when she allows her younger sister to fall through thin ice while skating. The occasion brings Jo to dedicate herself to working to control her passions, the free run of which brings only sorrow.

Beths frontline of temptation is more subtle than the others because she is naturally virtuous and sweet. The shy sisters victory is the realization, on her deathbed, that her contribution to domestic happiness is, in fact, enough.

Amy, the pretentious youngest, seems to achieve all her outward desires. Her ambition was to become the best she could aspire to. Through prayerful meditation on the good and beautiful and constant adjusting of her tendencies to a closer approximation of her aspiration, she actually does become a fine lady, with all the attendant luxuries.

A Unique Vantage Point

Alcott had had some small publishing success when her publisher suggested she write a girls book. Whether or not her heart was in it as she wrote, she certainly hit the bulls-eye with Little Women. It was right on target at the time and has remained a hit in the hearts of succeeding generations of readers ever since.

Having spent her life within the sphere of influence of intellectuals and writers at a time of rapid change in philosophy, technology, education, and womens rights, among others, Alcott was well-placed to see back along the path from which American society was emerging and forward toward the direction in which it was headed. She was smart enough to make something of this pivotal position. Her book embraces traditional goods as well as the changes that allowed for a greater development of the person than had been acceptable in the strict social atmosphere of the time.

Todays reader finds more that is familiar than is outdated in this work written over 150 years ago. Much of the Transcendentalist thought and theory became the foundation of the educational system that is now standard in the United States. While Alcott bore little resemblance to the feminists of today, she supported womens suffrage and increased opportunity for women to excel in their area of talent beyond what was common at the time. She endorsed literacy in the arts and wholesome exercise. These newer views are woven (sometimes unevenly, sometimes didactically) through her book, all the while remaining pinned to the traditional and enduring goods of virtue, integrity, and domestic happiness.

Little Women is a bright and attractive refuge of familiar domestic life, realistically rendered. G.K. Chesterton suggested that Alcotts book anticipated realism by twenty or thirty years. The success of Alcotts little women lies in the development of their characters, rather than merely their happily-ever-after marriages. As in real life, marriage is not the end, but one of the events that help shape the person.

Louisa May Alcott gathers into Little Women the goods common to people of all times, and builds newer ideas onto that foundation in a natural way that was not shocking to her contemporary audience. Nor do they seem dated to todays readers. Her subtle insight into the enduring truths of human nature may have been overlooked by academics, yet Alcott deftly navigates the rapid current of change in her time to produce a valuable piece of literature that refuses to be relegated to the nursery as just a childrens book. She has produced a gem of American literature.

Susannah Pearce holds a masters degree in theology and writes from her home in South Carolina.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 13:35:55|Editor: huaxia

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LOS ANGELES, May 2 (Xinhua) -- An uplifting international musical concert, "Together as One," aimed at boosting confidence in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, hit the internet on Saturday.

Organized by EDI Media Inc., a Chinese American multi-media company headquartered in Los Angeles, and co-organized by the County of Los Angeles and the Consulate General of the People's Republic of China, the concert was aired on iCiTi TV and YouTube.

The event brought together over 100 performers, musicians, officials and other luminaries to show love and support for those locked down at home.

Los Angeles County's Supervisor Kathryn Barger expressed thanks to the organizers "for putting together this amazing concert during this very stressful time for so many in LA County."

In a video message, Hollywood actress Madeline Carroll stressed the importance to stand together in unknown times, saying that "we're stronger together and it's important to be mindful of your community, how you can help, how you can lift somebody else up."

"So just having an awareness that it's not just you going through this, there are others too, and focusing on the good things and not the bad things ... At the end of the day, we will get through this," she added.

"Across time and geographical borders, artists from China and the United States bridge the Chinese and American people with music and songs," said Chinese Consul General in Los Angeles Zhang Ping.

"This online concert warms the people fighting against the COVID-19 pandemic with love and friendship and inspires people with courage and confidence. Together as One, we will win the battle against this disease," he said. Enditem
MHA says movement allowed for people who are distressed

MHA asks states to take precautions against virus in jails, other detention centres

More than 35 lakh people have been infected by the novel coronavirus. US continues to top the list of worst-affected nations due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In India, total number of cases have now reached 40,263 with 1,306 people dead so far.

Click here for complete coverage of coronavirus pandemic

Elsewhere in the world, Spaniards filled the streets to exercise outside for the first time in seven weeks and German children rushed to playgrounds as countries in Western Europe gradually relaxed coronavirus lockdown restrictions.

Here are the highlights on coronavirus from India and around the world:
Natasha Oakley confirmed her split with businessman Theo Chambers in November.

But it seems, the former couple, who started dating in late 2018, have rekindled their romance.

On Sunday, the bikini designer, 29, shared a photo to Instagram of herself enjoying a romantic lunch date and tagged Theo in the post.

Back with the ex? Natasha Oakley (pictured) enjoyed a lunch date with her ex-boyfriend Theo Chambers on Sunday... after she appeared to confirm the pair are dating

In the photo, wine glasses and a meal are pictured on a table and the ocean is visible in the background.

Natasha also shared a video while drinking wine and captioned the post: 'So excited for winter'.

Natasha's post comes after she addressed rumours she's back with her ex-boyfriend Theo.

Speaking to Stellar in March, the model was quizzed on recent social media posts which suggest she and Theo had rekindled their romance.

Romantic date: Natasha shared a photo to Instagram of herself enjoying lunch and tagged Theo in the post

Getaway: Natasha also shared a video while drinking wine and captioned the post: 'So excited for winter'

'I'm happy to share a lot, but my relationship is something I like to keep private,' Natasha said, appearing to confirm the rumours.

'As my career progresses and as I get older, privacy becomes more important,' she added.

Natasha announced her split from businessman Theo, the son of Chambers Cellar founder Steven Chambers, in November, telling The Daily Telegraph: 'We broke up,[but] we're still really good friends.'

'My relationship is something I like to keep private': Natasha's post comes after she addressed rumours she's back with her ex-boyfriend Theo

She added: 'I do travel a lot and have a very different lifestyle. We had an amazing relationship but these things happen in life.'

Despite being newly single at the time, Natasha insisted she was 'really happy'.

In late February, The Daily Telegraph reported whispers that Natasha and Theo's relationship was back on.

The bikini entrepreneur was said to have recently attended a friend's wedding in Sydney's eastern suburbs last month, alongside a dapper Theo.

Missing something? In February, the bikini entrepreneur (pictured) was said to have attended a friend's wedding in Sydney's eastern suburbs alongside a dapper Theo - but Natasha made no mention of his presence online

At the time, Natasha shared only solo shots of herself at the event venue to Instagram, and made no mention of Theo's presence.

Natasha and Theo were previously seen together at the Australian Open in Melbourne on February 2.

Despite their public sightings and closeness on the red carpet, Natasha made no mention of their reunion - or even Theo's presence - on her Instagram.

The pair had started dating in late 2018 and confirmed their romance on New Year's Eve that year.
Kabul, May 3 (UNI) US threatened Taliban and other conflict parties in Afghanistan with retaliatory actions if the militants do not reduce the scale of violence in the war torn country.

"The US military called on the parties to the conflict in Afghanistan to settle the disagreements through political means and threatened with retaliatory actions if the Taliban militants did not reduce the scale of violence", Col. Sonny Leggett spokesman for US forces in Afghanistan, said on Saturday.

Leggett sent a two-page letter to the Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, posted on Twitter. According to the US side, all parties must embark on the path of a "political solution" to the conflict, urging Afghans to sit down and start discussing the country's future.

"Reducing violence is an absolute necessityand this is up to the leaders of all military forces [Afghan National Security Forces] ANDSF, Taliban fighters and, yes, the Coalition. Attacks generate attacks, while restraint produces restraint. All sides must choose restraint to prevent more killing and violence," Leggett wrote on Twitter.

The Taliban spokesman responded to the call on his social media account, saying that the path to resolution of the conflict "lies in the implementation of the agreement concluded in Doha." he also called upon Washington not to "harm the current state of things".

On February 29, the US and the Taliban inked a peace agreement in the Qatari capital of Doha, according to which an intra-Afghan negotiation was scheduled to begin on March 10. The talks, however, failed to begin due to disagreements between Kabul and the Taliban, in particular on the subject of the prisoner exchange.

UNI XC JAL 0527
May 2 marks the 100th day since COVID-19 appeared in Vietnam. VNS presents a timeline of the pandemic.

Samples for the SARS-CoV-2 virus test taken by Hanoi Centre of Disease Control.

Jan 23: The first case of COVID-19 is recorded in Viet Nam. A 66-year-old Chinese man travelled from Wuhan to Viet Nam to visit his son. The man and his son were then hospitalised at Cho Ray Hospital, HCM City.

Viet Nam stops all international flights to and from Wuhan.

The Chinese patient (middle) and his son are treated at Cho Ray Hospital.

Jan 30: Three workers returning from a business trip in Wuhan test positive for coronavirus. Viet Nam records its first three Vietnamese patients. Of which, a female worker, patient 5, from Son Loi Commune, Binh Xuyen District, Vinh Phuc Province, infected five other people in close contact with her.

Feb 2: Schools are closed in Viet Nam, with students starting to study online.

Staff at Tran Nhan Tong High school in Ha Noi clean the classroom while the school is closed to students.

Feb 7: The National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology in Ha Noi successfully cultures and isolates the then 2019 novel coronavirus (nCoV) in the lab.

Feb 13: The number of COVID-19 cases climbs to 16. The 16th patient is the father of patient 5.

Feb 13: Son Loi Commune, Binh Xuyen District, Vinh Phuc Province is locked down until March 4.

A checkpoint at Son Loi Commune.

Feb 25: 16 patients are given the all-clear. Viet Nam has no new cases for three weeks from February 13 to March 6.

Mar 4: Viet Nam successfully studies and produces a COVID-19 test kit.

Medical workers take samples to test for SARS-CoV-2 in Long Bien Market, Ha Noi.

Mar 6: The 17th patient, after travelling through Italy, France and England, tests positive for coronavirus five days after landing in Viet Nam and having contact with many people.

A corner of Truc Bach Street where a lockdown was imposed on the evening of March 6.

An urgent meeting of the National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control is held on March 6 night.

Truc Bach Street, where the 17th patient lives, is immediately locked down until March 20 and sterilised the next morning.

Seventeen people test positive after having close contact with the 17th case, four of which were in the community and 13 of which were on the same flight VN0054 from England to Viet Nam.

Mar 7: Passengers arriving in Viet Nam have to complete health declaration forms provided by the Ministry of Health.

The number of positive cases increases in relation to people returning from Europe to Viet Nam.

Mar 9: The Ministry of Information and Communications and the Ministry of Health launch two applications, including NCOVI for Vietnamese people and the Vietnam health declaration for people entering Viet Nam.

A screenshot of NCOVI application.

Mar 20: The 91st patient, a 43-year-old British pilot of Vietnam Airlines tests positive for the virus. He visited Buddha Bar in HCM City, leading to a number of further infections.

Thirteen people visiting Buddha Bar then test positive, and six people in close contact with the 13 are also infected.

The number of patients connected to the bar soon increases to 19.

March 20: Ha Noi-based Bach Mai Hospital records the first two cases related to two nurses from the hospital.

March 25: Viet Nam suspends all international flights to contain the spread of the virus until at least April 30.

Planes are grounded at Noi Bai International Airport in Ha Noi.

March 28: Two more cases related to water supply company Truong Sinh Company of Bach Mai Hospital are recorded. These two people have had contact with many people in the canteen of the hospital.

On the same day, Bach Mai Hospital is confirmed as another virus hot spot, with unknown origin and complicated travel history of infected patients.

March 29: Bach Mai Hospital is locked down until April 12.

The main gate of Bach Mai Hospital on March 29.

March 31: Quick COVID-19 test booths are set up in some districts in Ha Noi to test those connected to Bach Mai Hospital.

Quick COVID-19 testing booths at ong a Secondary School in ong a District.

April 1: Social distancing is implemented nationwide following Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phucs Directive 16 issued the previous day.

April 7: Ha Noi imposes a lockdown on Ha Loi Village in Me Linh District following the countrys 243rd COVID-19 patient, who lived and attended a wedding ceremony in the village during his incubation period.

A checkpoint in Ha Loi Village.

April 10: The British Embassy in Viet Nam sends a message to offer special commercial flights from Ha Noi to London on April 14 and HCM City to London on April 12.

April 15: Social distancing in 12 high-risk localities including Ha Noi and HCM City is extended.

The usually crowded Tran Duy Hung street in Ha Noi was far less occupied during social distancing days.

April 22: Social distancing is basically eased nationwide from midnight.

April 24: Two new COVID-19 cases are reported after eight days straight without new cases. The two new patients are Vietnamese students from Japan. They are put under quarantine upon arriving in Viet Nam two days earlier.

May 2: The 100th day since the first cases reported in Viet Nam on January 23. Viet Nam has had no new infections in the community for 16 days straight.  VNS

Bailout package reaches people in need Many people across Vietnam have been adversely affected by COVID-19, prompting the government to release a bailout package worth VND62 trillion ($2.66 billion) in early April. The package has since been reaching needy people.
Christian McBride playing in his Montclair, N.J. living room during the Love From Philly virtual music fest on Saturday night. Read more

On Saturday, Love From Philly became a jazz festival.

The weekend-long virtual music fest is a fund-raiser for 30 Amp Circuit, a nonprofit thats distributing micro-grants to Philadelphia musicians and venue workers whose livelihoods have been impacted by COVID-19.

The fest started Friday with a slate of mostly up-and-coming rock and hip-hop acts. Its scheduled to continue Sunday at 3 p.m. with bigger names, like The War On Drugs, Freeway, Kurt Vile, and John Oates.

On Saturday, Love From Philly immersed itself in the current scene of a city with a storied tradition, while also paying tribute to those who have been lost.

 READ MORE: Love From Philly, a virtual fest of Philly bands to play for COVID-19 relief

The year has been particularly brutal on the Philadelphia jazz community, with the deaths of saxophonists Jimmy Heath and Danny Ray Thompson, bassist Jymie Merritt, trumpeter Wallace Roney, and sax player Bootsie Barnes, the latter two due to the coronavirus.

Barnes was the one whose name was most frequently evoked as a stellar horn player and a mentor to young Philadelphia musicians.

He was paid tribute to by Henry Tirfe, who led a trio from a studio in West Philly, and Tom Moon, the former Inquirer music critic who played sax and flute accompanied by electronic drums, and spoke of the pandemics toll not just in terms of disappearing gigs and income, but also lost opportunity for creative interaction and inspiration.

 READ MORE: Bootsie Barnes, Philadelphia tenor sax great, has died of coronavirus at 82

Many Philly-connected jazz men performed from far-flung locales. Pianist Uri Caines well-conceived three-song set included a cover of Grover Washingtons Mr. Magic, a song written in honor of 19th-century African American activist Octavius Catto, and Blues From Bootsy for Barnes.

I carry Philly wherever I go, said headliner Christian McBride as he gave his upright bass a workout in his Montclair, N.J. living room, shouting out Barnes and kicking off his set with Merritts Nommo.

Organist Joey DeFrancesco got cooking on a three-song set that closed with a vocal version of Frank Sinatras Fly Me To The Moon from his home in Arizona. And Germantown native Kurt Rosenwinkel played solo piano meditations from Berlin, Germany.

Camden County trumpeters Arnetta Johnson and Matt Cappy each brought an element of funk and soul to the occasion. Johnson played solo with prerecorded backing, and bandleader Cappy assembled his group via Zoom, with a guest appearance by West Philly rapper Chill Moody.

Guitarist Tim Motzers set was an ambient, improvisational standout. Bassist Gerald Veasley was lyrical and meditative. Former Tonight Show bandleader Kevin Eubanks put his jazz chops on display and employed visual trickery, as he accompanied himself in disguise on keyboards on one song and bass on another.

Not-strictly-jazz acts included rapper Kuf Knotz and harpist Christine Elise, and Lauren Hart, who started off the show with God Bless America. Ivan Neville, a 30 Amp cofounder, was the only non-Philadelphian on the bill, singing Stevie Wonders Joy Inside My Tears.

There were minor technical difficulties. The sound occasionally cut out during host Blake Melvin Jr.s intros. It was silent during the entirety of the second song by drummer Mike Greenfield of jamtronic band Lotus the first time the prerecorded performance was shown. (It was replayed later.) And trombonist Jeff Bradshaws set was nixed, due to a power outage on his block.

Love From Phillys spirit of unity, with a citys resilient musical community united in common cause, was best captured in a charismatic performance by spoken word poet Ursula Rucker. Philly born and bred, Tastykake sweet or hard of head, she rhymed. We are here ... We live... We matter.

Watch Love From Philly on YouTube via lovefromphilly.live.
Peter Sellers' ex-wife Britt Ekland has claimed the comedy actor was a 'very tormented soul' and deeply controlling.

The Swedish actress and former Bond girl, now 77, who was married to the British comic actor from 1964 to 1968, has spoken candidly for the first time about their fights and his controlling ways in a new documentary marking the 40th anniversary of his death.

She believed Sellers - who suffered from serious ill health as well as alcohol and cocaine dependency - 'obviously suffered from or was bipolar, severely bipolar' but was unable to receive medical treatment partly because of his value to studios.

Sellers, who died in 1980, was most famous for his comic role as Inspector Jacques Clouseau in The Pink Panther film series and his seminal 1960s BBC radio comedy The Goon Show.

Peter Sellers' ex-wife Britt Ekland (pictured left in 2018) has claimed the comedy actor was a 'very tormented soul' and deeply controlling. The couple together, right, in 1965

The former Bond girl, now 77, who was married to the British comic actor (pictured together) from 1964 to 1968, has talked for the first time about their fights and his controlling ways in a new documentary marking the 40th anniversary of his death

Speaking in the BBC documentary Peter Sellers: A State Of Comic Ecstasy, airing on May 9, Ekland recalled how the actor would choose what she would wear and threaten her with divorce 'every Friday night' before offering a make-up lunch on Monday.

'He obviously suffered from or was bipolar, severely bipolar. He was a very tormented soul who should have had more help. But instead he was unable [to] because he was such a valuable asset,' Ekland says, according to The Observer.

Recalling his controlling ways, she added: 'He decided what I was going to wear. He just pre-decided everything without ever asking me.'

In the documentary, Ekland explains that when looking back on her diaries from that period of her life, she sees the repeated use of the Swedish word for 'fight'.

Sellers (pictured on the couple's wedding day), who died in 1980, was most famous for his comic role as Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther film series and his seminal 1960s BBC radio comedy The Goon Show

Speaking in the BBC documentary, Peter Sellers: A State Of Comic Ecstasy, airing on May 9, Ekland recalled how the actor would choose what she would wear (pictured together in 1965)

Remembering an argument in Rome after being harassed by paparazzi, she said: 'He just went on and on This continued all night and he took my radio and smashed it. In the end he called our agent and said, "Come and pick her up". I knew that this time I could never go back.'

Ekland and Sellers, who had one child together - Victoria - in January 1965, met after he saw a photograph of her in a newspaper and realised they were both staying at the Dorchester in London.

The actress was in London to co-star in a Richard Attenborough film called Guns At Batasi.

Sellers said about their first encounter: 'I was knocked over, absolutely stunned. I couldn't believe it. She was so great. She wore a simple dress and her hair was like sunlight. Unbelievable.'

Swedish actress Ekland and Sellers, who had one child together, Victoria, in January 1965, met after he saw a photograph of her in a newspaper and realised they were both staying at the Dorchester in London (pictured together in 1964)

Ekland, who went on to star in The Man With The Golden Gun, recalls how after their marriage, Sellers's actions got her fired from the 1964 film Guns at Batasi. Pictured at their Beverly Hills home together

Smitten Sellers bombarded the woman 16 years his junior with flowers and expensive little gifts and  just 10 days later  they were walking down the aisle.

They were married at Guildford Register Office, where more than 1,000 people lined the streets outside to catch a glimpse of the newlyweds.

Ekland, who went on to star in The Man With The Golden Gun, recalls how after their marriage, Sellers' actions got her fired from the 1964 film Guns at Batasi.

He asked his wife to spend some time with him in California over her weekend off, but when she arrived he had arranged for a doctor to see her, who apparently said: 'She's suffering strain and stress. You can't possibly go back to filming'.

When asked in the documentary if she was ill, Ekland said she was as 'fit as a fiddle' but didn't have the option to say she was going back to work, and was subsequently fired from the film.

The couple divorced in 1968, with Ekland citing Sellers's psychological cruelty. Sellers went on to marry twice more.

Ekland was previously believed to have told Will Sellers, the comic icon's grandson by the son of his first wife Anne, that she wouldn't be involved in the BBC programme.

John O'Rourke, the documentarys producer-director, explained: 'Shes always quite private about this chapter of her life because she had her first child, Victoria, with Sellers  She hasnt gone into huge amounts of detail.

'She mentioned bipolar disorder. Obviously Britts not a medical professional. But she did live with him for four years.'

Peter Sellers: A State Of Comic Ecstasy, airs on BBC Two on May 9.
Missoulians have always sought comfort in the great outdoors. We are a community of weekend warriors  ridgetop runners, backcountry hunters, Jumbo paragliders and SUP-board yogis. Our outdoor pursuits often define us, and they help to give shape and meaning to our lives.

And yet, even as the spring thaws the high country around us, many of us are choosing to stay close to the valley this year.

Were skipping the big road trips in favor of local bike rides. Were replacing our far-flung backpacking adventures with daily family walks in the neighborhood. We are choosing to make our world a little bit smaller, so that we can better understand and address the very big challenges we face from COVID-19.

And in the process, were packing into our local trails, parks and greenways in unprecedented numbers.

Were spending time outside because it makes us feel good, and scientific research bears that out: a large body of evidence correlates time spent outdoors with improved physical and mental health. The benefits of that access are so clear that, even in this time of social distancing, the Centers for Disease Control is underscoring the importance of outdoor activity:

Staying physically active is one of the best ways to keep your mind and body healthy. In many areas, people can visit parks, trails, and open spaces as a way to relieve stress, get some fresh air and vitamin D, stay active, and safely connect with others.

Missoulas open spaces and greenways are a lifeline for us, and they will continue to be in the days and months ahead. Thats something our public officials need to remember as they respond to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and lay the pathway for recovery.

For more than 50 years, a federal program has helped to protect our most precious natural lands while expanding access to parks and recreation in our own neighborhoods. The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) provides financial support to local, state and federal agencies to protect natural areas and build and improve park facilities.

Funding for the program comes from offshore oil and gas royalties. Over its history, it has made more than 42,000 grants to states, supporting facilities from urban ballfields to playgrounds to hiking trails. Here in Missoula, the program has funded projects at Playfair, McCormick, and Fort Missoula parks as well as many of our local fishing access sites and our city bikeway system.

However, over the years, Congress has diverted more than half of the funding from LWCF to other budget items -- limiting the programs ability to expand access to open space and nature.

This year, a bipartisan coalition in Congress, with support from U.S. Sens. Steve Daines and Jon Tester, was on the brink of fixing this; that is, before the pandemic hit. Lawmakers were on the cusp of fully funding the Land and Water Conservation Fund at $900 million a year, and providing several billion to address maintenance problems at national parks and other public lands.

With the benefits of local open space fresh in their minds, Congress should finish the job and boost funding for the LWCF.

Missoulians may be valuing our local greenways and parks more during the coronavirus crisis than they have in generations. But these neighborhood spots wont stop being valuable once the pandemic is over. We owe it to ourselves and to future generations to invest in our communitys open spaces and to fully, permanently fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

Skye Borden of Missoula is the state director for Environment Montana.
Americas governors indicated on Sunday that they were continuing to walk a fine line in dealing with a global pandemic and economic desperation, as well as pushing back against resistance to measures designed to curb the spread of Covid-19.

Governors from both parties discussed a range of difficult choices that would have been almost unimaginable three months ago  as well as such peculiar side issues as having armed protesters march on their capitols or needing to use the National Guard to protect coronavirus testing kits. And even as many states have taken assorted steps to reopen  moves encouraged by President Donald Trump  political leaders and health professionals expressed concerns that more mitigation was needed.

We have to keep listening to the epidemiologists and experts, and not listen to the partisan rhetoric or these political rallies, or tweets, for that matter, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a Democrat, said on CNNs State of the Union. We have to keep doing the right thing, the next right thing.

The pandemics death toll has continued to rise, topping 67,000 in the United States  by far the highest in the world  according to the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine tracker. Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, warned that a slow simmer of persistent new cases and deaths through the summer could preview a larger outbreak when schools and residential college campuses are back in session this fall.

People are letting their guard down a little bit more, people are back at work after an August recess, and then you can see this slow simmer explode into a new epidemic or a large outbreak, Gottlieb said on CBS Face The Nation. That's the concern, that if we don't snuff this out more, and you have this slow burn of infection, it can ignite at any time.

Health professionals also warned that all states are not equally equipped to deal with the pandemic.

Story continues

Access to testing and the health care testing operations continue to vary like a patchwork across the country, Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins, said on NBCs Meet The Press. Before we even get to the fall, I am worried that we will have small waves in various places around the country for the coming months.

Hopefully, we won't, he added. But as we begin to ease social distancing in various places in the country, this virus is highly transmissible. Nothing has changed in the underlying dynamics of this virus. If we stop social distancing altogether tomorrow, we would recreate the conditions that existed in the country in February and March. So what we need to do is continue, to our best possible effort, all the individual efforts were making around social distancing: staying 6 feet apart, wearing masks when in public, avoiding large gatherings. The extent to which were able to do that over the next couple of months will dictate how we do as states and a country.

Warnings from medical professionals havent been enough to keep all Americans following suggested social distancing guidelines or stay-at-home orders. With millions of people newly out of work and many normal seasonal activities halted, governors have had to deal with a rising tide of protests in recent weeks, some of which have been much more dramatic than their numbers would suggest.

There were only a few hundred protesters, Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat, said on CBS, referring to agitation in his state. And although, you know, they sometimes carry reprehensible signs and, you know, are attacking what we're trying to do, we're still trying to keep them healthy, as we are the 12.7 million Illinoisans across the state.

A protest on Thursday at the Michigan State Capitol, in Lansing, featured gun-carrying protesters, some of whom also displayed swastikas, nooses and/or Confederate flags. A group of protesters tried to enter the legislative chambers, only to be stopped by police officers. Some of my colleagues who own bulletproof vests are wearing them, state Sen. Dayna Polehanki wrote on Twitter.

Some of the outrageousness, said Whitmer, of what happened at our Capitol this week depicted some of the worst racism and awful parts of our history in this country. The Confederate flags, and nooses, the swastikas, the behavior that you have seen in all of the clips is not representative of who we are in Michigan.

Speaking on CNN, Whitmer defended her decision to maintain restrictions in her state. Her states chief medical officer, Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, supported those steps, as well.

We are still having parts of the state that are seeing an increase in the rate of rise in cases, and we know that their hospital capacity is not what it should be, Khaldun said on NBC. We have to get our testing up.

Whitmer said she understood what was at stake, both in terms of public health and economic upheaval.

This is a public health crisis that has taken the lives of over  of almost 70,000 Americans, has put 30 million people into unemployment, she told host Jake Tapper. We have lost in the last 24 hours almost the same number of Americans that were killed on 9/11.

Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, expressed dismay over the Michigan protesters.

While defending their constitutional right to demonstrate, she expressed concern over their failure to follow social-distancing guidelines. We need to protect each other at the same time were voicing our discontent, she said on Fox News Sunday.

The pandemic has frequently put states in conflict with one another and with the federal government in securing medical equipment. Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, a Republican, confirmed on CNN that his state had stationed National Guard troops to protect hundreds of thousands of coronavirus tests purchased from South Korea.

The question really came up about a week or so ago, when I was asked about the  flying the test kits in from South Korea, and we were very careful about that, because there had been several reports of shipments being intercepted or diverted by the federal government from a couple of my colleague governors from around the country, Hogan told Tapper. We wanted to make sure that that didn't happen, which is why we had the National Guard and the state police, why we flew a Korean passenger plane into Baltimore Washington International, instead of Dulles, where they normally land. And we're just  we're guarding them.

He did say the situation had improved. It's not a concern any longer, but it honestly, it was an issue that we were looking at as we flew them in, he said.

Hogan has kept lockdown measures in place in Maryland, saying they remain necessary. He addressed remarks by Rep. Andy Harris, a fellow Republican, who told a rally Saturday: I didn't wake up in communist China. And I didn't wake up in North Korea this morning. And, tomorrow morning, I should be able to go to the church of my choice and worship the way I choose.

Hogan defended Harris right to protest but suggested his criticism was off-base.

Congressman Harris, I'm not sure where he woke up yesterday morning, but maybe he confused North Korea and South Korea, Hogan said. South Korea is doing a great job on testing. And we just saved the lives of thousands of Marylanders by getting those half-million tests from Korea.

Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, a Republican who had been one of the first governors to impose state restrictions, illustrated the hazards of the current debate over lockdown mesaures, explaining on ABCs This Week why he had ordered residents to wear face masks in stores last week, then almost immediately reversed himself.

It became clear to me that that was just a bridge too far, DeWine said. People were not going to accept the government telling them what to do. And so we put out dozens and dozens of orders, that was one that it just went too far. But at the same time we pulled that back, I said look this is  I highly recommend it.

DeWine has allowed certain aspects of Ohios economy to reopen: On Monday, the states manufacturing and construction businesses will reopen, joined by consumer and retail stores on May 11.

Were trying to do it very carefully, he told ABCs Martha Raddatz. It is a balancing thing. Weve got to bring the economy back, but we also have to continue to protect people. And one of the things I emphasize with Ohioans is its not so much my orders or the health directors orders. It is what we all do in our individual lives and how careful we are.

Speaking to Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, Birx echoed DeWines cautions.

"You need to continue to social distance, you need to continue to practice scrupulous hand-washing, you need to know where your hands and where they have been and what they have touched, and make sure you dont touch your face, she said. And I think, most importantly, if you have any preexisting condition, through Phase One and Phase Two of any reopening we have asked you to continue to shelter in place.

Rishika Dugyala and Sarah Cammarata contributed to this report.
Elena Gallegos was a trailblazer before women blazing trails was a thing.

Centuries ahead of her time, the third-generation New Mexican once possessed a large portion of what is modern-day Albuquerque.

Anyone who has driven by or traversed the Foothills east of town has probably heard of or seen her name because one of the citys most widely used open space properties bears her name. The 640-acre Elena Gallegos Open Space at the base of the Sandia Mountains offers hiking and mountain biking trails, picnic areas, a chance to witness wildlife in natural habitat and breathtaking views of the city.

Gallegos was born in 1680, in what would become New Mexico, to Spanish colonizers Antonio Gallegos and Catalina Baca. The family fled the area that same year to escape the Pueblo Revolt. Its unclear where Elena Gallegos spent her childhood and young adult life. Some speculate El Paso, and others say possibly Parral, Mexico, her fathers hometown.

She returned to the place of her birth in 1693, with two brothers and an uncle, and married tattooed Frenchman Jacques Grolet in 1699. Grolet, 17 years Gallegos senior, had been a part of the ill-fated 1684 La Salle Expedition.

The group sailed from France in search of the mouth of the Mississippi but ended up in Texas. The captain was killed by his men, others aboard also perished, and the ship never reached its destination, but Grolet survived only to become a Spanish prisoner.

He would be sent to Spain and then returned to America. He was eventually granted freedom but had to renounce his French citizenship. He changed his name to Santiago Gurule and moved to what is now New Mexico.

The couples son, Antonio, was born in 1703, and Santiago Gurule died eight years later.

Although Gallegos was a widow with a young son, she did not remarry. Instead she forged ahead, conducting her own business affairs raising stock. She was the first woman to obtain her own livestock brand. In 1712, Gallegos wrote to the governor asking for permission to register her brand.

In order that I may brand my stock and horses so that no person may rob me, and with the condition that I and my children may take possession of any animals or stock branded with said brand  therefore, I ask your Excellency to make me a grant in the name of His Majesty of the said brand in order that I may use it for my own.

Henrietta Martinez Christmas, a historian and president of the New Mexico Genealogical Society, researched Gallegos for the Scenic Historic Marker project highlighting important women in New Mexico. She found the letter during her research. Officials erected Gallegos Foothills marker in 2018.

Christmas said she is also a descendant of Gallegos and Gurule.

Shes kind of a forgotten hero of that time, Christmas said. She was overlooked, and her husband kind of took the lead role in history.

She purchased thousands of acres, which would become the Elena Gallegos Land Grant, from Capt. Diego Montoya in 1716. The land went south to what is now Montgomery NE, north to Sandia Pueblo, east to the Sandias and west to the river.

Advocates in Albuquerque began to rally in the 1960s in hopes of saving some of the citys valuable open space from development. Early on, they set their sights on what is now Elena Gallegos Open Space. In 1969, the Albuquerque City Council agreed to enact a tax so it could purchase the land, save it from development and create an open space trust fund for the acquisition of other open space properties. Two years later, the citys Open Space Division was born.

Gallegos lived on her land for more than a decade until her death in September of 1731, just four months after writing her will. At her request, she was buried in the Holy Church of San Phelipe de Albuquerque, which was in Old Town near the plaza. The church collapsed in 1792, was rebuilt in 1793 at a different location off the plaza and is the current-day San Felipe de Neri.

According to her will, she left two silk petticoats, a shawl, a veil, a silk dress pattern, coral bracelets and a chest made of Michoacan wood to her granddaughter Manuela.

But it was her son Antonio who inherited her land and livestock, which included 32 head of cattle, four oxen, 12 mares, two colts and two mules.

An Aug. 29, 1899, legal notice in the Las Vegas Optic valued the land at 30 cents an acre. That rose to $1 an acre by 1934. Three years later, Albert G. Simms and his wife, Ruth Hanna McCormick, purchased the land. Simms, who died in 1964, donated a portion of the land to the Academy for Boys school, of which he was a major backer. That school is now Albuquerque Academy.

But the real value of Elena Gallegos and her land cannot be assigned a true dollar amount. It has provided endless opportunities for the people of New Mexico to connect with nature, and it has allowed them to be transported to a century long ago, to witness, perhaps, exactly what Gallegos and her heirs saw as they stood in that exact location gazing upon New Mexicos infinite vistas.

Curious about how a town, street or building got its name? Email staff writer Elaine Briseno at ebriseno@abqjournal.com or 505-823-3965 as she continues the monthly journey in Whats in a Name?

Editors note: The Journal continues Whats in a Name?, a monthly column in which staff writer Elaine Briseno gives a short history of how places in New Mexico got their names.
Immigrants have engaged in protests and hunger strikes and have been kept in 100-person quarantines as the novel coronavirus tears through dozens of detention centers across the country.

We all are afraid because they dont tell us anything and we think we could get it, said Luis, 25, a Mexican immigrant who also said he had a fever for more three weeks at Immigration and Customs Enforcements processing center in Pearsall.

Luis, who isnt using his full name for fear of retribution, said he hasnt been tested for the coronavirus. ICE said it could not release any medical information about Luis without his approval. Its unclear whether ICE asked him to sign off on the release.

The Pearsall facility, some 45 miles southwest of San Antonio, has been in turmoil as fears of contracting the virus mount. Dozens of migrants were recently pepper-sprayed for protesting the virus spread at the facility before ICE had reported a single case. Detainees have reported several protests in the last couple of months. ICE said six detainees have gone on hunger strikes since the beginning of March.

On ExpressNews.com: Get the latest update on coronavirus and a tracking map of U.S. cases

Last week, the agency reported that six immigrants had tested positive  the first cases among detained immigrants in South Texas.

The highest concentration of infected immigrants is at ICEs Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, with 105 cases.

Asymptomatic workers who come and go at Pearsall can spread the disease, as well as inmates arriving from Bexar County Jail, which holds immigrants picked up in the San Antonio area until they are transferred to the ICE lockup. Forty deputies and more than 220 inmates have tested positive at the county jail.

ICE did not respond to a request for comment about how many immigrants have been transferred from the jail to the detention center amid the pandemic. ICE said it has halted all intake at Pearsall but is still accepting jail transfers.

Bexar County is probably the primary county jail system that goes to Pearsall, said Andres Perez, a San Antonio immigration lawyer. I dont like to think about how many (immigrants) got the virus there.

ICE has ramped up testing at its facilities in recent weeks, from just a few hundred tests a week ago to more than 1,000 now. With nearly 30,000 detained immigrants, 3 percent of its detained population has been tested.

Nearly half the tests on detained immigrants came back positive  a high rate when compared with public settings. Bexar Countys positive testing rate, for example, is around 6.5 percent. Texas has a 10 percent positive rate.

The number of immigrants in ICE custody has been shrinking in recent weeks after a federal judge in California ordered the agency to review medical records of all detainees and consider releasing those likely to get seriously ill from the disease.

As of mid-April, ICE had released more than 700 immigrants it deemed at risk of serious illness should they contract the virus. The agency said it is limiting transfers, and it announced that it was reprioritizing enforcement to target undocumented immigrants only if they pose a public safety threat.

This has lowered the overall detained population from about 32,309 in mid-April to about 29,700 now.

Most of the migrants in detention have no criminal convictions and are simply awaiting their court hearings.

Theres so many people, it seemed illogical to me that they have 100 women, with four bathrooms, four sinks, four showers and nothing else, said Erendina Cedillo, 42, who was detained in the Pearsall facility from March 3 to mid-April. I was scared of any kind of infection or disease.  Its not hygienic.

She said there were three hunger strikes and constant protests during her time there. She and Luis said three dorms  of about 100 people  were in quarantine.

Its running all over here, Luis said. Theyre putting some in quarantine and others no.

Luis, who has been living in San Antonio for about three years, has five children and a wife who live here. He said they worry about him and his health  especially with his ongoing fever and diarrhea.

The biggest fear is that Ill get coronavirus, if I dont have it. Its spreading everywhere, he said. Here theres no escape. You cant leave. Were locked up.

Silvia Foster-Frau covers immigration news in the San Antonio, Bexar County and South Texas area. To read more from Silvia, become a subscriber. sfosterfrau@express-news.net | Twitter: @SilviaElenaFF
Is Louisianas long political acceptance of wetlands destruction, pollution and a seesaw economy controlled by a global commodity really about jobs and making America energy independent  or just about oil and gas company profits?

Is it really economic suicide for this petro-state to support a transition from an industry that is contributing to the sea level rise swamping its bottom third  or is there a viable alternative?

Well, we may soon be getting some answers.

Thats because the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, part of the Trump administration, recently released two studies on the potential of offshore wind energy in the Gulf of Mexico that shakes up some long-held beliefs. While it has previously been estimated that offshore wind could provide half of the nations annual energy needs, there were serious concerns about the costs of getting there. This report clears those up  and offers hope for Louisianas tens of thousands of unemployed offshore energy workers.

Some highlights:

A single offshore wind turbine project could support approximately 4,470 jobs and $445 million in GDP during construction and an ongoing 150 jobs and $14 million annually from operations and maintenance in labor, materials, and services.

The wind area is large enough to support the commercial development of a utility scale offshore wind power plant and realize economies of scale.

Louisianas existing offshore oil and gas industrial supply chain means lower costs here than in the Atlantic coast, the North Sea and other areas.

If current cost trends observed in Europe and the northeastern United States continue, the economics of offshore wind in the Gulf of Mexico over the next decade will approach positive net values  particularly in Texas and Louisiana.

These economic cost-benefit projections include estimates for expenses specific to offshore wind in this area such as higher insurance and shutdown periods due to hurricane season, and more expensive structure foundations due to soil types, as well as interest on financing for each project.

The highest wind resources are in the western Gulf, which corresponds to the most favorable economics.

Its hard to think of better news for Louisiana, a state caught in the worst possible climate change squeeze.

While its own plan for coastal survival depends on the world dramatically reducing carbon emissions in the next 10 years, much of its revenue comes from the same industries whose products produce those emissions. So for years, its politicians have desperately fought emissions regulations in an effort to protect a large local energy industry already suffering historic layoffs.

But this research (started under the Obama administration) shows there is a way out of the trap. There is a clear path to address the gravest threat facing the state and world  human-caused climate change  while building a lasting energy industry. And, no, this wont mean the end of oil, only a transition to much less oil over decades.

Yes, serious economic issues must still to be resolved. Research shows electricity rates have surged in most states now requiring a portion of its supply from renewables. Some of those problems  such as access to power grids and power storage  are being addressed. And offshore wind avoids some of the other concerns, such as the large footprint industrial solar requires.

But the real bottom line in the debate between fossil fuels vs renewables clearly falls on the side of renewables because the costs were already experiencing with warming is telling us the future will be much, much worse.

When we talk about the costs of energy, were not just talking about your bill at the end of the month, but what its costing you to live in a state that is losing its land due to climate change, or its health from the pollution coming from refineries and spills, said Logan Atkinson Burke, executive director of the Alliance for Affordable Energy.

Yes, it might be more expensive in the beginning, but prices have already been falling for solar and wind all over the world. So we have a choice.

And a chance to find out if Louisiana wants to stay in the energy business  or just the oil and gas business.

Bob Marshall, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Louisiana environmental journalist, can be reached at bmarshallenviro@gmail.com.
Electronics manufacturers expect to resume partial production this week and full capacity by end of next month if there is no change in guidelines from the government, according to senior company officials.

The central and some state governments have issued notification to allow manufacturing of IT hardware, including mobile phones, and even allowing movement of staff with some restriction from May 4.

Most of the companies, who did not wish to be named, were waiting for order from local authorities in Uttar Pradesh before making announcement on starting manufacturing.

Uttar Pradesh accounts for more than 60 per cent of total mobile phones produced in the country.

According to industry sources, if companies located in Greater Noida, which falls in red zone, get permission to resume manufacturing then most of the mobile phone companies, including Vivo, Oppo and others, will be able to start operations at 30-40 per cent of their capacity by the end of next week.

"Home Ministry order has been very clear on movement of goods. It brings big relief for the manufacturers. Karnataka has come out with very clear instructions along with standard operating procedures. Andhra Pradesh has also issued permission for manufacturing activities. Production is expected to resume in these states. We are waiting for more clarity from other states," India Cellular and Electronics Association Chairman Pankaj Mohindroo told PTI.

MAIT CEO George Paul said most of the companies like iPhone maker Wistron, Flex, Sahasra Electronics and others are ready to resume production.

"All of our members expect to resume production this week. First two weeks in most of the companies will go in housekeeping, inventory cleaning and production planning and then get in to full production. Permission is of operating with 50 per cent staff which means 50 per cent production capacity can be resumed," Paul said.

He said that companies will have to pay salaries of 50 per cent who are on standby, therefore everyone would like to resume 100 per cent production as quickly as they can.

"The restoration of production is result of extensive consultation between government and industry bodies like us. Companies have applied for ESI scheme which provides for compensation of salaries. If it is approved then it will save industry from heavy losses," Paul said.

Electronic contract manufacturer Dixon Technologies chairman and managing director Sunil Vachani said about 10 days back it started operations at Dehradun plant and it has received permission to start production at plant located in Tirupati.

"We expect to reach 30 per cent of manufacturing activity this month and 100 per cent by end of next month if there is no change in guidelines from the government," Vachani said.

Members of two industry associations that are ready for resuming production activity but are apprehensive about execution of order at ground level.

"We have been facing problem in movement employees. The local authorities keep changing rules which is not uniformly communicated to police at check post and to the industry. This needs to be addressed across all the states. Otherwise, we see no issue in resuming production," said an Electronic Manufacturing Services (EMS) company official located in a southern state.

The EMS official said that big companies are expected to recover soon once they start operations, however, medium and small enterprises supplying components in the sector have been hit hard and will need handholding for coming back to the normal.

Sahasra Electronics managing director Amrit Manwani said the company will resume production from Monday with less then 50 staff because there is provision to ensure test of employees for COVID-19 which may take some time.

The company will start focusing on production of electronics required for essential medical equipments like ventilators etc initially for export purpose.

"We will gradually ramp up once all the arrangements as per the guidelines are made," Manwani said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Photo credit: Bravo - Getty Images

From ELLE

Lea Michele has confirmed, with a new Instagram post, that she is pregnant. The former Glee star made the announcement in the form of a photo of her wearing a blue floral maternity dress. The caption below the image of her cradling her stomach says, "So grateful."

Michele, who married businessman Zandy Reich last March, is now expecting her first child. Rumors about her pregnancy were already circulating last Monday, when a source for People reported that the couple was expecting. Neither People nor Michele have confirmed her due date.

"They've always wanted to be parents," the People source said.

Michele and Reich started dating in July 2017 and got engaged in April of 2018. They were married in Northern California, with more than 200 guests in attendance. Michele's Glee co-stars Darren Criss and Becca Tobin were there, as well as her Scream Queens co-star Emma Roberts.

"We are so excited to be married and grateful to be surrounded by our friends and family," the couple shared with People at the time. "And most of all, were so happy to spend the rest of our lives together."

Nearly seven years ago, Michel's then-boyfriend and Glee co-star, Cory Monteith died in a Vancouver hotel room of an apparent drug overdose. The show wrote in his character's death.

A lighthouse doesn't save the ships; it doesn't go out and rescue them, it's just this pillar that helps to guide people home," Michele told ELLE a few months after Monteith's death. She was 27 at the time.

"It's very hard," she said. "And you have to be very strong to come out of this alive, but I think by doing the best for myself, by showing that you don't have to lose yourself, maybe someone else will feel some sort of strength or comfort."

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In the 90s, watch brand Omega put together a formidable A-Team: James Bond, Cindy Crawford, and a gaggle of Hollywood actors playing astronauts. The mission was straightforward, if challenging: turn around the storied watch houses business. At that time, Omega was a completely different company than it is today, says Robert-Jan Broer, the founder of watch magazine Fratello and creator of Speedy Tuesdays, a day for collectors to share their Omega Speedmasters on Instagram. Fewer people were working there. It was a bit of long-gone glory. But in the early 90s, Omega started to regain some of its juice. The brand introduced its Seamaster Diver model, which almost immediately became the watch of James Bond. Cindy Crawford helped design and then promote its Constellation line. And then Tom Hanks and Kevin Bacon wore the Speedmaster as NASA astronauts in Apollo 13. These three events, focused on three different watches, really helped them moving forward, says Broer. Since then, the brand has hardly wavered from its winning formula: last year, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, Omega released special-edition gold versions of its Speedmaster. This year, the brand released its newest Bond watch to the general public. And Crawford remains the brands longest-serving ambassador. But shes not the only supernaturally good-looking person wearing Omega. Here, Broer walks us through his five favorite Omegas that have appeared on the silver screen.

MSDAPTH UV001 Courtesy of Everett Collection

Courtesy of Omega

The Omega Speedmasters in Apollo 13

There is no movie more important to the Omega Speedmaster than Apollo 13. The film shows the astronauts reliance on an Omega Speedmaster to help them navigate safely back to earth after an oxygen tank onboard explodes. Apollo 13 spread the message of Omega and its connection to NASAthe most important link in the watch brands history. I have an interest in space and, of course, I have an interest in Speedmasters, and this is the movie that brings it together, says Broer. And its not just me, but I think that goes for 90% of the Moonwatch fans and collectorsthe watchs history plays an important role in their interest. So it was very nice to see that the watch get credit for what it did for the Apollo 13 mission in the movie.

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This history, says Broer, is what separates the Speedmaster from every other watch in Omegas catalog. Those who prefer a Seamaster just want to have one good watch, says Broer. Whereas if you see someone wearing a Moonwatch and you ask about it, they will know the story behind it. And it played a role in their purchase, whether they were triggered by Apollo 13 or another movie.

MONEY MONSTER, From Left: Dominic West, Caitriona Balfe,2016. ph: Atsushi Nishijima / A TriStar Courtesy of Everett Collection

Courtesy of Omega

George Clooneys gold Omega Speedmaster Professional** in Money Monster

In the movie Money Monster, Clooney wore a highly unusual watch. While the Speedmaster is certainly the most legendary timepiece in Omegas catalog, collectors almost always go for the versions in steel, since theyre the ones most similar to what NASA astronauts wore. The gold Speedmaster is not a watch that was a big seller, says Broer. And it was discontinued by [the time this movie came out]. They didn't sell because these watches were freaking expensive.

A gold Speedmaster might not be the most common watch, but it makes sense in this instance. In the film, Clooney plays the host of a finance show (think Mad Money), the type of character drawn, in fiction and in real life, to watches like the Rolex Day Date or Audemars Piguet Royal Oak always in gold. But because Clooney was bound by contractual obligations to Omega, he likely sought out a watch from the brand that would fit his character. He would have had several options, but went with this more obscure variation of the brands icon. It shows he is a Speedmaster guy, says Broer.

Broer doesnt credit Clooney with turning the gold Speedmasters fortunes around, but he says more collectors are looking for these pieces now. The gold ones are underrated, he says. And because a gold Speedmasters can often be found for the same price as vintage steel versions, collectors are starting to give them a second look.

Tomorrow Never Dies Keith Hamshere

Courtesy of Omega

Pierce Brosnans Omega Seamaster Diver 300M in Tomorrow Never Dies

Although James Bond has worn Seiko, Breitling, and Tag Heuer over the decades, the argument that rages on in the watch community is whether he is at heart a Rolex or Omega man. Sean Connery wore a Rolex as the first onscreen James Bond, but for the past 25 years 007 has worn Omega. In 1995, the international secret agent started wearing the brands new Seamaster model. [The Seamaster Diver] wasnt based on anything from their past, their archives, or their history, says Broer. They really came up with a new watch so that it would be very recognizable, and could not be confused with another brand.

As for which brand truly has 007s heart, Broer says the chemistry between Omega and James Bond is undeniable. It's a good fit, because Omega is a bit more innovative with their watches, he says. They try to put more technology into the watches and I think Omega takes bigger steps. And if we pretend for a moment that 007 is not a fictional character, Omega is what Bond realistically would wear: the British Ministry of Defense issued the brands watches to its members during World War II and again in the late 60s.

In the 90s, appearing in the Bond films was a massive boon for Omega, and the partnership continues to pull in customers like a grappling hook. Retailers tell me that since Bond's worn Omega, they get people coming into the shop who ask for the James Bond watch. They don't ask for the Omega Seamasterjust the James Bond watch.

FREQUENCY, (aka FREQUENCE INTERDITE), from left: Dennis Quaid, Daniel Henson, 2000,  New Line/court Courtesy of Everett Collection

Courtesy of Omega

Dennis Quaids Omega Speedmaster in Frequency

While Broer called out Dennis Quaids watch in Frequency, he could have named several of the actors movies. The actor wore this exact watch in 1983s The Right Stuff (as one of NASAs first astronauts) and in 1987s Innerspace. He wasnt and isnt an ambassadorjust a fan of the brand, likely wearing his own watch. Broer says this movie stood out because it arrived right as he was really getting into watches. I remember that I was in a movie theater andboomthere was this Omega Speedmaster on the screen, he says. The character, too, fit nicely with the watch. He was a typical Speedmaster guy says Broer. Just down to earth and a bit no-nonsense.

SEVEN YEARS IN TIBET, David Thewlis, 1997, (c)Sony Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection Courtesy of Everett Collection

David Thewliss Omega Chronograph in Seven Years in Tibet

In Seven Years in Tibet, Brad Pitt and David Thewlis play mountaineers held as POWs in India at the beginning of World War II. The movie follows the pair as they attempt to escape and return to Austria, a quest that requires a starving Pitt and Thewlis to trade a watch for food. The watch that kept them alive? A gold Omega chronograph. Somehow, the watch went through an equally crazy journey to end up in the film.

James M. Dowling, literally the guy who wrote the book(s) on Rolex, said in 1998 that, years earlier, hed been approached by a props manager looking for a wide range of vintage watches to appear in a movie called Seven Years in Tibet. The film crew eventually decided on a Rolex Oyster and asked Dowling for two identical pieces to ensure theyd have a backup in case one got damaged while filming. Dowling recalls running off to the movies when the film came out. Imagine my disappointment, he wrote, when Pitt shows off his GOLD OMEGA. The entire cinema turned as one to stare at me when I called out SH*T. In Dowlings telling, the watches he supplied were not butch enough.

After those pieces were ruled out, Omega was selected after the brand was allegedly spotted on a crew member's wrist. Like those Rolex Oysters, the films director Jean-Jacques Annaud asked for two identical pieces. The watches from the 30s now sit in the Omega Museum.

Originally Appeared on GQ
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 14:48:01|Editor: huaxia

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LA PAZ, May 3 (Xinhua) -- A Bolivian air force plane crashed during a humanitarian mission, killing all six people on board, said the Defence Ministry on Saturday.

The tragedy occured near north-central Bolivia's city of Trinidad, the country's Air Force wrote on Twitter, confirming that two Bolivian crew and four Spaniards were all killed.

The twin-engine propeller plane would have arrived in the country's largest city of Santa Cruz, where the Spaniards were about to transfer for a flight to their homeland.

Investigation was underway to determine the cause of the incident, authorities said. Enditem
Over 80 cases were registered and 2,365 people briefly detained in Delhi on Sunday for violating government orders during the coronavirus-triggered lockdown, police said.

According to data shared by the police, 82 cases were registered under section 188 (for disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant) of the Indian Penal Code till 5 pm.

A total of 2,365 people have been detained under section 65 (persons bound to comply with reasonable directions of police officers) and 109 vehicles impounded under section 66 of the Delhi Police Act, they stated.

A total of 316 movement passes have been issued on the day, police said.

Thirty-eight cases were registered against people for stepping out of their houses without wearing masks, the police said.

Since March 24, a total of 1,37,897 people have been detained so far for violating order under section 65 of the Delhi Police Act.

A 21-day lockdown was first announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 24 in a bid to combat the coronavirus pandemic. It was extended up to May 3 and again till May 17.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
TWO interesting recent incidents related to media and the corona pandemic, which must raise valid questions:

[1] In South Carolina, United States, the newspaper The Post and Courier has required its news reporters to come to their office in Charleston at least one day a week starting May 4, in the wake of the gradual lifting of quarantine restrictions. Initially, executive editor Mitch Pugh asked for at least 15 hours a week but cut the time when it met some opposition. Many were angry, said Tom Jones of Poynter Institute in his newsletter The Poynter Report. That, despite assurance of safeguards such as reducing personnel at the office (not more than nine at a given time) and providing each reporter a face mask and a thermometer.

Can journalists refuse the order to report to the office and still keep their job? Tom Jones called the situation a coronavirus in the newsroom.

[2] In Lapu-Lapu City, a female official of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) assigned at the city jail, was taken from her home and moved to an isolation facility after she was confirmed to be positive of coronavirus. The scene was recorded on video by SunStar Superbalitas Allan Tangcawan and live-streamed on Facebook as newsfeed of the paper. BJMP complained in a statement that it was violation of journalism ethics and the law on data privacy, the anti-cybercrime law and other laws it did not name.

What is the protocol on media coverage of such phases in containing the virus as moving the patient to a quarantine facility?

Contract of employment

It is not known if the contract of employment between Post-Courier and its reporters covers refusal of an office order for fear of an epidemic. Or their labor laws in the US, if the feud goes beyond the threshold of exchanging e-mails and is litigated.

It would depend on how the labor arbiter or court judge would view circumstances of the case: Is the office so contaminated that the reporters should avoid it? Though the reporters have been working mostly from home, there must be occasions when they have to go out to the field. Up to how much risk would they expose themselves by spending one day a week at the office?

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Efficiency outside newsroom

On the other hand, since the reporters have been doing outstanding work from home, as executive editor Pugh told them in a letter, why must they show up at the office at all, except for collaborative purposes and camaraderie?

Thats an issue that not only journalists would raise once the community reopens but also employees in other industries. If doing work from home would be as efficient as doing it at the usual workplace, would that undercut any plan to make reporters and editors and other employees come to the office again?

While the standard rule is for management, through the editors, direct assignment and movement of its personnel, the present emergency hoists a life-and-death issue. The reporters didnt sign up for a shooting war, much more for a rampaging plague where the victim is described repeatedly as blind or attacked by an invisible assailant.

But since they are workers in an essential service, as affirmed by IATF and local government leaders, why cant reporters stay in their office for a few hours a week?

Matter of privacy

On the coverage of the April 30 transfer of a BJMP female officer from her house in Lapu-Lapu City to a quarantine facility, confidentiality wasnt violated if the patient was not identified.

Not enough of her was shown in the video for anyone to recognize her, said photographer Tangcawan who joined a team led by City Hall crisis manager Nagiel Banacia , which didnt keep out media from the scene. A news report by another media outlet, carrying a photo of the team, referred to the patient as a 40-year-old BJMP female officer.

Ivy Patdu, deputy commissioner of National Privacy Commission, once told media, If youre collecting information for purposes of journalism, for a story on a matter of public concern, then you dont need even to ask consent of the data subject. That is freedom of the press.

The F word

Editors dont have to use the F (freedom) word. Their primary concern is whether consumers need to know the story. Coverage must have been intended to tell the public, as it did, that authorities were being vigilant in enforcing the containment measure, thus there should be no panic since the Covid-confirmed patient was being segregated and her contacts being traced.

To be more efficient, however, the authorities may do well to outline the protocol and make the rules on media publicity clear. There was an IATF flip-flop, remember, on whether the virus-positive subjects must be identified. And the police cordon of the infected house and contact tracing of friends and neighbors usually attract so much attention that they negate the supposed hush-hush rule.
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A sixth woman who lived at Our Lady of the Angels Convent in Greenfield, Wisconsin has tested positive for the CCP virus after her death, officials say.

Sister Josephine Seier, 94, died May 1. A medical examiners postmortem examination revealed she tested positive for COVID-19, according to Michael OLoughlin, communications director for School Sisters of St. Francis.

The convent cares for retired religious sisters from the School Sisters of St. Francis and the School Sisters of Notre Dame.

Seiers death is the fourth among former nuns from the School Sisters of St. Francis, according to officials. The others are Sister Marie June Skender, 83, who died April 7; Sister Annelda Holtkamp, 102, who died April 19; and Sister Bernadette Kelter, 88, who died April 26, OLoughlin told CNN. They were all diagnosed postmortem.

Two School Sisters of Notre Dame who lived in the Wisconsin facility were also diagnosed with the virus postmortem, according to Trudy Hamilton, spokeswoman for the School Sisters of Notre Dame Central Pacific Province. They are Sister Mary Regine Collins, 95, who died April 6, and Sister Mary Francele Sherburne, 99, who died April 9.

For many weeks, Our Lady of the Angels has been working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, the Milwaukee County Health Department, infection control specialists, and the Greenfield Health Department for months to protect our sisters and staff against COVID-19; and once the presence of the virus was identified, to prevent further spread, Jane Morgan, administrator of Our Lady of the Angels, said in a statement.

We are also working closely with the leadership of the School Sisters of St. Francis and the School Sisters of Notre Dame to keep them informed, she said.

The Epoch Times refers to the novel coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19, as the CCP virus because the Chinese Communist Partys coverup and mismanagement allowed the virus to spread throughout China and create a global pandemic.

The CNN Wire and NTD staff contributed to this report
Today is shaping up negative for American Express Company (NYSE:AXP) shareholders, with the analysts delivering a substantial negative revision to this year's forecasts. Both revenue and earnings per share (EPS) estimates were cut sharply as analysts factored in the latest outlook for the business, concluding that they were too optimistic previously. At US$88.32, shares are up 6.2% in the past 7 days. We'd be curious to see if the downgrade is enough to reverse investor sentiment on the business.

Following the latest downgrade, American Express' 23 analysts currently expect revenues in 2020 to be US$38b, approximately in line with the last 12 months. Statutory earnings per share are anticipated to crater 51% to US$3.26 in the same period. Prior to this update, the analysts had been forecasting revenues of US$43b and earnings per share (EPS) of US$5.60 in 2020. It looks like analyst sentiment has declined substantially, with a measurable cut to revenue estimates and a pretty serious decline to earnings per share numbers as well.

View our latest analysis for American Express

NYSE:AXP Past and Future Earnings May 3rd 2020

The consensus price target fell 7.2% to US$102, with the weaker earnings outlook clearly leading analyst valuation estimates. Fixating on a single price target can be unwise though, since the consensus target is effectively the average of analyst price targets. As a result, some investors like to look at the range of estimates to see if there are any diverging opinions on the company's valuation. The most optimistic American Express analyst has a price target of US$129 per share, while the most pessimistic values it at US$76.00. Analysts definitely have varying views on the business, but the spread of estimates is not wide enough in our view to suggest that extreme outcomes could await American Express shareholders.

Of course, another way to look at these forecasts is to place them into context against the industry itself. We would highlight that sales are expected to reverse, with the forecast 0.6% revenue decline a notable change from historical growth of 5.6% over the last five years. By contrast, our data suggests that other companies (with analyst coverage) in the same industry are forecast to see their revenue grow 7.0% annually for the foreseeable future. So although its revenues are forecast to shrink, this cloud does not come with a silver lining - American Express is expected to lag the wider industry.

Story continues

The Bottom Line

The biggest issue in the new estimates is that analysts have reduced their earnings per share estimates, suggesting business headwinds lay ahead for American Express. Unfortunately analysts also downgraded their revenue estimates, and industry data suggests that American Express' revenues are expected to grow slower than the wider market. Given the scope of the downgrades, it would not be a surprise to see the market become more wary of the business.

As you can see, the analysts clearly aren't bullish, and there might be good reason for that. We've identified some potential issues with American Express' financials, such as recent substantial insider selling. For more information, you can click here to discover this and the 2 other risks we've identified.

Another way to search for interesting companies that could be reaching an inflection point is to track whether management are buying or selling, with our free list of growing companies that insiders are buying.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Islamabad/IBNS: The parents of slain journalist Daniel Pearl have filed a petition with the Supreme Court of Pakistan seeking overturning of the ruling that freed the four convicted men involved in his killing, media reports said.

Last month, the Sindh High Court (SHC) had acquitted the main accused, British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and three other men who were convicted for kidnapping and beheading Pearl in 2002.

However, after facing a global backlash over a court order, Islamabad had invoked a special order to keep militant Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh in prison.

In a video message on Saturday, Pearl's father said: We have filed an appeal of this decision to the Pakistan Supreme Court."

Their lawyer filed the petition in the court on Saturday.

A bare perusal of the entire record would reveal that there was a plethora of incriminating evidence, both forensic as well as oral, which proved that murder was committed and that all the accused persons aided and abetted the murder, the appeal petition reportedly said.

An anti-terrorism court in 2002 had convicted Sheikh and the three others for abducting and murdering the 38-year old bureau chief who was researching a story on the religious extremism in Pakistan's Karachi.

However, a Pakistan court later commuted the death sentence of militant Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was convicted 18 years ago in Pearl's murder case.




The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), the African Union (AU) and the Government of Rwanda have decided to postpone by one year the second Intra-African Trade Fair (IATF2020) in light of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The fair was set to take place from September 1 to 7 in Kigali, Rwanda.

This decision was endorsed by the IATF2020 Advisory Council during its sixth meeting held virtually on April 26, after careful assessment of the situation, said a statement.

Organised by Afreximbank in collaboration with the AU, the second IATF will still be hosted by the Government of Rwanda and is now scheduled to take place from September 6 to 12 in Kigali. It will now be dubbed IATF2021.

Afreximbank President Prof Benedict Oramah said the continuing Covid-19 pandemic situation was not conducive to holding such an important pan-African event.

The Covid-19 pandemic has forced governments, corporations and individuals to take unprecedented measures to ensure public safety, he said. It is our responsibility to comply with these measures to protect our host country and ensure the health and safety of all delegates, exhibitors and participants who have confirmed or expressed interest in taking part in the second edition of IATF.

Stressing the need to enable participants to fully benefit from the opportunities offered by the trade fair, Albert Muchanga, Commissioner for Trade and Industry of the African Union, said that the postponement would allow stakeholders to focus on the urgent collective task of responding to the pandemic.

We are facing an unprecedented health crisis. This is the time to join efforts to also mitigate the impact of the pandemic on African economies. We have agreed that the second IATF needed to take place in a more favourable context to enable African countries and companies to take full advantage of the Trade Fair, which will now become an element of their recovery strategy, said Muchanga.

Soraya Hakuziyaremye, Minister of Trade and Industry of Rwanda, reiterated the commitment of the Government of Rwanda to the success of the trade fair.

The reality we are confronted with today as we fight the spread of Covid-19 has prompted us to look at various factors which will undoubtedly impact African businesses and investors this year. In partnership with Afreximbank and the AU Commission, Rwanda is looking forward to the second IATF in 2021 to boost intra African trade, which is more than ever crucial to the development of our continent, Hakuziyaremye said.

Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, IATF Advisory Council Chairman and former President of Nigeria, said: We offer sincere condolences to the families, friends and colleagues of all those who have lost their lives because of the coronavirus. We also wish all those who have been affected by the virus speedy recovery. We hope that this pandemic will soon be overcome to enable normal businesses to resume and underpin the forthcoming trade fair."

The Advisory Council also decided to postpone the third edition of IATF from 2022 to 2023 to be in line with the two-year intervals between IATF events. - TradeArabia News Service
The U.S. Geological Survey reported that a 5.5-magnitude earthquake earlier today was recorded off the southern Puerto Rico waters shaking the city of Ponce.

The geological survey agency said that other earthquakes, which ranged from 3.4 to 4.9 on the Richter scale, have also hit the same area. On the other hand, there was no tsunami advisory issued.

According to Ponce Mayor Maria Melendez, through a CNN report, the earthquake damaged several buildings in the city. Officials, the mayor added, are currently assessing the calamity's effects and, at the same time, checking on the citizens.



5.5-Magnitude Earthquake Affected Other Areas

On its Twitter account, the Electric Energy Authority said that its EcoElectrica power plant was offline. However, the crew was already working on the restoration of the service. There was no exact number, though, as to how many residents had lost the electricity service.

Gov. Wanda Vasquez Garced said via Twitter, the Puerto Rican Water and Sewage Authority also made an inspection on the three dams on the island, and it did not find any damage.

"We emphasize the importance of remaining calm," she tweeted in Spanish and urged everyone to remain using a face mask when outside the home.

The governor also thanked U.S. President Donald Trump and the FEMA officials, saying Puerto Rico will "have all the resources it needs." Meanwhile, Javy Hernandez, Mayor of Vilalba, said that the city doesn't have any fatality and is indeed "blessed."

In Guayanilla, according to Mayor Nelson Torres Yortdan, there were no reports of structural or road damages.

According to Guanica Mayor Santos Seda, there were no significant damages reported in the area so far, as well, but noted that from up to 10 people have stayed in a shelter since the January 6.4-magnitude earthquake.



Started the Year with a Strong Quake

In January this year, USA Today released a report stating that over 950 quakes and aftershocks were recorded on the island since December 31 last year though many of them were weak and almost not felt.

Over 500 of these recorded shakes, though, had been of magnitude 2. The strongest recorded was of magnitude 6.4 that injured at least nine and killed one person and resulted in a power outage.

Since this earthquake that had the strongest magnitude so far, Puerto Rico has been hit by an "earthquake swarm," a term that experts use to describe a series of earthquakes. This is different from the usual pattern of one major earthquake, which is followed by aftershocks.

University of Southern California seismologist Jon Vidale said that they didn't understand well the reason why the larger earthquakes continued for a while. He added that perhaps it was the fault system's hydrology that has something to do with the "slow slip on faults in the area."

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the tectonics recorded in Puerto Rico is dominated by the merging between the Caribbean and the North American plates with this island being pressed between them.

To Puerto Rico's northern part, the North American plate "subducts" underneath the Caribbean plate along the trench of Puerto Rico.



Check these out!
Afghanistan's public health ministry announced Sunday that 500 random coronavirus tests in the capital revealed more than 150 positive results, raising fears that the virus may be spreading faster than originally thought.

Ministry spokesman Wahid Mayar called the results from Kabul concerning and said people must remain in their homes to slow the spread.

He said the country's actual infection rate would likely increase as testing becomes more available.

Afghanistan has thus far taken close to 12,000 samples, of which more than 2,700 have been positive, and 85 people have died.

Kabul and most other cities are in lockdown.

Afghanistan has also received more than 250,000 refugees who have returned from Iran, the country hardest hit by coronavirus in the region. There are growing fears that the country's health care system, devastated by four decades of war, will be woefully unprepared for a major outbreak.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Aubrey Plaza looked sporty while out walking her dogs on Saturday.

The Ingrid Goes West actress, 35, enjoyed the LA heat wearing a pair a light-weight running shorts and a red tee shirt.

Protecting herself and her community, the Delaware native covered her face with a mask during the stroll around her neighborhood, Los Feliz.

Dog days: Aubrey Plaza enjoyed a hot LA morning while walking her dogs around her LA neighborhood of Los Feliz on Saturday

It was a good thing that the star was sporting Adidas running shoes, as Aubrey kept up a brisk pace while walking her pups.

After getting in a bit of son Plaza and her furry friends headed home.

The star's outing comes after she reunited with her Parks And Rec castmates to raise money for the food bank charity Feeding America.

Together, the group raised an impressive $3.5millon.

Masked up: Protecting herself and her community, the Delaware native covered her face with a mask

For a good cause: Plaza and her Parks And Recreation costars raised an impressive $3.5 million from their virtual reunion on Thursday, plus half a million in matching funds

Marvel's Guardians Of The Galaxy, took to Twitter to express his thanks on Friday.

'Thank you to everyone who has donated!' he wrote.

'Its not over. Lets get that number up! There are a lot of wonderful pay check to pay check folks struggling to feed their kids right now. Were making them stay home from work to protect our most vulnerable. Theyve earned our help.'

The episode reunited all of the main cast members  Amy Poehler, Rashida Jones, Chris Pratt, Aziz Ansari, Nick Offerman, Aubrey, Retta and Jim O'Heir  along with a slew of memorable guest stars.

Enjoying sun: She flipped her hair out of her face while walking

Doing his part: Chris Pratt took to Twitter on Friday to urge fans to continue donating through May 21 to Feeding America to help the 'wonderful pay check to pay check folks struggling to feed their kids right now'

Good cause: The cast of Parks and Recreation reunited virtually for a brand new episode on Thursday to help a worthy cause, Feeding America

Cast: The episode reunited all of the main cast members - Amy Poehler, Rashida Jones, Chris Pratt, Aziz Ansari, Nick Offerman, Aubrey Plaza, Retta and Jim O'Heir - along with a slew of memorable guest stars

Aubrey has been quarantining with her longtime love Jeff Baena.

The duo first began dating in 2011 and have worked together ever since including on the 2017 dark comedy The Little Hours, which she starred in and he wrote and directed.

That year she told IndieWire that dating her collaborator meant 'Ive been there from the beginning of every idea because were together.'

She explained: 'Were working on it even when were not working on it. It just made sense. Also, we shot in the middle of nowhere.'

Together: Aubrey has been quarantining with her longtime love Jeff Baena, seen above in 2017

Aubrey, who also produced The Little Hours which was set in the medieval period, said; 'Jeff and I had to be hosting this experience together.'

She said of the movie, which is based on part of Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron: 'We had to take on those leadership roles, whether we wanted to or not.'

Aubrey explained: 'We had the entire cast and crew flying out to rural Tuscany. I couldnt just be like: "Im just an actor! Woo!"'
MOSCOW - At the heart of every small enterprise is a dream, and Ilya Smirnov's is crazier than most.

Right now that dream is dying. The state of his business - Kotissimo, Moscow's biggest cat cafe - resembles one of his feline recruits named Kostik, a shaggy gray and white beauty hit by a car that left him with just one eye and a useless, mangled jaw.

"He's a very optimistic cat, and very friendly," said Smirnov, who could be describing himself. He took out bank loans for $27,000 to start the popular business three years ago.

Smirnov's cafe - and potentially thousands of businesses across Russia - was hit by a double-barreled catastrophe: covid-19 lockdowns and the collapse in oil prices, a crisis for Russia's energy-dependent economy.

President Vladimir Putin's oil-price war with Saudi Arabia only sharpened the pain, leading to a humiliating reversal when Russia reached a deal last month with OPEC members and others to cut production.

Yet Putin seems oddly aloof from the disaster sinking small and medium enterprises in Russia that constitute up to a quarter of the economy.

He faces what many political analysts describe as his greatest domestic challenge since returning to the presidency in 2012.

But he appears detached, holed up at his country estate and content to delegate the business of saving the economy to lower-level officials. It's a paradoxical image for a man whose main political message is that Russia needs him in office until 2036.

"This is an unprecedented shock," said economist Sergei Guriev, professor at the Paris Institute of Political Studies and former chief economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. "Oil prices are at a level that Putin has never seen, so it's something completely new. Then you have the pandemic, then you have the economic crisis, which is also domestic, not just because of the oil prices."

Putin designated the coronavirus self-isolation period as extra paid vacation for workers, putting a burden on small-business owners who also face rent and loan payments with no income. Smirnov, a former business development manager, wrote to his landlord, seeking to delay his $4,000 monthly rental bill for the airy cafe set up to look like someone's home. "But I don't expect a miracle," he said.

Although they run Kotissimo as a business, he and his wife are happy when they break even. Their driving passion is the cats. The cafe saved 250, finding homes for 180.

"Every cat has a unique story. Seryosha has an absolutely humanlike face. He has charisma, but he can bite. Moona is our Monday face. Every Monday we post her picture because her face says it's Monday. She always looks angry. Barsya is one of the most intellectual cats I have ever seen. ... " Smirnov was just getting started.

Like 60 percent of Russians, he has no savings. "We don't have any margin," he said, coming soberly back to earth. "We don't have any money for a black day." He is worried about the cafe's 63 cats.

"Anything could happen. But it's my life. For me, it's better to die than to stop doing this." His wife works as a chief lawyer in an advertising firm, and Smirnov is now looking for another job to try to keep the cafe alive.

The International Monetary Fund predicts that Russia's GDP will shrink by 5.5 percent. Putin has announced a couple of so-far sputtering rescue efforts, including grants for families with children, and deferrals of taxes and loan repayments for small businesses.

Putin has not yet deployed the massive stimulus seen in the United States and Europe to kick economic engines into gear swiftly. He recently ordered the government to come up with more measures.

He sees the construction and automobile industries as drivers to lead the nation out of the crisis. But families may be so shattered after the lockdown that they might lack the money to buy a new car or an apartment, Guriev warned. Putin has ordered government agencies to buy Russian cars, and fast.

Even before the covid-19 crisis there were complaints about Putin's six-year, $400 billion effort to lift Russia's lethargic economic growth via a program of infrastructure projects. Critics say it would barely shift the growth needle.

A hallmark of his presidency is his move to boost Russia's economic independence, using oil revenue to build up a $157 billion war chest, the National Wealth Fund and other sovereign reserves to cover deficit spending in a crisis.

In March, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Russia's special reserves would last six to 10 years, enough to wait out an oil-price war until prices recovered. Now he's talking about four years.

Guriev thinks the reserves could dry up much sooner, perhaps by year's end.

"They're scared that they will run out of cash before the oil price recovers," Guriev said. "But there are many Russians right now who have no income, no savings, so they have pretty much nothing to eat, and in that sense the government should do more to support small business."

Asya Gushanskaya, owner of Milk beauty salon on the Arbat, one of Moscow's most prestigious streets, invested nearly $115,000 in the business, mainly loans. The only way to survive is to borrow more. But she said the purchases of equipment required to meet new health rules and social distancing requirements would bankrupt the business.

"A lot of people have already realized that they won't be able to get through the crisis. This business is my baby. I put all my money and my soul in it. I am not sure if the government or the president realize what a crisis and what problems small business is facing now," she said.

Danil Makhnitsky, a former Finance Ministry staffer, created an interactive map of more than 2,000 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) facing bankruptcy. He also launched a petition on Change.org calling for taxes to be lifted for Russian SMEs, gathering more than 324,000 signatures.

"Huge businesses and manufacturers, they got real help from government. The huge companies that have the possibility to lobby someone in the federal government have successfully done it," he said. "Small businesses have no common voice which will prioritize their problems in the federal government."

He said there was no transparency about which big companies were on the list to get interest-free lines of credit.

Putin's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said Thursday that Russia has proved its resiliency through dealing with "hostile" international sanctions - imposed for acts such as the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. He acknowledged, however, that recovery from the pandemic would take time.

"On the other hand, a crisis always makes one stronger," he said.

But those words will likely not comfort Anna Safronova, one of the business owners on Makhnitsky's interactive map.

"In the process of liquidation," she writes. "It's already too late for help."

- - -

Natasha Abbakumova contributed to this report.
Reeling under pressure due to sharp drop in footfalls following the COVID-19 pandemic, operators in the country's coworking industry believe the blip could be temporary and demand for flexible space would go up again as some key factors are going for them.

But challenges remain for the sector, which has posted remarkable growth in recent years and seen by many as a

catalyst of sorts for modern office spaces, as large corporates are still wary of depending on them for their

expansion, citing restrictions and limitations.

With many employees working from home amid indications that a significant section of them would continue to do so

even after the coronavirus-induced situation returns to normalcy, coworking space providers would now have to rethink their strategy, particularly in workplace, interior and design areas, and make the segment more attractive for consumers.

While concerns around Covid-19 have also led to reduced footfalls in co-workspaces which have been growing at a rapid pace for the last few years, this blip could be temporary and last till precautions are deemed necessary, said Manas Mehrotra, Chairman of coworking company 315Work Avenue.

According to him, any businesses would now seize the opportunity to rethink their working arrangements to provide

more flexibility to their employees than ever before, especially considering the benefits of productivity and

engagement, and, this will push up the demand for coworking spaces.

Once the lockdown period ends, companies would also lay more emphasis on cost optimisation and prefer flexible

workspaces. Most corporates would avoid capital expenditures and look to coworking facilities to expand their business, Mehrotra said.

Ashutosh Limaye, Director & Head - Consulting, ANAROCK Property Consultants, said coworking is likely to see subdued demand over the next few quarters, but will also see the fastest revival.

Once the pandemic pressures eventually ease out, several businesses would look to restart in these flexible workspaces, he added. Coworking spaces are not only the most cost effective, but also offer flexibility in terms of time period of rental agreements. Coworking spaces can be rented on a monthly, day-to-day and even hourly basis, Limaye noted.

According to Anuj Puri, Chairman ANAROCK Property Consultants, on an average, coworking spaces offer a substantial price difference of 15 per cent over traditional spaces in the top cities. While Pune offers the maximum cost advantage of 33 per cent, Gurugram in the National Capital Region has the least at six per cent, he said.

While start-ups and budding entrepreneurs make a beeline to coworking spaces, large corporates remain wary of depending on them for their expansion. This trend is quite contrary to what is witnessed in developed European nations, Puri, however, added.

Despite all the indubitable upsides of coworking spaces largely patronised by enterprises, freelancers, small and

medium businesses and startups, they do have limitations and restrictions, it was noted.

Apart from most of them lacking separate canteens or pantries for occupiers, they also bar corporates from

organising events in common areas. One of the industry players said maintenance of these properties is another challenge. While some large companies do use coworking spaces, these limitations have generally put some others off the notion of embracing them despite the lower rents.

Former Chief Financial Officer of IT major, Infosys Ltd, T V Mohandas Pai told PTI: Co-working facilities have to

maintain social distancing, so they will take a hit because density is very high, so I think there will be a problem.

A leading operator in the coworking space said social distancing would now mandate the density in the open work

stations. While the desk sizes have reduced, occupants would now need to sit six feet apart. Newer air-conditioning systems need to be installed to take care of air quality and prevent airborne viruses and cross-contamination between offices within a coworking setup, this player said.

Mehrotra said the coworking industry might also see some consolidation soon and companies will explore acquisition

opportunities, adding, the current situation will also see larger enterprises seeking smaller spaces to ensure synergised business continuity in the near future.

The COVID-19 is certainly not an end to the coworking culture as people would discover that the benefits of social

gatherings in terms of emotional and intellectual fulfillment would be a crucial necessity for the overall health of a society, he said.

People need options and access to a collaborative environment is needed for success in life and work, he added.
Flight Centre customers who were left thousands of dollars out of pocket when their holidays were scrapped due to COVID-19 lockdowns will be reimbursed after the travel agency finally agreed to waive 'ridiculous' cancellation fees of up to $300.

Australia's borders have been closed to holidaymakers since March in an effort to curb the spread of the deadly virus - forcing would-be holidaymakers to cancel their trips.

Airlines were quick to refund the full cost of flights but travellers who booked through the agency were livid when they found themselves out of pocket after being charged hefty cancellation fees.

According to the terms and conditions of Flight Centre, a $300 per person fee is taken to cover the cost of the staff member who made the booking.

The agency agreed to scrap the fee following talks with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission last week after it received 6,000 complaints from angry customers who threatened take legal action if they did not get their money back.

But the announcement came after thousands of grounded travellers vented their frustrations to Daily Mail Australia.

Meshelle Capulong (right), a 26-year-old graphic designer, and her sister (left) booked a trip of a lifetime through Europe, the UK and Dubai for April this year before the coronavirus crisis

Ms Capulong told Daily Mail Australia she made weekly inquiries with Flight Centre and Topdeck for five weeks prior to the cancellation. She was told time and time again that there was no chance her trip would be suspended

Meshelle Capulong, a 26-year-old graphic designer from Green Vale in western Sydney booked a trip of a lifetime through Europe, the UK and Dubai for April this year.

She, her sister and a friend had been saving for the holiday and booked last October, well before the pandemic swept the globe.

They were well aware of the $300 cancellation fee, but called for it to be scrapped given the unique circumstances.

Ms Capulong said she tried contacting Flight Centre and Topdeck for five weeks prior to the cancellation.

She was told time and time again that there was no chance her trip would be suspended.

'By March 9, I asked again because it was getting pretty serious - particularly in Italy. This time, I was told ''if we cancel the trip for any reason, you will get a full refund for the cost of the trip''.'

Two days after that message, which was sent by the official Topdeck Instagram page, they announced all tours were cancelled.

The pair have travelled in the past but were particularly looking forward to this holiday

Topdeck travel told Ms Capulong she would be entitled to a full refund should her trip be cancelled

Ms Capulong, who lost her job as a graphic designer, was counting on a quick and easy refund process to keep her on her feet without any source of income.

When Flight Centre did contact her days later, she was told she must accept either a voucher - which had an expiration date - or pay a $500 fee to Emirates, followed by a $300 fee to Flight Centre, to get her refund.

'We booked this trip in the first place only because we got a limited deal that made it affordable for us at the time... That is our own money we should be entitled to get back considering we now have no income to live off,' she said.

'This is a shock to everyone, we are completely understanding of that, but we are losing a total of $2,400 in cancellation fees for a trip that has already cost us more than $24,000.

'Flight Centre has done nothing but add to the exhaustion and stress this situation has put us through... It is ridiculous to me that they can basically rob us of our money.'

Ms Capulong said she couldn't accept a travel voucher from any of the companies involved due to the volatility in the industry at the moment and the very real possibility that more companies - like Virgin Airlines - would collapse in the wake of the coronavirus crisis.

The Garnero family (pictured) also told Daily Mail Australia they were left out of pocket $1,500 after Flight Centre refused to refund the full cost of their flights

Primary school teacher Michelle Garnero told Daily Mail Australia Flight Centre in Dapto was withholding more than $1,500 from her family after her booking to the United States was cancelled.

Ms Garnero said she was verbally told they would be receiving a full refund from her booking agent, before the employee was subsequently let go and she began dealing with management.

An initial email told them they would lose a fee of $100 per person for the refund, but that number was later changed to $300 per person.

Ms Garnero did not believe they should be able to take a cent from her because, while the terms and conditions stipulate potential 'cancellation fees', she didn't cancel anything.

'We have not cancelled anything at all... The airlines stopped flying and the government put a travel ban in place.'

The airlines and accommodation all refunded the full amount to Flight Centre, but the company fought to keep a portion to cover the costs of the work that was put in to making the booking.

The family were offered a credit, which must be used in full by July 2021, or a refund less the $300 per person. For a family of five, that equalled about $1,500.

The Bonham (pictured) family had booked to travel with the Garnero family before the coronavirus crisis grounded flights

'We tried to offer what we thought were reasonable solutions. First we said we'd sacrifice the $100 fee per person, which is what was initially offered to us,' Ms Garnero said.

When that was rejected, they offered to pay $600, to cover the cost of both the adults. They thought it was fair they received the full money back for their children, who are all aged under ten.

'They had no interest in supporting my family in any way,' she said,

Ms Garnero said she would have considered taking a credit had the company not been 'continually sacking staff and closing doors across Australia.'

'How do I know they won't go bust in that time? Then I'd lose nearly $8,000,' she said.

The primary school teacher requested a refund out of the two options given to her, but planned to pursue the additional $1,500 charge.

According to the terms and conditions of Flight Centre, a $300 per person cancellation fee is taken to cover the cost of staff and making the booking

David Swiggs also told Daily Mail Australia he felt ripped off by Flight Centre.

The father-of-three saved up for two years to take his family on a holiday to Europe, but has been left bitterly disappointed by the treatment he's received.

Mr Swiggs said that despite the airline offering a full refund for cancelled flights, he faced excessive fees from the travel agent and a lengthy wait time to get their money back.

'Flight Centre is wanting to charge us $1,500 for flights that have been cancelled,' he said.

He said the entire process is causing unnecessary stress on his family during an already difficult time.

'My wife is in an essential industry, providing out of home care for children removed from their families by child protection. I'm trying to work from home while home schooling the three kids under 14,' he said.

'It is just adding to the stress. Working from home. Having to home school the kids. Then to think that some company thinks it can basically take our money.'

Flight Centre stood firm on its cancellation policies claiming they were in line with other travel agencies.

The booking agency's Global Media & Investor Relations Manager Haydn Long previously told nine.com.au the charges were clearly outlined in the standard terms and conditions.

But a letter to customers on Saturday showed the company had a change of heart and agreed to retrospectively waive cancellation fees on trips scrapped as a result of COVID-19.

The terms and conditions (pictured) currently separate the differences between a customer cancelling a trip and a supplier cancelling

'The waiver follows ongoing discussions with customers and regulators, including the ACCC, and will apply retrospectively to bookings cancelled as a result of COVID-19 on or after 13 March 2020 for which a Flight Centre Cancellation Fee was charged,' it said.

'Please note this waiver applies to our fees  we cannot waive fees or conditions that airlines and other third party suppliers impose.'

ACCC chair Rod Sim said it was a positive step forward for the booking agency.

'We are continuing to discuss issues in relation to refunds and cancellations with the travel sector, and encourage travel providers to treat consumers fairly in these exceptional circumstances.' Mr Sim said.

Flight Centre stood 3,000 employees down on March 26 as international travel came to a grinding halt.

In a statement to the ASX, Flight Centre said travel restrictions and social-distancing meant staff levels were unsustainable.

'These never-before-seen restrictions, which have forced airlines to ground their fleets and heavily reduce their flight schedules, have virtually halted travel demand and led to the stoppage of the vast proportion of work that Flight Centre's people previously carried out,' the statement read.
A health worker checks the temperature of car passengers in an effort to help stop the spread of the coronavirus, as they enter the city in the Paghman district of Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, May 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

One-third of 500 random coronavirus tests in Afghanistan's capital came back positive, health officials said Sunday, raising fears of widespread undetected infections in one of the world's most fragile states.

Neighboring Iran, meanwhile, said it would reopen schools and mosques in some locations, even though the nation has been the regional epicenter of the pandemic since mid-February.

The results of the random tests in the Afghan capital of Kabul are "concerning," said Public Health Ministry spokesman Wahid Mayar. Afghanistan has performed only limited testing so farclose to 12,000, with more than 2,700 confirmed infections, in a nation of 36.6 million.

As more testing becomes available, the country's confirmed infection numbers will likely rise sharply, said Mayar. He urged residents to stay home. Kabul and most other cities are in lockdown, but compliance has not been widespread.

The death tollofficially at 85could also be much higher.

More than 250,000 Afghans returned home from Iran since the beginning of the year, fanning out across their country without being tested or quarantined. Anecdotal reports have emerged of dozens of returnees dying of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.

At a recent briefing, a senior government official said 40 people died of the virus in Sarobi district, barely 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of Kabul. The Health Ministry said it could not confirm the claim.

Volunteers in protective suits spray disinfectant on passing vehicles to help curb the spread of the coronavirus in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, May 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

The country's health care system, devastated by four decades of war, is woefully unprepared for a major outbreak. It has only 400 ventilators.

The new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms for most people. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness or death.

Testing in Afghanistan has been sporadic and some of those infected have been hiding their symptoms, in part because of local stigma. In parts of the country, there have been reports of COVID-19 patients being shunned by their neighbors and even refused food from the local markets.

The government, embroiled in political turmoil, has also faced criticism for responding too slowly to the crisis. Only recently, the government started testing in western Herat province where the hundreds of thousands of returnees from Iran have transited.

Volunteers in protective suits prepare disinfectant to spray on passing vehicles to help curb the spread of the coronavirus in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, May 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

Afghanistan has two presidents, both of whom claim to have won last year's election. American efforts to find a compromise have failed, causing U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to threaten to cut $1 billion in aid.

The bickering has also delayed implementation of a U.S.-Taliban peace deal signed in February to allow Washington to end its longest military engagement, end Afghanistan's decades of war and bring more than 12,000 U.S. soldiers home.

In Iran, authorities said Sunday that 47 people had died in the preceding 24-hour period, the lowest daily toll in two months. Still, Iran remains the hardest-hit country in the Middle East, with more than 97,000 cases and more than 6,200 deaths.

President Hassan Rouhani announced Sunday that schools and mosques would reopen in some low-risk locations. Schools and universities have been shut down since late February.

A health worker checks the temperature of passengers in an effort to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus, as they enter the city in the Paghman district of Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, May 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

A health worker checks the temperature of car passengers in an effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, as they enter the city in the Paghman district of Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, May 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

Volunteers in protective suits prepare to spray disinfectant on passing vehicles to help curb the spread of the coronavirus in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, May 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

A woman waits to receive alms with her daughter during holy fasting month of Ramadan in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, May 2, 2020. Muslims across the world are observing Ramadan when the faithful refrain from eating, drinking and smoking from dawn to dusk. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

A health worker checks the temperature of car passengers in an effort to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus, as they enter the city in the Paghman district of Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, May 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

A woman waits to receive alms during the holy fasting month of Ramadan in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, May 3, 2020. Muslims across the world are observing Ramadan when the faithful refrain from eating, drinking and smoking from dawn to dusk. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

Also Sunday, the U.N. children's agency urged six countries in the Middle East to green-light special polio and measles vaccination campaigns that were put on hold because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Currently, nearly 10.5 million children under the age of five are at risk of missing their polio vaccination, UNICEF said. Nearly 4.5 million children under the age of 15 could miss their measles vaccinations.

Routine vaccinations for other diseases such as rubella and diphtheria are continuing, but special campaigns for polio and measles were put on hold in some countries because health systems were overwhelmed by the coronavirus pandemic or governments wanted to avoid crowding at clinics.

The polio campaigns are on hold in Syria, Sudan, Yemen and Iraq, while measles vaccinations are suspended in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and Djibouti, the agency said.

In Israel, the city of Tel Aviv announced it is postponing its annual gay pride parade, along with those in the cities of Haifa, Jerusalem and Beersheba. The annual event in Tel Aviv, which was scheduled for early June, drew over 250,000 people in 2019, making it one of the largest in the Mideast.

Explore further Iran says virus deaths rise by 87 to 5,118

 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Journalism in Egypt has effectively become a crime over the past four years, as authorities clamp down on media outlets and muzzle dissent, Amnesty International said in a report released Sunday.

As the number of coronavirus infections in Egypt continues to rise, the government is strengthening its control over information, the London-based rights group said, instead of upholding transparency during the public health crisis.

The Egyptian authorities have made it very clear that anyone who challenges the official narrative will be severely punished," said Philip Luther, Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa director.

Amnesty documented 37 cases of journalists detained in the government's escalating crackdown on press freedoms, many charged with spreading false or misusing social media under a broad 2015 counterterrorism law that has expanded the definition of terror to include all kinds of dissent.

An Egyptian press officer did not respond to multiple calls seeking comment, but authorities have previously denied rights violations and justified arrests on national security grounds.

Following general-turned-president Abdel Fattah el-Sissi's rise to power in 2013, most of Egypt's television programs and newspapers have taken the government position and steered clear of criticism, or else disappeared.

Many privately owned Egyptian outlets have been quietly acquired by companies affiliated with the country's intelligence service.

But even a pro-government voice hasn't spared 12 journalists working for state-owned media outlets, who have landed in jail for expressing various private views on social media, the report said.

One of them is Atef Hasballah, editor-in-chief of the AlkararPress website. When he challenged the Health Ministry's coronavirus case count on his Facebook page last month, he was promptly bundled into a police van and detained on suspicion of joining a terrorist organization.

Egypt's public prosecutor warned in a recent statement that those who spread false about the coronavirus may face up to five years imprisonment and steep fines.

At least 12 individuals have been caught up in the COVID-19-motivated crackdown so far, according to Amnesty.

Last month, authorities blocked a local news site that covered calls by activists to release political prisoners over fears of the coronavirus spreading in Egypt's crowded prisons.

Separately, Egypt expelled a correspondent for The Guardian newspaper over an article that indicated the coronavirus infection rate may be higher than officially reported.

The journalists interviewed by Amnesty reported increasingly direct state intervention in their coverage.

Many working for government-owned or aligned papers said they receive specific instructions via WhatsApp on what to report and to omit.

For instance, a directive on how to handle President Trump's proposal to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict this year asked reporters not to mention the plan's violations of long-standing Arab policies, as Trump and el-Sissi have cultivated close ties.

Those who do not hew the official line, such as by praising prison conditions and smearing the state's political opponents, lost their jobs, were interrogated or imprisoned, one journalist was quoted as saying.

I cannot even imagine that someone could refuse to comply.

Marking World Press Freedom Day, Amnesty urged Egyptian authorities to halt their censorship, harassment and intimidation of journalists and to release those detained solely for carrying out their work.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Babita Rai, a 35-year-old domestic help from Zamrudpur in south Delhi, has been without work for over 40 days now. With her depleted savings and an additional loan of Rs 20,000 coming to an end, Babita and her husband are uncertain about their future even as the country readies to get some relaxation from the ongoing lockdown.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) had issued new guidelines on Friday to ease some of the restrictions on essential and non-essential services during the third phase of the lockdown, which starts from Monday.

While the ministry asked the resident welfare associations (RWAs) to take a call regarding allowing the movement of outsiders, several house helps were either told to not come or are not aware about the RWAs' decisions.

"No one has asked me to come back for work. I am without any work for over 40 days now. I did call them to check whether we can resume our work, while most denied one family, who are putting up on rent, said the owners of the house are not allowing them, Rai told PTI.

Before the lockdown came into effect on March 24, Babita was working in three houses in Greater Kailash, earning anything between Rs 6,000 - 10,000 per month.

On Sunday evening, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal cleared the confusion and announced that "self-employed" persons will be allowed to work.

"The self-employed people like technicians, plumbers, electricians, mechanics, sanitation workers, domestic help, and people involved with laundry and ironing are allowed to work," Kejriwal said.

Another worker, Rekha from Vasundhara, Ghaziabad, is afraid to step out fearing the police may reprimand her and has not heard about any RWA decision in this regard.

There is no work and whatever money I had saved is almost gone. I do not know if societies may allow us to work from tomorrow. I do not know how we will survive if we do not go back to work, she said.

Rekha had returned to Ghaziabad from her daughter's wedding in Bihar just in time before the lockdown restricted inter-state movement.

Not just domestic helps, but home-makers are also in the dark as they await to hear from their RWA secretaries.

We were told that there will be an RWA meeting today about allowing maids to come in, but we have not heard anything so far. While it would be of great help if they are allowed, we will still have to be careful, said Aniket Sharma, a resident of a gated society in Ghaziabad.

The movement restriction has hit the lower income class groups hard as another domestic worker Pinky from Noida sector 39 rued that the lockdown has rendered her jobless and her family hungry.

All my employers had told me that they would call when they wanted me to come to work, but I have not heard from anyone yet. Running the household has become extremely difficult. We are eating one meal a day because I have not got my salary for the last two months, Pinky said.

The confusion over permission to domestic workers has not spared the RWAs either.

Nivedita Upadhyay, a home-maker from Greater Noida, was told by the Resident Welfare Association of her area that they are awaiting instructions from the state government.

The RWA has told us that they are awaiting guidelines from the state regarding the relaxation. Our society had restricted the entry of maids, drivers, newspaper vendors etc from March 25 itself. Besides, allowing maids to work here is risky since most of the domestic help comes from Aicher village, which of late has recorded a lot of COVID-19 positive cases, she said.

On the other side, Anindyo Sengupta, a homeowner from Gurgaon, was relieved to know that her domestic help can resume work, but only after briefing her on all precautionary measures.

I am actually quite relieved that she will be returning. My husband and I had shared the workload, but it was getting very difficult to manage the household without her.

Since my mother lives with us, I have briefed her on all precautionary measures like keeping her nose and mouth covered, and washing hands and feet before getting started, Sengupta said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
It was all about the PPE.

NeedMasksToday, a coalition of Yale medical workers seeking a national solution to the countrys shortage of personal protective equipment, held an ambitious virtual event Saturday.

More 1,000 people tuned into a broadcast that gave medical experts, legislators and other officials the chance to discuss the PPE problem, according to Crowdcast, the platform that organizers used for the event. Many messages in the chat indicated users were from New Haven.

Speakers included prominent Connecticut voices such as U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who criticized the federal governments response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The federal government has completely abdicated their responsibility, Blumenthal said, contesting that the federal government has sometimes proved an obstacle in the coronavirus response, with reports of PPE shipment seizures.

About 90 percent of the nations PPE is manufactured abroad, according to the senator, who said the circumstance needs to change.

Abbe Gluck, a professor at Yale Law School, was similarly critical of the federal government, which she argued has not used the Defense Production Act effectively.

The DPA lets him [the president] get around the normal function of the market in order to provide vital equipment during national crises, according to Gluck, another panelist at the NeedMasksToday event.

Although the DPA has most commonly been used for military purposes, FEMA has also used it during natural disasters to acquire needed supplies, Gluck said.

President Donald Trump did not invoke the DPA early enough and has waffled in his use of it, Gluck argued, adding that the federal governments response has raised questions about whether PPE is being distributed equitably.

Trump has invoked the DPA several times in relation to the coronavirus.

In early April he used it to ban the export of PPE, a move the White House said was meant to prevent profiteering and ensure the equipment stayed in the U.S. to fight the virus, according to a report from the Hill.

Last week, Trump harnessed the DPA to deem employees at meat processing plants essential, MSNBC reported.

But lawmakers from across the country have called on the president to use the DPA more aggressively and order factories to manufacture PPE.

Dr. Lisa Lattanza, the chairwoman of orthopedics and rehabilitation at Yale University School of Medicine, described an unsettling scramble for PPE.

We can no longer reliably get mass, isolation gowns, surgical PPE through our normal supply chain, she said, adding that Yale New Haven Hospital has had to use other means to procure supplies, such as coordinating with local manufacturers.

The equipment shortage has also raised costs, according to Lattanza, who said masks worth 75 cents were being sold for $5 or $6.

And we have to pay it because otherwise we dont have the masks, she said.

Lattanza also shared her belief that physicians and other medical experts should be in charge of the pandemic response, not politicians.

Extensive time, money and effort should go into figuring out a way to mass produce N95 respirators domestically, she told attendees of the virtual event.

If you have the N95s, you dont need the ventilators, she said.

NeedMasksToday is encouraging folks to ask their governors or senators to call on the White House to use the DPA to produce PPE.

.

meghan.friedmann@hearstmediact.com
How can Boris Johnson call his government's response to COVID-19 a success?

Boris is back and with a characteristic bluster and pooh-poohing of fact, has said that he knows that many people will be looking at our apparent success [in fighting COVID-19] and wondering if now is the time to ease the lockdown.

The UK represents one per cent of the global population and yet can already lay claim to ten per cent of the worlds deaths from COVID-19.

Our elderly population in care homes has been decimated, hundreds of key workers, many in the NHS, have already lost their lives. We are a nation consumed by fear, our mental health has been shattered, our dependence on benefits has sky-rocketed, and our economy is in meltdown.

How can any of this be determined a success?

At the start of this crisis, the UKs chief scientific adviser said that fewer than 20,000 deaths would be a good result. With the official figure now at 26,000 and estimates that easily double that, the reality is that no matter how politicians try to spin it, in terms of how we have dealt with this virus and how many have been left dead in its wake, we are among the very worst in Europe, if not the world.

Did the prime minister, as he lay in his hospital bed struggling to stay alive as the virus, that only weeks before he had cocked a snook at, ravaged his body, question whether things could have been handled differently?

Did he ponder his own gung-ho approach, the one that helped put him in to power but was no match for a disease unimpressed by his boyish swagger? Were there dark moments when he wondered whether he had done the right things by the country?

And so, at the risk of being pilloried for raising questions in the midst of a crisis, of how our political leaders have handled this risk to our lives, to their own lives, should we have put faith in a prime minister who initially treated the risk of COVID-19 like a joke? A leader who was shaking peoples hands during the rising threat of the pandemic in some supremely silly gesture of machismo bravado and attending an international rugby match with his then pregnant fiancee when he could already see what was happening elsewhere?

Should we trust in a government in which a health secretary stockpiled fridges ahead of Brexit but forgot to top up supplies of ventilators or check the use-by date on PPE, and who lost any semblance of respect when he said that he wished that he had a magic wand and could simply procure protective equipment to fall from the sky?

In New Zealand, the prime minister was concise and she was clear: her main objective was to not allow one New Zealander to die  only 20 so far have. Our message was to protect the NHS and that would then save lives. And there was one reason that our message was different, and that was because we had an NHS so ravaged by ten years of austerity that it wasnt feasible to believe it could do the job that it was designed to do, given the numbers of sick predicted.

The UK Government knew that because their pandemic modelling exercise in 2016 had told them so.

I believed then and do now that our politicians saw this as a virus that was happening somewhere else to others and even when it reached Europe and we could see the tragedy unfolding in Italy and Spain, they covered their eyes, heard information selectively and didnt see it as something that would happen here.

As the WHO and almost every other epidemiology expert in the field knew and advised, the way to deal with a virus like COVID-19 is to act fast: test, trace, isolate and contain. And protect your most vulnerable.

Why didnt we do that?

And while there is predictable outrage among her fan base that Nicola Sturgeon isnt included in commentary about how well global female leaders like Jacinda Ardern, Angela Merkel, Mette Frederiksen and Erna Solberg have coped in this crisis, the reality is that despite her leadership team being all-women, until the departure, that is, of her CMO for ignoring the very rules she was asking everyone else to abide by, Sturgeons record in this pandemic is largely akin to Boris Johnsons record. And that isnt a good one.

It seems pointless now with so many dead to ask the counterfactual question: What if Scotland had done something different? What if Sturgeon had followed other smaller countries like Denmark, Norway and New Zealand, who also, coincidently, are led by women, and gone hard and gone fast?

In a small country with an independent health, education and legal system, with a nationalist government at its head, with a mandate to hold a second independence referendum, with an election looming and a Scottish Parliament wrapped in a mantra of finding Scottish solutions to Scottish problems, and with a proven record in following public health rules, why did we simply pay lip service to following the science, when what we did, in all honesty, was simply follow Westminster?

Sturgeon has dealt with public health crises before. She has done that well. And while its true that now you can sense an impatience in the First Minister to go it alone, and in small steps she is doing that and, predictably, being criticised for being perceived to be making a constitutional point in even advising the wearing of face masks, she is way behind the vital testing curve.

When she led on fighting swine flu or even on the Legionnaires outbreak, she had the benefit of Sir Harry Burns as her chief medical officer. His advice on a global pandemic has been simple from the start: Test, test, test, trace and isolate.

In 2011 Professor Anne Glover was Scotlands chief scientific adviser and amid the response to the Fukushima nuclear explosion, which threatened a global health disaster, she attended both COBRA and SAGE meetings on behalf of the Scottish Government. Her message was, and is, follow the science.

Of course, it is with hindsight, but I cant help but wonder on a parallel universe where Sturgeon would be now if shed had Burns and Glover still by her side. Perhaps then there would be no room for any slight regret that our first minister didnt follow her instinct, never mind the science.
Wearing a self-made cloth mask, 26-year-old Madan Prajapati gawps at the police team guarding a building across the street in southwest Delhi's Kapashera where 41 migrant labourers had tested positive for coronavirus in mid-April.

Prajapati, who hails from Uttar Pradesh's Maharajganj district, came to Delhi just three months ago in search of work and rented a room in a building in the area for Rs 3,000 a month.

Like him, hundreds of migrant labourers, who work in companies in Gurgaon in Udyog Vihar, reside in 50 such congested buildings with cramped 8X10 sq. feet rooms served by common toilets for men and women on every floor.

Most of these families have been waiting for the government to lift the lockdown so that they could either return or resume their work, Prajapati says.

"Do you have any idea when the bus service for Uttar Pradesh will begin?" he asks, expressing fear that others may also contract the deadly disease if they continue to stay here.

"It is hard to follow social distancing norms in such cramped buildings, with so many families sharing common toilets. If one catches the virus, it is bound to spread," he says.

The building in the Theke Wali Gali where 41 people have tested positive for COVID-19 since April 18, mostly migrants, is a two-storey structure with 60 rooms occupied by 160 people, a police official said.

Some of these single rooms are occupied by not less than five people, he said. And with common toilets and cramped room, families find it difficult to maintain physical distance.

Keeping in mind the high population density, the district administration sealed the building, hardly 100 meters from the district magistrate (southwest) office, and declared it a containment zone on April 19.

Samples of residents from the building were collected and sent to the National Institute of Biologicals in Noida. Of these, 41 returned positive for COVID-19 on Saturday.

The police have erected three layers of barricades to prevent entry of outsiders in the area, except the santitation workers and medical staff, who have been taking care of the quarantined people.

Around 25 police personnel from Kapashera police station have been guarding the two entry points to the area at any given time.

A policeman on duty said they have been working in eight-hour shifts and have been exercising utmost caution.

"Those venturing near the building make sure they wear personal protective equipment kits and keep a good distance even with their colleagues," he said.

The policemen deployed at the containment zone have not been visiting their homes and instead staying at an isolation facility provided to them.

"It is been a week since I visited my family. I stay nearby here in Najafgarh area but after our duty hours, we return to the isolation facility provided to us. We sanitize ourselves and every other belongings as soon as we return post duty," he added.

Besides maintaining law and order, the policemen have also been tasked to facilitate the needs of the people living the containment zone.

A WhatsApp group has been created which has SHO Kapashera, district officials and a few residents of the area wherein they share their concerns.

From providing medicines to supplying dry ration and packed foods, police personnel have been playing an essential role in facilitating the needs of people in the coronavirus-containment zones.

Contact numbers of shopkeepers, medical stores and other essential service providers have also been shared with the people in the containment zone.

The supplies are delivered at the entry point, from where policemen deliver them to the intended persons.

The day the first case of Coronavirus was reported from the building, fear gripped the people who work at a petrol pump, which is hardly 100 meter away.

"We don't know who we come in contact with since people from different places come here. We don't even know if any of the residents of the sealed building had even visited us recently. It is risky.

Ideally, the administration should have taken samples OF everyone in one-kilometer radius," said 23-year-old Sunny Kumar, who works at the petrol pump.

There are around 50 such buildings inhabited by migrant workers. Most have multiple rooms on every floor with common washrooms. In many cases, 10 people share a single room. The balconies and corridors are also congested, according to Kumar.

Sanitization exercises have been carried out in the area but the authorities should also collect samples from everyone, he said.

"What's scary is that samples were taken 13 days ago and we got to know of the cases just yesterday which means the virus may have spread," he said.

As a preventive measure, the petrol pump staff have been sending away customers who don't wear masks and prefer online transaction.

"We are eight staff working here. Ever since the lockdown was announced, we have been living here. Whoever the customer may be, if he or she is found not wearing a mask, we don't allow them to enter the premises. We tell them we don't have petrol left for supply and send them away right from the entry point," said 35-year-old Rishi Pal.

Pal also recalls how some good samaritans used to distribute food to the needy in the area for a few days, but even that has discontinued after the building was sealed.

"Many labourers used to stand in queues, maintaining distance with each other while collecting food in the presence of police personnel. But after the building was sealed, those who visited a few times here to distribute food have also stopped coming," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
British Airways is heading for a legal battle with union officials over plans to make a quarter of its pilots redundant.

Balpa, which represents BA's 4,300 pilots, is understood to have asked lawyers to begin the legal process to apply for redress on behalf of the 1,100 pilots who are at risk of being let go.

The airline's parent company, International Airlines Group (IAG), last week announced plans to cut up to 12,000 jobs at BA, including one in four pilots, as it scaled back its operations.

Legal fight: Pilots' union Balpa is threatening action against BA after the airline announced that as many as 1,100 could lose their 100,000-a-year jobs

However, Balpa argues that BA is in breach of its Covid-19 agreement, made on March 24, under which the airline committed to ensuring its pilots benefit from the Government furlough scheme to avoid compulsory redundancies.

BA pilots earn about 100,000 a year on average, rising to 200,000 for a senior captain, and have typically worked for the airline for 15 years.

BA aims to offer only statutory redundancy, claiming voluntary packages on enhanced terms would be too expensive.

In a letter to BA's director of flight operations, Allister Bridger, Balpa said: 'Instead of seeking to work constructively with Balpa to address the legitimate problems we face as a result of Covid-19, BA seems determined to try to exploit the current crisis at the expense of loyal employees.'

BA's brutal restructuring to survive the pandemic has also rattled major shareholders in IAG, which also owns Spain's national carrier Iberia, low-cost airlines Vueling and Level, and Irish national carrier Aer Lingus.

A source said that two of IAG's biggest institutional shareholders are concerned about the impact of the BA restructuring on IAG's revenues, as BA contributes around 60 per cent of the group's profits.

IAG's biggest shareholder is Qatar Airways, which increased its stake to 25.1 per cent in February, with Invesco and Aberdeen Standard Investments also in the top ten.

Last week, Labour MP Seema Malhotra wrote to BA chief executive Alex Cruz asking him to do 'everything possible' to avoid job losses.

'The scale of the cuts will have a detrimental impact on local jobs and the wider economy,' she said.
There has been a significant increase in cybercrime against women, especially sextortion, during the Covid-19-induced lockdown with caged criminals targeting them online, say experts.

The nationwide lockdown imposed from March 25 to April 14, and then extended to May 3, aims at preventing the spread of the novel coronavirus that has claimed 1,147 lives and infected 35,043 people in the country.

According to National Commission for Women (NCW) data, 54 cybercrime complaints were received online in April in comparison to 37 complaints  received online and by post -- in March, and 21 complaints in February. The panel is taking complaints online due to the lockdown.

Cyber experts, however, said the numbers are just the tip of the iceberg.

We received a total of 412 genuine complaints of cyber abuse from March 25 till April 25. Out of these, as many as 396 complaints were serious ones from women, (and these) ranged from abuse, indecent exposure, unsolicited obscene pictures, threats, malicious emails claiming their account was hacked, ransom demands, blackmail and more, said the founder of the Akancha Foundation, Akancha Srivastava.

The organisation works for education and empowerment of people by imparting knowledge on cyber safety. Srivastava said on an average she has been getting 20-25 such complaints daily, while before the lockdown the number was less than 10 per day. This is a significant increase, she said.

This is just the frustration and anger that is coming to the fore as there is no other release right now. This is a form of frustration as they (cyber criminals) are caged right now, she said. Men are morphing images and threatening women. There is a whole racket going on where women are getting these emails that your phone and laptop has been hacked, and if you dont deposit money my account I will send your morphed images, and share it with all your contacts, Srivastava added.

Vineet Kumar, founder and president of Cyber Peace Foundation, said specially the cases of sextortion have increased during the lockdown.

Sextortion is extorting money or sexual favours from someone by threatening to reveal evidence of their sexual activity through means like morphed images.

People are getting into relationships online as they are under lockdown and sextortion cases are being reported to us, he said.

Kumar said in these times people are connecting through technology but forgetting the security component.

Immediately after lockdown, we saw a rise in cases of misinformation, fake news and women getting duped online when they click on malware links which gets all their information on phone, turns on the camera and microphone, and captures their intimate moments. These are then used for blackmailing, he added.

Many women do not want to make official complaints in these cases, he said.

Cyber Peace has been receiving complaints through its channels and it has been seen that people are reluctant in filing complaints. They want us to handle things unofficially, Kumar said. Whatever official figure that is being quoted is just the tip of the iceberg as a majority of women do not report cybercrime because they worry about the social stigma associated with it, he said.

Vandana Verma, founder of InfoSec Girls, said when the whole country is locked down, people are working from home and spending a lot of time on the internet. So, even cyber criminals are becoming innovative and craftier in their techniques, she said .

Like sending specific phishing emails or themed emails for the current COVID-19 situation to people and getting their confidential details like address, phone numbers. These emails appear to have come from legitimate sources like the government in the form of advisories when they are not at all related to the government in any form, Verma said.

Creation of fake profiles, cyber bullying, online stalking are bigger challenges at this time. Insensitive comments on posts are also intimidating, she said.

Verma advised that such cybercrimes can be prevented through education on technology.

How to securely use the digital media, creating strong a password and spreading awareness on phishing emails, fake videos and securely sharing content on the internet can help a lot in safeguarding women, she said. NCW chairperson Rekha Sharma said often it is seen there is lack of awareness among women on where to reach out when something happens.

There is cyber police in every district who they can contact. They can reach out to us also if they need help, she said.

She advised women to remain careful in the cyber space. We are talking to women on how to protect themselves in cyber space. We advice women to not share their personal pictures or details on social media as its not safe. Women should realise that at times people known to them can also take advantage, said Verma. CSC e-Governance Services India, which holds the license for providing internet services, recorded an increase in data consumption to 4.7 terabyte (TB) as on March 30 from 2.7 TB on March 10.

Based on the growth trend, data consumption on the CSC SPV network is estimated to have increased by close to 100 per cent till date, CSC SPV CEO Dinesh Tyagi told PTI on April 5. He said that a major spike in data consumption has been recorded since the time lockdown started.

There are more than 60 crore internet users in India and out of this about 29 crore are in rural areas.
"No scientific backing" for claims COVID-19 could have escaped from Wuhan lab: scientists

WASHINGTON, May 2 (Xinhua) -- There is "no scientific backing" for the two claims floated recently by some U.S. politicians and media outlets that COVID-19 could be human-made and have escaped from a laboratory, scientists have said.

"The origin of the novel coronavirus is a legitimate area of scientific inquiry, in which there are still open questions," said an article posted on April 22 on BuzzFeed News.

The piece, written by reporter Ryan Broderick and based on interviews with several scientists, is titled "Scientists Haven't Found Proof The Coronavirus Escaped From A Lab In Wuhan. Trump Supporters Are Spreading The Rumor Anyway."

Vincent Racaniello, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University, told BuzzFeed that he wasn't even comfortable calling the idea that the lab was the source of the outbreak a theory. "A theory is based on results," he said. "I think it's driven by politics, frankly."

"People who are saying it escaped from a lab have no idea what they're talking about," he said. "No human could ever design this virus."

Jeremy Konyndyk, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development, said there is currently no evidence that the coronavirus originated in a lab -- either as a deliberate creation or an accidental release.

"There was a very early cluster (of cases) in the (Wuhan seafood) market," he said, citing the assessment of virologist Trevor Bedford. "If the lab was the point of spillover, you wouldn't necessarily see the early clustering in the market."

On April 21, World Health Organization spokesperson Fadela Chaib told a news briefing that "all available evidence suggests the virus has an animal origin and is not manipulated or constructed in a lab or somewhere else."
A man in his 30s has been arrested following an assault in Dublin.

It happened at an apartment complex in the Kilmore Road area of Artane shortly before midnight.
American authorities have approved an experimental drug for emergency use on coronavirus patients, as more US states eased pandemic lockdowns despite another spike in deaths from the disease. The approval is the latest step in a global push to find viable treatments and a vaccine for the coronavirus, which has left half of humanity under some form of lockdown, hammered the world economy and infected more than 3.3 million people. Remdesivir, an antiviral drug initially developed to treat Ebola, was given the green light on Friday after a major trial found that it boosted recovery in serious COVID-19 patients. "It's really a very promising situation," President Donald Trump said on Friday at the White House, where he was joined by Daniel O'Day, CEO of Gilead Sciences, which developed Remdesivir. The drug incorporates itself into the virus's genome, short-circuiting its replication process. Its approval came as the US leaders struggled with growing pressure from citizens wearying of stay-at-home orders. With about 1.1 million confirmed coronavirus cases and nearly 65,000 deaths, the United States has the highest tolls of any country, and Trump is keen for a turnaround as the world's largest economy reels with tens of millions left jobless. "Hopefully, we're going to come in below that 100,000 lives lost, which is a horrible number nevertheless," said Trump, after suggesting earlier in the week the country could expect 60,000 or 70,000 fatalities. Texas became the largest US state yet to ease curbs, while anti-lockdown demonstrations were held in several states -- including California, where officials had re-closed beaches beginning Friday to avoid a repeat of last weekend when crowds flocked to the shoreline. In Huntington Beach, about 35 miles (55 kilometers) south of Los Angeles, several thousand people rallied to denounce Governor Gavin Newsom's beach shutdown order. "It was the straw that broke the camel's back," protester Monica Beilhard fumed. "It was uncalled for, unnecessary and people out here are making that known," she said. - 'Slow, phased' reopening - Governments around the world are struggling to balance the immense political and economic pressure to ease lockdowns with the need for public health measures against the spread of the virus, which has killed more than 236,000 people. Several European countries have begun to lift restrictions, with authorities in some of the hardest-hit parts like Spain reporting signs that the pandemic there was slowing. Britain announced that it had hit its target of conducting 100,000 coronavirus tests a day, a step toward eventually lifting lockdown rules in the UK -- which this week overtook Spain to record the world's third-highest death toll. But Ireland extended its lockdown by two weeks to May 18, with Prime Minister Leo Varadkar saying the nation will reopen "in a slow, phased, staged way" after that. In Asia, India announced that the lockdown on its 1.3 billion people -- the world's biggest -- would continue for two more weeks from May 4. And in Singapore, the government said Saturday that pet food stores and hair salons will be allowed to reopen on May 12. Most of the city-state's infections have been detected at dormitories housing migrant workers, and their confinement was extended to June 1. The virus restrictions also put a damper on May Day celebrations worldwide on Friday as many labor unions delayed their rallies and some held online events, while a determined few hit the streets in facemasks in defiance of lockdown orders. - Sharp rhetoric - May Day carried extra significance this year because of the staggering number of people put out of work by the pandemic, with the global economy in a tailspin and facing its worst downturn since the Great Depression. Stock markets tumbled again on Friday after President Trump's unproven allegation that the virus may have come from a lab in Wuhan -- the central Chinese city where the disease first emerged late last year. Beijing has rejected the accusation, and scientists believe the virus jumped from animals to humans. The White House has accused Chinese authorities of mishandling the outbreak and putting American lives at risk. The disease overwhelmed healthcare infrastructure when it hit the United States, putting immense pressure on medical workers. Some US medics relied on experience in other countries to fight the virus. David Callaway, a doctor and academic who formerly worked on disease response in conflict-hit nations such as South Sudan and Iraq, said he found overseas epidemics easier to handle in some ways. "Family and loved ones, you can put them in a box and you use them as a source of motivation and inspiration when things get rough, but you know they are safe," he told AFP. "A pandemic at home, you know that your family and your loved ones are still at risk, their lives hang on the line." burs-qan/gle
The U.S. Capitol Building. The Senate will resume business after the coronavirus lockdown on Monday (Andrew Harnik/AP)

The Senate will reopen on Monday as the coronavirus crisis rages and the House of Representatives stays shut, an approach that leaves Congress as divided as the nation.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnells decision to convene 100 senators at the Capitol during a pandemic gives his fellow Republican Donald Trump the imagery he wants of America getting back to work, despite health worries and a lack of testing.

Yet the Washington region remains under stay-at-home orders as a virus hot spot. Gathering senators for the first time since March puts at risk not only politicians but the cooks, cleaners, police officers and other workers who keep the lights on at the Capitol complex.

We will continue to stand together for the American people  even as we stand six feet apart, Mr McConnell said ahead of the opening.

President Trump himself offered Congress access to the instant virus test system used to screen visitors to the White House.

But in an extraordinary rebuff, Mr McConnell and Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement on Saturday they would respectfully decline the offer and instead direct resources to the front lines where they can do the most good.

For Senate Republicans, returning to session is an attempt to set the terms of debate as Democrats push for another costly coronavirus relief bill.

Frustrated after Ms Pelosi boosted Democratic priorities in earlier aid packages  an unprecedented $3 trillion (2.4 trillion) in emergency spending  they are resisting more. Republicans are counting on the countrys reopening and an economic rebound as their best hope to limit a new round of big spending on virus aid.

As the Senate gavels in and the 430-member House stays away on the Capitol physicians advice, the Congress provides a snapshot of divided America struggling to confront the Covid-19 crisis. Some states are reopening, others are staying closed and questions abound.

Senators face few new rules for operating in the pandemic beyond the recommendations that they wear masks  blue face coverings will be available for free  keep their distance and leave most staff at home.

Hand sanitiser is back in stock but public access will be limited, including at public hearings. The Capitol itself remains closed to visitors and tours.

Expand Close Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has decided the Senate will resume on Monday (Patrick Semansky/AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has decided the Senate will resume on Monday (Patrick Semansky/AP)

Democrats complain they are returning to a noticeably light agenda, packed with confirmation hearings for Mr Trumps judicial and executive branch nominees, but with little emphasis on the pandemic and Great Depression-level economic collapse.

Democrats are going to fight like hell, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said on a conference call with Latino community leaders.

Were going to make sure people have enough money to live and get back on their feet.

In making his snap decision to return, Mr McConnell said the Senate could not sit on the sidelines. He compared the senators to the essential work force of grocery clerks, truck drivers and others keeping Americans fed during the crisis.

But Capitol Hill erupted in the days after the attending physician, facing questions from top Republican officials, said the health office did not have the means to perform instant virus tests on returning lawmakers.

On Saturday, Mr Trump stepped in, tweeting: There is tremendous CoronaVirus testing capacity in Washington for the Senators returning to Capital Hill on Monday.

Ninety minutes later, Health Secretary Alex Azar tweeted that the administration would be sending three machines and 1,000 virus tests to Capitol Hill.

In the rare joint statement, the congressional leaders said Congress would use the existing protocols from the Capitol physician until these speedier technologies become more widely available.

Hours later Mr Trump tweeted a response that insulted Ms Pelosi but did not mention Mr McConnell, saying: No reason to turn it down, except politics. We have plenty of testing. Maybe you need a new Doctor over there. Crazy Nancy will use it as an excuse not to show up to work!

The haphazard approach  to testing, health guidelines and the broader reopening  is what Democrats say is inadequate in the Republican response to the crisis.

With more than 65,000 US deaths due to the virus and 30 million Americans suddenly unemployed, Democratic senators say the focus needs to be singular  to ease this crisis and prevent a second wave of infections.

If were going to go back, lets do something about Covid, Mr Schumer said.
Failure to vaccinate everyone will give rise to new variants, says UN chief

Entry into apartments would depend on call taken by Resident Welfare Associations

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, May 03: The final call on allowing visitors or maids into an apartment complex would rest with the Residents Welfare Association, the Ministry of Home Affairs said.

With confusion looming large, an official in the MHA tells OneIndia that the associations may have to take a call on the entry of persons into the residential complex.

The official however said that before any such decision is taken, health protocols as specified by the Ministry of Health should be followed. The responsibility would lie with the person calling the person, the MHA official said while also adding that domestic helps in particular may find it difficult due to lack of transport.

The responsibility would however lie entirely with the person calling in the person in case of any mishap, the official cited above said.

The associations had taken a call on banning entry of domestic helps during the lockdown. In the same way they should take a call on lifting the ban, the official said. The MHA has clarified that barber shops, salons and spas in red zones continue to remain banned. However these services could resume post May 4 in orange zones, the MHA also said.

Meanwhile in a fresh clarification, the government ha said that taxis and cab aggregators will be permitted with restrictions.

The government said that taxis and cab aggregators will be allowed with one driver and two passengers only.

Inter-district movement of individuals and vehicles is allowed, only for permitted activities, with maximum two passengers, besides the driver, in four wheeler vehicles.

The Centre said that all other activities are allowed in the Orange Zones, without any restrictions. In the orange zones, in addition to the activities prohibited through the country, inter-district and intra-district plying of buses remain prohibited.

However, States/ UTs based on their assessment and priorities, may choose to permit a lesser number of activities, the Centre also said.

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Sunday, May 3, 2020, 8:08 [IST]
At least 38 allegedly killed while trying to cross border into Iran for work.

The coronavirus pandemic has caused tens of thousands of Afghans to cross the border from Iran, the regions worst hit country.

But some have also been trying to go in the other direction, looking for work.

Now, Afghanistan is accusing Iranian border forces of drowning dozens of Afghan migrants, to stop them from crossing over.

It is thought at least 38 people died. Iran has denied the allegations.

Al Jazeeras Alexi OBrien has more.
Nurses talk to each other through a glass at the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) ward at Kuala Lumpur Hospital, in Kuala Lumpur

By Rozanna Latiff

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysian authorities on Saturday defended plans to ease coronavirus lockdown measures next week even as the number of new infections jumped to a two-week high.

Most businesses will reopen on Monday after a six-week shutdown ordered to fight the COVID-19 outbreak, though schools, cinemas and nightclubs will remain closed, along with the country's borders, and mass gatherings will still be banned.

The decision to allow businesses to resume trading has sparked criticism including from members of the ruling coalition that restrictions were being eased too soon.

The number of new infections with the novel coronavirus as reported by the health ministry rose by 105 on Saturday, the highest daily increase since April 16. The number of known infections totalled 6,176 and fatalities stood at 103.

Security minister Ismail Sabri said Malaysia was not being hasty in relaxing the curbs, stressing that businesses reopening will have to implement hygiene and social distancing measures.

Former Prime Minister Najib Razak, whose UMNO party is part of the ruling coalition, said the easing was "huge and sudden" and there was no rush to reopen the economy, local media reported.

A Change.org petition to stop the measures from being partially lifted had garnered over 250,000 signatures on Saturday.

Announcing the easing of curbs on Friday, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said the government had lost 63 billion ringgit ($14.7 billion) from the restrictions imposed since March 18.

The economy could shrink more than initially forecast due to the curbs, the finance minister said on Saturday. Malaysia's central bank had in April forecast a change in gross domestic product (GDP) of between -2% and 0.5% this year.

"But that forecast was made after just two weeks of movement curbs. We're now more than five weeks in ... so our GDP could shrink even more," Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz said in an interview with a local television channel.

Story continues

Malaysia, which has announced a stimulus package worth 250 billion ringgit to help cushion the economic blow from the outbreak, will also announce an economic recovery plan later this month, the minister said.

($1 = 4.2930 ringgit)

(Reporting by Rozanna Latiff; Writing by A. Ananthlakshmi; Editing by Helen Popper and David Holmes)
Riyadh, May 3 : Saudi Arabia "must reduce expenditures" to mitigate the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan said.

"Saudi Arabia is committed to protecting itself from the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic through any necessary financial measures despite plunging oil revenues," Xinhua news agency quoted the Minister as saying in an interview with Al Arabiya TV on Saturday.

The drop in both oil and non-oil revenues will be seen further in the coming quarters, al-Jadaan noted.

Last week, the Minister had said that the Kingdom would limit the amount of money it would take from its reserves to a maximum of $32 billion.

Instead, Saudi Arabia would take advantage of its mostly untapped ability to borrow by issuing $60 billion of debt, he added.

The Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority said on Tuesday that foreign assets fell in March to $464 billion, the lowest in 19 years, as the Kingdom was combating the economic fallout of the global health crisis.

Saudi Arabia has taken serious steps to fight the spread of coronavirus, including nationwide curfews and suspending nearly all activities.

Saudi Arabia has so far reported 25,459 coronavirus cases, with 1,362 added on Saturday.

The Kingdom also confirmed seven new fatalities, raising the death toll to 176.
Russia's National Guard will deploy helicopters and drones in Moscow to monitor compliance with lockdown measures during holidays this week.

There is concern that warm spring weather and a string of holidays could draw people in large numbers to leave home and gather in woodland parks.

Monday and Tuesday are legal holidays and Saturday marks the 75th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany, a day that usually sees huge outdoor gatherings.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
"...He commanded so much respect and brought a lot of comic relief which came so naturally that he became hard to forget."



This, is what Lydia Forson said about the late Bishop Bernard Nyarko. The veteran actor is reported to have died at the Ridge Hospital in Accra, yesterday, May 2, 2020, after a short illness.



Against this backdrop, Ghanaians have been pouring in their tributes on social media to celebrate him.



Joining her colleagues in the film industry to pay their tribute, Miss Lydia Forson, who explained that she only worked once with the late actor, confessed that he (Bernard Nyarko) commanded so much respect.



"Ive only ever worked with him once and that was on Side Chic Gang before then Id never met him. But he commanded so much respect and brought a lot of comic relief which came so naturally that he became hard to forget. In fact, every time Id see him I remember the first thing I ever heard him say this coat too is not nice, what joooon coat is this (it sounded better coming from him)," she wrote on her Instagram page May 2, 2020.



Miss Forson continued that, though he's no more, his memories will continue to live with Ghanaians, just because of the good work he did.



"Whenever one of us goes, it doesnt matter if you knew or worked with them; theres just a feeling like youve lost family regardless. RIP Benard Nyarko- you will live on through your work."











Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Linkedin Marchio Irfan Gorbiano and Ghina Ghaliya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sun, May 3, 2020 16:50 625 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd59f422 1 National #labor,labor,May-Day,#May-Day,employment,#employment,COVID-19,#COVID19,COVID-19-in-Indonesia Free

As COVID-19 arrests most industry activity and disrupts global supply chains, millions of Indonesian laborers face a greater risk of being furloughed or losing their jobs entirely.

The government must now ensure that businesses have adequate support to prevent layoffs, and  where job reductions are inevitable  the government must ensure that workers rights are protected, labor experts have said.

The options [for laborers] are quite limited. If they are dismissed, it is important that they secure full compensation as stipulated by the Labor Law. If they are furloughed, they should get full wages and THR [holiday bonus], said Hadi Subhan, a labor expert from Airlangga University.

During the pandemic, what the government can do  and what furloughed or recently unemployed people need  is cash assistance. If this could be done by the government, that would be of great help, he said.

As the pandemic has hit employers and laborers alike, the government should issue a regulation that ensures the two sides meet if the companies reduce their workforce, University of Indonesia (UI) labor law professor Aloysius Uwiyono suggested.

There should be a legal basis as a reference for the employers and workers so they are on the same page. Without it, I think it will be difficult for them to discuss severance payment, he said.

About 375,165 formal workers have been laid off nationwide and 1.03 million formal workers have been furloughed during the COVID-19 crisis, while 314,833 informal workers have lost their livelihoods, according to data from the Manpower Ministry.

The government predicts that 2.9 million to 5.2 million workers could lose their jobs during the outbreak.

If that becomes the case, the additional unemployment would erase last years gains of 2.5 million new jobs.

Statistics Indonesia (BPS) data shows that 7.05 million people  5.28 percent of the workforce of 133.56 million  were unemployed as of August 2019.

Data from the Office of the Coordinating Economic Minister shows that 15,747 factories remain in operation in regions where large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) have been applied  about a third of the approximately 40,000 manufacturers that operate under normal circumstances. The companies are currently employing about 4.7 million workers out of the 17 million people who usually work in the sector.

Workers in manufacturing and other labor-intensive sectors have been among those hit hardest by the COVID-19 outbreak. The governments stay-at-home order has effectively halted production in nonessential industries.

The work-from-home approach is applicable only to workers in certain workplaces, but those in manufacturing cannot do it because they do everything in the factories, said Aloysius.

Read also: On May Day, workers marches go online to avoid coronavirus risk

The Indonesian Labor Workers Assembly (MPBI), a coalition of three major labor groups, has demanded employment protections amid the pandemic, noting that airlines, hotels, travel agents, restaurants, logistics firms, online transportation services, digital economic firms, as well as micro, small and medium enterprises have seen the most layoffs. They estimated that layoffs in these sectors could account for 90 percent of the total number of people who lose their jobs during the outbreak.

Said Iqbal, president of the Confederation of Indonesian Trade Unions (KSPI), which is a member of the MPBI, demanded the government require public audits on companies that claimed financial losses, as he believed not all sectors had been hit equally by the pandemic.

We want public audits for companies that claim losses. For those that survive, we demand they pay full THR and wages so that these workers can maintain their purchasing power and the economy can eventually grow positively," he said on Friday.

Manpower Minister Ida Fauziyah said that the government had implemented tax incentives and planned to relax premium payments to the Workers Social Security Agency (BPJS Ketenagakerjaan) to support companies so that they could continue employing workers during the outbreak.

The ministry, Ida said, was pushing for dialogue between stakeholders to discuss issues related to tackling COVID-19 and its impacts on business and employment sustainability. The ministry was also communicating with the regional administrations to prevent and resolve industrial relations disputes.

Read also: Indonesia delays deliberations over labor issues in omnibus bill amid backlash

A recent deal between the government and lawmakers to delay deliberation on the contentious labor provisions in the omnibus bill on job creation  coupled with COVID-19 restrictions and fears  led workers to scale back May Day rallies across the country on Friday. Many of them used social media instead to reiterate their disapproval of the job creation bill and demand protection during the economic crisis caused by the pandemic.

According to Said Iqbal, the MPBI coalition will ask the government to withdraw the bill entirely and resume deliberation only if policymakers allow labor unions to join the drafting process.
NEW YORK, May 2 (Xinhua) -- A more aggressive stand adopted by some top U.S. administration officials against China on economic, diplomatic and scientific issues at the heart of the relationship between the world's first and second largest economies may backfire, reported The New York Times on Saturday.

"Along with lost opportunities to fight the (COVID-19) pandemic, climate change and other transnational threats, U.S. efforts to punish China could backfire badly," Jessica Chen Weiss, a professor of government at Cornell University, was quoted by the newspaper as saying. "Weakening sovereign immunity to sue China could boomerang back."

China controls a vast supply of the masks and protective gear needed by American hospitals. "And if China develops a vaccine first, it will wield a powerful card, one that will bolster its global standing and give it leverage over the health of hundreds of millions of Americans," it reported.

China is likely to emerge from the recession caused by the pandemic faster than other nations, said the paper. "The United States - still reeling from the virus, with more than 1 million infected and more than 64,000 dead - will probably rely on economic activity in Asia to help prop up its own economy."

The newspaper listed the executive order signed by U.S. President Donald Trump to stop the import of foreign equipment for power plants and transmission systems, the request by several agencies for the Federal Communication Commission to ban China Telecom Americas from domestic networks, as well as the support of some White House aides this week for Trump to issue another executive order to block a government pension fund from investing in Chinese companies, among others, as the recent actions or tendencies that have dampened the bilateral ties between China and the United States.

With COVID-19 lingering in the United States, "the Trump administration may feel cornered into taking enforcement actions against China, even on dubious grounds, to show how tough they are," explained Wendy Cutler, a vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute.
Market forces rained on the parade of ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP) shareholders today, when the analysts downgraded their forecasts for this year. Revenue and earnings per share (EPS) forecasts were both revised downwards, with analysts seeing grey clouds on the horizon. At US$39.14, shares are up 8.5% in the past 7 days. Investors could be forgiven for changing their mind on the business following the downgrade; but it's not clear if the revised forecasts will lead to selling activity.

Following the latest downgrade, the current consensus, from the 17 analysts covering ConocoPhillips, is for revenues of US$16b in 2020, which would reflect a sizeable 51% reduction in ConocoPhillips' sales over the past 12 months. Following this this downgrade, earnings are now expected to tip over into loss-making territory, with the analysts forecasting losses of US$3.63 per share in 2020. However, before this estimates update, the consensus had been expecting revenues of US$20b and US$1.31 per share in losses. Ergo, there's been a clear change in sentiment, with the analysts administering a notable cut to this year's revenue estimates, while at the same time increasing their loss per share forecasts.

View our latest analysis for ConocoPhillips

NYSE:COP Past and Future Earnings May 3rd 2020

Analysts lifted their price target 6.1% to US$47.15, implicitly signalling that lower earnings per share are not expected to have a longer-term impact on the stock's value. The consensus price target is just an average of individual analyst targets, so - it could be handy to see how wide the range of underlying estimates is. There are some variant perceptions on ConocoPhillips, with the most bullish analyst valuing it at US$68.00 and the most bearish at US$33.00 per share. This is a fairly broad spread of estimates, suggesting that the analysts are forecasting a wide range of possible outcomes for the business.

Looking at the bigger picture now, one of the ways we can make sense of these forecasts is to see how they measure up against both past performance and industry growth estimates. By contrast, our data suggests that other companies (with analyst coverage) in the industry are forecast to see their revenue shrink 0.3% per year. So it's pretty clear that ConocoPhillips sales are expected to decline at a faster rate than the wider industry.

Story continues

The Bottom Line

The most important thing to note from this downgrade is that the consensus increased its forecast losses this year, suggesting all may not be well at ConocoPhillips. Unfortunately they also downgraded their revenue estimates, and our aggregation of analyst estimates suggests that ConocoPhillips revenue is expected to perform worse than the wider market. The rising price target is a puzzle, but still - with a serious cut to this year's outlook, we wouldn't be surprised if investors were a bit wary of ConocoPhillips.

After a downgrade like this, it's pretty clear that previous forecasts were too optimistic. What's more, we've spotted several possible issues with ConocoPhillips' business, like a weak balance sheet. For more information, you can click here to discover this and the 4 other risks we've identified.

You can also see our analysis of ConocoPhillips' Board and CEO remuneration and experience, and whether company insiders have been buying stock.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Thanh Van, a staff member, cleans a board.

Schools will get back students in a staggered manner. Over 87,000 ninth graders who are about to take high school entrance exams and over 63,000 12th graders who need to take their high school graduation exams will return on Monday and start normal classes the next day.

Students in fourth to eighth grades and 10th and 11th grades will return on May 8 and start classes on the 11th. Those in first to third grades will attend school on May 11 and start classes the next day.
A photo of Neetu Kapoor and Ranbir Kapoor has gone viral from Rishi Kapoor's prayer meet. The actor passed away on April 30 after suffering from leukaemia for two years.

Actor Rishi Kapoor left for the heavenly abode on April 30 after battling leukemia for two years. After being diagnosed in 2018, the actor was in New York for almost a year for treatment. During his time in New York, he found a solid support in Neetu Kapoor and their kids Ranbir and Riddimma. As the nation grieves the loss of their favourite romantic hero of the 80s, coping up with his demise has been particularly hard for his family.

Amid condolences pouring in from across the world, a photo of Neetu Kapoor and Ranbir Kapoor has gone viral from the actors prayer meet. The photo features Neetu Kapoor dressed in an all-white suit, while Ranbir Kapoor is dressed in a white kurta and orange turban. He is seen sporting a full grown beard and a tilak on his forehead.

The sadness in their eyes is bound to make your heart ache a little. If one takes a closer look, the photo kept on the table beside them is one of Rishi Kapoors photo from his days of youth.

Also Read: Rashami Desais no make up look will leave you awestruck

Also Read: Iss Pyaar Ko Kya Naam Doon: Barun Sobti expresses his desire of watching re-run of Sanaya Irani starrer amid lockdown

Rishi Kapoors daughter Riddhima Kapoor Sahni, who could not be a part of his funeral, reached Mumbai last night with her daughter Samaira and extended family. Since Riddhima lives in Delhi, she had to take permission from the government of India to drive down to Mumbai. Alia Bhatt, who is reportedly dating Ranbir Kapoor, made Riddhima attend Rishi Kapoors funeral via a video call.

Also Read: Kaun Banega Crorepati 12: Amitabh Bachchan to return with a new season, registrations open on this date

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South Koreas military said its troops exchanged fire with North Korea along their tense land border.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff in Seoul said North Korean troops fired several bullets at a South Korean guard post inside the heavily fortified border between the two countries at 7:41 am on Sunday.

The North Koreans apparently fired by accident.

South Korea fired two rounds in response after issuing a warning broadcast, the military said in a statement, adding it suffered no casualties.

We are taking actions via inter-Korean communication lines to grasp the detailed situation and to prevent any further incidents. And we also maintain a necessary readiness posture, it said.

The South Korean military later said the North Korean gunshots were not deemed intentional, according to Yonhap news agency.

Shots fired by North Korea across its border with South Korea were likely accidental, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday.

We think those are accidental. South Koreans did return fire. So far as we can tell, there was no loss of life on either side, Pompeo said on ABC This Week.





Kim questions swirl

Sundays exchange of fire took place one day after North Korea reported its leader Kim Jong Uns first public appearance in about 20 days amid intense speculation about his health.

North Koreas official media published photographs and a report on Saturday that Kim had attended the completion of a fertiliser plant, the first report of his appearance since April 11.

The Koreas are split along the 248-kilometre-long, 4-kilometer-wide (154-mile-long, 2.5-mile-wide) border region called the Demilitarized Zone that was originally created as a buffer.

But unlike its name, the DMZ is the worlds most heavily fortified border. An estimated 2 million mines are peppered inside and near the DMZ, which is also guarded by barbed wire fences, tank traps and combat troops on both sides.

In late 2018, the two Koreas began dismantling some of their front-line guard posts and removing mines from the DMZ as part of steps to reduce tensions.

But the efforts stalled amid a deadlock in nuclear negotiations between Kim and President Donald Trump meant to convince North Korea to give up its arsenal in exchange for lifting economic sanctions.

The last time there was gunfire along the border was in 2017, when North Korea sprayed bullets at a soldier fleeing to South Korea.
Journalism in Egypt has effectively become a crime over the past four years, as authorities clamp down on media outlets and muzzle dissent, Amnesty International said in a report released Sunday.

As the number of coronavirus infections in Egypt continues to rise, the government is strengthening its control over information, the London-based rights group said, instead of upholding transparency during the public health crisis.

"The Egyptian authorities have made it very clear that anyone who challenges the official narrative will be severely punished," said Philip Luther, Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa director.

Amnesty documented 37 cases of journalists detained in the government's escalating crackdown on press freedoms, many charged with "spreading false news" or "misusing social media" under a broad 2015 counterterrorism law that has expanded the definition of terror to include all kinds of dissent.

An Egyptian press officer did not respond to multiple calls seeking comment, but authorities have previously denied rights violations and justified arrests on national security grounds.

Following general-turned-president Abdel Fattah el-Sissi's rise to power in 2013, most of Egypt's television programs and newspapers have taken the government position and steered clear of criticism, or else disappeared.

Many privately owned Egyptian news outlets have been quietly acquired by companies affiliated with the country's intelligence service.

But even a pro-government voice hasn't spared 12 journalists working for state-owned media outlets, who have landed in jail for expressing various private views on social media, the report said.

One of them is Atef Hasballah, editor-in-chief of the AlkararPress website. When he challenged the Health Ministry's coronavirus case count on his Facebook page last month, he was promptly bundled into a police van and detained on suspicion of "joining a terrorist organization."

Egypt's public prosecutor warned in a recent statement that those who spread "false news" about the coronavirus may face up to five years imprisonment and steep fines.

At least 12 individuals have been caught up in the COVID-19-motivated crackdown so far, according to Amnesty.

Last month, authorities blocked a local news site that covered calls by activists to release political prisoners over fears of the coronavirus spreading in Egypt's crowded prisons.

Separately, Egypt expelled a correspondent for The Guardian newspaper over an article that indicated the coronavirus infection rate may be higher than officially reported.

The journalists interviewed by Amnesty reported increasingly direct state intervention in their coverage.

Many working for government-owned or aligned papers said they receive specific instructions via WhatsApp on what to report and to omit.

For instance, a directive on how to handle President Trump's proposal to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict this year asked reporters not to mention the plan's violations of long-standing Arab policies, as Trump and el-Sissi have cultivated close ties.

Those who do not hew the official line, such as by praising prison conditions and smearing the state's political opponents, "lost their jobs, were interrogated or imprisoned," one journalist was quoted as saying.

"I cannot even imagine that someone could refuse to comply."

Marking World Press Freedom Day, Amnesty urged Egyptian authorities to halt their censorship, harassment and intimidation of journalists - and to release those detained - solely for carrying out their work."
After donating 1,000 PPE kits for heathcare staff, Vidya Balan had announced that she is also collaborating with celebrity shout-out platform Tring in order to raise money to buy additional 1000 units. She managed to raise about Rs 16 lakhs in just few hours.

TOI

Exceeded expectations, 2,500 kits have been arranged now.

The actress has already released the first batch of 2,000 safety kits to Kasturba Gandhi Hospital in Delhi.



Sharing the good news, she took to Instagram and wrote, "First batch of the 2000 PPE kits donated by you all is being loaded at the plant in Delhi on its way to Kasturba hospital."



"Thank you so much for your generous donations and God bless you with a million times over of the best blessings life has to offer @tring.india @atulkasbekar #UniteForHumanity #WarAgainstCovid19," Balan's caption further read.



Besides Vidya, Dabangg actor Sonakshi Sinha is also raising funds for donating PPE kits to healthcare workers. Earlier on Friday, Sinha posted a video message on Instagram and urged the people to donate generously to help the frontline warriors combating COVID-19.

Vidya will be recognising the support of every donor by sending a personal thank you video message. The donors also stand a chance for a two-minute video call with her.


PRAGUE, Czech Republic - A private Czech television station has joined forces with CNN to create a news channel in the Czech Republic.

The Czech FTV Group and CNN International Commercial launched the channel, CNN Prima News, on Sunday.

CNN Prima News is the ninth channel that FTV Prima operates. Its broadcast includes local news covered by Prima reporters together with international news from CNN. The channel has also launched a website.

Other CNN-branded channels have already been established in other countries, including in Indonesia, Japan, Philippines, Turkey, Switzerland and Greece.

FTV Prima is the second-largest Czech private TV network.
MOSCOW, May 3, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- PhosAgro CEO, member of the Management Board of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RUIE), and President of the Russian Association of Fertilizer Producers, Andrey Guryev, took part in a round table hosted jointly by the Russia-24 television network and the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF). The round table was devoted to the experience of industries in the fight against the novel coronavirus.

Measures designed to prevent COVID-19 and protect the health of employees and residents of the cities where the companies operate, as well as the uninterrupted operation of continuous-cycle enterprises during the pandemic, were among the topics discussed by Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of RDIF; Anna Popova, Head of the Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection (Rospotrebnadzor); Andrey Chibis, Governor of the Murmansk Region; Alexei Teksler, Governor of the Chelyabinsk Region; Dmitry Konov, Chairman of the Management Board of PJSC SIBUR Holding; Pavel Grachev, CEO of PJSC Polyus; and Sergey Ivanov, CEO of ALROSA.

As Rospotrebnadzor head Anna Popova noted in her speech, Russia currently has only several cases of group sickness and infection in production facilities, which speaks to the positive practice being followed in the country.

"All production facilities that have organised the process in a timely and proper way and that don't permit violations are operating normally and don't have issues with infections," Popova emphasised.

Popova maintains that the set of anti-epidemic measures in place at production facilities contains two key elements. The first involves organising work process in a way that eliminates the risk of infection among people in the workplace who are in close proximity to one another. The second involves restricting worksite access to those who have tested positive for the virus. Important safety measures that have successfully been deployed in industrial enterprises include the use of personal protective equipment, measuring the temperature of people at the entrances to worksites, holding video and audio meetings, and testing. Regarding the latter, the emergence of reliable and sensitive rapid test systems, funded by the RDIF, is both timely and important.

Diagnostics can be carried out promptly both directly at production sites and in nearby settlements that do not have special laboratories. Making this possible is rapid testing technology developed jointly by Russian and Japanese scientists with the support of RDIF, which was discussed in detail by RDIF CEO Kirill Dmitriev.

"Thanks to our network of 18 leading sovereign funds, we were able to begin analysing the situation back in January and saw that testing is one of the key elements for keeping the situation under control. Separation of the infected from the uninfected, especially at industrial enterprises, is to a large degree key to success and safety on rotation shifts, at production operations, and at large investment projects," said Dmitriev.

He argued that the speed of diagnosis  one of the key elements in the fight against the virus  is a distinctive characteristic of testing systems produced by EMG with the support from RDIF. These testing systems make it possible to establish reliably within 30 minutes whether a person is infected.

Andrey Guryev, PhosAgro CEO and co-chairman of the RUIE Coordinating Council for Combating the Coronavirus, spoke about the pilot experience in using these rapid tests.

"When a patient suspected of having coronavirus was found on 24 March in Apatit, where a significant number of PhosAgro mining and processing plant employees live, we decided to deliver rapid tests manufactured by EMG with RDIF support to the city as quickly as possible. We sent a plane to Kazan and brought 100 of the express tests that were available at that time to Apatit.

"They helped us to check the first and second circles of people who had been in contact with the alleged patient zero, as well as the medical staff, within three hours. This quick and effective solution made it possible to isolate the infected group and put a barrier in place to stop the spread of infection," emphasised Guryev.

PhosAgro's CEO noted that the company moved swiftly to enact active anti-crisis steps, having begun developing instructions for pandemic action in advance based on Russian and Soviet epidemic control protocols and relevant foreign experience of partner companies based in Europe and China.

"I am certain that the measures taken by companies, authorities, municipalities, and governors have been highly effective today. In many respects, the key to this is sharing best practices in combating the epidemic both between regional command centres and between large companies. This sharing is facilitated by the work of the RUIE Coordinating Council for Combating the Coronavirus, which combines the best Russian and foreign practices for implementing action protocols during a pandemic. Information about this experience is available on the RUIE website as collections of best practices for business and regions," said Guryev.

He emphasised that continuous-cycle enterprises would not be able to operate steadily during a pandemic without close coordination with Rospotrebnadzor and regional authorities, noting the role of governors of the regions where the company operates who headed regional command centres.

According to Murmansk Region Governor Andrey Chibis, the experience of combating a pandemic has once again demonstrated: "How important and proper it is for the government and large businesses to work hand in hand to ensure people's safety."

Commenting on actions to combat the outbreak of coronavirus in Apatit, he noted that: "The clear and well-coordinated work of the command centres, Rospotrebnadzor, and PhosAgro allowed us to quickly identify a circle of contacts, test them rapidly, and localise the outbreak. This experience helped us greatly moving forward."

"It is fundamentally important that large companies not only help with testing, but also provide necessary preventative regimens in their workplaces and help us deploy additional beds to treat COVID patients," Chibis emphasised, citing as an example PhosAgro's assistance in deploying additional capacity at medical institutions in the cities where it operates.

"As governor, I feel really good about how clearly and harmoniously we have managed to work with big business," Chibis said in summary.

Agreeing with him was Alexei Teksler, governor of the Chelyabinsk Region, who noted that adherence to general sanitary and epidemiological requirements, as well as collaboration with large industrial enterprises, is what is needed today to maintain control over the situation in the regions as a whole.

"It seems that the activities undertaken today are allowing us to maintain precautionary standards, as employees are monitored and handled appropriately, and people are constantly supervised while on the enterprise territories. This is extremely important," said Teksler.

RDIF CEO Kirill Dmitriev concluded by emphasising that Russian companies are taking very fast and active steps to combat the coronavirus:

"We believe that in many ways Russian enterprises are better prepared than many companies in other countries. The fast mobilisation work that we see at PhosAgro, Polyus, Alrosa, Sibur, and other companies is producing results."

About the Company

PhosAgro (www.phosagro.com) is one of the world's leading vertically integrated phosphate-based fertilizer producers in terms of production volumes of phosphate-based fertilizers and high-grade phosphate rock with a P2O5 content of 39% and higher. PhosAgro's environmentally friendly fertilizers stand out for their high efficiency, and they do not lead to the contamination of soils with heavy metals.

The Company is the largest phosphate-based fertilizer producer in Europe (by total combined capacity for DAP/MAP/NP/NPK/NPS), the largest producer of high-grade phosphate rock with a P2O5 content of 39% and one of the leading producers of MAP/DAP globally, one of the leading producers of feed phosphates (MCP) in Europe, and the only producer in Russia, and Russia's only producer of nepheline concentrate (according to the RAFP).

PhosAgro's main products include phosphate rock, 39 grades of fertilizers, feed phosphates, ammonia, and sodium tripolyphosphate, which are used by customers in 100 countries spanning all of the world's inhabited continents. The Company's priority markets outside of Russia and the CIS are Latin America, Europe and Asia.

PhosAgro's shares are traded on the Moscow Exchange, and global depositary receipts (GDRs) for shares trade on the London Stock Exchange (under the ticker PHOR). Since 1 June 2016, the Company's GDRs have been included in the MSCI Russia and MSCI Emerging Markets indexes.

More information about PhosAgro can be found on the website: www.phosagro.com.

SOURCE PhosAgro
Ken Branca

A 16-year-old girl was shot in the head and killed early Sunday at a Balcones Heights apartment complex, and two men were arrested and are being held in connection with the slaying, police said.

Eric Hernandez, 21, and Kevin Clark, 18, each were charged with unlawful carrying of a weapon, possession of marijuana and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, said Balcones Heights Police Chief John Jahanara.
The experimental drug remdesivir has been authorized by US regulators for emergency use against COVID-19, President Donald Trump announced Friday.

Track live updates on coronavirus here

It comes after the antiviral made by Gilead Sciences was shown in a major clinical trial to shorten the time to recovery in some coronavirus patients, the first time any medicine has had a proven benefit against the disease.

"It is really a really promising situation," Trump said at the White House, where he was joined by Gilead's CEO Daniel O'Day.

Also Read: Remdesivir: The COVID-19 drug helping patients recover faster

"We are humbled with this first step for hospitalized patients," said O'Day, adding: "We want to make sure nothing gets in the way of these patients getting the medicine."

The company has previously announced it was donating some 1.5 million doses for free.

This amounts to about 140,000 treatment courses based on a 10-day treatment duration.

Remdesivir, which is administered by an injection, was already available to some patients who enrolled in clinical trials, or who sought it out on a "compassionate use" basis.

The new move allows it to be distributed far more widely and used in both adults and children who are hospitalized with a severe form of COVID-19.

The Food and Drug Administration, which authorized the approval, defines severe as having low blood oxygen levels, requiring oxygen therapy, or being on a ventilator.

The US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) announced the results of a trial involving more than 1,000 people on Wednesday.

It found that hospitalized COVID-19 patients with respiratory distress got better quicker than those on a placebo.

Also Read: Coronavirus India update: State-wise total number of confirmed cases

Specifically, patients on the drug had a 31 percent faster time to recovery.

"Although the results were clearly positive from a statistically significant standpoint, they were modest," Anthony Fauci, the scientist who leads the NIAID told NBC News on Thursday.

While not considered a miracle cure, remdesivir's trial achieved a "proof of concept," according to Fauci that could pave the way for better treatments.

Remdesivir incorporates itself into the virus's genome, short circuiting its replication process.

It was first developed to treat Ebola, a viral hemorrhagic fever, but did not boost survival rates as other medicines.
Dr. Deborah Birx called the crowds who gathered this week in the Michigan state capitol without masks 'devastatingly worrisome.'

Birx, one of President Trump's top medical advisers on the coronavirus taskforce, was asked by 'Fox News Sunday' host Chris Wallace about some behaviors people around the country have been engaged in as governors mull whether to reopen states as the COVID-19 death toll continues to climb.

Wallace asked Birx about the demonstrators who barged into Michigan's state capitol on Thursday, who were not practicing social distancing - and instead were wielding weapons.

'It's devastatingly worriesome to me personally because if they go home and infect their grandmother or their grandfather who has a comorbid condition and they have a serious or very - or an unfortunate outcome, they will feel guilty for the rest of their lives,' Birx said.

'So we need to protect each other at the same time we're voicing our discontent,' Birx added.

Dr. Deborah Birx said Sunday that she found the Michigan protests 'devastatingly worrisome,' because demonstrators did not practice safe social distancing. Birx said she was concerned about protesters spreading COVID-19 to elderly family members

On Thursday, protesters - most without masks, and some with guns - showed up to the state capitol in Lansing, Michigan to protest the strict stay at home order put in place by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (right) told CNN's Jake Tapper (left) that she thought the protesters were 'not representative of who we are in Michigan,' pointing to the 'swastikas and Confederate Flags and nooses and people with assault rifles'

Some protesters showed up with guns to the Michigan state capitol on Thursday, demanding that businesses be reopened amid the coronavirus pandemic

A protester, who is not wearing a face mask, yells into the faces of Michigan State Police at the state Capitol on Thursday

Protesters have been showing up in Lansing, Michigan for weeks to protest the state's strict stay at home order enacted by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

President Trump gave a nod to the protesters - many of whom sport Trump gear - by tweeting 'LIBERATE Michigan' in mid-April.

Since then, the protests have not died down.

Whitmer was asked about the most recent protest on Sunday, in an interview on CNN's 'State of the Union' with Jake Tapper.

She said she understood that people were 'not all happy' with having to stay home.

She then characterized those who showed up to the capitol as a fringe minority in her state.

'And displays like the one that we saw at our capital is not representative of who we are in Michigan. There were swastikas and Confederate Flags and nooses and people with assault rifles,' Whitmer said. 'And that's the very - that's a small group of people, when you think about the fact that this is a state of almost 10 million people, the vast majority of whom are doing the right thing.'

Tapper asked the Democratic governor if she agreed with the head of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, Halie Soifer, who compared the Michigan protester to those in Charlottesville.

The Charlottesville 'Unite the Right' demonstration in 2017 brought together members of the KKK, neo-Nazis and other supporters of white supremacy.

'Well, some of the outrageousness of what happened at our capitol this week depicted some of the worst racism and awful parts of our history in this country,' Whitmer said. 'The Confederate Flags, and nooses, the swastikas, the behavior that you have seen in all of the clips is not representative of who we are in Michigan.'

Whitmer pointed out the obvious, 'we're in a global pandemic.'

'This isn't something we just negotiate ourselves out of and it's a political matter,' she said. 'This is a public health crisis that has taken the lives of over - of almost 70,000 Americans, has put 30 million people into unemployment.'

'We have lost in the last 24 hours almost the same number of Americans that were killed in 9/11,' she continued.

Whitmer pressed that it was the time to listen to health experts.

'Whether you agree with me or not, I'm working to protect your life if you live in the state of Michigan. I'm going to continue to do my job, regardless of what tweets come out or what polls come out or what people think that is - makes sense,' she said. 'We're going to listen to facts and science, because we have got to get this right.'

Independent Rep. Justin Amash, who's pursuing a third-party bid for the presidency, said while he thought Whitmer 'overreached in a lot of ways,' he knocked the protesters for being inappropriate.

'I totally denounce and condemn Nazi symbols that were used in some of the protests. I think it's a terrible idea to come into the capitol with weapons, bearing weapons, knowing that it might be perceived as some form of intimidation toward legislators,' the Michigan lawmaker said.

'So, I denounce those things. But everyone has the right to protest. And we're a state that cares about our rights, cares about our freedoms, and we're - we should work together with the governor,' he added.

And Ohio's Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, suggested that his own order on masks went too far.

'It becamse clear to me that that was just a bridge too far,' he said Sunday on ABC's 'This Week.' 'People were not going to accept the government telling them what to do.'

DeWine had instituted a statewide order for people to wear masks inside stores.
Love Island has reportedly been hit by yet another crisis amid concerns coronavirus may stop the series from going ahead.

After ITV bosses hinted the series may be axed this year as it would send the wrong signal to viewers, sources are now claiming the ITV2 is struggling to get insurance to be filmed in Mallorca.

It's reported that bosses are considering asking its stars to isolate for two weeks before filming starts this summer, but without insurance production could be shut down completely.

Drama: Love Island has reportedly been hit by yet another crisis, as sources have claimed the show is struggling to get insurance cover amid the coronavirus crisis

A source told The Daily Star on Sunday: 'Producers are looking at ways of making it work.

'The current plan is to fly crew and contestants out to Majorca two weeks before filming starts and then isolate everyone. But even with these measures, insurance companies wont offer cover.

'ITV cant do the series without insurance. If the series is airing and even just one person tests positive for the virus, the whole thing would have to be shut down immediately.'

MailOnline has contacted representatives for Love Island for comment.

No show this year? The reports come just days after Head of ITV Kevin Lygo hinted this year's Love Island may be axed amid the COVID-19 crisis

The reports come just days after Head of ITV Kevin Lygo hinted this year's Love Island may be axed, as it could send the wrong signal to viewers during a time of social distancing.

Speaking during a virtual interview by the Edinburgh TV Festival, Kevin admitted they're at a point when they have to decide whether to go ahead with Love Island this year.

He said: 'We're approaching the moment of is it feasible? Will Majorca open its doors?'

The channel boss added that they wouldn't want to send the wrong signal to viewers when the country is asked to stay and home and keep at least two metres apart.

'What signal might it be sending out if we're doing a show where everyone is crammed together slavering over each other, and the rest of the world is told not to go near anyone in the park?' he added.

Taking a break: Kevin confirmed on Thursday ITV may abandon plans for a summer series this year as it would send the 'wrong signal' to viewers

Which UK shows have stopped filming? EastEnders Line Of Duty Peaky Blinders Doctors Casualty Holby City River City Pobol y Cwm Hollyoaks Vera Call The Midwife The Only Way Is Essex Lorraine Loose Women Emmerdale Coronation Street Advertisement

Kevin added that they did consider moving filming for this year's series to the UK from its usual spot in Mallorca.

He went onto dismiss reports the new series could be filmed in Cornwall saying it 'wouldn't be the same.'

Kevin also said that they are hoping to reach a decision on the new series of Love Island 'very soon,' and there would be a 'big commercial impact' if the series failed to go ahead.

It was reported earlier this month that Love Island bosses were hoping to go ahead with filming the new series, and would delay the start date until July.

A TV source exclusively told MailOnline: 'The team are still committed to the series airing this summer. The show will go on.'

'Production on Love Island have been told the upcoming series is still scheduled to take place but the show will launch a month later in July. All the usual preparations are going ahead,'

Uh oh: It comes following reports much of this year's cast will have missed on thousands of pounds in big-money deals during the lockdown (Shaughna Phillips and Demi Jones, pictured)

It comes following reports much of this year's cast will have missed on thousands of pounds in events and big-money deals as the country is ground to a halt during the lockdown.

On Thursday, Jack Cooper of EdHopkinsPR revealed to Metro that stars have missed key moneymaking moments which have previously bagged stars up to millions of pounds.

He said: 'They are also missing out on club appearances due to them being closed, which could have earned them up to 5,000 per hour.

'With no events to attend, they are also missing out on a huge range of exposure in the media, having no stories for the press to write about...

'The Winter Love Island stars are set to lose huge amounts of money, some contestants up to 500,000. Brand deals at the moment are at an all-time low.

'Many of the participants have approached us to represent them during this tough time. Due to our books being full and also the lack of opportunities in the industry at this time, we have had to decline them.'

Stand in: Laura Whitmore took over as host from her friend Caroline Flack, who went onto tragically take her own life in February

Love Island last aired on screens at the beginning of this year when ITV2 commissioned the show's first ever winter series, filmed in South Africa.

Laura Whitmore took over as host from her friend Caroline Flack, who went onto tragically take her own life in February.

Shortly after the show came off air that month, the global coronavirus pandemic spread around the world, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson enforcing a lockdown on 23 March.

Despite these concerns, the number of applications for the summer series is anything to go by, fans are hoping the ITV2 dating show does return as potential islanders are at a record high.

Oh no! Despite these concerns it's been reported this summer's Love Island has seen its highest number of applications yet (series winner Paige Turley pictured)

According to The Sun, Love Island has received its highest number of applications yet and show bosses are hoping to snap up new reality stars by holding virtual auditions.

An insider told the paper that applications have surpassed 12,000, claiming: 'Applications have gone through the roof since lockdown. Never before have so many people applied in this six-week time span.'

They continued: 'Over seventy per cent of the applications have come from 18 to 28-year-olds and the videos being sent in have been more creative than ever as people have more time on their hands.'

The insider suggested that once the candidates for Love Island's summer series have been shortlisted in the 'coming weeks', they'll then be interviewed virtually by the team, with ITV having to bring in 'extra staff' to accommodate the high numbers.
Mumbai, May 3 : The Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) on Sunday said that net redemptions under credit risk funds dropped 81.5 percent after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced a special liquidity facility of Rs 50,000 crore for the mutual fund industry.

Credit risk fund is a debt mutual fund scheme category, which constitutes less than 5 per cent of total debt mutual fund AUM.

In a statement, AMFI said that net redemptions under credit risk funds stood at Rs 2,949.49 crore as on April 24, and peaked at Rs 4,294.36 crore as on April 27, 2020.

Thereafter, for the past three days, on Tuesday (April 28), and Wednesday and Thursday, the net redemptions under credit risk funds stood at Rs 1,847.29 crore, Rs 1,251.17 crore and Rs 793.99 crore, respectively.

"All Mutual Funds have met the redemptions in the normal course of business. There is 81.5 per cent drop in net redemptions in Credit Risk Funds category on April 30, 2020 from the peak net redemptions as on April 27, 2020, courtesy measures announced by the RBI," it said.

Nilesh Shah, Chairman AMFI, said: "Declining trend in net redemptions from Credit Risk Funds is a welcome development, indicative of Investors' comfort from RBI's special liquidity facility available to the MF industry. AMFI will continue to work with Regulators for normal functioning of the market." To ease liquidity pressure on mutual funds, the Reserve Bank of India on April 27 decided to open a special liquidity facility (SLF-MF) worth Rs 50,000 crore.

Under the facility, the RBI shall conduct repo operations of 90 days tenor at the fixed repo rate. The apex bank said that SLF-MF is "on-tap and open-ended", and banks can submit their bids to avail funding. Besides, the scheme is available till May 11, 2020 or "up to utilisation of the allocated amount, whichever is earlier".
220m new term loan, 90% guaranteed by the French State.

67m new financing facilities, 70% guaranteed by the Spanish State; previously announced [1]

20m Incremental RCF, guaranteed by Eurazeo through a risk sub-participation.

Regulatory News:

Europcar Mobility Group (Paris:EUCAR):

As part of the continuation of its cost-saving and cash preservation plan published on March 23rd, the Group announces today the completion of a financing scheme, aiming at securing its liquidity to face the COVID-19 crisis and meeting anticipated fleet and corporate financing needs to swiftly restart operations.

A 220m term loan, signed with the Group's main French and international banks, benefiting from a 90% guarantee from the French State via Bpifrance ("Pret Garanti par l'Etat"). This facility will have an initial maturity of 1 year, with an up to 5-year extension option decided by Europcar (up to May 2026), subject to customary mandatory repayment provisions. Differed amortization for 1 year with a contemplated progressive amortization thereafter. Condition: no dividend payments in 2020 and 2021 and subject to a x3 net corporate leverage thereafter. New financing facilities for the Group's Spanish subsidiaries (Europcar Spain and Goldcar Spain), totalling 67.25m, signed over the last 2 weeks with Bankia and BBVA benefiting from a 70% guarantee from the Spanish State. These new facilities will have a 3-year maturity and proceeds are expected to fund both fleet corporate needs. A 20m Incremental RCF tranche (to increase the facility from 650m to 670m) provided by French banks which have obtained a guarantee from Eurazeo through a sub-risk participation.

All these new financing facilities, together with its existing financing framework, have been structured with regard to the current pandemic situation to allow the Group to face the significant business impacts resulting from lockdowns and travel restrictions everywhere it operates, while allowing to progressively resume its activities post COVID-19 crisis.

The Group remains in negotiation in other corporate countries on potential State Guarantee loans to reinforce its liquidity within the global financing framework.

Caroline Parot, Chairwoman of Europcar Mobility Group Management Board, declared:

"First of all, I would like to thank the Minister Bruno Le Maire, the Secretary of State Agnes Pannier-Runacher, the French State and our banks, for being supportive of Europcar Mobility Group and for allowing a constructive dialogue, at an early stage of the COVID-19 crisis. Our Group is also grateful for all the positive interactions and support our Country Managing Directors have received from their respective States and banking groups all across Europe. Finally, we are also thankful to Eurazeo for its renewed support in these difficult times.

These new financing lines will allow us to secure and progressively resume our activities once local economies restart and begin to recover. Our group is actively preparing for this restart, taking into account the new standards and customer expectations that will most likely stem from the crisis.

Over the coming months, given the uncertainties remaining ahead of us, we will actively continue our efforts to streamline our cost base and adapt our capital and debt structure to the evolutions of the business environment, with agility and flexibility.

French-born and European leader, our group has a 70-year history of customer services, to retail customers as well as local and international companies. As a mobility service company, our shared mobility solutions car rental, car-sharing represent a key alternative to vehicle ownership and a natural complement to public transportation.

We are ready to serve our customers and to help communities and businesses move safely in tomorrow's world, building on our expertise, leadership and the extraordinary dedication of our employees, and relying on our purpose: offering attractive alternative solutions to vehicle ownership, in a responsible and sustainable way".

Bank of America Merrill Lynch International, Banque Europeenne du Credit Mutuel, BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank, Credit du Nord, Credit Industriel et Commercial, Deutsche Bank Luxembourg S.A., Goldman Sachs Bank Europe SE, HSBC France, ING Bank N.V. (French branch), Natixis and Societe Generale acted as lending banks.

Rothschild Co, Darrois Villey Maillot Brochier and Gide acted as advisors to Europcar Mobility Group, White and Case as advisors to the banking partners.

The Company plans to file its Universal Registration Document on 6 May 2020.

About Europcar Mobility Group

Europcar Mobility Group is a major player in mobility markets and listed on Euronext Paris. The mission of Europcar Mobility Group is to be the preferred "Mobility Service Company" by offering attractive alternatives to vehicle ownership, with a wide range of mobility-related services and solutions: car rental and light commercial vehicle rental, chauffeur services, car-sharing, scooter-sharing and private hire vehicle (PHV rental to "Uber like" chauffeurs).

Customers' satisfaction is at the heart of the Group's mission and all of its employees and this commitment fuels the continuous development of new services. Europcar Mobility Group operates through a diversified portfolio of brands meeting every customer specific needs and use cases, be it for 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week or longer; its 4 major brands being: Europcar the European leader of car rental and light commercial vehicle rental, Goldcar the low-cost car-rental Leader in Europe, InterRent 'mid-tier' car rental and Ubeeqo one of the European leaders of round-trip car-sharing (BtoB, BtoC).

Europcar Mobility Group delivers its mobility solutions worldwide solutions through an extensive network in over 140 countries (including wholly owned subsidiaries 18 in Europe, 1 in the USA, 2 in Australia and New Zealand completed by franchises and partners).

Further details available at:

www.europcar-mobility-group.com

1 See 15 April press release Update on Europcar Mobility Group's cost-saving and cash preservation plan and 28 April press release Update on Europcar Mobility Group's cash preservation plan, announced on March 23rd - www.europcar-mobility-group.com

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200503005044/en/

Contacts:

Press Relations

Valerie Sauteret valerie.sauteret@europcar.com +33 6 72 93 31 05

Vincent Vevaud vincent.vevaud@europcar.com +33 6 43 64 21 49

Publicis Consultants

camille.madec@publicisconsultants.com +33 7 86 42 95 15

Investor Relations

Caroline Cohen caroline.cohen@europcar.com +33 1 80 20 90 37 +33 6 82 75 96 39
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The tourism industry has been in shambles for the past six weeks as the coronavirus pandemic has ravaged Alabamas hospitality sector.

Occupancy rates, prior to the beaches reopening Friday, were below 10% in Gulf Shores and Orange Beach. Job losses, particularly among restaurant and bar workers, continue to mount, and sales and lodging taxes are sinking.

It seems as if 2019, was a lifetime ago. The states annual tourism figures, released Sunday, shows just how strong last year was in Alabama.

According to the data, historically released in April or May, the state experienced record-breaking numbers in tourists visiting Alabama (28.7 million, up from 27.7 million in 2018) and in spending by tourists ($16.8 billion, up from $15.6 billion in 2018). Since the BP oil spill a decade ago, tourist expenditures in the state have grown by 85%, setting records during each of the past nine years.

The Gulf Coast region, consisting of Mobile and Baldwin counties, last year continued to see increases in tourism spending ($6.7 billion, up 8% from $6.2 billion in 2018). Huntsville, Birmingham and Montgomery all saw increases as well as visitors flocked to Alabama like never before.

The report examines only the impact on tourism in 2019. It doesnt include figures that might reflect on the current state of the industry.

Last year, the economy was good particularly in the South and Midwest, which is where our major amount of visitors come from, said Lee Sentell, the states tourism director. Each year for the last three years, weve attracted an additional 1 million of vacationers to our state and what I think it indicates is that we have a strong and attractive tourism product and were getting the message to our potential visitors and they are coming.

Sentell said that despite the bleak picture drawn by the numbers from the six-week shutdown of Alabamas beaches  the No. 1 tourism driver for the states economy  he could see a rebound as the year progress.

Its easy for someone to predict that the current year is not going to be a strong year, however, thanks to the governors schedule (for reopening) our beach season quite possibly will be longer than at any time in history because this is the first time that we have had the month of May as a potential full summer month instead of the traditional June, July and part of August, said Sentell. We could have 14 weeks between when the beach is open and before school starts, and that would bode well for our industry.

According to Gulf Shores & Orange Beach Tourism, overall occupancy has seen a slight uptick to around 18% for the weekend. For Memorial Day weekend, the numbers are moving up to 27%, according to the agency.

According to the 2019 state figures, average hotel occupancy rates for all of 2019 were at 63.3%, up from 62.4% the pervious year. Occupancies were highest in Madison County, at 70.5%.

Seven counties accounted for 75 percent of all travel-generated employment, the study found. Some 54,262 workers were employed around the beach towns of Orange Beach and Gulf Shores. Another 32,628 were employed in the Birmingham area while an estimated 18,970 jobs were created in the Huntsville area. The Mobile area claimed 18,658 jobs and the Montgomery labor force numbered 14,438. The Tuscaloosa area notched 9,028 jobs while across the state Auburn-Opelika had 7,076 workers, the annual report said.

Baldwin County exceeded the $5 billion mark in travel-related spending, a 9% increase over 2018 to $5.2 billion. Birmingham/Jefferson County was in second place at $2.41 billion, representing a 5.5% increase from 2018.

Huntsville and the Madison County, with $1.62 billion in sales, achieved the states highest increase at 15.2% growth from 2018.

Said Sentell, Huntsville, the community, has reinvented itself in the past couple of decades to where its designed to attract young, high-tech people. Theyve done a great job with restaurants, craft breweries, and an arts center open to all. Its a fresh and vibrant feeling in North Alabama.

Montgomery, driven by a 5.6% growth in visitors, saw its tourism-related spending reach $1.03 billion, which is a first.

Sentell credited the National Memorial for Peace and Justice for being a top draw. The memorial, which opened two years ago, is intended to commemorate the victims of lynching in the United States and acknowledge past racial terrorism.

The people who are coming to see that have a great curiosity about the way the subject is presented, he said.
Melissa George has revealed the devastating financial consequences of her acrimonious divorce from French businessman Jean David Blanc.

The Paris-based Australian actress, 43, ended her five-year marriage to Jean David, 52, in September 2016, and has since been embroiled in a bitter dispute over the custody of their sons Raphael, six, and Solal, four.

Speaking to Stellar magazine this weekend, the Australian actress, 43, claimed she was left penniless after her marriage ended - and was forced to sell her prized collection of jewels and clothing to make ends meet.

'I was left with nothing': Melissa George, 41, (pictured) has revealed she was broke and unemployed after her bitter divorce and custody battle with ex-husband Jean David Blanc, 52

'I was left with nothing [after the separation and court battles]... So I said, OK  what do you have? Ive got beautiful jewellery and designer clothes. And I just sold absolutely everything,' the former Home And Away star told the publication.

'I wouldnt take work because I didnt want to leave my babies. I mean, once youve lost it all, you really know what you need. Trust me,' the mother-of-two added.

Melissa confirmed that she has no current plans to move back to Australia, due to her ongoing custody dispute with Jean David.

The Paris-based Australian actress (left), ended her five-year marriage to Jean David (right) in September 2016. Pictured together in July 2013

However, Melissa - who was previously married to to Chilean film director Claudio Dabed - admitted that she'd love her next husband to be Australian.

Melissa and Jean David met in 2011 at a BAFTA after-party and began a relationship the following year.

In early 2017, Melissa and Jean David were convicted of assaulting each other following an alleged domestic dispute in 2016.

'I just sold absolutely everything': Speaking to Stellar magazine this weekend Melissa (pictured) said she was forced to sell her prized collection of jewels and clothing to make ends meet

Her boys: Melissa has been embroiled in a bitter dispute over the custody of the sons she shares with Jean David, Raphael, six, and Solal, four (pictured)

Jean David later said in a statement at the time: 'Regarding the supposed violence against Melissa George, I strongly contest it and have thus filed an appeal against the judgment, which is not final.'

Melissa starred as Angel Parrish on Home and Away from 1993 to 1996, and made her big-screen debut in the United States in 1998 film Dark City.

She has also featured in 2001's Mulholland Drive and 2005's Derailed.
ALBANY  A hospital chaplains connection with a patient is intimate and normally played out six inches apart - not the six feet apart called for during the coronavirus pandemic.

But six feet even feels intimate now when compared to the barriers chaplains face to not only avoid being infected with COVID-19 themselves, but to protect others around them in case they are unknowingly a carrier of coronavirus.

In order to minister, theyre forced to stand outside hospital rooms to bless a patient, or appear outside buildings while their flock watches out the windows. Or, the only connection is virtual through a tablet or an old-fashioned telephone call from miles away.

We are doing it more remotely. Chaplaincy has to do with personal connection. We are doing it in a more remote way especially with the COVID-19 patients, said Aloysius Kabunga, a Roman Catholic lay chaplain and manager of Spiritual Care for St. Peter's Health Partners.

Fear is a constant companion for the chaplains and the patients theyre ministering to inside St. Peters Hospital, Albany Medical Center Hospital and other hospitals. Patients are encountering anxiety and loneliness as they are cut off from family members.

This is something I was not trained for. Some patients, those who are non-COVID, are scared of us when we come in because they have to be protected. Were also being very protective of ourselves. We dont know who has what, Kabunga said standing outside the entrance to St. Peters Hospital.

Prior to this pandemic so much of this was personal connection. The chaplain would come in and the patient wasnt scared you were going to spread something to them, Kabunga said.

The pandemic has shut down churches, pushing weekly services on to social media platforms and streaming services. Its also felt in hospitals, nursing homes, hospice care and private residences, wherever people need spiritual reassurance and guidance not only for themselves as patients but for their families. Funeral services have also been limited to only immediate family members allowed to be physically present.

St. Peters and Albany Meds safety protocols for dealing with the coronavirus led Rev. John Scott, who is the Albany Episcopal Dioceses hospital chaplain in Albany, to change his routines at the two hospitals. Scott switched from visiting Episcopalian patients in their rooms, to dialing in on the phone to speak to them.

But a chaplains physical presence sends an immediate message that is not the same as just hearing a voice, Scott said.

The people take comfort from your physical presence as well as the spiritual presence. The people I talk to have understood and theyve been appreciative of the care that theyve received. Were carrying on as best we can under the circumstances, Scott said.

Scott has worked in hospital chaplaincy since he was first ordained and was in Texas during the AIDS epidemic. Todays coronavirus pandemic brings back memories of his experiences nearly 40 years ago.

At that time, people really didnt know much about it. I can remember suiting up and putting on mask and gloves, Scott recalled about his ministry then.

Verbal communication sometimes has to be basic and loud. Bullhorn and holy water in hand, Rev. Scott VanDerveer recently stood outside The Pines at Catskill Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation to bless the residents inside.

They cant even open the windows because theyre trying to prevent any contamination. I went to the four sides of the building and did that service four times, said VanDerveer, pastor of St. Patricks Roman Catholic Church in Ravena and St. Marys in Coxsackie.

Those inside watched from the windows as VanDerveer made his way around the building blessing each side. Hes also made a video of a blessing and sent it inside.

Im just trying to find creative ways to let them know that were praying for them, VanDerveer said.

While the battle against COVID-19 in the nursing homes is about stopping the virus' spread among the residents, our battle looks a lot different. Were fighting to protect our elders from the outside world, said Rabbi Beverly W. Magidson, director of chaplaincy services for the Jewish Federation of Northeastern New York. She also ministers at the Daughters of Sarah Senior Community and the Nursing Center on Washington Avenue Extension.

Were fighting against depression and loneliness. Youre fighting boredom and confusion caused by dementia and Alzheimers, Magidson said.

The chaplains are also shepherding families who cannot be with those who are hospitalized or in nursing homes. Magidson uses technology to help family members stay in touch.

We will hold iPads and phones so that loved ones can see their elder and reassure them that everything is ok, Magidson said.

We are fighting frustration of family members not being able to visit and families who feel disconnected and fear for their loves ones. So until this crisis is over we will give comforting words and do our best to create fun activities that can be done safely, Magidson explained.

Some physical connection is being reestablished at Albany Med where the chaplains are being allowed to be in the room with some COVID-19 patients, said Amelia Catone, who is a Buddhist and an interfaith chaplain in Albany Meds Department of Pastoral Care.

The chaplains hadnt been allowed into a patients room in order to preserve personal protective equipment and had turned to technology to communicate.

The ones of us who are going into the room feel very confident in the effectiveness of the PPE. We have a healthy respect for the disease and the infection. We also feel blessed to be able to offer care in that way that is intimate, Catone said.

The Ministry of Presence is the term used to discuss how a chaplains being there in person communicates at a deeper level than through technology. It frustrates chaplains to be kept away.

The most important thing is person-to-person because you make a different sort of connection that feels more valid and has spirituality, Catone said. Its a lot more reassuring to the patient.

Before the extent of the coronavirus was known, Tahlia Hadley, a chaplain at St. Peters who is Catholic, was exposed to a patient who tested positive during her rounds at the hospital. She felt the fear that came with learning about her exposure.

Its really scary to get that phone call and be told you were exposed to a positive patient, said Hadley, whose test came back negative. She worried about her family.

I wouldnt change anything about that visit. That was a very powerful conversation with that man. I helped him in prayer. I felt it was important that I was there as a chaplain at that time, Hadley said.

At the end of life, patients in hospice care also are impacted by coronavirus concerns, said Rev. Jeffrey Palmer, a Presbyterian minister who was a hospital chaplain for 27 years and now works for Community Hospice in Rensselaer. The hospice workers are taking precautions and cant be as close as they would like.

There is a heightened sense of anxiety and fear, Palmer said. Im needed to be a source of comfort, of compassion and peace for the people we are seeing.
The Oregon Health Authority on Sunday did not report any new coronavirus deaths and disclosed 45 additional infections, raising the statewide total to 2,680.

The new number of people infected are from the following counties: Clackamas (1), Coos (4), Hood River (2), Josephine (1), Malheur (1), Marion (21), Multnomah (5), Umatilla (3) and Washington (7).

The state reported results for 1,918 tests from the proceeding 24 hours. More than 62,000 Oregonians have now been tested for the novel coronavirus.

Coronavirus in Oregon: Latest news | Live map tracker |Text alerts | Newsletter

Sunday marks the first day since April 22 that the state has not reported any new deaths. But that does not mean that no Oregonians have died recently. It often takes the state several day to identify or report deaths.

County case numbers: Fully 32 of 36 Oregon counties have reported at least one identified coronavirus infection. Marion County has the highest per capita infection rate and now has the second-most infections statewide, recently surpassing Washington County.

Death toll: 109 Oregonians have died from COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus, according to the state. Nearly all of the deaths -- 103 -- have involved people aged 60 or older. Not quite half, or 46, are Multnomah County residents.

Ages: People ages 30 to 59 make up the majority of Oregons identified coronavirus infections. The state has identified 1,383 infections in people between those ages, or just over half of total infections.

Hospitalizations: Oregonians aged 60 and older account for the majority of coronavirus hospitalizations in Oregon. At least 361 Oregonians aged 60 and older have been hospitalized, representing about 60% of all hospitalizations.

Nationwide: More than 6.8 million tests have been completed in the United States, according to the COVID Tracking Project. Of those, more than 1.1 million Americans have tested positive and more than 60,000 have died.

-- Brad Schmidt; bschmidt@oregonian.com; 503-294-7628; @_brad_schmidt

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
With school closed and graduation canceled, the principal of a high school in suburban Dallas set out on April 17 with his wife, a bag of Snickers bars and a mission: visiting each of the 612 seniors at their homes.

Virdie Montgomery, the principal of Wylie High School in Wylie, Texas, said he thought it would take only a couple of days to see each student, deliver a note and a candy bar, and ask how they were doing. It ended up taking 79 hours across a dozen days, and about 800 miles traveled.

Wearing a mask covered in skulls and crossbones  a tribute to the schools pirate mascot  Mr. Montgomery, 66, took a selfie with each student. He told them the school was a much less happy place in their absence, but that one day they would look back on this and snicker.

Then he handed them a candy bar.

I delivered the same lame joke more than 600 times, Mr. Montgomery said. I wanted to see them and make sure they were doing all right.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip  Gaza residents have had to live with the isolation imposed on them by Israel's sea and land blockade for some 12 years now. Given this, they have been quick to adapt to the even more restricting circumstances stemming from the novel coronavirus outbreak.

The new virus has affected every part of the world, including areas without infections. In some countries, tens of thousands have died from COVID-19. The Hamas-controlled government in Gaza began taking measures to contain the outbreak of the coronavirus on March 15, among them a compulsory quarantine for everyone returning from abroad, housing them in public school buildings and private hotels. The Ministry of Health tests those in isolation after 19 days of confinement, unless someone presents with symptoms before that.

As of April 25, the World Health Organization reported 17 confirmed infections in Gaza, all of them in Gaza City. Ten people had recovered.

Preoccupied with the quarantine measures, Gazans have remained largely unaware of local love stories that have flourished in the time of COVID-19. These true stories bring to mind a passage from Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Love was always love, anytime and anyplace, but it was more solid the closer it came to death.

Nahla, not her real name, arrived in Gaza from Egypt on March 19, traveling with her father and brother. She initially resented the compulsory quarantine imposed on returnees.

When I arrived in Gaza and learned that we would be subjected to medical isolation in a school, I was furious, Nahla said. But there was nothing I could do, so I had to accept reality.

Nahla found being quarantined difficult. For one, the school was crowded. Though in isolation, she had no privacy, as she shared a room with four other people, making her fearful of catching the highly contagious coronavirus.

Strict measures were imposed by the quarantine management. It was prohibited to wander around the school, Nahla explained. Men and women were not allowed to socialize freely, given the conservative views of some of the isolated returnees.

My father and brother were isolated in the same school, she continued. I often went to check on them and had the chance to get to know those who were isolated with them in the same room.

One young man in particular caught Nahla's attention. He often asked her about her condition and whether she and her roommates needed anything. He searched for Nahla on Facebook and friended her.

He asked about my roommates so as not to draw suspicions, Nahla said. Then, we started chatting more and more.

With her father and her brother being isolated with her, the young man asked for her hand in marriage. Her father accepted, expressing his admiration for him.

We got engaged on the 19th day of the isolation, after it was confirmed that we were COVID-19 free, she said. It was a double celebration. The couple got married after leaving quarantine.

Rahaf, also a pseudonym, told Al-Monitor, When I got to the quarantine center on March 25, I was really afraid of being infected. I tried as much as possible to take the utmost safety and security measures.

Days after arriving from Egypt, Rahaf, a nurse, was socializing with some of her fellow quarantined Gazans. While listening to their stories and requests, which they relayed to the medical and security personnel, she noticed that a member of the security staff had a crush on her.

He always asked about me and gave me his phone charger and cables, she said. He placed the internet router near my room.

Rahaf liked him in return, adding that the care and attention he showed her made some of the women jealous.

They said it was not acceptable to behave this way, she said. We became more careful not to get noticed in order to avoid criticism.

While many Gazans in isolation have experienced stress and anxiety, for Rahaf it has been the opposite. I wanted the isolation to continue for a longer period, she remarked.

Rahaf was released April 14, but has maintained contact with the security officer through phone calls and on social media. Nothing is official between them, thus far.

Safa's story differs from Nahla and Rahaf's in that she had found love before her quarantine. She had gotten engaged a few days before traveling to Egypt with her mother on Feb. 25 to see family. Their visit wasn't supposed to last more than two weeks, but their return was delayed by the coronavirus crisis outbreak.

We returned to Gaza on March 17, Safa said. My fiance, Alaa, was waiting for me at the crossing, but the crossing administration prevented him from seeing me as a precautionary measure.

He didn't give up, she continued. He found out what school I was going to be confined in, and he waited for me there. I cried a lot when I saw him for just a few seconds, yet I felt happy to see him, and I was no longer afraid.

Due to poor internet service, she was only able to talk to her fiance in the evenings. Their conversations bothered some of her roommates who wanted to sleep. Some of them sympathized and made me feel comfortable, she said.

Safa revealed that some security officials who knew her story allowed Alaa to visit her once. She stood at the door of the school, and he stood more than six and a half feet away.

We agreed that we would get married right after my quarantine and invite all the women who were isolated with me, she said. I would play a special song for them, and we would all dance together.

Alaa told Al-Monitor that he had been scared for Safa, because she was isolated along with dozens of people who could have had the coronavirus. When she told him that her test had come back negative on the 19th day of her confinement, he felt that all that they had gone through had made their love even stronger.
(Natural News) One of President Donald Trumps top coronavirus task force advisers, Dr. Anthony Fauci, backed funding for controversial coronavirus research at the lab now believed to have created COVID-19.

Just last year the organization Fauci heads  the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases  funded scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other institutions for work on gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses, Newsweek reported.

The news magazine added:

In 2019, with the backing of NIAID, the National Institutes of Health committed $3.7 million over six years for research that included some gain-of-function work. The program followed another $3.7 million, 5-year project for collecting and studying bat coronaviruses, which ended in 2019, bringing the total to $7.4 million.

Many scientists have criticized gain of function research, which involves manipulating viruses in the lab to explore their potential for infecting humans, because it creates a risk of starting a pandemic from accidental release.

SARS-CoV-2, which is the official name of the virus now sweeping the globe and killing tens of thousands of Americans, is thought to have originated in bats. In fact, after first claiming that the coronavirus had naturally evolved, U.S. intelligence officials now think that COVID-19 stemmed from an accidental leak at the lab in Wuhan city.

At the same time, U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said that neither the Pentagon nor U.S. intelligence agencies believe the virus was manufactured because its genome sequence does not indicate that.

Theres a lot of rumor and speculation in a wide variety of media, blog sites, etc., Milley said last month. It should be no surprise to you that we have taken a keen interest in that, and we have had a lot of intelligence take a hard look at that.

Fauci promoted the work, arguing that the research was worth a risk

U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) was the first congressman to publicly suggest that the virus could have originated in a Chinese lab, though he was widely panned for it back in February.

We dont know where it originated, and we have to get to the bottom of that, he said in mid-April during an interview with Fox News. We also know that just a few miles away from that food market is Chinas only biosafety level 4 super laboratory that researches human infectious diseases.

As for Fauci, he did not respond to a request for comment from Newsweek. However, a statement from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) noted, in part: Most emerging human viruses come from wildlife, and these represent a significant threat to public health and biosecurity in the US and globally, as demonstrated by the SARS epidemic of 2002-03, and the current COVID-19 pandemic. scientific research indicates that there is no evidence that suggests the virus was created in a laboratory. (Related: Nearly half of severe coronavirus cases involve neurological complications.)

The NIHs research into coronavirus consisted of two parts, Newsweek noted. The first portion began in 2014 and involved surveillance of bat coronaviruses with a budget of $3.7 million.

That program funded Shi Zheng-Li, a Wuhan lab virologist, as well as other researchers who were investigating and cataloguing bat coronaviruses in the wild.

This portion of the project was completed last year, the news magazine said.

A second phase of the project, beginning that year, included additional surveillance work but also gain-of-function research for the purpose of understanding how bat coronaviruses could mutate to attack humans, Newsweek said.

Roughly 10 years ago during a controversial gain-of-function research project on bird-flu viruses, Fauci promoted the work, arguing that the research was worth a risk because it involved scientists making preparations that could be helpful during a pandemic.

Sources include:

Newsweek.com

DefenseOne.com

NaturalNews.com
WASHINGTON  Six months ago, government-sponsored income and health care sounded like pipe dreams from failed presidential candidates. In a post-coronavirus world, progressives hope, they arent so far-fetched.

The pandemic has already brought bipartisan support to left-wing policies that would have been off the table before 2020, including direct stimulus payments to Americans, an expansion of unemployment coverage and a requirement that many companies offer paid sick leave.

Now progressives see an opportunity to build on those gains, potentially pushing policy to the left for the long term.

What this has exposed is the economic precariousness of so many Americans, and now many people empathize with that, said Fremont Rep. Ro Khanna, a progressive Democrat. They no longer see the struggling as the other, but actually view themselves in solidarity with people who have been on the economic sidelines. So I think that the support for an agenda for economic security and economic dignity will have a broader coalition.

In the near term, progressives are pushing for Democrats to ensure more priorities in the next coronavirus relief package that Congress takes up. Khanna is hopeful that pieces of his proposed list of rights for essential workers with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren could be included, such as safety standards for frontline workers, living wages, collective bargaining protections, paid family and sick leave and support for child care, and guaranteed basic income.

The roughly 80-member Congressional Progressive Caucus has also written to House Democratic leadership asking that expanded direct cash assistance, food security and eviction protection, and full coverage for COVID-19 care be in the next relief bill.

But over the long term, progressives are also looking to make some of those changes permanent.

If we can get some of the priorities in the COVID bill to help people now ... we can then make the case when the crisis is over that some of these things are so basic they need to stay, Khanna said. If we can get worker protections in the COVID bill and get the fact that people should be paid more decently and they should have child care, all the things that seem obvious now, then they seem much harder to take away after.

He added it would be hard to tell the workers who were on the front lines during the pandemic, Now that youve done your job for society, were going to take it back.

Its not just progressives who see opportunity for long-term changes. Republicans are pushing for tax cuts that have long been central to their economic policies, as well as liability protections for businesses. The right flank of the party also sees the pandemic as reason to further restrict immigration and pull back from globalism and free trade.

But in a moment where Congress is doling out trillions to help struggling workers, progressives believe the political winds are at their backs.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested last week that she was open to one progressive idea that would go beyond $1,200 one-time payments in earlier legislation.

Others have suggested a minimum income for  a guaranteed income for people. Is that worthy of attention now? Perhaps so, the San Francisco Democrat said on MSNBC. Because there are many more people than just in small business ... and other people who are not in the public sector, you know, meeting our needs in so many ways, that may need some assistance as well.

Pelosis office clarified later that she was not speaking about universal basic income, but rather federal paycheck guarantees for workers.

Neera Tanden, president of the progressive think tank Center for American Progress, said the country has made major structural changes in past crises, such as the New Deal during the Great Depression and Reconstruction after the Civil War. The pandemic is one such moment, she said.

The coronavirus crisis exposes conservative libertarian thinking, in a sense, because essentially the actions of each individual can affect larger communities and the larger country, Tanden said. The unique challenge of the virus is if someone isnt getting access to the health care system and has the virus, it affects everyone.

Progressives arent just making the case for a stronger social safety net. They also see opportunities to address climate change, bolstered by a renewed appreciation for science. They argue that the changes Americans made to their lifestyle overnight for coronavirus are evidence that they can alter longstanding habits to tackle climate change, too.

They also intend to portray increased spending on domestic programs as a matter of national security, something thats always been the province of military budgets.

In the big picture, we prepared for the wrong war in the aftermath of 9/11, said Palo Alto Rep. Anna Eshoo, a more moderate Democrat who chairs a key subcommittee on health care. Which is understandable, but where we are now looking over my shoulder, I cant help but think that.

Bill Clark / CQ-Roll Call

Khanna has said the National Defense Authorization Act, a yearly must-pass bill, could be a vehicle for lasting progressive changes. He predicted Americans will see that spending $740 billion on defense but $50 billion on public health is misguided. Less money for defense spending, he said, could mean big investments elsewhere.

Do people around this country really think that the big risk to them is that Russian tanks are going to come into Ohio, or do they think that the bigger risk is we may have future pandemics? Khanna said. We need to talk as progressives about how our broken priorities in Washington have hurt the safety of the American people.

One area where progressives could have a harder time coming out of the pandemic, however, is immigration. Advocates of a welcoming immigration policy may struggle to convey that message when unemployment is in double digits. In a recent Washington Post poll, voters supported 2-1 a policy temporarily suspending immigration to the U.S. during the pandemic, and President Trump has been advocating his agenda of restricting immigration as necessary to help jobless Americans.

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., conceded in The Chronicles Its All Political podcast that Democrats may need to recalibrate their message in the face of the virus economic consequences.

We need to address it based on the dynamic that exists after we get through the pandemic, said Harris, a strong proponent of immigration rights. For now, she said shes been focusing on ensuring that the administration is protecting the rights of immigrants who are already here, including the safety of farm workers integral to the food-supply chain, and ensuring there arent virus outbreaks among undocumented migrants in detention centers.

In an interview with CNBC, Pelosi sounded optimistic that the country would come out of the pandemic less socially stratified, not more.

Im very confident that when people realize the assault that this has made, not only the health, the lives of the people and the livelihood of the people but to the sense of community of who we are as a country, well have an opportunity to do something working together, Pelosi said.

She added that opportunity will include recognizing the role that every aspect of our society plays in it  the public sector (and) private sector.

This story has been updated to reflect that Pelosis office says her comment about guaranteed income referred to possible federal paycheck guarantees for workers.

Tal Kopan is The San Francisco Chronicles Washington correspondent. Email: tal.kopan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @talkopan
Over the past week, Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi has held a series of meetings reviewing the state of various economic sectors, the ways in which the current slump can be reversed, and most significantly, the fundamental reforms that can be undertaken in these respective sectors to overcome structural issues. This is important, for once the coronavirus pandemic subsides, there will have to be a singular focus on the economy.

There is no doubt that the pandemic will force the economy to press the reset button. India will, in the worst case, witness a recession this year, or in the best case, grow by 1-2%, a projection offered by the chief economic adviser. These figures translate into businesses shutting down; a sharp dip in the profitability of companies which do manage to survive; shrinking incomes for citizens; the collapse of a high number of micro, small and medium enterprises; a spike in unemployment across sectors; a hit to trading arrangements; depleted taxes for the government at a time when expenditure commitments will increase; and an inability to pursue much-needed development goals. The ambition of becoming a $5 trillion economy will recede further.

This newspaper has consistently argued that to overcome the distress, the government must come up with a substantial fiscal stimulus package immediately. There is no alternative to enhanced public spending. This has already been delayed inexplicably. But beyond the size and the composition of the stimulus, the PMs meetings offer hope that this moment can be used as an opportunity to undertake structural reforms. Two areas, in particular, stand out. The first is manufacturing. As countries turn inwards, and many global production hubs seek to relocate from China, India must cut red tape, reform its fundamental factors of production, and encourage businesses which can provide mass employment. To be sure, new ways of doing businesses  including mass manufacturing  will have to be found in keeping with social distancing norms. The second is agriculture. The PM indicated in a meeting on Saturday the need for integrated markets and a new legislative framework for the sector. Fragmented agricultural markets and the Agricultural Produce Market Committees framework have long been held farmers hostage, given inordinate power to intermediaries, and undermined Indias potential. If, after the stimulus, the government can use the pandemic to herald long-awaited reforms, it will be the best use of this crisis.
Getty Images

PITTSFIELD  State police said they caught two drivers going more than 100 mph on Interstate 72, each while their license was either suspended or revoked.

Illinois State Police troopers stopped two cars on the interstate at 3:44 p.m. Friday after checking the speed of both at 109 mph in a 70 mph zone.
Over 800 stranded workers hailing from Uttar Pradesh arrived in Lucknow in a special train from Maharashtra's Nashik on Sunday morning amid the ongoing lockdown.

This is the first special train to arrive in Uttar Pradesh with stranded migrant workers.

The special train started from Nashik on Saturday morning and reached Lucknow via Jhansi and Kanpur.

The railways had said that according to Union Home Ministry's guidelines it will start "Shramik Special" trains to move migrant workers, pilgrims, tourists, students and other persons stranded in various parts of the country due to the lockdown which came into force from March 25.

The first such train left for Jharkhand from Hyderabad on Friday.

Also read: Coronavirus India Live Updates: Lockdown 3.0! 2,644 new cases in 24 hours; biggest 1-day spike; tally-37,776

The railways had announced six "Shramik Special" trains -- Lingampally to Hatia, Nasik to Lucknow, Aluva to Bhubaneswar, Nasik to Bhopal, Jaipur to Patna and Kota to Hatia.

While briefing reporters on Saturday, UP's Additional Chief Secretary (Home and Information) Awanish Awasthi had said the condition for bringing migrant workers back is that the states they are coming from should provide details of the workers along with a certificate that they have been properly screened and are healthy.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had issued directions to stop all kinds of illegal inter-district and inter-state movements and ordered officials to list the names, addresses, mobile numbers and job skills of workers returning to the state.

On Friday, around 5,000 UP migrant labourers stranded in Madhya Pradesh returned in 155 buses, while around 1,341 labourers hailing from MP were sent back home from Uttar Pradesh.

The migrant workers stranded in Uttarakhand (1,500) and Rajasthan (6,500) are also returning to UP.

Adityanath had written a letter to his counterparts in Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Odisha, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Delhi and Rajasthan, asking for the details of migrant workers stranded due to the lockdown.

Around 4,00,000 workers stranded in Delhi and 12,000 in Haryana have already reached UP.

Also read: Coronavirus pandemic can't stop America or Berkshire Hathaway: Warren Buffett

Also read: Lockdown 3.0: PM Modi discusses plan to spur growth in MSMEs as India heads for partial reopening
By Jerri-Lynn Scofield, who has worked as a securities lawyer and a derivatives trader. She is currently writing a book about textile artisans.

Spring has arrived in the northern hemisphere, and many urban dwellers can hear a pleasant cacophony: the sound of birdsong thats often obscured by the roar of city life.

Today is International Dawn Chorus Day for hearing birdsong. Dawn is the best time day to hear birds trilling, so if you werent aware of this event, you may have missed that high point. But that doesnt mean you cant enjoy the sound of birdsong: maybe not at dawn, but later in the day; maybe not today, but tomorrow or later during the week. And its not just city dwellers who can enjoy the sound, either, as Country Living notes, Good news! The dawn chorus is louder and clearer than it has been in decades, thanks to lockdown.

Im well aware when birds start to arrive in springtime. My husband often heads the few short blocks from our house to Prospect Park to observe the spring bird migration. I would imagine that many non-birders would be surprised to learn that Central Park is a major stop on spring migration routes  and hosts a knowledgeable and lively birding community. Its not just in New York city that birds have found niches, As yesterdays Guardian noted:

Globally, city wildlife is doing rather well too. Red-tailed hawks  the North American equivalent of our buzzard  nest on the ledges of high-rise skyscrapers in New York; magnificent frigatebirds drift over the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, their outstretched wings mirroring his own pose; lesser kestrels  one of Europes rarest birds of prey  gather above Sevilles vast cathedral; and pied kingfishers hover like giant black-and-white butterflies over the River Nile in Cairo. All have found a niche where they can thrive in the heart of our cities.

The birds are there, in our cities, its just that this year, we can hear them singing so much more clearly.

Mumbai: Massive Flocks of Flamingoes

I dont know very much about Mumbai and migrating flamingoes  although I have spent time watching these birds in Kutch, in Gujarat, at both the Great and Little Ranns, during many months of the year. That Indian state houses some of my favourite wildlife sanctuaries, where I imagine the lockdown really hasnt affected the natural ebb and flow of birdlife. One can see birds, wild asses in Dasada, and even leopards and Asiatic lions in Gir National Park  the sole remaining place in the world they still live.

But the Indian lockdown  one of the strictest in the world, now extended through the 18th of May, with some relaxations  has left the city of Mumbai (Bombay) to the birds, as people shelter inside, since unlike most places elsewhere, getting exercise is not an allowable excuse to leave ones dwelling.

Flamingoes migrate through Mumbai every year, and indeed, their number has been increasing, but this year, theyve arrived in even greater numbers, as The Print reports. Absent the presence of their normal human competitors, the massive flocks of flamingoes are more conspicuous.

Along with many if not most readers, I share deep despair over the deluge of depressing COVID-19 news. Please permit me to share a couple of joyous videos, which lifted my mood a bit:

Mysterious ways of Nature? Mumbai backwaters, as seen from Seawoods Complex in Nerul.

Every year 100s of pink flamingos migrate to this spot.

But this year, numbers are truly spectacular.

Its mystery, sitting 1000s of miles away, how did flamingos come to know about the change? pic.twitter.com/SZiVSH49j0  Harinder S Sikka (@sikka_harinder) April 16, 2020

Cleaner Environment

The flamingoes are not the only natural benefit to India during this lockdown. The principal cities  Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, New Delhi, Mumbai  are seeing air quality not glimpsed in decades. I have an elderly friend who lives in Kolkata who suffers from COPD> Mitrada is breathing much easier this year, along with everyone else in the country. Spare a minute to click on this link, as it reports some stunning information, India Witnesses Significant Drop in Pollution Levels Due to Lockdown, Reveals Satellite Data  which is preliminary, and only accounts for the very beginning of the lockdown through April. Whereas it is now May, and lockdown continues.

Its not just better air quality and flamingoes in Mumbai, but India has seen at least two other environmental changes, according to India Today: dolphins near the Kolkata ghats, and water fit for drinking from the river Ganges near Haridwar. The dolphins have been spotted for the first tie in thirty years, according to the Times of India:

The sighting of South Asian River Dolphins is extremely rare these days, but thanks to the reduced water pollution, these beautiful creatures decided to show up on the shores and say hello to the city dwellers. A few days back, a number of reports surfaced, claiming the water quality of the Hoogly river in Kolkata has improved given the current lockdown situation. During this time, several endangered mammals were spotted in the city outskirts. And now, the spotting of Gangetic dolphins has brought happiness to the city. Some 30 years back, spotting these water animals wasnt an unusual occurrence. They used to be a regular visitor to the Kolkata ghats, but gradually, due to industrial pollution, these drifted away from the city. According to the reports, the worldwide population of Gangetic dolphins is somewhere between 1200 to 1800. In an interview with TOI, Biswajit Roy Chowdhury, a senior environmental activist said that he spotted a couple of dolphins at Babughat in Kolkata. He said that due to the nationwide lockdown and lesser human activities, the quality of water has improved drastically and this is one of the main reasons that the dolphins are coming back.

And its not just India thats seen a healthier environment.Lockdowns have allowed nature to move quickly to counteractsome of the damage humans have done. The Guardian again:

As well as the advantage of less hustle, bustle and extraneous noise from traffic and aircraft, the skies are clearer too, because air pollution has fallen dramatically. In Venice, the canals are clear and blue for the first time in decades, allowing fish and birds to thrive. The next step might be to cut light pollution at night: leaving lights blazing in empty offices and other commercial buildings is not only wasteful, but helps drive the climate crisis. It also seriously impacts wildlife, especially moths, bats and migrating birds, which can get disoriented by artificial light sources as they travel by night.

I wonder: how much and how many of these benefits will survive?

Yes, I am well aware that audible birdsong, dancing dolphins, and cleaner air and water have come at tremendous economic cost. Which has not only been endured so far, but which will continue to cause future suffering.

Still, I shall breathe in the air deeply  and enjoy the chorus of birdsong and the thought of dolphins cavorting again near Kolkatas ghats.
Alabama State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris is among the scheduled guests Sunday on the NBC news show Meet the Press to discuss states plans to re-open during the lingering coronavirus pandemic.

As several states reopen, is it too soon?, Meet the Press tweeted Saturday in announcing its guest lineup.

Besides Harris, other guests are to include Michigan Chief Deputy Director for Health Dr. Joneigh S. Khaldun and Dr. Tom Inglesby at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Meet the Press can be seen in the Birmingham television market on WVTM Channel 13 at 10 a.m. Sunday.

Harris is charged with calling the shots for most of Alabama during a pandemic. As a result, he has become a familiar figure  the face of regular updates on the toll of the coronavirus on Alabama.

AL.com coronavirus coverage
(Natural News) The Wuhan Institute of Virology from which the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) is believed to have escaped has a number of questionable partnerships that are worth looking into in light of the pandemic.

Most of them are universities, including the University of Alabama, the University of North Texas, and Harvard University. There is also the EcoHealth Alliance, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the National Wildlife Federation.

While the relationships between these entities and the Wuhan Institute of Virology may be completely innocent, there is no way to really say for sure without a proper investigation. And this is exactly what Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is calling for, as is the nation of Australia.

Pompeo and the folks down under, along with millions of Americans, would really like to know the true origins of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19). An increasing number of people simply are not buying the narrative that the novel virus originated in bat soup at a Chinese wet market, and this even includes mainstream media outlets like Fox News.

The only way to really determine what was going on at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and who else might have been involved. is to open the place up for an international investigation. But communist China is against this, of course, accusing Australia of petty tricks and collusion with the United States.

Overnight, I saw comments from the Chinese Foreign Ministry talking about a course of activity with respect to Australia who had the temerity to ask for investigation, Pompeo is quoted as saying in response to Chinas aggression against a proposed investigation.

Who in the world wouldnt want an investigation of how this happened to the world? he added.

As the U.S. aims to get back on track economically speaking, Pompeo believes that now is the time to hold communist China, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and whoever else may have been involved accountable for unleashing this pandemic on the world.

Not only American wealth, but the global economys devastation as a result of this virus, Pompeo further stated. There will be a time for this. We will get that timing right.

Be sure to listen below to The Health Ranger Report as Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, talks to Dave Hodges about the coming invasion of Chinese troops into the U.S. in conjunction with the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis:

University of Texas also had substantial contractual relations with the Wuhan Institute of Virology

Another entity that is not listed on the Wuhan Institute of Virologys website as a partner, but that has substantial contractual relations with the institution, is the University of Texas, according to reports.

The Department of Education (DoE) is reportedly conducting a wide-ranging investigation into the ties between these two schools, which include both gifts and special contracts made to a controversial Wuhan researcher by the name of Shi Zhengli.

Shi co-authored a 2015 paper about the development of a new coronavirus, much like the one currently in circulation, that was made by combining a coronavirus found in Chinese horseshow bats with another that causes human-like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

Numerous Western intelligence agencies are said to be investigating both the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Chinese Centers for Disease Control, both of which presumably know the true origins of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19). If it can be determined unequivocally that the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) did, in fact, escape from the lab, then UT and the other aforementioned schools will also be probed for what they know about the situation.

It is also interesting that back in February, the University of Texass Medical Branch, which operates the Galveston National Laboratorys Institute for Human Infections and Immunity, developed a vaccine that supposedly protects mice against SARS, which shares about 82 percent of its genes with the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19).

In other words, it would seem as though the Wuhan Institute of Virology was secretly developing a new coronavirus that sounds just like the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) at the very same time that its Texas partners were developing a vaccine for it. This is highly suspicious, to say the least.

Part of the DoEs investigation into this situation also involves a November 2018 article published in the journal Science that was co-signed by officials at both the Wuhan and Galveston labs. The article admits:

We engaged in short- and long-term personnel exchanges focused on biosafety training, building operations and maintenance, and collaborative scientific investigations in biocontainment, adding that funding for research and the logistics of exchanging specimens are challenges that we have yet to solve.

All of this would suggest that numerous American institutions of higher learning, along with an agency of the federal government itself (NIH), conspired with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to both develop and create a cure for a new coronavirus that just might be the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) strain that is currently circulating.

Other potential conspirators include about two-dozen Chinese universities and companies, including the infamous Huawei microchip corporation, tied to the Bill Gates-founded Microsoft corporation, that was cut off from producing products for American households through an executive order signed by President Donald Trump back in 2019.

On top of all of this, new evidence has also emerged to suggest that UT and other American colleges and universities have been accepting money from foreign sources, including communist China. This alone deserves a full investigation into where these funds have been coming from specifically, what they were used for, and what is expected in return.

To keep up with the latest news about the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19), be sure to check out Pandemic.news.

Sources for this article include:

WHIOV.cas.cn

Yahoo.com

NaturalNews.com

ZeroHedge.com

NaturalNews.com
New Zealand police have received more than 1,200 reports of people breaking restrictions on mass gatherings since Alert level 3 was imposed on the country. New Zealand was on stringent Alert level 4 restrictions, however owing to a decline in cases, the Jacinda Ardern led government eased down restrictions on April 27. As of now, the country has recorded 1,487 COVID-19 positive cases and 20 deaths.

'Between 24-hour period'

According to a police statement, out of the total reports, 685 came on May 1 and 2, between a 24 hour period starting at 6 pm. It added that the police took action on 112 out of them. Both, May 1 and 2, marked May Day holidays and authorities across the world witnesses flouting of rules by citizens.

Under no circumstances should anyone be having a party under the Alert Level 3 restrictions. Such behaviour could waste all the sacrifices made by our team of five million over the last five weeks, said Acting Assistant Commissioner Scott Fraser in a statement.

Level 3 alert

Level 3 alert allows for economic activities such as forestry, construction and manufacturing however it restricts social activity, international media reported. The Kiwi leader later revealed that the decision on whether restrictions could be eased further would be taken on May 11. "If we want to make sure that we are a health success story, and ensure our economy can start to operate again without the virus taking off, we need to get the next phase right. The worst thing we can do for our country is to yo-yo between levels, with all of the uncertainty that this would bring," Arden said at the news briefing.

Read: New Zealand Claims 'elimination' Of COVID-19 Outbreak, Eases Restrictions

Read: Jacinda Ardern Impressionist Takes Internet By Storm, Gets A Thumbs Up From PM Herself

The New Zealand administration has received applauds from across the world for its response to the deadly outbreak and has been credited with successfully containing the contagious disease. The government had shut its borders and imposed strict lockdown measures even before a single death was recorded in the nation, thereby, flattening the curve of COVID-19.

Read: New Zealand Cafe's Social Distancing Trick For Serving Coffee Lauded, Netizens Approve

Read: New Zealand Prepares To Ease Coronavirus Lockdown As Cases Drop

(Image credits: AP)
'My mother was a hero who battled bravely to stop this virus spreading," said the grieving daughter of hospital worker Catherine Hickey.

Mechaela Whelan Hickey said her mother was completely dedicated to stopping the advance of Covid-19 as she carried out cleaning duties at St Luke's Hospital in Kilkenny.

Her mother ended up being treated for Covid-19 in the same hospital she had worked so hard to protect from the virus.

Catherine (51) and fellow St Luke's healthcare worker Jim Kenny (49) were the first two healthcare workers in Ireland to die of Covid-19. Jim was "a true gentleman". They died within 24 hours of each other in mid-April.

Catherine's husband Joseph and their daughter told the Sunday Independent they were "unbelievably proud" of her courage and commitment.

"People who do the cleaning in hospitals were not given enough credit, but now they're getting the recognition they deserve. Each day they face this virus head-on," said Mechaela (21). "My mother had a very big heart and she cared so much for others. I believe she died trying to help other people," she said.

Catherine herself was proud that the hospital department where she worked had scored 99pc for cleanliness in a recent audit, said her daughter.

In her last communication with her family, Catherine spoke calmly on a FaceTime call from her hospital bed to tell her loved ones to look after each other.

She had been looking forward to the birth of her first grandchild, a baby for their son Christopher and his partner Shauna. She had regularly shared her delight at the prospects of becoming a grandmother with her work colleagues and she spoke again of the child in her final call.

Her husband Joe said he and his wife were "best friends" from the time they began going out together at the age of 19.

He had met her when she was named Catherine Whelan and was working in The Black Cat pub in Kilkenny. Joe lived in Lord Edward Street in the city while Catherine came from Ballavarra, The Rower, a rural part of the county. When Catherine finished work on Saturday nights, after the pub closed, they would go to a disco at the Kilford Arms.

Joe was working very long hours as a baker, starting work at midnight six nights a week. "We'd go out on a Saturday night and I might fall asleep," he said with a smile.

He recalled their happiness when they moved into their family home in Butt's Green in the city on the day Niamh Kavanagh won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1993.

"We did everything together and went everywhere together," he said, recalling that Catherine was the one who booked all the family holidays. They travelled to Santa Ponsa in Majorca for a family celebration marking Mechaela's 21st birthday last year.

While Catherine was a great dancer, Joe said dancing was not one of his strong points. Catherine loved reggae and country music. She was a big fan of bands like UB40 and Big Country. She and Mechaela and Joe's sisters enjoyed trips to Kilkenny Country Music Festival at Gowran Park.

Catherine filled the family home in Butt's Green with music and Joe recalled how his wife would dance around the kitchen with a sweeping brush.

She was a big fan of the Irish rugby team and loved to watch the televised games.

Catherine worked for 12 years as a judge at the finish line at the local greyhound stadium. It was her job to ensure the dogs received their correct placings at the end of each race.

Five years ago, she became a member of the household staff at Saint Luke's Hospital. She worked hard and "wouldn't do a half job" of any task, said Joe.

Mechaela said her mother became ill on the first Friday in April with vomiting and body aches but she did not have a temperature and had spoken to a doctor on the phone.

When Monday came, the vomiting had stopped and she went to work that night, feeling weak. She was sent back home shortly after reporting for work. She was in touch with a doctor in the following days and on Thursday she had a test for Covid-19 and was told the next day it was positive. She was advised to self-isolate at home and she isolated herself in a bedroom.

In the days that followed she felt weaker and her breathing, too, became weaker. On the advice of her doctor, the following Wednesday, Joe drove her to St Luke's Hospital.

"I roared crying when she was going as I had a feeling in my gut we weren't going to get her back," said Mechaela.

Catherine telephoned from hospital to tell Joe she had pneumonia. She began receiving oxygen the next day and seemed to perk up.

But on Friday, she had the FaceTime conversation with Joe and Mechaela. "She was so calm. She told us that she loved us. I think she knew she was going," she said.

Later, her daughter sent her a text message to give her a boost, telling her she was loved and to stay strong. But, by nightfall, Catherine was on a ventilator in intensive care and she did not regain consciousness.

On Monday, Mechaela, Christopher, Joe and Joe's sister Theresa wore full protective clothing to visit Catherine. They were told the grim news there was "no chance" of a recovery. "I was wailing like a banshee," said Mechaela.

The distraught daughter later felt angry at the impending loss of her mother but she also realised her mother had received "the very best care".

On Wednesday, April 15, Mechaela and Joe wore full protective clothing and gloves as they held her hands to say a final goodbye. The ventilator was switched off at 12.05pm. Mechaela said: "The priest was there and we said a decade of the rosary. Her heart stayed beating for another 25 minutes. I remember telling her it was okay to cross over. She slipped away peacefully."

At the funeral home in New Ross, a few kilometres from the Whelan family home in Ballavarra, Catherine's brother Sean organised proceedings. The mourners included Catherine's mother Josie, sister Nora, and brothers Declan and Pat and many other loved ones.

The hearse travelled from New Ross, through The Rower, Graiguenamanagh and Gowran before being met at the cemetery in Kilkenny by a guard of honour of healthcare workers from St Luke's Hospital carrying red and white roses. People practised social distancing as they watched from the roadside.

The day after her mother died, Mechaela received a telephone call telling her that a test she had several days earlier showed she, too, was positive for Covid-19. The next day, Joe was informed he also was positive. Thankfully, neither of them had become seriously ill.

The pain of Catherine's loss continues. No more will she dance around her kitchen with a sweeping brush. On the stairs are two pairs of her shoes - no one has moved them. Her hospital uniform jacket hangs in the same place.

Her daughter said: "Our mother was not a statistic. She died a hero. She will always be our hero."
Holidays to parts of Spain could be possible by September or October, according to a travel expert.

Travel journalist Eoghan Corry thinks a holiday to parts of Spain later this year can not be ruled out.

Mr Corry said: "The Canary [islands] are already in a good state, their infection rate is very low.

"Two of the islands, Fuerteventura and Lanzarote would be in a position for the Spanish programme for opening up the islands."

He said the two islands would be in a position to open up around the end of July.

He said: "Which means that around September/October the airlines have plans to get about 50/60% or their aircraft back in the sky by then.

"All of that could start unlocking [the islands]."

Yesterday the Health Minister said yesterday it is "highly unlikely" anyone will be able to travel abroad this summer.

Simon Harris said anyone entering the country is being asked to self-isolate for two weeks.

Minister Simon Harris said that would turn a two-week break into a month.

He said: "You shouldn't leave the island of Ireland. So we don't want people leaving our country.

"And you're right even if we got to a point that advice changed you would be requiring people to isolate for two weeks,
with reporting from Digital Desk staff

Update

Sinn Fein have said that a government with Fine Gael and Fianna Fail together "is not what people voted for," in February's general election "no matter who they are propped up by."

Reacting to the Green Party's announcement this evening, Sinn Fein for TD Cavan/Monaghan Matt Carthy said: "Fianna Fail and Fine Gael have been working to a plan to exclude Sinn Fein from government and to ignore our mandate for some time."

He said: "Their record in government together over the past four years shows us exactly what they will do if they get into government again."

Mr Carthy said that "the threat of austerity" is central to framework document issued by Fianna Fail and Fine Gael and that Ireland needs "a break from the past, not a repeat of it."

"That means a fair recovery, and this means rebuilding the economy and investing our way out of recession, delivering universal healthcare, delivering the biggest public housing programme in the States history, investing in our forgotten regions and delivering the type of real change required to tackle the climate emergency."

Fianna Fail and Fine Gael welcome Green Party confirmation for government talks

Fianna Fail Leader Micheal Martin has welcomed the confirmation that the Green Party will now enter into formal negotiations on a programme for Government.

Mr Martin said as the country faces into a very uncertain future, it is critically important that Ireland has a solid and stable Government in place.

He said he wants the parties to protect people and ensure the country's economic recovery after Covid-19 is started as soon as possible and is built on fairness.

He said there is important legislation that needs to be passed to allow Irish businesses to access finance and there needs to be a government in place to do this.

In a statement today Mr Martin said: I am also confident that together, with an agreed progressive Programme for Government we will have the opportunity to tackle, in a fundamental way, the biggest issues that are facing our people  Covid-19, the housing emergency, access to health services, child care and climate change.

We must also not forget that a hard Brexit in six months is still looming.

For our part, Fianna Fail will be approaching the forthcoming Programme for Government negotiations constructively and confidently, determined to deliver on the mandate we have been given.

The Taoiseach has also welcomed the Green Party's decision to start negotiations.

Leo Varadkar said he looks forward to constructive discussions starting in the coming days and that Ireland needs a stable government to manage the remainder of the Covid emergency and to rebuild society and the economy over the next five years.

He said: We look forward to the forthcoming Programme for Government negotiations and believe that together our three parties can develop a programme that will deliver for the Irish people.

Green Party agrees to enter formal coalition talks with Fine Gael and Fianna Fail

The Green Party's parliamentary members have agreed to enter formal talks on forming a coalition government with Fine Gael and Fianna Fail after days of internal party debate about climate change demands in a deal.

A statement has been issued by the Green Party, confirming that Eamon Ryan's party will begin formal talks with the other two parties.

The move comes despite rows in recent days over Green demands for a 7% annual cut in greenhouse gas emissions in any government deal.

Tanaiste Simon Coveney played down the likelihood of any possible negotiations last week, telling the Irish Examiner that a Green demand for 7% cut in emissions could not be agreed if it decimated rural Ireland.

But Green Party members this afternoon have been told that the parliamentary party has now agreed to enter those formal programme for government talks.

The move follows rows over the 7% target as well as an internal dispute within the Greens among its TDs over entering the negotiations, following a list of 17 demands to both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael.

One parliamentary party source told the Irish Examiner:

The 17 questions were about establishing a decent baseline. There was so much we care about not in there that will need to be in any document good enough for the members to accept."

This decision is expected to lead to a meeting between all three party leaders in the coming days.

But party leader Eamon Ryan will also still have to try and get any final deal with the other two parties-if one is agreed-approved by two-thirds of party members.

The important thing is this is now happening. And that we get enough good things for young members, in particular," added a source.

In a statement this afternoon, the party said:

The party will now work with Fianna Fail and Fine Gael to develop a deal that respects our mandate with a view to presenting that agreement to Green Party members for approval.

Green Party approval of any programme for government will require support of two-thirds of the Green Party voting membership.

Any proposal must be transformative on climate action and commit to strong progress towards a more sustainable and fairer society.

If this is not the case Green Party representatives will withdraw from negotiations and pursue their mandate in opposition and work to hold the government to account.

The Green Party Leader Eamon Ryan will now seek a meeting with the Fianna Fail and Fine Gael leadership to start the process.
The royal family is always being criticized. It kind of comes with the job. Sure, they have a seemingly endless bank account and have everything they want at their fingertips, but their actions are also constantly scrutinized. No member of that family is safe from the watchful eye of the public. When new people marry into the family, the medias focus turns to them. This happened with both Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. But was Meghan treated more harshly than Kate?

Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex | Karwai Tang/Getty Images

Meghan Markle struggled with the criticism

Throughout her pregnancy, the British media constantly berated Meghan for everything from eating too many avocados to touching her belly too much. In the ITV documentary Harry & Meghan: An African Journey, the Duchess finally admitted that all of the criticism was getting to her.

Any woman, especially when theyre pregnant, youre really vulnerable, and so that was made really challenging, she told Tom Bradby.

Then when you have a newborn, you know. And especially as a woman, its a lot, she continued. So, you add this on top of just trying to be a new mom or trying to be a newlywed. Its um . . . yeah. I guess, also thank you for asking, because not many people have asked if Im okay, but its a very real thing to be going through behind the scenes.

Prince Harry speaks out

The royal family doesnt often engage with the British media, but eventually, Prince Harry had enough of the way that certain outlets were treating his wife and decided to sue the parent company of Mail on Sunday.

Unfortunately, my wife has become one of the latest victims of a British tabloid press that wages campaigns against individuals with no thought to the consequences  a ruthless campaign that has escalated over the past year, throughout her pregnancy and while raising our newborn son, he wrote in a statement.

There is a human cost to this relentless propaganda, specifically when it is knowingly false and malicious, and though we have continued to put on a brave face  as so many of you can relate to  I cannot begin to describe how painful it has been, he continued.

Was Meghan treated more harshly than Kate?

Though Kate was also criticized when she first joined the royal family and has had her fair share of scrutiny, especially when Prince William was accused of cheating on her, some people have wondered if Meghan was treated more harshly than Kate.

According to Meghans friends, the Duchess of Sussex does believe she was treated differently than her sister-in-law.

[Meghan said] no one would have put up with it, and the broken and outdated system would have been revised, the friend told The Daily Mail of how the situation would have been different if the criticism had been geared toward Kate. Those outlets responsible for their vicious attacks would have been shut out.

Meghan and Harry recently announced that they would no longer be engaging with the British tabloids at all.

Meghan said no one in the royal family should be surprised with the announcement, the source told the outlet. Everyone reportedly knew how Harry felt about the tabloids.

The source claimed that Harry went to both Prince Charles and the queen about Meghans treatment and neither would do anything about it.

[Meghan] said it was infuriating that Harrys very real and valid concerns fell on deaf ears, the source said.
Eavan Boland, an Irish poet with a precise wit that educated and captivated students on the Stanford University campus for 25 years and across the Atlantic Ocean for far longer, died Monday, April 27 after suffering a stroke in her native Dublin.

Boland, director of Stanfords creative writing program, had gone home to ride out the coronavirus pandemic with family while teaching an undergraduate course in 20th-century Irish literature remotely. Her death at age 75 came on the day one of her poems was published in the New Yorker. Called Eviction, the poem deals with her grandmother being booted from her apartment more than a century ago, and will be part of the collection Historians due for publication this fall.

Her death was confirmed by Robert ODriscoll, Consul General of Ireland, in San Francisco, who studied Bolands work while growing up in Dublin. Eavan in my mind is the preeminent female Irish poet, and one of the great Irish poets, said ODriscoll on Sunday. Everyone in Ireland from the age of 16 to 18 studies Boland right along with Shakespeare and Dickinson.

Modest and self-effacing, Boland was more interested in promoting the work of other poets than her own, said Maria Hummel, who pursued a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford specifically to study under Boland, and is now a professor of creative writing at the University of Vermont.

Hummel said Boland routinely turned down pleas to read her poetry in class or on campus in general. But when she finally relented, it was a major event that would pack a large auditorium. Hummel attended one of these events 10 years ago, and it sticks with her still.

It was an unforgettable experience, said Hummel. She read her poems in these low, measured tones that mimicked the way people read out loud to themselves. Her delivery drew the hundreds of us who were there listening into the intimate space she created.

Boland was born and raised mostly in Dublin, the youngest of five children. Her father, Frederick Boland, was a diplomat who became Irish Ambassador to the United Kingdom and later Irish Ambassador to the United Nations. The family lived in London and New York, and though Boland did not herself grow up in impoverished circumstances, she often wrote as if she had.

She had an old soul as they say and her first collection 23 Poems was published when she was just 18. It was the first of 10 volumes. Boland served as writer-in-residence at Trinity College in Dublin and University College Dublin, and was recruited to Stanfords Department of English faculty in 1996.

Boland taught both undergraduates and graduate students along with non-degree students in the famed Stegner program, which offers a two-year fellowship on campus and has attracted writers Ken Kesey, Larry McMurtry, Robert Stone, and Tobias Wolff, who joined the faculty one year after Boland.

She was a monument of Irish poetry but I never heard her say one word about herself, said Wolff on Sunday. She was the least self-important writer I have ever known.

Like Wolff, Boland lived in a home on campus. Her husband, novelist Kevin Casey, remained in Dublin, as did their adult daughters, Sarah and Eavan. Boland was always going back and forth and was in demand to read her poetry across the United States and abroad, but when she was on campus she was dedicated completely to the Stanford family and always available in her campus office, Wolff said. He always made a point of stopping by Bolands second-floor office, which was overstuffed with books and usually overstuffed with laughs.

She was great fun and always funny, said Wolff. She was the beating heart of the creative writing program.

In addition to her administrative duties at Stanford, Boland taught a full course load and still found time to be consistently creative. While at Stanford, she published A Woman Without a Country, New Collected Poems, and Domestic Violence. She also wrote Quarantine, about a husband and wife in the Irish potato famine. Published in the 2001 collection Code, it has been listed among the 10 most popular Irish poems of the past 100 years.

In the morning they were both found dead, it reads. Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history. But her feet were held against his breastbone. The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her.

She also published two volumes of prose: Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time and A Journey with Two Maps: Becoming a Woman Poet. She also co-authored The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms with Mark Strand.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Boland was an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Irish Academy of Letters. She received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Irish Book Awards in 2017. In 2019, Boland was commissioned by the Irish government to write a poem to mark the centennial of womens suffrage. She delivered it at a St. Brigids Day event at the Consul in San Francisco, with 250 people in attendance. The poem is titled Our Future will Become the Past of Other Women.

Show me your hand. I see our past, Your palm roughened by heat, by frost. By pulling a crop out of the earth, By lifting a cauldron off the hearth, it began. ... Remind us now again that history changes in one moment with one mind. That it belongs to us, to all of us. As we mark these hundred years. We will not leave you behind.

Boland leaves behind her husband and daughters, and all of her students and former students at Stanford and throughout the Republic of Ireland, noted Michael Higgins, president of Ireland.

With the passing of Eavan Boland, Ireland has lost not only an internationally acclaimed poet, distinguished academic and author, but one of the most insightful inner sources of Irish life, not only in life as expressed but as sensed and experienced, Higgins said in a statement.

Details for a Stanford memorial to celebrate her life will be provided at a later date.

Her former student, Hummel, eulogized her in a series of tweets that reads like poetry. It came to me last night what #EavanBoland was for many of us, reads the first one, posted April 29. In the old tales, the godmother was not a giggling witch, but the guardian and guide to your transformation. The figure who appeared in your darkest hour. The one who sheltered you.

Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: swhiting@sfchronicle.com. Twitter:@samwhitingsf
[May 03, 2020] PhosAgro CEO Andrey Guryev Takes Part in Russia-24 and RDIF Round Table on Industry Experience of Combating COVID-19

MOSCOW, May 3, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- PhosAgro CEO, member of the Management Board of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RUIE), and President of the Russian Association of Fertilizer Producers, Andrey Guryev, took part in a round table hosted jointly by the Russia-24 television network and the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF). The round table was devoted to the experience of industries in the fight against the novel coronavirus. Measures designed to prevent COVID-19 and protect the health of employees and residents of the cities where the companies operate, as well as the uninterrupted operation of continuous-cycle enterprises during the pandemic, were among the topics discussed by Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of RDIF; Anna Popova, Head of the Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection (Rospotrebnadzor); Andrey Chibis, Governor of the Murmansk Region; Alexei Teksler, Governor of the Chelyabinsk Region; Dmitry Konov, Chairman of the Management Board of PJSC SIBUR Holding; Pavel Grachev, CEO of PJSC Polyus; and Sergey Ivanov, CEO of ALROSA. As Rospotrebnadzor head Anna Popova noted in her speech, Russia currently has only several cases of group sickness and infection in production facilities, which speaks to the positive practice being followed in the country. "All production facilities that have organised the process in a timely and proper way and that don't permit violations are operating normally and don't have issues with infections," Popova emphasised. Popova maintains that the set of anti-epidemic measures in place at production facilities contains two key elements. The first involves organising work process in a way that eliminates the risk of infection among people in the workplace who are in close proximity to one another. The second involves restricting worksite access to those who have tested positive for the virus. Important safety measures that have successfully been deployed in industrial enterprises include the use of personal protective equipment, measuring the temperature of people at the entrances to worksites, holding video and audio meetings, and testing. Regarding the latter, the emergence of reliable and sensitive rapid test systems, funded by the RDIF, is both timely and important. Diagnostics can be carried out promptly both directly at production sites and in nearby settlements that do not have special laboratories. Making this possible is rapid testing technology developed jointly by Russian and Japanese scientists with the support of RDIF, which was discussed in detail by RDIF CEO Kirill Dmitriev. "Thanks to our network of 18 leading sovereign funds, we were able to begin analysing the situation back in January and saw that testing is one of the key elements for keeping the situation under control. Separation of the infected from the uninfected, especially at industrial enterprises, is to a large degree key to success and safety on rotation shifts, at production operations, and at large investment projects," said Dmitriev. He argued that the speed of diagnosis  one of the key elements in the fight against the virus  is a distinctive characteristic of testing systems produced by EMG with the support from RDIF. These testing systems make it possible to establish reliably withn 30 minutes whether a person is infected.



Andrey Guryev, PhosAgro CEO and co-chairman of the RUIE Coordinating Council for Combating the Coronavirus, spoke about the pilot experience in using these rapid tests. "When a patient suspected of having coronavirus was found on 24 March in Apatit, where a significant number of PhosAgro mining and processing plant employees live, we decided to deliver rapid tests manufactured by EMG with RDIF support to the city as quickly as possible. We sent a plane to Kazan and brought 100 of the express tests that were available at that time to Apatit.

"They helped us to check the first and second circles of people who had been in contact with the alleged patient zero, as well as the medical staff, within three hours. This quick and effective solution made it possible to isolate the infected group and put a barrier in place to stop the spread of infection," emphasised Guryev. PhosAgro's CEO noted that the company moved swiftly to enact active anti-crisis steps, having begun developing instructions for pandemic action in advance based on Russian and Soviet epidemic control protocols and relevant foreign experience of partner companies based in Europe and China. "I am certain that the measures taken by companies, authorities, municipalities, and governors have been highly effective today. In many respects, the key to this is sharing best practices in combating the epidemic both between regional command centres and between large companies. This sharing is facilitated by the work of the RUIE Coordinating Council for Combating the Coronavirus, which combines the best Russian and foreign practices for implementing action protocols during a pandemic. Information about this experience is available on the RUIE website as collections of best practices for business and regions," said Guryev. He emphasised that continuous-cycle enterprises would not be able to operate steadily during a pandemic without close coordination with Rospotrebnadzor and regional authorities, noting the role of governors of the regions where the company operates who headed regional command centres. According to Murmansk Region Governor Andrey Chibis, the experience of combating a pandemic has once again demonstrated: "How important and proper it is for the government and large businesses to work hand in hand to ensure people's safety." Commenting on actions to combat the outbreak of coronavirus in Apatit, he noted that: "The clear and well-coordinated work of the command centres, Rospotrebnadzor, and PhosAgro allowed us to quickly identify a circle of contacts, test them rapidly, and localise the outbreak. This experience helped us greatly moving forward." "It is fundamentally important that large companies not only help with testing, but also provide necessary preventative regimens in their workplaces and help us deploy additional beds to treat COVID patients," Chibis emphasised, citing as an example PhosAgro's assistance in deploying additional capacity at medical institutions in the cities where it operates. "As governor, I feel really good about how clearly and harmoniously we have managed to work with big business," Chibis said in summary. Agreeing with him was Alexei Teksler, governor of the Chelyabinsk Region, who noted that adherence to general sanitary and epidemiological requirements, as well as collaboration with large industrial enterprises, is what is needed today to maintain control over the situation in the regions as a whole. "It seems that the activities undertaken today are allowing us to maintain precautionary standards, as employees are monitored and handled appropriately, and people are constantly supervised while on the enterprise territories. This is extremely important," said Teksler. RDIF CEO Kirill Dmitriev concluded by emphasising that Russian companies are taking very fast and active steps to combat the coronavirus: "We believe that in many ways Russian enterprises are better prepared than many companies in other countries. The fast mobilisation work that we see at PhosAgro, Polyus, Alrosa, Sibur, and other companies is producing results." About the Company PhosAgro (www.phosagro.com) is one of the world's leading vertically integrated phosphate-based fertilizer producers in terms of production volumes of phosphate-based fertilizers and high-grade phosphate rock with a P2O5 content of 39% and higher. PhosAgro's environmentally friendly fertilizers stand out for their high efficiency, and they do not lead to the contamination of soils with heavy metals. The Company is the largest phosphate-based fertilizer producer in Europe (by total combined capacity for DAP/MAP/NP/NPK/NPS), the largest producer of high-grade phosphate rock with a P2O5 content of 39% and one of the leading producers of MAP/DAP globally, one of the leading producers of feed phosphates (MCP) in Europe, and the only producer in Russia, and Russia's only producer of nepheline concentrate (according to the RAFP). PhosAgro's main products include phosphate rock, 39 grades of fertilizers, feed phosphates, ammonia, and sodium tripolyphosphate, which are used by customers in 100 countries spanning all of the world's inhabited continents. The Company's priority markets outside of Russia and the CIS are Latin America, Europe and Asia. PhosAgro's shares are traded on the Moscow Exchange, and global depositary receipts (GDRs) for shares trade on the London Stock Exchange (under the ticker PHOR). Since 1 June 2016, the Company's GDRs have been included in the MSCI Russia and MSCI Emerging Markets indexes. More information about PhosAgro can be found on the website: www.phosagro.com. View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/phosagro-ceo-andrey-guryev-takes-part-in-russia-24-and-rdif-round-table-on-industry-experience-of-combating-covid-19-301051525.html SOURCE PhosAgro

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A Houston police officer was killed and another critically injured after their helicopter crashed early Saturday as they were responding to a report of bodies in a bayou, the citys police chief said.

The helicopter narrowly missed an apartment building, crashing around 2 a.m. in the complex between a pool house and a palm tree.

Had they crashed into the building itself, it wouldve been, without a doubt, fatal for residents of the complex, the chief, Art Acevedo, said at a news conference.

The pilot clearly manoeuvred the helicopter so it would not hit any residences, he said.

The complex, Biscayne Apartments, is part of a group of community apartment buildings that advertise affordable housing for families and people seeking a quiet and peaceful lifestyle.

I dont even know if he had time to broadcast the mayday, Acevedo said. He added that the pilot was dealing with an emergency situation in a dark environment, in a night sky, in a heavily populated area.

I promise you, that pilot was doing everything he could to avoid striking that apartment, he said.

A forensic unit investigating a homicide in the area saw the helicopter spiralling and then go down in the northern section of Houston.

Witnesses in the apartment complex waved down rescuers and showed them where the officers were trapped inside the mangled wreckage. The helicopter was on its side and the two officers were pinned for an extended period, Acevedo said.

Officer Jason Knox was killed in the crash, the chief said on Twitter. The injured officer who was piloting the helicopter was identified as Senior Officer Chase Cormier.

Cormier, 35, who was sworn into the department in July 2006, was very banged up and his injuries were significant, Acevedo said.

Were hopeful hes going to survive, but having said that, this is very traumatic, he said. When you have trauma, it can turn very quickly.

Acevedo said the police department was treating the crash as a homicide because an officer died.

We will look at it from a criminal standpoint, again, to make sure there was no criminal activity that led to this tragic incident, Acevedo said.

Knox, a tactical flight officer in the departments air unit, was the son of a city council member, Michael Knox, who also served as an officer in the Houston Police Department. Jason Knox, 35, was married with two young children, Acevedo said.

Knox joined the police department in June 2012. He was fond of restoring old police cars and had fixed up a 1996 Caprice to drive in the citys Thanksgiving Day parade in 2018. He told the Houston Chronicle that year that he was inspired by a visit to the Los Angeles Police Department Museum and its collection of vintage law enforcement vehicles.

Jason will be missed but we will carry him in our hearts and in our memories, Acevedo said on Twitter. When knocked down this man always got back up.

Officer Joe Gamaldi, president of the Houston Police Officers Union, said Knox had been in the marine and air division for a little more than a year.

He had been in the passenger seat Saturday, acting as eyes and ears in the helicopter. He planned to train as a pilot at the end of the summer, Gamaldi said.

It was always his dream job to be in that unit, he said. I think the only thing he loved almost as much as flying was restoring old police cars.

The cause of the crash was unclear. The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating.

It was also unclear Saturday if the report of bodies in the bayou was legitimate, Acevedo said, adding it was probably a bogus call.

About an hour after the crash, officers responded to a report of a shooting near the scene and three people were arrested, Acevedo said. The shooting was unconnected to the crash, he said.
China has released a short animation film, featuring Lego-like figures mocking the US' response to the coronavirus epidemic. There are two Lego-like figures, representing both the countries, engaged in a war of words. The film released by China's official Xinhua news agency suggests that China did everything in its power to warn the global community of the coronavirus breakout but the US never took the alerts seriously. And when cases escalated outside China, the US blamed the country for hiding facts, the video suggests. It also mocked the US' decision to cut funding for WHO.

The video begins with red curtains opening to reveal the figures talking about the breakout of coronavirus. "We discovered a new virus," says the Chinese warrior. "So what?" says the Lego-like Statue of Liberty, adding "It's only a flu."

Also read: Coronavirus India Live Updates: Lockdown 3.0! Highest 1-day jump with 2,644 cases; IAF salutes corona heroes

China's "wear a mask" warning is countered with the US' "don't wear a mask". China says "stay at home", to which the US says "it's violating human rights". The video shows the US calling China's temporary hospitals "concentration camps". When China says it is time to lockdown, the US replies, "How barbaric!"

When China flags how coronavirus is taking a toll on its medical system, the US calls them "backward" and then mocks them as a "third world country" when China says that the virus is killing its doctors.

"It'll magically go away in April," says the US when China alerts them that the virus is airborne.

China: We discovered a new virus. America: So what? China: It's Dangerous America: It's only a Flu China: Wear a Mask America: Don't wear a Mask ... pic.twitter.com/Qxugv8z73J - China Xinhua News (@XHNews) April 30, 2020

When in March, China's corona cases start dropping, the US says that it is impossible since Italy is suffering so much. The US then blames China for "lying" to them and "hiding facts", the video shows. China continues to argue that they made the data public.

As the war of words continues, the Statue of Liberty begins to change colour due to fever and is hooked to an intravenous drip.

"Are you listening to yourselves?" asks China to which the US says, "We are always correct, even though we contradict ourselves." "That's what I love about you Americans, your consistency," says the Chinese Lego-warrior.

Also read: Lockdown 3.0: Armed forces say 'Thank You' to corona warriors; check out latest visuals from different states

The video comes as the United States continues to accuse China of misleading the world about the severity of the outbreak. It has also called for an international inquiry into the origins of the virus.

In an interview with Reuters, Trump said he believes China's handling of the coronavirus pandemic is proof that Beijing "will do anything they can" to make him lose his re-election bid in November.

Lego's press office wrote in an emailed statement on Saturday: "We werent involved in making the animation in any way."

Also read: Lockdown 3.0: PM Modi discusses plan to spur growth in MSMEs as India heads for partial reopening

Also read: Major milestone! India conducts 1 million coronavirus tests
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 23:21:49|Editor: huaxia

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ISTANBUL, May 3 (Xinhua) -- A bookstore in Turkey's biggest city Istanbul has recently decided to gift everyone who makes an online order a book by a Chinese doctor on the COVID-19 pandemic, the press office of the Istanbul municipality told Xinhua on Sunday.

The book Prevention and Control of COVID-19 written by Zhang Wenhong was selected by Istanbul Bookstore owned by the municipality as the best suitable gift for its customers during these quarantine days, the press office said.

In a video posted on his Twitter account on Saturday, Ekrem Imamoglu, mayor of Istanbul, presented the book to readers, saying Zhang's experiences would be particularly helpful for Turkish people in their fight against the coronavirus.

"I think these experiences are extremely significant as they were obtained in advance," Imamoglu said, referring to the fact the COVID-19 was seen and defeated in China.

Zhang is leading a expert team of medical treatment to fight in the COVID-19 epidemic in Shanghai.

The book provides useful guidance on the prevention and control of COVID-19 in different places such as homes, outdoors and workplaces, according to the website of the World Scientific Publishing company.

Ulas Ozan Sapan, an Istanbul resident, said he had decided to order several books from Istanbul Bookstore so that he would get the guideline book as well.

"It would be great for me to learn more about the fight against this pandemic from a Chinese professional who was at the core of the pandemic," Sapan told Xinhua.

"I have many questions in mind about our adaptation process to the life outside once the limitations would be lifted," he said.

"I believe the book will provide all these details after we all saw China's success in defeating the virus," the Turkish citizen noted. Enditem
India achieved a big feat on Saturday as it completed one million real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests to identify people infected with coronavirus. According to officials, this is a major milestone in India's fight against coronavirus.

An Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) official confirmed the figure and said that the one-million mark was achieved on a day India saw the biggest single-day jump with 2,411 cases. The official said that 71 people died of coronavirus on Saturday.

Also read: Coronavirus India Live Updates: Lockdown 3.0! 2,644 new cases in 24 hours; biggest 1-day spike; tally-37,776

Since January 30 this year, when the first positive case was detected, India conducted 1.04 million tests.

The milestone comes amid the ICMR's attempts to increase testing. The biomedical research agency had ramped up tests to more than 70,000-75,000 samples per day. According to officials, till March 31, 47,852 samples were tested, which increased to a total of 9,02,654 samples as on April 30. From May 1 till May 2 evening, 1,37,346 tests were done.

RT-PCR tests began with the National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune and is now available in 292 government and 97 private facilities across the country.

Also read: PM Modi discusses second economic stimulus package with FM Sitharaman, Home Minister Amit Shah

Considered to be the most-effective diagnosis, RT-PCR is a throat and nasal swab test. It detects the virus early on, which is helpful in identifying and isolating an infected person.

Director General of ICMR Balram Bhargava said that the entire scientific and medical community including the private sector have all joined forces to tackle coronavirus. The Centre is also working with the states to ensure that the supply chain is maintained. "We have also decentralised the supply chain. The gold standard for COVID-19 testing remains and has remained the RT-PCR test which detects the novel coronavirus. This has been our principal strategy for testing," he said.

Also read: Lockdown 3.0: PM Modi discusses plan to spur growth in MSMEs as India heads for partial reopening
She rose to fame on the inaugural season of MasterChef Australia back in 2009, where she placed runner-up behind Julie Goodwin.

But it turns out Poh Ling Yeow was skeptical of her own cooking abilities at the time, and used a cheeky tactic as a secret weapon on the show.

Speaking to Freedom Hunters with Suzanne Delahunty, the 47-year-old celebrity chef joked: 'It was just really just faking it 'till I made it on the show.'

'I was faking it until I made it on the show': MasterChef star Poh Ling Yeow (pictured) has revealed the cheeky tactic that got her over the line in the original season in 2009

Poh explained at the time she 'didn't really know how to cook a lot of dishes,' and would rely a lot on her memory to create family favourites.

'It was funny because we got 10-minute phone calls a couple times a week, so all the people can speak to their families,' she began.

'Julie would be like, ''hi, darling'', speaking to all the kids, you know, and I would be like, "Mum, quick, just tell me that recipe real quick,''' Poh laughed as she shared her sneaky tactic.

Fake it until you make it! Speaking to Freedom Hunters with Suzanne Delahunty, the 47-year-old celebrity chef confessed: 'It was just really faking it 'till I made it on the show. Pictured at the finale with winner Julie Goodwin

Poh went on to explain that she had 'good instinct' for her cheeky maneuver.

'A lot of the things I would cook is from palate memory. I knew things went together. I knew how to make that flavour. But sometimes I didn't,' she explained.

Poh added that she would cook meals for the competition based on which ingredient combinations she knew worked.

Experimental: Poh explained at the time she 'didn't really know how to cook a lot of dishes,' and would most of the time use memory or sneak in a cheeky phone call during a break

Since appearing on the Channel 10 cooking competition in 2009, Poh has published two books and hosted her own cooking series on ABC.

In 2020, the fan favourite returned to MasterChef as a contestant in its all-stars series 'Back to Win'.

Some viewers have hit out at her constant airtime from producers and Channel 10 this year, re-naming the Back To Win series 'The Poh Show'.
A nationwide plea to the federal government to extend a lifeline to more than 1 million of the nation's most vulnerable people ineligible for welfare support has come amid a warning their plight risks undermining efforts to stop the spread of coronavirus.

Brendan Brest, 22, says he can barely survive on the disability support pension after losing his job because of the COVID-19 crisis. Credit:Kate Geraghty

More than 180 community groups have united in a call for federal financial support for 1.1 million temporary visa holders, including migrant workers, international students and asylum seekers living in the community.

Many families and their children, including asylum seekers on bridging visas, have no income after losing their jobs and face homelessness, advocates warn.

Disability pensioners, too, say they have been discriminated against in federal pandemic relief, arguing they and their carers should receive the fortnightly $550 COVID-19 supplement offered to other welfare recipients.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology - Hector RETAMAL/AFP

Accused of reacting too slowly to the initial reports of the coronavirus outbreak in China, Donald Trump tonight defended his handling of the crisis.

His administration has come under fire over its response after the first US case was reported on January 21.

Critics have said thousands of lives could have been saved if the administration had acted faster.

But this was dismissed by the US president on Twitter tonight.

Intelligence has just reported to me that I was correct, and that they did NOT bring up the CoronaVirus subject matter until late into January, just prior to my banning China from the U.S. Also, they only spoke of the Virus in a very non-threatening, or matter of fact, manner...  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2020

"Intelligence has just reported to me that I was correct, and that they did NOT bring up the Coronavirus subject matter until late into January, just prior to my banning China from the US," he wrote.

"Fake News got it wrong again, as always, and tens of thousands of lives were saved by my EARLY BAN of China into our Country.

"The people that we're allowed were heavily scrutinized and tested U.S. citizens, and as such, I welcome them with open arms (sic)!"

Mr Trump reportedly received his first briefing on January 23 and another five days later, on January 28.

A travel ban on anyone who had been in China in the previous 14 days, apart from US citizens, was introduced on February 2.

With more than 1.1 million cases of coronavirus in the US and a death toll of over 68,000, the administration's handling of the crisis is likely to dominate the November election.

Earlier in the day US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said there was "enormous evidence" that the global coronavirus pandemic started in a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Story continues

Appearing on ABC's This Week, he ratcheted up tensions between Washington and Beijing by laying the blame for the disaster, which has claimed nearly a quarter of a million lives across the world, at China's door.

Most experts believe the virus originated at Wuhan's wet food market and transferred from live animals  probably bats  to humans.

But Mr Pompeo joined Donald Trump in pinpointing the source of the virus to the nearby Wuhan Institute of Virology.

"There's enormous evidence that that's where this began," he said.

"We said from the beginning, that this was a virus that originated in Wuhan. We took a lot of grief for that from the outset, but I think the whole world can see now. Remember, China has a history of infecting the world, and a history of running sub-standard laboratories."
Global rights group calls on Egyptian authorities to stop censorship, harassment and intimidation of journalists.

Journalism in Egypt has effectively become a crime over the past four years, as authorities clamp down on media outlets and muzzle dissent, Amnesty International has said in a new report.

As the number of coronavirus infections in Egypt continues to rise, the government is strengthening its control over information instead of upholding transparency during the crisis, according to the London-based rights groups report on Sunday.

The Egyptian authorities have made it very clear that anyone who challenges the official narrative will be severely punished, said Philip Luther, Amnestys Middle East and North Africa director.

Amnesty documented 37 cases of journalists arrested in the governments escalating crackdown on press freedom, many charged with spreading false news or misusing social media under a broad 2015 counterterrorism law that has expanded the definition of terror to include all kinds of dissent.

200428065232086

Marking World Press Freedom Day on Sunday, Amnesty urged Egyptian authorities to halt their censorship, harassment and intimidation of journalists  and to release those held solely for carrying out their work.

There was no comment by Egypts government but authorities have previously denied rights violations and justified arrests on national security grounds.

Among the media workers imprisoned in Egypt is Al Jazeeras Mahmoud Hussein, a Doha-based journalist who was arrested in 2016 during a visit to his family in Cairo.

He has been detained without charge for more than 1,200 days, and there are concerns for his health during the coronavirus pandemic.

Mostefa Souag, Al Jazeera Media Networks director general, called on the world leaders in a letter published on Sunday to join the call to action for the immediate release of Mahmoud Hussein and all other journalists imprisoned around the world.

At Al Jazeera we stand in solidarity with all our colleagues in the media, he said. We believe that no journalist should be intimidated, persecuted or imprisoned for carrying out their duty. We believe in the fundamental truth that freedom of speech is the very basic building block to uphold the values of democracy.

Mahmoud Hussein has been detained without a charge for more than 1,200 days [Al Jazeera]

False news

Since general-turned-President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi seized power in 2013, most of Egypts television programmes and newspapers have taken the government position and steered clear of criticism, or else disappeared.

Many privately-owned Egyptian news outlets have been quietly acquired by companies affiliated with the countrys intelligence service.

But even a pro-government voice has not spared 12 journalists working for state-owned media outlets, who have landed in jail for expressing various private views on social media, Amnestys report said.

One of them is Atef Hasballah, editor-in-chief of the AlkararPress website. When he challenged the health ministrys coronavirus case count on his Facebook page last month, he was promptly arrested on suspicion of joining a terrorist organisation.

Egypts public prosecutor warned in a recent statement that those who spread false news about the coronavirus pandemic may face up to five years imprisonment and steep fines.

At least 12 individuals have so far been caught up in the coronavirus-motivated crackdown, according to Amnesty.

Last month, authorities blocked a local news site that covered calls by activists to release political prisoners over fears of the coronavirus spreading in Egypts crowded prisons.

Separately, Egypt expelled a correspondent for The Guardian newspaper over an article that indicated the coronavirus infection rate may be higher than officially reported.

The journalists interviewed by Amnesty reported increasingly direct state intervention in their coverage.

Many working for government-owned or aligned papers said they receive specific instructions via WhatsApp on what to report and what to omit.

For instance, a directive on how to handle United States President Donald Trumps proposal to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict this year asked reporters not to mention the plans violations of long-standing Arab policies, as Trump and el-Sisi have cultivated close ties.

Those who do not tow the official line, including praising prison conditions and smearing the states political opponents, lost their jobs, were interrogated or imprisoned, one journalist was quoted as saying by Amnesty.

I cannot even imagine that someone could refuse to comply.
The contributions for the Go In Your Purse For a Nurse (GIYPFN) fundraiser have steadily increased since Loreen and Dr. Sal Indelicato hatched the idea nearly a month ago.

And come Saturday, the nurses and Patient Care Assistants (PCA) at Staten Island University Hospitals South Campus will see exactly how much theyre appreciated. GIYPFN is planning to disperse a lot of gift certificates that include cards to restaurants, barbershops, hair and nail salons to each of the approximate 250 nurses and 175 PCAs.

According to Mike Cortese, the Indelicatos son-in-law and a key part of their fundraising team, GIYPFNs Staten Island faction has raised approximately $21,000 since they started a Venmo account for the program. When SILive.com first announced the GIYPFN initiative on April 13th, they had raised about $7,000.

"We are just so overwhelmed by the outpouring of support from our community,'' said Loreen Indelicato, a local hygienist who said the inspiration of the idea was her sister and SIUH South nurse Alicia Reddy. "For people to be as generous as they have (been) during this difficult time speaks volumes about the people of Staten Island.

"I am proud to be a Staten Islander.''

Since the GIYPFN program was featured on Fox News three weeks ago, different parts of the nation have followed suit. In fact, Cortese said 18 programs with the same idea have been started, including several in New York City and State. In addition, New Jersey, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri and Ohio have also started GIYPFN factions.

Loreen Indelicato, above, who created Go In Your Purse For a Nurse with husband, Dr. Sal Indelicato, said the first dispersement of gift certificates will take place on Saturday at Staten Island University Hospital's South Campus. (Courtesy of Mike Cortese)

"Staten Island has done a great job supporting one another and the best part is hearing that people in other parts of the country are doing the same thing,'' said Cortese. "Its incredible and well-deserved for these front-line healthcare workers.''

Cortese said FIYPFN will put up tents, get a DJ and distribute the gift-card packages to the SIUH Souths nurses and PCAs at a time to be announced later this week.

In the meantime, GIYPFN is not only planning to use the funds for gifts cards at 35 small businesses across the Island, but is also receiving a number of gift certificate donations from the businesses as well.

Loreen Indelicato, meanwhile, said GIYPFN is planning to continue raising funds in hopes of doing a similar ceremony for SIUHs Ocean Breeze campus later this month.

"With the continued donations, we hope to be able to continue to support other nurses across the Island,'' she said.

If you wish to make a donation, please search Facebook.com/Go-In-Your-Purse-For-A-Nurse or visit GIYPFNs new website (purseforanurse.org).
Spain records 164 more deaths from COVID-19, lowest daily rise since March 18, taking the total to 25,264.

Spains death toll rose by 164 to 25,264 on Sunday, the health ministry said, the lowest one-day increase since March 18. Confirmed cases of the virus rose to 217,466 from 216,582, the ministry said.

Afghanistans health ministry raised the alarm over the spread of the new coronavirus after a small study with random tests in Kabul suggested that about a third of the capitals residents could be infected.

Russia and India both recorded their highest daily rise of coronavirus infections.

Worldwide, the number of confirmed infections stands above 3.49 million with more than 246,000 deaths and about 1.1 million recoveries.

Here are the latest updates:

Sunday, May 3

20:59 GMT  Brazil coronavirus cases rise above 100,000

There were 4,588 new cases in Brazil and 275 deaths over the last 24 hours, the health ministry said, bringing total confirmed cases in the country over 100,000.

The South American country has now registered 101,147 confirmed cases of the virus and 7,025 deaths.

23:35 GMT  US says significant evidence virus from China lab

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Sunday said enormous evidence showed the new coronavirus originated in a lab in China, further fuelling tensions with Beijing over its handling of the outbreak.

I think the whole world can see now, remember, China has a history of infecting the world and running substandard laboratories.





Pompeo said early Chinese efforts to downplay the coronavirus amounted to a classic Communist disinformation effort. That created enormous risk.

President Trump is very clear: well hold those responsible accountable.

Read more here

20:20 GMT  Tanzania president questions coronavirus kits

Tanzanias President John Magufuli has dismissed imported coronavirus testing kits as faulty, saying they returned positive results on samples taken from a goat and a pawpaw.

Magufuli made the remarks during an event in Chato in northwestern Tanzania on Sunday. He said there were technical errors with the tests.

Read more here

18:20 GMT  COVID-19 claims 135 lives in France

France recorded 135 new coronavirus fatalities in the last 24 hours, taking the death toll to 24,895, the countrys public health ministry said.

The number of people treated in hospital for coronavirus and the number of people in intensive care units continued to decline, the ministry said.

The number of people in hospital with COVID-19 fell on Sunday to 25,815 from 25,827 on Saturday, and the number of people in intensive care fell to 3,819 from 3,827, the ministry added.

17:20 GMT  Latest tally in Qatar

Qatar, the GCCs second worst-hit country after Saudi Arabia, reported 679 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday, taking the total confirmed cases to 15,551.

As of Sunday, 12 people have died from the virus in the Middle Eastern country.

16:45 GMT  Turkey death toll rises by 61

The number of people who have died from COVID-19 in Turkey has risen by 61 in the last 24 hours to 3,397, according to data from the countrys health ministry.

The overall number of cases rose by 1,670 to 126,045, the data showed, the highest total outside Western Europe, the United States and Russia.

A total of 63,151 people have so far recovered from the new coronavirus, the ministry added.

Turkey has the highest number of cases outside Western Europe, the United States and Russia [Umit Bektas/Reuters]

16:40 GMT  UK records 315 more coronavirus deaths



The United Kingdoms death toll from COVID-19 rose to 28,446, an increase of 315, according to figures announced on Sunday.

That figure includes coronavirus deaths in hospitals, care homes and the community.

16:30 GMT  Jordan lifts all restrictions on economic activity

Meanwhile in Jordan, all restrictions on economic activity have been lifted, the latest easing of coronavirus lockdown rules to help jump-start the cash-strapped economy.

Jordan has in the last two weeks been lifting restrictions to allow businesses back to work, but with lower levels of staff and strict social distancing and hygiene guidelines.

16:15 GMT  Italy reports lowest daily death toll since start of lockdown

Deaths from COVID-19 in Italy climbed by 174 on Sunday, against 474 the day before, the Civil Protection Agency said, posting the smallest daily toll of fatalities since March 10.

The daily number of new cases also declined sharply to 1,389 from 1,900 on Saturday.

Italys total death toll since the outbreak came to light on February 21 now stands at 28,884, the Civil Protection Agency said, the second-highest in the world after the United States.

The number of confirmed cases amounts to 210,717, the third-highest global tally behind the US and Spain.

16:00 GMT  UK to test new COVID-19 tracing system

Britain will trial a new coronavirus tracing programme next week on the Isle of Wight, just off the south coast of England, cabinet minister Michael Gove said on Sunday.

This week we will be piloting new test, track and trace procedures on the Isle of Wight with a view to having that in place more widely later this month, he told a news conference.

The UK is one of the worst-hit countries in Europe [Reuters]

15:50 GMT  Canada death toll jumps by 4 percent

According to data from the public health agency, 160 people died in Canada from coronavirus in the past 24 hours, taking the total to 3,606.

The agency confirmed 1,576 new cases of the virus, bringing the total to 57,148.

15:00 GMT  Where are we with a coronavirus vaccine?

As government lockdowns focus on limiting the spread of the coronavirus, scientists around the world are working on treating and protecting us.

They have their work cut out. Vaccine and drug development is laborious, full of experimentation and repeated testing. Knowing how the virus works is key.

But what other challenges do they face? And how long will it take before we can defeat this virus with a pill or an injection?

Start Here explains.





14:51 GMT  Iran death toll rises by 47

Meanwhile in Iran, the death toll from the coronavirus outbreak rose by 47 over the past 24 hours to 6,203, Kianush Jahanpur, the health ministry spokesman, said on state TV on Sunday.

Iran, one of the countries in the Middle East hardest hit by the outbreak, has a total of 97,424 cases, he said.

14:00 GMT  Pompeo says enormous evidence COVID-19 came from Wuhan lab

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday that there was enormous evidence that the coronavirus pandemic originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

There is enormous evidence that this is where it began, he said on ABCs This Week.

12:55 GMT  Latest figures from the Netherlands

The number of confirmed coronavirus infections in the Netherlands increased by 335 to 40,471, according to health authorities.

The National Institute for Public Health reported 69 new deaths, taking the total number of COVID-19 fatalities to 5,056. Authorities believe the actual number of infections is likely higher because not all suspected COVID-19 patients are being tested.

Customers wait outside on social distancing markings at a prototype location of fast-food giant McDonalds for restaurants in Arnhem, Netherlands [Piroschka van de Wouw/Reuters]

12:43 GMT  Vienna Airport to offer tests to avoid quarantine

On-site coronavirus testing will become available on Monday at the airport in Austrias capital, Vienna, in a move aimed at enabling inbound passengers to avoid having to be quarantined for 14 days.





Passengers arriving at the airport have so far been required to present a health certificate showing a negative COVID-19 result which is no older than four days, or go into quarantine.

The test at the airport would cost 190 euros ($209) and results would be ready in two to three hours.

12:20 GMT  NY Governor Cuomo thanks Qatar for aid

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo thanked Qatar for helping send critical supplies and aid to the worst-hit state in the US.

Thank you to the government and people of Qatar from the people of New York. We are grateful for your assistance in helping send critical supplies and for the donation of aid, he wrote on Twitter.

Thank you to the government and people of Qatar from the people of New York. We are grateful for your assistance in helping send critical supplies and for the donation of aid.  Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) May 3, 2020

11:35 GMT  First case in Vietnam after 9 days

Vietnam reported its first new coronavirus infection in nine days, a British oil expert who was quarantined on arrival, the health ministry said.

The Southeast Asian country has registered a total of 271 coronavirus cases and has reported no deaths.

More than 30,500 people have been quarantined and 261,000 tests have been carried out.

10:56 GMT  Palestinian stock exchange resumes





After 40 days of inactivity, the Palestinian stock exchange resumed trading as authorities started easing restrictions from a full lockdown.

Ahmad Aweidah, chief executive of Palestine Exchange, said investors would be able to trade remotely, in line with health guidelines.

Forty-eight companies are listed on the exchange and the market has a total market capitalisation of about $3.8bn.

10:47 GMT  Despite rising cases, Armenia reopens bars and shops

Armenias Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinyan said shops, restaurants and bars will resume activities, even as the number of confirmed infections keeps rising.

The move comes as the government is trying to cushion the impact of the pandemic on its economy which is expected to shrink by 2 percent this year.

To date, Armenia has reported 2,386 coronavirus cases and 35 deaths, with the number of infections rising from an average of 50 a day in mid-April to more than 100 in recent days, including 134 registered on Wednesday.

Armenias shops, restaurants and bars will resume activities, even as the number of confirmed infections keeps rising [Karen Minasyan/AFP]

10:35 GMT  Flights expected to resume this year: Wizz Air

Wizz Airs Abu Dhabi-based joint venture is expected to start flying again this year, the Hungarian low-cost airline said in a statement.

The airline will also start flights from European cities to Abu Dhabi from June, which it said would supplement the launch of the joint venture.

10:20 GMT  Virus may be spreading faster than expected in Afghanistan: Health ministry

Afghanistans public health ministry said 500 random coronavirus tests in Kabul revealed more than 150 positive results, sparking concerns that COVID-19 may be spreading faster than originally thought.

Ministry spokesman Wahid Mayar called the results from the capital concerning and said people must remain in their homes to slow the spread.

Afghanistan has so far taken close to 12,000 samples, of which more than 2,700 have been positive, and 85 people have died.

Kabul and most other cities are in lockdown.

Men wait to receive free food donated by the Afghan government, amid the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Jalalabad, Afghanistan [Parwiz/Reuters]

09:24 GMT  Some Israeli pupils return to school after almost two months

First, second and third graders in Israel and illegal settlements built in the occupied West Bank went back to schools for the first time since they were shuttered 50 days ago to curb the spread of the pandemic.

Pupils in the last two grades of high school also returned to classes, allowing them to prepare for final exams, a government statement said.

After introducing sweeping restrictions in mid-March, Israel has in recent days been gradually relaxing its lockdown.

As of Sunday, Israel has registered 16,194 infections and 230 deaths.

Students sit in a classroom as it reopens following the ease of restrictions preventing the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in one of Israels illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank [Ammar Awad/Reuters]

08:44 GMT  Malaysia, Indonesia report new cases

Health authorities in Malaysia reported an additional 122 coronavirus infections, bringing the countrys total to 6,298 infections. The death toll rose to 105 due to two new fatalities in the last 24 hours.

Meanwhile in Indonesia, health ministry official Achmad Yurianto reported 349 new cases, taking the total number of infections to 11,192.

Yurianto said 14 new coronavirus-related deaths were confirmed, bringing the total to 845.

08:15 GMT  Iran to reopen some mosques as lockdown eases: Rouhani

Mosques across 132 Iranian counties will reopen on Monday after being shuttered since early March, President Hassan Rouhani said during a televised coronavirus task force meeting.

Maintaining social distancing is more important than collective prayer, he added, arguing that Islam considers safety obligatory while praying in mosques is only recommended.

Iran, one of the Middle Eastern countries hardest hit by the pandemic with 6,156 deaths amid 96,448 cases, will be divided up into white, yellow and red regions based on the number of infections and deaths, Rouhani said last week.









07:40 GMT  Latest tally in Singapore, Russia

Singapores health ministry on Sunday confirmed 657 new coronavirus infections, taking the city-states total to 18,205. Most of the new cases are among migrant workers living in dormitories, the ministry said.

Meanwhile, Russia reported 10,633 cases in the past 24 hours, an increase compared with the 9,623 new cases reported the previous day.

Medical personnel as they check COVID-19 patients upon arrival at a community isolation facility at the Changi Exhibition Centre in Singapore [EPA]

07:15 GMT  More UAE shopping centres, restaurants reopen

Three Abu Dhabi shopping centres reopened at 30 percent customer capacity after adopting safety measures, including installing thermal inspection devices, as the United Arab Emirates continued easing lockdown measures imposed more than a month ago.

Malls, dine-in restaurants and cafes in Dubai, the UAEs business and tourism hub, had earlier resumed operations with limited capacity. Shoppers must wear face masks and gloves and keep their distance from others.

06:50 GMT  India records highest daily increase

India has reported 2,644 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, its highest daily number to date, bringing its total to more than 39,000 confirmed infections. The country also reported 83 additional deaths for a total of total 1,301.

Meanwhile, the Indian Air Force conducted flypasts and showered flower petals on hospitals across different cities including the national capital of New Delhi as part of the armed forces efforts to thank doctors, nurses and police personnel who have been at the forefront of the countrys battle against the pandemic.

People wearing protective face masks wait to be tested at a mobile testing centre during an extended nationwide lockdown to slow the spread of the coronavirus disease in New Delhi, India [Adnan Abidi/Reuters]

06:35 GMT  S Korea to further ease physical distancing rules

South Korean Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said the country will further relax physical distancing rules starting on May 6.

The government will allow businesses to resume at facilities in phases that had remained closed up until now, and also allow gatherings and events to take place assuming they follow disinfection guidelines, he told a televised meeting of government officials.

06:10 GMT  Philippines temporarily bars incoming flights





Incoming passenger flights are barred from entering the Philippines for one week to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

This decision is meant to decongest our quarantine facilities to protect our people by preventing the further spread of COVID-19 and also ensure that our overseas Filipino workers are well taken care of when they arrive from abroad, officials said in a statement.

Some 20,000 repatriated Filipinos are undergoing mandatory quarantine in the capital, Manila, officials said. Entry to the country is closed to all except repatriated Filipinos.

As of Sunday, the country has reported 9,223 infections and 607 deaths.

05:30 GMT  Thailand reports lowest number of cases, as some restrictions ease

Marking its lowest number since early March, Thailand reported three new coronavirus cases and no new deaths as it started easing restrictions on some business and aspects of life.

The country allowed businesses such as restaurants, hair salons and outdoor markets to reopen as long as physical distancing was maintained and temperature checks carried out.

So far, there have been a total of 2,966 infections and 54 deaths.

Hairdressers wear face shields and masks as they tend to customers at a barber shop in Bangkok after it reopened due to an easing of measures to combat the spread of COVID-19 [Lillian Suwanrumpha/AFP]

04:51 GMT  World needs a robust airline system for COVID-19 recovery

Geoffrey Thomas, editor-in-chief of Airline Ratings, has said more needs to be done to assist airlines with their recovery.

Across the globe, weve all got to make concessions. This is all costing us money. At the same time, whether we are supporting our local airline or our favourite local restaurant with takeaways  everybody needs help, and the airlines are no different. Because the airlines are losing half of their revenue for 2020, and some of the bailouts are absolutely massive, he told Al Jazeera.

In certain jurisdictions, it has been enough. For instance in the Middle East  some of the countries there have stepped up significantly, like Qatar. In other jurisdictions, they havent. In Australia, the federal government hasnt supported its two airlines. So coming out of COVID-19, youre going to get some airlines that are very well looked after and other ones that are not.

He added: A lot more needs to be done because aviation is the fabric of the economy of the world and we need a robust airline system to help with this recovery  Certainly, we want to preserve as many of these airlines as we possibly can for the highly competitive market that we want post-COVID-19.





03:56 GMT  UK made contingency plan for Johnsons death as he battled COVID-19

Boris Johnson, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, has said the British government made contingency plans for his death as his condition deteriorated while he battled COVID-19 last month in intensive care.

In an interview with The Sun newspaper on Sunday, Johnson said he was given litres and litres of oxygen to keep him alive.

They had a strategy to deal with a death of Stalin-type scenario, Johnson told The Sun. It was a tough old moment, I wont deny it.

03:05 GMT  Roche gets US FDA approval for antibody test

Roche Holding AG said received emergency use approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for an antibody test to help determine if people have ever been infected with the coronavirus.

The Swiss drugmaker said its antibody test, Elecsys Anti-SARS-CoV-2, has a specificity greater than 99.8 percent and can help assess patients immune response to the new coronavirus, officially known as SARS-Cov-2.

02:36 GMT  South Korea reports 13 new cases

Health authorities in South Korea reported 13 new coronavirus cases, of which 10 were imported.

The country reported fewer than 15 cases for more than two weeks, and authorities say they plan to loosen social distancing rules this week. Details of the so-called everyday life quarantine are expected later today, according to the official Yonhap news agency.

02:17 GMT  Rise in virus cases in crowded Indian jails prompts concerns

The spread of the coronavirus in Indias notoriously crowded prisons prompted authorities to impose jail lockdowns and release thousands of pretrial detainees on parole, as health experts worry the cramped facilities are serving as breeding grounds for the disease.

It is a terrifying situation. If measures arent taken soon, then things can become extremely difficult, Madhurima Dhanuka, head of the Prison Reforms Program for the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, told the Associated Press news agency.





Although there are no official numbers on how many inmates have been infected by the virus, Indias correction facilities are slowly recording more infections and have temporarily banned visitors.

On Thursday, authorities locked down Nagpur Central Jail in coastal Maharashtra, among the Indian states worst hit by the pandemic. It was the eighth prison in Maharashtra to be locked down. The move came after 19 inmates in Indore Central Jail in central Madhya Pradesh state tested positive for the virus on Tuesday.

Indian prisons are highly overcrowded. According to the latest data by the National Crimes Records Bureau in 2018, India has some 450,000 prisoners, exceeding the countrys official prison capacity by about 17 percent.

Prisons in New Delhi and neighbouring Uttar Pradesh state have the highest occupancy rates, at more than 50 percent above capacity.

Making matters worse, the health facilities in prisons are not up to the mark, said Dhanuka.

02:06 GMT  China reports two new coronavirus cases

China reported two new coronavirus cases for May 2, up from one the day before, according to data from the National Health Commission.

One case was imported and the other is local. This compared with one imported case and no domestic transmissions on May 1. The NHC also reported 12 asymptomatic cases for May 2, down from 20 the day before.

The number of confirmed cases in China has reached 82,877. With no new deaths reported, the death toll remains at 4,633.

01:46 GMT  Hundreds in US state of Oregon protest against stay-at-home order

Hundreds opposed to Oregons stay-at-home order demonstrated in the city of Salem as health officials announced five additional deaths from COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus.

Most of the protesters did not wear face masks, but they waved American flags and Trump campaign signs in the rain. Other signs read, Reopen Oregon and Let me earn a living.

A group of healthcare workers demonstrated at the top of the Capitol steps, urging a phased plan to ease the states social distancing requirements. Most of the other protesters ignored them.

A woman holds a sign saying Open Oregon on the steps of the state capitol at the Reopen Oregon Rally on May 2, 2020, in Salem, Oregon [Terray Sylvester/Getty Images/AFP]

01:04 GMT  Pelosi, McConnell decline coronavirus tests for US Congress

The top Republican and Democrat in Congress said they are respectfully declining an offer of quick COVID-19 tests offered by the Trump administration.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, normally fierce political rivals, say Congress is grateful for the offer, but wants to keep directing resources to the front-line facilities where they can do the most good the most quickly.

The USs 100 senators, many of whom are advanced in age, will return to Washington, DC on Monday following a recess that was prolonged due to the pandemic.





00:54 GMT  Yemens Houthi rebels call for more test kits

Taha al-Mutawakel, the Houthi public health minister, urged the United Nations to increase the number of testing kits for COVID-19.

We are sending this appeal given the global situation of coronavirus, the ongoing assault against our country, the embargo on our country, and because the amount of the PCR tests which the World Health Organization has sent to us is very little and is about to run out, he told reporters in Sanaa on Saturday.

00:26 GMT  UN calls for probe into Venezuela prison riot that left 46 dead

The UNs Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has called for an investigation into a prison riot in western Venezuela that left 46 people dead and 75 injured.

The OHCHR said on Twitter it is gravely concerned about the incident on Friday at the Los Llanos penitentiary in Portuguesa state. The South American countrys prisons are infamous for extreme levels of violence and poor conditions.

We urge the authorities to conduct a thorough investigation, tackle overcrowding, and guarantee basic rights, the office said.

The riot came shortly after prison officials barred inmates family members from bringing them food, a measure to prevent the spread of the coronavirus within prisons.





00:12 GMT  Guards freed after prison riot at Brazils Manaus

Prison authorities in Brazil said 10 guards and five inmates suffered non-critical injuries following an uprising at a prison in Manaus, a state capital in the Amazon rainforest.

The inmates held seven guards hostage for more than five hours, but the situation was brought under control, according to the states public security secretariat.

Relatives of inmates said the prisoners at Puraquequara prison were protesting against the suspension of all family visits and poor conditions at the lockup amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Hello and welcome to Al Jazeeras continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. Im Zaheena Rasheed in Male, Maldives, with all the latest updates.

You can find all the key developments from yesterday, March 2, here.
Made In Chelsea newcomer Harvey Armstrong has revealed he was almost on the E4 series back in 2017, while he was still dating Sophie 'Habbs' Habboo.

Producers approached him and a friend, who knew former star Frankie Gaff, and asked whether they would be interested in appearing.

But Harvey turned it down, making the decision so that it would not interfere with his university finals or his relationship with then-girlfriend Habbs.

New boy: Made In Chelsea newcomer Harvey Armstrong has revealed he was almost on the E4 series back in 2017, while he was still dating Sophie 'Habbs' Habboo

But the hunky new star - who is now a regular fixture on the show - revealed that Habbs ended up on the show without him, and that they split up just a week after she joined the cast.

Speaking to Johnny Seifert on the Secure The Insecure podcast, Harvey explained: 'I left Newcastle University in 2017 and I was asked to join then.

'[I] went down for an interview and asked what was the package, how did it work? We were very naive we didn't have a clue apart from watching it back in our teens and early 20s.

'I was about to complete my final three exams for accounting. I said that I appreciated the opportunity but it was the wrong time for me.

No thanks! Harvey turned it down, making the decision so that it would not interfere with his university finals or his relationship with then-girlfriend Habbs [pictured]

Harvey went on to explain: '[Made In Chelsea] said [they] would bring [us] on as a couple. Before that [Habbs] was like, "don't go on that show!" Then they found an interest in both me and her and her whole thing changed'

'I was also in this relationship with Sophie Habboo. I was with her through out the whole time at university pretty much.'

Harvey went on to explain: '[Made In Chelsea] said [they] would bring [us] on as a couple. Before that [Habbs] was like, "don't go on that show!" Then they found an interest in both me and her and her whole thing changed.

'She was like, "yeah let's both go on it", and I was like, "no no no - I am doing my accountancy exams and it is not the right time for me".

'We broke up and within a week she was on it!'

Four years later: Habbs first appeared in series 14, in 2017 - indeed, the year Harvey states they were approached and subsequently split

Habbs first appeared in series 14, in 2017 - indeed, the year Harvey states they were approached and subsequently split.

She went on to date the likes of Alex Mytton and Sam Thompson, eventually ending up with now-boyfriend, stalwart cast member Jamie Laing.

'She got the job through [the casting team] approaching me and then we broke up and within a week she was on it so that was kind of hard hitting to be honest,' Harvey went on. 'It was shocking - I couldn't figure it out for a while.'

'As soon as the table turned and they were interested in her and me, her whole mind set changed. Then she broke up with me and she was on it.

Lockdown official: The global pandemic has solidified Made In Chelsea star Emily Blackwell's relationship with Harvey

Thriving: Since the UK has been in lockdown, the couple have posted loved-up videos to Instagram looking cosy as they embark on forced-domestic bliss

'I am not going to say that is why she broke up with me because we weren't in the greatest place - we were having a bit of a rough patch - but it all did come at once and it was a bit of a shock.'

Harvey has since found himself in a relationship with Emily Blackwell, Habbs' old roommate and one-time best pal.

He first arrived on the scene in last year's MIC: Buenos Aires. where he hooked up with another of Habbs' friends, Liv Bentley.

However, he and Emily have since sparked up a romance, and they are going strong - much to Habbs' chagrin; she no longer speaks to Emily.

The current 19th season was cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but there's sure to be more drama between them when the show continues later in the year, after everyone is released from lockdown.
When Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte said the government would relax some parts of a nationwide lockdown, residents entering an eighth week of home confinement to inhibit the coronavirus dove for their dictionaries.

Conte announced that starting May 4, people in Italy will be permitted to travel within their home regions for visits with congiunti, a formal Italian word that can mean either relatives, relations or kinsmen.

Under the lockdown, Italians only have been able to leave home for essential jobs or vital tasks such as grocery shopping.

The countrys cooped-up citizens therefore sought clarification. Which relatives? What relation? Would a second-cousin count as kin? A brother-in-law? The additional freedom previewed by the premier Sunday night seemed to rest on a clunky, archaic-sounding noun.

The correct definition is more than pedantic in Italy, a country where the generous concept of family embraces extended clans tied by blood or marriage. Whatever the governments intent, congiunti would be part of what stitches much of Italian life together.

The next day, Conte sought to clear up the confusion. Instead, he created more. The premier allowed that congiunti is a broad and generic formula. What he meant, he said, was Italians could pay visits to relatives, and to those with whom they have relationships of steady affection. Godparents? Longtime lovers? Couples engaged for years but without setting a wedding date, as is frequently the case in Italy? An early morning talk show on state radio tried to parse what ties of steady or stable affection mean. Calls and text messages poured in.

One guest, a lawyer who specializes in marriage law, said he has met couples together for only a week with more stable relationships than some spouses who have been married for years.

As far as the issue of home regions is concerned, the shows host raised the possibility that someone who lived, say, in eastern Sicily, could drive hundreds of kilometers (miles) across the island to see relatives, but couldnt visit a loved one just a handful of kilometers away in Calabria, a different region across the Strait of Messina.

For Bianca Amodeo, 17, that hosts hypothetical scenario is painful reality. Her boyfriend of 1 1/2 years  for many adolescents that equates to an exceedingly stable tie of affection  lives not far measured in kilometers but just across the Marche region border in the region of Abruzzo.

Deepening the teenagers anguish: Bianca has friends with boyfriends who live farther away but in the same region, and they are excitedly planning to see their sweethearts next week.

Said the girls mother, Olga Anastasi, before passing the phone to her daughter: Theres a deep sense of injustice. When a Carabiniere (police officer) stops to ask where you are going, can he determine whats a steady relationship? wondered Anastasi, a lawyer who deals with divorce and juvenile matters.

Some see more serious inequality in the governments policy. Same-sex marriages are not legal in Italy, so civil rights advocates worry that same-sex couples and their children might be excluded from the stable affection category.

When Italians finally determine whom they can visit, theyll have to puzzle out how to express affection when they arrive. The new measure requires all to wear masks and stay a safe distance apart when visiting.

(This story has been published from a wire agency without modifications to the text)

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Rishi Kapoor passed away in Mumbai on Thursday, April 30, and the condolences for the family have been pouring in ever since. Now an image of Neetu and Ranbir Kapoor from the late actor's prayer meet has been shared on social media.

The image has Ranbir wearing a saffron turban as he poses with his father's picture with mother Neetu on the other side. The image shared on social media is breaking hearts of many as they pray for Rishi's family.

Meanwhile, it was reported earlier that Rishi's daughter Riddhima, who could not be present in Mumbai during her father's cremation, has also arrived in Mumbai from New Delhi. She took a car for the journey and her daughter Samara also travelled with her.

Read: Riddhima Kapoor Arrives in Mumbai to Join Her Family After Rishi Kapoor's Demise, See Pics

View this post on Instagram UNBELIEVABLE  A post shared by @ pammi_bakshi_gautam on May 3, 2020 at 12:16am PDT

Rishi passed away after a two-year battle with cancer. The 67-year-old actor breathed his last at Sir HN Reliance Foundation Hospital in Mumbai.

Follow @News18Movies for more
Security forces on Sunday carried out a massive search operation along the International Border (IB) in Hiaranagar sector of Jammu and Kashmir's Kathua district following information about movement of suspected persons, officials said.

The Army, BSF, CRPF and Police launched the joint search operation in the sector, including areas along Jammu-Pathankot highway, the officials said.

This was for the third time in a week that security forces searched the area which has been witnessing intermittent shelling from Pakistan.

Last week, security forces carried out a massive combing operation in the entire border belt along the IB in Jammu, Samba and Kathua districts but no one was arrested.

"Local residents have reported suspicious movement, prompting the searches. We are maintaining our guard to scuttle any attempt by terrorists to enter into this side from across the border, a senior security official said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
NSW public high schools are encouraging year 12 students to return to school full-time from next week as independent schools increasingly resume normal classroom operations.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian wants students at school one day a week from May 11 but high schools are prioritising year 12, with many providing full-time classroom teaching from next Monday.

Newtown Performing Arts High has written to parents telling them school resumes full-time for year 12 from May 11, while Killara High is open "each day for those year 12 students who wish to attend".

Other high schools  Sydney Girls, Tempe and Greystanes  have allocated at least three or four days.
The number of coronavirus tests carried on fell sharply for the second day in a row today - the second successive fall since the Government beat its 100,000 target.

Chairing today's press conference Michael Gove said there had been 1,206,405 coronavirus tests in the UK as of 9am on Sunday May 3, including 76,496 in the previous 24 hours.

This was down from 105,937 on Saturday and 122,347 the previous day.

Asked about this decline, Mr Gove said: 'It is the case that you might expect over a weekend, particularly over a Saturday, with fewer people going to work, that you might have a dip in the amount of testing that might occur at that time.

'But I don't think that it in anyway detracts from the amazing achievement of the NHS and of other sin so significantly increasing the amount of tests that are available.'

However, data released by the Government today showed that while there have been fewer tests carried out at weekends, none has been such a marked fall of 28 per cent in a single day.

Chairing today's press conference Michael Goove said there had been 1,206,405 coronavirus tests in the UK as of 9am on Sunday May 3, including 76,496 in the previous 24 hours.

Asked about this decline, Mr Gove said: 'It is the case that you might expect over a weekend, particularly over a Saturday, with fewer people going to work, that you might have a dip in the amount of testing that might occur at that time

Testing plays a key role, along with the track and trace system being devised, in allowing the lockdown to be lifted safely.

The UK announced 358 new coronavirus deaths today, bringing total fatalities to 28,491 and putting the country on course to become the hardest hit in Europe.

On Friday Matt Hancock faced accusations of fiddling the figures to hit his much-vaunted target for 100,000 coronavirus tests in a day.

The Health Secretary faced claims he used postal tests yet to be completed and multiple checks on the same people to hit his six-figure milestone.

He used an appearance at the Downing Street briefing this evening to bullishly claim success after setting the significant target a month ago, when tests were running at just 10,000 a day.

Appearing live on television tonight he emotionally told the watching nation there were 122,347 tests in the 24 hours to 9am, branding it an 'incredible achievement' for the whole medical and scientific community.

But he faced a wave of condemnation as it became clear that the number appeared to only tell half the story.

Figures posted online by the Government itself show that his questionable calculation included tens of thousands of tests kits that have been sent out to homes and hospitals - even though they have yet to be used, returned and processed.

The head of the testing programme, Professor John Newton, confirmed tonight that around 40,000 of the total were kits that have been mailed out - suggesting 100,000 tests have not in fact been completed.

The Prime Minister is expected to reveal his roadmap of proposals to very carefully and slowly lift the restriction in place since late March later this week.

The first easing of restrictions is not expected to come into force until June, and will be accompanied by the stricter enforcement of breaches of the remaining rules, with fines rising from the current 60 to more than 3,000 for repeat offenders.

It will include a massive PR blitz urging people who cannot work from home to go in where they can safely, and urging key workers to send their children back to school to free them up for vital tasks.

Public transport will also increase, but will strict social distancing measures at stations and attempts to stagger working hours to reduce the rush hour.

Senior citizens could also lose their free travel during peak times to lower surge numbers further, the Sunday Times reported.

Trials of an NHS coronavirus contact tracing smartphone app are to start in the Isle of Wight this week, before being rolled out nationwide.

The NHSX app is part of the Government's test, track and trace strategy and will be central to its efforts in slowing the spread of coronavirus, alongside a massively expanded tsting regime.

Contact tracing has been used extensively in South Korea, Hong Kong and Germany, where outbreaks have been contained more quickly.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said around 50 to 60 per cent of people will need to use the software for it to be effective as he described it as the 'best possible way to help the NHS'.

He stressed the app would be completely confidential but called it a 'fantastic way' to ensure the country can 'keep a lid' on coronavirus and prevent a second wave.

'The idea is that we will encourage as many people to take this up as possible,' he said.

'This is going to be a huge national effort and we need for this to work 50-60 per cent of people to be using this app.

'Not everybody has a smartphone, and I appreciate that for various reasons not everybody will download it but it will be the best possible way to help the NHS.'
The Prime Minister is set to unveil the Governments roadmap to get Britain back to work next week.

Meanwhile the Government has said social distancing measures will be eased in line with the rate of transmission or "R" number.

Last week, it stood between 0.5 and one and this has reportedly given ministers optimism that they can reopen primary schools at the start of June.

Schools across the country are closed and GCSE and A-level exams have been cancelled / PA

It comes as deputy chief medial officer Dr Jenny Harries said on Saturday there were some signs that potentially younger children are less susceptible to disease and potentially transmit it less.

Based on the current infection rate, the PM is hoping to put teachers on three week's notice to reopen primary schools to all pupils by June 1, Whitehall sources told the newspaper.

Year 10 and Year 12 pupils are then expected to form the first wave of secondary pupils returning to school at a later point as long as the transmission rate remains low, the Telegraph added.

Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick speaks during a daily news conference to update on the coronavirus disease / via REUTERS

On Saturday, Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick said: Home learning is not easy, particularly when one or both parents are trying to work from home as well.

Meanwhile, the Whitehall source told the newspaper that secondary school pupils can do a lot more at home and online.

"They are not as pressing as primary schoolchildren, who we know need a lot of attention."

Coronavirus hits the UK - In pictures 1 /81 Coronavirus hits the UK - In pictures A deserted Westminster Bridge PA A man wearing a face mask or covering due to the COVID-19 pandemic, walks past customers sat outside a restaurant AFP via Getty Images Boris Johnson addresses the nation on the Coronavirus lockdown Andrew Parsons Runners pass cardboard cutouts of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and Prince William during the London Marathon in London AP An empty escalator at Charing Coss London Underground tube station Jeremy Selwyn Electronic bilboards displays a message warning people to stay home in Sheffield PA A sign is displayed in the window of a student accommodation building following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Mancheste Reuters People take part in a 'We Do Not Consent' rally at Trafalgar Square, organised by Stop New Normal, to protest against coronavirus restrictions, in Londo AP People sing and dance in Leicester Square on the eve on the 10PM curfew Reuters Hearts painted by a team of artists from Upfest are seen in the grass at Queen Square, following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Bristol Reuters Graffiti reads 'good luck and stay safe', as the number of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases grow around the world, under a bridge in London Reuters A sign is pictured in Soho, amid the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in London Reuters Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures, during a coronavirus briefing in Downing Street, London AP A person runs past posters with a message of hope, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues in Manchester REUTERS Riot police face protesters who took part in a 'We Do Not Consent' rally at Trafalgar Square, organised by Stop New Normal, to protest against coronavirus restrictions in London AP An image of The Queen eith quotes from her broadcast to the UK and the Commonwealth in relation to the Coronavirus epidemic are displayed on lights in London's Piccadilly Circus PA Military vehicles cross Westminster Bridge after members of the 101 Logistic Brigade delivered a consignment of medical masks to St Thomas' hospital Getty Images Durdle Door in Dorset Reuters Captain Tom Moore via Reuters Mia, aged 8, and Jack, aged 5, take part in "PE with Joe" a daily live workout with Joe Wicks on Youtube to help kids stay fit who have to stay indoors due to the Coronavirus outbreak PA An NHS worker reacts at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital during the Clap for our Carers campaign in support of the NHS Reuters Goats which have taken over the deserted streets of Llandudno @AndrewStuart via PA Tobias Weller PA Novikov restaurant in London with its shutters pulled down while the restaurant is closed London Landscapes: Hyde Park and the Serpentine, central London. Matt Writtle A newspaper vendor in Manchester city centre giving away free toilet rolls with every paper bought as shops run low on supplies due to fears over the spread of the coronavirus PA Theo Clay looks out of his window next to his hand-drawn picture of a rainbow in Liverpool, as the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continue Reuters A young man cuts another man's hair on top of a closed hairdresser in Oxford Reuters General view of the new NHS Nightingale Hospital, built to fight against the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in London via Reuters Jason Baird is seen dressed as Spiderman during his daily exercise to cheer up local children in Stockport, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues Reuters A woman wearing a face mask walks past Buckingham Palace Getty Images A man holds mobile phone displaying a text message alert sent by the government warning that new rules are in force across the UK and people must stay at home PA Medical staff on the Covid-19 ward at the Neath Port Talbot Hospital, in Wales, as the health services continue their response to the coronavirus outbreak. PA Prime Minister Boris Johnson taking part in a virtual Cabinet meeting with his top team of ministers PA A shopper walks past empty shelves in a Lidl store on in Wallington. After spates of "panic buying" cleared supermarket shelves of items like toilet paper and cleaning products, stores across the UK have introduced limits on purchases during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some have also created special time slots for the elderly and other shoppers vulnerable to the new coronavirus. Getty Images People on a busy tube train in London at rush hour PA Mia, aged 8 and her brother Jack, aged 5 from Essex, continue their school work at home, after being sent home due to the coronavirus PA Children are painting 'Chase the rainbows' artwork and springing up in windows across the country Reuters Social distancing in Primrose Hill Jeremy Selwyn A general view of a locked gate at Anfield, Liverpool as The Premier League has been suspended PA Homeless people in London AFP via Getty Images A piece of art by the artist, known as the Rebel Bear has appeared on a wall on Bank Street in Glasgow. The new addition to Glasgow's street art is capturing the global Coronavirus crisis. The piece features a woman and a man pulling back to give each other a kiss PA The Queen leaves Buckingham Palace, London, for Windsor Castle to socially distance herself amid the coronavirus pandemic PA A general view on Grey street, Newcastle as coronavirus cases grow around the world Reuters Matt Raw, a British national who returned from the coronavirus-hit city of Wuhan in China, leaves quaratine at Arrowe Park Hospital on Merseyside PA Britain's Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty (L) and Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance look on as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures as he speaks during a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) news conference inside 10 Downing Street Reuters The ticket-validation terminals at the tram stop on Edinburgh's Princes Street are cleaned following the coronavirus outbreak. PA Locked school gates at Rockcliffe First School in Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear PA A sign at a Sainsbury's supermarket informs customers that limits have been set on a small number of products as the number of coronavirus (COVID-19) cases grow around the world Reuters Jawad Javed delivers coronavirus protection kits that he and his wife have put together to the vulnerable people of their community of Stenhousemuir, between Glasgow and Edinburgh AFP via Getty Images A sign advertising a book titled "How Will We Survive On Earth?" Getty Images A man who appears to be homeless sleeping wearing a mask today in Victoria Jeremy Selwyn A pedestrian walks past graffiti that reads "Diseases are in the City" in Edinburgh AFP via Getty Images Staff from The Lyric Theatre, London inform patrons, as it shuts its doors PA A quiet looking George IV Bridge in Edinburgh PA A quieter than usual British Museum Getty Images A racegoer attends Cheltenham in a fashionable face mask SplashNews.com A commuter wears a face mask at London Bridge Station Jeremy Selwyn A empty restaurant in the Bull Ring Shopping Centre Getty Images A deserted Trafalgar Square in London PA Passengers determined to avoid the coronavirus before leaving the UK arrive at Gatwick Airport Getty Images

They said move was crucial for economic reasons, to get things moving, but also for educational reasons, adding that early years development is very important.

Another one of the plans reportedly being discussed to help to reopen workplaces across the country is to ask companies to routinely test asymptomatic staff.

This would be part of the national effort to "test, track and trace" the virus and to isolate those who could be positive.

Meanwhile, secondary school pupils can do a lot more at home and online. They are not as pressing as primary schoolchildren, who we know need a lot of attention.

Officials are believed to be working on detailed plans for the safest way to reopen schools, with possibilities including temporary limits on class sizes.

Meanwhile, question of when to reopen nursery schools remains an ongoing discussion.
Afghanistan Coronavirus Update - Coronavirus cases climb to 2,335, Total Deaths reaches to 68 on 02-May-2020

In Afghanistan total confirmed cases of Coronavirus (COVID-19) have increased to 2,335, while 68 people died due to the growing infection in the country.

Coronavirus (Covid-19) update from around the world:

Gujarat, 02-May-2020: Gujarat reported 333 new COVID-19 positive cases in the past 24 hours raising the total positive cases count to 5,054 in the state. While 262 deaths are reported so far as per Gujarat Health Department.

Tamil Nadu, 02-May-2020: Tamil Nadu government eases the restrictions in non-containment areas as per the Center's fresh guidelines on Covid-19 ongoing lockdown. Tamil Nadu government will allow the resumption of construction activity, road works, opening of SEZs, and some other from May 4 in non-containment areas in the state.

Mumbai, 02-May-2020: Mumbai reported 547 Covid-19 cases and 27 deaths today, raising the total cases of 8,172 and deaths to 322. Over 137 patients have been discharged today which increased the cured patient count to 1704. Public Health Department, Mumbai report provided the details of the patients in the state.

France: France is reporting higher number of deaths but but slightly fewer people with severe conditions were admitted into ICU in past fourth day. France reported 315 deaths last day as compared to 345 deaths the day earlier. In France 133,670 confirmed cases and 14,412 deaths reported so far.

Here are the latest cases of Coronavirus (COVID-19) infection in Afghanistan:

Sr. No. Date Total Cases New Cases Total Deaths Deaths 1. 27-Apr-2020 1,703 172 57 7 2. 28-Apr-2020 1,828 125 58 1 3. 29-Apr-2020 1,939 111 60 2 4. 30-Apr-2020 2,171 232 64 4 5. 01-May-2020 2,335 164 68 4 6. 02-May-2020 2,335 0 68 0

TOP 10 Deaths by country due to Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak:



1. Europe (137,429)

2. North America (71,920)

3. USA (65,776)

4. Italy (28,236)

5. UK (27,510)

6. Spain (24,824)

7. France (24,594)

8. Asia (18,966)

9. South America (9,486)

10. Belgium (7,703)

Total Deaths Worldwide (239,625)

Globally till now over 239,625 people died due to the outbreak of deadly Coronavirus (COVID-19). The new infection and death cases are increasing fast. Authorities in the Afghanistan and other countries are taking proper measures to contain the deadly Coronavirus (COVID-19).

As of now Europe is the worst affected country in the world with over 137,429 deaths and 1,399,726 confirmed cases.

Check latest update: Coronaviurs Covid-19 cases around the world
After the first weekend of May provided a quick break from chilly air dominating the Northeast, the start of the workweek sent temperatures tumbling once again.

While April left much to be desired for warm weather fans across the region, temperatures rebounded on Saturday and again on Sunday.

"After ending the month of April an average of 3.5 degrees cooler than normal, Boston soared to 78 on Sunday, which is actually 16 degrees above normal for early May," AccuWeather Meteorologist Mary Gilbert said.

Winds turned out of the northwest on Monday and brought in a cooler air mass to the region.

The weekend's warmth was replaced by afternoon temperatures 10-20 degrees lower Monday. This trend will continue on Tuesday.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FREE ACCUWEATHER APP

By Tuesday, most locations can expect temperatures in the 50s. However, temperatures from southeastern Pennsylvania to Connecticut, will once again climb into the low 60s.

High elevations in New York and New England will be limited to the 40s on Tuesday.

Residents from Boston to New York City, Philadelphia and Detroit looking for a quick return to warmth will be disappointed.

The dip in the jet stream will remain over the northeastern U.S. and will keep chilly conditions over the region and the storm track over the Southeast and mid-Atlantic.

Even colder air will settle over the Northeast into the end of the week, dropping temperatures to around 15-25 degrees below normal for the beginning of May.

Average temperatures at the beginning of May range from the upper 50s in northern New England to the lower 70s around D.C.

"Those in the Northeast feeling a bit stir-crazy under COVID-19 stay-at-home orders will want to grab a jacket if heading outside, while following proper social distancing protocols," Gilbert said.

AccuWeather's long-range team expects several more bouts of cooler-than-average air to sweep into the Northeast every few days into the middle of May. Those hoping for hot weather may have to wait until the calendar is fully into the summer months.

Keep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier and Verizon Fios.
Coronavirus update: The total number of coronavirus cases in India has crossed 40,000 mark, taking the total tally to 40,263 with toll at 1306. According to the latest data shared by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, a total of 28,070 active cases have been reported with 10,886 people recovered after fighting a battle against COVID-19. A total of 2,487 cases have been reported with 83 more patients losing their lives in the last 24 hours. ICMR official reveals that a total of 10,40,000 tests has been conducted in the country till now.

According to the state-wise tally, Maharashtra remains the worst-hit state with a total of 12,296 cases. In the last 24 hours, Maharashtra has reported a total of 790 fresh cases with 36 deaths, taking its total tally to 521. Gujarat comes at second after recording 5,055 cases with 262 deaths, the capital records total 4122 cases with 64 deaths as per the latest data shared by the Helth Ministry.

Moreover, the government has also extended the nationwide lockdown by two weeks till May 17. Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday said that though the lockdown is an important measure to control the spread of COVID-19, he added that get ready to live with coronavirus as it is time to re-open the capital. The Chief Minister also suggested the Centre to remove entire Delhi from the red zone.

Also Read: Coronavirus India: Arvind Kejriwal says Delhi is ready to relax lockdown restrictions, not right to mark entire city under red zone

2487 new #COVID19 positive cases, 83 deaths reported in the last 24 hours: Ministry of Health and Family Welfare https://t.co/rx1r2lyxEe  ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020

Listing down the activities that will be permitted after May 4, private offices are allowed to open but only with 33% strength, delivery of essential goods through e-commerce sites is also allowed and the government offices engaged in the supply of essential services are also allowed to function.

#WATCH Delhi is ready to re-open nowWe will not be able to sustain the lockdown for long as the economy is in peril. The revenue has fallen from Rs 3500 Crores in April month of previous years to Rs 300 Crores this year. How will government function?: Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal pic.twitter.com/jKzVp0959b  ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020

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With pandemic disrupting supply chains, thousands displaced by war struggle with lack of food during Muslim holy month.

Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso  At tonights iftar, the meal with which Muslims break their fast at sunset during Ramadan, Karim Bamago will have nothing to eat.

Instead, he will only drink water and coffee with his wife and five children.

I am managing, but its difficult to fast knowing there will be nothing at the end of it, the 30-year-old says.

For Bamago and other internally displaced people (IDPs) in violence-hit Burkina Faso, fasting this year for the Muslim holy month has been blurred by the lack of food, partly due to the coronavirus pandemic disrupting food supplies.

Many times, iftar can mean nothing more than taking a drink.





The amount of food being distributed by aid agencies, is not sufficient for everyone, so some dont get any, Bamago says from an IDP camp in Barsalogho, a town in Burkina Fasos north.

We dont know what to do here. We really need help  water is an issue, too, and there is no healthcare, he adds.

The camps inhabitants barely have enough water to drink, he says, let alone for wudhu (the ablution Muslims carry out before prayer). It also makes following guidelines around washing hands to prevent the new coronavirus spreading near impossible.

We pray to God to keep us safe

Burkina Faso has in recent years been gripped by an escalating and complex conflict that has spread across the Sahel region to several countries including Niger and Mali.

The deteriorating security situation, which has displaced some 800,000 Burkinabes, is complicating the countrys response to COVID-19, the highly infectious disease caused by the new coronavirus. In particular, people in Burkina Fasos north and east are faced with the double threat of the pandemic  the country has recorded 652 coronavirus cases and 44 deaths to date  and worsening violence, which killed more than 2,000 last year.

Across the country, more than two million people are in need of food aid.

The camp for internally displaced people in Barsalogho, a town in Burkina Fasos north [File: Henry Wilkins/Al Jazeera]

Asked if Ramadan is going to be a joyful experience this year, Bamago replies: No, it wont be the same as in the past, reminiscing about the rice and porridge he would have for iftar in previous years.

We only pray to God to help keep us safe from this coronavirus, he adds.

Barsalogho is a relatively safe haven for Bamogo after his nearby village was attacked by masked fighters last year killing some 15 people. Thousands of IDPs have fled to the town from surrounding settlements, which have seen massacres carried out by groups affiliated with the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) and Jamaat Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM).

Many of the IDPs in Barsalogho live in tents covered by blue tarpaulins or houses belonging to local people, some with just one or two rooms sheltering as many as 20 people. Although the town is yet to confirm a case of COVID-19, many IDPs say they live in fear the coronavirus will arrive soon.

Health experts say the disease could spread like wildfire in cramped, unsanitary conditions.

The market in Barsalogho has been closed by the government to stop the spread of the virus, making access to food even more difficult for locals and IDPs alike. Meanwhile, the World Food Programme (WFP) says the pandemic sweeping the globe risks exasperating the already precarious food situation for IDPs.

The government has had to restrict movement to contain the spread of COVID-19, says David Bulman, country director and representative of the WFP in Burkina Faso.

When people cant move around, in an economy that is heavily dependent on the informal sector, many of them cant work.

There are so many people here who earn their money each day and use their earnings to feed their family that night. If people cant work, a lot more families wont have much to eat, and will go hungry.

Compounding the problem, the price of food at markets in Burkina Faso has begun to rise rapidly since the country reported its first coronavirus case in early March.

In Burkina Faso, approximately 12.5 million Muslims (61.5 percent of the population) are observing Ramadan. And this year, many of them carry out the practice of zakat (charitable giving which becomes especially important during Ramadan) by providing IDPs with food and shelter.

IDPs travelling with their possessions along the road from Barsalogho to Kaya [File: Henry Wilkins/Al Jazeera]

In Kaya, another town in the countrys north where more than 80,000 IDPs have arrived in recent months, many of those displaced by conflict, are living in host communities rather than camps.

I always have juices and porridge and to (cakes made from millet, sorghum or corn)  A lot of people come, says Chief Madiega Dianbende, the community leader of Sector 6, a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Kaya hosting to several hundred IDPs.

He and other residents of Sector 6 have opened up their homes to IDPs flowing in from the surrounding countryside. IDPs sleep in the locals compounds and those unable to hold their own iftar are provided with food by the chief.

Dianbende points out that zakat is an essential part of Ramadan. Its important to share, especially at this time of year. Its just about giving what we can, food money and anything else.

He says there is enough food to make do for now, but he adds: Its really not enough.

This disease has changed everything. Those who were bringing us food before are coming less and less.
A city official in Northern California has been booted from his post after suggesting that old, sick and homeless people should be left to die during the coronavirus pandemic.

Ken Turnage II, chairman of the city planning commission of Antioch, located 35 miles east of Oakland, said in a Facebook post last month that the sick, the old, the injured should be left during the pandemic to meet their natural course in nature, The Associated Press reported.

The World has been introduced to a new phrase Herd Immunity which is a good one, he wrote in the since-deleted post. In my opinion we need to adapt a Herd Mentality. A herd gathers it ranks, it allows the sick, the old, the injured to meet its natural course in nature.

Turnage added that homeless and other people who just defile themselves by either choice or mental issues should also be allowed to perish as this would fix what is a significant burden on our Society and resources that can be used.

My @KPIXtv co-worker @AndreaKPIX reports Antioch city council voted to fire planning commission chair Ken Turnage. He says we should let nature take its course, let Covid-19 remove the weak & old. Andreas report @ 11 pm tonight. My report earlier today. https://t.co/vmPVpu7yWm  Da Lin (@DaKPIX) May 2, 2020

As local media reported, many city residents and officials were aghast at Turnages remarks.

Antioch Mayor Sean Wright, who appointed Turnage in 2017 to head the planning commission, lambasted the comments as abhorrent, according to The Mercury News.

As public officials in one of the largest and most diverse cities in Contra Costa County, we are called to serve all residents of Antioch; whether young or old, rich or poor, healthy or unhealthy, housed or unhoused, Wright said in a statement.

One resident said he was flabbergasted and in disbelief that  someone who represents my city of Antioch could find the heart to write such racist and discriminatory...

Continue reading on HuffPost
With glossy magazines going the digital-only route in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, celebrities are taking charge of their own photoshoots. Jacqueline Fernandez unveiled her first-ever digital magazine cover on Instagram, in which she is seen posing with a horse.

Jacqueline, who is stationed at Salman Khans Panvel farmhouse during the lockdown, is on the cover of the May issue of Harpers Bazaar India. She said that she is reconnecting with nature during this time.

It has been such an enriching liberating experience for me, being fully aware of the pain and suffering the pandemic has caused for many, Im just grateful that Im on a farm, safe and well. Doing everything that I can to help those in need from here and praying for strength and health to each one in this world during these tough times, the actor told the magazine.

Recently, Jacqueline gave fans a peek into Salmans workout session at his home gym and promised that there is a lot more to come. She wrote in her Instagram post, Gifted or just very hard working?? I feel hes grateful for everyday and respects the position the Almighty has given him @beingsalmankhan to all the Salman Khan fans, theres a lot more to come, stay tuned, stay safe! #lockdown #pyaarkarona.

Earlier, Salman shared a picture of Jacqueline sneakily clicking him while he worked out and wrote, Jacky got caught taking a pic chori chori Chupke chupke... she took one more after that which she will post on her own! @jacquelinef143.

Also see | Meenakshi Seshadris final goodbye to Damini co-star Rishi Kapoor: I will remember you Rishi ji always

Meanwhile, Jacqueline was last seen in the recently-released Netflix original film Mrs Serial Killer alongside Manoj Bajpayee and Mohit Raina. She plays a devoted wife who will stop at nothing, including murder, to prove the innocence of her husband, who has been charged with serial murders. The film has been unanimously panned by critics.

A Hindustan Times review of Mrs Serial Killer said, Not only does it disrespect your intelligence, it pretends --for a brief time towards the end -- that it has been in on the joke all along. It has none of the tongue-in-cheek chuckles that producer Farah Khans Main Hoon Na did, but is, instead, a strong contender for one of the worst films of 2020.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
Reporter

Mary Schenk is a reporter covering police, courts and breaking news at The News-Gazette. Her email is mschenk@news-gazette.com, and you can follow her on Twitter (@schenk).
The Philippines halted all inbound passenger flights for a week starting Sunday to free up space in quarantine centres filled with thousands of migrant workers who have come home during the coronavirus pandemic.



Millions of Filipinos work abroad, with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Singapore and Qatar among the most popular destinations.



Some 24,000 have already returned home, many after losing their jobs as the global economy screeches to a halt because of the virus.



Those returning are required to complete a 14-day quarantine at centres built or re-purposed by the government that are now filled to capacity.



"The new flight restriction... will be implemented for one week to give the government the opportunity to decongest the quarantine facilities in Metro Manila," government official Carlito Galvez said in a statement.



The announcement effectively suspends the repatriation programme for workers affected by the pandemic, and the government has told them to stay in their host countries for now.



However, outbound flights will be allowed to continue, including those flying stranded foreigners out of the country.



The Philippines has converted several convention centres, ships, hotels, and government facilities into quarantine centres as the number of people infected with the coronavirus has risen.



As of Sunday the country had reported over 9,200 cases and 607 deaths, though due to a limited testing capacity the numbers are thought to be higher.
A woman in her 20s is fighting for her life in hospital with "slash injuries" after a street fight in north-west London.

Police were called at 11.30pm on Saturday to Lawrence Way in Neasden to reports of people fighting in the street.

Officers attended with paramedics from the London Ambulance Service.

A woman was taken to hospital with "slash injuries to her abdomen".

Police and paramedics were called to reports of a street fight in Lawrence Way / Google Street View

Her condition is currently critical, police said.

No arrests have been made and enquiries into the circumstances are ongoing, led by the Met Police's North West Command Unit.

Witnesses are asked to call 101 quoting CAD 8620/2 May.
'The Union government does not have much of a governance function other than to send orders.'

'But even the sending down of orders it cannot do properly,' observes Aakar Patel.

IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi interacts with Opposition leaders last month. Photograph: ANI Photo

Our good and bad qualities as a nation and as a people, the shortcomings and peculiarities of our culture, the incompetence of our government and State, all of these are being exposed by COVID-19.

We are facing as a species the same problem across the world -- a disease with no cure, whose spread can only be slowed by individual cooperation, and whose worst affected victims can only be saved by a well equipped healthcare infrastructure.

This is, of course, something that India does not have.

We are a poor nation, with a per person income that is 30 times less than that in developed nations, with a life expectancy over 10 years less than that of developed nations and yet we spend less as a percentage of our GDP on healthcare than they do.

So it is our fault as a democracy that we have tolerated such a lack of focus on the population's health, and we will pay for it the longer this plague continues.

There are real consequences to not having more intensive care unit beds and ventilators and trained staff, and we will see them soon and some of us who are reading these words (and writing them) will feel those consequences.

Who can we blame for the fact that our Union government spends five times more on defence than on health? We should blame ourselves and not those we elect.

But we can blame our government for incompetence and that is the second thing that is being exposed and will continue be exposed.

And this holds true for both Centre and province because very little thinking goes into our decision making as this period is making clear.

The Union government does not have much of a governance function other than to send orders.

But even the sending down of orders it cannot do properly.

It made a law that would send business owners to jail if there was a violation of COVID-19 protocol in their factories and offices.

How would it be determined whether a worker got infected at work or at home?

How would it be known whether it was due to carelessness or misfortune?

How would it be known that the fault was that of the business owner?

None of this was thought through when the order was approved and passed.

When the details became known, a junior minister was sent to clarify that this law was now being altered.

It is not a small matter. It shows that the government is not thinking about how we are going to reopen this lockdown.

At the level of the province, where governance actually happens, there is no real governance.

In the state I live, the government decided to transfer over 100 undertrials, some of them COVID-19 positive, to a jail in a part of the state which was a green zone (meaning that till then it had no cases).

This created an uproar and was a scandal.

The government had not thought about this, and so had to bring these people back in another convoy, again risking the spread.

Such stories are common throughout this country and these things will continue to happen.

The last thing that will be exposed is us: Me and you and all of us as a culture.

COVID-19's spread can only be halted successfully if we maintain discipline.

Wearing a mask so that we protect others, washing our hands to protect ourselves, going out only if necessary and not exposing others to danger.

And this must happen here, in India, where already the rich are bribing their way to holidays and picnics, where governments are being pulled down and victory rallies being held, where the curfew passes are being duplicated and faked so that people can move around.

In the United States, which is suffering far more than we are at the moment, there is also a lockdown but it is different from ours.

Shops and offices and schools are closed, but there is no ban on the movement of people.

The government expects that its guidelines on social distancing will be followed by the population for their own safety.

There is no curfew that is being enforced by the police in the US unlike in India, because it is not required.

In India, the government believes that the only way to make people behave, even when their own safety is under threat, is through the danda.

What does that say about you and me and about our culture? That is what is being exposed in this period.

I have not touched upon our prejudices and our bigotry which has become so pronounced and so obvious to the world that the prime minister and the foreign minister had to telephone Gulf leaders to walk back the comments of BJP legislators and expatriate Indians against Muslims and Islam.

Many things about us are being exposed because of COVID-19 and will continue to be exposed.

What a strange, amazing and terrifying time it is for us to be alive and be observers of what is happening around us.

Aakar Patel is a columnist and writer.

You can read Aakar's columns here.
KUALA LUMPUR, May 3 (Xinhua) -- A medical consultant expert team sent by the Chinese government wrapped up their two-week working visit to Malaysia on Sunday, during which they shared Chinese experiences in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic in a gesture of solidarity and friendship between the two countries.

SHARING EXPERIENCES

The team was seen off on Sunday at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport by Chinese Ambassador Bai Tian and representatives from Malaysia's Health Ministry.

The team was organized by China's National Health Commission and selected by the health commission of Guangdong province, comprised of eight health experts in various fields such as infectious disease, respiratory, intensive care, microbiology/virology, nosocomial infection and Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).

During the two-week stay in Malaysia, members of the team shared China's measures and experiences related to fighting COVID-19, based on their respective areas of expertise, said Li Jun, head of the Chinese anti-COVID-19 Medical Consultant Expert Team.

According to Malaysia's Health Ministry, the expert team visited 13 medical institutes, public universities and research facilities in and around the capital city of Kuala Lumpur as well as in Sarawak and Sabah in east Malaysia. A total of 15 teleconferences were held throughout their visit.

"We wanted to share with our Malaysian friends on what China has experienced and what we have done in Guangdong Province to fight the pandemic; we wanted to share without reservation in the hope that they could apply what is suitable for them," Li told reporters before leaving Malaysia, noting that "I think we have achieved that goal."

During the discussions, Malaysian officials, doctors and experts have shown interest in learning from China's experiences, including the application of TCM in treating COVID-19 patients in China, to which the expert team had provided detailed explanations, said Li.

"TCM has benefited the people in China, and we hope it would also benefit the people in Malaysia," said Li, who is the vice-president of Guangdong Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

FOSTERING COOPERATION

At the end of their stay in Malaysia, the expert team held a wrap-up meeting with the Malaysian Health Ministry, in which they spoke positively of Malaysia's measures undertaken in addressing the pandemic and in treating the patients.

"Malaysia's fight against COVID-19 has been conducted in an orderly way," said Li.

At the meeting, the Chinese experts also provided advice on ways to prevent a rebound of cases, safeguarding medical personnel and testing procedures, among others.

Following the meeting, Malaysian Health Minister Adham Baba said Malaysia has gained valuable insight into handling the COVID-19 outbreak from the experiences shared by the Chinese expert team.

"The shared experiences and knowledge gained from the multiple engagements with the medical expert team have been invaluable, and provided the Ministry of Health Malaysia better understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic," he said.

This working visit has been a testament to the close relationship between the two countries and Malaysia looks forward to further collaboration with China for the benefit of the community in both countries, he added.

Malaysian officials said they are looking at further cooperation with China in fighting the pandemic, including the development of a vaccine. Li and his team are also looking forward to working with Malaysian counterparts on medical, technical and research cooperation in the future.

TOKEN OF FRIENDSHIP

Due to their busy schedule and Malaysian government's restrictive measures to contain the outbreak, the expert team had little time to contact locals, but the team said they could all feel the hospitality of the Malaysian people.

Li recalled ordinary people showing thumb-up and saying thank you on several occasions during their visit. "Some would try to say 'Xie Xie', while some would gesture to us, and we would wave back," he said.

The expert team said they were impressed by the professionalism and dedication of their Malaysian counterparts. They believe international cooperation is essential to win the fight against the pandemic.

"We must work together to fight infectious disease. A country is safe only when every other country is safe," said Li. "No country could detach itself from an interconnected world."

As of Saturday, Malaysia recorded a total of 6,176 COVID-19 cases, 4,326 or 70 percent of which have been cured and discharged, besides the total death of 103. The government announced that restrictions would be eased and most of the economy restarted on Monday following the recent decline of cases.

The experts said they hope their experiences could help Malaysia's fight against the outbreak and that their visit would contribute to the friendship between China and Malaysia.

"I can say that our working visit is not only a trip to share experience, but also a trip of friendship to contribute to the deepening of the friendship between China and Malaysia," said Li.

His view was echoed by Liu Xiangxin, the psychology expert in the team. "With the friendship and solidarity between China and Malaysia, we will win the fight against the pandemic together," he said.
Anglican bishops across Canada say the pandemic has revealed the urgent need for a guaranteed basic income program; and they've written to the prime minister asking him to implement it.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 3/5/2020 (625 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Anglican bishops across Canada say the pandemic has revealed the urgent need for a guaranteed basic income program; and they've written to the prime minister asking him to implement it.

Spearheaded by Geoff Woodcroft, bishop of Ruperts Land, which includes parts of Manitoba and northwestern Ontario, the letter is signed by 28 of 29 of the churchs bishops, along with Linda Nicholls, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada.

"Of all the issues the Anglican church has been involved in, this is as unanimous as it gets," said Woodcroft, noting the only reason not all bishops signed is because the Diocese of Athabasca, which includes Fort McMurray, is battling a flood.

"Its totally exciting to see so many solidly behind this."

In the letter, the bishops applaud the government for its response to the pandemic, including the emergency benefit for laid-off workers, but it notes some people are excluded from such programs.

The letter calls a guaranteed basic income an "affordable, just, evidence-based policy option."

Citing the 1970s Manitoba Basic Income Experiment, or Mincome, and recent efforts in Ontario, the letter notes it would provide "beneficial returns in every aspect of our polity, from justice to health, from education to social welfare."

It would not just be "an astute financial policy," it goes on to say, but also would mark "our identity as a country who cares for one another... a new social contract, defining a new relationship among Canadians, through the mediating role of our government."

It would also be a "great, transformational legacy left by this government" out of the pandemic, equal to the creation of universal health insurance.

Woodcroft got the idea when he saw the effect of the pandemic on Manitoba's poor.

"I was watching people struggle, and watched parishes trying to help those falling between the cracks," he said of how Anglican churches in the province were stepping up to provide food and other basic necessities.

"It hit my heart again and again."

He read Hugh Segals book, Bootstraps Need Boots: One Tory's Lonely Fight to End Poverty in Canada, in which the author outlines the case for a guaranteed basic income.

"I devoured it," he said, adding he reached out to other experts on the topic such as Evelyn Forget at the University of Manitoba.

I was watching people struggle, and watched parishes trying to help those falling between the cracks... It hit my heart again and again.  Bishop Geoff Woodcroft

Last week, he organized a Zoom meeting for Anglican bishops and Segal. During that meeting it became apparent there was cross-country interest in the idea.

Following the meeting, Woodcroft wrote a first draft of the letter and then invited response from other bishops. The final copy was sent to the prime minister on the weekend.

"I did it out of a sense of Christian compassion," he said about why he is promoting the idea.

"The call of God on the body of Christ is to look after our neighbours. God wants everyone to have life, and to have it abundantly. (This) is one way to open the door to abundance for everyone."

Woodcroft believes Canadians will support it, and that it will especially resonate in Manitoba where people generously help people living in poverty.

"I also believe they would want to prevent people from becoming poor in first place," he said, of why he believes many will get behind the call.

Forget, an economist and professor in the department of community health sciences at the University of Manitoba, has been researching guaranteed basic income for about a decade. She welcomes the support of the Anglican church.

The Free Press is committed to covering faith in Manitoba. If you appreciate that coverage, help us do more! Your contribution of $10, $25 or more will allow us to deepen our reporting about faith in the province. Thanks! BECOME A FAITH JOURNALISM SUPPORTER Click here to learn more about the project.

"I would expect faith communities to be thinking about economics and social justice," she said, noting she isnt surprised to see the pandemic spurring this conversation.

"People should have enough to live on... its a shock to see how little some people are paid to do essential jobs," she noted. "Many of them are not earning enough to be above the poverty line."

Woodcroft said the initiative is not tied to any political party. "This is the work we should be doing. This is the work God calls me to do."

In addition to the Anglican bishops, the letter was signed by Susan Johnson, national bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, and Jason Zinko, bishop of the same denomination in Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario.

Manitobans are invited to show their support by writing to their MP and the prime minister. More information is available on the dioceses website at www.rupertsland.ca.

faith@freepress.mb.ca
The Indian armed forces will on Sunday (May 3) conduct fly-pasts, play military bands, light up ships at sea and shower flower petals at different places across the country in order to express gratitude to the corona warriors who are busy fighting the highly contagious virus.

During the current crisis, it is the doctors, nurses, policemen, media, sanitation workers, delivery personnel, bank employees, government employees and local store owners who have put their lives on the line to ensure that we as a nation are protected and cared for adequately," Army PRO Colonel Aman Anand was quoted as saying by ANI.

WATCH: Indian Army, Navy, IAF, Coast Guards all set to salute corona warriors, show solidarity on May 3 pic.twitter.com/Prmn5NwIEM  Zee News English (@ZeeNewsEnglish) May 2, 2020

It may be recalled that Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat had announced on Friday (May 1) that the Indian Army, the Indian Air Force (IAF), and the Indian Navy will organise multiple events that will highlight the support of the nation towards the corona warriors like doctors, nurses, sanitation workers, policemen etc, who are at the forefront of the country's war against the deadly virus.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has welcomed the announcement by CDS Rawat to have the three defense services show solidarity with 'corona warriors'. "I welcome the announcements by the Chief of Defence Staff today. India has waged a strong fight against COVID-19 due to courageous frontline warriors who have cared and cured many. They are spectacular. India applauds them and their families," he tweeted.

I welcome the announcements by the Chief of Defence Staff today. India has waged a strong fight against COVID-19 due to courageous frontline warriors who have cared and cured many. They are spectacular. India applauds them and their families. https://t.co/IeKb7qZYwI  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) May 1, 2020

Fighter and transport aircraft of the IAF will take part in flypasts from Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir to Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, and from Dibrugarh in Assam to Kutch in Gujarat on Sunday. The helicopters from IAF and Navy will shower flower petals on the hospitals where COVID-19 patients are undergoing treatment.

The Navy and Indian Coast Guard (ICG) will move ships in formations at sea at select locations while Army bands shall visit COVID-19 hospitals and play tunes outside the hospitals in an expression of gratitude to the corona warriors.

IAF helicopter will shower flower petals over two hospitals At 10 am on Sunday. In Gujarat, the South Western Air Command (SWAC) has planned two flower petal drop sorties over two hospitals in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar between 9 am to 10 am.

The Navy at Porbandar illuminated ships from 7.30 pm to 11.59 pm on Saturday and this will conitnue on Sunday too. In Kolkata, a band has been planned at Victoria memorial for both Saturday and Sunday. The Army Uttar Maharashtra and Gujrat (UMANG) Sub Area HQs Nagpur has planned wreath-laying at Police Memorial for Sunday morning, followed by presenting of sweets to doctors and healthcare staff at two locations--Govt Medical College and Indira Gandhi Medical College.

On Sunday morning, the Naval Officer-in-Charge (Andhra Pradesh) will be visiting designated COVID-19 hospital at Visakhapatnam and felicitate the medical fraternity for their efforts. This will be followed by a naval helicopter from INS Dega showering flower petals on the hospital treating COVID-19 patients at Visakhapatnam. Two Indian Navy ships will also be illuminating at anchorage from 7.30 pm to midnight on Sunday at Visakhapatnam coast to pay homage to these COVID-19 warriors.

A Sukhoi Su-30MKI flypast over Assam assembly will take place around 10.30 am. The showering of flower petals at COVID-19 hospitals in Itanagar (Arunachal Pradesh), Guwahati (Assam), Shillong (Meghalaya) and Kolkata (West Bengal) will be done at 10.30 am. IThe band display of the IAF will take place in Guwahati and the flypast is subject to weather conditions.

Five Naval ships have been planned by Western Naval Command (WNC) for illumination from 7.30 pm to 11.59 pm off the Gateway of India, Mumbai. They would prominently display banners "India Salutes Corona Warriors". They will sound the ship's siren and fire a flare at 7.30 at anchorage.

Additionally, the Naval Air stations at Goa would display human chain messages, "India Salutes Corona Warriors", on the runway to honour the corona warriors. Aerial photography for the same would also be undertaken. However, social distancing norms will be ensured during the activity.

The Indian Navy aviation assets would undertake showering of petals by helicopters on COVID-19 hospitals--Mumbai's Kasturba Gandhi Hospital and INHS Asvini, Colaba. The activity is tentatively planned to be undertaken between 10 am-10.30 am.

Meanwhile, the total number of coronavirus cases in India jumped to 37,776 as of 11.45 pm (IST) on May 2 with the death toll mounting to 1,223.
The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has sent an urgent appeal to President Muhammadu Buhari urging him to urgently instruct the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice Abukabar Malami SAN to work with appropriate ministries and agencies to identify, publish and use confiscated stolen assets as isolation centres.

SERAP said: Using confiscated assets as isolation centres would provide safe and enabling environments for the treatment and care of people, improve the authorities ability to respond to COVID-19, reduce the risks to Nigerians and to public health.

The Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire, had last week reportedly begged Nigerians to donate and temporarily make their buildings available as isolation centres. According to him, more buildings would be needed, as the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) aims to test two million people in the next three months.

In the urgent appeal dated May 2, 2020 and signed by SERAP deputy director, Kolawole Oluwadare, the organisation said: While it is important to ramp-up testing for COVID-19 to prevent the spread of the virus, asking Nigerians to donate their buildings as isolation centres would be counter-productive, as it would put them at greater risk of contracting and spreading COVID-19.

SERAP also said: Rather than begging Nigerians to donate their buildings as isolation centres, the authorities should identify, publish and use confiscated assets as isolation centres, as a temporary measure. Using confiscated assets as isolation centres would be proportionate, necessary, and serve a legitimate objective, namely to protect public health and public order (ordre public).

According to SERAP, The proposed measure would be lawful, and more effective, as it would be in the public interest. Using the confiscated assets as proposed would neither violate the accuseds right to property nor entail a duty to compensate. The proposal by the Minister of Health would pose unnecessary risks to public health.

The urgent appeal, read in part: SERAP urges you to ask Mr Malami to urgently work out the details and modalities for implementing these recommendations with the Ministry of Health, Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC), the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC).

SERAP urges you to ask the Minister of Health to drop the idea of begging Nigerians to donate their buildings as isolation centres, and to move swiftly to focus on implementing these recommendations as a step towards effectively reducing the spread of COVID-19, treating and caring for people, and fulfilling the right to health, in line with Nigerias human rights obligations and the sustainable development goals.

Our recommendations, apart from being entirely compatible with Nigerias international anti-corruption obligations including the UN Convention against Corruption, which has been ratified, would also enhance the ability of the authorities to effectively and satisfactorily respond to COVID-19.

Reducing health risks associated with Nigerians donating their buildings as isolation centres would complement the authorities objectives of ending COVID-19.

READ ALSO:

As the right to health is closely related to and dependent upon the realization of other human rights, including the right to private and family life, asking Nigerians to donate their buildings as isolation centres may also violate this fundamental human right.

The recommendations would also enhance the ability of the authorities to effectively implement the countrys international human rights obligations particularly regarding to take effective steps to prevent, treat, and combat epidemic, endemic and other diseases, such as COVID-19.

SERAPs request is also in line with the repeated public commitment by your government to provide details and locations of all recovered stolen public funds.

Publishing confiscated assets would also be entirely consistent with the judgment by Justice Hadiza Rabiu Shagari of the Federal High Court, Lagos, which ordered your government to tell Nigerians about the stolen assets it allegedly recovered.

The judgment was delivered in July 2017 following a Freedom of Information suit number: FHC/CS/964/2016 brought by SERAP. Your government has refused to obey the judgment, despite Mr Malami publicly promising to do so.

We hope that the aspects highlighted will help guide your actions in acting to ensure enabling environments as isolation centres to treat and care for Nigerians, as the NCDC takes steps to ramp up testing for COVID-19.

Copied in the urgent appeal are: Abukabar Malami; Osagie Ehanire; Chikwe Ihekweazu, Director General, NCDC; Bolaji Owasanoye, Chairman, ICPC; and Ibrahim Mustafa Magu, Acting Chairman, EFCC.
Abu Dhabi, May 3 : More than 150,000 Indians in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have registered to fly home during the coronavirus pandemic, as per the latest figures with the e-registration launched by the Indian missions.

"As of 6 p.m. on Saturday, we received more than 150,000 registrations," Consul General of India in Dubai, Vipul told Gulf News on Saturday.

A quarter of them want to return after losing their jobs, he said.

"About 40 per cent of the applicants are workers and 20 per cent are professionals. Overall, 25 per cent have cited job-loss as the reason for leaving the country." About 10 per cent of the applicants are visit/tourist visa holders who were stranded after the flight suspension and lockdown in India. The rest of the applicants include those with medical emergencies, pregnant women and students, Vipul said.

The Indian Embassy in Abu Dhabi and the Indian Consulate in Dubai on Wednesday night began the e-registration for forming the database of their citizens wishing to fly home.

While there are Indians registering to return to various states, the Consul-General told Gulf News that 50 per cent of the applicants were from the state of Kerala.

Keralites comprise more than one million of the 3.4 million Indians in the UAE.

Vipul however, said the missions have not yet received intimations from the Indian government about the mode of transporting the stranded citizens, the pricing of the tickets or how the COVID-19 test results of applicants would be assessed for their journey.

"There are high-level discussions going on regarding these things," he said, adding that the e-registration would be open "till the time the issue (of repatriating Indians wishing to return home) stablilises".
After two hospitals in the northeastern city of Harbin experienced CCP virus cluster outbreaks, the nearby city of Mudanjiang also reported cluster outbreaks at the Kangan Hospital, considered the citys top hospital.

Both cities are located in Heilongjiang Province.

Internal documents that The Epoch Times recently obtained also revealed that the Heilongjiang government issued strict regulations to control and prevent outbreaks inside hospitals, noting that they should adopt measures similar to those in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the epidemic first broke out.

The Heilongjiang government also arranged for a Mudanjiang official to take over two hospitals in the city, indicating that the outbreak had become severe.

Cluster Outbreaks At Hospitals

The Epoch Times previous reporting showed that authorities in northern China have underreported infections. But even going by official statistics, it showed that the virus was spreading within multiple hospitals.

For several weeks, the Heilongjiang health commission has announced new patients and asymptomatic carriers in Mudanjiang and Harbin nearly every daymost of them having contracted the virus at hospitals.

In one example, a woman surnamed Gong visited the Mudanjiang Kangan Hospital for her liver disease in late March. After the hospital became fully devoted to treating COVID-19 patients, she was transferred to another hospital.

But soon after, she developed COVID-19 symptoms. Her husband, Mr. Wang, who accompanied her on hospital visits, also began to develop symptoms.

In mid-April, both tested positive for COVID-19. Since then, more than ten people who were close contacts with Gong, including medical staff and patients at the second hospital where she was being treated, also tested positive.

Wuhan Mode

Mudanjiang currently has three designated COVID-19 hospitals. Hongqi Hospital is dedicated to treating patients in severe and critical condition; Kangan Hospital is dedicated to treating patients in mild and medium condition; and the Suifenhe Peoples Hospital treats asymptomatic carriers. Suifenhe also has a makeshift hospital.

Suifenhe is a county level city that is experiencing a second wave outbreak, and is under the administration of Mudanjiang.

Internal documents from the Heilongjiang government revealed more details about how hospitals were dealing with the outbreak.

According to memos of a recent conference with Heilongjiang health officials held in Harbin on April 15, officials said they would encourage Harbin residents to take nucleic acid tests to test for the virus, but they must pay for the tests themselves.

At another conference held on April 19, officials spoke about adopting similar measures as in Wuhan inside COVID19-designated hospitals of Mudanjiang, according to the meeting memos.

For example, hospitals would rearrange their layout to have three zones: the red zone, the area where a virus patient is being treated; the clean zone, an area not exposed to the virus; and the buffer zone, an area where medical staff can disinfect themselves and take off their protective suits.

All medical staff at designated hospitals in Mudanjiang cannot go back to their homes at this time, and can only stay at the hospital or a designated hotel. Furthermore, the Mudanjiang medical teams who were previously dispatched to Hubei Province in February and March to assist in treating the large number of virus patients will now lead treatment teams in the city.

Hubei Province, where Wuhan is capital, is the hardest-hit region in China.

Inside the citys quarantine centers, officials requested that patients be monitored similar to patients in Hong Kong, meaning all must wear an electronic tracker wristband. The wristband is part of a geofence system; when the person walks outside the allowed perimeter, the system will alarm authorities.

Mudanjiang also decided to prolong the quarantine period for people returning to China from overseasfrom 14 days to 35 days. The city will also temporarily stop flights and trains to and from Beijing.

New Leader

A Mudanjiang internal government document dated April 17 explained that Communist Party committees would be set up inside the Hongqi Hospital and Kangan Hospital.

Zhao Rongguo, the citys deputy mayor, would be appointed to lead the two hospitals Party committees, with Liu Ying, director of the citys health commission, as deputy leader.

In China, all state-run businesses have Party organizations installed in order to ensure that employees toe the Party line. Both aforementioned hospitals are state-run.

U.S.-based China affairs commentator Tang Jingyuan said that the move was likely an indicator that the cluster outbreaks in the hospitals have spun out of control, adding that hospitals adopting Wuhan measures also suggested that the outbreak was very severe.

From The Epoch Times
9 patients die from COVID-19 as number of infected nears 600 - GeorgianJournal
For many African-American artists looking for gallery representation in the 1980s, George NNamdi was the only game in town. One of the few black art dealers, then and now, Mr. NNamdi opened his first gallery in Detroit in 1981 and focused on black artists working in abstraction. They had been largely ignored by the mainstream art world and marginalized, as well, within black communities that expected their artists to make socially and politically oriented work.

We were basically considered traitors if we didnt do specifically didactic work, said Howardena Pindell, 77, a graduate of Yale, who took her pioneering abstractions to the Studio Museum in Harlem only to be told, she said, by the director in the 1970s to go show your work with the white boys. They werent knocking on her door, either.

Mr. NNamdi offered opportunity. Ms. Pindell had eight solo exhibitions at his galleries in Michigan, Illinois and New York from 1987 to 2006. But by 2009, she had hired a lawyer to request the return of original works lent to the NNamdi galleries for exhibition, with a long trail of correspondence over the next decade seeking information on the whereabouts and sales of her art. She now is claiming that Mr. NNamdi, his son Jumaane and their related companies cheated her and profited off her vulnerability.

In a lawsuit touching on issues of race, loyalty and a lack of transparency in the art world, Ms. Pindell is seeking the return of 20 works of art from the NNamdis, along with three works from a Texas-based collector, Arthur Primas, and punitive damages of no less than $500,000.
Texas Park Ranger Is Pushed Into Lake After Warning Group About Social Distancing

A 25-year-old man was arrested after allegedly pushing a park ranger into the water in Austin, Texas.

The incident took place on April 30 at Commons Ford Park, officials told Fox7 in Austin.

Court documents obtained by the station said the ranger recalled standing on a rock near Lake Austin and was talking to a group of people who were drinking and smoking.

Brandon Hicks, the suspect, approached the ranger, who was not named, and pushed him into the water. A video was published on Reddit and other social media websites showing the incident.

The audio suggested that the ranger was telling the group about social distancing guidelines to curb the spread of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, a type of novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

Hickss intentional and reckless action could have caused the ranger to suffer serious bodily harm or even drown, authorities said. He was charged with attempted assault on a public servant.

Brandons intentional and reckless action could have caused the Ranger to strike his head on the dock as he was falling, and render himself unconscious in at least 3 feet of water where he could have drowned to death, an affidavit said, KXAN reported.

Hicks was in jail on Friday with his bail set at $7,500.

Austin police officer Justin Berry, who arrested Hicks, told the Austin American-Statesman that people were quick to help the ranger and identified Hicks as the suspect.

The patrons of the park actually came to the aid of the park ranger, Berry said. Several people came up to the ranger and apologized for the guys behavior. Thats the Austin we know, and thats the Austin we love.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last week announced measures to allow the state to open up again, including public parks.
Amid the world grappling with the coronavirus pandemic, Pakistan's secret agency ISI is propelling forth to weed off top Baloch and Pashtun leaders taking full use of the distraction. Over the weekend, missing Baloch journalist Sajid Hussain was found dead in Sweden. A day after this incident, Arif Wazir, a Pashtun Rights Activist and leader of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) was shot dead by unidentified armed persons outside his home in Wana, South Waziristan.

The Pashtun Tahafuz Movement has been critical of Pakistan's policies in the tribal belt with the Pakistan Army holding them responsible for an "anti-national agenda." The death of Arif Wazir makes him the eighteenth adult male in Ali Wazirs family that has been killed in the last decade. The PTM has also actively raised its voice against the army's atrocities on the civilians in Pashtun dominated areas.

Read: Pak Records Highest Single Day Spike In COVID-19 Infections

Read: Pak Neta Altaf Hussain Who Sang Saare Jahan Se Acha Says His Life Is In Grave Danger

"Arif Wazir is the 18th member of Ali Wazir's family to have been killed in a targeted attack. The family has sacrificed far more than most for the nation. Arif was an exceptional political activist and a young leader from South Waziristan. Heartbreaking," said Pashtun Tahafuz Movement in a tweet. Soon after, a hashtag #StateKilledArifWazir trended on social media.

Meanwhile, Sajid Hussain who was mysteriously killed in Sweden had left Pakistan in 2012 and had been living as a refugee in Sweden since 2017. The 39-year-old was a prominent Baloch journalist and Editor-In-Chief of the Balochistan Times. His body was found the police from a river in Uppsala.

Baloch political activists believe that Sajid was killed for exposing the Pakistan army and the ISI for rampant enforced disappearances, torture, and killings of political activists, intellectuals, students, and journalists in Balochistan, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces.

While sources have revealed that ISI is behind these coordinated attacks, it is seemingly obvious to see that the Pakistan intelligence agency is making full use of the pandemic to carry out targeted killings unfearful of the consequence as the world tries to come out of this global health crisis.

(With Agency Inputs)

Read: US Journalist Daniel Pearl's Parents Move Pak SC Challenging Singh High Court's Decision

Read: Pak Registers Highest Single Day Spike In COVID-19 Infections
The Foreign Ministry of Afghanistan says "a comprehensive investigation" is underway about Afghans being mistreated and allegedly pushed into a river by Iranian border guards.

Earlier, reports said that Iranian guards had mistreated a group of Afghan citizens, drowning them in Harirud River, on the Iran-Afghanistan border.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has categorically denied the allegations.

Several Afghan news outlets, as well as several social media users, reported on Saturday, May 2, that about fifty Afghan nationals who had entered Iran illegally had been arrested by border guards and "thrown into the Harirud River after being battered. Some reports said that between five and 23 of the refugees were either drowned or their fate was unknown.

Afghanistan's acting Foreign Minister, Mohammad Hanif Atmar, has ordered his political deputy to set up a commission to conduct a "comprehensive investigation" into the matter, the Ministry said on Twitter on Saturday.

Meanwhile, daily Sobh-e Kabul (Kabul Morning) cited officials in the province of Herat as saying that the reports concerning Iranian border guards mistreating and drowning of Afghans have not yet been verified, and a local investigation into the case was underway.

Nonetheless, in videos posted on social media, those who identify themselves as members of the mistreated Afghan refugees say Iranian border guards battered and then threw them into the Harirud River.

"While Afghans were struggling for their lives and drowning in the river, the guards were laughing," the eyewitnesses maintained.

Another passenger, Shah Wali, told RFE/RLs Afghan Service that "after torturing Afghans, Iranian border guards fired their guns and ordered them to jump into the Harirud River.

The Islamic Republic of Iran's Consulate General in Herat has strongly dismissed the reports as unfounded.

"Various sources, including officials from the Taibad Border Regiment, have denied the allegations, saying they have not arrested any Afghan nationals in the area," the consulate said.

Herat's GovernorSayed Wahid Qatali addresses a tweet to Iranian officials sayinf, "Our people are not Osama [bin-Laden] that you threw into the water. One day we will settle accounts."

Although the exact time and location of the alleged incident have yet to be clarified, daily Sobh-e Kabul quoted the spokesman for the governor of Herat, Jilani Farhad, as saying that the victims were residents of the town of Rubat-i-Sangin (or Rabat-e-Sangi) in the province and had entered Iran through Zolfaqar Valley.

Zulfiqar valley is located on the border of Iran and Afghanistan (as well as Turkmenistan).

Referring to "insecurity, unemployment and growing poverty" as the main reasons for Afghans entering Iran illegally, Afghan media have strongly criticized "Iranian border guards who mistreat Afghans repeatedly."

Sardar Mohammad Bahadori, a member of the Herat Provincial Council, told RFE/RL that Afghan people do not expect Iranian border guards to shoot at people who are forced to enter Iran out of necessity to find work.

"We request the neighboring country Iran to have mercy on those going there because of poverty and do not fire at them," said Bahadori, adding, "Instead of shooting Afghans, the Islamic Republic border guards could simply deport them, " Bahadori insisted.

There have been numerous reports in the past of Iranian border guards mistreating Afghan citizens.
NORTH HAVEN  On the second anniversary of a standoff and explosion on Quinnipiac Avenue, town police Saturday thanked SWAT team members and community residents for their response to the incident.

Two years ago today, members of the South Central Regional SWAT Team, which is comprised of officers from North Haven, East Haven, North Branford, Branford, Guilford, and Madison, responded to a home on Quinnipiac Avenue in North Haven to arrest a suspect involved in a domestic violence incident. While attempting to locate the suspect, a large explosion occurred injuring officers assigned to the team, police said on Facebook. We would like to take a moment to thank the members of the South Central Regional SWAT team for their efforts that day, as well as all the other agencies who came to assist that evening. We also would like to thank our community for the outpouring of support in the days that followed.
Davies was also a fierce advocate for the art form at the Photographers Gallery, intended to be democratic in its shows and its audiences. School parties were encouraged, as were discussion groups, which extended to monthly meetings of the Unemployed Photographers Club, formed following layoffs at Times Newspapers in 1991. Sue had rejected her first choice of name  The Photography Gallery  for a reason: she wanted to create a space where photographers felt at home, surrounded by photographs.  The Guardian (UK)
BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 3

Trend:

Over the past 24 hours, Armenian armed forces have violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops 22 times, Trend reports referring to Azerbaijani Defense Ministry.

The Armenian armed forces were using large-caliber machine guns and sniper rifles.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on the withdrawal of its armed forces from Nagorno Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
Lloyds will hand shares worth 200 to every member of staff this month to thank them for their efforts during the coronavirus crisis.

The bank has rewarded 65,000 staff for handling an unprecedented number of calls requesting mortgage payment holidays, rescue loans and overdrafts.

The bank's managers said they also recognised that customer-facing staff were under increasing pressure from irate members of the public who refused to socially distance themselves in branches.

A thank you: The bank has rewarded 65,000 staff for handling an unprecedented number of calls requesting mortgage payment holidays, rescue loans and overdrafts

Some staff members complained that members of the public had spat on them. The bank has ramped up a campaign to improve customer behaviour in response to cases of abuse.

Lloyds has also put all planned redundancies on hold and reassured staff they would still be entitled to bonuses paid this year for 2019. However, top executives  including chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio  have decided to forgo bonuses this year.

Now unions are also asking the bank to give an additional reward to branch staff in front-line roles.

Lloyds' profits in the first three months of this year were almost wiped out as it set aside nearly 1.5 billion to deal with an expected surge in bad loans. Profits came in at just 74 million for the period. RBS and Barclays have also made hefty provisions to prepare for the economic fallout from the pandemic.

Britain's biggest banks  including Lloyds, RBS, Barclays, HSBC, Santander and Standard Chartered  have now set aside 7.6 billion to deal with bad loans from business collapses.
Nepal's President Bidya Devi Bhandari on Sunday summoned the budget session of Parliament for Friday, raising hopes that the coronavirus lockdown may be eased soon.

As per the constitutional provision, the government needs to present the fiscal budget on May 29 every year.

President Bhandari has summoned the meetings of both the House of Representatives and National Assembly at the recommendation of the Council of Ministers as per the Article 93, section 1 of the Constitution, the President's Office said in a statement.

The meeting will take place at 4 pm at the federal parliament Building, New Baneswar.

The budget session approves the government's policies and programmes and fiscal budget.

With the government's decision to hold the budget session later this week, people are hoping that the nationwide lockdown will also be eased.

The ongoing lockdown will end on May 7, a day before the budget session of Parliament begins.

Nepal on Sunday confirmed 10 new coronavirus cases, taking the total number of infections to 69.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The United States has long hailed its aid overseas as a sign of good intentions, but friends and foes alike are seeing opportunities of their own by helping the global power ravaged by the coronavirus. Turkey, looking to end a rough spell with its NATO ally, and Egypt, whose autocratic leader counts on support from President Donald Trump, both sent military jets full of supplies in the past two weeks, while Taiwan, reliant on Washington for its defense and praised for its effective coronavirus response, has sent millions of masks. More controversially, China and Russia -- considered top global rivals by Washington -- have both sent medical goods to the United States, whose COVID-19 death toll is by far the highest in the world at more than 66,000. Nicholas Cull, a professor at the University of Southern California who studies international reputation, said that gifts were often more about donors' domestic audiences as leaders try to show that they are "winning the respect and admiration of the world." Cull said the most successful gifts come when a nation has no obvious political motivation and appears to be acting out of emotional attachment to another country. He pointed to the rousing reception in Italy for doctors sent by Albania, one of the poorest nations in Europe. By contrast, China's aid has been met by suspicion that Beijing is trying to assert itself or obscure the origins of the respiratory sickness, which was first discovered in the metropolis of Wuhan. - Welcoming aid, mostly - Recent history is full of disaster-hit nations whose prideful governments have refused help, but the United States has said it welcomes international cooperation against the virus. "We appreciate the generosity and support from around the world," a State Department spokesperson said. Other assistance has included testing kits from the United Arab Emirates and dispatches of medical teams from US allies, notably Poland. The US government has not directly taken aid from China, with Trump eager to blame Beijing over the pandemic amid criticism around his own performance. But China has channeled assistance to US states or through private donations. Jack Ma, China's richest person, in March announced a donation of 500,000 test kits, while New York Governor Andrew Cuomo thanked Ma and other Chinese businesspeople -- as well as Beijing's consulate -- for sending 1,000 ventilators. More recently, Chinese provinces donated supplies to the states of Maryland and Utah, with photo-ops showing local US officials holding signs that salute friendship. Russia gave prominent coverage when it sent a military plane of masks, ventilators and other supplies to New York. Trump, who has sought closer ties with President Vladimir Putin, called the gesture "very nice," although the State Department insisted the goods were purchased, not donated. Virus infections have since jumped inside Russia, and some social media users in both Egypt and Turkey have questioned whether their governments were really in a position to help others. Turkey has sent aid to some 55 countries. Its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been hoping to defuse tensions with the United States, especially with Congress over Turkey's purchase of an air defense system from Russia. The aid shipment marks part of an effort to reach out broadly to the United States after Erdogan "put all its eggs in Trump's basket," said Gonul Tol, director of the Turkey program at the Middle East Institute. "I'm sure there is an understanding in Ankara that this could be Trump's final year," Tol said, while adding: "Turkey's problems with the US are too deep to be resolved by this PR campaign." - Lasting damage to US? - The last time the United States received such wide assistance was after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans in 2005. The then administration of George W. Bush also decided largely to accept all aid regardless of politics, although it refused an offer of doctors from Cuba. Cull, the scholar of public diplomacy, said it was striking how little of Washington's own COVID-19 assistance gets noticed by Americans, who are more likely to oppose exporting aid at a time of need. The State Department says the US government has committed $775 million in overseas pandemic assistance. But Trump has also vowed to freeze funding for the World Health Organization, which is at the frontlines of the crisis and receives more than $400 million in US money each year, for alleged bias toward China. Cull expected that Trump's "America First" approach, coupled with scenes of COVID-19 devastation within the country, would bring lasting damage to the US reputation. "It's like a country with a terrible navy having to fight a naval war. Everybody knows that, for all the wonderful things in the United States, health care is a problem." Many people may still admire US products or universities, but "they are certainly not going to admire the American government in the way they have historically." Turkey's ambassador to the United States, Serdar Kilic, waits as a Turkish cargo plane carrying COVID-19 relief supplies is unloaded at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington in April 2020 A Turkish military cargo plane with medical supplies and protective equipment to help the US response to COVID-19 is unloaded at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington in April 2020 President Donald Trump shakes hands during a 2019 meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who has sent coronavirus aid to the United States, itself a major donor to Cairo A China Airlines plane taxies on the tarmac of Taoyuan International Airport in Taiwan, which has shipped aid around the world to fight the COVID-19 coronavirus A body is moved from a refrigeration truck serving as a temporary morgue to a vehicle at the Brooklyn Hospital Center in April 2020 A woman walks past a mural paying tribute to the sacrifice of doctors in Poland, which sent a medical team to the United States to help its ally battle the COVID-19 coronavirus
The Uttar Pradesh governmment has said that there wont be any relaxation in 19 districts of the state identified as Covid-19 red zones, Hindustan Times Hindi langiage publication Live Hindustan reported.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said on Saturday that the government will follow Centres guidelines, Live Hindustan reported, quoting his remarks to a television channel.

We are trying to turn all the red and orange zones in the state into green zones and free the state from coronavirus pandemic, Adityanath said yesterday.

The state government has allowed the reopening of certain shops selling non-essential commodities outside the Covid-19 hotspots in rural areas during the lockdown period.

Shops selling construction material, bricks, cement, sand, iron bars, hardware and mobile repairing shops located outside coronavirus hotspots in rural areas will be allowed to do business while strictly adhering to the norms of social distancing and other guidelines issued by the Centre, Chief Secretary R K Tiwari said on Saturday.

Adityanath further said on Saturday that the states revenu has taken a massive hit - it used to earn anywhere between Rs 17,000 crore to Rs 18,000 crore per month but in April the revenue collection is only Rs 1,000 crore. But he said that most important thing for the state government right now is the safety of the people.

He also appealed to the migrant workers to stay wherever they are, that the government will bring them back.

The centre had announced on Friday that a limited lockdown which includes suspension of air, train and inter-state road travel will continue to remain in force for two more weeks from May 4 across the country, but some activities would be allowed after classifications of districts into red, orange and green zones based on Covid-19 risk profiling.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had first announced a 21-day nationwide lockdown from March 25, which was later extended by two more weeks till March 3 to contain the virus spread.
Mumbai, May 3 : In a major relief for the depositors in the now defunct CKP Co-operative Bank, a senior Reserve Bank of India (RBI) official on Sunday said that around 99.2 per cent of the bank's depositors will get their full deposits back from the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation (DICGC).

The Registrar of Co-operative Societies, Pune, will next appoint a liquidator for starting the process in consultation with the DICGC.

The RBI official's assurance comes a day after the RBI announced the cancellation of the banking licence of Mumbai-headquartered co-operative bank, as its financial position had become unsustainable. The bank had a total of 1,32,170 depositors.

In a tweet on Sunday, Yogesh Dayal, Chief General Manager of the Department of Communication, RBI said: "CKP Co-op Bank Ltd., Mumbai has been under All Inclusive Directions of @RBI since 2014. As there was no scope for revival of the bank, its licence has been cancelled. Out of 132170 depositors of the bank, about 99.2% will get full payment of their deposits from DICGC." The RBI on Saturday said that through an order dated April 28, it had cancelled the licence of the CKP Co-operative Bank Ltd., Mumbai, to carry on banking business, with effect from the close of business on April 30.

As per central bank's statement on Saturday, the financial position of the bank is "highly adverse and unsustainable".

"There is no concrete revival plan or proposal for merger with another bank. Credible commitment towards revival from the management is not visible," the RBI statement said.

"The bank is not satisfying the requirement of minimum capital and reserves... and capital adequacy and earning prospects as stipulated in Section 22( 3)(d) of the Act and also stipulated minimum regulatory capital requirement of 9 per cent." According to RBI, the bank is not in a position to pay its present and future depositors.
Dr. Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response coordinator, speaks during a coronavirus task force briefing at the White House, Saturday, April 4, 2020, in Washington.

Associated Press/Patrick Semansky

Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator, said Sunday that protestors who were gathering with no personal protection or social distancing are "devastatingly worrisome."

Demonstrators who gather in groups to demand an end to lockdown measures could unknowingly infect high-risk relatives or loved ones at home, Birx said.

Birx's comment comes after mounting frustration with lockdown orders as protests were held in at least 10 states across the country over the weekend.

The public-health expert also said that businesses like salons and barbershops could be "safer" if everyone wore masks, but still does not recommend their reopening as a "good phase one activity."

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

White House coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said protests against social distancing orders were "devastatingly worrisome" as demonstrators did not wear masks or practice social distancing while gathering in large groups.

Dr. Birx said on "Fox News Sunday" that protestors who gather in groups with no protective practices could infect at-risk relatives at home after unknowingly being exposed to or carrying the virus.

"It's devastatingly worrisome to me personally because if they go home and they infect their grandmother or grandfather who has a comorbid condition and they have a serious or very unfortunate outcome they will feel guilty for the rest of their lives," Birx told host Chris Wallace. "So we need to protect each other at the same time as we're voicing our discontent."

Birx's comment comes after a weekend marked by protests in at least 10 states across the country as frustration continues to grow with the economic implications of ongoing lockdown orders.

Wallace also asked Birx if reopening businesses like hair salons and barbershops were safe, which the public health expert said were made "safer" if both customers and workers wore masks, but "we've made it clear that that's not a good phase one activity," referring to the White House's proposed plan for a gradual reopening of normal life.

Story continues

"I think the president's made it clear when he discussed the case in Georgia," Birx added, pointing to President Donald Trump's slam of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp's surprise announcement that the state would lift coronavirus restrictions in late April.

Birx also emphasized during the interview that reopening the country is based on federal guidelines that dictate states must have "gating criteria," including a decline in cases or positive tests for a 14-day period before beginning "phase one," which no state has currently.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Bir-Lahlou, 3 May 2020 (SPS) - President of the Repubilic, Secretary General of the Frente POLISARIO, Brahim Ghali, has addressed a message of condolence to President of the United Republic of Tanzania, H.E. Dr John Pombe Joseph Magufuli, on the passing away of of H.E. Ambassador Dr Augustine Mahiga, Minister of Constitutional and Legal Affairs and former Minister for Foreign Affairs and East African Cooperation of the United Republic of Tanzania.



I have learnt with deep sadness and sorrow, the passing away of H.E. Ambassador Dr Augustine Mahiga, Minister of Constitutional and Legal Affairs and former Minister for Foreign Affairs and East African Cooperation of the United Republic of Tanzania, on Friday 1st May at his home in Dodoma, said the president of the Republic in his message.



On this sad occasion, I would like to express to Your Excellency, to the People of Tanzania and to the family of the late Ambassador Augustine Mahiga our most sincere condolences for this sudden demise.



May his soul rest in perfect peace and may the Almighty God grant his family strength and fortitude at this time of mourning, he added. (SPS)



062/SPS
FILE PHOTO: Intravenous bags hang above young cancer patients at Rady's Children Hospital as they participate in decorating golden capes to wear as superheroes as part of Childhood Cancer Month in San Diego, California

Reuters

Gilead Sciences could be justified in charging up to $4,500 per coronavirus patient for its drug, a nonprofit pricing watchdog said in a recent report.

The California biotech is the maker of remdesivir, an experimental antiviral treatment that helped hospitalized COVID-19 patients recover 31% faster, shaving four days off hospital stays.

The company has yet to give a pricing strategy for remdesivir, beyond pledging to donate its current supply of the drug.

One Wall Street analyst calculated that Gilead could make $1 billion in 2020 by selling remdesivir at a $1,000 price tag, which he called "pretty reasonable."

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

While the big biotech Gilead Sciences has yet to outline its sales plan for the first effective coronavirus treatment, an influential drug pricing group has calculated the drug is worth up to $4,500 per patient.

The experimental antiviral called remdesivir was authorized for emergency use in the US on Friday, after a trial showed patients on the drug recovered 31% faster than those on a placebo. That translates to shaving four days off the typical hospital stay among these patients. It is the first drug to show a clinical benefit for COVID-19 patients in a high-quality randomized study.

The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) is a Boston-based nonprofit that analyzes drug pricing. The pharma industry regularly clashes with ICER, criticizing its models for being too rigid. The group often finds drugs to be overpriced compared to their value in the healthcare system.

But in the case of remdesivir, ICER said Friday a price of up to $4,500 per treatment course is justified for remdesivir. The organization cautioned its findings are based on preliminary data that may change over time.

ICER's analysis is focused on list prices for drug, which do not take into account rebates or discounts offered by drug companies.

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"We are releasing these estimates now, despite the fact that the evidence is highly uncertain and evolving, because now is the time when the public and policymakers should be actively debating how to link pricing to an overall platform to develop treatments for COVID-19," said Steven Pearson, ICER's president, in a statement. "The consequential discussion about the tradeoffs and priorities involved with different pricing approaches cannot wait."

But the California biotech has called it too early to set a long-term pricing strategy. So far, the company pledged to donate its current supply of remdesivir, which amounts to 140,000 treatment courses. The pricing question has become a top uncertainty among many investors and Wall Street analysts.

"The fact that ICER is typically conservative in all their analyses, and yet they can justify up to $4,500, seems pretty interesting," Jefferies biotech analyst Michael Yee wrote in a Sunday note to investors.

Read more: Gilead plans to spend up to $1 billion to ramp up manufacturing of its coronavirus treatment, but execs dodged Wall Street's questions about turning a profit

Using a placeholder of a $1,000 price, Yee estimated Gilead could make $1 billion on remdesivir by the end of 2020 if it sells 1 million treatment courses in the US and internationally. A $1,000 pricetag is "pretty reasonable" in the context of modern drug pricing, the analyst said.

Gilead has pledged it will donate its current supply of remdesivir, which amounts to about 140,000 treatment courses. CEO Daniel O'Day said Sunday the drug should start reaching patients within the next few days.

Remdesivir is given as a 10-day IV infusion and has only been tested in hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The company is also researching ways to administer the drug subcutaneously or through inhalation but has not provided any timetables on those efforts.

Read more: Coronavirus researchers are crafting drug cocktails with Gilead's antiviral remdesivir, tapping the HIV playbook to fight the coronavirus

Read the original article on Business Insider
The leaders of four major European nations have pledged to raise $8 billion to find vaccines and treatments for coronavirus. The international alliance consists of Norway's Erna Solberg, France's Emmanuel Macron, Italy's Giuseppe Conte and Germany's Angela Merkel. Europe is the worst affected nation by the pandemic with over 1,436,617 cases and 139,586 fatalities reported as of now.

Read: India Has Assumed Leadership Role In Fight Against COVID-19: Harsh Vardhan At G20

Read: COVID-19: G20 Launches International Initiative To Accelerate Access To Health Tools

In a press release, the European Council said that they are supporting the earlier call by the World Health Organization and other groups to brave COVID-19. It added that they were also building on the commitment made by the G20 Leaders. The G20 nations on April 26 launched a combined international initiative to accelerate the access of health tools needed to battle coronavirus.

'Access to COVID-19 Tools'

"For this reason, we have recently launched the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, a global cooperation platform to accelerate and scale-up research, development, access and equitable distribution of the vaccine and other life-saving therapeutics and diagnostics treatments. We are determined to work together, with all those who share our commitment to international co-operation. the press released added.

In addition to the four aforementioned leaders, the release was also signed by Charles Michel, President of the European Council and Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission. The leaders asserted that aimed to raise an initial 7.5 billion euros ($8 billion) in an online pledging conference on May 4 to make up the global funding shortfall estimated by the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB) and others. They added that more funding would be required to achieve their aim of manufacturing and delivering medicines on a global scale and to achieve universal access to vaccination, treatment and testing.

Previously, Health Ministers of G20 acknowledged the systematic weaknesses in health systems and vulnerabilities in the global communitys ability to prevent and respond to a pandemic. According to a statement released after the virtual meeting on April 19, the G20 Health Ministers addressed the need to improve the effectiveness of global health systems by sharing knowledge and closing the gap in response capabilities and readiness.

Read: COVID-19: G20 Launches International Initiative To Accelerate Access To Health Tools

Read: G20 Health Ministers Acknowledge Systematic Weakness In Health Systems To Fight Pandemic

(Image credits: AP)
Gettyimagesbank



By Jung Min-ho



Korea's legal age of consent is set to be raised to 16 from 13 after parliamentary approval.



On Wednesday, the National Assembly passed revisions to the criminal law to better protect children under 16 from sexual exploitation.



President Moon Jae-in is expected to sign it into law in two weeks.



The age of consent is that at which a person is considered mature and competent enough to consent to sexual activity. An adult who engages in sexual acts with a person under the age could be charged with child sexual abuse or rape.



Korea has long been criticized for keeping the legal benchmark too low. In Russia and Finland, it is 16; in California and Florida, it is 18.






Those holding Asbury Automotive Group (NYSE:ABG) shares must be pleased that the share price has rebounded 56% in the last thirty days. But unfortunately, the stock is still down by 34% over a quarter. But shareholders may not all be feeling jubilant, since the share price is still down 18% in the last year.

All else being equal, a sharp share price increase should make a stock less attractive to potential investors. In the long term, share prices tend to follow earnings per share, but in the short term prices bounce around in response to short term factors (which are not always obvious). The implication here is that deep value investors might steer clear when expectations of a company are too high. One way to gauge market expectations of a stock is to look at its Price to Earnings Ratio (PE Ratio). Investors have optimistic expectations of companies with higher P/E ratios, compared to companies with lower P/E ratios.

See our latest analysis for Asbury Automotive Group

Does Asbury Automotive Group Have A Relatively High Or Low P/E For Its Industry?

Asbury Automotive Group's P/E of 6.81 indicates relatively low sentiment towards the stock. We can see in the image below that the average P/E (10.0) for companies in the specialty retail industry is higher than Asbury Automotive Group's P/E.

NYSE:ABG Price Estimation Relative to Market May 3rd 2020

This suggests that market participants think Asbury Automotive Group will underperform other companies in its industry. Since the market seems unimpressed with Asbury Automotive Group, it's quite possible it could surprise on the upside. It is arguably worth checking if insiders are buying shares, because that might imply they believe the stock is undervalued.

How Growth Rates Impact P/E Ratios

Generally speaking the rate of earnings growth has a profound impact on a company's P/E multiple. When earnings grow, the 'E' increases, over time. That means unless the share price increases, the P/E will reduce in a few years. And as that P/E ratio drops, the company will look cheap, unless its share price increases.

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It's great to see that Asbury Automotive Group grew EPS by 16% in the last year. And its annual EPS growth rate over 5 years is 21%. With that performance, you might expect an above average P/E ratio.

Remember: P/E Ratios Don't Consider The Balance Sheet

One drawback of using a P/E ratio is that it considers market capitalization, but not the balance sheet. So it won't reflect the advantage of cash, or disadvantage of debt. Hypothetically, a company could reduce its future P/E ratio by spending its cash (or taking on debt) to achieve higher earnings.

Such spending might be good or bad, overall, but the key point here is that you need to look at debt to understand the P/E ratio in context.

So What Does Asbury Automotive Group's Balance Sheet Tell Us?

Asbury Automotive Group has net debt worth a very significant 141% of its market capitalization. This is a relatively high level of debt, so the stock probably deserves a relatively low P/E ratio. Keep that in mind when comparing it to other companies.

The Verdict On Asbury Automotive Group's P/E Ratio

Asbury Automotive Group's P/E is 6.8 which is below average (14.4) in the US market. The company has a meaningful amount of debt on the balance sheet, but that should not eclipse the solid earnings growth. If the company can continue to grow earnings, then the current P/E may be unjustifiably low. What we know for sure is that investors are becoming less uncomfortable about Asbury Automotive Group's prospects, since they have pushed its P/E ratio from 4.4 to 6.8 over the last month. For those who like to invest in turnarounds, that might mean it's time to put the stock on a watchlist, or research it. But others might consider the opportunity to have passed.

Investors should be looking to buy stocks that the market is wrong about. If the reality for a company is not as bad as the P/E ratio indicates, then the share price should increase as the market realizes this. So this free visual report on analyst forecasts could hold the key to an excellent investment decision.

Of course, you might find a fantastic investment by looking at a few good candidates. So take a peek at this free list of companies with modest (or no) debt, trading on a P/E below 20.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Aid handouts for poor communities allow them to just barely survive. This has to change.

A typical relief pack in the Philippines consists of a few kilos of rice, canned sardines, instant noodles, sachets of instant coffee, and a pack of sugar. Colloquially known as relief goods, food packs are distributed to poor and low-income households in times of disaster. They serve as immediate aid, a stop-gap measure; but for the poor, they are a lifeline until normalcy  a return to familiar rhythms of precarity  is restored.

Since President Rodrigo Duterte placed Metro Manila under community quarantine on March 12, and expanded this measure four days later to encompass the island group of Luzon, millions of relief packs have been distributed by state agencies, local governments, companies, non-government organisations, and individuals.

Yet their contents do not vary substantially; and the fact that they do not is telling of how both government and citizens value the needs of the poor and understand what is essential to survival.

Relief goods do not give relief, but rather offer the barest minimum of subsistence. Even then, what the state and private donors deem rudimentary is deficient, because hardly any thoughtful consideration is given to recipients needs. For instance, a typical relief pack does not allow families to cook, let alone prepare nutritious meals since basic pantry items and fresh produce are not included. Sacks of rice and bags of vegetables are more the exception than the rule.

Instead of asking what people need, we assume that we already know. Such mindless generosity conveys that the disaster-stricken should subsist on meagre allocations. Relief packs distributed to the hardest-hit and the worst-off are a metaphor for classed understandings and attributions of human dignity. They illuminate prevailing practices of care and explain the inadequacy and indignity of state responses to crises that trap the poor in cycles of deeper poverty and precarity.

Mismanaging a pandemic

After months of downplaying the coronavirus outbreak, Duterte eventually imposed a lockdown of Metro Manila, quickly deploying police and military to enforce immediate compliance. This militarised response proceeds from the governments view of the pandemic as a national security issue rather than a public health emergency. It reinforces the administrations law-and-order approach to governance and the presidents obsession with framing every crisis situation as a war.

In the span of two weeks, a state of calamity was declared and presidential emergency powers were granted to authorise the realignment of funds for governing a crisis that was fast becoming a catastrophe. While this has adversely affected the entire population, the lockdown has without a doubt disproportionately aggravated poor and low-income people.

Livelihood, mobility, housing, nutrition, sanitation, and healthcare have become especially precarious for socially vulnerable groups. As work was suspended, casual and contractual jobs were lost to termination or subjected to flexible work arrangements with reduced pay.

Daily wage earners under a no work, no pay scheme, and underpaid essential workers were left to walk long distances or made to endure perilous commutes on board crowded trucks, as mobility was severely crippled by the public transport shutdown, ban on domestic travel, and proliferation of checkpoints.

One migrant worker, for example, walked some 400km in five days, journeying from Muntinlupa, a city in Metro Manila, to his hometown in Camarines Sur, a province in southern Luzon.

Amid exhortations to self-isolate at home and observe physical distancing, stranded workers were admonished by government officials to find temporary accommodation to house them for the duration of the quarantine. Informal settlers and the homeless found themselves not only at a greater risk of contracting the virus but also in violation of strict directives by dint of their dense living conditions. Violators were punished, beaten up, arrested, ordered shot, or killed outright.

Without income and savings, or the freedom to ply a trade and find ways to put food on the table, people were made to depend on unreliable rations of insufficient relief goods. Until the lockdown, access to food has never been so insecure and prohibitive, and demanding food aid has never been so dangerous. In the absence of adequate water and sanitation infrastructure in urban poor settlements, appeals for frequent handwashing rang hollow. Pumps of hand sanitiser in village checkpoints replaced communal wash stations vital to practising good hygiene.

Starving and barely able to survive, the poor have struggled to keep themselves safe and healthy. As hospitals scrambled to manage the chaos from an overload of patients and severe shortage in essential equipment and personnel, the poors already diminished access to healthcare dwindled further.

In Manila, no other social group has been as terribly disadvantaged by the pandemic and the states botched responses to it than the urban underclass.

Reproducing urban inequalities

Locking down Metro Manila has aggravated and reproduced urban inequalities. National and local governments have failed to translate critical but untenable recommendations of home quarantine and physical distancing into viable action plans that understand informal settlements first, as built into the urban fabric, and then as vectors of transmission, and so require prioritising their inhabitants as an at-risk population rather than disciplining them.

This colossal mistake underlies a failure to recognise that extraordinary emergencies exceptionally hurt socially vulnerable groups and so urgently demand extraordinary responses centred on social justice.

But while these failures point to incompetence in governance, the finer point is that they radically expose deep flaws embedded in social structures. Reckless and inept responses to exceptional circumstances reveal fundamental gaps in the way our institutions and systems are organised and actually function, which in normal times already fail spectacularly to address social needs.

It is this very impotence and deficiency that mobilise and necessitate civic action. Yet, collective efforts will remain insufficient and unsustainable not only because resources and capacities are limited, but also because citizen interventions are meant to supplement rather than fill the gaps and repair the failures of government.

Unreflexive, unempathetic, and exclusionary practices of care

Nonetheless, the inadequacy of cultures of provisioning, whether public or private, owes more to deficits in practices of care. The way we exercise care as a society is unreflexive, unempathetic, and exclusionary.

It is unreflexive because it defaults to templates of giving which proceed from unexamined assumptions of what the poor need. It is unempathetic because it displays a lack of curiosity about and conveys disinterest in understanding their needs. It is exclusionary because it discriminates with requirements, qualifications, and conditionalities.

That we think in terms of what the poor need to survive rather than what they need to live, indicates a concern for mere survival rather than life. This preoccupation with getting by rather than what French philosopher Michel Foucault terms making live suggests an impoverished political imagination that can only hope for the poor to survive rather than thrive.

Narrow ideas of what people deserve materialise in the quality of help that is extended: in the selection of items included in the bags of aid that are distributed, in the amount of cash assistance that is allocated, or in the quality of accommodation provided. Regardless of intention, efforts therefore remain unresponsive to what people truly need, and as such fail to give relief.

A radical reimagination of care

Impoverished practices of care are rooted in embedded classed understandings and differential attributions of human dignity. They originate in the undignified view of the poor as people who matter less and therefore deserve less.

This idea informs beliefs that their needs are rudimentary, that substandard state welfare is acceptable, that shoddy generosity is unobjectionable, and that a life of deprivation excuses mediocre provisioning. The mentality that beggars cannot be choosers undergirds and characterises how Filipinos practise care as a society.

Correcting this requires a critical examination of how we regard and relate to the poor. A radical change in perspective encourages the development of a political imagination animated by the flourishing of life.

It is a quality of mind that militates against mere survival, questions celebrations of resilience, and transgresses what is permissible and desirable.

It demands more than what we are accustomed to giving and receiving. It requires distributing relief packs teeming with pantry staples, nutritious food items, fresh produce, toiletries, as well as health and hygiene essentials. It entails repurposing hotels to shelter and sustain shack dwellers and the homeless; guaranteeing hazard pay to uncounted essential workers; and providing direct and adequate financial assistance to poor and low-income households.

A political imagination insists on the radical. More than enacting unprecedented emergency measures, it demands a people-centred restructuring of healthcare, housing, and social protection systems to disrupt conditions that produce and reproduce urban marginality.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance.
On May 1, 2020, U.S. Navy sailors aboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Mustin (DDG 89) deployed in the Philippine Sea have conducted replenishment operation as sea with the dry cargo and ammunition Ship USNS Alan Shepard (T-AKE 3).

US Navy sailors aboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Mustin (DDG 89) prepare for a replenishment as sea with the dry cargo and ammunition Ship USNS Alan Shepard (T-AKE 3). (Picture source US Navy)

The USS Mustin is underway conducting operations in support of security and stability in the Indo-Pacific while assigned to Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) 15, the Navys largest forward-deployed DESRON and the U.S. 7th Fleets principal surface force.

The USS Mustin (DDG-89) is an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer in the United States Navy. This ship is the 39th destroyer of her class. USS Mustin was the 18th ship of this class to be built at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and construction began on 15 January 2001. She was launched on 12 December 2001 and was christened on 15 December 2001. On 26 July 2003, a twilight commissioning ceremony was held at the Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego, California.

The Arleigh Burke class of guided missile destroyers (DDGs) is a United States Navy class of destroyer built around the Aegis Combat System and the SPY-1D multifunction passive electronically scanned array radar. The ship is armed with 56 Raytheon Tomahawk cruise missiles, with a combination of land-attack (TLAM) missiles with a Tercom-aided navigation system, and anti-ship missiles with inertial guidance. The Standard SM-2MR block 4 surface-to-air missiles with command / inertial guidance remain at the centre of the Aegis system.

The USS Mustin feature is also armed with BAE Systems weapon system 127mm mk45 gun with Kollmorgen mk46 mod 1 electro-optic sight and two Raytheon / General Dynamics 20mm, six-barrelled Phalanx mk15 close-in weapon systems (CIWS). Phalanx block 1B was installed on USS Howard, Bulkeley and Cole and will be installed on new-build vessels.

The USS Mustin destroyers is equipped with six (two triple) 324mm mk32 mod 14 torpedo tubes for launching ATK mk46 or mk50 active / passive homing anti-submarine torpedoes.

The USNS Alan Shepard (T-AKE-3) is a Lewis and Clark-class dry cargo ship in the United States Navy. It is a class of 14 Combat Logistics Force (CLF) underway replenishment vessels operated by the United States Navy's Military Sealift Command. In configuration to T-AKE-3 to -14, the mission of this ship is to provide selective offload of cargo for resupply and sustainment of U.S. Marine Corps forces ashore.

In their primary mission role, the T-AKEs provide logistic lift to deliver cargo (ammunition, food, limited quantities of fuel, repair parts and ship store items) to U.S. and allied ships at sea. In their secondary mission, the T-AKEs may be required to operate in concert with a Henry J. Kaiser-class (T-AO 187) fleet replenishment oiler as a substitute station ship to provide direct logistics support to the ships within a carrier strike group.



U.S. Navygunners Mate 3rd Class Leonardo Carrizales, assigned to the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Mustin (DDG 89), fires a shot line during a replenishment as sea with the dry cargo and ammunition Ship USNS Alan Shepard (T-AKE 3). (Picture source US Navy)
If you take blood from a finger prick, you will never be able to achieve the same level of specificity that you will achieve  when you take blood from the vein, Thomas Schinecker, the companys head of diagnostics, said.
Canada is banning military-style assault weapons after the country's deadliest mass-shooting in history, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Friday.

"These weapons were designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to kill the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time. There is no use and no place for such weapons in Canada," Trudeau said in a briefing where he announced the decision.

The ban is effective immediately and includes 1,500 models of military-style assault weapons.

"It is no longer permitted to buy, sell, transport, import or use military-grade assault weapons in this country," he said.

MORE: Nova Scotia shooting may have begun as a domestic violence dispute: Investigators

There will be a two-year amnesty period for law-abiding gun owners and the prime minister said "fair compensation" would be given.

Trudeau spoke about the issue on Thursday, but only said a decision would be made in the coming days.

"We have long committed to strengthening gun control in this country, including banning military-style assault weapons," he said. "There is no need in Canada for guns designed to kill the largest amount of people, in the shortest amount of time."

PHOTO: AR-15 semi-automatic guns are on display for sale, June 17, 2016, in Springville, Utah. (George Frey/Getty Images)

He said measures to strengthen gun control were ready to go before parliament was suspended on March 13 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"[It's] something on which there is a large consensus by Canadians who want to see less violence and fewer deaths from gun violence in this country," Trudeau said.

MORE: El Paso shooting victim dies nearly 9 months after attack

The announcement comes nearly two weeks after the deadliest shooting rampage in Canadian history.

On April 18 and 19, at least 22 people were killed in a mass shooting in Nova Scotia. Canadian law enforcement officials said 51-year-old Gabriel Wortman allegedly targeted his former partner during the killing spree, which took place at six sites and destroyed several properties. Investigators said some of the other victims, including Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable Heidi Stevenson, were randomly killed.

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PHOTO: Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers prepare to take a suspect into custody at a gas station in Enfield, Nova Scotia, April 19, 2020. (Tim Krochak/The Canadian Press via AP)

Last year New Zealand banned all military-style semi-automatic weapons and assault rifles after a deadly shooting killed more than 50.

ABC News' Christine Theodorou contributed to this report.

Canada bans assault weapons after mass shooting in Nova Scotia originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
Boris Johnson and fiancee Carrie Symonds on Saturday named their new-born baby boy Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas, after their grandfathers and the two doctors who saved the UK Prime Minister's life during his hospitalisation last month with COVID-19.

Announcing the news on social media, Symonds, 32, said the baby was named after the UK Prime Minister's grandfather Wilfred and her grandfather Lawrie, with Nicholas a nod to the National Health Service (NHS) doctors Dr Nick Price and Dr Nick Hart.

Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas Johnson was born on Wednesday at University College Hospital in London.

Also read: Coronavirus India Live Updates: Lockdown 3.0! 2,644 new cases in 24 hours; biggest 1-day spike; tally-37,776

In an Instagram post revealing the name, Symonds also thanked the staff of that hospital, saying: "I couldn't be happier. My heart is full."

The picture alongside the post shows Symonds cradling the new-born, who can be seen with a full head of hair and wrapped in a cream blanket.

The birth of their baby boy came just weeks after Johnson, 55, was discharged from intensive care at St Thomas' Hospital here following treatment for coronavirus.

A spokesperson for the couple said earlier this week that the couple were "thrilled" and that both mother and baby were "doing very well" following the birth.

It is understood Johnson was present throughout the birth, with Downing Street releasing a photograph of him beaming on his return to Number 10 following the arrival of his son.

He had to postpone his paternity leave due to the ongoing coronavirus lockdown and was back at work after just a day's break.

The birth came two days after he officially returned to work at 10 Downing Street on Monday from his recuperation from COVID-19 at the prime ministerial Chequers countryside retreat.

Johnson and Symonds announced their engagement at the end of February, when it was also revealed that they were expecting their first baby in the summer.

Symonds, who works for an ocean conservation charity Oceana, met Johnson during her time as the communications chief for the Conservative Party when he was the Mayor of London in 2012.

In July 2019, they became the first unmarried couple to move into Downing Street together.

The news of their impending wedding and baby was made public soon after Johnson's divorce from his Indian-origin ex-wife Marina Wheeler got finalised in February.

Wheeler, whose mother Dip Singh hailed from Punjab, is a barrister and columnist who has four grown up children with Johnson.

Johnson and Wheeler had separated in 2018 and announced their divorce plans soon after reports of Johnson's affair with Symonds became public.

His marriage to Symonds will be Johnson's third, following his divorce from first wife Allegra Mostyn-Owen and then second wife Marina Wheeler, and their child is his sixth, four with Wheeler and a fifth following an affair with art consultant Helen Macintyre.

Also read: Coronavirus pandemic can't stop America or Berkshire Hathaway: Warren Buffett

Also read: Lockdown 3.0: PM Modi discusses plan to spur growth in MSMEs as India heads for partial reopening
Imprisoned members of the Islamic State group rioted and took control of a prison in northeast Syria for several hours, until Kurdish-led authorities negotiated an end to the unrest Sunday.

The riot began Saturday at a prison in the city of Hassakeh, one of the largest facilities where IS members are held, and control was reestablished Sunday evening, said Kino Gabriel, a spokesman for the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.

A two-day riot and takeover of the same prison in late March allowed four extremists to escape, although they were caught a day later. It was one of the most serious uprisings by the prisoners since IS was defeated a year ago, when the SDF seized control of the last sliver of land controlled by the extremists in eastern Syria.

Kurdish authorities currently operate more than two dozen detention facilities scattered across northeastern Syria, holding about 10,000 IS fighters. Among the detainees are some 2,000 foreigners whose home countries have refused to repatriate them, including about 800 Europeans.

Gabriel said SDF officials and members of the U.S.-led coalition had taken part in talks with the prisoners. At the height of the riots, he said Kurdish special forces and anti-terror units took part in the operations to try get the situation under control. He gave no further details, and did not say how many prisoners were involved or if there were any casualties.

U.S. military helicopters flew over the prison Sunday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, and North Press Agency, a media platform operating in the Kurdish-administered areas.

Gabriel said the U.S.-led coalition and the international community bear responsibility for finding solutions for IS detainees, and need to give more support to security and living conditions at the prisons.

A recent resurgence of IS attacks in both Syria and Iraq has raised concerns that the militant group is taking advantage of governments absorbed in tackling the coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing slide into economic chaos.

It was not immediately clear if Sunday's prison riot was triggered by concerns about the coronavirus's potential spread in the facility.

Last month, the U.S.-led coalition said it gave hygiene and medical supplies to detention facilities across northeastern Syria, including hand-washing stations, disinfectant wipes, face masks and examination gloves.

One coronavirus death was reported in Kurdish-held areas of Syria in April. The central government in Damascus has registered 43 cases and three deaths.

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In a letter to Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi on Sunday, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar has slammed the central governments decision to set up the headquarters of the International Finance Services Centre (IFSC) in Gandhinagar instead of Mumbai and termed the establishment of the centre in Gujarats capital as egregious, erroneous and unwarranted.

In the scathing letter, a picture of which he had tweeted on Sunday, the veteran politician wrote, It [the decision] will also be perceived as a move to shift financial institutions and business houses away from Maharashtra and will create unnecessary political disturbances. It will not only cause financial damage to the country but also bring international discredit to it by undermining the importance of Mumbai.

The former Union minister also said that the central government receives government securities (G-sec) worth 5.95 lakh crore from Maharashtra against Gujarats contribution of 1.40 lakh crore. He also said that Mumbai has been recognised among the worlds top 10 centres of commerce in terms of global financial flow, generating 6.16% of Indias gross domestic product (GDP) and accounting for 25% of industrial output and 70% of capital transactions to India economy.

If you see the general psyche of all business communities, bankers and other financial institutions, Mumbai is their natural choice for setting up such a unified authority. The Central governments decision will be taken as an act of undermining the strategic importance of Mumbai that boasts as the nations financial capital, Pawar wrote. Even the institutions across the world will be taken a back with this shocking decision, he added.

The former Maharashtra chief minister has also said that the PM must consider establishing IFSC in Indias financial capital.

I expect Hon @PMOIndia to take a rational, judicious decision keeping aside the state politics and consider it as an issue of utmost national importance, Pawar had tweeted.

The NCP chiefs reaction has come a day after former Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said that it was the then Congress-NCP government which is to be blamed for the move, as it did not consider the option when it first came up in 2007. Fadnavis also claimed that the previous state government, during his tenure, had submitted a proposal to the Centre to allow the functioning of two IFSCs in the country  in Mumbai and Gujarat  and added that it was still under consideration.

The Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) units in Mumbai too have indulged in a war of words over the Centres decision.

Reacting to the NCP chiefs scathing letter, BJP legislator Ashish Shelar said that it is still possible to establish an IFSC in Mumbai.

Those criticising [the Centre] today, what did you do when you were in power between 2007 and 2014? Shelar tweeted pointing at the then Congress-NCP government in Maharashtra.

He further said, You are in power today, start the process. Dont just criticise.

Congress spokesperson, Sachin Sawant, however, said that the decision to establish IFSC lies with the Central government.

Two committee reports during the tenure of UPA [United Progressive Alliance] government suggested that IFSC must be established in Mumbai. There is no report, which talks of Gandhinagar. The decision to establish IFSC was taken by the BJP government in 2015, within a year they came into power at the Centre.

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Sly and sleazy, malicious and menacing, ugly and evil - these are only some of the vilest of titles the human world has granted to the hyenas. This group of four living species of feliform carnivores belonging to the Hyaenidae family has been left unloved by Homo sapiens throughout history. But for those who have strived to know these animals up close and personal, they represent some of the finest of qualities in the Animal Kingdom. The article here discusses why it is time we stop misunderstanding the hyenas and shower some attention and tenderness to these wild beasts.

With valuable inputs from Wildlife SOS, a non-profit associated with the rescue, care, rehabilitation, and conservation of wildlife in India, the article also focusses on the conservation issues tormenting the striped hyena species in India.

Hyenas Of The World

About 12 to 6 million years back, the Hyaenids were much diverse with around 24 species with a sprawling range through Eurasia and Africa. Today, the Hyaenidae family includes only four extant species - the striped hyena (Hyaena hyaena), the spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta), the brown hyena (Parahyaena brunnea), and the aardwolf (Proteles cristata).

Spotted hyena female with cub in the Kruger National Park, South Africa. Image credit: Simon Eeman/Shutterstock.com

Aardwolf in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, Africa. Image credit: Joe McDonald/Shutterstock.com

Except for the striped hyena that has a wider distribution, the remaining three species are limited to Africa. The striped hyena's range stretches from North and East Africa to West and Central Asia, and further east to the Indian subcontinent. They occupy a wide range of habitats including savanna, grassland, shrubland, forest, and inland wetlands.

"In India, striped hyenas occur in arid and semi-arid ecosystems, as well as in the extremely wet regions of the south-western coast of India. They can be found in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Karnataka," informed Kartick Satyanarayan, the Co-founder and CEO of Wildlife SOS.

"Hyena populations in India are far few and far in between, and there hasnt been any official estimate of their numbers. Their total population in India is yet to be determined. The IUCN Hyaena Specialist Group is mapping the status of the striped hyenas that are now labeled as Near Threatened," he continued.

A brown hyena in the Kalahari Desert of Africa. Image credit: EcoPrint/Shutterstock.com

In fact, of the four hyena species, the striped hyena and the brown hyena are labeled as "Near Threatened" on the IUCN Red List while the others are "Least Concern" species. IUCN estimates suggest that there are around 5,000 to 10,000 mature individuals of striped hyena species in the wild. In Africa, the overlap of range between the striped hyenas, spotted hyenas, and aardwolf often make surveys increasingly difficult as few people know how to differentiate these species. The nocturnal, solitary, and elusive nature of these animals complicate things further.

Misunderstood, Maligned, And Ignored: Hyenas Suffer Silently

A striped hyena. Hyenas have been misunderstood throughout history. The truth is, they are intelligent creatures with a purpose. Image credit: Wildlife SOS.

In general, humans have always looked down upon scavengers/carrion feeders like crows, vultures, and worms - ones associated with dead/decaying matter - as filthy, savage, and devilish. Striped hyenas are no exception. Moreover, the fact that the hind legs of hyenas are shorter than their forelegs giving them an awkward appearance, allow humans to label them as dim-witted, manipulative creatures. However, such a physiological adaptation actually makes the hyenas excellent endurance runners, allowing them to run long distances.

Across cultures and continents, folklores have also often depicted hyenas as brutish creatures to be shunned at all costs. Some tales describe how dark witches use hyenas as their mounts while others narrate how hyenas kidnap human children to feast on them. All quite nasty, one would say!

Striped hyenas living in India also have their share of misfortunes as evident from what Satyanarayan had to say:

"Due to their scavenging habits, people tend to see them as harbingers of evil. They are considered to be mounts of witches in some parts of the country. Seen as malicious, devilish, and often associated with witchcraft, hyenas have been widely misrepresented in culture, folklore, and even in movies," he exclaimed.

Indeed, one cannot forget The Lion King remake where hyenas have been portrayed as sinister, cringing, and crafty creatures acting as sidekicks to the rogue lion Scar.

While hyenas might not understand what we say about them and feel insulted, our perception of these creatures has far-reaching, disastrous effects on their survival and ours as well. The lack of scientific research studies and reliable census data on these animals speaks volumes about our indifference towards them. In makes the successful conservation of hyenas a near to impossible task. Take, for example, the case of the striped hyena in India. According to Satyanarayan:

"The striped hyena is an underrated species that deserves more conservation attention. They are protected under Schedule III of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 but not much research has been carried out about this elusive species. Issues around keystone species such as the tiger or the elephant tend to get a bigger conservation platform," he stated.

According to him, man-animal conflict, poisoning, habitat destruction, hunting, and poaching for body parts are the biggest threats to the striped hyena populations in India. The skins of this species are illegally traded and body parts are used in traditional medicine.

Involved in the rescue of hyenas from various conflict situations, the concerned team of Wildlife SOS also faces numerous practical challenges during the rescue operations which reveal a lot about the plight of the striped hyenas and people's judgment of these animals.

Wildlife SOS rushed to the rescue of this striped hyena that fell victim to an angry mod in Agra. Image credit: Wildlife SOS

"The most common challenge we face is changing peoples mindset. In most cases, we rescue hyenas that were victims of human-animal conflict or poaching. Most of these conflict situations arise due to fear and misconceptions about this species. Another big challenge is crowd control. People are always curious to get a closer look at the animal and they try to take pictures of it while the rescue operation is being carried out. Such actions are dangerous and may lead to untoward accidents, if not managed properly," revealed Satyanarayan.

"In a recent incident, an approximately 3-year-old male striped hyena was brutally attacked in a village in Uttar Pradesh and brought to Wildlife SOS center for treatment. The chances of survival of the hyena appeared bleak as the animal had sustained severe spinal fracture leading to hind limb paralysis. Despite our best efforts, the hyena succumbed to its injuries. Over the years, we have seen some terrible situations, where the hyenas were so violently attacked that they ended up with severe head trauma and ruptured eyes. Incidents such as this make it imperative for us to spread awareness about the species and sensitize the public to their plight, as they struggle to gain a foothold in the shrinking forests. There is also a need to teach them appropriate measures to avoid such brutal conflicts," continued Satyanarayan.

A striped hyena trapped in a canal outside Agra city was rescued by Wildlife SOS in 2017. Image credit: Wildlife SOS

Reports such as the ones mentioned above are not just common in India but in other parts of the hyena's range as well. These misunderstood animals are given little love and plenty of hatred leading to their silent suffering and loss. Hence, conservation of the hyenas also attracts spare attention.

Intriguing And Intelligent: Hyenas Have A Purpose In Nature

Wildlife SOS releasing a striped hyena back into the wild after rescuing it from a human-animal conflict situation in Uttar Pradesh. Image credit: Wildlife SOS

While the masses continue to disregard the hyenas, those who have studied these animals in detail recognize them as social beings with high levels of intellect. CT scan tests have compared hyena brains with those of some primates and revealed astounding results. Similar to primates, the brain region associated with complex decision-making appears to be enlarged in hyena brains. Hyenas have also beaten chimpanzees in some cooperative problem-solving tests. Spotted hyenas are known for their highly developed social pack-behavior where they can be very co-operative while hunting. Each species of hyenas also have their distinct ecological roles. They are all part of the food chain that keeps the ecosystem in balance.

"Striped hyenas play a very vital role in maintaining an ecosystem  apart from getting rid of biological waste by their scavenger habits; they also act as pest control. The hyena's digestive system has adapted to maximize the nutritional value of animal remains; only the horns, hooves, and hair are regurgitated," informed Satyanarayan.

"A healthy ecosystem depends on the balance between species, so the decline of an animal, especially one that plays such an important role in keeping an ecosystem clean and free of diseases should raise a modicum of alarm," he warned.
In order to analyze the development and mitigation of the COVID-19 pandemic, we naturally look back to the most prominent global pandemic of modern times: the Spanish flu of 1918. The virus wreaked havoc around the world a century ago, leaving tens of millions of dead bodies in its wake, including more than half a million Americans at a time when our population was less than a third of todays level.

While it is reasonable to acknowledge the broad fact that even more lives would have been lost had it not been for social distancing interventions in 1918, as we now consider how to lift similar restrictions currently imposed, we need a more nuanced understanding of when, where, and how social distancing prevailed a century ago, as well as when, where, and how it did not.

Based upon the data of the Spanish flu pandemic, general consensus has emerged around a strong correlation between proactive measures and a lower death toll; the contrast between Philadelphia and St. Louis in 1918 has become ubiquitous. First referenced in an academic journal some 13 years ago, it has been featured regularly in analyses and articles over the past 2 months as a lesson on how American society should treat a pandemic.

The story goes like this:

Philadelphia (at the time the third largest city in America behind only New York and Chicago) downplayed the severity of the Spanish flu and went ahead with a World War I victory parade (really part of a public relations campaign supporting a war-bond drive) and gathered over 200,000 people at the end of September. Within a week, 2,600 people had died and city hospitals were overflowing. By the time the city reacted and started closing down public gatherings, which lasted for 4-5 weeks, it was already too late to stop the contagion. Thousands more died, with an ultimate death rate of almost 1% of the city's entire population. Almost all of the Philadelphia deaths occurred during that period of peak devastation, with only a slight resurgence of the virus 2 months later.

St. Louis, on the other hand (at the time the sixth largest city in America), reacted more quickly. The city cancelled a similar parade and instituted large-scale social distancing measures to stop the spread of the virus. The measures worked and St. Louis had one of the very best performances of any city. An excellent historical piece in St. Louis Magazine provides more color to this recounting - of particular interest is the resistance to the precautions recommended by the German-born Commissioner of Health.

Point taken. But the underlying academic research behind these anecdotes tells a much richer story than the binary contrast distilled in todays media, which treats pandemic deadliness as a single variable equation dependent only on social distancing. While the literature certainly does evidence a general correlation between proactive social distancing and less death, there are outlying data points as well that can shed light on how to proceed in the safest and most responsible way today. National Geographic did a robust job graphing many cities, illustrating the timing, frequency and duration of social distancing measures as well as the shapes of the curves and the overall death toll.

For example, the least deadly city in 1918 was Minneapolis, which had 2,670 deaths per million. New York City, which accounts for more than 20% of ALL deaths nationwide in 2020, is projected to ultimately have a bit more than half that amount: ~1,500 deaths per million. So already we can begin to see a dramatic difference in the impact of the pandemic.

Minneapolis utilized two rounds of social distancing interventions in 1918, which surely contributed to its superior performance. But other cities that used even more aggressive interventions still had higher proportional death tolls. The current media paradigm treats social distancing as a life-saving on/off switch, which is not accurate. (Nor is the blanket dismissal of the benefits of social distancing on the part of the liberation protestors.) Neither in 1918 nor in 2020 does one size fit all, as usual in a country as vast as the U.S.

Ultimately, there is one unescapable conclusion that must be acknowledged when using 1918 as a blueprint for today. Only the completely delusional would conclude that the COVID-19 epidemic is as deadly as the Spanish flu. In fact, its a whole order of magnitude less so. The Spanish flu claimed 675,000 American lives out of a population of 106.5 million (6,338 deaths per million), whereas COVID-19, even in the current worst-case IHME projection, will barely exceed 5% that figure: 114,000 deaths out of 331 million, or 344 deaths per million. The more likely middle projection of ~74,000 deaths would yield a rate of only 223 per million, which is proportionally less than Spain, France, Italy, and the UK. Of the large EU states, only Germany will have fared better. Said otherwise, the Spanish flus death rate of 6,338 deaths per million is almost as high as the total death rate in America today, which is 8,638 per million. We are not talking apples and oranges, but apples and watermelons.

When smaller, less densely populated states consider how to proceed, this data should not be lost on them. As mentioned earlier, over 20% of the entire nationwide death toll of COVID-19 belongs to New York City. A century ago, New York was also the most populous city and had the highest death toll. But New Yorks deaths accounted for less than 4% of the total. The top 20 cities during the Spanish flu had an combined death rate of just under 5,000 per million. The rest of the country was at about 6,600 per million. Compare that to COVID-19, in which the top 20 cities have a combined death rate of 507 per million, versus the rest of the country at approximately 150 per million. Not only is the disease an order of magnitude less deadly overall, but rural communities are much, much, safer than they were in 1918.

Protecting states and local communities from a pandemic is a complicated multivariable equation. The federal government has set reasonable guidelines for a phased return to normal life. Flouting those recommendations (because freedom!) is unwise. Pointing to the data of 1918 and insisting on cautiously replicating the terms of those stay-at-home orders is also unwise.

The answer lies somewhere in the middle. Local/state governments who know the terrain should craft the most appropriate timeline to safely ease restrictions in their communities on a case-by-case basis, in close cooperation with civic, medical, religious, commercial, and other social leaders.

There is no single solution that Washington can impose. Tight-knit communities with a culture of respect and social cohesion are most likely to prevail. Beating a pandemic ultimately comes down to solidarity and local control, in the best American tradition.

George Ajjan is an international political strategist.
By PTI

DUBAI: Three more Indians based in the UAE have either been fired or suspended from their jobs for "Islamophobic" posts on social media, days after the Indian ambassador to the Gulf nation warned the expatriates against posting such provocative updates online, a media report has said.

Chef Rawat Rohit, storekeeper Sachin Kinnigoli and a cash custodian, whose identity was withheld by his employer, are the latest additions to a list of about half a dozen Indians who have faced action for their social media posts, the Gulf News reported on Saturday.

ALSO READ | After backlash, Malayali businessman in UAE apologises for 'Islamophobic' poem

"It seems that the warnings of the Indian mission have fallen on deaf ears as the list of Indian expats facing action over vile Islamophobic remarks on social media keeps getting longer," it said.

On April 20, India's ambassador to the UAE Pavan Kapoor had warned Indian expatriates against such behaviour.

"India and UAE share the value of non-discrimination on any grounds. Discrimination is against our moral fabric and the Rule of law. Indian nationals in the UAE should always remember this," he said in a tweet.

Over the weekend, at least three more have been fired or suspended after their offensive posts were brought to the attention of employers by social media users, the report said.

A spokesperson for Azadea Group that operates Eataly, a chain of high-end Italian restaurants in Dubai, confirmed that Rohit had been suspended and was facing a disciplinary probe.

ALSO READ | Social media posts from Arab world on Islamophobia part of 'propaganda': India

Sharjah-based Pneumics Automation have also said they suspended their storekeeper Kinnigoli until further notice.

"We have withheld his salary and told him not to come to work. The matter is under investigation. We have a zero-tolerance policy.

"Anyone found guilty of insulting or showing contempt for someone's religion will have to bear the consequences," the firm's owner was quoted as saying in the report.

Dubai-based Transguard Group said they have cracked down on an employee who had posted several anti-Islamic messages on his Facebook page under the name of Vishal Thakur.

"Following an internal investigation, the actual identity of this employee was verified and he was stripped of his security credentials, terminated from our employment and handed over to the relevant authorities as per company policy. As of this statement, he is in the custody of Dubai Police," a Transguard spokesperson said in a statement.

The new sackings and suspensions come days after both the former and current Indian Ambassadors to the UAE cautioned their countrymen about the UAE's strict hate speech laws.

Similar warnings were issued by missions in other Gulf Cooperation Council countries.

Last month, Sharjah-based businessman Sohan Roy had to apologise for "unintentionally hurting religious sentiments" through his poem, which alluded to a Muslim religious group.

In March, chef Trilok Singh was fired from a restaurant in Dubai for an online threat against a student in Delhi over her views on the Citizenship Amendment Act.
New Delhi: As many as 63,000 crew members and passengers on board vessels mostly from China have been denied disembarkation at Indian ports so far, as part of efforts to curb the spread of coronavirus, a shipping ministry official said.

These crew members and passengers reached Indian ports on board about 1,990 vessels between January 27 and April 30, the official added.

"A total of 62,948 crew and passengers reached India's ports on board about 1,990 ships, mostly from China. Thermal scanning of all these crew and passengers were done as per the WHO (World Health Organization) guidelines. Besides adhering to all precautions and laid-down protocols to prevent any further spread of COVID-19, no shore passes or daily passes were issued to these people, and EXIM cargo was handled with care," the official told PTI.

Of the total 1,990 ships, 1,621 reached major ports and were allowed anchoring at designated places for loading and unloading of export-import (EXIM) cargo.

Of these 63,000 crew and passengers onboard these ships, 56,000 reached the major ports, the official said.

India has 12 major ports Deendayal (erstwhile Kandla), Mumbai, JNPT, Mormugao, New Mangalore, Cochin, Chennai, Kamarajar (earlier Ennore), V. O. Chidambaranar, Visakhapatnam, Paradip and Kolkata (including Haldia). These ports handled nearly 705 million tonnes (MT) cargo in 2019-20.

For maintaining smooth operations across ports, the shipping ministry has initiated a number of steps that include waiving of rentals.

The government has asked all major ports to ensure that no penalties, demurrage, charges, fees and rentals are levied on any port user (traders, shipping lines, concessionaires, licensees, etc) for any delay in berthing or loading/unloading operations or evacuation of cargo caused by the reasons attributable to lockdown measures from March 22.

Besides, for existing and operational PPP (public private partnership) projects, major ports can permit waiver of all penal consequences on a case-to-case basis along with deferment of certain performance obligations.

The official said hospitals across the major port trusts have been supplied with personal protective equipment (PPE), and the arrangement of sufficient staff round the clock has been made.

Ports and PSUs under the Ministry of Shipping have contributed over Rs 52 crore from the corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds towards PM-CARES Fund.

Besides, employees of ports, public sector undertakings (PSUs) and other offices of the ministry have contributed over Rs 7 crore from their salaries towards the PM-CARES Fund. The number of vessels handled by ports during 2019-20 was around 20,837 as against 20,853 vessels in 2018-19.
Lockdown 3.0 and India coronavirus latest news: The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases rose to 40,263 by Sunday 5 PM, including 28,070 active cases, 10,886 recoveries, 1 migrated patient and 1,306 deaths, according to latest update by the Union Health Ministry on its website. The country recorded 2,487 fresh coronavirus cases and 83 deaths in the last 24 hours. Earlier today, after its announcement to extend the nationwide lockdown for 2 more weeks till May 17, the central government has since issued a series of clarifications regarding allowing certain services to run in Red, Orange and Green Zones from May 4. Among several services allowed to run, the Union Home Ministry has allowed standalone shops or the ones in the neighbourhoods to open but only in non-containment areas, meanwhile the alcohol shops are allowed to open Orange and Green Zones- allowed in these zones. Other services such as salons, barber shops and cabs etc hae been allowed but with certain riders in these zones.

As India's 40-day lockdown ends on Sunday, the armed forces on Sunday conducted aerial fly-pasts to shower flower petals on various hospitals across India to express gratitude to lakhs of doctors, paramedics, healthcare workers and other frontline warriors engaged in fighting the novel coronavirus pandemic. The Indian Navy will also light up its ships at sea in the evening to pay its tribute to the corona warriors. The activities will go on for around 10 hours in several parts of the country throughout the day. Modi-government has extended the nationwide lockdown by 2 more weeks till May 17, albeit with some relaxations in green and orange zones. The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has also issued new guidelines to regulate several activities during the lockdown 3.0 duration.

Also Read: Coronavirus in India: COVID-19 cases near 40,000; check state-wise tally, deaths, list of testing facilities

Follow BusinessToday.in for live updates on coronavirus in India and world:

10.41 pm: Coronavirus in Delhi

Delhi reported 427 new coronavirus cases in last 24 hours, taking the total number of cases in the national capital to 4,549. Delhi has seen 64 deaths till date, informed Directorate General of Health Services, Delhi government.

9.53 pm: 2 more areas de-contained in Delhi

Delhi government has de-contained two more areas - Bengali Market, and House numbers 97 to 107 and House numbers 120-127, Kailash Hills, East of Kailash (South East) - today. This brings the number of containment zones in the national capital to 94.

9.45 pm: Lockdown 3.0 in Goa

Goa will follow all guidelines issued by Centre for extension of lockdown till May 17, stated Chief Minister Pramod Sawant. Non-essential shops will be allowed to operate between 7am and 7pm, he further said.

9.41 pm: Maharashtra COVID-19 cases

Number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Maharashtra has reached 12,974, including 548 deaths so far, informed State Health Department. The state reported 678 new COVID-19 cases and 27 deaths today.

9.06 pm: IN PICTURES: A Shramik special train carrying 977 people leaves Nagpur for Lucknow

Maharashtra: A 'shramik special train' carrying 977 people, mainly migrant workers, leaves Nagpur for Lucknow in Lucknow. #lockdown pic.twitter.com/MjbBaf7F1P ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020 8.58 pm: Gujarat COVID-19 updates Gujarat Health Department reported 374 new positive cases have been reported in last 24 hours. This takes the total number of COVID-19 cases in Gujarat to 5,428, including 1,042 recoveries and 290 deaths. 8.51 pm: Lockdown hits sales of Alphonso mangoes Traders say that the sale of Alphonso mangoes has gone down substantially as customers are not coming to markets due to coronavirus lockdown. Mangoes are rotting in godowns which has led to tremendous losses, a trader told news agency ANI. Maharashtra: Sales of Alphonso mangoes have slumped in Mumbai due to continuing #lockdown. Abdul Malik Ansari, a mango trader says, "There is almost no sale as customers are not visiting in the market. Mangoes are rotting in the godown. We are suffering losses". pic.twitter.com/SJMTr2X1mD ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020 8.50 pm: Chandigarh coronavirus update Chandigarh reported 97 coronavirus cases and 1 death so far. The city has seen 19 recoveries while 75 active cases still remain, Chandigarh Health Department informed. 8.45 pm: WATCH: Indian Navy ships of Eastern Naval Command illuminated to show appreciation for health workers engaged in anti-coronavirus activities Andhra Pradesh: Indian Navy Ships of Eastern Naval Command illuminated at Visakhapatnam as part of "India Salutes Corona Warriors" campaign to express appreciation for efforts of frontline workers in the fight against #COVID19. (Source: Indian Navy) pic.twitter.com/rTKNF0s7Ss ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020 8.23 pm: Delhi govt issues guidelines for liquor, paan, tobacco shops to reopen Delhi government has allowed liquor, paan and tobacco shops in the national capital to reopen and issued guidelines in this regard. In line with Centre's guidelines in the matter, Delhi government said that only standalone shops, neighbourhood shops and shops in residential complexes will be allowed to reopen. Shops will ensure that customers maintain a distance of 6 feet between themselves and there are not more than 5 persons in the shop at any time. Shops selling liquor,paan,gutka,tobacco etc are allowed to operate provided they're standalone shops,neighbourhood (colony)shops or shops in residential complexes.These shops shall ensure minimum 6 ft distance among customers more than 5 persons at one time at shop:Delhi Govt pic.twitter.com/AwLalL5dFo ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020 8.19 pm: Coronavirus updates: WB bringing back 1,000 labourers from Rajasthan West Bengal government is ferrying back more than 1,000 migrant labourers from the state stranded in Rajasthan. A special train carrying them will leave Ajmer tomorrow morning with and reach West Bengal on May 5. 8.03 pm: Only stranded persons allowed to move during coronavirus lockdown Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla has written to states clarifying that the relaxation in lockdown guidelines allowing people to travel is applicable only for stranded persons who could not return to their native places or workplaces due to the lockdown. It does not extend to people who are "residing normally at places other than native places for purposes of work etc, and those who wish to visit their native place in normal course". It is clarified that order regarding movement of persons amid lockdown is not extended to those categories of persons who're otherwise residing normally at places other than native places for purposes of work etc.&those who wish to visit their native place in normal course: MHA pic.twitter.com/GY9Z2AVHt4 ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020 7.54 pm: 7.53 pm: Dharavi coronavirus cases Dharavi in Mumbai reported 94 new coronavirus cases and 2 deaths due to the contagion today, according to Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. The total number of positive cases in Dharavi is now 590, includingn 20 deaths. 7.36 pm: Haryana corona updates Haryana saw number of coronavirus cases in the state reach 442. This includes 245 recoveries and 5 deaths, while the number of active cases in the state stands at 192, staed Haryana Health Department. 7.23 pm: WATCH: Delhi ready to reopen, says CM Avind Kejriwal #WATCH Delhi is ready to re-open now...We will not be able to sustain the lockdown for long as the economy is in peril. The revenue has fallen from Rs 3500 Crores in April month of previous years to Rs 300 Crores this year. How will government function?: Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal pic.twitter.com/jKzVp0959b ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020 7.16 pm: Tamil Nadu COVID-19 cases Tamil Nadu Health Department reported 3,023 COVID-19 cases in the state so far. There are 1,611 active cases are under treatment in the state, whereas 1,379 patients have been discharged, as of today. 7.04 pm: Punjab COVID-19 cases Punjab Health Department registered 331 new COVID-19 cases in the state today. This takes the total number of cases to 1,102, including 964 active cases, 117 recoveries, and 21 deaths. 6.58 pm: INDIA CORONAVIRUS TRACKER BusinessToday.In brings you a daily tracker as coronavirus cases continue to spread. Here is the state-wise data on total cases, fatalities and recoveries in one comprehensive graphic: Click here to Enlarge 6.53 pm: Plasma therapy for COVID-19 in Punjab Punjab has received approval from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to conduct clinical trials for convalascent plasma therapy on COVID-19 patients. The trials will be undertaken in inter-institution coordination, managed by the Principal Investigators, who would also ensure that the entire process is conducted in strict accordance with the ICMR protocol at each institution. 6.28 pm: Coronavirus in India Accoding to Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, as of 5PM on May 3, the total number of coronavirus cases in India has reached 40,263. This inlcudes 28,070 active cases, 1,306 deaths, 10,886 cured or discharged patients and 1 migrated patient. India saw 2,487 deaths and 83 deaths in the last 24 hours. 6.18 pm: UP coronavirus news Uttar Pradesh government has directed senior citizens above 65 years of age, children younger than 10 years, pregnant women, and those suffering from an ailmets not to go outside their homes, informed Additional Chief Home Secretary Avnish Awasthi. 6.09 pm: Coronavirus cases in J&K Jammu and Kashmir has reported 35 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours. This includeis 1 case from Jammu division and 34 cases from Kashmir division. The total number of active cases in the state now stands at 406. 35 new positive cases have been reported in last 24 hours in Jammu and Kashmir; 1 from Jammu division and 34 from Kashmir division. Total number of active cases in the state stands at 406: Department of information and public relation J&K pic.twitter.com/lMq1o1J25o ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020 6.05 pm: COVID cases in BSF Twenty five more BSF personnel have tested positive for coronavirus in Delhi today. They were part of the 126 battalion of BSF company deployed with the Delhi Police in Jama Masjid area. The total number of infected BSF jawans has now reahced 42, including 31 cases from the 126 battalion. 5.55 pm: Karantaka coronavirus updates Karnataka Health Department informed that 13 new coronavirus cases have been reported between 5 PM yesterday and 5 PM today. Total number of COVID-19 cases in the state now stands at 614, including 25 deaths and 293 recoveries. 5.47 pm: Himachal Pradesh COVID-19 cases According to Himachal Pradesh Health Department, only 1 coronavirus case in active in the state. So far, 34 patients have recovered from the infection in Himachal Pradesh. 5.32 pm: WATCH: Indian Navy personnel onboard ships deployed in Arabian Sea show their appreciation towards medical professionals engaged in fight against COVID-19 #WATCH Personnel onboard Indian Navy Ship deployed in the Arabian Sea, express gratitude and appreciation for all frontline workers for their contribution in fight against #COVID19. (Source: Indian Navy) pic.twitter.com/WQtJQ3c8EU ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020 5.30 pm: COVID-19 updates: Indian Army felicitates health workers in Rajasthan Indian Army personnel felicitate health workers of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Jodhpur to express gratitude and appreciation for medical professionals fighting against coronavirus. Rajasthan: Indian Army personnel today felicitated health workers of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Jodhpur in order to express gratitude and appreciation for medical professionals amid #COVID19. pic.twitter.com/sN3kxZuKK1 ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020

5.27 pm: Coronavirus news: EPFO staff donates Rs 2.5 crore to PM CARES fund

Staff of Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) have decided to contribute one day's salary to the PM CARES Fund. This amounts to a cumulative contribution of Rs 2.5 crores.

5.23 pm: Kerala coronavirus updates: No new cases reported in the state

Kerala on Sunday recorded no fresh COVID-19 cases. As per the sources, 1 person recovered on Sunday, taking the total count of those cured so far in the state to 401. The total tally of active coronavirus cases in Kerala now stands at 95.

5.16 pm: Lockdown in Bengaluru: Liquor shops to re-open from May 4

Here is the list of shops that will re-open in Bengaluru from Monday.

5.09 pm: Coronavirus cases in Noida: 8 more people tested COVID-19 positive

Greater Noida reported 8 fresh novel coronavirus cases on Sunday. Meanwhile, 6 more patients were discharged. The total active cases in the city now stand at 66.

4.59 pm: Karnataka lockdown extension news

Karnataka government on Sunday issued orders to allow inter-district movement to " undertake permitted activities" during lockdown 3.0 in the state.

Karnataka Govt issues order to allow inter-district movement to 'undertake permitted activities' during #lockdown in the state. pic.twitter.com/Kv73bu7YNS - ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020

4.55 pm: Lockdown in Delhi

Delhi Police has shared its COVID-19 helpline number 23469526 to look into the issues related to lockdown 3.0.

4.49 pm: Jammu and Kashmir lockdown updates

All educational and training institutions in J&K will be closed till May 17, in line with the central government's announcement to extend the lockdown for 2 more weeks till May 17.

4.44 pm: Handwara news: I bow to our soldiers for protecting us from terrorists, says Amit Shah

Union Home minister on Sunday paid his tributes to the soldiers and security personnel who were martyred "while protecting our motherland during an encounter with terrorists in Handwara in Jammu and Kashmir. Nation will always remain indebted to their supreme sacrifice. My deepest condolences to their bereaved families."

4.36 pm: Uttar Pradesh coronavirus lockdown news

Bus services will resume in UP's green zones from May 4. As per the sources, the bus services will resume only in the declared green zones with 50 passengers.

4.29 pm: Lockdown in Uttar Pradesh: Liquor shops to open in green, orange zones from May 4

The UP government has allowed the liquor shops in green and orange zones to re-open from May 4. The shops will remain open from 10 am to 7 pm. However, the red zones such as Agra, Noida, etc will be under strict vigil.

4.21 pm: Kerala coronavirus lockdown updates

Kerala government has announced that it will not allow the liquor shops to open across its containment areas in the state from May 4.

4.16 pm: Delhi coronavirus cases

17 fresh COVID-19 cases were reported in Kapashera building of south-west Delhi on Sunday.

4.09 pm: Coronavirus global news: Over 1,50,000 Indians in UAE register to return to India

Over 1,50,000 Indians in the UAE, have applied through the online registration process to the Indian missions, to return home, according to media reports. (PTI)

3.59 pm: Coronavirus lockdown in Delhi

Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has issued a notification stating that 'the University shall remain closed till 17th May, 2020'.

Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has issued a notification stating that 'the University shall remain closed till 17th May, 2020'. #CoronavirusLockdown pic.twitter.com/1gbJ3LxC6C - ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020

3.43 pm: Maharashtra lockdown extension news

Maharashtra government has decided to allow standalone shops including liquor shops to open in Red Zones, except the containment zones. Only 5 non-essential shops can be opened in each lane. Numbers not restricted for essential shops. (ANI inputs)

3.33 pm: Govt clarifications on lockdown extension: What's allowed in Red, Orange and Green zones

E-commerce deliveries- Red Zones- only essential items' delivery allowed, Orange and Green Zones- All e-commerce services allowed in these zones

Red Zones- only essential items' delivery allowed, Orange and Green Zones- All e-commerce services allowed in these zones Liquor shops- Red Zones- Standalone shops or the ones in the neighbourhoods are allowed but only in non-containment areas; Orange and Green Zones- allowed in these zones

Red Zones- Standalone shops or the ones in the neighbourhoods are allowed but only in non-containment areas; Orange and Green Zones- allowed in these zones Salons and barber zones- Red Zones- Not allowed, Orange and Green Zones- allowed in these zones.

Red Zones- Not allowed, Orange and Green Zones- allowed in these zones. Taxi and cabs- Red Zones- Commercial cabs will not be allowed to ply in these zones. However, private 4-wheeler riders can only ride solo, subject to permission for necessary. Orange and Green Zones- In Orange Zones, the cabs will be allowed to ferry 2 people besides the driver. In Green Zones, districts with no COVID-19 positive cases will also have the same rules as Orange Zones but these areas will have the permission to operate public transport buses at 50% capacity.

Red Zones- Commercial cabs will not be allowed to ply in these zones. However, private 4-wheeler riders can only ride solo, subject to permission for necessary. Orange and Green Zones- In Orange Zones, the cabs will be allowed to ferry 2 people besides the driver. In Green Zones, districts with no COVID-19 positive cases will also have the same rules as Orange Zones but these areas will have the permission to operate public transport buses at 50% capacity. Domestic helps- The decision regarding the domestic helps will be taken by the respective state governments.

3.21 pm: Delhi lockdown updates

A registry official at the Delhi High Court tested positive for novel coronavirus on Sunday and has been admitted to LNJP Hospital in the national capital, sources told PTI.

3.15 pm: Coronavirus live updates

Niti Aayog member VK Paul said on Sunday that the continuous increase in the number of people testing positive for COVID-19 is expected to stabilise anytime soon. (PTI inputs)

3.09 pm: Odisha coronavirus cases: 30-year-old male tests positive

A 30-year-old male tested COVID-19 positive in Keonjhar in Odisha on Sunday, taking the total tally in the state to 162, Odisha government. Earlier in the day, a 34-year-old man tested positive in Balasore. (ANI repots)

2.59 pm: Handwara news: "Their valour and sacrifice will never be forgotton", tweets PM Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to Twitter on Sunday to pay his tribute to the security personnel killed in an encounter between security forces and terrorists in Handwara, Jammu and Kashmir.

Tributes to our courageous soldiers and security personnel martyred in Handwara. Their valour and sacrifice will never be forgotten. They served the nation with utmost dedication and worked tirelessly to protect our citizens. Condolences to their families and friends. - Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) May 3, 2020

2.47 pm: Coronavirus in Haryana: Cases jump to 421

The total count of COVID-19 cases in Haryana climbed to 421 on Sunday including 174 active cases, 242 discharges and 5 deaths, said the state health department. (Inputs from ANI)

2.37 pm: Chandigarh lockdown news

The Chandigarh administration has withdrawn its orders where the lockdown was to be lifted Monday (May 4) onwards besides opening of shops from 7 am to 7 pm. The administration will announce new rules on Monday.

2.29 pm: Rajasthan coronavirus news: 25 fresh cases reported on Sunday

Rajasthan recorded 29 fresh COVID-19 cases on Sunday, informed Rohit Kumar Singh, ACS, Medical and Health, Rajasthan. Out of these new cases, 18 are from Jodhpur, 9 from Jaipur and 2 from Bharatpur. Sunday's total positive cases till 2 pm in Rajasthan stand at 60. Cumulative positive: 2,832, death reported till 2 pm: 3, cumulative death: 71.

2.15 pm: Punjab coronavirus cases

Vinay Bulani, Deputy Commissioner, Nawanshahr, Punjab said on Sunday that 63 out of 130 people, who returned from Hazur Sahib in Nanded, Maharashtra, have tested positive for COVID-19. (ANI reports)

2.09 pm: Coronavirus India updates: 40 CRPF officers to be home quarantined; Delhi head office sealed after staff tests positive

As many as 40 CRPF officers and staff including a Special Director General rank official, and a Deputy Inspector General will be home quarantined after a staff a staff member attached with a senior officer tested COVID-19 positive. The Delhi headquarter of CRPF has also been sealed for sanitisation with no one allowed to enter the building.

1.58 pm: Corona live updates

500 students stranded in Kota, Rajasthan reached ISBT bus depot in Delhi on Sunday.

1.49 pm: West Bengal lockdown news

The Mamata Banerjee government has announced health insurance with up to Rs 10 lakh coverage for frontline COVID-19 workers, including journalists.

Our Govt in #Bangla has also announced health insurance with up to Rs 10 lakh coverage for frontline #COVID19 workers, including journalists: West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee pic.twitter.com/rK80mysLm6 - ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020

1.35 Meghalaya lockdown relaxation

The Meghalaya government has partiallly lifted the lockdown from May 4 easing the curfew curbs in the state. Public gatherings remain banned in the state.

1.26 pm: Coronavirus live updates: Will turn challenges into opportunities, says Amit Shah

Taking to Twitter on Sunday, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that the government will turn challenges into opportunities and set a new standard for the world.

1.17 pm: Chennai lockdown news: Domestic workers may resume work after getting pass issued

Chennai Corporation has announced that the domestic workers can get a pass issued from it and resume their work. House owners can also get the passes issued if their domestic helps face problem in doing so.

1.10 pm: Jammu and Kashmir coronavirus news: 18 new coronavirus cases reported in Leh

19 more people were tested COVID-19 positive in Leh district of Ladakh. The total count of cases in Ladakh stands at 24 now, out of which 20 are reported from Leh and 4 from Kargil.

1.00 pm: Delhi records biggest single-day jump in coronavirus cases

Delhi recorded 384 fresh COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, the highest single-day spike. The national capital is the third worst-hit state in India with 4,122 cases following Maharashtra and Gujarat.

12.55: Coronavirus cases worldwide: Highlights

Global confirmed COVID-19 cases- 3.3 million, death toll- 2.3 lakh, total recovered- 1.5 million.

India makes contact tracing app Aarogya setu app mandatory for all employees in the country.

Adults in Spain exercise outside for the first time in 7 weeks.

Malasyia is detaining undocumented migrants to curb coronavirus infections, police chief says.

Russia reports record daily rise in novel coronavirus infections.

12.50 pm: Karnataka coronavirus cases: 5 more people test COVID-19 positive

Karnataka recorded 5 fresh coronavirus cases from 5 pm on Saturday, to 12 pm on Sunday. The state has a total of 606 confirmed cases, including 25 deaths and 282 recoveries.

12.45 pm: Odisha coronavirus cases

A 34-year-old man tests COVID-19 positive in Balasore. The total count of novel coronavirus cases in Odisha now stands at 161, according to the state health department. (ANI reports)

12.35 pm: Coronavirus live updates

Watch video: Indian Army band playing at the COVID19 quarantine centre in Delhi's Narela.

#WATCH Indian Army band playing at the COVID19 quarantine centre in Delhi's Narela pic.twitter.com/Vu9rc8aXLN - ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020

12.26 pm: Punjab coronavirus news

3 people from Maharashtra's Nanded, including 2 who returned from Punjab, have been tested COVID-19 positive, an official was quoted by PTI as saying. The total count of confirmed novel coronavirus cases in Punjab now stands at 772 with 112 recoveries and 20 deaths, according to Union Health Ministry.

12.17 pm: Tamil Nadu containment zones: Koyambedu in Chennai turns into hotspot

Koyambedu area in Chennai has turned into a COVID-19 hotspot with spillover in 5 other districts. The number of novel coronavirus cases linked with Chennai's largest wholesale market, Koyambedu has climbed to 119. Several people who tested positive had gone to the market and interacted with the traders and workers there. Here is the city-wise list of coronavirus cases in Tamil Nadu: -

Chennai - 52 cases

Ariyalur - 22 cases

Villupuram - 20 cases

Cuddalore - 17 cases

Kanchipuram - 7 cases

Perambalur - 1 case

12.10 pm: Delhi coronavirus cases: CRPF headquarters sealed after staff tests COVID-19 positive

An official said on Sunday that the CRPF headquarters in Delhi have been sealed after a staff member attached with senior officer tested COVID-19 positive, PTI tweeted.

11.59 am: Coronavirus live updates: China mocks US over coronavirus response

China has published a short animation titled "Once Upon a Virus" mocking the United States' response to COVID-19 pandemic using Lego-like figures representing the two nations. The animation posted online by China's official Xinhua news agency, red curtains open to reveal a stage featuring Lego-like animated figures wearing a face mask and the Statue of Liberty. "We discovered a new virus," says the warrior. "So what?" replies the Statue of Liberty. "It's only a flu."

(Screengrab from the animated video posted by New China TV)

11.52 am: Rajasthan lockdown news

Indian Air Force aircraft flypast Sawai Maansingh Hospital in Jaipur to express gratitude towards medical professionals fighting COVID-19 pandemic.

#WATCH: Indian Air Force aircraft flypast Sawai Maansingh Hospital in Jaipur to express gratitude towards medical professionals fighting #COVID19. #Rajasthan pic.twitter.com/jiGPTM8dlF - ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020

11.45 am: Delhi lockdown news

Indian Air Force chopper showers flower petals on Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan (LNJP) Hospital to pay tribute to healthcare workers fighting against COVID-19 pandemic.

Delhi: Indian Air Force chopper showers flower petals on Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan (LNJP) Hospital to pay tribute to healthcare workers fighting against COVID19 pandemic pic.twitter.com/TLyYe2zYx4 - ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020

10.36 am: Armed forces say a big thank you to coronavirus warriors

Officials at INS Jalashwa salute corona warriors fighting the COVID-18 pandemic across India while sailing through the Bay of Bengal.

10.27 am: Uttar Pradesh coronavirus cases: 21 more people tested positive

Out of a total of 1,033 samples tested in UP on Saturday, 21 were tested positive for novel coronavirus. The total count of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the state now stand at 2,487 and 43 deaths, according to Union Health Ministry.

11.19 am: Ladakh registers highest coronavirus positive cases in a day

Ladakh reported the highest single-day jump in COVID-19 cases with the count rising to 41. 19 fresh cases were reported in Chuchot village from where the first cases of the Ladakh region was also confirmed in March. The total count of confirmed cases in the region now stands at 23.

11.10 am: India coronavirus containment zones: Red zones to be revised weekly, Centre tells states

The Centre has told states that the list of red zones will be revised weekly depending upon the recovery rates. "The districts were earlier designated as hotspots or red-zones, orange zones and green zones primarily based on the cumulative cases reported and the doubling rate. Since recovery rates have gone up, the districts are now being designated across various zones duly broad-basing the criteria. This classification is multi-factorial and takes into consideration the incidence of cases, doubling rate, the extent of testing and surveillance feedback to classify the districts," Union Health Secretary Preeti Sudan wrote to Chief Secretaries of states. She wrote the letter to the states after a video conference was chaired by Rajiv Gauba with chief secretaries and secretaries of health.

11.07 pm: Lockdown 3.0 live updates: What is a Red Zone?

According to Union Health Ministry, Red Zones include areas with major outbreaks of COVID-19. Extremely strict containment measures are being taken in these zones including strict exit/entry rules, door-to-door screening of residents etc.

11.04 pm: India Lockdown live updates: What is an Orange Zone?

As per the Union Health Ministry, districts that do not have enough confirmed COVID-19 cases to meet the requirements of being identified under the 'red zone', but are being seen as potential hotspots are called Orange zones.

10.59 pm: Lockdown extension news: What is a Green Zone?

According to the Union Health Ministry, a district will be identified as a Green Zone if it doesn't have any confirmed COVID-19 case so far or there is no reported case for the last 21 days in the district (earlier it was 28 days).

10.54 am: Delhi coronavirus cases: 41 people test COVID-19 positive in Kapashera area

41 people have been tested positive for novel coronavirus in Delhi's Kapashera on Saturday. These people were living in a single building, informed Delhi South-West DM.

10.48 am: Coronavirus Red Zones in India reduced from 170 to 130; check full list here

Andaman and Nicobar Island: South Andaman

Andhra Pradesh: Kurnool, Guntur, Nellore, Prakasham, Krishna, YSR, West Godavari, Chittor, Visakhapatnam, East Godavari, Anantapur

Bihar: Anantapur

Chandigarh: Chandigarh

Chhattisgarh: Korba

Delhi: South, South East, Shahdara, West, North, Central, New Delhi, East, South West

Gujarat: Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, Bhavnagar, Rajkot

Haryana: Noah, Gurugram, Parval, Faridabad

Jammu and Kashmir: Srinagar, Bandipora, Baramulla, Jammu, Udhampur, Kupwada

Karnataka: Bengaluru Urban, Mussoorie, Belagavi

Kerala: Kannur, Ernakulam, Kasaragod, Malapuram, Pathanamthitta

Madhya Pradesh: Indore, Bhopal, Khargaon, Ujjain, Hoshangabad

Maharashtra: Mumbai, Pune, Thane, Nagpur, Sangli, Ahmednagar, Yavatmal, Aurangabad, Buldhana, Mumbai Suburban, Nashik

Odisha: Khordha

Punjab: SAS Nagar, Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar, Jalandhar, Pathankot

Rajasthan: Jaipur, Tonk, Jodhpur, Banswara, Kota, Jhunjhunu, Jaisalmer, Bhilwara, Bikaner, Jalwar, Bharatpur

Tamil Nadu: Chennai, Tiruchirappalli, Coimbatore, Tirunelveli, Erode, Vellore, Dindigul, Villupuram, Tirupur, Thani, Namakkal, Chengalpattu, Madurai, Tatikoran, Karur, Virudhunaru, Kanarukuru

Telangana: Hyderabad, Nizamabad, Wrangal Urban, Ranga Reddy, Jogulamba Gadwal, Machhal-Malkarjagiri, Karimnagar, Nirmal

Uttar Pradesh: Agra, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Meerut, Lucknow, Ghaziabad, Shaharanpur, Shamli, Firozabad, Moradabad

Uttarakhand: Dehradun

West Bengal: Kolkata, Howrah, Madinapur East, 24 Parganas North

10.43 am: Coronavirus in India cases: States and UTs with less than 300 cases

Andaman and Nicobar Islands- 33 cases, 0 deaths

Arunachal Pradesh- 1 case, 0 deaths

Assam- 43 cases, 1 death

Chandigarh- 88 cases, 0 deaths

Chhattisgarh- 43 cases, 0 deaths

Goa- 7 cases, 0 deaths

Himachal Pradesh- 40 cases, 1 death

Jharkhand- 115 cases, 3 deaths

Ladakh- 22 cases, 0 deaths

Manipur- 2 cases, 0 deaths

Meghalaya- 12 cases, 1 death

Mizoram- 1 cases, o deaths

Odisha- 157 cases, 1 death

Pudducherry- 8 cases, 0 deaths

Tripura- 4 cases, 0 deaths

Uttarakhand- 59 cases, 0 deaths

10.36 am: Coronavirus India cases: State-wise tally; check here

Maharashtra is the worst-hit state in India with 12,296 COVID-19 cases and 521 deaths

Gujarat follows suit with 5,054 cases and 262 deaths

Delhi is the third worst-hit state with 4,122 cases and 64 deaths.

Madhya Pradesh with 2,846 cases, 151 deaths

Rajasthan 2,770 cases, 65 deaths

Tamil Nadu 2,757 cases, 29 deaths

Uttar Pradesh (UP)-2,487 cases, 43 deaths

Andhra Pradesh-1,525 cases, 33 deaths

Telangana 1,063 cases, 28 deaths

West Bengal-922 cases, 33 deaths

Jammu and Kashmir (J&K)- 666 cases, 8 deaths

Karnataka- 601 cases, 25 deaths

Kerala- 499 cases, 4 deaths

Bihar-481 cases, 4 deaths

Punjab-772 cases, 20 deaths

Haryana-360 cases, 4 deaths

10.29 am: Delhi coronavirus lockdown 3.0

List of districts in red, orange and green zones.

District Zone

South East Delhi Red Zone

Central Delhi Red Zone

North Delhi Red Zone

South Delhi Red Zone

North East Delhi Red Zone

West Delhi Red Zone

Shahdara Red Zone

East Delhi Red Zone

New Delhi Red Zone

North West Delhi Red Zone

South West Delhi Red Zone

10.26 am: Corona live updates

In Pics: Preparations are underway at Delhi's Ganga Ram hospital to pay tribute and thank to corona warriors fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

10.19 am: Rajasthan coronavirus cases: 31 more people test positive on Sunday

Rajasthan recorded 31 fresh COVID-19 cases on Sunday. Out of these cases, 9 are from Jodhpur, 8 from Jaipur, 5 from Udaipur, 3 from Chittorgarh, 2 each from Ajmer and Pratapgarh, as well as 1 each from Dungarpur and Kota.

10.13 am: India lockdown news: Only accepting passengers brough and facilitated by state governments

The Indian Railways has clarified that it is running special trains only on state governments' requests to ferry migrant workers, pilgrims, tourists, students and others stranded at different places. It said that no other group of travellers or individuals are allowed to travel and no tickets are being sold at any station. The Indian Railways also cleared that all other passenger and suburban train services remain suspended.

10.07 am: Gujarat lockdown extension: List of red, orange and green zones

District Zone

Ahmedabad Red Zone

Surat Red Zone

Vadodara Red Zone

Anand Red Zone

Banas Kantha Red Zone

Panchmahal Red Zone

Bhavnagar Red Zone

Gandhinagar Red Zone

Aravalli Red Zone

Rajkot Orange Zone

Bharuch Orange Zone

Botad Orange Zone

Narmada Orange Zone

Chhota Udaipu Orange Zone

Mahisagar Orange Zone

Mehsana Orange Zone

Patan Orange Zone

Kheda Orange Zone

Valsad Orange Zone

Dohad Orange Zone

Kachchh (Kutch) Orange Zone

Navsari Orange Zone

Gir Somnath Orange Zone

Dang Orange Zone

Sabarkantha Orange Zone

Tapi Orange Zone

Jamnagar Orange Zone

Surendranagar Orange Zone

Morbi Green Zone

Amreli Green Zone

Porbandar Green Zone

Junagadh Green Zone

Devbhumi Dwarka (Devbhoomi Dwarka) Green Zone

10.05 am: Lockdown extension news

Additional restrictions announced across India: -

Public places

Wearing a face cover is mandatory in all public places

Marriage related gathering shall ensure social distancing with maximum of 50 guests

Funeral or last rites to be held with a maximum of 20 people while ensuring social distancing

All persons in charge of public places and transport shall ensure social distancing

Spitting in public places punishable by fine

Shops selling liquor, paan, gutka, etc to ensure the minimum two-metre distance between persons present at shops at all times

No gathering of 5 or more persons to be allowed

Consumption of liquor, paan, gutka, tobacco not permitted in public places

Workplaces

Wearing face cover is mandatory in workplaces

Arogya Setu app to be made compulsory for all employees

Intensive employee training ion good hygiene

All persons in charge of workplaces and transport shall ensure social distancing

Social distancing at workplaces to be ensured through adequate gaps between shifts, staggering the lunch breaks of staff, etc

Frequent sanitisation of workplaces, common areas

Large physical meetings to be avoided

Arrangements for transport facilities to be ensured with social distancing wherever personal/public transport is not feasible

Persons above 65 years of age, persons with co-morbidities, pregnant women and children below 10 years to stay at home

Provisions of thermal scanning, hand wash and sanitisers to be made available at all entry and exit points and common areas

A list of nearby dedicated Covid-19 hospitals/clinics to be made available. Quarantine areas to be marked so that any employee showing symptoms of coronavirus can be quarantined before being rushed to nearest health facility

10.04 am: Lockdown live updates: Highlights

The Centre has allowed all goods traffic.

No state/UT shall halt the movement of cargo for cross land-border trade under treaties with neighbouring nations.

No separate pass needed for the movement of essential goods and services across the country during the lockdown period.

States/UTs, basis their assessment of the prevalent situation, may permit only select activities out of permitted activities, as they may deem necessary.

The Centre has permitted e-commerce websites to deliver non-essential items in orange and green zones.

All other activities, that are not particularly banned, will be allowed activities.

10.01 am: What's closed in lockdown 3.0?

Besides zone-wise restrictions, the Centre has prohibited a limited number of activities across the country, irrespective of zones. These include: -

Travel by air, rail, metro and inter-state movement by road

Schools, colleges, institutions

Hospitality services, including hotels and restaurants

Places of large gatherings, such as cinema halls, malls, gym, sports complex, cultural, social and political and all kind of assemblies

Religious places/places of worship will also be closed for public

9.59 am: Haryana coronavirus cases: 82-year-old woman dies at Panchkula hospital

An 82-year-old woman hailing from Chandigarh died due to COVID-19 at a private hospital in Panchkula, a doctor in Haryana told a news agency.

9.54 am: Armed forces flypast over Delhi delayed; flower petal showers at around 11 am

The fighter aircraft training mission departure is delayed by 1 hour in the national capital, due to rains. The fighters are now likely to be over NCR area, at around 11 am, depending on the weather conditions, the Indian Air Force tweeted on Sunday. The fighters will come over Delhi at around 11 am. The flower petals showering will happen after that.

#IndiaSalutesCoronaWarriors Update on Aerial Salute : The C-130 aircraft are airborne as planned for #Covid19 relief mission. The aircraft will fly over Delhi area approx. at 1015 h depending on the rain/weather conditions. Jai Hind! - Indian Air Force (@IAF_MCC) May 3, 2020

9.45 am: Maharashtra coronavirus cases: Worst-hit state with cases past 12,000, 790 new cases in 24 hours

Maharasthra which is the worst-affected state in India reported 790 fresh COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours. The state's total number of confirmed novel coronavirus cases now stands at 12,296, including 2,000 recoveries and 521 deaths, as per the latest data by the Union Health Ministry.

9.39 am: Biggest one-day spike in coronavirus cases in 24 hours

India recorded 2,644 fresh COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, which is the biggest one-day jump in coronavirus tally in the country. The total count of confirmed cases now stands at 39,980 as of date, as per the latest update by the Union Health Ministry.

9.34 am: Coronavirus deaths in India: 83 deaths in 24 hours, biggest single-day spike

India recorded 83 new deaths in the last 24 hours, the biggest single-day spike in the country. The death toll due to COVID-19 jumped to 1,301 in India on Sunday, as the latest data by the Union Health Ministry.

9.32 am: India coronavirus cases jump to 39,980

The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases rose to 39,980 on Sunday, including 28,046 active cases, 10,632, 1 migrated and 1,301 deaths, according to latest update by the Union Health Ministry on its website.

9.29 am: India lockdown 3.0 extension

What's allowed in green zones:

All activities are allowed in green zones except the limited number of activities that are prohibited across India, irrespective of the zone. However, buses can operate with up to 50 per cent seating capacity and bus depots can function with up to 50 per cent capacity.

9.25 am: Lockdown 3.0 extension

What's open in orange zones

In addition to the activities allowed in red zones, taxis and cab aggregators will be permitted with 1 driver and 1 passenger only.

Inter-district movement of individuals and vehicles will be allowed for permitted activities only. Four-wheeler vehicles will have a maximum two passengers besides the driver and pillion riding will be allowed on two-wheelers.

9.19 am: Lockdown 3.0: Govt extends countrywide curfew till May 17

What's open in red zones; see here

All industrial and construction activities in rural areas, including MNREGA works, food-processing units and brick-kilns are permitted; besides, in rural areas, without distinction to the nature of goods, all shops, except in shopping malls are allowed.

All agriculture activities, e.g., sowing, harvesting, procurement and marketing operations in the agricultural supply chain are allowed.

Manufacturing units of essential goods, including drugs, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, their raw material and intermediates; production units, which require continuous process, and their supply chain; Jute industry with staggered shifts and social distancing; and manufacturing of IT hardware and manufacturing units of packaging material will continue to be permitted.

All health services (including AYUSH) are to remain functional, including transport of medical personnel and patients through air ambulances.

Public utilities, e.g., utilities in power, water, sanitation, waste management, telecommunications and internet will remain open, and courier and postal services will be allowed to run.

Most of the commercial and private establishments have been permitted to operate in the Red Zones. These comprise and electronic media, IT and IT enabled services, data and call centres, cold storage and warehousing services, private security and facility management services, and services provided by self-employed persons, except for barbers etc.

All plantation activities are allowed, including their processing and marketing.

Animal husbandry activities are fully allowed, including inland and marine fisheries.

A large part of the financial sector remains open, which includes banks, non-banking finance companies (NBFCs), insurance and capital market activities, and credit co-operative societies.

Operation of homes for children, senior citizens, destitute, women and widows etc.; and operation of Anganwadis is allowed.

9.14 am: Gujarat lockdown extension: List of red, orange and green zones

District Zone

Ahmedabad Red Zone

Surat Red Zone

Vadodara Red Zone

Anand Red Zone

Banas Kantha Red Zone

Panchmahal Red Zone

Bhavnagar Red Zone

Gandhinagar Red Zone

Aravalli Red Zone

Rajkot Orange Zone

Bharuch Orange Zone

Botad Orange Zone

Narmada Orange Zone

Chhota Udaipu Orange Zone

Mahisagar Orange Zone

Mehsana Orange Zone

Patan Orange Zone

Kheda Orange Zone

Valsad Orange Zone

Dohad Orange Zone

Kachchh (Kutch) Orange Zone

Navsari Orange Zone

Gir Somnath Orange Zone

Dang Orange Zone

Sabarkantha Orange Zone

Tapi Orange Zone

Jamnagar Orange Zone

Surendranagar Orange Zone

Morbi Green Zone

Amreli Green Zone

Porbandar Green Zone

Junagadh Green Zone

Devbhumi Dwarka (Devbhoomi Dwarka) Green Zone

9.07 am: Maharashtra containment zones: List of red, orange, green zones

Red zones:

Mumbai

Pune

Thane

Nashik

Palghar

Nagpur

Solapur

Yavatmal

Aurangabad

Satara

Dhule

Akola

Jalgaon

Mumbai Suburban

Orange zones:

Raigad

Ahmednagar

Amravati

Buldhana

Nandurbar

Kolhapur

Hingoli

Ratnagiri

Jalna

Nanded

Chandrapur

Parbhani

Sangli

Latur

Bhandara

Beed

Green zones:

Osmanabad

Washim

Sindhudurg

Gandia

Gadchiroli

Wardha

8.59 am: Uttar Pradesh coronavirus cases

UP recorded 159 fresh COVID-19 cases on Saturday. The total tally in the state now stands at 2,455, along with 656 recoveries and 43 deaths, according to Union Health Ministry.

8.53 am: Coronavirus India live updates: PM Modi held meeting on second stimulus to revive lockdown-hit economy

Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a series of meeting on Saturday with key cabinet ministers and government functionaries to discuss the second stimulus package to lift the economy hit by coronavirus induced lockdown. Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, were also present at the meetings. PM Modi held discussions with key economic ministries such as Agriculture and Famers' Welfare, and MSME to deliberate on several issues. He pointed out the need to generate gainful employment opportunities by helping businesses overcome difficulties due to disruptions caused by COVID-19. The Prime Minister also stressed on the need to strengthen major structural reforms undertaken in the past and new structural reforms in the areas of corporate governance, credit markets and infrastructure sectors were also discussed.

8.45 am: Maharashtra coronavirus cases

Pune District coronavirus patient details as on 2nd May 2020

Total tests till date - 16,254

Total negative till date - 13,933

Total positive till date - 1,912

Isolation wards - 1,708

Total dead till date-103

Discharged till date-14,443

8.39 am: Coronavirus latest news

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has tested 1.4 million people in the country since January 30. The apex medical body tests more than 70,000 people a day.

8. 34 am: Corona live updates: Govt makes Aarogya Setu mandatory for employees in India

The government has made Aarogya Setu mandatory for both government and private sector employees in India. Here is how you can register on the app:

1. After downloading the app, the user will need to read and agree with the terms and conditions to register.

2. The user will need to submit his/her mobile number for verification, after which an OTP will be sent.

3. Post registration, the user can fill his/her personal details such as name, age, profession, countries travelled to in the last 30 days

4. The app asks the user whether or not he/she is ready to volunteer in the times of need.

5. The user can also do a self-assessment test after providing all the necessary details. The app can let users know about the chances of their infection risk.

8.29 am: Total coronavirus cases in India: Maharashtra on top; Gujarat, Delhi follow suit

Currently, India has 9 states with more than 1,000 novel coronavirus cases. Maharashtra has the highest number of COVID-19 cases at 11,506, followed by Gujarat (4,721), Delhi (3,738), Madhya Pradesh (2,719), Rajasthan (2,666), Tamil Nadu (2,526), Uttar Pradesh (2,455), Andhra Pradesh (1,525) and Telangana (1,057).

8.25 am: Coronavirus live updates: Armed forces to say big thank you to COVID warriors on Sunday

The armed forces on Sunday will carry out aerial fly-pasts, light up ships at sea and shower flower petals on various hospitals across India to express gratitude to lakhs of doctors, paramedics, healthcare workers and other frontline warriors engaged in fighting the novel coronavirus pandemic.

8.20 am: Lockdown 3.0: National, international travel banned till May 17

All domestic and international air travel, movement of trains, metro and inter-state buses, except those allowed by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, will be banned during lockdown 3.0, as per the ministry's fresh guidelines issued on Friday.

8.15 am: Total coronavirus cases in India

The country's total number of COVID-19 cases now stand at 37,776 including 26,535 active cases, 10,017 recoveries, 1 migrated and 1,223 deaths, according to Union Health Ministry

8.10 am: Over 2,200 new coronavirus cases recorded in last 24 hours

Over 2,293 new novel coronavirus cases and 71 deaths were reported in India in the last 24 hours.

8.00 am: Coronavirus map live updates: Check BusinessToday.In tracker to get state-wise tally of COVID-19 cases

INDIA CORONAVIRUS TRACKER: BusinessToday.In brings you a daily tracker as coronavirus cases continue to spread. Here is the state-wise data on total cases, fatalities and recoveries in one comprehensive graphic
Three men are facing the prospect of 15 years in jail after allegedly buying sex dolls depicting children.

The men were arrested over two days in Grafton, NSW, and Turramurra in Sydney after Australian Border Force allegedly intercepted sex dolls being imported into the country in March and April.

A 62-year-old was arrested in Grafton on Thursday after being accused of importing one of the dolls from China, with police allegedly finding two other dolls and children's clothing at his home.

Police arrest one of the three men (pictured) after searching his home and allegedly finding a child sex doll in NSW

Possessing one of the child sex dolls (pictured) can incur punishment of 15 years in jail

He was refused bail via video link in Lismore Local Court on Friday.

Police arrested a 42-year-old man on Thursday in his home in Turramurra where they allegedly found a child sex-doll from Japan and another doll.

He appeared in Parramatta Local Court on Friday and was also charged with possessing cannabis.

A 37-year-old in Grafton was arrested for allegedly possessing a child-like doll and was scheduled to appear before Lismore Local Court on Saturday.

Each man was charged with possessing and illegally importing a child-like sex doll and child abuse charges, though police do not believe the arrests are connected to each other.

Possessing a childlike sex doll can incur a punishment of 15 years imprisonment in New South Wales.

A collection of dolls and clothing seized by police. Detectives do not believe the three arrests made between Turramurra and Grafton were connected

'These dolls sexualise children, they are not harmless and do not prevent people from offending in the future,' AFP Assistant Commissioner Lesa Gale said in a media release.

'Child-like sex dolls can desensitise people who use them to the physical, emotional and psychological harm caused by sexual abuse.

'Research by the Australian Institute of Criminology suggests that use of the dolls may lead to an escalation in child sex offences  from viewing online child abuse material to contact sexual offending.'

Australian Border Force Regional Commander for NSW Danielle Yannopoulos said the force will continue to track child sex dolls entering the country.

'The ABF is committed to detecting these dolls at the border and investigating and prosecuting those who seek to import this sickening material into our community,' she said.
Rights groups say 10 journalists have been detained and more than two dozen threatened due to work on the pandemic.

When Venezuelan photojournalist Rosali Hernandez started taking pictures of COVID-19 patients in one of the main hospitals of Caracas last month, she was met by a member of the armed forces.

He asked me to give him my telephone and camera. When I refused, he forced me to erase all of my materials, including the photographs I had taken before entering the hospital, said Hernandez, who works for the online news outlet Caraota Digital.

Even though I showed him my press credentials, he told me I was not authorised to work in the hospital, and insisted I shouldnt come back again, Hernandez said. She added that she was forced to stop working on three different occasions by members of security forces and by national guards.

In one of the hospitals, the medical staff begged me to erase all of my photographs, saying they were not allowed to share any information with journalists and that they feared for their security.

Hernandez is not alone. More than 35 other journalists and media outlets have been victims of smear campaigns, lawsuits, threats, persecution and confiscation of their equipment, preventing them from reporting on COVID-19, according to Redes Ayuda, a Venezuelan NGO specialised in defending press freedom. At least 10 journalists have been arbitrarily arrested while covering coronavirus-related stories since March 13, when the first case of the virus in Venezuela was confirmed, according to the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Redes Ayuda puts the number of detentions at 17.

The apparent crackdown on journalists comes as Venezuelans seek more information regarding the pandemic. Venezuela has confirmed at least 345 cases of COVID-19 and 10 deaths, but experts fear the number may be much higher. Doctors and other healthcare professionals have repeatedly warned the countrys healthcare system, which has faced medicine and equipment shortages for years, is ill-equipped to handle a surge in cases.

In Venezuela, the COVID-19 pandemic has only provided more excuses for the government to repress and censor critical media, in what was already one of the most challenging countries for the press in Latin America, said Natalie Southwick, the South and Central America programme coordinator for CPJ.

At a critical moment like this, the free flow of reliable information can spell the difference between life and death for many people, and a free press is vital to ensuring that information is able to reach those who need it, Southwick told Al Jazeera.

A man walks wearing a face mask to prevent the spread of the coronavirus walks on a street at a slum in Caracas, Venezuela [Ariana Cubillos/AP Photo]

Press organisations like Reporters Without Borders say that the climate for journalists has been extremely tense since the onset of the political crisis in 2016, and has further intensified since 2017, resulting in numerous arbitrary arrests and violence against journalists. Many Venezuelan journalists have fled the country in recent years due to the ongoing dangers and threats.

Rights groups also warn that some of the laws in place are used as a tool for the government to arbitrarily arrest or prosecute independent journalists. These include a 2010 law sanctioning any content calling the legitimately constituted authority into question, as well as a 2017 law on advocacy of hatred, prosecuting and imprisoning anyone who instigates hate or violence on the radio, television, in print or via social media. Local press NGOs like Redes Ayuda warn that this is a tailor-made law to justify any type of imprisonment for expressing ones opinions.

Darvinson Rojas, a freelance journalist, said special action forces arrested him on March 21 because he was covering recent numbers of confirmed coronavirus cases.

They acted violently, tied my hands with my shoelaces and covered my face with the T-shirt I was wearing, Rojas told Al Jazeera.

They arrived at my home at night, saying they had received an anonymous phone call indicating there was a person infected with COVID-19 in my house. When I tried to go outside to take a picture, the special forces arrested me. Then, they forcibly entered the house, and stole four computers, two cellphones and an iPad. They have threatened and harassed the neighbours who tried to intervene. Several people were hit during this incident, Rojas said.

Rojas was arrested with his parents, who were released that same day. He was subsequently detained at police headquarters for 12 days and released conditionally on April 2.

He is charged with advocacy of hatred and instigation to commit crimes for his reporting, and is currently awaiting criminal investigation. Human rights and press organisations warn that the trial is unlawful and politically motivated, aiming to discourage other journalists from reporting on the pandemic.

A city worker, dressed in protective gear, asks people waiting for a bus to maintain a safe social distance as a measure to curb the spread of the new coronavirus in Caracas, Venezuela [Ariana Cubillos/AP Photo]

Venezuelan ministries for communication, interior relations, justice and peace have not responded to Al Jazeeras requests for comment.

Vladimir Padrino Lopez, the Venezuelan minister of defence for the national armed forces, said in March that journalists are encouraged to carry out their work during the quarantine.

Of course, there are sectors that are exempt from this decree, such as the agriculture sector, for food production; the health sector and all the health workers who need to go to health centres and hospitals; the public transport sector; the pharmaceutical sector, essential services: electricity, gas, water; the telecommunications sector; the media sector, he said, referring to the nationwide quarantine. These are sectors that are exempt from this measure and may circulate, in the morning to go to work, and in the afternoon to go back home.

But rights groups say that is not necessarily the case.

Systematic policy of control

Redes Ayuda recently released a report exposing all known cases of alleged attacks against journalists reporting on COVID-19.

Luis Serrano, the general coordinator of Redes Ayuda, told Al Jazeera that if journalists are not allowed to report, the government is violating not only their right to work, but also the right of the people to be informed, which is essential to understand the magnitude of the pandemic.

He added that this censorship is part of a systematic policy of control over the population, controlling everything in peoples lives  from the information they receive to the food that they eat  which generates a population that is used to dictatorship.

A man wearing a face mask amid the spread of the new coronavirus pulls a baby stroller filled with empty containers, as he walks to a mountainside to collect water in Caracas, Venezuela [Ariana Cubillos/AP Photo]

Serrano said he was briefly detained on April 6, while he was receiving a delivery of masks, gloves and hand sanitiser on behalf of Redes Ayuda, which was putting together protection kits for Venezuelan journalists. Serrano told Al Jazeera that police officers had searched him because they wanted to check that he was not an illegal seller. When he objected, they forcibly transported him to the police station, where he was handcuffed and interrogated for about two hours. He was subsequently released.

For Hernandez, she worries what the crackdown on the press may mean for not just Venezuelans, but the region as a whole.

Venezuelan people have no idea about what is happening in the country, she said. All of this is very dangerous, not only for Venezuela but also for surrounding countries.
 Flash

A giant panda cub was born on Friday in the Ouwehands Zoo in Rhenen in the Dutch province of Utrecht, the zoo announced on Saturday.

Both the mother, Wu Wen, and the cub are doing well and currently staying in the maternity den, according to the zoo.

The cub's gender is still unknown. The keepers will be able to identify the cub's gender after a few months and then the little giant panda will get a name.

"I couldn't be happier with the birth of this panda cub," Marcel Boekhoorn, the owner of Ouwehands Zoo, said in a press release. "This is the positive news that everyone was expecting. I would like to congratulate the panda keeper team. This cub was born and conceived naturally thanks to their patience and expertise."

Giant panda is an endangered species that is only found in China. An international breeding program was established to protect this species and the Ouwehands Zoo is part of the program.

Male giant panda Xing Ya and female Wu Wen arrived at Ouwehands Zoo on April 12, 2017. According to the arrangement with China, the cub can stay in the Netherlands for four years. After that, it will move to China. Just like its parents, the giant panda cub is owned by China.
Mike Fierros daughter and her classmates were set to attend the trip of a lifetime to Washington, D.C., to round out their eighth grade school year.

Students from three middle schools in Wayne Township  Anthony Wayne, George Washington and Schuyler Colfax  were slated to travel to the nations capital. But that, of course, was before the coronavirus pandemic canceled all such trips.

Now families like the Fierros are waiting to see if theyll be refunded for the $615 cost of the overnight expedition.

Its not like we canceled on them for one reason or another, Fierro said. It is what it is. The circumstances are unprecedented, but the museums are closed. All public gatherings cant happen...and, it wouldnt be possible anyway.

The trip was booked through Curriculum Travel of America, a company that plans educational expeditions for students. CTA uses the payments to cover the travel, lodging, food, activities and a tour director for the duration of trips.

Upon registration, CTA offers individual cancellation waivers, allowing families to purchase insurance on the trip in case a student cant go for any reason. For the trip planned by Wayne Public Schools, the ICW cost an additional $49.

In an email to families, Wayne Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Mark Toback wrote that students who purchased an ICW for the trip received a full refund, minus the $49 cost of the ICW.

For families that did not purchase insurance, Toback said the school district is continuing to work with CTA to provide at least partial refunds. But those disputes are ongoing, and Toback said they will take time to resolve. Wayne Public Schools district attorney is assisting the school in the matter.

On CTAs website, the company states refunds will not be given without an ICW purchased at registration.

CTAs cancelation policy, posted on the companys website, includes a pandemic as a reason to cancel a trip without refunds.

If the School or Organization cancels the entire trip for ALL trip registrants, or, if the performance of the proposed trip is hindered or prevented...by Acts of God, war, hostilities, civil unrest, blockage, labor conflicts, strike, fire, flood, explosion, earthquake, or other natural forces, disease or medical epidemics, pandemics or outbreaks, or any other cause whatsoever, CTA may cancel the proposed trip without liability to refund, money or fees paid in advance," it reads.

In the final line of the companys cancelation policy, it states, Without ICW, all payments are nonrefundable.

Multiple parents said the wording of the cancelation policy was changed to include pandemics, and attempts to contact the company have been futile.

CTA did not return a request for comment. Its offices in Pennsylvania are closed due to the coronavirus outbreak and all staff has been temporarily furloughed.

Tobacks email said CTA was attempting to get refunds from individual vendors booked for the trip, but each of those vendors had individual cancelation policies.

But for now, families that did not purchase insurance for their students are stuck waiting to see if any money will be returned.

I just find it kind of odd that this company is not giving us anything back, Fierro said. So its very frustrating, and I dont know where to go. I dont know what to say."

Please subscribe now and support the local journalism YOU rely on and trust.

Chris Ryan may be reached at cryan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @ChrisRyan_NJ.
Coronavirus has claimed the life of an elderly Western Australian woman, taking the national death toll to 95.

The woman, 83, contracted the virus from a close contact and was admitted to hospital in mid-April before she died at home on April 30, Premier Mark McGowan announced on Sunday.

'It's heartbreaking to hear another Western Australian has passed away - my heart goes out to her friends and her family,' he told reporters.

'It goes to show just how serious and how deadly this virus is.

'It's a reminder for all of us  we must continue to take the threat of COVID-19 seriously.'

Coronavirus has claimed a ninth West Australian victim to take the national death to 95. Pictured are friends gathering in Kings Park in Perth on Friday after restrictions on public gatherings were lifted

The latest victim, who had pre-existing health condition, is the ninth person to die from the virus in WA since Diamond Princess cruise ship passenger James Kwan, 71, became the first Australian fatality from the global outbreak on March 1.

It comes after Western Australia recorded no new cases for the fourth consecutive day on Sunday after several restrictions were eased.

The two-person limit on non-work activities and gatherings has been increased to 10 in Western Australia.

But Premier McGowan urged Western Australians to comply with social distancing.

'We can't afford to get comfortable or slacken off,' Mr McGowan said.

'Don't be an idiot, we're all in this together. Follow the health advice, follow the rules, keep social distancing and keep up the good personal hygiene.

'The more we do this, the sooner we can get back to normal.'

Australia's death toll rose to 95 on Sunday with the death of a woman in western Sydney and the death of a woman at home in Western Australia

Earlier on Sunday, the national death toll increased to 94 after western Sydney woman Ann Fahey, 76, died in hospital on Saturday.

Having previously tested negative twice to the virus, her condition deteriorated on Thursday when a nurse found her collapsed on the floor in her room at a virus-riddled aged care home.

Ms Fahey was the 14th resident from Anglicare's Newmarch House aged care facility to die from the virus in the last three weeks since April 12.

Deputy chief medical officer Nick Coatsworth remains upbeat about Australia's handling of the coronavirus.

Australia's toll is relatively small by international standards, as is the number of reported cases at 6787, a rise of 14 in the previous 24 hours.

'We are looking good,' Dr Coatsworth told Sky News on Sunday.

He said the concept of elimination of COVID-19 in Australia would be 'magnificent to achieve' but challenging to sustain.

'Which is why we have taken a position of suppression,' he said.

He said that was why there was extra testing for the virus, the COVIDSafe app to assist contact tracing and increased public health resources.

'All those things are designed so that if there are small flares of coronavirus, spot fires if you will, that they can be suppressed very, very quickly,' Dr Coatsworth said.

'That offers the best balance of getting society back on its feet, confidence back into our society and living with coronavirus until a vaccine arrives.'

Ann Fahey, 76, (pictured) died in hospital on Saturday after contracting the virus at her western Sydney aged care facility, where 14 residents have died from the virus

Some states have already started to ease restrictions and the national cabinet will on Friday consider lifting some broader curbs.

CORONAVIRUS CASES IN AUSTRALIA: 27,244 Victoria: 20,269 New South Wales: 4,273 Queensland: 1,161 Western Australia: 692 South Australia: 473 Tasmania: 230 Australian Capital Territory: 113 Northern Territory: 33 TOTAL CASES: 27,244 ESTIMATED ACTIVE CASES: 269 DEATHS: 897 Updated: 5.31 PM, 11 October, 2020 Source: Australian Government Department of Health Advertisement

However, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said relaxing restrictions would depend on Australians signing up for COVIDSafe app, which uses Bluetooth connections to determine who infected people came into close contact with.

Some four million people have registered for the app but the government wants to see millions more by next Friday, a target that Deputy Chief Medical Officer Michael Kidd believes is 'realistic'.

But he also admitted the app is not yet live and won't up and running until next week,.

Health officials can not use the data but will be able to trace back from the time when someone first downloaded the app.

Meanwhile, Queensland police were forced to issue more than 30 infringement notices for breaches of COVID-19 restrictions on the first day of easing such curbs.

From Saturday, residents in the state could travel up to 50km from their home to shop, visit a park or even go to the drive-in.
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday said that his government was allowing self-employed people including domestic help, those involved in laundry services, technicians, electricians and plumbers to operate in the national capital from Monday, when the third phase of the national lockdown over the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) kicks in with considerable relaxations.

The Delhi government released its implementation strategy over the guidelines released by the Union home ministry, with Kejriwal saying that the Capital will follow the lockdown restrictions enforced by the Centre. He, however, urged the central government to lift restrictions in the Capitals areas that have largely remained unaffected by the disease. The Union government announced on Friday that the lockdown, necessitated by the infectious outbreak, was being extended by two weeks till May 17.

Detailing the Delhi governments plan at a news briefing on Sunday, Kejriwal said: Self-employed people  technicians, plumbers, electricians, mechanics, sanitation staff, people working as domestic help, laundry, dhobis  people like these the permission to work.

The Delhi CM also said print and electronic media, IT-related services, call centres, data centres, warehousing services, cold storages, private security firms and industrial estates with access control will also be allowed to remain open.

Elevator technicians, AC mechanics, vehicle mechanics, generator mechanics and TV mechanics will also be allowed to work from Monday. The Delhi chief minister on March 23 announced a complete lockdown in the Capital to contain Covid-19, which has severely hit metropolises across the world, days before the central government announced similar restrictions across the nation.

While public health experts say the lockdown was needed to control the disease from spiralling out of control, there have been concerns over stalling economic activity. Kejriwal said on Sunday Delhi was reporting heavy revenue losses and it was important to reopen areas largely outside the spectre of the pathogen to ensure people dont travel back to their hometowns because of the lack of employment. Currently, there are 94 containment zones in the national capital.

The Delhi CM said that people were losing jobs and traders were suffering because there was no business. He, however, reiterated the Centres rule on people not being allowed to step out of their homes for non-essential activities from 7pm to 7am.

Kejriwal said government offices and private facilities with 33% staff will open from Monday but the suspension of travel by air, metro and bus will continue. Delivery of essential goods through e-commerce portals will continue in the national capital, he said.

Malls, cinemas, salons, market complexes and Delhi Metro will remain shut while shops selling essentials will continue will be open, he said, adding that 50 people will be allowed in marriage function. Movement of individuals and vehicles is allowed only for permitted activities, with a maximum of two persons (besides the driver) in four-wheeler vehicles, and with no pillion rider in the case of two-wheelers.

Shortly after Kejriwals announcement, residents welfare associations (RWAs) in Delhi said they were open to letting electricians and plumbers enter the residential complexes, but expressed concern over domestic help resuming work.

Rajiv Kakria, convener, Save Our City campaign, said the Delhi governments decision came just a day after the city reported the highest number of Covid-19 cases in a single day. If the government ensures that the situation is conducive and there are zero movements from containment zones, then it can be eased. But it is better to wait and see how the situation pans out, he said. Domestic help work in at least 5-6 households It is risky, especially now when the cases are spiralling up, he added.

Madhur Srivastava, RWA president, Sector-4 DDA colony of Dwarka, said: We have a designated electrician, plumber and a person who irons clothes. We used to allow residents to use services from outside but that will strictly be banned now. One persons convenience cannot be the reason for risking other residents. At the same time, we cannot discontinue these services because people have started going to work and will need to get their clothes ironed, etc.

The Delhi government, RWAs say, has allowed self-employed people to work but without making any provision for their commute. Public transport is not allowed, then how will they come? said Atul Goyal, president URJA, a united front of a group RWAs in Delhi.

Reacting to the latest relaxations, Dr Lalit Kant, former head of epidemiology and communicable diseases at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), said: When these people come for one, they should ensure to wear a mask while working and wash their hands before starting the work. If there are elderly people or children at home, then they should be kept away as chances of them contracting the infection are high in case the domestic help is infected but asymptomatic.

Dr Jugal Kishore, head of community medicine at Safdarjung Hospital, welcomed the governments decision to allow self-employed people working as domestic help. This decision will help both, as there are people, especially the elderly, who are finding it difficult to manage the household without any help. It will also provide financial stability to domestic help. People should teach them how to protect themselves from the disease.
- The Ghana Police Service has released a new statement clarifying an earlier one after Ghanaians reacted to it

- The initial one was with regard to the use of security clothing by civilians

- The reactions to the post compelled the Service to release another one, which was also challenged

Our Manifesto: This is what YEN.com.gh believes in

The Ghana Police Service (GPS) has released a statement after Ghanaians descended on them for comments about uniforms used by some workers of the Multimedia Group.

YEN.com.gh understands that the GPS took to social media to register its displeasure at the fact that civilians opted to celebrate May Day by wearing uniforms for specified security agencies.

READ ALSO: Ghana's most beautiful police officer stuns her fans with a fresh photo

The GPS quoted section 28 of the Police Service Act, 1970 (ACT 350) which prohibits such an act and wondered why something of that nature should be encouraged.

The Service went ahead to state that it takes a lot to wear such uniforms and as such, it is necessary to obey the law at all times.

Wrapping up the earlier message, the Service called on all Ghanaians to go through the appropriate process to have access to such uniforms.

This, however, did not go down well with some social media users, who registered their displeasure at the statement from the GPS.

Ziblim believes the Police Service is not serious.

Agyei asked them to just do the right thing.

Adampah wondered why the Police are not doing their work.

Cudjoe wondered why the Police should tell Ghanaians something like this.

The GPS later released another statement and explained that it is not against the use of security uniforms by civilians for special occasions.

It explained that the use of such uniforms is guided by law and as such the workers of Adom FM should have sought permission before using such attires.

This led to another barrage of comments from some social media users:

Gyan called on the Police to get them arrested.

Boy wondered how the journalists had the uniforms in the first place.

Cobblah called on the Police to arrest and prosecute.

Abina wondered what would happen to the ordinary Ghanaian who did this.

In other news, a group of Ghanaians has been captured in a video angrily confronting police officers who were in the area to enforce the lockdown exercise that is currently ongoing.

According to the footage sighted by YEN.com.gh on the official Instagram handle of Facts and Truths, the local residents were out to get prepaid electricity.

They angrily narrated to the police officer who was sighted in the video that his colleague had just come to lash them without truly finding out why they were there and what they were out for.

READ ALSO: Nana Akua Addo stuns everyone with massive designer hat in new photo; Ghanaians react

Read the best news on Ghana #1 news app. Install our latest app for Android and read the best news about Ghana

Reasons why some Ghanaians are not wearing the nose masks in town | #Yencomgh

Want to be featured on YEN.com.gh? Send us a message on our Facebook page or on Instagram with your stories, photos or videos

Source: YEN.com.gh
The three-day annual Kamban



Festival scheduled to be held from May8 has been cancelled owing to the ongoing lockdown to contain the spread of COVID- 19 in the Union Territory.

Speaker of the territorial Assembly and president of Kamban Kazhagam holding the literary festival said in a press release on Sunday that the festival has been dropped because of the lockdown extended now to contain the pandemic.

The festival has been held since 1967 to commemorate the contribution of the Tamilpoet Kambar in the Chola dynasty to Tamil literature and to focus on the different facets of his magnum opus 'Ramayana'.

Every year during the festival held for three days in the second week of May, scholars and Tamil savants from different parts of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka would participate in various programmes, including moot courts and symposia.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A former chief scientific adviser has assembled a rival team of experts to the government's SAGE panel after the group became engulfed in a secrecy row.

Sir David King's group will run parallel to the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies which has been guiding Boris Johnson's coronavirus crisis response.

It will broadcast its 'robust, unbiased' advice on YouTube which will likely underscore splits among the country's top scientific minds.

Sir David's transparency mission comes amid mounting concerns over the secrecy of Sage, whose membership is classified and advice is not immediately published.

A simmering row over the group's covertness reached fever pitch last month when it emerged top Downing Street aide Dominic Cummings had attended its meetings.

Sir David King's group will run parallel to the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies which has been guiding Boris Johnson's coronavirus crisis response

Last week, the current chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance said the list of around 100 experts would be issued 'shortly'

Sir Patrick Vallance, who chairs the group and is a podium regular at the daily Number 10 briefings, moved to calm the storm by agreeing to reveal Sage's membership list 'shortly'.

But Sir David's new team could prove a fresh blow to the government panel if its advice runs contrary to the Prime Minister's current battle plan.

Sir David told the Sunday Times: 'I am not at all critical of the scientists who are putting advice before the government... but because there is no transparency the government can say they are following scientific advice but we don't know that they are.'

The group will submit their findings to the Commons' health select committee and hold their first meeting tomorrow.

The 12-strong team includes some of the world's most distinguished experts, including former World Health Organisation director Anthony Costello, who lashed out at Sage for being 'somewhat opaque'.

Ahead of their first roundtable, Sir David described Mr Cummings's attendance of some Sage meetings as 'dangerous'.

Dominic Cummings was revealed to have attended some Sage meetings, triggering a row

He said: 'Cummings is an adviser to the prime minister, and the chief scientific adviser is an adviser to the prime minister.

'So there are two voices from the scientific advisory group and I think that's very dangerous because only one of the two understands the science.'

The PM's chief adviser came under fire when it emerged he had sat in on some meetings, but Downing Street insist he was not a 'member' of the panel.

It was reported last week that he attempted to sway the scientists towards enforcing a lockdown sooner.

Sir David worked under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown from 2005 to 2007 and was at the centre of the foot and mouth crisis.

He has been particularly scathing of the decision to allow the Cheltenham Festival to go ahead and believes it helped 'accelerate' the spread of the disease on UK soil.

While Sage's membership list is not published, some scientists have revealed themselves to be members.

They include Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College whose initial modelling forecast a potential 250,000 deaths prompted the current social distancing.

Today, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said 'transparency is incredibly important in this crisis,' as he prepared to answer questions from the public.
Oishani Mojumder By

Express News Service

HYDERABAD: As telemedicine is slowly becoming the norm in an effort to practise social distancing, doctors at both government and private hospitals are willing to welcome the change if medico-legal laws are tweaked and data privacy is given utmost importance.

Experts pointed out that medical consultations in the post-Covid era was bound to change as people may avoid going to public places. The Nizams Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) started tele-consultation from Friday to avoid patients gathering on the hospitals premises amid the Covid-19 outbreak.

Major hurdles

In addition to this, while tele-consultation may work for the private sector, doctors at government hospitals are worried about the large number of underprivileged people who may neither have access to the technology nor the literacy to understand when a patient requires hospitalisation. Speaking to Express, Dr Ravi Kumar, HoD of pediatrics at Niloufer Hospital, said, While this practice may seem feasible in the private healthcare setting, it is close to impossible to have a similar setting in a government setup.

There are two important hurdles  lack of literacy among patient attendants and no access to required technology. Patients can be divided in three categories  mild, moderate and serious  based on the severity of their condition. Telemedicine is only possible with cases that can be classified as mild or boderline moderate. However, to distinguish this, the patient requires intelligent patient attendees, who can identify if his/her condition is shifting from mild to moderate, or moderate to serious, Dr Kumar said. Most of the patients who come to government hospital are barely literate.

We cannot expect such impoverished people to always have access to a high-quality video camera or even a smartphone for a video-consultation, he said. Dr Hari Kishan, a general physician at a city-based corporate hospital, said, Telemedicine is not a novel practice, but it is definitely becoming mainstream. For telemedicine to benefit, medico-legal laws have to be changed to protect doctors rights as the margin of error would definitely increase. Data privacy laws, too, have to be taken seriously to safeguard confidential patient data.
Gilman's play is set in Iowa, where she attended the prestigious Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in the early 1990s. Her sister was there at the same time pursuing a counseling degree and, says Gilman, "had shadowed a social worker" as part of the program. "The most vivid things were these visits she told me about that always seemed so awkward and nerve-wracking and terrifying for the people who were being visited. And that's the thing that I kept thinking: Somebody comes into your house to judge you, and then all of a sudden everything is going to look terrible to you."
I must say at this stage that the refusal by criminal Courts either through the learned Magistrate or through their office staff to accep...
The number of healthcare workers falling victim to Covid-19 at North Delhi Municipal Corporations three biggest hospitals  Hindu Rao in Malka Ganj, Kasturba in Daryaganj and the Rajan Babu TB Hospital in Kingsway Camp  more than doubled to 13 on Sunday from six a day before.

The fresh cases included three women doctors from the gynaecology department of Kasturba Hospital. A 25-year-old postgraduate student of the department of the hospital had tested positive for the virus last Wednesday. Later, another doctor had tested Covid positive on Saturday, taking the number of doctors infected by the virus to five.

There were allegations that the 25-year-old student had complained of high fever and body ache, but the authorities only asked her to go on leave and did not get her tested. Meanwhile, other doctors were frequently visiting her room.

In Hindu Rao Hospital, three more doctors tested positive for Covid on Sunday afterone of their colleague from the ophthalmology department was found Covid positive a day earlier. The chain of transmission here had begun with a nurse testing positive for the highly infectious disease on April 25.

Thereafter, 76 healthcare workers, who came in contact with the nurse, were tested and another nurse, who worked closely with the first victim, was found positive on Thursday. In total, six doctors and nurses are confirmed to have contracted the infection at this hospital.

Meanwhile, a laboratory technician at Hindu Rao also said he had tested positive on Saturday, most likely getting the virus from his Covid positive wife, a nurse at Fortis Hospital, Shalimar Bagh.

In the third north corporation hospital, Rajan Babu TB Hospital, a ward helper was found Covid positive last Tuesday.

Meanwhile, three other non-employees at the Hindu Rao Hospital have also tested positive for the diseases on Sunday. These are spouses of our Covid-positive staffers and one patient, a senior north corporation officer said.
Hide Transcript Show Transcript PROBLEMS. BIANKA: TEA FACES A NEW BATTLE -- SHE'S OUT OF WORK BECAUSE OF THE PANDEMIC -- TIANA. AS PART OF KC TENANTS, SHE'S URGING THE GOVERNOR TO CANCEL RENT AND MORTGAGE PAYMENTS. HE SAID HE WOULD EVALUATE IT IF IT BECOMES A PROBLEM.
The Houston Chronicle has lifted the paywall on this developing coverage to provide critical information to our community. To support our journalists work, consider a digital subscription.

8:37 p.m. With COVID-19 still on the loose, is leaving your house for nonessential reasons even worth it?

Coronavirus columnist Lisa Gray asked medical and public health experts the best ways to go back out in the world. They broke it down to assessing the risk, taking precautions and keeping track of where you go and who you see.

And, please wear a face mask.

Read more of Gray's coronavirus columns.

7:21 p.m. Houston-area business owners said they are trying hard to strike the right balance on the first weekend being open in more than a month, reports the Chronicle's Yvette Orozco.

Manager Chase Townsend isnt used to the extra space and quiet at the Music Factory in Pearland, which specializes in music gear. He has scaled down staffs wearing face masks who stringently wiped down surfaces and work reduced hours.

With guitars hanging from the ceiling and amplifiers lining the walls, space can be tight, Townsend said, but the 6-foot rule applies, and instruments are off-limits without permission.

If someone wants to try out a guitar, I politely tell them to ask first, Townsend said. If someone wants to play a guitar, we handle the guitar, hook it up and then wipe it down afterwards.

Read more about how Houston business is trying to rebound during the first phase of reopening in the state.

7:13 p.m. Statewide coronavirus cases increased Saturday by 1,196 positive diagnoses, according to analysis by the Chronicle. This is a 4 percent increase from Friday.

Numbers varied by county, but the total number of cases is now 31,314. This marks the fourth day this week that Texas has had more than 1,000 new cases in one day. Before this week, there had been one day with more than 1,000 news cases (April 9).

Statewide, there were 26 new deaths for a total of 866 people. There have been 205 deaths in the Houston region, up nine from Friday.

Harris County added 157 new cases for a total of 6,708 cases total.

 Jordan Rubio

6:18 p.m. Galveston County Health District today reports 15 new positive COVID-19 cases in Galveston County residents, which brings the total to 629.

There are four new recovered cases for a total of 344 recoveries, according to a news release. A woman in her 80s with preexisting medical conditions died on April 30.

Nearly 230 of Galveston County's cases are tied to longterm care facilities and are made up of residents and employees, the release stated. Twenty-five of the 28 deaths in the county are related to those facilities.

For more case-related graphics, please visit www.gchd.org/about-us/news-and-events/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19/galveston-county-confirmed-covid-19-cases

4:54 p.m. Texas hit a third straight day of more than 1,000 new coronavirus cases Saturday as the state charged into its first weekend of re-opening the economy with residents allowed to go back to malls, restaurants, movie theaters and retail stores in limited numbers, according to the Associated Press.

State health officials reported 1,293 new cases, the second-highest single-day infection rate, marking the first time the Texas has recorded more than 1,000 three days in a row.

Officials also reported 31 new deaths, the first time Texas has surpassed 30 on four consecutive days, although fatalities declined for a second consecutive day after a peak of 50 deaths on Friday.

The governor's office has said the number of diagnosed cases is expected to increase as the state ramps up testing.

4:47 p.m. Thousands of people descended on Galveston Saturday, the day after beaches reopened since being closed more than a month amid the outbreak of COVID-19.

Masks were few and far between, and there were a few larger groups that had clearly surpassed the 10-person threshold that public health experts have recommended as a way to stem the spread of the virus.

However, most beach goers appeared to be abiding by social distancing rules, as was reportedly the case one day prior.

Everyone has been really, really reasonable and really, really friendly, said Charlie Rightly, general manager of Flip Flops Bar and Grill. Everybody is just happy to be outside again.

 Robert Downen

4:43 p.m. The Dallas-based ShowBiz Cinemas theater chain, which has four locations in the Houston area, is reopening its theaters May 18.

Here's a list of the safety and sanitary precautions the locations will be taking.

Under Gov. Greg Abbotts most recent orders, movie theaters are allowed to open May 1 as long as they keep admission under 25 percent of capacity. Since there are no new theatrical films to show, ShowBiz initially will be screening older films.

Houston-based Star Cinema Grill announced Friday evening that it will be opening its Baybrook Mall location on May 8. There are theater chains opening in San Antonio and Dallas, as well.

The Chronicle's Cary Darling asked Houston movie-goers if they plan to go to a movie theater anytime soon.

Houston couple Samantha and Alexander Goodman are taking a wait-and-see approach. We wont be going as soon as things open back up, Samantha said. We will give the situation time to settle.

Check here for new movies opening this summer, fall and next year.

4:20 p.m. Houston is the latest major city to pull the rainbow curtain down on its Pride celebration. But it's not canceled  just postponed.

Pride Houston has postponed the annual parade and festival, with a new target of fall 2020, reports the Chronicle's Joey Guerra. There will, however, be smaller pop-up events beginning in June and through the fall. This year's theme is "DiverCity."

Last year's Pride Houston celebration drew a record crowd of almost 700,000 people to downtown Houston, the largest in the city's history, according to Mayor Sylvester Turner.

4:15 p.m. The Montgomery County Public Health District reported five new positive coronavirus case, bringing the total to 467 active cases.

The active cases include 51 hospitalizations and 153 that have fully recovered, according to a news release. The county's overall total for positive cases since testing started is 634.

The health district works in conjunction with the Montgomery County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. For details on individual cases, visit https://mcphd-tx.org/coronavirus-covid-19/confirmed-cases/.

Montgomery County Office of Emergency Management updates a dashboard for the cases here.

4:03 p.m. Mayor Sylvester Turner announced five new coronavirus deaths in Houston at a Saturday press conference, bringing the city's total to 65. This is a tie for the largest number of deaths reported in one day, he said.

The deaths reported include a Hispanic man in his 80s; a black man in his 70s; an Asian man in his 80s; and a black man in his 50s. Those four men had underlying health issues. Another Hispanic man in his 60s died with no pre-diagnosed medical conditions. The deaths occurred between April 5 and April 30.

"Now we are doing more testing, we would expect more people to be tested positively because we've always said there are more cases of community spread," Turner said. "In the last week, the number of reported deaths has raised to the numbers we saw at the first part of this crisis."

Since Harris County and the city are conducting more testing, the mayor expected more positive cases. But that's no reason to stop being vigilant, he added.

Texas began reopening in phases with limited capacities at various nonessential businesses on May 1. Turner said it's more important now than ever to stay home, social distance and wear face masks or other facial coverings.

"People are starting to behave as if the virus is gone. The virus is not gone; the virus is not under control," he said. "It is important to recognize that if you're not a part of these essential businesses, staying home is still important and social distancing is very important, and wearing the mask or facial coverings is still very important."

 Julie Garcia

Now Playing: The latest state and local case counts and updated headlines from the Houston Chronicle news team. Video: Houston Chronicle

12:40 p.m. United Memorial Medical Center is offering free walk-up and drive-thru tests this weekend at Pilgrim Academy Elementary near Hillcroft and Richmond Avenues.

The tests are open to anyone and will be conducted from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

A Chronicle analysis found that Houston's coronavirus cases are disproportionately clustered in vulnerable communities.

12:30 p.m. Chambers County will begin offering free COVID-19 tests Sunday for its symptomatic residents.

The White's Park site is also open for anyone over 65 and healthcare workers or first responders, according to the county.

Those interested must call for an appointment time. Call 512-883-2400 or register online at TXCOVIDTEST.ORG.

7:50 a.m.

According to Johns Hopkins University, there are now 3,362,778 confirmed cases of coronavirus. In the U.S., there are currently 1,104,161 cases, with a death toll climbing to 65,068 as of Saturday morning. Approximately 164,015 recoveries from COVID-19 have been reported in the U.S.

7:00 a.m.

A federal judge approved a temporary restraining order against the city of Houston, which will allow a Houston strip club to stay open as a restaurant.

Club Onyx filed the suit after being shut down in the early morning hours Friday, only hours after they opened under Governor Abbott's Phase I plan.

Mayor Sylvester Turner said the club had primarily operated as a sexually oriented business before the pandemic and was only claiming to be a restaurant so it could reopen.

I am asking the state to quickly clarify whether the governor intended for sexually oriented businesses like Onyx to be apart of the businesses authorized to open on May 1, Turner said. And if not, I am also asking the state, via the Texas Attorney General, to enforce the states order because the city cannot afford to expend its limited resources, i.e. fire and police, to defend the states order that a federal judge is now questioning.

Read the in-depth report by Houston Chronicle's Dylan McGuinness here.

CORONAVIRUS UPDATES: Stay informed with accurate reporting you can trust on HoustonChronicle.com
Two teenage boys have been charged with the murder of NHS worker David Gomoh.

The 24-year-old was stabbed to death a short distance from his home in Newham, east London on April 26, just days after his father passed away from coronavirus.

Muhammad Jalloh, 18, from Newham and a 16-year-old boy from Telford, Shropshire are charged with the murder and will appear at Thames Magistrates' Court on Monday.

Two teenage boys - Muhammad Jalloh, 18, from Newham and a 16-year-old boy from Telford- have been charged with the murder of NHS worker David Gomoh (pictured), who was stabbed to death outside his home in Newham, east London last week.

The pair, who had been in custody following their arrests over the weekend, are also charged with conspiracy to cause Grievous Bodily Harm (GBH) in a seperate incident involving a different person.

According to post-mortem examination, Mr Gomoh was struck in the chest and abdomen, with the fatal incident taking place on Freemasons Road, Newham at around 10.25pm last Sunday.

The 24-year-old's death also occurred days before the funeral of his father, Ken, who died from coronavirus in the days leading up to the attack on his son.

Mr Gomoh's father, Ken (pictured), had died just days before the attack on his son after contracting coronavirus

The 24-year-old's mother, Marian (pictured), is also a NHS worker and works as a labour ward matron in Newham University Hospital

Mr Gomoh was an NHS worker, like his mother Marian, 53, and helped to supply his colleagues with essential equipment during the global crisis.

Earlier this week, Detective Inspector Tony Kirk said: 'Within days his mother has seen the death of her husband and son, his sister has lost her father and brother. Both are heartbroken.

'At this time we believe the only thing David did to be murdered was walk down the street.'

On April 26 at around 10.25pm, Mr Gomoh was stabbed shortly after leaving his home on Freemasons Road in Newham, east London

Earlier this week, Ms Gomoh told the MailOnline: 'My son was not able to bury his father and we lost them both so close to each other. You cannot imagine how devastated the whole family is.

'For any family one death is bad enough but to suffer two in short a short space of time is so painful that I cannot put it into words.

'I am devastated, we all are and it's difficult to be strong at this time, but we are trying.'
Minutes of an April 23 meeting of the environment ministrys forest advisory committee (FAC) , in which it considered giving forest clearance to the contentious, 3097-megawatt Etalin hydropower project in Arunachal Pradeshs Dibang Valley, will be made public this week, senior ministry officials said.

But the officials said the FAC hadnt yet taken a decision on whether to reject or allow the project, which conservationists say entails felling tens of thousands of trees and poses a threat to the regions rich biodiversity.

The environment ministrys forest division has been swamped in the past week by letters and submissions on the project, to make way for which at least 270,000 trees will be felled. After several conservationists and researchers wrote to FAC about the risk of losing a significant tiger habitat and biodiversity-rich sub-tropical evergreen and rainforests, the Idu Mishmi community of Dibang valley has also started petitioning the FAC.

We have received some letters which are in favour of the project and some which are not. We plan to release the minutes of our discussion in FAC meeting next week but a decision is still not taken. We require more information. We will address the concerns raised by scientists and conservationists at an appropriate time, said Sanjay Kumar, director general of forests.

Among several petitions received by the ministry, the Project Affected People Forum, which groups residents of the valley near Tangon and Dri tributaries of Dibang river, where concrete gravity dams will be constructed, also wrote to the ministry. The petition said scientists and researchers with anti-development mindset are trying to sabotage the project by running a signature campaign against it.

Members of the forum said the project will be critical for the remote region which has been neglected by the government. There are no basic services like proper health-care services, schools here. When the project comes up people will get jobs. This is a very remote area. The project is also important for Arunachal Pradesh which has no source of revenue generation. There are no big industries here. China across the border has already built several dams on the rivers, Rohit Mele, chief advisor of the forum, said over phone.

More importantly, 250 families have been assured compensation under the land acquisition act which hasnt come through yet. Land acquisition has been completed and detailed project report made. All technical formalities are over except forest clearance and environmental clearance. These families are waiting for compensation, added Mele, who said the project developers had assured the forum that it will have no major environmental or biodiversity impact.

The project has been proposed by Etalin Hydro Electric Power Company Limited, a joint venture of Hydro Power Development Corporation of Arunachal Pradesh Limited and Jindal Power Limited HT wrote to Jindal Power Limited on April 29 for a response to the ecological concerns, but the company hasnt responded to the yet.

According to FACs own factsheet, the project falls under the richest bio-geographical province of the Himalayan zone and one of the mega biodiversity hotspots of the world. The proposed project location falls at the junction of the Paleoarctic, Indo-Chinese, and Indo-Malayan biogeographic regions having luxuriant forests and plethora of flora and fauna. It is also a vital tiger area.

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Vessel-arrest.com scored 50 Social Media Impact. Social Media Impact score is a measure of how much a site is popular on social networks. 2.5/5.0 Stars by Social Team

This CoolSocial report was updated on 7 Sep 2012, you can refresh this analysis whenever you want.

This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared the vessel-arrest homepage on Twitter + the total number of vessel-arrest followers (if vessel-arrest has a Twitter account). The total number of people who shared the vessel-arrest homepage on StumbleUpon. This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared, liked or recommended the vessel-arrest homepage on Facebook + the total number of page likes (if vessel-arrest has a Facebook fan page). The total number of people who shared the vessel-arrest homepage on Google Plus by a google +1 button. The total number of people who shared the vessel-arrest homepage on Delicious.

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PAGE TITLE Boat Repossession West Coast US | Vessel, Ship Recovery and Custodial Services, Yacht Repo  Vess DESCRIPTION Nielsen Beaumont Vessel Recovery and Custodial Services, offers a complete boat repossession, yacht repo, towing, ship, vessel recovery, repair and arrest service across West Coast of the United States, Mexico and Canada. KEYWORDS boat repossession, vessel recovery, boat repo california, repo seattle, ship recovery, boat repair service san francisco, boat towing service florida, chase shore boat service OTHER KEYWORDS



The keywords meta-tag found in the head section of the homepage. The title found in the head section of the homepage. The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the address of the site. CoolSocial advanced keyword analysis tool is able to detect and analyze every keyword on each page of a site. The description meta-tag found in the head section of the homepage.

Domain and Server

DOCTYPE XHTML 1.0 Transitional CHARSET AND LANGUAGE UTF-8 DETECTED LANGUAGE English English SERVER Microsoft-IIS/6.0 (ASP.NET) OPERATIVE SYSTEM Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2003

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TWITTER PAGE LINK FOUND TWITTER PAGE twitter.com/#!/vesselarrest DESCRIPTION ACCOUNT CREATED ON LOCATION TWEETS FOLLOWERS LISTED
Married At First Sight star Cathy Evans was forced to apologise after what some considered a racial slur on her Instagram again this week.

But this isn't the first the reality star has fallen foul on social media, with the scandal-prone bride caught making a number of highly questionable posts in the past.

From homophobic and racial slurs to rape jokes, Daily Mail Australia looks at the reality star's sordid use of language on social media.

Will she ever learn? MAFS star Cathy Evans, 27, (pictured) was forced to apologise AGAIN to fans this week, after a VERY problematic history with racial and homophobic slurs

In a now-deleted Instagram comment obtained by The Daily Telegraph's Confidential, the 27-year-old apologised for her 'poor choice of words'.

On Wednesday, Cathy shared a close-up photo to Instagram of her platinum locks, captioned innocently with the text 'angel vibes' and a cloud emoji.

Confidential revealed on Friday that the makeup artist was accused by some of making a racial slur, while responding to a follower in the comments section.

Started innocently: On Wednesday, Cathy shared a close-up photo to Instagram (pictured) of her platinum locks, captioned innocently with the text 'angel vibes' and a cloud emoji

When asked about her accent as she 'sounds islander', Cathy reportedly responded: 'I've never had that said to me before, but I'm from New Zealand, so maybe that's why I sound like a hood rat FOB (Fresh off the boat?)'

The logistics manager reportedly received death threats after being accused of making a racial slur in the comments section of the Instagram post.

In March, the reality star apologised yet again for using a racial slur in a resurfaced Instagram post from 2015, when she was aged 21.

Comments: As reported by The Daily Telegraph's Confidential on Friday, Cathy reportedly responded when asked about her 'islander accent': 'I've never had that said to me before, but I'm from New Zealand, so maybe that's why I sound like a hood rat FOB (fresh off the boat?)'

In the post, which has since been deleted, she used the N-word while documenting her weight loss.

She wrote: 'Me high waisted shorts getting a little baggy but n***a I'm still wearing them cuz I'm cheap af and don't wanna buy new ones.'

Cathy told Daily Mail Australia at the time: 'This post is from 2015 when I was younger and made some foolish decisions. I regret my use of this word and am deeply sorry for any offence I may have caused.'

Past actions: Meanwhile, this isn't the first time Cathy has found herself at the centre of controversy. In March, the reality star apologised for using a racial slur in a resurfaced Instagram post from 2015, when she was aged 21

The offensive caption was accompanied by a photo of Cathy posing in her bedroom.

Cathy caught the ire of the public yet again earlier that month, when she made what most considered a homophobic slur in a post from 2014.

In the now-deleted post, Cathy described a man she had encountered at the gym as a 'f**king f****t', before telling a friend 'he was raping [her] with his eyes'.

'I regret my use of this word': In the post, which has since been deleted, she used the N-word while documenting her weight loss

'I was younger and made some foolish decisions': The offensive caption was accompanied by this photo of Cathy posing in her bedroom

She had left the comments alongside a photo of herself at the gym. She was 20 years old at the time and studying performing arts at Unitec Institute of Technology.

Her caption read: 'Wish I was this tanned all year! Trained back today, any advice on how to deal with a f**king f****t who won't stop staring at me when I work out?

'Like not the normal "checking you out". It's like proper, "In my culture, women don't even come out of the house." Any advice I'll take, thanks.'

'Lapse in judgement': In the now-deleted post, Cathy described a man she'd encountered at the gym as a 'f**king f****t', before telling a friend 'he was raping [her] with his eyes'

Cathy walked back most of the comments in the post, including one where she was accused of making a rape joke.

After her friends commented on the post, Cathy added: 'I'm not joking but [the man] looks like he's raping me with his eyes.

Cathy told Daily Mail Australia: 'I am so embarrassed for my use of such offensive and inappropriate language. It was a lapse in judgement at the time and I apologise for any hurt or offence I have caused.'
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio slammed White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett for saying that the country might not need an additional economic relief bill passed through Congress and signed by President Trump.

At a press conference Sunday, de Blasio said Hassett appeared to favor 'saving money rather than protecting people.'

'I was digusted when I heard these comments because it sounded like the comments not only a cheapskate but someone who just didn't care,' de Blasio told reporters. 'So I hope President Trump will renounce these comments immediately.'

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio lashed out at White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett for suggesting there may not be a need for a 'phase four' coronavirus stimulus package. De Blasio warned that medical professionals in New York are in danger of being furloughed

White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said Saturday on Fox News Channel that if the reopning of the economy goes better than expected 'there is a chance that we won't really need a phase four'

Hassett appeared Saturday morning on Fox News Channel and suggested the administration's approach to a so-called 'phase four' stimulus package was to wait and see.

'I think right now, because there's been good news really, that the opening up is starting to happen faster than we expected, appears to be doing so safely, then there is a chance that we won't really need a phase four,' Hassett said.

De Blasio countered that for New York, which has been the epicenter of the outbreak in the United, that's already not the case, calling Hassett's comments an 'absolute misunderstanding' of the financial situation impacting hard-hit cities and communities.

The Democratic mayor said the city is $7.1 billion in the hole.

De Blasio said without additional stimulus dollars, the doctors and nurses employed by the public hospitals in the city could be furloughed.

'If we don't get help from Washington, that is what will happen,' de Blasio warned.

Trump has been reluctant to sign off on federal dollars going to cities and states, turning it into a red-state versus blue-state debate. He's suggested that some blue states, like Illinois, that need cash have simply been mismanaged by Democrats in government.

He's also floated attaching policy priorities, like ridding the country of so-called 'sanctuary cities,' to future money going toward state and local governments' budgets.

Asked about a 'phase four' package on Sunday, Larry Kudlow, the National Economic Council Director, made comments that were similar to what Hassett had said the day before.

'There's kind of a pause period right now,' Kudlow said on CNN's 'State of the Union.' 'There may well be additional legislation.'

But Kudlow said government officials are trying to implement the packages already passed by Congress and signed off by the president.

'So I guess what I would say to you, at this particular juncture, let's execute the continuation of what we have already done,' Kudlow said. 'Let's see what the results are.'

And while the Senate returns to Washington Monday, the House of Representatives - on the advice of the Attending Physician of the United States Congress - has decided to delay lawmakers coming back to Washington, D.C., which still hasn't seen a decrease in coronavirus cases.

Democrats have argued that it makes no sense to come back to Washington when details for a 'phase four' package have yet to be worked out.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has insisted on bringing the Senate back in session so they can get back into the confirmation business.
Madhya Pradesh Congress president



and former chief minister Kamal Nath said his party would come back to power after bypolls are held for 24 seats in the 230- member state Assembly.

Nath had to quit as CM on March 20 after 22 of his MLAs rebelled and resigned from the Assembly following the decision of senior leader Jyotiraditya Scindia to leave the Congress and join the BJP.

Two seats are vacant due to the death of sitting MLAs.

No bypoll date for these seats has been announced so far.

Speaking to reporters through video conferencing, Nath said, "The voters know how they were betrayed in 22 seats (where MLAs quit bringing down his government). How due to greed, 22 MLAs joined the BJP. They (turncoats) will get a befitting reply from the electorate."



Nath went on to predict that the Congress would win "22 of 24" seats whenever bypolls are held, though he also added that "I am not giving any seat to the BJP" when asked which two seats the saffron party could win.

On the chain of events that led to the fall of his government, Nath said, "I am hurt. I never thought our MLAs could fall for such allurements. I have long political experience, but did not have experience of deals in "



With the effective strength of the Assembly standing at 206, the BJP has a majority with 107 MLAs.

The Congress' current strength is 92, while there are four Independent MLAs, two from BSP and one from SP.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Mumbai, May 3 : When Raveena Tandon was a child, Rishi Kapoor was already a big star. Years later, Raveena would star opposite the man who is one of the greatest romantic icons in Bollywood, heartthrob of millions.

In an interaction with IANS, Raveena shared her fond memories of Rishi Kapoor, who passed away on April 30, and also spoke of her father, filmmaker Ravi Tandon's long association with the late actor.

"I have not worked with him in many movies but my dad has worked with him a lot. I have seen him since I was a child. I literally grew up in front of his eyes. My heart is heavy right now," said Raveena, recalling Rishi Kapoor. She added: "Rishi sir's death is a huge blow for my father. My father has lost one more friend from his inner circle. I clearly remember how my dad, Pancham uncle (RD Burman), Ramesh Behl uncle and Rishiji used to hang out together. After his demise, my dad has been feeling very down." Ravi Tandon worked with Rishi Kapoor in films like "Khel Khel Mein" and "Jhoota Kahin Ka". Raveena was paired opposite Rishi Kapoor in the 1995 movie "Saajan Ki Baahon Mein".

Remembering her last encounter with Rishi Kapoor, who's fondly called 'Chintu', Raveena shared that it happened last year when she met him during Ganpati pooja at Rishi Kapoor's sister Rima Jain's house in Mumbai.

"I was at Rima's house for Ganpati pooja. When I was about to leave, Rima told me to wait as Chintu ji's coming. I waited for him because I had not seen him for a long time since he was in New York. He came, we did aarti and had a good talk. That was my last and final memory of him. I will miss him a lot. May his soul rest in peace," Raveena said.

She took to social media to mourn the death of Rishi Kapoor, remembering the first walkie talkie doll he bought for her as a gift from Paris.

"Just totally love you ! Seems like a part of my life, my childhood memories, my now..all taken away so fast. Not fair Chintu uncle. Not fair on all of us..could not even say a goodbye. We will miss you terribly. His infectious laughter, his wit, incidents, even when he used to scold me on sets when working with him. Still seeing me, as the same 5 year old he knew, my first walkie talkie doll he bought from Paris, a make-up gift for getting engaged to Neetu aunty without telling me," Raveena recalled.

Rishi Kapoor died in a Mumbai hospital on April 30. He was 67 and had been battling leukemia.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Mumbai: India expects bad debts at its banks could double after the coronavirus crisis brought the economy to a sudden halt, a senior government official and four top bankers told Reuters.

Indian banks are already grappling with 9.35 lakh crore rupees ($123 billion) of soured loans, which was equivalent to about 9.1% of their total assets at the end of September 2019.

"There is a considered view in the government that bank non-performing assets (NPAs) could double to 18-20% by the end of the fiscal year, as 20-25% of outstanding loans face a risk of default," the official with direct knowledge of the matter said.

A fresh surge in bad debt could hit credit growth and delay India's recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

"These are unprecedented times and the way it's going we can expect banks to report double the amount of NPAs from what we've seen in earlier quarters," the finance head of a top public sector bank told Reuters.

The official and bankers declined to be named as they were not officially authorized to discuss the matter with media.

India's finance ministry declined to comment, while the Reserve Bank of India and Indian Banks' Association, the main industry body, did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

The Indian economy has ground to a standstill amid a 40-day nationwide lockdown to rein in the spread of coronavirus cases.

The lockdown has now been extended by a further two weeks, but the government has begun to ease some restrictions in districts that are relatively unscathed by the virus.

India has so far recorded nearly 40,000 cases of the coronavirus and more than 1,300 deaths from COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus.

'RIDING THE TIGER'

Bankers fear it is unlikely that the economy will fully open up before June or July, and loans, especially those to small- and medium-sized businesses which constitute nearly 20% of overall credit, may be among the worst affected.

This is because all 10 of India's largest cities fall in high-risk red zones, where restrictions will remain stringent.

A report by Axis Bank said that these red zones, which contribute significantly to India's economy, account for roughly 83% of the overall loans made by its banks as of December.

One of the sources, an executive director of a public sector bank, said that economic growth had been sluggish and risks had been heightened, even ahead of the coronavirus crisis.

"Now we have this Black Swan event which means without any meaningful government stimulus, the economy will be in tatters for several more quarters," he said.

McKinsey & Co last month forecast India's economy could contract by around 20% in the three months through June, if the lockdown was extended to mid-May, and growth in the fiscal year was likely to fall 2% to 3%.

Bankers say the only way to stem the steep rise in bad loans is if the RBI significantly relaxes bad asset recognition rules.

Banks have asked the central bank to allow all loans to be categorized as NPAs only after 180 days, which is double the current 90-day window.

"The lockdown is like riding the tiger, once we get off it we'll be in a difficult position," a senior private sector banker told Reuters.
The coronavirus pandemic has altered routines in countless ways, and religion is no exception.

Father Daniel OMullane used to administer the sacrament of Penance, commonly referred to as confession, to Catholics inside his church building in Boonton.

Now OMullane waits inside an outdoor shed on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays  at least 90 minutes in the morning, and another 90 minutes in the afternoon  while Catholics pull up in the parking lot, get out of their cars, kneel or stand by a closed window covered by three layers of curtains, and confess their sins.

I cant see out of it, OMullane said during a break in his morning and afternoon sessions at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church.

But he can clearly hear the parishioners and offer absolution, or forgiveness.

Rev. Daniel O'Mullane uses his iPhone to play church music over an outdoor speaker before confession in the confession shed outdoors with Rev. Daniel O'Mullane at the Our Lady of Mount Carmel church in Boonton, N.J. April, 30, 2020 Ed Murray | NJ Advance Media for

OMullane is among the many priests in the United States and elsewhere offering what have become known as drive-by confessions, performed while adhering to social distancing guidelines, amid the coronavirus outbreak.

There are different variations. In Bowie, Md., Father Scott Holmer devised an outdoor confessional, sitting on a chair in the parking lot, with drivers pulling up and confessing their sins through an open window while remaining in their vehicles, according to the National Catholic Reporter.

OMullane opted for setting up the shed as his temporary quarters. A sign on it reads, Please do not touch anything.

Confession at the confession shed outdoors with Rev. Daniel O'Mullane at the Our Lady of Mount Carmel church in Boonton, N.J. April, 30, 2020 Ed Murray | NJ Advance Media for

Great care is taken to protect the health of all involved, he said.

Theyre a foot, or two or three, away from the window. Im four or 5 feet away from the window on the inside, he said.

Penitents were arriving on Tuesday morning despite a steady rain drenching those receiving the sacrament.

Ron Casuer, of Pompton Lakes, was among them, and voiced admiration for Father Dan.

Priests are a shepherd and he really loves us and goes out of his way for us, Causer said.

Ron Causer of Pompton Lakes leaves after his confession at the confession shed outdoors with Rev. Daniel O'Mullane at the Our Lady of Mount Carmel church in Boonton, N.J. April, 30, 2020 Ed Murray | NJ Advance Media for

OMullane, 38, is a native of Great Britain who moved with his family to New Jersey when he was 12. He graduated from Mountain Lakes High School in 1999. Upon enrolling in Boston College, he was studying economics and eyeing a career as a banker, or on Wall Street.

Then his focus began to shift.

I was starting to get the sense, by the end of college, that God might have different plans," OMullane said.

He was ordained as a priest about a decade ago. In 2015, he was assigned to Our Lady of Mount Carmel, which was founded in 1847 and is the third-oldest Catholic parish in Morris County. Two years later, he became the churchs pastor.

Until the middle of March, he was saying three Masses on Sunday mornings. Since the church closed, he has been celebrating a live-streamed Mass on Sunday, and all other days, at 8 a.m. inside a small chapel in the churchs rectory where he lives, assisted by a seminarian and teacher also residing there.

Confession in the confession shed outdoors with Rev. Daniel O'Mullane at the Our Lady of Mount Carmel church in Boonton, N.J. April, 30, 2020 He puts out orange cones for safety distance.Ed Murray | NJ Advance Media for

Penance is one of the seven sacraments received by Catholics.

OMullane said he has administered the sacrament typically reserved for those near death, the Anointing of the Sick, about five times since the shutdown began.

People hesitate to call. They dont want to put me at risk. I dont know that Ive ever had to have been so forceful to say, I will come and anoint you," OMullane said.

OMullane said he heard about 10 confessions on Tuesday morning, but has received as many of 50 visitors on sunny days.

Were kind of the midst of what is a disorienting experience. We have an opportunity to choose again how to live out our priorities, OMullane said.

Many people are taking God up on the offer, in terms of reordering their lives, OMullane said.

Confession iat the confession shed outdoors with Rev. Daniel O'Mullane at the Our Lady of Mount Carmel church in Boonton, N.J. April, 30, 2020 Ed Murray | NJ Advance Media for

One arrival, who did not want to give his last name, said he used to attend Mass every day, but now reads Bible passages at home.

Confession, the man stated, is a way to feel Gods mercy.

OMullane said that Christians are charged with bringing Gods light to every corner of his creation, and that for Catholics the sacrament of Penance serves that mission.

The more we give ourselves to the task, the more we realize our insufficiency. Perhaps what we find is God works through our healed brokenness, he said.

Confession in the confession shed outdoors with Rev. Daniel O'Mullane at the Our Lady of Mount Carmel church in Boonton, N.J. April, 30, 2020 Ed Murray | NJ Advance Media for

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He was taking part in an anti-terrorist operation in the country.

A Ukrainian-born Brigadier with the French Foreign Legion, Dmytro Martyniuk, engaged in Operation Barkhane, was "seriously injured on April 23 in Mali in the blast of an improvised explosive device."

Having been evacuated to a military hospital near Paris, he succumbed to his injuries on Friday, May 1," reads the report published on the French defense ministry's website.

The Minister of the Armed Forces pays tribute to this legionnaire who died for France. She bowed to her engagement which embodied the strength of the Foreign Legion. France is grateful to those who chose it, to those who give their lives for it.

Read alsoUkraine's envoy to UN considers deployment of peacekeepers in Donbas almost unrealistic

Brigadier Dmytro Martyniukk "died while fighting terrorism in an area where several groups are carrying out violent actions against the civilian population."

In the Sahel region, France remains engaged alongside Mali, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Niger and Chad in the "relentless fight against armed terrorist groups".
New Jersey will join six other states in the region to pool resources for buying for personal protective equipment and other medical supplies as the area continues to battle the coronavirus pandemic, officials announced Sunday.

The announcement was made during New York Gov. Andrew Cuomos daily coronavirus briefing. Gov. Phil Murphy and other governors joined the briefing by video conference.

New Jersey will join New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Rhode Island and Massachusetts in the regional effort.

Were going to form a consortium, Cuomo said, adding the states will spend $5 billion to purchase equipment to share between the states. That will increase our market power. This consortium will help us get the equipment and get it at a better price.

Pooling resources will prevent states from competing with one another for resources and equipment, as happened during the early days of the outbreak, he said.

I echo literally everything you said, Murphy said. The notion of coordinating together as a region makes an enormous amount of sense."

CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Newsletter | Homepage

The governors have been acting in concert with one another in certain circumstances. For example, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut ordered all movie theaters, casinos and gyms in their states to close at the same time in March. The order also included tight restrictions on restaurants, which barred them from everything except takeout orders.

They also banned all public gatherings of 50 people or more in all three states at the same time.

The governors have argued the regional approach is necessary with certain things to avoid people from crossing state borders to dine inside a restaurant, for example.

This is a perfect extension of our relationship, Murphy said.

On Saturday, Murphy announced another 2,912 new positive tests for COVID-19 and 205 additional deaths in the state.

That brings the statewide total to at least 123,717 COVID-19 cases, including at least 7,742 deaths, in a little more than eight weeks since the outbreak began March 4.

State Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli also announced Saturday she is asking the National Guard to help New Jerseys nursing homes respond to the pandemic, which has claimed the lives of 3,670 people living in longterm care facilities.

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Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com.
NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro will not contest the key federal seat of Eden-Monaro, paving the way for the state's Transport Minister Andrew Constance to make the switch to national politics.

Mr Barilaro is expected to announce his decision at a press conference with Premier Gladys Berejiklian on Monday morning, sources close to the Nationals MP said on Sunday night.

The Liberal Party had been privately urging the Nationals to bow out of the looming byelection earlier on Sunday, claiming a new poll had indicated Mr Constance was the best option to win.

Liberals who spoke to the Herald on condition of anonymity pointed to the weekend poll to argue Mr Barilaro could not win against Mr Constance.




Law enforcement agents have launched an investigation into suspected criminal abuse of office by NetOne acting chairperson, Ms Susan Mutangadura, after she reportedly appointed her suspected business acquaintance  a retired judge  to preside over a disciplinary hearing of suspended CEO Lazarus Muchenje.





The appointment of the judge had already raised eyebrows given that Ms Mutangadura, the complainant against Mr Muchenje  who is on suspension facing various allegations, including incompetence  is a panellist at Africa Institute of Mediation and Arbitration (AIMA), a company founded by the judge (name supplied).





It, however, emerged last week that NetOne has filed an urgent chamber application seeking to bar investigators  who had obtained a search-and-seize order  from accessing relevant documents citing confidentiality.





The date for hearing the case had not been determined at the High Court.





However, Ms Mutangadura could not comment on Thursday. Unfortunately, I cannot comment at the moment for professional reasons, said Ms Mutangadura.





NetOne, a wholly State-owned enterprise, was formed in 1996 as the first cellular network provider in Zimbabwe.





With more than three million subscribers, it is the countrys second-largest mobile operator after Econet.





Mr Muchenje was suspended on February 20 this year, alongside acting chief finance officer Mr Tinashe Severa.





He subsequently approached the court seeking nullification of the suspension, after which an interim relief order was granted.





On March 12, NetOne appealed the order to interdict the hearing process at the Supreme Court and used that as the basis to proceed with the hearing.





However, the hearing failed to take place after Mr Muchenje insisted that any proceedings would be illegal since there was an interim relief order barring the hearing.





Last week some investigators from the Criminal Investigations Department (Serious Frauds) launched a probe into potential abuse of office by Ms Mutangadura for appointing her business associate.





The police got the order to search and seize relevant documents, which they needed for their investigations, said a source, who requested not to be named because the matter is now under judicial consideration.





However, NetOne made an urgent chamber application seeking to interdict the investigators from accessing the documents.





Ms Mutangadura was authorised by the NetOne board to appoint a disciplinary hearing authority to preside over proceedings of cases involving Mr Muchenje and Mr Severa through a resolution dated February 20 2019.





She then used powers granted to her by the resolution to appoint the judge to preside over the hearing.





A notification letter addressed to Mr Muchenje in March announced the development.





It is believed that the appointment of the judge was in violation of Section 34 of the Public Entities and Governance Act, which states that where a board member or a senior staff member of a public entity knows or has any reason to believe that any of his or her public associates has acquired or holds direct or indirect pecuniary interests in any matter that is under the consideration by the board or that is or, to his or her knowledge, is likely to be the subject matter of a contract between the public entity and any other person, the board member or senior staff shall forthwith disclose to the entitys board.





Ms Mutangadura took over from former board chairperson Mr James Mutizwa, who alongside two other directors resigned early February this year after allegedly being pressured to do.





Further, two other board members, including Dr Douglas Mamvura, are understood to be in the firing line.





Dr Mamvura, a renowned marketing executive and entrepreneur, is accused of not attending meetings despite not having been invited for a single meeting since his appointment in October last year.





Recent reports claimed that the resignation of the board members were due to poor performance.





It was alleged that according to the assessment report done for the entire board, those who resigned scored very low and failed to produce a viable turnaround strategy to the Ministry of Information Communication Technology and Courier Services, which forced them to quit.





But there are also counter claims that suggest that no board member was ever independently assessed or evaluated according to their performance contracts.





The only purported assessments done were for the full board and the chairperson who was independently evaluated, and this was done very unprofessionally, added the sources.





A former board member told The Sunday Mail Business that the former chair actually had a 3,5 score, which was above average.





We have never been individually assessed as board members, we noted the weakness of the whole board and if it is true that the board deserved to be fired by identifying its weakness, then it also raises eyebrows why the other board members are not being fired, said the former board member, who requested not to be named.




HUD to pay atheist group over $3K after settling lawsuit involving cabinet Bible study

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A leading secular legal group says the Department of Housing and Urban Development has agreed to pay $17,800 after settling a lawsuit related to Secretary Dr. Ben Carsons participation in a Bible study and his daily schedule that might include a Bible study.

Last Thursday, the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation announced that it, along with the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, settled a federal lawsuit filed after the denial of a Freedom of Information Act-related request by the agency.

FFRF and CREW filed a lawsuit in January 2018 accusing the agency of a pattern of rejecting requests to waive fees associated with processing their FOIA requests.

The requests filed by both groups were for the disclosure of records related to the influence Carsons family members have at HUD, emails Carson or other HUD officials have exchanged with a ministry that leads a weekly Bible study for top political leaders, any internal correspondence regarding the weekly Bible study that Carson sponsors, and copies of Carsons daily schedules schedule that include the daily Bible study.

The organizations claim that under FOIA law, agencies should produce requested documents at no charge to the requester if the disclosure of the information is in the public interest because it is likely to contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of the government and is not primarily in the commercial interest of the requester.

Both organizations requested that HUD waive fees associated with their FOIA requests but their requests were denied.

FFRF contends that the only explanation HUD gave for the denial of their request was: You state that fees should be waived because of your nonprofit status and because the release of records is in the public interest. Your request for fee waiver is denied.

According to FFRF, HUD has displayed a pattern of denying fee waivers on FOIA requests where disclosure of the documents is likely to cast the agency or HUD secretary in a negative light.

As part of the settlement, HUD has reportedly agreed to pay FFRF $3,400 in attorney fees and $17,400 in attorney fees to CREW. Both organizations have subsequently received their desired documents, according to FFRF.

In the settlement, HUD agreed to offer two sessions of in-person mandatory fee waiver training for its FOIA office and will issue and updated fee waiver guidance.

The Christian Post reached out to HUD for comment on the settlement. A response is pending.

One of the major benefits is that the updated training and guidance will ensure that citizens and groups will have access to agency records, FFRF Senior Counsel Patrick Elliott said in a statement. It is FFRFs information and understanding that HUD had been illegally rejecting requests to waive fees. The lawsuit has remedied that situation by forcing the agency to give FFRF and CREW the records without charge and making it promise to hold trainings to update staff.

FFRF, which advocates for a strict separation of church and state, has been critical of the weekly Bible studies organized by Capitol Ministries and pastor Ralph Drollinger since the beginning of the Trump administration in 2017.

FFRF has claimed that weekly Bible study is a big waste of taxpayers and has called for cabinet members to study the Bible in your private capacity, not in your official capacity and at your government desk.

Do it on your on time, not the taxpayers, the group said in 2017.

The group renewed its call in March after Drollinger made headlines when one of his blog posts was misrepresented by the mainstream media in articles suggesting that Drollinger had linked the coronavirus outbreak to homosexuality.

Following the media backlash, the White House distanced the president from Drollinger and the Bible study, with a White House spokesperson saying that the president has never attended the study nor is it held at the White House.

Along with Carson, the Bible study is sponsored by Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alex Azar, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, other former and current cabinet members as well as Vice President Mike Pence.

On the ministrys website, Carson is quoted as calling the ministrys work more important than ever.

Having enough perspective to realize that people who disagree with you are not automatically your enemies and learning how to treat each other and the constituents of this nation with respect will go a long way toward healing our nation, Carson said in a statement posted to the website. The work of Capitol Ministries is interwoven into those goals.
Binita Jaiswal By

Express News Service

CHENNAI: With the slump in passenger vehicle sales amidst the coronavirus pandemic, Maharashtra-based Kinetic Green Energy and Power Solutions Limited has shifted its focus to electric cargo and delivery vehicles. The firm now aims to raise revenue from the segment.

Kinetic Greens founder and CEO Sulajja Firodia told TNIE that sale of its e-delivery and cargo vehicles currently contribute to almost 30 per cent of its total revenue, but the company aims to increase this to 50 per cent this financial year.

The company is working plans to launch a wide range of products. Catering to the current demand scenario, the firm on Wednesday launched a range of electric vehicles that can be used for fogging and spraying operations to curb the spread of coronavirus.

The company has transformed its electric three-wheelers into Kinetic e-Fogger and e-Sprayer vehicles. We have already received 50-60 orders from different municipal corporations. From the responses, it seems by end of May we will have orders for 150-200 such vehicles, said Firodia.

According to Firodia, as the fogging and spraying equipment is mounted on Kinetics electric vehicles rather than on a diesel vehicle, they offer a green solution without noise, vibrations and air pollution. These vehicles are extremely economical with an operating cost of only 50 paisa per kilometre and can easily disinfect congested slums, industries and residential areas. The vehicles are well-equipped to have both water-based and diesel-based fogging options.

Kinetic Green is extremely happy to introduce these revolutionary products that will help create a germ-free environment and contribute to arresting the spread the coronavirus, Firodia said, adding that Kinetic Green will focus more on research and development of such products now.

With the factories shut as part of the lockdown, the company has used its stock of over 300 electric vehicles that have been transformed into e-Fogger and e-Sprayer vehicles.

The company has fully developed the supply chain, and completed development and testing of its solutions. A few of the e-Fogger vehicles are already running in certain places like Panvel in Maharashtra and Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh. The firm is in talks with several urban local bodies including various Maharashtra government authorities. The company expects to deliver many more in the coming weeks.
Array of health facilities granted permission to conduct COVID-19 tests



The Ministry of Health has allowed 51 health facilities across the country to perform diagnostic tests in order to detect cases of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).

In line with this move by the Ministry of Health, a total of 24 units based in northern region, four units located in the central region, along with one unit in the Central Highlands, and an additional 22 units located in southern region, will be permitted to conduct tests aimed at checking for positive COVID-19 cases.

At present, the two main methods of identifying positive COVID-19 cases globally include viral genetic tests, widely known as polymerase chain reaction (PCR), along with antibody tests, which are most often used for the purpose of quick testing.

The PCR method is considered to be highly accurate due to it being able to directly detect the viral gene. However, this method requires medical professionals to work with complex machines, ultimately leading to the results taking several hours to be released.

With regard to the antibody method, specialized training is not required, with the outcomes only taking a short period of time to be released. In spite of these benefits, this method has a much lower sensitivity and specificity than the results produced by the PCR method.

It is believed that a combination of both methods will help to control the disease in a more efficient manner, thus reducing the burden placed on medical facilities, whilst simultaneously allowing resources to be focused on treating infected cases.

Vietnam tests COVID-19 vaccine on mice

The Company for Vaccine and Biological Production No.1 (VABIOTECH) said it has tested COVID-19 vaccine on mice before further evaluation.

Dr. Do Tuan Dat, VABIOTECH President said the vaccine has been developed in collaboration with with scientists from the UK Bristol University since the very first COVID-19 infection case was confirmed in Viet Nam.

The companys scientists successfully grew the COVID-19 antigen in the lab, which is the most important ingredient in vaccine production, Dat said.

Next week, the blood samples on the animal will be sent to the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology for further evaluation, he added.

The vaccine will be further tested on animals to further evaluate the safety and immunization.

Vietnamese citizens from Italy released from isolation

A group of medical staff and nurses at a hospital in a Nang celebrate after the last COVID-19 patient leaves the hospital. 52 Vietnamese returning from Italy were released from isolation after testing negative for SARS-CoV-2 for the fourth time on Saturday (May 2).

A total of 52 Vietnamese citizens returning from Italy have tested negative for SARS-CoV-2 for the fourth time after a 14-day period of isolation in the central city, and they will be leaving for home soon.

Director of the citys Centre for Disease Control (CDC), Dr Ton That Thanh, told Viet Nam News on Saturday that they will be given health check certificates for going home. They had been isolated at the citys Military Training School since April 18.

Sample test results were negative for SARS-CoV-2 for the fourth time in a row. They are healthy with daily medical checks and monitoring during the isolation. They are allowed to leave isolation from today (Saturday), Thanh said.

According to the latest report from the citys health department, 16 people have been monitored at the citys hospitals, while 4,554 people had completed isolation. A total of 4,774 medical samples had tested negative for SARS-CoV-2.

Six COVID-19 patients, who were treated at the citys hospitals, returned home after testing negative for SARS-CoV-2 during isolation from March 27 to April 10. All six are in good health, vice director of the citys General hospital, doctor Nguyen Thanh Trung said.

Vietnam records no new community COVID-19 infection for 18 straight days

Health workers in southern Kien Giang province checks temperature for a local (Photo: VNA)

Vietnam reported no new COVID-19 cases on May 4 morning, marking 18 days in a row since April 16 without new infections in the community, according to the National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control.

The country has so far confirmed 271 cases tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2, including 219 recoveries and no deaths.

The committees treatment subcommittee reported that 12 patients tested negative for the virus once and nine others tested negative twice or more.

A total 27,409 people having close contact with patients or coming from pandemic-hit countries are under quarantine at hospitals, concentrated quarantine areas, or at home.

The Company for Vaccine and Biological Production No.1 (Vabiotech) of the Ministry of Health has gained initial success in studying a potential coronavirus vaccine.

Right after the first COVID-19 case was reported in Vietnam in January 2020, the company partnered with the UKs Bristol University to conduct research on the vaccine.

Blood test samples on mice will be sent to the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology for evaluation.

Philippines bars incoming flights for one week to decongest quarantine centres

People in Philippines wear face masks

The Philippines decided to suspend all incoming passenger flights for one week from May 3 to help reduce pressure on quarantine facilities which are housing thousands of Filipino repatriates.

Millions of Filipinos work abroad, with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Singapore and Qatar among the most popular destinations.

Some 24,000 have already returned home, with the majority losing their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Those returning are required to complete a 14-day quarantine at centres built or re-purposed by the government that are now filled to capacity.

The Philippines has converted several convention centres, ships, hotels, and government facilities into quarantine centres as the number of people infected with the coronavirus has risen.

However, outbound flights will be allowed to continue, including those flying stranded foreigners out of the country.

As of May 3, the country had reported over 9,200 cases and 607 deaths.

Five Buddha bar-linked patients test positive again

A corner of Buddha Bar in HCMC's District 2. The city has reported five relapses related to the hotspot - PHOTO: THE HCMC MEDIA CENTER

The HCMC Department of Health last night said two more recovered Covid-19 patients had tested positive again, all linked to the Buddha Bar cluster in District 2.

The relapses are the 235th and the 124th patient, who were discharged from hospital on April 15 and April 14, respectively. They visited Buddha Bar on March 14. Earlier, the city reported three relapses related to the hotspot, including the 151st, 207th and 224th.

Besides this, the 92nd patient, a 21-year-old Vietnamese student returning from France, has tested positive again after being given the all clear on April 14. All the relapses are now being treated at Cu Chi field hospital.

According to the health department, HCMC has seen 54 positive cases so far. Aside from the six relapses, local doctors are treating the 91st patient, a British pilot, who is still suffering critical developments. He obtained a negative result on April 30.

On Friday, the department also announced to keep recovered Covid-19 patients under health monitoring for 30 days instead of 14.

This morning also marks the 16th straight day that Vietnam has not reported any infection caused by community transmission. It has also been eight days in a row that Vietnam has confirmed no new Covid-19 patient, keeping its total count at 270 since last Friday when two imported cases were confirmed.

HCMCs condo building lockdown lifted





The apartment building at 1A-1B Nguyen Dinh Chieu Street in HCMC's District 1 is under lockdown on April 30 - PHOTO: CATPHCM

Authorities of HCMCs District 1 have lifted the lockdown on an apartment building at 1A-1B on Nguyen Dinh Chieu Street as 92 people in close contact with a recovered Covid-19 case that retested positive have returned negative test results.

The 92nd case, who lives in Block B2 of the building and returned to Vietnam from France, tested positive for the coronavirus on April 29 after recovery, prompting local authorities to lock down the building to take samples from those with potential exposure to the patient and disinfect the area. The patient was sent to Cu Chi field hospital in the city for treatment.

According to a representative of the district, some 32 people from 11 households who share the same story with the patient and some other families on the first floor are still self-quarantining. Da Kao Ward is calling for food donations to the households.

The 92nd patient contacted no one at the building during the quarantine period. However, after testing negative twice, he went to a convenience store nearby to buy food. Local government is still tracing all those with potential exposure to the patient, the official said.

The city has seen six Covid-19 patients retesting posititve for the virus so far.

One more COVID-19 case recorded, taking tally to 271

A British national has been confirmed the latest COVID-19 case in Vietnam, taking the countrys total amount of COVID-19 cases to 271, the National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control said on May 3.

Samples for SARS-CoV-2 testing.

The 37-year-old man, who is an expert of the Vietnam Oil and Gas Group, landed in Ho Chi Minh City-based Tan Son Nhat International Airport on April 28 onboard a private plane from the UK with 12 other passengers. They were taken to a concentrated quarantine area in the citys Can Gio district upon their arrival.

The man first tested negative for the novel conoravirus SARS-CoV-2 along with the other people on board but a second test taken on May 2 revealed a positive result.

Patient No. 271 is currently being treated at the Cu Chi COVID-19 treatment hospital in HCM City.

Of the 271 confirmed patients, 131 are imported cases who were quarantined upon their arrival.

Up to 219 patients have made full recovery, while 52 others are being treated at medical establishments nationwide.

Twelve patients were tested negative for SARS-CoV-2 once and nine others tested negative twice or more.

A total of 30,530 people who had close contact with confirmed patients or coming from pandemic-hit regions have been quarantined across the country, including 246 at hospitals, 5,748 at concentrated quarantine areas and 24,192 at home.

Campaign helps generate jobs for nearly 10,500 young people affected by COVID-19

Close to 10,500 people have found a job through a non-profit campaign held in Hanoi for students and young people affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The campaign was carried out from April 10  30 by the Hanoi chapter of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union (HCYU), the Hanoi Students Association, and the Hanoi Youth Federation, in cooperation with Global Shapers Hanoi, Global Shapers HCM City, Canavi, Accesstrade, and the G.A.P Institute.

It aimed to offer 10,000 jobs for students and young people whose employment is particularly vulnerable during the pandemic. Many have already lost their jobs and are struggling to make ends meet, as thousands of small- and medium-sized enterprises and household businesses in the city have suspended operation.

The campaign helped connect them with recruiters offering seasonal and work-from-home jobs as well as employment after the pandemic ends.

It has so far attracted 963 recruiters and job agencies such as SieuViet, Vietnamworks and FreelancerViet. As many as 17,291 candidates are waiting for job interviews or opportunities.

More than 1,000 people have taken part in interviewing skill and Microsoft Excel training courses held by Canavi.

Vice Secretary of the HCYUs Hanoi chapter Tran Quang Hung said the first phase of the campaign has ended with positive outcomes.

In the second phase, which will take place from May 4  31, the HCYUs Hanoi chapter will cooperate with Canavi to organise more workshops at major universities across the city to provide career counseling and job matching services for fresh graduates, he said.

Thailand reports single-digit new COVID-10 cases for seven consecutive days

Thailand recorded a downward trend in new cases with only three new infections confirmed on May 3, the lowest figure since March 10.

New daily infections have remained in the single digits for seven days in a row.

So far, Thailand has reported a total of 2,969 COVID-19 cases, 54 deaths, and 2,739 recoveries.

May 3 also saw lifting of restrictions on several businesses, bringing some aspects of life back to citizens.

On the same day, Laos reported no new cases for the consecutive 21 days. The number of cases remained at 19, of which nine were declared to have recovered.

Meanwhile, the Philippines saw additional 295 cases and four deaths on the day, bringing the total to 9,223 and 607, respectively. In all, 1,214 patients have recovered.

The number of COVID-19 infections in Indonesia is now 11,192 after 349 new cases were reported. With 14 new fatalities on the day, the countrys death toll hit 845.

Indonesia has conducted COVID-19 test for more than 83,000 people.

Malaysia reported 122 new cases and two deaths, bringing the total to 6,298 and 105.

Singapore also recorded 657 new COVID-19 cases on May 3, raising the national tally to 18,205, announced the countrys Ministry of Health.

Most of the infections were work permit holders residing in dormitories.
In a setback, two senior army officers, including a colonel-rank officer, were among five security personnel killed during an encounter with terrorists at a village in Rajwar forests of North Kashmir, officials said Sunday.

The deceased security personnel are: Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, Major Anuj Sood, Naik Rajesh and Lance Naik Dinesh, all from the Brigade of GUARDS regiment, and at present part of the 21 Rashtriya Rifles, deployed to counter terrorism in the hinterland.

A Jammu and Kashmir Police Sub-Inspector, Shakeel Qazi, also fell victim of to the bullets of terrorists.

The two holed-up terrorists, who were eliminated in the encounter, included commander of banned Lashker-e-Taiba Haider, a Pakistani national who has been active in North Kashmir area. The identity of the other was yet to be ascertained.

They had held some civilians hostage, the officials said.

Director General of JK police Dilbagh Singh said, "Sad to inform that five brave personnel including Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, Major Anuj Sood and sub-inspector of JKP Shakeel Qazi were martyred in the line of duty."



Security forces had noticed presence of some terrorists in the Rajwar forests in Handwara area for the past few days and a brief exchange of fire had taken place on Thursday deep inside the jungles.

Around Saturday afternoon, intelligence inputs indicated presence of the same group of terrorists inside a house at Changimulla village, prompting Col Sharma to launch a cordon and search operation along with his team and Qazi.

After a considerable lull, Col Sharma and four others personnel barged into a cowshed adjacent to the house, presuming that the terrorists had been eliminated in the heavy gunfire.

According to the officials, the team came under heavy fire after rescuing the civilians and all communication link with Col Sharma and his team were snapped. Calls made on the mobile numbers of the team were answered by terrorists.

The Army then rushed in para-troopers, who after ascertaining that the Army officer and his team were killed in the encounter, launched an offensive by the first light of the day and killed the two terrorists.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the nation in paying tributes to the soldiers.

"Tributes to our courageous soldiers and security personnel martyred in Handwara. Their valour and sacrifice will never be forgotten. They served the nation with utmost dedication and worked tirelessly to protect our citizens. Condolences to their families and friends," the Prime Minister said in a tweet.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh described it as "deeply disturbing and painful".

Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat said the anti-terror operation highlighted the determination of the security forces to safeguard the lives of the people of Kashmir.

The Army, in a tweet, said Chief of Army Staff General M M Naravane and all ranks of the force paid tributes to the "valiant braves of our Army and JK Police for their supreme sacrifice while fighting and eliminating terrorists in Handwara."



The death of Col Sharma and Major Sood, both from 21-RR, was a sad reminder of a near similar incident two decades back when Commanding Officer of the same batallion Colonel Rajinder Chauhan was killed by terrorists along with Brig B S Shergil in 2000.

The death of a Colonel-rank officer was seen in the valley after five years. In 2015, the Army had lost two colonels in a year in Kashmir.

Colonel M N Rai of 2/9 Gorkha Rifles, was the CO of 42 RR and laid his life for the country while fighting militants in Tral in South Kashmir in January 2015.

The same year, Col Santosh Mahadik was killed in an encounter in Kupwara area.

On the latest operation, the Army said based on the intelligence input that terrorists were taking hostage some civilians in a house, a joint operation was launched by the army and the JK Police.

A team comprising five Army and police personnel entered the target area occupied by the terrorists to evacuate the civilians and successfully extricated them.

However, during the process, the team came under a heavy volume of fire by the terrorists and in the ensuing firefight the five personnel were killed, the Army said.

The terrorists are believed to have come to Handwara to receive an infiltrating group from Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, officials said.

A wreath-laying ceremony would be held tomorrow after which Col Sharma's body would be flown to Jaipur and that of Major Sood to Pune, the officials said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Joe Biden's former staffer, Tara Reade, says the former Vice President and presumptive Democratic nominee, assaulted her in 1993. Reade's Senate ID card can be seen on the right.

Associated Press, Tara Reade

The Associated Press reported Saturday that Tara Reade, the former Biden staffer who says he sexually assaulted her 27 years ago, said her decades-old complaint to a congressional personnel office didn't contain the words "assault" or "harassment."

In a tweet Saturday, Reade said the Associated Press report was "false" but did not elaborate.

She last year accused Biden of inappropriately caressing her, but didn't publicly allege Biden had sexually assaulted her until March 2020.

Reade alleges Biden assaulted her in a Senate corridor in 1993 when he put his hands under her skirt and underwear without her consent.

Biden has denied all accusations against him.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Tara Reade, the former staffer of former Vice President Joe Biden who alleged Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993, has disputed a recent report saying she didn't explicitly refer to sexual harassment or assault in her complaint to a congressional personnel office.

"This is false," she tweeted just before 4 p.m. in response to a link to the Associated Press report. She did not say what exactly was false about the story, and Reade did not immediately return a Business Insider request to clarify what about the report she believed to be untrue.

Reade later told NBC News she was "not sure" what exact wording she used in the 1993 complaint to the Senate personnel office, but said the complaint concerned sexual harassment.

"I filed a complaint re sexual harassment and retaliation but I am not sure what explicit words on that intake form until we all see it again," Reade told NBC News.

The Associated Press reported Saturday that Reade said the complaint she filed with the Senate personnel office in the 90s did not contain the words "assault" or "harassment."

"I remember talking about him wanting me to serve drinks because he liked my legs and thought I was pretty and it made me uncomfortable," the Associated Press quoted Reade as saying. "I know that I was too scared to write about the sexual assault."

Story continues

"I know I didn't use sexual harassment," Reade reportedly said of the complaint, which she previously alleged resulted in her being fired from Biden's office.

According to the report, Reade said she used the terms "uncomfortable" and "retaliation" to describe her interactions with the then-senator. Reade's comments Monday suggest that even if her complaint to the office be found and made public, it wouldn't corroborate her accusations that Biden assaulted her.

The now 56-year-old woman has alleged Biden, 77, assaulted her in a Senate corridor in 1993 when he put his hands under her skirt and underwear without her consent. Reade last month filed a complaint with police in DC over the alleged 1993 incident. Biden has entirely denied Reade's allegations and called for the secretary of the Senate to locate Reade's 1993 complaint. Reade has said she does not have a copy of the complaint.

As Business Insider previously reported, Reade's former neighbor is one of a handful of people who have corroborated her story and said Reade discussed her alleged assault by Biden with them in the 90s.

In a recently rediscovered interview with the Associated Press, Reade told the news outlet last year that she "chickened out" after visiting the Senate personnel office. Those comments were not published by the outlet at the time. When the AP followed up Friday about what she meant by "chickened out," Reade said she meant that she did not file sexual assault or harassment allegations against the then-senator, according to the Saturday report.

As Business Insider previously reported, Reade in April 2019 first told a local newspaper that Biden had inappropriately caressed her, though she didn't allege sexual assault until March 2020 when she made the accusations during an appearance on a podcast.

"I filed it because I had been harassed so badly last April," Reade, 56, told Business Insider last month when she filed her complaint with DC police. "I also wanted to make it clear that I would be willing to go under oath or cooperate with any law enforcement regarding it, because it did happen. Even if it was 26 years ago."

Editor's note: This story has been updated after Reade disputed the contents of an Associated Press report saying she did not refer to sexual harassment or assault in her 1993 complaint against Joe Biden.

Read more:

Biden asks the secretary of the Senate to direct a search for an alleged sexual harassment complaint filed by a former staffer

Joe Biden 'unequivocally' denies sexual assault claim during fundraiser with Obama administration alumni

'It never happened': Joe Biden denies allegation he sexually assaulted former staffer Tara Reade

Trump says Biden 'should respond' to Tara Reade's assault allegation, but suggests the accusation could be false because 'I've been falsely charged numerous times'

Read the original article on Business Insider
The global medical community is experiencing unbearable stress, as they helplessly watch COVID-19 patients die alone, writes Indian American psychiatrist Dr. Shobhit Negi in this piece, adding that psychological first aid is a crucial early intervention that focuses on mental health of the affected survivors by providing psychosocial support during outbreaks like COVID-19. Above: A recreational marijuana smoker indulges in smoking weed on April 14 in the Bushwick section of the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Some smokers turn to smoking weed to ease their stress during the coronavirus pandemic (Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
Donald Trump moved to replace the top watchdog at the Department of Health and Human Services after her office released a report on the shortages in testing and personal protective gear at hospitals during the coronavirus pandemic.

In a Friday night announcement, the White House nominated a permanent inspector general to take the reins from Christi Grimm, the principal deputy inspector general who has run the office since January.

The White House nominated Jason Weida, an assistant United States attorney in Boston, as permanent inspector general. The announcement said Weida was chosen because he has overseen numerous complex investigations in healthcare and other sectors. He must be confirmed by the Senate.

Grimms removal follows a purge of high-profile federal officials and inspectors general whose work has been critical of the president. Inspectors general at large agencies serve at the pleasure of the president, but they are considered independent monitors for waste, fraud and abuse.

Trump laced into Grimm at a news conference in April, after her staff report found severe shortages of testing kits, delays in getting coronavirus results and widespread shortages of masks and other equipment at US hospitals.

The president demanded to know who wrote the report, calling the findings wrong. He then accused reporters of having withheld that Grimm had worked in the Obama administration.

Where did he come from, the inspector general? Whats his name? No, whats his name? Whats his name? Trump responded on 6 April, when asked about the report, which he said was politically biased. He then attacked Grimm on Twitter, writing: Why didnt the IG, who spent eight years with the Obama Administration (did she report on the failed H1N1 swine flu debacle where 17,000 people died?), want to talk to the admirals, generals, VP and others in charge, before doing her report.

Grimm is a career investigator and auditor who joined the inspector generals office, one of the federal governments largest, in 1999 when Bill Clinton was president. She has served in Republican and Democratic administrations and is not a political appointee.

She took over the inspector generals office in an acting capacity in January from another acting official, who retired.

A spokeswoman for the IGs office said Grimm will remain in her current role as principal deputy inspector general.

HHS OIG has for more than 40 years held a deep commitment to serving taxpayers and the beneficiaries of HHS programmes, Tesia Williams said in a statement. Our professionals have risen to a variety of challenges, including our groundbreaking work fighting the opioid epidemic and health care fraud, as well as oversight of the planning, response, and funding for Covid-19. We will continue to serve the American people by ensuring that their health and welfare are protected.

A White House spokesman, citing personnel decisions, declined to comment.

Washington senator Patty Murray, a Democrat, criticised the presidents decision. We all know the President hasnt told people the truth about this virus or his Administrations response, and late last night, he moved to silence an independent government official who did, she said in a statement. The President cannot be above oversight, no matter how he denies, attacks, and fights against it.

Grimms report came as Trump was facing widespread criticism for his administrations response to the pandemic. Its findings were based on a survey of 343 hospitals in 46 states. Auditors did their research for five days at the end of March.

The report said its findings were not a review of HHS response to the Covid-19 pandemic but were intended as an aid to HHS as it continues to lead efforts to address the public health emergency.

But the auditors conclusions amounted to the first official critique by the federal government of the health care systems capacity to cope with the flood of infected patients. And by substantiating complaints about inadequate equipment, the report called into question Trumps claims that hospitals and state officials were making inaccurate claims about their needs or being greedy.

In the past few weeks, Trump has fired a prominent inspector general who pushed to investigate a whistleblower complaint that led to his impeachment on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in the controversy over aid to Ukraine.

He nominated a White House lawyer to oversee the massive spending Congress authorised to jump-start the economy during the pandemic, a decision critics have called a conflict of interest. The president also moved to block a prominent inspector general from assuming the leadership of a panel of federal watchdogs overseeing pandemic spending.

Recommended Trump spends weekend at Camp David tweeting about Biden and Flynn

Trump has cleared out other officials he believed were not loyal to him in the months since his impeachment trial ended in an acquittal by the Senate, largely among party lines. Among other nominations the White House announced on Friday was a replacement for Marie Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine. Yovanovitch was forced out a year ago, viewed as an obstacle to White House aides as they tried to pressure the Ukraine government to investigate Trumps Democratic political rivals.

Keith Dayton, Trumps nominee to replace Yovanovitch, serves as director of the George Marshall Centre in Germany and as a senior US defence adviser to Ukraine. After serving 40 years in the US Army, Dayton retired in 2010 with the rank of lieutenant general before accepting his latest assignments.

The Washington Post
Representational picture

At least three more Indians have been fired or suspended in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) over the weekend, after their allegedly offensive posts were brought to the attention of their employers by social media users, Gulf News has reported.

These individuals join nearly half-a-dozen alleged hate-mongers who have similarly landed in trouble in recent weeks.

A spokesperson for Azadea Group that operates Eataly, a chain of high-end Italian restaurants in Dubai, told Gulf News that its employee Rawat Rohit, who was employed with them as a chef, has been suspended and is facing a disciplinary probe.

Sharjah-based Pneumics Automation has also said they suspended their storekeeper Sachin Kinnigoli until further notice. We have withheld his salary and told him not to come to work. The matter is under investigation. We have a zero-tolerance policy," the firm's owner was quoted as saying, adding that anyone found guilty of insulting or showing contempt for someones religion will have to bear the consequences.

Dubai-based Transguard Group said they had cracked down on an employee who had posted several anti-Islamic messages on his Facebook page under the name of Vishal Thakur.

Following an internal investigation, the actual identity of this employee was verified and he was stripped of his security credentials, terminated from our employment and handed over to the relevant authorities as per company policy and UAE Cybercrime Law No. 5 of 2012. As of this statement, he is in the custody of Dubai Police, Gulf News quoted a Transguard spokesperson as saying.

Moneycontrol could not independently verify the report.

This comes days after the Indian Ambassadors to the UAE cautioned Indians living there about the country's strict hate speech laws. Warnings were also issued by Indian missions in other Gulf countries.

Recently, there have been reports of highly offensive and Islamophobic posts by some Indians living in Gulf countries. While many of them have reportedly lost their jobs, others have taken down their posts or deactivated their accounts after being called out by other social media users.

Social media users who are calling out such posts, have been tagging employers of such people in their complaints.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 23:45:51|Editor: huaxia

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DAR ES SALAAM, May 3 (Xinhua) -- Tanzanian health authorities on Sunday warned people against random use of different types of medicines in the hope that they can cure the COVID-19 virus.

Abel Makubi, the Chief Medical Officer in the Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children, said there was until now no known medicines that can cure the viral disease.

"There have been reports in various social media claiming that certain medicines can cure the COVID-19 virus. This has led to random use of the medicines by desperate people," Makubi said in a statement.

The random use of medicines for treating COVID-19 could result in developing resistance to fighting the diseases they were supposed to cure, said the chief medical officer.

If these medicines cured the virus they could have been used to cure COVID-19 patients, added the official, urging people who suspected to have contracted the disease to report to relevant authorities.

Makubi also urged the Pharmacy Council of Tanzania to control random sale of medicines in pharmacies across the country. Enditem
Mexico City, May 3 : The clothing brand of Alejandrina Guzman, the daughter of notorious Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Gozman Loera, distributed around 300 gifts to children with his image imprinted on them.

Company employees on Saturday handed out balls carrying the image, along with the logo of the brand, called "Chapo 701", and a bag of sweets, reports Efe news.

The gifts were distributed in one of the most impoverished areas of Guadalajara, the capital of the western Jalisco province, which also has a high crime rate.

The company's CEO Julio Campos told Efe news that they would also carry out the campaign in other underprivileged districts of the city to celebrate the occasion with the children, despite the stay-at-home measures enforced to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus.

"We did not want to let this day pass. The foundation of Alejandrina Guzman is of the view that children are the future of our society and we are following that. We know that it is complicated to hold events right now, gathering people, but we are doing it in the most orderly way possible," he said.

He said the brand wants to get rid of the social stigma attached to the name of the drug lord.

Campos said that the brand would soon release miniature figures of El Chapo - made with non-toxic material - for sale to reach the young population.

The toys will be priced between 1,300-1,500 pesos ($50-$60).

Earlier this month, the company had distributed aid boxes on behalf of Alejandrina Guzman to elderly residents in Guadalajara who have been forced to remain indoors to avoid contracting the new coronavirus.

In a similar effort, videos uploaded on social media have shown alleged members of the Jalisco New Generation drug cartel distributing aid packets to people unable to leave their houses in the neighborhoods of Zapopan, Tonala and the southern coast of Jalisco, on behalf of their chief Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes "El Mencho".

After getting to know about the videos, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said such actions "do not help" the people and urged organized crime groups to stop such activities.

El Chapo, the leader of the murderous (and still active) Sinaloa cartel, is serving a life sentence after his conviction last July on charges of drug trafficking, firearms and money laundering.

He had twice escaped from prisons in Mexico before being extradited to the US.
The Indian Army, Indian Air Force and Indian Navy joined hands on Sunday (May 3) to express their gratitude to corona warriors, including healthcare workers, police, and forces who are at the forefront of the battle against the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic.

Expressing their support to corona warriors, flypasts, lit-up ships and musical tributes by army bands outside hospitals took place across the country. The flypasts by the air force and the navy in different parts of the country including Delhi, Mumbai, Srinagar, Hyderabad, Itanagar added to the tribute.

Indian Air Force aircraft flypast hospital to express gratitude towards health workers for their contribution in the fight against #COVID19 pandemic#CoronaWarriors pic.twitter.com/vrODYaMg7Q  Zee News English (@ZeeNewsEnglish) May 3, 2020

In Delhi, IAF's Sukhoi-30 MKIs, MiG-29s and Jaguars conducted a flypast over Rajpath and showered petals over the India Gate and Red Fort. The C-130 transport aircraft of the IAF also conducted a flypast in the national capital.

An IAF helicopter showered flower petals on the Police War Memorial in New Delhi to express gratitude to police officers busy in maintaining law and order across the country during the coronavirus pandemic.

The fighter jets from the Western Air Command of the IAF showered petals at hospitals across Delhi, including Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital and Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital.

In Mumbai, a flypast was conducted by fighter jets over the Marine Drive. The IAF choppers also dropped petals over the King Edward Memorial Hospital and Kasturba Gandhi Hospital.

The flypasts were also conducted over Srinagar's Dal Lake, Chandigarh's Sukhna Lake and Lucknow. Flower petals were showered over King George's Medical University in Lucknow by IAF choopers as a tribute to frontline workers.

In Gujarat's Ahmedabad, IAF showered petals on hospitals and conducted a fly-past over the city and the Gujarat Assembly complex in Gandhinagar. The Navy lauded the efforts of the 'corona warriors' by illuminating its vessels along the Gujarat coast in the early hours of Sunday.

IAF fighter jets also flypast Sawai Maansingh Hospital in Rajasthan's Jaipur to express gratitude towards medical professionals engaged in the fight against COVID-19.

An IAF Mi-17 chopper showers petals over Kolkata's Chitranjan Institute as a mark of respect and gratitude towards healthcare workers.

In Haryana, IAF choppers flew past the Panchkula Government hospital while an Army band performed underneath to salute the corona warriors. Navy helicopters showered flowers on the Goa Medical College in Panaji to thank frontline workers. An IAF chopper held flypast over SNM hospital in Leh to pay tribute to corona warriors.

Navy's INS Jalashwa in the Bay of Bengal saluted the frontline warriors against the COVID-19 pandemic by saying 'Thank You' . It is to be noted that INS Jalashwa is also one of the warships being readied by the Indian government for the evacuation of Indians from Gulf countries.
Los Angeles, May 3 : Hollywood star Chris Hemsworth has thanked everyone for loving his digital movie "Extraction", which is on its way to become Netflix's "biggest film of all time".

Hemsworth took to Instagram to post a video to express his gratitude about the response to the film, reports hollywoodreporter.com.

"Hey, what's up guys, I hope you're doing well. I just want to say a massive thank you to everyone who checked out 'Extraction', you've made it the number one film on the planet right now," said the actor from his gym.

"And it looks like it's going to be Netflix's biggest feature film of all time, which is absolutely mind blowing" he added.

The "Thor" star went on to say: "We are blown away by the response and the support. On behalf of myself, the Russo Brothers, Netflix, our director Sam Hargrave, thank you so so much. We love you guys".

He also addressed the rumors of a sequel to "Extraction".

"There's been a lot of talk and questions about sequels and prequels and all sorts of things, and all I can say is who knows," said the actor, adding: "But with this amount of support, it's something I will be pretty stoked to jump back into." The action thriller released on Netflix on April 24, and attracted viewership from "an estimated 90 million households in the first four weeks" of its release, according to Hemsworth's previous Instagram post.

With "Extraction", argrave graduated from being Chris Evans' stunt double in "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" for fight scenes and stunt coordinator in "Captain America: Civil War" to a feature director.

Hargrave was an additional second unit director in "Avengers: Infinity War".

For his first film, Hargrave reunited with his "Avengers" family. He got "Thor" star Hemsworth to lead the film, screenplay of which is done by Joe Russo. The film is produced by Russo Brothers (Joe and Anthony Russo), Mike Larocca, Chris Hemsworth, Eric Gitter, and Peter Schwerin.

It revolves around Tyler Rake (essayed by Hemsworth), a fearless, black market mercenary, who embarks on the most deadly extraction of his career when he is enlisted to rescue the kidnapped son of an imprisoned international crime lord.

It has been shot extensively in India, along with other places around the world.

Originally titled "Dhaka", the film also stars Indian actors Randeep Hooda, Pankaj Tripathi, Priyanshu Painyulli, and Rudraksh Jaiswal.
Axios launched our "What Matters 2020" series this year to focus on seven issues that will define the nation's future no matter who wins in November.

The big picture: The impact of the coronavirus pandemic will spread far beyond the most pressing issues we face now  lives lost and economic disruption  to drive debates on all of these longer term topics. Go deeper with the Axios subject matter experts to explore each one.

Automation

The COVID-19 pandemic and the social distancing policies it demands have made human workers both potential victims and vectors of disease, Axios' Bryan Walsh reports.

As a result, we're likely to see an acceleration of the trend towards greater automation in the workplace  with industrial robots and AI agents online.

Experts' views range on how dramatic the impacts may be.

Our thought bubble: If this results in human workers losing jobs to machines, as many experts expect, it could worsen an already terrible recession.

If this results in human workers losing jobs to machines, as many experts expect, it could worsen an already terrible recession. "If we don't embrace the opportunities for re-skilling workers, there is a chance here for serious social unrest, on the level of the Great Depression," said Michael Lotito, co-chair of the Littler law firm's Workplace Policy Institute.

Misinformation

There's a misinformation crisis surrounding the coronavirus pandemic  and it's driving research on how to tackle misinformation that may serve as a roadmap for other episodes moving forward, Axios' Sara Fischer writes.

She breaks down some of those strategies and discussions here.

Be smart: President Trump has been at the center of much of this controversy himself, and that has created challenges for a range of players, from government doctors and health experts to governors, mayors, news organizations and social media companies.

Health care costs

The coronavirus has put the holes in the U.S. health care system on display, Axios' Sam Baker reports.

Millions of people have lost their health insurance as theyve lost their jobs. And though the government has stepped in to cover the cost of coronavirus care, thats no help to people with chronic conditions, or who get sick with anything else.

A slow recovery will leave many of those people at risk for a long time.

All of the things that have made the U.S. system such a burden before  an industry chasing profits first, a patchwork system of coverage that varies from state to state and employer to employer, backwards incentives that put patients at the greatest risk just when they can least afford it  are working against us now, too.

China

The coronavirus has unraveled Washington's bipartisan consensus on China, per Axios' Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian.

Until now, there was general agreement among leading Republicans and Democrats that America's policy must address China's hard authoritarian turn. Now they're split over Republicans' efforts to blame China for the pandemic.

The pandemic also has further fractured the U.S.-China relationship, escalating tensions to levels not seen in decades.

It has put pressure on China to improve its image, resulting in a campaign to provide medical supplies to countries fighting an outbreak  but also in Beijing adopting Russian-style disinformation tactics on a global scale.

Climate change

As the pandemic has overshadowed most other news, climate change has receded somewhat from its perch as a rising political topic, per Axios' Amy Harder.

At the same time, a number of scientists and advocacy groups have sought to address questions or raise awareness about potential connections between major environmental disturbances and the evolution of future viruses or patients' ability to fight them.

Expect climate change to be a key part of larger arguments Joe Biden makes against Trump, including accusing him of disavowing science of all kinds and calling for clean energy to drive an economic recovery if he wins in November.

The other side: Weve already seen a glimpse of how Trump will respond: his campaign released a statement recently suggesting Biden is belittling the pandemic by linking it to climate change.

Capitalism

Countries with strong job protections and welfare states have had many fewer struggles than the U.S. when it comes to keeping workers employed, so that they can go immediately back to work when lockdowns are lifted, per Axios' Felix Salmon.

This crisis has exposed a key weakness of laissez-faire capitalism and at-will employment.

Our economy will take a long time to recover.

The big picture: As we've been reporting and as our Axios-Ipsos Coronavirus Index has been showing each week, the pandemic has turned inequality into a comorbidity. Better-off Americans are still getting paid and are free to work from home, while the poor are forced to either risk going out to work or lose their jobs.

Demographics

The virus is having a widely disparate impact on different racial and ethnic communities  with a potentially transformative reach on Generation Z, and lasting implications for immigration policy, per Axios' Stef Kight.
Losing $3 million a day?

That is the burden under which the University of Virginia Medical Center has been suffering during the coronavirus lockdown  and that now has pushed the center into massive furloughs and pay cuts for some personnel.

It starkly illustrates the tension between staying the course on the shelter-in-place orders keeping most of us at home vs. calls from some critics to re-open the economy in order to prevent a potentially global fiscal collapse.

Non-patient staff at the UVa Medical Center will be furloughed for up to three months; some physicians and upper-level staff will take a 20% pay cut; and Dr. K. Craig Kent, executive vice president for health affairs, will take a 40% cut. Employer contributions to retirement accounts will be suspended for all non-physician employees through July.

Staff treating COVID-19 patients will not see any change in their compensation or their jobs.

The Medical Centers financial losses are triggered by a statewide ban on elective surgeries and by stay-at-home orders that have kept patients from visiting clinics for non-critical care.

The decline has lost the center millions of dollars per day. Thats unsustainable.

Gov. Ralph Northam recently announced that elective surgeries can resume. Given the economic harm facing UVas Medical Center and other hospitals in the state, any pressure to allow elective surgeries to start generating some income is understandable.

Mr. Northam also floated a possible plan for nudging local economies forward again, perhaps region-by-region for those areas of Virginia where COVID cases are rare and, presumably, the coronavirus is a low threat. That suggestion generated strong pushback, including from several UVa professors.

Their reaction came just before the UVa Medical Center made its announcement of cutbacks. We wonder if this harsh new development has changed any minds.

To be clear: This newspaper also has encouraged Virginians to stay the course by staying home, minimizing the number of infections, lowering the death rate, and preventing first responders and hospital staff from becoming overwhelmed.

This goal of flattening the curve also has provided some breathing space so that governments and private enterprises, such as manufacturers of disinfectants and personal protective equipment, for instance, could ramp up efforts to tame the virus. Those efforts have not gone as quickly as one would have wished.

As Virginians have waited, weve also begun to see more and more evidence of how flattening the curve of infections also is flattening the economy. Whats good for one is terrible for the other.

The apparent choice between health and the economy has never been absolute. Its always been a question of where to find the right balance between the two. Unfortunately, we cant all seem to agree on the proper point along the continuum between an economy thats wide open vs. a populace that is locked down, with no one allowed to emerge for any reason.

Hospitals provide an instructive proxy for this debate.

As centers for the battle against the coronavirus, both in treatment and in research, hospitals are directly and often damagingly affected. The relentless pressure to save patients from a disease we still dont understand well is debilitating for staff. The inability to save many of those patients takes an emotional toll. And the physical demands of the job wear down doctors, nurses, technicians and other staff, making them more susceptible not only to breakdowns from exhaustion but also to the virus itself.

No wonder the cry is to flatten the curve, to prevent infection spikes that would further stress staff and instead to extend the period during which the virus is active.

But that means were also extending the time during which hospitals (and other businesses) are prohibited from doing business as usual. Resulting loss of income hits hospitals right alongside neighboring businesses.

But if hospitals collapse from being starved of funds  a very real possibility, especially for those already operating on thin margins  who will care for patients, corona or otherwise, now or in the future?

Hospitals have a lot to lose if the curve isnt flattened  but also a lot to lose if it is.

By prohibiting business as usual, we are gambling with outcomes. Were assuming most businesses will be able to bounce back. Were assuming hospitals can stay open.

If were wrong about those assumptions, the results could be catastrophic.
- Radio king Jalang'o went on social media sharing images of his vandalised car which he believed to have happened on Mombasa road

- The comedian is known for his high-end cars and he was not pleased when a part was stollen saying he failed to find a replacement in Kenya

- The funnyman promised a reward of KSh 10,000 for anyone that could be able to find a replacement or the exact part that was stolen

The last couple of days have not been great for comedian and radio host Jalang'o.

The king of Swahili radio is known for his flashy lifestyle including his cars and always shares more information about them with his fans.

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This is why he was not happy when he found out that his Mercedes ride, model SLK 200, had lost a part during one of his escapades.

Jalang'o went on Instagram sharing the information with his fans, explaining where he believes the part might have been stolen.

"Hey guys, I lost this part of the car along Mombasa road. Specifically between GM and Standard group, someone must have plucked it off at a parking. I have searched for it locally but nobody seems to have a second hand or a new one," Jalang'o expressed.

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He promised a reward of KSh 10,000 for anyone that would find the same part or if someone was sold to - the same part that got lost.

"What I know is that someone sold it to someone, so I am looking for that someone ill pay KSh 10,000 if you can get it for me or even if it's not the same one. If you also know somewhere I can get it please help. (The money) in Cash," he added.

The comedian recently went on his Instagram showing off a multimillion Maybach ride.

He was leaving work and could not help but show off the spotless and flashy interior of his mean machine.

The expensive car was fitted with fine, elegant, and pricey leather seats and had a refreshing finishing at the front.

Jalang'o even showed off the car's sunroof and off-white doors as he gave a mini-tour of the costly car.

Do you have a groundbreaking story you would like us to publish? Please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690. Contact Tuko.co.ke instantly.

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Ratipal Chauhan, a migrant labourer from Uttar Pradesh, is desperate to return home as the coronavirus-driven lockdown has left him jobless and drained his savings of the past eight months.

Tens of thousands of skilled and unskilled workers from different parts of the country are putting up in various parts of Jammu region and are facing the heat of the nationwide lockdown that came into effect from March 25.

We do not see the situation improving in the near future. It is better to be with one's family during this hour of crisis. The lockdown has virtually pushed us to the brink of starvation, Chauhan (28), a resident of Bardiya Lohar village of Basti district in UP, told PTI.

Chauhan, who has been working as a tile and marble setter in Jammu for over a decade, said he along with 23 others from his village are waiting for the first opportunity to return home.

Let this phase pass off we want to be with our families. We will work on our agricultural land for survival, which is otherwise not possible while staying hundreds of kilometers away from one's home, he said.

The migrant labourer also rued that no help was reaching people like him and they had to arrange meals from their own pockets.

We had saved some money for our family and are now spending it on food for survival. We are concerned as to how long the situation will continue like this, Chuhan said as others staying with him at a rented accommodation at Tawi Vihar Colony in Jammu nodded in agreement.

The group of skilled and unskilled labourers, including women, is paying Rs 1,700 per month as rent.

While Chauhan and his two brothers are held up in Jammu, his another brother is stranded in Bengaluru.

Rajesh, a mason by profession, said they had planned to leave for their native place on March 25, but the sudden announcement of the lockdown changed everything.

Now the government has started inter-state transportaion of migrant labourers, we are hopeful of making it to our homes soon, he said.

He claimed not a single penny was credited to their bank accounts or ration was supplied over the past one month.

A group of labourers from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Punjab had assembled outside the office of Divisional Commissioner, Jammu on Saturday to demand early evacuation to their homes.

We are struggling hard to get one square meal in a day. Some government officials came and recorded our details several times over the past few weeks, but no help came our way, Rajinder (60), a native of Chattisgarh, said.

He along with 150 of his fellow villagers are living in rented shanties in several plots of land in Sidhra area of Jammu.

We will be grateful to the government if transport is made available to take us to our native places. There is no benefit in staying here under the lockdown, Neru Lal (58), a mason and a native of Chattisgarh, said.

Lal has been visiting Jammu since 1996 for livelihood. He said the government should act immediately as the situation is driving the labourers to desperation.

We will die of starvation if we stay here. Even if the lockdown is lifted, the situation will take a long time to get normal, the labourer said, expressing apprehension about construction work getting started in the near future.

Another group of over 500 labourers, putting up near the railway station here, expressed their gratitude to various government agencies, NGOs and social groups for helping them to cope up with the situation.

The government, NGOs and social groups came forward and lent their support by distributing ration kits after we raised the issue of non-availability of food. We are thankful to the government and the people of Jammu, Naresh Kumar from Odisha said.

However, he said they are also planning to return to their homes till the situation improved.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Baghdad: The man wearing an explosive vest emerged from a car and calmly marched toward the gates of the intelligence building in Iraqs northern city of Kirkuk. When he ignored their shouts to halt, guards opened fire, and he blew himself up, wounding three security personnel in the first week of Ramadan.

Days later, a three-pronged coordinated attack killed 10 Iraqi militia fighters in the northern province of Salahaddin  the deadliest and most complex operation in many months.

The assaults are the latest in a resurgence of attacks by the Islamic State group in northern Iraq. The first was a brazen suicide mission not seen in months. The second was among the most complex attacks since the group's defeat in 2017. In neighboring Syria, IS attacks on security forces, oil fields and civilian sites have also intensified.

The renewed mayhem is a sign that the militant group is taking advantage of governments absorbed in tackling the coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing slide into economic chaos. The virus is compounding longtime concerns among security and UN experts that the group would stage a comeback after its caliphate, which once encompassed a third of Iraq and Syria, was brought down last year.

In Iraq, militants also exploit security gaps at a time of an ongoing territorial dispute and a US troop drawdown.

Its a real threat, said Qubad Talabani, deputy prime minister of the northern Kurdish region of Iraq. They are mobilizing and killing us in the north and they will start hitting Baghdad soon." He said IS was benefiting from a gap between Kurdish forces and federal armed forces caused by political infighting.

Intelligence reports say the number of IS fighters in Iraq is believed to be 2,500-3,000.

In northeast Syria, Kurdish-dominated police have become a more visible target for IS as they patrol the streets to implement anti-virus measures, said Mervan Qamishlo, a spokesman for US-allied Kurdish-led forces.

IS fighters in late March launched a campaign of attacks in government-held parts of Syria, from the central province of Homs all the way to Deir el-Zour to the east, bordering Iraq.

Some 500 fighters, including some who had escaped from prison, recently slipped from Syria into Iraq, helping fuel the surge in violence there, Iraqi intelligence officials said.

IS is shifting from local intimidation to more complex attacks, three Iraqi military officials and experts said. Operations previously focused on assassinations of local officials and less sophisticated attacks. Now the group is carrying out more IED attacks, shootings and ambushes of police and military. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Multiple factors help the militants. The number of Iraqi military personnel on duty has dropped 50% because of virus prevention measures, the military officials said.

Also, territorial disputes between Baghdad and authorities from the northern Kurdish autonomy zone have left parts of three provinces without law enforcement. The rugged landscape is difficult to police.

The uptick also coincides with a pullout of US-led coalition forces from bases in western Iraq, Nineveh and Kirkuk provinces in line with a drawdown conceived in December.

Before the emergence of the virus and before the American withdrawal, the operations were negligible, numbering only one operation per week, said a senior intelligence official. Now, he said, security forces are seeing an average of 20 operations a month. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.

Coalition spokesman Col. Myles B. Caggins III said IS attacks were increasing in reaction to operations against its hideouts in the mountains and rural areas of north-central Iraq.

Iraqi military officials believe the improved, organized nature of the attacks serves to cement the influence of new IS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Quraishi, who was named after his predecessor was killed in a US raid late last year. One military official said more operations are expected during Ramadan to demonstrate the new leaders strength.

In Syria, one of the most significant attacks occurred April 9, when IS fighters attacked government positions in and near the town of Sukhna. The government brought in reinforcements for a counterattack backed by Russian airstrikes.

Two days of fighting left 32 troops and 26 IS gunmen dead, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the countrys nine-year war.

Days later, the government said that because of the security situation in the desert several gas wells in the fields of Shaer and Hayan were damaged, leading to a 30% drop in electricity production.

Back in Iraq, the green pastures of the northern village of Kujalo conceal a hidden enemy that keeps resident Nawzad up at night. His farming community lies in a disputed territory that has witnessed a sharp increase in attacks, including a nearby ambush earlier this month that killed two peshmerga officers.

He said the militants have local collaborators. They know everything about each farm in Kulajo and they know to whom each house belongs, he said, asking to be identified only by his first name, fearing reprisals.

The militants also receive shelter, supplies, food and transport from local sympathizers, said Kurdish Brig. Kamal Mahmoud. His peshmerga forces are based on part of the front lines there, but can't operate in other parts run by government troops  and there, he said, the overstretched security forces control only main roads with no presence in villages and towns.

On April 1, a federal police officer was killed, and a battalion commander and brigadier general wounded in a security operation in the Makhoul mountain range in Diyala. Two days later, an IED attack targeted a patrol of a commando regiment of the Diyala Operations Command in the outskirts of Maadan village.

Sartip, a Kujalo resident, said he fears the militants improved capabilities.

IS has been carrying out attacks in Kurdish areas for a long time, but now they are more organized and have more people, he said.
They say family heirlooms went missing from Williamss home during a period when she was in poor health and various people entered her home. One of those was the flag that draped the casket of her husband, who was buried with honors at Arlington National Cemetery. Machen said he suspects a crew cleaning up Williamss home took the items.
Were joking, of course. But our fearless columnist and her long-suffering assistant Nicola Bebb have a relationship thats outlived most marriages. And now theyve turned it into a laugh-out-loud podcast

ive never met anyone more loyal than nic. she stuck by me when nobody else did. Liz wears shirt, Equipment, from Fenwick. Nic wears shirt, Nili Lotan, from The Place

Recording their podcast: Liz Jones's Diary

Recording their podcast Liz Jones's Diary

People think were partners. I say, no, Im straight, and anyway liz is not my type

YOU magazines beloved columnist of 20 years Liz Jones and her long-term assistant and best friend Nicola Bebb are laughing together, recalling the spats theyve had.

Weve had so many stand-up screaming matches, Nic says, wiping away tears of mirth. There was a humdinger once when Liz ended up sacking me over something petty  I cant remember what. I said, You cant sack me because I resign!

I flounced off one way, she flounced off another. Then about an hour later Liz phoned and said, Help! Ive broken down! I said, All right, where are you? Ill come to get you.

You dont find more devoted  or funnier  friends than Liz, 61, and Nic, 50. Over the 13 years theyve known each other, together they have weathered every storm in Lizs eventful life, from her disastrous spell living in Somerset after her divorce, to her subsequent move to North Yorkshire and her bankruptcy.

Nic held Lizs hand throughout her calamitous relationships with the anonymous rock star (yes, she knows his identity, but shes not telling) and more recently with David, whom the pair try  and usually fail  to refer to as he who shall not be named.

Ive never met anyone more loyal than Nic, Liz says. She stuck by me when nobody else did.

Now the duo are cheering us all up with their new podcast Liz Joness Diary, in which every week they dissect recent goings-on, while also reminiscing about highlights from Lizs diaries  such as behind-the-scenes shenanigans at the international fashion shows she attended as a magazine editor, to her panic on holiday in Thailand in 2001 when she thought her new husband, Nirpal Dhaliwal, was about to find her passport and discover the closely guarded secret of her age.

Today, the friends are sitting facing each other across a dressing table in a bedroom in a house in East London, which theyre visiting for the day from their homes in remote North Yorkshire to record a new episode of the podcast (this was before coronavirus lockdown).

Two microphones sit in front of them, as they record the new episode, discussing how they feel about returning to their former home city. It makes me quite nostalgic for my old London life, sighs Liz.

When you get to Kings Cross and see the rubbish, the pollution its like paradise, Nic agrees sarcastically.

How did the podcast come into being, I ask after the recording finishes. At first we thought Id just read my columns aloud, but having Nic and I do it together seemed an obvious choice because we are always chatting, says Liz.

So it became a celebration of female friendship, Liz continues. Nic and I are like a really dysfunctional family, like some weird, heterosexual, married couple.

People like builders have asked if were partners, chuckles Nic, whos been engaged twice but never married. I say, No, Im straight, and anyway Liz isnt my type.

While Lizs relationships with many people, from her neighbours to her family, have been fiery, Nic radiates calm. A lot of people find me difficult. Im a writer and I can be quite hard to live with, Liz says. Whereas Nic is very practical and all about common sense.

Liz becomes hysterical at anything, Nic smiles. Weve had many arguments  mainly when weve got a lot of stress in our lives. Three years ago Liz was going bankrupt and I was working all hours, dealing with accountants and lawyers. We were both super-tired, so like married couples wed end up going grrr at each other. But mostly we bounce off each other well. We may appear very different, but underneath it all weve got the same values.

Liz wears dress, iris & ink. earrings, 395, Melissacurry.com. Shoes, Jimmy Choo. Nic wears dress, Edeline Lee, from Fenwick. sandals, Manolo Blahnik. rings, Astley Clarke

Between them the women own four horses (two each), five dogs (three are Lizs) and two cats (Nics). We dont differentiate between each others animals in the way we feel about them, Nic says. When Lizs rescue dog was vomiting up blood, we both took her to the scan and the vet called us her two mummies. If any of our animals gets put down were both there.

It was animals that first brought the women together in 2007, not long after both had relocated to Somerset from London. Liz called up Nic, a former systems analyst programmer for Bupa, whod changed her life to become an equine behaviourist, to help with her rescue horse Lizzie.

Lizzie had been very abused. You couldnt do anything with her but Nic used all these very gentle, non-invasive methods that made such a difference. So she came to help with the horses and soon she was working for me permanently.

I couldnt just sit back and see Liz drowning in admin, so I gradually took on more and more  it became if Liz needed help Id do it, Nic says.

She became my husband! Liz laughs.

The women became so close that when, after years of hostility from the locals (one even fired at her letterbox with a shotgun), Liz decided shed had enough, Nic  whod been living in a cottage on Lizs estate  packed up her belongings and followed her boss to Yorkshire. There was no big conversation about it, she shrugs. It was the obvious thing to do.

Now Nic lives a short drive from Liz. And actually its better now that we dont both live in the same compound, because I am incredibly anal so in the past if Nic had left a bin liner outside her front door I would pick it up and take it away, Liz says.

And Id be like meals on wheels, says Nic. Id tootle over with her dinner, only to have Liz say, I dont like that. Shes very picky.

Still, its clear that  more than ever  both emotionally and practically the pair couldnt do without each other. Now, during isolation, Nic is organising their food deliveries from local suppliers.

When youre single and living somewhere remote, you need back-up, says Liz. I say to Nic, I cant light the fire, I havent got any logs, and shell bring some round. No one else would do that for me.

Once she called me, stuck in her car at the bottom of an icy hill, Nic laughs. She had all this dog food she wanted to get home so I was pushing her BMW up the hill, with it rolling back on me and Liz shouting push harder and me saying I cant! I mean, I love her but this wasnt her finest moment.

One of the podcasts many joys is hearing Nic tell Liz exactly what the rest of us are all thinking  that shes too fussy, she tries to buy peoples love with expensive presents and she worries too much about designer labels.

Shes also an outspoken critic of David, the man from whom  after seven years of on-off dramas  Liz seems finally to have split for good, just after Christmas.

I was quite nice to David until he was vile to me, Nic shrugs. I fixed his iPad, I cooked his dinner the first time Liz had him to stay. But when your friend is always telling you how her boyfriend has put her down or shes coming back at 4am in tears because theyve had a row and hes let her leave and drive down the motorway in that state, it makes you not like someone. So, yes, Ive probably been pretty horrible about David and unfortunately its public now that I dont like him because Liz publishes everything I say about him.

So who would Nic like as Lizs ideal man? I want someone who will value her and look after her the way I do  not just because its my job but because shes my friend and I love her. Im a bit like Lizs rottweiler, and Id like her to have that in a romantic relationship.

Liz repays Nics devotion, in 2014 footing the bill for her to have a tummy tuck after Nic lost six stone very quickly. I was distraught, my stomach was hanging under my knickers, we called it the pitta bread. Liz knew it had destroyed my confidence so arranged the tuck.

Since then, Nic, who has endured various health problems and  she says  had every eating disorder possible over my life, has seen her size go up again to a size 14, something shes very hard on herself about. At 5ft 2in if Im anything over a size 10 or 12 I resemble a womble! she sighs.

But the thing about Nic, Liz continues, is that even though Im the slimmer of us both, she has way more male attention than me  theres a queue!

Careful, Nic exclaims. People will think Im a slapper.

In fact, Nics weight struggles have been an eye-opener for Liz, who previously judged any woman larger than a size 10. I once famously wrote Id rather be thin than happy; deep down Ive always wanted to be Gisele or Janice Dickinson, she says. It gave me a willpower of steel: I could jog to the moon, I could easily stop eating for a week, so I used to look down on women who didnt do that. But Nic has taught me to think differently.

Ive taught her that fat people arent lazy. I work really hard, Nic says. We just have different mindsets. We go out for dinner and Liz will drive me mad because shell order an amazing dessert and be, like, I dont really want that and shell take a couple of mouthfuls then push it away  so I end up eating it. Im like her bin, or another dog. Were like Jack Spratt and his wife.

Or Laurel and Hardy, Liz smiles. Thats what we call ourselves.

I hate the idea of doing this YOU photo shoot, I just wont look at the pictures because Ill look frumpy and matronly. Liz can slip into anything and look fantastic, Nic continues.

But being thin didnt make my husband love me, Liz points out. Whatever size you are you have your strange phobias  even when I got married I wore trousers because I hate my legs and my husband never saw me naked  Ive been known to unscrew lightbulbs because Ive never wanted sex with the light on.

While Ive never been worried about anything like that, Nic says cheerily.

So fascinated was Liz by the differences between the two womens attitude to weight that now shes written her first novel 8 Stone, to be published in May. The heroine is a big, really funny woman. Shes based on 13 years of watching how a larger woman such as Nic deals with someone not wanting to have sex with her, or going on holiday and wanting but not being able to wear a bikini, Liz says.

But then the character loses weight and she becomes me: the skinny, OCD, no-thanks-I-dont-need-dessert-Im-full nightmare. So the fat character thinks shes going to become happy when shes thin, but shes not.

Nic doesnt seem to mind being the inspiration for this character, just as shes relaxed about her unexpected entry into the limelight. I didnt look for attention; Im just here to support Liz, but I love it when people say nice things about the podcast, I was terrified theyd tear me to shreds because Im so common  theres a perception that people with East London accents like mine are stupid, but Im not.

Whats clear is  podcast or no podcast  the women will always be there for each other.

We are a bit of a formidable force for a third person to come into  maybe thats why I cant get a boyfriend, Liz says, but she doesnt sound remotely bothered. Seriously, she continues.

We have had a laugh and in the end having a laugh with friends is the only thing that gets you through. Right now, who could disagree?

Did they really say that?

Some of the hilarious highlights from Liz Joness Diary: The Podcast

LIZS BEST BITS

On sex with her ex-boyfriend:

I found that I had to tell him exactly what to do. It was like Mary Berry giving someone a victoria sponge recipe: ingredients, method, baking time.

When Liz talks about her romantic getaway with David: One minute youre having dinner and the next minute you have to lock the hotel room door and tell reception not to give him a key.

Liz on having children: Women think that having children will keep their man around, but it repels them. Youre better off just buying one.

NICS BEST BITS

What she wants for Valentines Day:

Im cosmic-ordering my perfect man for Valentines Day next year. So Im thinking the Supervet in Magic Mikes body. He can look after my animals and flip me like a pancake all night.

On visiting a spa:

Liz: Its funny, though, isnt it? You lie on the table and you take your knickers off, and this poor young woman youve never met before is suddenly saying, Can you splay your knees? Its very intimate.

Nic: Sounds like a Saturday night out in Leyton.

On why sex is overrated:

They treat women like a docking bay. They dock then they take off again. Forty-five seconds, a trifle lasts longer  more pleasure, less mess.

When Nic says she didnt approve of Lizs marriage to Nirpal:

I would have tied you to the chair and stopped you.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday made it clear that the time has come to re-open Delhi as people will have to be ready to live with the coronavirus, and said it is impossible that COVID-19 infection cases will be zero.

Addressing an online media briefing, Kejriwal said the Delhi government will suggest to the Centre that only containment areas in the city be declared as red zones and not the entire district. At present, all 11 districts in the city have been declared as red zones.

"Time has come to re-open Delhi. We will have to be ready to live with coronavirus. We will have to get used to it," he said.

Delhi has been under lockdown since March 23.

The Delhi government has also prepared a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to facilitate movement of stranded people including migrant labourers. Thousands of migrant workers are stranded in the city, many of whom are currently residing in government-run facilities.

Kejriwal also announced a number of relief measures that will come into force from Monday, but said the lockdown will continue for another two weeks.

The chief minister said coronavirus is going nowhere and it is impossible that cases of coronavirus will be zero.

"Corona(virus) has come. It is impossible that there will be no cases of coronavirus because it has not happened across the country," he said.

Highlighting the adverse impact of coronavirus on the exchequer, Kejriwal said in April 2019, the government earned Rs 3,500 crore while in April this year, it only received Rs 300 crore.

He said the Centre has put the entire Delhi under red zone due to which markets, malls cannot open.

"We have suggested the Centre to seal those areas where cases of coronavirus have been reported and rest of areas can be allowed for the operation of all activities," he said.

Kejriwal said the Delhi government will also take strict action against those who spit in public. He added that movement of people from 7 pm to 7 am will not be allowed.

He said the government and private offices will open from Monday but the suspension of travel by flight, metro and bus will continue. Even suspension inter-city bus service will continue.

Delivery of essential goods through e-commerce portals will continue in the national capital, he said.

Delhi government offices engaged in essential services will function with full strength while offices of non-essential services and private offices can operate with 33 per cent strength.

"Malls, cinemas, salons, market complexes and Delhi Metro will remain shut while shops selling essentials will continue to be open," he said, adding that 50 people will be allowed in the marriage function.

As non-essential standalone shops are set to open from Monday, traders are elated that they can finally restart their work, but it will be far from business as usual due to concerns like availability of staff and commuting restrictions during the lockdown period.

Shops in containment zones will, however, remain closed.

Many trade bodies are also seeking clarity from local authorities on the easing of restrictions as they say there is a "confusion" over what constitutes a neighbourhood shop and a standalone shop.

The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) said there is confusion about the guidelines.

"The traders will be in a dilemma," CAIT Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said, adding there is "lack of clarity over what constitutes a neighbourhood shop and a standalone shop".

He asserted that the "clarification should come from the right quarters. Not only the Centre, it is the duty of the state governments to issue that clarification because most of the issues are under the domain of the state governments. The law enforcement authorities also function as per their directives."



Retailers Association of India (RAI) said that what constitutes market places could be misinterpreted.

Organised retailers such as Future Group and V-Mart Retail said they are also seeking permissions from local authorities.

"Some parts of the businesses will reopen. What we see is that there is the possibility of opening some standalone stores...We will open wherever we can and we will talk to the local authorities to open. We will have to see how it works out.

"In any case individual states will have to come out with clear guidelines. While some states have come out with the guidelines but they are the same as what the Centre has said. I think the states are also confused and they are printing the same thing that the Centre is sending," RAI CEO Kumar Rajagopalan said.

Meanwhile, healthcare workers in the national capital received a beautiful surprise as helicopters hovered over city hospitals, showering flower petals to thank the "corona warriors".

While the workers were "elated" and "overwhelmed" by the gesture, they also said it will send out a message to those who have stigmatised and humiliated them. They also emphasised upon the need to provide more PPE kits to the frontline staff. More than 200 healthcare personnel have been infected of coronavirus.

The total number of coronavirus cases stood at 4,122 on Saturday which saw the highest spike in cases in a day. So far, 64 people have died due to coronavirus in the national capital.

Nine people including doctors and contacts of positive staffers of NDMC-run hospitals, have tested positive for novel coronavirus, officials said.

At Hindu Rao, a doctor and two nurses had tested positive for the virus earlier. The total number of staffers who have tested positive at the hospital now stands at six.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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F ewer people would have died from coronavirus in the UK if the country had greater testing capacity sooner, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has said.

Speaking on Sunday, Mr Shapps said many things could have been different if the UKs testing capacity was above 100,000 before Covid-19 spread in the country.

More than 28,000 people have now died after testing positive for the virus in the UK.

Asked whether fewer people would have died if testing capacity had been greater sooner, Mr Shapps told BBC Andrew Marr Show: Yes.

If we had had 100,000 test capacity before this thing started and the knowledge that we now have retrospectively Im sure many things could be different.

The fact of the matter is this is not a country that had  although were very big in pharmaceuticals as a country  were not a country that had very large test capacity.

A nurse takes a swab at a testing station at Manchester Airport / Getty Images

It comes as the Transport Secretary announced that the NHS coronavirus contact tracing app will be trialled in the Isle of Wight this week before being rolled out more widely later this month.

He said the NHSX app, which will be "completely confidential", will need to be downloaded by more than half of the UK to work effectively.

He said the app is a "fantastic way" to ensure the country can keep a lid on coronavirus and prevent a second wave.

Mr Shapps also said he was actively looking at quarantining people travelling to the UK from abroad to keep coronavirus infection rates under control.

Coronavirus hits the UK - In pictures 1 /81 Coronavirus hits the UK - In pictures A deserted Westminster Bridge PA A man wearing a face mask or covering due to the COVID-19 pandemic, walks past customers sat outside a restaurant AFP via Getty Images Boris Johnson addresses the nation on the Coronavirus lockdown Andrew Parsons Runners pass cardboard cutouts of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and Prince William during the London Marathon in London AP An empty escalator at Charing Coss London Underground tube station Jeremy Selwyn Electronic bilboards displays a message warning people to stay home in Sheffield PA A sign is displayed in the window of a student accommodation building following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Mancheste Reuters People take part in a 'We Do Not Consent' rally at Trafalgar Square, organised by Stop New Normal, to protest against coronavirus restrictions, in Londo AP People sing and dance in Leicester Square on the eve on the 10PM curfew Reuters Hearts painted by a team of artists from Upfest are seen in the grass at Queen Square, following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Bristol Reuters Graffiti reads 'good luck and stay safe', as the number of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases grow around the world, under a bridge in London Reuters A sign is pictured in Soho, amid the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in London Reuters Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures, during a coronavirus briefing in Downing Street, London AP A person runs past posters with a message of hope, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues in Manchester REUTERS Riot police face protesters who took part in a 'We Do Not Consent' rally at Trafalgar Square, organised by Stop New Normal, to protest against coronavirus restrictions in London AP An image of The Queen eith quotes from her broadcast to the UK and the Commonwealth in relation to the Coronavirus epidemic are displayed on lights in London's Piccadilly Circus PA Military vehicles cross Westminster Bridge after members of the 101 Logistic Brigade delivered a consignment of medical masks to St Thomas' hospital Getty Images Durdle Door in Dorset Reuters Captain Tom Moore via Reuters Mia, aged 8, and Jack, aged 5, take part in "PE with Joe" a daily live workout with Joe Wicks on Youtube to help kids stay fit who have to stay indoors due to the Coronavirus outbreak PA An NHS worker reacts at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital during the Clap for our Carers campaign in support of the NHS Reuters Goats which have taken over the deserted streets of Llandudno @AndrewStuart via PA Tobias Weller PA Novikov restaurant in London with its shutters pulled down while the restaurant is closed London Landscapes: Hyde Park and the Serpentine, central London. Matt Writtle A newspaper vendor in Manchester city centre giving away free toilet rolls with every paper bought as shops run low on supplies due to fears over the spread of the coronavirus PA Theo Clay looks out of his window next to his hand-drawn picture of a rainbow in Liverpool, as the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continue Reuters A young man cuts another man's hair on top of a closed hairdresser in Oxford Reuters General view of the new NHS Nightingale Hospital, built to fight against the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in London via Reuters Jason Baird is seen dressed as Spiderman during his daily exercise to cheer up local children in Stockport, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues Reuters A woman wearing a face mask walks past Buckingham Palace Getty Images A man holds mobile phone displaying a text message alert sent by the government warning that new rules are in force across the UK and people must stay at home PA Medical staff on the Covid-19 ward at the Neath Port Talbot Hospital, in Wales, as the health services continue their response to the coronavirus outbreak. PA Prime Minister Boris Johnson taking part in a virtual Cabinet meeting with his top team of ministers PA A shopper walks past empty shelves in a Lidl store on in Wallington. After spates of "panic buying" cleared supermarket shelves of items like toilet paper and cleaning products, stores across the UK have introduced limits on purchases during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some have also created special time slots for the elderly and other shoppers vulnerable to the new coronavirus. Getty Images People on a busy tube train in London at rush hour PA Mia, aged 8 and her brother Jack, aged 5 from Essex, continue their school work at home, after being sent home due to the coronavirus PA Children are painting 'Chase the rainbows' artwork and springing up in windows across the country Reuters Social distancing in Primrose Hill Jeremy Selwyn A general view of a locked gate at Anfield, Liverpool as The Premier League has been suspended PA Homeless people in London AFP via Getty Images A piece of art by the artist, known as the Rebel Bear has appeared on a wall on Bank Street in Glasgow. The new addition to Glasgow's street art is capturing the global Coronavirus crisis. The piece features a woman and a man pulling back to give each other a kiss PA The Queen leaves Buckingham Palace, London, for Windsor Castle to socially distance herself amid the coronavirus pandemic PA A general view on Grey street, Newcastle as coronavirus cases grow around the world Reuters Matt Raw, a British national who returned from the coronavirus-hit city of Wuhan in China, leaves quaratine at Arrowe Park Hospital on Merseyside PA Britain's Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty (L) and Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance look on as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures as he speaks during a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) news conference inside 10 Downing Street Reuters The ticket-validation terminals at the tram stop on Edinburgh's Princes Street are cleaned following the coronavirus outbreak. PA Locked school gates at Rockcliffe First School in Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear PA A sign at a Sainsbury's supermarket informs customers that limits have been set on a small number of products as the number of coronavirus (COVID-19) cases grow around the world Reuters Jawad Javed delivers coronavirus protection kits that he and his wife have put together to the vulnerable people of their community of Stenhousemuir, between Glasgow and Edinburgh AFP via Getty Images A sign advertising a book titled "How Will We Survive On Earth?" Getty Images A man who appears to be homeless sleeping wearing a mask today in Victoria Jeremy Selwyn A pedestrian walks past graffiti that reads "Diseases are in the City" in Edinburgh AFP via Getty Images Staff from The Lyric Theatre, London inform patrons, as it shuts its doors PA A quiet looking George IV Bridge in Edinburgh PA A quieter than usual British Museum Getty Images A racegoer attends Cheltenham in a fashionable face mask SplashNews.com A commuter wears a face mask at London Bridge Station Jeremy Selwyn A empty restaurant in the Bull Ring Shopping Centre Getty Images A deserted Trafalgar Square in London PA Passengers determined to avoid the coronavirus before leaving the UK arrive at Gatwick Airport Getty Images

He told BBC Andrew Marr Show: I think it is important that as we are seeing the numbers decrease and the R rate we hope decreasethat we do ensure that the sacrifices in a sense  social distancing  that we are asking the British people to make are matched by anybody who comes to this country.

I am actively looking at these issues right now so that when we have infection rates within the country under control we are not importing.

The number of people who have died in UK hospitals after testing positive for coronavirus jumped by 621 yesterday.

A total of 28,131 people who tested positive for the virus have now died, up from 27,510 the day before.
"This is an unprecedented shock," said economist Sergei Guriev, professor at the Paris Institute of Political Studies and former chief economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. "Oil prices are at a level that Putin has never seen, so it's something completely new. Then you have the pandemic, then you have the economic crisis, which is also domestic, not just because of the oil prices."
Over 1.5 lakh Indians in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have registered to fly home amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, as per latest figures from the e-registration campaign launched by Indian missions, Gulf News has reported.

"As of 6.00 pm on Saturday (May 2), we received more than 1,50,000 registrations," Gulf News quoted Consul General of India in Dubai, Vipul, as saying. The Consul General added that a quarter of these individuals want to return home after having lost their jobs.

"About 40 percent of the applicants are workers and 20 percent are professionals. Overall, 25 percent have cited job-loss as the reason for leaving the country," Vipul was further quoted as saying.

About 10 percent of these applicants are tourist visa holders who were stranded after India suspended all international flights. The remaining are reportedly applicants with medical emergencies, pregnant women and students.

Follow our LIVE blog for the latest updates of the novel coronavirus pandemic

COVID-19 Vaccine Frequently Asked Questions View more How does a vaccine work? A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine. How many types of vaccines are there? There are broadly four types of vaccine  one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine. What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind? Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time. View more Show

The Indian Embassy in Abu Dhabi and the Consulate in Dubai had on April 29 began e-registration for forming a database of citizens who wished to return to India.

The report adds that 50 percent of the applicants are from Kerala.

The Centre is reportedly preparing a mega plan to evacuate and repatriate Indians in Gulf countries. Reports suggest that the first phase of evacuation could begin with the UAE with distressed workers, especially those from the state of Kerala getting the first priority.
Birds fly in a reaction as three fighter aircraft of the Indian Air Force flypast the Raisina Hill to express gratitude towards all frontline workers including medical professionals, police and sanitation workers for their contribution in the fight against COVID-19, in New Delhi. (Image: PTI)
Early last month, voters in Wisconsin navigated a dizzying number of rule changes governing the state's spring elections as officials tussled over the risks of the novel coronavirus, prompting a backlog of absentee ballot requests and fears that many would not be able to participate.

But in the end, tens of thousands of mail ballots that arrived after the April 7 primary vote were counted by local officials, a review by The Washington Post has found - the unexpected result of last-minute intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In Milwaukee and Madison, the state's two largest cities, more than 10% of votes counted, nearly 21,000 ballots, arrived by mail after April 7, according to data provided by local election officials.

The surprising outcome after warnings that many Wisconsinites would be disenfranchised amid the pandemic was the result of a largely unexamined aspect of the court's decision that temporarily changed which ballots were counted. Because of the order, election officials for the first time tallied absentee ballots postmarked by voting day, rather than just those received by then - underscoring the power of narrow court decisions to significantly shape which votes are counted.

What happened in Wisconsin has potentially far-reaching implications as the two parties square off in courtrooms across the country, hoping to notch legal victories that will shape the electorate in their favor before November.

Democrats think they have secured a game-changing precedent from the Supreme Court's 5-to-4 order. In the past week, lawsuits bankrolled by Democratic committees have been filed in four states seeking similar postmark rules and citing the Wisconsin opinion to bolster their argument. More cases are expected in the coming week.

Republicans, meanwhile, say they are prepared to spend millions of dollars to oppose these efforts, arguing that extending ballot deadlines creates an opportunity for fraud. Some have also been open in their view that higher turnout could harm them politically. On March 30, President Donald Trump said that if Democratic efforts to expand mail balloting succeeded, "you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again."

"The truth is that in competitive battleground states, both sides are fighting for inches. We're not fighting for feet," said Marc Elias, an election lawyer who is leading Democratic litigation efforts. "If there is a way to gain 1% of the vote, that would be among the most successful tactics that a campaign could engage in."

In Wisconsin, the Supreme Court's ruling opened the door to a surge of valid absentee ballots that officials would have otherwise rejected under a state law requiring them to be received by voting day.

The ruling followed a lower court judge's decision to extend the mail ballot deadline by six days to accommodate a wave of last-minute ballot requests resulting from the pandemic. State and national Republicans objected, appealing first to a federal panel and then to the Supreme Court.

The five conservative justices sided with the GOP, issuing an opinion on the eve of in-person voting that a blanket extension of the deadline would improperly allow voters to cast their ballots after April 7. Instead, they said ballots had to be postmarked by voting day - effectively imposing a new standard.

While the right praised the decision, liberal critics denounced it at the time, saying the conservative justices had made it harder for Wisconsinites to vote.

The Post's review found that the impact was more complicated. Fewer votes were counted than if the lower courts' orders had remained in place. But the Supreme Court's decision superseded the stricter existing law, expanding the universe of valid ballots compared to previous elections.

In all, The Post found that more than 30,000 votes arrived after voting day in 11 cities where that information was available, more than 10% of all votes cast in those cities. In Brookfield, a western suburb of Milwaukee in conservative Waukesha County, the figure was closer to 15%.

Together, those cities are home to less than a quarter of Wisconsin's 3.4 million registered voters. The Wisconsin Election Commission has not yet released the statewide number, which will probably be substantially larger.

The switch of an obscure election regulation may not have made a difference in the marquee race that day - a state Supreme Court contest in which liberal challenger Jill Karofsky defeated conservative incumbent Daniel Kelly with a margin of more than 160,000 votes.

But a similar rule change could sway a closer election. Trump won in Wisconsin four years ago by fewer than 23,000 votes. In 2018, Republicans won contests in Florida for governor and the U.S. Senate by less than one percentage point.

The Supreme Court's order also led officials to reject ballots that would have been counted if the rules had not changed.

In 13 cities where the data was available, at least 4,500 ballots were thrown out that would have been tallied under the lower court's ruling, The Post found.

"Part of what made it difficult was constant flux of what was and was not going to be permissible," said Thomas Montgomery, a high school history teacher in Brookfield who said he mailed his ballot on April 7 but still had his vote thrown out. "It's something I found alarming throughout the process."

- - -

The Post's survey of ballot data in the state's 24 largest cities found that Wisconsinites overwhelmingly chose to vote by mail rather than risk infection by casting a ballot in person.

In Milwaukee, Madison, Janesville and La Crosse, more than 70% of voters cast ballots by mail, according to the data. In Waukesha and Brookfield, more than 85% did so. That's a dramatic jump from the spring elections of 2016, when fewer than 10% of Wisconsin voters cast absentee ballots.

In the days preceding the vote, local election officials struggled to retain poll workers and announced the closure of hundreds of polling locations. On the eve of the election, Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, ordered the postponement of in-person voting, but Republican lawmakers successfully blocked the move in state court.

Thousands of people still opted to stand for hours in long lines on April 7. By the end of last week, state health officials said 52 Wisconsinites who voted or worked at the polls had tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

Wisconsin provided a potential preview of the November presidential election, when millions of Americans are expected to vote by mail - a method state officials are working to make easier because of the virus.

The stakes are high: Research has found that rules such as strict voting-day receipt of ballots disproportionately affect young and minority voters, who in turn vote heavily for Democratic candidates. And the rejection rates vary widely from place to place - meaning that inconsistent election administration is likelier than voter error, said Dan Smith, a political science professor at the University of Florida who has written several studies on the topic.

"That is as strong evidence as you can get that this is not an individual problem exclusively," Smith said. "Local election officials have incredible discretion."

The Post analysis found that ballots in Wisconsin were rejected for multiple reasons, revealing the particular challenges state and local election officials elsewhere may face as they try to meet demand for expanded mail balloting.

For instance, thousands of ballots with missing voter signatures, witness signatures or witness addresses were rejected across the state, which legally requires such information.

It's a sign of the barriers facing voters who are unaccustomed to voting by mail - and of the particular challenge that witness requirements present during a pandemic, especially for those who live alone and are unwilling to seek out contact with another person.

Pat Haukohl, who served 18 years on the Waukesha County Board, voted absentee for the first time this year. She learned from a reporter that her ballot was rejected because there was no witness address.

"My husband apparently did not add it after signing his name," she said. "His ballot was accepted, so I must have put our address on that one. Rather unsettling, because I was sure we followed all the instructions. Next time I am voting in person!"

The flurry of court decisions added to the confusion.

On April 2, the Thursday before voting day, U.S. District Judge William Conley rejected an effort by voting rights advocates and national Democrats to postpone in-person voting, saying the decision fell to the legislature.

But, in a nod to the barriers facing voters, he extended the deadline for completed ballots to be received by local election officials to April 13. He also ordered election officials to waive the witness rule if voters enclosed in their ballot envelope an explanation of why they were unable to obtain one.

Two days later, a federal appeals panel affirmed his decision extending the mail ballot deadline but reversing the witness rule.

Tom Huber, 68, an Air Force veteran who lives in a senior community in Brookfield, said he was worried about seeking a witness signature from his neighbors until he read about Conley's decision online.

Concluding that he was safe to forgo a witness, Huber attached a note to his ballot and dropped it in the mail at the local Pick 'n Save grocery store. It arrived in plenty of time but ultimately was tossed, according to a list of rejected ballots that election officials provided to The Post.

"I'm disappointed," said Huber, when informed of the rejection by a reporter. "It's a pride issue, in terms of trying to participate in things."

Madison, the only city that tracked the number of voters who enclosed similar notes of explanation, counted 142 such ballots - and discarded them.

Thousands of ballots were rejected because of postmark issues, The Post's examination found. Hundreds were rejected because of a late postmark, but many hundreds more showed no postmark or an illegible one. In Milwaukee, that number was 390, and city election officials chose to count those ballots anyway. Most other localities discarded such ballots, even though many may have been posted on time.

Several election officials said some post offices do not use postmarks with dates, but that their hands were tied by the high court's ruling.

In a statement, the U.S. Postal Service said its inspector general is conducting an investigation "regarding potential issues with absentee ballots in Wisconsin."

- - -

Wisconsin is one of 36 states with laws on the books requiring ballots to be received by voting day.

When Republicans appealed the Supreme Court, they challenged the decision of lower courts to extend the ballot deadline but did not explicitly seek a postmark deadline.

The unsigned Supreme Court order said the district court judge had in essence added six days of additional voting by not requiring that ballots be postmarked by voting day.

That "fundamentally alters the nature of the election," said the order, which reflected the positions of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, the justice responsible for emergency requests from the 7th Circuit.

The justices said a postmark was something "state law would necessarily require."

The Supreme Court was considering the lower courts' actions against the backdrop of a long-standing precedent, the 2006 case Purcell v. Gonzalez, which said courts should be extremely hesitant to change the rules close to voting day.

"This court has repeatedly emphasized that lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election," the order said.

But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in a dissent joined by liberal colleagues Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, said the majority was doing exactly what the Purcell principle forbids. "Election officials have spent the past few days establishing procedures and informing voters in accordance with the district court's deadline. For this court to upend the process - a day before the April 7 postmark deadline - is sure to confound election officials and voters."

Now, Democrats are citing the majority opinion in their latest round of litigation.

In addition to seeking postmarked-by standards, Democrats are aiming to secure free postage for ballots, ballot mailings to all registered voters and the right for third parties to collect ballots from voters, a controversial practice often called ballot harvesting.

"We're saying, essentially, let's take into account the pandemic. Let's keep everybody safe," said Eric Holder, who served as attorney general in the Obama administration and heads a group that is financing new lawsuits in Texas and North Carolina.

Republicans, meanwhile, are pushing for limits. In an opinion column published on the conservative website townhall.com, three lawyers for Trump's campaign argued for maintaining strict ballot rules to prevent fraud. Among their positions: Voters should have to request an absentee ballot application rather than be sent one automatically; ballots must be received by voting day to be counted; and security measures such as photo ID and signature-matching rules must be maintained even during the pandemic.

"Receiving ballots after election day allows losing candidates to 'go find' enough late votes to change the outcome," wrote lawyers Justin Clark, Jenna Ellis and Matthew Morgan.

"Moreover, any system that allows late-arriving ballots is ripe for prolonged litigation and almost always undermines election legitimacy," they wrote, "because reporting delays can last for days and sometimes weeks after the election."

- - -

Simmons reported from Milwaukee. The Washington Post's Alice Crites contributed to this report.
The post-COVID19 world order will be "markedly different" and it will be in Pakistan's own interest to change its actions like supporting terrorism, BJP General Secretary Ram Madhav said on Sunday, asserting that India knows how to handle such countries.

In an exclusive interview to PTI, he also said that there will be a flight of capital from China in the post-pandemic phase and India will be an attractive destination for investments by global corporate giants.

Strongly rejecting allegations of "Islamophobia" in India, Madhav said Prime Minister Narendra Modi is enjoying the support of all communities in the fight against coronavirus and those suffering from "Modi-phobia" are trying to communalise the country's discourse.

In an apparent reference allegation of Muslims being targeted for the spurt in COVID-19 cases after a Tablighi Jamaat congregation in Delhi, the BJP general secretary said: "It will not be fair to blame an entire religious community for perceived mistakes of some members of a group. It doesn't help the community and country at large."

On Pakistan, Madhav said the country has not relented on its anti-India and pro-terror campaigns even when the entire world is focusing on dealing with the coronavirus crisis.

It shows that somewhere something is hugely amiss in Pakistan's leadership. It doesn't want to improve relations with India, he said.

Madhav said Pakistan itself will be forced to decided what place it wants in the post-COVID19 global order. It is as much a question to Pakistan as much to China.

He further said: It will be in Pakistan's own interest to change its actions in the emerging new world order and India knows how to handle such nations.

Pakistan has been unrelenting in its efforts to push militants into India as there have been rising incidents of unprovoked firing by Pakistan military along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir in the last few weeks notwithstanding the coronavirus crisis, according to military officials.

Talking about China, Madhav said he felt many companies will move out of the neighbouring country in the wake of the coronavirus crisis and India will be an attractive destination for them.

In the post COVID period there will be a flight of capital from China and India will certainly be an attractive destination for them, he said.

The BJP leader said the allegations of Islamophobia are nothing but some sort of propaganda and are not based on the ground reality.

There has been a wave of angry reactions on Twitter by leading citizens and rights activists from various Arab countries following allegations that Muslims are being blamed for spreading COVID-19 in several parts of India.

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, a powerful bloc of 57 countries, recently accused India of "Islamophobia". India rejected the charges as regrettable.

Crediting Modi's leadership for effectively handling the pandemic, Madhav said: "India has set a shining example that how visionary leadership, democratic governance and popular support can work together to face such challenges.

He said one of the major reasons for successful handling of coronavirus crisis is that the country is "unitedly" standing behind the government.

Referring to surveys showing higher approval ratings for Modi among global leaders, Madhav said they reflected that he is enjoying the support of Muslims, Christians and all other minorities.

Look at the way the country has responded to his clarion calls to light lamps or clap for corona warriors. But some elements are trying to communalise the discourse as they are suffering from Modi-phobia, he said.
This conclusion was reached by Five Eye intelligence alliance, which includes United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and United Kingdom

For a long time, the Chinese authorities have been concealing and destroyed data on the outbreak of the coronavirus Covid-19 in Wuhan, which has already taken more than 243,800 people in the world. This was reported by the Australian news agency The Daily Telegraph, citing a report from the Five Eye intelligence alliance (USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the UK).

According to the publication, the document, which consists of 15 pages, states that the country was hiding information about the virus, "forcing doctors to remain silent or disappear."

Authorities destroyed biomaterials from laboratories and refused to provide samples to international specialists working on the vaccine.

According to the dossier, Chinese scientists at the beginning of December had evidence of the property of Covid-19 being transmitted from person to person, however, official Beijing recognized this fact only on January 20.

It is also alleged that in 2013, Chinese scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology under the guidance of Professor Shi Zhengli found samples of coronavirus in a cave in Yunnan province, which was similar in composition to Covid-19.

After that, they were engaged in the synthesis of coronavirus obtained from the body of bats. However, the dossier notes that now scientists are denying the leak that occurred to them since the SARS-CoV-2 genome was not like the virus samples from the laboratory.

According to Fox News, U.S. intelligence does not confirm the existence of the 15-page document, but a senior official told the channel that the information presented is consistent with US intelligence that China knew about the transmission of the virus from person to person before it was officially recognized.

At the same time, intelligence data differ in estimates of the origin of the virus. Thus, Australia supports the version of China about the emergence of the virus on the market in Wuhan, while US intelligence does not agree with this.

As we reported earlier, China has rejected numerous requests from the World Health Organization to allow it to participate in the investigation of the origin of COVID-19.
As an expression of solidarity and gratitude to corona warriors, the Indian Armed Forces organised multiple events throughout the country including the Jammu region on Sunday.

Indian Army in Rajouri, Akhnoor, Jammu, Samba, Kathua and Pathankot felicitated all agencies involved in the fight against Covid-19 by organising military pipe band displays as a token of appreciation and goodwill gesture at many places, said defence spokesperson Lt Col Devender Anand.

In Jammu, Tiger Division organised events at Government Medical College Jammu, J&K Police lines Gandhi Nagar, Govt Hospital Gandhi Nagar, Police Station, Bari Brahmana, Employees State Insurance Corporation Hospital and Bari Brahmana. Banners with encouraging slogans were displayed and senior army officials greeted and interacted with counterparts from other agencies.

Miran Sahib Brigade also presented hand sanitisers manufactured by Brigade EME workshop and greeting cards made by children to the corona warriors in Government Medical College Jammu.

In Rajouri, the frontline workers were honoured by Ace of Spades Division at District Police Lines, Civil Hospital, Government College and Army Hospital.

Similar events were organised in police stations and hospitals by Crossed Swords Division in Akhnoor, Rising Star Gunners in Kathua, Gurj Division and Sub Area in Pathankot.
The C-130 Super Hercules aircraft flew over national capital Delhi on Sunday morning as part of Indian Air Forces (IAF) appreciation to those at the forefront of fight against the deadly coronavirus disease.

According to the IAFs statement, the fly-past took place around 10:15 am. The other fighter jets, part of the fly-past, also flew over Delhi.

This was the third massive display of gratitude to Covid-19 warriors after Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked people to clap for them from their balconies and then by turning off lights and lighting candles to honour them.

The militarys plan to honour front-line workers on Sunday was finalised at a meeting chaired by defence minister Rajnath Singh on Friday. The meeting was attended by the national security adviser, the chief of defence staff and the three service chiefs.

As part of the plan, the IAFs fighter jets and transport planes will carry out fly-pasts across the length and breadth of the country - from Srinagar to Thiruvananthapuram and Dibrugarh to Kutch. The IAFs fighter jets will carry out fly-pasts over Mumbai, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Patna and Lucknow, apart from Delhi and the national capital region (NCR).

Military helicopters will shower petals over hospitals dedicated to treating coronavirus disease (Covid-19) patients across 23 locations in the country. These include Delhi, Leh, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Mumbai, Jaipur, Dispur, Shillong (subject to confirmation by state administration) Itanagar, Trivandrum and Chennai.

The armed forces will also lay a wreath at the police memorial on behalf of the three service chiefs to show support for Covid-19 warriors.
India: Christians struggle to survive amid COVID-19 lockdown

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In India, the COVID-19 pandemic and the national lockdown that followed has presented thousands of house church pastors and persecuted Christians with severe challenges.

Persecution watchdog International Christian Concern reports that amid the countrys nationwide lockdown  which Prime Minister Narendra Modi extended until May 3  pastors have been unable to gather their congregations for worship. As a result, already-struggling church leaders haven't been able to collect support for their families or ministries.

My rations will run out in three or four days, said pastor Radhe Kishan, a church planter who lives with his wife and 11-month-old daughter in a rented house in a rural village located in the Shahajanpur district of Uttar Pradesh.

About a week ago, a church member gave me five kilos of wheat flour and some lentils, pastor Kishan told ICC. We are surviving on that, and it might go for another four days. We have no choice except to trust in God for our food and needs. I am trusting God for His provision.

Before the pandemic, pastor Kishan visited between four and five villages each week and would share the Gospel with an average of 35 people. I feel sad that I am unable to meet people to share the Gospel, he said. I am also not allowed to do outreach work or to lead worship services. That was a part of my normal routine.

Another house church pastor from Karnataka told ICC that because he is a Christian, he is not eligible to receive the rations provided by the government.

The moment I embraced the Christian faith, I lost my eligibility to receive the benefits that the government provides to the poor. It used to be difficult to survive only on the offerings collected on Sunday. Now that the church is completely shut down, I dont have an income to feed my family, he said.

To help persecuted Christians affected by the government's lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, ICC has launched a campaign to provide critical food aid to vulnerable communities, including church planters.

More than 70% of rural church planters are facing a huge challenge, the Rev. Prabhu Das, director of Seva Bharat, told ICC. The majority of these pastors are living in difficult conditions as they do not have an income whatsoever while the churches are closed. They are forced to stay inside their homes, despite not having access to basic needs. These people desperately need food, healthcare, and moral support.



As of Tuesday, India had reported 31,360 coronavirus cases and 1,008 deaths, or about 0.76 deaths per million.

Christian support organization Open Doors USA estimates that the lives of thousands  if not millions  of persecuted Christians are at risk due to the lockdown, which requires all Indians to shelter-in-homes unless acquiring food or medicine.

Shalom, one of Open Doors partners on the ground, told the organization that Jia, a local church pastor, told him he personally knows at least 20 to 30 pastors who are starving because of the lockdown.

In cooperation with local churches, Open Doors has launched an initiative to reach persecuted Christians in India who are starving and have less access to healthcare, medicines, and community services because of these measures against coronavirus.

However, Open Doors warns that amid the pandemic, Christians face more opposition than ever from their communities because of their faith. According to the organization, numerous reports have surfaced of Christians being falsely accused, threatened and attacked in recent weeks.

There are many [Christians in India] who are [able] to use online streaming of worship, sermons and prayers, but the majority of the Christians in the rural areas are facing threats and persecution amid the lockdown, a local partner told the organization.

We are receiving news of persecution incidents from many areas, even in this situation where people have been ordered to stay inside their homes. In fact, we believe that during this phase of lockdown, Christians are suffering even more than before, since most of them have to now combat economic problems as well as the opposition and hatred from the community.

Another pastor, Pastor Mallesh, told ICC that Christians are also facing increased pressure from Hindu radicals during the time of lockdown.

The radicals are looking for an opportunity to inform the authorities that I have violated the lockdown and falsely accuse me of opening the church," he said.

Another local Christian expressed fear that Hindu extremists might use this time to pressure Christians to become Hindus to help solve their financial woes, adding, The current crisis makes the Indian church more vulnerable to these tactics.

Open Doors, which ranks India at No.10 on its 2020 World Watch List of countries where it's most difficult to be a Christian, warns that many incidents of persecution are likely going unnoticed due to the lockdown and poor connectivity.

The group encourages Christians worldwide to pray that God will protect His people in India; that Christians will be able to be salt and light, even in places where they are persecuted; that believers will have opportunities to pray and read the Bible without being harassed or abused, and that God will provide for His people who are starving and in need of financial help.
Dylan McDermott looked cool while out riding bikes with his daughters Saturday.

The 58-year-old actor covered up in a leather jacket during his cruise around the Pacific Palisades.

McDermott was out just a day after the premiere of his new Ryan Murphy series Hollywood.

Easy rider: Dylan McDermott looked cool in a leather jacket while bike riding with his daughters in the Pacific Palisades on Saturday

McDermott lead the way while his daughters Colette, 24, and Charlotte, 14 tried to keep up.

Even though he was exercising, he made sure to wear his mask.

It seemed like the star was in good spirits after the premiere of his new Netflix series Friday.

Follow the leader: McDermott lead the way while his daughters Colette, 24, and Charlotte, 14 tried to keep up

Tinsel town: His new show Hollywood is about about a group of aspiring actors and filmmakers during the Hollywood Golden Age in the post-World War II era trying to make their dreams come true, per IMDB

Hollywood is about about a group of aspiring actors and filmmakers during the Hollywood Golden Age in the post-World War II era trying to make their dreams come true, per IMDB.

Along with Dylan, the mini-series stars David Corenswet, Darren Criss, Laura Harrier, Jeremy Pope, Holland Taylor, Samara Weaving, Jim Parsons, and Patti LuPone. It was created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan.

McDermott and Murphy previously teamed up on multiple seasons of American Horror Story. He was also in last year's The Politician.

Star power: Along with Dylan, the mini-series stars David Corenswet, Darren Criss, Laura Harrier, Jeremy Pope, Holland Taylor, Samara Weaving, Jim Parsons, and Patti LuPone

Talking about his respect for Murphy during a remote interview with GoldDerby.com, he said: 'I always say that Ryan is the Andy Warhol of our time.

'He gives me things to do that no else does, and thats why actors love him,' he said.

'I think that we all love him because he gives us opportunities and he trusts us, and thats something thats very very rare.'

Hollywood is streaming now.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: Delhi Minorities Commission chairman Zafarul Islam Khan, who was booked by the Delhi Police under sedition charges for a controversial social media post, on Sunday asserted that he will continue his fight against "hate politics" without being deterred by arrest or jail.

He also said that it was "erroneously" reported by a section of media that he had deleted his tweet in question, saying he stood by its content.

"I will continue, now and in the future, the fight against hate politics in the country. FIRs, arrests, and imprisonments do not change this path which I have chosen for myself consciously years ago to save my country, my people, the Indian secular polity and the Constitution," Khan said in a Facebook post on Sunday.

An FIR was registered against Khan on April 30 under section 124 A (sedition) and 153 A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth) after police received a complaint by a resident of Vasant Kunj.

In the FIR, the complainant alleged that Khan's post was "provocative", "deliberate" and seditious and intended to cause disharmony and create a rift in the society, police said, adding that the case is being investigated by the cyber cell.

The controversy erupted after Khan thanked Kuwait in a tweet last Tuesday for taking note of the "persecution" of Indian Muslims and shared a Facebook post which led the BJP to slam him and demanded his removal from the post of the Delhi Minorities Commission chairman.

Khan, who had tendered an apology for his post, said he did so not because of its content, but because it was "ill-timed" and "insensitive" in the midst of a medical emergency faced by the country.
DreamOval Limited is committing GHC100,000 worth of technology services to support the efforts of the Ghana COVID-19 Private Sector Fund.

As one of the leading technology companies in Ghana, DreamOval Limited has committed itself to offer digital services to the Ghana COVID-19 Private Sector Fund by developing a website to promote transparency in the management of the Fund and raise awareness about its operations.

The company is also providing, free of charge, a digital platform for the receipt and processing of donations from around the world to the fund.

The Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of DreamOval Limited, Claud Kwaku Hucthful says his companys support for the fund is its contribution to the national effort to defeat COVID-19.

Mr. Hutchful said: We are proud to be service partners of the Ghana COVID-19 Private Sector Fund. We are offering years of specialization and expertise to the fund to build a world class website and an end to end digital platform to enable us process digitally donations that have been made by various people. When crisis happens, it's best we find solutions. For us the skill we have gathered over the years is what we can offer to help fight the war against COVID-19.

The Ghana COVID-19 Private Sector Fund was established by entrepreneurs to provide support to the government in its fights against the Coronavirus outbreak. The fund is currently spearheading the construction of the 100-bed infectious disease isolation and treatment facility. When completed, the fully-equipped facility will be used to treat critically ill COVID-19 patients at the Ga East Hospital, which has become the main national treatment centre for those infected by the disease. Plans are also far advanced for the construction of similar facilities in Kumasi, Takoradi and Tamale.
The Chhattisgarh government has



allowed opening of liquor shops in non-restricted areas of the state from Monday, officials said.

The excise department has also planned to start home delivery of alcohol at some places to discourage crowding at wine shops, they said.

"The liquor shops have been allowed to remain open from 8 am to 7 pm from following the Centre's decision to lift the nationwide curbs on the sale of alcohol from May 4 with certain restrictions," a government official said here on Sunday.

However, the district administration can also decide the timing of operation of liquor shops as per the period of lockdown fixed by them in their concerned areas, he said.

Liquor shops located in COVID-19 hotspots or containment zones or those in shopping complexes and malls will continue to remain shut, he said.

The operators of concerned shops shall comply social distancing norms and other guidelines issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs, he said.

"The excise department is also working on to provide facility of home delivery of liquor at some places to discourage crowding at alcohol shops. Delivery boys will be appointed through placement agencies," the official said.

Meanwhile, the opposition BJP slammed the ruling Congress over its plan to start the home delivery of liquor, terming it as "shameful".

"The order issued by the state government indicates that it will start home delivery of liquor. It is a very shameful decision as the Congress got elected to power after promising to ban alcohol," Leader of Opposition Dharamlal Kaushik said.

He demanded that the state government should immediately withdraw its decision of home delivery.

Kaushik also alleged that the state government has not taken any preventive measures before opening of liquor shops.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Dozens of journalists have died worldwide from the novel coronavirus in the past two months, a press freedom organisation has said, lamenting that media workers often lack proper protection for covering the pandemic.

The Press Emblem Campaign (PEC) warned that many journalists were putting themselves in harm's way to report on the global crisis, with many falling ill from Covid-19 themselves in the process.

Since March 1, the PEC said it had recorded the deaths of 55 media workers across 23 countries from the virus, although it stressed that it remained unclear if all of them had become infected on the job.

"Journalists are at great risk in this health crisis because they must continue to inform, by going to hospitals, interviewing doctors, nurses, political leaders, specialists, scientists, patients," PEC said in a statement.

It said that in a range of countries "indispensable protective measures" like physical distancing, quarantines and mask wearing had not been applied, especially early on in the outbreak.

Ecuador was the hardest-hit country, with at least nine journalists who had succumbed to the virus, followed by the United States, with eight, Brazil with four, and Britain and Spain with three each, it said.

The organisation also echoed warnings from the United Nations that the pandemic, which has killed more than 230,000 people out of more than 3.2 million infected worldwide, is being used in some countries as an excuse to crack down on the media.

"Censorship, internet shutdowns, arbitrary detentions of journalists, physical and verbal attacks and emergency laws that restrict press freedom have occurred in recent weeks," the PEC said.

It added that this was particularly worrying at a time when access to reliable public information was more vital than ever. "Transparency is paramount and can be life-saving in a health crisis," it said.
As a tribute to late actors Irrfan Khan and Rishi Kapoor, the makers of The Kapil Sharma Show have decided to re-run the episodes featuring the two actors.

India lost two gems of the Film Industry this week- Irrfan Khan and Rishi Kapoor. Their demise caused immense grief to fans across the world. While Rishi Kapoor was the romantic hero of the 80s, Irrfan Khan represented the common Indian man on 70mm screen. Their contribution to Indian cinema is truly remarkable and unforgettable. As a tribute to the two film personalities, the makers of The Kapil Sharma Show have decided to re-run episodes featuring them over the weekend.

To announce the same, the channel shared a collage of Rishi Kapoor and Irrfan Khans photos, which said they will always be remembered by the smiles they spread. To begin with, the channel aired an episode featuring Irrfan Khan on Saturday night.

Soon after Irrfan Khan featured on the television screens, fans rejoiced and plugged in the channel to watch the entire episode. A fan reacted to the episode on Twitter by saying that they wish they could have the actor back. Kapil Sharma is so lucky to have met him. All praises for his talent and personality, the fan added that they still cannot believe that Irrfan Khan is no more.

Also Read: Rishi Kapoors last film to be Sharmaji Namkeen alongside Juhi Chawla, makers aim for theatrical release

Also Read: Bigg Boss 13: Heres what keeps Himanshi Khurana happy, sane and positive during coronavirus lockdown

Heres how fans react to The Kapil Sharma Show episodes featuring Irrfan Khan and Rishi Kapoor:

@KapilSharmaK9 watching rerun of #TKSS with the one n only @irrfank . How i wish we can have him back! U r so lucky to have met him.Such talent, great personality. Still cant absorb hez no longer with us   Ramandeep Sidhu (@NanzSidhu) May 2, 2020

I'm watching the Kapil Sharma show featuring Irrfan Khan. What a simple man he is. Then we've seen him banging the big screen, truly a powerhouse of talent.  Viven (@MautKaFarmaan) May 2, 2020

@irrfank sir ji u r on Kapil sharma show right now missing you so much  Ronnie (@roadie620) May 2, 2020

Rishi Kapoor was diagnosed with leukaemia in 2018. Post which, he was in New York for treatment and surgery. He breathed his last on April 30 at a Mumbai Hospital. Irrfan Khan, on the other hand, was diagnosed with neuroendocrine tumour in the same year. He underwent treatment in UK for about an year.

Also Read: Hospital authorities on Rishi Kapoors leaked video: Strict action will be taken against perpetrators

For all the latest Entertainment News, download NewsX App
Former President John Dramani Mahama has ridiculed the promise by President Akufo-Addo to establish eighty-eight (88) district and six (6) Regional hospitals in the country.



President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, during his 8th address on COVID-19, assured Ghanaians that his government will construct a total of 94 health facilities in a year.



The President noted that the projects will begin this year saying, "the government has decided to undertake a major investment in our healthcare infrastructure, the largest in our history. We will, this year, begin constructing eighty-eight (88) hospitals in the districts without hospitals. It will mean ten (10) in Ashanti, nine (9) in Volta, nine (9) in Central, eight (8) in Eastern, seven (7) in Greater Accra, seven (7) in Upper East, five (5) in Northern, five (5) in Oti, five (5) in Upper West, five (5) in Bono, four (4) in Western North, four (4) in Western, three (3) in Ahafo, three (3) in Savannah, two (2) in Bono East, and two (2) in North East Regions. Each of them will be a quality, standard-design, one hundred bed hospital, with accommodation for doctors, nurses and other health workers, and the intention is to complete them within a year. We have also put in place plans for the construction of six (6) new regional hospitals in the six (6) new regions, and the rehabilitation of the EffiaNkwanta Hospital, in Sekondi, which is the regional hospital of the Western Region".



But to former President Mahama, President Nana Akufo-Addo is making "knee jerk promises" not borne out of "critical thinking".



Mr Mahama stated that the President is only reacting because the impact of COVID-19 has exposed his administration's failures.



"While even more investment is required to augment the existing health infrastructure, it is important the plan to do so is credible and clearly thought through. What we should avoid is knee jerk promises that appear reactive than the product of critical thinking and well-coordinated response to an existing or emerging problem,"



"The reaction of the public to the President's promise to construct 94 new hospitals in one year is understandable considering his rather tall list of unfulfilled or poorly implemented promises from yesteryears. I believe in a well thought out and forward-looking agenda which ensures further strategic investment in our health structure to meet contemporary and future challenges," he emphasized in a digital conversation on May Day.

Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Richard Wilkins returned to his hosting duties on Weekend Today on April 4, after testing positive for COVID-19 three times, and spending 18 days in isolation.

And on Sunday's 60 Minutes, the 65-year-old got emotional as he recalled the burden of not knowing whether he passed the virus onto his loved ones.

'I felt guilty, I felt ashamed, I felt scared, because it was early days,' the Channel Nine star told journalist Liz Hayes.

'I felt guilty and ashamed': Richard Wilkins, 65, (pictured) broke down in a candid interview on Sunday's 60 Minutes, as he recalled the burden of not knowing whether he passed coronavirus onto his loved ones

Richard, who showed no symptoms of coronavirus, described testing positive for the first time as 'like a sledgehammer'.

The TV personality explained how his 'mind went crazy' as he imagined a worst case scenario of having passed on the virus to everyone he came into contact with.

'I felt guilty, I felt ashamed, I felt scared, because it was early days,' he said.

'I felt responsible to my family, and the ripple effect kicked in. All the people I had to remember that I'd come into contact with.'

'I felt responsible to my family, and the ripple effect kicked in': Richard, who showed no symptoms of coronavirus, described testing positive for the first time as 'like a sledgehammer'

Proud father: Richard was particularly devastated for his son Christian Wilkins, who was competing on Dancing With The Stars at the time

Richard was particularly devastated for his son Christian Wilkins, who was competing on Dancing With The Stars at the time.

He became tearful during the 60 Minutes interview as he recalled the fear that if he passed on the virus, it would crush Christian's dreams of TV stardom.

'The thought that I was going to have to call him, [tell him] his dad was crook and that he couldn't come home, and that he may have it,' he said.

Richard added that they 'cried for a while' on the phone, and decided they 'would figure it out'.

Family: 'The thought that I was going to have to call him, [tell him] his dad was crook and that he couldn't come home, and that he may have it,' Richard said. Christian is pictured with dance partner Lily Cornish

Ordeal: Richard self-isolated for 18 days after testing positive for COVID-19 three times

Fortunately Christian did not test positive and made it to the finale episode.

Richard self-isolated for 18 days after testing positive for COVID-19 three times.

He announced that he tested negative in March with an Instagram video, where he angrily threw an empty Corona beer box into a bin at his Sydney home.

In the accompanying caption, he wrote: 'Coronavirus, you're outta here! I've been cleared to return to work by the incredible team at NSW Health.'

Healthy: Richard returned to hosting Weekend Today on April 4, after 18 days in self-isolation

Richard went into self-isolation on March 12 shortly after it was revealed that American actor Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson tested positive for coronavirus.

Richard had met Rita twice; once backstage at the Sydney Opera House and once during her Today Extra interview on March 9.

He first tested positive for COVID-19 on March 15 and got the same result for two more tests until the all-clear from NSW Health.
Be happy: Even if its the last thing you want to do, give a smile in case someone needs it. Photo: Ariana Cubillos/AP

An employee sprays disinfectant in a BTS commuter train carriage as a preventive measure against the spread of COVID-19 in Bangkok. (Photo by Mladen ANTONOV / AFP)

Fr Eduardo Pon Vasquez and Fr Rey Emmanuelle Amancio disinfecting their makeshift protective gear with alocohol after blessing unclaimed deceased bodies inside a funeral home. (Photo by Jes Aznar/Getty Images)

Independent.ie reporters keeping you up to date with the latest coronavirus news in Ireland and across the world.

17:05 3/02/2020

Another 19 people have died of Covid-19 in Ireland, according to the latest figures released this evening.

To date, 1,303 deaths in Ireland have been linked to Covid-19.

The Health Protection Surveillance Centre said it has been notified of another 330 cases of the virus, bringing the total number to 21,506.

The HSE is working to identify any contacts the patients may have had to provide them with information and advice to prevent further spread.

15:10 3/02/2020

Plastic straw use could drop after lockdown, packaging expert says

Post-coronavirus lockdown hygiene concerns could see a fall in the use of plastic lids, straws and keep cups, a packaging expert has predicted.

Starbucks and a number of other coffee shops banned the use of keep cups at the start of the pandemic in a bid of stem the spread of the virus.

Tommy McLoughlin, whose company produces recyclable paper cups for hot drinks, says he believes the pandemic will change how people eat and drink.

Expand Close Butterfly Cup founder and CEO Tommy McLoughlin believes Covid-19 will force catering businesses to address customer anxiety around the hygiene and cross-contamination risks of plastic lids, straws, and keep cups. / Facebook

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Whatsapp Butterfly Cup founder and CEO Tommy McLoughlin believes Covid-19 will force catering businesses to address customer anxiety around the hygiene and cross-contamination risks of plastic lids, straws, and keep cups.

Plastic lids and straws are a high-profile example of poor hygiene practice and are usually available unwrapped in public spaces at food service areas, the Butterfly Cup boss said.

Read More

12:45 3/02/2020

Investigation launched after family given wrong body

An investigation has been launched into an incident reported at Mullingar Regional Hospital where a person died and the family were given the wrong body.

At a briefing today, HSE chief operations officer, Anne O'Connor said there are procedures in place to prevent this happening and that the incident is being investigated.

"We would hope with an isolated incident, and certainly there are lots of procedures in place, and that incident is being investigated and any leanings from that," she said.

"I mean, obviously, it's a very important and critical thing for us. So we would hope that certainly the policies and procedures that are in place will ensure that that doesn't happen anywhere else."

11:30 3/02/2020

8 million pieces of PPE delivered this week

Eight million pieces of PPE has been delivered to Ireland this week, HSE chief operations officer Anne O'Connor confirmed.

She said 62 pc of the protective equipment has been deployed to long term residential care and home care.





11:08 3/02/2020

More than 90 confirmed Covid-19 cases in ICU

Expand Close HSE chief executive Paul Reid said he hoped Ireland would be carrying out 100,000 tests a week by mid May (Leon Farrell/PA) / Facebook

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Whatsapp HSE chief executive Paul Reid said he hoped Ireland would be carrying out 100,000 tests a week by mid May (Leon Farrell/PA)

The number of patients with confirmed cases of Covid-19 in ICU is 98 as of this morning with an additional 28 suspected cases, HSE chief officer Paul Reid has said.

This is out of 287 patients currently in critical care units.

There are 131 available critical care beds in ICU and 1,680 available beds across the acute hospital system, excluding private hospitals.

Speaking at a briefing today, Mr Reid said a target of 100,000 tests per week is expected to be achieved by May, 18.

There are 40 laboratories carrying out testing, including 35 hospitals used for community testing.

Some 5,000 tests are also being completed in German laboratories as per an agreement signed on Friday.

More than 60,000 swabs have been taken this week, the highest number ever taken to date.

Laboratories have processed 57,000 swabs, and on Friday, 12,000 swab tests were completed and tested.

Mr Reid said out of 551 nursing homes Covid-19 testing has taken place in almost 80 pc of these.

He added that 84 pc of the nursing homes that have experienced an outbreak has had testing completed by staff and residents by last Friday, May 1.





8:15 3/02/2020

US Senate to resume amid pandemic crisis



The Senate will reopen on Monday as the coronavirus crisis rages and the House of Representatives stays shut, an approach that leaves Congress as divided as the nation.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnells decision to convene 100 senators at the Capitol during a pandemic gives his fellow Republican Donald Trump the imagery he wants of America getting back to work, despite health worries and a lack of testing.

Yet the Washington region remains under stay-at-home orders as a virus hot spot. Gathering senators for the first time since March puts at risk not only politicians but the cooks, cleaners, police officers and other workers who keep the lights on at the Capitol complex.

We will continue to stand together for the American people  even as we stand six feet apart, Mr McConnell said ahead of the opening.

Read More

08:10 3/02/2020

Visit our Covid-19 vaccine dashboard for updates on the roll out of the vaccination program and the rate of Coronavirus cases Ireland

Coronavirus crisis risks missed cancer cases

Cancer patients face increased death risks by putting off a diagnosis over fears attending a GP or hospital exposes them to Covid-19.

New research shows many patients are not being referred for specialist treatment because they fear picking up Covid-19 in healthcare settings, meaning necessary interventions are not happening as regularly as before the coronavirus outbreak.

Professor Mark Lawler, who is leading cancer research at Queen's University Belfast, has warned more cancer patients will die as a result of not seeing a doctor urgently.

"There will be excess deaths in the Irish situation," he told the Sunday Independent.

"It is difficult to predict what those numbers will be."

Read More

08:00 3/02/2020

New coronavirus rehabilitation hospital to open in former TB wards

The old tuberculosis wards at St Mary's Hospital in Dublin's Phoenix Park have been renovated as a rehabilitation hospital for Covid-19 patients.

The new Covid-19 hospital will cater for between 75 and 90 patients with the first expected to be admitted from the Mater Misericordiae Hospital on May 11.

The new hospital adjoins St Mary's nursing home where more than 20 older residents have died since an outbreak earlier this month
HONG KONG, May 3, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- MGM China Holdings Limited ("MGM China" or the "Company"; SEHK Stock Code: 2282) today announced the selected unaudited financial data of the Company and its subsidiaries (the "Group") for the three months ended March 31, 2020.

In the first quarter, MGM China recorded total revenue of HK$2.1 billion . The Group saw an adjusted negative EBITDA of HK$0.1 billion . Overall occupancy rate was 36%.

. The Group saw an adjusted negative EBITDA of . Overall occupancy rate was 36%. The first-quarter results were significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and we continue to be impacted today. China has implemented temporary suspension of tour groups and Individual Visit Scheme in late January, followed by a 15-day shutdown of all casinos ( February 5 -19 ) by the Macau Government.

has implemented temporary suspension of tour groups and Individual Visit Scheme in late January, followed by a 15-day shutdown of all casinos ( ) by the Macau Government. The Macau market continues to experience low visitation levels primarily driven by various travel restrictions and quarantine measures in Mainland China and Hong Kong . Macau's gross gaming revenue (GGR) in first quarter declined by 60% year-on-year, that February GGR was down by 88% year-on-year and March down by 80% year-on-year.

market continues to experience low visitation levels primarily driven by various travel restrictions and quarantine measures in Mainland China and . gross gaming revenue (GGR) in first quarter declined by 60% year-on-year, that February GGR was down by 88% year-on-year and March down by 80% year-on-year. For the Period, MGM MACAU recorded revenue of HK$1.1 billion and EBITDA of HK$34.1 million . MGM COTAI recorded revenue of HK$1.0 billion and negative EBITDA of HK$156.8 million .

recorded revenue of and of . MGM COTAI recorded revenue of and negative EBITDA of . MGM MACAU and MGM COTAI were reopened on February 20 with social distancing and other safety protocols in place.

Grant Bowie, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of MGM China said: "The decisive actions and leadership of the Macau Government has contained the COVID-19 & shielded Macau from the worst effects. We at MGM China have been working with the Government as we focus on the health and safety of our team members, guests and all Macau citizens.

"While we focus to contain our costs, we are building scenario and maintaining relationship with our customers. We are preparing for recovery and extremely positive about the prospects of Macau gaming and hospitality market in a longer term."

About MGM China Holdings Limited

MGM China Holdings Limited (HKEx: 2282) is a leading developer, owner and operator of gaming and lodging resorts in the Greater China region. We are the holding company of MGM Grand Paradise, SA which holds one of the six gaming concessions/sub-concessions to run casino games in Macau. MGM Grand Paradise, SA owns and operates MGM MACAU, the award-winning premium integrated resort located on the Macau Peninsula and MGM COTAI, a contemporary luxury integrated resort in Cotai, which opened in early 2018 and more than doubles our presence in Macau.

MGM China is majority owned by MGM Resorts International (NYSE: MGM) one of the world's leading global hospitality companies, operating a portfolio of destination resort brands including Bellagio, MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay and The Mirage. For more information about MGM Resorts International, visit the Company's website at www.mgmresorts.com.

SOURCE MGM China

Related Links

http://www.mgmchinaholdings.com


Customs clearance is now available daily from 8am to 11am and 12pm to 4pm (Vietnam time). As from May 1st, customs clearance is also conducted on holidays and weekends.

On April 17th, during phone talks with Vietnamese Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh, Director of Chinas General Administration of Customs Ni Yuefeng decided to resume customs clearance at the border gate to reduce goods congestion in local border areas.

The Ministry then coordinated closely with the Vietnamese Embassy in China, the Vietnamese Consulate General in Nanning city in Guangxi province, and the Chinese Embassy in Vietnam to ensure Guangxi sped up the resumption, which therefore came earlier than the initial plan of May 6th.

China had earlier intensified its disease prevention and control measures at land border gates, including those with Vietnam, which seriously affected customs clearance and the exchange of goods between the two countries.

The Chinese sides decision to resume customs clearance at the Tan Thanh - Po Chai border gate is a positive sign for Vietnamese enterprises, but they are advised to keep a close watch on the situation and remain updated on relevant information to have a suitable goods regulation plan to avoid any congestion and losses./.
DES MOINES, Iowa  The second and third largest indoor farm shows in the U.S. have announced that the events will be going by new names. The Nebraska Power Farming Show is now called the Nebraska Ag Expo and the Iowa Power Farming Show is the Iowa Ag Expo.

These name changes better reflect the evolution of agriculture and our farm shows, said Tom Junge, show director.

Todays growers come to our farm shows to engage with the familiar brands they know, but also to discover emerging companies with technology and innovation that will make them even better at what they do.

According to Junge, there have been three major agricultural evolutions over the years. One of the biggest was the mechanization of agriculture. In 1918, the Iowa farm show had an unimaginable 43 tractor brands on display, Junge said. Then, while U.S. tractor sales peaked in the early 1950s, the horsepower or power of tractors continued to increase to help farmers cover more land in less time. This evolution brought about the names Iowa and Nebraska Power Farming Shows.
Champaign, IL (61820)

Today

Cloudy skies. Windy this evening. Low 27F. Winds SW at 20 to 30 mph. Higher wind gusts possible..

Tonight

Cloudy skies. Windy this evening. Low 27F. Winds SW at 20 to 30 mph. Higher wind gusts possible.
A spectacular fly-past was carried out by a fleet of Indian Air Force military jets over the national capital as part of a nationwide exercise to express gratitude toward lakhs of Covid-19 warriors in the frontline of fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

Military jets, including Sukhoi-30 MKI, MiG-29 and Jaguar, flew over Rajpath in Delhi and orbited over the city for around 30 minutes on Sunday.

Premier transport aircraft C-130 also carried out a separate fly-past over the Delhi/NCR region.

Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat on Friday announced that the three armed forces services will carry out a series of activities to thank the corona warriors on Sunday.

The thanks-giving activities started on Sunday morning with the wreath-laying ceremony at the national police memorial in Delhi to honour the police personnel deployed in the enforcement of the nationwide coronavirus lockdown.

Air force helicopter dropped petals on medical staffs to thank them for their tremendous effort during coronavirus outbreak at LNJP hospital in New Delhi on 03 April 2020. (HT Photo/Biplov Bhuyan)

The IAF-led fly-pasts were also carried out in Mumbai, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Srinagar, Chandigarh, among other cities across the country.

Indian Army saluting the medical staff to thank them for their hard work during the coronavirus outbreak at Guru Nanak Dev Hospital in Amritsar on Sunday. (HT Photo/Sameer Sehgal Hindustan Times)

Military helicopters also flew over hospitals that are treating coronavirus patients and shower petals as a tribute. One such hospital was the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi.

(With inputs from PTI)
A new G.I. Joe movie is in the works  even before spinoff Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins hits theaters this fall.

Paramount and Hasbro are already in negotiations with screenwriting team Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse to pen a follow-up to the upcoming film, which is due for release in November.

The new movie will not be a direct sequel but 'rather an expansion to take audience goers deeper into the world of Joe,' according to The Hollywood Reporter.

More G.I. Joe: After somewhat successful live-action franchise installments in 2009 and 2013 (Dwayne Johnson and Channing Tatum in G.I. Joe: Retaliation seen here), a new G.I. Joe movie is in the works

The first two G.I. Joe films, 2009's G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and 2013's G.I. Joe: Retaliation, attracted several big ticket movie stars, including Bruce Willis, Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, Channing Tatum, Dennis Quaid, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Sienna Miller.

Meanwhile, the upcoming Snake Eyes film stars Henry Golding as the titular ninja, after previously being incarnated by X-Men and Star Wars actor Ray Park in both of the previous films.

Golding, 33, recently revealed the origin story of the menacing silent character has lots of old-fashioned stunt work which he is sure will wow audiences.

He said: 'We have an authenticity to this. Which no one will ever have seen in a G.I. Joe franchise ever.

Romcom turned action star: This, even before the latest G.I. Joe spinoff sequel Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins hits theaters this fall, starring Crazy Rich Asians' Henry Golding

Franchise: The first two G.I. Joe films, 2009's G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and 2013's G.I. Joe: Retaliation, attracted several big ticket movie stars, including Bruce Willis, Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, Channing Tatum

'The amount of physical stunts that we do outweigh that of any of the CGI. Generally speaking, it's all physical stunts,' he added.

The Crazy Rich Asians star  who was born in Malaysia before moving to England as a child  admitted that his body has taken a battering on set because he was prepared to shoot so many of his own stunts.

'I had a few injuries,' Henry allowed. 'I'm not gonna lie; I blew out my hip, I tore my quad, my meniscus like tore.'

Puppy eyes and snake eyes: The upcoming Snake Eyes film stars Henry Golding as the titular ninja, after previously being incarnated by X-Men and Star Wars actor Ray Park

Golding insisted his injuries have been beneficial for his performance, as being 'put through the wringer' brought an honest 'tenacity' to his 'susceptible' and 'volatile' alter ego.

Henry stars alongside Andrew Koji as Storm Shadow and Samara Weaving as Snake Eyes' love interest Scarlett in the upcoming actioner, whilst Iko Uwais and Ursula Corbero will also be featured.

Snake Eyes is a spin-off to the previous two G.I. Joe films, all of which are inspired by the hugely popular military themed toy range of the same name.
Primary schools could reopen as soon as June 1 - Reuters

Primary schools are due to reopen as soon as June 1, as part of Boris Johnsons blueprint for gradually unlocking Britain, The Sunday Telegraph can disclose.

The Prime Minister is expected to unveil the Governments roadmap out of the coronavirus lockdown in an address to the nation next Sunday, after ministers take stock of a study showing the rate of the viruss transmission in the UK.

One of the plans being discussed to help to reopen workplaces across the country is to ask companies to routinely test asymptomatic staff as part of a national effort to track the disease and isolate those who could be infectious.

Based on the current, reduced infection rate, Mr Johnson is hoping to put teachers on three weeks notice to reopen primary schools in England to all pupils on June 1, Whitehall sources said.

Year 10 and Year 12 pupils are then expected to form the first wave of secondary pupils returning to school at a later point, if such a move would be unlikely to increase the transmission rate over the threshold that Mr Johnson warned could result in a dangerous second peak.

The earliest possible return of primary schoolchildren is intended to minimise the threat to early years development and help parents to return to work.

On Saturday, Robert Jenrick, the Communities Secretary, said: Home learning is not easy, particularly when one or both parents are trying to work from home as well.

In other developments:

Manchester, Stansted and East Midlands airports will this week begin requiring travellers to wear face masks and gloves

Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, Andrew Griffith, Mr Johnsons former business adviser, warns that every additional day the phone rings unanswered in lockdown Britain is an order lost to an overseas competitor whose own economy is open for business

A senior bishop signalled the Church of England could accept a temporary relaxation of Sunday trading laws, as Alok Sharma, the Business Secretary, pushed for the move in order to boost the economy and allow more time for key workers to shop

A study by scientists at the University of Dundee found that resuming more than just 10 per cent of pre-lockdown contacts with other people would risk a second peak.

Story continues

On Saturday night, Mr Johnson held talks with the quad of senior ministers making key decisions about the lockdown.

Whitehall sources said the plan included opening primary schools as early as June 1  a date that could be pushed back as a result of data due to be delivered to ministers by the Office for National Statistics this week.

Mr Johnson has said it is vital to keep the R number  the measurement of the Covid-19 transmission rate  below one, meaning the virus is in retreat nationwide.

Last week, it stood between 0.5 and one, giving ministers optimism that they can reopen primary schools as early as June 1.

A Whitehall source said the move was crucial for economic reasons, to get things moving, but also for educational reasons, adding early years development is very important.

Meanwhile, secondary school pupils can do a lot more at home and online. They are not as pressing as primary schoolchildren, who we know need a lot of attention.

On Saturday, Jenny Harries, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, said there were some signs that potentially younger children are less susceptible to disease and potentially transmit it less.

Officials are believed to be working on detailed plans for the safest way to reopen schools, with possibilities including temporary limits on class sizes.

The question of when to reopen nursery schools remains a live discussion.

ONS survey data due to be issued this week is expected to give ministers the clearest picture yet of how the disease is spreading in the UK.

A source said a lot of the strategy would depend on the findings.

This week the Government is also expected to focus on measures intended to encourage those already permitted to work to return to construction sites and factories.

Those who work in offices and can carry out their roles from home are likely to be encouraged to continue to do so.

Dr Harries said the public needed very clear messaging to understand when to come out and to be reassured that its safe.

Last week, senior civil servants from the business department are said to have asked business groups about the practicalities of introducing workplace testing.

Several senior government and corporate figures believe the UK will end up with such regimes as part of a national track and trace strategy intended to pinpoint and isolate cases of the virus.

A Yale study suggesting that new saliva tests are a more sensitive alternative to the swab tests currently administered by the NHS, has led to optimism that workplace testing of asymptomatic staff could become routine, with samples handed to office managers or human resources staff to send to labs.

This week, the NHSs South Korea-style contact tracing system is expected to be piloted on the Isle of Wight.

A Department for Education spokesman said: Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has not set a date for schools reopening.

Schools will remain closed, except for children of critical workers and vulnerable children, until the scientific advice indicates it is the right time to reopen and the five tests set out by Government to beat this virus have been met.

Are schools reopening too soon? Share your thoughts in the comments below
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 3)  President Rodrigo Duterte is expected to submit to Congress his sixth report on the special powers granted to him by Congress to address the COVID-19 crisis.

The expected updates from Duterte in his latest report include cash aid for the poor, one of the key provisions of the Bayanihan to Heal as One Act, which gave the president special budget powers to counter the pandemic.

In his last report, Duterte bared that only 6.27 million of the 18 million target families have received cash aid from the government, leaving some 65 percent of the target beneficiaries still without financial relief more than a month since the enactment of the law.

The Department of Social Welfare and Development, however, said that as of Saturday, around 11.6 million families have already received cash aid, or 64.5 percent of the target beneficiaries.

Aside from cash aid for the poor, Senator Joel Villanueva is also expecting updates on aid for workers, including tricycle drivers and overseas Filipino workers.

Senator Nancy Binay, meanwhile, wants the executive branch to submit a national plan on its response to COVID-19, its mitigation of the disease, and the transition to what it calls as the new normal.

Also expected from Dutertes sixth report are updates on the governments spending for its response to the COVID-19 crisis.

In his fifth report, Duterte revealed that the government has released some 245 billion in savings from canceled programs and special purpose funds for its COVID-19 response, the bulk of which  around 196 billion  went to the DSWD.

After the DSWD, local government units received the next biggest chunk of government of the realigned funds, receiving a total of 36.91 billion from the so-called Bayanihan Grant.

The Department of Agriculture, meanwhile, obtained the third-largest cash allocation, with 8.5 billion.

The Department of Health also received a 1.8-billion cash allocation from the pooled savings, while the Department of Labor and Employment got 1.5 billion from the same funding source.

The Philippine National Police and the Armed Forces of the Philippines also received an additional cash allocation of 93.1 million and 150.7 million, respectively.

The Bayanihan to Heal as One Act allows Duterte to reshuffle funding within the executive department towards the governments efforts against the disease.

The same law also requires the president to submit to Congress a weekly report on how he has so far utilized these powers and the governments response to the pandemic.

CNN Philippines Xave Gregorio contributed to this report.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath

Holding the Tablighi Jamaat responsible for the spread of COVID-19, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Saturday said that being infected with a virus is not a crime but to hide it is definitely a crime.

Speaking at a programme of a news channel, Adityanath said, "The role of Tablighi Jamaat was most condemnable. To get a disease is not a crime but to hide a disease which is infectious is definitely a crime. And this crime has been done by those associated with the Tablighi Jamaat."

"In Uttar Pradesh and other places where the spread of the coronavirus has been seen, Tablighi Jamaat is behind it. Had they not hidden the disease and went about like its carriers, then perhaps we would have controlled the coronavirus outbreak to a large extend," he said.

The chief minister said action would be taken against them for the "crime that they have committed".

A Tablighi Jamaat congregation in Delhi in March turned out to be a major source of COVID-19 cases, with those who attended the meet returned home in different parts of the country after being infected with the deadly virus.
The Government has recognized the contributions of journalists in the fight against coronavirus as the world marks press freedom in 'a social distancing mode.'

In a statement issued by Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, the Government of Ghana congratulated all journalists in Ghana as the world marks Press Freedom Day today.

This year's celebration is being marked globally under the theme Journalism without Fear or Favour.

The theme focuses on the significant role the Press is playing in the ongoing COVID-19 situation, and how their contribution by providing verified information can lead the prevention of getting infected.

The statement says government celebrates the significant role the Press is playing in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Their reporting and publishing of information on preventive etiquette is contributing positively in this fight according to the statement.

It says the Akufo-Addo administration has been working closely with the Media and other stakeholders in disseminating information and educating the public as part of the broader COVID-19 Government response.

The Media, as the President in one of such engagements described, is an invaluable ally in the fight against COVID-19

The statement said We are hopeful that together, we will defeat this pandemic in the shortest possible time and continue with initiatives to make the media and broadcasting space increasingly productive

The Director General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), also in statement indicated that at a time when we are mired in worry and uncertainty because of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, free information is essential to helping us face, understand, think about and overcome this crisis. We must consider the vital importance of information in this situation: informing the public means giving everyone the means of combatting the illness by adopting appropriate practices.

---Daily Guide
Mahindra Holidays & Resorts India Ltd (MHRIL) on Sunday said it plans to first reopen resorts that are at drivable distance from the metro cities once the coronavirus lockdown is lifted.

The Mahindra Group firm has currently suspended operations at its resorts in compliance with the government directives.

"At Club Mahindra we have over 255,000 member families and once travel restrictions are relaxed and state borders open up, and people feel comfortable enough to travel again, we expect our members and their families to start travelling to our resorts in their own vehicles, since we are at drivable distances from major cities,"MHRIL MD and CEO Kavinder Singh told PTI.

The company is gearing up for this by putting in place all the necessary safety related standard operating procedures (SOPs). It will ensure the highest levels of hygiene standards (hospital grade) to achieve a quick return to normalcy, he added.

"We will first open resorts that are at a drivable distance from the major metro cities," Singh said. He, however did not share the number of resorts that would be opened in the first phase.

The company has over 100 resorts in India and abroad.

Asked about the steps the company is taking to ensure the health and safety of guests and employees at the resorts, Singh said: "In view of the current situation we are implementing various SOPs which will cover hygiene and disinfection norms at all the touch points in our resorts."



The company will ensure social distancing norms for members at its resorts. The resorts are much bigger than traditional hotels, have open spaces and are spread out and this helps in facilitating social distancing norms, he added.

"The entire guest experience right from check in to resort experiences including F&B will be contactless. Our best-in-class experiences will help keep our members and their families engaged, while maintaining the highest safety and hygiene standards," Singh said.

Club Mahindra is partnering with experts in the healthcare and technology spaces for implementing these enhanced safety procedures and contactless services, he added.

Asked about the impact of the pandemic and subsequent lockdown on the hospitality industry, Singh said: "COVID-19 is a true Black Swan event that presents an unprecedented challenge to the hospitality and aviation industries in India and globally. It has deeply impacted the hospitality industry with occupancies declining sharply, as India went into lockdown from March 25."



According to recent estimates, the overall revenue of the Indian hotel industry will decline by about Rs 90,000 crore in 2020, an erosion of 57 per cent compared to last year. More importantly, it is estimated that there will be around 38 million job losses, he said.

On the way forward for the industry, Singh said the sector expects a slow recovery as there will be many strict travel restrictions even as the lockdown begins to get lifted. Domestic travel will begin much faster than international travel, but both will take some time to fully recover.

He further said the industry is expecting support from the government for its survival.

"Most of the hospitality players have debt on their books and industry is hoping for a debt recast and for the moratorium to be extended to 12 months. This would certainly provide much-needed relief," Singh said.

The industry is also hoping for waiver or deferment of statutory payments and minimum electricity demand charges as this will help it with the working capital situation, he added.

"The industry also employs millions of people, so it would be helpful if there is some level of support for them, such as a direct benefit package for the staff who keep the industry running," Singh said.

For the revival of the industry, the annual leave travel allowance (LTA) should be made tax-free, every year, so that people have more money to spend on travel once things get better, he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
66-year-old man rescued from ham radio tower Firefighters were called to rescue a 66-year-old man who was stuck on a friend's amateur radio mast in Big Piney Road, Rapid City, South Dakota



Associated Press report:



A rescue in Rapid City, a man stuck on a Ham radio tower on Big Piney Road.



The man was stuck about 20-feet above ground and the Sheriffs office says his arm was pinned under a retractable part of the tower.



A high angle rescue was performed and the jaws of life were then used to free the mans arm from the tower.



The man was wearing no safety equipment and he was there helping a friend do some work on the tower.



Watch a short video of the news report at

https://www.newscenter1.tv/66-year-old-man-rescued-from-ham-radio-tower/
Apple reported quarterly revenue that grew 1pc, but didn't provide a forecast for the first time in more than a decade, sparking concern that performance will suffer later this year.

Chief executive Tim Cook said Apple experienced a "very depressed" period in late March and early April, in the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic, but saw a "pickup" in the second half of this month.

The company raised its dividend and expanded a share buyback plan by $50bn (45bn).

Fiscal second-quarter sales came in at $58.3bn, compared with $58bn a year earlier.

That beat Wall Street estimates, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

IPhone revenue was $28.96bn, down 7pc, but also topping analysts' expectations. Services sales jumped 17pc to $13.35bn, while the wearables and accessories business climbed 23pc to $6.28bn. The shares rose 1.2pc on Friday morning in New York.

"The last part of March and the first part of April were very depressed and then we've seen a pickup relative to that period of time in the second half of April," Cook said in an interview.

"I would attribute that partially to the new products that we were able to launch at end of March and early April, the economic stimulus and probably some level of people getting a bit more used to that this is going to last a little while."

The Cupertino, California-based technology giant did not provide guidance for its June quarter due to the ongoing complications from Covid-19.

"It just spooks people about just how bad the second quarter is going to be," said Mike Walkley, an analyst at Canaccord Genuity.

During a conference call, chief financial officer Luca Maestri suggested that challenges continue in the current quarter.

"On iPhone and wearables, we expect the year-over-year revenue performance to worsen in the June quarter relative to the March quarter," he said. "On iPad and Mac, we expect the year-over-year revenue performance to improve."

Apple has been uniquely affected by the pandemic. In late January, many of its Asia-based suppliers and manufacturers ground to a halt as part of efforts to curb the spread of Covid-19. That resulted in shipping delays for devices and supply constraints. Around that time, it closed all 42 retail stores in China, a key source of revenue for the company, then shut its other retail locations. It's still waiting to reopen most of them.

In January, the company had projected fiscal second-quarter sales of between $63bn and $67bn, but it pulled the guidance in February as the pandemic starting spreading outside of China.

On Thursday, Maestri said digital content services, such as Apple TV+ and Music, will remain strong, but that the AppleCare warranty business and revenue from advertising deals would again dip. App Store revenue grew double digits in the fiscal second quarter, with paid subscriptions topping 550 million, he noted.

"Our active installed base of devices reached an all-time high in all of our geographic segments and all major product categories," the CFO said. "We are confident in our future and continue to make significant investments in all areas of our business."

Apple is also sticking to its M&A strategy, Maestri said, while reiterating a pledge to invest $350bn in the US economy in the coming years.
A professor of Geology at the Sahyadri First Grade College for a couple of terms, Nisar Ahmed was invited to the Kannada poets' meet at the Mysuru Dasara in 1959.

Renowened Kannada poet Professor K S Nisar Ahmed passed away on 3 May at the age of 84 at his Bengaluru residence, reported Asian News International. The Padma Shri-awardee was suffering from cancer and had recently travelled to the United States to receive treatment.

Kannada poet Professor KS Nisar Ahmed passes away at his residence. He was 84 years old. (File pic) pic.twitter.com/i7hadMxVhE  ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020

A remarkable figure in Kannda literature, Ahmed wrote several tremendously popular songs and poems such as 'Jogada Siri Belakinalli' and 'Kurigalu Saar Kurigalu'. Some of his other best known works include Nityotsava, Anaamika Anglaru, Sanje Aidara Male, Manasu Gandhi, and Bazaru.

A professor of Geology at the Sahyadri First Grade College for a couple of terms, Ahmed was invited to the Kannada poets' meet at the Mysuru Dasara in 1959.

The academician had also led the Kannada Sahitya Sammalenna in the year 2007 and was subsequently honoured with the Kendra Sahitya Akademi award in 2008. Much later in 2017, he made history by becoming the first Muslim to inaugurate the festival, deeming it the "greatest moment of his life" as well as reiterating the importance of communal harmony.

Many of the poet's readers condoled his death on social media, sharing glimpses of how he touched their lives with his multi-layered works.
I know what its like to wake up at 3am in a cold wave of fear

Can you imagine. You have just had a row with your boyfriend, he has flounced out to drive back to London, and suddenly you are told you cannot leave your house? He will return, with his brown holdall stuffed with unironed T-shirts, a washbag covered with toothpaste, drop them by the front door where they will remain for the next 17 years because MEN NEVER UNPACK. Those women leaning out of windows in Italy arent singing, theyre wailing, He keeps picking his feet! My week so far. In the space of two days (poor me!)

1 I got an email from my mortgage broker, saying that despite my high salary/track record of never having a day off sick/awards/work ethic, he cant get me a mortgage. Sorry.

2 Then I get an email saying my book launch might be pushed back. I was devastated, having worked on it for five long years. Then the publisher saw sense, realising what we need at the moment is a book that will make us laugh. Phew!

3 My UK tour in October is in doubt, obviously, though who knows?

4 My assistant Nic came with me to London for work and is now blaming me for the fact she cant see her mother, just in case she got infected during one day in London and passes it on. I knew it was a bad idea and we should have cancelled, she has just told me. Listen, I said. You shouldnt visit your mother anyway. I went to cover an earthquake in Pakistan wearing only flip-flops. I crossed Somalia in an armoured truck. I learned to be a trapeze artist with Cirque du Soleil when I dont even do stepladders and my horse Lizzie was dying. I had a facelift just so I could write about it! I went to Venice with half an hours notice, no one told me which terminal I was to fly from, or how to catch a water bus to my hotel with no money in my account, only for my editor to call me while I was at the boarding gate and say, We will want photos of you in a gondola. I told him I was currently dressed as Beyonce (Ivy Park at Topshop leggings and sweatshirt; not high quality, as once washed it faded, got bobbles and shrunk), and hadnt had TIME TO PACK MAKE-UP!!

5 I realise I will not be allowed to fly to Australia to meet the Hunk. I am considering writing a letter to someone high up, saying, I havent had sex since before Christmas. Surely this is a global emergency?

I once got into lots of trouble with my boss when I was losing my house, because I wrote that I would rather have cancer than be forced to give up everything I owned. She deleted it. Of course, being ill is terrible. But my experience is that when you are losing your career, house, furniture, car, and are terrified your animals will be seized, there is no sympathy.

6 The Press Awards have been cancelled. Im up for Columnist of the Year, again, and had written my speech.

7 So for anyone who is currently suffering financial hardship, I know. Ive been there. I would wake at 3am, and this wave of fear would wash over me, like a great big cold sea full of jellyfish I was about to drown in. I was adrift in a new, hostile world of lawyers, insolvency practitioners, debt specialists, the Official Receiver. Removal men. Putting things in storage before even that luxury is taken away and you are like, well, OK, just sell everything on Ebay.

The only thing that got me through, a white polystyrene float I would doggy paddle behind, was humour. Endless episodes of Fawlty Towers and Friends, who really were my friends. Early Cary Grant movies including Bringing up Baby and My Favorite Wife. Bridesmaids, watched so many times I can now recite huge chunks: Stove. What kinda name is that? Are you an appliance? Nancy Mitford. Helen Fielding. Dodie Smith. Stars and Bars by William Boyd.

Isnt it telling that the man youve been sharing a vagina with for the past, what, Im not good at sums, few years doesnt text to say, How are you? Are you OK? Ive been feverishly texting friends, a niece, my old cleaner. But from him? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

 LISTEN TO LIZ JONESS PODCAST! 

Join Liz as she dissects her weekly You Diary, delves into the archives and screams, Why did I write that?! Find it now at mailplus.co.uk/lizjones, iTunes and Spotify.

To contact Liz visit LizJonesGoddess.com or Tweet #LizJonesGoddess.
David Iben put it well when he said, 'Volatility is not a risk we care about. What we care about is avoiding the permanent loss of capital. So it might be obvious that you need to consider debt, when you think about how risky any given stock is, because too much debt can sink a company. We note that Yield Go Holdings Ltd. (HKG:1796) does have debt on its balance sheet. But should shareholders be worried about its use of debt?

Why Does Debt Bring Risk?

Debt is a tool to help businesses grow, but if a business is incapable of paying off its lenders, then it exists at their mercy. If things get really bad, the lenders can take control of the business. However, a more common (but still painful) scenario is that it has to raise new equity capital at a low price, thus permanently diluting shareholders. Of course, plenty of companies use debt to fund growth, without any negative consequences. When we think about a company's use of debt, we first look at cash and debt together.

Check out our latest analysis for Yield Go Holdings

What Is Yield Go Holdings's Debt?

As you can see below, at the end of September 2019, Yield Go Holdings had HK$47.3m of debt, up from HK$25.1m a year ago. Click the image for more detail. However, it does have HK$65.7m in cash offsetting this, leading to net cash of HK$18.4m.

SEHK:1796 Historical Debt May 3rd 2020

How Healthy Is Yield Go Holdings's Balance Sheet?

According to the last reported balance sheet, Yield Go Holdings had liabilities of HK$174.3m due within 12 months, and liabilities of HK$749.0k due beyond 12 months. On the other hand, it had cash of HK$65.7m and HK$282.2m worth of receivables due within a year. So it can boast HK$172.8m more liquid assets than total liabilities.

This luscious liquidity implies that Yield Go Holdings's balance sheet is sturdy like a giant sequoia tree. With this in mind one could posit that its balance sheet is as strong as beautiful a rare rhino. Simply put, the fact that Yield Go Holdings has more cash than debt is arguably a good indication that it can manage its debt safely.

Story continues

But the other side of the story is that Yield Go Holdings saw its EBIT decline by 8.9% over the last year. If earnings continue to decline at that rate the company may have increasing difficulty managing its debt load. When analysing debt levels, the balance sheet is the obvious place to start. But it is Yield Go Holdings's earnings that will influence how the balance sheet holds up in the future. So if you're keen to discover more about its earnings, it might be worth checking out this graph of its long term earnings trend.

Finally, while the tax-man may adore accounting profits, lenders only accept cold hard cash. Yield Go Holdings may have net cash on the balance sheet, but it is still interesting to look at how well the business converts its earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) to free cash flow, because that will influence both its need for, and its capacity to manage debt. During the last three years, Yield Go Holdings burned a lot of cash. While that may be a result of expenditure for growth, it does make the debt far more risky.

Summing up

While we empathize with investors who find debt concerning, you should keep in mind that Yield Go Holdings has net cash of HK$18.4m, as well as more liquid assets than liabilities. So we are not troubled with Yield Go Holdings's debt use. When analysing debt levels, the balance sheet is the obvious place to start. But ultimately, every company can contain risks that exist outside of the balance sheet. Consider for instance, the ever-present spectre of investment risk. We've identified 5 warning signs with Yield Go Holdings (at least 1 which is potentially serious) , and understanding them should be part of your investment process.

If, after all that, you're more interested in a fast growing company with a rock-solid balance sheet, then check out our list of net cash growth stocks without delay.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Mr Godwin Edudzi Effah, the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) for Keta has appealed for the establishment of a unit of the Marine Police of the Ghana Police Service at Keta to help curb fishery infractions in the Municipality and adjoining areas.



He said it was important for the coastal municipality with a good number of its people being fisher folks to have the unit to prosecute perpetrators of Illegal Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing practices including the use of under-size mesh, light fishing and fishing with explosives.



Mr Effah was speaking at a meeting attended by chief fishermen, officials from Marine Police and the Municipal Assembly to dialogue on fishing-related issues including illegal fishing.



Coastal Volta which spans from Aflao in the Ketu South Municipality to Anyanui in the Anloga District has no fishing enforcement unit to enforce fishing laws and has to depend on the one based in Tema, making follow up on complaints of infractions almost impossible.



This situation, fisher folks blame for the continuous fishing infractions in the regions waters.



It is reported that recently some trawlers engaged in light fishing in the Keta areas, thus impacting negatively on the catch of small-holder fishmen with the latest occurring on March 23, 2020, where members of Vodza Landing Beach Committee alleged that they observed a trawler dumping juvenile fishes into the sea.



The MCE said aside the establishment of the unit in the area it would help in enforcing compliance with fishing laws, Keta has been declared a port zone and so we need the unit to ensure security.



Mr Seidi Iddi, Director of Marine Police welcomed the request from the MCE for their presence in the area saying, he would table the request before the Police Administration since it will be in the interest of the country to spread out the unit.



It shouldnt just be in Tema and Takoradi alone because Ghana is endowed with 550 nautical miles coastline from Aflao to New Town, Half-Assini. We need to be out there to offer support.



Theres a lot of IUU fishing practices and we need to be there to fight it so that our fishermen can go out to sea and come back with abundant catch.



Security wise, we need to have Marine Police to be the watcheye over the ocean so that in case of anything, theyll be the first to take action, Mr Iddi added.

Source: GNA









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Terri is interested in settling with an African man and she was written to a relationship adviser and blogger, Joro Olumofin to post her request.

She wants a man who is not younger than 28 years and she is not really concerned about looks.

Once you can provide a valid proof of identification, then you are good to go. If youre interested in meeting Terri, send a mail to [email protected] with proof of ID.
Popular rock band Rage Against the Machine has rescheduled its reunion tour to 2021.

The band was set to kick off the tour from March 26 in El Paso, Texas, and stretch all the way through September.

"Rage Against The Machine will commence our tour at such a time when we are confident it will be safe for our fans," the band said in a statement posted on its official Instagram page.

We sincerely hope that each of you and your families and friends stay safe and well and that music is bringing you solace and inspiration.

The reunion tour will now start on June 3, 2021 in El Paso, Texas and run through August 20th, 2021.

Tickets for the band's 2020 tour will be honoured at the rescheduled 2021 dates, and those who want the refunds can begin the process at their point of purchase.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In the wake of Covid-19, will the movie business ultimately look like a dystopian disaster downer, or an uplifting tale of survival?

One things for certain right now  its playing like a mystery.

With at least two of the major chains saying they could reopen by mid-summer, and some smaller theaters already opening in some states, we asked film folks in Connecticut to take a look into their crystal balls. They predicted everything from little change, to continued expansion of digital options, to even a revival of drive-in movies over the next several years.

Regardless, they all believe nothing can replace gathering in a theater to watch a film on the big screen. Their comments have been condensed for clarity.

Adam Birnbaum, film programming director for the Avon Theatre, a Stamford nonprofit showing documentaries, independent and foreign-language films. During the pandemic, the venue has pivoted to rental screenings via its website.

Theres a space in which (onsite and streaming) can coexist. ... But I would also say theres been a streaming presence for over a decade now. Perhaps with some more marginal fare, we might see them go straight to (video on demand), or straight to streaming or barely get a theatrical release with streaming. But I also believe theres always going to be a place for films to be seen in theaters. ...

Quite frankly, most of the content thats on Netflix or other streaming services really is not in any way compatible with what our general customer base is looking for. So Im really not all that concerned about it in the long run being something that dramatically alters things for us once were talking about a post-pandemic universe. ...

When its all said and done we as human beings are social creatures and have tendencies that lend themselves to wanting to interact with others. Im constantly reminded of that on a daily basis when Im in conversations with people who are telling me just how much they miss the Avon, and want to get back to going to the movies. So even if that doesnt happen immediately, I do have a very strong degree of confidence that normalcy will return.

Ginger Stickel, executive director of the Greenwich Film Festival, which for the first time in its six-year history launched the May 1-3 event virtually instead of physically.

There are benefits that come out of this. First of all, typically when you attend our festival, a movie is played at a specific date and time, and the way the virtual festival is set up people can enjoy our films any time they want around their schedules (during the run). We did incorporate some connectivity, because about two-thirds of our films are offering Q&As (with directors, actors) that are at specific times through a platform like Zoom. And so the ability to connect over film virtually, I think that trend will grow. 

Most of our audience comes from Connecticut and some from New York and in the past month weve seen people buying passes from Indiana, from Denmark, from other parts of the world and the country that we wouldnt typically be able to attract to our festival. So I think theres some element around streaming films or offering virtual events that will stay even when its safe to have physical events. 

Tom Carruthers, director of Connecticut Film Festival, New Haven Film Festival and FilmFest52.

For some time Ive wanted to launch a system where we actually show films in a venue like a movie house or at a college and also show the same film virtually to people on the mailing list who cant make it to the experience in the theater. 

You can monetize these virtual screenings with direct donations and you can also have sponsored screenings, and at the same time still give people some sort of experience. This gets you through to the period where hopefully well all get together in theaters again. But this virtual experience will still happen afterwards.

JC Barone, professor in Department in Communication & Media Arts at West Connecticut State University.

Going to the movies is more than just watching something. I hope that appreciation for the social aspect and the thrill of seeing and hearing something on the big screen in a communal manner will survive. I think it will, but the number of venues may change. That will depend on how financially feasible and profitable it is. 

Even with people sitting six or more feet from each other, youre still sitting in an enclosed space for two hours. But the 305 existing drive-ins in the U.S. may offer some relief and an answer. Maybe even more drive-ins? I miss them. We could still go to the movies  enjoy blockbusters or great indie flicks on the big screen, social distancing, a communal experience, even take the dog!

pquinn@ctpost.com
As Nigeria prepares to relax its lockdown from Monday, the country continues to record more COVID-19 cases than before.

Nigeria recorded more COVID-19 cases in the past week than in the previous eight weeks put together.

A PREMIUM TIMES analysis shows that Nigeria recorded 1206 new cases last week, 102 more than 1182 recorded in the previous eight weeks.

However, the lockdown imposed on major cities like Lagos, Abuja and Ogun will be relaxed from tomorrow, President Muhammadu Buhari announced last Monday. Instead of the lockdown, the president announced a night curfew (8 p.m. to 6 a.m.) as well as other safety measures like use of face masks and social distancing.

The Data

According to data sourced from the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), while Nigeria recorded more cases last week, the country also recorded more recoveries.

Almost half of the COVID-19 patients who have recovered since the outbreak of the pandemic in Nigeria were discharged last week, the data shows.

A total of 163 patients were discharged last week, bringing the total number of recoveries as of Saturday night to 385.

Nigeria recorded its first case of the infection in an Italian man who visited Lagos on February 28.

Nigeria has recorded 2,388 cases as of Saturday midnight. Out of these, 385 people have recovered and have been discharged while the death toll rose to 85.

A breakdown of the 2,388 cases shows that Lagos State has 1,068 cases, followed by Kano  313, FCT  266, Borno  75, Gombe  96, Bauchi  53, Delta  17, Oyo  33, Zamfara  12, Sokoto  54, Ondo  13, Nasarawa  9, Kwara  16, Edo  52, Ekiti  11, Borno  69, Yobe  13, Adamawa  4, Niger  3, Imo-2, Ebonyi  5, Enugu  8, Rivers  14, Ogun  56, Osun  34, Katsina  40, Kaduna  66, Akwa Ibom  16, Taraba  8, Jigawa  7, Kebbi12, Bayelsa  5, Abia  2 and Plateau  3. Benue and Anambra have one case each.

Also, a total of 163 patients were discharged last week. This represents a 42 per cent increase when compared to the 222 who recovered and had been discharged in the previous two months.

As of last week, the pandemic had spread to six new states in addition to the previous 28 states and the FCT. This means only two states are yet to record a case of the infection.

While Lagos remains the epicentre, there was a major surge in Kano, which has moved up to the second position on the NCDC chart, thus displacing the FCT to the third position.

Moreover, the average daily figure of confirmed cases rose drastically last week. The average for last week was 151, compared to 96 for the previous week.

Meanwhile, the number of those who died of the virus also shot up with 50 new deaths recorded last week as against the 35 in the previous two months.

The rise in the number of cases cannot be disconnected from the increase in testing capacity, as the country has so far tested 16,588 persons since the beginning of the pandemic.

Nigeria has one of the worst testing coverages in Africa and anywhere in the world, according to worldometers.info, a website dedicated to providing real-time statistics.

According to the Director-General of NCDC, Chikwe Ihekweazu, during one of the daily briefings last week, the Nigerian government has set a target of testing two million people in the next three months.

In this weekly review, we take a look at the figures in the past week.

Timeline

On Sunday last week, 91 new cases of COVID19 were reported. The spread is 43  Lagos, 8  Sokoto, 6  Taraba, 5  Kaduna, 5  Gombe, 3  Ondo, 3  FCT, 3  Edo, 3  Oyo, 3  Rivers, 3  Bauchi, 2  Osun, 1  Akwa Ibom, 1  Bayelsa, 1  Ebonyi, and 1  Kebbi.

This means that as of 11:50 p.m, April 26, a total of 1273 confirmed cases had been reported in Nigeria with 239 discharged and 40 dead.

On Monday, 64 new cases were reported; 34  Lagos, 15  FCT, 11  Borno, 2  Taraba and 2  Gombe.

As of 11:20 p.m., April 27, a total of 1337 confirmed cases had been reported with 255 discharged and 40 deaths.

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On Tuesday, 195 new cases were reported as follows:

80  Lagos, 38  Kano, 15  Ogun, 15  Bauchi, 11  Borno, 10  Gombe, 9  Sokoto, 5  Edo, 5  Jigawa, 2  Zamfara, 1  Rivers, 1  Enugu, 1  Delta, 1-FCT, 1 .- Nasarawa.

As of 11:50 p.m., April 28, a total of 1532 confirmed cases had been reported in Nigeria with 255 discharged and 44 deaths.

On Wednesday, 196 new cases were reported thus: 87  Lagos, 24  Kano, 18  Gombe, 17  Kaduna, 16  FCT, 10  Katsina, 8  Sokoto, 7  Edo, 6  Borno, 1  Yobe, 1  Ebonyi, and 1  Adamawa.

As of 11:55 p.m. on April 29, a total of 1728 confirmed cases had been reported, out of which 307 had been discharged while 51 had died.

On Thursday, 204 new cases were reported. These were 80  Kano, 45  Lagos, 12  Gombe, 9  Bauchi, 9  Sokoto, 7  Borno, 7  Edo, 6  Rivers, 6  Ogun, 4  FCT, 4  Akwa Ibom, 4  Bayelsa, 3  Kaduna, 2  Oyo, 2  Delta, 2  Nasarawa, 1  Ondo and 1  Kebbi

As of 11:50 p.m, April 30, 1932 confirmed cases had been reported with 319 discharged and 58 deaths.

On Friday, 238 new cases were reported as follows: 92  Kano, 36  FCT, 30  Lagos, 16  Gombe, 10  Bauchi, 8  Delta, 6  Oyo, 5  Zamfara, 5  Sokoto, 4  Ondo, 4  Nasarawa, 3  Kwara, 3  Edo, 3  Ekiti, 3  Borno, 3  Yobe, 2  Adamawa, 1  Niger, 1  Imo, 1  Ebonyi, 1  Rivers and 1 in Enugu

As of 11:50 p.m, May 1, a total of 2170 confirmed cases had been confirmed in Nigeria while 351 patients had recovered and 68 dead.

On Saturday evening, 220 new cases were reported; 62  Lagos 52  FCT, 31  Kaduna, 13  Sokoto, 10  Kebbi, 9  Yobe, 6  Borno, 5  Edo, 5  Bauchi, 4  Gombe, 4  Enugu, 4  Oyo, 3  Zamfara, 2  Nasarawa, 2  Osun, 2  Ebonyi, 2  Kwara, 2  Kano and 2 in Plateau.

Thus, as of 11:55 p.m., May 2, there were 2388 confirmed cases in Nigeria. A total of 385 of these had been discharged while 85 had died.

Relaxation of lockdown

After over a month of restriction on movements in the FCT, Lagos and Ogun states, President Muhammadu Buhari announced a gradual relaxation of the lockdown from Monday, May 4.

Starting from that day, selected businesses can open within a time frame while some guidelines for the relaxation were later reeled out by the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19.

These include compulsory use of face masks in public places, decontamination and fumigation of some places, provision for thermometers to check temperatures in the public.

Also, a nationwide curfew from 8 p.m to 6 a.m will be enforced in all states from May 4 as well as a total ban on movement across state boundaries.

The relaxation of the lockdown has generated controversies. While some said it was expected given the insufficiency of the palliatives given by the government, others said it poses a great danger.

For instance, the Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) rejected it in a press release issued by its spokesperson, Ikenga Ugochinyere.

The group said it carried out a detailed survey and analysis of the pattern of spread since the imposition of the initial lockdown and reviewed the guidelines for the lifting released by the Presidential Taskforce.

Based on the outcome of the efforts, we have come to this unimpeachable conclusion that what Nigeria rather needs now is a national lockdown and not lifting of the partial lockdown. This is fundamentally because like we had highlighted in previous statements, a lockdown on its own without complementary action was not going to achieve much.

Efforts to salvage Kano

The PTF said the efforts to cut the surge of the virus in Kano were yielding positive results.

Our response to the Kano situation is yielding results since testing was rampant, the state task force in collaboration with our team has also established contact tracing and isolation. A lot of emphases is being placed on building of capacity for coordination, care management, the Chairman of the Taskforce, Boss Mustapha, said last week

Although the spike in the figures from Kano is a bit worrisome, global trends indicate the discovery of previously detected cases and create greater opportunity for detection, isolation, care and management.

Mr Mustapha said the PTF was also putting up a team to support the state on a full-time basis.

Meanwhile, the Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire, said a team of 14 specialists will be deployed to Kano State on Saturday.

According to him, they will be responsible for the training and capacity building of the health workers so that the NCDC strategy can be actualised.

Research still ongoing for vaccines and drugs

The task force encouraged Nigerian researchers to join the race for the cure and vaccination against the virus, saying it welcomes any innovation to mitigate the infection.

According to the WHO Immunisation Team Lead, Fiona Braka, there are 89 Covid-19 vaccines under development globally.

She made this known at the national daily press briefing of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19.

Mrs Braka, who fielded questions from journalists, spoke extensively on how far WHO has gone with the production of vaccines.

Researchers around the world are working around the development of vaccines and therapeutics for Covid-19.

She said WHO has working groups to accelerate various aspects of vaccine development as well as 130 manufacturers and specialists to help speed up the availability of vaccines for COVID-19.

She, however, reiterated that there are no approved vaccines yet.

Till date we do not have a vaccine but trials are underway in a very accelerated process, she said.
The nations coronavirus death toll has risen by 315, the government has confirmed  bringing the total number of recorded fatalities in the country to 28,446.



The figures come after a drive to increase testing in the country to more than 100,000 per day  a target the government achieved despite criticism that as-yet uncompleted postal tests were included in the total number.

However, the number of tests conducted fell over the latest 24 hour period observed by the government  to 76,496. Overall, a total of 1,206,405 coronavirus tests have been carried out in the UK since the beginning of April.

The government is now including deaths outside of hospitals in its daily toll  in particular those recorded in care homes and in the community. The UK has one of the highest fatality rates of any nation.

At the daily Downing Street press conference, Mr Gove said: Thanks to the hard work of so many across the NHS, Public Health England, our pharmaceutical sector and our universities, we have tested over 200,000 key workers and their families, allowing those who dont have the virus to go back to work and protecting those who do.

We have now of course extended the criteria for testing beyond key workers to anyone over 65 displaying symptoms, and anyone who has to travel to get to work.

And this week, we will be piloting new test, track and trace procedures on the Isle of Wight with a view to having them in place more widely later this month.

All of these steps will help us to get more people back to work and help to support the delivery of our public services.

Mr Gove  the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster  went on to pay tribute to Muslims celebrating Ramadan during lockdown  adding: For those experiencing the first Ramadan without a loved one, this will be a particularly painful time.

As with Christians who could not celebrate Easter together in church, and the Jewish community whose Passover rituals were affected by social distancing, our thoughts are with Muslim neighbours who cannot break their fast together and must adapt their religious and cultural practices because of the crisis.
Nationalism is what made us great, argues Rich Lowry in The Case for Nationalism: How It Made US Powerful, United and Free (New York: Broadside Books/HarperCollins Publishers, 2019). Nationalism tends to sport its particular flavor depending on who champions and shapes it. In our case, it is democratic nationalism that makes us exceptional. America is a nation What makes us different is that our ideas are true. That our claim to chosenness has been better demonstrated, by our essential goodness and power, than that of any other country (p. 14).

Further, our brand is that of cultural nationalism. The preservation of the American cultural nation should be our absolute priority (p. 214). Culture is seeded in ideas. They are best expressed in the English language which remains a pillar of our national identity (p. 18-19). And we hear you: Neither Greek nor Roman, not a Jew or Gentile, we are all children of God fit to embrace, and to be embraced by, American nationalism. It isnt based on hatred, instead on love: our affection for home and our own people (p. 32).

Love fosters loyalty. Loyalty reaches back for memories to strengthen its sword of imagination via fostering continuity. Memory is what gives a nation its self-image and its sense of unity and coherence (p. 199).

However, nationalism is in disfavor in government, business, media, and academia. Our elites have betrayed us, and ditched nationalism in favor of globalism and other progressive, and, ultimately, anti-American projects. They consider our nation, any nation, really, as an artificial construct. America is fake; it is an artificial construct  runs the progressive screed. To such treasonous defilement, the author retorts sharply: Nations arent mere intellectual constructs but accretions of history and culture, usually shaped over the long term by their beginnings (p. 102).

If this sounds like a MAGA commercial, Lowry should be forgiven. His is a common sense plea to reembrace American nationalism to save these United States of America. To prevent the looming tragedy, Lowry has given us a primer on American nationalism. The author traces its origins back rather aptly to the Old Testament. Next, Lowry draws a straight line to Americas Puritan roots via a detour to England. One recoils, however, from the authors praise of various sectarians, including apparently the Lollards of the 14th century, as virtually an inspiration for the United States (p. 105), as reflected in the Puritans.

There is surely a continuity of tradition, in particular Christianity in its variegated manifestations in the colonies. The theocratic Puritans were certainly a part of the variety; but they soon developed plenty of competition outside of Massachusetts. Yes, they were among the first on these teeming shores but they held no monopoly on shaping America. Instead, we see a typical story of multiple points of entry by multiple peoples, arriving over time.

Why not give some credit to Catholic Marylanders? How about Marylands initial settlement town of St. Marys City being the first urban center in the American colonies to institute religious freedom to all Christians, save the anti-Trinitarians? I bet the presence of the Maryland Catholics at least partly informed wise decision of the Founding Fathers not to establish an official American Church.

Culture is generated by increments, including the American culture in its melting pot. Lowry signals so but fails to include the Marylander factor in the story of the origin. This insight would have strengthened the overall universalist argument of The Case for Nationalism.

The rest of the story is pretty straightforward and should not be controversial to any American patriot who supports nationalism anchored in a universalist framework. We should hope that Americas racial and ethnic lines blur, rather than harden, under the benign influence of intermarriage, perhaps the best friend of national unity over the long run (p. 204). Intermarriage, culture, and history rather than unrestricted emigration should drive the American project.

Granted, The Case for Nationalism is a plebeian and sectarian tale of the origins of American nationalism, but it should do a sufficient job, with some readjustment, of rekindling the American spirit for the great task of a cultural Reconquista and, ultimately, a counterrevolution to restore the United States of America to those who care about the nation and its democratic nationalism that made it great. This is because, according to Lowry, most importantly, our country should come first (p. 5). A corrective: God should come first, then the nation. Otherwise we court a neo-pagan disaster. Aside from that, we are in a tentative agreement with the authors solutions to remedy the contemporary ills afflicting our great country.
Goudreau, a 43-year-old veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who runs a security firm in Florida, said by telephone late Sunday that the operation involved 60 troops, including two former U.S. Special Forces members, who had spirited into Venezuela by land and sea. Some, he said, had already engaged Maduros forces. None of his claims could be immediately verified.
There has been increasing pressure for a relaxation on our states stay-at-home restrictions, resulting in our governor re-opening the state in phases. The Montana Nurses Association (MNA) is concerned about the economic impact of this pandemic, but more importantly, MNA is concerned about the health of our patients and all of our citizens.

MNA would support loosening guidelines after the state has achieved three important goals:

1. A consistent drop in cases over a two-week time period coupled with reliable and adequate community testing.

2. Reliable access to testing and personal protective equipment (PPE) without the need for rationing.

3. The ability for ample contact tracing. (Expand testing needs to address tracing protocols, social contagion tracking and epidemiology).

At this point, our state is struggling to meet all of these targets. Montanas supply of PPE and testing capabilities are still low in many parts of the state as is evidence by an inability to obtain testing supplies and the rationing and reuse of PPE.

Anthony Fauci, the administration's top infectious diseases expert, said recently that the United States needs to "significantly ramp up" its testing capacity in order to effectively contain the coronavirus as blunt measures like stay-at-home orders are eased: "I agree you don't need to test everybody, but you should at least be able to test the people in which you have to test to be able to do containment, and right now I think there's still some gaps there."

We know that social distancing and good hand-washing is working but relaxing the stay-at-home order at this point could be counterproductive. The last thing we want is to open up too soon, see another spike in cases, and have to revert back to another stay-at-home order. The Montana response has had a positive result and our concern is if we open before important goals are met, our state will lose progress made and will be compromised.

Many of our members are bearing the COVID-19s economic impacts, so this is not taken lightly. Elective surgeries and other health care visits have been canceled or reduced, forcing many nurses to suffer a reduction in hours. Many nurse practitioners, owning their own primary health care clinics, are seeing a massive reduction in patient visits coupled with an inability to test for COVID-19 and obtain proper PPE, devastating their ability to survive and provide health care for their communities

One of MNAs top concerns is the potential to re-open our schools. Schools are not designed for social distancing. Many students have underlying health issues such as asthma and diabetes, not to mention poor hand hygiene that comes with just being young. We support the Montana Federation of Public Employees, along with any school superintendents and school boards that recommend to keep our schools closed for this school year and focus on ways to safely resume in the fall.

MNA will continue to advocate for citizens to continue to stay home. This is how we have flattened the curve and why our infection numbers are low. We are protecting ourselves and each other every day while we adhere to social distancing. If you have to be out in the public, wash your hands frequently, wear a mask to protect others from you (as non-symptomatic people can spread the virus), and stay 6 feet or more away from others.

Flattening the curve by social distancing is not easy for any of us, but it is the most efficient and effective way to prevent further spread of coronavirus, moreover, it is all we have until further research and evidence surrounding antibody testing, testing for immunity and the production of a possible vaccine can be relied on.

Vicky Byrd is a registered nurse and the executive director of the Montana Nurses Association.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.-- Police were searching the water near Wolfes Pond Park on Saturday for a missing kayaker, an NYPD spokesman said.

Rescue crews initially responded at about 4:15 p.m. to the area of Arbutus Avenue and Nicolosi Drive, the spokesman said.

It wasnt immediately clear if the missing individual was a male or a female.

Less than an hour earlier, a kayak reportedly overturned off the coast of New Jersey, in the vicinity of Raritan Bay and the Great Beds Lighthouse, according to emergency radio transmissions.

The spokesman could not confirm the incident near New Jersey, and said it wasnt yet known if the two incidents were related.

A helicopter overhead, a diver in the water and a city Parks employee were seen in the area of Seguine Point at about 4 p.m., as a small crowd gathered on the beach to watch.

This is a breaking story. More information will be posted as it becomes available.
People were detained to make sure they did not spread coronavirus in the city

Malaysian police on Friday carried out an operation to arrest hundreds of illegal migrants in Kuala Lumpur to prevent the spread of Covid-19. Abdul Hamid Bador, chief of the local police, said this, BBC news agency reports.

People were detained to make sure that they did not spread the coronavirus in the city. Police raids took place in that part of the capital where foreigners lived.

The United Nations called on the Malaysian authorities to release children and vulnerable persons from migrant camps.

Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch warned that the detention of foreigners could exacerbate the pandemic in Malaysia, both in terms of the threat of outbreaks within the camps and the reluctance of undocumented people to cooperate with the authorities.

According to Johns Hopkins University, in Malaysia, just over 100 people died from coronavirus.

The country remains under partial quarantine.

Malaysia does not recognize refugees, and there is a high level of distrust of those who come from abroad. As a rule, they are involved in low-paid types of labor.

As we reported before, new details emerged about the evidence against four individuals  Ukrainian citizen Leonid Kharchenko and Russian citizens Oleg Pulatov, Sergey Dubinsky, and Igor Girkin  who are charged with complicity in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 passenger plane as Dutch prosecutors at The Hague court read out their case.
B oris Johnson is set to urge countries to "pull together" in the fight against the global coronavirus pandemic.

The PM will call for the sharing of expertise as he co-hosts an international conference on Monday on the race for coronavirus treatments, tests and vaccines.

Mr Johnson will also describe the challenge facing humanity as the "most urgent shared endeavour of our lifetimes," before adding: "We are in this together and together we will prevail."

It comes as he prepares to reveal the Government's lockdown exit strategy for the UK as pressure mounts to ease social distancing measures.

The World on Coronavirus lockdown 1 /60 The World on Coronavirus lockdown Getty Images A UK government public health campaign is displayed in Piccadilly Circus Reuters Chinese paramilitary police and security officers wear face masks to protect against the spread of the new coronavirus as they stand guard outside an entrance to the Forbidden City in Beijing AP A usually busy 42nd Street is seen nearly empty in New York AFP via Getty Images Bondi Beach, Australia Getty Images Military vehicles cross Westminster Bridge after members of the 101 Logistic Brigade delivered a consignment of medical masks to St Thomas' hospital Getty Images View of the illuminated statue of Christ the Redeemer that reads "Thank you" as Archbishop of the city of Rio de Janeiro Dom Orani Tempesta performs a mass in honor of Act of Consecration of Brazil and tribute to medical workers amidst the Coronavirus (COVID - 19) pandemic Getty Images Rome AFP via Getty Images An Indian man paddles his bicycle in front of a mural depicting the globe covered in a mask, as India remains under an unprecedented lockdown over the highly contagious coronavirus Getty Images Aerial view of the empty 9 de Julio avenue in Buenos Aires in Argentina AFP via Getty Images A view of an empty Grand Canal Reuters Las Ramblas, Barcelona, Spain Getty Images Aerial view of the empty Central cemetery in Bogota, Columbia AFP via Getty Images The facade of the Palacio de Lopez (seat of the government palace) AFP via Getty Images Miami, Florida AFP via Getty Images Aerial view of the empty Simon Bolivar park in Bogota AFP via Getty Images An LAPD patrol car drives through Venice Beach Boardwalk AP Venice Beach, California Getty Images Los Angeles, California Getty Images Surfers Paradise is seen empty in Australia Getty Images Many shops stand shuttered on the Venice Beach boardwalk Getty Images Empty escalators are seen at a deserted train station during morning rush hour after New South Wales began shutting down non-essential businesses Reuters A nearly empty Times Square in New York AFP via Getty Images Caracas AFP via Getty Images Metropolitan Cathedral of San Salvador AFP via Getty Images A general view of an unusually quiet Midland Park in Wellington, New Zealand Getty Images A general view of an unusually quiet Civic Square at lunchtimein Wellington, New Zealand Getty Images A policeman rides his motorcycle wearing a face mask in front of a closed shopping mall in Buenos Aires, Argentina AFP via Getty Images Florida Keys AP The historic Channel 2 Bridge closed to fishermen, bikers and pedestrians in Florida Keys AP The Beach on Scenic Gulf Drive near Seascape Resort in south Walton County, Florida sits empty of tourists AP Surfers Paradise is seen empty in Australia Getty Images A deserted Rajpath leading to India Gate in New Delhi AFP via Getty Images A general view is seen of a closed Luna Park in Sydney, Australia Getty Images A general view is seen of a closed Luna Park in Sydney, Australia Getty Images Empty roads are pictured following the lockdown by the government amid concerns about the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Kathmandu, Nepal Reuters An empty New York Subway car i AFP via Getty Images The empty pedestrian zone is seen in the city of Cologne, western Germany, AFP via Getty Images Place de la Comedie in the city of Montpellier , southern France AFP via Getty Images An empty street in Kuwait city AFP via Getty Images A building is covered by the Portuguese message: "Coronavirus: take precaution" over empty streets in downtown Sao Paulo, Brazil, AP A general view shows an empty street after a curfew was imposed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Reuters Parliament of Canada is pictured with empty street during morning rush hour AFP via Getty Images A near empty beach on Southend seafront in England PA Near empty Keswick town centre in Cumbria, England PA

Monday's online pledging conference - co-hosted by the UK and eight other countries and organisations - aims to bring in more than 6.6 billion in funding to support the global response to the pandemic.

The UK has pledged to give 388 million in aid funding for research into tests, treatments and vaccines - part of a 744 million commitment to help end the pandemic and support the global economy.

Mr Johnson is expected to say: "To win this battle, we must work together to build an impregnable shield around all our people and that can only be achieved by developing and mass producing a vaccine.

Boris Johnson: UK is past the coronavirus peak

"The more we pull together and share our expertise, the faster our scientists will succeed.

"The race to discover the vaccine to defeat this virus is not a competition between countries but the most urgent shared endeavour of our lifetimes.

"It's humanity against the virus - we are in this together and together we will prevail."

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Coronavirus has claimed more than 244,000 lives around the world, according to analysis by John Hopkins University.

The Government believes tackling the virus globally is crucial to preventing a second wave reemerging in the UK and it will speed up the creation of vaccines, tests and treatment.

International Development Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan said: "It is only by working together that we will prevent future waves of infection and end this pandemic as quickly as possible.

"By strengthening developing countries' health systems and working to find a vaccine, the UK is playing its part in stopping the global spread of coronavirus to save lives everywhere and protect our NHS."

Writing in The Independent newspaper on Sunday, the leaders of France, Germany, Italy and Norway and senior EU officials said the outbreak has "caused devastation and pain in all corners of the world".

They said responding to the "global challenge" requires "bringing together the world's best - and most prepared - minds to find the vaccines, treatments and therapies we need to make our world healthy again".
Harvard to Donate Unspent Jeffrey Epstein Money to Sex Crime Victim Groups

After recent criticism over its financial ties with Jeffery Epstein, Harvard University announced that it is donating the remainder of the money gifted by the convicted sex offender to charities that help sex crime victims.

Harvards president Lawrence Bacow confirmed the decision in a statement, saying that the unspent $200,937 from Epsteins donation would be divided equally between two non-profit groups: My Life My Choice, in Boston, and Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, in New York.

These organizations support victims of human trafficking and sexual assault, and Harvard is proud to support their important and valuable work, Bacow wrote.

An earlier review (pdf) of Epsteins connection to Harvard found that he gave $9.1 million to the university between 1998 and 2008 to support a variety of research and faculty activities. Bacow emphasized in his statement that the according to the review, Harvard did not receive any gifts from Epstein after 2008, when he was convicted by a Florida state court of procuring a minor for prostitution.

Jeffrey Epstein in a file photograph. (New York State Sex Offender Registry via AP)

The Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Mass., on March 23, 2020. (Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)

The review noted, however, that Epstein maintained close ties with Martin Nowak, a math professor and director of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, which was founded in 2003 with Epsteins gift of $6.5 million. Nowak gave Epstein an office at the programs building in Harvard Square and circumvented campus security rules to grant Epstein unlimited access to the facility, allowing him to visit more than 40 times between 2010 and 2018.

The review also found that several other Harvard professors solicited Epstein for personal funds. Some admitted that they visited Epstein at his various homes in New York, Florida, New Mexico, and the Virgin Islands, and traveled on one of his planes. Some even visited him while he was still serving time in jail.

Harvards general counsel Diane Lopez, who oversaw the review, also revealed that some faculty members made several attempts to resume donations from Epstein after his conviction.

In 2008, shortly after taking office as President, Drew G. Faust was asked to consider a new gift from Epstein, wrote Lopez (pdf). Though she had not heard of him at the time, after she was briefed on the nature of the allegations against him, she determined that Harvard should no longer accept gifts from him. The same request was brought in 2013 to then-Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Michael D. Smith, who reportedly made the same decision as Faust.

The report issued today reveals institutional and individual shortcomings that must be addressed, Bacow wrote. Not only for the sake of the university but also in recognition of the courageous individuals who sought to bring Epstein to justice.
ASHWINI M SRIPAD By

Express News Service

BENGALURU: A day after the Union Government issued guidelines to be followed during the extended lockdown and classified three districts in the state as Red Zones, the Karnataka Government has decided to appeal to the Centre to revise the zoning. At the same time, it has directed the district Deputy Commissioners to allow economic activities to restart outside containment areas.

Primary and Secondary Education Minister S Suresh Kumar said the State Government will write to the Centre seeking revision of the zoning as it feels that Bengaluru Rural, which has been classified as a Red Zone, deserves to be in the Green Zone while Mysuru, which is also in the Red Zone, can be in the Orange Zone.

More stringent restrictions have been put in place in the Red Zones to contain the spread of the coronavirus. While Bengaluru Rural had reported six positive cases, all have been discharged after treatment and there are no active cases in the district now. Mysuru district had reported 88 positive cases, but has a high recovery rate too.

The district now has 24 active cases as 64 of those who had tested positive have been discharged after treatment, Suresh Kumar pointed out. Revenue Minister R Ashoka too said they will appeal to the Union Government to drop Bengaluru Rural district from the list of COVID-19 Red Zones as there are no fresh cases of coronavirus infections there.

Presently, there are no cases of COVID-19 in Bengaluru Rural district, he said. Ashoka was part of a high-level meeting chaired by Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa on Saturday. The State Government is also keen to allow economic activities in Bengaluru Urban district, which is classified as a Red Zone. Bengaluru has a population of more than one crore, which equals many districts put together. Just because there are some cases, the whole of Bengaluru cannot be considered as a Red Zone. Instead, Bengaluru can be divided into five divisions and the area where the number of cases are more (10-km radius) be considered as a Red Zone, Ashoka told TNSE.

DCs instructed to allow economic activities

WE can take up economic activities at least in some parts of Bengaluru instead of shutting down the entire city. We have suggested this to the authorities and have told them to write to the Union Government, Minister R Ashoka said. Meanwhile, Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa, who held a video conference with Deputy Commissioners on Saturday, directed them to allow economic activities that are permitted by the Central Government outside the containment zones.

The staff of IT/BT firms, who are permitted, can work from offices while construction activities too will restart from Monday. There are around 70,000 migrant labourers who are employed in building construction at 414 locations in Bengaluru. Minister Suresh Kumar directed CREDAI to take up construction work from Monday.

With this, the real estate sector is expected to pick up pace. Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike Commissioner BH Anil Kumar told The New Sunday Express that all construction activities can start, provided there are men and material on site. Cement, steel, electric, sanitaryware, plumbing accessories shops, along with neighbourhood shops, are allowed to open. Grocery stores, chemist stores and bakeries are already functioning. However, he said markets and shopping malls cannot open.

BACK TO WORK FOR GOVT STAFF Karnataka Chief Secretary TM Vijaya Bhaskar on Saturday issued a circular which states that Group A, B, C and D grade employees in the departments which are providing essential services have to attend office. In other departments which come under non-essential services, 33 per cent staff can work on any given day. However, in the other districts, all the staff in all department have to work starting May 4
This is an opinion column.

Steve Marshall must be bored. This week, the Alabama Attorney General sent a letter to the city of Birmingham saying  something.

The something, exactly, isnt clear.

Recently, Birmingham enacted a new ordinance requiring protective face masks in public. And Marshall doesnt like it  for reasons that begin and end with a lot of phone calls he says hes getting about it.

So he wrote a letter to the manager  Mayor Randall Woodfin.

In his letter, Marshall didnt threaten to sue the city, as he has in the past over other things like Confederate monuments. He didnt tell Woodfin he was breaking the law. He didnt offer any substantive advice for what the city should do, just a lot about what it shouldnt.

Apparently, Marshall doesnt believe the City Hall and its legal department are capable of weighing the pros and cons of a city ordinance on its own.

Marshall takes the biggest issue with how severe the citys ordinance is, which carries a maximum $500 fine and 30 days in jail. But the city says those are maximum penalties, and municipal judges would have the discretion to decide whats most appropriate and proportionate.

And anyone with a lick of sense knows nobodys going to get locked up for walking bare-faced in the park.

Anybody but Marshall, it seems.

In his letter, Marshall tries to imagine a scenario that might be unconstitutional.

For example, if an individual were fined or arrested for not wearing a mask in an office building where he or she was working alone  which would appear to be a violation of an ordinance  the City would likely not be able to show that the required wearing of a mask in that context was sufficiently related to a valid public health purpose.

How does this scenario play out in real life, exactly? The hypothetical Marshall asks us to imagine is some poor clerical worker pulling a late-night shift, trying to catch up on a backlog of paperwork piled up during the pandemic  when BANG! The Birmingham SWAT team rappels through a skylight?

Show us your hands! Cover your face! Put your germs where we cant see them!

Marshall, as I mentioned, has a history with Birmingham and this isnt the first letter hes written. When Birmingham Mayor William Bell built a plywood wall around the Confederate monument in Linn Park, Marshall sued the city for breaking the states new monuments law, and he spent years fighting the city through the appellate courts.

The Alabama Supreme Court gave Marshall a victory of sorts. The state could fine the city $25,000 for breaking the monument law, the court said  and nothing else.

The plywood wall around the Confederate monument is still there.

But for Marshall, spending time and resources to move taxpayer dollars from the city to the state counts as a victory, I suppose.

In the aftermath of 9-11, the satirists at The Onion had to be funny again. They wrote a story of an American housewife who, desperately wanting to do something, baked an American flag cake because it was all she knew how to do. And thats what Marshall has become. With courts pretty much closed, he doesnt have much to occupy his time, and as a politician, he doesnt have many ways left to make himself seen.

So instead of doing something different and unexpected, he has fallen back on what he knows  bullying Birmingham and a mayor whos trying to keep his constituents healthy.

The point of Marshall's pushy letter is for all of us to see him writing a pushy letter.

According to the mayors office, reporters somehow got the letter before the city did.

I have just received your letter regarding the city of Birminghams ordinance requiring the use of face coverings in public places to protect the citizens of Birmingham, Woodfin wrote back. Since my office has already received calls from the press asking about it, I assume the letter has been widely distributed by you.

But if Marshall is that hard up, if hes pacing the floors of his home looking for something to occupy his time, surely theres a more productive outlet for his energy.

Perhaps he can learn to bake.

Kyle Whitmire is the state political columnist for the Alabama Media Group.

You can follow his work on his Facebook page, The War on Dumb. And on Twitter. And on Instagram.

More columns by Kyle Whitmire

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HOLLAND, MI -- Two people were seriously injured Sunday afternoon when a vehicle struck their motorcycle.

The driver of the vehicle told police he didnt see the motorcycle before he pulled out in front of the pair riding the motorcycle, according to the Ottawa County Sheriffs Office.

Those injured are a 41-year-old man and 42-year-old woman both from the Coopersville area.

The crash was reported around 1:30 p.m. Sunday, May 3, at the intersection of 120th Avenue and James Street in Holland Township, the sheriffs office reports.

Around that time, a 38-year-old Zeeland man was traveling south on 120th Avenue in his Jeep Grand Cherokee when he attempted to turn left onto eastbound James Street.

As he attempted the turn, the Jeep collided with a Harley Davidson motorcycle headed northbound on James Street. Deputies say the Harley had a green traffic signal at the intersection when the crash occurred.

The impact of the crash propelled the motorcycle into a third vehicle, which was stopped in the left turn lane of southbound 120th Avenue.

The Zeeland man told deputies that he didnt see the motorcycle before turning left.

Neither he nor the driver of the third vehicle were injured.

The pair on the motorcycle suffered serious injuries and were transported to an area hospital. Both of them were wearing helmets.

Read more:

Kent County records 89 more coronavirus cases, 3 deaths

Two men who stole lawn and fishing equipment caught hiding in lake, police say

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Chinese pastor who refused to join communist controlled church arrested for 'subversion'

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A house church pastor in Chinas Hunan province has been arrested for inciting subversion of state power after he refused to join the ruling Chinese Communist Party's Three-Self Patriotic Association.

Radio Free Asia reports that pastor Zhao Huaiguo, the founder of Bethel Church, was arrested on April 2 in Chinas Hunan province, after being criminally detained since March 14 for inciting subversion of state power. His whereabouts are unknown.

His wife, Zhang Xinghong, told the outlet that after her husband was criminally detained, the state security personnel told her that the reason for his arrest was due to his re-posting of messages about the coronavirus pandemic.

Authorities accused him of using VPN software to avoid the Great Firewall and sharing political content, including what happened in Wuhan, the epicenter of the disease.

Zhang told RFA that before her husband was arrested, he was asked multiple times to join the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, the association that oversees Protestant Christianity in China, which he refused to do.

A day after his arrest, six police officers went to Bethel Church where they confiscated 480 books, including study tools, handouts, and copies of biblical materials, claiming the materials were illegal and without publication permission.

Zhang told China Aid, Recently, the state security personnel have visited me multiple times, asking me to authorize a local lawyer in Zhangjiajie to handle Zhao Huaiguos case. I was also asked to sign a statement, promising that I would not reveal the progress about his case to any reporter, nor publish his criminal detention notice and arrest warrant.

Feeling frustrated, she added, Last Friday, [] I was about to hire a good lawyer, but the state security told me that Zhao has already authorized a lawyer [to represent him]. I was very unhappy. I told them, If you knew that his family was going to hire a lawyer, why did you ask him to hire one? I told them I would not accept the lawyer hired by him, including local lawyer from Zhangjiajie.

Zhao Huaiguo founded Bethel Church in Cili, near the city of Zhangjiajie (Hunan) in 2007. Last year, the church was banned, with the government saying Zhao illegally preached and distributed Christian pamphlets.

From March to December of last year, the public security police repeatedly harassed the church, taking its preachers in for questioning and forcing them to sign an agreement that they would not preach or hold any more religious activities.



[Zhao] was accused of proselytizing and distributing Gospel tracts, which were considered illegal acts. After the Lunar New Year last year, the religious bureau forced the church to disperse, to which it refused. The official ban arrived last April, a local Christian previously told China Aid.

International Christian Concern notes that the Chinese government often pressures prisoners of conscience to use state-appointed or recommended lawyers as an incentive for reduction of sentences. However, many have refused, fearing that these lawyers serve only the states interest.

Open Doors USAs World Watch List ranks China as one of the worst countries in the world when it comes to the persecution of Christians. The organization notes that all churches are perceived as a threat if they become too large, too political or invite foreign guests.

In the past year, Chinese authorities have shut down a number of well-known churches, including Rongguili Church in Guangzhou, Xunsiding Church in Xiamen, and the 5,000-member Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu, China.

China has also been labeled by the U.S. State Department as a country of particular concern for continuing to engage in particularly severe violations of religious freedom.

In its annual report released Tuesday, the United States Commission for International Religious Freedom called the country the worlds foremost violator of human rights and religious freedom. The report cited the Chinese governments harassment of human rights advocates outside its border as well as the CCPs continued persecution of Christians, Muslim-majority Uighurs, and other ethnic minorities.

[China] cannot be compared to any other country in the world not only because of its inexcusable actions, but because of the way it aids and abets similar actions by other countries all around the world, said commissioner Johnnie Moore.

Meanwhile, the international order, in pursuit of self-interest, continues to let China play by its own rules, and especially at the United Nations. This is absolutely inexcusable, and those nations around the world who ignore Chinas malevolence may eventually find themselves subservient to it. It is past time for our world bodies, and our liberal democracies, to demand more from China.

In a statement, Arielle Del Turco, Family Research Councils assistant director of the Center for Religious Liberty, said: "USCIRF's report confirms what we already knowthat religious freedom in China is rapidly deteriorating. China uses all manner of new technology to control and suppress religious practice. As technology develops, so do China's human rights violations.
Rohingya refugees are seen on a boat near the coast of Bangladesh, May 2, 2020.

Bangladesh has taken a small group of Rohingya to an uninhabited island in the Bay of Bengal it had controversially developed for refugees, citing fears of COVID-19 contagion, officials said Sunday.

The refugees are likely from smuggling trawlers stranded at sea after Malaysia and Bangladesh refused to allow them to land, and which are now anchored off Myanmar, they said.

Suddenly, the day before yesterday, some Rohingyas arrived in Teknaf aboard a dinghy. Some escaped, and the coast guard escorted the rest to Bhashan Char on Saturday night. They will be quarantined there, Foreign Minister A.K. Abdul Momen told BenarNews on Sunday. Teknaf is the southernmost district in Bangladesh, bordering Myanmar.

We sent them to Bhasan Char to keep them isolated from people in the Rohingya camps in Cox's Bazar, Momen said. Who knows whether they are infected with coronavirus or not?

Momen declined to give the number of refugees taken to Bhasan Char, but a coast guard official, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media, told BenarNews there were 29: five children, 19 women and five men.

"Most likely they will stay there until they return to Myanmar," AFP quoted Momen as saying.

It was the first time that Rohingya refugees have been taken to the flood-prone island, located hours from the mainland. Human rights groups oppose Dhakas plan to relocate refugees there, as the island is vulnerable to cyclones, and aid officials say it would be costly to provide services there.

Food, doctors and a team of 10 policemen were sent to the island to take care of the refugees, Tonmoy Das, the chief local government official in Noakhali district, told the Associated Press.

Tonmoy said the group was believed to be from one of several trawlers stuck at sea after both Bangladesh and Malaysia blocked them from landing.

Rohingya boats anchored off Myanmar, FM says

In mid-April, hundreds of starving Rohingya men, women and children were brought ashore in Bangladesh after a nearly two-month failed journey to Malaysia during which dozens died and were thrown overboard, officials and survivors said. Malaysia, which has sealed its borders to foreigners due to COVID-19, did not allow the boat to land, according to Rohingya survivors.

Momen subsequently announced that the government would not allow hundreds more Rohingya stranded at the sea in two trawlers off its southeastern coast to come ashore, causing human rights advocates to warn of a looming tragedy aboard the boats.

On Sunday, Momen told BenarNews that the trawlers had dropped anchor in Myanmars waters.

Myanmar considers the Rohingya illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and denies them citizenship although many of their families have been in that country for generations. They also do not get access to basic services, such as education and health care.

More than one million Rohingya are taking shelter in Bangladesh. About 740,000 of them fled their homes in Myanmars Rakhine state, beginning in August 2017, after Naypyidaws military launched a brutal crackdown in response to deadly attacks by an insurgent group on government security posts. Other refugees had crossed in recent years to flee cycles of violence in Rakhine.

So far, no Rohingya has tested positive in refugee camps, according to health authorities. Bangladesh reported 665 new COVID-19 infections and two fatalities on Sunday, taking its cumulative cases to 9,455 with 177 deaths.

Bangladesh had developed housing and other infrastructure to accommodate thousands of refugees on Bhashan Char, saying it would ease chronic overcrowding in its main camps at Coxs Bazar district, but rights groups had questioned the viability of the location.

Human rights investigator Yanghee Lee, who stepped down late last month as the U.N.'s special rapporteur on Myanmar, had raised questions on the islands habitability.

There are a number of things that remain unknown to me even following my visit, chief among them being whether the island is truly habitable, she told reporters after visiting the island in January last year.

In February, state minister for disaster management Enamur Rahman told BenarNews the country had decided to hold off on its plan to relocate 100,000 Rohingya to Bhashan Char.

We have not received support from U.N. agencies and the international community, he said at the time.

Tareq Shamsur Rahman, an international relations professor at Jahangirnagar University in Dhaka, applauded the governments decision to send the Rohingya to Bhasan Char, amid the threat of coronavirus ravaging the camps.

It's a wise decision. There is no alternative to gradually rehabilitating them in Bhasan Char, Rahman told BenarNews, as he warned that the government must stay alert to stem transmissions of the coronavirus in the crowded refugee camps. Otherwise, Bangladesh can't bear the burden.
The state-run Sassoon General



Hospital in Maharashtra's Pune city has received the Indian Council of Medical Research's nod to apply plasma therapy on critical COVID-19 patients here, a senior health official said on Sunday.

Technically called "convalescent-plasma therapy", the treatment aims at using the immune power gained by a recovered person to treat a sick person.

As part of the therapy, antibodies from a recovered patient are harvested and ingested into a sick person to help the latter's immune system mount a fight against the pathogen.

"We have received necessary permission from the ICMR for plasma therapy and in the next two to three days, we will take further steps. A probable list of 35 donors has been prepared and they will be contacted," Dr Subhash Salunkhe, chairperson of Communicable Diseases Prevention and Control Technical Committee said.

"These are people who have definitely developed antibodies. Let's see how many are willing to donate plasma. Repeat tests will be conducted on all the donors before the procedure," he added.

The ICMR has already clarified that the therapy is not a "therapeutic drug of choice", Salunkhe said, adding that "we are using the therapy as a last resort to revive a serious or critical patient".

A recovered patient said he was ready to donate plasma provided the necessary logistics are taken care of by the hospital authorities.

A Pune-based firm, ABIL, had recently donated Rs 28 lakh to Sassoon Hospital to buy equipment required to extract plasma from the blood of a recovered patient.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Rural Ireland is likely to be disproportionately affected by the impact of Covid-19 and an ambitious and coordinated tourism plan from public and private stakeholders should be considered to prevent the industry from faltering, according to a new report by consulting and professional services firm, EY Ireland.

Pre-crisis, the accommodation and food sectors accounted for 179,200 jobs in the Republic of Ireland. Today almost 12 percent of those workers are availing of the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme. Tourism was one of the first sectors hit by Covid-19 and is likely to be the last one to recover.

An estimated 10 percent of jobs in Laois are directly dependent on the tourism and hospitality sector, 9 percent of jobs in neighbouring Offaly depend on the sector. This compares with 10 percent in the capital and 10 percent in Cork, with many more supported through the supply chains and associated wages.

As a result, these rural regions are markedly less resilient than others to Covid-19 shocks and will be directly impacted, with fewer alternative sectors that could compensate for job losses.

The development of Irish Tourism is at the heart of the Project Ireland 2040 aspirations to build a more sustainable and resilient economic model, less dependent on Dublin, with a higher focus on indigenous rather than multinational business. It is also an industry that provides joy and inspiration, that helps to energise us and it acts as a gateway for people to experience our society and all it has to offer.

Given COVID-19s scale and impact on global travel, just before the peak tourism season, current forecasts estimate the effects will be felt globally for more than two years, although this could vary from one country to another.

Simon MacAllister, Valuation, Modelling and Economics Partner, EY Ireland commented:

Between 2009 and 2019 there was a 56 percent rise in overseas trips to Ireland by non-residents, but we have seen a near overnight reversal of this as a result of COVID-19. Tourist behaviour will undoubtedly be impacted in the long-term by this pandemic, for geopolitical, economic and possibly psychological reasons.

While intra-EU bookings can be made on a last-minute basis, this approach is unlikely for American tourists, who represent over a quarter of overseas visitors to Ireland every year. The loss of this lucrative market is a concern, given their typically higher daily spend and length of stay versus tourists from other countries.

In the short term, the report recommends implementing a rapid and sustainable financial support package, tailored to the needs of each tourism sub-sector, alongside strategic operational supports. Firms within the sector will also need to adapt their business plans to respond to fast-evolving government restrictions and to target new, local markets.

These measures should be followed by a forward-looking plan. This should aim to build resilience and to capitalise on opportunities in new travel trends that may exist post-crisis such a greater desire to take holidays in un-crowded, rural locations.

As a destination, Ireland has consistently punched above its weight for the last decade and a coherent and consistent Team Ireland approach to promoting our attractiveness at home and overseas will be vital for recovery.

Yannick Cabrol, Economic Strategy Manager, EY Ireland, said:

After the immediate health concerns are addressed, people will have less disposable income due to the economic impact of the pandemic. They are also likely to have a reduced willingness to travel far from home. Our view that the grass is always greener elsewhere and that extensive international travel is essential to human happiness is being challenged.

While we must continue the longstanding Irish tradition of welcoming overseas visitors with our famous hospitality, many of us are turning our thoughts to how we can enjoy our national heritage and natural beauty more. Growing domestic and sustainable tourism will be essential elements of the recovery.
Princes William and Harry are set to be 'very upset and angry' over a controversial new documentary which will claim that Princess Diana tried to kill herself four times.

According to The Sun, a four-part series provisionally called 'Being Me: Diana' will delve into the mental torment the late royal suffered - from battling eating disorders to her unhappy marriage to Prince Charles and painful childhood.

It will use unseen footage from Diana's speeches filmed before the Princess of Wales' death in 1997, as well as interviews with people who were close to her to shed light on her inner turmoil shortly before her split from Charles in 1992.

The series is being made by TV company DSP, which was behind 127 Hours and ITV's Torvill And Dean. The project is planned for Netflix but has not yet been commissioned.

It's set to be particularly upsetting for Harry, who worked with the streaming service on a Thomas The Tank Engine 75th anniversary special after he and Meghan Markle stepped down as senior royals earlier this year.

Princes William and Harry are set to be 'very upset and angry' over a controversial new documentary which will claim that Princess Diana tried to kill herself four times. Diana is pictured with Prince Charles on the announcement of their engagement in 1981

Princes William and Harry 'will be very upset and angry' about the series, a TV source has claimed. The brothers are pictured with Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle in 2018

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are also believed to be in talks with Netflix about other future projects.

A TV source told the publication that The Firm will refuse to take part in the documentary series, as will the Spencer family.

'William and Harry will be very upset and angry', they added. 'It's particularly distressing for Harry because he's been working with Netflix.

'At a time when the royals have been dealt a blow with Harry and Meghan leaving, the timing is not good.'

The series provisionally titled 'Being Me: Diana' will delve into the mental torment the late royal suffered - from battling eating disorders to her unhappy marriage to Prince Charles and painful childhood. She is pictured in 1987

A spokeswoman for Endemol Shine, the parent company for DSP, told The Sun: 'This is a not a commissioned show and everything within the treatment is already in the public domain.'

Charles and Diana tied the knot at St Paul's Cathedral in front of 2,000 people on July 29, 1981.

In 1992, Prime Minster John Major announced the couple were to separate, but continue living together at Kensington Palace.

They divorced in 1996 and a year later Diana died in a car crash in Paris. In 2005 Prince Charles married Camilla Parker Bowles at Windsor Guildhall.

Charles and Diana tied the knot at St Paul's Cathedral in front of 2,000 people on July 29, 1981

In video footage released late last month, the Duke of Sussex introduced a new program for Netflix called 'Thomas and Friends: The Royal Engine', which features his father and grandmother, Prince Charles and the Queen, as animated characters.

A Buckingham Palace spokeswoman confirmed the project had been in the pipeline for a 'long time' and added that 'everybody was aware' of it before it aired, including the Queen.

The episode was recorded before Harry and wife Meghan quit as senior royals and moved to America.

Proceeds from the anniversary edition, which aired in the US one day before the UK, are being donated to environment and sustainability projects under Harry's Travalyst project.

Prince Harry during the recording of his introduction to the new animated special 'Thomas & Friends: The Royal Engine'

In his introduction, Prince Harry is seen sitting in an armchair, reading from a book about the train's adventures.

The 35-year-old, who is now living in Los Angeles, said: 'Thomas the Tank Engine has been a comforting, familiar face to so many families over the last 75 years - entertaining, educating and inspiring children on important issues through exciting stories and characters.

'I certainly have fond memories of growing up with Thomas & Friends and being transported to new places through his adventures.

'I am very proud to have been asked to take part in this special episode. I wish Thomas and Friends a very happy anniversary.'

Meghan has carried out similar work in the wake of seeking financial independence and moving to the US, narrating the Disney+ documentary Elephant which started streaming on April 3, three days after she and Harry officially quit royal life. She too donated proceeds from the project to charity.
A regular meeting on anti-crisis measures aimed at neutralizing the effects of coronavirus was held today led by Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan in the government, government's press service reported.

The promotion of high technology and steps to stimulate the development of information technology in the long term were on the agenda.

Minister of High-Tech Industry Hakob Arshakyan presented the results of a study done to assess the impact of coronavirus on the normal course of work of IT organizations, and options for solving problems.

An exchange of views took place in this regard, during which the participants touched upon support mechanisms and the use of tools with development logic, the introduction of strategic long-term mechanisms, and other issues. A number of observations and suggestions were presented.

The PM noted that the stimulation of the technology sector by state support tools is important not only from the point of view of solving the problems caused by the current situation but also in the context of promoting the technological priorities of Armenia.

He instructed to develop a support plan based on the discussion, as well as proposals on long-term development mechanisms.
Washington: US officials believe China covered up the extent of the coronavirus outbreak - and how contagious the disease is - to stock up on medical supplies needed to respond to it, intelligence documents show.

Pictures from the WeChat account of Chinese state-owned property developer Poly Australia, which sent medical supplies to China in January and February this year.

Chinese leaders "intentionally concealed the severity" of the pandemic from the world in early January, according to a four-page Department of Homeland Security report dated May 1 and obtained by The Associated Press.

The revelation comes as the Trump administration has intensified its criticism of China, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo saying on Sunday that China was responsible for the spread of disease and must be held accountable.

The sharper rhetoric against China coincides with administration critics saying the government's response to the virus was inadequate and slow.
Mulayam Singh Yadav was among the first to get off the special train as it arrived at platform number 1 of the Lucknow railway station, where health officials, policemen and photographers waited for them.

The 02121 Shramik Special carried over 800 others from Maharashtra's Nashik, all stranded there for weeks after a lockdown to fight coronavirus was imposed nationwide.

While Uttar Pradesh has already brought in several bus-loads of workers back to the home state, Yadav's group is the first batch to be brought home to the state by train.

Thirty-two buses waited outside the station to take the labourers to their onward journey to different districts.

Eager to reunite with his family in Janunpur's Machlishahr, Yadav said, "It is a matter of barely a few hours."



Yadav, in his mid twenties, had boarded the train in Nashik on Saturday morning. It reached Lucknow at around 5.52 am on Sunday.

The railways had said it will start "Shramik Special" trains to move migrant workers, pilgrims, tourists, students and other persons stranded in various parts of the country due to the lockdown.

At around 5.34 am, the first announcement of the arrival of 02121 Shramik Special from Nashik on Platform number 1 was made.

Railway, health and police officials stood alert. The ticket examiners were deployed on the platform to ensure that the arriving passengers adhere to the norms of social distancing.

As the train made its halt, the enthusiastic passengers waved at policemen and health officials.

A senior railway official said two exit routes were planned for the passengers.

The passengers were allowed to leave the station premises only after their medical check-up was done.

Thereafter, they were given food packets and boarded to the UPSRTC buses that would take them to their respective districts.

Arun Chauhan, who worked as a driver is Nashik and hails from Azamgarh, was thankful for the arrangements made by the government to facilitate the return of migrant workers to their native places.

He, along with his friends Rajesh Kumar, Om Prakash and Neeraj Kumar, boarded the Azamgarh-bound bus and waved at the policemen and other officials as his onward journey to home began.

Surya Jaikumar from Sonbhadra said, "We faced no problem of food and water during our journey. Now, I am looking forward to return back to my village."



Mohammed Arif, who hails from Shamli, too was happy to return home.

"I worked as a welder. Once lockdown is lifted and travel permission is allowed, I may think of going back. However, till the time lockdown is in place, I will stay in my home," he said.

Pramod, who worked as a daily wage labourer and hails from Maharajganj, was tying his jute bag and covering his face with a green-coloured towel as he was readying himself to board the bus for home.

The Uttar Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation had deployed 32 buses outside the railway station to take the migrant workers home, Regional Manager of UPSRTC's Lucknow depot P K Bose said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The ruling All Progressive Congress(APC) has lauded former vice president Atiku Abubakar over his advise to the President Muhammadu Buhari for the diversification of the nations economy amid dwindling price of crude oil at international market.

However, in a statement on the official Twitter handle of the Party, the ruling party expressed surprise that the former vice president failed to notice the effort of the current administration in diversifying the economy in the last five years which has been yielding positive gains.

The All Progressives Congress (APC) welcomes the opinion of the former Vice President, @atiku and expresses our sincere thanks for the suggestions he made to the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration on the need to diversify Nigerias economy.

However, we are a bit surprised that the former Vice President failed to acknowledge the bold efforts this administration has made in the last five years towards diversification of the economy and the many positive gains our country has recorded. Perhaps, it was an oversight.

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Or, could it be too inconvenient a truth to admit?

Read Also: Prepare For Aftermath Of Pandemic, APC Tells Nigerian Workers

While we appreciate that Atiku Abubakar is keying into this administrations policy direction regarding diversification, we are only worried that it took him 13 years after leaving office to realise that the Government

 under which he served as the Vice President was short-sighted for its failure to faithfully diversify the Nigerian economy.

Not to be confused, @atiku had eight years as a powerful Vice President and Chairman of the National Council on Privatisation with

 vantage opportunity to lead the country away from its dependence on oil. How Nigeria got worse even when international oil prices were stable and high are matters @atiku may still need to address in future.

The All Progressives Congress (APC) welcomes the opinion of the former Vice President, @atiku and expresses our sincere thanks for the suggestions he made to the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration on the need to diversify Nigeria's economy.  APC Nigeria (@OfficialAPCNg) May 2, 2020

However, we are a bit surprised that the former Vice President failed to acknowledge the bold efforts this administration has made in the last five years towards diversification of the economy and the many positive gains our country has recorded. Perhaps, it was an oversight.  APC Nigeria (@OfficialAPCNg) May 2, 2020

Or, could it be too inconvenient a truth to admit? While we appreciate that Atiku Abubakar is keying into this administrations policy direction regarding diversification, we are only worried that it took him 13 years after leaving office to realise that the Government  APC Nigeria (@OfficialAPCNg) May 2, 2020
Every day, week, and month there is a startup or business venture coming out of Africa. Within the many enterprises, there are some worth highlighting and shedding light on during COVID-19.

The following are five of them that were written and spoken about highly from start of corona-virus epidemic till current pandemic.

Enjoy African progressive development, progressive innovations, and progressive solutions at their finest!

MDaaS is a tech startup that provides convenient, high-quality, and affordable healthcare. They currently operate in Nigeria. MDaaS recently created a website to offer needed resources for the COVID-19 period. The startup is helping health organizations and Nigerian government to create mass testing centers.

These mass testing centers include drive-through testing sites and booth testing sites. This will help attend to high volume of patients for COVID-19 samples and send to a centralized laboratory for processing.

Gradely is a personalized learning platform for educators and parents to make a difference in their childs learning outcomes and produce more globally competitive learners. They currently operate in Nigeria. Gradely recently extended its tech expertise to the education system, to help students and teachers currently stuck at home continue their education during the COVID-19 lockdown.

The Ed-tech startup is using its AI-driven educational tool to assist students further their education and not experience disruption to their learning. This will be highly essential as schools begin to adopt home-schooling due to the pandemic.

54gene is genomics research, services and development company addressing the need to include under-represented African genomic data in research. They currently operate in Nigeria. 54gene recently piloted its first COVID-19 mobile laboratory, which aims to expand testing across the country.

Their mobile lab removes the restriction imposed by permanent buildings and allows them to quickly offer services to multiple states due to the ease of transport and the mobile capability it provides. They have also helped build capacity by equipping molecular scientists with the necessary skill set required to handle the instruments in the mobile lab as they would in regular molecular testing laboratories.

Ultra Red Technologies is a Product Design and Prototyping firm that does 3D printing. They currently operate in Kenya. Ultra Red recently printed plastic face shields to fill a gap within COVID-19.

They have also designed a 3D printed prototype for a ventilator adaptor that could allow doctors to treat two or more patients at once if necessary. Also, Ultra Red is working with an established medical equipment distributor to administer testing on sets of artificial lungs.

aSurveyor is a digital fruit surveyor. They currently operate in South Africa. a Surveyor recently launched a mobile app, Ukweli, to help exporters or Agri-traders to account for food waste that occurs in the process of transporting crops from farm to final consumer.

They seek to create trust and transparency amongst farmers, customers, insurers and transporters through the mobile app. Thus, the Ukweli app will make collated data available to stakeholders who could help mitigate food loss and waste. Ultimately, a Surveyor would be using their app to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of hunger eradication, especially during COVID-19.

Well, those were some of the African innovations for COVID-19 thus far!
A sign hangs outside of Bolinas, Calif., warning visitors to stay away. (Maura Dolan / Los Angeles Times)

When the coronavirus outbreak appeared likely to rage through the Bay Area weeks ago, residents of this hermit-like beach community tried to protect themselves by doing what they do best  keeping out strangers.

Despite a regional stay-home order, outsiders were inundating Bolinas, which sits just south of Point Reyes National Seashore in west Marin County. Yelling matches ensued. Residents posted themselves at the entrance to town and shouted at drivers, "Go home!"

Under a homemade "Bernie 2020" sign painted in red, residents hung two others: "Bolinas closed to visitors for duration of pandemic. Residents, deliveries only."

Jyri Engestrom, 42, a venture capitalist who owns a home here, worried that the pandemic would rage through town, which has about 1,600 residents, many of them seniors. Some residents had symptoms but could not get tested.

"I was getting scared because frankly this is a town of aging hippies whose idea of social distancing is not to hug each other as much," he said.

Working with volunteer and nonprofit groups, Engestrom organized a testing project for all willing residents, Bolinas employees and front-line workers. On Friday, UC San Francisco, which processed the samples, announced the results of 1,845 nasal and oral swab tests. No one was infected.

A lone beachgoer walks near the waves in Bolinas, Calif. (Maura Dolan / Los Angeles Times)

Surrounded by the sea on three sides and reachable from San Francisco by a long, windy, cliff-edged, two-lane road, this hamlet is best known for its disdain of development and outsiders. Bolinas leaders limited water hookups decades ago to keep the community small and tore down traffic signs that pointed the way to town.

Still, high-tech entrepreneurs managed to purchase homes, and property values and rents skyrocketed. The entrepreneurs ingratiated themselves, donating money for local causes, including a park. Residents said they have also helped pay for free meals and masks during the pandemic. The town has come to appreciate the beneficence.

Story continues

"They don't understand the town," said Bolinas resident Rudy, 69, chatting with another man on a street overlooking a lagoon. "But they are exceedingly generous."

Rudy declined to give his last name. "Bolinas is a secretive place, you know," he said.

A city sign in front of a trail leading to the water reads: "All non-residents may be subject to fines. Shelter at home."

A sign warns outsiders to stay away in Bolinas, Calif. (Maura Dolan / Los Angeles Times)

Engestrom said the mass testing a week ago proved surprisingly easy. Even though hospitals were short of the components needed for tests, the organizers improvised and used what was plentiful. They are planning to publish a blueprint for other communities that want to follow their example.

He and Cyrus Harmon, 49, who founded a pharmaceutical startup and moved to Bolinas 10 years ago, got the idea for community-wide testing after reading about the northern Italian town of Vo. It tested nearly all its 3,000 residents at the height of the coronavirus outbreak. The two men said they wanted to give something back to the town.

Mark Pincus, who founded online game maker Zynga and also owns a home in Bolinas, donated the first $100,000.

Volunteers flocked to help. "It is not about tech executives doing this," Harmon said. "It is about the community coming together and doing it."

Engestrom knows the optics of rich people being tested while poor people go without are disturbing, but he said most residents in Bolinas live modestly.

The median household income is about $58,000 and the median age is 62.5. More than 16% of the residents, mostly 65 and older, live below the poverty line, according to census data.

"I am definitely an outsider because I am part of the problem," said Engestrom, who bought a home here in 2014 . "We are jacking up the housing prices by coming here from San Francisco. I feel that."

He and other organizers of the testing project, working with infectious disease experts at UC San Francisco, had to scavenge for supplies. The long swabs typically used for testing were unavailable, but shorter swabs that experts said would suffice were plentiful.

For protective gear for testers, the organizers scoured hardware stores for painter suits, also approved by scientists. A call on social media for the face shields produced so many that Engestrom has a storage-room full that he can't give away. Volunteers went online to hire phlebotomists  certified testers  to take the samples, obtained gloves from restaurant suppliers and masks from friends who bought them from China.

A volunteer team of Airbnb engineers built the platform residents used to schedule appointments for the tests, and a GoFundMe page brought in donations, most under $1,000. Eventually, about $360,000 was raised. The biggest payment went to UCSF, which subsidized the project.

In addition to sampling residents for the virus, the town also tested them for antibodies. UCSF has started a companion study to test residents of San Francisco's highly dense Mission District, where infections have spread.

The Bolinas organizers purchased wedding tents for the testing and set them up in the parking lot of a town park. Tests were done over four days.

Among the few who declined was Bruce Dark, 67. He has lived in Bolinas for 32 years.

Bruce Dark, a Bolinas resident, calls the pandemic "mass hysteria" but still wears a mask. (Maura Dolan / Los Angeles Times)

"It is mass hysteria," he said. "I have talked to 15 people, and no one knows anyone who has died."

Dark was huddled with two other men in the city's tiny downtown, which includes gas pumps where regular grade last week was selling for $5.99 a gallon, a bar, a grocery store, a surf shop, a cafe and a hardware store. The main street dead ends at the beach.

One of Dark's friends declined to be interviewed. "Go back to Los Angeles," he shouted.

Dark, though, was congenial. He wore a blue head covering and a print cloth mask, which he regularly lowered and raised. As he inched closer to a masked reporter to better hear, he said, "Don't worry. You won't get sick."

During the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, some communities walled themselves off from others and managed to escape the disease, said Dr. Robert Benjamin, a longtime Bay Area public health officer. He questioned whether that was possible today.

The value of the Bolinas testing was "purely surveillance information," he said, and could be used to determine when places should reopen.

"It is a snapshot," he said. "It says nothing about tomorrow." As long as the town didn't use testing supplies that were more urgently needed by others, he saw no problem with it.

Engestrom said he knows the town "dodged a bullet this time." The mood now is one of relief.

Engestrom, a native of Finland, said he fell in love with Bolinas years ago. He said it reminds him of a small Italian or Spanish town where elders take the time to meet and chat on the streets.

The residents' animosity toward outsiders might seem "obnoxious," he said, but the old timers "are defending their right to exist without having the means to do so anymore."

"I feel like they are fighting a losing battle," he said. "The power of capital is just so overwhelming."
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Saturday and Sunday brought warmer temperatures after a week full of rain, but Notify NYC is warning people, boaters in particular, not to be fooled because the water is still cold enough to cause problems.

Water temperatures are still 45 to 55 degrees, and cold enough to be life-threatening, a Notify NYC warning said.

Dress for the water temperature, not the air temperature, and always wear a life jacket, it said.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced on April 18 that he -- along with Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey and Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont  would be lifting the closure of boatyards, marinas, and marina manufacturers so long as they follow strict social distancing and sanitation protocols.

Chartered watercraft services and rentals are still not permitted.

Cuomo said he and the other governors have been working together to create a uniform regional approach so that people do not state shop at neighboring marinas.

Therefore, the three states have reopened at the same time.

According to the National Weather Service, Sunday will be mostly sunny with a high near 75 degrees.

Theres a 30% chance of rain as Sunday winds down, between 9 p.m. and 2 a.m.

Monday is predicted to be mostly sunny as well, with a high temperature near 62 degrees and a light breeze that will increase in the afternoon.

FOLLOW KRISTIN F. DALTON ON TWITTER.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: Industry body Ficci has suggested various measures like infrastructure status to the steel industry, zero duty on critical raw materials, and another three-month moratorium to revive the sector, which has been impacted by the lockdown.

COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent nationwide lockdown have affected the demand and production of steel, as well as resulted in the rise of inventory levels, it said, adding the policy interventions would help the industry to revive and help generate employment opportunities.

In its suggestions to the government, Ficci said: "It recommends for an extension of additional three months moratorium granted on payment of interest and repayment of loans without any penal interest and interest free financing/at nominal rates for MSMEs in the sector to revive".

Granting infrastructure status to the steel industry, it said, will give access to finance at competitive rates from various markets and sources.

Besides, the entire supply chain of the sector should be incorporated into essential services, and be allowed to operate with precautionary measures as per the guidelines of the government.

The industry body also suggested zero import duty on critical raw materials for steel making.

The move will help players to reduce input cost and sustain in the market.

Fast tracking operationalisation of all steel consuming industries should be accorded the highest priority, the body said, adding new areas of applications for steel products like in furniture, setting railway infrastructure etc must be explored to further enhance the demand.

"To further reduce financial burden on the sector, Ficci recommends for deferment of royalty, DMF (District Mineral Fund) and NMET (National Mineral Exploration Trust) by 6 months till the economic situation stabilises and subsuming of all levies like royalty, DMF, NMET etc. into one tax like GST," the industry body said.

Other suggestions included to subsidise railway freight by additional 15 per cent for next six months, waiving off charges like container detention and demurrage charges, ground rent by custodians till end of May 2020 to reduce the financial burden on the industry, priority in rake allocation for transportation of raw material and steel products for next 6 months.

It also said that all statutory clearances like mineral license, environment clearance, and consent to operate etc, that are pending for renewals, should be deemed granted for at least one year, in view of the nationwide lockdown.

It has requested the government to facilitate the movement of migrant workers from their native places to plants by providing special sanitised wagons and financial support to the workers for commuting.

The body also raised concerns that India could see a surge in imports post lockdown as many countries would try to dump in their products into local market.
All India Institute Of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) doctors on Saturday showered flower petals on police officials, to show their gratitude towards Delhi Police for their work in enforcing lockdown guidelines in the national capital.

The doctors were seen chanting Jai Hind while showering petals on Delhi Police officials.

As the threat of deadly coronavirus looms large, the police officials across the country are coming up with several awareness campaigns and unique attempts to create awareness among the public about the lockdown norms and restrictions.

A video of the event was also shared on Twitter by ANI:

#WATCH Delhi: AIIMS (All India Institute Of Medical Sciences) doctors shower flower petals on police officials, to show their gratitude towards Delhi Police, amid #COVID19 lockdown. pic.twitter.com/ZU34egil2o  ANI (@ANI) May 2, 2020

On March 24, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced a 21-day lockdown as a precautionary measure to contain the spread of COVID-19. The lockdown was later extended till May 3.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Friday issued an order to extend the ongoing lockdown by two more weeks from May 4 and also allowed the movement of migrant workers, tourists, students and other persons stranded at different places, by special trains.

Also Read |
A total of 391 Walmart employees that were tested for COVID-19 on Thursday, 81 have been reported to be positive for the virus.

Officials have reported a total of 2,297 confirmed positive cases of coronavirus in Worcester City. This is an increase of 109 cases from Friday.

On Thursday, 391 employees at the Walmart on Tobias Boland Way were tested and the store was closed as a result of the outbreak.

Dr. Eric Dickson, the CEO of UMass Memorial Health Care, said the testing at Walmart is a great opportunity to examine the prevalence of disease within a group. Its also a chance to test asymptomatic people, something that has not typically been possible.

The store has undergone a professional, deep cleaning, officials said. All employees must be tested before they return to work, per the citys order.

As for towns around Worcester, there are 179 cases in Shrewsbury, 56 in Holden, 56 in Grafton and 97 in Leicester. There is no new data from Millbury but as of Friday, there were 150 cases.

Since April 1, Worcester has seen an increase of 2,183 new cases which averages 68 new cases per day.

The combined medical facilities of Saint Vincent Hospital and UMass Memorial Health Care had 280 total COVID-positive in-patients and 105 total COVID-positive ICU patients. To date, their facilities have had 114 total COVID-related deaths. A total of 183 of their employees have tested positive for the virus.

The homeless shelter at the DCU Center has 19 positive clients and the field hospital site at the DCU Center has 21 patients that are not classified as homeless.

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Srinagar: An Army Colonel and a Major were among five security personnel killed in an encounter with terrorists at a village in north Kashmir's Handwara area, Director General of Police Dilbagh Singh said on Sunday.

"Sad to inform that five brave personnel including Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, Major Anuj Sood and sub-inspector of JKP Shakeel Qazi were martyred in the line of duty," Singh told PTI.

He said the Colonel and his team bravely rescued civilians held hostage by the terrorists. The two terrorists were killed in the encounter.

Giving details, the Army said based on the intelligence input that terrorists were taking hostage some civilians in a house in Changimulla at Handwara of Kupwara district, a joint operation was launched by the Army and the Jammu and Kashmir Police.

A team comprising of five Army and police personnel entered the target area occupied by the terrorists to evacuate the civilians and successfully extricated them, it said.

However, during the process, the team came under a heavy volume of fire by the terrorists and in the ensuing firefight, two terrorists were eliminated and the five Army personnel and a policeman were killed in the line of duty, the Army said.

The terrorists are believed to have come to Handwara to receive an infiltrating group from Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, officials said.

Besides Colonel Ashutosh Sharma and Major Anuj Sood, the other Army personnel killed in the encounter were identified as Naik Rajesh and Lance Naik Dinesh.

Col Sharma was the Commanding Officer of the 21 Rashtriya Rifles and had been decorated for gallantry twice in Kashmir.

A wreath-laying ceremony would be held here after which the Col Sharma's body would be flown to Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh and that of Major Sood to Chandigarh, the officials said.
TDT | Manama

Deputy Premier HH Shaikh Mohammed bin Mubarak Al-Khalifa will take part tomorrow in a virtual summit of the Nonaligned Movement on behalf of His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa.

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, Incumbent President of the Movement, called for the summit. Themed United Against Covid-19, the virtual summit affirms the commitment of member states to the UN Charter and the principles on which the Non-Aligned Movement is based.

HH Shaikh Mohammed will affirm Bahrains commitment to the principles of the movement and take part in various discussions.
A $3.9 million armed robbery in Melbourne's CBD last week, allegedly involving a man with a surgical mask, a gun and a trolley has exposed extraordinary security failings but also reveals the unusual business practices of the city's gold and precious gem dealers.

In a nondescript building near the corner of Collins and Swanston streets, bags of gold jewellery are exchanged for cash, diamonds are used to secure high-interest loans and deposits worth millions of dollars are made into company bank accounts using pseudonyms such as 'Aghtogde'.

Business has been booming in recent months, as the coronavirus battered global financial markets and spooked investors turned to gold bullion as a safe haven. Others had been forced to trade or pawn their old gold jewellery and watches after suddenly facing financial hardship.

A man has been charged over an armed hold-up at the Melbourne Gold Company. Credit:Justin McManus

Last week, Karl Kachami, 48, from Hawthorn East, allegedly entered the building at 227 Collins Street where many of Melbourne's gold and diamond dealers ply their trade.
New Delhi: The Handwara operations, in which five security personnel including a Colonel were killed, highlight the commitment of the armed forces to secure lives of common people, Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat said on Sunday.

In the operation, 21 Rashtriya Rifles Commanding Officer Col Ashutosh Sharma along with Major Anuj Sood, Naik Rajesh and Lance Naik Dinesh lost their lives along with Sub Inspector Nazeer of Jammu Kashmir Police while trying to rescue hostages from terrorists.

"The operations highlight the determination of the security forces to safeguard the lives of the people. Commanding Officer leading from the front along with other personnel of the unit and J&K Police have laid down their lives, living up to the motto; Service Before Self," ANI quoted Rawat as saying.

He said the armed forces are proud of their courage as they have successfully eliminated the terrorists. We salute these brave personnel and express our deep-felt condolences for the bereaved families, he said.

On Saturday (May 2), five army persons lost their lives during a gunbattle with terrorists that took place in a remote location in Handwara. Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, Major Anuj Sood, Naik Rakesh Kumar, Lance Naik Dinesh Singh and a rifleman and sub-inspector Shakeel Qazi of Jammu and Kashmir Police were among those who were killed during the firefight. Two terrorists, including a top Lashkar-e-Toiba commander from Pakistan, were also killed in the operation by security forces.
OTTAWA - Publishers that represent a majority of Canadian newspapers have penned an open letter to the federal government urging immediate action to make digital giants like Facebook and Google share their advertising revenues with Canadian media companies.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 2/5/2020 (626 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA - Publishers that represent a majority of Canadian newspapers have penned an open letter to the federal government urging immediate action to make digital giants like Facebook and Google share their advertising revenues with Canadian media companies.

The letter, which appeared in an ad published in newspapers across the country Saturday, says the situation is urgent, with media companies suffering huge declines in advertising revenue because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The publishers point to action taken recently in Australia, where the country's treasurer has announced mandatory measures to force digital companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter to pay news media for use of their content.

The measures were to be completed by November, but are now being fast-tracked due to steep declines in advertising dollars caused by COVID-19  declines that have forced many newspapers to stop printing.

Bob Cox, publisher of the Winnipeg Free Press and one of the signatories of the letter, says newspaper ad revenues in Canada have fallen by at least 50 per cent, which has made the newspaper industry unviable.

"Newspapers are fighting for their very survival right now," he said.

The wage subsidy that forms part of the Liberals' multi-billion dollar pandemic emergency aid package will help, Cox said, calling the program a "life-saver."

The Liberal government is also rolling out a $30-million COVID-19 awareness advertising campaign, which was also billed as support for the media industry, but Cox noted these measures are short-term fixes.

"We expect that the impact of COVID-19 and the decrease in advertising will continue for some time, at least through 2020 and probably into 2021, so we're going to be facing this decrease in advertising for a long time," he said.

"We need to look at the bigger picture, at the longer-term problems, and this is one of those longer-term problems."

Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault said last month the government is moving closer to implementing long-promised tax credits for newspapers to address ongoing revenue challenges in the sector. The most significant of these measures is a tax credit that will allow qualified newspapers to claim up to 25 per cent of the wages or salaries they pay to their journalists or other eligible employees.

The credit, which is not available to broadcasters, will be retroactive to salaries that were paid starting on Jan. 1, 2019.

A panel tasked with assessing whether media organizations qualify for these tax measures will begin informing the first news organizations of their qualification for this program this spring, with payments coming in the summer, said Guilbeault's press secretary Camille Gagne-Raynauld.

"Additionally, we are accelerating the processing of applications to our Aid to Publishers program, and expect funds to flow to successful recipients in June," she added, referencing a program aimed at helping print magazines and non-daily newspapers.

As for the actions taken by Australia and France to set deadlines of July for digital giants to start paying for copyrighted media content, Gagne-Raynauld said the federal government is "closely following what is being done abroad with regards to media support," but did not elaborate further.

Cox says he understands the federal government has been busy rolling out billions of dollars in aid for Canadian workers and employers hit by the pandemic while also dealing with a public health emergency.

But implementing measures to make digital giants share the ad revenue they make from content created by Canadian journalists, which they have been featuring on their platforms, would level the playing field for the media industry in Canada, Cox said.

It would also go a long way to help the media industry weather the long-term impacts the pandemic and resulting economic downturn is having and will continue to have on news companies.

"Newspapers and news media in general have been very, very valuable during the COVID-19 pandemic, they have informed the public, they've fulfilled their role, the public has trusted them to deliver information about this very important issue to them," Cox said.

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"We feel it's time to establish a solider business model for them going forward. We want to be around for the next time we're needed."

Facebook, Google and Twitter did not immediately respond for comment.

Facebook announced in March it was spending US$100 million to support the news industry during the COVID-19 crisis, and Google also has a Google News Initiative, with an aim to "work with the news industry to help journalism thrive in the digital age."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 2, 2020.



Torstar holds an investment in The Canadian Press as part of a joint agreement with subsidiaries of the Globe and Mail and Montreal's La Presse.
Less than 24 hours after the death of Tafida Abubakar, the emir of Rano in Kano State, another elder statesman and community leader has passed on.

Isa Hashim, a retired professor who held the title of Jarman Kano in the Kano emirate council, died on Sunday morning, according to a family member.

The 86-year-old died at his home, following a short illness, his daughter, Dija Hashim, told PREMIUM TIMES.

Details of his ailment were not immediately available but a family member said Mr Hashims health deteriorated following the deaths of some of his childhood friends in quick succession.

Mr Hashim was a retired professor of political science, administrator and author.

He enrolled into the then Kano Native Authority in 1948 as a first school leaver and rose to the position of a permanent secretary before he retired in 1979.

Upon his retirement, he joined Bayero University Kano (BUK) where he taught for many years.

Suspicious deaths continue

Mr Hashims death is the latest among increasing deaths of the elderly in Kano.

At least two independent studies conducted in the last two weeks established a surge in number of deaths in the densely populated metropolis.

In a BBC Hausa interview Friday evening, Nasir Gwarzo, who led a federal government medical intervention team to Kano, said his team suspects strong link between the increased deaths and coronavirus.

He said the pandemic has passed its two initial stages of transmission in the city and gone into the scary stage of community transmission.

READ ALSO:

The Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 has announced deployment of 3,000 workers to help contain the pandemic.

On Friday, Governor Abdullahi Ganduje announced donation of a 400-capacity mobile testing facility by Kano-born business tycoon, Aliko Dangote.

Some health workers in Kano are however worried that attitudinal indifference by the people in complying with health protocols may only lead to more surge in cases.
Islamabad, May 3 : For the first time in Pakistan's history, a Hindu has been selected as a pilot in the country's air force. The youth named Rahul Dev has been recruited as a General Duty pilot officer in the Pakistan Air Force.

According in Pakistani media, Rahul Dev hails from Tharparkar, the largest district in Sindh province. Tharparkar is the place where a large population of the Hindu community resides.

All Pakistan Hindu Panchayat Secretary Ravi Dawani expressed happiness over Dev's appointment. He said many members of the minority community are serving in the civil service as well as the army. Many doctors in the country also belong to the Hindu community. He said that if the government continues to focus on the minorities, then in the coming days many Rahul Devs will be ready to serve the country.
Image Credit... Agnes Lee

Found Money

Dear Diary:

Ever since I was little, I have believed that found money is lucky. Whether its a stray bill, an uncommon silver coin or a common copper penny, theyre all good for a wish  like an evening star or a new moon.

When my wife and I moved from Los Angeles to Manhattan in 1981, one of the newfound joys of city life was walking every day from our apartment on the Upper West Side through Central Park, and then down Sixth Avenue to my office at 46th Street.

Once in a while I would catch the subway at 72nd Street and Central Park West, change at Columbus Circle and then magically  to me, at least  pop out from the south end of the Rockefeller Center station at the foot of my office building.

Once, as I came up the stairs to street level, I spied a shining Lincoln head on the penultimate step. I paused to pick it up, being careful not to impede either the people coming up behind me or those who were heading down into the station.
Indian Air Force (IAF) is performing a nationwide activity today, on May 3, to express their gratitude towards all the corona heroes fighting in the frontline in this war against COVID-19. The IAF helicopters are showering flowers at hospitals across 23 locations in the country. Apart from that, IAFs fighter jets are also carrying out fly-pasts across different cities.

From Mumbai to Delhi to Guwahati to Leh, the defence forces helicopters are flying over various places to give the aerial salutes. And, several videos and images of this spectacular and heartfelt gesture have now made their way onto Twitter. Tweeple are now sharing emotional to appreciative reactions using various hashtags  so much so that the hashtag #Airwarriors also started trending on the micro-blogging site.

Indian Air Force showering with flowers in hospital all over the country to salute doctors and other medical staffs. Thats how Indian Air Force showers love, a Twitter user wrote this heartfelt caption and shared an image. It shows an IAF helicopter showering flower petals:

Indian Air Force showering with flowers in hospital all over the country to salute doctors and other medical staffs. That's how Indian Air Foce showers love. There's still so many programs planned by Indian Army.

Thank you.#IndianAirForce #IndianArmy #AirForceSalutes @IAF_MCC pic.twitter.com/y4ZeBcS4iI        x-     (@mysugasaga) May 3, 2020

There were many who wrote that theyre extremely proud of the Indian Air Force and todays activity is absolutely heartwarming.

The best salute ever #AirWarriors to #CoronaWarriors, wrote a Twitter user. The whole nation applauds the unconditional endless efforts of frontline fighters, the #CoronaHereos, tweeted another.

There were many who wrote appreciative comments on the different videos shared by Indian Air Forces official Twitter handle.

This is what we call the power of nation. Its keep us United too in this severely situation of crisis. From core of my heart my gratitude towards all nations health workers. #JaiHind & #Salute    2.0 (@VARU_911) May 3, 2020

Act of enhancing the spirit of fight against Covid-19....  gopal beerla (@GBeerla) May 3, 2020

Indian Armed forces doing extra ordinary effort for Corona warriors. Many many thanks for this. We salute to our Corona warriors. They all are doing extra ordinary work for human beings. Thanks a lot all Doctors, Nurses, safai karmcharis, police personnels, CRPF and etc.  Ameeta Verma ( HINDU) (@ameeta_verma) May 3, 2020

Earlier on Friday, Indias chief of defence staff General Bipin Rawat said that armed forces will show their gratitude to the countrys corona heroes. The activities include fly-pasts, lighting of warships, and displays by army bands.
The virus has not got any more virulent, but is as infectious as ever (stock photo)

The founders of one of the country's largest waste companies, Key Waste, are adapting their washroom services company Key Hygiene to meet the needs of customers in workplaces following the impact of Covid-19.

As part of that, owners Neville O'Boyle and Mark Butler will launch their own innovation this week - a bracket which will allow people to open doors without using their hands.

Called the Foothandle, Butler said the pair came up with the product when watching people use their shoulders or covering their hands when using doors. "We're trying to be creative and innovative and keep ourselves busy," he said.

He said that over the past two weeks companies, mainly in the construction sector, have been seeking back-to-work solutions.

"Companies need to adapt to a new way of how customers interact and how staff actually work within an office environment. We've actually seen a lot of requests come in to Key Hygiene for various solutions and products which may help a company be able put a process or procedure in place that allows staff to be in an office environment in a safer manner.

"Whether that's through screens on a desk, or using paper towels rather than air dryers, there is going to be a whole new way how companies adapt to that, to a changed world after Covid."

Butler and O'Boyle worked with Irish manufacturer Carnehill Joinery to produce the Foothandle device, which will have its own website.

"I think Key Hygiene will have to adapt to a changing market," said Butler. "I think our customers will want us to develop and innovate different products and solutions. And it's exciting."

He said some parts of the company's business were up and some were down as a result of the current restrictions. "Overall, every business has been affected in some shape or form," he said.

The sale of Key Waste, for a reported price tag of up to 50m, was at an advanced stage prior to the outbreak of Covid-19, according to industry sources. It is understood that there is an expectation that it will still go ahead.

When asked about this, Butler said: "We're a company that is always seeking out new opportunities. We're continuously developing the way we do things and one of the things we're really focused on is forging new partnerships. Whether that's development within the business and expanding it, whether that's through funding or financing."
EVADALE  The first race day at the Evadale Raceway since Texas went on a precautionary lockdown more than a month ago wasnt supposed to start until 4 p.m. Saturday, but hours before then, trucks with trailers and campers were backed up from the gate to FM 105.

Gary Peltier, owner of the raceway, said Saturdays event was just supposed to be a sort of tune and test day where people could try out their machines and work out kinks, but he was expecting about 400 people at the event and 100 cars to speed down the track by the end of the night.

After a hectic week of trying to go from mothballs to race ready, Peltier was still trying to smooth out some last-minute details while the office phone rang with calls from spectators or racers asking if the track was open.

Were blessed to have the spectators and community that we do, he said. We didnt really know what to expect today, but I knew we had to open.

Even with a strong opening two days after Gov. Greg Abbott lifted restrictions on some businesses, Peltier said he and other track owners and promoters will have to wait and see what happens next.

The state started enforcing restrictions in earnest at the start of the raceways usual season opener in March, meaning it had to go six months without operating after closing down in November.

Now, some of the large regional and national races hosted at the raceway might be up in the air.

But, as spectators started to filter in and take their tailgating spots by the track, Peltier said he had faith in the local racing community.

For the Evadale Raceway, that local community happens to extend quite a ways, even over the eastern border to Louisiana.

Kenneth Biscamp, his brother and nephew decided to bring out their recently acquired 1984 Ford Mustang from Leesville, Louisiana, for a test run.

Biscamp and company sometimes visit the Pine Valley Raceway in Lufkin, but the former airport-runway-turned-drag strip in Evadale has become their home track.

He said he recognizes why the last several weeks of self-isolation and precautions have been necessary, but he was glad he was able to make it out to the track once again.

It was important, but we would be sick if we couldnt race, he said.

Evadales status as one of the only open race tracks west of Baytown also attracted some other out-of-staters.

Cody Wagoner said he and his dad, Kenny Wagoner, packed up the Corvette and headed to Texas from Natchez, Mississippi, after a couple of his friends said they were headed to the Evadale track.

Wagoner said he usually competes in about 15 or 20 races a year across the South, but he decided to try out the Evadale track for the first time since he didnt have a lot of other options.

Louisiana and Mississippi werent opening up yet, so we decided to hit the road, he said.

jacob.dick@beaumontenterprise.com

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Kathmandu, May 3

Apparently hit hard by the coronavirus outbreak across the world recently, the government of Nepal has decided to halt regular schedules of staff recruitment indefinitely. The governments decision aims at avoiding any financial crisis in the country.

A cabinet meeting held last week made the decision. Following that, Chief Secretary Lok Darshan Regmi has recently sent a letter to the Public Service Commission, responsible for the recruitment of staff, to halt all recruitment procedures, except for emergency cases, till the next notice. The decision will also affect recruitment procedures in security agencies and public service utilities.

Though the letter does not categorically mention the reason for the decision, officials of the concerned agencies say the decision was made as the amount of revenue collected of late is nominal due to the global crisis.

Basanta Adhikari, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration, says the decision was made to reduce the amount of recurrent expenditure. For the next fiscal year, we have a big challenge of adjusting the revenue collection with the amount of expenses. At such time, we thought it would be better not to spend any money on publishing vacancy announcements now.

Meanwhile, the commissions chairperson Umesh Mainali says it will abide by the decision regarding beginning new recruitment schedules, adding, those which have already started, however, cannot be halted indefinitely.
The Prime Minister will co-host a virtual Coronavirus Global Response International Pledging Conference, aiming to raise 7 billion to develop vaccines, treatments and tests - AFP

Boris Johnson will on Monday describe the race to develop a coronavirus vaccine as "the most urgent shared endeavour of our lifetimes" as he urges countries not to see it as a competition.

The Prime Minister will co-host a virtual Coronavirus Global Response International Pledging Conference, aiming to raise 7 billion to develop vaccines, treatments and tests to help end the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mr Johnson is expected to say: "To win this battle, we must work together to build an impregnable shield around all our people, and that can only be achieved by developing and mass-producing a vaccine.

"The more we pull together and share our expertise, the faster our scientists will succeed. The race to discover the vaccine to defeat this virus is not a competition between countries but the most urgent shared endeavour of our lifetimes. Its humanity against the virus  we are in this together, and together we will prevail."

The US will not attend the summit. President Trump has instead said his focus is "Operation Warp Speed", which aims to have enough doses to cover most Americans by the end of this year, sparking concerns that he is adopting an "America First" approach.

In March, the German newspaper Die Welt reported that the Trump administration had offered a German medical company "large sums of money" for exclusive access to a vaccine.

The comments came after Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, suggested that life in the UK would not return to how it was before the pandemic until a vaccine was developed.

Asked at the daily press conference by The Telegraph when life would return to normal, Mr Gove said: "Unless and until we have a vaccine, I suspect that we are going to have to live with some degree of constraint."

Senior Tory MPs have also warned that Britain could be "at the back of the queue" if China is first to develop a vaccine.

Story continues

One former Tory minister told The Telegraph: "The US and China are both outside of this coalition. If the US gets it first, I am sure we will be up there in the queue. If China gets it first, there's simply no chance its going to come this far west. It will go to all the other countries that have been less critical about China."

A Government source added: "If China starts to manufacture it [a vaccine] at scale, we are not taking it for granted that China would start to share it with other countries."

Downing Street said Mr Jonhson's words were not aimed at any one country. Most experts think a vaccine is likely to become available by the middle of next year, around 12 to 18 months after the virus first emerged.

Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative MP who chairs the Commons defence select committee, said: "The prestige and economic power that accompanies procurement of a vaccine can be compared landing a man on the moon and winning the space race.

"With power over manufacture and distribution it allows the winner not only to truly exit from Covid-19 and unconditionally restart the economy, but also yield immense authority in determining the vaccine role out across the world."

He said the Government must "prepare for scenarios where Britain, and the coalition we are part of, may not be in the front of the queue", adding: "America and China's absence illustrate firstly, how frail collective western resolve has become in responding to international threats and secondly, how a rising China does not play by global rules."

The UK has provided 744 million for the global response to the virus and is one of the biggest supporters of the effort to find a vaccine. It has also pledged 250 million to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. The summit will be attended by Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Norway, Saudi Arabia, and the EC.

The new "COV-access agreement" means that, wherever a vaccine is developed, the UK will be allowed equal access to use it and administer it to Britons.

Mr Johnson's comments seem to contradict previous remarks by Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, who said that Britons must be first in the queue for any UK-developed vaccine.
The April 1 purchase order, which was obtained by The Washington Post, identifies June 30 as the delivery deadline. But the Maryland official said that is only because June 30 is the end of the current fiscal year. The agreed upon shipping date for the masks and ventilators was April 14, according to a Blue Flame invoice obtained by The Post. Bearman did not respond to a request for comment on this complaint.
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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-02 17:17:46|Editor: huaxia

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Photo taken on May 2, 2020 shows a bus loaded with aid supplies in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Around 70,000 people have been evacuated after the Sardoba dam in the central Syrdarya region burst, flooding residential areas and crop fields, the Uzbek Emergency Ministry said Saturday. At least 56 people were injured and subsequently hospitalized in the region due to flooding, according to the ministry. (Photo by Zafar Khalilov/Xinhua)

TASHKENT, May 2 (Xinhua) -- Around 70,000 people have been evacuated after the Sardoba dam in the central Syrdarya region burst, flooding residential areas and crop fields, the Uzbek Emergency Ministry said Saturday.

At least 56 people were injured and subsequently hospitalized in the region due to flooding, according to the ministry.

The dam burst in the early morning on Friday after heavy rain and gales caused serious damage to settlements, communication networks and agricultural land, the ministry said.

Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has visited the region and said the situation is under full control and there was no reason to panic. Enditem
On the eve of Lunar New Year in 2020, the novel coronavirus with a diameter of only 60 to 140 nm opened up the Pandoras magic box and unleashed a public health crisis in Wuhan, the hardest hit Chinese city by COVID-19. A wave of extreme uneasiness quickly loomed over everyones state of mind since the spread of the epidemic was incredibly rapid and discreet.

On January 26, the first medical team of Peking University People's hospital rushed to Wuhan and participated in the treatment of patients contracted COVID-19. I happened to be on duty at the hospital on that day, and I saw my brave colleagues off as they were preparing to stand on the front line in Wuhan to fight against the epidemic. Their determination and bravery made my heart flutter, and then I decided to join the battle when I was informed on February 2 that another batch of medical teams would be formed soon.

My wife took initiatives to help me pack luggage and bought disposable items that might be useful. On February 6, I received a phone call from the hospital, "This is a formal announcement from the hospital. You will set off tomorrow. Please gather at the hospital at 7 a.m. and remember to gather up your belongings tonight."

It was 5 oclock in the morning by the time I left my house. The weather outside was cold and dark when I embarked on my way to the hospital.

On the morning of February 7, 110 members from the third batch of medical teams quickly assembled. Prior to our departure, Jiang Baoguo, president of the Peking University Peoples Hospital, boosted everyones morale with rousing remarks. "Members and fighters! Today, we will be going to Wuhan to fight against the epidemic! We must win and make sound contributions to our people! Are you ready?" The unanimous response Yes! from doctors and nurses was the loudest cheer I have ever heard in my entire life.

The third batch of medical teams from Peking University People's Hospital

On the way to the airport, I received countless messages from colleagues and friends. Messages like "Take care, bro!", "Wishing you come back safe! ", and "Please protect yourself! were crowding up my WeChat. They were being extremely supportive and I was, for once in my life, so strongly brimming with ambition, strength and power.

As I was looking down at the sea of clouds below me from the plane, I thought of my father. When the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) broke out in China in 2003, my father, as the head of his department, rushed to the front line on the first notice and took charge of the imageological diagnosis of patients. I remembered witnessing this when I was 13, and thus hoping to become someone like him, a white-clad warrior who saved the lives of many. My father had passed away before he could see me dress in the same white gown he once did. But it did not matter, because I had never felt so close to him as I did then. I was determined to do my father proud, and more than ready for the long-awaited battle ahead.

At 3 o 'clock in the afternoon, we arrived in Wuhan. Walking out of the eerily quiet airport lobby, I was greeted by a piercing wind. It was the first time that I had ever been to Wuhan, and it was also the first time that I had felt such bitter, chilly air.

On the way to the hotel, there were no other cars or people on the street. Through the windows of the residential buildings we passed by, not a single moving figure was found. The whole city seemed to have stopped living. It was hard to imagine the once bustling metropolis had turned into a lifeless ghost town in such a brief amount of time. Everyone felt nervous in the overwhelming ominous atmosphere.

After arriving at the hotel, our whole team immediately received emergency training. We were introduced with details regarding the conditions of the medical wards and given updated information about the patients. We also received training on personal protection and precautions.

Medical workers receive specialized training

Before I went to bed at night, I opened the window for ventilation. The air was damp and chilly. I was shuddering as the bitter wind pierced though my skin.

The battle begins

On the next day, our team visited the newly established ICU at the Tongji Hospital. When we arrived, the team leader and the hospital support staff were still busy making final adjustments to the medical equipment and the information system.

Immediately, everyone on the team was busy with their respective tasks: doctors were managing the medical record system, while nurses were busy inspecting medical instruments and checking the drugs. We were all busy carrying out our duties to prepare for the impending battle ahead. It took only 24 hours for the ICU to be fully prepared for incoming patients!

Doctors familiarize with medical instructions and the medical record system

Around 10 p.m., the first incoming stream of patients started arriving at the ICU, signaling the beginning of our battle. I recall entering the changing room prior to their arrival and having to wear protective clothing, gloves, shoe covers, goggles and face shields. Everyone on our team made sure to check up on each other for any misplacement or gaps in our safety equipment. Once having put on the entire outfit, immediate discomfort started to arise from every part of my body: the sealed glasses were placed tightly around my eyes, creating impaired vision due to the foggy lenses; the tightly fit goggles exerted unbearable pain and pressure on the bridge of my nose; my hands were tightly bound by five layers of gloves, making it difficult to even extend or flex my wrists; and it was hard to breathe through normally when wearing the airtight masks. It became evident to us all that the following days at the hospital would be challenging.

In order to enter the contaminated zone, we had to go through four buffer zones and five protective doors. For safety, the team members made sure we entered the ward in separate groups at once.

The first door, the second, the third, the fourth, and the fifth. Tension was building up with every door that was opened in front of us.

When the last door was closed behind us, I stood for a few seconds attempting to breathe calmly, and meticulously scanned the scene in front of me, looking for patients that were in an urgent need of treatment.

Liu Zhongdi (right), author of this article, works in the contamination zone

More and more patients started to cram up outside of our unit as our shift progressed. Patients who were diagnosed and have already registered were directed to different wards according to the severity of their illness. Doctors and nurses cooperated with each other, making arrangement orders and collecting medical records. We ensured that symptomatic treatment was given on time to each patient and every person had their needs met when requested.

The first group of patients that arrived made a lasting impression on me. They were all in critical condition due to their pre-existing chronic illnesses and many of them were elderly patients with severe damage to their respiratory and circulatory systems. When consulting their symptoms, many of them mumbled. Since most of them spoke in a dialect, communication was difficult at first. I remembered clearly during training that medical professionals were advised to maintain a certain distance from the patients, but during consultations, the doctor-patient seating distance, patients dialect and mumbled responses combined made it difficult for me to make sense of what they said. I had to ask several questions over and over again, at times even closing up to the patients to listen. The entire routine eventually proved to be highly emotionally draining, and it was devastating to hear similar accounts again and again of how patients were tortured by the novel coronavirus.

Four hours passed quickly, and with the blink of an eye my shift had come to an end. As I was getting off my shift, it dawned on me that I had completely forgotten about the discomfort I initially felt when I first put on my protective gear. After I took off my gear, I noticed that my inner layers were all wet, and the wetness brought touches of coldness to my skin when exposed to the fresh air. When the foggy glasses were finally taken off, the area around my eyes swelled up immensely, and my nose bridge and cheeks were left with deep indentations on my skin. Stinging pain was felt all over, especially on the areas where the protective gear was tightly bound on my body.

A dynamic Wuhan returns

Through continuous and valiant efforts, many patients began to make slow recoveries and eventually succeeded in leaving the hospital with their health restored. Patients started discharging from the hospital on February 21. It was definitely a hard-earned milestone accomplished by the collective efforts of everyone working at the medical unit.

I often had flashbacks to times when a few patients were newly admitted to the hospital. Initially, they were hopeless and terrified for the uncertainties ahead. As they made gradual recoveries, they started becoming optimistic and smiled more often, which left a deep impression on me and made me more aware of the responsibility I had as a doctor.

The work went on like clockwork, and before I realized, the last day of February quickly approached within the blink of an eye. I was turning 30 on March 1, and I spent my birthday on the front line combating COVID-19 with my fellow colleagues. In the past, I usually made self-deprecating humor claiming that I was an old millennial. Now, instead of making fun of my age, I felt an enormous sense of honor to be one of the young medical professionals in the battle against this epidemic. What was more exciting to me was that on March 15, 14 days after my birthday, Chinese President Xi Jinping replied a letter to the post-90s generation in the medical corps of Peking University and extended sincere greetings to the young people working on various positions to prevent and control the pandemic. As a member of this age group, I was lucky to receive a reply from President Xi and it was an honor and a privilege to be recognized and encouraged by him!

In his letter, President Xi encouraged us to thrive in serving the people, strive to improve our skills through hard work, and develop our capability with practice. As a medical worker and a millennial, I am bound by my duty to serve my country and the people with my knowledge and skills. While I was working in Wuhan, I was frequently touched by the friendship that existed all around me. Whether it was between the medical team members, or between patients and medical staff, everyone made sure to always look for the silver lining in times of darkness. Over the course of my time in Wuhan, I took notice of the little things that mattered, and I was constantly reminded of how united China has become when we were all fighting the same battle.

As the weather in Wuhan started to get warm, I saw the early cherry blossoms on the side of the road every time I went off to work. I did not know exactly when they started to blossom, but just like when silver linings appeared in dire times, new life always emerged when least expected. Before we all realized, spring was arriving and transforming the city of Wuhan gradually into a lively, cheerful, and resilient city we once knew.

Being a doctor was my dream since childhood. In all the years I have been wearing a white coat, I have never felt so proud to be a white-clad soldier! After returning to Beijing safe and sound on April 6, the memories of my time in Wuhan are still lingering.

About the author

Liu Zhongdi, an M.D. holder and attending physician, is working for the Trauma Rescue & Treatment Center of Peking University People's hospital. Dr. Liu is engaged in the clinical treatment of severe trauma, bone and joint injuries, as well as other trauma cases. Dr. Liu also teaches and carries out research on relevant fields.

Source: Peking University People's Hospital, Peking University Health Science Center (Chinese)
Tejaswi is worried about missing her appointment with a doctor in Michigan on May 26. The fear of losing his job in Boston is giving Srikanth sleepless nights. Rashmi Deshpande desperately wants to go back to her eight-year-old autistic son in Maryland.

They are among the hundreds of the Non-Resident Indians (NRIs), who live and work in the United States, but are now stranded in India due to the ban imposed on international passenger flights to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

They all have now reached the end of their tethers with the government extending the curbs beyond Sunday.

They are now saying it (the curbs imposed to contain the COVID-19 pandemic) has been extended till May 17. But I dont know if they will start outbound flights even after May 17, Tejaswi told the DH from Vijaywada in Andhra Pradesh. If I miss my appointment with the doctor, it may take months before we will be able to reschedule it.

She lives in Michigan in the United States where her husband Phani is an Informational Technology (IT) professional. She came to Vijaywada on February 15 and was planning to return to Michigan on March 28, but got stuck due to the lockdown and the ban on international flights imposed to stop the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

Srikanth came to Bengaluru on March 15 with his children for a family emergency, leaving his wife alone in Boston, where the techie couple has been living for several years now. I must return immediately or I may end up losing my job, he said, with reports about the economic downturn and growing unemployment adding to his worries.

Also Read: Coronavirus India update: State-wise total number of confirmed cases, deaths

Rashmi Deshpande has been living in Maryland in the US for the last 18 years. She came to India on March 21 to perform the last rites of her mother, who had passed away a few days ago. Stuck here since (for) 1.5 (one and a half) months, she posted on Twitter. I need to go back home to Maryland to my eight-year-old autistic son.

Another NRI, who did not want to be identified, came to Mangaluru from Atlanta in the US after his father was hospitalized in February. His father eventually passed away on March 3. He, however, got stuck due to the lockdown and travel and transport curbs. My wife is five months pregnant. She is with my six-year-old son in Atlanta, taking care of him alone, he said. It is extremely stressful and traumatic to leave her alone in such a situation and I feel helpless that I cannot do anything

Tejaswi, Srikanth and Rashmi joined many others to urge the government to restart outbound flights from India so that they could go back to their families in the US. If the government allows a limited number of outbound flights taking people stranded in India to the US, it will not expose the country to any new risk or undermine the efforts to contain the COVID-19, Srikanth told the DH. There is no blanket ban on inbound flights in the US.

The stranded NRIs pointed out that the government had already helped the US and other foreign nations to evacuate their citizens from India by special aircraft. If the government can allow the foreign citizens to leave, why cannot they open some outbound flights so that we can return to our families, our workplaces? wondered Sai, a research scientist in Oregon, currently stranded in Chennai.

We read news-reports about the government planning evacuation of citizens from foreign countries. They will obviously send empty aircraft for evacuating people, Sai said, adding: What we are urging the government to allow us to board the empty aircraft and reach some place where we can take connecting flights to our respective destinations in the US.

Another NRI, who works in the US on (the) H1B visa, came to India in the last week of February with his wife and newborn baby so that his parents could see their grandchild. They were planning to return on March 26 but got stuck due to (the) ban on international flights. I am now living in fear of losing (my) job all the time. I am the lone earner in my family. My salary has been stopped already. I dont know how I would pay rent, repay my loans and pay for my insurances and other bills in the US. These are really huge amounts and I wont (be) able to pay anymore without any salary there.

My job and livelihood everything is at stake. I am on a valid H1B visa and my employer is pressuring me to return back as early as possible, Shankar (name changed), one of the many stranded NRIs, said.

The stranded NRIs started online petitions requesting the government to start outbound international flights. The inability to return to the destination of choice is causing a lot of problems for people, including but not limited to loss of employment, financial burden and debt due to loss of income, loss of immigration status, anxiety, one of the online petition, already signed by over 8600 people, pointed out, adding: If the air traffic is not restored soon, people's lives will be severely upended and people will have to suffer the consequences of it for years to come. While we realize that COVID-19 has put us in an unprecedented situation, we request the government to reinstate international flight traffic in a staggered manner, even with case by case approvals if needed, so that people in dire need to travel can avail this facility.

Many stranded NRIs drew the attention of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi while tweeting about their plight.

Sir, we r (are) emotionally drained, broken being separated 4m (from) family. We have more damages like losing job(s), visa status etc going on than worrying about the hidden virus. Please resume outbound flight to US & (and) let us go, Subhasree Sridhar posted on Twitter, replying to a tweet by the Prime Minister. I hope you will listen (to) me. Pls (please) start Int (international) outbound flight. My family is there nd (and) my wife alone now in (the) US with my 5 yr (year) old kid. She is so scared and not able to handle alone. I came here for 5 days due to (a) family emergency and now I am not able to go. Pls (please) help, Pradeep Choudhary, another NRI, tweeted, replying to a post by Minister for Civil Aviation Hardeep Singh Puri.

My young son is missing primary care from his physician, his vaccines and therapy. We have been stranded here for the last 50 days, tweeted Sooraj Purandare, who works as a software developer in the US, but is now stranded in India. We need to get back home. Forget the economic cost. There is a humanitarian cost that is growing each day.
President Moon Jae-in presides over a meeting with his senior aides at Cheong Wa Dae, April 27, the second anniversary of the Panmunjeom Declaration. He said the COVID-19 crisis could present a new opportunity for the suspended inter-Korean relations. / Yonhap



By Yi Whan-woo



With North Korea officially claiming to have no COVID-19 cases, speculation is growing as to whether President Moon Jae-in will be able to make his desired breakthrough in cross-border relations through cooperation on the pandemic.



The President has repeatedly expressed hope that inter-Korean cooperation could be revived by the pandemic since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China, in January, with his latest related remark being made on April 27.





Participants wave unification flags during a ceremony in Seoul, April 27, to mark the second anniversary of a summit between President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. / AP-Yonhap



Marking the second anniversary of the Panmunjeom Declaration on April 27, he again cited possible cooperation on COVID-19 as an opportunity to resume stalled talks with the North.



Some experts were skeptical about Moon's idea. Referring to their own findings and sources, they stated the virus situation in the secretive state is not as serious as people in the outside world think.



"The situation is believed to be no worse than it is in the South. And under such a situation, the North is likely to give the cold shoulder to the South's gestures for cooperation," said An Chan-il, a Seoul-based defector, researcher and commentator on Pyongyang.



He pointed out the reclusive state has locked down its border with China in January, imposing strict containment measures since then.



An argued the country also has been tightening the already strong control on citizens' movements within the country.





North Korean leader Kim Jong-un presides over a meeting of the political bureau of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers' Party in Pyongyang, April 11. The bureau suggested anti-virus guidelines. / Yonhap



The North has suspended all international trains and flights, while enforcing security checks at airports, sea ports and other border regions.



Park Won-gon, an international relations professor at Handong Global University, said the North "appears not to be desperate" when it comes to accept items from international relief organizations.



"The relief items from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Doctors Without Borders and UNICEF are believed to be taking more than a month to be delivered from China to the North," Park said.



He added the amounts of delivered goods "are not that much," either.



"This leads to speculation that the North is coping with the COVID-19 crisis pretty well, and if is it true, there is no reason for Pyongyang to respond to Seoul's offer for pandemic cooperation," Park said.





Calls growing for discreet approach to NK intelligence Kim Yo-jong's presence increasing Gunshots fired from North Korea hit South Korean DMZ guard post North Korea's Health Minister O Chun-bok claims there are no COVID-19 cases in the country during an interview with the state-controlled Korean Central Television in February. / Yonhap

In a recent counter-argument regarding the North's claim that the country has no cases of COVID-19, U.S.-based media outlet Radio Free Asia (RFA) citing Pyongyang officials claimed the virus had existed in the North around late March. It said three areas of the country had been affected  Pyongyang, South Hwanghae Province and North Hamgyong Province. The RFA report has raised speculations in the North that the virus has spread across the country.



"But even if that is the case, the North could refuse to accept relief aid from the South," Park said. "It is possible Pyongyang has been receiving help secretly from Beijing and not announcing it to the outside world in order to hide its lies."



Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies, voiced a similar view.



"The North is unlikely to be free from the coronavirus," he said. He argued the political bureau of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea came up with the anti-virus guidelines because the country is affected by the pandemic as well.



"Still, it does not mean the North will change its stance suddenly and become friendly with the South. China is the first country the North would ask for help," Yang added.



To capitalize on the COVID-19 crisis and make a new opportunity for inter-Korea ties, the analysts suggested making contact on the civic level, not on the governmental level.



"It may be important to show that COVID-19 cooperation is solely for humanitarian reasons. Otherwise, Pyongyang may view it as Seoul's attempt to flaunt its ideological superiority," An said.



He recommended delivering the goods through the Korean Red Cross or the Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation, a unification-related consultative body consisting of politicians, religious leaders, scholars and civic activists.



Yang reckoned COVID-19 cooperation with the North may begin when Pyongyang accepts possible relief aid from China.



"Considering Beijing has been Pyongyang's largest benefactor, it will not make sense for the North to openly take relief goods from the South while not making support from China public," he said.



The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed in April it had been receiving "weekly updates" from the North's health ministry.



It said the country has the capacity to test people for the virus at a national reference laboratory in Pyongyang. The WHO then confirmed testing has continued across the North and it has over 500 people in quarantine.



The U.N. approved humanitarian exemptions to the sanctions placed on North Korea to help prevent the spread of the virus in the country.



A senior Cheong Wa Dae official referred to the U.N.'s approval and confirmed COVID-19 cooperation with the North is "thus not subject to sanctions."



"We expect no major constraints," the official said on April 28.




ALBANY  Anthony Carpinello became a justice on the states second-highest court. His brother George became a corporate attorney whose clients have included the New York Yankees.

But the star of their family remains their mom, Jennie Carpinello, who raised the boys as a single mother in East Greenbush, worked for 33 years at Albany Law School and guided generations of future lawyers  including some of the states most prominent figures  through the halls of the nation's oldest independent law school.

On May 9, Jennie Carpinello, now a great-grandmother, will turn 100 years old.

To mark the occasion, Law Beat spoke with some of the attorneys whose lives she touched, including Richard Parsons, who eventually became chairman of Citigroup and CEO of Time Warner.

"She was like my law school mom," said Parsons, 72, who graduated from Albany Law School at the top of his class in 1971. "She was like a mother to me  and I mean that in the full sense of the word."

To say Parsons career has been robust is an understatement. First he was a legislative intern. Then he became a staff attorney for Gov. Nelson Rockefeller; worked closely with President Gerald Ford; co-chaired President George W. Bush's commission on Social Security; worked on the economic advisory team for President Barack Obama; chaired the New NY Education Reform Commission and led the Common Core Task Force under Gov. Andrew Cuomo, an Albany Law grad himself. Parsons also served as interim CEO of the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers, and was the interim chairman of the board of CBS.

But in 1968, when Parsons arrived at Albany Law School, he was broke. Jennie Carpinello and registrar Helen Wilkinson helped him get a job at the school bookstore. He also worked for the school's custodian mopping floors after class.

Parsons knew of one other black student at the school  future lawyer and Albany NAACP president Bernard Bryan. He was later drafted during the Vietnam War, leaving Parsons the sole black student at Albany Law.

Carpinello "looked after me, made sure that I was comfortable and part of the community, part of the family," Parsons told Law Beat.

"When I say (she was) my law school mom, I mean it," Parsons said. " ... She made sure that whatever was going on, I was comfortable and part of the group. She couldn't have been more embracing of me."

Carpinello grew up in Albany's South End neighborhood, one of eight children of working-class Sicilian immigrants (her father worked as a dishwasher at area hotels). In 1961, she was working as a waitress in an East Greenbush diner. A friend who worked at Albany Law School said the school  at the time headed by Dean Andrew Vernon Clements  was looking for a secretary, her son George recently recounted.

She would work at Albany Law School until retiring in 1994.

This was new to her; she had no background in the law, George Carpinello, 69, of Delmar, told Law Beat. But she got the job and she did very well. I think the biggest asset was that she loved the school, but especially loved the students and would always go out of her way for the students. Whenever I run into attorneys who went to the law school, they all say, Your mother, she was great to me. She took care of me. I had this problem or that problem and she took care of it.

Anthony and George Carpinello were extremely young when their parents divorced. They were raised solely by their mother, the brothers said, at a time when single-parent homes were rare. Their family, at the time. had no lawyers in it.

George Carpinello said he and his brother met law professors at Albany Law School holiday parties. George later taught as a full-time professor at Albany Law School from 1985 to 1992. By that point, he had graduated magna cum laude from Princeton and later from Yale Law School, where he was editor of the Yale Law Journal. George  now a partner in the firm of Boies, Schiller & Flexner  has for more than 30 years chaired the state's Advisory Committee on Civil Practice, which advises the state court system on changes in New York civil practice. New York's judicial selection commission has nominated him four times for the Court of the Appeals, the state's top court, twice to be chief judge.

Anthony Carpinello, 71, of East Greenbush, said that growing up he "had no thought of wanting to be a lawyer." His mother suggested he meet with an assistant dean, who told him it would be good training for whatever he wanted to do. He took the Law School Admission Test on a lark, he said, made it to Albany Law School and the rest was history. He was elected to state Supreme Court and later served on the Appellate Division's Third Department, from 1996 to 2008. He now does private arbitration and mediation with Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Service, which is based in New York City.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

Anthony said their mother had an "fundamental sense of absolute fairness about her" that helped him and his brother become good lawyers.

"My joke is, 'Someday I hope to be something other than Jennie's son,'" he said. "Because everybody who interacts with me who was a student at the law school asks, 'Is Jennie your mother?' 'Yes, Jennie's my mother.'"

Nearing 100, his mother has hearing issues in both ears but is otherwise doing well. She still lives in the home where she raised her sons. "She has great stamina. Her health is really excellent," Anthony said.

For years, Anthony and George and their families would have weekly Sunday dinners at their mother's home. She would make homemade pasta and meatballs. George and his wife Beth have three children (Olivia, Alexis and Lucas) and a son-in-law, Olivia's husband Kyle. Anthony and his wife Sharon have two children (Amy and James) and Anthony's son James and his wife, Amy, have two children (Jack and Ava).

When their mother began working at Albany Law, the administrative staff essentially consisted of the dean, his secretary, longtime registrar Helen Wilkinson and head custodian John DeMatteo. And Jennie Carpinello. They handled everything  tuition bills, scholarship grants, reproducing exams, sending grades out  except teach and doing custodial work, Anthony Carpinello said. His mother also kept a card file of places that would rent apartments to students, he said.

Albany Law School Dean and President Alicia Ouellette, who graduated from the school in 1994, said when she travels around the country and speaks to alumni, they often speak of how Jennie Carpinello was there for them and changed their lives.

"She was really the face and the heart of the law school," Ouellette told Law Beat. She said Carpinello's job did not necessarily require her to deal with students, but they sought her out for guidance almost daily.

"She was like their resident mother or grandmother, never hesitant to give advice whether it was on law school-related matters or love matters or to tell a male student that he needed a haircut," the dean said. "She was someone you could come to with problems in life or love or anything in between. She really lifted every student up."

Jonathan Harvey, an attorney since 1967 now based in Saratoga Springs, explained that Carpinello was generally the first person law students met on their first day of class. Her office was on the main floor in the front of the school.

She just was the face of the law school, Harvey told Law Beat. In those days, the law school classes were small. I think our class had 65 or 68 kids in it. She knew every one of them, and you could rely on her to give you answers to anything  and I mean anything, whether it had to do with the law school or had to do with life.

Today, Harvey, 78, is a complex litigation attorney who handles motor vehicle dealership law. He once chaired the Committee on Professional Standards for the Appellate Division of state Supreme Courts Third Department.

She had an instant warmth, something one would never forget. She cared. She was engaged with the students and it was clear that she liked what she did and that she was glad to see us all there," he said. Very few times in ones life do you come across someone with a lasting impact and the kind of impact that Jennie Carpinello had on me, and I believe anyone who passed through the halls of Albany Law School."
State Department of Transportation information signs are urging people to protect New Mexico and get tested for COVID-19. But not everybody who contacts the state gets a test.

Richard Kraft, a 65-year-old real estate broker in Albuquerque, found that out recently.

I saw the highway sign and thought I would do the right thing and get tested, Kraft said.

When he called the state hotline, he was referred to one of the local clinics.

But when he called the clinic, he was told he couldnt be tested. He didnt have any of the symptoms for the coronavirus.

Testing for people without symptoms is still focused on certain groups such as first responders, front-line workers like grocery store clerks, and people who have been in contact with someone who has tested positive. As a real estate broker, Kraft doesnt fall into any of the categories of people who can get tested.

We dont have 2 million tests for everyone in the state, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said.

But the circle of who is tested has widened as the state ramps up testing to its goal of 42,000 a week.

The state will now test someone displaying any of the following symptoms: fever, cough, shortness of breath, chills, repeated shaking with chills, muscle pain, headache, sore throat and/or loss of taste or smell.

Not enough New Mexicans are coming to us seeking to get tested, Lujan Grisham said Thursday.

The state also is going to do more surveillance and sentinel testing, state officials said.

The projected number of tests is substantially higher than the 7,400 tests a week the state has been averaging through April. The state, hospitals and clinics had conducted more than 70,000 tests as of Friday.

The state Department of Health projects it will need to process 6,000 COVID-19 tests a day once a pilot project with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention kicks into gear.

Lujan Grisham has said repeatedly she believes testing is key to easing the restrictions in her stay-at-home and business closure orders.

As of Saturday, there were 3,732 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state and 139 people have died.

Last week, the CDC committed $6.6 million to the state for COVID-19 testing and contact tracing.

According to Health Department spokesman David Morgan, the state has contracts with out-of-state laboratories to increase its testing capacity.

Wider scope for testing

Even before the CDC pilot project begins, the state has increased the number of people doing tracing from 60 to more than 100 public health workers tracking down people who have been in contact with someone who has tested positive.

More than 150,000 people have been contacted by the states contact tracing program.

The CDC pilot project will expand the rate of testing as well as the number of testing sites from the current 64 around the state.

The state began testing in March, but only for those people with virus symptoms that included a high fever, dry cough and shortness of breath.

While the state is not doing universal testing, over the last six weeks it has expanded testing to include:

 Employees and residents of nursing homes and elder care facilities whether they have symptoms or not.

 People who have no symptoms but who live with or have been in close contact with someone who has tested positive.

 People without symptoms who are in group homes, jails or homeless shelters.

State Health Secretary Kathy Kunkel said the CDC pilot project will allow increased testing in the states prisons.

The testing locations are posted on an interactive map on the DOH website. Most require an appointment and some sort of pre-screening either through a teleconference or questionnaire.

Many of the sites are drive-up but some are walk-in where a person will be screened before testing.

There is no cost for the tests for people who meet the current criteria.

The Department of Health has a portal on its website that allows someone to check their test results.

We can test more, Kunkel said. We want to test more.

Testing processes, labs

The Department of Health laboratory employs a testing method that is used to detect people with an early active infection, called nucleic acid amplification testing (NAAT).

The same kind of testing process has been used for years to detect everything from malaria to sexually transmitted diseases.

There are two systems for running the tests and both rely on nasal swabs for the test samples.

The DOH lab is a high-throughput reference laboratory, meaning it is capable of running a large number of tests at the same time. The DOH gets results back within 24-48 hours.

Rapid test platforms like Cepheid GeneXpert and Abbott ID Now machines can provide test results in less than an hour and are used in smaller labs, like the ones found in area hospitals.

The rapid test platforms are not capable of running large numbers of tests at once.

The larger laboratories running tests from New Mexico include TriCore Reference Laboratories, LabCorp, Mayo Clinic Laboratories, Quest Diagnostics, BioReference Laboratories and Jewish National Laboratories in Denver. TriCore is a not-for-profit headquartered in Albuquerque and co-sponsored by Presbyterian Healthcare Services and the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center.

These laboratories report results back to the state Department of Health.

Morgan said, All the labs running tests are highly reputable and skilled in the performance of these tests.

Tests at private reference laboratories cost about $200 a test but thats not being charged to the people being tested.

The majority of the diagnostic tests in New Mexico are being run through these large laboratories that are reviewed by the CDC and have to meet and maintain federal standards.

Lujan Grisham is discouraging the use of any home test kits for several reasons.

She said many of the tests on the market are not approved by federal regulators and may be inaccurate.

I need to know the results of the tests to make decisions, Lujan Grisham said.

Key to restart economy

Increased testing for active coronavirus cases and tracking down everyone who was in contact with someone testing positive are the keys to keeping COVID-19 at bay, once the state begins to restart its economy, according to state and national experts.

The National Governors Association, Johns Hopkins University and the CDC are all recommending following that course of action as states reopen their economies.

Lujan Grisham is also committed to staying the course.

If I dont know who is positive (for the virus), I cant stop the spread, Lujan Grisham said at a recent news conference.

According to the National Governors Association most recent report:

There is consensus among public health experts and federal leaders that preparing for the next phase of COVID-19 containment will require significant preparation by states to scale up testing, surveillance and the public health workforce necessary to identify active cases and limit the risk of outbreaks as economic functions gradually resume.

The state is in talks with Accenture, a professional services firm, to develop a support center to help coordinate the contact tracing efforts.
Spain has recorded its lowest daily death toll linked to coronavirus since 18 March, new figures from the health ministry show.

A total of 164 deaths were reported in the last 24 hours, the lowest number in over six weeks, while new cases of the virus rose to 217,466 from 216,582.

Experts caution that numbers collated at the weekend are sometimes lower but have said that the figures are favourable.

A total of 25,264 have died with coronavirus in Spain but the country has started to gradually ease restrictions. Adults were able to exercise outdoors on Saturday for the first time in seven weeks.

Spain will make the wearing of masks obligatory on public transport from Monday to help prevent a new wave of coronavirus infections as it begins lifting its strict lockdown measures.

The Madrid government, which had until now highly recommended the use of masks, will distribute six million across the country and supply another seven million to local authorities.

Announcing the measure on Saturday, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said: The virus is still with us. We need to respect the rules as well as the guidelines for hygiene and social distancing.

It came as thousands of Spaniards flocked into streets, parks and squares to exercise for the first time in seven weeks after the government ended a prohibition on outdoor activity.

People ran, walked or rode bicycles and in Barcelona many flocked to the maritime promenade for a glimpse of the still closed beach. Others simply delighted in jogging around parks and neighbourhoods across the nation.

Some parts of industry were allowed to resume work in the past two weeks and children have been allowed out for a walk with one adult since last weekend, but Saturdays move represented a significant step forward for Spaniards.

SOURCE: AEGCNCIES
Brent N. Clarke / Associated Press

WILTON  Joe Pantoliano, an actor know for his role as Ralph Cifaretto in The Sopranos, was injured on Friday after a motor vehicle accident, according to police.

Wilton police said Pantoliano received treatment at Norwalk Hospital and is recovering at his home in town.
Supermodel and womens rights activist Amber Rose has been in the national spotlight for many years. After being forced to strip at age 15 in order to help support her family, Rose gained fame as a model and celebrity influencer. Rose, who is known for her buzz-cut blonde hair, big personality, and various relationships with other celebrities, is never afraid to do things her own way. This strong sense of individuality was on display when Rose was recently spotted near her Los Angeles home rocking an outfit that wont be featured on a runway anytime soon but was iconic for a different reason.

Amber Rose | Gustavo Caballero/Getty Images

Who is the real Amber Rose?

Born Amber Levonchuck in Philadelphia, PA, Rose rose to fame as an international supermodel, actress, and reality show star. Rose has appeared on a variety of reality shows including RuPauls Drag Race, Dancing With The Stars, and Americas Next Top Model. She also had her own short-lived series, The Amber Rose Show. The South Philly raised model has also gained fame due to her romantic relationships and breakups with hip-hop artists Kanye West and Wiz Khalifa. The 2012 split between West and Rose is said to be the inspiration behind Wests album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. The break-up was volatile, which led to a lot of negative publicity for Rose and West. Following her relationship with West, Rose and Khalifa began dating and were married in 2013. The pair later divorced in 2016, but remain on good terms.

Rose is known for speaking her truth and always keeping it real, and encourages her fellow women to do the same. Roses SlutWalk campaign has inspired women across the world to be open about their sexuality and served as a public call out those who have unfairly slut-shamed others. Rose has spoken publicly about instances where she has felt judged for her open sexual nature, as well as instances that she has been shamed and sexually assaulted. Rose has hosted SlutWalk events across the United States and hopes to end misogynistic practices that Rose and other victims have experienced.

Roses quarantine lifestyle

Rose has spent her quarantine posting pics to her popular Instagram and urging her followers to stay safe and stay inside. She has also stayed busy while social distancing with her two sons, Sebastian and Slash. Rose had Sebastian, whos nickname is Bash, with her ex-husband Khalifa in 2013. Rose and Wiz are have been able to effectively co-parent, and still consider each other good friends. In 2019, Rose gave birth to her second son, Slash with the Vice President of Def Jam Records, A.E Edwards. Rose recently had her sons names Slash and Bash tattooed underneath her forehead, a decision that was inspired by the tragic death of Kobe Bryant.

How to dress like a quarantine model

Rose is used to modeling some of the most expensive pieces, created by the worlds best designers. She has walked the runway across the world and appeared on billboards for international companies. She has made cameos in many music videos and television shows, all while serving sizzling-hot looks. During Roses quarantine, however, she reminded the world that its OK to dress comfortably during these trying times. Rose took a breath of fresh air while wearing a bright-pink polka-dotted robe and a pair of fuzzy slide slippers outfit. This outfit may not be seen on Roses next appearance on the runway, but it is a good reminder of how great it is to be comfortable and cozy. Allow Roses iconic robe and slippers look to be a quarantine inspiration for all of us. There is a lot of worry across the world, but Rose laid-back attitude and attire is a reminder that its OK to take it easy every so often.
After intermittent outages that lasted for about two-and-a-half hours on Sunday, the states websites are back online, the state said.

The websites went down on Sunday at about 11 a.m. The Labor Departments site was among those not working, though it came on and off throughout the outage times.

The State of New Jersey network experienced unusually high traffic beginning at approximately 11AM until 1:30 PM EST," said Chris Rein, the states chief technology officer, in a statement. "This traffic resulted in some State services becoming unavailable."

"At this time, traffic has normalized and all services are available, he said.

NJ Advance Media first learned of the outage when frustrated unemployed workers said they couldnt get onto the Labor Departments website, which has been under pressure with unprecedented numbers of claimants since the coronavirus pandemic began.

The state site posted this message: Maintenance in Progress. New Jersey is open and working for you.

We are actively adding capacity to our systems to better serve you during this time of high demand. We regret any inconvenience this may cause, it said.

When the problems first happened, the state said a number of its sites were experiencing "technical difficulties and it was working to bring the sites back.

The Labor Departments site, which is used by workers seeking unemployment benefits, was down several times during the last week. Sunday was the first time the problems were more widespread across the states sites.

The state said the Saturday Labor Department outage would cause some workers to be paid a few days late.

Before the outage, the Labor Department posted a new certification schedule to help manage the volume of claims.

After the Sunday outage, it updated its message to workers: Attention customers: The nj.gov state server has been experiencing intermittent outages Sunday, May 3. We apologize for the inconvenience while full access is restored. Updates to the certification schedule will be posted as soon as possible.

The Labor Department didnt immediately respond when asked how many more people were unable to certify benefits on Sunday and how many workers would be paid late because of the weekend website troubles.

Local journalism needs your support. Subscribe at nj.com/supporter.

Karin Price Mueller may be reached at bamboozled@njadvancemedia.com.

Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com.
Ms. Maley loved to play cards and entertain. Read more

People Weve Lost Monica Maley

74 years old

Lived in Exton

She was a social worker in Chester County More Memorials

Monica M. Maley was a good listener to friends and relatives who counted on her for advice.

She enjoyed life and loved to travel, hold card parties, and entertain.

Ms. Maley had a wide circle of friends. Still, she valued her independence.

She was very loyal to her friends and family, but she was a straight shooter, and you knew where you stood with her, said sister-in-law Loretta Maley.

She established boundaries long before I ever heard the term."

Ms. Maley, 74, of Rehoboth Beach, Del., a retired program analyst for the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare, died Tuesday, April 7, from COVID-19 at Beebe Hospital in Lewes, Del.

She grew up in coal country in central Pennsylvania, and lived in Newtown Square and Exton while working in Chester County. Earlier, she worked in Northumberland County, near her hometown.

Ms. Maley was born to John and Sara Monica Higgins Maley of Mount Carmel. She had two older brothers. After Mount Carmel Catholic High School, she graduated from Immaculata University.

Ms. Malleys laugh was described as absolutely joyful.

She never married or had children, and treasured her nieces and nephews.

She was a wonderful role model of an independent woman for them," Loretta Maley said.

She loved animals, had dogs and cats, and rode horses. She thoroughly enjoyed life, Maley said. That laugh she had when she was having a good time was absolutely joyful.

She had the tightest group of first cousins, and she is really going to be missed."

In January, Ms. Maley had heart surgery in Philadelphia and recuperated at a rehabilitation center in the area for more than two months.

She was excited to move back to her Delaware home on March 25.

But she collapsed on March 30, was hospitalized, and was diagnosed with the coronavirus on April 3.

In addition to her sister-in-law, Ms. Maley is survived by other family and friends.

Services and interment will be held at a later date.

 Valerie Russ
Dover officials handed out face masks and blankets to 49 migrants who were intercepted crossing the Channel in three boats today.

The migrants were picked up by Border Force off the Kent coast near Dover as they attempted to cross the English Channel in small dinghies between 5am and 6am.

Photographs captured several of the arrivals as they travelled to shore on board a Border Force vessel, many wearing surgical face masks and covered in blankets.

The migrants, of whom 43 were men and six were women, were later seen lined up at the Port of Dover as they spoke to British authorities.

The latest arrival brings the total number of migrants to make the dangerous crossing this year to an estimated 900 - around half the 1,850 who made it to Britain throughout 2019.

The migrants (pictured) were picked up by Border Force off the Kent coast near Dover today as they attempted to cross the English Channel in small dinghies

More than 600 people have made the journey since Britain's coronavirus lockdown began on March 23, the BBC said, with 476 attempting the crossing in April alone.

The Home Office confirmed those who arrived today will be transferred to immigration officials and will be interviewed in line with immigration rules.

Three boatloads of migrants from France were brought ashore last week after being intercepted by British authorities on the Channel.

A young child was among around 13 migrants to have made the perilous crossing in one small boat over the world's busiest shipping lane on Monday.

The migrants were spotted in a boat off the Kent coast, sparking a rescue mission involving a coastguard helicopter, lifeboats and Border Force vessels on April 27.

All 13 were taken to Dover to be processed by Border Force officials, who were seen wearing face masks due to the coronavirus pandemic.

None of the migrants were being tested for coronavirus and were instead observed for symptoms, the Home Office confirmed.

The migrants, of whom 43 were men and six were women, were later seen lined up at the Port of Dover as they spoke to British authorities

Photographs captured several of the arrivals as they travelled to shore on board a Border Force vessel, many wearing surgical face masks and covered in blankets

A Home Office spokesman said: 'All individuals will be brought to Dover and, in line with established processes, will be assessed to establish whether there are any medical requirements. No issues reported.

'All will be transferred to immigration officials.

'They will be interviewed and their cases will be dealt with in line with the immigration rules, transferring to detention where appropriate.

'In line with Public Health England guidance, Border Force and all operational staff have the relevant personal protective equipment available to them.'

There were unconfirmed reports that two further vessels were picked up in the Channel on the same day.

Pictured: Migrants who were intercepted by Border Force near Dover today wear face masks

Pictured: Border Force officials transport two of the dinghies to shore near Dover, Kent

More than 110 migrants also arrived on the south coast in just two days last week - 76 on Friday and 35 on Saturday.

Tony Eastaugh, Home Office director for crime and enforcement, said: 'Those facilitating these illegal crossings and the criminals behind this trade are breaking the law.

'If someone facilitates an illegal crossing, we will enforce the law and seek to return those with no right to be in the UK.

'We are working around the clock each day with the NCA [National Crime Agency] and French law enforcement agencies to arrest and dismantle organised crime gangs in France.

'On a daily basis there are extra police patrols on French beaches, drones, specialist vehicles and detection equipment to stop small boats leaving European shores.'

Last month, Home Secretary Priti Patel said she was 'determined' to stop illegal Channel crossings, adding: 'I will not stand by whilst malicious criminals prey on the vulnerable.'

More than 600 migrants have made the journey since Britain's coronavirus lockdown began on March 23, the BBC said last week, with 476 attempting the crossing in April alone

Meanwhile, Dover MP, Natalie Elphicke, has called for those attempting to enter the country illegally to be sent back to France or be put in an immediate 14 day quarantine.

She said: 'France's lockdown means people need permission just to walk the dog. So how come hundreds of migrants can still pile into small boats and illegally motor into Britain?

'We know that the coronavirus has infected the French camps.

'The French have been paid tens of millions of pounds to stop these dangerous journeys being made - it's vital the Home Office make the French honour their obligations in order to stop the further spread of the virus into Britain.

'I have long said that anyone seeking to break into Britain should be immediately returned to France.'
An Indian Air Force (IAF)



helicopter showered flower petals over two hospitals in the city on Sunday as a mark of gratitude to frontline coronavirus warriors, a Defence spokesperson said here.

Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat had announced on Friday that the three services of the armed forces will carry out a series of activities to thank the "corona warriors".

An IAF Mi-17 helicopter took off from Barrackpore air force station and showered flower petals over Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute at New Town and Command Hospital at Alipore, the spokesperson said.

It was an expression of gratitude to doctors, nurses, paramedical staff and other professionals who are fighting the COVID-19 pandemic from the frontline, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Tara Reade, the former Senate staffer who alleges Joe Biden sexually assaulted her 27 years ago, says she filed a limited report with a congressional personnel office that did not explicitly accuse him of sexual assault

Washington: Tara Reade, the former Senate staffer who alleges Joe Biden sexually assaulted her 27 years ago, says she filed a limited report with a congressional personnel office that did not explicitly accuse him of sexual assault or harassment.

I remember talking about him wanting me to serve drinks because he liked my legs and thought I was pretty and it made me uncomfortable, Reade said in an interview Friday with The Associated Press. I know that I was too scared to write about the sexual assault.

Reade said she described her issues with Biden but the main word I used  and I know I didnt use sexual harassment  I used uncomfortable. And I remember retaliation.

Reade described the report after the AP discovered additional transcripts and notes from its interviews with Reade last year in which she says she chickened out after going to the Senate personnel office. The AP interviewed Reade in 2019 after she accused Biden of uncomfortable and inappropriate touching. She did not raise allegations of sexual assault against Biden until this year, around the time he became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

The existence of the Senate report has become a key element of the accusations against Biden, which he has flatly denied. Reade says she doesnt have a copy of the report, and Biden said Friday that he is not aware that any complaint against him exists. He asked the Senate and the National Archives to search their records to try to locate a complaint from Reade.

But Reade is suggesting that even if the report surfaces, it would not corroborate her assault allegations because she chose not to detail them at the time.

According to a transcript of her 2019 interview with the AP, Reade said: They have this counseling office or something, and I think I walked in there once, but then I chickened out. She made a similar statement in a second interview with AP that same day, according to written notes from the interview.

On Friday, Reade said she was referring to having chickened out by not filing full harassment or assault allegations against Biden. In multiple interviews with the AP on Friday, Reade insisted she filed an intake form at the Senate personnel office, which included her contact information, the office she worked for and some broad details of her issues with Biden.

On Saturday, Reade told the AP there may have been a box to check on the form noting a sexual harassment complaint, but she couldn't remember and wouldn't know for sure until she saw the form. Reade also said she canceled a planned television interview with Fox News Sunday because of security concerns.

Reade was one of eight women who came forward last year with allegations that Biden made them feel uncomfortable with inappropriate displays of affection. Biden acknowledged the complaints and promised to be more mindful about respecting personal space in the future.

During one of the April 2019 interviews with the AP, she said Biden rubbed her shoulders and neck and played with her hair. She said she was asked by an aide in Bidens Senate office to dress more conservatively and told dont be so sexy.

She said of Biden: I wasnt scared of him, that he was going to take me in a room or anything. It wasnt that kind of vibe.

The AP reviewed notes of its 2019 interviews with Reade after she came forward in March with allegations of sexual assault against Biden. But reporters discovered an additional transcript and notes from those interviews on Friday.

A recording of one of the interviews was deleted before Reade emerged in 2020 with new allegations against Biden, in keeping with the reporters standard practice for disposing of old interviews. A portion of that interview was also recorded on video, but not the part in which she spoke of having chickened out.

The AP declined to publish details of the 2019 interviews at the time because reporters were unable to corroborate her allegations, and aspects of her story contradicted other reporting.

In recent weeks, Reade told the AP and other news organisations that Biden sexually assaulted her, pushing her against a wall in the basement of a Capitol Hill office building in 1993, groping her and penetrating her with his fingers. She says she was fired from Bidens office after filing a complaint with the Senate alleging harassment.

The accusation has roiled Bidens presidential campaign, sparking anxiety among Democrats. Republicans have accused Biden backers of hypocrisy, arguing that they have been quick to believe women who have accused President Donald Trump and other conservatives of assault. Trump has faced multiple accusations of assault and harassment, all of which he denies.

Reade says she was reluctant to share details of the assault during her initial conversations with reporters over a year ago because she was scared of backlash, and was still coming to terms with what happened to her.

Two of Reades associates said publicly this past week that Reade had conversations with them that they said corroborated aspects of her allegation. One, a former neighbor, said Reade told her about the alleged assault a few years after Reade said it happened. The other, a former coworker, said Reade told her she had been sexually harassed by her boss during her previous job in Washington.

The AP has also spoken to two additional people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect their families' privacy, who said Reade had told them about aspects of her allegations against Biden years ago.

One friend, who knew Reade in 1993, said Reade told them about the alleged assault when it happened. The second friend met Reade more than a decade after the alleged incident and confirmed that Reade had a conversation with the friend in 2007 or 2008 about experiencing sexual harassment from Biden while working in his Senate office.
Dr. Bob England, the countys interim health director, acknowledged the shortfall in data, saying he primarily pays attention to the deaths, hospitalizations and outbreaks sections of the dashboard to gauge the spread of the virus.

Asked to compare the pandemic with a bad flu season, he said that every year deaths from the flu are undercounted, with an official death toll calculated using a formula by the CDC based on a bunch of indicators.

He said hes sure the same thing is happening with the pandemic, but to less of an extent.

I think were undercounting deaths probably less often than we are with the flu, he said. But I dont know what the actual amount of that undercount is going to be.

He said about 200 people in Pima County were lost during a bad flu season a couple years ago, according to an estimate based on the CDC formula, while 89 have died from the coronavirus as of Sunday morning. While that means less than half have died than a typical bad flu season, that does factor in strong social-distancing measures that limited people from leaving their homes.
Ekiti State Government on Saturday officially confirmed record of three new Coronavirus (COVID-19) cases in the state, as announced Friday night by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).

The government said the three new COVID-19 cases were among those infected with the virus by the now late 29-year old pregnant woman.

The pregnant woman was earlier reported to have sneaked into the state from Lagos, but later died of the complications arising from the virus after she was delivered of her baby.

The State Commissioner for Health and Human Services, Dr Mojisola Yahaya-Kolade, disclosed this in a statement in Ado Ekiti.



We can confirm that three of the samples sent to the NCDC accredited laboratory for testing returned positive results of the COVID-19 virus infection.

The samples were from three of the primary contacts of our third case  the late 29-year-old mother who died of complications from childbirth on April 22, 2020, she said.

According to her, the new positive cases are all females, with ages ranging from 26-50 years and who had been in self isolation for 14 days now.

This brings the total confirmed cases in Ekiti State to 11 out of which eight are active, two discharged, with one death recorded,  she said.

Follow Us on Facebook  @LadunLiadi; Instagram  @LadunLiadi; Twitter  @LadunLiadi; Youtube  @LadunLiadiTV for updates
David Jeremiah reveals 'unprecedented' online revival happening amid COVID-19

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Prominent pastor David Jeremiah has revealed that amid the COVID-19 pandemic, his ministry has reached an unprecedented number of people with the message of the Gospel, indicating an online revival may be taking place.

Due to government-issued social distancing orders enacted to help prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, many churches have been livestreaming their services online as large physical gatherings are temporarily halted.

Jeremiah, senior pastor of Shadow Mountain Community Church in El Cajon, California, and host of the radio program "Turning Point, told The Christian Post that ever since the shutdown began, viewership of his online services has dramatically skyrocketed.

The church is alive and well and maybe more responsive now that I can ever remember except for the possible exception of 9/11, he said. What we've learned from all of this is God doesn't need a building for there to be a church.

The founder of Turning Point Radio and Television Ministries revealed that on Easter Sunday, a staggering 90,000 people tuned into his online worship service.

I'm preaching right now to more people than I have ever preached to my life, he said, adding that after the service, he gave viewers the opportunity to receive Christ.

I said, If you pray this prayer and invite Christ into your life, He will come to live within you, and I actually led them in a prayer, the pastor recalled. Then I said, If you prayed with me, theres a little place on the screen you can click on where we will send you more information to help you get started on your walk with Christ.

According to Jeremiah, over 600 people clicked on that button.

Ive been doing this for over 50 years; Im all over media, and I've never had anything like that happen, ever, he emphasized. Would I rather have the 12 or 15,000 people that we have on Easter sitting in the church with our choir and orchestra and the Easter lilies and everybody cheering and praising? Yeah, I'd rather have that. But this is a new and different thing that God is doing. It's unprecedented.

Similarly, the pastor revealed that a recent sermon he delivered in which he addressed whether COVID-19 is mentioned in biblical prophecy received over 1 million views on YouTube.

We've never had anything on YouTube get that kind of traction, he said. When everything in which we have trusted is taken away and we are left with ourselves, we have to ask the hard questions. If this is it, what happens to me now? Theres a renewed interest in the Gospel and a desire to know what the Bible has to say.

Is this the beginning of a revival? This may not be a revival in the truest sense of the Great Awakening, but I believe we are seeing an online revival.

While the pandemic is frightening and frustrating for many people, Jeremiah stressed that God is clearly in the midst of it all, adding: He is with us wherever we are. You don't have to be in a crowd to have God. You just need a quiet moment.

The pastor released his latest book, Shelter in God: Your Refuge in Times of Trouble. In it, he shares how the book of Psalms can aid those struggling to find meaning during the coronavirus pandemic.

Everybody is currently sheltering in place and thats one thing that might help you physically, but if you want to get help spiritually, you must shelter in God. He's the only answer for the many things that are ripping people apart during the coronavirus epidemic, Jeremiah told CP.

In the 10-chapter book, Jeremiah focuses largely on the sheltering Psalms, which he revealed were particularly meaningful to him as he battled cancer two decades ago.

These Psalms speak of God being our refuge and the one in whom we shelter when we're going through storms or when the storms are passing by, he said. We grabbed hold of those Psalms and put them together in about two weeks to help bring comfort to people during this time.

In addition to the Psalms, the Bible is full of comfort for times of trouble, Jeremiah said, referencing Philippians 4:7: "And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

If you don't know Christ, you cant understand this peace; it's beyond explanation, he said. But if you're a Christian and you've ever been through anything that rips at your soul, you know what that's all about. I don't know how to explain it, but I do know that God draws near to us in our times of suffering and disaster.

I know that during the coronavirus, God has drawn near to many people. We've had unbelievable numbers of people die during this time, and yet at the same time, we've seen so many people healed from it. Even as we speak right now, one of my dear friends is trying to get this out of his system and it's just really awful to watch it. And yet, it's also wonderful to see how God is wrapping His arms around him during this time.

According to Jeremiah, God may be using COVID-19 to remind people of their reliance on Him.

We are a great country, there's no question about it. We have the greatest economy in the history of the world. We are a nation of self-made people, according to them. If were not careful, we can begin to think we are the master of our own souls, in charge of our own fate," he said.

God sometimes just reaches down to remind us, You think you've got this thing under control, but I can take a germ you cant even see and bring [you] to your knees, he added.

He also addressed some of the relational struggles families may be facing during the shutdown, acknowledging that many marriages can be pushed to the limit when you're stuck in the same room with somebody."

"During this time, we need to learn to serve one another well, which I believe is a biblical mandate for marriage, he said. When you're serving one another, it takes the focus off of yourself. We can all expect there to be some bumps; we just need to have the strength spiritually to get over them and know that God hasn't forgotten us. He's with us.

The pastor encouraged couples to find structure during this time of quarantine, warning that idleness is the enemys great entry point.

You can't get up and just live in your pajamas all day. You have to ask God to help you get on a schedule, he said. What are some things you need to do? What are some things you can do while you're at home? And structure those things and get a schedule for them, because if you don't, that's where the enemy can get into your heart.

Every human was born with a virus way worse than the coronavirus  the virus of sin, he pointed out. The pandemic has burned into his heart the need for spiritual revival across the world.

The only cure for that is through the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ in His death on the cross, he said. If you dont have Christ, how do you get through situations like this? We can get so caught up in doing church and our small groups that we forget that the reason God put the church here was so that it might be the means whereby men and women can come to know Jesus Christ as their personal Savior.

I really feel a strong rebirth in my spirit of the purpose and importance of evangelism and not being so satisfied with what we have that we fail to share our hope with others. My prayer is that the virus will push the world to know of its incredible need for the Lord Jesus Christ.
Rhylee Gerber is mourning her stepfather John Lowrey. The Below Deck alum shared the news of his death exclusively with Showbiz Cheat Sheet.

Lowrey, who Gerber lovingly referred to as Hoonie, was hospitalized in March after doctors suspected he had a blood clot in his heart. Further tests revealed he had congestive heart failure. Lowrey also had stage 4 bone cancer.

Rhylee Gerber | Photo courtesy of Rhylee Gerber

Gerber rushed to her familys side when Lowrey was hospitalized. After several days in the hospital, the family chose hospice care so Lowrey could return home. Gerber helped purchase hospital equipment to make sure her stepfather was comfortable at home and visited with him before she left Florida.

She describes Lowrey as loving and caring

Gerber described Lowrey to Showbiz Cheat Sheet as a kind and gentle soul. She said he was one the most loving, kind-hearted, gentle beings God has created. He dedicates every moment of his life to others and never asks for a thing in return.

She also recalled a time when Lowrey wanted to make sure her mother knew how much he loved her. At 77 years old, he climbed a ladder early one morning and strung up these heartfelt letters for his wife to see before she left for work. No special occasion, no specific reason. Just because he loves her. Gerber also shared a photo of Lowrey standing with his special message.

Rhylee Gerber and John Lowrey | Photo courtesy of Rhylee Gerber

Gerber also said it was Lowrey who taught her how to fish. She shared in an Instagram video in July that Lowrey still wanted to help around the house and meet her mother for lunch.

Gerber recalled how much her stepfather loved his family. By day 28 of dating, Lowrey had showered her mother in gifts and love. Hes just someone who loves us and loves his family, she said. And hes done so much for my mother and my sister and I. He took us in and raised us as his own.

Gerber continuously fought for her family

Gerber was devastated when her stepfather was diagnosed with stage 4 bone cancer last year. She sacrificed her Alaska fishing season to be near her family. When her boss admonished her for choosing family over a job, she shared his harsh words on Instagram.

My stepfathers situation cannot be helped, she wrote to her boss. Ive taken on financial obligations as well as the burden of knowing this isnt easy for my mother or my stepdad and is likely to just get harder. However, her boss still attacked her for remaining in Florida.

Rhylee Gerber and John Lowrey | Photo courtesy of Rhylee Gerber

When her stepfathers cancer treatments were going to cost the family $22,000 per treatment, she started a GoFundMe. The drug manufacturer saw her fundraiser and eventually worked with the family to bring down the cost. Gerber also started selling some of her dresses and outfits she wore on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen. Medical expenses were mounting, so she sold the clothing to help cover costs.

Gerber recently embarked upon a road trip van life adventure. She dreamed of living a life of travel on wheels for years and was hoping to finally see where the road took her.
Just so you know where Im coming from, I think a great city is one that contains a Dries van Noten store, with the Belgian designers trademark daffodil yellow silk wallpaper, sumptuous upholstery and clothes that everyone of all shapes and ages can wear, if not afford. Antwerp is such a place.

Dries van Noten is among the huge fashion talents that helped give Antwerp a reputation as one of the most intriguing cities in northern Europe, particularly if you are interested in fashion and design.

He was a graduate of the citys exceptional Royal Academy of Fine Arts, alongside a small group of distinguished contemporaries that included Ann DeMeulemeester and Martin Margiela. Known as the Antwerp Six, they became as influential on the 1980s fashion scene as Italians such as Giorgio Armani and Gianni Versace, similarly stamping out their particular aesthetic.

Cobbled charm: Open-air cafes along one of Antwerps elegant streets

Antwerp is further proof that if you want to seek out a city with an exciting creative scene, look for one with a great art school.

The famous fashion museum MoMu, which is also a big part of the citys fashion heritage, is being renovated but is a must-visit for anyone interested in clothes when it reopens next year.

Thirty years after the Antwerp Six came of age, the city has become a most delicious short-break destination.

It is small enough to explore easily, but rich in discoveries. Many of the chief historical sites, such as the Rubenshuis, the beautiful home of the artist Sir Peter Paul Rubens  where I learnt that he slept sitting up, hence his curious, small bed  are in the centre of town, near the best shopping streets for contemporary and vintage fashion.

Although you can find every high-street fashion name around Meir, the citys main shopping street, Antwerp is also home to many small, unique shops and concept stores where you will stumble across Belgian designers as well as international names.

The Belgium school of fashion has a reputation for an androgynous, dark style, but nowadays the shop windows are filled with colour and pattern. The knitwear is particularly tempting.

If you visit only one shop, make it Graanmarkt 13, set in a tree- lined square near the Rubenshuis. Theres a mix of homeware, clothes, bathing products and general knick-knacks, with almost everything new to me.

A typical art nouveau building on the stylish Cogels Osylei

Clothes included home-town mother-and-daughter brand Bernadette, with its range of printed silk dresses and shirts, minimalist designer Sofie DHoore, who specialises in sumptuous neutral-toned outfits, and pieces by Christian Wijnants, one of the countrys most successful fashion names.

But it was the small and relatively inexpensive items that were irresistible  beautiful blocks of Japanese notepaper, weighty and chic glass tumblers, woven Guatemalen rugs and delicious soaps and oils.

I wasnt there to browse the diamond shops, of which there are said to be about 1,500, but there were plenty of other treasures to find  Antwerp is a vintage mecca.

Labels Inc, one of the best stores, is on the unprepossessing Nationalestraat which houses many good boutiques. There you will find second-hand bargains from Dries and Margiela, and other desirable brands such as Loewe, and Comme des Garcons. Just leave enough time to really rifle through.

While the city is famous for fashion design, there is also an exceptional range of furniture and lighting, both old and new, to be found. Head to Kloosterstraat to find stores selling high-end, mid-century antiques as well as more idiosyncratic and cheaper pieces. Such is the variety that you will wish you were returning home with a trailer, rather than on Eurostar as I was.

Antwerps range of architecture is fascinating. Among the impressive merchant buildings of the Het Zuid district, near the industrial riverside, you will find FOMU, a huge photography museum sited in an old warehouse that hosts innovative and original exhibitions as well as a permanent collection.

Home ground: For a huge range of furniture stores  selling new and antique items  head to Kloosterstraat

TRAVEL FACTS When restrictions are lifted, Eurostar to Antwerp, via Brussels, takes about three hours from London St Pancras, with single fares from 44.50. Visit eurostar.com. Advertisement

We visited in winter and were enchanted by the carmine sunsets over the Scheldt river where, during warmer months, there are great open-air eating spots.

In contrast, Cogels Osylei, in the Zurenborg quarter, regarded by some as the most elegant street in Antwerp, contains extraordinary art nouveau buildings with the kind of intact original tiling and mosaics you can rarely find.

Exploring is hungry work, and I certainly ate and drank my fair share over two days. Hotel Franq, a converted townhouse where I stayed, was a successful random pick. Its beautiful bar is a great place for a pre-dinner cocktail if you want somewhere more glamorous than the many artisanal beer hang-outs.

Like many northern European cities, cafes and pastries are a big thing, and Cafe Imperial, although in the tourist centre, is a pleasant place to indulge.

Its oddly difficult to find a good sandwich  but fries are also a big thing, and Frites Atelier is a fantastic lunch spot with the best chips in town, jars of specialist mayonnaise and a glass of wine if you wish.

My top tips: Many shops, museums and restaurants are closed on either Sundays, Mondays or Tuesdays. There is a good metro and tram network (no Uber, and taxis are scarce). Antwerp is walkable, although the streets are often cobbled so not suitable for high heels.

Everyone speaks English, but its hard to find an ATM should you want to carry cash to strike a bargain in all those vintage stores.

To glean more information, I used Belgian resident Derek Blyths excellent guide, The 500 Hidden Secrets Of Antwerp.
The cancellation of Punchestown this year due to the Coronavirus pandemic makes 2020 one of the few years in which the annual national hunt festival has not taken place. As it happens, the Punchestown races were cancelled one hundred years ago in April 1920 although for entirely different reasons.

The 1919 Punchestown races had not taken place as a result of the Sinn Fein campaign against country hunt meetings, including against the owners of Punchestown the Kildare Hunt Club. The 1920 Festival was all set to go ahead however, with the Leinster Leader of April 10 highlighting the pleasant and interesting programme put together for the traditional Walking Sunday.

The middle-class weekly journal The Irish Statesman also included an half-page advertisement for Switzers of Dublin Debutante Department and their lovely selection of new gowns and wraps, suitable for Punchestown.

Preparations for the annual festival were thrown into turmoil at the very last minute however, with the calling of a two day General Strike by the Irish Trade Union Congress and Labour Party very late on the eve of the races. The strike was due to begin on the opening Tuesday morning of Punchestown. This nationwide strike was in support of republican prisoners then on hunger strike in Mountjoy Jail in Dublin, with Ed Malone of Dunbrin, Athy, among those on hunger strike.

The General Strike organised by the labour movement brought the country to a standstill and crucially for Punchestown it meant there was no rail transport available to bring patrons to the races.

The sudden abrupt calling of the strike initially resulted in much confusion, with many visitors having already travelled to Naas in advance. The Kildare Observer of 17 April reported that visitors to Naas found most of the workers of Naas walking about idle, indulging in a sort of melancholy festivity. They had been ordered out, and out they came to kick their heels about the town instead of enjoying themselves, as they would no doubt otherwise be, on the racecourse.

Apart from the stopping of public transport, the nationwide strike saw pickets on shops to ensure they stayed closed along with public rallies across the country.

The labour movement ensured that the strike was strictly adhered to, with the Naas branch of the Irish Transport & General Workers Union reporting to senior union official William OBrien in Dublin that: The first day it was impossible to get the shops shut owing to the big crowd from Dublin [for the races]. At any rate we marshalled our forces yesterday morning and closed every place: banks, shops, solicitors, offices etc.

A picket of our fellows paraded the town armed with bricks, sticks etc. (not with our consent) and if a shop had dared to open there would have been murder There must have been 1,000 in the procession. The oldest resident admit that they never saw anything like it in Naas before or so well organised.

These scenes were replicated across the entire country, with transport and commerce coming to an abrupt halt.

The Kildare Hunt Club were left with little choice but to abandon Punchestown for 1920 as a result. They had initially tried to delay the racing festival until later that week, but this changed once the widespread disruption of the strike became apparent.

The Leinster Leader reported that stable lads at the Curragh appeared to partake in the strike also, by refusing to handle any horse for Punchestown!

One group who benefited from the cancellation was the publicans of Naas. The commentator in The Kildare Observer of 17 April remarking that The pubs did a roaring trade its an ill wind that blew hundreds of country folk into Naas on Tuesday with the object of attending races which had been postponed by wire to the papers at two oclock the previous morning.

This prolonged by a day the harvest period of Naas publicans. Unfortunately the last minute cancellation was a disaster for other traders, vendors and jarveys who had expected a bumper trade for the races but were left with unwanted foods, goods and wasted journeys instead. It was even noted that one lady had boiled thirty hams and prepared a great deal of other food in anticipation of making a tidy profit, all to no avail!

The General Strike itself was a success, with the British military caving in and releasing the prisoners in an humiliating capitulation. This was a rare example of how mass mobilisation and the efforts of the labour movement could combine to defeat the British authorities without resorting to guerrilla warfare.

Although it was a global health crisis that caused the cancellation of Punchestown this year rather than political conditions of 1920, it should be noted that the 1921 Punchestown Festival did go ahead. This is something to remain hopeful for next year!

Kevin Murphy works in the Local Studies & Archives Department of Kildare Library Service. Email: localhistory@kildarecoco.ie

Sources:

Conor Kostick: Revolution in Ireland: Popular Militancy 1917-1923

James Durney: The War of Independence in Kildare

www.kildare.ie/ehistory
The devastating toll that the coronavirus is taking on human life is weighted heavily on those in congregate care  nursing homes, prisons, and other institutional settings that house many people. Deaths associated with nursing and personal care homes in Pennsylvania represent 65% of the 2,292 COVID-19 deaths, as of April 30. The fear of similar outbreaks in jails and prisons has led governors in New Jersey and Pennsylvania to release some people, though so far only a small number have actually been released.

In this crisis, though, another vulnerable population needs attention: youths in the juvenile justice system -- many of whom are in the system for either misdemeanors or technical violations. According to the Juvenile Law Center, in 2018, there were 7,623 detention admissions (those waiting for trial or placement) and 2,965 delinquency residential placements in Pennsylvania.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, which oversees five residential placement locations, only one staffer has tested positive for COVID-19. The fact that no youths have tested positive is only indicative of the fact that only five youths in state-run institutions have been tested. Younger people are more likely to be asymptomatic. DHS could not provide the number of tests conducted in private institutions, where the majority of delinquent youths are.

 READ MORE: Defuse the ticking time bomb of coronavirus in jails and prisons | Editorial

In the Philadelphia Juvenile Justice Services Center, where about 100 youths in detention either await trial or placement, two youths have tested positive. All new youths entering the system go through 14 days of isolation.

While it is true that the risk of severe illness or death from coronavirus is low for youths, it is not nonexistent. Further, because younger people are just as likely to contract coronavirus, they can spread the virus while it goes undetected -- putting facility staff, and their communities, at risk.

But the most serious risk of coronavirus is to the mental well-being and rehabilitation progress of the youths. To facilitate social distancing, all visitations to facilities are canceled and school is done through worksheets. Youths are isolated if they exhibit any symptom of coronavirus or if they were exposed. Robust testing is clearly called for.

DHS says that for now most programming continues, but that depends on staff being able to come to work. They also continue their oversight on non-DHS-run facilities.

The juvenile justice system is distinguished from the adult system because it is designed not to be punitive, but to offer supervision, treatment, and rehabilitation. Advocates have concerns -- about the extent of programming, lack of contact with the outside world, and isolation conditions. Unfortunately, trust in the system has been lost after multiple abuse allegations in residential placement facilities, like those exposed by The Inquirer at Glen Mills or alleged in a lawsuit against multiple facilities including South Mountain Secure Treatment Unit.

Three steps that would make the system safer:

Ramp up testing: Without testing, youths who were exposed or exhibit symptoms are quarantined. Isolation is especially detrimental to youths -- many of whom deal with trauma and mental illness. Youths in detention dont have the comfort of their phones, iPad, family members, or, depending on location, even their own clothes. That makes the isolation experience equivalent to solitary confinement. Testing can also prevent asymptomatic youths from infecting staff. Make testing data public: The New Jersey attorney general provides the total number of positive youths and staff tests by facility. Pennsylvania should follow and include the overall number of tests conducted in all facilities that hold youths. Release youths currently in the system: In response to coronavirus, the Juvenile Law Center, Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project, and DLA Piper filed a petition with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court asking them to release all youths in the system -- including those awaiting trial in adult jails. The court rejected the petition. Philadelphia courts have been reviewing cases for release, but the Defenders Association says that there is wide variation in how much judges take the crisis into account.

Placement for youths in the system was always meant to be temporary and to keep young people safe. With the threat of coronavirus, and the inevitable disruptions in programming due to social distancing, judges should seriously reconsider the benefits of the current system. Insisting on keeping youths in custody just so that they do worksheets in a cell instead of their home is punishment, not justice.
Public transport will resume normal service, but universities and schools will remain closed as night curfew continues.

Jordan says it has lifted all restrictions on economic activity in the latest easing of coronavirus lockdown rules to help jump-start the cash-strapped economy.

Jordan has in the last two weeks been lifting restrictions to allow businesses back to work, but with lower levels of staff and strict social distancing and hygiene guidelines.

Minister of Industry and Trade Tariq Hammouri said on Sunday businesses and industries would now be able to resume production.

Public transport will be allowed to return to full normal service with safety guidelines following the outbreak, but universities and schools will remain closed and a night curfew will continue.

Jordan has reported 460 confirmed coronavirus cases and nine deaths but says it has now contained the outbreak.

The government of Prime Minister Omar al-Razzaz won widespread praise for quick moves to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

But as the economic impact deepened, the government faced criticism from business groups and there were fears of social unrest.
A new Democratic-aligned political action committee advised by retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, is planning to deploy technology originally developed to counter Islamic State propaganda in service of a domestic political goal - to combat online efforts to promote President Donald Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

The group, Defeat Disinfo, will use artificial intelligence and network analysis to map discussion of the president's claims on social media. It will seek to intervene by identifying the most popular counter-narratives and boosting them through a network of more than 3.4 million influencers across the country - in some cases paying users with large followings to take sides against the president.

The initiative reflects fears within the Democratic Party that Trump's unwavering digital army may help sustain him through the pandemic, as it has through past controversies, even as the economy craters, tens of thousands have died, and Trump suffers in the polls.

"It's often said campaigns are a battle of ideas, but they're really a battle of narratives," said David Eichenbaum, a Democratic media consultant who is a senior adviser to the PAC. "Today those narratives spread quickly online."

The initiative is run by Curtis Hougland, whose received initial funding for the technology from DARPA, the Pentagon's research arm, as part of an effort to combat extremism overseas. He insists Democrats are ill-prepared for the looming battle over information and attention, which is bound to play an outsize role in November.

Hougland cites as an example Trump's suggestion last week that injecting bleach or other household disinfectants could be a treatment for the novel coronavirus - a moment that appeared unequivocally damaging to the president but was less clear-cut as it unfolded on social media. Although the episode was associated with a spike in Twitter engagement about Trump, especially in swing states such as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, according to Hougland's analysis, four of the top six tweets about Trump and disinfectant came from accounts partial to the president, boosting the notion that he had not really suggested the bogus cure.

Among them was a tweet from Ryan Fournier, national co-chair of Students for Trump, who wrote, "No, President Trump did not tell people to inject themselves with Clorox or Lysol. If you believe that, you're a moron."

Fournier said there's a grass-roots digital army prepared to defend the president when his back is against the wall.

"I see the people on Twitter," he said. "I see the Facebook groups. I see the posts across these networks. I see the websites people have created to support the president. It's tremendous amounts of stuff that I've never seen in a presidential election before."

Hougland agreed. Republicans, he said, "have greater volume frequency and quality of digital narrative."

Though he is advising the overtly political effort, McChrystal stopped short of endorsing Trump's opponent, former vice president Joe Biden, whom the former general once criticized as part of a dust-up that led to his resignation.

McChrystal said his interest in the PAC is about ensuring the accuracy of information leading up to the election, even if it involves chasing viral attention with emotional appeals and other tactics rewarded by online clicks.

"Everyone wishes the Pandora's box was closed and none of this existed, but it does," McChrystal said in an interview.

His ambivalence is shared by large parts of the Democratic Party, which recoiled at an effort, brought to light at the end of 2018, to use Russian-inspired tactics, including the creation of fake accounts, to sway the 2017 Senate election in Alabama.

Hougland's PAC shuns these methods. Yet it differs from more traditional Democratic-aligned PACs, such as Priorities USA and American Bridge 21st Century, in embracing the practice of paying influencers to convey their messaging. The approach raised eyebrows and prompted tech companies to clarify their rules when it was put into practice by Mike Bloomberg's presidential campaign earlier this year.

"I have no trepidation about paying content creators in seeking out and amplifying the best narratives," Hougland said.

Stephanie Berger, a former national finance director for the Democratic National Committee, is raising funds for the initiative, which is an extension of Hougland's technology company, Main Street One. Andrew Tobias, a former DNC treasurer, was an earlier investor in the start-up.

Main Street One's leaders were previously involved in cultivating digital narratives in Eastern Europe to counter Russian propaganda and, more recently, have waded into American politics. The organization ran a campaign that paid influencers to boost Kentucky Democrats before the gubernatorial election last fall. A super PAC supporting Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey in his bid for the Democratic nomination paid Main Street One more than $500,000 for similar services last year.

Hougland said his aim is to maintain the "largest repository of content against Trump," and to be nimble in boosting organic material that is already performing well, such as videos produced by the Biden campaign.

The presumptive Democratic nominee, whose primary bid counted on the gulf between Twitter and real life, has sought to expand his digital prowess as campaigning has gone fully virtual. He anchors a new podcast, and his campaign is plugging virtual rallies with mantras like "#SoulSaturday" designed to compete with Trump's digital reach.

At the same time, Biden's aides are betting that the president's bully pulpit is just as likely to turn voters off as it is to win them over. Matt Hill, a campaign spokesman, pointed to recent moves by the president's team to "pull back his daily disinformation shows as his credibility continues to sink."

But Joe Trippi, a Democratic operative who helped manage the 2017 Senate campaign in Alabama, said the president is partially insulated from the fallout over his own remarks by a "media echo chamber that is very disciplined about just picking up whatever the misdirection of the day is and amplifying it." That protective armor makes it all the more critical for Democrats to turn up the volume on anti-Trump messaging, he said.

But Trippi wondered about the long-term consequences of adopting some of the online tactics favored by the right.

"Once someone does something that works, it's usually picked up by the other side," Trippi said. "You've got to fight it, but the question is, like negative ads, if it works, do you just get better and better at it? I don't think that'd be very helpful for our democracy."

Restraint could be a more effective approach, said Cindy Otis, a former CIA officer and disinformation researcher. She stressed the need to illustrate the real-world consequences of the president's words, for instance demonstrating that his comments about bleach were followed by a spike in calls to emergency hotlines.

Otherwise, she said, "it's most effective to counter false narratives with straight-up facts."
The rise in the number



of COVID-19 cases to about 300 over one week in Aurangabad district in Maharashtra can be largely attributed to augmented testing capacity, a senior official said on Sunday.

Divisional Commissioner Sunil Kendrekar told PTI that the administration had earlier been testing only primary contacts of coronavirus positive cases but has now included secondary contacts as well.

Aurangabad has been classified as one of the 14 'Red' zones in Maharashtra, which has reported more than 12,000 COVID-19 cases so far.

"Augmented testing is the reason for the rise in the number of cases. This aggressive tracing (of contacts) has also helped us in detecting more patients," he said.

Kendrekar also said that since majority of COVID-19 cases are asymptomatic, the rate of recovery will be good.

"We have succeeded in containing (the number of) asymptomatic patients hence the rate of recovery will also be good," he said.

Kendrekar said though the rising number of cases is a matter of concern, people should not panic.

Listing various measures to contain spread of the coronavirus, the divisional commissioner said clinics have been set up in the containment zones and swabs of suspected cases are being collected.

He said testing of samples will receive a further boost with the activation of laboratory at a university.

The divisional commissioner further said that it should not be assumed that the ongoing lockdown will be "virus- proof".

He said one cannot assume that the number of coronavirus positive cases will not rise once the lockdown is lifted after May 17.

"People should not do 'corona policing'," he said.

Kendrekar also informed that dedicated Ramzan markets will not be allowed.

"People can buy essential commodities during a period of four hours every alternate day," Kendrekar added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
This is all fine and not completely terrifying.

Washington State Department of Agriculture

As if 2020 wasn't already bad enough, the US now has another problem to deal with: a terrifying monster insect nicknamed the "murder hornet."

Officially known as the Asian giant hornet, the insects were spotted in the US for the first time in Washington state last December, but are beginning to emerge more frequently as the weather warms up.

The insects will destroy entire colonies of bees by decapitating them, and can kill humans.

The giant hornets killed 41 people in the Chinese province of Shaanxi in the summer of 2013.

"They're like something out of a monster cartoon with this huge yellow-orange face," one insect expert said.

Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

As if 2020 wasn't already bad enough, the US now has another problem to deal with: a terrifying monster insect nicknamed the "murder hornet."

Officially called the Asian giant hornet, or Vespa mandarinia, the huge insects have been spotted in the US for the first time in recent months, appearing in Washington state, the state's Department of Agriculture says.

The hornets, which are over two inches long, were first spotted in the state in December last year, and generally become active in the spring, researchers from Washington State University said in a post published in early April.

"They're like something out of a monster cartoon with this huge yellow-orange face," Susan Cobey, a bee breeder at WSU's Department of Entomology.

"It's a shockingly large hornet," added Todd Murray, a specialist in invasive species at the university.

While generally not aggressive towards people or pets, the hornets can attack if provoked, officials say, and have killed humans in extreme circumstances.

Murder Hornet

Washington State Department of Agriculture

In 2013, between July and October, the insects killed 41 people and injured 1,600 in Shaanxi province during a particularly bad hornet season, the BBC reported.

Story continues

Their main target, however, is the hives of honeybees, which they attack and often will destroy, largely by decapitating the bees in the hive, according to the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA).

"Asian giant hornet attacks and destroys honeybee hives. A few hornets can destroy a hive in a matter of hours. The hornets enter a "slaughter phase" where they kill bees by decapitating them," the department said.

"They then defend the hive as their own, taking the brood to feed their own young. They also attack other insects but are not known to destroy entire populations of those insects."

Scientists are keen to make clear that people should be extremely cautious around the insects.

Such is the threat posed by the giant hornets that the WSDA has an entire web page devoted to reporting sightings of the insects and instructions on how to trap them. The site displays a large red banner warning people to be careful near them.

Murder hornet warning

Washington State Department of Agriculture

"Don't try to take them out yourself if you see them," said entomologist Chris Looney from the WSDA in a blog post on the WSU website.

"If you get into them, run away, then call us! It is really important for us to know of every sighting, if we're going to have any hope of eradication."

Read the original article on Insider
Armenian parliament speaker Ararat Mirzoyan congratulated journalists on World Press Freedom Day.

According to him, the free press is one of the most important pillars of democracy, the key to the development of society and progress.

"No wonder the press is considered to be the fourth power of the country," he noted. "Our joint task is to ensure the existence of an honest, objective, and independent press in Armenia."
As Covid-19 courses its way across the United States, killing thousands, overwhelming hospitals and upending daily life, authorities has pinned one of its strategies on combatting the spread of the virus on a simple device: the face mask.

But as America, and many other countries have discovered, demand for masks - the majority of which are made in China - far outstrips supply.

As a result of the shortage, a global cottage industry has sprung up almost overnight, as people scramble to protect themselves and others by making their own masks.

In particular, the fashion industry has taken up the baton to help meet the demand.

Hanson in studio, New York.

Aine Hanson, a fashion designer from Sligo living in New York, the epicenter of the pandemic in America, is one of many in her industry who has pivoted to making face masks as part of her daily routine.

I was aware from the news that there was a shortage of medical masks. I was at a loose end one weekend and decided to make simple cotton masks for myself, my husband and neighbours, said Aine.

Like millions across the city, Aine has been self-isolating for the best part of a month, so she slipped the face masks, which she made in her studio at home, in to ziplock bags with a little note and taped them to neighbours doors in her apartment block.

Initially it was just a pet project to help out, but it has kind of escalated over the past week or so, she said.

Aine mentioned to an aunt in Boston that as well as working on her line-up of handmade leather bags and wallets, she had made some face masks for her neighbours.

My aunt told my that my cousin, who is an ER doctor in Michigan, has only one medical mask and he has to reuse it everyday as the hospital doesnt have any supply.

I decided to make a few for him and also some to hand out in his department if anyone else was in need.

When Aine added a video of the process of making the masks to her social media accounts inquiries started coming in.

They really liked the idea of a washable and reusable cloth mask. I am also making batches to donate to my local hospital."

As Aine explained, pivoting to producing face masks was not a huge task: she drafts patterns for new product designs most days, and working from home she all the equipment and materials in her atelier.

I chose a simple silhouette and kept sewing to a minimum to speed up the process of making. The trick with sewing is all in the steam iron, if you press your seams right the rest will follow.

The material she uses, a lightweight chambray cloth which she had in her cupboard, is ideal as its a breathable natural fabric made from cotton and can be machine washed.

Over the past month Hanson has watched her adopted city, where she has lived since 2017, transform as it battles the onslaught of Covid-19.

She's doing all she can to help.
WASHINGTON - Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a rare letter jointly rejecting the Trump administration's offer to supply Capitol Hill with 1,000 rapid-result coronavirus tests, asking that they be prioritized for front-line workers.

The decision by the leaders Saturday to turn down the Trump administration's offer came as the United States neared 66,000 coronavirus-related deaths and at least a dozen states had their first weekend of loosened coronavirus-related restrictions.

The Capitol's attending physician, Brian Monahan, had told Senate staffers Thursday that limited testing capacity meant only lawmakers and staff with symptoms could get tested, and that they would need to wait several days for results.

The Senate is set to return to Washington on Monday to a city still on lockdown amid growing death rates. McConnell's decision to call senators back to Washington while the District of Columbia is effectively shut down has been controversial. Pelosi has refused to do the same.

The tests offered by the Trump administration could have allowed lawmakers and some staff to preemptively check for the coronavirus and know the results within minutes.

"There is tremendous CoronaVirus testing capacity in Washington for the Senators returning to Capital (sic) Hill on Monday. Likewise the House, which should return but isn't because of Crazy Nancy P. The 5 minute Abbott Test will be used," Trump tweeted Saturday morning.

But McConnell and Pelosi agreed the tests should be reserved for those who needed them most.

"Congress is grateful for the Administration's generous offer to deploy rapid COVID-19 testing capabilities to Capitol Hill, but we respectfully decline the offer at this time," they wrote. "Our country's testing capacities are continuing to scale up nationwide and Congress wants to keep directing resources to the front-line facilities where they can do the most good the most quickly."

They added that Monahan would use the older testing until "these speedier technologies become more widely available."

A senior Democratic aide on Capitol Hill said no request for rapid tests was made by leaders of either chamber or by Monahan. They learned about the administration's offer like the rest of the world: by tweet.

"No one asked for this," said the aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly.

The tweet came from Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar who late Friday first shared plans to send Congress three rapid-results machines with the ability to conduct 1,000 tests.

The White House uses these tests on anyone meeting with President Donald Trump or Vice President Mike Pence, but most health-care workers and first responders don't have access to them.

Of the top four congressional leaders, only House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has been tested because of his attendance at a White House event with Trump when they had instituted a policy of testing those in proximity to the president.

Pelosi, 80, McConnell, 78 and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., 69, have not been tested, according to their aides.

The limited testing available for Congress is a microcosm of the broader issue of insufficient testing capacity across the country. Until there is a vaccine, public health experts have said one of the best ways to contain the virus is with robust testing to determine where outbreaks are occurring.

But the United States is at minimum weeks away from having enough tests to provide any American who wanted one, Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease doctor, said last week. He has also called for at least doubling the number of tests being performed before reopening the country.

More than a dozen states have nevertheless begun to relax coronavirus restrictions. Several others are set to reopen or lift stay-at-home orders next week.

Florida's stay-at-home order expires Monday, and restaurants and retail will be allowed to reopen at 25 percent capacity everywhere except for in the heavily-populated Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. Other states reopening businesses and loosening restrictions Monday include West Virginia, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas and Indiana.

Protests against stay-at-home orders and other lockdowns continued across the country. In a city in Oklahoma, which has allowed restaurants, movie theaters and gyms to reopen, the mayor of Stillwater withdrew a requirement that people wear face masks inside reopened stores and restaurants amid threats of violence and physical abuse directed at employees, according to a statement from the city manager.

"I hate that our businesses and their employees had to deal with abuse today, and I apologize for putting them in that position," Stillwater Mayor Will Joyce said in a statement. "I am not the kind of person who backs down from bullies, but I also will not send someone else to fight the battle for me."

Protesters gathered in the capitals of Nevada, Kentucky and Oregon.

An armed group broke through the fence at the governor's mansion in Carson City, Nev. The #ReOpenNevada protests were an objection to Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, extending the state's stay-at-home orders until at least May 15. Protesters reached the governor's door, chanting, "USA, USA," and holding a sign that said "Trust Trump."

That date is also when the federal government's social distancing guidances expire, which Trump said this week will not be extended.

- - -

The Washington Post's Marisa Iati contributed to this story.
Under the influence of Beijing and other media outlets recent release of the news on minimizing the public health emergency response, Chinese people's enthusiasm for traveling has been greatly boosted. The booking volume of air tickets and hotels soared in a short time, along with the prices of air tickets.

It is estimated that more than 90 million trips will be made during this year's Labor Day holiday, making it the year's first real travel peak.

With Beijing as an example, following the news that the city would lower the public health emergency response from level one to level two effective April 30, the local people' enthusiasm increased.

According to Qunar, an online travel information provider, the number of searches for air tickets on the platform rose rapidly within half an hour after the news was released, with bookings for flights departing from Beijing jumping 15-fold over the previous period and searches for other travel products such as holidays and hotels also rising three-fold.

Within an hour of the announcement, the trading volume of air tickets in and out of Beijing increased by more than 500 percent compared with the same period of the previous day, and the volume of train tickets in and out of Beijing increased by 400 percent on Fliggy, a Chinese online travel platform run by Alibaba Group.

Hotels and accommodation also ushered in a small peak of booking. Two hours after the release of plans to lower emergency response levels, the number of residential search and bookings soared four times compared with the same time of the previous day, according to data from Tujia, a global lodging-service sharing and booking platform.

"Since the beginning of this year, the enthusiasm of tourists has been dampened by the epidemic, and many high-end tourists have turned to the domestic market due to the outbreak of COVID-19 in foreign countries. For the sake of safety and epidemic prevention, tourists will also enhance the quality of travel requirements. Under the influence of many factors, high-quality products are naturally very popular," said a travel expert from Ctrip, China's largest online travel agency.
One thing we could say about the covering analyst on AKITA Drilling Ltd. (TSE:AKT.A) - they aren't optimistic, having just made a major negative revision to their near-term (statutory) forecasts for the organization. There was a fairly draconian cut to their revenue estimates, perhaps an implicit admission that previous forecasts were much too optimistic.

Following the downgrade, the consensus from single analyst covering AKITA Drilling is for revenues of CA$122m in 2020, implying a substantial 31% decline in sales compared to the last 12 months. Before the latest update, the analyst was foreseeing CA$166m of revenue in 2020. It looks like forecasts have become a fair bit less optimistic on AKITA Drilling, given the sizeable cut to revenue estimates.

View our latest analysis for AKITA Drilling

TSX:AKT.A Past and Future Earnings May 3rd 2020

Another way we can view these estimates is in the context of the bigger picture, such as how the forecasts stack up against past performance, and whether forecasts are more or less bullish relative to other companies in the industry. We would highlight that sales are expected to reverse, with the forecast 31% revenue decline a notable change from historical growth of 2.1% over the last five years. By contrast, our data suggests that other companies (with analyst coverage) in the industry are forecast to see their revenue decline 11% annually for the foreseeable future. The forecasts do look bearish for AKITA Drilling, since they're expecting it to shrink faster than the industry.

The Bottom Line

The most important thing to take away is that the analyst cut their revenue estimates for this year. The analyst also expects revenues to shrink faster than the wider market. After a cut like that, investors could be forgiven for thinking the analyst is a lot more bearish on AKITA Drilling, and a few readers might choose to steer clear of the stock.

There might be good reason for analyst bearishness towards AKITA Drilling, like major dilution from new stock issuance in the past year. Learn more, and discover the 2 other risks we've identified, for free on our platform here.

Another way to search for interesting companies that could be reaching an inflection point is to track whether management are buying or selling, with our free list of growing companies that insiders are buying.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Greece was set Sunday to evacuate hundreds of migrants from a notoriously overpopulated island camp to the mainland.

Two groups, of 142 and 250 vulnerable" migrants were to board ferries on the island of Lesbos, according to a police source, after leaving the Moria camp where conditions were said to be deplorable.

In April, Human Rights Watch urged Greek authorities to act quickly to ward off a potential health crisis in migrant camps lest the coronavirus take hold there.

The sites are battling rampant overcrowding, poor sanitation,

Read all the Latest News and Breaking News here
CONSHOHOCKEN  Mayor Yaniv Aronson joins mayors across Pennsylvania in asking that the sound of ringing bells echo throughout the town on Sunday at 7 p.m.

Were just trying to get everyone together and do something as a community, noted Aronson, who issued a proclamation in support of Bells Across Pennsylvania Day.

Its an initiative of the Pennsylvania State Mayors Association, Aronson said.

The threefold purpose of the proclamation, as noted in a press release, is to recognize and honor first responders, healthcare workers, and employees of grocery stores, pharmacies and other life-sustaining businesses who have maintained essential services while at risk of infection from COVID-19; to show solidarity with elected officials and residents of municipalities across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, all of whom are fighting COVID-19 on the frontlines together; and to demonstrate a collective resolve that Pennsylvanians will prevail over COVID-19 and work tirelessly to ensure that their businesses and civic life will thrive once again.

At 7 p.m. on May 3, all residents are encouraged to ring bells for three minutes to honor their hometown heroes, rally with other Pennsylvanians on the frontlines of the COVID-19 battlefield and to show resolve that, when conditions are safe, local businesses and civic life will be restored.

To show his own support of the event, on Friday Aronson posed holding a bell with wife Sarah Aronson in front of one of Conshohockens oldest churches, the Coptic Christian Church.

.
Each Leaving Cert student should be given the choice of sitting an exam this year or having their marks calculated on a mixture of past results and overall national averages, says an education expert.

It would be kinder to students and better for their mental health if the State examinations were formally cancelled and replaced with a series of options which would give individual students choices on how they would like to be assessed, says former school principal Colm Cregan.

Mr Cregan, who has worked as a Department of Education inspector, is now chief adviser to the head of the schools inspection bureau in Dubai, which oversees the education of half-a-million students.

Education Minister Joe McHugh has set a date of July 29 for the Leaving Cert exams to begin, public health considerations permitting. An exams timetable is expected to be issued in the first week of June. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar told the Dail last Thursday there would be "major difficulties" in using predictive marking. He said some students are concerned teachers may not give them a fair grade.

On Friday, the Government confirmed schools and colleges will not reopen until September. After the Taoiseach's announcement on the plan to lift restrictions, Fianna Fail said the Leaving Cert should not take place and that alternatives should now be explored to take pressure off parents and students.

The party's education spokesperson, Thomas Byrne, said: "Given that the Leaving Cert is not mentioned in the road map published this evening and schools aren't opening till autumn and given the preparations are not in place to have a fair Leaving Cert, I'm fully convinced the Leaving Cert should not take place.

"There is no scope for it to take place. Take the pressure off parents and students."

Speaking to the Sunday Independent, Mr Cregan proposed an alternative approach to traditional methods involving assessments, but where teachers would not be expected to calculate the exam mark for their pupils. It would be the responsibility of the State to issue marks by harvesting the results of previous exams and looking at national trends in recent years regarding the difference in results of mock exams and State exams. He proposed that each student be offered one from three options.

The State Examination Commission (SEC) would compare mock exam data with real exam data over the last three Leaving Certificates. This difference, based on correlation of all existing data, would then be added to either Option 1 or Option 2 as follows:

Option 1 - calculate the average mark from the student's internal exam scores during their fifth- and sixth-year journey. Add the Government mock-to-real average score to this average.

Option 2 - where available, use 2020 mock exam results. Add the Government mock-to-real average score to this mark.

Option 3 - it may be possible for individual students to choose to sit a Leaving Cert exam if they wish to do so, Covid-19 permitting.

"These choices need no prediction. This does not require teachers to pass judgments on their students or to predict their results. This model requires schools and SEC to gather the existing data, with inspectors validating the process," Mr Cregan said.

Each student would be awarded a grade that is fair and based on their work over the past two years, he added.
The Bexar County Medical Examiners Office identified one of the two people shot and killed Saturday on the North Side.

Darren Meeks, 21, was found dead in a car around 6:20 p.m. at the Lincoln Village Apartments, located on the 1700 block of Jackson Keller.

San Antonio police arrested Zion J. Limon, 20, in connection with the shootings. Limon has been charged with capital murder.

On Saturday evening, officers were called to the apartment complex and found two men inside a Kia Soul. The vehicle, parked outside one of the buildings, was running with the key in the ignition.

FIND OUT FIRST: Get San Antonio breaking news directly to your inbox

Both men appeared to have been shot in the back of the head as they sat inside the vehicle, according to an arrest affidavit. They were pronounced dead on scene.

As the Medical Examiner's Office investigated, the girlfriends of the two victims arrived "visibly shaken up."

One of the women told police that her boyfriend had met a man named Zion on social media four days before the shooting. He wanted to give them some edibles, so she drove with her boyfriend to the apartment complex, collected the edibles, and left.

While the girlfriends were standing with police Saturday, one of the women noticed a man walking a few feet away in the parking lot. She approached the man, calling him Zion, and he stopped to talk to her. She asked if he had killed the victims and they began to argue.

Officers separated the pair and asked Limon if he had any weapons. He said he did. Police handcuffed him and took his handgun. Limon claimed to have more weapons inside a gym bag he had been carrying.

The women confronted Limon, asking if he had killed their boyfriends.

According to the affidavit, Limon responded, "I want my lawyer. It was self-defense."

Investigators found several firearms and clothing covered in blood inside the gym bag. On Saturday, Police Chief William McManus said the incident was likely "a drug deal gone bad."

Limon was charged with capital murder. Bond was set at $500,000.
The MSME sector is key priority area and Bank of Baroda (BoB) is taking various steps, including a Rs 2,300-crore financial support, to help the sector hit hard by the coronavirus-induced lockdown, the bank's Executive Director Vikramaditya Singh Khichi said.

The state-owned bank launched an emergency credit line to provide funds to its existing MSME and corporate borrowers in the last week of March, soon after the lockdown was announced.

In the past one month, the bank has approved 64,000 applications and about Rs 2,300 crore have been disbursed to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to help them meet liquidity requirement, he told PTI.

Under the scheme, the bank provides an additional line of credit of 10 per cent of the existing fund based on working capital limits, subject to a maximum of Rs 200 crore.

The MSME sector was already under the stress far the past few years due to economic slowdown and their financial position got further exacerbated due to the lockdown.

The bank is looking at reassessment of working capital for the sector and after the assessment, will enhance their capital so that they have enough liquidity to undertake activity smoothly, he said.

Khichi also said the bank is encouraging MSME units to take advantage of the one-time restructuring plan announced by the Revere Bank of India (RBI).

"The bank is promoting the one-time restructuring window extensively. Those who were hesitant to avail the restructuring window in the past are now looking at this option actively as an alternative," he said.

With a view to provide relief to the stressed MSME sector, the RBI extended the one-time restructuring scheme by another one year till March 2021. As per the central bank's directive, the restructuring under the scheme has to be implemented by December 31, 2020.

At the end of January this year, about 6 lakh MSME units availed the one-time restructuring window of the RBI.

The MSME sector plays an important role in the growth of the Indian economy, contributing over 28 per cent of the GDP and more than 40 per cent of exports while creating employment for about 11 crore people.

As part of the handholding exercise, the bank conducted an outreach programme last week which saw MSME participation.

The important objective of outreach programme is to educate MSME borrowers about various facilities/options made available by the bank for their benefit, he said.

Further, he said the MSME borrowers were made aware of the business opportunities that are likely to arise in certain segments in the post COVID-19 scenario.

The government is very keen to ensure that the MSME industry remains in good health, as it is one of the growth engines of the economy.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Rajesh Asnani By

Express News Service

JAIPUR: In Rajasthan, health institutions will now be able to conduct 10,000 COVID-19 tests per day. The state government has recently set this as the target for Rajasthan. Medical and Health minister Raghu Sharma said that when the first Corona positive case was detected in the state on March 2, Rajasthan had no facilities to test for Covid-19 and the samples had to be sent to a lab in Pune.

Two months later, the aim of being able to conduct 10,000 Corona tests daily was accomplished on Saturday. The state government has also purchased the Cobas-8800 machine to speed up testing in Jaipur and Jodhpur whereby these two cities will soon be able to conduct an additional 4000 tests each.

Health Minister Raghu Sharma said, Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot was keen that we should test more and more so that we could find out the exact Corona situation in Rajasthan and through isolation and quarantine facilities, we could check the spread of the virus in our state. In accordance with the CMs wishes and the targets set by him, Corona test facilities will soon be available in all District headquarters in the state.

A total of one lakh thirteen thousand and nine hundred thirty-four samples have been collected in Rajasthan so far and very few states in the country have held such extensive Corona tests. The Health Minister further asserted that due to the commitment of health workers and the spirit of patients, the number of people turning from Corona positive to negative is rapidly increasing every day.

Over the past 12 hours, 60 fresh corona positive cases have been found whereby the total number of corona patients has risen to 2832. While there have been 71 deaths, 1293 Corona positive patients have turned negative. 915 patients have been discharged and the number of active cases now stands at 1468.
NASA's award of $1 billion in contracts to Blue Origin, Dynetics, and SpaceX to build landers to carry astronauts back to the moon is dominating headlines this week -- and don't get me wrong, this is a really big deal. But it pales in comparison to another NASA contract that SpaceX won just a little over a month ago.

That contract, to provide logistics services to a planned Lunar Gateway space station orbiting the moon, could be worth as much as $7 billion -- and SpaceX might not have to share it with anyone.

$7 billion for SpaceX ...

As NASA described the larger contract award back in March, SpaceX will be hired to "deliver critical pressurized and unpressurized cargo, science experiments and supplies to the Gateway." Once delivered, these supplies would be stored at the space station for resupply to astronauts exploring the lunar surface. By bringing a supply depot closer to the astronauts' place of work, the Gateway should be able to support longer-duration exploration of the moon, enabling astronauts visiting Earth's satellite to stay there longer.

SpaceX's supply runs will include "multiple supply missions" over a term of somewhere between 12 and 15 years. Other companies may receive similar contracts, and according to NASA, the "maximum total value ... across all contracts" could add up to $7 billion over the entire performance term. But with SpaceX currently the only contractor named to perform the service, there seems to be a very real chance that SpaceX alone could end up collecting the entire $7 billion.

Or not.

... or $0 for SpaceX

You see, there's just one problem with the contract that NASA awarded SpaceX on March 27. It centers on what NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations Doug Loverro had said about the moon mission two weeks prior to the contract award.

Specifically, in discussions with NASA Advisory Council's science committee on March 13, Loverro appeared to be less than enthusiastic about the idea of using a Lunar Gateway. Highlighting the difficulty of meeting Vice President Pence's mandate to land astronauts on the moon by 2024, Loverro said the best way to make that happen is to "remove all the things that add to program risk along the way." One such "thing" is the Lunar Gateway itself.

There is a "high possibility," explained Loverro, that NASA won't be able to complete construction of the space station in time for astronauts to use it as a base from which to descend to, and ascend from, the moon in 2024. Moreover, "from a physics perspective," said Loverro, "I can guarantee you we do not need it for this launch." (He's also not particularly enamored of NASA's original plan "to launch a lander in three individual pieces that have to meet up at" an orbiting space station before making their final approach to the moon.)

Simply put, it's simpler and thus less risky to send astronauts straight from Earth to the moon and back than to have them make pit stops at an orbiting space station en route. Indeed, the Starship spaceship that SpaceX is building in Texas is expressly designed to make such direct flights possible, and intermediate steps such as the Gateway unnecessary.

SpaceX isn't the only company that could lose out

Perversely, this means that if SpaceX's Starship is eventually chosen as the spaceship that takes astronauts back to the moon, it could make the Lunar Gateway -- and $7 billion worth of "logistics services" contracts to supply the Lunar Gateway -- unnecessary. There's a very real possibility that in building Starship, SpaceX could be working itself out of a $7 billion job!

If that were to happen -- if Lunar Gateway gets deemed unnecessary and never built -- it wouldn't just be bad news for SpaceX, either. Other space contractors, including those hired by NASA's international partners and also America's own Maxar Technologies and Northrop Grumman, both of which have been awarded contracts to build elements of the Lunar Gateway, could lose out as well.

Arguments for and against

Then again, with many companies in addition to SpaceX having vested interests (and valuable contracts) in the Lunar Gateway, NASA could end up building the thing anyway. Maybe not in time to facilitate the actual first trip by astronauts (back) to the moon, but later on -- because even after the astronauts arrive, the arguments in favor of establishing an orbital supply depot might still have merit.

In that regard, Loverro noted that he thinks the Lunar Gateway would help make lunar exploration missions "sustainable," and so he believes "100% positively it will be" built eventually if this can be done at a reasonable cost. But even so, this leaves open the possibility that a budget-conscious NASA may end up deciding the cost is not reasonable ... especially if SpaceX succeeds in building a spaceship that makes space stations irrelevant.

If you ask me, once that first spaceship bypasses a space station to touch down on the moon independently, a lot of folks (in NASA, and certainly in Congress) are going to start wondering whether spending extra billions to build a Lunar Gateway might be an unnecessary extravagance.

At that point, the clock will start ticking on Lunar Gateway -- and all the contracts tied to it -- going away forever.
With many states yet to issue their guidelines for e-commerce companies and a large number of sellers being located in red zones, it is likely that only a small percentage of merchants on online platforms like Amazon and Flipkart will be able to start operations from May 4 and sell non-essential items, according to industry executives.

On Friday, the home ministry announced a two-week extension of lockdown but said there would be certain relaxations for orange and green zones. Under the latest rules, e-commerce activities in red zones, which cover large cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune and Hyderabad, are permitted only for essential goods during the third phase of lockdown.

A senior industry executive, who did not wish to be named, said that while there are Centre's guidelines for e-commerce companies for the third phase of the lockdown, only few states including Karnataka, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh have notified their guidelines so far.

This lack of clarity from other states could pose difficulty for e-commerce companies to resume full operations, the person said.

Another challenge for e-commerce companies that follow the marketplace model (like Amazon India, Flipkart and Snapdeal) is that many of their sellers are either located or have their warehouses in red zones. The home ministry guidelines, issued a few days ago, remain unclear on operations of these marketplace sellers of non-essential products, who are in red zones. So, they are dependent on how local authorities issue their guidelines, the person said.

E-commerce platforms and many several consumer organisations have also been requesting the government for expansion of the list of essential products to include items like laptops, mobile phones and chargers as well as summer clothing to ensure people that do not have to step out of their homes amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The person said that the addition of these categories will help customers, especially in red zones, to continue work and study from home and practice social distancing.

Another industry executive said e-commerce platforms have been engaging with seller-partners to prepare them for resumption in services.

The seller, if in the orange and green zone, will be able to see the locations they can service, while the customer will see products that can be delivered to them depending on their location, while other items may carry indicators saying the item cannot be delivered.

Srinivas Mothey, senior vice-president at Paytm Mall, said the company has already had discussions with its suppliers, logistics partners, and most importantly, offline shopkeeper base and they are all set to go online.

"We would be going live with key consumer demand categories like consumer electronics, laptops, home and fashion. These verticals and catalogs would be open to our customers besides continuing essentials. We would be taking new orders for non-essentials from Monday, May 4, and deliver in all green and orange zones," he added.

Mothey said most of its sellers in non-essential categories have confirmed their preparedness by updating their inventory and would be starting to go live on May 4 and the rest will follow suit over the coming week as zonal restrictions ease.

"We have extended their processing times to pack and ship products by 2-3 days buffer, relaxed SLAs (service-level agreements), and penalty conditions on order processing temporarily. We are in the process of getting inventory updated and cataloguing their SKUs (stock keeping units) on the platform. Our logistics partners are in touch with them and will start the process of deliveries soon as we start getting orders," he added.

Walmart-owned Flipkart had welcomed the Centre's move to allow e-commerce companies to offer non-essential products in orange and green zones and said it is working with lakhs of sellers and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) across India and helping them prepare their businesses resume operations.

An Amazon India spokesperson has said millions of small and medium businesses and traders will be able to jump-start their businesses and livelihoods across their workforce after the relaxations coming in from May 4.

Emphasising that the company will focus on maintaining the "sanctity of the new guidelines around the red zones", Amazon India has also urged the government to consider the positive role e-commerce can play to get customers all priority products they need in the red zones as well to enable a stronger economic support for the small businesses while prioritising safety.

Under the first phase of the nationwide lockdown between March 24 and April 14, the government had only allowed delivery of essential goods through e-commerce platforms. On April 16, the Ministry of Home Affairs issued fresh guidelines for the current lockdown, allowing e-commerce deliveries and movement of trucks, but on April 19, it modified its order to allow online commerce companies to deliver essential items only till May 3.

Interestingly, traders' body CAIT had argued that e-commerce companies were misinterpreting the MHA guidelines of May 1 and "twisting (them) in their favour to misguide the various state governments and authorities and to create unnecessary confusion".

CAIT has sent a communication to Defence Minister Rajnath Singh (also chairman of the GoM on COVID-19) urging him to get the matter clarified by the MHA. It has also written to Home Minister Amit Shah and Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
TikTok has taken the world by storm.

And on Saturday, Rebel Wilson, 40, started a hilarious duet fight challenge on the video-sharing app.

The Pitch Perfect star posted a video of herself dancing to Shakira's Hips Don't Lie and challenged her fans to attempt to do the same thing.

'Let's see who is victorious!' Rebel Wilson (pictured) has started a hilarious duet fight challenge on Tik Tok

'Duet me on TikTok if you dare! Let's see who is victorious!,' she captioned the video.

The duet function allows users to take another person's video and add to it their own clip.

The actress also shared a hilarious video to Instagram stories of her fans completing the challenge.

Dancing away: The actress posted a video of herself performing to Shakira's Hips Don't Lie and challenged her fans to attempt to do the same thing

Rebel's post comes after she stripped down for a sultry photo shoot at home in Sydney, while in lockdown amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

She shared a series of Instagram photos of herself flaunting her curves in a light blue track pants and an unzipped hoodie.

The picture revealed her slimmed down figure and ample assets in a black bra.

Va va voom! Rebel's post comes after she stripped down for a sultry photo shoot at home in Sydney, while in lockdown amid the COVID-19 pandemic

In the first image, she channeled her inner model as she posed sitting on top of her stylish white sofa.

For the second picture, the Pitch Perfect star stood in front of the camera with her leg turned out and a her curled blonde tresses cascading down her shoulders.

She completed the images with a final photo of herself seductively crawling toward the camera

The actress wrote in the caption: 'I call this series: At Home with Rebel.'
Two women dressed in healthcare scrubs making rounds in neighborhoods in the Pacific Northwest have been accused of stealing delivered packages from porches.

Officers in the Kennewick Police Department, in the state of Washington, is asking the public for help to identify and locate them, according to the departments Facebook page.

Pictures of the suspects were posted Saturday morning, FOX43 News reported.

Officers hope that someone might recognize them and call them with a tip.

Detectives do not believe the women in the photos are actual nurses. Anyone with information should call 509-628-0333 and reference case number 20-16877.

More:

Free online courses through Penn State Extension continues until May 10 due to coronavirus

Supposed photo of math-challenged protester debunked
Spaniards, who were on board were planning, to return to their homeland during outbreak of coronavirus

The crash of a Beechcraft Baron B-55 light aircraft in Bolivia took the lives of six people, among whom were Spanish citizens. Reuters reports with reference to the Bolivian Air Force.

The disaster occurred near the southeastern city of Trinidad, from where passengers were transported to the larger Santa Cruz transport hub. 12 minutes after takeoff, the pilot announced his intention to return to Trinidad airport due to engine failure. Communication with the ship was lost. The accident killed two crew members and four Spanish citizens.

The Spaniards who were on board the plane were planning to return to their homeland in connection with the epidemic of coronavirus.

The Bolivian authorities created a group to investigate the disaster. A report on the tragedy will be released within eight days.

Recall that Bolivia closed its borders to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

As we reported before, on April 26, Ukraine International Airlines organize the dispatch of a special flight to the southern part of the United States to bring Ukrainians back to their homeland
Around 270 United Kingdom (UK) nationals left for their country in a special Qatar Airways flight from Sri Guru Ram Dass Jee International Airport in Amritsar on Sunday.

The flight was scheduled to take off at 2:15 AM from Amritsar.

Click here for full Covid-19 updates

Speaking to ANI, Davinder Singh, Volunteer, British High Commission said, Around 11,000 UK nationals have been repatriated so far around the world out of which 5500 are from Punjab. In the coming days as well UK nationals will be sent back. We would like to thank the Government of India and Airways authorities.

Before the flight took off, UK nationals here expressed their gratitude to the Indian citizens and Government of India for helping them while they were stranded here due to coronavirus-induced lockdown.

We came here on March 9 for 2 weeks but our flight was cancelled due to lockdown. We were unable to move out of our house for six weeks. People should obey the lockdown norms, said Gurbaksh Kaur, UK national.

Another UK national, Rajinder Singh told ANI, We came here on February 29 for two weeks but later we were stranded here amid lockdown. We did face many problems but people of Punjab supported us and loved us during this crisis.

Another special flight airlifted 271 UK nationals from Amritsar yesterday.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 04:43:30|Editor: huaxia

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UNITED NATIONS, May 2 (Xinhua) -- In Malawi, one of the world's poorest countries, with a fragile health system, the United Nations is bracing for the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic which, it is feared, could be severe, UN News reported on Saturday.

"COVID-19 is known to be particularly dangerous for those with underlying health conditions and, in the African Great Lakes nation, a significant proportion of the population fall into that vulnerable category," it said.

Around one million adults are living with HIV/AIDS, and approximately the same number of children have been orphaned by the disease. Many others are suffering from a range of infectious diseases, such as hepatitis A, malaria, rabies, schistosomiasis (a disease carried by freshwater snails), and typhoid.

Maria Jose Torres is UN resident coordinator in Malawi, the senior UN development official there. She warned that COVID-19 could have a disastrously high toll: "Even a fairly low number of cases could overwhelm the health system, cause food shortages, and reverse the path of progress the country has been on in recent years."

Torres said that a "systematic approach" is needed to avoid that scenario. "We've got to make sure that people have the supplies and knowledge they need to stay safe."

UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), with support from partner UK Aid and others, is working to deliver water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) supplies, so communities are prepared. So far, over 24,000 units of chlorine powder drums, water buckets, water testing kits, laundry soap, hygiene education materials, and portable toilets have been distributed to emergency treatment units in four districts, according to UN News.

However, educating the population is just as important as providing the supplies, as Torres explained: "WASH supplies are beneficial only if people use them properly. That is why the UN in Malawi is working to make sure people learn exactly what they need to do to keep themselves, their families, and their country, safe."

Printed information about COVID-19 is being distributed throughout rural Malawi by UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and other UN agencies, with support from the European Union and UK Aid.

To address the immediate need, the World Food Programme (WFP) has distributed cash to almost 350,000 vulnerable people in the country's most food-insecure districts.

The United Nations in Malawi - which is working with the ministry of health and community leaders to decide on the best ways to share prevention messages - insists that strong partnerships with community groups play a vital role in the fight against the pandemic. "The UN can't do it alone," said Torres. "Government can't do it alone. People need to hear messages from those they know and trust." Enditem
Ottawa, May 4 : Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced an allotment of 240 million Canadian dollars on Sunday for moving mental health and primary care services online during the COVID-19 crisis.

During his press conference on Sunday, Trudeau said a new mental health platform will provide strategies for managing stress with specific help for those from marginalised communities, Xinhua news agency reported.

The money will include funding for marginalised communities and virtual primary care for patients who may not need to see a doctor in person.

"By helping doctors run appointments online, you can stay safe at home while getting care, and our hospitals can stay focused on those who need it most," Trudeau said. "If we can use apps to order dinner and videochats to stay in touch with family, we can use new technology to keep each other healthy." Last month, Canadian Health Minister Patty Hajdu unveiled an online portal aimed at linking Canadians of all ages to support workers and mental health professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trudeau also announced on Sunday an additional 175 million Canadian dollars (about US $122 million) to support Canadian company AbCellera for what he called "very promising COVID-19 research," and introduced a new COVID-19 Supply Council.

The council will be tasked with finding innovative solutions and keeping Canada supplied with medical equipment like ventilators and masks.

"Until we have effective treatments, or better yet a vaccine, we'll still need a reliable supply of everything from masks to ventilators," he said.

Several provinces in Canada have begun easing COVID-19 lockdown restrictions and are set to reopen businesses and services on Monday, including Ontario and Quebec which are two provinces hit hardest by the coronavirus.

As of Sunday afternoon, there were 56,696 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Canada while 3,566 died and 23,813 recovered from the virus.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
The centres were converted into shelters to help stem COVID-19s spread, but experts worry they may pose more of a risk.

Portland, Oregon  Outside the Oregon Convention Center (OCC) in downtown Portland, Oregon, sits a mobile shower with a wheelchair lift and a smoking shelter in which the massive buildings new, temporary residents sit shoulder-to-shoulder.

Inside, people pass the hours, sitting or lying in numbered, military-style green cots, in a shared central sleeping area divided by tape and hanging blue curtains. Residents say there is an eating area, large folding tables, chairs tipped up to show they have been sanitised and a single TV, whose remote control, a resident said, is kept by staff. No guests are allowed inside; coloured adhesive bracelets are checked at the front door. Officials at OCC declined Al Jazeeras request for a tour.

The vibes are pretty good for the most part, said 19-year-old OCC resident Logan Staggs. They provide everything you need.

There is one detail that Staggs dislikes, however: the star-like constellations of tiny LED lights in the ceilings.

When I first went in there, the lights creeped me out, Staggs said. Theres no windows, so it can mess with your body clock.

Logan Staggs stands outside the Oregon convention centre homeless shelter [Thacher Schmid/Al Jazeera] [Daylife]

For residents the convention-centre homeless shelters that have popped up across the United States since the coronavirus hit, those lights can symbolise the cavernous scale and surreal nature of their surroundings  unprecedented, unforeseeable, and brought by a pandemic.

Its just a jillion lights, said Kathleen Mortensen, 62, in San Diego Convention Center (SDCC). There is a resemblance to stars.

Warif Rahemtulla, 60, who is staying in the Fort Worth Convention Center (FWCC), said the lights help him relax. Its like looking at the sky, Rahemtulla added. If I cant sleep, I look up, and Im like wow, man. Its pretty cool.

As the impact of the coronavirus grew severe in March, convention centres axed programming and events that would have brought in billions of dollars. Homeless shelters also began to close as they could not meet social distancing guidelines. Homeless service systems, working with public health authorities, hoped that refurbishing the convention facilities into non-congregate shelters would allow for greater physical distancing. Around the country, they moved thousands of people into an unknown number of shelters in convention centres, many of them buildings with glimmering glasswork and stunning grounds. While authorities say the approach marked their best option for minimising COVID-19s effects on the homeless population, critics fear that such massive undertakings may instead put them in the coronaviruss crosshairs.

Shelter referrals

The Federal Emergency Management Authority (FEMA) has received requests from 31 states and one Indigenous tribe for a total $1.2bn in funds for for eligible activities including but not limited to non-congregate sheltering, the agency said.

FEMA told Al Jazeera the funds are for health- and medical-related needs and may include unhoused individuals, but the agency would not say how the $1.2bn was specifically allocated.

It is not clear how many of these shelters sit inside convention centres. FEMA does not track the number or locations of homeless shelters it is funding inside convention centres, a spokesperson said. FEMA referred Al Jazeera to the Housing and Urban Development agency, which did not respond to requests for comment.

More than 800 homeless people are sheltered in the San Diego Convention Center, and up to 1,500 may shelter there during the outbreak. https://t.co/ejlb2xK0w5 pic.twitter.com/vJoMi8FC54  Gary Warth (@GaryWarthUT) April 8, 2020

The convention centre in San Diego alone holds 1,135 and is growing, while about 328 people on average sleep in the FWCC and 120 in Oregon.

Many of the federal medical sites for coronavirus could also be understood as de facto homeless shelters.

Inside Bostons convention centre, at the Boston Hope medical centre for people recovering from COVID-19, more than half, or 97, of its 187 patients are homeless, according to Chief of Health and Human Services Marty Martinez.

The vast majority of those living in the convention centres are referrals from existing shelters, though some shelters, such as SDCC, later opened their doors to unsheltered homeless people. All of the centres require health screenings at intake. Residents must wear adhesive wristbands and are allowed to leave.

In turn, residents are provided with catered food, according to nearly a dozen residents who spoke to Al Jazeera from the San Diego, Portland and Fort Worth convention-centre shelters.

The food cant be beat, David, a 70-year-old resident of the OCC shelter who declined to give his surname, told Al Jazeera. I havent eaten this good for f****** decades.

Public health concerns

Little is easy in these shelters, however. Authorities used the Las Vegas, Nevada, convention centres car park to give shelter. In Cincinnati, Ohio, pink yoga mats were used as beds. In Oregon, Texas and California, residents sleep in facilities that can cover 14 city blocks.

This is all new and somewhat strange, said Denis Theriault, spokesman for the OCC. A site lead and recently hired former data analyst there, Peter Tiso, said, weve been learning a lot.

Public health experts have expressed concern over the convention centre shelters. Dr Margot Kushel, director of the University of California San Francisco centre for Vulnerable Populations, said the idea these shelters prevent infections is magical thinking.

Youre sharing bathrooms, Kushel told Al Jazeera. You cant keep people six feet (1.8 metres) away.

Homeless people get settled in a temporary car park shelter at Cashman Center, with spaces marked for social distancing to help slow the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Las Vegas, Nevada, [Steve Marcus/Reuters]

Eric Tars, legal director at the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, agreed.

Every one of these facilities is on its face violating the CDCs guidance to avoid large gatherings, he said.

The homeless population has a high incidence of what medical professionals call comorbidities: risk factors such as existing serious health problems, mental health struggles or addictions that make them particularly vulnerable, experts say.

Svenn-Erik Mamelund, a public health expert in Norway, said socioeconomic status has long been overlooked in public health responses. His study of deaths in the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic found the first wave hits the poor, the second wave hits the rich.

Im really, really concerned that in the end, it will be the poorest sections of society that will pay the highest burden from [coronavirus] mortality, as we have seen back in history, Mamelund said.

SDCC recently saw its first two positive COVID-19 tests, while FWCC has had five, but currently has none. At OCC, county officials declined to share numbers. None has had outbreaks, but there have been outbreaks in some homeless shelters, including one in the Seattle area erected to decrease crowding.

In Portland, David said, coughing is out of control.

OCC shelter spokesman Theriault said that residents are referred to motels for isolation if they have a new, worsening, or different cough.

While the centres are not ideal, public health experts concede there is no simple solution.

Its almost impossible to manage the crisis of homelessness in a pandemic, Kushel said.

Best option?

In the convention centre shelters, local officials contend that the facilities are the best option given the circumstances.

They were already in our shelters, so we had to take quick action to make sure the physical distancing was being met, said Ashley Bailey, a San Diego city spokesperson. So, the convention centre is the best option.

Officials have set up handwashing stations and mobile showers, hired staff, added screening procedures, transportation to hotels, and isolation programmes. They said they have been doing the best they can to keep vulnerable people  and the entire population  safe.

This is what theyre used to, said Richard Zavala, director of Parks and Rec at the City of Fort Worth, in charge of the FWCC shelter. Were only temporary, were not going to operate on a permanent basis. We dont want to institutionalise it.

Theriault said the best public health practice would be for people to have homes and anything else we come up with is our best harm reduction approach.

William Keith stands outside the San Diego Convention Center [Courtesy of San Diego activist Amie Zamudio]

Federal housing officials agree, saying private individual rooms are the preferred pandemic homeless sheltering approach, while shared spaces are the least ideal.

In Fort Worth, 39 RV-housed individuals who have tested positive for COVID-19; 10 RVs provide isolation. In Portland, 17 people are in two hotel isolation programmes. San Diego is offering hotel rooms to some, Bailey says, but that setting is not ideal for everyone.

Zavala draws his experience from managing hurricane shelters, he said. Whereas SDCC and OCC residents can stay all day, Zavalas gets residents up, feeds them breakfast burritos and gets them outside by 7am. They can return at 4pm.

There are other differences. In Portland, couples can push cots together; FWCC and SDCC separate genders. Four months pregnant, Lori Pena left bed 126 in San Diego because she was not allowed to be near her boyfriend.

I want to protect my pregnancy, Pena, 34, said. Were trying the best we can right now to stay together and keep our little family safe.

It is not clear how long these convention-centre shelters will be open. Traditional shelters are often closely spaced, and cannot return to capacity until social distancing guidelines are no longer in place. Its the local and state health departments that are really running the show, the University of California San Franciscos Dr Kushel said.

In Texas, the first phase of the governors reopening plan took effect on Friday. Zavala estimates the Fort Worth centres shelter will be open another month or two.

All depends on governor orders, moreover pandemic trends and health professionals, he said.

It also may depend on the biggest unknown of all: the 30 million newly unemployed Americans. How many will lose their housing, and how much could the current figure of a half-million homeless grow, especially in cities and states already facing affordable housing crises?

Despite challenges and remaining questions, officials are upbeat, and residents have also found cause for gratitude.

In San Diego, Mortensen said, fresh laundry is placed in plastic bags on cots by 2pm daily, and they dont lose a sock. In Portland, we all just kind of support each other, said Rubin, 23, declining to give a surname.

This [pandemic] is the worst experience of my life. Im going through hell, really, said Rahemtulla, who is employed and has plans to get back into housing. If it wasnt for the convention centre, I dont know what Id do.
The justices have offered various explanations for their resistance to live access to their work. Some have said they feared showboating from the lawyers. Others have worried that their questions, some including colorful hypotheticals, would be taken out of context.

Justice Sotomayor has said she feared the public would not understand the arguments. I dont think most viewers take the time to actually delve into either the briefs or the legal arguments to appreciate what the court is doing, she said in 2013.

Lawyers who argue before the court and experts on its history and procedures said that arguments conducted by telephone are likely to be more stilted and less valuable than ones in the courtroom.

Its better than nothing, but its no substitute for the real thing, said Kannon K. Shanmugam, an experienced Supreme Court lawyer with Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. Its hard to have the back-and-forth that you have in open court. And its that much harder without videoconferencing, where you can at least see each other.

Instead of the unruly but productive commotion that characterizes the modern Supreme Court argument, the court has announced that the justices will ask questions one by one, in order of seniority.

That seemingly small adjustment will have important consequences, notably in diminishing the ability of the justices to use their questions to talk to one another by jumping in to build on or respond to their colleagues concerns. The court will mute the lines of lawyers before and after they argue, but it has not said whether or how the justices themselves will be muted when it is not their turn to ask questions.

Other courts that have heard arguments by conference call have experienced hiccups, including dropped calls and background noise. The Supreme Court is unlikely to be immune to such glitches.
Cypret, a Rock Island Arsenal retiree, learned two main lessons since she started her quest in 2013. First, the creation of an inclusive playground means more than providing physical access. Second, nothing beats the support of caring people with deep pockets to meet financial goals.

What inclusive means

To get started with her dream, Cypret and her team  a group of friends and supporters known as Gabe's Dream Team  organized a meeting in 2013 at Davenport's Eastern Avenue Library.

They invited "pertinent people," such as special education teachers and pediatric occupational and physical therapists and, with a big piece of butcher block paper taped to a wall, brainstormed ideas and wrote them down.

"Oh my gosh," Cypret said of the community input. "We were just focused on Gabe and his little buddies, but it's so much bigger than that."

They realized features could be tailored toward children with Down syndrome and on the autism spectrum and those with sight and hearing impairments. And accessible ramps would be great for grandparents or other adults in wheelchairs or walkers who want to accompanying their grandchildren or young friends.
CLEANNESS by Garth Greenwell (Picador 14.99, 240 pp)

CLEANNESS

by Garth Greenwell (Picador 14.99, 240 pp)

Greenwells exquisitely written debut, What Belongs To You, followed an aspiring poet who moves from Kentucky to Bulgaria, where he forms an intense sexual attachment to a homeless labourer while working as a teacher.

This less dramatic, more episodic follow-up revisits the same unnamed narrator, prior to his return to the U.S.

He tags along at a political protest, enters into a series of anonymous hook-ups online and gets uncomfortably close to a former student after the collapse of a long-term relationship with a man from Portugal.

Greenwell is trying to find a way to write about sex that portrays minds and bodies with equal candour. But while his endlessly twisty sentences unspool with admirable fluency and control, I cant truly say I never found myself bored.

Even more than his debut, this is an airlessly solemn affair, with a nagging sense that lifes emotional range is being muzzled for the sake of a rather willed melancholy.

PEACE TALKS by Tim Finch (Bloomsbury 16.99, 224 pp)

PEACE TALKS

by Tim Finch (Bloomsbury 16.99, 224 pp)

While monologues of a male midlife crisis arent exactly alien territory for literary fiction, Tim Finchs deceptively straight-talking new novel has a trick or two up its sleeve.

Its about a lonely, half-Norwegian diplomat, Edvard, who reports on his attempt to broker an end to the violence between two unspecified warring parties in the Middle East, now breaking bread at a luxury Alpine resort.

Edvards chatty, companionable narration unfolds as if in imaginary dialogue with his late wife, Anna, an eminent psychiatrist shockingly beheaded on a London street in a brutal terrorist attack  an event that, to his shame, has turned him into a minor celebrity, as well as the object of female attention he cant quite resist.

As well as shining a light on the conflict resolution industry, Finch plays a canny game with our assumptions about the motives behind Annas murder, in a smart tale slyly engineered to warn against the perils of nationalist tub-thumping.

THE GLASS HOTEL by Emily St. John Mandel (Picador e-book out now, 13.95; hardback 14.99, to be published August 6)

THE GLASS HOTEL

by Emily St. John Mandel (Picador e-book out now, 13.95; hardback 14.99, to be published August 6)

A few years ago I interviewed a writer who told me he had binned his planned novel about the disgraced financier Bernie Madoff because he realised he couldnt find anything new to say.

His admission came to mind while reading Mandels new book, which draws heavily on the scandal, only to tie the reader in knots by trying to put its own stamp on the tale with a fatiguing medley of characters and subplots.

The New York fraudster here is Jonathan, who unwittingly puts himself at risk when he embarks on a May-to-December relationship with Vincent, a young female employee whose rackety half-brother has a drug habit.

While mystery hangs over how Jonathans exposure affects his unlikely late-life companion, the novels developments rarely feel as earth-shattering as theyre plainly meant to be  not least the story behind some ominous graffiti.

Fans of Mandels hit pandemic thriller Station Eleven may find it all rather a fussy mess.
By Debbie Walsh

Every 10 years, following the decennial census, the New Jersey Apportionment Commission convenes to redraw the lines of the states 40 legislative districts so that population changes are reflected in the New Jersey Legislatures 40 Senate and 80 General Assembly seats. This commission will determine the contours of New Jersey politics for the next 10 years. They will hold in their hands the fate of incumbent legislators, the partisan control of each legislative district, and the hopes of newcomers awaiting the opportunity to run.

Early indications are that, of the 10 members of the bipartisan commission selected for the next redistricting, only one member will be a woman. There will be zero Democratic women. The next decade of New Jersey politics will be contested in an environment created almost entirely without the input of women, further estranging them from the levers of power in the state.

I dont doubt that the individuals been tapped to serve are dedicated public servants, but they do not reflect the diversity of the state. They have been selected by the political powerbrokers in the state who historically have reallocated power among the already powerful.

In the last redistricting, women were three of the 10 members of the commission, which, while still far short of parity, was significantly better than the prospective commission. Even then, the negative impacts of the last redistricting disproportionately affected women. In 2011, when women were 28% of the New Jersey legislature, four of the legislators forced out of office by impacts of their district being redrawn  57% of the total  were women.

Women already struggle in New Jersey politics, a state in which consolidated party power creates few opportunities for advancement for newcomers and outsiders. In the state legislature, women hold less than a third of seats, meaning New Jersey isnt even among the top 20 states in the country for womens representation in its legislature. Women lag in county executive positions, as freeholders, and as mayors, never reaching a one-third share of any these offices.

Behind these elected positions, however, are the Democratic and Republican county party chairs, who exert an outsize influence on candidate recruitment and endorsements. Of the 42 county party chairs, there are only nine women  five Democrats and four Republicans. With men holding 79% of these powerful positions, there are diminished opportunities for women to advocate for other women in their personal and professional networks as candidates for office.

It becomes clear rather quickly, between overwhelmingly male county party chairs and an almost entirely male redistricting commission, that the system of political power in New Jersey remains unwelcoming to the women of the state. In the wake of NJ.com/The Star-Ledgers reporting on the misogyny, harassment and even sexual assault that permeates the political institutions in our state, there has been much hand-wringing over how to change the culture. One of the most obvious answers is to include women in greater numbers at every level of government and politics. That should start with womens representation on the commission that defines the politics of the state.

The decision to almost completely exclude womens voices from the redistricting process sends a powerful message to the women of New Jersey that they are not valued by the men who wield power in this state. The optics are bad, but this is more than just optics. This is about substance. Research described last year in The Harvard Business Review showed that gender inclusivity, authentic and not simply decorative inclusivity, improves business outcomes, measured by both market value and revenue. In 2014, Scientific American reviewed a variety of research showing that diversity, including gender diversity, leads to more innovative, creative thinking and improved results across a range of organizations.

Excluding women from decisions that will impact a decade of New Jersey politics not only robs women of having a voice in those decisions, it robs the commission of having the wisdom and innovative thinking that is a natural by-product of consulting a wide range of opinions and experiences and it robs New Jersey of better outcomes. In order for the outcome of the 2020 redistricting to be fair, the New Jersey Apportionment Commission must be fairer.

Debbie Walsh is the director of the Center for American Women and Politics at the Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University.

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Social bubbles could be limited to fewer than ten people and super-spreader indoor events could be banned until well into 2021 to avoid a second peak of coronavirus infections, under scientists' proposals to government.

Britain could face an 'exponential growth' in Covid-19 cases if groups of more than ten are allowed to get together, according to the results of two studies.

The country won't be able to return to 'normal' until a vaccine is found, according to Dr Mike Lonergan, senior author of a study by the Division of Molecular and Clinical Medicine at the University of Dundee.

He told MailOnline the only way lockdown can be safely eased is if people keep only 10 per cent of their former social lives.

'It doesnt look like its possible to go back to how things were before. It looks hard to believe well do a tenth of the things we were once doing,' he said.

Weddings, birthdays and funerals could result in the R-rate - the number of people one person can infect - sky rocketing, the Sunday Times reports.

Senior epidemiologist Adam Kucharski has warned Britain could face 'exponential growth' in Covid-19 cases if groups of people start getting together for celebrations or religious services.

Dr Lonergan explained that if a person went to the pub every day for ten days before lockdown. Now they could only safely go once.

'There's no end point to it. If we want things to be stable they need to be how they are now, in lockdown. This will have to stay until something drastic changes.'

Senior epidemiologist Adam Kucharski has warned Britain could face 'exponential growth' in Covid-19 cases if groups of people start getting together. Pictured, people social distance as they gathered for a street party in Clapham on April 25

Dr Lonergan said the world was 'lucky' social-distancing has been able to curb the virus, because it was 'barely' enough.

He added that once the number of infections rises, it will 'take quite a lot to claw it back' because the effect of social-distancing on reducing infections has been so slow.

'Look at where these super-spreading events occur, it's often at family gatherings and meals and weddings and parties and all these things that socially we want to happen,' Dr Kucharski told The Sunday Times.

But being outside, for physical activity or even non-contact sports, could be okay because the virus is less likely to spread, the research showed.

'Going to the park to exercise  thats something where the transmission risk is probably very low if people are sensible but obviously has enormous health and wellbeing benefits,' the epidemiologist said.

Dr Kuckarski's team at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found the usual infection rate, known as the R-rate, sees one person spread the virus to an average of three others.

Dr Kucharski is author of bestselling book about epidemics The Rules of Contagion

The R-rate currently stands at around 0.7, which crucially falls below the Government goal to keep it below one. The list of five requirements for easing lockdown includes a low R-rate.

But when large groups meet in badly ventilated environments, such as churches, the infection rate soars and the virus spreads three times faster, the study suggests.

The findings mean going to church or celebrating birthdays could put thousands of people at risk because of the increased rate of infections.

But gatherings where people stay at a distance apart from each other and stay outside could be allowed.

The Mail on Sunday reported plans likely to be introduced for easing lockdown later this month will mean people can exercise several times each day.

They'll also be allowed to drive to the countryside and outdoor spaces for walks and picnics.

However, they will only be allowed to do so with members of their household and must stay at least two metres (6ft 6in) away from other groups.

Dr Kucharski, author of bestselling book about epidemics The Rules of Contagion, said: 'As soon as measures are lifted, we risk being back where we started, facing exponential growth.'

He added that this meant social distancing restrictions would have to stay in place until at least next year, but ultimately it would be a Government decision.

Brits will have to 'substantially' reduce the level of social interaction they were having before the pandemic to ensure the number of cases doesn't start to rise out of control. Pictured, a street party in Clapham on April 25

'It seems likely that these kinds of close interactions between people will need limitations,' he said.

The findings of the studies are due to be discussed at a Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) meeting next week.

What action is taken next will be up to the Government and it is still unknown how the UK will exit lockdown, but Dr Kucharski said social distancing is likely to stay in place for some time to come.

Social contact, defined by the Dundee University study as a conversation or physical touch, should be kept at no more than ten people each day, the authors said, to make contact tracing possible.

Another possible was to ease lockdown could be to introduce a system of letting people know when they've been in contact with someone who has the virus.

But contract tracing, which has been praised as the method used by South Korea to keep the disease under control, can only be implemented if the number of people an infected person comes into contact with is 'substantially reduced'.

Last week Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon suggested people in Scotland could soon be allowed to meet a small 'bubble' of friends and family outside of their households under plans to ease the lockdown gradually. Pictured, people clapping for carers in their street

Brits will have to cut their 'normal' level of social interaction to ensure the number of cases doesn't start to rise out of control.

Under an 'optimistic' approach, the authors said, people could choose between five and ten people to interact with outside of work, school or home.

In research published last week Dr Kucharski's team found the transmission rate while exercising in a park was 'very low' and those under the age of 20 were 75 per cent likely to be asymptomatic.

While symptoms are much more likely for over 70s, who have only a 24 per cent chance of being asymptomatic - where they have the virus and can pass it on to others but have no symptoms.

Yesterday the UK announced another 621 deaths, taking Britain's official fatality toll to 28,131 - edging the country closer to becoming Europe's worst-hit nation.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon suggested people in Scotland could soon be allowed to meet a small 'bubble' of friends and family outside of their households under plans to ease the lockdown gradually.

On April 24 Ms Sturgeon said other countries are beginning to look at expanding the definition of 'households' to allow small gatherings of people and that Scotland could do the same.

The SNP leader said any such scheme would only work if people stuck to meeting the same group each time as she said she understood the 'anguish' of not being able to see loved ones.

She also suggested people who live alone could 'match up with somebody else who is on their own or a couple of other people'.

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson has not spoken of plans to introduce social bubbles, but is planning to reveal his 'whack-a-mole' strategy to ease the coronavirus lockdown some time next week.

He is expected to reveal his roadmap of proposals to very carefully and slowly lift the restriction that have been in place since March 23, but come down hard on any secondary hotspots that emerge.

It came as the Welsh government announced some of its stay-at-home measures are being toughened up but also followed Ms Sturgeon in publishing a roadmap for how to eventually get out of lockdown.

Northern Ireland has similarly signalled it could lift restrictions independently of the rest of the UK with Downing Street now under growing pressure to set out its own strategy for getting life back to normal amid fears England could be left in limbo.

Nicola Sturgeon today said the Scottish government is looking at plans to allow people to meet with a 'bubble' of friends or family

UK ministers, led by Health Secretary Matt Hancock, continue to insist the focus must remain on stopping the spread of the virus but the actions of the devolved administrations mean Number 10 could ultimately be forced to change tack.

Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford said the aim of his government's end-of-lockdown 'framework' will be to 'find a way for people in Wales to live and work alongside coronavirus' and to enable a 'gradual return to something resembling normal life'.

But he also moved to tighten current guidance on staying at home to make sure people stick to it and do not linger outside after completing essential tasks like shopping or exercise.

The Welsh government advice is being tweaked with the requirement for people not to leave the place where they live now becoming a requirement 'not to leave or remain away from that place'.

A further crackdown on people visiting second homes in the country is also being considered with the Welsh government asking the police if extra restrictions are needed.

Ms Sturgeon told BBC Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland programme that any proposal to let people see friends or family would have to be based on them seeing the same group each time. Pictured, a family at their home in north London

But some rules are being formally loosened with 'click and collect' services allowed to open as long as they apply two metre social distancing rules.

Meanwhile, rules were also relaxed for people with particular health conditions or disabilities so they can leave home for exercise more than once a day.

It was hoped this would help families with children with learning disabilities and autism in particular.

Ms Sturgeon told BBC Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland programme that any proposal to let people see friends or family would have to be based on them seeing the same group each time.

People took part in a coronavirus anti-lockdown, anti-vaccine, anti-5G and pro-freedom protest near Scotland Yard, the headquarters of London's Metropolitan Police Service, in London yesterday

Last month she revealed her framework for relaxing lockdown measures in Scotland but warned some restrictions could stay in place until at least the end of the year.

The First Minister stressed no decisions have been made on such a 'bubble' arrangement and that she wants to have an open conversation with the public about the way forward.

Ms Sturgeon said: 'I know from my own parents who are not seeing their grandkids just now, I understand the anguish of that.

'We're all missing seeing our loved ones so we all want to get beyond that as quickly as possible.

Games of Bingo were held by David Walsh (left) on a street in Liverpool, Britain, 25 April 2020, as people try to keep themselves entertained

'Every country is going through these decisions, none of us are through this pandemic yet, but some countries are starting to look at slightly expanding what people would define as their household - encouraging people who live alone to maybe match up with somebody else who is on their own or a couple of other people to have almost kind of bubbles of people.'

She added: 'And the key thing there is, if you're seeing maybe one or two more people outside your household, it's got to be the same people on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis so you're still limiting the ability for the virus to transmit.

'Now, none of these are fixed decisions yet, but these are all the kind of things we're trying to work through.

People run past a social distancing sign at the entrance of Regent's Park, as the lockdown continues due to the coronavirus outbreak, in London, Sunday, April 26, 2020

Social distancing is practised on a park bench as a man reads a book as a couple exchange a kiss, in London Fields park in east London on April 25, 2020

Members of the public follow social distancing guidelines and queue outside a Homebase store in Leicester yesterday

'What we're trying to do is to do is, how do we get a semblance of normality back into our lives because the lockdown - it is essential that people stick with it just now - but it's having consequences of its own.'

In Belgium, experts are reportedly considering allowing private gatherings of 10 people on weekends - but it would have to be the same people each week.

The First Minister also said the Scottish government will increase talks with councils about children returning to school. The need to keep social distancing in place will put an upper limit on class sizes, she said.

She said: 'So if it's the case that we need to keep kids in school two metres apart from each other then that will put an upper limit on how many people can be in a classroom.

'So do we have to take classes divide them into two, where half of the class is there one week, the other half the other week or one half in the morning and the afternoon?

Ministers could be preparing to lift restrictions on outdoor activities such as picnics as the first stage in relaxing the lockdown rules

'These are the kind of things where we're having to think through.'

Mr Drakeford today set out an initial blueprint for how to lead Wales out of the coronavirus lockdown.

He said the devolved administration's approach would be guided by seven tests designed to assess when and how stay-at-home restrictions are lifted.

Mr Drakeford said: 'Our approach to date has been one of lockdown. We have taken unprecedented steps to protect everyone, but particularly those most at risk from serious illness.

The Prime Minister (right), whose son Wilfred was revealed to the world by mum Carrie Symonds yesterday (left) is expected to reveal his roadmap of proposals to very carefully and slowly lift the restriction in place since late March

Boris Johnson plans to reveal his 'whack-a-mole' strategy to ease the coronavirus lockdown and put the UK economy back into gear

'This has helped the NHS prepare and cope with coronavirus and, even though we have sadly seen more than 640 people die, it has helped to save many more lives. But this strategy comes with its own costs to people's wider health and wellbeing and long-term costs to our economy.

'We are keeping these regulations under constant review. We know coronavirus will be with us for a long time yet but we want to see whether there are things we can do while we continue to tackle the virus and while the search for better treatments and a vaccine continue.'

Mr Drakeford's seven questions include whether easing a restriction would have a negative effect on containing the virus, whether loosening a measure could be easily reversed and whether it has a positive economic benefit.

The Welsh approach will be underpinned by a 'Wales-wide programme of surveillance, case identification, and contract tracing'.

He added: 'We will need to have some sort of restrictions in place for some time yet to continue to control the spread of the virus and reduce community transmission. This framework will help us determine what is right for Wales.

Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford today announced coronavirus lockdown rules are changing in Wales in order to stop people staying outside for too long

'There is a long road ahead of us towards recovery to pre-pandemic levels, but if we continue to work together, I hope we will be able to make changes to the restrictions and see a gradual return to something resembling normal life.'

As well as setting out a path to the end of lockdown, Mr Drakeford said some measures needed to be strengthened now to stop the spread of the disease.

He said: 'The restrictions are staying in place, which mean you must stay at home to save lives and protect the NHS.

How the lockdown to could start to be eased Construction and other outdoor workers cleared to return

Non-food retailers allowed to reopen

Offices re-opened but with strict distancing rules

Schools reopening in June

Ban on visiting beauty spots relaxed

Increased public transport with strict distancing rules

Return to strict lockdown in areas where cases surge again

Pubs and other congregational settings remain closed for longer

Harsher fines for rule breaking Advertisement

'Over the last few months, we have taken unprecedented steps to protect everyone, but particularly those most at risk from serious illness. This approach has helped the NHS prepare and cope with coronavirus and it has also helped to save many lives.

'The changes we are introducing supplement the rules already in force but they respond to some challenges being faced in parts of the country and by families throughout Wales.

'Our message has not changed  anyone can get coronavirus, anyone can spread it. So please, stay home, protect the NHS, and save lives.'

Current UK rules state you should only leave your home to get food, medicine, for exercise or to go to work.

But there have been signs in recent days that some Britons are beginning to tire of the lockdown with more cars on the UK's roads and more people visiting parks.

The first easing of restrictions is not expected to come into force until June, and will be accompanied by the stricter enforcement of breaches of the remaining rules, with fines rising from the current 60 to more than 3,000 for repeat offenders.

It will include a massive PR blitz urging people who cannot work from home to go in where they can safely, and urging key workers to send their children back to school to free them up for vital tasks.

Public transport will also increase, but there will be strict social distancing measures at stations and attempts to stagger working hours to reduce the rush hour.

Senior citizens could also lose their free travel during peak times to lower surge numbers further, the Sunday Times reported.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps warned that Britain will not return to 'business as usual' this month.

Ministers told guidance on visiting family must be clear if lockdown is eased Clear guidance on whether people can safely visit family and friends needs to be ready as soon as any easing of coronavirus lockdown rules is announced, a public health expert has warned. Indefinite shielding of vulnerable groups such as the over-70s would be 'incredibly unpalatable and damaging to families', Professor Linda Bauld said, as the public clamour for information on what the future might look like continues. The professor of public health at the University of Edinburgh said international travel is likely to be 'strongly discouraged' until the autumn but said clear guidance is needed on whether safe travel within the UK will be possible. She said: 'Would people be able to drive to actually physically see their relatives, in the summer months, when the weather for not all but most of the UK should be reasonable and that contact can be outdoors? That's the kind of discussion government needs to be having with the population so we can re-establish some of that contact.' Advertisement

He told Sky's Sophy Ridge On Sunday: 'I don't think we should expect us to go from this situation that we have at the moment of social distancing back to where we were in February - that's clearly not going to happen and I don't think anyone imagines that for one moment.'

Ministers are concerned that the public have gone beyond the letter of the law introduced when the pandemic began to sweep the nation, according to the Sunday Times.

A senior Whitehall source told the paper: 'What you are going to see this week is a restatement of what we thought would happen right at the beginning when we first issued the lockdown.

'But it's going to be repackaged as a slow opening up of the economy. Please will construction sites reopen, please will you go to work if you can without hurting people, please if you are a key worker will you send your children to school.

'We've gone round the houses to get back to where we started.'

New polls today reveal how reluctant Britons are to return to normal while hundreds of people are still dying every day.

More than four in five Britons are against lockdown restrictions being eased for schools, pubs and restaurants this week, according to a poll by Opinium for the Observer.

Just 17 per cent thought the time was right to consider re-opening schools, with smaller proportions of people thinking conditions had been met to allow cinemas, sporting stadia and nightclubs to open their doors.

There was also opposition to the reopening of restaurants and pubs - with only 11 per cent agreeing Britain is at a place to reopen eateries and 9 per cent supporting a return to pubs.

Britons more strongly opposed a return to stadium events and nightclubs, with 7 per cent saying conditions have been met for both to resume, compared to 84 per cent who did not.

Ministers will aim to tread a fine line between kickstarting economic activity and keeping 'R', the reproduction rate of the virus, below 1.

The number of people who have died in hospitals, care homes and the wider community after testing positive for Covid-19 in the UK as of 5pm on Friday rose to 28,131, up by 621.

The death toll has edged closer to that of Italy, which now stands at 28,710 and is the highest in Europe, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

School is not out for summer

As plans to ease lockdown are made it has been suggested primary schools could re-open on June 1, with students from Years 10 and 12 becoming the first in a wave of secondary pupils flocking to classes.

Mr Johnson is hoping to put teachers on three weeks' notice to re-open primary schools in England to all pupils as soon as next month.

Whitehall sources have claimed the earliest possible return of primary schoolchildren is intended to help parents to return to work.

It will also prevent damage being done to 'early years development' about which Gavin Williamson has warned, according to The Sunday Telegraph.

As plans to ease lockdown are made it has been suggested primary schools could re-open on June 1, with students from Years 10 and 12 becoming the first in a wave of secondary pupils flocking to classes. Pictured, children leave school in Westminster last month

Meanwhile arts students could be the last to return to university after students of medicine, dentistry and veterinary science in the autumn.

A spokesperson for the Department for Education said: 'Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has not set a date for schools reopening.

'Schools will remain closed, except for children of critical workers and vulnerable children, until the scientific advice indicates it is the right time to reopen and the five tests set out by Government to beat this virus have been met.'

The move is being considered as data show that younger children are potentially less likely to transmit Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

Public transport running - but with social distancing

Public transport could return to approaching normal levels of service but with measures in place to limit numbers.

Scenes of packed Tube trans during the lockdown shocked the nation and Mr Shapps this morning said that it was unlikely that would be allowed.

He indicated that the staggered start times enforced in offices could be used to help reduce peak demand on trains and buses.

'The crushes would be completely at odds with social distancing,' he told Sky.

Public transport could return to approaching normal levels of service but with measures in place to limit numbers. Pictured, staff stand inside Camberwell bus depot in London, during a minute's silence to pay tribute to the NHS staff and key workers who have died

'Of course i'm very concerned about people being able to wash their hands - it's still far and away the most important advice.

Key worker testing programme runs out of tests on its first day The government's new online system for booking coronavirus tests closed just hours in an opening-day farce today as Ministers raced to meet their 100,000 daily target. The website had launched this morning with two options, allowing key workers to book one of just 1,000 home testing kits or apply for a slot at a drive-through centre. Some ten million key workers and their households are now eligible for the tests, but applications shut at 10am, with the website saying people could no longer register. Earlier, people were told at 8.30am that today's allocation of home kits - which only went live at 8am - had been issued, and they could only ask for drive-through tests. The Department of Health and Social Care had expected home kits to run out by 10.30am, with Whitehall sources saying the rush today confirmed the high demand. Ministers are hoping to be able to provide 18,000 home test kits by the end of April. Earlier, some people took to Twitter to complain that the process was 'not simple' or that they could not find a category for their job role, despite Health Secretary Matt Hancock claiming the process was straightforward and 'a bit like booking a flight'. Advertisement

'We can help with that by trying to have hand sanitiser , one-way systems, spacing on platforms and at bus stops and that sort of this clearly marked out.

'There are a lot of different measures that can be taken, of which easing into this is clearly going to be one of the most important things of all.'

But he refused to confirm the idea reported last week that commuters could face temperature checks at stations before being allowed on to services.

Ban on picnics at beauty spots to be lifted

Ministers are preparing to lift restrictions on outdoor activities such as picnics as the first stage in relaxing the lockdown rules.

The Mail on Sunday understands the plans  likely to be introduced later this month if coronavirus infection rates continue to fall  will mean people can exercise several times each day and drive to the countryside and other outdoor spaces for walks and picnics.

However, they will only be allowed to do so with members of their household and must stay at least two metres (6ft 6in) away from other groups.

The change, which will end the sight of police officers moving on solitary sunbathers in parks, follows new scientific advice to ministers that the risk of transmitting the disease outside is substantially lower than indoors.

But people will still be barred from areas such as playgrounds and beaches where crowds congregate and the two-metre rule becomes harder to observe.

Covid-19 cases to be tracked by a smartphone app

Ministers are understood to be 'optimistic' people will download a phone app to trace the spread of coronavirus, but conceded the task to get the contact tracing system running remains 'significant'.

Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick said he thought the 'vast majority' of people would download the app and 'play their part' - though insisted it was just one element of the plan to stop the spread.

Contact tracing will be central to the Government's efforts in slowing the spread of coronavirus, and will involve alerting people who have been in contact with an infected person and asking them to self-isolate.

It has been used extensively in South Korea, Hong Kong and Germany, where outbreaks have been contained more quickly.

The Government intends to use an app and a phone team to carry out the tracing.

Mr Jenrick told the daily Downing Street press conference: 'Contact tracing will rely on all of us in society playing our part but I'm optimistic about the prospects for that.

Boroughs in London accounted for all of the top ten worst hit local authorities, the report showed

'This has been a national effort so far - if you think of the different measures that we've brought forward, the restrictions, the vast majority of people have got behind it and I think that they will do again when we are able to launch the app on a national scale.'

Deputy chief medical officer Dr Jenny Harries said to get contact tracing 'up and running at scale and effectively' is 'another significant task but (there is) lots of preparation under way'.

She said: 'We need the whole population to work with us on this, it's quite an exciting adventure.'

Britain's death toll (28,131) is bound to overtake Italy's (28,236) by next week and make the UK the second worst-hit country in the world, behind only the US (65,173). The outbreak in the UK is two weeks behind Italy's, meaning its daily death and infection jumps are decreasing at a slower rate

Quarantine for visitors from abroad

Mr Shapps said he was 'actively looking at' quarantining people travelling to the UK from abroad to keep coronavirus infection rates under control.

The UK has been very much an outlier in recent weeks by not halting inbound flights or insisting arrivals are checked, with experts saying it is of little help now the virus is widespread in the UK.

Home Secretary Priti Patel is believed to be among those who have demanded tougher rules for foreign visitors and the remaining Brits still abroad who make it home.

Mr Shapps said this morning: 'I think it is important that as we are seeing the numbers decrease and the R rate we hope decrease... that we do ensure that the sacrifices in a sense - social distancing - that we are asking the British people to make are matched by anybody who comes to this country.

'I am actively looking at these issues right now so that when we have infection rates within the country under control we are not importing.'
Berkshire Hathaway has sold all its airline stocks because of the coronavirus pandemic, but Warren Buffett is telling investors they should still 'bet on America'.

The billionaire investor revealed the conglomerate has offloaded the entirety of its stocks in the US airline industry, waving goodbye to shares in United, American, Southwest and Delta Airlines, during the firm's annual shareholder meeting Saturday.

In the same meeting, Buffett urged investors to hold onto stocks in businesses they like and to 'never bet against America' despite the mounting concerns over the long-term impact the virus is wreaking on the economy.

More than 30 million Americans have lost their jobs since the outbreak began and gross domestic product plummeted 4.8 percent in the first quarter alone, officially plunging the US into its first recession since 2008.

The airline industry has been one of the hardest-hit by the pandemic as borders closed, the federal government banned flights to and from some nations and stay-at-home orders have left the few planes still operating empty of passengers.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett revealed Berkshire has sold its roughly 10 percent stake in the four largest airlines because the 'world has changed'

Buffett confirmed Berkshire has sold its roughly 10 percent stake in the four largest airlines because the 'world has changed' for the industry.

Back in December, Berkshire owned upwards of $4 billion in airline stocks including 42.5 million or a 10 percent stake in American, 58.9 million or a 9.2 percent stake in Delta, 51.3 million or a 10.1 percent stake in Southwest and 21.9 million or a 7.6 percent stake in United.

'The world has changed for the airlines. And I don't know how it's changed and I hope it corrects itself in a reasonably prompt way,' he said during Saturday's meeting, often dubbed Woodstock for Capitalists, which was held virtually.

'I don't know if Americans have now changed their habits or will change their habits because of the extended period.'

The chairman and CEO warned that the current downturn could have an impact on consumer travel habits going on far longer than the virus itself.

'I think there are certain industries, and unfortunately, I think that the airline industry, among others, that are really hurt by a forced shutdown by events that are far beyond our control,' he said.

'I don't know whether two or three years from now, that as many people will fly as many passenger miles as they did last year ...The future is much less clear to me about how the business will turn out through absolutely no fault of the airlines themselves.''

The airline industry has been one of the hardest-hit by the pandemic as borders closed, the federal government banned flights to and from some nations and stay-at-home orders have left the few planes still operating empty of passengers

Berkshire has sold the entirety of its stake because the company doesn't like to simply 'trim positions'.

'When we sell something, very often it's going to be our entire stake: We don't trim positions. That's just not the way we approach it any more than if we buy 100% of a business. We're going to sell it down to 90% or 80%,' he said.

'If we like a business, we're going to buy as much of it as we can and keep it as long as we can. And when we change our mind we don't take half measures.'

Buffett went on to say that he likes the airlines, but that sometimes there are events 'on the lower levels of probabilities that happen' like the pandemic that mean investors need to change tact.

However, the financial guru offered up somewhat contradictory advice as he recommended investors hold onto stocks they like and continue to 'bet on America'.

'If you owned the businesses that you liked prior to the virus arriving... nobody's forcing you to sell,' he said.

A Delta agent in Atlanta airport in April. Berkshire has offloaded the entirety of its stocks in the US airline industry including in United, American, Southwest and Delta Airlines

'Stocks have an enormous advantage and... if you bet on America, and sustain that position for decades, you're going to do better than, in my view far better than, owning treasuries securities.'

Buffett said it is difficult to predict when and how the economy will recover as the US comes out of the other side of the crisis, but said investors should 'never bet against America'.

'We do not know exactly what happens when you voluntarily shut down a substantial portion of your society,'' he said.

He said in the last recession of 2008 'our economic train went off the tracks... This time we just pulled the train off the tracks and put it on its siding.''

'We may not know the answers to some very important questions for many years,'' he said.

But he urged investors to 'never bet against America and that in my view is as true today at it was in 1789, and even was true during the Civil War and the depths of the Depression.'

The stock market has been spirallng downward amid the pandemic, as businesses across many industries have taken a dramatic hit.

Last month, JPMorgan Chase analysts warned investors to get ready for a 'vicious spiral' twice as worse as that seen in the 2008 global financial crisis.

For airlines, a decade-long hot streak where the big players together earned tens of billions of dollars, bought new planes and hired thousands more workers was wiped out in a matter of weeks, when the pandemic ramped up.

Government flight restrictions and border closures aimed at slowing the spread of coronavirus ravaged the industry.

The stock market has been spiraling downward amid the pandemic, as businesses across many industries have taken a dramatic hit

Planes have been pictured abandoned on runways as airlines cut thousands of flights, planes that do take off have barely anyone on board and thousands of staff have been laid off or furloughed to try to keep the industry afloat.

American, United, Southwest and Delta all reported their first losses in years last month.

The major players reached an agreement with the US Treasury in April for $25 billion in government aid to pay workers and avoid massive layoffs.

But Buffett's own businesses haven't been immune to the pandemic either.

His comments came the same day Berkshire Hathaway reported nearly $50 billion in losses in the first quarter, marking the greatest loss the company has ever suffered throughout its history.

The conglomerate said most of its more than 90 businesses are facing 'relatively minor to severe' negative effects from COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus and now punishing the global economy, with revenue slowing considerably in April even at businesses deemed 'essential'.

The conglomerate  which owns companies including Geico auto insurance, Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad, Dairy Queen and Duracel - said in a regulatory filing Saturday morning that before the coronavirus outbreak in mid-March many of its businesses were posting revenue and earnings increases compared to year ago.

However, the pandemic has led the BNSF railroad's shipping of consumer products and coal to fall, while Geico set aside money for car insurance premiums it no longer expects to collect.

Some businesses cut salaries and furloughed workers, and retailers such as See's Candies and the Nebraska Furniture Mart closed stores.
The world is in the grip of a lethal virus for which no vaccine or reliable treatment exists.

In this country (along with countless others), the population is being held in a form of collective house arrest. In such circumstances, how miserable should we be?

Or, to be more precise, how much more miserable than before the coronavirus and the resultant draconian social restrictions wrought havoc on our lives?

You might think the answer would be: much, much more miserable. Off-the-charts unhappy. But you would be wrong.

In this country (along with countless others), the population is being held in a form of collective house arrest amid the coronavirus crisis, writes DOMINIC LAWSON

While opinion polls measuring people's self-assessment of happiness levels showed a precipitous fall when the virus began its depletion of British lives, it has been gradually returning towards normal levels  starting on March 23, the day that Boris Johnson announced an end to voluntary 'social distancing' with a compulsory lockdown.

Perhaps that might have been a reflection of people's relief that the Government was taking their anxieties with sufficient seriousness.

But still, it seems paradoxical that happiness levels have been rebounding even while there is no end in sight to the medical and financial hazards we all face.

Fortunate

Obviously, such overall figures hide great variations on the part of individuals.

Deltapoll released the result of an online survey yesterday in which 43 per cent said their general mood was the same as before social isolation began, 23 per cent said their mood was better, and 30 per cent said it had got worse.

I am one of the 23 per cent, insofar as I am capable of telling (I think very little about whether I am happy or not, let alone about how it could be measured).

But I am among the most fortunate, in that my work has not been interrupted  I write from home anyway  and we live in the countryside with plenty of outdoor space of our own.

That, however, would not be sufficient to make me happier, since those are unchanged circumstances.

The truth is that I feel much more relaxed now that obligations to go to London for conferences and other meetings have been (by state order, as it happens) suspended.

My wife explains this by pointing out that I am 'profoundly anti-social'.

But there are positive aspects with which she would agree (even though, in general, she is not happy in lockdown): most specifically, that our younger daughter, whom normally we would see only at weekends, is now with us all the time.

To me, that is very heaven  although our daughter may have reservations for precisely the same reason.

And she misses her friends. So, yes, I am being selfish in my pleasure.

But it turns out that there are quite a lot of people for whom lockdown has been oddly life-enhancing.

Dr Farrah Jarral (pictured) wrote a piece in the Guardian last week in which she said a number of her patients had expressed the view that the lockdown has been life-enhancing

Dr Farrah Jarral wrote a piece in the Guardian last week in which she said a number of her patients had expressed this.

One told her: 'My usual life feels like a pinball machine. You're whacking the buttons and the paddles are flailing around, sometimes not even making contact, and it just doesn't feel like that anymore.'

Of course, this is a fool's paradise, or at least no more than an interlude, as the lockdown will end.

And when it does, we will all be dealing with the adverse financial consequences as the fear of infection will continue to wreak damage on so-called 'consumer-facing' businesses.

But we will get accustomed to that, too.

The thing is  and this explains the return to something like 'normal levels of happiness' as the lockdown has entered its second month  our moods oscillate in the short term but in the long term are stable.

Psychologists call this the 'hedonic treadmill'.

According to this model of human behaviour, good and bad events temporarily affect individuals' happiness, but people return (at different rates) to their previous levels of contentment, or discontent.

To put it more simply, we are who we are.

This is not a universally accepted theory, but what can't be disputed is that we are an immensely resilient species.

The first point to make is that those born with disabilities which might strike outsiders as unbearable are just as content with their lives as anyone else (and often more so).

Amazed

The Irish writer Christopher Nolan was born with severe cerebral palsy, unable to control the involuntary spasms of his face and limbs, and also devoid of the power of speech.

With the help of his wonderful mother, Bernadette, he learned to type with a 'unicorn stick' secured to his head.

After he won the Whitbread prize for his second book, Under The Eye Of The Clock, he was interviewed by an American journalist, who submitted the question: 'What would you do if suddenly released from your physical imprisonment?'

Nolan typed out that he would get back into his wheelchair by himself.

The Irish writer Christopher Nolan was born with severe cerebral palsy, unable to control the involuntary spasms of his face and limbs, and also devoid of the power of speech

His mother explained to the amazed interviewer: 'He's telling you that we instinctively judge his life by looking at it through our able-bodied eyes, and we see it as a tragedy.

But to him it isn't like that at all: it's just life! It's as normal to him, as grand to him, as complete to him, as our able-bodied lives are to us.'

But what about those who were once able-bodied but because of some catastrophic accident have been unexpectedly reduced to the status of a prisoner in their own bodies?

There can be no more devastating example of this than the condition known as 'locked-in syndrome'.

in 2008, Steven Laureys (pictured), who runs the Coma Science Group at the university of Liege in Belgium, found in a survey that 72 per cent of locked-in people professed themselves 'happy'

This is when a person, usually as a result of a massive stroke, becomes quadriplegic and so paralysed that he or she can communicate only by blinking.

You might suppose that those whose lives had been so totally reduced would be thinking of little other than how to persuade their doctors to release them  in the terminal sense.

But in 2008, Steven Laureys, who runs the Coma Science Group at the university of Liege in Belgium, conducted a quality-of-life-survey (along with five other researchers) of 168 people with locked-in-syndrome.

Adapt

Of those able to respond, 72 per cent professed themselves 'happy' and 28 per cent declared themselves 'unhappy'.

Only 7 per cent expressed a wish for euthanasia.

This was an astounding demonstration not just of the human spirit, but of the psychologists' model proposing that happiness levels can adjust to accommodate almost anything.

In this country, there is the extraordinary example of Shirley Parsons, a solicitor in Exeter, who in 2003, aged 42, suffered a colossal haemorrhagic stroke from a clot on her brain.

She wasn't expected to live, but has survived since then  with locked-in syndrome.

Rowan Hooper, whose book Superhuman I reviewed for the Mail three years ago, describes visiting her: 'Shirley can answer yes/no questions with her eyes.

'For more complicated answers she uses her computer using a cheek switch. Her face is flushed and sheened. Her mouth hangs open.'

In this country, there is the extraordinary example of Shirley Parsons, a solicitor in Exeter, who in 2003, aged 42, suffered a colossal haemorrhagic stroke from a clot on her brain. She wasn't expected to live, but has survived since then  with locked-in syndrome

But she told Hooper: 'Rather bizarrely, I think that I am happier . . . before the stroke my life was noisy and hectic, but now most of the time it's quiet, peaceful and calm.

'Over the years I've grown accustomed and become content with my life.'

Her phrase 'over the years' is important. Adjustment to a traumatic adverse change in one's life circumstances is not quick.

For Shirley Parsons, this was a return to a fundamentally sunny outlook: 'I don't doubt that my happy disposition and inability to maintain upset or anger has helped me.'

But if people can adapt to the outwardly horrendous state of 'locked-in syndrome', how much easier it is to regain our normal levels of happiness in 'lockdown Britain'.

Not only is it temporary, not only does it leave us without any adverse physical consequences (other than perhaps piling on the pounds), we are all in the same predicament together, rather than singled out for particular punishment.

This might help explain, given the public's fear of infection, why the lockdown policy has proved so popular (to the Government's amazement).

As for this anti-social animal, I will somehow learn to accept normal life, when it resumes.
The Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) on May 3 claimed that net redemptions under Credit Risk Funds have dropped 81.5 percent after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced a special liquidity measure of Rs 50,000 crore for the mutual fund industry.

Net redemptions under Credit Risk Funds stood at Rs 2,949.49 crore as on April 24 and peaked at Rs 4,294.36 crore on April 27, AMFI has said.

Thereafter, for three days  April 28, 29 and 30  the Net Redemptions under Credit Risk Funds stood at Rs 1,847.29 crore, Rs 1,251.17 crore and Rs 793.99 crore, respectively.

According to AMFI, this is an 81.5 percent drop in net redemptions in Credit Risk Funds category as on April 30, from the peak on April 27 courtesy measures announced by the RBI.

Also read | Franklin Templeton India Crisis: RBI announces Rs 50,000 crore special liquidity facility for mutual funds

"Declining trend in net redemptions from Credit Risk Funds is a welcome development, indicative of Investors comfort from RBI's special liquidity facility available to the MF industry. AMFI will continue to work with Regulators for normal functioning of the market," Nilesh Shah, Chairman, AMFI.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un claps during a factory completion ceremony in Sunchon, South Pyongan Province, Friday, in this photo released by the Korean Central News Agency, Saturday. His sister Yo-jong is sitting next to him in the seat usually taken by the country's No. 2, showing her raised political status and possible emergence as Kim's successor. Yonhap



By Kim Rahn



North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's public appearance Saturday after rumors of his deteriorating health also shed light on his sister, Kim Yo-jong, who accompanied her brother to a fertilizer factory completion ceremony.



Yo-jong was very close to Kim at all times, showing she has become a key figure in the regime and could emerge as a successor to her brother whose children are still too young to take control.



The North Korean leader participated in a fertilizer plant completion ceremony Friday, according to state media reports the following day  20 days after he disappeared from public view which raised speculation on his whereabouts and health.






A Democratic state lawmaker in New Hampshire has resigned after a tweet in which he dismissed the sexual assault allegation against the likely Democratic presidential nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden.

Tara Reade, a former Senate staffer for Biden in the 1990s, was one of several women who last year accused Biden of uncomfortable kissing, hugging or touching. She made a new allegation, that Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993, during a podcast interview in March. Biden has strongly denied the allegation.

WBZ reported that Rep. Richard Komi, a Democrat from Manchester, New Hampshire, posted a tweet that called into question one of Reades claims, which included that Biden put his hand under her skirt. The tweet, which has been deleted, indicated that a womans anatomy would make it difficult to be digitally penetrated without some cooperation from the female herself. He accused Reade of looking for attention," WBZ reported.

New Hampshire House Speaker Steve Shurtleff called for Komis resignation over the tweet, which he called outrageous and offensive."

I am appalled by Representative Komis comments," Shurtleff said, according to WBZ. "They were dismissive and hurtful to survivors of sexual assault across the Granite State and across the country. The comments are not fitting for the New Hampshire House of Representatives and immediately upon learning of them I called him and asked Representative Komi to resign his seat.

In an email sent to Shurtleff Saturday, Komi offered his resignation, according to the Union Leader.

I also want to offer my sincere apologies to anybody whose feelings may have been hurt by the tweets," Komi said. "I am and will continue to be a supporter of victims of sexual and domestic assault. The tweets were very poorly worded and do not reflect who I am and what I stand for. I ask for the forgiveness of all who have been a victim of sexual or any other kind of assault.

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Washington: Four months after the coronavirus began its deadly march around the globe, the search for a vaccine has taken on an intensity never before seen in medical research, with huge implications for public health, the world economy and politics.

Seven of the roughly 90 projects being pursued by governments, pharmaceutical makers, biotech innovators and academic laboratories have reached the stage of clinical trials. With political leaders  not least US President Donald Trump  increasingly pressing for progress, and with big potential profits at stake for the industry, drugmakers and researchers have signalled that they are moving ahead at unheard-of speeds.

A lab technician performaing a swab testing process to identify COVID-19 at the Invitro LLC laboratory in Moscow, Russia. Credit:Bloomberg

But the whole enterprise remains dogged by uncertainty about whether any coronavirus vaccine will prove effective, how fast it could be made available to millions or billions of people and whether the rush  compressing a process that can take 10 years into 10 months  will sacrifice safety.

Some experts say the more immediately promising field might be the development of treatments to speed recovery from COVID-19, an approach that has generated some optimism in the last week through initially encouraging research results on remdesivir, an antiviral drug previously tried in fighting Ebola.
Kolkata: A shocking visual has emerged from West Bengal's Howrah city where a huge rally-led by Howrah Assistant Commissioner of Police Aloke Dasgupta was taken out. The rally, taken out at Tikiapara area of Howrah, which was recently in the news for attacks on corona warriors, saw a large number of participants including a few Trinamool Congress leaders.

The rally is likely to trigger a controversy with many social media users questioning the purpose of gathering a large number of people at one place at the time of global pandemic.

Videos surfaced on the internet show people in the rally violating social distancing and lockdown norms with some marching alongside the senior cop without wearing masks.

Watch the video below:

Hundreds join peace rally in West Bengal's Howrah; violate lockdown norms pic.twitter.com/w25geNBYdh  Zee News English (@ZeeNewsEnglish) May 3, 2020

Speaking of the Howrah attack, the police has so far arrested at least 10 people whereas raids are still on to nab all the culprits responsible for the attack on the police team on April 28. Two police personnel were injured as a mob hurled bricks and bottles and attacked a police outpost in the Tikiapara area, besides vandalising two security force vehicles after the lawkeepers tried to enforce the lockdown in Belilous Road.

Tension prevailed in the area for next 48 hours which saw nightlong raids by the police to round up the perpetrators of the violence identified from a video footage of the incident that had caused outrage in the state as also various parts of the country.

A day later, on April 29, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said she has directed the police to take stern action, without harassing any innocent people. She, however, accused the BJP of trying to politicise the issue.

"There are so many police stations in Bengal. The incident has taken place in only one police station area. And they are making it a big issue across the nation. As if it is a big victory of the BJP. Their only aim is to humiliate the state government and the state," she told media persons.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (C) visits a fertilizer factory in Sunchon, South Pyongan province, near Pyongyang, North Korea, in this May 1, 2020, photo provided by the North Korean government. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)

South Korea: Kim Jong Un Did Not Have Surgery Amid Lingering Rumors

SEOUL, South KoreaNorth Korean regime leader Kim Jong Un did not undergo surgery or any other medical procedure, a South Korean official said Sunday, amid speculation about his health that continues to linger even after he reappeared publicly in recent days.

North Korea had said Saturday that Kim attended the completion of a fertilizer factory near Pyongyang on Friday, in his first public appearance in about 20 days.

While North Korean video showing a smiling Kim moving around, cutting a red ribbon and smoking quelled intense rumors that he might be gravely ill or even have died, some media outlets and observers still raised questions about his health, citing moments when his walking looked a bit stiff at the factory.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (C) cuts a tape, watched by his sister Kim Yo Jong, during his visit to a fertilizer factory in Sunchon, near Pyongyang, North Korea, in this May 1, 2020, photo provided by North Korean state media. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)

A senior South Korean presidential official told reporters Sunday that the government had determined that Kim did not have surgery or any other procedure, according to the presidential Blue House. The official, whose name wasnt disclosed by the Blue House, refused to provide the basis for the intelligence assessment.

South Korea has a spotty record in confirming developments in North Korea, one of the worlds most secretive countries. But when rumors about Kims health surfaced in recent weeks, the South Korean government steadfastly dismissed them as baseless and maintained there were no unusual activities in the North.

It wasnt the first time Kim had disappeared from public view for an extended period. In 2014, when he reappeared after a six-week absence, he walked with a cane and used an electric cart. The North Korea-provided footage on Saturday showed Kim riding an electric cart similar to the one he used in 2014, when he was reported to have an ankle injury.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspects a military drill at undisclosed location in North Korea on March 2, 2020. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)

Kim, 36, is the third generation of his family to govern North Korea with an iron fist that tolerates no dissent. He hasnt publicly anointed his successor, and rumors about his health triggered worries about the Norths political stability and its nuclear program.

North Korea hasnt explained Kims absence, including why he missed the April 15 commemoration of the birthday anniversary of his late grandfather and North Koreas founder, Kim Il Sung. Its the Norths most important state anniversary, and Kim hadnt skipped the event since taking power in late 2011 upon his father Kim Jong Ils death.

By Hyung-Jin Kim
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2020 > The need is not to avoid Fiscal Deficit but to save lives

by Akhilendra Pratap Singh

The country has entered the second round of the lockdown. This time too, if some economic activities are omitted, then there is nothing special in the guidelines issued by the government for the relief of the common man. Whatever the reasoning, the truth is that the Prime Minister had announced the lockdown last time without any preparation and this time also there is no roadmap to deal with the hardships of the people created by this epidemic. Despite being urgent, it is not a cure to avoid the disease. For the treatment, it is necessary to test and treat more and more people by marking the hotspots. Our record on this front is very poor; we are far behind in giving personal protection equipment to health workers including doctors. Modi does not say anything about this preparation of the medical system, yes, he does make sure that, to get the approval of his program, he gets the thali and bell to be played by the public and sometimes candles and lamps are lit. This use of symbols can divert public attention but a disease like Kovid-19 cannot be dealt with by it.

It is also not good to say that India is doing better than America and Europe because our comparison with them is absurd for many reasons. We should also keep an eye on the countries of our neighbourhood. There is a need to learn from our neighbour Bangladesh which is also doing well. How China has controlled this epidemic can also be learnt from it. What is the use of giving the example of America, which privatized facilities like education, health for profit and gave a big boost to the arms industry, finance and forward trading economy at its cost? It is also true that the first case of Corona arrived in Kerala on January 30 and the central government had no concrete policy and program to deal with it till mid-March. After all, what was the rationale for doing programs like Namaste Trump in this dangerous phase of the epidemic? However, these are old things; there is no use of going into it now.

The point is that now it should be seen what the government can do and should do? What is the reason for what she is not doing? And what could be our role as a movement, as a political voice? Many liberal people are worried that if about 77 million tonnes of food grains are in the godowns of the country and in the coming days more grains will be coming to the godowns, then why this government is not distributing it to the poor and the needy. There is not going to be any financial loss from this, even then why is the government not doing it.

Actually, it is to understand that governments are neither formed in the air nor their attitude is spontaneous. In spite of such large grain storage under normal conditions, if the government does not distribute the grain to the poor sections, despite knowing that the grains are being eaten by rats, then in this time of crisis, it will not develop a sudden love for the working people. Governments are publicising more relief than what they are actually doing. No matter how much we deny, the government has a class character, it has a vision and selfishness and it works under that. As the debate has arisen from the Tabligi Jamaat that people are victims of bigotry and doctors and health workers are being attacked. But it is not debated that in the seventy years who are those who put faith against logic and science in raising religiosity and who are they who believe in science and logic and what is their role in running the governance system. Its interest still remains to villainies a community on one pretext and alienate it. This is also a good way to get the government acquitted by turning the debate over the responsibilities of the government!

At a time when there is a deep national crisis in the country, there is a deep concern about the safety of the people; there is a concern about the economy of the country. Even at that time, an attempt is being made to institutionalize a deep gap between Hindus and Muslims. In this, from news channels of arms dealers to other corporate family controlled channels, they are working in a systematic manner whereas it is a fact that even after living together for more than a thousand years, the unity that was to be formed in the Hindu-Muslim people has not been achieved. Communal discrimination at this time is being presented as a value, as a permanent division which has never been in the history of India.

Many big economists of the country say that the government has to come out of fear of fiscal deficit and it should give at least 6-7 percent of GDP i.e. 6-7 lakh crore rupees in cash. Still the government is not going to accept it. One is its commitment to be bound by anti-people economic-industrial policy and the fear that if we allow the fiscal deficit to increase and this deficit to 6-7 per cent, then global capital may fly away from India. It is the responsibility of any sovereign government to protect the interests of its country and spend on the needs of the people. If foreign capital tries to flee the country, then ban it and declare that for three years to five years no capital will go outside the country and in some form or the other it will continue to invest in the industries here. In the meantime, freeing itself from the pressure of foreign capital, build its economy on its farming and resources. The economy of this forward trading and the corruption that is developing from it can also be controlled by stopping the exit of foreign capital.

But this capability does not lie in the government of those parties which are dependent on market and financial capital. There is nothing more in this government of Hindutva which connects everything with patriotism and nationalism. It cannot control deficit finance, so to increase the financial deficit; it does not want to spend money for the betterment of the public. We need to maintain our right to criticism and pressure even while supporting the good work the government does to deal with the Corona epidemic.

Just see now what happens more? The crisis is so deep that not only common life but also the corporate houses of the country are going through a deep crisis. Foreign capital has started swallowing them; it is difficult to say how long their autonomy will remain. However, they have been raised under the umbrella of foreign capital. Corporate houses are also demanding a package of Rs 14 to 15 lakh crore for relief. How the government does them bailout will be seen in the coming days. If they are bailed out from the national capital, then there is a need to create a demand to declare that property as national property.

Here, one thing has come in vogue that we should not do politics in times of crisis. The entire nation should stand together and fight. After all, what is the point of raising such things on the question of politics and to make politics stand against the selfishness of the nation? The ruling class of the country does not desist from profit politics even in the deep crisis. In this era too many people are engaged in making profits, otherwise people engaged in hoarding, black marketing, adulterated medicine should not take the refuge of political parties. All those people who are engaged in the politics of their deceit, they put politics against the service of the nation, whereas public politics is only for the service of the nation, which is going on continuously.

The Government of Kerala has done a good job, there are no two opinions. But a civil society that has been created in Kerala in 70 years has also played a big role in it; there are politically conscious people there. There civil society is discharging its role and that is why Kerala is successful in dealing with the disease in a better way. But in states like Uttar Pradesh, instead of taking public support to deal with the Corona infection, taking wide public participation, it is being dealt with in a bureaucratic manner. Inhuman treatments of migrant labourers by police-administration, lawsuits against those who have been giving public support in this epidemic and journalists who are warning the public and criticizing the government are being harassed. Due to this attitude, the barbaric way is being adopted to deal with the mess that is happening due to the backwardness present in the public, is making the problem even more complicated.

However, the people who do all the way Hindu-Muslim, Pakistan and China, they will equally say that spend on weapons because they get big commission in it. But for those people who are actually going through a virus like Kovid-19 and a lot of diseases, we need to pressurize the government in this period to change its policies and stand on public policies because this era of Corona epidemic has changed the country and the world rapidly. Until the vaccine is made of this virus, its risk will remain. Therefore, we have to remain engaged in the long-term struggle and keep the pressure on the government by doing whatever public cooperation is possible in the present era, with special emphasis on cleanliness, educating people against the danger of fascist politics.

At this juncture, we will have to insist on the government that it spends at least 6-7 lakh crores in cash and food grains to ensure the livelihood of the public and reorganize its entire economy in such a way, irrespective of the financial deficit in which more and more part of the budget is spent on health, education, employment and agricultural development. The Prime Ministers Care Fund should be made transparent and the central government should help the state governments which have become financially weak due to GST. Most important is that the government should spend more and more on testing to deal with Corona infection, identify hotspots, provide life-saving kits to health workers and Corona warriors, facilitate quarantine centres and give better treatment to the sick by strengthening government medical system.

Dated 17.04.2020

Akhilendra Pratap Singh is associated with Swaraj Abhiyan
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to be with her mother Neetu Kapoor and brother Ranbir Kapoor.
Tragically, I also think about the musicians not performing and the restaurants and high-quality grocery stores that provided fare for Ravinia from all over the area and their employees mostly put out of work by this pandemic. As was the case in the 1930s when the venue reopened, it became the crown jewel it currently is today, and once again, hopefully next year, the park can reopen to rave reviews with the same elegance and style.
April 28, 2020 Peter Christian , (907) 644-3512

The National Park Service announced today that Denali National Park will once again be accessible to the public as it has opened a portion of the Denali Park Road effective immediately. The park has plans to continue opening more of the road in the very near future as conditions and staffing allow.



In support of recent updates to health mandates and travel restrictions issued by the state of Alaska, Denali has opened the Denali Park Road to the Mountain Vista Rest Area (mile marker 12).



"President Trump recognizes the magnificence and grandeur of our National Park System and our ability to restore access to these lands in a safe manner. The American people will once again be able to enjoy the incredible benefits of the great outdoors at Denali National Park," said Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt.



Alaskans are doing a great job flattening the curve of COVID-19 infections, said Governor Mike Dunleavy. As of Friday, Alaska ranked lowest among the 50 states in total COVID-19 infections. As we work to re-open Alaskas economy responsibly, resuming traffic on this beautiful road through one of the states top visitor attractions is a positive sign that we can be open for business, including the tourism business, while protecting public health. I want to thank President Trump and Interior Secretary Bernhardt for working with Alaska to safely reopen Denali Park Road into Alaskas beautiful Denali National Park.



Denali National Park and Preserve looks forward to offering recreational opportunities to the public during these challenging times, said Denice Swanke, Acting Park Superintendent. We are considering several ways to offer more access for private vehicles and are collaborating with local business to offer different opportunities to enjoy the park. We encourage the public to practice proper social distancing and to adhere to the states travel guidance when they access their park lands.



Acting Regional Director Don Striker added that the Park Service is examining additional Road Lottery options for the summer. The decrease in commercial cruise traffic to Denali offers us the potential to safely allow more private vehicle access like we do during the annual September lottery that is so popular with Alaskans. We are actively working out the details to allow our neighbors to enjoy Denali all summer, which will also help the local economy.



At the end of the park road, several Kantishna lodges are also making plans for being open this summer, and repairs to the road caused by the Pretty Rocks landslide are ongoing. The park continues to work with contractors at Pretty Rocks, and the NPS staff continues spring plowing operations, which are on schedule to get the road open for summer.



For now, the public will have access to all trails and open spaces along the park road, up to the Mountain Vista Rest Area, including the Riley Creek Day-Use Area. Park staff will also open and maintain restroom facilities for public use.



In accordance with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance, campgrounds and most visitor facilities are currently closed, and interpretive programs remain suspended. This includes the Winter Visitor Center, the Denali Kennels, Headquarters, and the Walter C. Harper Talkeetna Ranger Station.




Co Antrim woman Deborah Buchanan posted this image just hours after mum Joan Wright (75) died from Covid-19 on Thursday.

A grieving daughter shared this heartbreaking final photo of her dying mum in hospital in a bid to get people to wake up to the realities of coronavirus.

Co Antrim woman Deborah Buchanan posted the image just hours after mum Joan Wright (75) died from Covid-19 on Thursday.

"This is the reality of coronavirus. Wake up and wise up," said Deborah, from Newtownabbey, as she urged people to stay at home.

She released the image as the coronavirus death toll across the UK neared the 30,000 mark.

It was Joan's last picture with loving husband Charles (80), who is also battling coronavirus, and her family by her side at Furness General Hospital, Cumbria.

Deborah told Sunday Life: "It's absolutely heartbreaking and very surreal.

"We got into the room and it only felt like five minutes, she opened her eyes and then it was moments later that she passed away.

Expand Close Deborah Buchanan (38) and Charles Wright (80) at Furness General Hospital following the death of Joan Wright (75) from Covid-19. / Facebook

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Whatsapp Deborah Buchanan (38) and Charles Wright (80) at Furness General Hospital following the death of Joan Wright (75) from Covid-19.

"When the staff came in to check on her they were in floods of tears when they told us she had passed.

"Mum and dad moved here 15 years ago to retire and were actually in the process of trying to move back when this happened. They had been together for over 50 years without a day apart.

"We want to thank Furness General Hospital and all the NHS staff on Ward 7 for everything they did for mum and us, we know a lot of people back home haven't been able to say goodbye in that way and we're extremely grateful to them.

"When a spouse dies in the hospital they give them each little knitted hearts as keepsakes. They placed my mum's under her wedding ring so she could never let go and my dad hasn't let go of his since, he won't be parted from it."

On Thursday Deborah, who works for Phoenix Gas, shared the image on Facebook detailing the family's ordeal.

She said: "It breaks my heart to write this status. My mum asked me to take this photo last night around 3am, those were some of the last words she said to me.

Expand Close Charles Wright (80) and Joan Wright (75), Joan died from Covid-19. / Facebook

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Whatsapp Charles Wright (80) and Joan Wright (75), Joan died from Covid-19.

"My mum and dad both tested positive for Covid-19 on Monday after being admitted to hospital on Friday evening.

"I received a call from the hospital in England at 4pm yesterday requesting we get there ASAP.

"We arrived at 1.30am and were provided full PPE to go and see our parents. In this photo she was happy, talking, joking, pulling faces and giving us grief as usual, she was doing well despite being on a ventilator.

"Several hours later we got a call to say we had to go back as she wasn't so good. Shortly after we arrived today, we put our PPE on and entered the room where my mum sadly passed away a very short time later, my dad holding her hand and us by her side.

"We had to watch her gasp her last breaths and slip away in agony. My dad says this is the worst thing he has ever felt in his life, he fears going to sleep in case he doesn't wake up.

"They hadn't left the house in weeks but still picked this up and both took very unwell.

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Whatsapp A member of staff hands over a Randox laboratories Covid-19 self test kit to a member of the public at a drive-through test centre at the SSE Arena in Belfast. PA

"My dad is still in hospital and not out of the woods yet, his heart is broken and he has to continue to fight to try and beat this."

Yesterday the Department of Health in Northern Ireland confirmed that a further 11 people have died from coronavirus here. This brings the total number of deaths in the region to 376.

A breakdown of the deaths up to Friday revealed the youngest person known to have died here with Covid-19 was aged between 20 and 39. According to the statistics, the majority of victims (230) were aged 80 or over; 16 of the victims were aged between 40 and 59; and 117 of those who died in Northern Ireland after testing positive for coronavirus were aged between 60 and 79.

The number of people who have died in hospitals, care homes and the wider community across the UK after testing positive for coronavirus has risen to 28,131, up by 621. The death toll has edged closer to that of Italy, which at 28,236 is the highest in Europe.

Twenty-five more people diagnosed with Covid-19 have died in the Republic of Ireland, with a total 1,286 Covid-19 related deaths there.

Both the UK and Irish governments are planning to gradually lift restrictions over the coming months.

Despite the increasing understanding of the risks and cautious optimism, Deborah has pleaded with people to continue to adhere to social distancing rules.

She said: "This is the reality of coronavirus. Wake up and wise up. This is not going away anytime soon and more and more people are going to die.

"Don't let it be your parent or grandparent or any member of your family who ends up like this. Stay away from those you love, and protect yourselves and them.

"We were lucky we got to be with our mother/wife/grandmother when she passed away, so many families aren't given the chance to be with their loved ones and cannot say goodbye, people are dying alone and it's not right.

"Please, stay at home, please do not go through the heartache we have had to. Ours isn't over yet.

"I want to add that although my parents did not leave the house in weeks, they did have care workers and medical professionals coming into their home. So many people are asking how it's possible when they didn't leave, anything is possible with this virus."

She spoke as it emerged that there has been a tenfold increase in the number of people attending Northern Ireland's Covid-19 testing centres.

A partnership involving Serco, Deloitte and the Public Health Agency has opened three centres in Belfast, Craigavon and Londonderry. According to the department, more than 5,000 samples had been taken at the three centres by May 1.

However, overall there had been a total of 28,425 laboratory tests carried out by the same date, which could include tests carried out at other venues, including hospitals. Regional manager Chris Kelly said: "Over the last week the numbers have increased tenfold from where we first started now that testing has been opened up to all key sectors and key workers who can go on to the website and register to get tested at one of the three sites in Northern Ireland."
Union Home Minister Amit Shah paid tribute to the five security personnel who were killed in an encounter in Jammu and Kashmirs Handwara on Sunday. Shah said that the entire country will remain indebted to the supreme sacrifice made them.

I bow to our soldiers and security personnel martyred while protecting our motherland during an encounter with terrorists in Handwara in Jammu and Kashmir. Nation will always remain indebted to their supreme sacrifice. My deepest condolences to their bereaved families, Shah said on Twitter.

I bow to our soldiers and security personnel martyred while protecting our motherland during an encounter with terrorists in Handwara in Jammu and Kashmir. Nation will always remain indebted to their supreme sacrifice. My deepest condolences to their bereaved families.  Amit Shah (@AmitShah) May 3, 2020

Five security force personnel, including Indian Armys Colonel and Major, and a Jammu and Kashmir Police officer, were killed in the gunbattle with terrorists in Handwara in north Kashmir on Sunday.

Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, Major Anuj Sood, Naik Rajesh Kumar, Lance Naik Dinesh Singh and sub-inspector of Jammu-Kashmir police Shakeel Qazi were martyred in the line of duty while rescuing civilians held hostage by the terrorists.

Two terrorists were also shot dead by the security forces in the Handwara encounter.

Col Sharma, the commanding officer of the armys 21 Rashtriya Rifles battalion, was leading the three army men and the sub-inspector and had been locked in a gunfight with the terrorists holed up inside a house in Rajwar forests.

The army said a joint operation was launched by the army and state police based on the intelligence input that terrorists were taking hostage some civilians in a house.

Also watch| Handwara encounter: Army Colonel among 5 martyred, 2 terrorists gunned down

Prime Minister Narendra Modi also paid tributes to security personnel for their supreme sacrifice.

Tributes to our courageous soldiers and security personnel martyred in Handwara. Their valour and sacrifice will never be forgotten. They served the nation with utmost dedication and worked tirelessly to protect our citizens. Condolences to their families and friends, he said on Twitter.

While the four Army personnel and the police sub-inspector lost their lives in the encounter, the civilians trapped in the house were safely evacuated.


What is happening in North Korea is unclear. But the U.S. should be clear about how to respond to what is happening with Kim Jong-un, North Korea's leader who has not been seen for weeks, sparking speculation that he is healthy but laying low, ill or incapacitated, or even dead.



The Trump administration must anticipate any of these scenarios. For each possibility, it should be ready to respond to any newfound provocation from Kim or a putative successor meant to reassert the regime domestically by testing a world worn thin by the coronavirus pandemic.



This means that U.S. ties need to be bolstered with South Korea and Japan _ America's key Asian allies who are at odds with each other. A multilateral approach has always been the best way to contend with the successive Kims who have ruled North Korea for generations.



That means multilateralism among Washington and a patched-up Tokyo and Seoul alliance, for certain, but also some kind of cooperation with Beijing _ despite strained relations because the COVID-19 pandemic started (and was concealed by) China, North Korea's enabling ally.



Shoring up the strains within the alliance won't be easy, especially since the discord is deep and emotional, mostly over World War II "history issues" estranging Japan and South Korea. Add to that the Trump administration's unnecessary and ill-timed squabble with South Korea over defense costs, a distracting dispute that must be resolved.



Bridging the Beijing-Washington divide will be even harder. But both sides have a vested interest in relative stability, even if it includes the unstable Kim remaining as leader.



China fears that instability from a crisis could create a wave of refugees amid a pandemic and has made it clear that it will resist a reunited Korean Peninsula that could bring U.S. troops to China's border.



For every nation, the notion of an even more bellicose Pyongyang (perhaps led by a new ruler like Kim's sister, Kim Yo-jong) is worrisome. A military miscalculation could turn catastrophic, whether it is from the regime itself or from another state or nonstate actor acquiring North Korea's nuclear know-how, or the nuclear weapons themselves.



The uncertainty reveals the depth and breadth of President Donald Trump's strategic error in elevating Kim so significantly through summits that not only accomplished nothing of substance but undercut the working-level relationships between Washington and Pyongyang that would be necessary to implement any accord.



Now it's reportedly difficult for top U.S. officials _ up to the secretary of state _ to engage with their North Korean counterparts, leaving the U.S. in the dark about Kim's fate, let alone the fortunes of the world.



Should he re-emerge, don't expect Kim to re-engage on a more productive level. "Kim is not just about security guarantees," Jung H. Pak, a former CIA analyst who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said during a webinar on Tuesday. Pak, author of "Becoming Kim Jong Un," added that, "He requires a hostile outside world to justify his reign."



Whether it remains his reign is unclear. But it seems clear that regardless of who leads North Korea, the U.S. must be prepared for provocation, and Trump, or his successor, should try a new approach.



The above editorial appeared in the Star Tribune (Minneapolis). It was distributed by Tribune Content Agency.




Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has heightened her criticism of Thursdays mass gathering in Lansing that involved armed protesters congregating inside the Capitol.

Whitmer said on Friday that she found elements of the protest disturbing. But in an appearance Sunday morning on CNNs State of the Union, the governor said the Confederate flags, nooses and nazi signs displayed were outrageous and racist.

Some of the outrageousness of what happened in our Capitol this week depicted some of the worst racism and awful parts of our history in this country, Whitmer in response to questions from host Jake Tapper. The Confederate flags and nooses, swastikas and the behavior that youve seen in all of the clips, is not representative of who we are in Michigan.

Protesters, some with rifles over their shoulders, were expressing outrage over Whitmers stay-at-home order. They called for legislators to vote against extending the state of emergency declaration.

The Republican majority in the House did not extend Whitmers executive powers under the state of emergency declaration. Whitmer contends she retains emergency authority during the COVID-19 pandemic regardless of what the Legislature does.

Whitmer has extended the state of emergency until May 28 and the state-at-home order is in effect until May 15.

During Sundays TV appearance, Whitmer remained strong in her stance that politics and protests would not play a role in her decision making.

Im working to protect your life if you live in the state of Michigan, Whitmer said. Im going to continue to do my job, regardless of what tweets come out or what polls come out or what people think that makes sense. Were going to listen to facts and science.

During the interview with Tapper, the governor addressed White House Senior Advisor Jared Kushners statement that the federal government has enough tests but the barrier is that states do not have enough capability to collect the amount of test samples needed.

Whitmer said that is not true for Michigan and the state is still asking for more testing supplies.

Weve never been able to get to full capacity because we are missing things from the supply chain, Whitmer said. Thats part of why I think so many of us on both sides of the aisle have really called for more of a national strategy on these fronts.

Also on on Sunday morning, Michigans chief medical executive, Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, was interviewed on NBCs Meet the Press.

Khaldun said there have been certainly significant improvements over the past several weeks in figures, but she also pointed out the state is third in the country for the number of COVID-19 deaths.

Michigans death toll surpassed 4,000 on Saturday.

Our hospitals were over capacity, particularly in the southeast area of the state several weeks ago, Khaldun said. We are having parts of the state that are still seeing an increase in the rate of rise of cases and we know their hospital capacity is not what it should be.

She added some of the states rural areas have already reached their capacity and there are several outbreaks on the west side where cases are on the rise.

Every part of the state is different, said Khaldun, when asked by host Chuck Todd about a regional approach to reopening parts of Michigan. Even in the southeast (part of the state), quite frankly, even though were seeing a decrease in the rate of rise, were still seeing many, many cases and deaths every day.

She pointed out Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has loosened up some restrictions, but Khaldun added the approach needs to maintain an incremental, data-driven approach.

As far as outside pressures from business leaders, those within the state government, or even family and friends on reopening, Khaldun said the approach is not a personal one.

People hire me to give medical and public health advice. That is what I do I, Khaldun said. I talk to the governor and other folks in the governors office on a regular basis to tell them the facts."

On Saturday, Michigan saw an increase of 851 new cases and 154 new deaths. In total, the state has reported 43,207 cases and 4,020 since the pandemic started in March.

If we dont do well with these social distancing measures, more people will die," Khaldun said. "That is just the facts.

68 Protesters congregate at Michigan Capitol in rally against stay-home order

PREVENTION TIPS

In addition to washing hands regularly and not touching your face, officials recommend practicing social distancing, assuming anyone may be carrying the virus. Health officials say you should be staying at least 6 feet away from others and working from home, if possible. Carry hand sanitizer with you, and use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and when you go into places like stores.

More coronavirus coverage on MLive:

Gov. Whitmer supports Joe Biden despite sexual-assault claim by ex-aide

Whitmer defends decision to continue coronavirus state of emergency, calls Capitol protest disturbing

Day of angry protests, political maneuvers sets stage for likely legal battle in Michigan

Michigan House adjourns without extending coronavirus state of emergency

Gov. Whitmer to legislature: Michigan is still in a state of emergency
An ice rink featuring a frozen waterfall in Beijings Changping district has become a popular destination among climbing enthusiasts and newcomers to ice sports. Located in the Huyu Natural Scenic Area, the rink consists of a 40-meter-high climbing area. With the approach to the Beijing Winter Olympics, ice and snow activities are attracting fans across the country. The China Tourism Academy estimated that 305 million people will visit such venues nationwide this season

Jan 18, 2022 05:36 PM
Universities are asking the Government to open more places for Irish students in the autumn to help cover their Covid-19 losses.

The cost of the pandemic to the seven Irish traditional universities will run to 374m over 2020 and 2021, according to an initial assessment.

The biggest chunk of that is an estimated 181m in lost fee income from international students.

The universities also predict a drop of 86 in commercial revenues from the prolonged closure of facilities such as the Book of Kells in Trinity, the Helix in DCU and the University Concert Hall in UL.

They have pencilled in a loss of 34m in rental income from on-campus accommodation particularly during the summer, and a drop of 37m arising from disruption to research activities.

The financial consequences of Covid-19 are set out in a document from the Irish Universities Association (IUA), called Partners in the Recovery, in which they call for Government supports.

The IUA points out that it is income streams they developed to offset the decline in funding during the financial crisis, such as growth in international students and commercial revenue, that are taking a big hit.

It is noteworthy that the agile and entrepreneurial mitigation measures taken by universities to relieve the pressure on State funding during the last financial crisis have been eroded, at least in the short term," the document states.

All other aspects of their work and business are being severely disrupted, including research activities, and they warn that the livelihoods of professional researchers, the majority of whom are on fixed-term contracts, are imperilled.

Most subsidiary companies of universities have ceased to trade during the crisis, including catering and event facilities with, in some cases, staff laid off or non-renewal of contracts.

While the IUA acknowledges that the Government cannot cover all the expected financial shortfall, it is seeking a range of supports, including a 280m one-off Stability Fund to deal with the collapse in key income sources and to ensure that students are appropriately supported.

The IUA says 125m of that should fund places for extra Irish students to replace, in part, the expected drop in international students and associated fee income, which they estimate could take three years to recover.

It would also include 85m to underpin an enhanced Access programme targeted at students from disadvantaged backgrounds, more Susi grants support and additional resources devoted to student well-being.

The IUA is also seeking a Transformation Fund to enable universities to respond directly to the skills needs of the economy as the country emerges from the crisis and a Research and Innovation Fund, which it describes as an essential ingredient of the economic re-boot.

Universities also support the Fianna Fail proposal for a Department of Higher Education and Research, with a senior minister.
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Linkedin Made Anthony Iswara (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sun, May 3, 2020 18:30 625 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd5a8cde 1 National #IllegalLogging,illegal-logging,environment,#environment,KLHK,COVID-19,#COVID19,COVID-19-in-Indonesia Free

Forest rangers on patrol in Gowa, South Sulawesi, knew something was amiss when they noticed a man in his mid-50s loading two-meter-long logs onto a yellow truck in a protected forest. The rangers approached him and asked for legal documentation but the man, identified by the initials FT, could not provide any.

The rangers searched the vehicle and found 74 logs of blackboard trees inside the truck in what was allegedly another attempt to smuggle timber in late April. Investigators said they would soon bring FT to court, where, if convicted, he could face a maximum of 10 years behind bars or a fine of Rp 5 billion (US$323,695) for violating the 1999 Forestry Law.

"We will continue to expose an even broader illegal logging network and the masterminds behind it so that we can create a deterrent effect," Environment and Forestry Ministry Sulawesi regional law enforcement head Dodi Kurniawan said.

The case in Gowa was one of numerous instances of illegal logging to be uncovered since COVID-19 began to spread outside of China in mid-January. The ministry investigated at least five other similar cases in April alone and many more over the last three months.

The illegal logging cases recorded during the COVID-19 outbreak might only be the tip of the iceberg, said Syahrul Fitra from the environmental NGO Auriga Nusantara, citing the organizations past observations in Makassar, South Sulawesi, and Sorong, West Papua.

Read also: Police arrest two on suspicion of illegal logging in Riau

He said large-scale social distancing would likely force the ministry to deploy fewer officers on the field, thereby weakening law enforcement.

He also feared that a recent regulation by the Trade Ministry that relaxed export regulations for timber products would stoke further illegal logging this year. The regulation scrapped the requirement for Indonesian timber companies to secure V-legal documents certifying that the wood came from legal sources before exporting products. This change in policy has made it harder for authorities to monitor timber exports.

In addition, ongoing forest fires in some regions could divert the governments attention away from monitoring illegal logging, activists have warned.

Read also: Deregulation puts sustainable timber trade at risk

The environment ministry has not disclosed official data on illegal logging during the pandemic or data on how much damage has been done to the environment over the period. However, data from April 23 shows that about 465,500 hectares of land were deforested between 2018 and 2019, lower than the 493,300 ha recorded between 2017 and 2018 but still the smallest decrease since 1990, disregarding previous increases.

The current pandemic, activists have said, should serve as a wake-up call for the government to stop illegal logging. A 2016 United Nations Environment Program report found that the risk of emergent and fast-spreading diseases increased as encroachment upon natural habitats by human activities intensified. The proximity enabled pathogens found in wild areas to spill over into livestock and humans.

It is important to prevent illegal logging so that we do not have new viruses like what we have right now. If not, we will face what scientists have warned about, which is the emergence of new viruses that we have never seen before, Syahrul said.

One solution amid current mobility restrictions, he said, was for the Environment and Forestry Ministry to integrate its online system SIPUHH, which compiles information on forest products, with the Industrial Material Fulfillment Plan (RPBBI), which compiles information on the industrial use of timber sourced from natural forests as well as information on non-tax state revenue systems.

With such a combined system, investigators could detect discrepancies between the amount of timber exported or used by industries and the number of trees logged and transported across Indonesia. Authorities, Syahrul said, could then decide to act upon the information and refuse to issue certificates needed to transport the timber if violations were detected.

Environment and Forestry Ministry law enforcement director general Rasio Ridho Sani declined to comment. But last month, he said the ministry would not scale down efforts to enforce forestry laws during the pandemic. He said field officers would continue to patrol forests.

The ministry said it would also use satellite imagery to monitor deforestation and would use videoconferencing platforms to question suspects being held in detention facilities elsewhere.

"We expect judges to punish perpetrators of environmental and forest crimes as severely as possible so that there is a deterrent effect, Rasio said.
A jawan allegedly killed his senior, a sub-inspector, before taking his own life in a fratricidal incident at a BSF camp in Rajasthan, officials said.

They said the incident took place at about 6:30 AM at border out post 'Renuka' in Sriganganagar district of Rajasthan where a unit of the 125th battalion of the force is deployed.

Head constable Shiv Chander Ram is reported to have shot dead his senior and sub-inspector R P Singh before he killed himself using a service weapon, a senior official of the border guarding force said.

Senior officials are at the incident spot to ascertain the cause of the fratricidal incident, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hollywood stars, including Chris Pratt, Salma Hayek and Bryce Dallas Howard, are mourning the demise of actor Irrfan Khan by not only remembering him for his exceptional talent but also his good nature.



"So sad to hear that Irrfan Khan passed away, I was a big fan and had the honour to meet him. He was a great actor and a lovely man, may he Rest In Peace," Hayek posted on Instagram.



Pratt, who worked with Irrfan on their 2015 blockbuster Jurassic World, called him an "exquisite human being".



"So sad to hear about the passing of screen legend @irrfank . Irrfan Khan played Masrani in 'Jurassic World'. He was an exquisite actor and human. He will be missed," Pratt tweeted.



Jurassic World actor Howard posted two pictures of herself with Irrfan from the Colin Trevorrow-directed adventure thriller, and condoled his death.



"Irrfan, you are an exquisite human being and we will all miss you dearly. These images are from the first and last day of filming, and I was lucky enough to spend them working with you. Love to you and your family always," she posted.



Irrfan breathed his last early on Wednesday at the age of 54. He was admitted to Mumbai's Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani hospital with a colon infection earlier this week. However, unfortunately he succumbed to his ailment.



The Academy also mourned the loss.



"A mainstay of Bollywood cinema and incredible talent in films like Slumdog Millionaire, Life of Pi and 'The Namesake, Irrfan Khan left his imprint on global cinema. An inspiration to millions, he will be greatly missed," read a post on the official twitter account of The Academy.



According to deadline.com, filmmaker Marc Webb, who directed Irrfan in 2012 superhero hit The Amazing Spider-Man, will always be a "dedicated" fan of the actor's work.



"In Irrfan, power and gentleness co-existed perfectly. When he sings to his new wife at the bathroom door in 'The Namesake' or speaks of his father in 'Life of Pi' his talent is positively mystical. He is the most nuanced actor I've worked with. I am forever his dedicated fan," he tweeted.



Oscar-winning filmmaker Ang Lee called Irrfan "a great artist, a true gentleman and a brave fighter" while mourning his demise.



"His passing away is cinema's loss. We will miss him dearly. May you Rest In Peace my dear friend," said the director of "Life of Pi".



Indian-origin Hollywood star Mindy Kaling is "devastated" after hearing the news of his demise.



"The loss of Irrfan Khan - at such a young age - is devastating. He was my favorite actor. I can't think of someone who gave such layered and thoughtful performances but was also a movie star; you couldn't take your eyes off of him onscreen. Love and peace to his family," Kaling said in a post on Twitter alongside a photo of Irrfan.



"Suits" star Gabriel Macht recalled his meeting with Irrfan when his wife, Jacinda Barrett, who worked with the actor in "The Namesake".



"I met Irrfan Khan when he worked with @JacindaBarrett on 'The Namesake'. One of the most pleasant, down to earth, and gentle beings in the few times I had with him. What a beautiful actor as well. Blessings to he and his family. #RIPIrrfanKhan" he tweeted.



Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman has sent her love to the near and dear ones of Irrfan.



Remembering Irrfan, Portman took to Instagram to share a photo of herself with the actor. In the photo, she is in a white bridal wear and is held by Irrfan, who is in a black and white suit with a hat.



"Sending love to Irrfan Khan's loved ones today," she captioned the snap.



The two had featured together in Mira Nair's segment of "New York, I Love You", a 2008 American romantic comedy-drama anthology film.



Earlier, Hollywood star Angelina Jolie had also expressed her condolences, in a message shared with IANS.



"I had the privilege of working with Irrfan Khan on the set of 'A Mighty Heart'. He stood out for his generosity as an artist, which made it a pleasure to work in any scene with him. I remember the intensity of his commitment, and equally his smile. I send my condolences and my sympathy to his family, his friends, and all admirers of his work, in India and around the world," Jolie said in her message.


MasterChef's Poh Ling Yeow is known to millions for her culinary creations.

But away from the kitchen, the 47-year-old is a very accomplished artist who has exhibited her work across Australia, which may fans discovered on Saturday.

After sharing a picture of her latest painting, many of Poh's new followers from her return to TV were amazed at her skills, after only recently following the star.

Surprise! MasterChef's Poh Ling Yeow (pictured) shared a picture in front of her latest painting on Saturday, impressing her new followers and fans who were not aware that she is an artist

'You're a talented human being,' complimented one follower, as Poh posed with a cake in front of her painting - paying homage to her love of art and baking.

'Your paintings are just so so beautiful,' wrote another fan.

A third follower gushed 'gorgeous art' as many marvelled in the artwork.

MasterChef: Back To Win contestant Rose Adam commented: 'You're an inspiration wifey. Your creativity knows no limits.'

'Your creativity knows no limits': Poh was praised by followers and co-star Rose Adam as she posed with a cake in front of her painting - paying homage to her love of art and baking

Talent: Poh has been painting full-time since 2002, after first freelancing as a graphic designer and illustrator before focusing mainly on acrylics on canvas

Poh has been painting full-time since 2002, after first freelancing as a graphic designer and illustrator before focusing mainly on acrylics on canvas.

Her work 'emphatically explore notions of belonging' and her paintings 'are an attempt at reconciling this heritage with her Western identity, after her family moved from Kuala Lumpur to South Australia when she was nine, her website reads.

She has exhibited across Australia, takes commissions and sells pieces online. The creative has her own art studio inside her colourful Adelaide home.

Culture: Her work 'emphatically explore notions of belonging' and her paintings 'are an attempt at reconciling this heritage with her Western identity, her website reads

Artist: She has exhibited across Australia, takes commissions and sells pieces online. Pictured: Poh's portrait of one of her dogs

Poh is currently the favourite to win MasterChef: Back To Win.

The contestant first found fame on MasterChef Australia's first season in 2009, where she memorably came second, behind Julie Goodwin.

Some viewers have hit out at her constant airtime from producers and Channel 10 this year, re-naming the Back To Win series 'The Poh Show'.
AGAINST the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, people in Ireland and the wider world are witnessing large-scale, national efforts to utilise technology in support of enabling society to maintain some sense of normality and routine to their daily lives.

For many, the very concept of normality and routine seem out of reach but for the students, parents and teachers in Limerick Educate Together Secondary School, normality and routine does exist, that is at least, through the lens of remote learning, teaching and assessment.

Limerick Educate Together Secondary School is Limericks newest second-level school. Last week the Leader revealed the news that council planners had given the green light for the construction of the massive, multi-storey, state-of-the-art school which will be built in the shadow of Northern Trust in Castletroy.

Prior to the Easter holidays, students and teachers had engaged in three successful weeks of remote learning, teaching and assessment. And following their return to studies it has been no different.

These are unprecedented times and with it comes enormous challenges for families on a day to day basis and it is likely that the public health restrictions will continue for some time to come, said Eoin Shinners, principal.

In the week leading up to school closures, our staff met, formulated and agreed a contingency plan for remote learning in the event of such closures. We communicated this to parents in advance of the closures and really from thereafter, we hit the ground running. The learning experience has been very positive with an student online engagement averaging 84% prior to the Easter break, Mr Shinners added.

All students in Limerick ETSS have iPads and teachers are equipped with the best that Apple technology has to offer. Students dont have textbooks. Teachers create their subject content which is tailored to meet the needs of all students. The school integrates Apple with all things Google. Interestingly, when speaking about the success of their remote learning, Mr Shinners doesnt reference technology in great detail but moreover, highlights teachers sense of professionalism as crucial to remote process.

Technology lies at the heart of learning and teaching in our school. But its merely one of the many tools we use. Technology is an enabler. But its not the learning and its not the teaching. In the absence of textbooks, coupled with the vibrant, dynamic and flexible learning spaces in Limerick ETSS, our teachers are pushing the traditional barriers of teaching every day, Mr Shinners explained.

Despite the school closures, students are following a reduced version of their timetable. With all the uncertainty surrounding Covid-19 we felt it was really important to help students and their families maintain some sense of normality and routine to their day. So our timetable is running.

Maria Harper, chair of the board of Management and parent of Charley who is in first year commended the teachers for going above and beyond to ensure that students are having a positive experience from the remote learning.

It has been seamless from day one. The timetable is running and teachers are on (online). My daughter gets up for school like any other school day. While theres no replacing the personal interaction that your traditional classroom brings, this is as close as it gets, explained Ms Harper.

Its incredible to see my daughter and her peers all online and engaged together via Google Classroom and Google Hangouts. My worry was that students might have to navigate through a silo of work but this isnt the case because the teachers are online. They vary the types of work set and they engage with students on the chat feeds, via email and best of all, classes are delivered via live streams using Google Hangouts. They even do whole school assemblies online and the principal provides pre-recorded updates to parents.

Mr Shinners does not expect second-level schools to reopen this side of June.

Speaking about the likelihood of continued school closures he stated: I think it would be foolish at this stage to reopen schools and risk undoing all that we have done to support our frontline services. Teachers across Limerick and the country are doing incredible things to ensure that learning continues. Parents have been incredible in making the adjustment to homeschool life while at the same time trying to balance it all with family life, siblings and much more.
(Bloomberg) -- The coronavirus shutdown left Los Angeles public schools with a problem: 100,000 students, or nearly one in six, lacked the computer equipment and internet connections needed for online instruction as classrooms shut.

Many of our families are struggling to make ends meet and cannot afford to do this on their own, Superintendent Austin Beutner said in a March 23 message to the schools community. But their children deserve the same opportunity those in more affluent communities have.

A growing number of politicians of both parties in Washington are coming to agree. The Covid-19 crisis, by laying bare the so-called digital divide at school systems and communities across the country, may achieve what years of lobbying by interest groups has failed to deliver: significant new federal funding to narrow the gap.

House Democrats on Thursday released a proposal for investing more than $80 billion to spread broadband, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she wants a piece of that funding in the next large coronavirus relief bill.

Were talking about distance learning, were talking about telemedicine, were talking about people buying things in a way that they hadnt before, Pelosi said at a news conference Thursday. And yet, its not available to everyone. So, this is about fairness and equity in every way.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy in a press call Thursday called broadband funding an appropriate discussion for us to have as lawmakers debate the bills dimensions. In the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has signaled reluctance to spend more in emergency packages -- yet other Republicans there acknowledge that broadband should be spread more widely.

The coronavirus pandemic has further underscored the pressing need for increased access to broadband for all Americans, Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker, chairman of the Commerce Committee that oversees internet policy, said in an emailed statement. I believe this bipartisan priority will be considered by Congress.

Story continues

President Donald Trump tweeted April 21 that broadband was among the Infrastructure Investments the federal government needs to make in addition to bridges and tunnels to rebuild the nation.

Households face divergent fortunes under the stay-home orders imposed across the U.S. Office workers with good connections have been able to keep their jobs by staying in through services such as Zoom Video Communications Inc.

Meanwhile less-affluent households subsist in a form of digital twilight. They may have smartphones, but nearly 12 million schoolchildren lived in homes without internet connections in 2015, according to a widely cited congressional estimate.

Theyre much less likely to have fast connections. About 56% of households earning less than $30,000 a year have broadband at home, compared with 92% of household with incomes of $75,000 or more, according to the Pew Research Center.

Congress took note of students plight in an earlier Covid relief bill, providing $16 billion aimed at easing remote learning. Schools can use the money for hardware, software, and connectivity, the FCC and Education Department said in an April 27 news release.

In Los Angeles, the nations second-largest school system, made an emergency $100 million purchase of iPads and Chromebooks for students, and Verizon Communications Inc. kicked in wireless hotspots to bring signals to homes lacking service.

All of a sudden the light bulb has gone on, about how essential broadband is to full participation in society, said Gigi Sohn, a distinguished fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy in Washington.

The realization that youve got to have robust broadband, even if you dont have a pandemic, has been brought to the fore, Sohn said in an interview.

Congress previously hasnt been willing to fund robust broadband programs, Sohn said. There has not been a recognition among members of Congress that broadband is critical infrastructure, Sohn said.

Funding has largely been left to an array of programs that include subsidies administered by the Federal Communications Commission, that are funded by a fee on telephone calls, according to an October 2019 report by the Congressional Research Service.

The U.S. doesnt need to spend more money, said Roslyn Layton, visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute policy group.

The best, fastest and quickest way to close any kind of gap is with wireless networks, Layton said in an email. There is cash flow in the broadband industry to make the necessary investment, but the spectrum has to be made available first.

Food, Water, Internet

More than 200 companies and advocacy groups in a letter to congressional leaders on Wednesday called for broadband funding in upcoming relief legislation. Signers included Common Cause, Consumer Reports, the NAACP, and the Incompas trade group that has members including Netflix Inc. and Facebook Inc.

Like food, water, and electricity, everyone needs broadband internet service during this unprecedented crisis, the groups said in the letter. That is why Congress must include policies that support broadband availability, including increased funding for adoption, network sustainability, and deployment for areas still lacking access, in upcoming stimulus packages.

The crisis could push changes taking place over the past decade, as broadband has evolved from a relatively slow service that couldnt have supported Zoom meetings, remote learning and widespread binges of shows from Netflix Inc.

Coronavirus changes everything -- but in this case it doesnt change things, it accelerates things as broadband becomes essential to economic growth, said Blair Levin, who oversaw development of a national broadband plan while at the Federal Communications Commission a decade ago.

Its going to be an information society, and broadband is the means by which we collaborate, said Levin, a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. You need 100% of school kids.

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By Online Desk

With 2573 new cases and 83 more deaths from coronavirus infection reported in the last 24 hours, the tally in India has climbed to 42,836 on a day when the country entered the second extension of the COVID-19 lockdown with relaxations in orange and green zones. This includes 29,685 active cases and 11,762 discharges. The death toll stands at 1,389.

While Tamil Nadu registered the biggest-ever spike with 527 cases, its neighbouring state Kerala reported no cases for the second day in a row. 'Well, the curve has flattened. No new cases. 61 recoveries. Active cases down at 34...,' chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan stated on Twitter.

In Chennai, the spillover of cases from Koyambedu market, the COVID-19 hotspot, is getting bigger.

Meanwhile, the Centre has announced that it will facilitate the return of Indians stranded abroad. On Monday evening, the Ministry of External Affairs said that the process of repatriation will start from May 7 in a phase manner.
The Leadership of the Private Vehicle Testing Stations (PVTS) Association is demanding the Driver Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) to enforce the law which requires motorists to submit their vehicles physically for inspection before receiving road worthy certificates.



The Association said the non-enforcement of the law was the major contributory factor of road accidents in the country.



Mr Samuel Oppong, President of the Association in a media briefing, said, the Road traffic Regulation LI 2180, 2012, the DVLA had the additional mandate to license PVTS Companies to test and ensure that conditions of vehicles complied with required standards to mitigate road crushes.



He said the inspections were to ensure that any equipment fittings and fixtures required on the vehicle were present and serviceable in order to avoid road accidents.



Mr Oppong who is also the Chief Executive Officer of S-Class Services and Board Chair of the Inter-City STC Company said, every vehicle that visited the Vehicle Inspection and Technical Organization was expected to go through rigorous testing processes such as identification, payment for test, registry, visual and automated testing, printing and certification of road worthy certificate.



He said the visual test comprised windscreen, tyres, wipers, wheel knots and bolts, seat belt, number plates and seats, while the automated test consisted of emission test, alignment, shock absorbers, front, rear and rear brakes test and the lighting system, Mr. Oppong added.



The President said there were 24 PVTS across the country and that the stations were under-utilized because the DVLA had slacked in its responsibility to compel drivers to submit their vehicles for thorough testing before issuing road worthy stickers.



He said owners of the test stations had invested millions of cedis for over eight years now and that the DVLA did not care about their supervisory role to ensure that motorists did the right thing by testing their vehicles at the various centres before issuing road worthy stickers.



Mr Oppong said the PVTS that were to be networked from their stations directly to the DVLA through technology has not yet been done, adding that, the stations were set for the networking.



He said drivers did not turn up for testing, because they paid for the testing and the stickers and so they go to the DVLA offices to collect their stickers without going through any inspection, saying, "about 70 per cent of drivers went to the DVLA for stickers and that was partly responsible for road accidents.



Mr Oppong also called on government to provide a stimulus package for members of the associations whose operations were s affected by the three-week lockdown.



The PVTS Association President noted that the close down directive led to the loss of revenue for government and the companies, adding, the companies were at the point of calculating how much revenue they lost as they would pay their staff for no work done.



He however commended President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and his government for the measures taken to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 in Ghana.



The PVTS is mandated by the DVLA to check the road worthiness of vehicles, as part of efforts and measures by the Authority to reduce road crashes in the country.

Source: GNA









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As the Trump White House activated its strategy for reopening the economy from its coronavirus shutdown, tensions grew in states where some residents felt things were not reopening fast enough, and others felt they were reopening too fast. Armed protesters entered the Michigan statehouse in Lansing to express their opposition to Gov. Gretchen Whitmers continued state of emergency.

Vice President Mike Pence drew criticism for not wearing a face mask while visiting the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. Pence said he wanted to "look [health care workers] in the eye and say thank you. Later in the week, the vice president wore a mask during a visit to a General Motors/Ventec ventilator factory his home state of Indiana.

Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, faced intense scrutiny after a former staffer, Tara Reade, claimed Biden sexually assaulted her in the 1990s. The former vice president flatly denied it ever happened. Republicans accused Democrats, especially women, of hypocrisy for standing by Biden while having pressed Christine Blasey Fords sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Other topics addressed in this weeks cartoons include the mysterious disappearance of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un (he reportedly had surfaced by weeks end); presidential son-in-law Jared Kushners assertion that the U.S. coronavirus response was a great success story as the death toll surpassed 60,000; aides pulling the plug on the daily coronavirus task force briefing after President Donald Trumps poll numbers dipped; and Trumps use of the Defense Production Act to keep meat processing plants open despite widespread coronavirus infections among workers.

Cartoons were drawn by Bill Bramhall, Dana Summers, Drew Sheneman, Walt Handelsman, David Horsey, Phil Hands, Joel Pett and Joey Weatherford of Tribune Content Agency; and A.F. Branco, Mike Luckovich and Michael Ramirez of Creators Syndicate.

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He admitted that he made mistake when investing in airlines, and lost money on this

Warren Buffett Reuters

Berkshire Hathaway holding sold all its shares in the four largest US airlines. The head of the holding, Warren Buffett, said this at the annual meeting of shareholders, Bloomberg writes.

These are shares of American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines Holdings. In the first two, the holding owned 10% each, in Delta Air Lines and United Airlines Holdings - 11 and 9% respectively. At the same time, in early April, Buffett's share in Delta Air Lines and Southwest Airlines fell by 18 and 4%, respectively.

Buffett noted that as a result of the economic crisis, the business has changed significantly due to the coronavirus pandemic.

"The world has changed for airlines, and I wish them all the best," he said.

The head of the holding admitted that he made a mistake when investing in airlines, and lost money on this. He also told shareholders that the Berkshire Hathaway holding had taken a series of actions in connection with the pandemic and assured that he was still interested in making a major acquisition, which has not happened since 2016. At the same time, Buffett will not provide support to companies, as he did during the economic crisis in 2008.

Note that on the eve of the Berkshire Hathaway holding, it reported a loss of $ 49.7 billion in the first quarter of 2020. Shares of the financial conglomerate itself fell in price by 19%.

As we reported before, Bloomberg Billionaires Index has been released officially. The list includes 500 positions, with the world's richest and most powerful people in it.
Defying curbs and norms like physical distancing, migrant workers on Saturday staged a flash protest at different locations here, demanding that authorities send them to their home states like Jharkhand immediately, an official said.

Follow latest updates on the COVID-19 pandemic here

The workers, mostly involved in construction activities and housed at various facilities here, suddenly converged at locations, including Velachery, Pozhichallur and Guindy Industrial Estate, demanding that they be sent home, he said.

Groups of people from states including Odisha and West Bengal, meanwhile, thronged the Collectorate at Vellore District, urging authorities to facilitate their return to their home towns. Approximately 3,000 people are stranded at Vellore, including Bangladeshis, most of whom had come to the city to avail treatment at the Christian Medical College Hospital.

Asked about people wishing to return to their home towns, another official merely said that TNePASS (tnepass.tnega.org) system is in place for processing requests. However, he did not elaborate.

The website read: "Individuals can apply for marriage, medical emergency or close relative's death only." A large gathering of workers from various states, including Odisha and Jharkhand -engaged in various construction activities in southern suburbs- staged a demonstration at Pozhichallur.

Clad in lungies and towels and sans face masks, they raised slogans, demanding that the authorities send them home. Police and revenue officials assured them that their demand would be considered expeditiously. Another protest was held at the Five Furlong Road junction in Velachery.

The protests led to anxiety for a while, the official said, adding that authorities pacified the workers and sent them back to their respective locations of stay. One more group of labourers gathered in front of a construction site at Guindy. They had worked at that site ahead of the clampdown due to COVID-19. Munna, a worker from Bihar told PTI: "We are prepared to walk all the way home if it is not possible for the government to arrange transport to our hometown.

Deb, another worker from West Bengal, said he and his colleagues have been confined to an under-construction building in Velacherry for a little over a month and was struggling without wages. I cant sit idle here, without work or wages. I would rather go home to be with my family, he said.

On the claims on another protest at Maduravoyal here, a police official said "no protest happened there today." Government authorities indicated that the return of guest workers was being planned and their journey to their home states through trains will be scheduled soon. However, the authorities remained tight lipped about the timing, hinting at the possibility of huge crowds of workers turning up simultaneously.
Businesses in New York City will be asked to change workers schedules to reduce rush-hour density on the subway. A new squad of guards will patrol stations, reporting overcrowding to supervisors and directing riders to emptier train cars. Brightly colored markers will be added to encourage riders to keep a distance from one another on platforms, following the advice of transit agencies in China, Singapore and Britain.

New Yorks transit agency took the drastic step on Thursday of halting overnight service on the system for the foreseeable future to give workers more time to disinfect trains and stations.

But it is just a first step for officials racing to develop a strategy for ensuring that the subway can rebound from a cataclysmic pandemic.

As authorities weigh decisions about when to begin letting some businesses reopen, New Yorks ability to revive its economy hinges on whether millions of daily commuters will return to a public transit network that they are persuaded can provide safe and reliable service.
When the NHS put out its recent call for volunteer responders, more than half a million people signed up in the first 24 hours.

The administrators even had to close the site while they processed those keen to offer their services.

But what if you've got time, skills, and a desire to do your bit but can't, or would rather not, venture from home? Here are the ways you can make a real difference right now, all from the comfort  and safety  of your own sofa...

Here are the ways you can make a real difference right now, all from the comfort  and safety  of your own sofa

Lend an ear

An estimated 4,000 grassroots neighbourhood initiatives are now operating in response to the pandemic, with volunteers liaising via WhatsApp or Facebook.

They are working to make sure the elderly aren't too lonely, and that shopping and medicines get delivered.

How to get involved: Go to covidmutualaid.org and type in your postcode to find details of your closest neighbourhood group. You can sign up for shifts to take calls to your phone from people who need help nearby, or who want advice, or just a chat to stave off loneliness.

To spread your net further afield, become a 'check in and chat' volunteer for the British Red Cross at goodsamapp.org. Anyone in isolation can opt to be a telephone companion.

Or visit royalvoluntary service.org.uk and search for any telephone companion volunteer opportunities.

Special skills required: A willingness to chat.

Be a beauty banker

Some people are struggling to afford basic personal care.

Beauty professionals Jo Jones and Sali Hughes set up Beauty Banks to donate essential products to foodbanks, homeless centres, refuges and schools, for instance.

How to get involved: During the pandemic, you can donate to buy soap, hand sanitiser and more for people going without during the crisis at gofundme.com/helpinghands-for-covid19. You can also search for the Beauty Banks wishlist on easho.org.uk to purchase bundles for those in need.

While the organisation is not currently accepting product donations from the public due to safety concerns, there is no better time to find items to donate in the future.

Go to beautybanks.org.uk and download a private bankers' starter kit. Then clear out your bathroom cabinet and encourage everyone in your family to do the same. Everything from shampoo, body wash, toothpaste and toothbrushes to deodorant, disposable razors, sanitary pads, face wash and make-up can be donated, as long as the item hasn't been used.

When you send the team your postcode they will identify a charity in your area to which you can donate directly.

Special skills required: A packed bathroom cabinet.

Join Jane Fonda

The pandemic appears to have temporarily quietened climate change discussion, but actress Jane Fonda is working with Greenpeace to keep awareness levels high

The pandemic appears to have temporarily quietened climate change discussion, but actress Jane Fonda is working with Greenpeace to keep awareness levels high.

The 82-year-old had been leading Fire Drill Friday civil disobedience protests across the U.S. in response to teenage campaigner Greta Thunberg's Fridays For Future school strikes. The name is a reference to Thunberg's environmental alarm call of: 'Our house is on fire!'

Fonda is urging people around the world to join her online for a virtual Fire Drill Friday each week to keep the environmental crisis at the front of our minds.

She posted an exercise video, like those she made in the Eighties, on the social network TikTok, urging fans to register their support.

How to get involved: Visit firedrillfridays.com to find out more. Enter your email address in the 'Join Us' tab to learn about ways to be involved.

You can also follow Fire Drill Fridays on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to keep updated on 'teach-ins' (rather than the usual sit-ins) and see celebrity appearances every Friday.

Special skills required: Strong feelings about saving the planet.

Share tech skills

Age UK is calling for volunteers to donate their time to one of more than 130 local centres around the country, in a bid to help elderly people stay connected, access vital services and pursue hobbies online.

How to get involved: Fill in the volunteer enquiry form at ageuk.org.uk and watch the eight-minute video to learn how to help older people make the most of technology. Your local Age UK branch will make contact if it needs help.

Or you can work alone, by explaining the benefits of online tools such as Skype, FaceTime or WhatsApp to any elderly people with whom you are in contact. You can also offer to help them search for any items they might need online.

You could teach them how to subscribe to Mail+ so they can read their favourite newspaper on a phone or tablet. They simply have to search for Mail+ in the Apple App Store or Google Play on Android devices, or go to mailplus.co.uk.

Special skills required: An understanding of social media and the internet.

Go global

Even if you don't leave home, modern technology means you can still lend your help to causes around the world.

How to get involved: Head to onlinevolunteering.org/en, a UN-backed organisation which aims to help volunteers from many fields team up to tackle world issues.

Volunteers can pick from up to 300 online tasks at 3,000 organisations by clicking on 'Browse all opportunities'.

Many tasks are Covid-19-related and ask for skills such as writing and proof-reading, art and design, technology development, research, admin and teaching.

Special skills required: This is tailored to your own skills.

Offer your sight

The blind or partially sighted can struggle with simple tasks such as checking expiry dates or reading instructions.

The charity Be My Eyes puts volunteers around the world in touch with those who are in need and potentially isolated at home, to help solve tasks big or small.

How to get involved: Go to bemy eyes.com and download the free app, which lets you offer visual assistance through a video call.

Special skills required: Good eyesight.
In March, Mr. Putin reversed his earlier praise for small businesses, saying in an interview that there are certain grounds to regard business owners as swindlers, echoing the Soviet bias against entrepreneurs but somewhat undercutting his own cheerleading of smaller industry.

The government believes people in retail are all crooks, said Irina M. Nurullayeva, owner of a chain of four flower shops in St. Petersburg. The problem is that all these officials have not been in touch with normal life since the 1990s, when this could have been the case.

Lalya N. Sadykova, an owner of a chain of 12 barbershops and three beauty salons in St. Petersburg, said she had so far received no help at all. Her multiple letters to the local authorities have gone unanswered. With little money left, she bought about four pounds of rice, flour, buckwheat and a bottle of cooking oil for each of her 17 neediest workers, many of them young single mothers.

She complained that taxes had been deferred, rather than waived, during the lockdown.

They had to cancel taxes for the duration of quarantine, not simply offer a deferral, Ms. Sadykova, 36, who started her business in 2002 with only $500 in her pocket, said in an interview in one of her closed salons. We scream everywhere that we are such a great country, but when push comes to shove, the government cannot assume responsibility.
Over a quarter of coronavirus patients on ventilation suffer kidney failure, causing a shortage of vital equipment.

Charities have warned the killer infection can lead to acute kidney injury (AKI), a sudden serious condition that can be fatal if not treated immediately.

Thousands in intensive care are needing special renal support that takes over the role of the kidneys so that they are able to recover.

The Government have warned of a severe disruption to supplies, but say it will not affect people who already receive dialysis.

Today Britain's death toll reached 28,491, putting the country on course to become the hardest hit in Europe.

Over a quarter of coronavirus patients on ventilation suffer kidney failure, according to charities causing a shortage of vital equipment - such as this haemodialysis machine

Thousands in intensive care are needing special renal support that take over the role of the kidneys so they are able to recover. Pictured, Stephen Parker, 62 a COVID-19 patient being applauded by staff at Poole Hospital after recovering in intensive care

The UK has announced 315 new coronavirus deaths today, bringing total fatalities to 28,446 and putting the country on course to become the hardest hit in Europe

AKI refers to sudden failure of kidney function and can be life-threatening. It can be reversed with treatment.

In COVID-19 patients who require treatment on an intensive care unit (ICU), 25 per cent of patients on ventilators develop severe AKI, according to the Renal Association.

Kidney Care UK report the figure as high as 28 per cent.

And according to National Kidney Foundation, based in New York, approximately three to nine per cent of patients with confirmed COVID-19 develop an AKI.

More than 2,000 patients admitted to intensive care with COVID-19 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have suffered kidney failure, the BBC reports.

The Government has since warned of strain on equipment for treatment similar to concerns over ventilators at the beginning of the outbreak.

Although COVID-19 is known as a respiratory disease, its deadly complications can affect various vital organs.

Dr Graham Lipkin, consultant kidney specialist and president of The Renal Association, told the BBC: 'The virus can be seen within the very fine structures of the kidneys.

A THIRD OF CORONAVIRUS PATIENTS IN NHS HOSPITALS DIE A third of coronavirus patients admitted to NHS hospitals die from the disease and more than half of those on ventilators do not survive, according to a major study. Researchers analysing almost 17,000 COVID-19 hospitalisations in the UK found 33 per cent died, 49 per cent were discharged and 17 per cent are still receiving care. The study, the biggest of its kind in Europe, found just a fifth of intubated UK patients made it home alive. Fifty-three per cent have died while on a ventilator and 27 per cent are still hooked up to the machines at the time of writing. Of those in ICU, 45 per cent succumbed to the virus, 31 per cent went home after beating the illness and just under a quarter are still being treated. Experts said the findings suggest the coronavirus could be as dangerous as Ebola - which kills roughly four out of every 10 people it infects. Calum Semple, professor in outbreak medicine at University of Liverpool, said that 'people need to get it their heads' just how lethal the virus is. He said while coronavirus infects many more people than Ebola, they have similar fatality rates when the illnesses lead to hospitalisation. The bleak realities of the crisis were laid bare in a report by the International Severe Acute Respiratory and emerging Infections (ISARIC). Writing in the paper, which has been published on the pre-print website MedRxiv and has not been peer-reviewed, the researchers said: While most patients with COVID-19 experience mild disease, of those who have been admitted to hospital 14 days prior to data extraction, half have been discharged alive and one third have died. Seventeen per cent of those admitted to hospital required critical care. Those who have poor outcomes are more often elderly, male and obese. The near-real time analysis of data presented by this urgent public health study is allowing health policy makers to react dynamically to best evidence as it presents, such as expanded ICU capacity.' Advertisement

'And it also affects the stickiness of the blood. The blood it becomes very sludgy and because kidney is full of little blood vessels, it sludges up in the kidneys and therefore the kidneys start to fail.'

AKI usually happens when your kidneys are damaged suddenly, commonly because there is not enough blood flowing through the organs.

Those with most at risk of kidney failure are often the same patients at higher risk of dying from COVID-19, including patients over the age of 65 and with pre-existing health conditions like high blood pressure, heart disease, liver disease or diabetes.

But scientists theorise the virus directly attacks the kidneys by latching onto them.

SARS-CoV-2 enters the cells of people who are infected by latching onto ACE2 receptor, which coat cell surfaces.

ACE2 is known to be present in the lungs, which are particularly affected by the virus. But scientists have found high expression in parts of the kidneys, suggesting their susceptibility for infection.

An international team led by University of British Columbia researcher Dr Josef Penninger looked at how the virus can infect blood vessels and kidneys using organoids - small, engineered mini organs that replicate the real thing.

The virus can directly infect and duplicate itself in these tissues, according to the study, published in the journal Cell on April 2.

The findings are important information considering the fact that severe cases of COVID-19 present with multi-organ failure.

Researchers in Wuhan - where the virus originated in December 2019 - have found worryingly high numbers of deaths involved kidney failure.

A team conducted autopsies on people who died of COVID-19 and found nine of 26 had acute kidney injuries and seven had particles of the coronavirus in their kidneys, according to the paper published 9 April in the medical journal Kidney International.

'It does raise the very clear suspicion that at least a part of the acute kidney injury that we're seeing is resulting from direct viral involvement of the kidney,' said Paul Palevsky, a University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine nephrologist and president-elect of the National Kidney Foundation.

He added this is distinct from what was seen in the outbreak of SARS in the early 2000s, a related coronavirus, The Independent reports.

But there is concern that patients are showing signs of kidney failure early on in the disease, too, said Alan Kliger, a clinical professor of medicine at Yale University, who saw a surge in Covid-19 patients suffering from kidney failure in New York.

It has been clear that the kidney is a target, he told the Irish publication TheJournal.ie.

He said the pandemic increased roughly five-fold the need for renal replacement therapy.

'There needs to be global thinking, with reserves that can be sent where they are needed,' he said. 'A pandemic moves in waves, and doesnt happen at the same moment everywhere.'

arly in hospitalisation some patients show kidney damage, which suggests kidneys are infected by the virus early on, said Dr Kliger.

Treatment of kidney failure requires sophisticated machines that need sterile tubing sets, fluids and filters to operate.

Severe AKI on the ICU is usually treated with either haemofiltration or haemodialysis, which both do the work the kidneys should be doing until they can recover.

Both remove waste products from the blood by passing it out of the body through a set of tubing to a filter and returning it, cleaned, to the body.

The machine works 24/7 to remove the excess fluid and toxins that accumulate in the body when the kidneys are not producing sufficient urine.



But there is now a critical national shortage of the material required due to the surge in COVID-19 patients in ICU worldwide.

Charities in the UK say a huge amount of work is going on amongst kidney doctors and critical care specialists to share resources effectively within the NHS and use alternative treatments.

They have also reassured that 30,000 or so patients who have dialysis within the community are not affected because they are wired up to different machines.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are starting a new life together in North America. The two officially stepped down from the royal family in March, and theyve since spent some time in Canada and most recently Los Angeles. But not everyone is convinced that Prince Harry will ultimately be happy so far away from the family; one expert believes his past indicates that he might be too vulnerable.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle | Jack Taylor/Getty Images

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle wanted to get away from the royal spotlight

Harry and Meghans decision to step back from royal life wasnt an easy one. The two had wed back in 2018, and since then, things were not simple for either of them. Meghan had a difficult time with the press; the media was constantly publishing negative news stories about the duchess, which resulted in a negative relationship with the public.

The spotlight was a lot for them to handle, and it had never been something Harry enjoyed. He told Newsweek in 2017 that he hated having to publicly walk behind her mothers casket. I dont think any child should be asked to do that, he said. Fast forward more than 20 years later, and Harry and Meghan decided not to give their son, Archie, a royal title with the hopes of giving him a more private life. Ultimately, between their want for privacy and their spiraling relationship with the press and public, Harry and Meghan left the family.

The couple is starting a new life together in Los Angeles

These days, the two are settling into a brand new life  but there will be a lot to get used to. Harry has never lived away from his family and hasnt spent much time in California. And although Meghan grew up in L.A., shes a much different public figure now than she was when she last lived there.

Harry and Meghan spent several weeks in Canada prior to moving to the United States. And these days, theyre still looking for a home while also giving back to their new community; the two were spotted giving out free meals to those in need back in April. But Harry might not settle in as well as he hopes, per one royal experts opinion.

One royal expert thinks Harrys past suggests he wont handle life well away from his family

Harry has been through a lot in his life, and he was able to get through his most trying times with the help of his family. He had an extremely difficult time coping with his mothers death, and his brother, William was a big reason why he got through it. Harry also revealed in his Newsweek interview that he sought therapy for quite a while in his 20s, thanks to his brother working with him to find the right kind of help. Harry said that his life was total chaos for years after losing his mother.

Royal commentator Angela Mollard said that Harry could become increasingly vulnerable now that hes living away from his family, according to Express. That kind of closeness between [Prince Charles and Prince William], and the friendliness Will not have gone unnoticed by Harry, Mollard said, referring to Charles and William spending more time together during royal engagements now that Harry is gone. These stories do make you worry for someone like Harry, who has talked most recently about being in therapy for many years I cant help seeing him as an increasingly vulnerable person.

Its unclear how things will go for Harry in his new life, but Mollard does make a good point that Harrys distance from his family might eventually take a negative toll on him, as it could anyone. William was someone Harry leaned on quite a lot when things became tough, and now that his relationship with brother is on the rocks, it could lead to Harry ultimately being unhappy. Its unclear how Harry and Meghan will balance their new lives with maintaining a closeness to the other royals  or if they will at all. And its even murkier about what it will mean for Harry down the road.
By Express News Service

KOCHI: Taxi services, including online cab aggregators like Uber and Ola, which had been put out of work in the lockdowns wake, will hit the streets here on Monday following the relaxations announced by the Centre. Under the guidelines, the government has allowed cab aggregators and taxi services to operate in the green and orange zones with one driver and two passengers. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had on Saturday said that inter-district service for essential requirements will be permitted in the green and orange zones. The state government has provided financial assistance of Rs3,000 to cab drivers, whose livelihood has been severely affected, through the Welfare Fund Board .

However, most of the drivers are not registered under the welfare scheme and hence could not avail themselves of the aid. Though Ola service is distributing a relief of D500 and D750 for drivers every week there is no such help forthcoming from the other companies. We have urged the government to extend the moratorium for six months and provide a time period of six months for renewal of fitness, permit and tax certificates, said Jackson Varghese, president, Kerala Online Drivers Union.

Meanwhile, the district administration demonstrated the use of fibre glass partition in taxis, separating the drivers compartment from the passenger section, as part of Covid preventive measures. However, the drivers rejected the idea citing the additional expenditure involved.

 According to the guidelines, only two passengers are allowed and there is no idea about the number trips which can be undertaken. The airport is closed and hence there will be no trips from there, said another taxi driver. People can travel in their personal vehicles with same number of people -- a driver and two passengers. However, these guidelines do not apply in the red zone areas.
A 69-year-old man who sexually abused his daughter and chained her to her bedroom floor has attempted to use the COVID-19 pandemic as a reason to have his sentence reduced.

The man, who suffers from cardiovascular disease, gout and diabetes, argued the potential consequences of the virus on his health were "relevant to an assessment" of his sentence and "an extraordinary problem" that should be considered as part of his appeal against his sentence.

The man will remain behind bars. Credit:Greg Henderson

The man, whose name has been suppressed to protect the identity of his victim, was sentenced to eight years jail in 2019 for sexually abusing his daughter several times over nearly a decade and chaining her to her bedroom floor overnight.

Between 2002 and 2011, the man indecently touched his daughter, who was aged between 4 and 12 at the time, on five occasions. Most of the offending occurred in the family's home in Kewdale and later in Waterford, where the man, a FIFO worker, lived with his then-wife and daughter.
Chandigarh, May 3 (UNI) Expressing shock and grief over the loss of five security personnel in Jammu and Kashmir's Handwara region, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Sunday mourned the sacrifice of the bravehearts, while announcing a job to a family member with Rs ten lakh financial aid to the next of kin of NK Rajesh Kumar, a soldier who hailed from Mansa district of Punjab.

As news of the martyrdom of the four Indian Army soldiers and one Jammu and Kashmir policeman came in the morning, the Punjab Chief Minister joined the nation in saluting the bravery and valour of the martrys, and prayed to God to grant strength to their families in this time of grief.

The five security personnel, including an Army Colonel and a Major, were killed in an encounter with terrorists, who had taken some civilians hostage in a house. He described it as a ghastly and cowardly act by the terrorists, who continued to be pushed in by Pakistan from across the border despite the whole world, including the two nations, currently engaged in a bigger war against the Covid.
Carla Grosso had no intention of letting a pandemic scuttle her sons senior prom.

At first, when coronavirus didnt look like the wrecker of social lives that it became, the Palm Beach, Florida, mom of two figured she'd host her son and a group of fellow seniors at her house if the event got canceled. Then stay-at-home orders and social distancing kicked in, and the invite list shortened  significantly.

Fortunately for Dominick Grosso and his date, Paige Houck, their families live a block apart and had become one extended social unit of sorts even before the term COVID-19 entered the public lexicon.

When Royal Palm Beach High pulled the plug on its Roaring 20s-themed rite of passage, Grosso got to work, online-ordering her way to Jazz Age ambiance complete with Gatsby-esque winding stair backdrop, faux crystal wall sconces and cardboard cutout Roadster.

Royal Palm Beach High School seniors Dominick Grosso and Paige Houck toast each other April 18 as they spend their prom night together in the backyard of the Grosso home. Their school prom was canceled because of the coronavirus.

She was determined wed have a prom our senior year and keep everybody safe at the same time, Dominick said.

Like a mother at Christmas with toddlers in the house, Grosso kept the details of the big night under wraps.

I had to announce when I was coming out of my room, he recalled.

Fun in the time of coronavirus: Proms, graduations and birthdays adapt

When he and Paige shuttled from her house to his, they had to yell inside from the garage, announcing their presence.

While Grosso directed production, Paiges mom, Renee Houck, an assistant principal at the high school, took over catering. At Paiges request, Italian takeout from Basilicos was secured. A chocolate and vanilla sheet cake declaring Prom 2020 in Royal Palms trademark blue and black was ordered, and a photo of the couple was planted prominently atop the icing.

Paige and Dominick met in middle school.

She was the girl he was crushing on in seventh grade. He was the boy she didnt crush on until he had another girlfriend in their sophomore and junior years. This year, the Royal Palm Beach High athletes finally connected.

Story continues

No one doubted the two would attend prom together. Dominicks prom-posal (no one just asks you to go to prom anymore) involved an Easter egg hunt and a homemade ticket to the big night.

Paige got her dress long before spring break even rolled around. Dominick anticipated a trip to Mens Warehouse, but the store, like so many others, was shuttered. He borrowed a slightly snug blue suit from one of Paiges older brothers instead.

On the big night, timed to coincide with what wouldve been the big night at some swanky venue, the couple, family in tow, headed to Palm Beach at sunset for their prom photo session  first round with masks on.

They returned to a transformed backyard complete with fog-filled effects  dry ice in the pool  and a DJ, Dominicks freshman sister.

Dinner, dancing and games ensued. The guest list included both sets of parents, Paiges two adult brothers and their dates.

Renee Houck snaps a prom photo of Dominick Grosso and Paige Houck.

The only people we see is each other, said Paiges father, Leroy Houck, who, along with Dominicks mom and dad, works for the Palm Beach County Sheriffs Office. We are fortunate to have an extended family of sorts.

A prom date with your parents, brothers and sisters wouldnt seem like a winning combination, but Paige and Dominick would disagree.

I went to my junior prom. I enjoyed the pictures part of it, but Im not much of a party, dancing type, Paige said. I had more fun with my family and his than I would have anyway.

Across the country, roughly 3.7 million students have seen their high school senior events turned upside down by the pandemic. More than a few have successfully improvised. Actor John Krasinski hosted a virtual Prom 2020 for his YouTube show, "Some Good News."

Paige and Dominick said theyve become the envy of friends, who saw snaps from the night via social media.

Paiges dad said the teen was devastated when the girls senior softball season was canceled. Her 18th birthday also fell in the social desert created by the need to put the brakes on the coronavirus.

It was great to get to see her get into her prom dress and to at least have a little glimpse of normal," Houck said. "To give them both something happy.

Coronavirus and schools: High school seniors are too uncertain to commit to a college

Royal Palm Beach High School seniors Dominick Grosso and Paige Houck have their first dance while their families take pictures at the Grosso home.

Dominicks mom couldnt agree more.

Were blessed that we have our health, and were blessed that we have not been sick from this illness, Carla Grosso said. But it does stink for the seniors. They can be happy they dont have the virus, but in the end, there still is a little bit of a disappointment.

Grosso is intent to deliver some hallmark memories before the books close on the Class of 2020.

She plans a senior picnic, breakfast and backyard graduation. The only thing she couldnt deliver was a theme park grad bash excursion.

Given time, she probably wouldve figured out that one, too.

Follow Sonja Isger on Twitter: @sonjaisger

Support journalism: Stories like this are possible because of our subscribers

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Coronavirus senior prom 2020: High school couple get backyard bash
BOSTON  On April 20, I had just gotten home from a particularly difficult 14-hour shift when I saw President Trumps tweet about closing the United States border to immigrants. He said that he was acting as a response to the coronavirus pandemic and to protect the jobs of American citizens. This was alarming news to me, especially since some of the reporting on the announcement suggested that visas for highly skilled workers could also be banned. As a foreign-born doctor on a work visa, I was very worried about how this would impact my ability to remain in the country.

As it turned out the executive order he ultimately signed on April 22 was more limited in scope, and included exceptions for certain health care workers like me. The announcement came a month after the administration halted all routine visa processing, including for work visas. Many see these developments as further proof of the presidents characteristic anti-immigration stance, but for me, its much more personal.

I grew up in Bangladesh, a country with a history of political unrest and massive inequality. My parents wanted me to have a chance at a better future, so we immigrated to Canada during my formative teenage years. Then in 2010, I applied and got into Emory University in Atlanta. As graduation approached, I knew I wanted to continue my studies in the United States so I enrolled in medical school at Cornell University in New York. In the past decade I have come to view this country as my home, and in the past two months I have been working to help fight a deadly virus that has devastated my city, like so many others around the world.

I have tended to hundreds of American patients of varying races, genders, socioeconomic backgrounds and political affiliations. Every morning I wake up, I prepare myself for the long, inevitably exhausting day ahead. I cant help but feel nervous as I walk through the now deserted streets to the hospital where I work. I wonder if this will be the day I will be infected with the coronavirus. I worry about being asymptomatic and unwittingly infecting my patients, most of whom are elderly and have numerous medical conditions.
Belgium began a cautious easing of its coronavirus lockdown on Monday, allowing some businesses to reopen while obliging all passengers on public transport to wear a mask under a new rule to minimise the risk of a new outbreak.

The country of 11.5 million people, among the worst affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, has until now only permitted food shops and pharmacies to operate throughout the crisis, and more recently home-improvement and garden centres.

Hospital staff wearing face masks to protect against coronavirus, transfer a patient to MontLegia hospital in Liege, Belgium. Credit:AP

On Monday, 150,000-300,000 people were expected to resume work in businesses that have contact with consumers, such as manufacturers, although remote working is still encouraged.

All adults and older children taking public transport were obliged to wear a mask from Monday, on pain of a 250-euro($273.30) fine. Shops selling fabric and sewing supplies were also allowed to open to allow the public to make their own masks. Some supermarkets also began selling surgical masks.

The public may also now expand their range of leisure activities beyond walking, jogging and cycling to include sports where physical distancing is possible - such as tennis, golf or kayaking.

The government has outlined a phased removal of restrictions. Next week, all shops will be allowed to open and the week afterwards schools will start to receive some pupils.

Belgium has confirmed 50,267 COVID-19 cases and 7,924 deaths from the highly contagious respiratory disease. But the rate of increase of new cases, hospital admissions and deaths has fallen steadily since peaks in early April.
Copyright  2020 Albuquerque Journal

More than a month ago, the state Supreme Court issued an order putting evictions in New Mexico on hold. The ruling, issued March 24, applies to tenants facing eviction because they cannot afford rent.

The order came as thousands of New Mexicans applied for unemployment benefits, the after-effect of an economy ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic.

But landlords and property managers are continuing to file eviction claims in court, even if the tenant is unable to pay.

Since the Supreme Court issued its order, 11 eviction claims have been filed in Santa Fe Magistrate Court because of a tenants inability to pay.

One of those claims was against Ashley Chavez, a security guard with three children who lives off Airport Road.

Chavez said she had to take two weeks off work after the virus caused schools to close because she is a single mom and was unable to find a babysitter to watch her children.

As a result, she was three days late on her rent. When she got paid, she tried calling her landlord, Viktor Gisler, to tell him she could pay the rent  but he didnt answer.

I continued to call him about five times a day for two weeks and he refused to answer me, she said. And then I received a summons for court.

The case was eventually thrown out because of a technical violation, but Chavez said she is still afraid her landlord will try the same thing next month.

He said if I dont pay him by (May 1), hell be filing again, she said last week. The lease says I have until the third.

Gisler did not return requests for comment.

And the lack of evictions has not dampened the demand for new rentals. Chavez said she briefly searched for a new place to live in Santa Fe, but with no success.

Its like a bloodbath out here, she said. Theres like 7-10 applicants within 24 hours for each house. People are really fighting for homes.

While many courts have seen an overall decline in eviction claims, that is not expected to last forever.

The Supreme Courts order lasts as long as Gov. Michelle Lujan Grishams public health emergency, currently slated to end May 15, is still in effect. Once that ends, landlords can continue evicting tenants.

Thats when the real wave will begin, said Tomas Rivera, executive director of Chainbreaker Collective. Its happening now, but its going to get worse and worse.

Rivera said many people still do not understand the courts eviction order, putting them at risk for paying back rent and other fees.

While tenants cannot be removed from their units, courts can still order evictions that will not be enacted until the public health emergency ends, and tenants are still responsible for all unpaid rent, according to multiple attorneys interviewed for this article.

Serge Martinez, a University of New Mexico law professor who holds an economic justice clinic, said theres confusion about the courts order on all sides.

Im not even sure landlords understand it, he said.

He said that once the order ends, sheriffs around the state will be evicting a large number of tenants.

Santa Fe Magistrate Judge David Segura said in a phone interview that tenants are required to prove their inability to pay is caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Martinez said this is incorrect and that tenants do not have to justify why they cant afford rent.

Adding to the confusion is the federal governments 120-day moratorium on evictions, which applies to properties receiving money for federal affordable housing programs as part of the CARES Act. These properties are not allowed to file evictions or issue late fees  but some still do.

Casa Rufina Apartments, which receives affordable housing funds, filed an eviction claim against a tenant April 21 for failing to pay $954 for that months rent.

Thomas Prettyman, managing attorney for NM Legal Aid, said the case should not have been filed in the first place.

Theyre not supposed to file at all and theyre not supposed to be charging late fees, he said. But some are doing it anyway because whos going to say anything?

Monte Vista Apartments in Las Vegas, New Mexico, filed an eviction claim April 8. The company that owns Monte Vista, Monarch Properties, manages subsidized apartment units across New Mexico and has also filed several eviction notices.

Prettyman said its unlikely Monarch is unaware of the law.

Monarch is too big, too smart, he said. They know theyre not allowed to evict people.

Neither Casa Rufina nor Monarch Properties returned requests for comment.

In order to help residents navigate the new eviction moratoriums, multiple organizations have established hotlines to call for information.

Rivera said Chainbreaker Collectives hotline received several dozen calls in the first week alone.

Theres confusion out there and there are unscrupulous landlords who will evict people outside of the law, he said.

Meanwhile, Chavez said shes been able to return to work, although she now works the graveyard shift. Her grandma drove from Mesa, Arizona, to help watch her children for the next two months, or at least until school starts again.

She said she hopes she can stay in her home, but that she doesnt trust her landlord. The pandemic, she said, has put additional strain on her family, as it has for so many others.

I can see on everybodys face that its hard, she said.
The market registered a strong run in the week that ended on April 30, majorly due to liquidity after global central banks announced stimulus measures.

The progress in COVID-19 vaccine, hopes of a bigger fiscal stimulus from the government, expectations of a decline in daily novel coronavirus cases in the United States and Europe, and partial reopening of economic activity also lifted the mood at Dalal Street.

The BSE Sensex and Nifty50 gained nearly 8 percent each, taking the total April month's gains to more than 14 percent. The broader markets underperformed frontliners with the Nifty Midcap and Smallcap indices rising 6.35 percent and 3 percent, respectively.

However, the coming week is unexpected to be the same as there could be a knee-jerk reaction on May 4 (Monday) to weak global cues amid fears of another United States-China trade war and disappointing HUL earnings.

Overall, the week is expected to be volatile. Experts feel that the market will start reading the extended lockdown and its impact. There is likely to be some stock-specific action due to earnings.

COVID-19 Vaccine Frequently Asked Questions View more How does a vaccine work? A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine. How many types of vaccines are there? There are broadly four types of vaccine  one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine. What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind? Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time. View more Show

"Markets are also expected to keep an eye on long awaited stimulus package as well as mutual fund investors' behavior on the inflows and outflows from D-Street. Volatility will remain higher in the coming week and a lot of volatility is expected in small and midcap stocks, although they will face selling pressure at higher levels," Jimeet Modi, Founder & CEO, SAMCO Securities & StockNote told Moneycontrol.

"Earnings results have been subdued so far, as expected, with investors more interested in the commentary and outlook rather than the previous quarter numbers. This will drive stock / sectoral specific moves in the market for the next week also," Vinod Nair, Head of Research at Geojit Financial Services said.

Here are 10 key factors that will keep traders busy this week:

US-China trade war again?

US President Donald Trump has threatened China with imposition of new tariffs on import of Chinese products, over China's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

US has recorded the highest number of COVID-19 infections and deaths. The outbreak was first reported in China in late 2019.

If there is a trade war, it would be closely watched by the markets globally. The relationship between the two countries is already fragile. Hence, the markets are expected to see some correction on May 4, experts feel.

US markets and Britain's FTSE had already reacted on May 1, falling 2-3 percent. SGX Nifty was down nearly 500 points on May 1.

"United States has been believed that the China has initiated this virus mess. It is not only US but most of other countries also have same thought. So we will have global impact if the actual trade war starts again," Ajay Jaiswal, President, Strategies & Head of Research at Stewart & Mackertich told Moneycontrol.

Possibility of a COVID-19 vaccine after emergency USFDA nod to Gilead's drug?

The progress of Gilead Sciences' Remdesivir, an antiviral drug, in treatment for COVID-19 patients, lifted the global sentiment last week.

Over the weekend, the drug received emergency use authorisation (EUA) from United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) to treat COVID-19 patients with severe symptoms only, though there was no filing of formal new drug application, review and approval process for this drug.

Hence, the drug's progress from here will be closely followed globally.

If the drug proves to be successful in the coming days in treating COVID-19 virus patients, there could be stability in the market, experts feel.

COVID-19 to remain in the news

Countries have started thinking about re-opening their economy to some extent. Some countries including India and the United States have already reopened partially.

But, with the number of infections rising every day, the outbreak remains a major concern.

Globally, there have been over 34.2 lakh confirmed cases of COVID-19. At least 2.43 lakh people have died so far. The United States, Spain, Italy, France, Germany and the United Kingdom are the most-affected countries.

In India, there have been at least 37,776 known cases of COVID-19 and 1,223 deaths so far.

These numbers continue to rise. Hence, complete re-opening of the economy will take more time.

Follow our LIVE blog for the latest updates of the novel coronavirus pandemic

The Centre has extended the nationwide lockdown by two more weeks to May 17. However, it has eased restrictions in non-hotspot areas.

There are 130 'red zones' in the country which include major cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Kolkata, which are important areas for the economy.

Click here for Moneycontrols full coverage of the novel coronavirus pandemic

Earnings

This will not be a heavy earnings week as there are only around 24 companies that will announce their quarterly results, including only two BSE Sensex firms (ICICI Bank and HCL Technologies). Only 10-odd companies from BSE Sensex have announced their earnings so far.

Among others, Marico, Adani Ports, Varun Beverages, Persistent Systems, SBI Life, Yes Bank, Kansai Nerolac Paints and Cyient, etc. will declare their quarterly earnings this week.

ICICI Bank and HCL Technologies

ICICI Bank, the country's second largest private sector lender by assets, is expected to register more than four-fold increase in Q4FY20 profit due to low base in year-ago period and lower provisions. Double digit growth in NII, other income and pre-provision operating profit may also boost profitability.

Net interest income growth is likely to be around 15 percent YoY on improving net interest margin and around 12 percent growth in advances. Brokerages largely expect stable asset quality.

Meanwhile, HCL Technologies may report marginal QoQ decline in Q4 profit while rupee revenue may grow more than 2 percent sequentially. As the company said there was little impact of COVID-19 in March quarter. The full year constant currency revenue growth guidance of 16.5-17 percent implied constant currency revenue of 0.3-2 percent QoQ in March quarter.

Brokerages largely expect constant currency revenue growth in the range of 0.6-0.9 percent QoQ, whereas EBIT may see some pressure despite rupee depreciation, due to lower billing and decline in utilisation.

Every brokerage including Sharekhan feels the company may avoid giving FY21 revenue growth guidance due to macro uncertainties.

Indian Rupee and oil prices

The Indian Rupee appreciated by 173 paise in last seven consecutive sessions from 76.83 to 75.10 levels on April 30, largely due to a rally in the equity markets, progress in the COVID-19 vaccine, reduced FII selling and easing of lockdown restrictions.

Experts have raised doubts over sustainability of rupee recovery due to likely weakness in economy and earnings.

"There is still risk of a second wave of infection and India's macros are not attractive enough to bring in heavy dollar inflows. Thus, going ahead USD/INR spot may trade above the support of 74.50 towards 75.50/76.00," Rahul Gupta, Head of Research-Currency at Emkay Global told Moneycontrol.

Meanwhile, oil prices recovered sharply by more than $6 a barrel during the week gone by to close at $26.44 a barrel on the Brent crude futures, while WTI crude also jumped to $19.69 after falling below zero level in previous week, but experts expect the limited recovery further given the lockdown in major parts of the world.

"We believe any recovery in Brent should be limited towards $30 and any meaningful upside should be seen only after revocation of lockdown going on across the globe," Amit Gupta of ICICI Direct said.

Technical view

The Nifty50 closed higher by 3.2 percent on April 30, 7.7 percent for the week and 14 percent in April, forming bullish candle on daily, weekly and monthly charts. After consolidation in the range of 8,800-9,300 levels, the index has broken its resistance of 9,400 and decisively crossed 9,800 during the week to close at 9,859.90.

Experts feel that the index has to hold 9,400 and move closer to 10,000 mark then only bullish momentum can be sustained, but if it breaks 9,400 then there could be selling pressure.

"The index has recently completed its 38.20 percent retracement of entire fall from 12,430 to 7,511 mark and now key hurdle is 50 percent retracement at 9,970 levels. It has to hold above 9,400 zone to witness an upmove towards 9,889 then 9,970 levels while downside key support exists at 9,250 then 9,000 levels," Chandan Taparia, Vice President | Analyst-Derivatives at Motilal Oswal Financial Services said.

F&O cues

The May series of F&O contracts will begin on May 4. The April series data indicated that rollover in Nifty50 as well as Bank Nifty was higher than its 3-month average while there was short covering and formation of some fresh longs. India VIX or Volatility index fell 13 percent to close at 34 levels during the last week.

Since it is the beginning of the May monthly series, open interest activity was scattered at various strikes. Maximum Call open interest was placed at 9,500 then 10,000 strikes while maximum Put open interest was at 9,000 then 8,500 strikes. There was no meaningful writing on Call side while decent Put writing was seen at 9,500 and 9,000 strike. Option data indicates an immediate trading range in between 9,000 to 10,000 levels, experts feel.

"Volatility has also declined towards 30 percent, which is quite noticeable as it has declined from elevated levels of 85% in March. Further cool-off in volatility would be a key trigger for the Nifty to surpass 10,000 levels," Amit Gupta of ICICI Direct said.

The positional support for the Nifty remains at 9,000, which is the major Put base for the May series, he added.

Corporate action and macro data

Here are key corporate actions taking place in the coming week:

The board meetings of Shriram City Union Finance, Punjab & Sind Bank and NHPC will be held on May 4, 5 and 6 respectively, to consider fund raising plans.

On the macro front, Markit Manufacturing and Services PMI data for April will be released on May 4 and May 6, while foreign exchange reserves for week ended May 1, and bank loan and deposit growth for fortnight ended April 24 will be announced on May 8.

Global cues

Here key global data points to watch out for next week:
The National Union of Somali Journalists has called on the government to stop harassing and intimidating journalists.



In a statement to mark World Press Freedom Day the union says journalists in Somalia are working in a climate of extreme fear, with brutal physical assaults and malicious arrests.



It says in recent weeks journalists have been on trial on trumped-up charges in order to silence those seen as critical of the authorities.



One radio host was shot dead in February and three journalists were killed last year.



The rights group Reporters Without Borders ranks Somalia near the bottom of the global press freedom index - at 164th place out of 180 countries.

Source: BBC









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Nigerian rapper Jidenna is the cover star for GQ South Africas May/June 2020 music issue.

The publication writes: Whether its Pan-Africanism, style as rebellion, or the global sound fusion shaping his next studio album, Jidenna is, above all, true to himself.

The Classic Man crooner is eye candy in the photos following the cover feature first rocking a printed damask jacket, showing off his Polynesian tattoo. Next, he dons a matching set from South African Afro Futuristic Luxury brand, Imprint ZA.

Inside the issue he says:

My mission doesnt stop with Africa alone. Im building a two-way, multiple- lane highway thats cultural, economic, spiritual and uplifts people on both sides.

The post Jidenna Looks Dapper Rocking African Designs On The New GQ South Africa Cover appeared first on .

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Beijing: China has reported 14 new COVID-19 cases, including 12 asymptomatic ones, taking the number of infections in the country to 82,877 while over 4,630 people have succumbed to the deadly virus, health officials said on Sunday.

China's National Health Commission (NHC) said the two new confirmed cases were reported on Saturday which included one imported and another locally transmitted.

The death toll remained 4,633 as no fatalities due to the coronavirus were reported on Saturday while the total number cases increased to 82,877 with 531 still undergoing treatment, it said.

China has reported a total of 1,672 imported cases so far, of which 451 Chinese coming from abroad are still being treated with six in severe conditions, the NHC said.

Also on Saturday, 12 new asymptomatic cases were reported in China. So far, 968 asymptomatic cases, including 98 from abroad, are still under medical observation, it said.

The central Hubei province which was cleared of confirmed COVID-19 cases on April 26, reported 651 asymptomatic infections as of Saturday.

Asymptomatic cases refer to people who are tested COVID-19 positive but develop no symptoms such as fever, cough or sore throat. However, they pose a risk of spreading the disease to others.

The Chinese government has banned foreigners from entering the country and reduced the number of international flights, making it difficult for Chinese citizens to return from abroad.

The novel coronavirus which originated from the Chinese city of Wuhan in December last year has claimed 243,829 lives and has infected over 3.4 million people, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
The number of people who have died with coronavirus in UK hospitals, care homes and the wider community has risen by 315, bringing the total number of fatalities to 28,446.

The official Department of Health figure, the lowest since the end of March, was offered by cabinet minister Michael Gove during Sunday's Downing Street news briefing.

Mr Gove also revealed that 76,496 coronavirus tests were carried out in the 24 hours to 9am on Sunday - below the government's target.

The target of 100,000 tests per day by the end of April had been met the previous two days.

And Mr Gove admitted there would be a time, when the virus was under control, for "deep and probing questions about lessons we can learn as a country from how we handled this crisis in its early stages".

"Undoubtedly this government, like all governments, will have made mistakes," he said.

Meanwhile, Professor Stephen Powis, the national medical director of NHS England, told the briefing that the current R number across the UK was around 0.7 - meaning the lockdown restrictions to slow the spread of the virus are working.

"R" is shorthand for reproductive rate and is a measure of how many people, on average, will catch the virus from someone who is infected.

Governments across the world see it as crucial, in terms of lifting lockdown restrictions, that R is below 1.

Answering questions later in the briefing, Mr Gove said he suspected the public would have to live with "some degree of constraint" until a vaccine is developed.

He suggested that lockdown measures may have to be targeted and reintroduced in certain regions where there are new outbreaks of the virus.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said he will set out a "road map" for easing the lockdown later this week.

Mr Gove also confirmed that Britain would trial a new coronavirus tracking programme next week on the Isle of Wight, off the south coast of England, in a bid to minimise the risk of a second wave of the infection.

Story continues

"This week we will be piloting new test, track and trace procedures on the Isle of Wight with a view to having that in place more widely later this month," he told the news conference.

Each home nation also disclosed the latest daily figures for hospital deaths on Sunday.

In England, the number of people who have died with the virus in hospitals has risen by 327 to 21,180. These figures are calculated over a different time period to those released by the Department of Health.

:: Listen to Sophy Ridge on Sunday on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify, Spreaker

The new system introduced last week, and run by PHE, gathers data in England from three sources and verifies them to avoid duplication.

Some of the deaths included in NHS England's total on Sunday had already appeared in the UK numbers through PHE's figures.

The explanation on the DHSC website says: "The daily count under the new measure may be lower than the old measure because some hospital deaths in the hospital-only data will include individuals who have already been included in the composite count. Individual deaths have already been reported in the PHE series on previous days."

In Northern Ireland, five more people have died with COVID-19, bringing the total number of deaths to 381.

A further 14 people have died in Wales, taking the total number of deaths there to 983, Public Health Wales said.

Scotland deaths have risen by 12 to 1,571.

Earlier, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps admitted that fewer Britons would have died from coronavirus if more tests had been available earlier.

Speaking on The Andrew Marr Show, he said "many things" could have been different if the UK's testing capacity was above 100,000 before COVID-19 spread in the country.

He added: "The fact of the matter is this is not a country that had - although we're very big in pharmaceuticals as a country - we're not a country that had very large test capacity."

Mr Shapps told Sky News the NHSX contact tracing app, which will be rolled out later this month, requires 50%-60% of people to use for it to be successful.

This week Kay Burley will be hosting a live Q&A with Health Secretary Matt Hancock. You can put your questions to Mr Hancock about the coronavirus and its impact on your life live on Sky News.

Email us your questions - or you can record a video clip of your question on your phone - and send it to AskTheHealthSecretary@sky.uk
The Gombe State Governor, Inuwa Yahaya, has inaugurated a 38-member special committee on relief and palliatives to cushion the effect of the partial lockdown in the state occasioned by the coronavirus pandemic.

Inaugurating the committee at the new banquet hall of the Government House on Saturday, Mr Yahaya said the setting up of the relief panel was born out of the need to cushion the economic effects of COVID-19 on the people.

There is no doubt that the special measures taken to tame the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has put our people in severe economic difficulties. We are fully aware of the hardship being experienced particularly by the daily earners whose living depends on their ability to go out and mingle with others. However, these are sacrifices that we must make to save lives, he said.

Mr Yahaya said in order to ameliorate the economic hardship brought about by the restrictions imposed to control the COVID-19 pandemic, his administration is obliged to provide support and relief to the people most especially the vulnerable ones in the state. He added that his government will ensure that the palliatives reach their intended destinations.

As people of faith, we are aware that trials and travails are integral part of our lives. We have an abiding faith in the fact that at the end of every difficulty comes some ease. I therefore enjoin us to persevere and continue to pray in order to win the fight against this invisible enemy, Mr Yahaya was quoted as saying in a statement by his office.

He commend the residents of Gombe State for complying with the measures put in place to keep the state safe, appealing for more of such support and cooperation with government officials and security agencies in the enforcement of all the required guidelines and protocols.

While wishing the residents of the state who tested positive for COVID-19 a speedy recovery, Mr Yahaya paid tribute to health workers in the state, philanthropists and corporate organisations for their solidarity.

Gombe State has the fourth highest cases of coronavirus in Nigeria after Lagos, Kano and the FCT.

The Relief and Palliative Committee which is headed by the Emir of Gombe, Abubakar Shehu, is to amongst other things undertake a general situational assessment and identify the households/individuals that are eligible to receive the palliative support.

The committee is also mandated to develop an equitable distribution framework for delivering the relief support to the beneficiaries, and to ensure that relief items reach the deserving beneficiaries in all the 114 wards of the 11 local governments in the state.

The committee will also solicit for donation of palliative and other relief materials from the general public, private sector organisations, non-governmental organisations, and lhilanthropists to complement governments efforts.

The chairman of the committee assured the governor that the committee will exhibit due diligence while carrying out its assignment.

He thanked the governor for finding them worthy to serve in the committee and promised that the committee will ensure equity and justice.
Doctors and pharmacists in the Indian diaspora in the UK have been extending medicines and consultation to hundreds of ailing Indians stranded here due to the lockdown, who have run out of medicines or need medical consultation.

Medicines in the UK are dispensed strictly on the basis of prescriptions issued by a general practitioner or other doctors in the National Health Service to patients registered. These are usually not freely available to visitors on temporary visas.

The Indian high commission on Sunday coordinated an interaction by video-link with diaspora groups such as the British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (Bapio), Jain Vishwa Bharti, Friends of India Society International and the Indian National Students Association. A large number of Indian-origin professionals work in Britains health system.

According to Ramesh Mehta, president of Bapio, the groups members have been giving prescriptions and holding consultations with the stranded Indians without charging fee. The medicines are provided by a Bristol-based pharmacy that dispenses and posts medicines on a no-profit basis.

We are delighted to support the hundreds of stranded Indian travellers and students who need medical help, and will continue to do so until it is needed. No fee is charged by our medical professionals, Mehta said.

Thousands of Indians have registered with the high commission in a list of people who are stranded and need to return home. Charter flights are expected to be organised later this month, with those in emergency situation offered priority.

Rohit Wadhwana of the high commission said: We have facilitated prescriptions, and Indians who needed the medicines were able to get them. Some had illnesses that needed continuing provision of medicines. Many had stock for their travel period but now that the lockdown has been extended it is over. Some need examination, consultation, he added.

The Boris Johnson government has extended until May 31 the visa for free of Indians whose period has or is expiring until then, while the high commission and diaspora groups and individuals have been extending a range of services to the stranded Indians, including financial and legal.

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Imprisoned members of the Islamic State group rioted and took control of a prison in northeast Syria for several hours, until Kurdish-led authorities negotiated an end to the unrest Sunday.

The riot began Saturday at a prison in the city of Hassakeh, one of the largest facilities where IS members are held, and control was reestablished Sunday evening, said Kino Gabriel, a spokesman for the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.

A two-day riot and takeover of the same prison in late March allowed four extremists to escape, although they were caught a day later.

It was one of the most serious uprisings by the prisoners since IS was defeated a year ago, when the SDF seized control of the last sliver of land controlled by the extremists in eastern Syria.

Kurdish authorities currently operate more than two dozen detention facilities scattered across northeastern Syria, holding about 10,000 IS fighters.

Among the detainees are some 2,000 foreigners whose home countries have refused to repatriate them, including about 800 Europeans.

Gabriel said SDF officials and members of the US-led coalition had taken part in talks with the prisoners.

At the height of the riots, he said Kurdish special forces and anti-terror units took part in the operations to try get the situation under control.

He gave no further details, and did not say how many prisoners were involved or if there were any casualties.

US military helicopters flew over the prison Sunday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, and North Press Agency, a media platform operating in the Kurdish-administered areas.

Gabriel said the US-led coalition and the international community bear responsibility for finding solutions for IS detainees, and need to give more support to security and living conditions at the prisons.

A recent resurgence of IS attacks in both Syria and Iraq has raised concerns that the militant group is taking advantage of governments absorbed in tackling the coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing slide into economic chaos.

It was not immediately clear if Sunday's prison riot was triggered by concerns about the coronavirus's potential spread in the facility.

Last month, the US-led coalition said it gave hygiene and medical supplies to detention facilities across northeastern Syria, including hand-washing stations, disinfectant wipes, face masks and examination gloves.

One coronavirus death was reported in Kurdish-held areas of Syria in April.

The central government in Damascus has registered 43 cases and three deaths.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Indian security agencies have identified nearly 7,000 accounts on micro-blogging site Twitter that were opened in April 2020 and are being operated from Pakistan, a report submitted to the government this week has said. These social media handles, the report said, had launched a shrill campaign against India that was aimed at influencing Indias relations with the Gulf countries.

Indian intelligence agencies had earlier reported an organised effort by Pakistan to target New Delhi and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on social media by Twitter accounts opened between January and March. The report handed over to the government this week said it had spotted 7,000 more accounts that were opened in April, all of them being operated from Pakistan.

The barrage of tweets, quite a few of them by handles that pass themselves off as residents or citizens of Gulf countries, have gained some traction in the local social media landscape in Islamic countries and led a number of people in the gulf countries also to fall prey to it, the report said.

By way of an example, the report names one verified Twitter handle of a prominent national of a Gulf country that had been taken in by claims of persecution of Muslims in Kashmir. This account, put out a photograph of a dead man with a caption, Persecution of people in Kashmir.

Also Read: In Jaishs plan for Kashmir, simultaneous suicide attacks on May 11

When security officials looked around, they found the photograph was of a Jaish terrorist killed in an encounter along with 2 Pakistani terrorists in Dhriti village of Jammu and Kashmirs on 14 September 2018.

Then there was a tweet purportedly by an Omani princess that advocated expulsion of Indian workers from the country. Sayyida Mona bint Fahd al Said, the Omani princess whose name was used by the impersonator, issued clarification that she had no connection to the tweets and the handle was a fake.

Also Read: The contours of Pakistans new narrative on India | Analysis

Indian officials said it was clear that the social media campaign wasnt just an invention of Pakistans deep state, the Inter Services Intelligence, but had its origin in Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khans shrill pitch against India, and PM Modi at the UN General Assembly in August last year.

It was the first occasion that PM Imran Khan, at an international event, had attempted to rally the worlds Muslim community to what he described as the plight of Muslims in Kashmir and beyond.

It has been a recurring theme in statements from PM Khan and his foreign ministry as well but hadnt found any reverberation outside of Islamabad. PM Khan had repeatedly made the same point during protests against amendments to the citizenship law that fast-tracked citizenship for religious minorities from Islamic countries in Indias neighbourhood.

External affairs ministry spokesperson Anurag Srivastava, asked about the flurry of social media posts in West Asia, this week stopped short of naming Pakistan but described much of the material on social media platforms as propaganda by interested parties.

On some commentators calling out out what they said were Islamophobic social media posts by a handful of Indians working in the Middle East, Srivastava underscored that stray tweets cannot be used to characterise our bilateral relations with these countries, and the real picture of these relations is very different.

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By John Fensterwald

EdSource

In a surprise announcement last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom suggested reopening schools as soon as late July or early August to mitigate the loss of learning that all students - but especially low-income black and Latino students - have experienced during two months of school closures due to the coronavirus pandemic.

"That learning loss is very real," Newsom said during his daily update on the coronavirus. "And from a socioeconomic frame, from a racial justice frame, this is even more compounding and more challenging. And so it is incumbent upon us to think anew with respect to the school year."

Reopening schools would be part of the second - and next - of four phases of returning life to normal. Newsom offered no further details about how an early start would work, how it would be paid for or phased in by counties where public health officials would have the final say on conditions for reopening schools. As he was speaking, a panel of finance experts and state officials was warning legislators at a budget hearing not to count on any increases in education spending next year, and that state revenue losses could exceed that of the Great Recession.

In a statement, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said that an early school start would have a double advantage of addressing "equity issues facing our most vulnerable students" and helping parents and caregivers "in their much-needed return to work." However, he cautioned there could be cost implications: purchasing protective equipment for school staff and potentially hiring more teachers for smaller classes to meet social-distancing requirements.

"If we start school early, we need resources to make it a reality," he said.

'Get kids back in the classroom'

Edgar Zazueta, senior director of policy and governmental relations for the Association of California School Administrators, made the same point. "The governor today gave the clearest indication today that (coronavirus) modeling indicates we will be able to get kids back in the classroom. We're happy about that. But to be a reality, schools will need resources and support, and it will be easier for some districts than others to open early."

Newsom's affirmation that reopening schools would be both a personal priority and integral to post-coronavirus normalcy may hearten 760 nonprofit children's organizations, advocacy groups and health agencies that asked Newsom, Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins and Assembly Speaker Tony Rendon in an April 23 letter to "prioritize kids" in the 2020-21 state budget. They included ensuring "sufficient resources for the summer months to provide school meals and to address the significant learning loss that has occurred" as one of their asks.

In an interview last week, Ted Lempert, president of Children Now, which organized the letter, had called on Newsom to issue an executive order for summer learning, similar to what he did last month when he told districts they should focus on distance learning. "Say it now: Make summer learning for students most in need a priority," Lempert said.

But Assemblyman Patrick O'Donnell, D-Long Beach, made it clear he favors traditional summer school. "It would be better for our students to take summer classes than to simply start the school year earlier," O'Donnell, chair of the Assembly Education Committee, said in a statement. "Some students need summer school to make up for lost credits and to help boost their GPA to get into college."

There is unanimous agreement among education authorities nationwide that there is an unprecedented need to start to reverse the loss of learning that students have been experiencing during the school closures. For low-income students whose lives have been most disrupted by the coronavirus in California, the need is critical.

"If not mitigated, the educational and economic disruption caused by this pandemic will lead to lasting academic and life setbacks for current students and those entering the workforce," the Educational Results Partnership, a Sacramento-based data analytical nonprofit, wrote in a sober assessment.

An analysis last month by the Collaborative for Student Growth, which is affiliated with the research nonprofit NWEA, predicted a substantial impact from the "COVID slide": a loss of 30 percent of the typical yearly gains in reading and, in some grades, nearly a full year behind in math. That's the average; it will be worse for children under stress, without a quiet place to study and without access to the internet. In California districts that were caught especially flat-footed by school closures and have struggled since, students may go six months without quality learning.

The coronavirus is "exacerbating the inequalities we knew were there before," said Pedro Noguera, who directs the Center for the Transformation of Schools at the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies.

For districts that have been struggling with vague and unfunded plans for distance-learning summer school, Newsom's option could shift the focus to a more cohesive transition to the start of school.

School districts generally budget a small amount for summer school, to cover special education students who are entitled to year-round services and for courses to put high school students on track for graduation. Expanding summer school significantly this summer would take money districts don't have - and quite possibly wouldn't get.

San Diego Unified Superintendent Cindy Marten has calculated a cost of $52 million for what she acknowledges is "a long shot": a five-week summer school for elementary and middle schools and six weeks for high schools. Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Austin Beutner has budgeted $103 million for summer school but is $50 million shy of paying for it.

CARES Act funding

However, Newsom also may have to cobble together state and federal money to pay for additional weeks of school. He might commit a piece of the expected $355 million the state will soon receive as its K-12 and higher education share of the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act that Congress passed last month. In an April 15 letter to Newsom, five urban districts, including Los Angeles and San Diego, asked Newsom to make "summer instruction to bridge the academic needs of students" one of the uses.

The CARES Act will directly provide California districts $1.67 billion, with the flexibility to use it to compensate for lost learning. Although that's an average of about $267 per student, districts will receive funding based on their federal Title 1 enrollment of low-income students, with West Contra Costa Unified entitled to about 20 times as much as nearby wealthier San Ramon Unified. The new money will increase Title I funding by 87 percent, estimates Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown University's Edunomics Lab.

But districts will need that money to cover other unexpected expenses. San Diego Unified calculates it has spent $18 million just on buying new Chromebooks and refurbishing school computers it is distributing to 60,000 of its 100,000 students.

Newsom may be pinning his biggest hopes on more money from Congress. The last round of stimulus/coronavirus aid provided $484 billion for small businesses and medical testing but didn't include money for local governments and schools. However, education advocates are optimistic they will be next. A dozen national education organizations are seeking at least $175 billion for K-12 plus $25 billion more for Title I and special education funding for states. California's share might be at least $25 billion. Newsom, in an April 8 letter to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, included a request that "several hundred billion" for K-12 nationwide be part of the $1 trillion in additional help for state and local governments.

An early transition back to school could offer several advantages that State Board of Education President Linda Darling-Hammond mentioned, without referring to Newsom's plan, at the hearing Tuesday of the education subcommittee of the Assembly Budget Committee. One option could be for elementary and middle school students to return to the teachers they had before schools closed. Those teachers "are best positioned to welcome them," re-establish relationships and diagnose students' gaps in learning, she said.

But Heather Hough, executive director of the research nonprofit PACE, said that "to be effective, districts will need clear directives from the state on how the program is supposed to be implemented and the outcomes expected."

"Lots of districts have requested guidance on what is expected with distance learning," and haven't gotten it, she said. The governor should clarify who'd teach the students on the return to school, how many instructional minutes there will be, whether it would be in-person instruction - "endless questions," she said.

This story was originally published by EdSource. Please use the following link when sharing: https://edsource.org/2020/gov-newsom-says-schools-could-reopen-as-soon-as-late-july-early-august/630408

Copyright  2020 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.
Damascus, May 4 : A convoy of 30 Turkish military vehicles entered Syria's northern Idlib province, a war monitor reported.

The military convoy carried logistic and military gears, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday.

The UK-based watchdog group said 2,980 Turkish military gears entered Idlib since March 5, when Russia and Turkey established a cease-fire deal in Idlib between the rebels and the Syrian army.

The Syrian government repeatedly called for the withdrawal of foreign forces that entered Syria without the consent of the Syrian government such as the Turkish and the US forces.
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More than 800 migrant workers from Uttar Pradesh arrived in Lucknow in a special train from Maharashtras Nashik on Sunday morning amid ongoing Covid-19 lockdown.

The 847 migrant workers travelled in the Indian Railways Shramik Special train, which started from Nashik on Saturday morning and reached the state capital via Jhansi and Kanpur.

This is the first special train to arrive in Uttar Pradesh with migrant labourers, who were stranded in Maharashtra and other parts of the country after Prime Minister Narendra announced the lockdown on March 24.

Health workers registered the details of the migrant workers as they deboarded the train at the Charbagh station and segregated them according to the districts they belong before taking their temperature.

Special buses of state transport department will ferry the passengers to their respective districts. The migrant workers were screened by health experts before they boarded the buses. Anyone with symptoms of infection will be taken to quarantine centres or hospitals.

Authorities had kept ambulance on standby outside the Lucknow railway station to take passengers with Covid-19 symptoms to these quarantine centres and hospitals.

Those who were allowed to make a forward journey were also handed food packets.

Migrant workers on board a UP state transport bus that will take them to their native districts after they returned from Maharshtra. (HT Photo )

The railways had said it will run Shramik Special trains to move migrant workers, pilgrims, tourists, students and other persons stranded at different places due to the nationwide lockdown that came into force from March 25.

Ten such Shramik Special trains were run on Saturday to ferry stranded migrants to Jharkhand, UP, Bihar from Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat and the five southern statesTamil Nadu, Telangana, Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh.

The trains scheduled from the respective railway zones were to ferry nearly 20,000 passengers, senior officials said.

The Centre on Friday decided to allow these special trains to enable stranded migrants to return home amid demands by states and a recognition of the logistical challenges involved in transporting millions of people back to their homes.

Five such trains operated on Friday.

On Saturday, around 7,500 migrants who were stranded in Rajasthan and Uttarakhand arrived in Lucknow. A senior official said the two states transported the migrants to the borders of UP from where around 285 buses were deployed to take the migrants to their respective home districts.
Shares in Boeing Co (BA) fell after the ailing planemaker said it raised $25 billion in debt financing and told investors that as a result it would not need to tap capital markets or the U.S. government for additional funding for now.

The planemakers stock dropped 5.4% to $133.37 in U.S. trading on Friday, taking its year-to-date plunge to 60%. The bond offering included debt instruments with an aggregate principal amount of $25 billion across seven tranches with maturities ranging from three to 40 years.

The robust demand for the offering reflects strong support for the long-term strength of Boeing and the aviation industry, Boeing said in a statement. As a result of the response, and pending the closure of this transaction expected May 4, we do not plan to seek additional funding through the capital markets or the U.S. government options at this time.

The Chicago-based company said it will use net sale proceeds for general corporate purposes.

The coronavirus pandemic-related travel restrictions and stay-at-home orders have brought the airline industry to an almost complete halt and caused production disruptions, which in turn have put pressure on Boeings cash flow.

We expect negative operating cash flows in future quarters until deliveries resume and ramp up, and we will need to obtain additional financing in order to fund our operations and obligations, Boeing said in a regulatory filing.

The aerospace company said last week that it plans to cut 10% of its workforce and announced reductions in its plane production rates as it braces for years-long industry recovery from the aviation industry crisis.

TipRanks data shows that overall Wall Street analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on Boeings stock based on 13 Holds and 6 Buys. The $183.11 average price target foresees 37% upside potential in the shares in the next 12 months. (See Boeings stock analysis on TipRanks).

As of the end of March, Boeing had $15.5 billion in cash and marketable securities after burning through $4.7 billion in the quarter, mainly reflecting the impact of the 737 MAX grounding and COVID-19.



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Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, the commanding officer of the 21 Rashtriya Rifles, and the joint security team that he was leading had waited patiently for an hour after the last bullet was fired by the terrorists on Saturday evening. Then he decided to go in.

The encounter had started a couple of hours earlier at 3.30 pm when a joint team of the Rashtriya Rifles and Kashmir police surrounded the house a short distance from Kupwaras Handwara town.

The information available with the army indicated that a group of terrorists had entered the house and had taken the civilians hostage. This was believed to be one of the teams of terrorists that had slipped past the security grid along with Line of Control.

Also read | Hostages, gunfight, assault teams: How the Handwara encounter ensued

Kashmir Police IG Vijay Kumar said one of the two terrorists killed in the deadly encounter is a top Lashkar commander Haider.

In April alone, intelligence agencies estimate about 25-30 terrorists have crossed over. This week, intelligence agencies also alerted about terrorist plans to carry out simultaneous suicide attacks to target army and paramilitary bases in Jammu and Kashmir.

Colonel Sharma, RR company commander Major Anuj Sood, Naik Rajesh Kumar, Lance Naik Dinesh Singh and J&K Police Sub Inspector Shakeel Qazi entered the house around 5.30 pm. Qazi, the police officer was a veteran of counter-terror operations in Kashmir and part of the J&K polices special operations group.

Watch l Handwara encounter: Army Colonel among 5 martyred, 2 terrorists gunned down

Col Sharma wanted to rescue the inmates who were trapped inside the house and wanted to make sure that the terrorists didnt escape. He led from the front, as always, a top army commander told Hindustan Times.

Also read: Col killed in Handwara; a two time gallantry awardee for counter-terrorist operations

Col Sharma has been awarded the armys gallantry medal twice, the last one was in August 2019.

The heavily-armed terrorists , who had located themselves in the cowshed, resumed firing soon after the five walked in.

The firefight continued for another 7-8 hours.

A Jammu and Kashmir police officer said the firing eventually ended around dawn.

An army spokesperson said the civilians were successfully extricated.

Chief of Defence Services General Bipin Rawat said the operation in Handwara, J&K highlights the determination of the security forces to safeguard the lives of the people.

This, however, isnt the first time that terrorists had hidden themselves in the cowshed.

Colonel MN Rai, who made the supreme sacrifice in an encounter in January 2015, was also targeted by Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists hiding in the cowshed. Then again, an army officer said Deputy Superintendent of Police Aman Thakur, who laid down his life last year, was also hit by bullets fired by Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists who had located themselves in the cowshed.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Shishir Gupta Author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (2011, Hachette) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (2014, Hachette). Awarded K Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 by Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA) and the 2011 Ben Gurion Prize by Israel. ...view detail
03.05.2020 LISTEN

Generally, virtue in a politician is demonstrated by commitment to the common good of society and of the polity: in the language of the our constitution, it is a commitment to the general welfare. We expect our political actors and political leaders to represent the interests of their people or their constituents, but also to be elected with their own moral conscience in place and with a deep concern for the society in general.

From what I have observed and witnessed the last three years, I think we have to be skeptical of politicians closely following demographic trends, employing advertising techniques and pandering to divisive public sentiment. By upholding the common good and ensuring that the interests of the greater majority of the nation are safe guarded. Politicians must also ensure the good handling of the Commonwealth and heritage of the people; eschew selfishness and self service and look at the big picture for the nation rather than serving narrow interest.

I could not watch the former President's live conversation with the public because of internet issues. The internet continuously connected and disconnected again and again due to multiple reason. I just watched the recorded version and must admit he was absolutely fantastic. The most important virtue that a statesman can possess is prudence, combined with magnanimity and that was what I saw.

The former President has devoted every moment of his life towards bringing Ghana out of the phase of the covid-19 devastation and making it into a positive and healthy society. He has shown that hatred and negativity can never be the foundation of the country's development.

I am confident that these milestones will not only take our politics and development to a new height, but will also strengthen the bond of friendship between the two dominant political parties.

I think the former President did his homework well and did a lot of consultations before interacting with the public and said exactly what Ghanaians wanted to hear from him. Personally, he inspired me as he spoke about his plans for the future. He was truly amazing. I never felt bored listening to his long speech.

The Covid-19 pandemic is a crisis of a completely different magnitude and one that will require a response of unprecedented scale not knee jerk reaction. Our leaders in the public and private sector must come together to respond to the immediate threats to our health systems and the long-term effects to the country's economy. According to the forecast released by the Economist Intelligence Unit in 26 March, the global economy is expected to contract by 2.2% in 2020. These effects are expected to be more pronounced in major G20 economies, such as Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the US- all countries that are major markets for our most tradeable good. The implication is that prices of our export commodities will drop sharply which will automatically affect our revenue (generation). The depressed oil prices will also lead to strong reversal of growth. In the coming months, there can no doubt that there will be a decrease in remittances and these second degree impacts will also be felt in the country, painfully in rural Ghana, where families rely heavily on remittances for their subsistence. More worryingly still, data from the Finance Ministry indicates that Ghana has close to 90% of workers in the informal sector. While there will be a significant impact on the livelihood of workers in the formal sector, there can be no doubt that the informal sector will be hit even harder.

Government cannot afford to be blind sided by the crucial issues and the secondary economic risks associated with this crisis the former president raised in his conversation. The fight against covid-19 cannot be carried out by the government alone. It requires an unprecedented level of coordination between the public and private at the local and international levels. The suggestions the former president raised in his address should be our interest for now. Let's suspend the promises and the political speeches and focus on the short to medium term policies and solutions. His speech and answers to the questions were different and unique from speeches and responses of other politicians and there is no comparison to them and the speech in particular was simply an incomparable speech. We've got a priceless asset. The speech contained all the necessary directives and ingredients needed to bury the covid-19 pandemic and the problems it will bring.

Eugenia Akua Koomson, Deputy Director AWED
One thing weve learned for sure this year is that no national crisis is too awful to keep Trump & Company from exploiting it for their plutocratic political purposes.

Obviously, COVID-19 is a god-awful crisis, having killed more than 55,000 Americans so far while also killing most of the U.S. economy. It couldnt be worse. But late one night, deep inside the White House, a dim bulb flickered in our present presidents head: Eureka, Donald Trump exclaimed, heres our chance to kill the U.S. post office!

Yes, of all the things this brooding madman might focus on during a devastating pandemic, hijacking our public mail service, bankrupting it and then privatizing its profitable functions has become a top priority for him. Bizarrely, Trump has long been fixated on and flustered by matters of postal management. Specifically, he rants that the post office should charge higher prices for us customers to ship packages, and he bemoans the fact that postal workers are unionized and earn middle-class wages.

In February, with our economy collapsing under the weight of COVID-19, Trump struck. Like nearly every business, the Postal Service had suffered a crushing loss of customers and needed emergency funding to keep Americas mail moving. Congress quickly proposed a bipartisan $13 billion postal lifeline as part of its $2 trillion national rescue package. But that gave our personally piqued president the rope he needed to throttle the agency. No, he said, threatening to kill the whole bill if it included a grant to save the public post office.

The U.S. mail service, however, is enormously popular and an essential part of our nations economic and social infrastructure, so Trump cant just blatantly choke off its survival funds. Instead, hes taking the agency hostage, offering to provide a $10 billion loan from the Treasury Department  contingent on the public entity agreeing to his draconian demands that it raise postal prices, gut postal unions and cut postal services.

Trumps provisos are postal poison pills, for they would destroy the agencys morale and service, undermine popular support, and clear the political path for profiteering corporations to seize, privatize and plunder this public treasure.

Heres how I feel about the value of our nations postal service: The humble Post Office is a community fixture, a civic inheritance, a rural lifeline, and one of the last vestiges of a shared civic culture in America. Tolerate it, treasure it, and dont let the vicissitudes of global capitalism, contempt for government, or a viral outbreak take it away.

Those are my sentiments but not my words. Theyre from an April 17 article in The American Conservative magazine that calls on people of all political persuasions to save this vital public institution.

The men and women of the postal service have been steadfast in their duties, especially in times of national emergencies such as wars, financial crashes and plagues, literally delivering for the American people. In todays terrible pandemic, as corporate executives and government officials shut their doors, some 600,000 of these workers have kept communication and commerce flowing. No matter who you are, how rich or poor, living in teeming inner cities or isolated rural reaches, postal employees are on the job so you and I can get our mail, medicine, food, household necessities, election ballots and other basics brought right to our doors. A stamp is cheap, yet the wear, tear and cost of the postal workforce can be high  for example, about 1,200 of them have been infected by COVID-19, and at least 44 have died.

Yet, the entire public system is now under direct attack by an outbreak of Trumpista vitriolitus, an inexplicable form of personal animosity emanating from the White House. By controlling a $10 billion line of credit the post office must have to get through the current coronavirus depression, Trump is demanding cuts in wages, benefits and rights from our stalwart postal workers; authority over hiring top postal officials; and the right to raise postal rates.

To help stop Trumps power play to set himself up as Americas postal potentate and privatizer in chief, get information and campaign resources from the American Postal Workers Union and visit USMailNotForSale.org.

Populist author, public speaker and radio commentator Jim Hightower writes The Hightower Lowdown, a monthly newsletter chronicling the ongoing fights by Americas ordinary people against rule by plutocratic elites. Sign up at HightowerLowdown.org.

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NEW DELHI: Popular Front of India Chairman O M A Salam on Sunday condemned the sedition and other fabricated criminal charges framed against the well-known Islamic scholar, journalist and Chairman of Delhi Minority Commission Dr Zafarul Islam Khan by the Delhi Police.

In a statement, Popular Front said that a tweet by Dr Zafarul Islam Khan was taken out of context, distorted and added inflammatory content to it by some miscreants, adding that this was followed by a vicious campaign against him by a section of media and social media handlers.

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Acting against the tweet, the Delhi Police Special Cell booked Dr Khan for sedition (sec 124A) and creating communal divisions (sec 153A). The FIR was registered by a resident of Vasant Kunj, on April 30. The booking of Khan under sedition comes just days after Karnataka cadre IAS, Mohammad Mohsin was issued a show-cause by the Karnataka government for praising Tablighi Jamaat members on donating plasma for coronavirus treatment.

Popular Front termed the framing of FIR as indicative of the very low level of individual targeting and character assassination ongoing in our country under the patronage of BJP government.

Popular Front, which has been proactively fighting hate speech against Muslims on social media and mainstream, called Dr Zafarul Islam Khan a blotless personality and a strong advocate of human rights and minority rights and has been doing an exemplary job as the chairman of Delhi Minority Commission. The organization has been working in response to ongoing Islamophobic campaign by reporting FIRs against such hate campaigns and it has issued 500 rejoinders and notices to different media houses for the same. Additionally, 1015 cases were filed in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar and Maharashtra for which legal processes are in process.

Popular Front said that the Delhi Police must be made answerable on account of many complaints received by the Commission. Due to this reason, the communal divisive elements in government and police found him a threat to their abuses of power and hence the vilification campaign against him, they said.

Salam said that Khans arrest is a malicious campaign by Hindutva camps and this misconduct of Delhi Police under Central Government against the head of a statutory minority panel will further worsen the already damaged overseas image of India.

Salam accused the Delhi Police of giving fuel to communal divisive elements, saying that slapping criminal charges against Khan was done because government and police found him a threat to their abuses of power and hence the vilification campaign against him.

Extending solidarity with Khan and ensuring full support through legal and democratic means, Popular Front called upon the Central Government and Delhi police to stop the witch-hunt and withdraw the baseless criminal charges against Dr Khan.
The Borno State Government says no fewer than 16 health workers have been infected with COVID-19 since the outbreak of the disease in the state.

The 16 in Borno are among the 113 health workers infected with the virus across Nigeria.

The states Commissioner for Health, Salisu Kwaya-Bura, made this known on Saturday in Maiduguri, during the daily media briefing on the pandemic, organised by the State Response Team on COVID-19.

Mr Kwaya-Bura said the development showed the increasing risks being faced by health workers in the fight against coronavirus.

He, however, said urgent measures were being taken to protect the health workers, adding that about 2,000 Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) had been ordered by the state.

The commissioner, who is the secretary of the team, said a total of 69 people were infected with COVID-19 in the state, out of which nine had died.

At the moment, none of our patients is at a critical state.

They are at the isolation centres receiving medical attention; though the kind of attention varies for those with mild symptoms and those with moderate symptoms, Mr Kwaya-Bura said.

He also announced that the team had increased its contact tracing and surveillance groups to 25, where 20 of them were out for tracing and five were respondents to alerts.

Earlier, the chairman of the team, who is also the states Deputy Governor, Umar Kadafur, said the inability of the team to brief the media on Thursday and Friday, was due to its busy schedule, part of which was the effort to expand the capacity of the states isolation centre.

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Mr Kadafur also disclosed that the government was making plans to expand the 100-bed capacity isolation centre to between 500 and 1000 bed capacity.

He urged the public to observe all precautionary measures against COVID-19, particularly staying at home, physical distancing, wearing of masks and regular washing of hands.

Health workers at risk

Last week, the health minister, Osagie Ehanire, cautioned health workers on treating suspected COVID-19 cases.

He explained that only health care workers with training in infectious diseases control are eligible to handle COVID-19 patients.

If you hear us speaking here frequently against trying to treat coronavirus in private clinics, we are actually referring to those people who do so without having necessary precautions and training because they risk infecting themselves and go home and give this infection to their family.

Healthcare workers who have no training have no business handling coronavirus, he said.

The federal government had earlier barred private hospitals from treating COVID-19 cases, saying many of the health workers there are not trained to handle such a disease.

The federal government has now asked private hospitals willing to treat COVID-19 patients to register with their states health ministry and ensure proper training of staff.
Part of HCMC's hi-tech park in District 9, November, 2019. The park has been deemed to play a key role in the city's plan to build its innovative urban area. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran.

A HCMC master plan to build an innovative urban area en route to becoming a smart city looks likely to remain on paper.

This area, in the making since 2017, would combine three of the southern metropoliss eastern districts into one innovative hub. City authorities had said then that the plan would generate a bright future for both local residents and businesses. It would encompass the hi-tech park in District 9, the university precinct in Thu Duc District and the new urban area and financial center on the Thu Thiem Peninsula in District 2.

But the Construction Ministry has thrown a spanner into the works, saying there is no precedent in the country to establish "a city inside a city" by combining three districts.

Responding to an April letter from city authorities that asked for the ministrys feedback on steps to implement this plan, it also said that there was no legal framework to establish such an area.

It noted that the resolution on preferential mechanisms and policies aimed specifically at developing HCMC, approved by the National Assembly in 2017, does not have any regulation on setting up a city inside a city.

The ministry also said that while HCMC has been planning on developing the innovative and highly interactive urban area in the eastern part, it has not made clear if there is a general urban plan for it and whether such a plan has been studied and approved.

Furthermore, in a master plan to develop the city until 2025 that the government approved in 2010, there is no mention of such an innovative urban area, the ministry noted.

Meanwhile in its latest move, the city had this week set up a steering committee with 22 members headed by Chairman Nguyen Thanh Phong to oversee building of the "innovative urban area."

As HCMC planned it, the "Eastern Town" would be spread over more than 22,000 hectares (54,300 acres) with a population of over 1.1 million.

The city expected that this innovative and highly interactive hub would thrive from already existing pillars  the hi-tech park where 13 groups are operating on an area of more than 1,000 hectares, the university precinct with 18 universities, and the Thu Thiem new urban area and financial center, which is being built on an area of 657 hectares.

Chairman Phong said earlier that the town would not only boost the citys economy but also that of the southern key economic zone, which comprises HCMC and the localities of Dong Nai, Binh Duong, Ba-Ria Vung Tau, Binh Phuoc, Tay Ninh, Long An and Tien Giang. The zone acquired significance in the context of the nation becoming part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, referred to commonly as Industry 4.0.

The new area was also expected to contribute to the establishment of value added chains based on high technology, modern technical and social infrastructure of international standards, and effective financial support for businesses.

It was to play a key role in linking scientific and technical research with commercial production to boost residents lifestyle to international standards.

At a 2018 meeting, the city's Party chief Nguyen Thien Nhan had said if the city fails to connect the three districts of 9, 2 and Thu Duc, it will be unable to turn startup ideas into reality, which would be a huge waste of public resources.

"This will be Vietnam's Silicon Valley," Le Van Thanh of the HCMC Institute for Development Studies had said at that meeting.

The "innovative urban area" was part of a plan to turn the countrys largest city into a smart city by 2020. Its ambition was to use scientific advances to resolve the problems the city faces, including rapid population growth, unsustainable economic growth, inadequate forecasting, planning and management, inadequate healthcare, education and public transportation, pollution, and inefficient public administration.

The city said it was studying the use of artificial intelligence to help achieve its goals including the establishment of the "city within the city."
Amid changing norms and economic insecurity, marriage rate falls to historic low

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While marriage has been shown to positively impact society in health outcomes, longevity and economic security, a new report from the National Center for Health Statistics shows marriage rates have now reached its lowest point in more than 100 years due to changing norms and economic insecurity.

The report by statisticians Sally Curtin and Paul D. Sutton also noted that that while adults have been increasingly postponing marriage, a record number of current youth and young adults are projected to forego marriage altogether.

Even though the federal government has been collecting marriage data since 1867, the latest report focuses on marriage rate per 1,000 population from 1900 through 2018. From 2017 to 2018, the rate dropped 6%, from to 6.9 per 1,000 population to 6.5, which is the lowest marriage rate on record for the period studied.

Millennials are in peak marriage years, their 20s and 30s, and its still dropping, Curtin, who is the lead author of the report, told the Wall Street Journal. This is historic.

The researchers highlighted many variations in marriage rates between 1900 and 2018 but noted that the most pronounced fluctuations occurred during the 1930s and 1940s, at the time of the Great Depression and World War II.

Marriage rates ranged between 9.3 per 1,000 population and 12.0 from 1900 to 1929 and then declined to a relative low of 7.9 in 1932, the report said. Between 1932 and 1946, however, the marriage rate more than doubled to an all-time high of 16.4, then dropped to 8.4 in 1958 before stabilizing at 8.5 around the period 1959 to 1962.

From 1982 to 2009, marriage rates steadily declined, before stabilizing from 2009 to 2017 at a range between 6.8 and 7.0.

Reacting to the report Wednesday, former MLB first baseman and two-time World Series Champion Aubrey Huff lamented that there were diminishing incentives for especially wealthy men to get married.

I believer in marriage the way it used to be before it became a business. There is absolutely zero reason for a wealthy man to marry in todays society. Nothing to gain, and everything to lose, he wrote on Twitter.

Recent research highlighted how a variety of economic factors have resulted in marriage increasingly becoming a status symbol of wealth. Many successful women were also being forced to choose to remain unmarried or settle for men who earn less than $53,000 and lack a college degree, according to researchers Daniel T. Lichter of Cornell University, Joseph P. Price of Brigham Young University, and Jeffrey M. Swigert of Southern Utah University in Mismatches in the Marriage Market.

University of Maryland sociology professor Philip Cohen, author of The Coming Divorce Decline, noted in an earlier report that today, marriage is becoming more of an achievement of status for those who choose it.

Marriage is become more selective, and more stable, even as attitudes toward divorce are becoming more permissive, and cohabitation has grown less stable. The U.S. is progressing toward a system in which marriage is rarer, and more stable, than it was in the past, representing an increasingly central component of the structure of social inequality, Cohen said.

Many poorer and less educated Americans are often in cohabiting relationships with children and those relationships are seen as less stable.

Just last month, a Wall Street Journal analysis of census data from 1980 to 2018, showed that middle-class Americans were already forsaking marriage amid financial insecurity.

The middle three-fifths of U.S. earners, households that earned from $25,000 to $125,000 in 2018, showed the sharpest declines in marriage rates over the past four decades compared with people at the bottom of the income ladder and those at the top, the analysis said.

Economic conditions, even in the good economy, remain difficult for many working Americans, Daniel Schneider, assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied marriage, told the publication. That is not conducive to you feeling like you could get married, or people wanting to marry you.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday offered condolences on the passing away of five security personnel, including a highly-decorated colonel of the Indian Army, in an encounter between security forces and terrorists in Handwara, Jammu and Kashmir.

I offer my tributes to the soldiers and security personnel who fell in action, Singh tweeted.

The defence minister said that India stands shoulder to shoulder with the families of these brave martyrs. He said the country will never forget their bravery and sacrifice.

The loss of our soldiers and security personnel in Handwara(J&K) is deeply disturbing and painful. They showed exemplary courage in their fight against the terrorists and made supreme sacrifice while serving the country. We will never forget their bravery and sacrifice.  Rajnath Singh (@rajnathsingh) May 3, 2020

The loss of our soldiers and security personnel in Handwara (J&K) is deeply disturbing and painful. They showed exemplary courage in their fight against the terrorists and made supreme sacrifice while serving the country. We will never forget their bravery and sacrifice, his tweet read.

A highly-decorated colonel of the Indian Army was among five security personnel killed during an operation to flush out terrorists from a house in Handwara in north Kashmir, officials said on Sunday. The operation lasted for over 12 hours.

Two terrorists were also killed in the encounter that began around 3:30 pm on Saturday after they took hostages inside a house in Chanjmulla area of Handwara.

Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, the commanding officer of the armys 21 Rashtriya Rifles battalion, Major Anuj, a Lance Naik and a rifleman and sub-inspector Shakeel Qazi of the Jammu and Kashmir police were killed in the firefight with terrorists who were holed up in the house.

Officials said their bodies have been recovered from the encounter site. The civilians have been rescued, they added.
Tesla (TSLA) is looking to become a UK energy provider and has already made the first steps in this direction, a document reviewed by The Telegraph shows.

Teslas energy product sales director, Evan Rice, made an application on Tuesday to the UKs energy regulator- the Gas and Electricity Markets Authority- for a license to generate electricity.

However, the application does not disclose why Tesla has applied for the license, and the company declined to comment.

Having built a significant battery business in recent years, industry sources say that Tesla is now preparing to enter the British market with its technology The Telegraph writes.

That could include the company's Autobidder platform, a real-time trading and control platform which enables power producers to monetize battery assets.

According to Tesla, Autobidder is already successfully operating at Hornsdale Power Reserve (HPR) in South Australia, and has added competition to drive down energy prices. Tesla swooped into Australia in 2017 with one of the world's largest lithium-ion batteries after the country suffered a series of power blackouts.

Meanwhile Tesla CEO Elon Musk caused a commotion on Friday after he told the Twittersphere that Tesla stock is too expensive. The controversial comments sent the electric carmakers shares down over 10%.

We continue to believe Musks leadership is central to investor confidence in TSLA shares and expect this issue to be a modest overhang on the stock until any potential SEC risk is clarified commented Oppenheimer analyst Colin Rusch on May 1. He has a buy rating on the stock and $968 price target (38% upside potential).

However the rest of the Street takes a much more cautious approach to Tesla stock. Indeed, in the last three months, TSLA has received 6 buy ratings, 10 hold ratings and 11 sell ratings, giving it a Hold analyst consensus.

And with shares putting on an incredible 68% rally year-to-date, analysts now foresee 13% downside potential from current levels. (See Teslas stock analysis on TipRanks)

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Eleven Mumbai Police personnel have been tested positive for Covid-19 on Saturday and Sunday.

Six of the personnel who have been tested positive are from Pydhonie police station, said senior inspector S Dudhgaokar. However, he refused to divulge any further information on the cases.

On Saturday, police officers from south region underwent screening at a testing centre for police personnel at JJ Hospital, during which six police personnel from Pydhonie were tested positive. On Friday, during the police personnel from the central region were screened, during which three personnel from Nagpada police station and two constables from Mahim had been tested positive for coronavirus, said a senior police officer.

The three personnel from Nagpada police station have been admitted and their contacts are being tested. Nagpada is a red zone, with a high number of cases.

This is not the first case where Pydhonie police station personnel were tested positive for coronavirus.

Earlier, an assistant police inspector who had to be deployed at Varsha, chief minister Uddhav Thackerays official residence at Malabar Hill on April 19, was stopped outside the premises after she was detected with fever. She was later found positive for coronavirus and is currently home quarantined after her treatment, the officer said.
Meghan Markle's best friend Jessica Mulroney has revealed how doctors found a tumour on a gland in her face while she was pregnant with her twin sons.

The Canadian stylist, 40, who lives in Toronto, spoke about the experience on her wedding reality show I Do, Redo, and later shared a clip on her Instagram page.

In the emotional scene, Jessica said that she was forced to have surgery after doctors found the tumour in her parotid gland, saying: 'I felt like it was so difficult for me to be a strong mother and a strong wife, and try to understand mothering.'

The mother-of-three shares twins Brian and John, nine, and daughter Ivy, six, with husband Ben Mulroney.

Jessica Mulroney, 40, who lives in Toronto, revealed on her Netflix wedding show I do, Redo that she was forced to have surgery after doctors found a tumour in her face while she was pregnant with her sons

The show which airs on Netflix, is hosted by Toronto wedding stylist Jessica Mulroney, who is Meghan's a close friend and confidant.

The 10-part reality show 'revisits first-time wedding disasters before re-making the wedding dreams of 10 devoted couples.'

In the clip, which is part of an episode set to air on Canadian television tonight, Jessica speaks with bride-to-be Jolicia Ward about the struggles to afford healthcare and pay for surgeries.

Opening up about her own experience, Jessica said: 'When I had my twins, they found a tumour on my parotid gland and I had to have surgery.

The Canadian stylist made the confession while speaking with a couple on her wedding reality show, and later shared a clip of the emotional moment online

Jessica said the emotional moment in which she discussed healthcare with a couple was her 'favourite scene of the show'

'I felt like it was so difficult for me to be a strong mother and a strong wife, and try to understand mothering.

'I can't imagine the weight of not knowing how to pay for the surgery.'

She posted the clip on her Instagram page, writing: 'This was probably my favorite scene of the show.'

Jessica often posts snippets from the programme online to inspire her 391,000 Instagram followers.

Jessica is currently in isolation with her husband Brian Mulroney and their three children in Toronto

Jessica is close friends with Meghan Markle, 38, after the two met while the American-born actor was living in Toronto (pictured together in 2015)

She is currently in lockdown with her husband, son of former Canadian Prime Minister Ben Mulroney, and their three children at their home in Toronto.

The stylist is close friends with the Duchess of Sussex, having known her for years.

Jessica befriended Meghan while the American-born actor was living in Toronto where she was filming the television drama Suits.

The two women reportedly bonded over a love of yoga. Mulroney's social media also includes photos of the two taking trips together.
Doctors treating Boris Johnson for coronavirus prepared to announce his death after he was taken to intensive care, the British prime minister said on Sunday, in his first detailed comments about his illness.

It was a tough old moment, I wont deny it, he was quoted as saying by the Sun on Sunday newspaper in an interview. They had a strategy to deal with a death of Stalin-type scenario.

I was not in particularly brilliant shape and I was aware there were contingency plans in place. The doctors had all sorts of arrangements for what to do if things went badly wrong.

Johnson, 55, first announced he had contracted Covid-19 on March 27 but maintained he had only mild symptoms. Yet he failed to shake the illness after a week of self-isolation.

He was taken to hospital as a precaution on April 5 for further tests but within 24 hours was moved to intensive care.

The Conservative party leader spent three days receiving oxygen support, and admitted after his discharge on April 12 that his fight with the virus could have gone either way.

But although he told the newspaper he did think how am I going to get out of this?, he did not think at any point he was going to die.

Johnson, who returned to work last Monday and became a father again when his fiancee Carrie Symonds gave birth on Wednesday, said he was given litres and litres of oxygen in hospital.

He said he felt frustrated he was not getting better but the reality hit home when doctors were deliberating whether to intubate him and put him on a ventilator.

That was when it got a bit... they were starting to think about how to handle it presentationally, he told the weekly tabloid.

- Pretty groggy -

Johnson has repeatedly paid tribute to staff of the state-run National Health Service (NHS) for their care.

He and Symonds baby boy, Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas Johnson, is named in part after two of the doctors who led his care -- doctors Nick Price and Nick Hart.

Both are experts in infectious diseases and ventilation.

Symonds, 32, said in an Instagram post earlier to announce the boys name that Hart and Price saved Boris life last month.

The Sun on Sunday said Johnson was emotional when recalling his treatment and recovery, which he called an extraordinary thing.

He said he had been in denial about the seriousness of his condition at first, as he tried to continue to work despite feeling pretty groggy.

He also said he did not want to go to hospital at first but doctors were adamant because of his low oxygen levels. Looking back, they were right to force me to go, he said.

Johnson said the experience had made him more determined to fight the disease and get the country back to normal.

His comments came as the government announced 621 more deaths in the outbreak, taking the overall cumulative toll to 28,131 -- just behind Europes worst-hit country, Italy.

He said he would announce a roadmap towards easing the lockdown restrictions imposed in late March later this week.


By James M. Dorsey





It is early days, but first indications are that the global pandemic is entrenching long-drawn Middle Eastern geopolitical, political, ethnic and sectarian battle lines rather than serving as a vehicle to build bridges and confidence.



The coronavirus crisis is also changing the region's political landscape as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and militants in countries like Iraq, Syria and Lebanon fill gaps where governments have failed to cater to social and health needs created by the pandemic.



The empowerment of NGOs and militant groups, particularly where they fill a gap without coordinating with government, potentially raises security issues as militants capitalize on their ability to show up the state's lack of capability.



The expanded militants' role takes on added significance as states like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates use the pandemic to entrench, as well as manage, many of the Middle East's fault lines, if not widen them to their advantage.



The pandemic has also not stopped the region's foremost external power, the United States, from taking Iran's bait in a tit-for-tat escalation that risks a larger military conflagration.



In a similar vein, the UAE has used the pandemic to solidify its limited outreach to Iran designed to shield the Gulf state from becoming a battlefield in any U.S.-Iranian military confrontation.



While the United States reportedly blocked an Iranian request for $5 billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to fight the virus, the UAE was among the first nations to deliver medical aid to Iran and facilitate shipments by the World Health Organization (WHO).



The shipments led to a rare March 15 phone call between UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan and his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javid Zarif.



The UAE began reaching out to Iran last year when it sent a coast guard delegation to Tehran to discuss maritime security in the wake of alleged Iranian attacks on oil tankers off the coast of the Emirates.



The Trump administration remained silent when the UAE last October released $700 million in frozen Iranian assets that ran counter to U.S. efforts to strangle Iran economically with harsh sanctions.



The UAE's moves amount to a lowering of the temperature. Officials insist that there will be no real breakthrough in Emirati-Iranian relations as long as Iran supports proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon, pro-Iranian militias in Iraq and Houthi rebels in Yemen.



UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed made that clear when he phoned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a bid to drive a wedge between Syria and Iran and complicate Turkish military interventions in Syria as well as Libya.



UAE support for Syria and Libyan rebel forces led by Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar spotlight the contradictions in the Emirates' projection of itself as a humanitarian actor. Neither al-Assad nor Haftar has shied away from targeting hospitals and medical facilities at a time when functioning health infrastructure is a priority.



In cuddling up to Syria and reaching out to Iran, the UAE and Saudi Arabia may have common goals  even if they pursue them in different ways  that are dictated by the degree of risk they are willing to shoulder.



As a result, Saudi Arabia, in contrast to the UAE, has maintained a hard line toward Iran, casting aside opportunities to build bridges by, for example, offering Iran medical aid.



Instead, Saudi Arabia appeared to reinforce the divide by accusing Iran of "direct responsibility" for the spread of the virus. Government-controlled media charged that Iran's allies, Qatar and Turkey, had deliberately mismanaged the crisis.



Moreover, the kingdom, backing a U.S. refusal to ease the sanctioning of Iran, prevented the Non-Aligned Movement from condemning the Trump administration's hard line at the time of a pandemic.



Saudi Arabia's failure to follow in the UAE's footsteps could prove to be costlier than meets the eye.



The coronavirus, coupled with the global economic breakdown and the collapse of the oil market, has somewhat leveled the playing field with Iran, with the undermining of the kingdom's ability to manipulate oil prices as well as its diminished financial muscle.



Add to that the weakening of Saudi Arabia's claim to leadership of the Islamic world as the custodian of Mecca and Medina, Islam's two holiest cities, as a result of its efforts to combat the pandemic.



One has to go way back in history to find a precedent for the kingdom's banning of the Umrah, Islam's minor pilgrimage to Mecca; the likely canceling of the haj, Islam's major pilgrimage that constitutes one of the faith's five pillars; and the closing down of mosques to avoid congregational prayer.



Just to make things worse, Saudi Arabia has jeopardized its close ties to the United States with an oil price war against Russia that collapsed oil markets, drove oil prices to rock bottom and significantly undermined the U.S. oil industry with its 10 million jobs.



Nonetheless, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in a twist of irony given his record of flagrant human rights abuses and repressive rule of law, has emerged as a model in some Muslim countries like Pakistan that have been less forceful in imposing physical distancing and lockdowns on ultra-conservative religious communities.



"What if this year's haj was under Imran Khan rather than Mohammad bin Salman? Would he have waffled there as indeed he has in Pakistan?" asked Pakistani nuclear scientist, political analyst and human rights activist Pervez Hoodbhoy, referring to Pakistan's prime minister.



Saudi Arabia has so far carried the brunt of U.S. criticism despite the fact it remains more closely aligned with U.S. policies than the UAE, which to date has succeeded in flying under the radar.



That is a remarkable achievement given the Emirates backed Saudi Arabia in its debilitating price war by announcing that it too would raise oil production.



The strategy has since been put on hold with an agreement to radically reduce production among members of the Organization of Oil Exporting Countries (OPEC), non-OPEC producers, including Russia, and the Group of 20 that brings together the world's largest economies.



In the same vein, the UAE's outreach to Syria and Iran runs counter to U.S. policy.



The policy contradictions stem from Gulf efforts to ensure that entrenched conflicts do not spiral out of control, particularly as they battle a pandemic and struggle to cope with the economic fallout.



That is also their core message to U.S. President Donald Trump amid heightening tensions with Iran: "Don't let this get out of hand. You live thousands of miles away. It will be us, not you, who pays the price and you won't be there to rush to our defense," said a prominent Saudi.





Dr. James M. Dorsey is an award-winning journalist and a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. He is also an adjunct senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore's Middle East Institute and co-director of the University of Wuerzburg's Institute of Fan Culture in Germany. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.






Osun State has recorded two new Coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the State to 36.

The Osun State Commissioner for Health, Dr Rafiu Isamotu, told The Nigerian Voice that the two new cases were confirmed by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC

He disclosed today that the two cases are wife and son of a previously confirmed case in Ife, who died last week.

He said "Last night, we received results of 53 samples we sent to the NCDC accredited Testing Centre for evaluation, out of which 2 tested positive and 51 returned negative.

"The 2 positive cases are wife and son of a previously confirmed case in Ife, who died last week. They are currently receiving treatment at our Isolation Centre," he said.

Isamotu further revealed that with the development, Osun now has 36 confirmed cases, 10 active cases.
As May began, small business owners in Scarboroughs plazas and malls thought about the rent and whether they could pay it.

A relief program, the Ontario-Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance (OCECRA), could take care of 75 per cent, but its up to landlords to apply, and some arent.

In Huntingwood Square, a plaza on Birchmount Road, George Petrou was working seven days a week at his restaurant, Hunters Pizza and Souvlaki House.

Petrou, on April 30, said hed asked his landlord, Mohamed Khan, to apply for the OCECRA, and so had other plaza businesses.

Federal and provincial contributions cover 50 per cent in the program, and landlords and tenants each pay 25.

Khan didnt seem to care, said Petrou.

He doesnt want to lose a dime, the restaurateur complained. But its OK for us to lose our shirt.

Though open for takeout, Petrou said businesses like his need a three-month break on rent, just to survive.

Khan confirmed hes not interested in the OCECRA. We dont need that, and were not going to use that, he said.

The landlord argued he wouldnt be able to pay contractors or operate the property if he gave up 25 per cent of rents; that money doesnt go into the landlords pocket, he said.

On Kennedy Roads commercial strip south of Highway 401, Ammar Odeh, the business improvement areas treasurer, said hes seeing a mixed bag of communication on whether landlords are giving tenants a break.

Odeh owns a Telus dealership and his two full-time employees are at home, each bringing the business $2,000 a month through a new federal wage subsidy. With his landlord waiving the rent for three months apart from fixed costs such as taxes, maintenance and insurance, he said, hes doing OK.

But some other landlords for the BIAs 344 businesses are not being that gracious on rent, and some tenants arent even offering to pay.

The ones that are wait and see are typically not paying anything.

Odeh said he doesnt think property owners want their tenants to leave, but neither do they want to be in the red on debts on their properties.

All the same, he added, the city should be encouraging its commercial landlords to follow a set of rules.

There have been calls for the province to declare a commercial eviction moratorium.

Businesses are panicking, said John Beers, co-ordinator of the Crossroads of the Danforth Business Improvement Area in southwest Scarborough.

Beers said theres no incentive for landlords to use the OCECRA, and suggested business owners should voice concerns with local MPs and MPPs, as what theyre doing is still fluid.

Scarborough-Agincourt Coun. Jim Karygiannis said hes heard from a handful of businesses gravely concerned they might have to close altogether.

I just hope that we do not lose a lot of businesses and then we become a ghost town, he said on April 30.

Bridlewood Mall deferred rent to its smaller shuttered stores in April, and their May rent is basically deferred until we figure it out, said manager Josephine Kwan.

The mid-sized shopping centre on Finch Avenue is still open. With two supermarkets, Shoppers Drug Mart, Dollarama, three banks and restaurants doing takeout, full rents are still coming in.

Kwan noted governments arent providing certain details of the OCECRA  whether the rent is gross rent or net rent, for instance  until mid-May.

For landlords, paying 25 per cent isnt a lot, but they still owe the same in taxes on properties, which is a large loss, said Kwan.

If the city cancelled property tax collection for three months, we will give the tenants the break right away.

Scarborough Town Centre, the areas largest mall, said its committed to supporting our tenants during the pandemic.

This process is being managed with each tenant individually and does include rent relief, said Adrienne Simic, a spokesperson.

Agincourt Malls owners, the North American Development Group, announced a fund on March 26 to provide rent deferrals for its small retailers over April and May. A spokesperson on May 1 said company officials were unavailable to provide an update.

The OCECRA, announced April 24, would be retroactive to April 1 and cover April, May and June.

Jean Yip, a Liberal MP, said many small businesses are hurting, and its important the government act quickly to help Canadians, even if its relief programs like OCECRA be adjusted later.

That happened with the emergency wage subsidy, which the federal government tweaked after listening to businesses, she said.

Mike Adler is a reporter with toronto.com and Metroland Media Toronto.
New Delhi, May 3 : The people's trust in imported goods from China has collapsed in the last two years, according to the latest results of IANS-CVoter tracking survey conducted across the country.

There has been a steep fall in the fortunes of Chinese companies and goods as the survey shows that while back in 2018, 5.6 per cent people had no trust at all in Chinese goods, the number has jumped dramatically to 57.4 percent who have no trust at all in Chinese goods.

While in 2018, 25.8 per cent respondents said that they had no trust in Chinese goods, this number has more than doubled in 2020 to 62.6 per cent now.

On the flip side, those who said they had a lot of trust in these goods were much higher at 20.2 per cent in 2018 but have plummeted to only 5.2 per cent in 2020. Those having some trust have also almost halved from 46.9 percent to 20.2 percent in 2020.

It may be pointed out that there is a backlash against China globally following the coronavirus originating in Wuhan city and several countries are putting place a policy framework to erect fences against an Chinese companies wanting to acquire foreign companies at cheap valuations.

India has also notified a policy to protect against opportunistic takeovers of Indian companies as valuations have fallen and companies with origins in countries with which India shares a land border will have to seek government approval for every investment.

In comparison to Chinese goods, the survey shows that Made in India goods have shown an increase in net trust as the figure has gone up from 70.7 per cent in 2018 to 74.4 per cent in 2020.

The respondents who said that they had a lot of trust in Made in India goods have gone up marginally from 72.6 per cent to 75.9 percent.

Those who expressed some trust have however fallen from 21.3 per cent to only 15 per cent in 2020.

On the whole, while trust in Chinese goods has collapsed, the trust level in Made in India goods has gone up somewhat as per the IANS-CVoter tracker.
Some 1,285 unregistered products were seized from herbal facilities, lorry stations, information centres and markets in Abura Asebu Kwamankese, Assin South, Assin Central, Gomoa West, Gomoa Central and Agona West.

The markets were Agona Swedru, Mankessim, Agona West and Assin Fosu Markets.

Mr John Odai-Tettey, the Regional Head of the Authority, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency after the exercise, said the items were seized after dawn swoops between Monday, April 27 to Thursday, 29.

He explained that the products were not registered by the FDA and were not supposed to be sold in the market.

The products were largely herbal concoctions that had no labels on them to indicate the kind of ingredients used in their preparation and had no directions detailing the right usage.

He said, the move formed part of a sustained effort by the FDA to clamp down on dealers of unwholesome products to safeguard the lives of consumers.

The FDA will continue to protect public health by ensuring the safety, efficacy and security of human and veterinary drugs, food, biological products, cosmetics, medical devices, household chemical substances, tobacco and conduct clinical tests.

We will continue to regulate, check, monitor and seize all unregistered, fake and substandard medicines and medical devices supplied to hospitals, pharmacies and all unauthorised places throughout the country, he said.

We will continually ensure that only wholesome products are registered, inspected and licensed while surveillance and clinical trial activities are carried out in conformity with the applicable national and international standards to meet customer satisfaction.

Mr Odai-Tettey said the FDA had routinely organised training programmes for drug sellers and manufacturers in the Region and appealed to stakeholders to help it flush out the illegal drug dealers in the system.

He said the suspects would be dealt with according to the law to serve as a deterrent to others.

---GNA
Real-time data on the whereabouts of goods in transit has proved useful during the coronavirus pandemic and will speed up the digitalisation of logistics processes across industries, according to a global chemicals producer and logistics executives.

Such data has been key to Germany-based Covestros ability to carry out contingency planning and make decisions with make-or-break consequences quickly in unusual circumstances.

In the past we had no visibility of these materials between the ports of departure and arrival, today we are able to track the exact locations of 92 per cent of them globally in real time, said Samir Hifri, the chemicals companys head of the supply chain centre for Asia-Pacific and managing director of its Hong Kong office.

This ability to track and trace is very important. If there are any delays, changes in routes, it allows us to take counter measures immediately to mitigate the impact.

With the help of its shipping partners, the Leverkusen-based firm spent a year developing the tracking system, launching it last November.

Covestro has some 10,000 customers in more than 50 nations. Besides shipping finished products, it sources raw materials to feed its 30-odd production plants in Europe, Asia and the US, mainly by sea.

Our China operations continued during the outbreak as some of our products are essential industrial goods, where we saw disruption of inter-regional shipments due to reduced sea transport capacity, Hifri said.

The public health crisis meant his team  mostly based in Hong Kong  had to make proactive contingency decisions such as stocking up extra polycarbonate materials made by its Thailand plant in China and Japan, to ensure its car manufacturer customers there have materials to keep operations going.

After its India plant was caught up in the worlds largest ever lockdown that brought ports and factories to a standstill there, Hifri had to arrange alternative supplies of adhesive materials from its plants in Shanghai and Germany to meet the needs of its major customer in Malaysia that makes food packaging.

Story continues

In China, its largest market, contributing just over a fifth of global revenues, with the help of its logistics partners Covestro has also partially implemented real-time tracking of goods delivered by road transport.

Alternative routes could be planned faster to shorten delivery time when roadblocks were erected during the outbreak.

This enabled it to deliver urgently needed polycarbonate materials to a supplier of electric car giant Teslas Shanghai plant for the production of Model 3 sedans, despite partial lockdowns in most parts of China in February, Hifri said.

It also allowed Covestro to deliver materials to medical googles manufacturers in Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces so that they were able to produce 160,000 units needed desperately by hospitals in Shanghai and Wuhan  the original epicentre of the pandemic.

Logistics industry stakeholders from port authorities and terminal operators to shipping lines have in recent years sped up initiatives to digitalise the supply chain, said Michael Yip, chief innovation officer of Modern Terminals  Hong Kongs second largest container terminal operator.

Events such as [the coronavirus pandemic] will only further accelerate digitalisation of our industry, he said. Adopting technologies such as blockchain, parties can trust that the information received is valid and immutable.

Andre Simha, chief digital & information officer of Geneva-based MSC Mediterranean Shipping, said it will take time to know how much and how quickly shipping lines and their customers will invest in technology and data standardisation as the pandemic has dealt the global economy a shock.

More importantly, such technology needs to be actively used by the shippers to get the results.

Many people talk about data and artificial intelligence, but it is important that they are used, said Ralf Belusa, managing director of digital business and transformation at Germany-based global shipping company Hapag-Lloyd.

Logistics customers need to work with the data and enhance them by using artificial intelligence tools, so that they get better recommendations, make better decisions and improve their workflow.

Sign up now and get a 10% discount (original price US$400) off the China AI Report 2020 by SCMP Research. Learn about the AI ambitions of Alibaba, Baidu & JD.com through our in-depth case studies, and explore new applications of AI across industries. The report also includes exclusive access to webinars to interact with C-level executives from leading China AI companies (via live Q&A sessions). Offer valid until 31 May 2020.

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-04 00:29:10|Editor: huaxia

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HONG KONG, May 3 (Xinhua) -- The May Day holiday used to be a busy time for tour guide Tang Ning in Hong Kong, but this May Day holiday was completely different, which saw him have no business at all, and he even began to worry about the fate of his company.

"Hong Kong has come to the high season, and I should have been fully occupied. But the truth is that I haven't worked for months," said Tang, a Japanese-language tour guide hired by a local travel agency.

According to the latest figures released by the Immigration Department of China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government, Hong Kong recorded 1,528 arrivals on the first day of the four-day public holiday, with Hong Kong residents accounting for 90 percent and mainland visitors dropping to 119.

However, on the same day last year, the number of arrivals and departures here amounted to 1.06 million, of which nearly 500,000 are from the mainland.

Yiu Si-wing, a Hong Kong lawmaker and tourism industry insider, said that no tour group visited Hong Kong during this holiday, which is the first time that such a thing has happened since the Individual Visit Scheme was launched in 2003.

Another experienced tour guide surnamed Wan also has had nothing to do in the business for several months.

"Actually I haven't received any tourist since September last year. Many of us have suffered from both the social unrest last year and the pandemic this year," he said.

Tourism industry in Hong Kong had already suffered a lot in the second half of last year due to the social unrest and violence, with quite a number of people in the industry making no money at all, and in the first half of this year, many countries and regions issued travelling advisories because of the COVID-19 outbreak. All these have plunged Hong Kong tourism industry into a miserable situation.

In late January, Hong Kong Disneyland and Ocean Park were closed temporarily. It was not long before many tourist attractions, well-known eateries, shops and hotels stopped their operation or service.

During travel seasons, Wan usually could receive 10 tour groups from Southeast Asia or 15 tour groups from the mainland per month, and he could earn as much as 20,000 Hong Kong dollars (around 2,600 U.S. dollars).

In order to relieve residents' burden brought about by the COVID-19 outbreak, the HKSAR government has launched two rounds of anti-epidemic fund and rolled out many relief measures to help them weather the current hardship.

For tour guides like Tang and Wan, they will receive a monthly subsidy of 5,000 Hong Kong dollars lasting for six months.

It's not a large sum, but it works to help them tide over the difficulties, said the duo who are grateful for the subsidies and also expressed confidence in Hong Kong's economic recovery.

Hong Kong's effective anti-epidemic measures, altogether with these all-out efforts made by the HKSAR government and various sectors, gave Hong Kong tourism hopes.

Hong Kong's Center for Health Protection (CHP) reported no new COVID-19 cases on Sunday, with the total number remaining at 1,039. Hong Kong has detected no new local infection for 14 consecutive days.

Financial Secretary of the HKSAR government Paul Chan said in his blog on Sunday that as the COVID-19 pandemic has ebbed recently in Hong Kong, some measures are expected to be gradually relaxed, allowing social life and business operations to return to normal.

He said that Hong Kong's economy is in the midst of a deep recession, and the forthcoming forecast for annual GDP growth in the first quarter will be even worse due to the continuous violent protests and the lingering of the pandemic.

If the pandemic continues to be under control and pandemic preventive measures for various industries to be eased step by step, it will help all walks of life to regain their vitality, Chan said, stressing that a stable and peaceful social atmosphere is essential for the economy to regain its momentum.

In post-epidemic days, tourists may prefer destinations with better public hygienic environment, such as places with clean hotels, an official from the Hong Kong Tourism Board predicted, noting that the board was mapping out a plan to revitalize local tourism.

"We are repositioning our tourism in order to provide better services. Hong Kong is preparing to welcome tourists back," the official said. Enditem
As of May 3, Singapore's health ministry announced that over 657 cases of the novel coronavirus have been detected in the past 24 hours that surged figures to 18,205. Most new cases were recorded at the migrant workers dormitories, the ministry said. Singapore has a total of 17 deaths from the COVID-19 disease, and no new fatalities were recorded in the last 24 hours.

As per the health ministry of Singapore, the vast majority of cases in the city constitute the work permit holders, and as many as 7 new clusters, and earlier identified 52 clusters linked to the foreign dormitories have emerged so far. The S11 Dormitory, Sungei Tengah Lodge, and Tuas View Dormitory account for the highest number of cases out of the 25 dorms where over 300,000 overseas workers reside, local media reports confirmed.

According to the authorities, new facilities are being constructed and designed to quarantine the migrant workers, including Indians, who are asymptomatic or no longer carrying the strain of the virus, media reports confirmed. In addition, Health monitoring equipment is also being set up to track the symptoms of the COVID-19 recovered patients, the Manpower Ministry said in a statement.

As of 3 May 2020, 12pm, we have preliminarily confirmed an additional 657 cases of COVID-19 infection in Singapore. Read more: https://t.co/mVZjmIwfPT  Ministry of Health (@sporeMOH) May 3, 2020

Read: US Reports 1,435 New Coronavirus Cases In 24 Hours, Nationwide Toll Soars To 67,444

Read: WHO Lauds China For Handling Coronavirus Crisis; Says Other Countries Should Learn From It

Pandemic 'under control' by June-July

The inter-agency task force would designate blocs to return fully cured migrant workers to isolate separately from the asymptomatic cases. National Development Minister Lawrence Wong, who co-chairs the task force told the press conference that it would be premature to assume that Singapore passed a particular wave. He added that the authorities were looking at pandemic controlled by June or July.

Earlier, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong had warned that more people could test positive at the packed dormitories. While efforts have been made to break the chain of transmission, it will take some time to show the results and flatten the curve, he said at the daily coronavirus press briefing. He further added, in an official statement, that owing to the surge in infections, the partial lockdown measure in Singapore will be extended until June 1. The protocol was due to be suspended on May 4 but stood revised under the new guidelines, local media reported.

Read: UK Reports 621 More Coronavirus Deaths, Total Toll Surpasses 28,000

Read: Coronavirus Live Updates: Armed Forces Pay Tribute To COVID Warriors Ahead Of Lockdown 3.0

(Image Credit: AP)
All it takes is a few words from a storybook to connect young children over a radio stations broadcasts. Radio may not be the most modern technology, but it has been reaching out to children in many parts of the United States during the coronavirus crisis. It even reaches the most remote towns and villages in Alaska, many of which lack good internet connections.

The public library in the town of Homer, Alaska got creative when it had to close during the pandemic. It is now partnering with a radio station to bring a story hour to very young children. They are required to stay-at-home because of the governments rules for protecting the public against the virus.

Youth services librarian Claudia Haines reads childrens books Thursday mornings on radio station KBBI, which serves the town of 5,000 and surrounding villages. The station is among several radio broadcasters that have served Alaska communities for many years.

Radio has such a storytelling tradition, Haines said. Its nice to see it put to use.

The program is among ways U.S. libraries are dealing with the pandemic, notes a study from the Public Library Association. About 2,500 libraries nationwide answered questions from the association. More than 90% of the libraries reported that their buildings are closed. Like the Homer library, they have expanded online services like streaming media and e-books.

Local libraries are providing for their communities in other ways, too. The El Dorado County Library in California is using its 3-D printers to make face covers for hospitals and other places. The Saint Louis County Library in Missouri partnered with a diaper bank to provide a drive-through emergency diaper service at four library buildings.

In Alaska, the radio story hour, which is also live-streamed on KBBIs website, has dance breaks to let young listeners burn off some energy. The program also invites boys and girls to call in to the show before it ends each day.

They were really happy to call and say hello and have me recognize them, Haines said. The spirit of the first program was, Hey, weve been apart while the library is closed and were all staying home, but were still here together in our community, and this is a way to stay connected.

Four-year-old Polly Fraley always listens to the story hour. She said her favorite part of a recent show was when everybody ate dinner in the book Thank you, Omu! by Oge Mora.

Pollys mother, Cassy Quinlan, said her family has listened to the station for a long time. She said they even communicate through KBBI with friends who have poor internet service. The station reads messages from listeners in its broadcasts. They can include anything from birthday wishes to love poems, Quinlan said.

Polly and her 6-year-old sister, Lucy, have been missing the library since it closed in March. But the pandemic is bringing people back to simplicity, you know, the basics  radio, reading, doing a puzzle, Quinlan said.

Librarian Claudia Haines said she jumped at the chance to connect again with families. Leading the show is one of the rare times she leaves the house, working with a single radio station employee to get it on the air.

The story hour is part of the stations larger effort to keep people connected although they're in isolation, KBBI development director Loren Barrett said. KBBI has also added weekly COVID-19 information reporting from officials. Another new program, called Social Distance, includes live music and discussions about food for listeners seeking new recipes.

Retired Alaskan broadcaster Al Bramstedt, Junior noted the importance of radio right now for many across the country. Radio, particularly in a small community like that ... can really focus in on children and do excellent work, he said.

Im Caty Weaver.

The Associated Press reported this story. Caty Weaver adapted it for VOA Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

remote -adj. far away from other people, houses, cities, etc.

library -n. a place where books, magazines, and other materials (such as videos and musical recordings) are available for people to use or borrow

pandemic -n. a situation in which a disease spreads very quickly and affects a large number of people over a wide area or throughout the world

stream -v. to transfer (digital data, such as audio or video material) in a continuous stream especially for immediate processing or playback

diaper -n. a piece of cloth or other material that is placed between a baby's legs and fastened around the waist to hold body waste

puzzle -n. a question, problem, or device to test skill or intelligence

isolation -n. the state of being in a place or situation that is separate from others

recipe -n. a set of instructions for making food

focus -v. to direct your attention or effort at something specific
This week, in regard to Flynns interview where he lied to the FBI, Stefaniks twitter feed incredulously calls out the FBI, not Flynn, for corruption and coverup. This coordinated GOP spin, also parroted by compromised and recused HSPCI chair Devin Nunes and Foxs Sean Hannity, comes directly after a document dump that implicates the Trump White House in illegal conversations regarding a pardon for Flynns guilty plea for lying about surreptitious discussions with Sergei Kislyak, Russias ambassador, in the fall of 2016.
Rome, May 3 : Most of Italy's nearly 4,000 museums are set to reopen this month, several weeks after they closed at the start of the national coronavirus lockdown on March 10. But for most tourists, seeing some of the world's greatest cultural treasures will require a virtual tour.

Last week, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced a stage-by-stage easing of national lockdown rules. The first part of the so-called "Phase Two" starts on Monday, allowing parks, factories, and building sites to reopen, reports Xinhua news agency.

Two weeks later, museums will be allowed to reopen on May 18.

Initially, the number of visits is expected to be small.

Last week, Minister of Tourism Dario Franceschini said he did not expect foreign tourists, who represent the bulk of the country's tourist industry, to return to Italy in large numbers until 2021.

At the start, movement within the country will be limited even for Italians looking to travel outside their region.

Additionally, social distancing rules will also reduce the number of visitors.

Florence's sprawling Uffizi Museum, for example, will only allow 450 visitors into the museum at a time, half its normal number.

In Rome, the full exhibit to mark the 500th anniversary of the death of Renaissance master Raphael, will most likely end up shortened to just 15 days, since most of the works loaned to it must be returned.

The exhibit, the largest collection of Raphael's work ever gathered in one place, had been scheduled to run from March 5 to June 2, was forced to close its doors just days after it opened.

Other museums say they'll only allow tourists in by reservation or through the use of shifts.

But many of the country's greatest museums are already open 24 hours a day for increasingly sophisticated virtual tours.

The Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan had a well-developed virtual presence even before the lockdown. But the museum's director, James Bradburne, said in an interview that after the museum closed he had staffers working from home focused on further improving the museum's high-definition digital presence.

Dozens of other Italian museums and cultural sites -- ranging from the Uffizi in Florence and the Museum of Modern Art in Bologna to the Palazzo Ducale in Venice and the Colosseum in Rome -- have taken similar steps.

Even the Scuderie del Quirinale has set up a virtual tour for the Raphael exhibit aimed at those unable to visit.

Italy is one of the European countries worst-hit by the coronavirus pandemic.

It currently accounts for the third highest coronavirus cases in the world with 209,328 infections, with 28,710 deaths.
Update: Hayden Maslowski has been found safe and well, a garda spokesperson has confirmed.

The spokesperson thanked the public for their assistance.

Earlier: Gardai are seeking the public's assistance in finding Hayden Maslowski, 14.

The Dublin teenager is missing from his home in Stoneybatter, Dublin 7.

Hayden was last seen this afternoon at around 12.30 pm when he left his home on on Oxmantown Road.

He is described as being roughly 5' 5" in height, with shaggy brown hair, slight build and green eyes.

It is unknown what Hayden was wearing when he left home.

Hayden's family and Gardai are concerned for his wellbeing.

Anyone with information on his whereabouts are asked to contact Gardai in Bridewell on 01 6668200, the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666 111 or any Garda Station.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-04 00:43:08|Editor: huaxia

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CARACAS, May 3 (Xinhua) -- Venezuelan Interior Minister Nestor Reverol announced on Sunday that an attempted maritime invasion "by Colombian terrorist mercenaries" had occurred in the central state of La Guaira to destabilize the country.

He stated that the objective of the attack was "to increase the spiral of violence, generate chaos and confusion in the population, and thereby lead to a new coup attempt."

The "terrorists," said Reverol, tried to enter on "speedboats along the coasts of the state of La Guaira," but the action was thwarted by the National Bolivarian Armed Forces (FANB) and the Special Actions Force (FAES) of the Bolivarian National Police (PNB).

According to Reverol, "some were killed and others arrested" in the attempt to overthrow the government of President Nicolas Maduro.

"The operation continues," he said, not ruling out new arrests.

In responding to the attacks, Reverol urged the population to be on alert for any threat. "We will respond forcefully against these terrorist groups," he said.

This is not the first time that Venezuela has announced an attempted coup. Last year, authorities thwarted an assault on a military base, allegedly backed by the opposition.

Recently, government authorities warned of an operation by the Venezuelan opposition to allow entry to Colombian paramilitary groups by way of the land border in order to destabilize the country. Enditem
editor's pick

UI at 150 & Beyond: 'It changes so much but it's always home'
The Jammu and Kashmir Apni Party (JKAP) on Sunday said the killing of five security forces personnel in an encounter in Kupwara district has exposed Pakistan's evil designs to disrupt peace in the Union Territory.

It said the killing was a "big loss" in the fight against Pakistan-sponsored militancy in the valley and said the union government must take serious note of the situation.

Expressing concern over the death of four Army personnel, including two officers, and a sub-inspector of Jammu and Kashmir Police in the Handwara encounter, the party said, "Once again, the evil design of Pakistan has been exposed when the militants backed by it adopted violence to disrupt peace in Kashmir Valley."



"This (killing of the security men) is a big loss in the fight against militancy. We hope the central government will take cognizance of the matter and investigate the matter as different versions are coming out," senior party leaders said in a joint statement here.

It said even as Pakistan was facing an increasing number of COVID-19 cases, the neighbouring country is still busy pushing their proxies into Kashmir Valley.

"This act must be condemned and the Union government must take serious note of the situation," the JKAP said and lauded the role of security forces in maintaining peace in the Union Territory despite the challenging situation.

In a setback, two senior army officers, including a colonel-rank officer, were among five security personnel killed during an encounter with terrorists at a village in Rajwar forests of North Kashmir, officials said Sunday.

The deceased security personnel are: Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, Major Anuj Sood, Naik Rajesh and Lance Naik Dinesh, all from the Brigade of GUARDS regiment, and at present part of the 21 Rashtriya Rifles, deployed to counter terrorism in the hinterland.

Jammu and Kashmir Police Sub-Inspector Shakeel Qazi, also fell victim of to the bullets of terrorists.

The two holed-up terrorists, who were eliminated in the encounter, included commander of banned Lashker-e-Taiba Haider, a Pakistani national who has been active in North Kashmir area.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In a groundbreaking discovery, scientists have discovered that the largest and most enigmatic dinosaur species known as the Spinosaurus aegyptiacus was a proficient swimmer and not the typical land-dweller, which has long been the matter of debate. Belonging to the early 20th century, Spinosaurus aegyptiacus was the largest carnivorous dinosaur of all time native to Cretaceous North Africa that preyed on fish, other dinosaurs, and pterosaurs, as per the scientific journals.

Published in the journal Nature, the research indicates that the remains discovered in Morocco expands the understanding of how Mesozoic-Era creatures inhabited the Earth. Scientists found that the Spinosaurus was actually a marine reptile, known as the Plesiosaurs, Ichthyosaurs, or Mosasaurs, which, despite their appearance, are not to be considered as dinosaurs.

Earlier this week, a team of researchers uncovered a 95-million-year old Spinosaurus tail which was two-foot-long with an unusual paddle shape. Speculating, the species was likely propelled out of the water depths of the rivers, the researchers argued that it was aquatic. Study author Nizar Ibrahim, a vertebrate palaeontologist at the University of Detroit Mercy, told an international media outlet that Spinosaurus was basically a dinosaur that was trying to build a fishtail. He added that these creatures were involved in water activities, hunting and retreating back to shores, he said.

Tail reveals species as 'aquatic vertebrate'

A vertebrate palaeontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Matthew Lamanna, reportedly said that the hunting trait in the non-avian dinosaur species was an unusual trait and the species tail was just weird-looking. As per the published research, the scientists revealed that this dinosaur had a tail with an unexpected and unique shape that consisted of extremely tall neural spines and elongate chevrons, which forms a large, flexible fin-like organ capable of the extensive lateral excursion.

Further, it confirmed that the tail shape of Spinosaurus produced greater thrust and efficiency in water, and therefore, the species performance was more comparable to those of extant aquatic vertebrates that use vertically expanded tails to generate forward propulsion while swimming.

Read: COVID-19: Scientists In Canada Use Algae To Develop Low-cost Testing Kits

Read: Scientists Use AI To Crack Novel Coronavirus Genome Signature

Several years ago, the scientists observed a set of Spinosaurus bones discovered in Morocco in 2008 and argued extensively about it being a land-dwelling relative of the Tyrannosaurus rex, as per the reports. Lindsay Zanno, a palaeontologist at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, reportedly called the new discovery mindblowing.

Read: Scientists At Work: Uncovering The Mystery Of When And Where Sharks Give Birth

Read: Record-size Ozone Hole Over North Pole Heals Due To Polar Vortex, Scientists Confirm

(Image Courtesy: Journal Nature)
Representative image

Four months after a mysterious new virus began its deadly march around the globe, the search for a vaccine has taken on an intensity never before seen in medical research, with huge implications for public health, the world economy and politics.

Seven of the roughly 90 projects being pursued by governments, pharmaceutical makers, biotech innovators and academic laboratories have reached the stage of clinical trials. With political leaders  not least President Donald Trump  increasingly pressing for progress, and with big potential profits at stake for the industry, drugmakers and researchers have signaled that they are moving ahead at unheard-of speeds.

But the whole enterprise remains dogged by uncertainty about whether any coronavirus vaccine will prove effective, how fast it could be made available to millions or billions of people and whether the rush  compressing a process that can take 10 years into 10 months  will sacrifice safety.

Some experts say the more immediately promising field might be the development of treatments to speed recovery from COVID-19, an approach that has generated some optimism in the last week through initially encouraging research results on remdesivir, an antiviral drug previously tried in fighting Ebola.

In an era of intense nationalism, the geopolitics of the vaccine race are growing as complex as the medicine. The months of mutual vilification between the United States and China over the origins of the virus have poisoned most efforts at cooperation between them. The U.S. government is already warning that American innovations must be protected from theft  chiefly from Beijing.

COVID-19 Vaccine Frequently Asked Questions View more How does a vaccine work? A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine. How many types of vaccines are there? There are broadly four types of vaccine  one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine. What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind? Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time. View more Show

Biomedical research has long been a focus of theft, especially by the Chinese government, and vaccines and treatments for the coronavirus are todays holy grail, John Demers, assistant attorney general for national security, said Friday. Putting aside the commercial value, there would be great geopolitical significance to being the first to develop a treatment or vaccine. We will use all the tools we have to safeguard American research.

The intensity of the global research effort is such that governments and companies are building production lines before they have anything to produce.

We are going to start ramping up production with the companies involved, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the federal governments top expert on infectious diseases, said this past week. You dont wait until you get an answer before you start manufacturing.

With the demand for a vaccine so intense, there are escalating calls for human-challenge trials to speed the process: tests in which volunteers are injected with a potential vaccine and then deliberately exposed to the coronavirus.

Because the approach involves exposing participants to a potentially deadly disease, challenge trials are ethically fraught. But they could be faster than simply inoculating human subjects and waiting for them to be exposed.

Even when promising solutions are found, there are big challenges to scaling up production and distribution. Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder whose foundation is spending $250 million to help spur vaccine development, has warned about a critical shortage of a mundane but vital component: medical glass.

Without sufficient supplies of the glass, there will be too few vials to transport the billions of doses that will ultimately be needed.

The scale of the problem and the demand for a quick solution are bound to create tensions between the profit motives of the pharmaceutical industry, which typically fights hard to wring the most out of their investments in new drugs, and the publics need for quick action to get any effective vaccines to as many people as possible.

Given the proliferation of vaccine projects, the best outcome may be none of them emerging as a clear winner.

Lets say we get one vaccine quickly but we can only get 2 million doses of it at the end of next year, said Anita Zaidi, who directs the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations vaccine development program. And another vaccine, just as effective, comes three months later but we can make a billion doses. Who won that race?

The answer, she said, is we will need many different vaccines to cross the finish line.

It is one thing to design a vaccine in record time. It is an entirely different challenge to manufacture and distribute one on a scale never before attempted  billions of doses, transported at below-zero temperatures to nearly every corner of the world.

If you want to give a vaccine to a billion people, it better be very safe and very effective, said Dr. Paul Stoffels, chief scientific officer of Johnson & Johnson. But you also need to know how to make it in amounts weve never really seen before.

So the race is on to get ahead of the enormous logistical issues, from basic manufacturing capacity to the shortages of medical glass and stoppers that Gates and others have warned of.

Even as the world waits for a vaccine, a potential treatment for coronavirus could be on the way.

Studies of drugs tend to move more quickly than vaccine trials. Vaccines are given to millions of people who are not yet ill, so they must be extremely safe. But in sicker people, that calculus changes, and side effects might be an acceptable risk.

And because drugs are tested in people who are already sick, results can be seen more quickly than in vaccine trials, where researchers must wait to see who gets infected.

Public health experts have cautioned there will likely be no magic pill. Rather, they are hoping for incremental advances that make COVID-19 less deadly.

Almost nothing is 100%, especially when you are dealing with a virus that really creates a lot of havoc in the body, said Dr. Luciana Borio, former director of medical and biodefense preparedness for the National Security Council.

Many in the medical community are closely watching the development of antibody drugs that could act to neutralize the virus, either once someone is already sick or as a way of blocking the infection in the first place.

Even without a vaccine, Borio said, a handful of early treatments could make a difference. If you can protect people that are vulnerable and you can treat people that come down with the disease effectively, she said, then I think it will change the trajectory of this pandemic.

c.2020 The New York Times Company
Something has happened to me since I tripped into my mid-30s. I say tripped, because the last time I checked I was 29, drinking alcopops at a festival, as I watched a man sell narcotics out of a baguette. So I'm really not sure how the situation escalated to this, now 36, eating collagen alone in my bedroom. My only assumption is that I skidded on something that catapulted me forward seven years. Maybe it was one of my own unfertilised eggs?

I'm maturing. There are the physical effects, of course, the new lines and folds in my face that look like an arts-and-crafts enthusiast broke into my home overnight and tinkered away at me for hours, trying to mould my head into an accordion.

Maturing means I'm losing things I'd rather keep, like facial elasticity, child-bearing years and the mental pluck to wear a scrunchie. But I'm also gaining things like sanity and perspective. Physically, I'm curdling, but mentally, I'm ripening.

Take, for example, my attitude towards male friendships. Excuse the exclusively hetero-woman angle, but it's all I know (though, let's face it, no orientation is safe from the economics of attraction; we're all in this warzone together).

As a teenage girl, boys were only good for the following: attention, a swell in my own self-esteem and social kudos. My teenage years were spent needing to be fancied. At that stage I knew nothing about myself, only that I loved coleslaw, puffer jackets and was mortified by my body, so if a boy considered me important enough to fancy, then that meant something.

To be fancied was to be seen; it made you feel important. I couldn't see anything in myself other than unwanted bulk, hidden under layers of Umbro, so male attention was like an emotional ring light - validation, the modern-day equivalent of a blue tick - that gave me something to work with. Nothing was more thrilling than being approached by a chain-smoking 16-year-old called Deco who told you that his mate Damo requested your puffed-up, overly lip-lined presence in the bike shed, where he was waiting to put his tongue in your mouth for as long as you both could bear it. Magic.

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I'm sure there were other girls more sophisticated than me who got their teenage thrills from highbrow pursuits like writing novellas in their bedroom or gorging on the historical achievements of Emmeline Pankhurst, but my main concern was tongue: seeking it, winning it, binging it.

My 20s brought with them a slightly more mature attitude to men. I had guy friends who I got on with but we kept each other on the outer circle, never on the inner. We'd go out in gangs but I would never in my wildest dreams have rung them in broad daylight and suggested we nip down the town for coffee and a quiche. They were too 'other'; I felt sure they couldn't give me the all-consuming affinity I felt from my female friendships.

I adore women. Not all women, of course - I'm not going to pretend there aren't some I wouldn't like to put in a barrel and drop off the side of a boat, and I know there are women who would happily barrel me into the ocean also, that's an unfortunate fact of life, but even those women, I still think about them. They affect me. Those situations gnaw away at me, because our perceived betrayals of each other are more painful than if done by a man.

Women begin from a position of unspoken, understood solidarity; a shared experience that is so strong that when crossed, it feels like more than just rude disregard - it feels like treason.

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I used to go to house parties and come home with the phone numbers of women. I've made life-long female friends in the toilets of nightclubs. Nothing thrills me more than a stranger asking an entire bathroom for a tampon and me proudly passing one over like a baton of female fortitude. That connection is so gratifying, knowing that this woman can carry on her evening in comfort, without a cinderblock of toilet paper stuffed into her knickers. We are one.

I blame the movies

The few male friendships I had that progressed from outer circle to inner were always riddled with holes: disguised desire, secret obsessions, drunken declarations, disastrous hook-ups and eventual implosion. By the time we eventually crossed the line, the blur was so bad I couldn't tell if we were sexually compatible or riddled with cataracts. All friendships need a chemistry to exist and survive, a mutual magnetic draw that pulls you together - so when that chemistry is between two people who traditionally like to sex that sex, the lines can wobble and blur. That has always been my experience, anyway. Some of my female friends grew up with great male mates and no lines were ever crossed and I just looked on with a tilted head, impressed but confused.

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Movies have a lot to answer for. The idea that men and women can't be best mates without someone wanting to secretly wiggle their way into the other's knickers is a favourite story (note: the wiggler always wins). Take the movie Just Friends, for example, a personal favourite of mine because Anna Faris's character, pop star Samantha James, basically steals the show for being bonkers.

Anyway, Ryan Reynolds has a lifelong obsession with his childhood bestie, Amy Smart, whom he eventually wins over by morphing from obese, badly-braced nerd to incredibly hot, successful music producer. Oh and I'm 70pc confident that almost every Sandra Bullock movie circles around this idea also, but in reverse - Sandra starts out ugly (which in movie terms means she wears glasses), Sandra gets hot (which in movie terms means she takes off her glasses and exposes a kneecap), and she ends up in bed with Hugh Grant or some other character who never wore glasses. We're fed this type of stuff all the time, and I gobbled it all up like a hungry, emotionally-stunted pig.

One of my own secret-obsession-man-friend situations took up most of my 20s. It was exhausting, heartbreaking but also intoxicating. Let's face it, the human condition loves a bit of 'will they, won't they'. It gives us life; it's up there with blood transfusions and antibiotics and that scene in Real Housewives where someone accused Aviva of faking her asthma diagnosis, so she ripped off her prosthetic leg and threw it across the dinner table.

Being secretly in love with your fake best friend is akin to getting waterboarded by an adorable puppy. At times, it's complete torture, but you need to be around the puppy so you can absorb its very being, which you've decided is celestial, so you carry on, in the hope that the puppy has an epiphany and realises it should not be drowning you in a trough of Pedigree Chum, but instead should be drowning you in a trough of Pedigree soulmate.

I would hang around my man-friend-obsession at all times, negging him with OTT reminders that he was definitely not my type, trying to throw him off my scent, like I hadn't tried to swipe a lock of his baby hair from his mother's side cabinet. And then I'd bid him an overly casual good-night in a way that suggested he physically repulsed me, and spend the evening listening to My Heart Will Go On, smelling the bobble hat he'd once left in my house and trying to wear the face off his Facebook page. Sleep, eat, obsess, repeat.

Befriending your unrequited love should be considered a mental-health issue; it's like an exercise in psychological self-harm.

Sometimes it's just a physical thing - a chemical thing, unrequited lust; whatever hormone they're leaking, you're buying. Their very presence makes your entire body fizz up with adrenaline and excitement and longing. You crave them; it's like they're heroin and your genitals are the syringe.

But then there are the other friend-obsessions where you think you're actually in love with them and the 'love' is unrequited. That's a one-way street and there's nothing coming your way but tumbleweed and torment, because that's when the voice starts, that debilitating hum in your head, the little bastard lounging in the back of your mind on a beanbag, smoking a cigar, and whispering: 'If they don't want you, it's because you're not good enough for them. You're not quite sure about yourself yet, are you Joanne? No, so you should see yourself how they see you. That's exactly what you should do - allow them to determine your worth. Yes, him, that man who lives in his mother's basement, is a suspected gambling addict and thinks walnuts can cure cancer. Yes him, he is perfection. How he sees you is how you must see yourself. The only way to fix this internal rejection-fuelled turmoil is to win him over. Win his attention. Win this gift to womankind. Change his mind. Only then can you achieve inner peace.'

I didn't have the emotional skill-set to validate myself, so I would try to outsource that side of things to men. When it didn't work, all hell broke loose. It's all classic human behavior - I want them, so they increase in value, but they don't want me, so I decrease in value. Love is basically the FTSE 100 for humans. I don't wish to be challenged on this analogy.

Obsession is never subtle

Sometimes you pine for so long, you lose focus; you pursue an imagined relationship that you've invented. Who can ever live up to that? I've been the secret fancier and the secretly fancied. In my 20s, a particular man pursued me for years, years! I finally succumbed to his charming flirtations and three months in, he dumped me. Basically, he achieved his mission, so I lost value, and then he got to know me, so my FTSE plummeted through the floor, down through the Earth's crust and into the bowels of hell. What can I say? I'm an acquired taste.

Obsession is obvious. It always is. You think you've got a hold on things, you think your 'friend' doesn't know, but they always know. Your body will betray you: small signs like a flushed cheek, a diluted pupil, an ill-timed erection. I'll never forget seeing a photo of Brad Pitt staring at Angelina Jolie at some press junket for that movie they basically agreed to make so they could rub up against each other for 12 months and eventually leg it off together. He was entranced; his eyes were twirling in his head and pulsing like a heartbeat. It was incredible to watch. Like I said, obsession is never subtle.

Previous relationships have done nothing to change my mind. Like the boyfriend who has a particular female friend whom you've never met, but he assures you they're 'just good friends'. Your gut is squealing at you because you know it's more; you just know. But you want to believe him because love loves a lie; it means you can stay.

The whole situation stirs up your waters of intuition so violently that you're practically vomiting silt on a daily basis, and when you eventually find her sexy selfies in his phone, and his love-eye replies, it echoes what you've always believed - agenda. There is always an agenda. It also confirms that you want your next boyfriend to be a eunuch with no Wi-Fi and a Nokia 500.

My mid-30s have come with changes; I'm evolving. Yes, I still occasionally come in pissed and eat my housemate's hummus, but now I'll admit to it rather than blame the wind. Growth. And during this spurt of personal development, I've acquired these wonderfully sound man friends. Real ones, no agenda, no sexual motivation, no stolen glances, no dilated pupils, no smelling bobble hats. We are legitimately 'just friends', and it's brilliant. They bring new angles to old problems, and I'm always surprised by how similar we actually are. As the weirdly accurate Thai saying goes: 'same, same, but different'.

Obviously, everyone's experiences are different and everyone gets different things from different friendships, but just out of interest, I asked one of my new man friends why he likes having female friends. "Because you actually listen. Men don't want to hear my problems; men are just waiting to talk again."

I asked a female friend is there anything she gets from her male mates that she doesn't get from her female mates, and she took a long, superior, woke breath and said: "Joanne, I collect personalities. Not genders." And then I regretted asking her because I remembered that she matured way faster than me (but she also thought Indiana Jones was based on a true story, so no-one's perfect).

Men have always felt different to me, because, well basically, I'm not one. I had the whole thing worked out: gay man equals friend; straight man equals agenda (mine or theirs). Outside of that incredibly reductive equation, I distrusted everyone's motivations, including my own, but now that's changed, and I think I know why.

Part of my mental ripening is I now know my sole purpose in life is not to try and be considered 'attractive'. I've moved on. Now I don't care if lads fancy me or not - it's nice and all that, but growing up, I thought it was all I was good for: try to be pretty, if they don't think you're pretty, you've got nothing; none of your other accomplishments mean anything unless you're fanciable.

I've finally shed all that. I now know I've more to offer the world. Listen, I'm not suggesting I live my life in a muumuu dress and a moustache, far from it. I lash money into my face and I've had so much laser I could be used as an Olympic beam, and I enjoy all that - actually, I love it - but now I've stopped waiting for men to tell me who I am, which is handy, because they really didn't. It's a lot to ask of someone, especially when they're just trying figure out their own shit.

Shaking off all that male validation stuff has freed me up to have male mates. I don't need or want anything from them except normal friend stuff like chats and drinks, and potentially their sperm if the fear of dying alone means I decide to grow my own baby for company. Like I say, normal stuff! I'm late to the male-mate game, but I'm here now. Yes, maturing can turn a breast into a forward-falling flesh-slinky, and it will widen a gut, but it will also widen an outlook, and for that, I am glad.

See joannemcnally.com Instagram: @joannemcnallycomedy; Twitter: @jomcnally

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QUEENSBURY  An eighth Warren County resident of a nursing home has died from COVID-19.

A total of 15 people have died from COVID-19 in the county. Five of the other deaths occurred at a hospital, one at an assisted living facility and another at a private residence.

Warren County Health Services also confirmed six additional COVID-19 cases among Warren County residents, which brings the total to 178. A total of 91 involve residents in nursing homes, 11 in assisted living facilities and 76 in the community.

Of the positive cases, 81 have fully recovered and 82 are still sick.

Four residents remain hospitalized  one more than on Friday.

Three of those people hospitalized are in critical condition and one is moderately ill, according to a news release.

Overall, seven COVID-19 patients were in critical condition in various facilities as of Saturday.

Four more people have recovered from the virus for a total of 107 patients in Warren County overall, county officials announced.

The countys joint testing site with Glens Falls Hospital will resume testing on Monday at the Warren County Municipal Center. It is open to residents of Warren, Washington, Saratoga, Essex and Hamilton counties from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on weekdays.

People need to contact a doctor or urgent care center to receive a referral.

More information can be found on the countys COVID-19 page at warrencountyny.gov/covidhub.

Washington County reported three more people tested positive for a total of 159 confirmed cases. Seventy-one people have recovered from the disease. Seven people are deceased.

Saratoga County picked up three more cases of COVID-19 for a total of 358.

The number of people who are hospitalized with the virus has decreased by one to 10, according to a news release issued on Saturday from the Saratoga County Department of Public Health Services.

The county on Saturday also announced the creation of a new data dashboard located on the Department of Public Health Services COVID-19 website at www.saratogacountyny.gov. It will contain a more specific breakdown of information including the number of cases and quarantines, hospitalizations and deaths, total positive cases by municipality and graphs on daily and total confirmed cases. The information will be updated each weekday.

As of Friday, 14 people had died from COVID-19 in the county. The highest number of positive cases is in Clifton Park with 77 followed by Halfmoon with 52; Saratoga Springs with 39; Wilton, 28; and Malta, 25.

Essex County had one new positive case for a total of 48. As of Saturday, 400 residents have been tested and 8% percent were positive.

Statewide, the number of deaths edged up a little bit to 299 from 289 the day before. Of that, 276 people died in hospitals and 23 in nursing homes. The number of new hospitalizations was down from 954 to 831.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo also announced that the state is distributing $25 million in aid to support food banks. The Capital Region and Hudson Valley will see about $4.4 million of that funding.

In addition, Cuomo cited results from the antibody testing program showing that 12.3% of people tested for COVID-19 antibodies, showing whether a person was previously infected with the coronavirus or not. The state tested 15,000 people at grocery stores and community centers across the state. Men were more likely to have antibodies  13.1% compared with 11.5% for women.

Broken down by region, New York City had the most percentage of people with antibodies at nearly 20%. The Capital District had 2.2%, which was the third lowest of 11 regions. Central New York had 1.9% and the North Country was at 1.2%.

The state also is going to distributed over 7 million cloth masks to homeless shelters, farm workers, nursing homes, faith-based organizations and food banks.

Reach Michael Goot at 518-742-3320 or mgoot@poststar.com and follow his blog poststar.com/blogs/michael_goot/.

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The COVID-19 pandemic, along with Saudi Arabia and Russia's war for global market share dominance, has brought much of the oil industry to its knees. We've already seen some companies go bankrupt just a couple of months into the downturn, and more bankruptcies are on the way as the supply-and-demand imbalance gets even worse with each passing day. That makes much of the oil patch a minefield for investors to avoid.

But even within this minefield there are a core group of well-capitalized and diversified companies that have both the operations and balance sheet strength to navigate the epic downturn. Four Motley Fool energy experts contributed a top oil stock that looks worth buying now: French energy giant Total SA (NYSE:TTE), refining and midstream leader Phillips 66 (NYSE:PSX), dominant and well-built oil and gas giant ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP), and midstream stalwart Magellan Midstream Partners (NYSE:MMP). Keep reading to learn what sets these four oil stocks apart from most of the rest of the industry right now.

Integrated model and low North American exposure

Tyler Crowe (Total SA): There are three appealing qualities for Total today compared to most other companies in the oil and gas industry:

Its integrated business model means it can generate some revenue from downstream operations and other venues as its exploration and production business suffers.

It has low exposure to North American oil production where prices are even worse than the international market.

It has lots of cash on the books and has already eliminated $5 billion in cash expenses for the year.

Oil prices are so low these days that no company can produce oil and profits simultaneously. That is even worse in North America, where spot prices for certain crudes such as West Texas Intermediate and Western Canadian Select are priced much lower than the international benchmark, Brent. Of the oil majors, Total has the least exposure to North America, so its price realizations will likely be better than most.

Also, with a highly profitable refining and retail segment as well as a significant contribution from its integrated gas, renewables, and power segments, Total's chances of avoiding taking on significant debt to get through this are much lower than others in this industry.

This isn't to say that Total will come out of this downturn unscathed, but the damage will likely be lower than others and could make it one of the better bets on the oil and gas industry today.

Big enough, strong enough

John Bromels (Phillips 66): Refiners are somewhat insulated from low crude oil prices because they make their money off the "crack spread" -- the difference between the cost of crude oil and the selling prices of the refined products and petrochemicals made from it. Unfortunately, there's a lack of demand for refined products like gasoline right now, and that has sent shares of refiner and marketer Phillips 66 down 33.8%.

With a glut of crude oil on the market in the U.S. and limited storage, oil prices are likely to stay low even after drivers start returning to the roads, increasing demand for refined gasoline. That should drive higher margins at Phillips 66's refineries while low gas prices simultaneously increase traffic to its filling stations. Phillips 66's size, strong balance sheet, and $1.6 billion cash hoard should ensure it can survive until that point.

The oil industry is a dangerous place these days, but Phillips 66 is one of the surest bets in the sector.

Built for times like these

Matt DiLallo (ConocoPhillips): ConocoPhillips learned some valuable lessons during the last oil market downturn, which are paying dividends this time around. That experience had the oil giant put a priority on increasing its flexibility -- both operationally and financially -- so that it can quickly adjust to changes in market conditions.

One of the most important things it did was to build a fortresslike balance sheet. ConocoPhillips entered this currently turbulent period with the second-lowest leverage ratio in its peer group and a mountain of cash on its balance sheet. That has given it the financial flexibility to maintain its dividend. Meanwhile, it has focused on operating assets that not only boast some of the lowest supply costs in the sector but are flexible enough that it can adjust on the fly. That's allowed it to quickly reduce spending and production so that it can save that low-cost oil for better market conditions.

ConocoPhillips' flexibility will also allow it to move quickly when market conditions improve. It can turn wells back on and ramp up its drilling program. On top of that, it could potentially take advantage of opportunities that arise to bolster its portfolio via acquisition. This unparalleled flexibility puts it in an elite class.

A well-structured infrastructure giant

Jason Hall (Magellan Midstream): If independent oil producers are the most at-risk from the oil crash, then top midstream companies are probably the safest. In this segment, Magellan is one of the very best. Magellan owns pipelines and storage facilities that are critical in the logistics of crude oil and refined products.

On one hand, now isn't a great time to be in the business of moving crude oil or refined products in North America. There is an overabundance of crude oil, but with gasoline demand at Vietnam War-era levels right now, Magellan's cash flows will feel a pinch. A protracted downturn would have a bigger impact on its bottom line than many expect, forcing the giant to tap more debt for cash to fund its distribution, or even back down from its plan to keep paying investors through the downturn. That's the downside case.

The upside from here is that, while oil production will be the last segment to benefit from a recovery of economic activity, supplying refined products should prove one of the first. That's excellent news for Magellan, which counts on the refined products business for the majority of its operating profits.

Between the diversity in its business that should prove helpful in weathering the storm and a balance sheet that gives it plenty of room to navigate the downturn and continue paying a dividend yield that's above 10% right now, Magellan Midstream looks buy-worthy today.
Given the current Covid-19 crisis, relatives, neighbours and friends of those who have died are reminded of the current Government advice regarding indoor and outdoor mass gatherings. Condolences and messages of sympathy can be conveyed online.

The death has occurred of Richard Dirk Kuipers late of Killaloe / Kildimo. Peacefully, at the Lake's Nursing Home, Killaloe. Greatly missed by his adored wife Jeannie and loving children Andrew and Lizzie. Deeply regretted by his sister Martine, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, RAF colleagues, students and extended family in Holland. Due to the Government restrictions on Covid-19 and the HSE guidelines on public gatherings Richard's funeral will be private. May he rest in peace.

The death has occurred of Mary O'Rourke (nee Hourigan) late of Ballynahown, Croom. On May 2, 2020, peacefully at UHL. Beloved wife of the late Peter and dear mother of the late PJ. Very deeply regretted by her sorrowing son Dave, daughters-in-law Irene and Liz, grandchild Sean, sister Carmel, brothers David, Tom and Patrick, sisters-in-law Kathleen and Patricia, nephews, nieces, relatives, kind neighbours and her many friends. Remains arriving for 12 noon private family funeral Mass on Monday in St Marys Church, Croom, with burial afterwards in Reilig Mhuire Croom. Mass will be relayed live on www.croomparish.ie/webcam. Memorial Mass for Mary will be celebrated later. May she rest in peace.

The death has occurred of Joe Coffey late of Oakland Drive, Greystones. Late of Irish Cement). May 3, 2020, peacefully, at Nenagh General Hospital. Beloved husband of the late Martha. Dearly loved father of John, Colin, Sharon, Joseph and the late Caroline. Sadly missed by his son-in-law Tom, daughters-in-law Maria and Linda, grandchildren, nephews, nieces, extended family and friends.

In line with best practice taken from government advice regarding public gatherings, a private funeral will take place. May he rest in peace.

The death has occurred of Sr Angela (Kathleen) Hanly late of.Convent of the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, Drumcondra, Dublin and formerly of Barringtons Bridge, Lisnagry. On May 1 2020, in her 96th year. Sadly missed by her religious community, her brothers Michael and Noel (Melbourne), her sisters in law Lelia and Mary (Melbourne), her nieces, nephews, grandnieces, grandnephews, relatives and friends. In accordance with current guidelines a private burial will take place in Dublin on Wednesday next. It is intended to have a requiem Mass at a future date when restrictions are lifted. May she rest in peace.




A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Femi Fani-Kayode, has condemned the Group Managing Director of Access Bank, Herbert Wigwe, for sacking some his workers.

Naija News reports that the bank had announced plans to sack its workers as a result of the negative impact of the Coronavirus outbreak.

Herbert Wigwe had said that apart from the mass sacking, which would affect about 75 per cent of the banks workforce, he would take the lead in having the largest pay cut of 40 per cent.

I will be the first to take the hit and Im gonna take the largest pay cut, which would be as much as 40 per cent, he said.

It was gathered that many of the banks staff received their sack letters via email on Thursday.

Reacting on Sunday in a post on his Twitter page, Fani-Kayode accused the Bank GMD of betraying his workers to appease President Muhammadu Buhari.

He recalled that Access Bank had donated N1 Billion to help the Federal Government combat Coronavirus (COVID-19).

Fani-Kayode wrote: You gave 1 Billion Naira to the FG to fight Covid 19 and the next day you sacked hundreds of your loyal staff.

You betrayed your workers and turned your back on them when they needed you most because you were more interested in your profits and appeasing Buhari. Access Bank SHAME ON U!

Worse still you shut down 340 of your branches! With a stroke of the pen you have thrown thousands of people into unemployment at a time when they are already going through hell because of the lockdown and you have destroyed many families. Herbert Wigwe, how do you sleep at night?

You gave 1 Billion Naira to the FG to fight Covid 19 & the next day you sacked hundreds of your loyal staff. You betrayed your workers & turned your back on them when they needed you most because you were more interested in ur profits &appeasing Buhari. @myaccessbank SHAME ON U!  Femi Fani-Kayode (@realFFK) May 3, 2020

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The United States Air Force has dispatched a fleet of B-1 bombers to Guam just weeks after ending its 16-year continuous bomber presence in the Indo-Pacific region.

Four bombers and approximately 200 Airman arrived at Anderson Air Force Base in Guam on May 1 to conduct training and strategic deterrence missions.

The B-1s, from Dyess Air Force Base in Texas, have been deployed as part of the US Pacific Air Forces bomber task force, a procedure designed to demonstrate operational unpredictability and keep Washingtons adversaries guessing about where US firepower will be and when.

Analysts say the tactic makes US forces harder to target, rather than keeping fleets stationed on specific bases as had been the case in the now-ended Continuous Bomber Presence in Guam.

Four bombers and approximately 200 Airman arrived at Anderson Air Force Base in Guam on May 1 to conduct training and strategic deterrence missions

The consistency and predictability of the [Guam] deployment raised serious operational vulnerabilities. A planner in China's military could have easily plotted ways of destroying the bombers due to their well-known presence, Timothy Heath, senior international defense researcher with the RAND Corp. think tank, told CNN.

The USAF pulled a fleet of B-52 bombers from Guam on April 17, just days after the aircrafts participated in a military might 'elephant walk' exercise aimed at China.

Ever since, the service has been increasing the presence of its B-1s in the Pacific, with several missions being flown over from bases in the US.

Last Thursday, a 32-hour flight was conducted by two B-1s from Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota to the South China Sea.

That mission followed an operation earlier in April where two Ellsworth B-1s conducted 30-hour round trip to Japan, where they carried out training exercises alongside Japanese F-15 and F-2 fighters, as well as US F-16 jets.

In announcing the B-1 deployment in Guam, Lt. Col. Frank Welton, PACAF's chief of operations force management, spoke of the US' ability to be able to carry more powerful weapons with the B-1s than the B-52s that left Guam a few weeks ago.

The USAF pulled a fleet of B-52 bombers from Guam (above) on April 17, just days after the aircrafts participated in a military might 'elephant walk' exercise aimed at China

The flight path shoing the B-52Hs elephant walk over China

The B-1 is able to carry a larger payload of Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles and a larger payload of 2,000-pound class Joint Direct Attack Munitions, Lt. Col. Frank Welton, Pacific Air Forces chief of operations force management, said in a statement.

Additionally, the B-1 is able to carry the [anti-ship cruise missile], giving it an advanced stand-off, counter-ship capability. It also has an advanced self-protection suite and is able to transit at supersonic speeds to enhance offensive and defensive capabilities.

The bombers precision guided missile is designed to strike enemy warships with a fragmentation and penetrating warhead, while keeping bombers at a low risk of a counterattack.

B-1s were last deployed to the Indo-Pacific region in 2017. The Air Force had used those Guam-based bomber missions to patrol over the East and South China Seas as a means of projecting U.S. airpower and resolve to North Korea, China and Russia.

The Air Force declined to specify how long the temporary deployment will last. Analysts say deployments of this kind can now be considered the new normal in the region.

We will stage bombers through Guam periodically, said Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the US Pacific Command's Joint Intelligence Center told CNN. Sometimes they will participate in exercises with our allies and partners, sometimes they will continue on to the Indian Ocean by way of the South China Sea.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 09:11:28|Editor: huaxia

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HARBIN, May 3 (Xinhua) -- No new confirmed COVID-19 cases were reported in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province on Saturday, the provincial health commission said Sunday.

By Saturday, the province had reported a total of 558 locally-transmitted confirmed COVID-19 cases and 386 imported cases.

Also by Saturday, 484 locally-transmitted COVID-19 patients as well as 136 imported cases had been discharged from hospital after recovery.

A total of 19,820 close contacts in the province had been tracked as of the end of Saturday, 2,268 of whom were still under medical observation.

By Saturday, the province had a total of 25 domestically-transmitted and seven imported asymptomatic cases, according to the commission. Enditem
BEIJING, May 2 (Xinhua) -- A signed Chinese article slammed a recent report released by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), urging it to stop using religious matters to smear China.

The USCIRF never runs short of political bias against China and has published one report after another to smear China's religious policies over the years, said the article.

The report, based on lies and prejudice, ignored the basic fact that the Chinese government protects its citizens' freedom of religious belief in accordance with the law, said the article.

China currently has nearly 200 million religious believers, more than 380,000 clerical personnel, some 5,500 religious organizations, 144,000 venues for religious activities registered according to law, and 92 religious institutes, according to the article.

The legitimate rights and interests of religious circles in China are safeguarded, and religious activities of believers are protected by law and carried out in a normal and orderly manner in the country, the article noted.

"China, like other countries, will never allow anyone to engage in criminal activities, spread religious extremism and carry out violent terrorist activities under the pretense of religion," it said, adding that the report maliciously smeared and attacked the Chinese government's policies of governing Xinjiang and Tibet.

For more than two millennia, various religions in China have integrated with the inclusive cultural tradition of the Chinese nation, forming a harmonious coexistence of different religions, said the article.

Today, China's religious groups have established friendly relations with religious organizations from over 80 countries and actively participated in international conferences and activities involving different civilizations, beliefs and religions, it added.

"Only by being objective, rational, inclusive and cooperative can we prevail over the paranoid, fanatical, zero-sum and confrontational mentality, thus contributing to the development of China-U.S. relations," the article said.
Doris Joyce (Snow) Collins Seely was born January 17, 1931 in a little house on Front Street in Anaconda, MT. Her parents were Harold and Violet (Tarkalson) Snow.

She was raised on ACM Ranches, which her father managed during WWII and they soon welcomed a brother, Lee. Doris attended schools in Anaconda and Opportunity, MT and later earned a GED.

A gentle soul, Doris who could fish with her bare hands, coax wild animals close to her or get birds to come sit on her hand. Doris loved camping, fishing and swimming.

Doris married Dennis Collins and they moved to Puerto Rico and Louisiana when Dennis was stationed there during the Korean War. After they returned to Montana, Doris welcomed her daughter, Kathleen.

Doris was a natural mom, even though Kathleen had special needs. Doris was one to have her join in, hauling her up mountains, teaching her to fish and watch nature, and trying every craft that struck their fancy.

Doris and Kathleen moved to Helena where Kathleen attended college, and Doris worked at Galen State Hospital and Warm Springs. Doris was a tireless worker and took great pride in being able to work with all kinds of people.

Doris was gifted in creativity, making patterns and sewing dolls for Christmas presents. She became a Girl Scout leader and active sponsor when Kathleen joined Jobs Daughters. About the time she retired, Doris was diagnosed with Alzheimers disease. She moved back to Helena where she lived with Kathy. They continued to take care of each other until Doris went to live in assisted living. Alzheimers is a nasty disease that steals peoples sense of humor and joy, slowly losing all the gifts so well developed through life.

Doris was a joyful person and a great MOM to everybody who needed one. She is proceeded in death by an infant brother, her parents Harold and Violet Snow, her first husband Dennis Collins, and Ray Seely, her second husband.

A visitation for family and friends will be Tuesday, May 5th from 2:00 until 6:00 p.m. at Anderson Stevenson Wilke Funeral Home, 3750 N. Montana Avenue, Helena, MT 59602. A graveside service will be held on Wednesday, May 6th at 2:00 p.m. at Sunset Cemetery, 5001 Crackerville Road, Anaconda, MT 59711. A memorial celebration where we can visit, talk and eat up close will be held after this Corona 19 mess has resolved.
A top commander of Lashkar-e Taiba was killed in the operation in Jammu and Kashmirs Handwara, inspector general of police Vijay Kumar said on Sunday.

The Lashkar operative was identified as Haider from Pakistan by news agency ANI.

The army had said earlier in the day that two terrorists were gunned down in the encounter, which ensued between terrorists and security forces at Changimullah area of Handwara on Saturday.

A colonel and four other security force personnel also died in the Handwara encounter on Saturday after an hours-long gun battle with the terrorists who were holding civilian hostages.

Also read | Hostages, gunfight, assault teams: How the Handwara encounter ensued

The personnel killed in action are Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, the commanding officer of the armys 21 Rashtriya Rifles battalion, Major Anuj Sood, Naik Rajesh Kumar and Lance Naik Dinesh Singh and sub-inspector Shakeel Qazi of the Jammu and Kashmir police.

WATCH | Handwara encounter: Army Colonel among 5 martyred, 2 terrorists gunned down

The joint operation by the army and police was launched on Saturday afternoon to rescue the civilians who had been taken hostage by the terrorists inside a house.

In a statement issued on Sunday, the army said the joint operation was launched on the basis of intelligence that terrorists were holding civilian hostages at Changimulla.

A team comprising five army and J&K Police personnel entered the target area occupied by the terrorists to evacuate the civilians. The team entered the target area and successfully extricated the civilians, the statement said.

Also read: Col killed in Handwara; a two time gallantry awardee for counter-terrorist operations

However, during the process, the team was subjected to heavy volume of fire by the terrorists. In the ensuing firefight, two terrorists were eliminated and the team of five comprising two army officers, two soldiers and one police sub-inspector attained martyrdom, it added.
An Indian Air Force helicopter



showered flower petals at two hospitals in Bhopal on Sunday as a mark of gratitude towards health workers who are at the forefront of the battle against coronavirus.

The health staff members of the two hospitals, who were wearing the personal protecting equipment (PPE), cheered and clapped while looking at the aircraft in the sky.

The MI17 helicopter of the IAF dropped petals at the government-run All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and the private Chirayu Hospital in the Madhya Pradesh capital between 10 am and 10.30 am, an official said.

Wing Commander Abhishek Yadav, who was the co- ordinating officer for the exercise, said, "Usually people thank the armed forces, but this time we paid our gratitude to people at the forefront of the battle against COVID-19."



He said the petal showering activity was accomplished under the guidance of Group Captain Shreepath Tokekar.

"Four quintals of sanitised flowers were dropped in the exercise," he added.

On the occasion, an Army band played musical tunes on the Chirayu Hospital campus.

Police and revenue officials in Bhopal also clapped to thank the frontline health workers.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
For a 12-year-old juvenile whose parents couldnt wait to see grow into a vibrant young woman in pursuit of big dreams, Juliet Daly di...





For a 12-year-old juvenile whose parents couldnt wait to see grow into a vibrant young woman in pursuit of big dreams, Juliet Daly didnt think that what had started out as mere stomach ache would later leave her bedridden and gasping for breath.





The healthy little girl nearly died after COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, seemed to trigger multiple organ failure and a rare heart condition that caused her heart to stop for two minutes.





I died for two minutes, Juliet told Good Morning America on Wednesday while recounting how her near-death journey began three weeks ago when she was airlifted to Ochsner Medical Center (OMC) in New Orleans with heart failure.





My stomach would not stop hurting. I didnt want to move. I didnt want to live. I wanted for it all to stop.





It was gathered that she spent four days unconscious on a ventilator at the intensive care unit (ICU) after Jake Kleinmahon, a pediatric cardiologist at OMC, who treated Juliet, attributed her rare heart condition to an inflammation which was triggered by COVID-19.





Before she tested for COVID-19, the little girl had complained about severe abdominal pain  which was not a typical symptom of other COVID-19 patients such as a fever, cough or breathing difficulties.





Jennifer Daly, Juliets mother, had also recounted driving home from the New Orleans hospital where her daughter was rushed to, saying shes the sweetest girl in the whole world. And she does not deserve this. I was praying to God  just please, please help, help me!





After they put the breathing tube down her throat, her heart stopped, Jennifer said.





They had to do two minutes of CPR on her. At that point, my whole world just crumbled.





Juliets mother also warned other parents that the virus can be fatal to some children.





I think its really important to get the message out. I mean we nearly missed it, she said.





If we hadnt taken her to the hospital on time, I dont think things wouldve turned out okay.





The young girl was discharged on April 15, after her heart function had become normal, although her doctor expressed fears that she likely has a little trauma to her heart that should decrease over time.





Juliet came in as one of the sickest children weve taken care of with COVID-19. The top chamber of her heart was not working correctly with the bottom chamber. She was developing multisystem organ failure, said Kleinmahon.





COVID-19 can infect the heart and it can cause the cells in the heart to be unhappy and actually start to die.




Islamabad, May 3 : Parents of slain American journalist Daniel Pearl have approached the Pakistan Supreme Court against the Sindh High Courts (SHC) verdict acquitting and releasing the prime accused in their sons murder case 18 years ago, a media report said.

Two criminal petitions have been filed by renowned lawyer Faisal Siddiqi on behalf of the parents, Ruth and Judie Pearl, against the acquittal and release of the four accused, including the main accused, British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, The Express Tribune reported.

"The decision by the Sindh High Court to free the men in the murder of Daniel Pearl is a complete miscarriage of justice. It is a defining case for the Pakistani state and its judicial system, involving freedom of the press, the sanctity of every life, freedom from terror and the manifestation of a welcoming and safe Pakistan to the world. Rarely has any court case embodied and risked such fundamental values," the lawyer said.

The petition states that the SHC has failed to note that this was a brutal murder as a result of international terrorism and the principle of the standard of proof, as well as the benefit of doubt in cases of international terrorism, has to be applied keeping in the context that the nature and type of evidence available in such terrorism cases cannot be equated with cases involving non-terrorism crimes.

It further argues that the SHC erred in holding that no evidence has been brought on record by the prosecution to link any of the accused persons to the murder of Pearl.

The petition said that the SHC further erred in failing to take into consideration that Ahmad Omer Sheikh has a history of involvement in international terrorism.

Siddiqi further added in the petition submitted that the provincial high court's judgment, has itself held that the present case was a "very sensitive case where a foreign journalist was murdered in the most brutal circumstances that would have spread terror amongst other foreigners in Pakistan and the journalist community as a whole", The Express Tribune reported.

"Therefore, in light of its own finding and the strong incriminating evidence establishing the case for kidnapping for ransom of the deceased person, Sindh High Court has erred in giving the aforementioned findings," said the petition submitted in the apex court.

The SHC had last month acquitted the four men acquitted in Pearl's 2002 kidnapping and beheading.

Pearl was South Asia bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal when he was abducted in Karachi in January 2002 while researching a story about religious extremism.

A graphic video showing his decapitation was delivered to the US consulate nearly a month later.
The wait going to over, as domestic and international technology businesses are expected to soon benefit from new supporting policies, breathing new life into the burgeoning tech market.

Vietnams digital transformation is vital for socio-economic success

The Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) has just announced that it is working on a number of solutions to further promote digital technology businesses, develop tech products in e-commerce and e-payment, and boost IT applications in socio-economic development.

According to a VIR source, the new policies may focus on tax, fees, and favourable market access to certain areas. As expected, the specific solutions will be announced at the prime ministers largest-ever dialogue with the business community in late April or early May.

Alongside these strategies, golden opportunities for domestic and multinational corporations (MNCs) are on the way as the country issued a number of legal foundations in April as a means of opening up the market.

On the topic of national data sharing, the government enacted Decree No.47/2020/ND-CP dated April 9 on management, connectivity, and sharing of digital data of state organs. Taking effect from May 25, organisations, businesses, and individuals can access certain open information in line with prevailing rules.

Also in April, Vietnam, for the first time, issued a set of technical criteria on cloud computing. Based on these, state organs can assess and select solutions, or lease cloud computing services to serve the development of e-government and e-authority.

Vietnam is making great progress in promoting digital transformation at the government level since the launch of an e-government portal last December.

The cloud computing platform will be a new generation telecommunications infrastructure in the next five or 10 years, said a MIC official. The announcement of a set of technical criteria is more meaningful in this period, as state organs and Vietnamese businesses are heading towards digital transformation. This is the orientation for development of cloud computing for e-government and e-authority towards a digital government, digital economy, and digital society.

The sharing of digital data and the cloud computing platform are being viewed with interest by domestic and international technology firms in Vietnam. World-leading brands such as Amazon, Microsoft, and others are expanding rapidly in the country.

There is more good news for both international and domestic technology enterprises, as the MIC and the Government Office are finalising a national digital transformation programme and will submit it to the government for issuance this month, thus giving a big push in digital transformation across sectors.

In the draft of the National Digital Transformation Programme by 2025, with a vision towards 2030, Vietnam will become a digital country, pioneering in testing new technologies and models; renovating fundamentally and comprehensively the management and administrative activities of the government, production and business activities of enterprises, and peoples living and working routines; and developing a safe and humane digital environment.

These would be a new driving force for technology firms to take the next step with their plans. So far, domestic telecommunications giants like FPT, Viettel, and VNPT along with MNCs such as AWS, Qualcomm, Lenovo, Keysight Technologies, and VMware Vietnam have announced their ambitious plans for the country.

In a nation where small- and medium-sized enterprises make up over 90 per cent of the market, this represents a positive potential growth area. AWS in particular believes it can play a big part in this growth.

On the 5G front, we already mentioned that we have 22 regions, and we are building edge locations and points of presence around the world, Conor McNamara, managing director of Amazon Web Services Southeast Asia, told VIR. Over time well bring these operations to Vietnam. That will allow deployment of AWS infrastructure in various data centres.

With the coming launch of Wavelength, continued McNamara, Coupled with the high consumption level of Vietnamese consumers and the digital savvy nature of the country, Vietnam certainly is an area of focus for us and we expect that it will happen over the years to come.

Similarly, Keysight Technologies has partnered with technology giants such as Qualcomm, NVIDIA, and others to introduce new products and services to accelerate digital transformation.

Nguyen Van Giap - Manager, Lenovo Vietnam Vietnam now sees Industry 4.0 as a key enabler for digital transformation, taking the country to a digital economy for further development. Vietnam is a market full of potential for IT companies like us because of its stable economic growth and the governments vision towards technology applications to drive future economic growth. We recognise that our intelligent transformation strategy is aligned with Vietnams economic development, making it one of the key markets in the Asia-Pacific region for us to focus on. With our Smarter Technology For All vision, we are continuing to pursue this strategy with a focus on smart Internet of Things, smart infrastructure, and smart verticals, where we see our greatest opportunity for future growth and industry leadership. In addition, education transformation is a priority for Lenovo in Vietnam. The Vietnamese government is working on Education 4.0, where smart classrooms and distance learning become trends for increasing education quality and efficiency, demanding that educators adapt themselves to meet new requirements. We will continue to explore new opportunities and integrate them deeply with vertical industries and the Lenovo ecosystem. This is enabled by our leading innovation strength with our commitment to invest $1.2 billion for AI research and development over the period until 2023. Pham Viet Thang - Country manager, VMware Vietnam Vietnam is on track to be a technology powerhouse in the region and the growing innovation ecosystem here will continue to drive the countrys fast-growing digital economy. As a global leader in the modern technology space, we provide Vietnamese enterprises with innovations that enable them to modernise their applications and infrastructure, giving them the freedom to deliver apps to any cloud and any device. By empowering organisations with next-generation technologies to build, run, and also manage their modern applications in a secure environment, we strive to help businesses become more cloud-ready so they can stay ahead of their rapidly changing customer demands. VMware is committed to Vietnams innovation ecosystem; we are well positioned to help businesses here succeed along each step of their digital transformation journey. The strong and secure partnerships that we have forged across the ecosystem gives enterprises in Vietnam and beyond the access to next-generation technologies, while also providing a robust digital foundation that is critical in meeting modern technology demands such as the cloud, intrinsic security, intelligent networks, and also digitalised workspaces. Nam Thieu - Country manager, Qualcomm Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia Qualcomm and Keysight Technologies are open to collaborate with, and make our technologies accessible to Vietnamese companies and other stakeholders who plan to deploy small cells in the country as part of their respective 5G infrastructure development plans. This is part of our commitment to help Vietnam achieve its goal of becoming one of the first countries in the region, if not the world, to commercially launch 5G. Specifically, Qualcomm is working with Vietnamese carriers to support their 5G rollout plan, covering network design, trial, testing, and optimisation which includes 5G small cell deployment. Also, Qualcomm is supporting Vietnamese manufacturers in building Made-in-Vietnam 5G small cell products by providing reference design, chipset platforms, software, and engineering customer support. The target markets are wireless operators rolling out 5G networks. 5G small cell deployment will be key to ensure network quality and coverage, especially for indoor areas. Another key target market is enterprises deploying 5G private networks for applications such as smart factories, autonomous driving, and remote healthcare, thanks to the ultra-low latency and very high reliability of 5G. VIR

Bich Thuy

Passion for applied technology creates start-up When he was a student, Le Anh Tien had a passion for scientific applications. He tried to create products in various fields, from economics and the environment to education.
IAF chopper crash: Probe report likely to be submitted to Air headquarters next week

Defence forces shower petals, play music to honour corona warriors

India

oi-Madhuri Adnal

New Delhi, May 03: Chopper of the Indian Air Force showers flower petals on the Police War Memorial in Delhi in order to express gratitude and appreciation towards the police officials.

It is to be noted that these corona warriors, during this time of crisis, are risking their own lives to protect everyone else.

IAF helicopter showers flower petals to honour COVID-19 warriors in Kerala capitals

Flower petals were also showered by an Indian Air Force helicopter on two hospitals in honour of the front-lineworkers fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

At around 10 am, the Sarang helicopter of the IAF flew past the Government Medical College Hospital and the General Hospital here as part the nation-wide initiative by the armed forces to honour doctors, paramedics, sanitation staff and other front-line workers battling coronavirus. It hovered over a statue of 'motherand child' at the medical college hospital and moved towards the main entrance showering petals.

The lightweight chopper flew past over the hospital once again and left for the General Hospital to honour the COVID-19 warriors there.

A Defence release said the "Indian Coast Guard will honour the front-line workers by illuminating the Coast Guard Ships (Dress Overall) at Shangumugom Area on May 2 and 3 from 6.15 p.m to 8.30 p.m."

IAF showers petals, conducts fly-past over Guj Assembly

Aircraft of the Indian Air Force showered petals on hospitals in Ahmedabad and conducted a fly-past over the city and the Gujarat Assembly complex in Gandhinagar to thank healthcare workers and others involved in the fight against COVID-19 pandemic.

An IAF helicopter showered petals on the civil hospital and the civic-run Sardar Vallabhbhai Hospital in Ahmedabad, where coronavirus positive patients are being treated, to express gratitude towards those engaged in the battle against the deadly disease.

Personnel of the IAF band also arrived at the two hospitals and played the tune of "Saare Jahaan Se Achcha, Hindustan Hamara", a defence release said. Besides, the IAF's Sukhoi fighter jets (SU-30/3 fighter aircraft) carried out a fly-past over Ahmedabad city and the Legislative Assembly building in Gandhinagar in a formation at a low level, it said.

This was part of the nationwide thanksgiving exercise by the armed forces to honour doctors, paramedics, sanitation staff and other frontline workers battling COVID-19 across the country.

IAF chopper showers flowers on 'corona warriors' in Bhopal

An Indian Air Force helicopter showered flower petals at two hospitals in Bhopal on Sunday as a mark of gratitude towards health workers who are at the forefront of the battle against coronavirus.

The health staff members of the two hospitals, who were wearing the personal protecting equipment (PPE), cheered and clapped while looking at the aircraft in the sky.

The MI17 helicopter of the IAF dropped petals at the government-run All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and the private Chirayu Hospital in the Madhya Pradesh capital between 10 am and 10.30 am, an official said.

The Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat had earlier on Friday stated that the armed forces will carry out special operations across the country on May 3 to express gratitude to the "corona warriors" who have been working at the frontlines in the fight against the pandemic.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also welcomed the announcement by CDS Rawat to have the three defence services show solidarity with 'corona warriors'.
For weeks the Trump re-election effort has diligently cut, catalogued and pushed out viral videos of every verbal stumble Joe Biden makes in interviews, relentlessly pushing the idea that the presumptive Democratic nominee is mentally unfit for the presidency.

There is something missing, Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said last week in a campaign broadcast. I feel bad for him. I wish his wife would pull him out of this.

But behind the scenes, the offensive has become a point of contention among some of Donald Trumps closest advisers, who have spent weeks debating without resolution the best message and strategy to accomplish the Trump campaigns central goal of tarnishing the Biden brand as poll numbers continue to show a rocky road to re-election for the president.

Several political advisers, including White House senior aide Kellyanne Conway, have warned his allies against relentlessly mocking the 77-year-old Bidens mental acuity because the president has already lost ground with senior citizens, people familiar with the matter said.

Senior Democratic and Republican strategists, in private conversations, are in full agreement about the stakes of the discussions now taking place at the White House and in campaign conference calls. If Trump and his political machine dont find a way to drive up Bidens unpopularity with voters, they argue, the president will have little shot at winning a second term.

We have to introduce people to a different Joe Biden, a Trump campaign adviser said. One of the reasons we won in 2016 is because so many people hated Hillary Clinton. Im not sure people hate Biden that much.

Republicans need the election to be a choice between Biden and Trump and not a referendum on the presidents performance and rhetoric in office, according to Republican and Democratic strategists. On this score, Democrats said they are  for the moment  more bullish on Bidens prospects than they expected to be just a few months ago.

The debate over when and how to launch a focused and sustained attack on Biden with paid advertising has yet to be resolved inside the presidents campaign, according to multiple sources.

There are advisers telling him to wait until the convention. Other people saying go at it now, said one Trump campaign adviser, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private deliberations. It is not decided.

Adding to the dilemma for the presidents campaign is that the coronavirus pandemic has focused the spotlight brightly on the president and his controversial handling of the outbreak while Biden maintains a relatively low profile, doing interviews and virtual campaign events from a basement office at his home in Delaware.

The pandemic has delayed a widely expected anti-Biden advertising offensive by the vastly wealthier Trump campaign, allowing Democratic super PACs to outspend Republicans in key swing states over the past month. Bidens approval ratings are also far stronger than those of the last Democratic nominee, Clinton, at this point in 2016.

The presidential candidate has publicly denied sexual assault allegations made by former aide Tara Reade (MSNBC)

Our expectation was always that Trump would go on the offence early and wed have to scramble to defend against his attacks, said Josh Schwerin, an adviser to Priorities USA, a super PAC supporting Biden. The reality has been weve been able to run millions of dollars of thoroughly researched and tested ads, largely unanswered, and Trumps numbers in these states have been eroding badly.

Trump decided last month to delay a decision by his campaign leadership to run ads attacking Bidens policy toward China after multiple advisers urged him to focus on selling his leadership as president during the pandemic first. As a result, the campaign has said it will spend more than $1m (799,000) over the next week on advertising across the country promoting Trumps pandemic response, a move that Democrats have dismissed as a cosmetic move to please the president, who is consumed by what he watches on cable television.

Parscale has argued repeatedly that getting Bidens unfavourable numbers up is key to winning the election, according to people who have heard his comments.

He has told other campaign advisers that positive ads do not do as much for the presidents political fortunes as negative ads against Biden, and that is why he wants to focus on campaign ads that are anti-Biden, even as some advisers would prefer a different approach.

You cant let Biden hide in the shadows, Parscale has told surrogates, according to a person with direct knowledge of his comments.

Parscale has been among the most aggressive advocates for going after Biden, but his standing has become shaky at times with the president, four Trump advisers said.

Trumps team hopes to target Biden, particularly over China once the pandemic wanes, along with trade deals and some of the more liberal policy positions he committed to during the Democratic debates, such as health care for undocumented immigrants. The Trump campaign has several ads about China ready to go.

A recent Republican National Committee poll found that 51 per cent of voters in 17 swing states  such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin  blame China the most for the coronavirus, according to a person briefed on the results. Some 24 per cent blame Trump the most.

The polling on China is so strong that the major Trump super PAC, America First Action, has launched a $10m (7.9m) campaign casting Biden as weak on handling the US rival. The group purchased the Web address BeijingBiden.com in 2019, long before the pandemic.

It is not that there is one line of attack against Joe Biden. The most damaging thing against Joe Biden is that while he has high name ID, the depth of impression of him is weak, America First Action President Brian Walsh said. He is relatively a blank slate.

The America First spots have been matched by a similar investment in the same states from the pro-Biden super PAC American Bridge 21st Century, which has been running ads that cast Trump as caving to pressure from China.

Since November, weve defined Trump in key battlegrounds  outspending him on TV and radio in our target states, said Bradley Beychok, the groups president.

Some Trump allies and campaign surrogates are also focusing on the allegation from Tara Reade that Biden sexually assaulted her in the early 1990s  an accusation Biden denies  as well as the former vice presidents tendency to make verbal gaffes. But the latter two arguments are challenging given the presidents history of women accusing him of sexual assault, which includes Trump caught on tape bragging about grabbing womens genitals, and his tendency to also veer off-script into meandering, untruthful comments.

Trump complicated the matter further last week by repeatedly suggesting in public that Reades allegation may be false.

I would just say to Joe Biden, Just go out and fight it, Trump said Friday during an interview with conservative podcast host Dan Bongino.

A number of Trumps top political advisers said they are frustrated that Biden is hiding out in his basement, making fewer gaffes and public comments than they hoped, even if they anticipated this before the pandemic.

We always thought he was going to play Biden-seek once he got the nomination, leaving it to his ads and his handlers to shape his image. This has given him an ability to do that, Ronna McDaniel, chair of the RNC, said in an interview.

Trumps advisers have taken heart in some recent internal polls that show voters seeing the president as more energetic and more of a not your average politician than Biden. Some 20 per cent see Trump as not an average politician, according to a recent RNC poll, while 69 per cent see Biden as more of a normal politician.

Some Trump advisers said they are happy that Biden is basically being a pundit on TV instead of calling troops overseas, working with food banks or doing things that would get him more positive media coverage and draw a contrast with the president during the pandemic.

Conway has been one of the advisers arguing for a delay in attacking Biden on China and along with others has pushed for going after him as an establishment, insider politician.

Donald Trump speaks to reporters as he leaves the White House for Camp David during the coronavirus pandemic (Reuters)

To me, its just sequence. You have the president, you have the secretary of state, you have many Democrats angry with China about the virus, she said in an interview. You set that groundwork now. And then, later, you say Biden has spent four decades being compliant and complacent. Its about sequencing.

The Biden campaign dismissed the idea that the former vice president is vulnerable on the issue of China.

Kellyanne Conway should read the Trump campaigns own polling, which shows Joe Biden winning in a landslide after sounding the alarm about coronavirus early, publicly warning Donald Trump not to trust the Chinese government about containment, and calling for testing on the scale we need to overcome this outbreak, said Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the Biden campaign.

Working from the White House while many top campaign aides are at home during the pandemic, Conway has been dispatched to help the president improve his numbers among senior citizens, which have dropped in recent public and internal polling. She helped orchestrate an event at the White House on Thursday where Trump spoke with leaders of senior citizens groups.

Recent RNC polling showed that voters in the 17 swing states  a list that includes Arizona, Florida and North Carolina  see the two men as essentially equal when it comes to being weak or confused; 45 per cent saw Biden as more weak and confused, while 44 per cent saw Trump that way.

Voters view Trump as more of an outsider  69 per cent to 20 per cent  and better at getting things done and handling the economy. Some 46 per cent say Trump is in better health, while 37 per cent say Biden is in better health.

But voters say Biden better understands average people and is more honest, compassionate, calm and committed to making health care more affordable by double-digit margins, the poll showed. Voters also see Biden as more intelligent and competent, the poll showed.

Trump aides have been discussing attacks that range from going after Biden for not supporting the raid on Osama bin Laden to supporting taxpayer-funded health care for illegal immigrants and supporting the Green New Deal and its champion liberal freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., according to Republican officials. Other attacks would focus on Bidens support of the Iraq War or backing the NAFTA trade agreement, Trump advisers said.

Recommended Why this Colorado Democrat is supporting Joe Biden despite accusations

They are also looking to exploit divisions in the Democratic Party  from liberals who are sceptical of Bidens more centrist positions to moderates and independents who are sceptical of him promising more liberal positions. Trump advisers say they hope to unearth more contentious Senate votes and want to see his papers at the University of Delaware covering his 36 years as a senator.

In 2016, Trump and his campaign were successful in making Hillary Clinton unpopular, magnifying concerns that predated the campaign by focusing on her government emails, foreign entanglements, speaking fees and long career as a Washington insider.

Like Clinton, Biden has spent decades in Washington as a political insider, but Trump, who withstood a massive negative advertising onslaught in 2016, is now running for re-election as the president, potentially blunting the attack.

It will be interesting to see if it works, said Amanda Loveday, an adviser to the pro-Biden super PAC Unite the Country. Because it didnt work against Donald Trump. And I would argue it didnt work against Hillary Clinton because the people who didnt like her already didnt like her.

The Washington Post
Srinagar, May 3 (UNI) The Army on Sunday paid rich tribute to two soldiers, who were martyred when Pakistan violated ceasefire near the Line of Control (LOC) in frontier Kashmir district of Baramulla on Friday.



An Army official told UNI that Havildar Gokaran Singh and Naik Shankar Singh Merha, who on Saturday succumbed to injures incurred in Pakistani shelling along the LoC in Rampur sector on Friday, were on Sunday paid a befitting tribute by the Army in a solemn ceremony at BadamiBagh Cantonment.



'General Officer Commanding (GOC) of 15 Corps (Chinar Corps), Lt Gen BS Raju and all ranks paid homage to the soldiers on behalf of a proud nation,' he said.



The Army official said that the mortal remains of the martyrs would be flown for last rites to their native places, where they would be laid to rest with full military honours.



Defence Ministry spokesperson Colonel Rajesh Kalia told UNI that Pakistani troops resorted to unprovoked shelling along the LoC in Rampur sector at around 1530 hrs on Friday, resulting in injuries to three soldiers. The Army retaliated and the injured were rushed to Army's 92 base hospital in Srinagar. However, he said after battling for their lives for several hours, Havildar Singh and Naik Merha succumbed in the wee hours on Saturday.

UNI ABS SV 1407
O fsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman has suggested there could be a "mixed economy" of schooling as the coronavirus lockdown is eased.

Ms Spielman said a mixture of some children returning to the classroom while others continue to learn at home could be in place for some while.

Speaking on Sky's Sophy Ridge programme, she added that there is a "great deal of logic" in targeting younger children to return to the classroom.

She said "normality" for younger children is important, saying that the younger they are "the more they need routine".

"The younger the child, the more they need that simple structured routine where they understand what's happening," she said. "It's hard for them to go to school one day and then not for two weeks."

From parents point of view it is also logical for younger pupils to be in school, she added, as they tend to need more care and oversight.

Ms Spielman also said the loss of education to children will "contribute to widening gaps" and the longer children stay out of school the harder it will be to "pull that together".

Europe takes it's first steps out of Coronavirus lockdown 1 /25 Europe takes it's first steps out of Coronavirus lockdown People queue at a hardware store during a partial reopening after the Austrian government eased lockdown restrictions Reuters A worker checks the temperature of a customer at the entrance of a supermarket in Itay Reuters Customers hold flowers in front of a DIY store in Graz, Austria, after it re-opened on April 14, 2020, following a "shutdown" in a measure to limit the spread of the new coronavirus APA/AFP via Getty Images People wearing protective face masks and gloves walk in the streets as the Italian government allows the reopening of some shops while a nationwide lockdown continues following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Venice, Italy, Reuters People queue to enter a hardware store during a partial reopening after the Austrian government eased restrictions following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Eisenstadt, Austria Reuters Camilla Cocchi wears a face mask and gloves as she sorts out clothing in her children's clothes shop after it was allowed to reopen following lockdown measures to contain the spread of Covid-19, in Rome AP A man wearing a face mask shops in a hardware store during a partial reopening after the Austrian government eased restrictions following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Eisenstadt, Austria Reuters "Respect the 2 meters distance" banner is seen at a fish stand as the Italian government allows the reopening of some shops while a nationwide lockdown continues following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Venice, Italy, Reuters Customers wearing face masks push shopping carts in front of a DIY store in Vienna, Austria, after it re-opened on April 14, 2020, following a "shutdown" in a measure to limit the spread of the new coronavirus APA/AFP via Getty Images A worker checks the temperature of a customer at the entrance of a supermarket, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, in Turin, Italy Reuters Customers line up in front of a DIY store in Graz, Austria APA/AFP via Getty Images Gianfranco Mandas wears a face mask as he sorts out clothing in his children's clothes shop after it was allowed to opens following restriction measures to contain the spread of Covid-19, in Rome AP Customers wearing face masks push shopping carts in front of a DIY store in Vienna, Austria, after it re-opened on April 14, 2020, following a "shutdown" in a measure to limit the spread of the new coronavirus APA/AFP via Getty Images Customers queue at the Trastevere market, as new restrictions for open-air markets are implemented to prevent the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Rome, Italy, Reuters Customers wearing face masks push shopping carts in front of a DIY store in Vienna, Austria, after it re-opened on April 14, 2020, following a "shutdown" in a measure to limit the spread of the new coronavirus APA/AFP via Getty Images A man wears a protective face mask and gloves at the newsstand as the Italian government allows the reopening of some shops while a nationwide lockdown continues following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Venice, Italy Reuters People wearing face masks work in a hardware store during a partial reopening after the Austrian government eased restrictions following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Eisenstadt, Austria Reuters Customers queue at the Trastevere market, as new restrictions for open-air markets are implemented to prevent the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Rome, Italy Reuters A general view of the parking area of a hardware store during the partial reopening of shops after the Austrian government loosens its lockdown restrictions during the global coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Vienna Reuters

She said: "The harm to children is largely invisible. Some children are living in really difficult circumstances where they are not looked after well.

"Those children aren't visible to most parents at the moment - they are not out on the streets, they are not in school, they are not in the playgrounds.

"There's the longer term invisible harm of the progressive loss of education which we know is going to contributing to widening gaps.

"The longer children stay out of school, the harder it is going to be to pull that together."

Coronavirus hits the UK - In pictures 1 /81 Coronavirus hits the UK - In pictures A deserted Westminster Bridge PA A man wearing a face mask or covering due to the COVID-19 pandemic, walks past customers sat outside a restaurant AFP via Getty Images Boris Johnson addresses the nation on the Coronavirus lockdown Andrew Parsons Runners pass cardboard cutouts of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and Prince William during the London Marathon in London AP An empty escalator at Charing Coss London Underground tube station Jeremy Selwyn Electronic bilboards displays a message warning people to stay home in Sheffield PA A sign is displayed in the window of a student accommodation building following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Mancheste Reuters People take part in a 'We Do Not Consent' rally at Trafalgar Square, organised by Stop New Normal, to protest against coronavirus restrictions, in Londo AP People sing and dance in Leicester Square on the eve on the 10PM curfew Reuters Hearts painted by a team of artists from Upfest are seen in the grass at Queen Square, following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Bristol Reuters Graffiti reads 'good luck and stay safe', as the number of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases grow around the world, under a bridge in London Reuters A sign is pictured in Soho, amid the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in London Reuters Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures, during a coronavirus briefing in Downing Street, London AP A person runs past posters with a message of hope, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues in Manchester REUTERS Riot police face protesters who took part in a 'We Do Not Consent' rally at Trafalgar Square, organised by Stop New Normal, to protest against coronavirus restrictions in London AP An image of The Queen eith quotes from her broadcast to the UK and the Commonwealth in relation to the Coronavirus epidemic are displayed on lights in London's Piccadilly Circus PA Military vehicles cross Westminster Bridge after members of the 101 Logistic Brigade delivered a consignment of medical masks to St Thomas' hospital Getty Images Durdle Door in Dorset Reuters Captain Tom Moore via Reuters Mia, aged 8, and Jack, aged 5, take part in "PE with Joe" a daily live workout with Joe Wicks on Youtube to help kids stay fit who have to stay indoors due to the Coronavirus outbreak PA An NHS worker reacts at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital during the Clap for our Carers campaign in support of the NHS Reuters Goats which have taken over the deserted streets of Llandudno @AndrewStuart via PA Tobias Weller PA Novikov restaurant in London with its shutters pulled down while the restaurant is closed London Landscapes: Hyde Park and the Serpentine, central London. Matt Writtle A newspaper vendor in Manchester city centre giving away free toilet rolls with every paper bought as shops run low on supplies due to fears over the spread of the coronavirus PA Theo Clay looks out of his window next to his hand-drawn picture of a rainbow in Liverpool, as the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continue Reuters A young man cuts another man's hair on top of a closed hairdresser in Oxford Reuters General view of the new NHS Nightingale Hospital, built to fight against the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in London via Reuters Jason Baird is seen dressed as Spiderman during his daily exercise to cheer up local children in Stockport, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues Reuters A woman wearing a face mask walks past Buckingham Palace Getty Images A man holds mobile phone displaying a text message alert sent by the government warning that new rules are in force across the UK and people must stay at home PA Medical staff on the Covid-19 ward at the Neath Port Talbot Hospital, in Wales, as the health services continue their response to the coronavirus outbreak. PA Prime Minister Boris Johnson taking part in a virtual Cabinet meeting with his top team of ministers PA A shopper walks past empty shelves in a Lidl store on in Wallington. After spates of "panic buying" cleared supermarket shelves of items like toilet paper and cleaning products, stores across the UK have introduced limits on purchases during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some have also created special time slots for the elderly and other shoppers vulnerable to the new coronavirus. Getty Images People on a busy tube train in London at rush hour PA Mia, aged 8 and her brother Jack, aged 5 from Essex, continue their school work at home, after being sent home due to the coronavirus PA Children are painting 'Chase the rainbows' artwork and springing up in windows across the country Reuters Social distancing in Primrose Hill Jeremy Selwyn A general view of a locked gate at Anfield, Liverpool as The Premier League has been suspended PA Homeless people in London AFP via Getty Images A piece of art by the artist, known as the Rebel Bear has appeared on a wall on Bank Street in Glasgow. The new addition to Glasgow's street art is capturing the global Coronavirus crisis. The piece features a woman and a man pulling back to give each other a kiss PA The Queen leaves Buckingham Palace, London, for Windsor Castle to socially distance herself amid the coronavirus pandemic PA A general view on Grey street, Newcastle as coronavirus cases grow around the world Reuters Matt Raw, a British national who returned from the coronavirus-hit city of Wuhan in China, leaves quaratine at Arrowe Park Hospital on Merseyside PA Britain's Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty (L) and Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance look on as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures as he speaks during a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) news conference inside 10 Downing Street Reuters The ticket-validation terminals at the tram stop on Edinburgh's Princes Street are cleaned following the coronavirus outbreak. PA Locked school gates at Rockcliffe First School in Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear PA A sign at a Sainsbury's supermarket informs customers that limits have been set on a small number of products as the number of coronavirus (COVID-19) cases grow around the world Reuters Jawad Javed delivers coronavirus protection kits that he and his wife have put together to the vulnerable people of their community of Stenhousemuir, between Glasgow and Edinburgh AFP via Getty Images A sign advertising a book titled "How Will We Survive On Earth?" Getty Images A man who appears to be homeless sleeping wearing a mask today in Victoria Jeremy Selwyn A pedestrian walks past graffiti that reads "Diseases are in the City" in Edinburgh AFP via Getty Images Staff from The Lyric Theatre, London inform patrons, as it shuts its doors PA A quiet looking George IV Bridge in Edinburgh PA A quieter than usual British Museum Getty Images A racegoer attends Cheltenham in a fashionable face mask SplashNews.com A commuter wears a face mask at London Bridge Station Jeremy Selwyn A empty restaurant in the Bull Ring Shopping Centre Getty Images A deserted Trafalgar Square in London PA Passengers determined to avoid the coronavirus before leaving the UK arrive at Gatwick Airport Getty Images

It comes as First Minister Mark Drakeford has said schools in Wales could reopen at the beginning of next month.

Mr Drakeford told the BBCs Andrew Marr Show: Our advice from the trade unions and from the local education authorities is that you will need three weeks as a minimum from the point that we decide to do that, to when schools can reopen, so we are talking about the beginning of June.

Mr Drakeford said some groups could return earlier than others, using the examples of year-six children who are due to move up to secondary school, and Welsh medium pupils who may not have had opportunities to use the language at home during lockdown.
An unheard track by Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Ringo Starr recorded after the Beatles split is heading for auction.

Angel In Disguise could be the only song co-written exclusively by the band's former bassist and drummer, according to auctioneers.

The ex-Beatles recorded the demo for Sir Ringo's 1992 solo album Time Takes Time but it did not make the cut.

Under the hammer: An unheard track by Sir Paul McCartney (pictured and Sir Ringo Starr recorded after the Beatles split is heading for auction

Former Radio Luxembourg DJ Tony Prince is selling the cassette, which is expected to fetch up to 20,000.

He was asked to find artists to record alternative versions of Angel In Disguise in the 1990s, after Sir Ringo rejected the track.

The song has never been heard publicly.

Unheard track: Angel In Disguise could be the only song co-written exclusively by the band's former bassist and drummer, according to auctioneers

Out of the archives: The ex-Beatles recorded the demo for Sir Ringo's 1992 solo album Time Takes Time but it did not make the cut

Auctioneer Paul Fairweather said: 'It's fantastic to be able to bring to the market a previously unheard and unreleased track...

'We think the track certainly had enough about it to be included in the album and I am sure if Paul was to release this himself it would certainly prove a hit with fans.'

The cassette contains two versions of the track - a rough demo with Sir Paul on vocals and a fuller 'mixed' version with musicians and backing vocals and Sir Ringo singing.

Under the hammer: Former Radio Luxembourg DJ Tony Prince is selling the cassette (pictured), which is expected to fetch up to 20,000

Another Sir Ringo demo, Everyone Wins, which was also shelved but later released on a compilation recording, is also included on the tape.

The tape, with other memorabilia, will go under the hammer at Omega Auctions' online sale on May 19, with 25% of proceeds donated to the NHS Charities Together Covid-19 Urgent Appeal.

The Beatles announced their split in 1970, shortly before the release of their twelfth studio album, Let It Be.

Old times: (L-R) John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison attend the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band press party in London, May 1967

Speaking on SiriusXM's The Howard Stern Show in March, Sir Paul spoke candidly about the end of the world's most successful group.

When asked why he didn't keep the band together after Lennon announced his departure, he said: 'When families break up, it's to do with the emotion and the emotional pain.

'You can't just think of a smart idea like that at the time. You're hurting too much so it wasn't going to happen.'
For 13 years, Danny Catalanotto paid the more-than-$2,000 mortgage on his Bowie, Maryland, home on time every month. When work as a church organist dried up in mid-March, Catalanotto says, he expected his mortgage company to offer help.

Instead, a large Texas-based mortgage company called Mr. Cooper said Catalanotto could defer his monthly payments but would have to pay them all back in one lump sum.

"It could be $8,000 to $10,000 by then. How do you come up with that if you've been out of work?" he said.

While aggressive federal and state intervention and temporary corporate measures have prevented a surge in evictions and foreclosures, the housing market has fallen into a crisis that threatens the ability of millions of Americans to stay in their homes even if the novel-coronavirus pandemic eases in the coming months.

The speed and reach of the disruption probably will pit landlords and mortgage companies against homeowners and renters, with each side claiming it needs more assistance and fueling calls for billions in new aid for the housing sector.

The tension could explode this week as mortgage and rental payments come due for millions of Americans who have lost their jobs as the coronavirus has shuttered the U.S. economy. This is especially true in high-priced regions where stimulus payments of $1,200 per adult, for those making under $75,000 a year, are unlikely to cover more than a month of rent or mortgage payments, if that.

At least 3.8 million homeowners have sought mortgage relief and were not making their payments by the end of April, a 2,400% increase from early March, according to Black Knight, a mortgage technology and data provider. That number probably will increase drastically this week as the country's unemployment rate hits levels unseen since the Great Recession, lenders and housing advocates say.

The problems facing America's 40 million households in rentals are potentially more dire, sparking calls from advocates for rent strikes across the country and a $100 billion bailout fund. Nearly 10% of renters didn't pay in April compared with 5% during a typical month, and May is expected to be worse, according to industry data. Most renters are protected by federal and state eviction moratoriums but will probably face a cash crunch once those orders expire in a few months and they're asked to make back payments.

"There is no doubt that May will be worse, and it will be hardest for lowest-income renters," said Diane Yentel, chief executive of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, an advocacy group.

From New York to Philadelphia and across the country, tenant and community groups have called for a government-imposed halt to rent payments. The #CancelRent hashtag has trended online in recent weeks with the support of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.

That has some landlords, who say they are suffering too, on edge. Steve Irish, who owns 11 rental properties in four states, is preparing for the worst. While many tenants in North Carolina have been able to keep up, those in Michigan, one of the states hit hardest by the coronavirus, are struggling. Only one of his six renters in Michigan paid full rent last month. One made a partial payment, $160.

"I am expecting people will be less and less able to pay as time goes on," Irish said.

Irish estimates that he could carry the cost of the missed rent for a few months, including covering homeowner association fees and maintenance costs. But floating renters could become unaffordable this summer, when he will have to pay property taxes in multiple states, Irish said.

"I am trying to be as helpful as I can be and still recover over time. I understand this is a crisis," Irish said. But "this is my retirement money."

This crisis will stand out from the Great Recession a decade ago for its speed and reach, industry officials say. During the global financial crisis, the pain was focused largely on borrowers with shoddy mortgages or overvalued homes and unfolded over several years, housing experts say. This time the pain will be felt more broadly, particularly among renters who are more likely to have the service sector and hospitality jobs most affected by the crisis. It potentially will take months, not years, to surpass the number of homeowners in distress there were a decade ago.

"The last foreclosure crisis was a slow-moving train; the impact in terms of people was over the course of several years," said Jesse Van Tol, chief executive of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a research and advocacy coalition of 600 community organizations. "Whereas the current moment, it's all happening pretty quickly, 25 million, 30 million unemployed in a manner of a few weeks."

Home prices in some markets may fall, but not as far as they did a decade ago - closer to 5% rather than 30%, said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Analytics. The homeowners in trouble have better credit scores and more equity in their homes than those who lost their homes a decade ago and are more likely to be able to rebound, he said.

Still, 1.5 million to 2 million homeowners could lose their homes to foreclosure due to the crisis, according to Zandi. That is fewer than during the housing crisis but two to three times existing foreclosure rates, he said.

Mortgage lenders say they are helping as many homeowners as they can, allowing millions to postpone their payments without incurring a penalty and preparing to take billions in losses. Banks are aggressively attempting to avoid the criticisms that plagued their response to the last crisis. Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase have set up online portals for customers to seek forbearance on their mortgage loans. Many have also dropped the extensive paperwork requirements that bogged down the response last time.

But some mortgage servicers warn that the cost of widespread mortgage relief, known as forbearance, could push them to brink of failure and are asking for federal help. If 25% of borrowers do not make their mortgage payments, the industry has said it could need nearly $40 billion in federal help over the next three months and $100 billion over nine months.

The number of homeowners seeking assistance probably will increase in coming days as May due dates come closer, said Mike Fratantoni, chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association. "Whether we meet or exceed those numbers [from the global financial crisis] depends on how long the shutdowns are going to last," he said.

But the help mortgage lenders are offering to homeowners isn't uniform, and housing advocates worry that it doesn't go far enough. Some are particularly concerned about what happens when a homeowner's forbearance ends. Homeowners say they are being asked to make lump-sum payments they cannot afford or are being encouraged to refinance their loans, which comes with thousands of dollars in new fees, advocates say.

For Catalanotto, the organist from Maryland, the solution should be clear. His mortgage company, Mr. Cooper, should tack his missed payments on to the end of his mortgage, instead of requiring him to pay it back all at once, he said. "The money we lose during the crisis is lost forever. We will never get that back. I just don't know what they expect us to do," he said. "Regular people are paying the cost of this crisis."

In a statement, Mr. Cooper said the type of mortgage relief available depends on a homeowner's loan. Mr. Cooper acts as a middle man between the homeowner and the owner of the loan, collecting payments and servicing the mortgage. "We know this is a confusing and incredibly stressful time for many of our customers, and we are dedicated to supporting them and finding solutions for their unique situations as we face the impacts of this pandemic together," the company said in a statement.

The mortgage industry says that lump-sum payments are just one option available to homeowners but that it is willing to negotiate other repayment plans borrowers can afford. Loans backed by the giant mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac allow for 12 months of forbearance that can be added to the end of a loan. But some mortgages limit what kind of help borrowers qualify for, particularly if they have already missed a payment, industry officials say.

Forbearance programs were built to respond to natural disasters such as hurricanes and tornadoes, not a nationwide public emergency that involves many more people all across the country, industry officials say.

"There will be a variety of repayment options available, which will differ depending on several factors," Bob Broeksmit, chief executive of the Mortgage Bankers Association, said in a statement. "That is why borrowers must contact their mortgage servicer and have a conversation on the best approach for their particular situation."

Renters, meanwhile, say they face greater odds than homeowners and have received less help. Some may be able to use the $1,200 stimulus payments from the federal government or $600 in enhanced unemployment benefits to cover their housing costs. But that will not be enough for everyone, advocates say. The stimulus payments have not arrived in time for millions of renters to pay May rent, and there are massive backlogs of jobless claims across the country, they say.

Annette Rise, a Miami hostess and event planner, panicked when she didn't have the money to pay her April rent. The landlord gave her until the middle of the month to catch up and then put a notice on her apartment door. "Then I really freaked out," she said.

The landlord has agreed to wait until Rise receives the $1,200 stimulus check that should be coming in the mail any day, she says. But then Rise will face another decision: Using the stimulus check to cover her entire $1,200-a-month rent would leave her nothing for living expenses. She is hoping the landlord will accept a partial payment, maybe $800. "I just need to leave a little for food," she said.

As for May rent? "I have no idea, to be honest," said Rise.

Various plans have emerged to address troubled renters, including a proposal by some Democrats that $100 billion in rental assistance be included in the next stimulus package. The Urban Institute has outlined several approaches and estimated that if 20% of renters needed help, three months of assistance would cost $24 billion.

The National Rental Home Council, which represents landlords of single-family homes, says landlords should be reimbursed by the government when tenants miss rent payments due to the coronavirus. The renters would then pay back the money through their tax returns under the industry plan.

Without national renter assistance, once eviction moratoriums across the country are lifted many renters will struggle to make up their missed payments and be left heavily in debt or facing eviction, said Yentel of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. "We have to make sure we are not creating a financial cliff once those moratoriums are lifted," she said.

Anli Llego of Colorado is among those plunging into debt amid the coronavirus outbreak. The medical massage therapist is still waiting for her stimulus check and says she's too intimidated to apply for unemployment insurance. "I just can't face that disappointment," she said of her fear of not qualifying and the complicated application process.

Llego said she could seek financial support from her family but considers that a last resort. Instead, she is charging rent, about $1,000 a month, on credit cards and watching her once-stellar credit score, 820, fall. "I know I have to do something because I can't live on my credit cards forever," Llego said.
The Concerned Voters Movement (CVM) on Saturday said governance is a serious business and involves problem solving, exactly what President Akufo-Addo is delivering to the people of Ghana.



A statement signed by Mr Razak Kojo Opoku, the Founder and President of the CVM, and copied to the Ghana News Agency in Accra, said the concerns of Ghanaians in this COVID-19 period had been reasonably addressed by the President.



It said the President had been engaging relevant stakeholders, holding strategic meetings, reaching consensus and having serious discussions at Cabinet, all geared towards ensuring the safety of the people.



This is also to stabilize the economy for the collective good of the populace, the statement said.



It commended the government for the critical thinking and consultation with experts on the best way forward to contain the pandemic.

Source: GNA









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Guwahati, May 3 : The Assam police on Sunday detained 27 Bangladeshi nationals who entered the state before COVID-19 lockdown on a tourist visa, but their visa has now expired, officials said.

The Bangladeshi nationals, including women and children, were held at Bahalpur under Chapar police station in the bordering Dhubri district (western Assam) during a routine checkup.

Dhubri District Superintendent of Police Yuvraj Singh said that there was an advisory from the External Affairs ministry about the foreign nationals who are in India, but the validity of their visa expired.

"We are now examining their travel document and would act according to the law and the government's latest guidelines," the district police chief told IANS over phone.

The two vehicles, in which the Bangladeshi people are travelling, were also seized by the police.

An Assam government official said that the Bangladeshi nationals were travelling in two mini-buses from Upper Assam's Jorhat district, around 470 km east of Chapar, on curfew passes issued in the name of a local Indian contractor.

Of Assam's 33 districts, five districts -- Dhubri, Golaghat, Nalbari, Marigaon and Goalpara -- in the orange zone. Dhubri has a total of five positive cases of COVID-19 and four patients have already been released after their recovery from the novel coronavirus.

The Dhubri district health authority on Saturday confirmed that COVID-19 test done on the random samples of 158 individuals turned out to be negative.

Assam has a 263-km border with Bangladesh, where the total number of confirmed corona positive cases crossed 8,800, while the death toll has increased to 178 with the virus spreading to 61 of the country's 64 districts including the capital city Dhaka.

Dhubri District also shared inter-state borders with West Bengal and Meghalaya.

The Union Home Ministry had suspended passengers' movement through all land immigration checkposts on the country's borders with Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Myanmar from March 15 midnight.
To the Editor:

Clearly, no one really knows when local businesses can and should reopen. Thus reopening is somewhat of an experiment in public health.

I suggest that the reopening be considered medical research. Every patron entering any open establishment must sign a consent form both agreeing to participate in the study and granting permission to share his/her identification. There should be a log to sign with his/her identification, home address and telephone number.

We know that it will be imperative to be able to trace contacts of any new Covid-19 patients, and that can be very difficult. With the use of such logs, if any of the customers develop Covid, the public health workers can more easily track down all contacts and test, quarantine and otherwise care for future patients.

Steven M. Marcus

Montville, N.J.

The writer, a doctor who practiced medical toxicology and public health, is professor emeritus at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.
Photo credit: Samir Hussein - Getty Images

From Harper's BAZAAR

Royal photographer Samir Hussein revealed that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are fans of the gorgeous, rainy snapshot he took of them.

Hussein's photo showcased the Duke and Duchess of Sussex beaming under an umbrella at one of their last public engagements as working royals in March.

"The picture that I took of Harry and Meghan in the rain recently, Ive never had a reaction to a picture like that one," said Hussein.

Thanks to royal family photographer Samir Hussein, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle may have a new favorite photo.

In a new interview with Us Weekly, Hussein shares that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were "really happy" with the now-iconic snapshot the photographer captured of the royal couple back in March. The photo in question was from the 2020 Endeavour Fund Awards in Londonone of the last public appearances from the couple as active working royals where Hussein captured the pair beaming at each other whilst under an umbrella as they arrived to the event.

Photo credit: Max Mumby/Indigo - Getty Images

"The picture that I took of Harry and Meghan in the rain recently, Ive never had a reaction to a picture like that one. In terms of the reaction Ive had from people, thats got to be the most iconic from that point of view," Hussein told Us Weekly. "I spoke to some of their team and they were really happy about it and talking about it."

The photographerwho had spent time photographing the couple all around the world over the past few years, including locations such as Australia, Fiji and Africaexpressed how he'll miss being able to capture images of the pair due to their recent relocation to Los Angeles this spring.

"Im really disappointed that I wont get to photograph them so much anymore," admitted Hussein. "I hope to get to photograph them [again]."

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The International Space Station received several tons of supplies this week from an unmanned craft, but the big story this week is a milestone birthday for the ultimate eye in the sky, as the Hubble Telescope turned 30. VOAs Arash Arabasadi spoke with NASAs director of astrophysics
Mumbai: There is a dispute between Maharashtra and the central government over the headquarters of the International Financial Services Center (IFSC). NCP chief Sharad Pawar has expressed displeasure by writing a letter to PM Modi on the decision of the central government to make IFSC headquarters in Gandhinagar, Gujarat instead of Mumbai. He has demanded PM Modi to reverse this decision immediately.

Actually, Maharashtra leaders have pressurized the central government for years to set up IFSC center in Mumbai. But the decision to shift this center from Gandhinagar in Gujarat instead of Mumbai has now created political turmoil. In Maharashtra, the ruling Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress have become attackers on the BJP government at the Center. The allegations-counter-chain in the state has intensified regarding the IFSC center.

NCP chief Sharad Pawar has written a letter to PM Modi saying that- I hope from Hon'ble that PMOIndia considers taking politics, rational decision and keeping it a matter of utmost national importance while keeping the politics of the state separate. Sharad Pawar further wrote- I hope that my letter will be taken with a right spirit and consider setting up IFSC headquarters in the financial capital of India.

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During the Regina Caeli from the Vatican Library, Pope Francis spoke about the World Day of Prayer for Vocations. In light of the pandemic crisis, the pontiff called for international collaboration to "find vaccines and treatments" for everyone. There will be a day of prayer, fasting and works of charity for all believers on 14 May. Marian pilgrimages will only be virtual.

Vatican City (AsiaNews)  On Good Shepherd Sunday, the fourth after Easter, the Church celebrated the World Day of Prayer for Vocations. For this reason, after the Regina Caeli prayer, Pope Francis invited everyone to ask the Lord for the gift of good labourers for his Kingdom, with heart and hands [made] available for his love.

Streamed live from the Apostolic Library because of the coronavirus emergency, Francis explained: "Christian existence is always a response to Gods call, in any state of life. This Day reminds us of what Jesus said one day, namely that the field of the Kingdom of God requires a lot of work, and we must pray to the Father to send labourers to work in his field (cf. Mt 9:37-38). The priesthood and consecrated life require courage and perseverance; without prayers one does not go forth on this path.

Earlier, the Pope focused on the Gospel passage (John 10:1-10) in which, regarding the Good Shepherd, it is said that the sheep hear his voice, as he calls his own sheep by name" (Jn 10.3).

After explaining how to recognise "Gods voice as well as that of the enemy, the pontiff said: "Dear brothers and sisters, at this time so many thoughts and concerns lead us to turn inward. Let us heed the voices that reach our heart. Let us ask ourselves where they come from. Let us ask for the grace of recognizing and following the voice of the Good Shepherd, who brings us out of the enclosures of selfishness and leads us into the pastures of true freedom. May Our Lady, Mother of Good Counsel, guide and accompany our discernment.

Concerns and awareness of the situation in a world affected by coronavirus prompted Francis to express his "closeness to people with COVID-19, to those who dedicate themselves to their care and to all those who, in any way, are suffering because of the pandemic.

Right after the Marian prayer, he added: At the same time, I wish to support and encourage the international collaboration that is taking place through various initiatives, in order to respond adequately and effectively to the serious crisis that we are [currently] experiencing.

It is important in fact to harness the power of science in a transparent and disinterested way to find vaccines and treatments and to guarantee universal access to essential technologies that allow every infected person, in every part of the world, to receive the necessary health care.

The pope also called on everyone to be available for the day proposed by the High Committee for Human Fraternity, "so that next 14 May, believers of all religions will join spiritually in a day of prayer, fasting and works of charity, to implore God to help humanity overcome the coronavirus pandemic.

Finally, Francis noted that, due to the pandemic, this years pilgrimages to Marian shrines in May, which is dedicated to Mary, will only be virtual, spiritually going to these places of faith and devotion, to lay in the heart of the Holy Virgin our concerns, expectations and plans for the future.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 18:05:26|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, May 3 (Xinhua) -- The number of existing confirmed COVID-19 cases on the Chinese mainland had dropped for 11 consecutive days as of Saturday, a Chinese health official said Sunday.

The mainland reported 12 new asymptomatic cases on Saturday, the lowest figure since the daily report on COVID-19 cases included this figure, said Mi Feng, a spokesperson for the National Health Commission, at a press conference in Beijing.

However, 10 provincial-level regions had reported new locally transmitted cases or asymptomatic cases over the last 14 days, which highlighted that risks of a resurgence and even spread of the epidemic still existed, Mi noted.

"We need to keep highly vigilant and make epidemic prevention and control a part of our regular work agenda while advancing efforts to resume production and daily life," Mi added. Enditem
Lightfoot and her wife, Amy Eshleman, have invited Chicagoans to join them on the social media platform each Sunday in May for performances by local musicians to benefit the Arts for Illinois Relief Fund, according to a news release from Lightfoots office. The fund was launched by Lightfoot and Eshleman because the COVID-19 pandemic is having an enormous economic impact on Chicagos local arts community, the statement said.
SEOUL - North and South Korea exchanged gunfire near one of the South's guard post inside the Demilitarized Zone separating the two countries, the South Korean military said Sunday.

The incident began when North Korean soldiers fired at the guard post several times, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement, adding that its soldiers shot back twice.

No casualties or equipment damage was reported in the statement, and the guard post was not hit, a South Korean Defense Ministry official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Describing a "handful of shots that came across from the North," U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that "we think those are accidental."

"South Koreans did return fire. So far as we can tell, there was no loss of life on either side," Pompeo said Sunday on ABC's "This Week."

The shooting came a day after North Korea broadcast footage of leader Kim Jong Un's first public appearance in about three weeks. His absence from public eye prompted unconfirmed news reports about his health and even rumors of his death.

On Sunday, an official from South Korea's presidential Blue House told journalists that the government did not believe that Kim had undergone any kind of medical procedure, as had been rumored.

"Our view is that there was no surgery," the official said, adding that there was evidence for this but declining to share it.

Pompeo said "there's not much that I can share" about what the United States knew about Kim's activities during his absence. "We know there have been other extended periods of time where Chairman Kim's been out of public view as well, so it's not unprecedented."

But from the images shown on North Korean television, "it looks like Chairman Kim is alive and well," he said.

Asked if Kim had ever been gravely ill, and if he could "rule out" coronavirus infection or a heart problem, Pompeo said, "I just can't say anything about that."

South Korea's military said it was contacting its North Korean counterpart via a hotline to figure out what had happened and prevent further escalations. It did not repeat Pompeo's statement that the exchange was "accidental."

The Demilitarized Zone was originally established as a buffer zone between the two Koreas as a result of an armistice that halted the Korean War in 1953. Despite its name, the DMZ contains barbed-wire fences and land mines as well as combat-ready troops, making it one of the most one of the most heavily guarded frontiers in the world.

In late 2018, South and North Korea started dismantling the front-line guard posts as relations between the two countries warmed. But such efforts to reduce military tensions have stalled as negotiations to denuclearize North Korea broke down amid disagreements over ending U.S. sanctions aimed at curbing the North's development of nuclear weapons.

- - -

DeYoung reported from Washington.
Sageer Ahmed Pathan, the police officer who made the supreme sacrifice in north Kashmirs Kupwara district on Saturday evening, had volunteered to join the Special Operations Group of Jammu and Kashmir Police nearly 14 ago. When a team of four army officers and jawans led by Colonel Ashutosh Sharma decided to walk into the Handwara house to pull out the family that was believed to have been held hostage, Pathan alias Qazi stepped forward. Like he always had.

That was the last anyone saw him, alive.

Pathan was also the natural choice to join the risky mission.

Also read | Assalamualaikum: How one word changed the course of Handwara encounter

The 41-year-old, a father of three daughters and a son, had been the go-to man for many in the 21 Rashtriya Rifles, the armys counter-insurgency unit. He was not only courageous but was also familiar with the district. This was his home.

Pathan was born in Trad village of Kupwara districts Karnah tehsil that is located right along the Line of Control in 1978. He grew up around this place and joined the J&K Armed Police in 1999.

In 2006, he made the switch and volunteered to join the Special Operations Group, the specialised anti-militancy team. He was good at his job. So good that in the next 14 years, he landed himself three out-of-turn promotions and a bunch of awards and commendation certificates.

Director General of Jammu and Kashmir Police Dilbag Singh said during his posting in SOG, he led various successful anti-terror operations.In recognition of his immense contribution, he was granted three out-of-turn promotions and he rose from the rank of a constable to sub-inspector over the years, he said. Pathan, or Qazi as many called him, honoured with Police Medal for Gallantry in 2011, Sher-i-Kashmir Police Medal for Gallantry in 2009, besides DGP Commendation Medal and GOC-in-C, Northern Command Commendation Disc.

Also read | Went in to rescue civilians: Colonel, Major among 5 killed in action in Handwara

Pathan was incharge of the SOG team that accompanied the 21 Rashtriya Rifles and the district police when the operation to search the terrorists was launched. He was part of the original team which went in to evacuate the civilian inmates in the target house who were taken hostage by the hiding terrorists, a Jammu and Kashmir police statement said.

The team could safely rescue the inmates but came under heavy fire from the terrorists, during the evacuation process and attained martyrdom, the statement said.

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Cayuga County officials reported no new confirmed coronavirus cases on Saturday and a drop in its active cases.

The Cayuga County Health Department situational update said there are now three people in mandatory isolation because they tested positive for COVID-19 and are still in a recovery period. That's down from five people in mandatory isolation on Friday.

The number in mandatory quarantine, required of people who have been in contact with a person who has tested positive, dropped from 50 to 45.

Cayuga County has had a total 52 positive COVID-19 test results since testing began in March. As of Saturday, none of the active cases required hospitalization. The county has reported one coronavirus death, a man in his 40s with underlying health conditions who died in early April.

Cayuga County has now received 1,025 results on tests done by the health department, physicians, health care facilities and licensed clinical laboratories, with tests taking place both within and outside the county. The county health department said as of Saturday afternoon is awaiting results on 12 more tests.

Cayuga County's largest neighboring county, Onondaga, reported 47 newly confirmed cases on Saturday under its more aggressive testing program. Onondaga County had a net daily gain of of 13 active cases, which are up to 352.

For the year-to-date, Onondaga has had 994 cases and 34 deaths. Of its active cases, officials in that county said 36 people are hospitalized and 10 are in critical condition.

Another county that borders Cayuga, Wayne County, reported its second COVID-19 death and one new case on Saturday. Its cumulative positive test total is at 73.

The only other border county to report updated test results as of Saturday afternoon was Oswego County, which said it has no new cases to remain at 64 positive results for the year to date.

Statewide, the virus killed 299 people Friday, according to the Gov. Andrew Cuomo. That brings the states official death toll to more than 18,900, a number that does not include 5,200 additional victims in New York City whose deaths were blamed on the virus on death certificates, but whose infections havent been confirmed by a lab test.

Another 831 people were hospitalized with the virus Friday, Cuomo said during his daily briefing on Saturday, a number that has been dropping but which he said remains disturbingly high.

The governor on Saturday toured a Metropolitan Transportation Authority maintenance facility in Queens, seeking to highlight the closure of New York City's subway system from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. so trains and stations can be disinfected.

He described the cleaning as labor intensive, with workers wearing haz-mat suits.

This has never been done before, Cuomo said. "You have to go through the whole train with a misting device where they spray disinfectant on every surface.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Icelandic actor and strongman Hafthor Bjornsson has set a world record for the deadlift, lifting 501 kilograms at Thor's Power Gym in Iceland.

Bjornsson, best known for his portrayal of Ser Gregor "The Mountain" Clegane on the popular HBO series Game of Thrones, broke the record previously held by Briton Eddie Hall who in 2016 became the first man to lift 500 kilograms.

The event was streamed live on ESPN and Bjornsson, 31, lifted the barbell that was bending and straining under the weights, holding it for two seconds before letting go and roaring in delight.

"I believe today I could've done more, but what's the point?" the 31-year-old Bjornsson told ESPN. "I'm happy with this."
Jerusalem, May 3 : Israel on Sunday allowed primary and secondary school students to return to their classrooms despite opposition from several municipalities, which refused to open educational centres until coronavirus prevention measures were guaranteed.

Municipalities including Tel Aviv, Beersheva, Haifa and Hadera have asked for more time to prepare schools, reports Efe news.

Students returned to classrooms in other parts of the country, all wearing masks and with measures to maintain a physical distance with their classmates.

The Israeli government approved on Friday a plan to gradually resume education from Sunday, which is a working day in the country.

This has created some confusion among parents and reluctance in local administrations, with some criticising the decision as hasty.

The Education Ministry allowed students from six to nine years old and from 16 to 18 to return to classrooms.

Pre-schools are due to reopen in a week and the rest of the country's pupils will return to classes from June, according to the plan.

Ultra-Orthodox schools, which have seen the highest number of infections in the country, will only have students aged between 12 and 18 years old allowed to return.

Attendance has not been made compulsory and teachers over 65 years old or with health conditions which put them at a higher risk of the virus will be able to opt out.

The reopening of schools was part of a rapid de-escalation programme recently launched by authorities, the country has already reactivated a lot of its economic activity and has eased restrictions on the movement of the population.

Many shops have reopened and the government is preparing a phased plan to resume more social and economic activity.

There have been more than 16,100 confirmed cases in Israel, of which more than half have recovered.

Officials announced the lowest number of infections on Sunday since March with 41 new cases reported in the last 24 hours.

A total of 230 people have died from the virus in the country, which has a population of 8.8 million, and 82 patients were being treated on respirators, much lower numbers than in many European countries.
Good Morning, welcome to Information Nigerias Newspaper headlines for today, 2nd May 2020.

Here are the major headlines.

WHO To Commence Vaccine Trials In Nigeria

The World Health Organization (WHO) has revealed that Nigeria has expressed interest to be part of the global solidarity trial of the vaccines being developed to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Ganduje Relaxes Presidential Lockdown In Kano State

Kano State governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, has announced the relaxation of the lockdown order imposed on the state by President Muhammadu President Muhammadu Buhari.

Life Wont Return To Normalcy Until 2021  NCDC DG

Chikwe Ihekweazu, the director-general of Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), says Nigeria and the rest of the world next year would not return to normalcy until 2021.

Tackle Fake News Vigorously  Buhari Tells Journalists

As journalists celebrate 2020 world freedom day, President Muhammadu Buhari has urged journalists to vigorously tackle fake news and hate speech.

Kogi Government Denies Spending N7bn To Construct Isolation Center

The Kogi State government has dismissed claims that it spent N7 billion naira to construct an isolation center for COVID-19 cases.

Lockdown: FG Orders Release Of 17,500 Metric Tons Of Grains

The federal government has ordered the release of 17,50 metric tonnes of grains to the public as palliative, following the lockdown imposed on the nation.

Movement Not Allowed For Lagos Workers In Ogun State  Dapo Abiodun

Governor Dapo Abiodun of Ogun State has said the COVID-19 lockdown in the state will now end on May 9. The Governor expressed that residents of the state who work in Lagos State are not permitted to move out or into the state as the lockdown eases next week.

PTF Release Guidelines To Implement Gradual Easing Of Lockdown

The Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 has released the guidelines for the implementation of the phased and gradual easing of the lockdown.

Rivers Relaxes Lockdown. Enforce Facemask In Public Places

The Rivers state government on Friday announced the relaxation of lockdown of the stare and equally declares the use of face mask in public places mandatory.

Nigeria Will Do Anything For Ventilators  Donald Trump

The President of the United States, Donald Trump has revealed that Nigeria will do anything to have ventilators needed in the worlds fight against the novel coronavirus disease.
The closure of liquor vends due to



the lockdown for the coronavirus outbreak has made some alcoholics in Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh reportedly turn to sanitisers to satisfy their craving, though most officials dismissed it claiming they were unaware of such incidents.

Most sanitisers available in the market have a high content of alcohol but consuming it can cause ethanol poisoning and complications that could lead to coma and death.

"I have come across this trend of alcoholics turning to sanitisers during the lockdown and risking their lives. Recently, I treated an 18-year-old girl who consumed it, though she claimed she had taken it by mistake," said Bhopal- based Siddhanta Red Cross Super Specialty Hospital Director Dr Subodh Varshney.

"Sanitisers being produced by liquor distillers have ethyl alcohol and hydrogen peroxide, which is a very toxic combination. In fact, there is double the amount of alcohol in them than what is there in a whiskey bottle," he said.

He said three types of sanitisers are being manufactured at the moment, but some people are consuming the ones being made by liquor distillers, as these contain "edible alcohol".

On Saturday, a man identified as Indal Singh Rajput, was held in Sultanpur area of Raisen district in the state for allegedly making liquor from sanitisers to profiteer from the closure of alcohol vends during the lockdown, police had said.

However, queried on the worrying trend, MP Excise Commissioner Rajesh Bahuguna said he was unaware of "sanitiser drinking".

"Sanitisers are not in my domain. People should not be consuming it," he said, and repeated the answer when told that two people in Satara district in neighbouring Maharashtra had died last week after consuming the contents of a hand santiser bottle.

Meanwhile, the Controller of Food and Civil Supplies Jyoti Shah Narwariya said "I don't look after drug affairs", while Deputy Controller (Drugs) Shobit Koshta could not be contacted for comments.

MP Additional Director General of Police (Narcotics) SW Naqvi also said he was unaware of incidents of alcoholics consuming sanitisers to satisfy their urge.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Chief Justice of India S A Bobde has directed that Supreme Court officers in the ranks of deputy registrar and above or their equivalent in the registry shall attend office from May 4.

The apex court has restricted its functioning since March 23, days before the nationwide lockdown started from March 25, and is presently hearing urgent matters through video-conferencing.

An office order, issued on Sunday by the top court's secretary general Sanjeev S Kalgaonkar, said that remaining staff members shall continue to work from home as per terms and conditions as notified earlier.

"In partial modification of orders referred above, the Chief Justice of India has been pleased to direct that all the officers in the ranks of deputy registrar and above, or their equivalent, in the registry shall attend office with effect from Monday, May 4, 2020," it said.

"The remaining staff shall continue to work from home on such terms and conditions as notified earlier, by the orders under reference, however concerned registrar(s) may direct any other subordinate officer/staff to attend office to meet any urgent requirement(s) and, on such direction, such officer and/or staff shall report for duty at office on the date and time so directed," it said.

The office order said all officers and staff, while commuting to and from office and also while at work, shall strictly follow all precautions as per advisory and guidelines issued by the government and the apex court registry from time to time towards preventing the spread of COVID-19, like practising social distancing and wearing face masks.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
View of Eskimo Joes bar and restaurant near Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

Svineyard/Shutterstock

Just hours after Stillwater, Oklahoma, passed an order requiring the use of face masks in stores and restaurants, the city revised its stance.

Store employees trying to enforce the requirement were met with verbal and physical abuse, including a threat involving a firearm, according to a city statement.

To protect employees, Mayor Will Joyce amended the order to say that the use of face masks is encouraged, but not required.

City Manager Norman McNickle said that many of the customers threatening violence believed that being required to wear face masks is unconstitutional, even though it is legal.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Residents of Stillwater, Oklahoma  home to Oklahoma State University  did not react well to an order that went into effect on May 1 requiring the use of face masks in stores and restaurants.

Within three hours of enforcing the order, store employees reported verbal abuse and threats of physical violence, including one threat involving a firearm.

Shortly thereafter, Mayor Will Joyce released an amended order strongly encouraging, but not requiring, the use of face masks.

Mayor Will Joyce #StayHomeStillwater (@stillwaterwill) May 1, 2020

In a statement, City Manager Norman McNickle called the incidents "unfortunate and distressing."

"The wearing of face coverings is little inconvenience to protect both the wearer and anyone with whom they have contact," he said, noting that both the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention and Oklahoma State Department of Health recommend the use of masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

McNickle also said that many of the people objecting to the order believe being required to wear face masks is unconstitutional. "No law or court supports this view," he said.

As part of Oklahoma's gradual reopening strategy, personal care businesses such as hair salons were allowed to reopen across the state beginning April 24, and restaurant dining rooms were allowed to open on May 1 as long as they adhered to social distancing and sanitation protocols.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Drew Angerer/Getty

Nearly 5,000 meat industry workers had contracted COVID-19 and 20 had died on the eve of President Donald Trumps executive order Tuesday that plants churning out Americas steaks and chicken fingers stay open through the pandemic.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) dropped a report Friday summarizing data it collected from April 20 to 27 on processing facilities in 19 states. The findings are even more severe than those of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents thousands of meatpackers nationwide.

Besides the 4,913 employees the CDC discovered had tested positive for the novel coronavirus, it noted the industrys frequent failure to maintain the hygiene standards necessary to prevent transmission.

South Dakota Meat Factory Becomes Worst Coronavirus Cluster in U.S.

Challenges included structural and operational practices that made it difficult to maintain a 6-foot (2-meter) distance while working, especially on production lines, and in nonproduction settings during breaks and while entering and exiting facilities, the report reads.

The pace and physical demands of processing work made adherence to face covering recommendations difficult, with some workers observed covering only their mouths and frequently readjusting their face coverings while working. Some sites were also observed to have difficulty adhering to the heightened cleaning and disinfection guidance recommended for all worksites.

Two processors in South Dakota have the highest rate of infection at 17.3 percent, while the 22 affected locations in Pennsylvania have the highest number of cases overall: 858. Coloradowhere a facility belonging to JBS USA had to close due to a severe outbreakaccounted for a full quarter of the deaths in the industry nationwide, more than any other state. The Denver Post reported Thursday that another worker at the plant in Greeley had lost their life to the illness, bringing the death toll to six.

Story continues

The CDC found the same phenomenon nationally that local authorities noted in Greeley: employees feeling compelled to show up on the job despite showing symptoms.

Among workers, socioeconomic challenges might contribute to working while feeling ill, particularly if there are management practices such as bonuses that incentivize attendance, the report continues. (The CDC previously found that a Smithfield Foods pork processing plant in Sioux Falls offered a bonus of $500 to employees who showed up to work amid a coronavirus outbreak.)

The report offers only recommendations for improvement: taking the temperature of anybody entering a plant, implementing social distancing, providing hand sanitizer and face shields, disinfecting surfaces, better training on best practices, and providing paid sick leave.

Meanwhile, the presidents executive order invoking the Defense Production Act appears to disempower local authorities to close down infected facilities, and asserts the superior authority of his Department of Agriculture. He has also said he intends to limit the legal liability of beef and poultry giant Tyson, which this week alone has seen severe outbreaks at its facilities in Maine and Nebraska. The former remains open, while the latter has closed.

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Kareena Kapoor has shared a song clip featuring her late uncle Rishi Kapoor and husband Saif Ali Khan in one frame. Rishi, who died on Thursday, had played Saifs father in the 2004 film, Hum Tum.

Kareena shared the video on Instagram with a heart emoji. It shows Rishi crooning Main Shayar To Nahin from his debut film Bobby. Saif is seen walking around and even offers Rishi a drink. The song was originally picturised on Rishi during a party sequence in Bobby which also had Dimple Kapadia in frame.

Saif had also won the National Film Award for Best Actor for his performance in the film. It had Rani Mukerji as the female lead.

Hours after his death, Kareena took to social media to bid adieu to her uncle, whos fondly called Chintu. She posted a cute childhood picture of Rishi and her father Randhir Kapoor, and wrote: The best boys I know... Papa and Chintu uncle.

Also read: Rishi Kapoors funeral: Ranbir Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Kareena Kapoor, attend actors last rites, see pics

Kareenas elder sister Karisma too mourned Rishi Kapoors death. She uploaded an old picture of herself as a child with her father and uncle Rishi Kapoor. Always looking over family, Karisma captioned the image in which Rishi Kapoor is seen wearing big pants and sunglasses.

Also read: Amitabh Bachchan says Rishi Kapoor never lamented his condition, would say routine visit to hospital, Ill be back shortly

On Thursday, both Kareena and Saif had joined the Kapoors at the HN Reliance Hospital where Rishi breathed his last after a two-year battle with leukaemia. The 67-year-old actor was cremated at around 4pm at Mumbais Chandanwadi crematorium. Thursday at a private ceremony in Mumbai under heavy security, with his family urging fans to follow Indias restrictions on public gatherings to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Alia Bhatt, Aadar Jain and Abhishek Bachchan turned out to provide moral support and strength to his family.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Planning and Architecture has added the English version to their digital data hub Ho Chi Minh City Urban Planning Information in an effort to enhance accessibility to public information for expatriates.

The Ho Chi Minh City Urban Planning Information is a digital application, available on web and mobile platforms, developed by the department with the intentionn of streamlining the process of disseminating urban planning information in Ho Chi Minh City to its residents, institutes, and private businesses.

The app on Wednesday received a major update which includes a new digital format map, user interface redesign, advanced search function enabling street name and coordinate queries, as well as a user ratings and feedback feature.

On top of that, the app is now available in English, which is expected to help expatriates and foreign stakeholders having an interest in the citys urban planning to access and research their desired information with much less hassle.

The department welcomes individuals and entities to check out the new experience of the app on its web-based version: https://thongtinquyhoach.hochiminhcity.gov.vn or the mobile version at bit.ly/ttqhandroid (Android) and bit.ly/ttqhios (iOS).

Users can also find the app on the iOS App Store and Google Play Store using search queries thong tin quy hoach HCM or TTQH HCM.

The app made its debut on November 30, 2017 and has been considered a pivotal solution for the public demand for accessible urban planning information, as well as an advocate for citizen participation in establishing and observing the urban planning process.

The department vows to listen to users feedback and consistently update the app in the future.

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Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York reported a slight decrease in the number of statewide COVID-19 deaths on Sunday

New York is banding together with six nearby states to purchase equipment and supplies that sometimes have been hard to come by during the coronavirus pandemic, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Sunday.

After working with neighboring states on coronavirus-related closing and reopening plans, Cuomo said Sunday that New York will join with states from Massachusetts to Delaware to create a regional supply chain for masks, gowns, ventilators, testing supplies and other equipment vital to fighting the disease.

The seven-state consortium, which includes New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, was formed on the same day that Cuomo announced 280 more statewide deaths from COVID-19.

The number is a slight drop from the 299 deaths he reported on Saturday.

More than 19,100 people in the state have died from coronavirus, though the total doesn't include more than 5,300 deaths in the city that were attributed to the virus on death certificates but weren't confirmed by a lab test.

Since the start of the pandemic, New York State has reported 316,415 confirmed cases of COVID-19.

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The governor also reported a slight decline in the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations statewide

Cuomo on Sunday also reported a drop in the number of statewide intubations

Cuomo said there were 280 deaths from COVID-19 on Saturday - a slight drop from the 299 deaths reported on Friday

'You can see that that number has not moved dramatically in a relatively long period of time,' the governor said during his daily coronavirus briefing held on Sunday in New York City.

'The overall direction is good, even though it's very painful.'

But the governor said he was encouraged by data showing fewer hospitalizations and intubations statewide.

Cuomo said the total hospitalization rate fell to below 10,000 on Sunday.

Hospitalizations peaked far at 18,825 on April 12 and fell to almost half that - 9,786 - on Saturday.

That is the lowest number of hospitalizations across the state since mid-March, Cuomo said.

The governor also announced that there were fewer intubations - 789.

'That's good news,' Cuomo said. 'We were hovering at about 900, 1,000.'

Cuomo on Sunday invited the governors of four of New York's neighboring states to remotely address the briefing and talk about the consortium.

'We can work together to buy things that we need to allow our healthcare system to have the capacity it needs to fight this fight,' Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf said.

Cuomo (far left) announced a partnership on Sunday with neighboring governors who will pool resources to buy medical supplies. Cuomo is seen left with Governors Ned Lamont of Connecticut (top left); Phil Murphy of New Jersey (top right); John Carney of Delaware (bottom right); and Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania (bottom left)

Cuomo on Sunday also announced 280 new deaths on Saturday - a slight drop from 299 COVID-19 deaths from the previous day

As of Sunday, there were a total of 316,415 COVID-19 cases statewide, the latest figures show

Massachusetts and Rhode Island are also part of the seven-state consortium announced on Sunday by Cuomo. Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker (left) and Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo (right) are pictured above

Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey said: 'Someone said to me a couple days ago that gowns have become the new ventilators and so we are still there.

'So the notion of coordinating together as a region makes enormous amount of sense so sign New Jersey up.'

Governors John Carney of Delaware and Ned Lamont of Connecticut also gave brief statements.

The states are joining together after months of dealing separately with what Cuomo said was a 'totally inefficient and ineffective' purchasing process that pitted all 50 states against each other, as well as the federal government and other entities, driving up prices as supplies dried up.

New York buys about $2billion worth of medical equipment supplies per year, Cuomo said.

The other states joining the consortium together spend about $5 billion per year.

Working together, they'll have stronger purchasing power and improve their clout with global suppliers, Cuomo said.

Protective masks and bandannas were distributed in the Prospect Park section of Brooklyn on Sunday

The bandannas and masks were handed out by the New York City Parks Department

Face masks will continue to be distributed in the weeks ahead as New York continues to be the global center of the COVID-19 outbreak

'It will make us more competitive in the international marketplace and I believe it will save taxpayers money,' Cuomo said.

'I also believe it will actually help us get the equipment, because we have trouble still getting the equipment.'

One goal, the states' governors said, is to find suppliers within the region, instead of relying on swamped manufacturers in China and other faraway places.

On a parallel track, they'll also continue to work with the federal government to procure medical gear, Cuomo said.

'Whatever they can do to help is great,' Cuomo said.

In a lesson learned from the coronavirus crisis, Cuomo said that going forward, hospitals in New York will be required to to keep a 90-day supply on hand of masks, gowns and other personal protective equipment that ran critically short at times.

In building their stockpiles, hospitals should account not for normal usage, but for the high equipment usage rates they've seen during the pandemic, Cuomo said.

Because of dwindling supplies, hospitals were rationing supplies and asking staff to reuse masks until they became soiled.

At one point in the crisis, hospitals in the New York-Presbyterian system were burning through about 40,000 masks a day - about 10 times the normal amount, according to Columbia University Medical Center officials.

'We can't go through this day-to-day moving masks across the state, this mad scramble that we were in and still are, in many ways,' Cuomo said.

Meanwhile, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is praising residents for mostly adhering to coronavirus social distancing rules during the warmest weekend of the spring, with police handing out only a few dozen summonses.

Tens of thousands of people flocked to New York City's parks and public spaces Saturday as temperatures hit the low-70s, and for the most part they complied with social distancing rules.

'The big story here is what New Yorkers have done right,' de Blasio said.

Officers issued 51 summonses, including 43 in parks, Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said.

There were at least three arrests.

About 1,000 police officers were out on foot, bicycles, in patrol cars and even on horseback to enforce public health restrictions requiring people - as well as couples, families and other small groups living under the same roof - to keep 6 feet away from others.

Officers were also handing out face masks, which people are required to wear when social distancing is not possible, breaking up large gatherings and stopping people from playing team sports, which are still banned.

'The vast majority of New Yorkers have really risen to the challenge,' de Blasio said, though he and Shea noted some overcrowding at places like Manhattans Hudson River Park and Brooklyns Domino Park.

In Harlem, dozens of people crowded a blocked off street for a memorial to a 30-year-old father of three who was shot dead last week.

De Blasio said such large gatherings are a violation of city and state public health guidelines and 'have to be stopped before they even get started.'

'We have to get clear to people that no such events should be happening,' de Blasio said.

'When you start to attract large numbers of people, the chance of social distancing being maintained is minimal.'
Israel's top court Sunday started hearing arguments to bar Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from forming a new government as he faces a criminal trial on corruption charges.

The Supreme Court will also hear petitions challenging a coalition deal with his rival-turned-partner Benny Gantz, who is currently speaker of the Knesset, Israel's parliament.

Either case carries with it the danger of forcing another election, after three polls in less than a year failed to produce a government and left the country in a grinding political deadlock.

"Today we shall hear arguments on the question of bestowing the duty of forming a government on a Knesset member against whom an indictment has been filed," Chief Justice Esther Hayut said as she opened proceedings.

"Tomorrow there will be a hearing on the second issue, regarding the coalition agreement," she said, sitting at the head of a panel of 11 judges, all wearing face masks in line with COVID-19 precautions.

The hearing was broadcast live on the court website.

Neither Netanyahu, the right-wing premier in power since 2009, nor the centrist ex-military chief Gantz, was able after a March election to form a viable governing coalition in the deeply divided 120-seat Knesset.

They agreed to a power-sharing deal last month, aiming to avert a fourth poll that is opposed across the political spectrum.

- Netanyahu indictments -

Under the three-year coalition deal, the government's first six months will be dedicated primarily to combatting the novel coronavirus that has infected more than 16,000 Israelis and ravaged the economy.

But eight separate petitions to the Supreme Court seek to declare the deal illegal, including one from former Gantz ally Yair Lapid, head of the opposition Yesh Atid.

Lapid broke with Gantz last month when the ex-military commander was elected parliament speaker and decided to pursue a deal with Netanyahu.

As a long list of lawyers representing the eight petitioners and the dozens of respondents filed in front of the judges on Sunday, Israelis in protective masks protested near the courtroom and outside Netanyahu's official Jerusalem residence.

Demonstrator Tmira Stareck said that his unsuitability for another term was so blatant that there should be no need for a court hearing.

"The very fact that we even need to discuss the obvious issue - a criminally-charged man forming a government is already a failure, it's already abnormal," she told AFP in Hebrew.

"Would you hire someone who is criminally charged? No. You wouldn't even let him be the school janitor.

Sunday's court session deals with indictments filed against Netanyahu in January.

The veteran premier has been charged with accepting improper gifts and illegally trading favours in exchange for favourable media coverage. He denies wrongdoing and his trial is set to start May 24.

Israeli law bars an indicted person from serving as an ordinary cabinet minister, but does not compel a criminally-charged prime minister to leave office.

The complication regarding Netanyahu is that he is not currently an ordinary prime minister. He has been serving as the caretaker head of a transitional government through Israel's period of political deadlock.

According to some interpretations of Israeli law, that makes Netanyahu merely a candidate to become prime minister.

Interviewed on public radio Saturday, energy minister and Netanyahu ally Yuval Steinitz said that if the court rules Netanyahu cannot serve, it would amount to "an unprecedented attack on Israeli democracy".

The Gantz-Netanyahu agreement, Steinitz said, is "a necessity, the result of three election campaigns and a desire among Israelis to avoid a fourth election".

- The deal's terms -

The main argument against the coalition deal concerns specific provisions opponents say violate the law.

The agreement sees Netanyahu serving as prime minister for 18 months, with Gantz as his "alternate", a new title in Israeli governance.

They will swap roles midway through the deal before likely taking voters back to the polls in 36 months.

But Israeli law traditionally endows governments with four-year mandates, an issue pounced on by the deal's opponents.

There is also a provision freezing certain public appointments during the government's initial six-month pandemic emergency phase, which critics also say is illegal.

An opinion delivered to the Supreme Court this week by Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, who indicted Netanyahu, said that while "certain arrangements in the coalition agreement raise major difficulties... at this time there are no grounds to disqualify (it)."

He advised that problematic provisions be reviewed "at the implementation stage".

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In Ukraine, as of the morning of May 3, the number of Covid-19 infected with the coronavirus increased to 11,913. The Center for Public Health of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine reports.

During the day, the number of cases in the country increased by 502 cases. As of Sunday morning, 288 fatal cases were recorded in the country, 1,547 patients recovered.

The situation by region:

Vinnytsia region - 435 (146 recovered);

Volyn region - 324 (64 recovered);

Dnipropetrovsk region. - 448 (64 recovered);

Donetsk region. - 70 (12 recovered);

Zhytomyr region - 423 (23 recovered);

Zakarpattia region - 508 (53 recovered);

Zaporizhya region - 275 (79 recovered);

Ivano-Frankivsk region - 965 (86 recovered);

Kyiv - 1,511 (80 recovered);

Kyiv region - 784 (82 recovered);

Kirovograd region - 397 (121 recovered);

Lviv region - 473 (95 recovered);

Luhansk region - 37 (7 recovered)

Mykolaiv region - 149 (6 recovered);

Odesa region - 409 (17 recovered);

Poltava region - 222 (23 recovered);

Rivne region - 726 (78 recovered);

Sumy region - 110 (62 recovered);

Ternopil region - 868 (127 recovered);

Kharkiv region. - 348 (36 recovered);

Kherson region - 136 (52 recovered);

Khmelnytsky region - 115 (27 recovered);

Cherkasy region - 308 (63 recovered);

Chernivtsi region - 1818 (138 recovered);

Chernihiv region - 54 (6 recovered).

As we reported before, Japan plans to ship the anti-flu drug Avigan to 43 countries after its holiday period ends next Wednesday. The drug is seen as a potential treatment for people infected with the coronavirus
It's shaping up to be a tough period for Royal Dutch Shell plc (AMS:RDSA), which a week ago released some disappointing quarterly results that could have a notable impact on how the market views the stock. Earnings fell badly short of analyst estimates, with US$60b revenues missing by 14%, and statutory earnings per share (EPS) of US$1.95 falling short of forecasts by some -13%. This is an important time for investors, as they can track a company's performance in its report, look at what experts are forecasting for next year, and see if there has been any change to expectations for the business. So we gathered the latest post-earnings forecasts to see what estimates suggest is in store for next year.

View our latest analysis for Royal Dutch Shell

ENXTAM:RDSA Past and Future Earnings May 3rd 2020

Following the recent earnings report, the consensus from 19 analysts covering Royal Dutch Shell is for revenues of US$229.3b in 2020, implying a stressful 29% decline in sales compared to the last 12 months. Statutory earnings per share are forecast to crater 58% to US$0.52 in the same period. Yet prior to the latest earnings, the analysts had been anticipated revenues of US$233.8b and earnings per share (EPS) of US$0.35 in 2020. Although the revenue estimates have not really changed, we can see there's been a sizeable expansion in earnings per share expectations, suggesting that the analysts have become more bullish after the latest result.

The consensus price target was unchanged at US$22.99, implying that the improved earnings outlook is not expected to have a long term impact on value creation for shareholders. There's another way to think about price targets though, and that's to look at the range of price targets put forward by analysts, because a wide range of estimates could suggest a diverse view on possible outcomes for the business. The most optimistic Royal Dutch Shell analyst has a price target of US$33.59 per share, while the most pessimistic values it at US$9.45. With such a wide range in price targets, analysts are almost certainly betting on widely divergent outcomes in the underlying business. As a result it might not be a great idea to make decisions based on the consensus price target, which is after all just an average of this wide range of estimates.

Story continues

These estimates are interesting, but it can be useful to paint some more broad strokes when seeing how forecasts compare, both to the Royal Dutch Shell's past performance and to peers in the same industry. We would highlight that sales are expected to reverse, with the forecast 29% revenue decline a notable change from historical growth of 5.8% over the last five years. By contrast, our data suggests that other companies (with analyst coverage) in the same industry are forecast to see their revenue grow 6.8% annually for the foreseeable future. It's pretty clear that Royal Dutch Shell's revenues are expected to perform substantially worse than the wider industry.

The Bottom Line

The biggest takeaway for us is the consensus earnings per share upgrade, which suggests a clear improvement in sentiment around Royal Dutch Shell's earnings potential next year. Fortunately, the analysts also reconfirmed their revenue estimates, suggesting sales are tracking in line with expectations - although our data does suggest that Royal Dutch Shell's revenues are expected to perform worse than the wider industry. The consensus price target held steady at US$22.99, with the latest estimates not enough to have an impact on their price targets.

With that said, the long-term trajectory of the company's earnings is a lot more important than next year. At Simply Wall St, we have a full range of analyst estimates for Royal Dutch Shell going out to 2024, and you can see them free on our platform here..

Don't forget that there may still be risks. For instance, we've identified 3 warning signs for Royal Dutch Shell that you should be aware of.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
BEIJING, May 2 (Xinhua) -- The old saying, brazenly upheld by some Western politicians, that "a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth" is in itself untrue, because in the face of facts, a lie, no matter how many times it is repeated or how delicately it is fabricated, remains what it is.

So do the lies made by some U.S. politicians on China's role in the global fight against the novel coronavirus.

Panic persists among them as, in a little more than three months, the number of COVID-19 cases has surpassed 1 million and related deaths topped 60,000 in the United States, since the first confirmed case of the coronavirus was reported on Jan. 21 in the country.

It is their nonfeasance and dereliction of duty that ultimately incurred such an incessantly worsening predicament to the world's sole superpower.

Yet facing growing voices on their failure to contain the pandemic, those politicians, drawing upon great power politics, decided to distort reality and contemporary history by telling out-and-out lies and making up stories, in a bid to divert the blame onto China.

Photo taken on March 11, 2020 shows the White House in Washington D.C., the United States. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

As the COVID-19 situation continues to worsen in the United States, their smearing campaign against China has become even more unscrupulous. Calling China "the origin of the coronavirus" and blaming China for "hiding information," they are desperate to hold China accountable for the pandemic, and blackmail China to "compensate" for the losses caused by COVID-19.

Though it is widely acknowledged that the tracing of the virus' origin is a scientific issue and should be conducted by scientists and medical experts, some, with ulterior motives, tried their best to propagate a conspiracy theory that the coronavirus emanated from a research lab in Wuhan.

Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, rejected the conspiracy theory earlier at the White House, saying that current evidence on the virus' origin is "totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human."

Anthony Fauci (front), director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), speaks during a press conference on the coronavirus at the White House in Washington D.C., the United States, March 4, 2020. (Photo by Ting Shen/Xinhua)

Like the rest of the world, China is a victim of the pandemic, not an accomplice with the virus. By smearing China and instigating anti-China sentiment around the world, those politicians intend to frame China as an untrustworthy partner.

The accusation that China delayed information-sharing on COVID-19 to win the vaccine race for economic gains cannot hold water. As a matter of fact, China has been updating the United States on the coronavirus and its response since Jan. 3, which was recorded by international organizations and media outlets, including The Washington Post and The New York Times.

China has done what should be and needs to be done in the face of a pandemic. Moreover, the U.S. courts have no legitimate rights to judge China's domestic handling of COVID-19.

There are neither rational nor legal grounds for their accusations. It is only an absurd claim featuring typical U.S. bullying.

With more information unveiled, the timeline on how the pandemic has unfolded in the United States will be clarified step by step, which means the current U.S. administration's irresponsibility in handling the pandemic will be increasingly exposed to the public.

They should have done a much better job in dealing with the public crisis, but their entrenched arrogance, prejudice and ignorance only led to postponed and wrong decisions.

Photo taken on April 27, 2020 shows people posing for a photo with the face masks donated by China's Fujian Province in Oregon, the United States. (Xinhua)

At the early stage of the outbreak, what concerned Washington most was the performance of the U.S. stock market, instead of the virus' threat to human lives.

Despite timely warnings from China and the World Health Organization (WHO), the U.S. administration deliberately downplayed the severity of the pandemic and misinformed the public by repeatedly telling Americans to think of the coronavirus as the flu.

Since as early as January a dozen warnings about the coronavirus outbreak have been reported to the White House by its intelligence officials, according to The Washington Post, but U.S. President Donald Trump still said in late February that the virus would disappear "like a miracle."

Commenting on the sluggish decisions of the U.S. federal government at the outset of the COVID-19 crisis, The Lancet, a general medical journal, said in an editorial: "The degree to which the USA stalled in taking aggressive action to curtail the spread of COVID-19 is directly the product of an administration marked by consistently poor timing, intent on making decisions in favor of economic interests instead of those that are guided by science and to protect health."

The editorial, dated April 18, also described the U.S. government's hasty decision to reopen the economy as putting "dollars over deaths."

When the epidemic got worse, what the U.S. administration worried most was not the lack of anti-epidemic materials, but rather their election campaigns. From reporting the first confirmed case on Jan. 21 to declaring a national emergency on March 13, the country missed nearly two months to take prevention and control measures.

Even when the ravaging epidemic caused the market to plunge, the decision-makers did not concentrate on the COVID-19 battle, but instead started a "vote-defense battle" through shifting blame to China via stigmatization, politicization, and arbitrary labeling.

A recently-leaked GOP memo of 57 pages also stresses the strategy by advising Republican candidates to deal with voters' inquiries and fury by attacking China. Even American citizens feel ashamed by the brazen tactic of deflecting blame.

In just over three months, the United States' death toll in the COVID-19 pandemic has exceeded that in the Vietnam War. It is the American people that suffer the most, and it is the U.S. politicians' tilted focus on their re-election, instead of their people, that led to the misery.

"Caught amid the chaos are the American people grappling with the fear of a deadly and poorly understood virus, conflicting messaging around their protection and safety, fear of financial fallout, absence of a cohesive national strategy, and volatile, incompetent leadership," The Lancet said.

People wearing face masks wait in line to do shopping at a store during the coronavirus pandemic in the Brooklyn borough of New York, the United States, April 14, 2020. (Photo by Michael Nagle/Xinhua)

In the face of the common tragedy of mankind, these politicians have wasted the precious time China bought the world with its painstaking fight against the virus, and dismissed the righteous international call for battling the virus in solidarity.

They are short of sympathy for the loss of lives and short of empathy to help each other in difficulties, but full of political calculations and paranoid Cold War mindsets.

Coining such labels as "China virus," they have carefully crafted the "U.S. narrative" to frame and defame China, in a bid to turn the war between humans and the coronavirus into a "new Cold War" to suppress China.

However, no lies can conceal the truth. In the tsunami-like epidemic, China was the first to report the outbreak and the first to issue a warning to the world. It mobilized its national resources immediately to confront the brunt of the virus, making huge sacrifices for the global anti-pandemic fight.

It notified the WHO of the epidemic, shared the gene sequence of the virus with other countries, and cooperated with the international community on epidemic prevention and control. The world, said The Lancet editor-in-chief Richard Horton, should be grateful to China for its warnings and containment efforts.

Meanwhile, China has offered assistance to more than 120 countries around the world, including the United States and Europe, and it has made substantial donations to the WHO. It has provided countries all over the world with various types of protective materials, including more than 20 billion masks and billions of sets of protective clothing and goggles.

Looking back at history, the human race grew and developed in their struggles against various diseases and disasters, and every major epidemic has left precious experience and lessons for human beings.

During this year's pandemic, China's early warning is worth remembering, China's experience is worth learning from, China's sacrifice is worthy of respect, and China's contribution is commendable.

Liars should never be allowed to reconstruct reality. Any stigmatization and defamation is disrespect for the millions of medical personnel who have fought on the frontlines, for the over 10 million people in Wuhan who lived for 76 days in lockdown, and for the 1.4 billion Chinese people who have strictly disciplined themselves to help curb the virus' spread.

At present, the pandemic is rampantly spreading, devouring lives and battering the economy. It has been evolving from a global public health crisis into a comprehensive crisis affecting the fields of politics, economy and social affairs. Only with combined efforts of all nations can the world defeat the common challenge.

All in all, history is always created by the brave, and nothing but unity and responsibility is the right theme of humanity's fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
We have all heard of the smartphone and any day now, most of us will have one. Not far behind: the smart home. Writing in the latest issue ...
Recently returned from Honduras, I feel a headache developing. A quick thermometer check prompts a call to my doctors COVID-19 advice line.

I press all the options in the phone tree until a nurse finally answers.

When I report my fever of 100.3, her triage questions become more focused.

No, I dont have a cough, I say. Just a slight headache.

More questions. More answers.

No, Im not nauseated.

She records my answers on a clicking keyboard while multitasking her interrogatives about travel and exposure.

Well, Ive been in Honduras where I was helping the Chispa Project establish elementary school libraries.

Yes maam, I find it very rewarding.

I downplay the danger as being only a half-dozen cases when I left last month, so no exposure that I know of, I add.

She mumbles something, so I give her a Pardon me? followed by Yes, I suppose I am calm.

Why? she asks.

Well, maybe its from my years working as a chaplain, but mostly Im calm because I am starting to think that my thermometer might be broken.

Her uh-huh sound is the same one I use when I hear patients in deep denial.

She grants me a moment to try my thermometer again and I soon report 102.6.

My face flushes with heat, melting away my calm.

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I start a text to my best friend and hospital chaplain, Roger Williams. I want to tell him that Im dying, when suddenly, my thermometer screeches with discordant beeps.

I wonder aloud about its reliability.

I hear the nurses incredulous response.

Really? Thermometers can malfunction when the batteries are dying?"

I try taking another reading, hoping that its the batterys moment to die rather than mine.

A few minutes later I tell her its plummeted to 86.6. Its a meer-i-cle I tell her in my best impression of a televangelist.

The nurse agrees, not entirely able to suppress her chuckles.

My search for help from a broken thermometer tells me a few things: I am scared. I am anxious for answers. I am worried about my friends and family, my pregnant daughter.

The false reading reminds me of the misinformation we are ingesting from various sources.

Facebook friends endorse Swedens effort to rush to herd immunity. A politician speculates aloud on the effectiveness of heat therapy or injecting disinfectant. And a few pastors claim either Gods protection over them or gods judgment over you. My lowercase g is intentional because only a lowercase god would hurt his people.

So where is the capital-G God?

God is in the waiting room with us. He waits while we wait. He hurts while we hurt. He grieves while we grieve. He offers clarity to the caregivers and comfort to the dying.

And in that time, he sustains us, he uplifts us. He cries with us, and sometimes he helps us to laugh.

Gratefully, as my call with the nurse concludes, we share a laugh at the scared, hypochondriac chaplain.

Yes, I can take two Tylenol for my headache and, what else did you say?

Yes maam, Ill buy a new thermometer and call you in the morning.
Trying to stay educated and up-to-date with all the political ads in todays environment certainly seems like a daunting task, to say the least. It seems almost impossible to wade through all the rhetoric to decide who is the best candidate. However, impossible as it may seem, the importance of the election could not be stressed more.

One such important election is in HD 88, with incumbent Representative Sharon Greef. Sitting legislators can easily be vetted, as they should be, because they have a legislative history and voting record that a person can look at. However, that vetting sometimes can also make the legislator a target when an opponent will pick out only one or two votes they have disagreed with. How conservative a legislator is defined, should be decided on their record as a whole, rather than on just one or two votes. My advice is to be wary of the opponent who spends their whole time throwing the politically rhetorical grenades over the fence. They are usually the ones that hide behind that fence, never offer solutions, and personally have nothing to offer; other than an ability to criticize the decisions of others.

While I too may not agree 100% with Representative Greefs voting record, I still find a candidate strong in her convictions, articulate in her messaging, and still sensitive to the needs of her constituents. Those convictions, and the experience she has achieved in Helena, could not be more important than in the upcoming Montana legislative session. With the current Corvid-19 crisis in Montana, one could be assured of a Montana budget fraught with financial shortages, a wide array of policy changes needing to be made, and critical decision making at every level.

Now is the time for experience, now is the time for conviction, now is the time for Representative Greef to take her legislative experience to another level. I am confident she is the right person for the job, and will prove to all, that she is the conservative candidate we want to represent us in Helena. I am supporting Representative Greef in the upcoming election, and think you should also.

 Former Montana House Majority Leader Ron Ehli

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Hundreds of families, in Mexico, have resorted to protests as they demand news of their sick relatives who were admitted to hospitals after contacting coronavirus. Many of the distraught members are also asking for the corpses of their relatives. According to reports, multiple videos showing cadavers surfaced on social media recently, prompting these protests.

Read: New Mexico Takes More Drastic Measures Against Virus Hotspot

Video clips on social media

Amongst them was a video of Las Americas general hospital in Ecatepec which went viral. The clip showed several bagged bodies in stretchers, some packed in a room while others in against the courtyard wall. Another video that surfaced showed upset family members of an infected patient who had forced their way into the hospital. The clip showed them shouting in a crowded hallway as they demanded details of their relatives.

En Hospital General de Ecatepec Las Americas , familiares de paciente, entran a buscarlo, y descubren que fallecio y encuentran los restos de otros fallecidos

Esto es un cuadro dantesco digno de un Apocalipsis, que tienen que decir @HLGatell y @lopezobrador_ ?

 Fuertes imagenes pic.twitter.com/ctA6X3n5R4  Aprendiz de Brujo (No Soy Periodista) (@JoseAntonioLo06) May 2, 2020

Read: Mexico's Economy Plunges Deeper Into Recession: Report

Read: Mexico Tells Towns, States: Stop Putting Up Virus Roadblocks

According to the countrys health ministry, Ecatepec, a working-class city outside Mexico City has recorded 407 confirmed cases of the virus and over 27 deaths. Meanwhile, after the protests emerged, the Mexican government asserted that coordination with funeral homes has been strengthened to speed up delivery of bodies and avoid the situation of pathology. Officials had also reportedly remarked that they were continuously working on increasing communications with families of those infected. However, the entrance to the hospital has been blocked in order to curb the spread of the COVID-19 infection.

Mexico has reported a total of 22,088 positive cases and 2,061 fatalities as of now. A total of 13,447 have revered in the nation. Meanwhile, in Latin America, a total of 200,569 have been tested positive for the COVID-19 and 10,259 have been reported dead.

Read: 'Remain In Mexico' Asylum Hearings Suspended Until June 1

Read: New Mexico Takes More Drastic Measures Against Virus Hotspot

(Image credits: AP)
Chief of the Army Staff, General MM Naravane, and all ranks of the Indian Army paid tributes to security personnel for their great sacrifice while fighting terrorists at Handwara in Kupwara district on Sunday.

General M M Naravane #COAS and all ranks of #IndianArmy pay tributes to the valiant braves of our Army and J&K Police for their supreme sacrifice while fighting and eliminating terrorists in #Handwara. pic.twitter.com/WcLirwTQ1D  ADG PI - INDIAN ARMY (@adgpi) May 3, 2020

READ | 'Nation Will Remain Indebted': Amit Shah Pays Tribute To Handwara Martyrs

The Indian Army said that the security personnel involved in the Handwara operation demonstrated the strong determination of the forces to protect the lives of citizens.

This operation exemplified true tradition and strong determination of the #SecurityForces to safeguard the lives of own citizens. The Commanding Officer leading from the front along with others is testimony to the motto of Service before Self.  ADG PI - INDIAN ARMY (@adgpi) May 3, 2020

The Army saluted Col Ashutosh Sharma, SM*, Maj Anuj Sood, Nk Rakesh Kumar, L/Nk Dinesh Singh and SI Shakeel Qazi and expressed to their bereaved families.

READ | CDS General Bipin Rawat Salutes Martyred Personnel In J-K's Handwara

Counter-terror operation

A team comprising of five Army and J&K Police personnel entered the target area occupied by the terrorists to evacuate the civilians, the statement said. Two terrorists were eliminated and the team of five security forces personnel comprising of two Army officers, two Army soldiers, and one J&K Police Sub Inspector attained martyrdom.

Top Lashkar-e Taiba commander Haider from Pakistan has been killed in Handwara encounter, reported news agency ANI quoting IG Kashmir Vijay Kumar.

READ | Handwara Encounter: PM Modi Pays Tribute To Martyrs, Hails Their Valour & Sacrifice

Defence Minister pays tribute

Paying his tribute to the martyrs, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said: "I offer my tributes to the soldiers and security personnel who fell in action. My heart goes out to the families who lost their loved ones today. India stands shoulder to shoulder with the families of these brave martyrs. The loss of our soldiers and security personnel in Handwara(J&K) is deeply disturbing and painful. They showed exemplary courage in their fight against the terrorists and made supreme sacrifice while serving the country. We will never forget their bravery and sacrifice."

READ | Army Issues Statement As 5 Bravehearts Are Martyred In Handwara
Helping Thailands starving elephants

PHUKET: The plight of animals and wildlife in Thailand during the COVID-19 pandemic has been well documented as the decimated tourism sector has left many previously reliant on that field in a desperate situation.

animalscharityCoronavirusCOVID-19wildlife

By The Phuket News

Sunday 3 May 2020, 10:48AM

STEF is looking to help the 1,360 domesticated elephants throughout the southern region left devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo: STEF.

The number of elephants affected by the collapse of tourism in Thailand is set to increase dramatically as more and more elephant owners, now with no income, run out of savings to buy food for their elephants.

A UK registered, internationally focused charity, Southern Thailand Elephant Foundation (STEF), is stepping up and helping to supply vital food to starving elephants in the south of Thailand. Trucks have already been rolled out to deliver this food to some of the 1,360 domesticated elephants throughout the southern region.

STEF has volunteers on the ground in Thailand identifying vulnerable elephants and coordinating food supplies. To help with this work, STEF has joined forces with another charitable organisation, the Thai Elephant Alliance Association, and both charities are together striving to ensure that the collapse of Thailands tourist industry following the COVID-19 outbreak doesnt result in domesticated elephants starving.

Thailand has been in lock-down since the end of March; the elephant parks have closed, and many of the elephants have been returned to their owners. But these owners, often an elephants mahout or other individual, relied heavily on the income they received from tourism and, without it, they are now struggling to feed themselves as well their elephant. It costs 60 (B2440) a week to feed one elephant.

Locals in Thailand are also doing all they can to help; one farmer has donated a field of sugar cane to the cause. Trucks deliver mostly fodder and bags of feed pellets; each truck load costs 60 and provides enough food to last one elephant for a week; with 1,360 domesticated elephants in Southern Thailand the scale of the problem is massive.

STEF Trustee, Jakrapob Thaotad, who is overseeing the feed distribution in Southern Thailand with his cousin Sitthisak Songkaew, commented: The scale of the problem is considerable, but we are getting word out and owners in need are calling us so we can schedule deliveries to them as soon as possible.

Since the launch of its appeal to Save the Starving Elephants, STEF has raised over 7,000 from donations via JustGiving and from generous private donations. They are also asking their supporters to sponsor a food delivery truck for 60. STEF is run entirely by volunteers and all the money raised through these appeals is going directly to Thailand to provide food for the elephants.

It is vital that we continue to support this work otherwise the future of elephants in Thailand will be in jeopardy, commented STEF President Sir Richard Armstrong.

For more information on how to help, volunteer or donate please contact Gillian Newsum on +447775992124 or email info@southernthailandelephants.org

The STEF Justgiving page can be accessed here: https://justgiving.com/campaign/feedthestarvingelephants

Sponsor a Truck campaign can be accessed here:

https://southernthailandelephants.org/sponsor-a-truck/

Further info on domesticated elephants issues can be accessed here: https://southernthailandelephants.org/domesticated-elephants/

About STEF

The Southern Elephant Foundation (STEF) is an international charity, registered in England, which raises funds to support projects that promote the ethical treatment and high standards of health and welfare of elephants in Southern Thailand.

The major community project at present is to fund the construction of an elephant veterinary centre at Ban Ton Sae, in Phang Nga province, Southern Thailand. The centre, which is expected to be open later this year, will provide free treatment for elephants in the region, and eventually include an education centre and a rest-home for old or abused elephants.
The Concerned Youth of the National Democratic Congress, (NDC), has pooh-poohed governments stimulus package to support businesses and industries in the country.

The National Board for Small Scale Industry is scheduled to disburse the stimulus package to industries from May 2020, but the situation looks bleak.

The Concerned Youth of the NDC has described the GHC600 million as paltry, especially comparing it to South Africa which is making available US$27 billion to support their economy.

According to a statement issued in Accra and signed by Edem Adzogah, leader of the group, former President John Dramani Mahama being a visionary leader could have made available GHC2 billion to support collapse businesses and industries because he understands the effect of the COVID 19 on the private sector.

If we are talking about industrialization, the Ex President John Mahama was ready to use the Ghana Exim Bank (GEXIM) to transform industries. What President Akufo Addo is doing clearly depicts that he doesnt have the private sector in mind, forgetting that the private is the engine of growth, it said.

Chieftans in the private sector who are now complaining about the effect of the COVID 19 on their businesses say looking at the situation now the government could have done much better to the private sector.

The statement said, the way the Ex President John Mahama had structured GEXIM before his exit, GEXIM could have been running a portfolio of not less than US$3 billion to transform industries in the country.

GEXIM bank currently gives support to the agro industry, the pharmaceutical companies, SMEs among others, but the desire for the sector has still not been realized.

The statement advised that GEXIM should consider issuing bonds on the international market to revamp the industries in the country, since its within its mandate to do that and stop paying lip services.
Plot summary: This book is written not to glorify the North or the South during the divisive Civil War, but simply to reach an understanding of why John Arnold Edwards, the authors great-great grandfather, served in the Confederate Army, specifically Company E, 15th Virginia Cavalry. He was born in Pennsylvania and grew up in Methodist parsonages throughout Pennsylvania, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. He was the second of nine children of the Rev. Dr. William Balthrop Edwards and Elizabeth Alexander Sommerville Edwards. William Balthrop was born in King George County, and was a Methodist minister for 57 years, under appointment to the Baltimore Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. It is through the Minutes of the Annual Conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church and letters William Balthrop penned to his wife that we learn of William Balthrops antislavery and anti-Southern stances. Despite that, John Arnold joined the Confederacy while his parents and siblings stayed north and prospered. This book includes much about his fathers ministry, division within the MethodistEpiscopal Church, and conflicts over slavery. John Arnold attended Edwards Academy, later called Piedmont Academy in Fauquier. It was there that he received his formal education under his uncle, Francis Marion Edwards, principal of Edwards Academy. When the Civil War broke out, most of the students there joined the Confederacy. John Arnolds first cousin, Waite Sommerville, joined the Union Army. Both lives ended tragically. Prior to the Civil War, John Arnold married his second cousin, Rose Emma Edwards, in King George, moved there, and was schoolmaster at Mt. Hope, which became his family homeplace. He was wounded during the Bristoe Campaign at Brandy Station, near Culpeper, on Oct. 11, 1863, and died from those wounds in the Linwood House in Richmond on Jan. 17, 1864. The proprietor of the Linwood House was John Arnolds friend, Malcolm Mac Wallingsford, a clerk for the Confederate Army and a spy. John Arnold was survived by two children, Maggie and George, who remained in King George. Many of their offspring live there now. Interestingly, in 1865, John Arnolds father was one of five members of the Methodist denomination who planned a D.C. memorial service for President Abraham Lincoln.
The number of cases of Covid-19 reported in Russia has continued to grow rapidly, with the mayor of Moscow warning hospitals may soon be overrun by the virus.

The nation recorded 9,623 new cases on Saturday  the second highest such figure worldwide across the 24 hour period  with the majority recorded in the Russian capital.

Sergei Sobyanin, the citys mayor, issued an appeal to Muscovites to continue to self-isolate, adding that the number of critically ill patients is rising but has not yet reached the pace of worst-case scenario projections.

However, it is obvious that the threat is on the rise, he said in his blog.

While initially seeming to have escaped the worst of the virus, the number of cases in Russia has continued to grow across the last month  reaching a total of 124,054.

The death toll meanwhile has risen to 1,222 with 57 deaths since Friday, however while fatalities remain low compared to counterparts in Europe and North America, the curve of infections in the country is yet to plateau.

The sparsely populated yet vast nation has been subject to partial lockdowns particularly focussed on areas with dense populations since the end of March. In Moscow, people who have not obtained a special permit that allows free movement for work or other purposes are only able to leave their homes to shop, walk their dogs and dispose of rubbish.

Mr Sobyanin told Russian media authorities may cut the number of digital permits issued for travel across the city if the situation worsens.

The measures are currently due to continue until past 11 May, when the country finishes celebrating its Labour Day and Victory Day holidays.

It comes as the virus continues to strike at the upper echelons of Russian society  including those close to Mr Putin, who is running the country from a state of isolation.

Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, the second-most senior official in the country after Mr Putin, has temporarily stepped down from his role to recover after contracting the virus. First deputy prime minister Andrei Belousov is currently serving in his stead.

And on Friday construction minister Vladimir Yakushev, a member of the Russian cabinet, announced he had been diagnosed with the virus and that he would be treated in hospital.

Dmitry Volkov, one of his deputies, has also tested positive, the ministry said.

Additional reporting by Reuters.
Boris Johnson and fiancee Carrie Symonds on Saturday named their new-born baby boy Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas, after their grandfathers and the two doctors who saved the United Kingdom prime minister's life during his hospitalisation last month with COVID-19.

Announcing the news on social media, Symonds, 32, said the baby was named after the UK Prime Minister's grandfather Wilfred and her grandfather Lawrie, with Nicholas a nod to the National Health Service doctors  Dr Nick Price and Dr Nick Hart.

Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas Johnson was born on Wednesday at University College Hospital in London.

In an Instagram post revealing the name, Symonds also thanked the staff of that hospital, saying: "I couldn't be happier. My heart is full."

The picture alongside the post shows Symonds cradling the new-born, who can be seen with a full head of hair and wrapped in a cream blanket.

The birth of their baby boy came just weeks after Johnson, 55, was discharged from intensive care at St Thomas' Hospital here following treatment for coronavirus.

A spokesperson for the couple said earlier this week that the couple were "thrilled" and that both mother and baby were "doing very well" following the birth.

It is understood Johnson was present throughout the birth, with Downing Street releasing a photograph of him beaming on his return to Number 10 following the arrival of his son.

He had to postpone his paternity leave due to the ongoing coronavirus lockdown and was back at work after just a day's break.

The birth came two days after he officially returned to work at 10 Downing Street on Monday from his recuperation from COVID-19 at the prime ministerial Chequers countryside retreat.

Johnson and Symonds announced their engagement at the end of February, when it was also revealed that they were expecting their first baby in the summer.

Symonds, who works for an ocean conservation charity Oceana, met Johnson during her time as the communications chief for the Conservative Party when he was the Mayor of London in

2012.

In July 2019, they became the first unmarried couple to move into Downing Street together.

The news of their impending wedding and baby was made public soon after Johnson's divorce from his Indian-origin ex-wife Marina Wheeler got finalised in February.

Wheeler, whose mother Dip Singh hailed from Punjab, is a barrister and columnist who has four grown up children with Johnson.

Johnson and Wheeler had separated in 2018 and announced their divorce plans soon after reports of Johnson's affair with Symonds became public.

His marriage to Symonds will be Johnson's third, following his divorce from first wife Allegra Mostyn-Owen and then second wife Marina Wheeler, and their child is his sixth, four with Wheeler and a fifth following an affair with art consultant Helen Macintyre.
In 2020, investing in the travel sector in general and cruise companies in particular has produced losses for shareholders. Today Im evaluating Carnival (NYSE:CCL) stock. Year-to-date, CCL stock is down an eye-popping 73%.

ccl stock

Source: Ruth Peterkin / Shutterstock.com

InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading Tips

Carnivals shares are dual-listed both in the U.S. and the U.K. In fact, it is the only company in the world to be included in both the S&P 500 index in the US and the FTSE 100 index in the UK.

As we start a new month when several U.S. states and countries around the world are discussing how to get back to business without compromising the health of the public, some investors are wondering what may be next for CCL stock price. At this point, I do not believe that the valuation of cruise operators like Carnival is attractive yet. As a result, it may still be too soon to invest in the shares. Heres why.

The Pandemic and Carnival

Until the novel coronavirus outbreak became a pandemic, Carnival prided itself on being the worlds largest cruise operator. The companys different cruise line brands used to operate a combined fleet of over 100 vessels that visited more than 700 ports globally. Annually, the combined fleet welcomed almost 11.5 million passengers aboard, representing about 50% of the global cruise market.

Analysts used to discuss the companys potential growth, especially in the emerging economies of Asia and. Latin America, Those regions could have provided major catalysts for Carnival.

However, in the past several weeks, Carnival and other cruise operators, including Royal Caribbean (NYSE:RCL) and Norwegian Cruise Line (NYSE:NCLH), have had to suspend their operations. Thus, although it is interesting to hear about these past numbers, it is also somewhat meaningless to use them to estimate the companys future performance.

Story continues

For its first quarter that ended in February, Carnival reported a GAAP net loss of $781 million, or $1.14 per share, on revenue of $4.8 billion. In the same quarter last year, its net income was $336 million, or 48 cents per share, on revenues of $4.7 billion.

In a statement, the firm said We believe the ongoing effects of COVID-19 on our operations and global bookings have had, and will continue to have a material negative impact on our financial results and liquidity, and such negative impact may continue well beyond the containment of such outbreak.

The Price of CCL Stock in the Past Five Years

At the end of April 2015, Carnivals stock price was around $46. Today its around $14. On Jan.2, the shares were worth around $51.

The stocks compound annual growth rate over the last five years was -21.17%. Put another way, $1,000 invested in CCL stock would have decreased to about $304.

Please note that until recently, Carnival used to pay regular dividends. The calculation above doesnt take into consideration its dividends or reinvesting that income. I did not factor in any brokerage commissions or taxes either.

Given the grave uncertainty the industry is facing, Carnival has recently axed its dividend. It has also suspended buybacks of its stock.

Can Carnival Stock Recover Soon?

As the numbers above show, CCL stock has had a downward and difficult trajectory. Investors who bought its shares would have lost considerable capital over the past five years. But in fact, the stocks steep losses occurred in 2020. Thus, if we had done a similar calculation in early January 2020, the results would have looked a lot different.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the global economy will contract 3% in 2020. Yet in 2021, the IMF forecasts robust growth. Stock prices generally reflect expectations of future profits.

Investors who agree that these gray clouds may dissipate in the coming months may want to start investing in cruise stocks.

However, many countries are still facing lockdowns as well as travel restrictions. Thus, the light at the end of the tunnel for the industry may still be far away. Also, since Carnivals dividends are now suspended, I do not expect passive income seekers to return to the shares.

On April 2, Carnival stock price hit a 52-week low of $7.80. It was an all-time low for the shares. Could it be that the Street is having doubts about the ability of the cruise operator to survive?

The company is expected to release its Q2 earnings in late June. Investors who are considering buying the shares may want to wait for the companys results, giving them an opportunity to study the companys metrics and its outlook for the second half of the year in detail.

By then, the Street may have a better view as to when Carnival will generate revenues again. I would also pay attention to additional steps the beleaguered cruise operator may be taking to improve its liquidity and whether its pursuing any additional financing arrangements.

The Bottom Line on CCL Stock

Its still unclear when consumers will start taking international vacations again. Carnival and its peers may not be able to regain their pre-pandemic revenue levels for many months, if not years, to come. And unless cruises resume in the coming months, operators will be put in rather complicated and difficult financial positions.

I believe our economy is resilient. And in the coming months, we will be able to put at least some of the economic cost of this viral outbreak behind us. Thus, there will be opportunities to invest in the broader indices at bargain levels . However, I think investing in CCL stock is still risky.

Tezcan Gecgil has worked in investment management for over two decades in the U.S. and U.K. In addition to formal higher education in the field, she has also completed all 3 levels of the Chartered Market Technician (CMT) examination. Her passion is for options trading based on technical analysis of fundamentally strong companies. She especially enjoys setting up weekly covered calls for income generation. As of this writing, Tezcan Gecgil did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.

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The post It May Be Too Early to Buy Carnival Stock appeared first on InvestorPlace.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has been warned to clash with president Trump over coronavirus: AP

The governor of Michigan has defended Joe Biden against a sexual assault allegation, saying she believes the presumptive Democratic nominee's denials and added that she resents having to answer such questions as a survivor of sexual assault herself.

Gretchen Whitmer, currently seen as a top choice to serve as the former vice presidents running mate in the race against Donald Trump, told CNN that she had been heavily researching the allegation made by Tara Reade, a former Senate staffer to Mr Biden.

I know Joe Biden, and Ive watched his defence and theres not a pattern that goes into this, Ms Whitmer, a former prosecutor and state lawmaker, told CNNs Jake Tapper about the accusation against Mr Biden. I think for these reasons, Im very comfortable that Joe Biden is who he says he is.

The governor then sought to tamp down any follow-up questions about the controversial allegation, which has garnered national news in recent days as Mr Biden appears set to secure the partys Democratic nomination.

And you know what? Thats all Im going to say about it, Ms Whitmer said. I really resent the fact that every time a case comes up all of us survivors have to weigh in.

She added: It is reopening wounds and it is, take us at our word, ask us for our opinion, and lets move on.

The governor said that sexual assault survivors feel a simmering anger about seemingly having to represent other victims when high-profile allegations take over the national news cycle.

Ms Reade has accused Mr Biden of assaulting her when she worked for him as a Senate staffer on Capitol Hill in the 1990s. The accusations have come under intense scrutiny after she appeared to advance her previous claims of uncomfortable behaviour on the part of Mr Biden to outright assault in the final months of the Democratic primaries.

The former staffer said she complained about how she was treated in the office to other aides, who have said they do not recall such conversations. She also said she never filed an official complaint and made no mention of assault or harassment on a form she filed about the allegations with a congressional personnel office.

Story continues

While Ms Whitmer has largely avoided answering questions about serving as a running mate to Mr Biden, she has praised the former vice president in a series of interviews in recent weeks after endorsing him for the White House.

Were cut from a similar cloth, she told Politico about herself and Mr Biden. Im grateful for the friendship, and thats  you know, everything that Im doing right now is focused on helping the people of my state through this crisis.

However, her states lockdown orders have resulted in demonstrators taking to the streets and demanding Michigan be reopened for business despite the coronavirus pandemic. Ms Whitmer announced some of the most restrictive stay-at-home guidelines in the country after the state saw one of the first significant outbreaks of Covid-19 in the US. It remains unclear for now whether the protests will jeopardise Ms Whitmers potential placement on the ticket.

On Sunday, Ms Whitmer told CNN that we have to listen to the epidemiologists and health experts while slamming the demonstrations in the state capitol, saying the protesters, some of whom brandished swastikas, Confederate flags and assault rifles, were not representative of who we are.

Mr Biden has vowed to select a female VP nominee, and previously said Ms Whitmer joined his list of possible picks shortly after she delivered the official Democratic response to Mr Trumps State of the Union address in February.

She told Politico earlier this month she would be the most enthusiastic supporter of [a] Biden-whomever ticket.

I would include people like Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren and Stacey Abrams and Amy Klobuchar and Val Demings, she said. You know, I think that there really is a great  theres a huge class of highly competent women leaders across this country that would, I think, be fantastic.

Read more

The armed Michigan protests could just be the beginning

Michigan provides coronavirus couples with free condoms by mail

Trump calls Michigan lockdown protesters good people

Michigan politicians wear bulletproof vests amid armed protesters

The irony of the protests against Governor Whitmer in Michigan
Tony Hetherington is Financial Mail on Sunday's ace investigator, fighting readers corners, revealing the truth that lies behind closed doors and winning victories for those who have been left out-of-pocket. Find out how to contact him below.

A.Y. writes: I have received a letter from Lowell Portfolio, claiming an alleged debt of 599 which it says I owe to PayPal.

With the letter was a further letter from PayPal, saying it had transferred the debt to Lowell.

I rang PayPal and was told that in fact no money is owed on my account, for which I have only ever used a debit card anyway.

Mix-up: The debtor had the same name and birthday but lived in the Shetlands

You told me that you had never used any form of credit with PayPal, so it was impossible for you to be in debt.

However, as a precaution, you decided to close your account and PayPal allowed this, which it would not have done if you had owed any money.

What made you particularly concerned was that Lowell was able to supply a letter on PayPal's notepaper, showing your name and address, and claiming that PayPal had already contacted you about your outstanding balance.

Lowell had also been in touch with you quite recently, chasing debts due to Shop Direct and the JD Williams catalogue company. It turned out that there is someone who shares your name and your date of birth.

The big difference is that the real debtor lives in the Shetlands, more than 800 miles from your own address. Lowell accepted this and dropped its pursuit of you, only to start the ball rolling again, after it took over PayPal's 599 claim.

So, I asked PayPal to let me see any of its records that would show how the debt arose, and why its letter was addressed to you and not to your Shetlands namesake. Not surprisingly, PayPal had no such records.

It told me: 'We will be contacting Mr Y to apologise and to say we will not be pursuing this matter.' Lowell was more forthcoming. It buys bad debts at a discount from firms like PayPal, and then tries to collect what it can.

All your details were supplied by PayPal, but Lowell accepts that it had been down this road before and had chased you for payments that were due from the other Mr Y.

In view of this, Lowell has sent you an apology and 150. You have told me you are donating this to charities that are responding to the coronavirus crisis.

Lowell has also made one more point. It says that information held by credit reference agencies has also mixed your real records in with those of the debtor.

It would be a good idea to ask all these agencies for a copy of your file, spring-clean it, and add a warning that you and the other Mr Y are two very different people.

Zara's a tricky customer for refund

Ms I.T. writes: I was asked to provide fashion company Zara with my bank details to receive a refund of 69.

After three months, Zara insists I have been repaid, but I have received nothing.

It seems Zara credited an unknown account, but I am fobbed off with replies saying my refund has been processed.

A bad sign: Ms I.T. ound that contacting Zara on its chat message board was frustrating

You found that contacting Zara on its chat message board was frustrating, and my own experience was little better.

Staff in London told me I had to contact the group's bosses in Spain. I did, but they failed to reply. When I warned that I was going to publish your complaint, they asked a London public relations firm to tell me there was confusion because you had changed your bank  something you deny.

The PR firm gave me a statement from Zara: 'Last June, we issued the refund, but the payment was unfortunately rejected by the customer's bank.

'We asked the customer to verify her bank details and have since resent the amount to her.'

I asked Zara where it sent the original payment but it flatly refused to tell me, 'because of privacy concerns'.

As you had signed a consent form allowing Zara to deal openly with me, I do wonder whose privacy they were concerned about. I am pleased that you have finally received the refund, but Zara has proved not to be an easy company to deal with.

Wine scam: Fraudster Freddie Achom with the Duchess of Cornwall

WE'RE WATCHING YOU There is disastrous news for investors in the collapsed Bordeaux Wine Company (BWC), who have been told by the Administrator that they are likely to recover less than a penny for every 1 they poured into what were supposed to be profitable wines. Insolvency Practitioner Umang Patel, who was appointed Administrator by the High Court last September, has written to the company's clients to say he has received claims totalling more than 1 0million, and he expects this figure to rise as many investors have not yet filed a claim. Investigations at a bonded warehouse used by the company have shown a massive shortfall of cases of wine which investors had paid for, but which BWC had not actually bought from vineyards. One investor said: 'The end result is that unsecured creditors are likely to get 0.6p in the pound.' As a result, this investor only stands to get about 340 in place of 57,000 he invested. Even this figure is only likely because the Administrator found that last July and August, BWC sold much of the wine it had stored but banked payments of 584,380 in the account of a completely different company, controlled by BWC's director Boington Grant. The Administrator won a court order to freeze the account, and has seized 52,538, and is pursuing the balance. Last year, I recovered 27,000 for one investor but warned that the company was likely to collapse very soon. And I named its behind-the-scenes controller as Freddie Achom, a convicted fraudster with a history of wine scams who had reinvented himself as a successful businessman, being pictured at official receptions hosted by then Prime Minister David Cameron and the Duchess of Cornwall.

If you believe you are the victim of financial wrongdoing, write to Tony Hetherington at Financial Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TS or email tony.hetherington@mailonsunday.co.uk. Because of the high volume of enquiries, personal replies cannot be given. Please send only copies of original documents, which we regret cannot be returned.
Bhopal, May 3 : Former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister and state Congress chief Kamal Nath has high hopes of his party bouncing back to power in the state in the near future.

Addressing a video news conference on Sunday, he claimed the BJP government may not last beyond the bypolls to the 24 vacant Assembly seats. He expected the Congress to win 20-22 of the seats.

Kamal Nath said that the betrayal by 22 former MLAs of Congress and the BJP's role in toppling his government right when the nation was supposed to deal with coronavirus were not lost on people's mind.

"The voters are very much aware of happenings around them and they can hand a verdict quietly. You can gauge their mood on social media or when you talk to them in those constituencies. So, I am very confident of the comeback of Congress," Kamal Nath said when asked if he will hoist the national flag in MP on Independence Day.

Even while answering all political questions, Kaml Nath kept insisting that, as of now, the priority was to deal with the situation arising out of Covid-19 pandemic. He attacked the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government for "mismanaging the crisis". "Unless the BJP shows some vision in its strategy , the state will get sucked into darkness," he said.

He said that the biggest failure was in the government's inability to get the suspect cases tested. "What kind of testing is being done, why are results coming after more than 10 days? In these 10 days, even negative persons will get infected in the hospitals and those infected might die. Also, how much testing is being done in rural and semi-urban areas, with such influx of returning migrant labourers. Perhaps they believe if there is no testing, there will be no cases. This is disastrous," Kamal Nath said.

For once, Kamal Nath chose to speak up about his failure and that of his party's top leadership to read the dissent in the party that reflected on his acumen and overconfidence. "I certainly have political experience of 40 years, but I did not have the experience of the politics of deals and allurements and burning ambitions. I was communicating constantly with our MLAs even in Bengaluru and they told me of the tempting deals on offer, I told them to do whatever they deemed right," he said.

Kamal Nath scotched the theory that the Congress MLAs left because they were unhappy. He said had all the records of communications with them and how many of their works were done.

"Will they accept that they went out of temptation and as part of the deal? I know how much time I gave them despite being personally running the government with ministers and not outsourcing it like the previous government," he said.

He denied differences with former Chief Minister Digvijaya Singh or that Singh gave him the impression the MLAs would not quit the party. "My relations with Digvijaya Singh will continue as before. I do not need any new team," Kamal Nath said.

He strongly denied the BJP claim that his government did not take enough steps to prevent the Corona crisis.

He said that steps were taken right from January end when there were only a few cases in the country. All through February, different meetings were held and orders issued to deal with the situation, though the pandemic was declared only on March 12. He listed out a series of date-wise steps to prove his point.

"BJP and Shivraj (Singh Chouhan) kept cracking jokes about the Corona crisis saying our apprehension was misplaced. They were only busy pulling down the government and now they are trying to put the blame on us," he said.

If Congress were in power, it would focus on procuring emergency equipment like ventilators, preventive gear like PPE kits and more testing kits and facilities, he said.

Kamal Nath also rebutted BJP charge about his government not fulfilling promises of farm loan waivers, saying that loans had been waived for over 27.22 lakh farmers in two phases and he has records of the same.

He said Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan still believed in the old trick of populist announcements. "But the point is about the strategy to implement these announcements. It is about how relief will be provided to farmers, small traders, labourers and small businesses. "How will they rebuild the economy that has totally collapsed?"
A police driver was killed and



three constables were injured after their multi-utility vehicle hit a wild boar and turned turtle on Wardha Road in the early hours of Sunday in Maharashtra's Nagpur, an official said.

He identified the deceased as Khushal Shegaonkar and the injured as women constables Snehal Thorat and Harsha Shende and head constable Sajid Sayyad, all attached to Butibori police station.

"They were going to Khaparkheda to unite a mentally unwell woman with her family. The woman was brought to Butibori police station by people and the family had requested that she be dropped home since they were unable to come because of the lockdown. On the way, the police vehicle hit a wild boar on Wardha Road in Jamtha area," he said.

"The vehicle hit cement structures along the road after dashing into the wild boar and overturned. All the four were rushed to a nearby hospital where Shegaonkar succumbed to his injuries," he said.

A case of accidental death has been registered at Hingna police station.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Dah Division of Indian Army on Sunday paid tributes to the frontline workers battling the novel coronavirus at Dr Rajendra Prasad Government Medical College (RPGMC), Tanda.

Defence PRO Lieutenant Colonel Devender Anand said that the Army expressed gratitude to the selfless gallant fighters from varied fields across the nation fighting coronavirus pandemic.

Army Pipes and Drums Band from Gorkha Rifles unit played patriotic tunes keeping with the solemnity of the occasion to motivate and express heartfelt gratitude to corona warriors of Kangra district, he said adding that an event was held in strict compliance of social distancing norms.

On behalf of the Army, a certificate of appreciation* was presented to Dr Bhanu Awasthi, principal and head of ortho department, RPGMC as a mark of solidarity with the medical fraternity and support staff of the hospital.
In the rush to answer this crisis, Congress passed a stimulus bill fattening unemployment benefits so generously that millions of people will earn more if they get fired or furloughed.

That creates an opportunity. By putting 100,000 public workers on furlough as soon as possible, New Jersey could increase their take-home pay during this crisis, easing their burden and juicing the state economy.

There is more. The stimulus bill also includes generous new subsidies for employers to share jobs during this slowdown, rather than rely on layoffs. The hope is to spread the pain, for 10 people to lose half their hours by furlough, rather than for 5 people to lose their jobs entirely.

New Jersey could capture that subsidy, too. Senate President Steve Sweeney, who is pushing this idea, estimates that the job-share subsidy could be worth $750 million -- split between state government, local governments, and school districts.

That may be optimistic, but this is clearly a promising course that the state should charge hard at right away. This is money on the table, folks. Failing to claim it would be political malpractice, the craziest move since Gov. Chris Christie turned down $3 billion in federal aid for the Hudson River tunnel project.

In fact, while no state has done this yet, the private sector saw this opportunity a few weeks ago and has been taking full advantage -- putting workers on part-time furlough and claiming those job-share subsidies, just as Sweeney wants to do in the public sector.

Its a great idea, and more widespread already than people think, says Tom Bracken, head of the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce. You have people who are not as busy as they were, so you can have them work a few days a week on furlough. They get the unemployment and are kept whole. And it saves employers money. Its a win-win.

The state Senate will hold hearings on the plan this week, remotely. Gov. Phil Murphy says hes open to the idea, but his advisors are skeptical that it would save as much as Sweeney hopes, and Sweeney is frustrated that weeks have passed since he proposed the idea and hes still waiting for an answer.

It gives the state of New Jersey a chance to get $750 million more, and it doesnt hurt one person, Sweeney says. Why wouldnt we do it?

Hetty Rosenstein, head of the Communications Workers of America, says that unions might support Sweeneys plan on a smaller scale. It is one tool, but it wont save $750 million, she says.

Public workers, she says, are busy in this crisis -- not just police and cops but teachers, nurses, and office workers processing unemployment claims. People at the Department of Labor are working from home 12 hours a day and six days a week, she said. I dont reject anything, but its going to apply to a fairly small number of people in the grand scheme.

Perhaps. But no one has a good handle on that number yet. And even if the savings are one-third as large as Sweeney predicts, that comes to $250 million, in addition to the pay hikes for furloughed workers. In the world of public policy, this is a rare opportunity.

Remember, New Jersey gets a very raw deal from the federal government on the whole, sending $1 to Washington and getting 90 cents back. Last week Sen. Mitch McConnell suggested that states like New Jersey should declare bankruptcy rather than ask for more federal help during this crisis. His state, Kentucky, gets $2.41 back for every $1 it sends to Washington.

Want to get some revenge on Mitch? Lets grab this money. And lets move fast.

More: Tom Moran columns

Tom Moran may be reached at tmoran@starledger.com. Follow him on Twitter @tomamoran. Find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has given Saturday Night Live star Cecily Strong a taste of Michigan  literally.

The Michigan governor recently sent Strong a Michigan care package full of Kalamazoo-based Bells Brewery beer and memorabilia, in honor of Strongs recent portrayal of that woman from Michigan."

Strong offered up a spoofed message from the governor last weekend, where she poked fun at recent headlines like President Donald Trumps reference to Whitmer as that woman from Michigan and protests outside the state capital.

The SNL star thanked Whitmer in an Instagram post Saturday showing off the Michigan care package, which included four cases of Bells Brewery beer, a T-shirt, stickers and other items.

Got a giant and gorgeous Michigan care package sent to New York courtesy of that super cool woman from Michigan, Strong wrote on Instagram. Honestly, this blew me away!

The gift was full of Bells Brewery souvenirs, a toast to Strongs parody which portrayed the Michigan governor sipping a Labatt Blue beer.

Whitmer later told Fox 2 Detroit in an interview that the SNL skit got the beer wrong," holding up a bottle of Bells Two-Hearted Ale.

We love Canada, but we drink Michigan beer, Whitmer said in the interview.

RELATED: SNL delivers a spoof Message from Gov. Whitmer

The video, which aired April 25, features Strongs Whitmer offering some tips for those wishing to exercise their freedom of speech, including staying home.

I promise you can call me a b---- from the safety of your couch. Its called Twitter, she says, while also advising people wear face coverings but no Joker or clown masks or any with hoods.

Watch the full skit below.

More on MLive:

Whitmer issues orders extending state of emergency without support of legislature

Whitmer orders extension of protection guidelines for grocery stores, pharmacies until May 30

Day of angry protests, political maneuvers sets stage for likely legal battle in Michigan
BETHLEHEM  As small business owners trudge through the economic shock of the COVID-19 pandemic, the town of Bethlehem has launched a new initiative to support their local entrepreneurs.

Town leaders are encouraging residents to take to social media with photos of themselves patronizing local businesses with the hashtag #InvestInBethlehem to raise awareness about the businesses remaining open during the pandemic.
'Rather than people settling into a remote-working groove or positive pivot, many members are feeling like they are losing their footholds.' Stock photo: Joe Giddens/PA Wire

On the morning of March 18 - less than one week after Irish children were sent home with all their school books, office doors were closed and words like "self-isolation" and "social distancing" were still far from commonplace - Joanne Griffin wrote a message to two contacts on LinkedIn.

"I barely knew either of them," she told me via a WhatsApp call. But the former LinkedIn executive turned founder and CEO of Adapt IQ, dedicated to helping organisations prepare teams for the future of work, was thinking of the uncertain future in which we all suddenly found ourselves. "I pinged Colin Harris, managing director of VIP Recruitment, and Louise O'Conor, a partner at Beta Digital. I knew they were both creative, connected and believed in creating social impact."

Joanne asked if they were interested in designing a way to pull people together from their new, separated worlds. To create a community. Her idea ignited a fast-moving spark in the others. "I wrote my message at 10.23am. Eight minutes later they both got back to me and said, 'We're in'. By 1.44pm, we were on a Zoom call," she said. "We are all running businesses on the side, but we are also committed to the strength of the collective brain to solve common challenges."

By April 1 (no fooling), the trio had added Mindi Caselden as a fourth partner and launched IrelandTogether.ie, a brand-new non-profit committed to providing free online support for Irish businesses struggling with the effects of the Covid-19 restrictions.

"We are a small enough nation to make this stuff work. It's the solidarity of the Irish people. Our platform already has over 300 members made up of senior leaders of SME's across Ireland and the diaspora," Joanne told me.

"We have a thriving community on Slack and our ethos is reciprocity. Advisers give their time for free. For instance, today we had a number of accountants come forward. They are providing financial support to companies who are trying to access the Covid-19 supports whether for their employees or for their cash flow. In return they need help for social marketing. It's a 'pay it forward' community."

In addition to providing a supportive network of members and advisers, IrelandTogether has also been conducting sentiment surveys for participants. With three weeks' of surveys returned so far, the results are somewhat surprising.

1 CONFIDENCE IS DECLINING

Rather than people settling into a remote-working groove or positive pivot, many members are feeling like they are losing their footholds. "We are seeing a decline in people saying that they have the right networks around them to support them," Joanne said. "All the advisers who signed up at first thought they were the right people to provide support. But now they're saying: 'Oh no, we're running out of sales pipeline and what should we say to attract more customers?'"

In fact, only 11pc of those surveyed described themselves as being "very confident" about the future. Over the past week alone, the survey has reported a significant increase in concerns over cashflow. "We're also inundated with webinar 'shoulds' and 'woulds' and that just adds to anxiety.

"We're now preparing to roll out an 'Ireland Talks' video series to examine the real-life stories of our members and networks who are making tough choices and learning from experience," Joanne said.

2 WILLINGNESS FOR COLLABORATION IS EXPANDING

The feelings of isolation and precariousness are catapulting people's desire to collaborate. It's not better to go it alone, it's better to join forces. Tackling problems together is also a goal for IrelandTogether.

"We've established working groups within the membership to help tackle and offer solutions to identified problems," said Joanne.

"Even though we're physically distant, there's a real willingness for competitors to help people get out of hustle mode and start to collaborate and pivot if that is what they need to do."

I agree. You don't have to know it all on your own. But you do need to not be afraid to reach out and ask others for help.

3 SENSE OF URGENCY IS INCREASING

For the first week of restrictions, Joanne said to me, she observed that people seemed very patient. "Now, people are feeling a big sense of urgency, anxiety and 'me me me'. We are only three weeks old and already have hundreds of members and advisers. But we're still not moving fast enough."

Along with the increasing need for speed is an increasing wave of enthusiasm from the community.

"It's overwhelming," Joanne said. "The initial calibre of the people we expected were middle managers, but we have top companies, top leaders. We are getting reach-outs from Groupon, Google, Virgin TV and RTE."

At this moment the world's population, according to the United Nations, consists of 7.8 billion people. Each person has a story. Of the distinct set of concerns, questions and events they're experiencing during this time of remote working, self-isolation and continuing uncertainty.

The more we can come together (virtually, of course) connect and collaborate, the more we will feel the power of community. Of being together. Apart.
- Pauleen Luna recently shared some photos of how her daughter Tali spends the day amid lockdown

- The celebrity mom showed her Instagram followers Tali's teepee tent which was set-up inside their home

- The 2-year-old kid definitely enjoyed her mini 'campsite' as she was seen watching cartoons inside the tent

- She was also joined by her father Vic Sotto inside the tent while both of them took a nap

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A lot of people are definitely missing the outdoors because of the lockdown amid COVID-19. Some celebrities are finding cool ways to beat quarantine blues inside the comfort of their homes.

KAMI learned that Pauleen Luna just shared a series of photos on her Instagram showing her daughter Tali's awesome teepee tent which was set-up inside their home.

Instagram @pauleenlunasotto

Source: Instagram

Tali can be seen watching some cartoons on an iPad while inside the tent, complete with blankets and pillows. Pauleen even wrote, Someone's camping in. Feel na feel.

In another photo, the 2-year-old can be seen sleeping inside the tent with her father Vic Sotto.

Instagram @pauleenlunasotto

Source: Instagram

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As reported earlier by KAMI, Vic Sotto celebrated his 66th birthday last Tuesday, April 28, in his house amid the enhanced community quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Out of all of the birthday greetings he received, the cutest and most adorable one came from his youngest child, Tali Sotto. A video greeting from Tali to his daddy went viral on social media, with the toddler greeting Vic in English. The viral video also came with a translation of Talis greeting since her speech at the age of 2 is not yet 100 percent clear.

Vic Sotto is a famous comedian and TV host in the Philippines. He is married to his Eat Bulaga co-host Pauleen Luna. Vic has a daughter named Talitha with his wife Pauleen.

POPULAR: Read more news about Vic Sotto

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Being aware of the correct and relevant information is the first step towards solving any problem. Here we remind you of the major symptoms of the coronavirus disease. Be safe and stay informed! Check out all of the exciting videos and celebrity interviews on our KAMI HumanMeter YouTube channel!

Source: KAMI.com.gh
The Egyptian Medical Syndicate (EMS) filed a report with the countrys public prosecutor on Sunday against the head of a quarantine hospital in Alexandria for allegedly compromising the safety of doctors by violating infection control codes, a union and a judicial source said.

The syndicate said in a statement on Sunday that the head of the Agami Hospital had neglected for two days a doctors request to get tested for the coronavirus after he had come in contact with positive coronavirus cases. Eventually, the doctor tested positive for the virus.

Instead of putting the doctor in isolation to receive treatment, the hospital director insisted that the test be administered a second time. This time it came back negative and he asked the doctor to return to work, the syndicate said.

By doing so, it explained, the hospital head had violated medical protocols, given that 35 percent of people infected with the virus retest negative. The doctor insisted he undergo a third test, which came back positive.

If the doctor had yielded to the directors request and continued to work after the second test, he could have transmitted the virus to all of those who were in contact with him, whether patients or medical staff, the EMS said in the statement.

The hospital head had also violated infection control policies by allowing newly assigned doctors to stay at the same residence with doctors who had come in direct contact with coronavirus patients, and who later tested positive for the virus.

Separately, the syndicate said it had sent an official request to Health Minister Hala Zayed demanding the strict implementation of preventive measures to protect medical staff at isolation hospitals from getting infected with the virus.

These include exempting some groups from working at isolation and quarantine hospitals, including those who are above 50 years of age, pregnant women, and mothers whose kids are less than 12.

It also called for applying infection control standards while using air conditioners so that air does not move from contaminated areas to clean ones, and following social distancing guidelines by accommodating a small number of medical staff in each room.

It also demanded that medical staff who finish their work at isolation hospitals undergo two polymerase chain reaction laboratory tests  two days apart  and only be allowed to leave if results come back negative.

It added that in case of a shortage in test devices, one test can suffice provided that the staff member is either put in quarantine for 14 days or asked to self-isolate.

Officials from the syndicate said last week that at least 90 doctors had contracted the virus so far, and five have died since the beginning of the outbreak.

As of Saturday, Egypt had 6,193 confirmed coronavirus cases, with the death toll standing at 415.
The Mahindra Group firm has currently suspended operations at its resorts in compliance with the government directives.

New Delhi: Mahindra Holidays & Resorts India Ltd (MHRIL) on Sunday said it plans to first reopen resorts that are at drivable distance from the metro cities once the coronavirus lockdown is lifted.

The Mahindra Group firm has currently suspended operations at its resorts in compliance with the government directives.

"At Club Mahindra we have over 255,000 member families and once travel restrictions are relaxed and state borders open up, and people feel comfortable enough to travel again, we expect our members and their families to start travelling to our resorts in their own vehicles, since we are at drivable distances from major cities," MHRIL MD and CEO Kavinder Singh told PTI.

The company is gearing up for this by putting in place all the necessary safety related standard operating procedures (SOPs). It will ensure the highest levels of hygiene standards (hospital grade) to achieve a quick return to normalcy, he added.

"We will first open resorts that are at a drivable distance from the major metro cities," Singh said. He, however did not share the number of resorts that would be opened in the first phase.

The company has over 100 resorts in India and abroad.

Asked about the steps the company is taking to ensure the health and safety of guests and employees at the resorts, Singh said: "In view of the current situation we are implementing various SOPs which will cover hygiene and disinfection norms at all the touch points in our resorts."

The company will ensure social distancing norms for members at its resorts. The resorts are much bigger than traditional hotels, have open spaces and are spread out and this helps in facilitating social distancing norms, he added.

"The entire guest experience right from check in to resort experiences including F&B will be contactless. Our best-in-class experiences will help keep our members and their families engaged, while maintaining the highest safety and hygiene standards," Singh said.

Club Mahindra is partnering with experts in the healthcare and technology spaces for implementing these enhanced safety procedures and contactless services, he added.

Asked about the impact of the pandemic and subsequent lockdown on the hospitality industry, Singh said: "COVID-19 is a true Black Swan event that presents an unprecedented challenge to the hospitality and aviation industries in India and globally. It has deeply impacted the hospitality industry with occupancies declining sharply, as India went into lockdown from March 25."

According to recent estimates, the overall revenue of the Indian hotel industry will decline by about Rs 90,000 crore in 2020, an erosion of 57 percent compared to last year. More importantly, it is estimated that there will be around 38 million job losses, he said.

On the way forward for the industry, Singh said the sector expects a slow recovery as there will be many strict travel restrictions even as the lockdown begins to get lifted. Domestic travel will begin much faster than international travel, but both will take some time to fully recover.

He further said the industry is expecting support from the government for its survival.

"Most of the hospitality players have debt on their books and industry is hoping for a debt recast and for the moratorium to be extended to 12 months. This would certainly provide much-needed relief," Singh said.

The industry is also hoping for waiver or deferment of statutory payments and minimum electricity demand charges as this will help it with the working capital situation, he added.

"The industry also employs millions of people, so it would be helpful if there is some level of support for them, such as a direct benefit package for the staff who keep the industry running," Singh said.

For the revival of the industry, the annual leave travel allowance (LTA) should be made tax-free, every year, so that people have more money to spend on travel once things get better, he added


An Indian-American physician in Kansas City has begun a study to find if something called remote intercessory prayer might initiate God to heal those infected with the coronavirus.

Dhanunjaya Lakkireddy launched the four-month prayer study on Friday, which involves 1,000 coronavirus patients who are in intensive care.

In the study, none of the patients' prescribed standard care will be changed. They will be divided in two groups of 500 each and prayers will be offered for one of the groups.

Also, neither group will be informed about the prayers.

The four-month study will investigate "the role of remote intercessory multi-denominational prayer on clinical outcomes in COVID-19 patients," according to a description provided to the National Institutes of Health.

Half of the patients, randomly chosen, will receive a "universal" prayer offered in five denominational forms -- Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism -- while the other patients will constitute the control group.

All the patients will receive the standard of care prescribed by their medical providers and Lakkireddy has assembled a steering committee of medical professionals to oversee the study.

"We all believe in science, and we also believe in faith," Lakkireddy said.

"If there is a supernatural power, which a lot of us believe, would that power of prayer and divine intervention change the outcomes in a concerted fashion? That was our question," he said.

The investigators will assess how long the patients remain on ventilators, how many suffer from organ failure, how quickly they are released from intensive care and how many die, Lakkireddy said.

He describes himself as "born into Hinduism," but said he also attended a Catholic school and had spent time in synagogues, Buddhist monasteries, and mosques.

The physician said he cannot explain how people praying remotely for someone they don't know (or a group of people,) could actually make a difference in their health outcomes, and acknowledged that some of his medical colleagues have had "a mixed reaction" to his study proposal.

Lakkireddy said he has no idea what he will find, "but it's not like we're putting anyone at risk. A miracle could happen.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Around 270 United Kingdom (UK) nationals left for their country in a special Qatar Airways flight from Sri Guru Ram Dass Jee International Airport in Amritsar on Sunday amid the nationwide Coronavirus lockdown. The special flight was scheduled to take off at 2:15 AM from Amritsar.

READ | COVID-19 Update: Over 10,000 patients recover in India, positive cases surge to 37,776

Around 11,000 UK nationals have been repatriated so far around the world out of which 5500 are from Punjab, Davinder Singh, Volunteer, British High Commission told ANI.

"Around 11,000 UK nationals have been repatriated so far around the world out of which 5500 are from Punjab. In the coming days as well UK nationals will be sent back. We would like to thank the Government of India and Airways authorities", Singh said.

READ | Mumbai reports 547 cases and 27 deaths in a day; total COVID-19 tally rises to 8172

UK nationals express gratitude

UK nationals here expressed their gratitude to the Indian citizens and Government of India for helping them while they were stranded here due to coronavirus-induced lockdown before the flight took off.

"We came here on March 9 for 2 weeks but our flight was cancelled due to lockdown. We were unable to move out of our house for six weeks. People should obey the lockdown norms," said Gurbaksh Kaur, UK national. Another UK national, Rajinder Singh told ANI, "We came here on February 29 for two weeks but later we were stranded here amid lockdown. We did face many problems but people of Punjab supported us and loved us during this crisis."

Another special flight airlifted 271 UK nationals from Amritsar yesterday.

READ | Maharashtra issues lockdown guidelines for May 4-17; strict restrictions in Mumbai, Pune

COVID-19 situation in India

Over 10,000 patients have recovered from COVID-19 in India as of Saturday, indicating progress in the nation's fight against the pandemic. As per the latest data released by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, 2,411 new cases were reported in the last 24 hours taking the tally to 37,776.

Of the total number, 26,535 are active positive cases. As many as 10,018 patients have recovered from the disease, while 1,223 COVID-19 deaths have been reported to date. Of these, 71 deaths were reported in the last 24 hours.

READ | BJP's Sambit Patra shares shocking video of lockdown violation in Mumbai; police attacked

(With inputs from agency)
1. Son Babil Shares Irrfan's Rare Photos From NSD Days That Show He Was The King Of Intense Roles!

Giving us a glimpse into those days, Irrfan's elder son Baabli shared some pictures. In the first photo, Irrfan khan can be seen wearing round-rimmed glasses while he lights up a cigarette.



2. After Raising Funds, Vidya Balan Releases First Lot Of 2000 PPE Kits To Kasturba Hospital

After donating 1,000 PPE kits for heathcare staff, Vidya Balan had announced that she is also collaborating with celebrity shout-out platform Tring in order to raise money to buy additional 1000 units. She managed to raise about Rs 16 lakhs in just few hours.



3. 32 Years After The Release Of 'Uttar Ramayan', Here's What Luv And Kush Are Doing Now

Mayuresh Kshetramade who essayed the role of Luv didn't choose acting as his career after he grew up. Currently, he has settled in the US. He is quite successful as a businessman and is reportedly the CEO of a company called Commission Junction Affiliate. He also authored a book titled Spite and Development.



In a clip going viral on social media, the Pakistani television host, who is also a politician from Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party Aamir Liaquat Hussain, stated Adnan had spared Bollywood actresses Rani Mukerji and Bipasha Basu by not working with them.



5. After Travelling 1400 Km, Rishi Kapoor's Daughter Riddhima Reaches Mumbai To Be With Her Family

During these tough times of the pandemic, she couldn't take a flight to be there with her family and get one last glimpse of her father. However, she sought permission from Union Home Ministry and availed a movement pass from Delhi government and got the permission to travel via road, Delhi to Mumbai.


With spurt in cases, MHA issues SOPs for police, paramilitary forces

Police chiefs were also asked to consider the option of work-from-home for personnel not deployed on the frontline and in areas where the option is deemed feasible.

The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) has been the worst hit with 135 of its troopers testing positive in Delhi; a driver was confirmed with the disease on Sunday due to which it had to seal its headquarters.(PTI)
The Nord Stream 2 AG company, which operates the Nord Stream 2 project, does not agree with the German Federal Network Agencys preliminary decision to deny the company a waiver under the EU Gas Directive, the companys spokesperson Jens Mueller said, TASS reports.

"We are aware of the information shared by the German authority, BNetzA, with the participants in the procedure. We do not agree with this conclusion. We will wait for the formal decision of the authority and of course evaluate it and further actions to preserve our rights," he said.

Germany's Handelsblatt newspaper reported earlier, citing the Federal Network Agencys document, that the regulator had decided to reject the waiver request. The parties are expected to clarify their positions by May 8, and after that, the regulator will announce its final decision.
Former first lady Laura Bush and former President George W. Bush greet President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump outside of Blair House December 04, 2018 in Washington, DC.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

President Donald Trump derided a video from George. W Bush that urged Americans to overcome partisanship amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

In the video's voice-over, Bush asks Americans to "let us remember how small our differences are in the face of this shared threat," and said, "we are not partisan combatants."

The president tweeted early Sunday, apparently quoting weekend "Fox and Friends" co-anchor Pete Hegseth asking why Bush didn't push for "putting partisanship aside" during the impeachment trial against Trump.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

President Donald Trump mocked a video from George. W Bush calling for unity amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Related: 6 Times Trump Contradicted Coronavirus Public Officials

The former president shared a three-minute video on Twitter Saturday urging Americans to overcome partisanship after outlining the importance of the "spirit of service and sacrifice" and "empathy and simple kindness" in the face of outbreaks by leaders, healthcare workers, and other Americans.

Bush also pointed to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as an example that the US has withstood "times of testing before."

Near the end of the video, Bush asks Americans to "let us remember how small our differences are in the face of this shared threat."

"We are not partisan combatants," Bush says. "We are human beings, equally vulnerable and equally wonderful in the sight of God. We rise or fall together, and we are determined to rise."

George W. Bush Presidential Center (@TheBushCenter) May 2, 2020

As of Sunday morning, the video had racked up at least 4.5 million views. Less than 24 hours after it had been tweeted, it also received a tweeted jab from Trump.

The president tweeted early Sunday, apparently quoting weekend "Fox and Friends" co-anchor Pete Hegseth asking why Bush didn't push for "putting partisanship aside" during the impeachment trial against Trump.

Story continues

"He was nowhere to be found in speaking up against the greatest Hoax in American history!" Trump added.

The 43rd president did not publicly comment on the two approved articles of impeachment the House passed against Trump in December 2019, but other members of the family have criticized Trump, including former first lady Barbara Bush who said in 2018 that she didn't consider herself a Republican anymore because of Trump's rise to prominence.

Business Insider
BuyMeds mission to improve the efficiency of the entire healthcare industry puts the company at the forefront of Viet Nams pharma efforts to modernise the healthcare system. Photo thuocsi.vn

HA NOI  Local start-up BuyMed, a pharmaceutical distribution network, raised US$2.5 million in its pre-Series A funding.

According to the firm, investors include Sequoia Capital, Indias Surge early-stage accelerator program, and Genesia Ventures. Former investor Cocoon Capital also participated in the funding, it added.

Founded in 2018, BuyMed operates Thuocsi.vn, a pharmaceutical distribution platform in the local market.

The firm announced that it has tripled annual revenue in the past 12 months and is planning to add new product lines, including cosmetics, medical devices, supplements and medical services, with the goal of becoming a one-stop marketplace for health supplies for healthcare providers in Southeast Asia.

BuyMed verifies suppliers on its platform, improving safety and reducing the risk of medications making their way into the unofficial market. Currently, the platform has 700 verified suppliers, distributors and manufacturers serving over 7,000 healthcare providers.

Genesia Ventures general partner Takahiro Suzuki, said: There is still a tremendous opportunity for growth and improvement in Viet Nams pharmaceutical supply chain and we believe that BuyMeds founders have the experience, execution and operational management necessary to tackle this problem.

BuyMed Co-founder Hoang Nguyen told Viet Nam News: There are no major multi-brand distributors in Viet Nam, so most pharmaceutical manufacturers and brands need to set up their own networks. This means the process of getting medications and other pharmaceutical supplies to healthcare providers is highly fragmented.

Peter Nguyen, CEO and co-founder of BuyMed, told local media that the firm is committed to supporting both pharmacies and pharmaceutical partners in times of a healthcare crisis.

As online marketplaces like thuocsi.vn are becoming the new normal, BuyMeds mission to improve the efficiency of the entire healthcare industry puts the company at the forefront of Viet Nams pharma efforts to modernise the healthcare system.

The platform now serves thousands of pharmacies, clinics and hospitals across the country  a 250 per cent growth in six months. BuyMed has also expanded its network of suppliers, distributors and manufacturers, working closely with hundreds of partners to ensure the products received by end users are delivered in a timely manner.

BuyMed aims to add other healthcare verticals including cosmetics, medical devices, supplements, and medical services to become a one-stop marketplace for healthcare practices in emerging markets, the CEO said.

Meanwhile the firm co-founder Hoang added: Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, BuyMed has expanded its platform so more of its partners can sell online, and added safety measures like frequent warehouse and office sanitisation and a no-contact drop-off and cash collection system."  VNS


The unprecedented coronavirus pandemic, which broke out in late December 2019 and has now engulfed the world, portends to reshape our lives, and the world order as we know it. This is the sixth of a series to cast light on the changes that might lie ahead.  ED.



By Nam Hyun-woo



The world is busy anticipating what the global economy will look like after the COVID-19 pandemic ends. Experts say the world will experience fundamental changes in trading arrangements, with a reduced dependence on global supply chains due to protectionism and reshoring.



"The rise of protectionism and the weakening of the global supply chain will be expedited after COVID-19 and become the new paradigm of global trade," said Trade Minister Yoo Myung-hee. "This will lead Korea to be exposed to greater risk, given its export-driven industrial structure."



Businesses are expressing similar views. Korea Enterprises Federation (KEF) Chairman Sohn Kyung-shik warned that "protectionist barriers will rise among economies."



Korea was one of the first countries to experience the economic fallout of COVID-19. In February, Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors shut down their plants temporarily due to problems in getting supplies of wiring harnesses from China after it went into lockdown. The two carmakers have since been forced to cut production due to reduced demand in major export markets, such the U.S. and Europe, which are also under lockdown.



These developments have raised doubts about relying on global supply chains to cut labor and other costs.



"In the past, companies had a strategy of offshoring manufacturing to countries with cheaper costs or big markets, thus making China the world's greatest offshoring magnet," said Mun Byung-ki, a senior researcher at the Institute for International Trade at the Korea International Trade Association.



"However, as competition between major economic powers increased in a period of low growth, some economies veered into protectionism. The COVID-19 outbreak has highlighted the critical risks and weaknesses of conventional global supply chains," he said. "For companies, minimizing risks and uncertainties is a top priority in their business strategies. The pandemic is a loud wake-up call to alert them to the lurking risks of traditional supply chains, and leading them to consider reshoring."



Another industry officials also told The Korea Times that companies are starting to reexamine their conventional overseas strategies in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. "Labor cost advantages from offshoring have weakened a lot in the past several years," one executive told The Korea Times. "A growing number of companies are now putting more emphasis on market conditions, growth potential, risks and resilience when they decide on overseas investments."



A growing number of countries, particularly the U.S., are encouraging companies to come back home and strengthen their domestic supply chains. Korea is also promoting reshoring. On April 27, the government and manufacturing business associations jointly launched a taskforce supporting "U-turn companies," meaning companies returning to Korea.



In supporting the program, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said "the importance of reshoring is growing amid the increased need to stabilize the supply chain of Korea's backbone industries after COVID-19."



The government in February also announced new policies to help reshoring companies, including tax cuts and financial aid worth 4.5 trillion won.



Following the announcement, LG Electronics said it would support suppliers that bring their plants back to Korea. One of the them, Dong Gu Enterprise, decided to join the campaign.





Multilateral partnerships



Experts said partnerships between companies or countries will be one of the ways for businesses to deal with the new trading order.



"With global supply chains getting weaker, companies and countries will compete more fiercely for key raw materials and core technologies," Mun said. "To overcome this, companies with common ground can form partnerships. However, this will be available only in growing sectors, because partnerships can exist only when there is growth. Thus, the first step to survive in the new trade order is finding new growth drivers."



Trade Minister Yoo also said the trade strategies in the post-coronavirus era should be focused on multilateral trade networks among companies, and businesses should be prepared to restructure global supply chains to obtain greater stability and resilience rather than efficiency.




Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 20:47:40|Editor: huaxia

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HANOI, May 3 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's Ministry of Health said on Sunday that a British expert who recently entered the country had tested positive for COVID-19, bringing its total confirmed cases in the country to 271.

The Briton entered Vietnam among a group of experts via plane and had been put under quarantine upon arrival, Vietnam News Agency reported Sunday.

Before the latest case, Vietnam had reported no new COVID-19 infections for several days since it confirmed two cases, both Vietnamese students returning from abroad, on April 24.

A total of 219 COVID-19 patients have recovered in the country, with no deaths reported, while there are 443 suspected cases and over 30,000 people being monitored and quarantined as of Sunday evening, according to the health ministry. Enditem
Forces sweetheart Dame Vera Lynn has died aged 103.

On Thursday, the singers family shared a statement announcing the news, saying: Dame Vera Lynn, who lived in Ditchling, East Sussex, passed away earlier today, 18 June 2020, surrounded by her close family.

Dame Veras songs were hugely popular during the Second World War including The White Cliffs Of Dover, Therell Always Be An England and Ill Be Seeing You, which were released to help raise spirits during the Blitz.

Recommended Dame Vera Lynn dies aged 103

However, she was perhaps best known for the song Well Meet Again, which gave separated families during the war hope that they would soon be together.

The song experienced a resurgence in popularity this year as families became divided once more due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In May, the Queen quoted the famous melody during a speech in which she called on the nation to stay positive throughout the crisis.

We should take comfort that while we may have more still to endure, better days will return, the Queen said. We will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again.

The song was also used to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day with a nationwide singalong of the wartime anthem.

Here is everything you need to know about Well Meet Again, from the full lyrics to why the song is so important.

What are the lyrics to Well Meet Again?

Well meet again

Dont know where

Dont know when

But I know well meet again

Some sunny day

Keep smiling through

Just like you always do

Till the blue skies chase

Those dark clouds far away

And I will just say hello

To the folks that you know

Tell them you wont be long

Theyll be happy to know

That, as I saw you go

You were singing this song

Well meet again

Dont know where

Dont know when

But I know well meet again

Some sunny day

And I will just say hello

To the folks that you know

Tell them you wont be long

Theyll be happy to know

That, as I saw you go

You were singing this song

Well meet again

Dont know where

Dont know when

But I know well meet again

Some sunny day

Dame Vera Lynn serves cups of tea to servicemen in 1942 (Getty)

Who wrote the song?

Originally released in 1939, Well Meet Again was composed by Ross Parker and Hughie Charles, and sung by Dame Vera Lynn.

Why was the song so important during the Second World War?

The song found its fame during the Second World War, as it resonated with soldiers who had to leave their families and fight for Britain.

Thanks to its moving melody and uplifting lyrics, Well Meet Again was played on the radio during wartime broadcasts, which were designed to provide public information and boost morale after bombing raids.
A survey conducted by the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Koforidua in the Eastern Region reveals that almost five people out of 10 are seen wearing face masks.

Mr Elvis Attafuah, a resident of Korle Nkwanta, a suburb of Koforidua who shared his experience said, due to the relaxation of the lockdown, the movement of people have become dangerous as one would not know who is the carrier of the virus, so the only way out is to start using the face mask for safety.

He said, the region is also recoding cases of the COVID 19 and this has made it more dangerous and one needed to protect himself.

A resident of Nsukwao, a suburb of Koforidua, Ms Miriam Kwao said, she started wearing the face mask right after the country started recording the cases of coronavirus because she was afraid she may contract the virus as she travels a lot for business and other important duties.

A trader who spoke on anonymity said, she has seen some of her colleagues wear the mask every day, however, she finds it difficult breathing when she put the mask on, so that has prevented her from wearing the mask often.

The New Juaben South Municipal Assembly on April 27, 2020 issued a press statement that wearing of the nose and mouth masks within the municipality is mandatory for everybody.

The statement directed that commercial drivers should ensure that all passengers in their vehicles wear nose and mouth masks before allowing them to board their vehicles.

It said notices of ''NO NOSE MASK, NO ENTRY should be displayed at vantage points including offices, lorry stations, shops, markets, malls, banks, pharmacy shops, and all public places.

---GNA
Chandigarh, May 3 : Punjab Police has selected 108 police personnel, three state doctors, one social worker and nine doctors and nurses of the PGI Hopsital for the Director General of Police Honour and Disc for exceptional services in the battle against COVID-19, it was announced on Sunday.

One social worker of Faridkot town who has brought a large number of NGOs on one common platform for supplying dry rations and cooked meals to the poor has also been recognized by DGP Dinkar Gupta.

Four doctors of the PGI's Plastic Surgery Department and three from Anaesthesia Department have also been hounoured, with one award going to sister Sheetal.

Mohsina Subair, Gowtham Kampalli, Anshu Tiwari and Tarush Gupta are from the Plastic Surgery Department, while Nidhi Panda, Rashi Sarna, Konica Chittoria are from the Anaesthesia Department.

In addition, one collective award is being given to the entire nursing staff and hospital attendants of PGI's Plastic Surgery Department.

The PGI staff is credited with two successful surgeries on April 12 and 14 and the post-surgical treatment and care which led to the early discharge and speedy recovery of Sub-Inspector Harjit Singh, whose hand was severed in a clash while imposing curfew restrictions to contain the spread of coronavirus. It was reimplanted by the PGI.

Gupta said the police personnel selected for the award include: ASPs (four), DSPs (14), Inspectors (14), Sub-Inspectors (13), Assistant Sub-Inspectors (21) and Head Constable and Constables (42).

Giving details of the prominent awardees, the DGP said Aman Sharma, who is posted as Medical Officer in the Police Hospital in Ludhiana, has carried out regular medical examinations of police personnel at police stations, and also at their duty points.

Sunita Rani of Fazilka, who has been attached as the nodal officer by the Civil Surgeon, has done a commendable job in surveillance, quarantining and testing of corona suspects who entered Fazilka from other states recently.

Bidhi Lord Singh, posted as district epidemiologist in the office of Civil Surgeon in Tarn Taran has been personally supervising the sampling and COVID testing efforts at the ground level.

Parveen Kumar Kala, a social worker of Faridkot, established effective coordination with NGOs of Faridkot and brought them on one platform.

Assistant Sub-Inspector Rafi Mohammed of Amritsar was actively involved in distribution of ration among the poor. He even spent his salary to feed them, and also established contact with the Muslim community as well as migrant labourers for this purpose.

Head Constable Amrik Singh of Batala police district played a key role in saving the life of a person who suffered a heart attack.

Karamjit Kaur of Ferozepur, an active member of the 'May I Help You Group' , created to help the poor during the curfew, had been visiting slums of migrant labourers to distribute cooked food and rations among them, risking her own safety.

Sub-Inspector Prabhjot Kaur has been honoured for creating awareness among common people about preventive measures against coronavirus through social media platforms, and has also been delivering medicines door-to-door.
The parents of American journalist Daniel Pearl who was murdered in 2002 on Saturday filed an appeal to Pakistan's Supreme Court seeking reversal of the Sindh High Court (SCH) verdict that overturned convictions of four men in their son's abduction and murder case.

'We are standing up for justice'

The deceased journalist's father tweeted details of the petition along with an emotional video message, according to Voice of America. "We are standing up for justice for not only our son, Daniel Pearl, but for all of our dear friends in Pakistan, so they can know a society free of violence and terror, and raising their children in peace and harmony," Pearl's father, Judea Pearl, was quoted as saying by Voice of America.

Last month, the Sindh government had challenged its provincial high court's order in the Pakistan Supreme Court, wherein British-born al-Qaeda leader Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and three others were acquitted in US journalist Daniel Pearl's kidnapping and murder case.

Two criminal petitions have been filed by renowned lawyer Faisal Siddiqi on behalf of the parents - Ruth Pearl and Judie Pearl - against the acquittal and release of the four accused, the Express Tribune reported on Saturday.

Pearl, the 38-year-old South Asia bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, was abducted and beheaded while he was in Pakistan investigating a story in 2002 on the alleged links between the country's powerful spy agency ISI and al-Qaeda.

Singh HC acquitted the four men

On April 2 this year, a two-judge Sindh High Court bench overturned the death sentence of British-born 46-year-old al-Qaeda leader Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was convicted in Pearl's murder. The court also acquitted his three aides who were serving life sentences in the case. Thereafter, the four acquitted men were re-arrested, only a day after SHC overturned their convictions.

READ | US slams Pakistan as court overturns death sentence of terrorist in Daniel Pearl's murder

The Pakistan Interior Ministry had said in a statement that the men's release was halted after they were re-arrested through a measure, allowing the government to hold suspects for three months. The ministry said it "reiterates its commitment to follow the due process under the laws of the country to bring terrorists to the task."

READ | Sindh govt appeals in Pak SC against acquittal of terrorists who murdered Daniel Pearl

Pearl's murder took place three years after Sheikh, along with Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, was released by India in 1999 and given safe passage to Afghanistan in exchange for the nearly 150 passengers of hijacked Indian Airlines Flight 814. He was serving a prison term in India for kidnappings of Western tourists in the country.

READ | Pak's Sindh govt seeks early hearing of plea against provincial HC order in Daniel Pearl case

READ | Maharashtra issues lockdown guidelines for May 4-17; strict restrictions in Mumbai, Pune

(With agency inputs)
Chandigarh, May 3 : Expressing gratitude to the frontline COVID-19 warriors, flypasts by the Indian Air Force over Chandigarh's rain-fed famed Sukhna Lake was exhibited on Sunday.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) choppers dropped flower petals over the Command Hospital in Chandimandir, near here, and the PGI and the Government Medical College Hospital in Sector 32 here.

Also in neighbouring Panchkula and Mohali cities an Indian Army band performed at one government hospital each to express gratitude towards the frontline workers.

All three services of the Indian Armed Forces displayed solidarity with the corona warriors who are working at the frontline to fight the pandemic in the country.
An Army Colonel and a Major were among the five security personnel killed in the Handwara encounter. Amid the fierce encounter with terrorists at the Chanjimulla area of Handwara in north Kashmirs Kupwara district, two terrorists were also killed.

Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, the commanding officer of 21 Rashtriya Rifles, and Major Anuj Sood led the five-member team in attacking a house in the area in order to carry out this operation.

Other army personnel who lost their lives in the Handwara encounter include Major Anuj Sood, Naik Rajesh Kumar, and Lance Naik Dinesh Singh. Sub-inspector Shakeel Qazi of Jammu and Kashmir police were also killed in the operation.

Based on the intelligence input that terrorists were taking the civilian inmates of a house in Changimulla, Handwara of Kupwara district hostage, a joint operation was launched by Army and JK Police. A team comprising five Army and JK Police personnel entered the target area occupied by the terrorists to evacuate the civilians. The team of Army and JK Police entered the area and successfully extricated the civilians. However, during the process, the team was subjected to a heavy volume of fire by the terrorists. In the ensuing firefight, two terrorists were eliminated and the team of five armies and JK personnel, comprising two Army officers, two Army soldiers, and one JK Police Sub Inspector, attained martyrdom, the official statement from the army said.

Here are some facts about Colonel Sharma, who led the Handwara encounter:

 Reuters

1. Colonel Ashutosh Sharma was the commanding officer of the 21 Rashtriya Rifles unit, a branch of the Indian Army under the authority of the Indian Ministry of Defence. The RR is a counter-insurgency force made up of soldiers deputed from other parts of the Indian Army. The force is currently deployed in the state of Jammu and Kashmir.



 Reuters

2. The Colonel had previously also been awarded for his exemplary bravery in counter-terrorist missions twice, with Sena Medal gallantry award medals.



 Reuters

3. Colonel Sharma is survived by his wife and a 12-year-old daughter and was serving in the Kashmir valley for a major part of his life.



 Reuters

4. Colonel Sharma had received his gallantry award once as a commanding officer post a mission, wherein he killed a terrorist who was rushing towards his unit with a grenade hidden in his clothes. The colonel then shot him at close range and saved the lives of his unit along with Jammu and Kashmir Police personnel at the time.



 Reuters

5. Before Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, Col MN Rai laid down his life in the service of the country in January 2015 during an operation in the Kashmir valley and Col Santosh Mahadik was martyred in November in the same year. Colonel Sharma, was the first commanding officer or a colonel-rank official in the last five years to have lost his life in an encounter with terrorists.



A wreath-laying ceremony is going to be held in Srinagar after which Col Sharmas body will be flown to his hometown in Bulandshahr.
A young Australian woman diagnosed with one of the world's worst cases of Tourette Syndrome has learned to embrace her condition and fulfil her dreams.

Bianca Saez was diagnosed with Tourette's when she was just three years old after she began punching and scratching herself and her loved ones.

After finding love and moving into her own home, the Sunshine Coast woman said the only thing left was find a job.

Now the 27-year-old has finally got everything she's ever wanted working as an ambassador for diversity and disability at employment training agency, Designer Life.

Bianca Saez (pictured) told 60 Minutes that she has finally overcome all her barriers and was able to get a job

Bianca pictured with her mother Leanne after struggling for years with her Tourette's

'When I was a teenager I never thought i'd be in this position, I thought I'd be a 40-year-old cat lady at home, but it's so good that I have everything I ever dreamed of,' she told 60 Minutes.

'I went from just laying on my couch, eating, sleeping, that was all my days would ever be.'

The simple act of waking up for Ms Saez and getting ready in the morning is exhausting as Tourrette's hijacks life's simple tasks.

'It's not as easy for me... makeup goes all over my face, toothpaste goes in my hair,' she said.

But last year Ms Saez found love with boyfriend Zach, which she says was a major turning point in learning to accept her condition.

'Falling in love with this beautiful man has helped me and improved my motivation and my mental health - it's made me smile,' she said on 60 Minutes in August.

'It's just helped my Tourette's and moods in so many ways.'

Zach helps her get ready each day, putting on her shoes and helping with her makeup.

At the young age of 16, Bianca was put into a mental health unit which devastated her family

Zach (pictured with Ms Saez) helps her get ready each day, putting on her shoes and helping with her makeup

Designer Life chief executive Leisa Roberts said she had been following the 27-year-old's story for 11 years.

Ms Roberts said she recognised Ms Saez's talents as a motivational speaker and wanted to track her down after seeing her appear on television.

'As soon as she walks into the room the students are, you know, captivated,' Ms Roberts said.

The agency makes sure to keep everything safe for Ms Saez, with no glass tables or walls nearby in meetings and multiple conversations about her ticks.

'I just want to help people and it's truly amazing to help people,' Ms Saez said.

Designer Life chief executive Leisa Roberts (pictured with Ms Saez) said she had been following the 27-year-old's story for 11 years and was motivated to track her down last year

Now the 27-year-old has finally got everything she's always wanted working as an ambassador for diversity and disability at employment training agency Designer Life

After finding the love of her life and fulfilling her dreams with a career she said there are only few things left she wants to do.

'I'd love to marry the love of my life, I'd like to build a Tourette's proof house, maybe even have a child one day if I'm able to,' she said.

'Just the normal things in life - family, purpose, love - simple things.'

At the young age of 16, Ms Saez was put into a mental health unit which devastated her family.

Her plight shocked the nation after footage was televised of her during a particularly violent episode that saw her roll around screaming in a park, before attacking her mum and a bench.

Her helpless family didn't know where to turn.

'I'm just a simple bloke, I just want to have my family together. It's hard,' her dad John said at the time.

'It's still hard but I'm trying to be positive and I get really resilient,' Bianca said

Her mother Leanne added: 'There's nothing we can do to help her.'

In 2008, Ms Saez underwent extreme radical brain stimulation surgery, the first of its kind in Australia, which was meant to reset her brain cells to stop her from hitting herself.

'I'm so grateful for this,' Ms Saez told 60 Minutes host Tara Brown back then.

'I can't believe how much I'm grateful for having this operation because it's changed my whole entire life and I'm so proud of myself for doing it.'

Unfortunately, Ms Saez contracted a staph infection which meant the electrodes had to be removed, leaving her to once more suffer the full effects of Tourette's.

Despite her symptoms returning, including calling her mum a 'f***ing dog' and punching her, Ms Saez says she has come to accept her situation.

Despite her symptoms returning, including calling her mum a 'f***ing dog', Bianca says she has come to accept her situation

Bianca has launched a YouTube channel to educate her followers and the community about Tourette's

'It's still hard but I'm trying to be positive and I get really resilient,' she said.

'If I wasn't resilient I don't think I would be here right now. I don't think I'd be here at all.'

Now living independently, Ms Saez says she feels more mature and is happy to be able to do the things she couldn't do before.

'It's a very hard illness to live with but I have mastered it,' she said in August.

'If I was offered a cure tomorrow, I don't think I would take it because I've been given this really bad Tourette's for a reason. I have to do something good with it I guess. I just want to help people in the future.
The Kaduna State Government has announced the payment of daily incentives to frontline health workers involved in the treatment of COVID-19 patients.

The Kaduna State health commissioner, Amina Mohammed-Baloni, announced this in a statement sent to PREMIUM TIMES.

The health workers will earn between N5,000 and N15,000 daily depending on the amount of risk they are exposed to.

Kaduna, as of Sunday morning, has recorded 38 coronavirus cases, according to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.

Read the full statement by the health commissioner below.

The Commissioner of Health, Dr, Amina Mohammed-Baloni has announced details of the Occupational Safety Incentive approved for health workers by the Kaduna State Government. She also confirmed that the state government is providing additional insurance coverage for death and disability for all the frontline health workers.

The Occupational Safety Incentive, which takes effect from April 2020, is structured to enhance the pay of frontline health workers by adding three categories of compensation as follows:

1. High risk staff to receive a compensation of N15,000 per day;

2. Medium risk staff to receive N10,000 per day;

3. Low risk staff to receive N5,000 per day.

This Occupational Safety Initiative would benefit frontline health workers. Together with insurance premiums, the incentives are payable from April 2020.

The insurance package includes death benefit of N5m, disability benefit of N2.5m and Covid-19 infection cover of N100,000 daily for 10 days. This package has been enhanced from the initial set of benefits kindly donated by Leadway Assurance. KDSG is paying additional premiums to increase the assured sum for death and disability to the amounts stated above.

The government has also approved a monthly incentive of 10% of net pay for other health workers in public hospitals and primary health centres.

The Kaduna State Government wishes to acknowledge and commend its health workers for their dedication and professionalism in the efforts to contain and manage Covid-19.

Malam Nasir El-Rufai has also paid personal tribute to the medical professionals from the Ministry of Health, Barau Dikko Teaching Hospital and Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospitals who successfully treated him when he was infected by Covid-19.

Dr. Amina Mohammed-Baloni

Commissioner of Health

2nd May 2020
House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, presides over the first live video stream of the N.C. House, April 28, 2020.

The N.C. General Assembly is in session, but it's unclear how long it may take lawmakers to deal with economic fallout caused by COVID-19 .Lawmakers converged on the legislative complex to begin work as a few hundred people gathered in downtown Raleigh to protest shutdown orders from Gov. Roy Cooper.The House gaveled in at noon, Tuesday, April 28, and streamed video from the chamber. Only a handful of members took seats on the floor as rules were changed to allow social distancing during proceedings. The Senate also opened but took up no business Tuesday.At 5 p.m., 46 senators filed Senate Bill 704, COVID-19 Recovery Act . The legislation calls for $1.24 billion from money provided by the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. The number is roughly $500 million less than the House's proposal.A Senate committee will consider the measure Wednesday morning.Things were more raucous outside the Legislative Building. Some members of ReopenNC, a private Facebook group with 70,000 followers, filled the sidewalks to demand Cooper lift a statewide stay-at-home order. If Cooper failed to act, the group urged members to reopen their businesses and attend worship services May 1.Four members of the group, including co-founder Ashley Smith and her husband, Adam, were arrested when they defied police orders and stepped on the sidewalk in front of the Executive Mansion.Cooper didn't mention the protesters at an afternoon news conference. But he did say he would be open to allowing the Charlotte Motor Speedway to host the Coca-Cola 600 on Memorial Day weekend if COVID-19 conditions continued improving. The speedway wouldn't allow any fans, only drivers, crews, and media.Members of the House Finance Committee unanimously approved two bills to help cash-strapped North Carolinians. House Bill 1039 , COVID-19 Response Act: Economic Support, waives interest on individual and corporate income tax, as well as franchise taxes. The bill brings North Carolina in line with federal tax filing deadlines, which in March were pushed from April 15 to July 15.H.B. 1039 firms up North Carolina's flexibility to send unemployment benefits to people who lost their jobs to the pandemic, as laid out in several of Cooper's executive orders and in the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Security Act.A second piece of legislation, House Bill 1034 , Small Business Emergency Loans, pays $75 million in federal money to small businesses adversely affected by COVID-19. The money would be doled out via the Golden LEAF Foundation , a nonprofit created by the General Assembly in 1999 to administer grants to rural and poor communities.The finance committee unanimously passed H.B. 1034. Both H.B. 1039 and H.B. 1034 are headed to the House Rules Committee.Later in the day, House lawmakers approved House Bill 1037 , Health Care Working Group Policy Recommendations, in a 29-10 vote. The legislation stockpiles personal protective equipment and testing supplies. It allows more health care workers to give vaccines, diagnostics, and antibody tests. The most controversial part of the bill grants health care providers protection from liability lawsuits during the pandemic.The bill temporarily expands Medicaid to cover COVID-19 testing and treatment for uninsured residents with incomes up to 200% of the federal poverty level.The bill requires insurers and health plans to cover telehealth services, and to reimburse telehealth providers at the same rate as in-person visits. It also brings parity to telephone visits to help seniors and rural residents receive virtual care.The bill effectively suspends physician supervision during the pandemic. It bans regulatory boards from enforcing the mandate that nurse practitioners must pay for a physician supervisor. Other providers get loosened regulations, inspections, and reporting requirements, as well as more time to connect to the state's health information exchange network.The bill requests a pandemic health care workforce study to investigate the ability of the health care system to treat patients during the pandemic. The purpose of the study is to analyze support for health care workers and assess the costs of canceling non-essential services.Representatives expect to pass another coronavirus response bill from the same committee in May. House Bill 1037 is "a phase one bill" that's up for discussion in the House Rules Committee Wednesday, said Rep. Donny Lambeth, R-Forysth.The House Committee on Education K-12 unanimously approved an education omnibus bill to provide relief for the state's K-12 public schools and higher education institutions as the COVID-19 outbreak continues.Efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19 significantly disrupted the 2019-20 school year. Schools have closed for in-person instruction for most of 2020 and will remain closed for the rest of the school year. Remote learning has replaced the brick-and-mortar classroom - at least for the time being. House Bill 1035 , Education Omnibus/COVID-19, includes a variety of waivers for state tests, teacher licensure, K-3 class size reductions, and education program requirements, as well as calendar flexibility to start the school year as early as Aug. 17.The measures are temporary and apply only to the 2020-21 school year.H.B 1035 is a bipartisan effort from the House Select Committee on COVID-19 education working group. The working group met several times in virtual meetings before the short session.said Rep. Craig Horn, R-Union, a co-chair of the education working group.Tackling the COVID-19 issue felt like standing in front of a forest fire armed with only a squirt gun, Horn said.More work will be done to address the challenges posed by COVID-19 and the subsequent school closures, Horn said.The April 28 meeting was short. Lawmakers approved the legislation without debate.
President Trump retweeted a claim on Saturday evening by a Twitter follower that he had been the best president for black people in the history of the United States.

The tweet by Kenyan David Kyalo Musyoka wrote: 'Trump has done more for Blacks than all the other Presidents combined! Are we together?'

The tweet was quickly reposted by the president who gleefully took the comment with a small dose of humility adding that President Abraham Lincoln, who ended slavery in 1863, may well have done more for such relations than the current occupier of the White House.

'So true, although Honest Abe wasn't bad. Thank you!' Trump wrote in return.

Presigodent Trump retweeted a claim on Saturday evening by a Twitter follower that he had been a good popular president for black people

The tweet was quickly reposted by the president who gleefully took the comment with a small dose of humility

The tweet praising Trump's treatment of black people was made by David Kyalo Musyoka on Twitter. Musyoka appears to be based in Kenya according to his social media profiles

Lincoln, who served as the nation's 16th president between 18611865, engineered the end to slavery with his Emancipation Proclamation and his order that the Army protect escaped slaves

Lincoln, who served as the nation's 16th president between 18611865, engineered the end to slavery with his Emancipation Proclamation and his order that the Army protect escaped slaves.

He also encouraged border states to outlaw slavery, and promoted the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which outlawed slavery across the country.

Despite praise on Twitter from the Kenyan, recent reporting by Vox suggests the President's policies towards the African-American community has in fact led to a greater number of deaths from the coronavirus in that particular community.

The report suggested that the Trump administration's policies 'have exacerbated the health conditions that are leading to more coronavirus fatalities among black Americans.'

'We're seeing tremendous evidence that African Americans are affected at a far greater percentage number than other citizens of our country,' Trump said at one of his daily coronavirus press conferences in April 'But why is it that the African American community is so much, numerous times more than everybody else? We want to find the reason to it.'

Aside from the current crisis, there have been numerous instances throughout President Trump's term where he has been accused of being racist towards black people.

One notably disturbing incident occurred last July when Trump made a comment about former United States Representative Elijah Cummings and his Baltimore district.

'If racist Elijah Cummings would focus more of his energy on helping the good people of his district, and Baltimore itself, perhaps progress could be made in fixing the mess that he has helped to create over many years of incompetent leadership,' Trump said in a tweet.

In a post on Twitter, Trump called Cummings' district 'disgusting, rat and rodent infested. No human being would want to live there,' he said.

The tweets drew pointed responses from Democrats, who said the comments were racist, a charge which Trump later denied.

'There is nothing racist in stating plainly what most people already know, that Elijah Cummings has done a terrible job for the people of his district, and of Baltimore itself,' Trump said.

Cummings passed away in October of last year.

Trump's remarks echoed a similar attack he made in January 2017 against another black lawmaker and icon of the civil rights movement, John Lewis.

President Trump was accused of being racist against former United States Representative Elijah Cummings, but the president denied such a charge

Last year he also recently told four minority women lawmakers to 'go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came from.'

'I absolutely think it's important to call it out for what it is, which is racism,' former Democratic presidential candidate Julian Castro said at the time.

'There's a pattern here,' he added. 'That's how he thinks he won in 2016 and that's how he thinks he's going to win in 2020.'

In 2016, Trump did poorly among black voters, winning just 8% of their votes in the election.

Twitter followers were quick to respond and refute the suggestion that Trump had been a positive influence on the black community or had been as effective as Abraham Lincoln

In February, the Public Religion Research Institute released the results from a survey that suggest Trump wasn't particularly popular with black people at all.

'Black Americans are remarkably unified in their opposition to Trump,' read a memo breaking down the PRRI data.

More than 3 in 4 African Americans held a 'mostly' or 'very' unfavorable view of Trump in 2019, with 56% of those saying they view the president 'very' unfavorably.

Trump has repeatedly claimed he's 'the least racist person.'
Partly, this intense growth was caused by the fact that ESMA enforced new restriction laws on the maximum leverage that EU traders can use (this caused FX brokers to focus on other big markets, like Africa)

An average of over $5.1 trillion is traded daily in the Forex market. Though worldwide, there are major forex trading centres which include London, Tokyo, Paris, Sydney, New York, Zurich, Singapore, and Hong Kong. A Forex trading day starts in Australia and ends in New York. The market stays open for 24 hours a day and five and a half days a week.

There are specific regulations in countries, continents that oversee the trading of Forex. In some countries, FX trading is restricted and banned while in others, it is fully supported. In this post, our focus is on Africa as well be looking at Forex regulation across the continent.

Overview of Forex Trading In Africa

Forex trading is a very competitive activity, and in Africa, it is no different. The market has experienced speedy growth over the last two decades as more Africans are being enlightened on what Forex entails.

Significantly, the last decade has seen the Forex market go from almost unnoticed to becoming one of the most dynamic industries in the content. This can be attributed to the advent of mobile devices and other technologies.

There are about 1.3 million Forex traders in Africa. South Africa and Nigeria lead the way as both countries constitute a large percentage of the total figure.

Other countries where Forex trading is gaining ground are Kenya, Egypt, Angola, Namibia, and Tanzania. This has attracted international Forex brokers like IQ Option, IC Markets, XM Forex Trading, ForexTime (FXTM), and Olymp Trade.

With this vast amount of forex traders, it is expected that government financial regulatory bodies will be interested in monitoring trading activities in individual countries.

Forex-Friendly African Countries

A lot of African countries are Forex-friendly, but there are minor restrictions from the government. Forex can be traded in Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Kenya, Namibia, Ivory Coast, and many other African countries.

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Whereas Forex trading cannot be said to be legalized in these countries, it also does not break the law. Before a Forex broker can offer Forex trading services to a countrys citizen, it is mostly mandatory to acquire a trading license.

Forex-Prohibited African Countries

Currently, a complete Forex ban is not placed on any country in Africa, unlike world countries like North Korea and Israel. As stated earlier, there are minor restrictions from the government in some countries. These restrictions do not prohibit the trade of Forex but are imposed to prevent fraudulent and scam activities.

Some of these restrictions are on the maximum trading amount and the maximum amount you can have in your Forex account. These are similar to Forex restrictions imposed in countries like China and Russia. Furthermore, Forex trading with non-licensed Forex brokers is prohibited in some African countries. Likewise, you can only trade Forex for yourself and not for anyone else (identification is mandatory for most Forex brokers).

Forex trading is usually not welcomed in countries governed with strict sharia laws. As a result, countries like Algeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Egypt, etc., may not be the best to engage in Forex trading.

Lets consider how Forex trading is regulated in some major African countries:

Forex Regulation In South Africa

In South Africa, various regulatory trading rules are put in place to minimize Forex trading risks. These regulations are imposed by the South African Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA), formerly known as the Financial Services Board (FSB). The FSCA is the body responsible for monitoring and controlling all financial activities in the country. It is the most vigorous Forex market regulation in Africa.

The FSCA regulatory policies are in line with what is obtainable from regulatory bodies overseas. Notably, all OTC derivative brokers must report all trades in a bid to organize CFDs. Through the FSCA, Forex brokers can relate with each other without resulting in conflict.

According to topforexbrokers.co.za, the FSCA license incorporates some immense benefits like that FX brokers regulated by the FSCA treat their customer in good faith and that they help them with financial education and financial literacy. Not to mention that if anything goes south, a South African trader who is trading with FSCA regulated broker can go to FSCA if they think they have been scammed by their broker or mistreated.

Forex Regulation In Kenya

In Kenya, the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) regulates all financial activities, including foreign exchange trading. Before a Forex broker can do business in Kenya, they must be registered and licensed by the CMA.

Forex was previously unregulated in Kenya. Before 2016, lots of Kenyans were trading with unregulated brokers, and there were too many reports of fraudulent activities. As a result, the Kenyan government authorized the CMA to regulate Forex trading activities in the Finance Act 2016. The principal aim of the regulation is to make the market transparent and protect investors funds.

The CMA drew regulatory leads from international regulatory bodies like the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) and the United Kingdoms Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

Forex Regulation In Nigeria

Forex trading in Nigeria is still unregulated despite the market being one of the most active ones in the continent. However, it is perceived that the countrys apex bank is working with the Securities Exchange Commission to commence Forex trade regulation.

Despite the absence of regulation in the country, the government does not consider Forex trading illegal. There are local Forex brokers who register just like other businesses and carry out foreign exchange activities as usual. Most Forex traders in Nigeria make use of foreign Forex brokers rather than the local ones due to this lack of regulation. The trading risk is totally on the trader, so they assume the foreign brokers are more trustworthy.

Banking policies do have effects on Forex trading in Nigeria. Some Nigerian banks may prevent customers from using their electronic cards to make payments or withdraw from foreign exchange platforms. Presently, there are imposed restrictions on the amount of foreign currency a Nigerian can spend outside the country. These are individual policies that could be eliminated if the Nigerian government properly legalizes Forex trading.

How To Select The Best Forex Broker For Africa

Due to the risks involved in Forex trading, it is vital to be cautious when deciding on the best Forex broker to invest in Africa.

Firstly, you should check for the broker license. If Forex trading is regulated in your country, check to see the Forex brokers licensed by the regulatory body. For a country like Nigeria, where the market is not restricted, consider foreign brokers who are licensed by global licensing authorities.

The next thing to do is to check out the trading platforms offered by these brokers. Check for their deposit bonuses, ratings, minimum deposit, and payment options before making a decision. For a practical trading experience, a Forex demo account should be featured where you can try your hands before going live. Do not invest real money if you havent fully understood how the platform works.

How To Stay Safe While Trading Forex

You should avoid any unlicensed Forex broker in Africa. The amount of Forex scams in African countries is on the high side, and it has resulted in grave losses for the victims. By going with a well-licensed broker, this risk is almost eliminated, and you can trade more assuredly.

Additionally, you should be cautious when making a substantial investment when you dont fully understand the Forex market. Likewise, you should control your emotions and dont spend all your money on Forex trading.

Conclusion  The Future Of Forex In Africa

Interest in Forex will undoubtedly continue to rise in the coming years. The sensitization level is currently high as Forex trading is advertised on newspapers, TVs, radios, websites, etc.

There are equally Forex seminars and programs to create awareness. More overseas Forex brokers are also picking interest in offering their services to African countries. Consequently, better regulatory policies will be imposed in countries that lack them so that aspiring traders can trade safely.

This article was originally posted on FX Empire

More From FXEMPIRE:
It seems the environment is not minding the lockdown, not even one bit. Now the world has become cleaner and even more picturesque. Don't believe us? You can see the evidence for yourself in these pictures of the clear blue skylines over Maximum City Mumbai:
Channel Nine star Sylvia Jeffreys and Sky News presenter husband Peter Stefanovic welcomed their first son Oscar together in February.

And the trio looked nothing short of radiant on Sunday, while enjoying a morning stroll together near their Sydney home.

Sylvia, 34, rugged up for the chilly weather in black activewear leggings and a white jumper as she showed off her post-baby curves.

Brood: Channel Nine star Sylvia Jeffreys, 34, (L) showed off her slender post-baby figure alongside husband Peter Stefanovic, 39, (R) as they enjoyed a morning stroll in Sydney with son Oscar on Sunday morning

Sylvia and Peter smiled as they strolled with adorable Oscar in the pram. At times, the baby was placed on Sylvia's carrier strapped to her mid-section.

The Channel Nine star opted to wear a pair of black compression tights along with a stylish all-weather white P.E. Nation jacket.

She completed the outfit with a black New York Yankees cap along with a white-and-black pair of Nike runners.

All style: The Channel Nine star opted to wear a pair of black compression tights along with a stylish all-weather white P.E. Nation jacket

She wore her trademark blonde tresses out, and appeared to go for a light application of makeup.

Journalist Peter, who hosts Sky Breakfast, also kept it casual with a grey zip-up hoodie, black t-shirt and grey sweats during the stroll.

The hunky dad finished his outfit off with a white cap and round sunglasses.

Family first! Doting dad Peter pushed the pram while Sylvia walked alongside her husband, with them clearly enjoying the morning sun

It comes after Sylvia celebrated her 34th birthday last week.

Her husband shared a sweet tribute to mark her special day.

The breakfast anchor, 38, uploaded a photo to Instagram of Sylvia cuddling Oscar.

Hugs: The Sky News breakfast anchor, 38, uploaded a photo to Instagram of Sylvia cuddling Oscar. 'Happy Birthday, Mumma Sylvie!' he wrote in the caption. 'Oscar and I are very lucky to have you. We love you!'

'Happy Birthday, Mumma Sylvie!' he wrote in the caption.

'Oscar and I are very lucky to have you. We love you!'

Peter and Sylvia welcomed their first child, son Oscar, on February 6.

So sweet! Sylvia Jeffreys shared a sweet Instagram photo of her two-month-old child as they enjoyed a stroll on Friday. Both pictured

The couple met while co-hosting Weekend Today, and Sylvia previously said it was a case of 'love at first sight'.

She told The Sydney Morning Herald she was instantly drawn to Pete when they 'bumped into each other' in the car park before their first day working together.

They tied the knot at Ooralba Estate in Kangaroo Valley on April 1, 2017.
Post ICJ, India tried to persuade Pak through back channel to release Kulbhushan: Harish Salve

India

pti-PTI

New Delhi, May 03: India had hoped it might be able to persuade Pakistan through "back channel" to release retired Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, who was sentenced to death by a Pakistan military court on charges of "espionage and terrorism" in 2017, senior advocate Harish Salve has said.

Salve was the lead counsel for India in the Jadhav case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which had last year ruled that Pakistan must review the death sentence awarded to the retired naval officer after a closed trial.

During an online lecture series organised by the Akhil Bharatiya Adhivakta Parishad, affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) on Saturday, Salve from London said the Indian side has kept on asking how do Pakistan propose to carry out the ICJ judgement and give effective review and reconsideration, but no answer has been forthcoming.

"We were hoping that through back channel, we may be able to persuade Pakistan to let him go. If they want to say on humanitarian ground or whatever, we want him back. We said let him go. Because it has become a big ego problem in Pakistan. So, we were hoping that they will let him go. They haven't," he said, while answering a question on the current situation in the matter. "We have written four-five letters. They just keep on denying," he said.

"I think we have reached a point where we have to now decide whether we want to go back to ICJ for consequential directions because Pakistan has not moved ahead."

Salve said that following the ICJ order, Pakistan had granted consular access but it was too late and "we have now been in a tussle with Pakistan to get them to set up machinery."

"Pakistan believes, first of all they told the whole world they have won the case, good for them. And now, they keep saying that you have to file a proceeding in a Pakistani court or take Pakistani proceedings," he said.

"We keep saying how you propose to carry out the judgement of ICJ and give effective review and reconsideration. They refuse to answer that question. We have had exchanges backward and forward. I think the Government of India has been writing to them and who knows the way things are going, we may have to go back in the ICJ someday, trying to get justice for Jadhav," Salve said.

He said till date, Pakistan has refused to share the case details such as the FIR, the chargesheet or the judgement of the military court in the matter. Responding to a question about the alleged offensive languages used by lawyer representing Pakistan at the ICJ, Salve said the Pakistan's lawyer had used very "strong language" against India.

"In the ICJ, we never used words like these. I did the word check and worlds like disgusting, lying and dishonest have been used by Pakistan many times," he said.

Salve said that he did not want to stoop to the Pakistan's level as Indian traditions did not allow him to use such bad words and, moreover, he respected the ICJ and its portal.

Salve then referred to a statement of a registrar of the ICJ made to the Indian ambassador during a function. "He (registrar) said that there was so much heat in this case." Salve recalled, adding that he said that the America-Iran sanction case was important one, but that was done peacefully.

Sharing the experience about the hearing in the Jadhav case, he said that by the time of rejoinder argument, the Pakistan lawyer was apologetic for the language used.

We are keeping this case under the glare of the international community in the hope that Pakistan does not do what it does, he said in response to a question as to how to save Jadhav from the fate meted out to Sarabjit Singh in a Pakistan jail.

Sarabjit, who was convicted for alleged involvement in bomb attacks in Pakistan's Punjab province in 1990, was brutally attacked by inmates in the Kot Lakhpat Jail and had died in a hospital in the country.

Salve, while addressing the lawyers, gave the background of Jadhavs case and said he is the ex-navy commander and his case is that he carries out business in Iran and one day he was kidnapped.

He was handed over by the Taliban to the Pakistan Army. The fact that he was seized by the Pakistan Army at the Pakistan border with Iran is an admitted fact. Of course Pakistan does not admit that he was kidnapped by the Taliban. There is no clarity. There has been no clarity in Pakistans case as to how they nabbed him, Salve said.

Their case generally is that they caught him trying to infiltrate Pakistan at the Pakistan-Iran border at the place called Chhabahar. Thats where they caught him, he said. Salve added that before Pakistan informed India about Jadhavs arrest, they had made his confession global.

The confession makes an interesting reading. It is a very general kind of confession saying that I have been a bad boy. I have indulged in terrorism activities in this place and that place and on behalf of India. I have done lot of bad things in Pakistan. No details, no dates, no incidents mentioned, no specific incidents mentioned. They claim that on basis of this, he was then sent to trial, he was given an Army officer, as a lawyer to represent him. They claim he was tried, he said.

Pakistan has claimed that Jadhav was arrested on March 3, 2016 and India was informed on March 25, 2016, when its Foreign Secretary raised the matter with the Indian consulate in Islamabad. Jadhav was sentenced to death on charges of espionage and terrorism in April 2017 by the Army court. India had moved the ICJ against the Pakistan Army court.
Donald Trump has said he was confident coronavirus may have originated in a Chinese lab - AFP

China has published a short animation titled "Once Upon a Virus" mocking the US response to the new coronavirus using Lego-like figures to represent the two countries.

Washington and Beijing are locked in a war of words over the origins of the disease, which emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan and has grown into a global pandemic.

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday he was confident the coronavirus may have originated in a Chinese virology lab, but declined to describe the evidence.

In the animation posted online by China's official Xinhua news agency, red curtains open to reveal a stage featuring Lego-like figures in the form of a terracotta warrior wearing a face mask and the Statue of Liberty.

"We discovered a new virus," says the warrior.

"So what?" replies the Statue of Liberty. "It's only a flu."

China: We discovered a new virus.

America: So what?



China: It's Dangerous

America: It's only a Flu



China: Wear a Mask

America: Don't wear a Mask

... pic.twitter.com/Qxugv8z73J  China Xinhua News (@XHNews) April 30, 2020

As the warrior issues warnings about the virus and counts off the grim milestones in China's outbreak, the Statue of Liberty replies dismissively with echoes of Mr Trump's press conferences in which he played down the severity of the illness.

"Are you listening to yourselves?" asks the warrior as the statue begins to turn red with fever and gets hooked up to an intravenous drip.

"We are always correct, even though we contradict ourselves," the statue replies.

"That's what I love about you Americans, your consistency," says the warrior.

The US and other countries have accused China of misleading the world about the severity of the outbreak, and there are growing calls for an international inquiry into the origins of the virus.

In an interview, Mr Trump said he believes China's handling of the coronavirus pandemic is proof that Beijing "will do anything they can" to make him lose his re-election bid in November.

Lego's press office wrote in an emailed statement on Saturday: "We weren't involved in making the animation in any way."
Luxury Hotel Group Caves to Pressure, Returns $59 Million in Relief Funds

Three publicly traded Texas-based hospitality firms that collectively received nearly $59 million in coronavirus relief funding and are tied to hotelier Monty Bennett announced Saturday they would return the funds after Bennett earlier said he would not turn back the money.

Ashford Inc., Ashford Hospitality Trust, and Braemar Hotels & Resorts released a statement saying the return of Paycheck Protection Program loans under the $2 trillion coronavirus economic relief package stemmed from the agencys recently changed rules and inconsistent federal guidance that put the companies at compliance risk. Among the 130 hotels in Ashfords portfolio are Ritz Carltons and Embassy Suites.

The statement was released on the same day The New York Times ran a front page article chronicling the loan controversy and Ashfords operations.

The trio of luxury hotel real estate firms garnered scrutiny for receiving funds, one of the largest amounts delivered by the program, at a time when tens of thousands of small businesses are still locked out from receiving government assistance. Large companies like Shake Shack and Ruths Chris Steak House received, and later agreed to return, PPP funding. As of Friday afternoon, the Ashford Group of Companies still maintained they would keep the funds, part of a $660 billion program meant for small businesses to maintain payrolls through the ongoing economic crisis.

Get the Latest on Coronavirus and the Travel Industry on Skifts Liveblog

The group of companies asserted the nature of the hotel industry, where smaller ownership groups typically operate under the flag of a global brand like Marriott or Hilton, qualified them for PPP funds. Since mid-March, the companies have furloughed or laid off 90 percent of their workforce due to coronavirus hindering business. The Small Business Administration has not publicly released a list of PPP loan recipients, but Ashford claimed the hotel industry received less than 3 percent of the initial $350 billion round of PPP loans.

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Ashford Hospitality Trust President and CEO Douglas Kessler voluntarily stepped down this week amid the scrutiny over the funding, but no details on the executive change have been made public.

The hotel industry has been devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting National Emergency, Bennett, Ashford Inc. chairman and CEO and the chairman of the board of Ashford Trust and Braemar, said in a statement. Hotel industry executives met with the Administration at the White House on March 17, 2020 to plead for help for our industry. We are disappointed that, in an abundance of caution to avoid any risk of non- compliance with the changed PPP rules, our actions mean that our employees, vendors, communities and others in need will not benefit from the PPP as Congress intended. We call on Congress, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve to provide assistance to the hotel industry to protect jobs and asset values that have been severely impaired as a result of the pandemic and the governments actions that have followed.

The promise to return the PPP funding comes after travel industry groups like the U.S. Travel Association and the American Hotel & Lodging Association Thursday called for the government to discourage unaffected businesses from applying for PPP loans. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said earlier this week the government will perform a full audit on any company taking out more than $2 million in the small business loan program.

Presumptive Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Joe Biden tweeted Saturday afternoon Bennett should return the tens of millions of dollars he received, and we should give it to the small businesses that need it.

The Ashford companies stated they would return all PPP funds by May 7.

Subscribe to Skift newsletters for essential news about the business of travel.
Major players in the gaming industry have been accused of giving "self-serving advice" to government as part of a Victorian taskforce charting a course out of lockdown rules for the state's entertainment industry.

Tony Mohr, executive director of the Alliance for Gambling Reform, said he was "pretty alarmed that a group of gambling industry heavies" was part of a state government-appointed group that had met in recent weeks to address the crippling effect of the lockdown on the industry.

Tony Mohr, the executive director of the Alliance for Gambling Reform. Credit:Alliance for Gambling Reform

The advisory group  set up before the pandemic  includes Crown Resorts, Tabcorp, Woolworths' pokies arm ALH, the Australian Hotels Association, Community Clubs Victoria and the RSL.

Crown's former head of gaming, Neil Spencer, is the taskforce head.
Sunday, April 19

I made my comeback on CNN today, six years after leaving the network, and passionately ripped into President Trump and Boris Johnson for both failing to react fast enough to the coronavirus crisis.

The interview created quite a stir.

Actress Mia Farrow messaged me from Los Angeles to say: Your moral outrage is brilliant and so very welcome Piers. No one has better articulated the components of responsible leadership and the catastrophic failures we are now witnessing.

President Trump unfollowed me on Twitter overnight, which, given that he follows only 47 accounts and only two months ago tweeted Piers, I like you! to his 78 million followers, was not an insignificant moment

David The Hoff Hasselhoff, who never agreed with me about anything when we worked together on Americas Got Talent, emailed: Thanks man, you said exactly what I would have said (well, almost!).

Even The Fonz was impressed: Piers, CNN, well said, tweeted Henry Winkler.

Thursday, April 23

The TV regulator Ofcom has been bombarded with thousands of complaints about my supposedly unfair grilling of Government Ministers on Good Morning Britain.

This follows a series of heated interviews Susanna Reid and I have conducted with the likes of Care Minister Helen Whately, who kept inexplicably laughing while failing to answer simple questions such as how many health and care workers have died on the front line, and how many elderly care home residents have died, too.

Britains heading for the second-worst death toll in the world from this virus, and I believe that is because we were scandalously slow off the mark to respond and shamefully underprepared.

Its not bullying to demand answers as to why.

The first duty of all journalists is to speak truth to power, especially during a crisis of this magnitude where so many lives are at stake.

Friday, April 24

The Sun bizarrely claims my ferocious coronavirus maulings only boost Ministers standings because Downing Street focus groups suggest the public feel sorry for them.

They quote a No 10 insider saying: He doesnt know it, but Piers is doing us a big favour. Thats why we keep sending Ministers in front of him.

Wow.

A Government actively celebrating its Ministers getting exposed as woefully ill-informed imbeciles during the biggest crisis of our lifetime is beyond parody.

Saturday, April 25

President Trump unfollowed me on Twitter overnight, which, given that he follows only 47 accounts and only two months ago tweeted Piers, I like you! to his 78 million followers, was not an insignificant moment.

Hes unhappy that Ive been repeatedly torching him for his dreadful handling of this crisis which has resulted in nearly 60,000 Americans now dying  more than the number that died in the whole Vietnam War. But Im reminded of what Trump himself once told me about success.

You gotta win, he said. Thats what its all about. Muhammad Ali used to talk and talk, but he won. If you talk and talk but lose, the act doesnt play.

Exactly.

The President is currently talking and talking  but losing.

And the act isnt playing.

Sunday, April 26

Amid a cacophony of abuse on social media for daring to confront the Government over its ineptitude, an email arrives from Sir Michael Parkinson: Piers, just to say you have been bloody marvellous, an object lesson in questioning backed up by a real grasp of the subject. Wonderful. Keep it up. We need you. Watching you demolish the politicians, I kept thinking, Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Love to Susanna, who is also doing a splendid job. Parky.

This really touched me, as it did Susanna when I told her.

Later, another TV hero of mine, Des Lynam, rang to offer similar praise, which meant a lot, too.

Even his successor Gary Lineker felt compelled to tweet: Im not sure Im enjoying Piers Morgan being popular right now, it just doesnt seem right. Hes been excellent though, through this, holding the Government to account and demanding action and answers.

Monday, April 27

Ofcom has emphatically ruled in my favour. We assessed a number of complaints about Piers Morgans conduct while interviewing politicians about the UKs response to the coronavirus public health crisis. Piers Morgan is well known for his combative interviewing style, and viewers would expect him to challenge senior politicians and hold them to account. His guests were given adequate opportunity to put their points across and counter the presenters criticisms. In Ofcoms view, in line with freedom of expression, it is clearly in the public interest that broadcasters are able to hold those making political decisions to account, particularly during a major national crisis, such as the coronavirus pandemic.

Tuesday, April 28

Home Office Minister Victoria Atkins appeared on GMB after a shocking Panorama last night exposed Britains abject failure to properly prepare for the onslaught of Covid-19.

As has been widely reported, there was a massive pandemic drill in 2016 named Exercise Cygnus, attended by all major Government departments and health chiefs, that was an almost exact parallel to what is now happening.

It concluded that Britain was woefully short of many things including, specifically, Personal Protective Equipment for frontline health workers.

Yet as Panorama revealed, nothing was done to fix this shortage. And 134 NHS and care home staff have now died from coronavirus. This is an absolute disgrace.

I made my comeback on CNN and passionately ripped into President Trump and Boris Johnson for both failing to react fast enough to the coronavirus crisis. The interview created quite a stir. Even The Fonz was impressed: Piers, CNN, well said, tweeted Henry Winkler

Astonishingly, Ms Atkins, who hadnt bothered to watch Panorama, had never heard of Exercise Cygnus, despite being a Home Affairs Select Committee member at the time.

When I expressed my horror at this admission, she brazenly lied and suddenly announced she had heard of it, but when I asked her to reveal one single finding, she couldnt, other than to repeat back what I had told her.

It was the single worst performance by any Government Minister on GMB since the crisis began, and the bar was sadly already very low.

Who in Government takes the decision to send such underprepared Ministers on to GMB? tweeted Andrew Neil after watching it. Its not a car crash, its a massive pile-up. Is the Government that bereft of talent? If so, better not to send anyone. Its excruciating.

It is, yet apparently Im doing No 10 a big favour.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 18:18:17|Editor: huaxia

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TOKYO, May 3 (Xinhua) -- Japan will restart parks, museums, libraries and some other public facilities after a nationwide state of emergency is expected to be extended, a senior government official said on Sunday.

Japanese Economic Revitalization Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura told a press conference that the government will allow those facilities to reopen if sufficient measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 are put in place, even in areas with a relatively high number of infections.

Nishimura, also minister in charge of the government's response to the pandemic, said that the government will release a set of guidelines on how to resume social activities on Monday, when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will formally decide to extend the state of emergency for about one month.

He added that the planned reopening of public facilities will be allowed in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Hokkaido, Fukuoka and eight other prefectures that the government has singled out for taking stepped-up measures against the virus.

The government is also eyeing using the Regional Economy Vitalization Corp. of Japan, a public-private investment fund, to financially support troubled mid-sized firms in non-urban areas, according to the minister.

"About 1 trillion yen (9.3 billion U.S. dollars) has been prepared (by the fund) for the whole country. If necessary, we will also think about increasing this amount," he said.

Abe first declared a month-long state of emergency for Tokyo and six other prefectures on April 7, but this was expanded to cover the entire nation on April 16, in part to dissuade large numbers of people crossing prefectural lines during the five-day Golden Week holidays, which officially began on Saturday.

The state of emergency was originally scheduled to end on May 6, the last day of the Golden Week holidays.

On Friday, a panel of medical experts recommended that the Japanese government continue requesting the nation to continue to follow social restrictions to tackle the spread of the coronavirus and as such believed the state of emergency should be extended.

As of Sunday morning, COVID-19 cases in Japan has increased to 14,877 as nationwide death toll from the virus has now risen to a total of 530, including 13 from a cruise ship that was quarantined in Yokohama near Tokyo, the latest figures showed. Enditem
(Newser)  Just a day after Russia notched a record 9,633 cases of coronavirusthat a 20% increase over Friday, which broke Thursday's numbersthe country one-upped its own record on Sunday, crossing into five-digit territory with 10,633 new cases. That brings Russia's total number of cases to 134,687, the seventh-worst in the world; Moscow accounts for half of those cases. CNN calls the burgeoning crisis "a major headache for President Vladimir Putin," who has gone from calmly sending New York City medical supplies back in March to now scrambling to extend the national lockdown to May 11 as ill-equipped medical fall sick and two dozen hospitals are forced to shut down and quarantine. One silver lining Reuters notes: A low death rate, perhaps helped by the fact that Russia's outbreak was later than most countries, giving it time to prepare. (Read more coronavirus stories.)
Tara Reade Says Shes Receiving Online Harassment, Threats Targeting Family

Former Senate staffer Tara Reade said on May 3 that she has faced online harassment and threats after she publicly accused presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden of sexual assault.

I find it astoundingthe hypocrisy that Democrats are talking about women being able to tell their story safely, Reade told Fox News. Im a Democrat, a lifelong Democrat, but yet here I am trying to talk about my history with Joe Biden and Im just the target of online harassment.

Biden, a former vice president and longtime U.S. senator from Delaware, said on May 1 that the allegations arent true.

I want to address allegations by a former staffer that I engaged in misconduct 27 years ago. They arent true. This never happened, Biden, 77, said.

Reade told the news outlet that false social media accounts were created to impersonate her. One of the accounts had uploaded personal photos of Reade and her family.

Meanwhile, she said that the home address of one of her family members was posted online, while that person received several creepy phone calls on May 1. One of the messages included a caller who said they were a journalist who wanted to speak with Reade.

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks to MSNBCs Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski, on May 1, 2020. (MSNBCs Morning Joe via AP)

Hi, Ms. Reade, this is Dave Johnson from the Observer, a small New York newspaper, the voice says before laughing, adding that Jeffrey Epstein didnt kill himself.

Another voice message said, Hey Tara, this is Dave Johnson with the Observer, and I would really love, Id really appreciate a call back so we can discuss your new powerful allegation against Vice President Biden. I think youre setting a tone and underscoring a double standard put forth by the #MeToo movement, so Id really appreciate it if you could just call me back, give me a couple of quick questions.

Reade told Fox that she received an email from a woman named Linda Dubois, who cursed at her and accused her of fabricating her story.

This is something that really has to stop, and Im just wondering where this is coming from, Reade said in the interview. Are these just fanatic supporters? And if so, what does that say about our Democratic voters? Why are they targeting me when the party line is supposed to be allowing people to be safe? Why are they targeting my family and myself and making my family frightened?

It creates barriers for survivors to want to come forward and talk about difficult things that have happened. And in my case, talking about how Joe Biden sexually harassed and sexually assaulted me is very excruciating and enough by itself, but then to be targeted and harassed and have my whole family targeted and harassed online by people that call themselves his supporters is not only just upsetting, its frightening.

Reade, meanwhile, told The Associated Press that she recalls filing a limited report with a congressional personnel office that didnt explicitly accuse the former vice president.

I remember talking about him wanting me to serve drinks because he liked my legs and thought I was pretty, and it made me uncomfortable, Reade said in an interview May 1 with The Associated Press. I know that I was too scared to write about the sexual assault.

The existence of the Senate report has become a key element of the accusations against Biden, which he has flatly denied. Reade says she doesnt have a copy of the report, and Biden said on May 1 that he isnt aware that any complaint against him exists.

He asked the Senate and the National Archives to search their records to try to locate a complaint from Reade.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
As some Houston offices that closed due to coronavirus are asking employees to get back to work, the state allows some workers to choose not to, while collecting unemployment.

Last week, Gov. Greg Abbott announced new Texas Workforce Commission guidelines for Texans receiving unemployment benefits.
Joe Lewis was just 18 when he was shot twice by the Ohio National Guard on his college campus.

A freshman at Kent State University in Ohio, Lewis had saved money working at the post office during high school to pay for his first year of college. He loved the freedom college afforded, and in 1970, the campus was abuzz with the "excitement of being on the cusp of a new world," he said.

Lewis grew up on images of the civil rights protests and the Vietnam War and took part in anti-war protests when he got to the campus.

But in May, things escalated and then turned tragic.

Vehemently opposed to President Richard Nixon's escalation of the war into Cambodia, students at Kent State began protesting. On Friday, May 1, students demonstrated on campus and throughout the town of Kent. The next day, the Reserve Officers' Training Corps building on campus was set on fire  how the blaze started remains up for debate  and by the evening, Gov.Jim Rhodes, who was running for the Senate, called in the National Guard. That Sunday, in a press conference, the governor called the students "the worst type of people that we harbor in America."

By Monday, May 4, things reached a boiling point, and students weren't just protesting the war anymore but also the armed guards stationed on their campus with military-grade weapons. Lewis was among the estimated 2,000 people who gathered that afternoon in a demonstration beset by the "toxic waters of the 60s flowing together in one place," according to historian Howard Means, who wrote a book on the incident, "67 Shots: Kent State and the End of American Innocence."

"You had this combination of naive students, a politically ambitious governor, and a laissez-faire administration all deeply complicated by terrible leadership in the National Guard," Means said. As the National Guard ordered Lewis and his fellow students to disperse, they refused. The guardsmen used tear gas, but it proved largely useless because of the wind, and students threw rocks. While this was all happening, the important school administrators were out to lunch, Means said.

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Then, the guardsmen, at least 60 yards from most of the students protesting, started firing. In 13 seconds, 61 to 67 shots were fired. Lewis was hit twice, four students were killed, eight others were injured, one of whom was permanently paralyzed, and the course of history was altered.

"I remember stopping, and there was absolute stillness," Lewis said of the moments after the shots. "Then, screaming and wailing and chaos. I didn't lose consciousness, I was in a state of shock."

IMAGE: Wounded student at Kent State (Howard Ruffner / Getty Images)

Many details about the tragedy remain unknown, even today. Why exactly did the guardsmen start shooting? Were the guardsmen who later claimed they feared for their lives telling the truth when there was so much space between them and the students?

What is known is that in the immediate aftermath, public opinion largely sided with the National Guard, but the shooting accelerated the growing disapproval of the Vietnam War.

"It was definitely understood very quickly as an indication that things in the U.S.  on and off campus  were spiraling out of control," said Angus Johnston, a historian on student activism who teaches at the City University of New York.

Johnston called the Kent State shooting "a turning point in American history" for that reason. The report Nixon commissioned on campus unrest after it said that "a nation driven to use the weapons of war upon its youth is a nation on the edge of chaos"  and Americans were feeling the "chaos."

Days after the Kent State shooting, on May 15, there was a shooting at historically black Jackson State College in Mississippi during a protest against racism that students on campus were facing. Two students were shot and killed and 12 others were injured at the hands of the police.

IMAGE: Shooting at Kent State University (AP)

The U.S. was "spiraling out of control," Johnston said, in a war it wasn't winning, and it was shooting its own students dead. Although the May tragedies certainly weren't the only time campuses saw violence, the dramatic photos of the Kent State shooting revealed to the American public what was really going on. The deaths of the students in Ohio (which got far more attention than those in Mississippi, in part, historians believe, because the students who died at Kent State were white) not only further divided a country already split over the war but also revealed that the divide was growing unsustainable.

Alan Canfora, a student who attended the Kent State protest, said the purpose of the demonstration  one that he never imagined would turn deadly  was "to send a message to stop the war." Canfora was captured in one of the most famous pictures from the day, holding a black flag while facing down the National Guard. He was holding the flag in mourning  one of his close friends from childhood had died in the war. Just a week before the protest, he had attended a funeral of someone else he knew who died in Vietnam.

Means, the historian, said he believes the message of Canfora and his fellow students was received. Kent State, he said, "unmoored Nixon," who just days before the shooting had called anti-war protesters "bums," to which a parent of one of the students killed that day famously replied, "My child was not a bum."

When the president's intelligence officials couldn't find evidence that the protest was stirred by outside agitators, Nixon was frustrated. The anger was coming from the students themselves  and it was only growing.

IMAGE: Riots at Kent State University (AP)

After the shooting, there was a nationwide student strike that saw 4 million turn out in response to the tragedy. As many as 100,000 students marched on Washington. Then, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young released their protest song "Ohio" a month later, with the chorus "four dead in Ohio," after seeing the photos of the shooting. With lyrics that directly called out Nixon, the song was heard by the nation loud and clear.

A year after Kent State, the 26th Amendment was ratified, lowering the voting age to 18, which was seen as a massive win for students who until then were too young to vote for politicians who wanted to end the war but were old enough to be drafted.

Canfora, who was shot in the wrist that day 50 years ago and returns to the campus every year to mark the anniversary, is proud to have been there despite the tragedy.

"We helped stop the war," he said.
Twenty-five migrant labourers from



Rajasthan, who were stranded in Mumbai due to the lockdown, hired a private bus to go to their native places and sought travel permission from the police, which they granted after submission of documents, an official said on Sunday.

The bus carrying these migrants, who work at Metal Market, Dawa Bazar and other commercial places in South Mumbai, left around 5.30 pm on Sunday, the official said.

"They were stuck in the city due to the COVID-19 lockdown. However, after the Centre allowed the movement of stranded migrants, these people approached us with a request to allow them travel to Rajasthan in a bus hired by them. They also submitted their documents," he said.

Before starting the journey, Jalam Singh, one of the passengers who hails from Jalore district in Rajasthan, said, "We are happy that we are finally going to our native place. We had approached the MRA Marg Police Station and sought their nod saying that we have hired a bus for travelling to Rajasthan. We submitted our documents and the police gave permission."



Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone 1), Sangramsinh Nishandar, said, "These migrants had arranged the bus for themselves. It left the CST Junction in the evening. We sanitised the bus and screened the passengers, after which they were allowed to go.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Armed forces on Sunday



acknowledged the efforts of "corona warriors" in Karnataka in the fight against the pandemic with Indian Air Force helicopters showering flower petals on hospitals and the IAF band made a presentation.

An Indian Air Force Mi-17 helicopter showered flower petals on doctors, nurses and staff at the Victoria Hospital, a designated COVID-19 hospital here.

The front-line workers too acknowledged the gesture by clapping and several of them clicking photos.

"We are doing our duty, we know the danger of the disease, but we come here and do as its our duty. Such gesture, that too from the Armed forces is great, it will help us keep going," a hospital staff said.

The Airforce band also performed at the Victoria Hospital on the occasion.

A similar activity was undertaken at the Command Hospital here as a mark of appreciation of those from the facility involved in testing of samples for COVID-19, Defence officials said.

They said the INS Vikramaditya ship, which is at Anchorage off Karwar coast, will be illuminated at 7.30 PM.

There will be a flypast by transport aircraftat C 130 J Hercules at 3.46 over Vidhana Soudha, the seat of state legislature and secretariat here, they added.

Meanwhile, the Defence Public Relations Office here tweeted that bands from Madras Engineer Group (MEG), Parachute



Regiment Training Centre (PRTC), Army Service Corps bands performed on Saturday thanking the corona warriors.

"Indian Army thanking all the #CoronaWarriorsIndia for their efforts in mitigating #Covid_19india crisis. Bands from #MEG, #PRTC, and #ASC performed at Vidhan Soudha, National War memorial and MG Metro stn respectively yest," it said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Here are todays top news, analysis and opinion. Know all about the latest news and other news updates from Hindustan Times.

First special train ferrying UP migrants reaches Lucknow from Maharashtras Nashik

More than 800 migrant workers from Uttar Pradesh arrived in Lucknow in a special train from Maharashtras Nashik on Sunday morning amid ongoing Covid-19 lockdown. The 847 migrant workers travelled in the Indian Railways Shramik Special train and reached the state capital via Jhansi and Kanpur. Read more.

Colonel, Major among 5 killed in encounter in J&Ks Handwara; 2 terrorists shot dead

A colonel, one major and two soldiers of the Indian Army were killed along with a police officer during an operation to flush terrorists out of a house in Handwara in north Kashmir, sources said on Sunday.Two terrorists were also killed in the encounter that began around 3:30pm on Saturday in Chanjmulla area of Handwara. Read more.

Second economic stimulus package likely soon: CEA

The second economic stimulus package can be expected very soon, Chief Economic Adviser Krishnamurthy V Subramanian said in an interview on Saturday, although he declined to put a time-frame or a magnitude to it. Read more.

Over 16k visited Tablighi Jamaat markaz in Delhi from March 13-24

At least 16,500 people visited Tablighi Jamaats headquarters in Nizamuddin around the time it emerged as a Covid-19 hotspot between March 13 and 24, according to a Delhi police report that an officer said has been compiled after the biggest exercise the force has ever undertaken. Read more.

An Olympian looks for opponents at home

To say that Vikas Krishan has a competitive bent of mind would be an understatement. The boxer cannot live without an adversary, but to his dismay the lockdown has left him with none. To tide over the situation, Krishan has found opponents, albeit on a different playing field, at home to keep the mind occupied. Read more.

Rishi Kapoors daughter Riddhima Kapoor Sahni reaches Mumbai to be with mom Neetu Kapoor, brother Ranbir Kapoor

Rishi Kapoors daughter Riddhima Kapoor Sahni reached Mumbai on Saturday night, two days after the veteran actor died of leukaemia, to be with her mother Neetu Kapoor and brother Ranbir Kapoor. She could not attend his funeral on Thursday as she did not get permission to fly down to Mumbai due to the restrictions of the nationwide lockdown. Read more.

World Laughter Day 2020: Why we must remember that laughter is indeed the best medicine

Youre watching your favourite comedy show from the 90s like Friends, Seinfeld, or Hum Paanch and realise youre not laughing alone. The simulated sounds of laughter in the background of the show tend to make you smile or laugh more often at the comedic punches. Read more.

How Chinas loss can become Indias Covid-19 gain: PMEAC member explains

With the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbating the slowdown, in India and globally, Nilesh Shah, part-time member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) spoke to Hindustan Times Aditi Prasad about how the country can kick-start its economy once the threat of the virus dissipates. Apart from pushing for a cohesive boost involving fiscal and monetary stimuli, and foreign direct investment, Shah also pointed out how India can take advantage of the growing global discontent with China to attract manufacturers. Watch here.
Imogen Anthony left little to the imagination in a series of photos posted to Instagram on Sunday.

The 29-year-old shared a number of moody black and white images in which she sat naked in bed, covering her bust with just her hands.

The socialite, who captioned the stunning shoot, 'hands', appeared makeup free as she pulled sultry faces for the camera.

Racy: Imogen Anthony (pictured) left little to the imagination in a series of photos posted to Instagram on Sunday

Holding up her hands to the lens at times, she appeared to be posing in a classic 'no pictures please' stance.

In each frame, she perched on luxurious bedding, arranging her impressive figure in alluring poses.

Imogen also showed off her new hair in the photos, after debuting her new post-breakup makeover following her split from Sydney radio host Kyle Sandilands.

Classy: The 29-year-old shared a number of moody black and white images in which she sat naked in bed

No peeking! At times she was covering her bust with just her hands

New look: Imogen also showed off her new hair in the photos, after debuting her new post-breakup makeover following her split from Sydney radio host Kyle Sandilands

The fashion star showed off a more subtle look last Saturday, confessing to having a 'Britney moment' on Instagram.

'Fresh out the shower and having my own Britney moment being undecided on which video to post: so we do Britney proud and post them all!' she said at the time.

Imogen looked absolutely stunning with her new shoulder-length hair, with the star proving to forgo her usual heavy blonde extensions.

Changes: The fashion star showed off a more subtle look last Saturday, confessing to having a 'Britney moment' on Instagram

Gone! Imogen looked absolutely stunning with her new shoulder-length hair, with the star proving to forgo her usual heavy blonde extensions. Pictured before the haircut

Chilling: The model has been laying low since her split from Kyle, spending time at the former couple's farm in New South Wales' Southern Highlands

The brunette tresses framed her face perfectly, and appeared to be thinned out and layered with some blonde highlights.

The model has been laying low since her split from Kyle, spending time at the former couple's farm in New South Wales' Southern Highlands.

Kyle confirmed his breakup with Imogen live on KIIS FM on November 5, telling listeners they had been living apart 'for months'.

He is now dating former employee, Tegan Kynaston.
First special train to Odisha carrying 1,150 migrants arrives in state

India

pti-PTI

Bhubaneswar, May 03: The first 'Shramik Special' train to Odisha carrying around 1,150 migrant workers stranded in Kerala due to the lockdown arrived in Ganjam district on Sunday, officials said.

The train had left Ernakulam railway station on Friday evening and arrived at Jagannathpur railway station in Ganjam district in the morning. It further proceeded to Khurda Road railway station, where it terminated, they said.

Over 500 passengers, including women and children, alighted at Jagannathpur while the remaining got down at Khurda Road, the officials said. The passengers were screened and given certification for the journey before boarding the train in Kerala, they said.

Those alighting at Jagannathpur railway station were sent to their home districts of Kandhamal, Ganjam, Rayagada, Boudh, Nabarangpur and Koraput, the officials said. Steps were taken to ensure that the workers strictly observed social distancing norms after their arrival at the railway stations, they said, adding all workers were wearing masks. The workers were received by government officials.

They were given food packets and stamped with indelible ink on their right hands to highlight that they had returned from another state before boarding special buses for quarantine centres, the officials said.

The travellers, who had registered themselves with the state government's portal, hail from 23 of Odisha's 30 districts. The highest number of those who returned are from Kandhamal district (382), followed by 283 from Kendrapara and 130 from Ganjam. The public and journalists were not allowed inside railway stations at the time of their arrival to avoid any health risk, an official said.

The state government has made similar arrangements for the return of more migrant workers stranded in Kerala and Gujarat, he said. These trains will halt at stipulated railway stations, from where the migrants will go to their villages along with respective panchayat officials and will be placed under quarantine for 14 days, the official said.

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik thanked his Kerala counterpart Pinarayi Vijayan for taking good care of the stranded people during the lockdown and cooperating with the Odisha government to ensure their safe return.

Patnaik also commended the role of the Ganjam district administration and police for the smooth handling of the workers at Jagannathpur railway station. He thanked different government departments for "meticulous planning and precision" in completing the first leg of 'Operation Subha Yatra', the state administration's endeavour to facilitate the return of stranded migrant workers.
Yashili International Holdings Ltd (HKG:1230), which is in the food business, and is based in China, saw significant share price movement during recent months on the SEHK, rising to highs of HK$0.69 and falling to the lows of HK$0.45. Some share price movements can give investors a better opportunity to enter into the stock, and potentially buy at a lower price. A question to answer is whether Yashili International Holdings's current trading price of HK$0.45 reflective of the actual value of the small-cap? Or is it currently undervalued, providing us with the opportunity to buy? Lets take a look at Yashili International Holdingss outlook and value based on the most recent financial data to see if there are any catalysts for a price change.

See our latest analysis for Yashili International Holdings

What's the opportunity in Yashili International Holdings?

Good news, investors! Yashili International Holdings is still a bargain right now. According to my valuation, the intrinsic value for the stock is HK$0.60, but it is currently trading at HK$0.45 on the share market, meaning that there is still an opportunity to buy now. Yashili International Holdingss share price also seems relatively stable compared to the rest of the market, as indicated by its low beta. If you believe the share price should eventually reach its true value, a low beta could suggest it is unlikely to rapidly do so anytime soon, and once its there, it may be hard to fall back down into an attractive buying range.

What kind of growth will Yashili International Holdings generate?

SEHK:1230 Past and Future Earnings May 3rd 2020

Investors looking for growth in their portfolio may want to consider the prospects of a company before buying its shares. Buying a great company with a robust outlook at a cheap price is always a good investment, so lets also take a look at the company's future expectations. With profit expected to grow by 80% over the next couple of years, the future seems bright for Yashili International Holdings. It looks like higher cash flow is on the cards for the stock, which should feed into a higher share valuation.

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What this means for you:

Are you a shareholder? Since 1230 is currently undervalued, it may be a great time to increase your holdings in the stock. With an optimistic outlook on the horizon, it seems like this growth has not yet been fully factored into the share price. However, there are also other factors such as capital structure to consider, which could explain the current undervaluation.

Are you a potential investor? If youve been keeping an eye on 1230 for a while, now might be the time to make a leap. Its prosperous future outlook isnt fully reflected in the current share price yet, which means its not too late to buy 1230. But before you make any investment decisions, consider other factors such as the strength of its balance sheet, in order to make a well-informed investment decision.

Price is just the tip of the iceberg. Dig deeper into what truly matters  the fundamentals  before you make a decision on Yashili International Holdings. You can find everything you need to know about Yashili International Holdings in the latest infographic research report. If you are no longer interested in Yashili International Holdings, you can use our free platform to see my list of over 50 other stocks with a high growth potential.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Uttar Pradesh government on Sunday permitted the operation of standalone liquor vends across the state including the Red Zones, where maximum restrictions will be imposed during the third phase of national lockdown beginning May 4 till May 17.

The notification of new guidelines governing individuals and businesses in the state for the next two weeks was released by the States chief secretary. The notification largely follows the guidelines released by the Union home ministry, a couple of days ago, on May 1.

Standalone excise department shops in municipal and rural areas will be allowed to stay open between 10 am and 7 pm with the caveat that social distancing norms should be implemented strictly during the sales. This provision will also be implemented in a similar fashion in the Orange and Green Zones, says the order.

The Central government had released guidelines to control the movement of people and conduct of businesses on May 1, in a graded lifting of restrictions, seen during the 40-days of nationwide lockdown. It allowed the states to modify the order taking into account local realities as long as they didnt dilute it in any way.

All the 733 districts in the country have been demarcated as Red, Orange or Green Zones, depending upon the severity of the spread of the disease and other parameters defining the threat posed by the virus.

19 districts in Uttar Pradesh including Lucknow and Gautam Budh Nagar are classified as Red Zones, 36 districts are categorized as Orange Zone and 20 as Green Zones.

While Red Zones are classified on the basis of number of positive cases, recovery rate, doubling rate, the extent of testing and surveillance feedback from the districts, Green Zones include districts that have not seen any positive case in the last 21 days, all the other districts that do not fall into these two categories, are in the Orange Zone.

For Coronavirus Live Updates

The Uttar Pradesh government has retained almost all the guidelines released by the centre.

Places of mass gatherings including malls, cinema halls, educational and training institutes, religious places, clubs, social and political gatherings, interstate travel by air, rail or road, hotels and restaurants will remain shut during the third phase of lockdown in the state.

It also bans inter and intra-district public transport in Red Zones and Orange Zones while permitting them to operate in the Green Zones at 50% capacity while maintaining social distancing norms.

Auto rickshaws, cycle rickshaws and taxis and cab services like Ola and Uber will not be allowed in the Red and Green Zones.

The HT Guide to Coronavirus COVID-19

The order also makes it mandatory to wear face masks at all public places and prohibits the gathering of more than 5 persons at any common area. Permission will have to be taken for organizing marriages which cannot be attended by more than 20 people. The administration also places a limit of 20 people for holding of last rites.
Inspired by the care he received from an oncology nurse, a 17-year-old used his wish from Make-A-Wish New Mexico to give workers at Presbyterian Rust Medical Center and two Albuquerque hospitals kits to help them disinfect after work and have an easier time getting meals.

Albuquerque resident Sam Neale was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma in 2019, and registered nurse Shawna Sanchez helped care for him at Presbyterian Hospital in downtown Albuquerque during his five months of chemotherapy. Now, hes in remission, and Sanchez works at Presbyterian Rust.

When Make-A-Wish connected with him, Neale wished to give back to health-care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic because he appreciated Sanchezs work, kindness and humor. With sponsorships from the Jennifer Riordan Foundation and Shawna and Clay Holderman of Rio Rancho, and donated items from the community, Neale and his supporters compiled 120 full-size kits and about 100 smaller ones.

Sams Wish Kits contain items such as bleach, hand sanitizer, spray bottles and face masks, to help keep health-care workers and their families healthy, and gift cards to local grocery stores and restaurants.

On Wednesday, Sanchez received the first kit at her home. Then, Neale, his family, Make-A-Wish representatives, Jennifer Riordan Foundation representatives and Albuquerque police officers and firefighters caravanned to Rust, where the Holdermans met them. Rio Rancho Police motorcycle officers led the entourage up to Rust.

The caravan then delivered kits to Lovelace Medical Center and University of New Mexico Hospital.
Larry Edward Mattioda

1947 - 2020

Larry Edward Mattioda, 72, passed away peacefully at home Sunday March 15th 2020 from complications directly related to Mesothelioma. Born in Kenosha on October 12, 1947 to John and Irene Mattioda, Larry spent his life walking the fine line and living life to its fullest. Less than two weeks after his 19th birthday, Larry answered the call to duty and joined the ranks of the United States Army to fight the battle in Vietnam as a Single Rotor Turbine Helicopter Mechanic receiving his initial training at Fort Rucker, Alabama. While deployed to the Republic of Vietnam from July 1967 to January 1968, Larry was assigned to the 281st Assault Helicopter Company under the 5th Special Forces Group in Nha Trang. The 281st was the first helicopter company to support the Special Forces and nicknamed the Intruders. Larry was awarded six Air Medals for meritorious service while performing the duties of a Huey helicopter crew chief and door gunner. A second tour of Vietnam from February 1969 through July 1969 found Larry assigned to the 61st Assault Helicopter Company nicknamed Lucky Star as a crew chief. Upon his return to the states in July of 1969, Larry was honorably discharged from the U. S. Army at Fort Lewis, Washington and returned to Kenosha. His awards and decorations include the National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal with Silver Star (6 campaigns), the Republic of Vietnam Campaign Ribbon with 1960 device and the Air Medal with silver oak leaf (6th award) and the Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross Unit Citation.

Larry worked for Ocean Spray from 1982 to 2006 as a maintenance technician retiring only because Parkinson's began to take it's hold. Larry was a craftsman whose passion in life was using his hands so he thoroughly enjoyed woodworking, photography and mechanics. His skillset allowed him to not only fix anything around the house but also build his Harley Soft Tail from the frame up. He also rebuilt his 1967 Chevelle himself except for the paint.

Larry enjoyed the time spent fishing in the UP and downtime at the cabin up in Lake Tomahawk where life was much simpler and he could just relax.

Larry met Pam in 1982 and stepped in to help raise her three children Kelley, Elizabeth and Steven as if they were his own. They were married October 24th, 1987. He will be sadly missed by not only them but especially by Basset Hounds Lucy Lou and Frankie who stayed loyally by him as he passed and made sure his face was clean once he was gone. Larry was preceded in death by his father John but survived by his wife of 32 years Pam, his mother Irene of Kenosha and brother Tim (Carla) Ratliff of Southhaven, Mississippi. Per Larry's very direct orders, no services were conducted nor marker laid. He gave his body up for science so others may not suffer as he did. If you wish to make a donation in his honor, please consider giving to any Vietnam Era support fund and/or the fight against Mesothelioma.

Go rest high on that mountain, your work on earth is done.
Despite COVID-19 fears, some 40,000 workers in occupied West Bank are expected to enter Israel for a three-week period.

Israel has reopened a number of crossings following an agreement with the Palestinian Authority (PA), in a move that allows thousands of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank seeking employment opportunities to return to work despite fears of being exposed to the new coronavirus.

The two-day opening, expected to last until Monday, will see some 40,000 Palestinians cross over for work, mostly in construction and agriculture.

The move comes in conjunction with an easing of restrictions that were in place to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus in Israel, which has so far recorded 16,185 positive cases and 229 deaths.

Meanwhile, the PA headed by Mahmoud Abbas has registered some 353 infections, many of which were believed to be contracted by workers who cross over to Israel.

Last month, private employers were accused of dumping Palestinian workers who showed symptoms of COVID-19 at checkpoints [Abed Al Hashlamoun/EPA]

Under the agreement, workers will remain in Israel for at least three weeks, said Al Jazeeras Nida Ibrahim, reporting from Bethlehem.

Usually, they [workers] would go and come back in the same day  but after the outbreak, the agreement is that they go in and stay there, Ibrahim added.

Its important to note that this has been a difficult decision to make by the PA, she noted.

On the one hand  about two-thirds of the infections that happened in Palestine came from workers and those who were around them.

But also, youre talking about a segment of Palestinian society that brings around $2.5bn in revenues each year to the PAs weakened economy.

Since early March, the PA has closed schools, universities and has imposed a state of emergency to ensure physical distancing was being observed  this has also led to a near-complete halt of movement.

Wages earned in Israel is more than what is made in the West Bank, where the unemployment rate hovers at about 30 percent [Abed Al Hashlamoun/EPA]

Up to 20 percent of employed Palestinians work in Israel and in illegal settlement complexes built on occupied Palestinian land.

The money earned is more than what they would make in the West Bank, where the unemployment rate hovers at about 30 percent  a figure among the highest in the world.

Many are forced to make a living this way as Israels decades-long occupation of the West Bank has left Palestinians with no control over their resources.

Despite the dangers associated with the pandemic, many Palestinians still choose to risk their lives for wages during a particularly financially challenging time.

Last month, private employers were accused of dropping off Palestinian workers who showed symptoms of COVID-19, the highly infectious disease caused by the coronavirus, at military checkpoints. They waited to be picked up by Palestinian ambulances.

The move was criticised by rights groups who accused Israeli authorities of failing to secure the safety of the workers.
The view over the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) from a guard post in Cheorwon County, Gangwon Province, Oct. 17, 2018. Korea Times file



By Jung Da-min



A South Korean guard post in a central section of the demilitarized zone was hit by at least four bullets fired from North Korea, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said Sunday.



The shots were a clear violation of an inter-Korean military agreement under which the two Koreas halted all hostile activities at the border, but do not seem to have been fired intentionally, the JCS added.



According to the JCS, a guard at the post heard multiple gunshots around 7: 41 a.m. and found four bullet holes on the outer wall. There were no casualties and no significant damage to the military facility.






Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 3) Metro Manila the region hardest-hit by COVID-19 in the country may opt to implement localized lockdowns after May 15, an adviser to President Rodrigo Duterte suggested Sunday.

In a virtual press conference, Presidential Adviser on Entrepreneurship Joey Concepcion said the move will help restart the economy in other areas.

"Kung ila-lockdown natin, kung i-ECQ (enhanced community quarantine) natin ang isang lugar, huwag na siguro 'yung buong NCR (National Capital Region). Baka pwede nating i-ECQ na lang 'yung isang city or 'yung barangay approach na ginawa ni Mayor (Isko Moreno) dito sa Tondo," Concepcion said in a briefing with PROJECT ARK.

"At least, matutuloy 'yung ekonomiya sa ibang lugar," he added.

[Translation: If we'll lock down areas, if we implement ECQ, maybe we won't have to implement in the whole NCR. Maybe we can do ECQ per city or do the barangay approach like what Mayor Moreno did in Tondo. At least, the economy in other areas can continue.]

Concepcion shared he believes the country has "done much to bring down the level" of COVID-19 infections, but stressed that mass and targeted testing should still remain in place.

"Dapat 'yung approach natin ngayon, 'yung test, test, test, talagang i-accelerate 'yan eh... Focused approach tayo, ang kailangan moving forward."

[Translation: Our approach should be, "test, test, test" that should be accelerated. We need to have a focused approach moving forward.]

The enhanced community quarantine in the capital region and other COVID high-risk areas and provinces has been extended for another two weeks, with the number of cases still climbing by the day. Regions classified as lower risk areas, meanwhile, saw a gradual easing of lockdown measures under the "general community quarantine" policy.

READ: Govt finalizes rules for areas under enhanced, general community quarantine

Manila City Mayor Isko Moreno has implemented localized quarantine measures of his own, as he had placed the areas of Barangay 20, Sampaloc, and Tondo District 1 under lockdown in a span of weeks.

Moreno, for his part, said it is "too early to tell" whether the imposed quarantines are failing or succeeding, as long as the infection continues to thrive in a community.

To date, the Philippines has logged 9,223 cases of COVID-19, including 1,214 recoveries and 607 fatalities.
It happened again. An unknown party  well, unknown to me  placed a small American flag on the grave of another Civil War Union soldier in St. Patricks Cemetery in Godfrey.

I know the grave well because I must drive by it each time I go the cemetery to visit the graves of family members. This was the first time I have ever seen it decorated with a flag. Did my column in last Saturdays Telegraph about finding a flag on the grave of Civil War veteran John Hale, Sr. inspire someone to decorate another Union soldiers grave?

Lawrence Havens obituary appeared in the March 2, 1904 edition of the Alton Evening Telegraph. He is identified as a long time resident of Alton who lived on Main Street and left behind a wife and six children. Like Hale, Havens funeral was held at what the obituary called the Cathedral, which was Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church on State Street. He was 67 at the time of his death.

Unlike Hales obituary, however, Havens obituary contains no mention of his service during the Civil War. His tombstone notes that he served in Company C of the 144th Illinois Infantry. Hale belonged to the 7th Illinois Infantry, which made history by being the first Illinois unit to serve in the Union army. Its men also earned distinction by purchasing Henry repeating rifles, which gave them a tremendous advantage over foes armed only with single-shot muzzle-loading muskets.

History has largely overlooked the Illinois 144th Infantry. It engaged in no battles with Confederate soldiers. In fact, its troops never even left the area.

Organized in Alton and mustered into service on Oct. 21, 1864, the Illinois 144th Infantry consisted of nine companies. Companies A and B included a number of men from Alton and Upper Alton, as well as neighboring communities such as Piasa, Brighton and Woodburn. Every man in Company C, in which Havens served, was from Alton. Even its captain, Augustus DeLange, as well as its first lieutenant, Charles Robideau, and second lieutenant, John Barnard, were Alton residents.

If Civil War historians have paid scant attention to the Illinois 144th Infantry, at least part of the blame must be assigned to the unit itself. The Illinois Adjunct Generals report, which I consulted when writing about Hale, contains much information regarding the Illinois 7th Infantry. The author of this report noted the existence of the 144th Infantry but then conceded, Notwithstanding diligent effort was made to obtain historical mention of the services of this Regiment, none was sent into the office and hence it was not in our power to say anything authentic concerning the campaign of the Regiment.

For information regarding the 144th, one must go to sources such as the web site of the Madison County Historical Society. The section titled Guarding the Alton Prison states, Six successive regiments guarded the Alton facility while it functioned as a military prison. The last garrison was composed of the 144th Illinois Infantry. While there isnt any information about Havens Company C, the site notes that James Manchester, a member of Company B, was on detached service on Smallpox Island for several months. Telegraph readers who perused my April 11 column will know that assignment to Smallpox Island comprised hazardous duty indeed.

Modern medicine was in its infancy during the Civil War and the germ theory of disease had not yet been universally accepted. According to the web site, 1,159 men served in the Illinois 144th Infantry. Sixty-nine lost their lives to infectious diseases such as smallpox, rubella and measles. Service in a unit that saw no combat whatsoever didnt ensure that the men of the Illinois 144th Infantry would survive the Civil War.

Soldiers such as Havens put their lives on the line for the Union. They deserve to have American flags placed by their tombstones.

John J. Dunphy is an author, the Godfrey 15th Precinct Democratic Committeeperson and recording secretary for the Godfrey Democrats.
Habash and a co-worker, Mustafa Gamal, were arrested in March 2018 after directing a music video for the song Balaha that mocked President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi. The title refers to a character in a popular Egyptian movie who is considered a repetitive liar  and the implication is that Sissi is like that character. Sung by Ramy Essam, who is in exile in Sweden, the tune denounces Sissis rule.
100 Years Ago  1920: Chested vied with other cities in the country Saturday in the observance of American Day which was marked by a brilliant and spectacular parade and impressive ceremonies attending the unveiling of a handsome tablet bearing the names of the members of the Chester Fire Department who participated in the World War. More than forty thousand persons watched the paraders and about 10,000 attended the exercises in Deshong Memorial Park. Gov. Sproul and Rep. Thomas S. Butler, other public officials and guests viewed the parade from a stand in front of the Chester Times and the Morning Republican building on Market Street.

75 Years Ago  1945: While the search was on today in Berlin to recover the body of Adolf Hitler, reported by the Russians as a suicide, Dr. Robert M.W. Kempner of Lansdowne, former German police official, declared positive identification of the Nazi leaders body was possible because of certain physical characteristics such as an abnormally large right thumb, and a receding mouth (that cannot be altered by plastic surgery). Dr. Kempner, now an American citizen, was in charge of the investigation when Hitler was arrested more than 20 years ago after the famous Munich beer hall putsch.

50 Years Ago  1970: The Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus, currently making its 50th anniversary tour, will appear in concert May 16 at Smedley Junior High School in Chester. The chorus escaped from Communist dominated Ukraine during World War II. Tickets for the concert may be obtained at the parish office of St. Marys Church, 2412 W. Third St.; Colony Hotel, 513 Welsh St.; and Modern Card and Religious Shop, 515 Edgmont Ave.

25 Years Ago  1995: The U.S. Defense Department says it wont move an office of its Defense Contract Audit Agency to Media, as originally planned. The decision was made after U.S. Rep. Tom Foglietta (D-1) intervened, insisting the 33 jobs be kept in Philadelphia. Jack Holefelder, president of the Delco Chamber of Commerce, said Foglietta is right to be concerned about the exodus of jobs from Philadelphia. We would rather see private enterprise move into the county, he said. Private investment is not contingent on the whim of politics.

10 Years Ago  2010: Aston Township commissioners entered into a 12-month agreement with Barnabys Pennell Inc. permitting the establishment located at 5501 Pennell Road to allow its employees to park on Dublin Way, thus opening up 15 parking spots for customers. Barnabys has and continues to experience parking congestion resulting in an overflow of customer parking on to adjacent streets and roadways.

 COLIN AINSWORTH
The coronavirus outbreak has given us many heartbreaking stories, but it has also given us hope, all thanks to doctors and healthcare professionals working tirelessly at the frontlines in a bid to save the lives of thousands.



In a heartwarming gesture, a Bengaluru doctor was moved to tears after her neighbours honoured her for treating COVID-19 patients.

Twitter/@BJPKarnataka

When Dr Vijayashree returned from her duty, all the society members gathered in their respective balconies to welcome her with thunderous applause.

The video was shared by BJP Karnatakas official Twitter account, with the following caption,This is how the residents of an apartment in Namma Bengaluru honoured Dr Vijayashree who returned home after treating #COVID patients. Let us respect and appreciate the great services rendered by our Doctors, they tweeted. They also used the hashtags #ThankYouCoronaWarriors and #IndiaFightsCoronavirus."

This is how the residents of an Apartment in Namma Bengaluru honoured Dr Vijayashree who returned home after treating #COVID patients.



Let us respect and appreciate the great services rendered by Our Doctors.#ThankYouCoronaWarriors#IndiaFightsCoronavirus pic.twitter.com/7yEWlckO6v  BJP Karnataka (@BJP4Karnataka) May 2, 2020

Mayor of Bengaluru M Goutham Kumar also shared the clip on Twitter. "Dr. Vijayashree of Bengaluru received a heroic welcome when she returned home after tending to Covid-19 patients in MS Ramaiah Memorial Hospital. A big thank you to all the #CoronaWarriors working selflessly on the frontline of this pandemic. We salute you," he wrote in the caption.



  !



Dr. Vijayashree of Bengaluru received a heroic welcome when she returned home after tending to #COVID19 patients in MS Ramaiah Memorial Hospital.



A big thank you to all the #CoronaWarriors working selflessly on the frontline of this pandemic. We SALUTE you! pic.twitter.com/COHT4KYYE1  M Goutham Kumar (@BBMP_MAYOR) May 2, 2020

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Railway Minister Piyush Goyal also tweeted a video of a similar incident where a doctor who returned home after 20 days of COVID-19 duty and received a heros welcome from her family and neighbours.



Moments like this fill the heart with happiness.



This is the spirit of India.



We will courageously fight COVID-19.



We will remain eternally proud of those working on the frontline. https://t.co/5amb5nkikS  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) April 30, 2020

In the video, some residents of the society are seen stepping forward to shower the doctor with petals, while others applaud and hold up placards to welcome her and thank her for her service. Some are also seen banging utensils as a sign of gratitude. The doctor is seen breaking down in tears at the warm welcome.






Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury is calling the coronavirus pandemic the gravest crisis for the aerospace industry, forewarning the European plane makers plans to right-size its entire business operations.

Thousands of employees in France and the U.K. have been placed on temporary furlough as the global airline industry has grounded to a halt. Production is slashed, airplane deliveries are delayed, and cost-cutting is underway after revenues plummeted and cash reserves dwindled. The first cut to Mobiles Airbus facility came on Friday, with the announcement that 14 subcontractors within the engineering center were losing their jobs in the coming weeks.

But do the dire warnings add up to a collapse of the industrys future in Mobile, home to Airbuss only North American manufacturing plant?

An Airbus spokeswoman, in a blunt statement Thursday, denounced any suggestion that the global leader of aircraft deliveries could leave Mobile.

We have no intention of closing Mobile  it has been and remains a strategic part of Airbus global production network, said Airbus spokeswoman Kristi Tucker.

Alabama Commerce Secretary Greg Canfield added, We are committed to continue building a world-class aerospace cluster in Alabama. There are very few large aircraft plants in the world, and we are fortunate to have one in Mobile.

Dire scenarios

Faurys comments sent a chill to Mobile leaders who, just two months ago, were preparing for a year in which the company was looking at a production ramp-up and adding more employees. Due to coronavirus, the company has dropped its global production output from a record 60 planes per month in 2019, to 40 planes per month.

In January, the company announced plans to increase output of the A320 aircraft to 63 per month by 2021, with the Mobile plant responsible for churning out seven planes. At the start of the year, the Mobile plant was manufacturing five plans monthly.

Moving forward, Tucker said, We will contribute to the global adjustment in the A320 family production rate.

Airbus, according to reports, has burned through $4.78 billion in cash during the first quarter of the year, and Faury has said that the company plans to reassess its production rate again in June.

I think anyone who read (Faurys comments) would have concern, Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson said on Wednesday. When you burn through the amount of cash they are burning through, its a concern.

The financial situation facing aerospace giants like Airbus and its chief rival Boeing, has some analysts and economists worried about whether the company will want to preserve its future in Mobile when jobs are at stake on its home continent.

K.C. Conway, the director of research and corporate engagement at the Alabama Center for Real Estate housed in the Culverhouse College of Business at the University of Alabama, said hes worried about the number of cancellations Airbus is getting and the collapse of airline travel in the United States, and what that might mean long-term for the companys presence in Alabama.

The metric to pay the most attention to, and its important for Mobile, is the TSA passenger count, said Conway, referring to the number of airline travelers passing through TSA checkpoints at airports in the U.S. It was running over 2.2 million passengers per day up into March. That was last year and the first of March. It is now below 100,000. If we dont get passengers traveling to the 1.1 million range, the carnage well see in airline manufacturing will be staggering.

Conway said he believes that European governments will ensure that Airbus workers do not lose jobs permanently. Conway said that Alabama and Mobile officials need to be doing the what if thinking if airplane manufacturing is idled for months or if production capacity is further cut for the next year or two or longer.

He said that what is not currently baked into either Boeing or Airbuss production plans is the impact from reduced plane demand by commercial airlines that either do not anticipate a travel demand recovery or financially will be forced to renegotiate or cancel orders. He said the term demand shock, which has been used to describe slumping industries in past recessions, is applying to the aerospace industry.

As were opening the economy back up, were finding a lot more damage has been done, said Conway. Airbus  they are slowly restarting in France and they are finding that the cancellations are coming in. What happens if the passenger counts dont lift to over 1 million? The order cancellations (come in).

Political realities

Karl Moore, an associate professor at the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University in Montreal and Conway both say that U.S. support for the aerospace industry is likely to align with Boeings needs, given that its corporate headquarters are based in the U.S. Boeings difficulties pre-date the pandemic with the year-long grounding of its 737 MAX aircraft following two tragic plane crashes in 2018 and 2019.

President (Donald) Trump will be understandably focused on Boeing over Airbus and in Europe, Airbus will be a central concern, said Moore.

Conway said he can anticipate Trump, who will be in the middle of a re-election campaign, putting every muscle he can to get the 737 MAX flying again. He said there wont be a lot of focus on Airbus. Its an Alabama thing. He doesnt view it as major U.S. manufacturing.

Indeed, the political dynamics of Airbus, Boeing and the White House are likely to come into play in the coming months. Alabama officials, though, believe they are better positioned to handle the situation than Conway or others believe.

U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne, R-Fairhope, said he has had excellent cooperation from the Trump Administration in advocating for Airbus and has never detected any bias against them, or preference for Boeing.

Said Byrne, To them, U.S. jobs are U.S. jobs.

In particular, Byrne cited the recent trade decisions in which imported aircraft parts -- fuselages and other airline sections shipped from Europe to the Port of Mobile  were left off a list of European goods that were assessed hefty tariffs by the Trump Administration late last year.

At present, the push at the national level is to help the commercial aviation industry get through this very rough time for them, and no favorites are being played, said Byrne.

Alabama is also politically a red state that has been one of Trumps biggest boosters since he was elected in 2016. At least one airline analyst believes that political reality will serve Mobile well.

The situation right now is very difficult, but Airbus is not run by amateurs who would plan for a 12-month time horizon, said Richard Aboulafia, vice president with Teal Group Corp. and an aviation industry analyst. The industry is based on long-term strategy, not short-term tactics. And if there is one thing Airbus has learned, its that a U.S. presence is a brilliant way of thwarting protectionist measures.

He added, As for Trump, is he more likely to back a red state manufacturer or a blue state one? That question answers itself, really.

Popular aircraft

Canfield and Byrne said that Mobile sits in a good position because the largest global backlog of aircraft orders are of the same exact jets that are made in Mobile.

A positive for us in this crisis is that we assemble the A320 family of single-aisle aircraft in Mobile, said Canfield. There is a large backlog of A320 orders and there were only a handful of canceled A320 orders in the first quarter of this year. It is not easy nor very practical to transfer production of one aircraft model from one factory to another.

He added, Our A320s and A220s are built in the U.S. specifically for the U.S. market.

Tucker, the Airbus spokeswoman, said the companys plans to ramp up the A220 aircraft in Mobile remain s unchanged, even if forecasts are trending downward elsewhere. The company announced a plan to accelerate output of the A220 toward 10 a month from the current four at its plant in Mirabel, Quebec, is postponed until mid-2021. Tucker said the plan for an output of four per month in Mobile at some point in the middle of the decade remains unchanged.

We are preserving our ability to meet our customers commitments while protecting our ability to further adapt as and when the global market evolves, said Tucker. Safe and efficient air travel is a key backbone of global economic development and culture exchange; and aviation is a long-term business  we are convinced people and [of?] good will want and need to fly.

But when they return to flying is anyones guess, Faury admitted last week.

At Mobiles Airbus complex, 1,100 employees are back to work as of Wednesday. Employees can work remotely if they can while the COVID-19 crisis snails along. Onsite employees are practicing strict safe social distancing hygiene protocols, said Tucker.

Looking longer-term, Mobile should not be at risk of losing its prize manufacturer, Aboulafia said.

There may be layoffs in line with the broader industrys bust cycle, but closure is not an option, he said.
(Alliance News) - UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson revealed that doctors prepared to announce his death as he battled coronavirus in hospital last month.

Johnson spent three nights in intensive care at St Thomas' in London with the disease, where he said medics gave him "litres and litres of oxygen".

He described it as a "tough old moment", telling the Sun On Sunday: "They had a strategy to deal with a 'death of Stalin'-type scenario.

"I was not in particularly brilliant shape and I was aware there were contingency plans in place.

"The doctors had all sorts of arrangements for what to do if things went badly wrong.

"They gave me a face mask so I got litres and litres of oxygen and for a long time I had that and the little nose jobbie."

Johnson, 55, said it was "hard to believe" his health had deteriorated in just a few days, saying he "couldn't understand why I wasn't getting better".

The PM told the paper the "indicators kept going in the wrong direction" and that he kept asking himself: "How am I going to get out of this?"

"The bad moment came when it was 50-50 whether they were going to have to put a tube down my windpipe.

"That was when it got a bitathey were starting to think about how to handle it presentationally."

He said he was "in denial" initially about how serious his illness was, and that doctors were right to "force" him to go to hospital.

After a fortnight convalescing from the virus, and just two days after he returned to work full-time, his fiancee Carrie Symonds gave birth to their son, Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas Johnson.

They named him after their grandfathers, and two doctors a Dr Nick Price and Prof Nick Hart a who helped save Johnson's life.

He shared his experience of the disease as the number of people who have died in hospitals, care homes and the wider community after testing positive for Covid-19 in the UK as of 5pm on Friday rose to 28,131, up by 621.

The death toll has edged closer to that of Italy, which now stands at 28,710 and is the highest in Europe, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

And the number of daily tests both concluded and sent out in the last 24 hours dropped to 105,937.

Of those, the number of people tested also fell a down to 63,667.

It comes as questions were raised over how tests are being counted after Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Friday he had met his target for 100,000 Covid-19 tests per day.

Elsewhere:

a The Telegraph reported that primary schools could reopen as early as June 1. Government sources suggested no firm dates had been set, and Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick said at the daily press conference that ministers could not give a date.

a The British Medical Association told the Sunday Times that the lockdown should be eased for healthy over-70s, after Jenny Harries said blanket restrictions on those told to shield would be reviewed.

a Fewer than one in five people believe it is the right time to consider reopening schools, restaurants, pubs and stadiums, a poll for The Observer suggested.

Meanwhile, the Communities Secretary said the government was "optimistic" people will download a phone app to trace the spread of coronavirus.

Robert Jenrick said he thought the "vast majority" of people would download the app and "play their part" a though he insisted it was just one element of the plan to stop the spread.

Contact tracing will be central to the government's efforts in slowing the spread of coronavirus, and will involve alerting people who have been in contact with an infected person and asking them to self-isolate.

It has been used extensively in South Korea, Hong Kong and Germany, where outbreaks have been contained more quickly.

The government intends to use an app and a phone team to carry out the tracing.

Jenrick told the daily Downing Street press conference: "Contact tracing will rely on all of us in society playing our part, but I'm optimistic about the prospects for that.

"This has been a national effort so far a if you think of the different measures that we've brought forward, the restrictions, the vast majority of people have got behind it and I think that they will do again when we are able to launch the app on a national scale."

Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jenny Harries said to get contact tracing "up and running at scale and effectively" is "another significant task but (there is) lots of preparation under way".

By Harriet Line, PA Deputy Political Editor

source: PA

Copyright 2020 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
The Bui Power Authority has presented a cheque for Ghc50,000 to the Ghana COVID-19 Private Sector Fund to support the construction of a 100-bed infectious disease isolation and treatment facility in Accra.

Cherie Lawson Adamu, Corporate Affairs Manager for the Bui Power Authority, handed over the cheque to the Managing Trustee of the Fund, Mr. Senyo Hosi at a ceremony at the Ga East Hospital, where the facility is being built.

After a tour of the project site, Madam Cherie Adamu said she was impressed by the progress of the construction, which started in the middle of April and is set for completion by the end of May.

She described the donation as a token from Bui Power Authority to support the Ghana COVID-19 Private Sector Fund.

It is a good project, she said, and we think we have to support you in finishing the project.

Receiving the cheque, Mr. Hosi thanked the Bui Power Authority for their support for the project and the overall national campaign against COVID-19.

He assured that the project will be completed on schedule.

We are very honoured to have you not just as a friend and partner to the project but also as a donor. At this time, we all know the challenges the energy sector is facing but for you to still find economic space for such a project is an indication of your sense of humanity as an authority and your commitment to the cause of this country, Mr. Hosi said.

The 100-bed isolation and treatment facility will be used to treat critically ill covid-19 patients when completed. When the epidemic is over, it will also be used to treat and manage other infectious diseases.

The Ghana Covid-19 Private Sector Fund also has plans are to build similar facilities in Tamale, Takoradi and Kumasi.

The Ghana Covid-19 Private Sector Fund is an initiative by private business people who set it up with a seed fund of One Million Ghana Cedis, while campaigning to raise at least One Hundred Million Ghana Cedis from local and international businesses as well as the general public to aid the fight against Covid-19 in Ghana. For more information on how to donate/contribute, please visit: www.ghanacovid19fund.com

Watch Video here:
This past April 17th, Democratic Party frontrunner and presumptive presidential candidate, Joe Biden, enthusiastically accepted J Streets endorsement for the upcoming presidential election. The endorsement read as follows:

"At a time" when the threats to our core values both at home and abroad have never been more serious, all of us in the pro-Israel, pro-peace community know that the path to a better future begins with defeating Donald Trump at the polls.

In his acceptance response from J Street, the non-profit left-wing, nominally Israel-focused advocacy group, the former vice president asserted,  I share with J Streets membership an unyielding dedication to the survival and security of Israel, and an equal commitment to creating a future of peace and opportunity for Israeli and Palestinian children alike, he added. Thats what we have to keep working toward  and what Ill do as president with J Streets support.

To the uninitiated, the extreme left, and Jews who view the Democrat party as their true religion, this is all fine and well but digging a little deeper, a better understanding of what J Street and Biden himself represent comes to the surface.

Liberal Democratic Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz stated, J Street has been the most damaging organization in American history against Israel . . . J Street has done more to turn young people against Israel than any organization in the whole of history. It will go down in history as one of the most virulent, anti-Israel organizations in the history of Zionism and Judaism. It has given cover to anti-Israel attitudes on campus and particularly its approach to Israels self defense.

Esteemed writer and senior editor of the Jerusalem Post, considered by many the matriarch of the modern Zionist Movement, Caroline Glick, concurred: J Street is an anti-Israel, pro-Iranian and pro-Palestinian lobby run by American Jews..The tools it employs are demoralization and deceit.. "It is J Streets purpose to hide this truth from the American Jewish community. So it is the task of American Jews to build on the decision of the Conference of Presidents [overwhelmingly rejecting J Street] and ensure that J Street goes down in time as the great failure it deserves to be.

In a shocking 123-page, fully annotated report, titled, J Street Sides with Israel's Enemies & Works to Destroy Support for Israel , Morton A Klein, president of the National ZOA, Elizabeth Berney, and Daniel Mandel, PhD. leave no stone unturned proving the malfeasance of this sinister, Jewish-led group. Even in this politicized age where truth takes a back seat to dogma, the evidence of this is irrefutable.

Regarding Biden, it can be surmised, following a 36-year career in the Senate, eight years as the 47th vice president of the United States, and after amassing huge wealth for himself and family, would be aware of this, leaving question to either his judgment or his intent in accepting this endorsement.

In a 1982 meeting with then Prime Minister of Israel, Menachem Begin, Biden threatened : "The United States doesnt look favorably upon Israeli settlements and [they] would endanger support for foreign aid to Israel." Begin went ballistic, and put the then-senator in his place, shouting, Dont threaten us with slashing aid. Do you think that because the U.S. lends us money it is entitled to impose on us what we must do?.We are grateful for the assistance we have received, but we are not to be threatened. I am a proud Jew. Three thousand years of culture are behind me, and you will not frighten me with threats.

Fast forward to an April 19, 2016 article in the New York Post, by Benny Avni titled,  Biden Slams Israel Even After Terror Hits Israel. Once again, the aforementioned J Street comes into view as Biden addressed the group and expressed, overwhelming frustrations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus policies. Just hours prior, a bus bombing took place in Jerusalem severely injuring 21 passengers. Although the former vice president did eventually get around to proclaiming he stands with the state of Israel, he stuck with prepared remarks: The present course Israels on is not one thats likely to secure its existence as a Jewish democratic state, and we have to make sure that happens. As the self-proclaimed, Israels best friend in Obamas inner circle; thats really not saying much, the all-knowing Biden once again found himself at odds with yet another Israeli prime minister.

Further into the 2016 J Street meeting, Biden addressed the first female member of the Knesset, a vocal far left woman in the Labor party stating, May your views begin to once again become the majority opinion in the Knesset. To rousing cheers he concluded, "she reminds me of my young progressive self, when elected to the Senate at 29."

With clairvoyant foresight, Avni goes on to say, You dont have to be a Netanyahu fan to wonder about the symbiotic relationship between J Street and the Obama administration, an anti-Israel administration whose policies Biden strenuously supported for 8 years as vice president. He concluded the article saying, Biden spent more time Monday thanking the organization for its support of the Iran deal than addressing that days terrorism in Israel.

In summation, J Street is a far left Jewish organization that stealthy portrays itself as pro-Israel, when in fact supports the Palestinian cause to the detriment of the Jewish state. It was founded in 2007 by Jeremy Ben-Ami its current president who has consistently supported Democrat politicians such as James Clyburn with long histories of voting against Israel.

In their Statement of Principles J Street unabashedly supports a negotiated two-state solution, based on the 1967 borders. Unsecured borders referred to as Auschwitz borders by former Israeli Foreign Minister, Abba Eban in a speech given at the U.N. in 1969.

They likewise support An Israeli-Syrian peace agreement based on the land-for-peace formula. One can only imagine the position Israel would be in today having returned the Golan Heights to a Syria controlled by Iran and Hezbollah.
CARACAS (Reuters) - Human rights groups on Saturday called for an investigation into a prison riot in western Venezuela that left 46 people dead and 75 injured, and questioned authorities' explanation that the incident was linked to a failed escape attempt.

The U.N.'s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNOHCR) said on Twitter it was "gravely concerned" about the incident on Friday at the Los Llanos penitentiary in Portuguesa state. The South American country's prisons are infamous for extreme levels of violence and poor conditions.

"We urge the authorities to conduct a thorough investigation, tackle overcrowding, and guarantee basic rights," the office said.

The country's prisons minister, Iris Varela, was quoted on a state radio station's website as saying the incident resulted in the deaths of 17 inmates and injuries to the prison's director, who tried to negotiate with the prisoners who were attempted to escape.

"Those responsible, despite being incarcerated, will be judged in accordance with the law," Varela said.

Beatriz Giron, president of the Venezuelan Observatory of Prisons, which advocates for inmates' rights, said the explanation of a frustrated escape attempt was unlikely. She added that 46 bodies had been identified so far, a figure also cited by UNOHCR.

"It is difficult to believe that at 1 p.m., in the light of day, prisoners are going to escape through the front door," she said, adding that the Los Llanos prison was built for some 750 inmates but was currently housing at least 2,500.

Neither Venezuela's information ministry nor its chief prosecutors' office responded to requests for comment on Saturday.

Both Giron and A Window Toward Freedom, another rights group, said the riot came shortly after prison officials barred inmates' family members from bringing them food, a measure to prevent the spread of the coronavirus within prisons.

Such restrictions have prompted riots in prisons in several countries, including Italy. In Argentina, prisoners rioted last month demanding some inmates be freed due to fears of infection.

(Reporting by Deisy Buitrago and Vivian Sequera; Writing by Luc Cohen; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
OTTAWA - Provinces across the country are set to begin easing COVID-19 restrictions on Monday following a weekend in which thousands more cases of the respiratory illness were identified, hundreds more were reported dead and a much-ballyhooed made-in-Canada testing kit was recalled.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 3/5/2020 (625 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrives for his daily news conference on the COVID-19 pandemic outside his residence at Rideau Cottage in Ottawa, on Sunday, May 3, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

OTTAWA - Provinces across the country are set to begin easing COVID-19 restrictions on Monday following a weekend in which thousands more cases of the respiratory illness were identified, hundreds more were reported dead and a much-ballyhooed made-in-Canada testing kit was recalled.

Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan are among those set to take another step out of lockdown by allowing the resumption of some economic and social activities that have been halted for than a month due to the pandemic.

Manitoba is poised to go the farthest by allowing museums, libraries and retail businesses  including restaurant patios  to re-open, albeit at half capacity. Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta are also letting non-essential medical activities, such as dentistry and physiotherapy, resume.

Ontario and Quebec aren't going as far. Ontario is allowing a small number of mostly seasonal businesses to re-open while Quebec is easing the lockdown on most retail stores outside the Montreal area, which has been hit hard by COVID-19 over the past month and a half.

Yet unlike the other provinces, Quebec's plan to begin re-opening comes as the province has shown little progress in curbing the illness's spread, with another 1,800 positive cases and 183 deaths from the disease reported over the weekend.

Quebec Premier Francois Legault has previously defended plans to start re-opening, noting most of the province's deaths have been in long-term care homes and arguing the fight against COVID-19 is entirely different in those facilities.

Quebec officials also added more than 1,300 cases to April's count, saying those numbers weren't originally included because of a technical problem. The province accounts for more than half of the Canadian cases of COVID-19, which includes more than 3,680 deaths.

Quebec Premier Francois Legault did not hold a briefing on Sunday, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other federal government officials sidestepped questions in Ottawa about the province's plan to begin re-opening even as more cases continue to be reported.

Those plans also include unlocking elementary schools and daycares across Quebec on May 11.

"Different regions will have different measures to bring in at different times and our job is to make sure we're supporting them as best we can as we go through this carefully and step by step," Trudeau said during his daily COVID-19 update.

That federal support includes obtaining enough protective equipment for workers as provinces open more segments of their economies, helping increase testing capacity and supporting research into COVID-19.

It was in that vein that Trudeau announced $175 million in federal funding to a Vancouver biotech company, AbCellera Biologics Inc., which the prime minister says has identified antibodies that could be used to create treatments or a vaccine.

The prime minister also announced $240 million to boost online access to health services, including mental-health treatment and virtual access to family doctors for primary care, and the creation of a special council tasked with ensuring Canada can obtain more protective equipment.

Public Procurement Minister Anita Anand said the council will include members from business and civil society, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Canadian Red Cross, and will be charged with buying equipment from abroad and developing it at home.

Anand went on to outline some of the initiatives that the federal government has pursued to obtain more protective equipment for frontline workers, including hiring the U.S. shipping firm UPS to ferry equipment from Shanghai.

Agreements have also been reached with New Brunswick-based biotech firm LuminUltra to produce 500,000 COVID-19 tests per week until next year after Ottawa was able to facilitate the delivery of important chemicals for the tests from China last week.

Yet even as Anand was hailing one made-in-Canada solution to the country's need for more tests, federal officials were playing down the recall of another test that was being hailed by some last month as a major advance in the fight against COVID-19.

Ottawa-based Spartan Bioscience's announcement Sunday that it was voluntarily recalling its rapid test for COVID-19 after Health Canada expressed concern about its effectiveness nonetheless represented a setback for expanded testing in the country.

Health Canada first approved the tests on April 13 and they were set to be rolled out by three provinces.

Canada's chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam said during a COVID-19 briefing in Ottawa that the recall of 5,500 testing kits won't affect the national testing goal of 60,000 people a day, since that figure is based on systems already in use.

But she acknowledged that it could affect the speed of further test increases and especially affect rural communities where local in-clinic tests would be especially useful. At the moment, such samples are often transported to laboratories and other testing sites elsewhere for analysis.

The need for more testing is widely considered to understanding the true scope of COVID-19 infection in Canada and devising ways to limit its spread before the economy can be fully restored to pre-pandemic levels.

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Trudeau, meanwhile, sidestepped questions about unsubstantiated reports from the United States that some intelligence officials believe the novel coronavirus leaked from a Chinese lab in the city of Wuhan  an allegation repeated by U.S. President Donald Trump.

"We will continue to work with intelligence agencies around the world, not just the Five Eyes (Canada, Australia, Britain, New Zealand and the U.S.) but friends and partners as well and look to find answers to the many questions people are asking," Trudeau said.

"But it is still early to draw firm conclusions and indeed our focus remains on how we are working to protect Canadians, how we are ensuring that Canadians have our entire focus right now and our entire ability to support them through this time."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 3, 2020.

with files from Morgan Lowrie in Montreal and Ian Bickis in Toronto.

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version said restaurants will be allowed to reopen. In fact, only their patios can open.
Syracuse, N.Y.  The Food Bank of Central New York will get $2.1 million from a new $25 million state program meant to help feed people with local produce during the coronavirus pandemic.

Through Nourish New York, the state is giving money to food banks so they can purchase excess products, such as fruits and vegetables, from New York farmers. The money also can be used to buy local dairy products to distribute directly to communities.

The Food Bank got $2,134,197. The Cayuga Seneca Community Action Agency got another $68,207. The dairy cooperatives will use excess New York State milk to produce these products and are prepared to increase production to meet the rising demand.

The food providers can use the money to:

Set up food-drive through events/giveaways;

Distribute dairy vouchers that can be redeemed in grocery stores for products like cheese, yogurt, milk, sour cream and butter throughout the state; and/or

Purchase products directly from New York dairy/food manufacturers for their feeding programs.

Most of the money will go toward buying dairy products, according to the state. The food banks will work with Cabot Cheese, Chobani, Dairy Farmers of America, HP Hood, Upstate Niagara Cooperative Inc. and others to buy products such as milk, yogurt and cheese. A dedicated portion of this award will be focused on the purchase of kosher items.

Heres a full breakdown of the $25 million:

New York City Region: $10,997,554

Westchester Region: $985,605

Long Island Region: $1,587,313

Capital/Hudson Valley Region (includes portion of North Country and Mohawk Valley): $4,357,115

Central NY Region (includes portion of North Country and Mohawk Valley): $2,202,404

Southern Tier Region: $1,054,327

Western New York Region: $2,129,463

Finger Lakes Region (includes portion of Southern Tier): $1,686,218

MORE ON CORONAVIRUS

Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources

Cuomo set at least 12 tests for CNY economy to reopen. Heres how we check the boxes

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Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com

Got a story idea or news tip youd like to share? Please contact me through email, Twitter, Facebook or at 315-470-2274.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-04 00:54:46|Editor: huaxia

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CAPE TOWN, May 3 (Xinhua) -- The South African government on Sunday announced strict measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 at workplaces before the partial resumption of business.

Employers must take measures to protect the health and safety of everyone in their workplaces, Minister of Employment and Labor Thulas Nxesi said.

With regard to social distancing, workplaces must be arranged to ensure a minimum of 1.5 meters between workers, Nxesi said.

"If this is not practicable, physical barriers must be erected and workers must be supplied free of charge with appropriate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)," he said.

Social distancing must be implemented in all common areas in and around the workplace to prevent crowding, including working spaces, canteens, meeting rooms, Nxesi said.

Workers must wear masks at work and employers must also require members of the public entering a workplace to wear masks, said Nxesi.

Employers must provide each employee, free of charge, with at least two cloth masks to wear while at work or commuting, he said.

They must also provide sufficient quantities of hand sanitizer with at least 70-percent alcohol content, ensure that work surfaces, equipment and common areas such as toilets, door handles and shared equipment be regularly cleaned and disinfected, said Nxesi.

The minister made the announcement one day before the partial return to workplaces on Monday when about 1.5 million people will return to work. The country moved to stage four of a nationwide lockdown on May 1, down from stage five.

The government has said that the easing of the lockdown will be a carefully phased process based on a risk assessment and the necessary levels of preparation.

In addition to social distancing, a prevention direction announced by Nxesi requires employers to screen workers for symptoms of COVID-19 at the time that they report for work.

"Workers should immediately inform the employer if they experience any symptoms while at work, Nxesi said.

Workers with symptoms must be placed in isolation and arrangements made for their safe transport for a medical examination or for self-isolation, he said.

Labor inspectors are empowered to promote, monitor and enforce compliance with the direction, said the minister.

An employer who does not comply with the direction may be ordered to close their business, he said.

Failure to take the necessary measures to prevent the transmission of COVID-19 may result in criminal prosecution, Nxesi warned.

South Africa has seen a sharp rise in infections involving workers at workplaces, particularly shopping malls. In Cape Town alone, five shopping malls have been closed following outbreaks at the malls over the past few days. Enditem
Members of farmers' body detained in Lucknow for trying to burn effigies of PM Modi, Shah

Coronavirus lockdown: Over 800 UP migrant labourers reach Lucknow in a special train from Nashik

India

pti-PTI

Lucknow, May 03: Over 800 stranded workers hailing from Uttar Pradesh arrived in Lucknow in a special train from Maharashtra's Nashik on Sunday morning amid the ongoing lockdown. This is the first special train to arrive in Uttar Pradesh with stranded migrant workers.

The special train started from Nashik on Saturday morning and reached Lucknow via Jhansi and Kanpur. The railways had said that according to Union Home Ministry's guidelines it will start "Shramik Special" trains to move migrant workers, pilgrims, tourists, students and other persons stranded in various parts of the country due to the lockdown which came into force from March 25.

The first such train left for Jharkhand from Hyderabad on Friday. The railways had announced six "Shramik Special" trains -- Lingampally to Hatia, Nasik to Lucknow, Aluva to Bhubaneswar, Nasik to Bhopal, Jaipur to Patna and Kota to Hatia. 

While briefing reporters on Saturday, UP's Additional Chief Secretary (Home and Information) Awanish Awasthi had said the condition for bringing migrant workers back is that the states they are coming from should provide details of the workers along with a certificate that they have been properly screened and are healthy.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had issued directions to stop all kinds of illegal inter-district and inter-state movements and ordered officials to list the names, addresses, mobile numbers and job skills of workers returning to the state.

On Friday, around 5,000 UP migrant labourers stranded in Madhya Pradesh returned in 155 buses, while around 1,341 labourers hailing from MP were sent back home from Uttar Pradesh.

The migrant workers stranded in Uttarakhand (1,500) and Rajasthan (6,500) are also returning to UP.

Adityanath had written a letter to his counterparts in Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Odisha, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Delhi and Rajasthan, asking for the details of migrant workers stranded due to the lockdown. Around 4,00,000 workers stranded in Delhi and 12,000 in Haryana have already reached UP.
- Kim was missing in the public for about 20 days

- There was speculation that he was gravely ill after a heart surgery

- North Korea's State media said Kim cut a ribbon to open a fertiliser factory in a region north of Pyongyang

- Kim was in the company of top State officials and sister Kim Yo Jong

Our Manifesto: This is what YEN.com.gh believes in

North Korea leader Kim Jong-un has appeared in public for the first time since in about 20 days, the country's State media has reported.

The reappearance of the leader comes amid health concerns speculation.

There have been global speculations about Kim Jong-un's health. Photo: KCNA.

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Former javelin world champion Julius Yego turns to masonry amid COVID-19 and it's interesting

According to Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) as quoted by BBC News, Kim cut a ribbon to open a fertiliser plant on Friday, May 1.

According to the report, people who had attended the event thunderously cheered Kim when he showed up.

"The North Korean leader cut a ribbon at a ceremony at the plant, in a region north of Pyongyang. People attending the event burst into thunderous cheers of 'hurrah!' for the Supreme Leader who is commanding the all-people general march for accomplishing the great cause of prosperity", KCNA stated.

US President Donald Trump gave the new development a wide berth, saying he was not ready to comment at the moment.

The leader was reportedly cheered by North Koreans when he cut a ribbon to open a fertiliser factory. Photo: KCNA.

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Coronavirus: UN chief Antonio Guterres blames US-China tension for infection spread

There were numerous unconfirmed reports that Kim was in grave danger after heart surgery.

KCNA indicated that Kim was in the company of senior State officials and his sister Kim Yo Jong.

Hypothesizing on Kim's health commenced when he missed the birth anniversary celebrations of his grandfather and State founder Kim II Sung, one of the nation's biggest calendar events on Wednesday, April 15.

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New Delhi: The Indian Air Force (IAF) jets and transport planes across India on Sunday showered petals on hospitals and places of national importance to show honour and express their gratitude towards the coronavirus warriors who are battling the pandemic. It was part of the nationwide thanksgiving effort by the armed forces to honour doctors, paramedics, sanitation staff, police and other front-line workers battling coronavirus in the country.

The IAF choppers and jets, including Mig-29, Sukhoi-30 and Jaguar, conducted flypasts and Army bands played patriotic tunes outside medical buildings, in most districts across the country from east to west and north to south.

The armed forces showered petals at the Goa medical college, SNM hospital in Leh, Jaipur in Rajasthan, Rajpath and police memorial in Delhi, Sukhna lake in Chandigarh, Srinagar's Dal Lake, Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh, Panchkula hospitals in Haryana and the Kalinga Institute of Medical Sciences in Bhubaneswar.

#WATCH Indian Air Force aircraft shower flowers on King George's Medical University in Lucknow to express gratitude towards medical professionals fighting #COVID19. pic.twitter.com/idIGNnM2Wj  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) May 3, 2020

In Mumbai, military aircrafts dropped petals at the King Edward Memorial (KEM) Hospital and Kasturba Gandhi Hospital, among others.

The IAF choppers showered flower petals on the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital in Chennai to pay tribute to healthcare workers fighting Covid-19 pandemic.

#WATCH IAF chopper showers petals on Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital in Chennai, to pay tribute to healthcare workers fighting COVID19 pandemic pic.twitter.com/e2fUQniyaY  ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020

This was the third major display of gratitude to health workers across the country, following Prime Minister Narendra Modi's request to countrymen to clap, ring bells and beat utensils to support the Covid-19 warriors from their balconies, and later by people switching off their lights and lighting candles and diyas.



The medical fraternity and other corona warriors were seen assembled outside the COVID-19 hospitals and other government buildings putting hands on their chest to show honour and respect to the efforts of Armed forces.



The gesture of thanks started with laying of flowers by the three service chiefs at the police memorial in Delhi in the morning to honour police personnel deployed for enforcement of the nationwide lockdown.



Sukhoi-30 MKI, MiG-29 and Jaguars, Chetak did a flypast over Rajpath and orbited over Delhi and showered petals over the India Gate and Red Fort. Besides, C-130 transport aircraft followed a similar route.

The aircraft flew at an approximate height of 500 meters to 1,000 meters.



The IAF fighter jets from the Western Air Command dropped petals at Delhi's Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital and Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital.



The gesture was expressed at a time when 1,301 people have died and nearly 40,000 are infected with the deadly novel coronavirus or COVID-19 pandemic across the country.
 Flash

The U.S. Navy Blue Angels and U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds conducted a flyover on Saturday in Washington D.C., Northern Virginia and Prince George's County in Maryland in support of the frontline healthcare workers fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

The show is one of a series of flyovers the squadrons have been making around the country.

The 20-minute Washington D.C. flyover, which followed one in Baltimore of Maryland earlier in the day, started at 11:45 a.m. Eastern Time in Prince George's County of Maryland. The planes then hovered around Montgomery County of Maryland and headed into Northern Virginia via Arlington.

After passing over Fairfax City, the planes looped back in Prince William County, and then flew toward the National Mall in the downtown D.C. area, where the flyover was brought to an end at around 12:05 p.m.

Saturday's flyover was part of the "America Strong" tour, which President Donald Trump announced at a recent news conference.

"What we are doing is paying tribute to our front-line health care workers confronting COVID, and it's really a signal to all Americans to remain vigilant during the outbreak," Trump said at an April 22 news briefing.

"Operation America Strong was the idea of our great military men and women - the Thunderbirds and the Blue Angels crews who wanted to show support to the American medical workers who, just like military members in a time of war, are fiercely running toward the fight," said the president.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 13:50:47|Editor: huaxia

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PUL-E-KHUMRI, Afghanistan, May 3 (Xinhua) -- Four persons were killed and several houses destroyed as a flash flood swept parts of Tala-o-Barfak district in Afghanistan's northern Baghlan province on Saturday, district governor Abdul Ahmad Barfaki said Sunday.

Heavy rain followed by flash flood hit several villages in Tala-o-Barfak district late Saturday, besides killing four people also washing away several houses and badly damaging farmlands, the official said.

According to the official, rescue operation is underway to find the bodies of the killed persons. Enditem
Some of the Indian workers

Scores of aggrieved Indian workers at the Dangote Oil Refinery Company in Lagos State have accused their employer of forcing them to work without pay or protection amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The workers, in a video on YouTube published on Saturday, called on their Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, and Minister of Home Affairs, Amit Shah, to take necessary steps for their safety.

They claimed to be employed by GTA Power Mech Nigeria Ltd., a joint venture between Power Mech Projects Limited and Skipper T&D undertaking projects in Africa.

The company had in 2017 got a $76m order for composite work tender unit-V by Dangote Oil Refinery Company.

An unidentified man, who spoke in a foreign language on behalf of the group, said, We, the citizens of India, are speaking from Dangote Refinery, which is situated almost 60km away from Lagos in Nigeria. We are workers of the Dangote Refinery.

The whole world is suffering from coronavirus, which is a global pandemic. Nigeria has also announced its lockdown. During this lockdown, the workers of Power Mech Company are being forced to work. The staff here are forcing us to work through physical violence.

We request our Home Minister, Mr Amit Shah, and Prime Minister, Mr Narendra Modi, to kindly understand our problems and help us get out of this situation by taking necessary steps to protect and save our lives.

According to them, the workers of many other Nigerian companies are not being forced to work as they are abiding by the social distancing and stay-at-home order.

They alleged that, though other workers were secure, Power Mech Company had not provided any security for them.



The people here are forcing us to work by taking us out of our rooms and pushing us into the bus in order to make us work. The company responsible for this is the Power Mech Company.

We, the people working in the Power Mech Company, have not been paid. The workers have not received any payment since three months and there is no food arrangement made for us. The food which is given is worse (than) those of animals.

In this situation of the pandemic, they are not saving us from the disease but are trying to kill us of this disease and are pushing us into it so that we die, they said.

Attempts to get a reaction from GTA Power Mech proved abortive as the company did not respond to phone calls, a text message and an email.

When contacted, Dangote Groups Chief Corporate Communications Officer, Mr Anthony Chiejina, said the video was over two months old.

He said, That video is more than two months old. Its just an unrelated issue. People are just doing what they like.

When our correspondent pointed out that the video made reference to COVID-19, Chiejina said, What they are saying is rubbish. Three months ago, was coronavirus there? It is an old thing that is unrelated.
Five more persons, including two returnees each from Surat and Kolkata, tested positive for COVID-19 in Odisha on Sunday, taking the total number of such cases in the state to 162, officials said.

The five fresh cases were reported from Ganjam (two), Jharsuguda (one), Balasore (one) and Keonjhar (one) districts, the Information and Public Relations department said.

The latest COVID-19 case was reported from Hatadihi in Keonjhar district of a 30-year-old man, who had recently returned from Kolkata and was asymptomatic of the disease. He was kept in quarantine in view of his travel history, an official said, adding that the mineral-rich Keonjhar district now has two coronavirus patients.

Similarly, a 34-year-old man from Balasore district with a travel history to Kolkata also tested positive for COVID-19. With this, the total number of coronavirus patients in Balasore increased to 21.

Ganjam district, which had so far been a green zone, reported its first COVID-19 cases after two migrant workers (males aged 17 and 22 years), who returned from Gujarat recently, were diagnosed with the disease.

With Ganjam, the home district of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, registering two cases, the number of districts under the grip of COVID-19 increased to 16 in the state. Odisha has a total of 30 districts.

A 40-year-old woman from Jharsuguda district also tested positive for the disease. She contracted the infection after coming in contact with a COVID-19 patient. With this, the total number of coronavirus cases in the industrial district of Jharsuguda has increased to two.

Contact-tracing and follow-up action relating to all the fresh cases have been initiated.

A total of 2,065 samples were tested for COVID-19 on Saturday, an official in the Health and Family Welfare department said. So far, Odisha has examined a total of 38,658 samples.

The number of active cases in the state stands at 105 as 56 people have recovered. One person from Bhubaneswar succumbed to the disease on April 6.

Jajpur district has reported the highest number of 48 novel coronavirus cases in the state, followed by Bhubaneswar (47), Balasore (21), Bhadrak (19) and Sundergarh (10).

Two COVID-19 cases each have been detected in Ganjam, Jharsuguda, Kendrapara, Bolangir, Keonjhar and Kalahandi and one case each has been reported from Cuttack, Puri, Dhenkanal, Deogarh and Koraput districts.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Tonight on Four Corners, Flattening the Curve, produced by Janine Cohen, tells the personal stories of frontline workers.

Im no stranger to pandemics and to fear and anxiety from infection but I never thought Id be in the situation of fighting this battle against COVID right here, right now. Senior infectious diseases doctor, Sydney

Six weeks ago, Australias health professionals were bracing for the worst medical crisis in decades. Devastating pictures from the COVID-19 hotspots in Italy and America told a frightening story of what our health workers could expect as the number of Australian infections began to rise.

This is like war time. We all need to play our part. Yes, people will die. Well try to keep the numbers down to the minimum. Professor of Anaesthesia, Melbourne

From those tense early days to the flattening of the coronavirus curve, Four Corners has been documenting the fight against COVID-19 in hospitals and GP clinics around Australia.

If it does get really bad then theres the potential that we will have to make clinical decisions that are going to haunt us and theyre going to push our ethical limits. Anaesthetist, Canberra

Those on the frontline, Australias healthcare workers, have been paying a price in stress and sickness.

When I am lying in bed at night the things that keep me awake most are When will I get COVID? When will I get sick? And what will I do when I get sick?. Director of Critical Care, Regional Victoria

In this powerful Four Corners, the program brings you the deeply personal accounts of Australian medical workers filmed as the pandemic crisis has unfolded.

It was a busy shift and I just had a moment where I thought Oh my god I didnt sign up for this. And immediately, I thought Well actually yes I did. I did sign up for this. I took an oath. Emergency doctor, regional NSW

Captured in video diaries, interviews and footage recorded around the country, the program shows what the fight against coronavirus looks like from behind the masks and gowns.

I admitted the first positive COVID-19 patient to our unithe did unfortunately pass away and its fair to say that his death has had a fairly significant impact on our staff including myself. Intensivist, Melbourne

The film captures the remarkable turnaround from catastrophic predictions to a manageable health problem, thanks to the extreme lockdown measures we are all enduring.

I think it is like a little miracle that our society has pulled off because it wasnt looking like it was going in that direction. Psychiatrist

All are grateful for the respite but warn this crisis is far from over.

This might look like the end of the beginning, but its not the end. Australias about to plunge into the depths of winter and with that always come a surge in flu cases and other respiratory illnesses and coronavirus is going to make that much harder. Director of Critical Care, Regional Victoria

Monday 4th May at 8.30pm on ABC.
Chris and Sheryl Kester-Beyer said they were leaning toward at least the end of May before resuming services.

Theres a lot of logistics, Sheryl Kester-Beyer said. Once you get people in the sanctuary, you could probably make sure theyre sitting six feet apart if theyre in the same family unit. But how do you get them down our narrow hallway to the sanctuary and keep them six feet apart?

Mulholland said Westway has conducted a survey of its membership and said the responses have basically been split 50-50 across the board whether they are ready to attend services again. Whether voting for or against the services, Mulholland said respondents had many of the same concerns.

They were all, how are we going to maintain separation? he said. There were questions about masks. There were questions about childrens ministry and all those kinds of things. Its interesting, even though we had about 48% who said they would come, of those yesses, we still have the same questions: How are we ... ? How are we ... ? How are we ... ?
People are seen on Sheep Meadow in Central Park during the coronavirus pandemic on May 2, 2020 in New York City.

Noam Galai/Getty Images

Warm spring weather caused thousands of people to rush to New York City's parks this weekend, despite stay-at-home orders.

But most of them appeared to be observing social distancing rules in an effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

City officials were expecting crowds and sent out 1,000 police officers to monitor the situation, with many of them patrolling parks and even handing out free face masks.

Speaking about people gathering in the parks this weekend, Mayor Bill de Blasio said: "The nice weather is very much a threat to us."

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Thousands of New Yorkers flocked to the city's park this weekend enticed by the warm weather despite stay-at-home orders.

While people exercised, walked their dogs, and even enjoyed picnics in and around Central Park, it appeared they were still endeavoring to adhere to social-distancing measures.

City officials, who were expecting the large crowds, sent out 1,000 police officers to monitor the situation and hand out free face masks.

Scroll down to see photos of thousands of people gathering in New York city's parks.

New Yorkers rushed to parks and open spaces on Saturday as the first weekend of May welcomed temperatures in the high 70s.

People fill Sheep Meadow in Central Park during the coronavirus pandemic in New York on May 2, 2020.

Noam Galai/Getty Images

Source: New York Times

Thousands of people were sunbathing, doing exercise, walking their dogs, and even picnicking in and around Central Park.

People exercise around Central Park in New York City on May 2, 2020.

Eduardo Munoz/Reuters

New York State, which has been one of the worst-affected in the country, is still under an executive order from Gov. Andrew Cuomo that restricts any "nonessential gatherings" until at least May 15.

People fill Sheep Meadow in Central Park during the coronavirus pandemic on May 2, 2020, in New York City.

Noam Galai/Getty Images

Source: New York Times

But it appeared as if New Yorkers  some of who wore masks  were following the social-distancing measures as much as possible.

Central Park goers practice social distancing in Sheep Meadow during the coronavirus pandemic on May 2, 2020 in New York City.

John Lamparski/Getty Images

A spokesperson for the New York City Pars Department told CNN that while there were a lot of park-goers out this weekend, most of them were complying with social-distancing rules.

Story continues

Source: CNN

City officials were also aware that the warm weather would draw crowds, sending out 1,000 police officers to enforce social distancing measures and also give away free face masks.

Park enforcement officers stand as people fill Sheep Meadow in Central Park during the coronavirus pandemic on May 2, 2020 in New York City.

Noam Galai/Getty Images

Source: CNN

But some people didn't enjoy the police presence. "It's Orwellian to be watched like this," one park-goer told the New York Post.

Park enforcement officers stand as people are seen on Sheep Meadow in Central Park on May 2, 2020 in New York City.

Noam Galai/Getty Images

Source: New York Post

The crowds of people are making public officials nervous. In a radio interview on Friday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said: "The nice weather is very much a threat to us."

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio holds a face shield as he speaks to the media during a visit to the Brooklyn Navy Yard on March 26, 2020.

Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images

But de Blasio also said that it is "totally understandable" that people want to go out and get some fresh air.

"People have heard that we need them to stay home, overwhelmingly they have. Even with good weather, they've gone out for a while and they came back home," he added.

Source: CNN

Parks have remained open in the city, with public health experts saying that they are generally regarded as a relatively low-risk environment for illness transmission.

People wear protective face masks in Central Park on May 2, 2020, in New York City.

Noam Galai/Getty Images

Jennifer Nuzzo, an associate professor at the Department of Epidemiology at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to the New York Times: "There's no reason a family can't picnic in the park."

However, Nuzzo also said that it's difficult to determine whether the groups of people spotted in the park are from the same household or not. "It's hard for the people who enforce this to know whether they're dealing with a family or not," she said.

Source: New York Times

New York State has seen a decline in new coronavirus cases in the last few days, but locals are still ordered to keep their outings to a minimum.

People rest and enjoy the day at Central Park in New York City on May 2, 2020.

Eduardo Munoz/Reuters

"I believe with the warm weather people will come outside, and that's great," Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on Saturday in Queens, according to the New York Times.

"Go for a walk, but just respect the social distance and wear a mask," he added.

Source: New York Times

Read the original article on Business Insider
https://www.aish.com/ci/s/When-the-Quarantine-Is-Over.html

A meaningful insight derived from the etymology of the word quarantine.

How long should a quarantine last?

The very word for quarantine has an etymological answer  and it is a fascinating historical truth that in all probability is rooted in a biblical connection.

To find the origin of the word we must go back to 14th century Europe. It was then that repeated waves of plagues swept across the continent and after arriving in southern Europe in 1347 spread rapidly to England, Germany and Russia by 1350. Its estimated that one third of Europes population perished as a result and the impact of the epidemic led to the institution of extreme infection control measures. In 1374 Viscount Bernabo of Reggio Italy declared that every person with plague must be taken out of the city into the fields, there to die or to recover.

In the Mediterranean seaport of Ragusa, the citys famous Jewish chief physician Jacob of Padua counseled the establishment of a place outside the city walls for treatment of ill townspeople and outsiders seeking a cure. Somehow the doctor intuited the contagion theory that promoted separation of healthy persons from those who are sick.

With that idea in mind, in 1377 the Great Council passed a law establishing a thirty-day isolation for ships arriving from plague infested areas. No one from Ragusa was allowed to visit those ships under trentino, the 30 day isolation period, and if someone broke the law, they too would be isolated for the mandatory 30 days. The law seemed to be effective in diminishing the ravages of the Black Death and it caught on. Over the next 80 years, Marseilles, Pisa, and various other cities adopted similar measures. Only one change was instituted for the trentino. For some reason the 30 days were extended to 40  hence quarantine from the Italian root for the 40 days of isolation.

Historians are uncertain about what prompted the change and why in particular the number 40 was chosen. Of course, it is possible that it was simply because of the feeling that the shorter period was insufficient to prevent spread of the disease. But many scholars believe that in an age of profound religious belief and of reverence for the Bible the number 40 resonated with great meaning  the same meaning that both Christians and Jews have recognized by its emphasis in Torah narratives.

The story of Noah and the flood had a 40 day timeline. That was enough to change the world. Later, Moses would ascend Mount Sinai and remain there precisely for 40 days to return with the two tablets of stone containing the 10 Commandments. That too would alter human history. When the Jews who left Egypt were hesitant about fulfilling Gods command to enter Israel they insisted on first sending delegates to spy out the land. Their trip lasted 40 days. Their report was filled with pessimism and caused despair among the freed slaves. That angered God for its lack of faith in the divine promise and for that reason the Jews would be forced to wander in the desert for 40 years  a year for a day of their sin  until a new generation could arise who were no longer marked by the slave mentality of defeatism.

For Jews the number 40 maintains its symbolic significance for the concept of change and renewal in the realm of Jewish law as well. Someone ritually impure must immerse in a body of water, a mikveh, filled with 40 seahs, a liquid measure, in order to change their spiritual identity. A non-Jew wishing to convert to Judaism must similarly enter a mikveh to become considered as if newly born  the water symbolically echoing the prelude to birth of the fetus in the amniotic sac. It takes 40 days for and embryo to be formed in the mothers womb; until then it is considered little more than water. And every year, when Jews spend the time from the first day of the month of Elul to Yom Kippur totally dedicated to introspection, change, and teshuvah, repentance, it is in the profound hope that these 40 days will make them into new and better versions of themselves.

How remarkable then that the word to describe the attempt of the world to combat the dreaded consequence of a deadly plague affecting us physically is quarantine - the same reference to the number 40 so fundamental to the biblical emphasis on change, on self-improvement, on rebirth to a higher level from a spiritual perspective.

Yes, the world will survive the coronavirus pandemic. And hopefully sooner rather than later, we will come out of quarantine and resume our lives of normalcy. But the time we spent in our homes confined together with our loved ones and removed from the harried lives we have become accustomed to, lives that allow us no time for personal reflection, ought in retrospect inspire us to greater connection with the more meaningful references of the number 40. Perhaps the 40 of quarantine can imbue us with the kind of clarity about our lifes purpose that will better link us to the 40 days of Moses on Mount Sinai.

It is a formidable task to find any ray of light in our present darkness. It is faith, however, that asks of us to hear the message of 40  change, renewal, and hope for a better future.
LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / May 3, 2020 / Compare-autoinsurance.org (https://compare-autoinsurance.org) is a top auto insurance brokerage website, providing car insurance quotes online from trustworthy agencies all over the United States. This website has recently launched a series of articles that explain how to coronavirus pandemic has changed the auto insurance industry and how can drivers save money.

Young adults are among the most affected groups financially by the current COVID-19 pandemic. Those who are about to enter the workforce are likely to have lower wages and will also have had less time to start building savings. 18-24 years old young adults have low levels of job security due to heavy presence in sectors like retail, leisure, and hospitality that were seriously affected by the coronavirus outbreak. Many of them are looking to make as many savings as they can. Car insurance is one area where customers look to save some money.

Most young adults have less than $1,000 in their savings account. While more and more states are imposing shelter-in-place restrictions and are instructing people to stay home, traditional insurance products like house insurance or boat are seeing a decline. Most people feel that they are less likely to be burgled during the COVID-19 outbreak.

While car insurance is difficult to cancel due to legal requirements, policy owners can make some adjustments to their policies and switch their comprehensive policies to usage-based or on-demand insurance in order to reduce costs. This move can be especially popular among young drivers who have to pay higher premiums due to their inexperience and their likelihood to be involved in accidents more often.

While this shift in behavior can be challenging for large insurance companies, small specialized insurers will benefit from the move. Usage-based car insurance providers will become more popular due to the fact their customers will pay less on their premiums when they are using their cars less often. Also, on-demand insurance companies will become more popular because they allow their customers to switch on and switch off their covers and pay only for the periods they need to be insured.

Story continues

For additional info, money-saving tips and free car insurance quotes, visit https://compare-autoinsurance.org

Compare-autoinsurance.org is an online provider of life, home, health, and auto insurance quotes. This website is unique because it does not simply stick to one kind of insurance provider, but brings the clients the best deals from many different online insurance carriers. In this way, clients have access to offers from multiple carriers all in one place: this website. On this site, customers have access to quotes for insurance plans from various agencies, such as local or nationwide agencies, brand names insurance companies, etc.

"The current coronavirus outbreak will have lasting impacts on consumers' behavior regarding car insurance. While usage-based and on-demand car insurances are not that popular today, the current crisis will act as a catalyst to make them more popular," said Russell Rabichev, Marketing Director of Internet Marketing Company.

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Nigella Lawson has admitted she was 'too distracted to remember to cook' at the beginning of the UK's lockdown and 'didn't really want to eat anything other than chocolate'.

The TV chef and food writer, 60, previously revealed that she was eating a 250g bar of chocolate every evening while isolating in her London home.

Writing in The Sunday Times' Style magazine, Nigella said: 'I've always enjoyed cooking for myself, and yet for the first 10 or so days of lockdown, I found myself in the uncharacteristic position of being too distracted to remember to cook.'

Nigella Lawson (pictured) has admitted she was 'too distracted to remember to cook' at the start of the UK's lockdown

She added: 'Frankly, I didn't really feel I wanted to eat anything other than chocolate. Of course I did eat meals, but randomly.

'Without the need to feed others, I found it all too easy to spiral out of any proper schedule. And I say that as someone who is usually emphatically not a grazer, but a devout believer in hallowed mealtimes.'

The celebrity chef revealed she has now thankfully pulled herself back and is cooking herself something 'proper, something to look forward to, each evening'.

She encouraged others isolating at home alone to take advantage of only having themselves to please - suggesting they experiment with flavours and ingredients.

The TV chef and food writer (above), 60, confessed that she 'didn't really want to eat anything other than chocolate'

The author previously revealed that a sharing-size bar of chocolate a day had become her treat while self-isolating at home (pictured, her candid tweet)

Nigella added that now was the time to find out what new foods you like without the weight of performance anxiety, which people often experience when cooking for others.

The author previously revealed that a sharing-size bar of chocolate a day had become her go-to treat while self-isolating at home.

In March, she told her Twitter followers that she was eating a 250g bar of chocolate per day while holed up in her London home.

It comes after the TV chef announced the release of her first cookbook in three years, Cook Eat, Repeat (pictured)

Nigella posted on Instagram to share the news her cookbook would be published in October

The TV star tweeted: 'All I can do is eat chocolate at the moment. I'm on a 250g bar a night at the moment. And rising.'

In February, Nigella announced the release of her first cookbook in three years - Cook, Eat, Repeat.

It will feature a chapter on creating a vegan feast, as well as another called How To Invite People For Dinner Without Hating Them (Or Yourself).

She took to Instagram to reveal she'd been 'hugging this secret project' to herself for several months before she could finally share her efforts.

Alongside a short video showing her new book cover, Nigella penned: 'Exciting news! I am thrilled to announce my new book, COOK EAT REPEAT, which is to be published this October.'
Fly-pasts by fighter jets, aerial flower shower, performances by military bands at major hospitals and lighting up of warships marked the nation-wide mega exercise by the armed forces on Sunday to express gratitude to lakhs of doctors, paramedics and other front-line workers battling the coronavirus pandemic.

Indian Air Force's combat jets and transport aircraft flew over various state capitals including Delhi, Mumbai, Jaipur, Guwahati, Patna, Lucknow, Srinagar, Chandigarh, Bhopal, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Thiruvananthapuram to salute the "corona warriors".

Army's military bands also performed at leading hospitals treating coronavirus patients across the country.

A fleet of military jets comprising Sukhoi-30 MKI, MiG-29 and Jaguar roared over the Rajpath, Delhi's centrepiece boulevard, and then orbited the national capital region for around 30 minutes from 11 AM. Residents in many areas witnessed the spectacular fly-past from their balconies amid the ongoing lockdown.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi described the thanks-giving activities as "great gesture by our armed forces."



In most areas, the aircraft flew at an approximate height of 500 metres to 1000 metres keeping aerospace safety in mind, a senior official in the Indian Air Force said.

A large number of helicopters belonging to the Indian Air Force and the Indian Navy dropped flower petals over leading hospitals treating coronavirus patients across the country.

In the evening, 25 Indian Naval warships across nine port cities including those in Andaman and Nicobar Islands were illuminated from 7:30 PM as part of the thanks-giving exercise. Overall 40 ships participated in the exercise.

At the sea, the Navy's front-line ships INS Jalashwa and INS Savitri saluted the 'corona warriors'. Navy personnel on board aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya too expressed their appreciation by forming a human chain.

In the Southern Naval command, seven fast interceptor crafts in Kochi displayed a banner thanking the those fighting the pandemic.

The thanks-giving activities started with laying of wreaths at the national police memorial in Delhi to honour the police personnel deployed in enforcement of the nationwide lockdown, officials said. A military chopper also showered petals on the memorial.

From Srinagar to Thiruvananthapuram and Dibrugarh to Kutch, the Army carried out these activities and felicitated health professionals and emergency supply operatives.

"Visits to hospitals were carried out in over hundreds of towns in all states from the local Army formations," the defence ministry said in a statement.

In a series of tweets, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh complimented the armed forces for the exercise.

"I thank the Armed Forces for their special initiatives like fly pasts, showering flower petals and several other performances to express gratitude towards medical professionals, police and other frontline warriors. The entire nation stands united in these challenging times," Singh said.

Singh said the "frontline warriors" are doing commendable work in strengthening India's fight against COVID-19.

Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat had on Friday announced that the three services will carry out a series of activities to thank the "corona warriors".

An IAF chopper showered flower petals on Kalinga Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS) COVID Hospital in Bhubaneswar.

"We express our heartfelt gratitude for motivating and lifting the spirits of the COVID warriors at KIMS... and they would continue their fight against the novel coronavirus with renewed zeal," said Dr Achyuta Samanta, Founder of KIMS.

In Bhopal, an MI17 helicopter of the IAF dropped petals at the government-run All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and the private Chirayu Hospital.

Wing Commander Abhishek Yadav, who was the co-ordinating officer for the exercise, said, "Usually people thank the armed forces, but this time we paid our gratitude to people at the forefront of the battle against COVID-19."



Similarly in Mumbai, an aircraft dropped flowers on the state-run J J Hospital, KEM Hospital and the Kasturba Gandhi Hospital, which have been treating coronavirus patients.

The Navy's representatives met doctors, paramedics, police personnel, firemen, sanitation workers and other frontline workers at the Ernakulam General Hospital in Kerala and applauded their efforts in fighting COVID-19.

The front-line workers were overwhelmed by the gesture of the armed forces as many clapped and took photos.

"We are doing our duty, we know the danger of the disease, but we come here and do as its our duty. Such a gesture, that too from the armed forces is great, it will help us keep going," a hospital staff said in Bengaluru.

In Hyderabad, IAF's Chetak helicopter hovered over the state-run Gandhi hospital and also at the military hospital in Golconda and showered petals, as doctors, nurses, paramedical, sanitation and other staff and police personnel assembled near the premises.

An IAF Mi-17 helicopter took off from Barrackpore air force station and showered flower petals over Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute and Command Hospital in Kolkata.

In Chennai, helicopters of the IAF strew flower petals on the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital and the Tamil Nadu Government Multi-Super Speciality Hospital at Omandurar Estate in the heart of the city.

Later, a Coast Guard helicopter carried out a similar activity, honouring personnel at the Government Stanley Medical College and Kilpauk Medical College in the city.

In the evening, naval ships INS Sahyadri and INS Kadmatt were illuminated off the Marina.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Copyright  2020 Albuquerque Journal

Two candidates, both newcomers to competitive politics, will vie for the Democratic nomination for the District 5 seat on the Santa Fe County Commission.

The district covers an area that makes up the central part of the county mostly south of Interstate 25, including neighborhoods around Santa Fe Community College, Eldorado and San Marcos.

The seat is currently held by Ed Moreno, first elected in 2016, who announced earlier this year he would not run for the seat again.

And while both candidates have never been elected to office before, they do have vast experience serving the public and the people of Santa Fe County.

In the absence of a Republican contender, the winner of the June 2 Democratic Party primary election is destined to be elected the countys next new commissioner in November. The commission is already made up exclusively of Democrats.

District 4 Commissioner Anna Hamilton and Anna Hansen in District 2 are up for reelection, but both are unopposed in the primary.

Hank Hughes, 63, has lived in the county for more than 30 years and said, in that time, he has heard many concerns from his fellow residents, primarily about the condition of roads and waterways in the county.

Addressing these concerns and overseeing the countys many different projects inspired Hughes to finally run for public office.

I would just be wanting to make sure these things happen in a timely manner, he said.

Hughes has had interest in several political topics throughout his life. He earned two degrees in environmental engineering from Cornell University, and the state of the countys natural lands remains a pressing concern for him, he said.

In fact, he considers it one of the countys most pressing issues, apart from the coronavirus pandemic.

Once were through the virus, I think that the effects of climate change on Santa Fe County are not going to be pretty and were going to want to mitigate them, he said.

However, the vast majority of Hughes career in public service has been advocating for Santa Fes homeless population, as well as an increase in affordable housing.

The average rent in Santa Fe is over $1,200 per month, compared to the state average of $800. Hughes said the county needs to do more to make housing more accessible.

If we dont continue to address affordable housing, were not going to have a very diverse community, he said.

Hughes said, though, that the current commissioners have done a good job running the county, which hasnt always been the case, and that he hopes to improve on their accomplishments.

Id like to see that the county becomes and stays a wonderful place to live, he said.

Floyd Trujillo, 47, has lived in the same Santa Fe neighborhood his whole life, a fact he said will help him succeed if elected commissioner.

Trujillo has spent most of his life working for the government and is currently the New Mexico Finance Authoritys director of information technology. He has also spent nearly two decades serving on Turquoise Trail Charter Schools Governing Council, an unelected position.

He said all the years spent in the world of government finance gives him the skills necessary to become a competent commissioner.

I want to do everything to help my community and improve my community, he said. You really need to step up and put the time in.

When it comes to campaign finances, though, Trujillo remains far behind, raising $1,345 compared to Hughes $11,183.

Trujillo said the layout of the county, as well as COVID-19, has made it difficult to raise the funds.

It does have me concerned, he said. We were having difficulty making ends meet before this crisis.

To counter the small revenues, Trujillo said his campaign is currently trying to coordinate a large base of volunteers.

Trujillos platform includes a countywide Green New Deal and infrastructure improvements, but he emphasized his desire to see more funds go to Santa Fe Countys schools, many of which may face economic hardship in the near future.
123A: Give doctors any and every award, but a documentary can get an OSCAR.

63D: My knowledge of crime families and international law degree terminology is paltry, so I had no idea what to put as the fourth letter of this entry. Because of its proximity to an affectionate description I use for my partner, HIMBO, I got a laugh at the notion of carbo here. Call me Creta Carbo, I want to be alone with my quarantine waffles. This clue actually refers to CARLO Gambino, who the Mob Museum refers to as the face of organized crime in New York City, but who I still cant picture. LLB, at 75A, stands for Legum Baccalaureus or Bachelor of Laws; the double L is how Latin plurals are abbreviated, like pp. for pages.

Todays Theme

Todays theme consists of eight entries, at 23-, 29-, 58-, 76-, 107- and 117-Across, and 3- and 79-Down. Depending on the trajectory of your solve, the puzzles title  Shifting Sounds  might have been a giveaway, or it might have been a misdirect! Let me elucidate by explaining the first clue that I solved, at 3-Down, because that was the way the cookie crumbled for me.

Its really because THEIR and AA MILNE were quick lit fill-ins for me, which led me to notice and get wrapped up in the interesting three-step dance of SHIPMEN, AHOY and KINSHIP. I jumped on Bad shot by Dracula? and answered it correctly  COUNTMISS  but for the wrong reason. I figured that Shifting Sounds was just an indication of homonyms (Sounds) that change position (Shifting) so COUNT MISS was the theme-ization of MISCOUNT, which isnt the cleanest way to say Bad shot but it was good enough for me for a minute. I needed to fully solve another example for things to snap together correctly. At 23-Across, Dogs order at a malt shop? looked like hound something right away (I wanted something that would transform to newshound by moving its parts around, if you catch my drift). I didnt know what to do with HOUNDSHAKE  hounds hake? Voila: HOUND SHAKE is handshake, transformed; COUNT MISS is cant miss. In other (spoken) words, youre shifting sands to sounds; anywhere in the theme entries that you want to say wa say wou instead (you want phthongs? Read the constructor notes).

Even if you can wrap your head (or the mouth in your head) around the shift you need to make, none of the rest of the theme entries solve themselves. Theres a great mix of cultural references: Chess and the magic kingdom, to name a couple. My favorite was at 29-Across, where the clue referenced a show I knew absolutely nothing about but the entry is a beloved icon from The Simpsons, trying to stride the Scottish highlands  NED FLOUNDERS. Heres evidence that The Simpsons touches every touchstone, including this puzzle, as theres a clear reference to another theme entry.
These are the schools that have canceled classes for Jan. 18

Some school districts across the county are virtual today. Others will make up the snow day.
The US space agency NASA has reportedly chosen SpaceX, Blue Origin and Dynetics to design and develop human landing systems (HLS) for its Artemis program. The three companies will be working on their designs over the next year after which NASA will select one lander to take the first woman and the next man to the lunar surface by 2024. According to media reports, the US Space agency will pay the companies $967 million over 10 months for initial design development work.

The NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said, With this contract awards, America is moving forward with the final step needed to land astronauts on Moon by 2024, including the incredible moment when we will see the first woman set foot on the lunar surface. This is the first time since the Apollo era that NASA has direct funding for a human landing system, and now we have companies on contract to do the work for the Artemis program.

READ: NASA Plea: Stay Home For 1st Home Astronaut Launch In Years

The three designs

Out of the three companies, two are from prominent billionaire-led rocket companies, Elon Musks SpaceX and Jeff Bezos Blue Origin. As per reports, the three landers designed are all distinct. While Blue Origins lander is the Integrated Lander Vehicle (ILV), Dynetics design reportedly looks like a rabbit and the lander design calls for two large solar arrays that extend upward, along with a very low-hanging crew cabin, making it easy for astronauts to get down to the surface easily.

READ: NASA Goes Private For 1st Astronaut Lunar Landers In Decades

SpaceX, on the other hand, bid its next-generation spacecraft Starship, which the company has been developing in Boca Chica, Texas, for the last few years. According to reports, Starship is designed to land on Moon and Mars by using its main engines to lower itself down to a hard surface. Furthermore, it was reported that to get down to the surface of the Moon, an elevator would lower astronauts from the top of the landed Starship.

READ: NASA Scientist Answers How Hubble Is Still Revolutionizing Modern Astronomy

Bridenstine and other NASA officials are pretty confident that the space agency would be able to meet the Trump administrations goal of landing the first woman and next man on the moon by the end of 2024. The US space agencys commercial partners will be refining their lander concepts through the contract base period ending February 2021.

NASA is also expected to evaluate which of the contractors will perform the initial demonstration mission; the agency will then select firms for development and maturation of sustainable lander systems followed by sustainable demonstrations mission. As per reports, NASA intends to procure transportation to the lunar surface as commercial space transportation service after these demonstrations are complete.

(Inputs/Image: ANI)

READ: Ocean Sand, Bahamas Wins The Tournament Earth 2020 Organised By NASA
Nurses at Desert Valley Medical Group in Victorville attend to a COVID-19 patient on a ventilator on April 28. (Los Angeles Times)

To the editor: When I was 27, a friend's brother died in a plane crash. He was 23. When I was 46, a boy in my daughter's high school died in a swimming pool accident. He was 17. When I was 50, a friend the same age suffered a cerebral aneurysm and was dead within 24 hours. ("Rationing COVID-19 treatment to the elderly and disabled is illegal and immoral," letters, April 30)

When I was 52, my brother-in-law died at age 61. My mother was dismayed: "He's gone and I'm still here? That's ridiculous."

I'm with her.

I am now 73 and lucky to still be here. I'd love to live for a while longer, but if it comes to a choice between me and a younger person with COVID-19, then I'm OK with not being given the last ventilator.

Triage is the process by which medical personnel figure out how they can best save the most people. Lets allow them to base the decision on which patients have the best chance of surviving.

Janice Blake, Manhattan Beach




Shankkar Aiyar By

It could be safely said that the spectre and fallout of COVID-19 has produced a parade of paradoxes. The landscape is littered with seductive signs, validating every thesis and anyone with a political itinerary.



Regimes across the world are faced with a rising tide of demand for return to normalcy. The return itself is not a switch on action and requires calibration and choreography of the when, where, and how.

The dilemma faced by politicos is illustrated by the saga in the worlds largest economy, the United States. This week even as President Donald Trump declared that federal social distancing guidelines will not be extended, his alma mater Wharton School aka Penn Wharton released a report warning against opening up before June 30.



The report presented three scenarios. Under lockdown till June 30, loss of lives would be 117,000 and additional loss of jobs would be 18.6 million. A partial opening with social distancing restrictions would result in loss of 14 million jobs and 162,000 lives. A full opening while containing job losses to 500,000 between May 1 and June 30 but would push the death toll to 350,000  or, nearly half of Bostons current population.

The Hamletian to open or not to open question is haunting the worlds largest democracy, India. This Friday, the March 24 lockdown covering 1.35 billion people was extended till May 18 with a colour coded matrix of what can or cannot be done in red, orange and green zones. A quick analysis of Maharashtra show that hyper economic regions, typically employment and therefore population dense, are in the red zone.

The cost of the lockdown is manifest. GST collections for April are estimated to have dipped to a third of monthly average and back of the envelope estimates for loss of economic activity range from Rs 5 lakh crore to Rs 9 lakh crore for April. And rating agency Moodys has slashed India GDP forecast to 0.2 per cent.

Audit and consulting firm Deloitte analysis shows 27 of top 100 NSE listed companies wont be able to sustain current wage bill from its cash profits, if their revenue dips by 30 per cent or more. Imagine the state of the lesser enterprises and the self-employed. The much promised big-tag stimulus for MSMEs is yet being engineered for content and presumably for timing.

As governments seek a balance between the twin challenges of life and livelihood, the pandemic has expanded debt and deficit across countries and the obligations of the state. Countries are paying up to keep workers away from work and yet employed. The quest to save lives and livelihoods has seen countries unleash over $ 10.6 trillion as stimulus  for those looking for a historical perspective, that is eight times the quantum of the 1948 Marshall Plan set up to rebuild post war Germany and Japan.

As millions nay billions are stranded in zombie economies betwixt the curve and fear of the next wave, the costs could rise further. The go-to phrase in developed economies is fiscal fatigue  that is, how much can the state do for how long  and the operative phrase for emerging economies is fiscal frailty. Over 100 countries have approached the IMF for help. Argentina is knocking on the doors of default. S&P has downgraded and revised outlook of over a third of sovereigns it reviewed and Fitch has cut ratings of more countries in three months than in 2019.

It will take more than just staying open to restore normalcy. Sweden stayed open, and Denmark stayed shut. Thanks to fears, the consumption story in both economies is not dissimilar. China has been open now for two months, yet forecasts are scarcely sunny. Germany, which has the best record of containing COVID-19 till date, wasnt completely locked down. Its top companies are quoting a sub-book value. Volkswagen reported 81 per cent drop in first quarter profits. Lufthansa, which is seeking a 9 billion Euro bailout, may just apply for bankruptcy protection. Data out of the US, where Boeing and Ford are in the news or from the UK is scarcely different.

The factoids reflect the nervous fissures wracking global economies. Social distancing has distanced consumers from consumption. Closed borders have shut down exports. The supply shock in goods in services is triggering a supply shock in credit markets. The discussions on curves and waves now factor not just infections, but also deepening distress and the potential wave of defaults, bankruptcies, and job losses. The earliest forecast for recovery is 2023, and that future economy will be different and disrupted.

Aggravating anxieties is the lack of credible global leadership required to orchestrate concerted response  the Chinese embassy in France posted videos with a bleeding Statue of Liberty on social media while the Trump administration threatens trade sanctions on China over COVID-19. Yes, there is some sign of collaboration but more often its motion mistaken for movement.

Every nation it would seem is on its own. The crux therefore is how well the time under lockdown is used to come out of it. There is no one silver bullet. The virus dares definition. In a battle of finite imagination and infinite possibilities, every cure comes with a price. This war challenges notions of victors and victory.

Shankkar aiyar is the author of Aadhaar: A Biometric History of Indias 12 Digit Revolution, and Accidental India and can be contacted at shankkar.aiyar@gmail.com
Afghan officials on May 3 launched an operation to locate and retrieve bodies of migrants from a river in western Herat Province after reports that Iranian border guards had thrown Afghans into the river to prevent their entry into Iran.

In a statement on May 2, the Afghan Foreign Ministry said a probe had been launched into the reports.

It was not immediately clear how many migrants had been involved in the alleged incident, which was denied by the Iranian consulate in the region.

A senior official in the presidential administration said initial assessments suggested at least 70 Afghans who were trying to enter Iran from Herat were beaten and pushed into the Harirud River.

Doctors at Herat District Hospital said they had received the bodies of five Afghan migrants, some of whom had drowned.

"Of these bodies, it's clear that four died due to drowning," said Aref Jalali, head of Herat District Hospital.

Provincial council member Ahmad Karokhi said that 12 people were able to swim to safety, adding that seven bodies have been recovered from the river in the Gulran district of Herat.

Afghan citizen Noor Muhammad told Reuters he was one of 57 Afghan citizens who were caught by Iranian border guards on May 2 when they were trying to cross into Iran from the Gulran district.

"After being tortured, the Iranian soldiers threw all of us in the Harirud River," Mohammad told Reuters, adding that the group was in search of work.

Another man from the group, Shir Agha, said he also survived but that at least 23 of the 57 people thrown by Iranian soldiers into the river were dead.

The Iranian Consulate in Herat denied the allegations.

"Iranian border guards have not arrested any Afghan citizens," the consulate said in a statement on May 2.

Iranian Embassy officials in the Afghan capital, Kabul, were not immediately available for comment.

Afghan officials in the area say this was not the first time that Afghans had been tortured and killed by Iranian security forces guarding the 920-kilometer border.

The incident comes as the coronavirus outbreak has seen a mass return of Afghan migrants from Iran, one of the global pandemic hotspots, with many returnees testing positive for the virus.

Decades of conflict, extreme poverty, and high rates of unemployment force thousands of Afghans to illegally cross the border to Iran every year.

There are currently up to 1 million registered Afghan refugees in Iran, while the country hosts another 2 million undocumented Afghans, according to UN reports.

With reporting by Reuters and dpa
Georgia Love lost her mother Belinda to pancreatic cancer just hours after confessing her love to Lee Elliot on The Bachelorette in 2016.

And every year, Mother's Day is a difficult holiday for the 31-year-old to cope with in her mum's absence.

On Sunday, the former reality star explained how it's her 'least favourite' day in a moving Instagram post.

Hurting: On Sunday, Georgia Love (pictured) revealed in an Instagram post she has made a candle to raise money for charity to honour her late mother. The former Bachelorette star also said that Mother's Day is her least favourite day of the year

Alongside a photo in which she is beaming for the camera, Georgia wrote: 'One week until Mothers' Day, my least favourite day on the calendar.

'But this year, instead of hiding under the bedsheets and pretending it's not happening, I'm remembering my Mum.'

Georgia explained she will be honouring her late mother by raising funds for Pancare Foundation.

Tragic: Georgia Love lost her mother Belinda to pancreatic cancer just hours after confessing her love to Lee Elliot on The Bachelorette in 2016

Georgia wrote: 'One week until Mothers' Day, my least favourite day on the calendar. But this year, instead of hiding under the bedsheets and pretending it's not happening, I'm remembering my Mum'

The former journalist teamed up with Damselfly to design a candle in two colours, with one hundred percent of the profits from the sale going to charity.

'Profits from the sale of this beautiful candle (designed by Yours Truly) will go towards research and help support those battling pancreatic and upper GI cancers,' Georgia told her fans.

Belinda Love died from pancreatic cancer in October 2016, a month after her 60th birthday, and just one day after The Bachelorette finale had aired.

Georgia said that she and her fiance, Lee Elliott, had decided to cancel most of their media commitments the day after the finale so they could spend the day with her mother, not realising it would be her last day.

Thoughtful: The former journalist teamed up with Damselfly to design a candle in two colours, with one hundred percent of the profits from the sale going to charity. Pictured with her mother and grandmother

Awful: A distraught Georgia told the Lemonade podcast last year that losing her mother felt incredibly 'unfair'

A distraught Georgia told the Lemonade podcast last year that the whole situation felt incredibly 'unfair'.

She added that 'nothing felt real' during that period in her life, including the death of her mother, due to the experience of filming The Bachelorette.

'While I was devastated at the time, I feel like the reality and the grief of it didn't hit for another few months, when all of a sudden it was like, "Oh, she hasn't come back,"' she said.

Georgia added: 'I don't know when this pain will end, because the thing that is painful won't end, because mum isn't coming back.'
DES MOINES -- Betty Andrews is reminded these days of a well-known saying in the black community.

When white America catches a cold, the saying goes, black America gets pneumonia.

That phrase has become all too real during the global new coronavirus pandemic, across the U.S. and in Iowa, where minority communities are bearing a disproportionate burden of the spread of the virus and COVID-19, the disease to which it leads.

Latino Iowans comprise just 6 percent of the states population, but they make up 23 percent of the confirmed cases of the coronavirus here.

Black Iowans comprise just 4 percent of the states population, but they make up 13 percent of the confirmed cases of coronavirus.

Those figures are according to U.S. Census and state public health data.

We tend to take on a large brunt of whats happening, said Andrews, who serves as president of the Iowa and Nebraska branch of the NAACP.

Outbreaks at food processing plants, where high shares of minority workers are employed, and myriad institutional socioeconomic factors are causing higher coronavirus infection rates in minority communities, experts and advocates say.

In Iowa, the food processing plant outbreaks are the primary driver of spikes in the Latino infection rates. Outbreaks have occurred in at least a half-dozen plants throughout Iowa and just across the states borders in neighboring states, leading to many hundreds of confirmed coronavirus infections. Many of the plants shut down while attempting to disinfect work areas and take steps to protect workers from further outbreaks. Some are back online.

Typically, employees at food processing plants work in close proximity along production lines. Such conditions are ripe for spread of the virus, which is highly contagious when people are gathered close together, especially indoors.

More than a third of animal slaughtering and processing workers in the U.S. are Latino, according to federal statistics.

It has nothing to do with DNA, said Joe Henry, political director for the Iowa chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens. It has everything to do with these buildings that are sweatshops. Theyre incubators for the virus. Its a death march for these workers every day, going into these buildings.

Top officials at the companies that operate the food processing plants in Iowa have said they are taking steps to protect the safety of their workers, and Gov. Kim Reynolds has said those leaders have assured her of the same. Some of the companies say they have slowed production in order to allow workers to stand farther apart, installed barriers between workers, and staggered shifts and breaks so fewer workers are gathered together at the same time.

But workers privately continue to share with advocates and journalists their concerns about working conditions at the plants during the pandemic.

We need a coalition of Iowans to speak up about this, Henry said. We need to fight for the rights of these workers, for their safety and health and higher wages.

Black Iowans were behind the 8-ball before the new coronavirus pandemic hit, making the virus impact even worse in black communities, Andrews said. There are higher rates of obesity and diabetes, for example, among black Americans, according to federal statistics. Those are the types of health issues that make individuals more susceptible to the virus more serious impacts. Black Americans also experience a higher rate of poverty, which also can be tied to poorer health.

The federal government also has observed disproportionate impacts of the virus in minority communities. In addition to higher rates of underlying health issues and working in food processing and manufacturing jobs, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports other factors may include minority Americans living in densely populated areas and multi-generational homes, and a higher share of minorities in jails and prisons, all places where the virus can more rapidly spread.

A number of social reasons that exist because of the dynamics of our country prior to this situation, and obviously we as Americans generally need to do a better job taking care of our health, Andrews said. And that is exacerbated when you have communities that are poor, which communities of color tend to be.

In minority communities, once a person contracts the virus, the problems only multiply, advocates said. Getting tested for the virus and getting the proper health care can be challenges.

Henry and Andrews said minority Iowans have reported difficulty getting tested for the virus, and that some minority Iowans --- especially those living in poverty --- who become infected with the virus may not get the proper health care for fear of not being able to afford a trip to the doctor, or not having an established relationship with a primary care doctor.

When youre talking about the communities that have access to less financial resources, that means they also have less access to consistent health care, Andrews said. So (theyre) not necessarily being able to communicate that (health care concern) initially because they dont necessarily have a relationship with a provider.

The CDCs first recommendation for public health officials to address the disparate impact of the coronavirus on minority communities is to ensure that communications about COVID-19 and its impact on different population groups is frequent, clear, transparent, and credible.

The NAACP in early April requested Iowas state public health department report the racial and ethnic breakdowns of confirmed coronavirus cases. The state has been reporting those numbers.

On Monday, state officials began reporting COVID-19 deaths demographically. Black Iowans had accounted for 7 percent of deaths through that day, and Latino Iowans 6 percent.

State public officials had said previously they may start reporting the breakdowns in virus-related deaths once they have sufficient data. They did not made a similar pledge about the testing numbers.

This story was updated on May 5 to reflect newly released information about COVID-19 deaths in Iowa.
How the lockdown to could start to be eased Construction and other outdoor workers cleared to return

Non-food retailers allowed to reopen

Offices re-opened but with strict distancing rules

Schools reopening in June

Ban on visiting beauty spots relaxed

Increased public transport with strict distancing rules

Return to strict lockdown in areas where cases surge again

Pubs and other congregational settings remain closed for longer

Harsher fines for rule breaking Advertisement

Parts of the UK that fail to adhere to safety measures designed to get Britain back to work face being slapped straight back into lockdown if there is a surge in coronavirus cases, Michael Gove warned Britain tonight.

The Cabinet Office Minister confirmed that the Government would follow a 'whack-a-mole' strategy against resurgent areas as the Government slowly lifts the economically crippling restrictions and get UK PLC going again.

He praised the stoicism of the public in mostly adhering to strict rules in place for the past five weeks.

But speaking at tonight's press conference he warned that areas that see a relapse in coronavirus cases when the lockdown slowly begins to be eased face a return to the current lockdown.

He spoke after revealing that the number of tests carried out yesterday fell to just short of 76,500, 48 hours after reaching 122,000 - blaming the weekend for the steep fall.

Mr Gove said it was important to speak to firms and trade unions 'in order to make sure people understand the guidance about working safely'.

But he added: 'It is also important that we make clear that any approach we take is staged ... a phases approach is one which allows us to monitor the impact that those changes are having on public health and if necessary, in a specific and localised way, that means that we can pause or even reintroduce those restrictions that might be required in order to deal with localised outbreaks of the disease.'

The Prime Minister is expected to reveal his roadmap of proposals to very carefully and slowly lift the restriction in place since late March later this week.

The first easing of restrictions is not expected to come into force until June, and will be accompanied by the stricter enforcement of breaches of the remaining rules, with fines rising from the current 60 to more than 3,000 for repeat offenders.

It will include a massive PR blitz urging people who cannot work from home to go in where they can safely, and urging key workers to send their children back to school to free them up for vital tasks.

Public transport will also increase, but will strict social distancing measures at stations and attempts to stagger working hours to reduce the rush hour.

Senior citizens could also lose their free travel during peak times to lower surge numbers further, the Sunday Times reported.

The UK announced 358 new coronavirus deaths today, bringing total fatalities to 28,491 and putting the country on course to become the hardest hit in Europe.

It came as:

NHS England's national medical director Professor Stephen Powis said that the important R value that gauges coronavirus spread was at 0.7

The UK announced 358 new coronavirus deaths today, bringing total fatalities to 28,491

Senior doctors have warned Boris Johnson the lockdown should be eased for over-70s on mental health grounds

Minsters were said to be examining plans to re-open some schools from the beginning of June

Some people were found to be enjoying the lockdown, saying it was helping their relationships, they were enjoying work more and plan to spend more time with their children in future

A ban on picnics and visits to beauty spots could be lifted

Public transport could return to approaching normal levels of service but with measures in place to limit rush hour numbers

Boris Johnson revealed that doctors prepared to announce his death in case he lost his coronavirus battle.

The Cabinet Office Minister confirmed that the Government would follow a 'whack-a-mole' strategy to lift the economically crippling restrictions and get UK PLC going again

The Prime Minister is expected to reveal his roadmap of proposals to very carefully and slowly lift the restriction in place since late March, but come down hard on any secondary hotspots that emerge.

Mr Gove said there had been 1,206,405 coronavirus tests in the UK as of 9am on Sunday May 3, including 76,496 in the previous 24 hours. This was down from 105,937 on Friday and 122,347 the previous day.

t came as the UK announced 358 new coronavirus deaths today, bringing total fatalities to 28,491 and putting the country on course to become the hardest hit in Europe

Mr Gove said there had been 1,206,405 coronavirus tests in the UK as of 9am on Sunday May 3, including 76,496 in the previous 24 hours.

This was down from 105,937 on Saturday and 122,347 the previous day.

Asked about this decline, Mr Gove said: 'It is the case that you might expect over a weekend, particularly over a Saturday, with fewer people goign to work, that you might have a dip in the amount of testing that might occur at that time.

'But I don't think that it in anyway detracts from the amazing achievement of the NHS and of other sin so significantly increasing the amount of tests that are available.'

However, data released by the Government today showed that while there have been fewer tests carried out at weekends, none has been such a marked fall of 28 per cent in a single day.

Testing plays a key role, along with the track and trace system being devised, in allowing the lockdown to be lifted safely.

Asked when daily life might return to normal, Mr Gove said that the easing of lockdown restrictions had to be done in a 'cautious fashion'.

He added: 'The transport secretary (Grant Shapps) was right to say that we can begin to see perhaps more people use public transport, but provided they are helped to stagger or to control the times when they use public transport, in the way that people have already adjusted to how they might use supermarkets and food shops and so on.'

Mr Gove said he suspected people would have to live with 'some degree of constraint' until a vaccine was developed.

This afternoon's death figures, which do not include deaths outside hospital settings and are typically lower at weekends, puts Britain's toll just 219 behind Italy which was the original epicentre of the continent's outbreak.

England suffered the lion's share of today's reported deaths with 327 patients, aged between 46 and 101, passing away in NHS hospitals.

Department of Health figures published later will encompass care home deaths, but the NHS data continues to point to April 8 as the day virus deaths peaked.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps warned that Britain will not return to 'business as usual' this month.

He told Sky's Sophy Ridge On Sunday: 'I don't think we should expect us to go from this situation that we have at the moment of social distancing back to where we were in February - that's clearly not going to happen and I don't think anyone imagines that for one moment.'

Ministers are concerned that the public have gone beyond the letter of the law introduced when the pandemic began to sweep the nation, according to the Sunday Times.

A senior Whitehall source told the paper: 'What you are going to see this week is a restatement of what we thought would happen right at the beginning when we first issued the lockdown.

'But it's going to be repackaged as a slow opening up of the economy. Please will construction sites reopen, please will you go to work if you can without hurting people, please if you are a key worker will you send your children to school.

'We've gone round the houses to get back to where we started.'

New polls today reveal how reluctant Britons are to return to normal while hundreds of people are still dying every day.

People queue outside B&Q stores in Greenwich (above) and Loughborough (top) today as the DIY giant re-opens all their stores ahead of an expected general easing in the nationwide lockdown

Less busy today was an army-run 'pop up' Covid-19 Testing centre, in Coal Drops Yard near Kings Cross in north London

More than four in five Britons are against lockdown restrictions being eased for schools, pubs and restaurants this week, according to a poll by Opinium for the Observer.

Shapps admits more, earlier testing would have saved lives Fewer Britons would have died from coronavirus if more tests had been available earlier, a Cabinet minister has admitted, as he warned life would not return to 'business as usual' when Boris Johnson sets out his exit strategy. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said 'many things' could have been different if the UK's testing capacity was above 100,000 before Covid-19 spread in the country. More than 28,000 people have now died after testing positive for the virus in the UK. In an interview with BBC One's The Andrew Marr Show, he was asked whether fewer people would have died if testing capacity had been greater sooner. Mr Shapps replied: 'Yes. If we had had 100,000 test capacity before this thing started and the knowledge that we now have retrospectively, I'm sure many things could be different. 'The fact of the matter is this is not a country that had - although we're very big in pharmaceuticals as a country - we're not a country that had very large test capacity.' Advertisement

Just 17 per cent thought the time was right to consider re-opening schools, with smaller proportions of people thinking conditions had been met to allow cinemas, sporting stadia and nightclubs to open their doors.

There was also opposition to the reopening of restaurants and pubs - with only 11 per cent agreeing Britain is at a place to reopen eateries and 9 per cent supporting a return to pubs.

Britons more strongly opposed a return to stadium events and nightclubs, with 7 per cent saying conditions have been met for both to resume, compared to 84 per cent who did not.

In the Sunday Times, a YouGov poll found that just 25 per cent of adults would feel safe returning to work and oppose reopening schools by 48 per cent to 28 per cent.

And 59 per cent of people polled by the Sunday Express said they would not feel comfortable going out and do not plan to resume a normal life next month.

Ministers will aim to tread a fine line between kickstarting economic activity and keeping 'R', the reproduction rate of the virus, below 1.

The number of people who have died in hospitals, care homes and the wider community after testing positive for Covid-19 in the UK as of 5pm on Friday rose to 28,131, up by 621.

The death toll has edged closer to that of Italy, which now stands at 28,710 and is the highest in Europe, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

A new interactive map lays bare the coronavirus postcode lottery and reveals sprawling areas in Wales, the South West and East England which have recorded zero deaths

A long queue maintaining social distancing outside a Tesco supermarket in north London today

Ministers are concerned that the public have gone beyond the letter of the law introduced when the pandemic began to sweep the nation, according to the Sunday Times

Get businesses going again

The Government's main priority is getting the economy going again, amid dire statistics about commercial activity and hundreds of billions of pounds flowing out of the treasury to prop up firms and pay the wages of furloughed workers.

'Discriminatory' lockdown should be eased for the healthy elderly, say senior doctors Senior doctors have warned Boris Johnson the lockdown should be eased for over-70s that are considered healthy, due to the damage keeping them inside is doing to their mental health. Both the Royal College of GPs and the British Medical Association (BMA) weighed in to say that age alone should not be the determining factor when the government establishes who can return to their daily lives as the lockdown is eased, potentially in the coming weeks and months. Around 1.8 million people classed as 'clinically vulnerable' were told to stay indoors for 12 weeks when the lockdown began as they were considered to be the most at-risk people in the UK from Covid-19. Some ministers have even suggested that such groups could have to stay at home until a vaccine has been developed, which could well take a year or more. Those in the 'clinically vulnerable' category include anyone 'aged 70 or older regardless of medical condition', as well as anyone who is younger than 70 with a 'underlying health condition'. According to The Times, the doctor's union said that while it agreed that the most vulnerable people in society must be protected, measures should be determined on individual risk with a system that applies to all ages, and not just 'an arbitrary age of 60 or 70.' Martin Marshall, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, warned of the harm a prolonged lockdown would do to the 'physical and mental' of those over the age of 70, and that their age is not the best way to determine 'who should self-isolate and to what extent during the next stage of lockdown'. The BMA said said in a statement: 'A blanket ban on any section of the population being prohibited from lockdown easing would be discriminatory and unacceptable.' Advertisement

It comes as a leading business group urges the Government to be 'bold' and not shy away from sustaining high levels of public spending.

The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) laid out a series of moves for a phased end to the current lockdown in a letter to the PM.

Steps should include safely reopening public spaces, schools and public transport, as well as workplaces and commercial spaces, said the letter.

Moves should be made to minimise job losses and business failures, putting the UK economy on a 'high-growth, high-wage and low unemployment trajectory' as soon as possible.

The plans due to be laid out this week are reported to focus on those who work outside, including construction workers, because of science suggesting the virus is harder to catch outdoors.

Public transport is likely to return to normal levels and non-food retailers, factories, and warehouses will be encouraged to open.

Work on this has already started: people yesterday flocked to newly reopened DIY stores and rubbish tips.

Orderly queues formed at branches of Homebase, which opened 164 stores, as well as B&Q and Wickes. Costa Coffee drive-throughs were also busy.

Offices are expected to instruct most of their staff to continue working from home.

But for those who cannot there will be strict rules for office spaces

They include mandatory floor markings to keep staff two metres apart, staggered start times and breaks, limits on how many people can get in lifts and regular deep cleaning, according to the Sunday Express.

And in a blow to everyone desperate to celebrate the release of the lockdown with a cold pint in their local, pubs and restaurants are likely to remain closed for weeks or even months longer.

This is because the bring people into close proximity to each other in difficult to control ways.

But the phased reopening will be accompanied by harder action against those who break social distancing rules.

School is not out for summer

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps this morning told Sky's Sophy Ridge on Sunday: 'It's no secret that of course we want the kids to go back to school but I'd be over-egging it to say there's a date in place, there's a plan in place'

Primary schools could re-open on June 1, with students from Years 10 and 12 becoming the first in a wave of secondary pupils flocking to classes.

Boris Johnson is hoping to put teachers on three weeks' notice to re-open primary schools in England to all pupils as soon as next month.

Lockdown is making us love our families MORE: Britons are less likely to split up from partners, are eating and sleeping more... and having more sex When Boris Johnson announced the stringent stay-at-home measures in March, many predicted: 'The divorce rate is going to go up!' Not so, according to The Mail on Sunday's exclusive poll, which paints a more rosy picture of life in lockdown, showing that, on balance, people believe that the extra time spent with their partners has made them less likely to split up. They are also enjoying work more, plan to spend more time with their children in future and are having more sex  but only if they are married. The results of the Deltapoll survey will be studied closely in Downing Street as officials start to draw up a blueprint for easing the restrictions slowly and safely. In terms of intimate relations, the lockdown has opened up a divide between the generations. Overall, 29 per cent of people said that they were having less sex now, compared with 20 per cent who are having more. But among the 18-24 age group, more than half (58 per cent) are enjoying less intimacy, with just 18 per cent enjoying more. That is the generation likely to be still living at home or in shared flats, rather than with long-term partners, and unable to go on dates. Advertisement

Whitehall sources have claimed the earliest possible return of primary schoolchildren is intended to help parents to return to work.

It will also prevent damage being done to 'early years development' about which Gavin Williamson has warned, according to The Sunday Telegraph.

Officials are understood to be contemplating limiting the size of classes temporarily, while the question of when to re-open nurseries is an open one.

Pupils from Years 10 and 12 would then head to school, provided ministers were satisfied the transmission rate did not cause a 'second peak'.

The move is being considered as data show that younger children are potentially less likely to transmit Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

The discussions also come after Mr Williams told the education select committee this week that schools would not reopen opening during the summer holidays as a way of helping pupils who have missed out on education to catch up.

The education secretary also suggested a phased return to schools, saying it was 'not realistic or practical' for all school children to return in one day.

He said scientists were looking at other countries for best practice and that a special team of the Scientific Group for Emergencies (SAGE) had been set up to focus solely on schools reopening.

Mr Shapps told Sophy Ridge on Sunday: 'It's no secret that of course we want the kids to go back to school but I'd be over-egging it to say there's a date in place, there's a plan in place.'

But Ofsted chief inspector of schools Amanda Spielman told the same programme: 'If you look at the interests of children ... it's very clear that their interests are served, in the vast majority of cases, by being back at school as soon as possible.'

The Party's OVER: Social bubble could be limited to just 10 family and friends until 2021 Social bubbles could be limited to fewer than ten people and super-spreader indoor events could be banned until well into 2021 to avoid a second peak of coronavirus infections, scientists revealed. Senior epidemiologist Adam Kucharski has warned Britain could face 'exponential growth' in Covid-19 cases if groups of people start getting together to celebrate as lockdown measures are eased. 'Look at where these super-spreading events occur, it's often at family gatherings and meals and weddings and parties and all these things that socially we want to happen,' Dr Kucharski told The Sunday Times. His team at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found the usual infection rate sees one person spread the virus to an average of three others. Advertisement

Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford has said schools in Wales could reopen at the beginning of next month.

Asked for an indication about when pupils could return, Mr Drakeford told the BBC's Andew Marr Show: 'Our advice from the trade unions and from the local education authorities is that you will need three weeks as a minimum from the point that we decide to do that, to when schools can reopen, so we are talking about the beginning of June.'

He said some groups could return earlier than others, using the examples of year-six children who are due to move up to secondary school, and Welsh medium pupils who may not have had opportunities to use the language at home during lockdown.

But Kevin Courtney, General Secretary of the National Education Union, the largest teachers' trade union for England and Wales, says talks about a June re-opening are 'very premature'.

He told MailOnline: 'While we all want to see a return to some sort of normality the National Education Union believes it's really premature to talk about a June return date.

'Instead the government should be providing evidence about how this can be safe, how many more fatalities would we expect to see amongst school staff and parents and how these can be prevented or minimised.'

He added: 'If the government proceeds in this sort of way it is will fail to get the confidence of heads, staff and parents.'

Public transport running - but with social distancing

Doctors prepared to announce Boris Johnson's DEATH while he battled coronavirus Boris Johnson has revealed that doctors prepared to announce his death in case he lost his coronavirus battle. The Prime Minister, 55, has admitted he was 'not in particularly brilliant shape' while battling the disease at St Thomas' Hospital in central London last month. As his chances of survival balanced on a knife-edge, he said he was given 'litres and litres' of oxygen as medics fought to keep him alive in intensive care. In his first interview since recovering from Covid-19 - and the birth of his son Wilfred - the PM recalled his frustration that he could not seem to shake the virus. But Mr Johnson described how the sobering experience allowed him to see the 'fantastic' care offered by the NHS, his voice cracking as he reflected on the rollercoaster past few weeks. Advertisement

Public transport could return to approaching normal levels of service but with measures in place to limit numbers.

Scenes of packed Tube trans during the lockdown shocked the nation and Mr Shapps this morning said that it was unlikely that would be allowed.

He indicated that the staggered start times enforced in offices could be used to help reduce peak demand on trains and buses.

'The crushes would be completely at odds with social distancing,' he told Sky.

'Of course i'm very concerned about people being able to wash their hands - it's still far and away the most important advice.

'We can help with that by trying to have hand sanitiser , one-way systems, spacing on platforms and at bus stops and that sort of this clearly marked out.

'There are a lot of different measures that can be taken, of which easing into this is clearly going to be one of the most important things of all.'

But he refused to confirm the idea reported last week that commuters could face temperature checks at stations before being allowed on to services.

Ban on picnics at beauty spots to be lifted

Ministers are preparing to lift restrictions on outdoor activities such as picnics as the first stage in relaxing the lockdown rules.

The Mail on Sunday understands the plans  likely to be introduced later this month if coronavirus infection rates continue to fall  will mean people can exercise several times each day and drive to the countryside and other outdoor spaces for walks and picnics.

However, they will only be allowed to do so with members of their household and must stay at least two metres (6ft 6in) away from other groups.

The change, which will end the sight of police officers moving on solitary sunbathers in parks, follows new scientific advice to ministers that the risk of transmitting the disease outside is substantially lower than indoors.

But people will still be barred from areas such as playgrounds and beaches where crowds congregate and the two-metre rule becomes harder to observe.

Covid-19 cases to be tracked by a smartphone app

Britons will be allowed to exercise several times each day and drive to the countryside for walks and picnics in the first stage of relaxing lockdown Ministers are preparing to lift restrictions on outdoor activities such as picnics as the first stage in relaxing the lockdown rules. The Mail on Sunday understands the plans  likely to be introduced later this month if coronavirus infection rates continue to fall  will mean people can exercise several times each day and drive to the countryside and other outdoor spaces for walks and picnics. However, they will only be allowed to do so with members of their household and must stay at least two metres (6ft 6in) away from other groups. The change, which will end the sight of police officers moving on solitary sunbathers in parks, follows new scientific advice to ministers that the risk of transmitting the disease outside is substantially lower than indoors. But people will still be barred from areas such as playgrounds and beaches where crowds congregate and the two-metre rule becomes harder to observe. The softening of restrictions will be accompanied by the stricter enforcement of breaches of the remaining rules, with fines rising from the current 60 to more than 3,000 for repeat offenders. Boris Johnson's review of the lockdown on Thursday is not expected to lead to any more substantial changes until next month when public transport is likely to return to normal levels and non-food retailers, factories, warehouses and more construction sites will be encouraged to open. Offices are expected to instruct most of their staff to continue working from home, while pubs and restaurants are likely to remain closed for weeks or even months longer. Advertisement

Trials of an NHS coronavirus contact tracing smartphone app are to start in the Isle of Wight this week, before being rolled out nationwide.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said around 50 to 60 per cent of people will need to use the software for it to be effective as he described it as the 'best possible way to help the NHS'.

The NHSX app is part of the Government's test, track and trace strategy and will be central to its efforts in slowing the spread of coronavirus.

Contact tracing has been used extensively in South Korea, Hong Kong and Germany, where outbreaks have been contained more quickly.

Mr Shapps stressed the app would be completely confidential but called it a 'fantastic way' to ensure the country can 'keep a lid' on coronavirus and prevent a second wave.

'The idea is that we will encourage as many people to take this up as possible,' he said.

'This is going to be a huge national effort and we need for this to work 50-60 per cent of people to be using this app.

'Not everybody has a smartphone, and I appreciate that for various reasons not everybody will download it but it will be the best possible way to help the NHS.'

Mr Shapps said he did not know how many of the 18,000 contact tracers the Government is seeking have been hired yet - with plans for them to be in place by mid-May.

He told Sky: 'It's not an issue because the app isn't going to be available for some time yet, a few weeks yet, but when it is there we will have the people in place.'

Labour's shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds said that testing and tracing will be 'so important' in easing the lockdown in the weeks and months ahead.

Speaking on Sky's Sophy Ridge programme, he said: 'We've been asking for the ramping up of testing so clearly I'm pleased that testing has been ramped up.

'I think there's always been a difference between the number of tests actually carried out and the overall statistics, indeed the number of people tested is a different figure.

'But of course I'm pleased that testing has been ramped up. But that in itself is not a strategy.

'Firstly, the testing has to be increased further, I mean the original target we were talking about a quarter of a million tests a day some time ago, but it has to be linked to tracing as well and it's that testing and tracing that is going to be so important now in terms of easing the measures of the lockdown in the weeks and months ahead.'

Quarantine for visitors from abroad

Mr Shapps said he was 'actively looking at' quarantining people travelling to the UK from abroad to keep coronavirus infection rates under control.

New restrictions would make the UK one of the last countries to introduce them, with the country very much an outlier in recent weeks by not halting inbound flights or insisting arrivals are checked.

People arriving are advised to self-isolate but there is no enforced testing.

Home Secretary Priti Patel is believed to be among those who have demanded tougher rules for foreign visitors and the remaining Brits still abroad who make it home.

Appearing on the BBC's Andrew Marr show Mr Shapps said: 'I think it is important that as we are seeing the numbers decrease and the R rate we hope decrease... that we do ensure that the sacrifices in a sense - social distancing - that we are asking the British people to make are matched by anybody who comes to this country.

'I am actively looking at these issues right now so that when we have infection rates within the country under control we are not importing.'

Coronaphobia UK is rife: Two new polls find just one in four Britons would feel safe at work and more than half are opposed to schools reopening

Just one in four Britons would feel safe at work amid the coronavirus crisis and more than half are opposed to schools reopening in the next few weeks, new polls have found.

Data published by Opinium found only 17 per cent of Britons believed conditions had been met to considering reopening schools on May 8, with 67 per cent of those polled believing the opposite.

There was also opposition to the reopening of restaurants and pubs - with only 11 per cent agreeing Britain is at a place to reopen eateries and 9 per cent supporting a return to pubs.

Britons more strongly opposed a return to stadium events and nightclubs, with 7 per cent saying conditions have been met for both to resume, compared to 84 per cent who did not.

Pictured: An elderly couple walk past a police patrol car in Greenwich Park, London on May 2

The data, collected between Wednesday and Friday last week, came as a YouGov poll found only one in four adults would feel safe returning to work amid the current state of coronavirus.

The second poll, carried out on behalf of The Sunday Times, also noted 47 per cent of Britons opposed the reopening of schools in the next few weeks, compared to 28 per cent who did not.

A third survey, undertaken by Redfield and Wilton Strategies and published by the Express, found 56 per cent of those polled approved of how the Government had handled the crisis.

An earlier poll of 1,500 people by the researchers found 54 per cent of Britons would not feel comfortable returning to work, with only 13 per cent agreeing they would feel safe travelling to London on May 7.

A majority 88 per cent of Britons added they would not feel safe attending a sporting event, compared to 12 per cent who would.

Psychologist Professor Dame Til Wykes of King's College London told the Guardian that 'it is likely that most people will feel anxious' as lockdown restrictions are lifted.

Pictured: A man wearing a face mask walks past rainbow graffiti in support of the NHS in Soho, central London

A survey published by Opinium found only 17 per cent of Britons believed conditions had been met to considering re-opening schools on May 8, with 67 per cent of those polled believing the opposite

She said: 'We have been given strict behavioural advice for more than five weeks, and when that is removed people will feel pressured, and individuals who had pre-existing anxiety, particularly about their health, will be worst hit. It will take quite a lot of psychological treatment to get over this.

'Different groups will be more affected than others, in particular the elderly and also parents, who will worry about their children bringing home the virus from schools.'

Boris Johnson said on Friday that Britain is 'past the peak' of coronavirus - which has killed 28,131 in the UK amid 183,500 confirmed cases.

Heading his first Downing Street briefing since falling ill, the Prime Minister said the UK is now on the 'downward slope' and praised Britons for having avoided an 'uncontrollable and catastrophic' epidemic.

But Mr Johnson dashed hopes of an imminent loosening, after making clear that a new flare-up of the deadly disease would be worse than the current crippling impact on the economy.

Boris Johnson said on Friday that Britain is 'past the peak' of coronavirus - which has killed 28,131 in the UK amid 183,500 confirmed cases

Britain's death toll (28,131) is bound to overtake Italy's (28,236) by next week and make the UK the second worst-hit country in the world, behind only the US (65,173). The outbreak in the UK is two weeks behind Italy's, meaning its daily death and infection jumps are decreasing at a slower rate

He claimed that efforts to bolster the NHS had avoided a 'reasonable worst-case scenario' of 500,000 deaths if no action to combat the pandemic had been taken, likening it to digging a tunnel under an alpine mountain.

But in the strongest hint yet that restrictions will run into June and beyond, he added: 'It is vital that we do not now lose control and run slap into a second and even bigger mountain.'

The premier said a 'huge amount of work' was going into an 'exit strategy' with the first draft to be published next week. While it will offer a 'road map, a menu of options' for how the curbs could be eased in future, he cautioned that it would not give any timings as they would depend on the science.

He gave a strong hint that it will involve advising people to wear face coverings in some circumstances, saying they 'will be useful' as the situation evolves.

The Department of Health stopped giving a breakdown of how many COVID-19 deaths occurred in different settings, such as hospitals or care homes, yesterday

Mr Johnson also said he was 'not going to pretend' the government had not made any mistakes in the handling of the crisis, pointing to PPE supplies. He admitted they were learning lessons every day.

The Opinium poll found only 47 per cent of people approved of how the Government had responded to the coronavirus crisis.

Three in five Britons also disapproved of how the Government had handled access to PPE for NHS staff and essential workers, with only 16 per cent praising their response.

An overwhelming 79 per cent of Britons said they have been following strict lockdown rules since they were introduced by Mr Johnson on March 23.

However, 23 per cent admitted to heading to the shops for non-essentials and 21 per cent said they have left the house more than once per day for exercise.
The state of Maryland on Saturday terminated a $12.5 million contract for personal protective equipment with a firm started this spring by two well-connected Republican operatives.

State officials said the company, Blue Flame Medical, failed to deliver masks and ventilators as promised and that the matter has been referred to Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, a Democrat, for review.

Blue Flame received a nearly $6.3 million down payment from Maryland in early April - after promising to provide within weeks desperately needed personal protective equipment for front-line medical personnel dealing with the novel coronavirus.

Ethan Bearman, the Los Angeles attorney for Blue Flame Medical, said Saturday he was unaware the state was unhappy with the firm.

"This comes as a surprise," Bearman said when told that the attorney general had confirmed receiving a referral about the company from the state General Services Department. "This does not comport with what I know of Blue Flame Medical."

However, a letter sent to the firm Thursday by Danny Mays, Maryland's director of procurement, revealed deep frustration.

"Despite numerous requests for information and order status, Blue Flame Medical has yet to deliver any items under this order, or provide any pertinent data as to a pending shipment," Mays wrote. "As Blue Flame Medical LLC has failed to honor its delivery commitment under the terms and conditions, [the Department of General Services] is now formally requiring Blue Flame Medical to cure this deficiency."

Bearman acknowledged that delays had occurred in filling the order but said such problems have become commonplace this spring during the chaotic rush to locate masks and other protective equipment.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the contract's cancellation Saturday.

Blue Flame was started in late March by Michael Gula, a Republican fundraising and lobbying consultant in Washington, and John Thomas, a California political consultant.

Before moving in to the medical supply business, Gula was known in GOP circles for his political fundraising prowess. His firm has raised campaign funds for Sens. Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania, Steve Daines of Montana, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and dozens of other influential Republicans. He startled some longtime clients in March when he announced he was quitting the fundraising world during an election year to start the medical supply business with Thomas.

Thomas recently worked as a strategist and fundraiser for Republican Don Sedgwick, who sought to run against Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., but lost in the March primary.

The two Republican consultants incorporated their firm in Delaware on March 23 and a week later received the contract from Maryland.

Gula used a connection to a staffer in the administration of Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, to initially make a pitch for the sale, according to a Maryland official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive legal matter. After Gula started using that staffer's name on a reference sheet to seek contracts with other states, the official said, the staffer referred the matter to the chief legal counsel for Hogan, Mike Pedone.

Pedone then referred the matter on April 9 to Frosh's office, the official said.

Gula and Thomas did not respond to requests for comment.

The April 1 purchase order, which was obtained by The Washington Post, identifies June 30 as the delivery deadline. But the Maryland official said that is only because June 30 is the end of the current fiscal year. The agreed upon shipping date for the masks and ventilators was April 14, this person said. Bearman did not respond to a request for comment on this complaint.

The order shows that Blue Flame agreed to provide 1.5 million N95 masks and 110 ventilators, and that the state wired the company nearly $6.3 million as a deposit.

Michael Ricci, a spokesman for Hogan, said in an interview Friday that none of the masks and ventilators had arrived.

"We placed this order on April 1, and we haven't gotten anything," Ricci said. "We received no shipping confirmation. Obviously, that's a concern. That's not been the case with any of our other vendors."

The price Blue Flame was charging at the time for N95 masks - $4.52 each - was much higher than the list price provided by manufacturers.

Frosh confirmed Saturday the matter had been referred to his office.

Frosh would not comment on the contract, the investigation or what precipitated the referral.

Asked about the delays in fulfilling the contract, Bearman said: "I know Blue Flame Medical wanted to deliver the shipment [masks and ventilators] in April. I know, too, of actions by the Chinese government. Their supplier in China wrote a letter to Blue Flame Medical informing them that the Chinese government interfered with the supplier's ability to ship."

Bearman said his client "has done everything in its power to fulfill, and has alternate suppliers to fulfill the order as written. And they so informed the state of Maryland."

The Hogan administration has been aggressively working to shore up the state's supplies of equipment needed to fight the pandemic, including the purchase of 500,000 coronavirus tests from South Korea last month.

Local officials in Maryland were frustrated that those tests were not made available for their use, in part because of a lack of swabs, reagents and other testing supplies.

- - -

The Washington Post's Desmond Butler, Alice Crites and Ovetta Wiggins contributed to this report.
Former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign rally in Detroit on March 9. (Associated Press)

To the editor: The Democratic Party's public support for the #MeToo movement needs to be applauded and examined. Like most women, I have been glad that Democratic Party leaders have been vocal. I welcomed the investigation into allegations against then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, even though nothing came of it. ("Tara Reade's allegation that Joe Biden assaulted her demands an independent investigation," editorial, April 30)

The party's hypocrisy, however, is once again showing. If Democrats can so loudly proclaim that justice must be done for Kavanaugh's accuser Christine Blasey Ford and even passionately insist that victims cannot be dismissed, they must apply the same scrutiny to former Vice President Joe Biden.

The Democratic Party should not expect the millions of voters who did not support Biden  and who want change and, of course, for President Trump to be defeated  to support such hypocrisy. People might vote for Biden as the lesser of two evils, but how dare the Democrats expect me and millions others to be concerned more about their party's power than the issues that really matter?

Janet Conner, Ventura

..

To the editor: I do not agree at all that Biden should request any sort of investigation for something that allegedly occurred in the 1990s. He can answer questions and move on, just like Trump.

Any independent investigation would be pointless and provide no clarity on the situation. When would the investigation end? Just in time for the election?

No thanks.

Sandra Carter, Long Beach

..

To the editor: What a stunning example of the left's double standards. Kavanaugh was denied due process and deemed guilty by the public. Remember "all women must be believed"?

Perhaps The Times should get a comment from Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) and find out if she feels Biden should "just shut up and step up," as she said to men after the Kavanaugh allegation.

Story continues

Apparently the #MeToo movement only matters when it doesn't affect Democrats.

Rick Kern, Incline Village, Nev.

..

To the editor: Biden's accuser Tara Reade graphically describes a sexual assault allegedly involving Biden during his Senate career, something that Biden firmly denies.

So now what? The American people, especially those desperate for a change in the White House in 2021, deserve to know the truth about this awful allegation.

Let's demand that both Reade and Biden submit themselves to a lie-detector test, independently administered by a neutral expert. And let's do it now before the issue engulfs the Biden campaign and the Trump campaign runs with it.

Saif Hussain, Woodland Hills
L ast week marked the beginning of Ramadan, a religious festival which Muslim communities all over the world observe as a month of prayer, fasting and spending time with family.

Being under lockdown at a time when most people come together with their loved ones can be difficult, but whether youre isolating with the whole family or in ones and twos, theres loads of content out there to keep your spirits up.

Weve rounded up five of the best YouTubers you can turn to for Iftar inspiration and general tips for making the most of Ramadan under lockdown.

Cooking With Anisa



Leicester Classy Cooking Queen Anisa is your go-to if youre stuck on what to make for Iftar meals or even just your average day-to-day meal plans. Anisa breaks down everything from wholesome biryani dishes to tasty treats like Ferrero Rocher milkshakes for those of us with a sweet tooth.

Chinutay A



If youre looking to immerse yourself in a mixed bag of lifestyle content as well as recipes, Manal Chinutay and her family will keep you distracted for hours with their Ramadan Diaries. The London-based Canadians channel includes make-up reviews, family adventures and general life updates on how shes keeping busy. For a good laugh, check out her recent attempt to cut her husbands hair during lockdown.

Zeinah Nur

Another family-focused YouTuber taking part in Ramadan Diaries is straight-talking British-Somali Zeinah Nur. Watching Zeinahs channel feels like youre talking to a friend as she regularly imparts great tips for viewers when it comes to ways that we can navigate parenting and practising wellness while in isolation.

Hungry For Goodies

If food-focused ASMR is your bag, youre in for a treat. This channel gets straight to the good stuff with close-ups of the cooking process for dishes like Halal lasagne, Chicken Chana Chaat and Masala Egg Puffs. Run by British YouTuber Rabia, the latest ASMR Ramadan Recipes have zero dialogue to allow for viewers to really take in the inexplicably gratifying sounds of chopping and sizzling.

Aysha Harun

Where can we apply to trade in our lives for Aysha Haruns? Ayshas candy-coloured aesthetic is what dreams are made of as she gives us a peek into quarantine life with her husband during Ramadan. As well as recipes, subscribe for make-up tips, date night vlogs and skincare routines.

youtube.com
A seven-year-old boy has tested positive to coronavirus, causing a school to shut down.

Just days after term two began, Warragamba Public School - on the eastern edge of the Blue Mountains - will be 'non-operational for on-site learning' on Monday.

All students will now undertake at-home learning, after around five per cent of pupils remained on campus.

It is not yet known where the boy - who has mild symptoms - caught COVID-19.

'The (education) Department has been advised by NSW Health that a student has tested positive for COVID-19,' a statement on the school website says.

'The school will be non-operational for the on-site attendance of staff and students while the school conducts contact tracing and is cleaned.'

Warragamba Public School - on the eastern edge of the Blue Mountains - will be 'non-operational for on-site learning' on Monday, with all students undertaking at home learning

Treasurer Dominic Perrottet said the relaxing of restrictions was a sign of the ongoing success in limiting the spread of COVID-19, but warned it was no time for complacency

Staff and students who are identified as a close contact will be contacted and advised they should self-isolate for the required period of time.

Students will gradually transition back into classes on school grounds from next Monday, beginning with one day a week on campus.

Meadowglen Primary School in Epping, in Melbourne's north, will be closed from Monday until Wednesday after a staff member tested positive to the virus.

'This staff member has been on site recently ... this is why it is necessary for the school needs to be cleaned,' Victorian Health Minister Jenny Mikakos told reporters on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Anglicare's Newmarch House aged care staff members will now be subject to daily COVID-19 tests in an attempt to manage the outbreak at the facility where 14 residents have died.

Four new COVID-19 cases were reported in NSW on Sunday of which two are staff members at the aged care home in western Sydney.

There are now 63 infections linked to the facility including 26 staff members and 37 residents.

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said the new measure would be implemented in an attempt to manage the outbreak after a 76-year-old resident died at Nepean Hospital from the virus on Sunday.

NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant said one of the new cases at the facility was a close contact of another case who had been in isolation for a period of time and subsequently developed symptoms. The source of the second case is under investigation.

CORONAVIRUS CASES IN AUSTRALIA: 27,244 Victoria: 20,269 New South Wales: 4,273 Queensland: 1,161 Western Australia: 692 South Australia: 473 Tasmania: 230 Australian Capital Territory: 113 Northern Territory: 33 TOTAL CASES: 27,244 ESTIMATED ACTIVE CASES: 269 DEATHS: 897 Updated: 5.31 PM, 11 October, 2020 Source: Australian Government Department of Health Advertisement

Anglicare announced on Sunday the Family Support Program, which will involve a scheduled daily call from a registered nurse to a resident's dedicated contact.

Anglicare Sydney chief executive Grant Millard said the initiative - which begins on Tuesday - will help address communication issues which were raised by residents' family members last week.

'The Family Support Program is designed to respond to the feedback from our families, ensuring they feel engaged and are in close contact with their loved ones,' Mr Millard said in a statement on Sunday.

The Berejiklian government announced on Sunday traditional property inspections and on-site auctions will be allowed from next weekend after a six-week limited shutdown due to COVID-19.

Treasurer Dominic Perrottet said the relaxing of restrictions was a sign of the ongoing success in limiting the spread of COVID-19, but warned it was no time for complacency.

NSW now has 3035 COVID-19 cases with 14 people in intensive care including 11 who require ventilators.

More than 2300 people have recovered from the virus in NSW. The state's death toll sits at 44.

A statement from NSW Health on Sunday said 75 per cent of cases were in non-acute, out-of-hospital care.
SEVEN HILLS, Ohio -- Gabrielle Shipta, a Seven Hills resident attending Cuyahoga Community College, is the recipient of the 2020 Culinary Scholarship sponsored by the Cleveland chapter of Les Dames dEscoffier International (LDEI).

Shipta, 25, plans to use the $2,000 prize to help pay her Tri-C tuition as she pursues an associate of applied business degree in hospitality management, with a focus on culinary arts.

She enrolled in Tri-Cs culinary program to build on a bachelors degree in applied nutrition that she earned from Ohio University in 2018.

Shipta said she became interested in nutrition and cooking through a middle school home economics class.

The passion derived from there in wanting to keep improving my own health and eating, she told writer Paris Wolfe for a story on the scholarship award that was posted on the Dames Dish! blog by LDEI.

Shipta works as a part-time sous chef at the Center for Integrative and Lifestyle Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, where she helps patients learn to look at food as medicine. The position reinforced her desire to build culinary skills and led her to the Tri-C program.

Shipta said she hopes the culinary degree leads to full-time work at the Cleveland Clinic, either leading the culinary medicine program or as an executive chef.

I want to make a difference in peoples lives through food, Shipta told Wolfe.

The LDEI Cleveland $2,000 scholarship assists and promotes women in the professions of food, wine and hospitality.

The award is based on academic accomplishments, career goals, culinary experience, professional and personal reference, and financial need, said Carol Hacker, chair of LDEI Clevelands scholarship committee. Gabrielle is an ideal winner.

Coronavirus cancellation: The Parma Animal Shelter has announced that another of its fundraisers, the Dine to Donate event set for May 21 at Danny in Broadview Heights, has been canceled as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

As Ohio gradually begins to reopen after Gov. Mike DeWines stay-at-home order shifts to a stay-safe order, PAS is still functioning and continuing adoptions of cats and dogs. Shelter staff and volunteers are following social distancing protocols. Adoptions are handled by appointment only.

For more information, call 440-885-8014 or visit parmashelter.org.

Gaelic Imports, a popular Parma store, closed its doors on May 1. (Carol Kovach, special to cleveland.com)

Farewell: There is one less member in the Parma retail community after the May 1 closure of Gaelic Imports.

The popular store at 5633 Pearl Road, Parma, offered homemade goodies from Ireland, Scotland and Great Britain, including meat pies, scones, soda bread, sausage and more. It also offered imported candy, food items, kilt outfitting, bagpipe supplies, jewelry, flags and more.

Store owners posted this message on their Facebook page: We hope that this post finds you all well and healthy. It is with a heavy heart and sad eyes that we write this message. We are closing our doors. Due to unforeseen circumstances and some personal reasons we are unable to move forward with business operations. We have weighed out all the options and there just isnt a way that we can make it work.

"Along with recent events and a steady decline in business, there was just no way for us to stay afloat and this decision was not made in haste. We wish more than anything that things could have been different.

"We just wanted to say, from the very bottom of our hearts, that it is has been nothing short of a pleasure getting to know you personally and gaining an extended family. You all welcomed us with such open arms and open hearts. This adventure was truly a blessing to each of us who got to know you and your families the past four years, and we thank you a million times over. We will miss every single one of you and we thank you for your support and dedication.

After having limited hours the past couple of months, the store opened on May 1 to sell off its inventory. Dozens of loyal customers shared their disappointment on Facebook about the closure.

The closing even drew Facebook notice from Polish Village in Parma, which shared news of the stores closing.

No parade: The first weekend in May normally is an exciting time in the Polish community as they celebrate Polish Constitution Day on May 1 and Flag Day on May 2. Parmas Polish Village traditionally hosts a parade and celebration.

This years festivities -- including the Miss Polonia dimer, Mass at St. Charles Borromeo Parish, the grand parade and the parade afterparty -- were to have taken place May 1-3, until the coronavirus health crisis intervened. City officials announced that the events were postponed, but no new date has been announced.

As disappointing as the cancellation was for the organizers, they acknowledged that safety was the key factor and they expect next years festivities to be even better.

Information, please: Readers are invited to share information about themselves, their families and friends, organizations, church events, etc. in Brooklyn, Independence, Parma, Parma Heights and Seven Hills for the Sun Postings column, which I write on a freelance basis. Awards, honors, milestone birthdays or anniversaries and other items are welcome. Submit information at least 10 days before the requested publication date to carolkovach@hotmail.com.

Read more from the Parma Sun Post.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: India Inc has demanded a fiscal stimulus package of Rs 6 lakh crore to refuel the crisis-hit economy post lockdown. "CII has suggested instituting a Government spending package equivalent to three per cent of GDP which would add Rs 6 lakh crore to the available firepower," Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, of Confederation of Indian Industries said, while welcoming the move to relax economic activities in the green zone. Given the fiscal constraint, the industry body suggested that the Government could raise debt to pay for the package, given "modest" debt to GDP ratio of the country.

"Enhanced debt to GDP ratio can be a way out for adding fiscal space at a time when the debt to GDP ratio is modest in India." Banerjee argued. Meanwhile, Nitin Gadkari, Minister of Road Transport and Highways and MSME, said on Saturday that government is likely to announce a relief package for the MSME sector soon.

"We have sent recommendations for a relief package to the Finance Minister and Prime Minister and I hope it will be announced soon. We will try to give relief to the extent possible," Gadkari was quoted by the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) statement, where he addressed members via a webinar. Gadkari further said that in order to gain competitiveness in the international markets, the industry must focus on reducing costs.

"Our focus will be to reduce the logistic cost, capital cost, power and production cost without compromising the quality," Gadkari added. Most of the chambers have welcomed the relaxation given by the government for business activites in green zones. The chambers also argued that the relaxation to many industrial activities including industrial establishments in urban areas such as Special Economic Zones, industrial estates and industrial townships with access control within the Red Zone with restrictions, is absolutely in line with what they had recommended.
A child is in critical condition after he was shot by a younger sibling outside a Jefferson County mall Saturday.

The incident happened at 11:45 a.m. at Western Hills Mall in Fairfield. Jefferson County sheriffs deputies were dispatched there on a report of a 4-year-old boy shot.

Sgt. Joni Money said the boy had already been rushed to Childrens of Alabama by family members before deputies arrived. He was in critical condition as of Saturday night.

Witnesses told deputies that child was in the back seat with his siblings. A younger sibling found a handgun in the car and accidentally shot the boy.

The investigation is ongoing. No additional details have been released at this time.
Pakistans long battle to eradicate the crippling polio virus has been thwarted by militant attacks, radical Islamic clerics, and anti-vaccination propaganda.

But the South Asian nation of 220 million people is facing a new hurdle: the coronavirus pandemic.

Pakistani authorities have halted a nationwide door-to-door polio vaccination drive to stop the spread of the coronavirus -- with polio workers and resources being redeployed to tackle the pandemic.

Pakistan has registered more than 19,100 coronavirus cases and 440 deaths as of May 3, according to official numbers.

But the real number of infections is believed to be much higher, as little testing has been completed.

The government originally imposed restrictions on the movement of people and enforced social-distancing measures but have since eased them.

Pakistani health officials warn that the suspension of the polio-eradication campaign will prevent tens of millions of children from being vaccinated and fuel a resurgence of the disease.

With the disappearance of wild polio cases in Nigeria in recent years, Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan are currently the only countries in the world where new polio cases are discovered.

Polio Cases Will 'Definitely Increase'

The coronavirus crisis led Pakistani authorities to stop a nationwide immunization drive scheduled for April that was intended to vaccinate some 40 million children.

The campaign was seen as crucial after Pakistan recorded 147 polio cases in 2019, a sharp rise from a record low figure of 22 cases in 2017. So far this year, authorities have recorded 41 cases.

The majority of the cases of polio -- a childhood virus that leads to deformed limbs, paralysis, and even death -- were recorded in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The number of polio cases will definitely increase because we were in the middle of an anti-polio campaign when the coronavirus outbreak halted everything, said Abdul Basit, the provincial coordinator for the National Emergency Operation Center in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

It happened in the past and it will happen again that when children are not getting immunization, the number of cases goes up, he said, adding that he expected it would be months before the campaign could resume.

But right now our whole setup is engaged in efforts against the coronavirus outbreak, he said.

Nadeem Jan, a public health specialist with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's government, said the polio campaign must restart as soon as it is safe to do so.

The current number of cases we have is much more compared to previous years, he said. We fear that this number will go up as the polio drive is halted due to the coronavirus situation.

Jan said all polio-eradication programs have been suspended until May 31.

We don't see a chance for an effective countrywide anti-polio campaign until June, he said. A wide-ranging campaign is urgently needed.

Change Of Duties

Pakistan employed tens of thousands of health workers who went door-to-door to administer anti-polio drops and educate communities that were reluctant to immunize their children.

Now, those same workers are helping a national effort to stem the spread of the coronavirus.

My duty has now been changed to tracking coronavirus cases, said Shakeel Khan, 33, a polio worker in the northwestern Khyber tribal district.

We are monitoring people to see if they show symptoms of the coronavirus, he said. We monitor who comes into the district. We are meeting local mullahs and tribal elders to advise them about physical distancing and how they can reduce the chances of being infected.

But Pakistans redeployment of health workers to fight the coronavirus could come at a cost.

Ten polio cases have been recorded since the coronavirus outbreak in March, said Khan.

Polio cases have already increased since the coronavirus outbreak, he said. It will keep increasing in the next two to three months if the polio campaign does not restart.

Long Struggle

The coronavirus is only the latest obstacle keeping Pakistan from eliminating polio.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is a poor and religiously conservative region that was once a stronghold of militant groups like Al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban.

Many residents of the province, which lies along the porous border with Afghanistan, have been suspicious of the polio vaccine, with conservative Islamic clerics and militants claiming it is a Western conspiracy to harm or sterilize children.

In April 2019, a vaccination drive in the province was thwarted after a mass panic was created by rumors of children fainting or vomiting after they were immunized.

As the rumors spread, thousands of panicked parents rushed their children to hospitals in the provincial capital, Peshawar, forcing the health facilities to declare emergencies. The rumors turned out to be wildly exaggerated.

Public-health studies in Pakistan have shown that maternal illiteracy and low parental knowledge about vaccines -- together with poverty and rural residency -- are the factors that most commonly influence whether parents vaccinate their children against the polio virus.

Anti-vaccination propaganda has also been fueled by a distrust of Western governments who fund vaccine programs, including after the CIA reportedly staged a fake hepatitis-vaccination campaign in 2011 to confirm the location of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden -- living in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad -- where he was killed by U.S. SEALs.

Since then, some clerics have even issued fatwas saying that children who become paralyzed or die from polio are "martyrs" because they refused to be tricked by a "Western conspiracy."

Pakistani militants have also propagandized that Western-made vaccines contain pig fat or alcohol, which are both forbidden in Islam.

Militants in Pakistan have kidnapped, beaten, and assassinated dozens of vaccinators or their armed police escorts in recent years in a bid to stop local anti-polio campaigns.
We are investigating the circumstances that led to her death so definitely there are questions investigators will need to find out and he is one of those that need to answer some of those questions; that is why he has been invited and some few others who were there.'' Bala said
Prime Minister Narendra on Sunday led the nation in paying rich tribute to five security personnel, including a decorated colonel, who were killed in an anti-terror operation in Handwara area of North Kashmir.

"Tributes to our courageous soldiers and security personnel martyred in Handwara. Their valour and sacrifice will never be forgotten. They served the nation with utmost dedication and worked tirelessly to protect our citizens. Condolences to their families and friends," Modi said in a tweet.

In his reaction, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh termed the killing of the Army personnel "deeply disturbing and painful"



Col Ashutosh Sharma, a decorated Armyman who was the commanding officer of the 21 Rashtriya Rifles battalion, was among the five security personnel killed in the encounter late on Saturday night. Col Sharma was part of a number of successful counter-terrorism operations in Kashmir.

The other personnel killed in the encounter are Major Anuj Sood, Naik Rakesh Kumar, Lance Naik Dinesh Singh and Sub Inspector of Jammu and Kashmir Police Shakeel Qazi, officials said.

Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat, paying tribute to the deceased personnel, said the operation in Handwara highlighted the determination of the security forces to safeguard the lives of the people of Kashmir.

The operation was launched following inputs that a number of civilians were being held hostage in a house in Chanjmulla locality of Handwara. Two terrorists were killed in the operation, according to Army officials.

"The loss of our soldiers and security personnel in Handwara (J&K) is deeply disturbing and painful. They showed exemplary courage in their fight against the terrorists and made supreme sacrifice while serving the country. We will never forget their bravery and sacrifice," the defence minister tweeted.

"I offer my tributes to the soldiers and security personnel who fell in action. My heart goes out to the families who lost their loved ones today. India stands shoulder to shoulder with the families of these brave martyrs," Singh said.

The Army said the armed forces are proud of the courage of the personnel as they have "successfully eliminated" the terrorists.

In a tweet, the Army said Chief of Army Staff General M M Naravane and all ranks of the force paid tribute to the "valiant braves of our Army and J&K Police for their supreme sacrifice while fighting and eliminating terrorists in Handwara."



BJP President J P Nadda also condoled the death of the security personnel.

"Received the sad of our soldiers making the supreme sacrifice in an encounter with terrorists in Handwara in Jammu and Kashmir. I bow to the martyrs and pray for peace to their souls. May God give their grieving families the strength to bear the loss," Nadda tweeted.

Other BJP leaders also paid tribute to the fallen soldiers, with party general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya asserting that government will give a befitting response to this cowardly attack by terrorists.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
There's a new phrase emerging: 'Safer at Home'

Americans across the country are beginning to heed the warning of "safer at home" over "stay at home" as states begin to ease social distancing restrictions. At the height of restrictions in late March and early April, more than 310 million Americans were under various stay-at-home directives. But as businesses, beaches and parks begin to reopen, hints of normalcy are emerging. Still, leaders warn that restrictions could come back if coronavirus cases spike. There are more than 1.1 million confirmed cases of coronavirus in the United States, as of Sunday, with the death toll surpassing 67,000.

Not every reopening has gone smoothly. California authorities pleaded for beachgoers to follow social distancing rules this weekend after Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday temporarily shuttered Orange Countys coastline, a move he said was prompted by overcrowded beaches last weekend. But some aren't too happy about it. In Huntington Beach, police estimated 2,500 to 3,000 protesters gathered for May Day on a beachside street.

Demonstrators gather at Huntington beach to protest the state's stay-at-home order amid the coronavirus pandemic, on May 1, 2020 in California.

Coronavirus treatment drug to arrive in hospitals this week

Remdesivir, the first possible treatment for battling COVID-19, will become available for U.S. hospitals in the coming week. Daniel O'Day, CEO and chairman of Gilead Sciences, says his company aims to have more than 140,000 treatment courses by the end of May, more than 500,000 by October and more than 1 million by December. Early results from a global study conducted by the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases found patients given the experimental drug recovered faster and may be less likely to die. While not a "knockout," White House coronavirus task force chief Dr. Anthony Fauci said the study results were "a very important proof of concept."

Story continues

'Death is our greeter': Doctors, nurses struggle with mental health as coronavirus cases grow.

Lockdowns begin to lift globally

Spaniards flocked to the streets and parks Saturday, ending seven weeks of a strict coronavirus lockdown. Spanish authorities remained cautious, keeping beaches closed and requiring face masks on public transportation. Some small businesses will reopen Monday on a limited basis. Italy will begin lifting its nationwide lockdown Monday by allowing some key businesses  primarily construction and manufacturing  to reopen under strict social distancing rules. Meanwhile in France, kindergartens and primary and secondary schools will reopen May 11, followed by cafes, restaurants and bars.

A man takes a selfie photo with healthcare workers in protective suits at the Hospital del Mar in Barcelona, encouraging people who exercise outside, early on May 2, 2020, during the hours allowed by the government to exercise, for the first time since the beginning of a national lockdown to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 disease.

Income and race create different COVID-19 realities

An exclusive look at ZIP code data show the coronavirus has run rampant through some neighborhoods, while leaving residents in adjoining areas much less impaired. In the poorest neighborhoods, where median household income is less than $35,000, the COVID-19 infection rate was twice as high as in the nations wealthiest ZIPs. Infection rates were five times higher in majority-minority ZIP codes than in ZIPs with less than 10% nonwhite population.

Real quick

Joe Biden, DNC chair address Tara Reade's sexual assault allegation

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez on Sunday dismissed calls to launch an investigation into Joe Biden, saying the former vice president was already an "open book." Tara Reade, a former Biden Senate staffer, has alleged that Biden sexually assaulted her 1993. The Democratic presidential candidate denied the accusations publicly for the first time Friday: "No, it is not true. I'm saying unequivocally it did not happen," he said. Political experts say Reade's allegation could complicate Biden's support among two crucial voting blocs  liberals who backed U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders in the primary and independent women in suburbs.

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks at the 2019 Democratic women's leadership forum, Oct. 17, 2019, in Washington.

'Murder Hornets' spotted in the US

A small number of Asian giant hornet sightings in the Pacific Northwest has raised alarms for its killer nickname: "Murder Hornet." While experts have been tracking the invasive species in the U.S. for months, a New York Times feature published Saturday brought the nickname to the national consciousness. hile officials are concerned  especially for local honeybee populations  the danger to the average person is low at this time, said Washington State Department of Agriculture entomologist Chris Looney.

P.S. Like this round up of stories? We send it to inboxes every afternoon. Sign up for "The Short List" newsletter here.

This is a compilation of stories from across the USA TODAY Network. Contributing: Associated Press.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Coronavirus, states reopen 'safer at home,' Joe Biden allegation, murder hornets: The weekend's biggest news
Earlier today, I showed that New York state, the two other states that surround New York City, and nursing homes in the rest of America probably account for around two-thirds of the U.S. coronavirus death total. A focus on New York and nursing homes yields a common denominator: Andrew Cuomo.

Cuomo is governor of the state that accounts for about 37 percent of U.S. coronavirus deaths. This statistic by itself isnt enough to condemn him. Nor are imperfections in the states response to the pandemic, although if youre a Democrat, imperfections in the U.S. response are enough to condemn President Trump.

But consider this: Cuomo did not put New York on lockdown until March 20. This was three days after the Trump administration issued its guidelines for slowing the spread of the coronavirus. It was just a few days before states with much less to fear from the virus (e.g., Illinois, Ohio, and New Mexico) locked down. If the Trump administration was laggardly, as critics claim, Cuomo was worse.

Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and former commissioner of the citys Health Department, says that if the state and city had adopted widespread social-distancing measures a week or two earlier, including closing schools, stores, and restaurants, the estimated death toll from the outbreak might have been reduced by 50 to 80 percent. Instead, New York mandated those measures after localities in states including California and Washington had done so.

Cuomo was clueless about this virus even as late as the beginning of March. On March 2, he declared:

This isnt our first rodeo. We are fully coordinated, and we are fully mobilized, and we are fully prepared to deal with the situation as it develops.

The governor assured New York residents that the general risk in the state remains low.

A few weeks later, Cuomo was frantically looking for ventilators and hysterically attacking the Trump administration for not supplying enough of them. Trump got Cuomo the ventilators he said were desperately needed, and Cuomo ended up with a large surplus of them.

In an article summarizing the shortcomings of the states response to the pandemic, as well as New York Citys, the New York Times concludes, the initial efforts by New York officials to stem the outbreak were hampered by their own confused guidance, unheeded warnings, delayed decisions and political infighting.

Cuomos most egregious error was his approach to nursing homes, which are, in a real sense, the epicenter of this pandemic. On March 25, after Cuomo issued the lockdown order, the New York State Department of Health ordered that nursing homes and rehabilitation centers admit and readmit patients sick with the coronavirus. The first sentence of the order stated:

No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19.

The criminal stupidity continued in the next sentence, which said that nursing homes are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission.

Thus did Cuomo stand up for the right of those infected with the coronavirus to infect the population most vulnerable to this disease in a setting known to be extremely conducive to spreading infections.

Furthermore, according to Michael Goodwin, Team Cuomo issued the order without notice that it was coming. This left facilities with no time to establish protective procedures and protocols or to obtain protective equipment. There was no planning, no thought process to give us time to identify buildings and establish units, one industry executive complained.

Predictably, the consequences have been devastating. The 705-bed Isabella Geriatric Center in Manhattan has reported 98 resident deaths believed to be linked to COVID-19. It has had to store bodies in a refrigerator truck because overwhelmed funeral homes could not pick them up for days.

Similarly, a nursing facility in the Cobble Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn reported that at least 55 residents had died from the novel coronavirus. The CEO of that facility told state officials on April 9 he couldnt handle the flood of infected patients and specifically asked about using the Javits and Comfort instead. Reportedly, the request was turned down, even though both facilities were caring for only a fraction of those they had the capacity to treat.

How has Cuomo defended his record? He initially denied knowing about the crucial order issued by his own Department of Health in connection with this pandemic, the biggest crisis he has had to deal with as governor.

He later took to defending the order, and claimed that it wasnt our job to provide nursing homes with the items they needed to cope with the consequences of his order. Then, he vowed to investigate nursing homes and threatened to take away their licenses.

Anything to deflect attention from Cuomos own scandalous behavior and to cover his ass.

New York and nursing homes are the epicenter of this pandemic. Cuomos incompetence and stupidity are at the center of both disasters.
The Bank Holiday this Friday will be quite different from the day envisaged. Presumably those plans involved ceremonies and fly-pasts, street parties and solemn tributes.

Yet perhaps a more pensive, solitary recognition of past generations' sacrifice was always the more appropriate course.

History has taught us that wars never really cease when the antagonists agree on a ceasefire.

In Europe, as Churchill predicted, a Cold War began in the embers of World War II that redrew borders and divided nations. Britons celebrated a peace in Europe on VE day, but often in a muted way.

British literary expert Patricia Nicol shared a selection of books focusing on war including Kate Atkinson's Life After Life (left) and Victoria Hislop's Those Who Are Loved (right)

Nella Last, the wartime Mass Observation diarist, portrayed so movingly by the late Victoria Wood in Housewife 49, recorded feeling curiously flat when the announcement came, contrasting that with 'the wild mafficking' of the end of the Boer War or the 1918 Armistice.

Her diary entry for May 7, 1945, published in the riveting Nella Last's War, recognises the beginning of the end, but recounts: 'We felt no uplift . . . emotion is drained out of us  sapped day by day, by news of events and by happenings.'

Although many had died and been injured and some did not make it home for months, even years, we were lucky in the UK to have peace.

Some European countries, such as Greece, descended into bitter civil war, following occupation and liberation. Victoria Hislop's most recent novel, Those Who Are Loved, explores that country's convulsive mid-20th century through the experiences of its heroine, Themis.

Kate Atkinson's Life After Life imagines many possible life scenarios for its heroine, Ursula Todd. In one timeline, she experiences the Blitz, but in another she marries a German and so witnesses the defeat and brutal Soviet occupation of Berlin.

In the four weeks to April 17, more Londoners died of Covid-19 than during the worst four-week period during the Blitz.

But this Friday, the lesson to take from our shared history is that this too will pass.
Hailing the role of press in a



democracy, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Sunday urged media persons to work fearlessly.

Taking to Twitter, on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day, the CM said she respected journalists for their contribution to the society.

Banerjee iterated that her government was providing a health insurance cover of Rs 10 lakh for frontline COVID-19 workers, including scribes.

"Our Govt in #Bangla has also announced health insurance with up to 10 lakh coverage for frontline COVID workers, including journalists #PressFreedomDay," she tweeted.

"Press is the fourth pillar in a democracy and must perform its duties fearlessly. We respect journalists for their contribution to society," Banerjee added.

The United Nations General Assembly has declared May 3 as World Press Freedom Day or just World Press Day to remind governments the need to respect their commitment to press freedom. May 3 also marks the anniversary of the Windhoek Declaration, a statement of free press principles put together by African newspaper journalists in Windhoek in 1991.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
What US President Donald Trump says and does often flies in the face of mainstream science. Coronavirus and the idea of injecting disinfectants is only the latest episode.

When a rare solar eclipse happened in 2017, astronomers and eye doctors repeatedly warned people not to stare directly at the sun without protection. Photos show Mr Trump did anyway. He later donned protective glasses.

For decades, scientists have called climate change a pressing issue, pointing to data, physics and chemistry. Mr Trump regularly called it a hoax until recently.

He claims that noise from wind turbines  which he refers to as windmills  causes cancer, which is not accurate.

And he has said that exercise will deplete the finite amount of energy a body has, while doctors tell people that exercise is critical to good health.

When Mr Trump wanted to defend his warning that Alabama was threatened by Hurricane Dorian last year, he displayed an official weather map that had been altered with a marker to extend the danger areas.

Alabama National Weather Service meteorologists were chastised by their agency chief when they issued tweets to reassure worried residents that they were not in the path of the hurricane.

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump wear protective glasses as they view the solar eclipse at the White House (Andrew Harnik/AP)

On Thursday, Mr Trump raised the idea of injections of disinfectant to fight the coronavirus, which health officials warned would be dangerous.

The president later claimed he was being sarcastic, although the transcript of his remarks suggests otherwise.

Mr Trump also suggested that ultraviolet light, even internal light, could be a possible preventative measure, contrary to scientific advice.

On Friday, as the recorded US death toll passed the 50,000 mark, the Food and Drug Administration issued an alert about the dangers of using a malaria drug that Mr Trump has repeatedly promoted for coronavirus patients.

Asked what kind of grade he would give the president on science, M Granger Morgan, a Carnegie Mellon University engineering and policy professor who has advised both Democratic and Republican administrations, answered with a quick F.

Story continues

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu, who was energy secretary in the Obama administration, said of Mr Trump: When he starts to air things like that (injection), its definitely a danger to the public because some people might actually do that. This isnt science. This is something else.

Our president certainly has high confidence in his beliefs, added Mr Chu, chairman of the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the worlds largest general scientific society. Scientists always test their beliefs all the time. Thats part of the fabric of science.

Sudip Parikh, a biochemist who is chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said Mr Trump seems to put science, medicine and controlled studies on equal footing with rumour and anecdotes.

Mixing those two up when talking to the public is terrible for communication and muddles and confuses the public, said Mr Parikh.

White House spokesman Judd Deere said any suggestion that the president does not value scientific data or the important work of scientists throughout his time in office is patently false.

He pointed to data-driven decisions on Covid-19, such as limiting travel from highly infected areas, expediting vaccine development and issuing social distancing guidance to slow the spread of the virus.

Mr Deere pointed to Mr Trump saying on Thursday: My administration has partnered with leading technology companies and scientific journals to create a database of 52,000 scholarly articles on the virus that can be analysed by artificial intelligence.

Presidents of both parties often put politics before science, and Mr Trump is not unusual there, Prof Morgan said. But this administration has regularly contradicted science and doctors.

Weve seen daily statements that run counter to reality, and science is about physical reality, he said. Science matters.

Donald Trump claimed he was being sarcastic after raising the idea of injections of disinfectant to fight the coronavirus (Evan Vucci/AP)

Both Prof Morgan and Mr Chu said Thursdays ultraviolet and disinfectant comments could end up harming people who do not listen to doctors.

They pointed to a case in Arizona where a couple misinterpreted Mr Trumps promotion of a malaria drug and wrongly used related chemicals; one of them died.

Fridays FDA warning was issued because of reports of dangerous side-effects and deaths from the use of the malaria drugs in test treatments.

Gretchen Goldman, research director for the Union of Concerned Scientists Centre for Science and Democracy, said the actions of Mr Trump and his administration have ignored science, censored science, manipulated science across agencies.

Its a different beef than weve seen in past administrations, she said. This administration, theres a lot of disinterest and disrespect for science and the process.

Her advocacy group listed 130 attacks on science.

Ms Goldman published a survey this week in the peer-reviewed science journal PLOS One that she and colleagues made of 3,700 federal scientists.

Half of them said political interests hinder their agencies from making science-based decisions. One in five reported political interference or censorship of some kind either from political appointees in their own agency or in the White House.

Ms Goldman said the survey, carried out in 2018 before the coronavirus outbreak, found that the highest level of scientists claiming White House interference was in the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

Meteorologist Ryan Maue, a conservative scholar, said that on policy, he and other conservatives like Mr Trumps agenda of deregulation, including pulling out of the United Nations Paris climate agreement.

He pointed to increased funding of Nasa and its return to the moon mission as pro-science, and added that the weather service is improving its forecast models.

But when it comes to communicating science, the president is a mess, Maue said. Hes trying to be funny and folksy and it doesnt work and the media is eating that stuff up alive. And I think thats fair.
The airport's quarantine team carried out medical checkups on passengers and the disinfection and sterilisation of their luggage

A special flight operated by EgyptAir to repatriate 339 Egyptians from Washington amid the coronavirus pandemic landed in Egypts Marsa Alam on Sunday, state-run MENA agency reported.

An informed source at the airport said in statements to MENA that the airport's quarantine team carried out medical checkups on passengers and the disinfection and sterilisation of their luggage.

Upon their arrival, the passengers checked in at a hotel in Marsa Alam selected by authorities where they will spend 14 days in quarantine.

The government is requiring returnees to sign before boarding their flights a written acknowledgement that they agree to be quarantined.

The repatriated Egyptians will bear the cost of the hotel quarantine, estimated at a minimum of EGP 10,500 ($666.7), despite a previous decision by the state to cover the cost of the stay.

Egypt began repatriating its citizens in March, bringing back hundreds of its nationals stranded in various countries due to the pandemic.

The country is keeping its airspace open to inbound charter and special flights to transport outbound passengers, and to cargo and domestic flights, during the suspension of air traffic that has been in place since mid-March.

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi stressed in earlier statements that Egypt is committed to repatriating an estimated 3,500 Egyptians stranded abroad at the earliest opportunity.

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In the biggest loss in recent years, two senior Army officers, including a colonel, were among five security personnel killed during an encounter with terrorists in north Kashmir, officials said on Sunday.

The encounter in Handwara in Kupwara district claimed the lives of Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, Major Anuj Sood, Naik Rajesh and Lance Naik Dinesh, all from the Brigade of the Guards regiment, and at present part of the 21 Rashtriya Rifles and deployed to counter terrorism in the hinterland.

A Jammu and Kashmir Police Sub-Inspector, Sageer Ahmad Pathan alias Qazi, also fell victim to the bullets of terrorists. Earlier his name was given by police as Shakeel Qazi.

Before this, the Army had lost two colonel-ranking officer in separate terror incidents in 2015.

Giving details of the encounter at a village in Rajwar forests, officials said the two holed-up terrorists, who were eliminated in the encounter, included commander of banned Lashker-e-Taiba Haider, a Pakistani national who has been active in the north Kashmir area. The identity of the other was yet to be ascertained.

They had held some civilians hostage, the officials said, adding that a couple of terrorists could have managed to give security forces the slip under the cover of darkness as well. A hunt has been launched in the entire area.

Director General of Jammu and Kashmir Police Dilbagh Singh said, "Sad to inform that five brave personnel including Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, Major Anuj Sood and sub-inspector of JKP Shakeel Qazi were martyred in the line of duty."



Security forces had noticed presence of some terrorists in the Rajwar forests in the Handwara area for the past few days and a brief exchange of fire had taken place on Thursday deep inside the jungles.

Around Saturday afternoon, intelligence inputs indicated presence of the same group of terrorists inside a house at Changimulla village, prompting Col Sharma to launch a cordon-and-search operation along with his team and Qazi.

After a considerable lull, Col Sharma and four other personnel barged into a house from an adjacent cowshed presuming that the terrorists had been eliminated in the heavy gunfire.

According to the officials, the team came under heavy fire after rescuing the civilians and all communication link with Col Sharma and his team were snapped. Calls made on the mobile numbers of the team were answered by terrorists.

The Army then rushed in para-troopers, who after ascertaining that the Army officer and his team were killed in the encounter, launched an offensive by the first light of the day and killed the two terrorists.

On conclusion of the operations, the house was searched early this morning and bodies of two terrorists eliminated in the encounter were recovered along with arms and ammunition.

President Ram Nath Kovind, who is also the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, paid tributes to the soldiers and security personnel and said "...a grateful nation will always remember their supreme sacrifice. The entire country stands united in the fight against the forces of terror and evil. Thoughts and prayers with the families of martyrs."



Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, "Their valour and sacrifice will never be forgotten. They served the nation with utmost dedication and worked tirelessly to protect our citizens. Condolences to their families and friends."Defence Minister Rajnath Singh described it as "deeply disturbing and painful".

Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat said the anti-terror operation highlighted the determination of the security forces to safeguard the lives of the people of Kashmir.

The Army, in a tweet, said Chief of Army Staff General M M Naravane and all ranks of the force paid tributes to the "valiant braves of our Army and JK Police for their supreme sacrifice while fighting and eliminating terrorists in Handwara."



The death of Col Sharma and Major Sood, both from 21-RR, was a sad reminder of a similar incident two decades back when Commanding Officer of the batallion Colonel Rajinder Chauhan was killed by terrorists along with Brig B S Shergil in 2000.

The death of a colonel-rank officer was seen in the valley after five years. In 2015, the Army had lost two colonels in a year in Kashmir.

Colonel M N Rai of 2/9 Gorkha Rifles, was the CO of 42 RR and laid down his life for the country while fighting militants in Tral in south Kashmir in January 2015.

The same year, Col Santosh Mahadik was killed in an encounter in Kupwara.

On the latest operation, the Army said that based on the intelligence input that terrorists were taking hostage some civilians in a house, a joint operation was launched by the Army and the JK Police.

A team comprising five Army and police personnel entered the target area occupied by the terrorists to evacuate the civilians and successfully extricated them.

However, during the process, the team came under a heavy volume of fire by the terrorists and in the ensuing firefight the five personnel were killed, the Army said.

The terrorists are believed to have come to Handwara to receive an infiltrating group from Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, officials said.

A wreath-laying ceremony would be held tomorrow in Srinagar after which the bodies would be flown to their native places where they will be cremated keeping the coronavirus safety protocols in mind.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Melbourne real estate agents face an uphill battle selling property under COVID-19 conditions but claim theres still interest if sellers are motivated.

Developer John Woodman, the prolific political donor and planner at the centre of a corruption probe into dodgy planning decisions at Casey Council, could be one of the lucky ones. Mornington Peninsula agents have secured $4 million selling the Flinders estate and hobby vineyard controlled by a company linked to Woodman and his son, Heath.

Documents relating to the sale list Malvern-based executive Susan Chadwick as the buyer.

Its been almost six weeks since the Independent Broad-based anti-Corruption Commission put its probe into Casey Council on ice as it waits out the COVID-19 threat. In IBAC hearings at the end of 2019, commissioners heard Woodman had allegedly paid councillors Sam Aziz and Geoff Ablett more than $1.2 million in allegedly corrupt payments in a bid for favourable planning decisions.

It was in early March when The Age revealed Woodman was trying to raise more than $6 million by offloading waterfront and beachside properties held by companies that he controlled or owned. All this was happening as the corruption watchdog circled. Others mentioned in the hearings, including Aziz, have had their assets frozen.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Hospitals in New York State will be required to have a 90 day supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) to prepare for a potential outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) in the fall, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said during a press conference on Sunday.

The state Department of Health (DOH) will require every hospital -- both public and private -- to build a supply of PPE that could last at least 90 days during another surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations.

The requirement comes a month after the governor called on the private and public hospitals to work together to combat the coronavirus pandemic as hospitals were getting overwhelmed with COVID-19 hospitalizations. Cuomo said at the end of March that it was an all hands on deck situation, and under normal operating procedures, public and private hospitals operate as two systems with very little interaction.

That had never been done," Cuomo said, when it comes to public and private hospitals working together. "We did this all basically on the fly and we put together a de facto public health system. But it was a lot to do on the fly and we need to institutionalize these lessons.

*** CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF CORONAVIRUS IN NEW YORK ***

He said it is important to learn from what happened when there was a PPE shortage in New York, as well as across the country -- which led to the new state requirement he announced Sunday.

Were going to put in a state requirement now that every hospital has to have a 90 day supply, stockpile, their own stockpile, of all the PPE equipment that they could need for a 90 day supply at the rate of usage we saw with this COVID virus, he said. So every hospital has to have a 90 days supply. We can;t go through this day-to-day moving masks all across the state, this mad scramble that we were in and still are in, in many ways.

As a nation, Cuomo said we cannot go through trying to secure PPE the same way again -- as there was competition among states and private entities to purchase PPE. Due to the limited supply of equipment and competition among the states and private entities, it drove up the prices of PPE and other items.

Cuomo also announced the launch of a consortium among seven Northeast states, including New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Delaware, and Massachusetts. The consortium will jointly procure PPE, tests, ventilators, and other medical equipment.

Were going to form a consortium with our seven Northeast partner states, which buy about $5 billion worth of equipment and supplies," Cuomo said on Sunday. That will then increase our market power when were buying and we will buy as a consortium, [and] price as a consortium...

It will make the consortium more competitive in the market place while saving taxpayers money. It will also help states actually get the equipment at a better price, Cuomo said.

The consortium will identify regional PPE and equipment needs, identify and avoid irresponsible vendors, and will buy items in America. It will identify American, regional and in-state supplies that can meet PPE and equipment demand over the next three months.

Cuomo said it is an important relationship to have with neighboring states as they plan for a regional reopening.

CORONAVIRUS IN NEW YORK

According to Cuomo, the total hospitalization rate is down below 10,000 -- at 9,786 hospitalizations. The number of intubations has also decreased, he said Sunday. The number of new coronavirus cases in New York is 789.

As of May 2, 290 people in New York State died due to the coronavirus -- down from 299 on May 1.

45 Photos of the pandemic in NYC: Our lives changed forever

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Slamming Pakistan's continued support to terrorism, Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat, on Sunday, said that Pakistan was putting all its effort in infiltrating into Indian soil, in conversation with Republic TV. He added that Pakistan was frustrated with peace in the valley and hence was renewing its infiltration attempts. Expressing confidence in the Indian Army's ability, he said that Pakistan will be soon exposed with respect to terrorism.

CDS Rawat: 'Pakistan frustrated with peace in Pakistan'

"Pakistan continues to extend support to terrorists. All efforts are made to train them, to infiltrate, and carry out violence in the state of Jammu & Kashmir. I think they are frustrated with the peace they are witnessing in J&K. We had prepared for this. Whenever they see peace returning in Jammu & Kashmir, they will attempt excessive infiltration as they have to always tell people of Jammu & Kashmir - 'we support you'. India will expose them soon as far as terrorism is concerned," he said.

Coronavirus Live Updates: India case count breaches 40,000-mark ahead of Lockdown 3.0

Talking about the martyrdom of 5 Indian soldiers in the Handwara encounter, earlier in the day, he said that they had upheld the true value of the Armed forces and succeeded in their mission. He added that the soldiers had stopped the two terrorists from infiltrating and carrying out violence in Jammu and Kashmir. He also expressed his condolences to the bereaved families and lauded the Bravehearts.

5 personnel including Army Colonel, Major martyred in Handwara; Raksha Mantri pays tribute

CDS pays tribute to Handwara martyrs

"Today's operation has been a sad operation - soldiers have laid their lives from the Indian Army and police forces. These five brave soldiers carried out their duty and ensured that the terrorists who had infiltrated do not carry out violence among the civilian population near Handwara. They have successfully completed their mission, but in the bargain, we have lost a commanding officer, one field officer, two more jawans, and a police inspector," he said.

He added, "I would like to use this opportunity to commend their bravery and express condolences to their families, upholding the true tradition of the Armed forces. They have maintained the peace in Jammu & Kashmir so that the people can benefit from what the government is doing for them".

Handwara encounter: PM Modi pays tribute to martyrs, hails their valour & sacrifice

Counter-terror operation in Handwara

A team comprising of five Army and JK Police personnel entered the target area in Jammu Kashmir's Handwara occupied by the terrorists to evacuate the civilians taken hostage in a house in Changimul, Handwara, the Army said. Two terrorists were eliminated and the team of five security forces personnel comprising of two Army officers, two Army soldiers and one JK Police Sub Inspector attained martyrdom. Top Lashkar-e Taiba commander Haider from Pakistan has been killed in Handwara encounter.

Handwara Encounter: Prez Kovind pays tribute to martyrs; remembers their supreme sacrifice
The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) say students' mental health is being affected by pre-paid rents not being refunded.

The USI and local Students Unions called on individual colleges at the start of the pandemic to refund students who had moved out of university-operated student accommodation. Most colleges and universities agreed to provide refunds.

However, a number of private landlords and the University of Limerick have not given them money back for accommodation that was paid upfront, despite the majority of units lying empty since mid-March.

The USI has said that many students are worried they may not be able to afford college next year and are extremely stressed due to the lack of refunds for accommodation they now cannot use.

USI President, Lorna Fitzpatrick's calling on them to rethink the decision.

Ms Fitzpatrick said: "University-owned accommodation has issued refunds, all bar University of Limerick who haven't issued refunds to their students.

"But, I suppose this is an issue that is affecting students across the board, across the island really, because there are a lot of students living in private accommodation, in private purpose-built student accommodation in every town and city where there is an institution and a university."

She called for a national response to this and has said all students should be treated equally regardless of whether they were living in private or college-run accommodation or what third level institution they attend.

She said: You could have a family where one sibling goes to NUI Maynooth, while another is studying in UL, but are both back home caring for family members.

"In that case one will have gotten a full refund, while the UL student has had no refund.

"Its very unfair and we are calling for every student to be treated the same and every organisation that has been paid rent for accommodation that cannot now be used, to give full refunds.

Orla, a student in St Angelas College told USI: Having to pay over 1,000 for accommodation that I cant be in is very upsetting and challenging.

"Now I have to start paying a deposit for next years accommodation not knowing if Ill be able to afford it. My usual summer job doesnt look like it will be operating as normal and so Ill have no income.

"I dont qualify for the Covid payment as I was not working prior to the date in February. My parents pay has been cut  this time is a very big struggle financially and mentally.
Shostakovich: Symphony No 11 The Year 1905

BBC Philharmonic, conducted by John Storgards Chandos, out now

Rating:

Shostakovichs 11th Symphony here receives a performance of exceptional eloquence from the Manchester-based BBC Philharmonic under their chief guest conductor, the Finn John Storgards.

The Chandos recording is typically vivid and wide-ranging, and this album surely goes to the top of the list for those wanting to acquaint themselves with one of Shostakovichs most mysterious utterances.

At one level, of course, the 11th, written in 1957, is anything but mysterious. Indeed, so accessible is it, its often thought of as a film score without the film. The symphony depicts events outside the Tsars Palace in January 1905 when a large and peaceful group of peasants  singing hymns and carrying pictures of the Tsar, to whom they were appealing for help  were cut down in substantial numbers by his soldiery.

Shostakovichs 11th Symphony here receives a performance of exceptional eloquence from the BBC Philharmonic under their chief guest conductor, the Finn John Storgards (above)

How this Bloody Sunday style event was retold in the years immediately after it, with inevitable exaggerations about its scale, did much to undermine the Tsars standing, and precipitate the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

But what does this vividly memorable symphony actually mean? Is it a conformist piece of musical agit-prop, full of revolutionary songs? Or is it something very different?

Is it, as many now suggest, Shostakovich using a massacre of the innocents by a former Russian government to pass his own judgments on another Russian government brutally suppressing the Hungarian uprising of 1956?

Shostakovich is, of course, to echo Churchills saying about Russia itself, A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. Persecuted to within an inch of his sanity and freedom by Stalin, Shostakovich knew how to cover his tracks.

On occasions, he was outwardly conformist and inwardly rebellious; he wrote music to be played immediately, and other more profound stuff for the drawer, to be brought out only when it was safe to do so.

Personally, I think Shostakovich was so relieved at Khrushchev denouncing Stalin and all his works in 1956, he probably did think it was time to conform a bit. Many will strongly disagree.

Anyway, what we are left with is a powerful statement, brilliantly orchestrated, and, in its brazen, populist way, totally memorable.

Whether you like it or not, this symphony is a remarkable piece; no mystery at all about that.
MUSKEGON, MI -- Muskegon County reported three more cases of COVID-19 and no related deaths Sunday, May 3.

The latest daily increase brings the county to a total of 304 reported cases and 17 deaths, according to data posted by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

The daily increase is the lowest since April 12, when the county reported only two new cases.

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State health officials on Sunday reported that Michigan has 43,754 total confirmed cases and 4,049 deaths.

Related: Michigan reports 29 new coronavirus deaths; 547 new cases

Of all the tests conducted in Muskegon County, about 15 percent of them have come back positive for the virus.

Black residents make up about 37 percent of coronavirus cases in Muskegon County, according to data provided by the county health department. Black residents account for about 14 percent of the countys population.

Fifty percent of all cases countywide are about distributed equally among the cities of Muskegon and Muskegon Heights, according to the data posted Saturday by county health officials.

Norton Shores has the third highest case count, with 16 percent of the countys cases.

The peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Muskegon County is expected around mid-May, Muskegon County Public Health Officer Kathy Moore previously told MLive.

COVID-19 PREVENTION TIPS

In addition to washing hands regularly and not touching your face, officials recommend practicing social distancing, assuming anyone may be carrying the virus.

Health officials say you should be staying at least 6 feet away from others and working from home, if possible.

Carry hand sanitizer with you and use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and when you go into places like stores.

Read all of MLives coverage on the coronavirus at mlive.com/coronavirus.

Additional information is available at Michigan.gov/Coronavirus and CDC.gov/Coronavirus.

READ MORE:

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In a conversation that mixed history with humour, billionaire financial guru Warren Buffett told investors that while the U.S. is dealing with an economic shut down that is in some ways unprecedented, the country will prevail.

The annual Berkshire Hathaway stockholders meeting, known as Woodstock for Capitalists, is typically a mecca for investors, with thousands of people travelling to Omaha, Neb., for a festive weekend centred around Buffetts ruminations on the economy, stock picks and other topics.

But like so many events, the annual pilgrimage was disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. Buffett, Berkshire Hathaways chair and CEO, dispensed his advice solely via live stream Saturday on Yahoo Finance alongside the companys vice-chair Greg Abel.

Though Buffett was unable to mingle with attendees, the Oracle of Omaha continued his tradition of presiding over an hours-long presentation and answering questions submitted by investors.

Berkshire has not been unscathed by the current economic crisis. The conglomerate reported a loss of $49.7 billion (U.S.) in the first quarter. Its operating earnings, however, ticked up to $5.8 billion as compared to $5.5 billion during the same period last year.

Our operating earnings will be less, considerably less, than if the virus hadnt come along, he said. It hurts some of our businesses a lot. Some of our businesses effectively have been shut down.

Berkshires businesses span the U.S. economy, from ice cream seller Dairy Queen to auto insurer Geico to battery-maker Duracell. And at a time when industries ranging from transportation to retail are struggling to stay afloat, Buffetts perspective on the marketplace has been of particularly keen interest.

Here were some of the key take-aways from Saturdays meeting.

Coronavirus and the economy

It may take years to fully understand all of the ramifications of the near-shuttering of the U.S. economy, actions that have led 30 million Americans to file jobless claims over a six-week period, and the nations gross domestic product to contract 4.8 per cent between January and March.

We do not know exactly what happens when you voluntarily shut down a substantial portion of your society, said Buffett, adding that in 2008 our economic train went off the tracks ... This time we just pulled the train off the tracks and put it on its siding.

But he is generally optimistic.

We may not know the answers to some very important questions for many years, he says, but never bet against America and that in my view is as true today at it was in 1789, and even was true during the Civil War and the depths of the Depression.

The stock market has gyrated in recent weeks, as oil prices have plunged and the airline industry and other major forces in the economy have seen business grind to a halt.

But Buffett says if you hold tight and own a range of stocks, preferably in the S&P 500, youll do fine.

If you owned the businesses that you liked prior to the virus arriving ... nobodys forcing you to sell, he said. Stocks have an enormous advantage and ... if you bet on America, and sustain that position for decades, youre going to do better than, in my view far better than, owning treasuries securities.

But borrowing to invest is not a good bet.

You never want to use borrowed money ... to buy into investments, and we run Berkshire that way, he said. Theres no reason to use borrowed money to participate in the American tailwind. But theres every other reason to participate.

Berkshire sold airline shares

After previously buying roughly 10 per cent of the four largest airlines, those shares were part of the $6 billion in securities Berkshire sold in April.

The companies we bought were well managed, he said. But given the dramatic slow down in travel as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, those airlines are now planning to borrow $10 billion to $12 billion each.

That takes away from the upside, he said, and I dont know whether two or three years from now, that as many people will fly as many passenger miles as they did last year ... The future is much less clear to me about how the business will turn out through absolutely no fault of the airlines themselves.

Theres been much speculation about when Buffett, 89, and his 96-year-old partner Charlie Munger will step down.

While the appointments of Abel and vice-chair Ajit Jain are said to be part of the companys planning for an eventual transition in leadership, changes at the top dont appear to be coming anytime soon.

I want to assure you, Charlie at 96 is really in fine shape, Buffett said in explaining why Munger wasnt in his typical spot by his side. It just didnt seem like a good idea to have him make the trip.

But Munger is utilizing Zoom to hold meetings daily. Hell be back next year, Buffett said.

Read more about:
People wearing face masks walk on a street in central Seoul, South Korea April 22, 2020.

HEO RAN/REUTERS

South Korea is one of the only countries in the world that has brought a major COVID-19 outbreak under control. It's not currently enforcing stay-at-home orders, and most businesses are open.

The country is relying on high-tech solutions  a government app tracks the location of new airport arrivals, and mandatory location tracking bracelets are given to people who break quarantine laws.

Korean health officials are also developing "smart city" tools to bolster existing networks of testing and contact tracing, but some privacy advocates are pushing back.

Beyond high-tech approaches, South Korea has also spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a more straightforward measure: Making COVID-19 tests widely available.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

In Seoul, South Korea, much of daily life has returned to normal despite the coronavirus pandemic  restaurants, shopping malls, and parks have been filled in recent weeks as the South Korean government started winding down social distancing measures.

It's one of the first countries in the world to bring a major COVID-19 outbreak under control. Cases in South Korea peaked at 909 on Feb. 28 and have gradually diminished since, and the current death toll from coronavirus is 236, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The country has controlled COVID-19 by rapidly scaling up testing as well as relying on other high-tech solutions: A government app tracks the location of all new visitors to the country; people who violate quarantine have to wear a location-tracking bracelet; "smart city" tech is being deployed to bolster contact tracing networks.

"We are in a lengthy tug of war with the coronavirus," Health Minister Park Neung-hoo told Reuters in April, adding that such measures may need to remain in place for months or years.

The success of Asia's fourth-largest economy could serve as a lesson to other countries, like the US. While there are clear differences between the two nations  for one, South Korea's single-payer healthcare system makes testing and treatment free for all citizens  the US is still in the process of scaling up testing and exploring how best to deploy contact tracing networks on a state-by-state basis.

Story continues

Here's a look at some of the cutting-edge technology being used to fight COVID-19 in South Korea.

A mandatory government-run smartphone app tracks the location of all new arrivals to the country.

An employee from a disinfection service company sanitizes a KTX train at Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, March 4, 2020.

Reuters

Roughly half of the new cases in South Korea in recent weeks came from oversees, according to Korean health authorities.

At Seoul's Incheon International Airport, the government has set up walk-through facilities that test anyone with symptoms for COVID-19, and follow up to ensure those without symptoms are tested within three days.

New arrivals also have to download a government smartphone app that tracks their location and asks them to report any symptoms, according to Reuters. Even those without symptoms are forced to self-quarantine for two weeks, after which the app displays a message saying they're allowed to delete the app from their phone.

The government plans to roll out location-tracking wristbands for people who violate quarantine orders.

People wait in line to buy face masks in front of a store at Dongseongro shopping district in Daegu on February 27, 2020.

JUNG YEON-JE/AFP via Getty Images

The Korean government announced plans to roll out location-tracking bracelets for people who break quarantine after reports of people tricking the government-mandated app by leaving their smartphones at home.

The wristbands would instantly alert authorities if people tamper with them or cut them off, according to the Associated Press.

However, the government softened its tone after human rights groups argued that the wristbands violate privacy rights, Reuters reported. Now, wristbands will only be given to patients who consent to wear them  but breaking quarantine is still a crime.

South Korea plans to use 'smart city' tech to bulk up its contact tracing networks.

A military vehicle disinfects a road to prevent the spread of coronavirus in Seoul, South Korea, March 4, 2020.

Reuters

South Korea has already started to build a "smart city" database to monitor traffic and pollution across cities. Now, that infrastructure will be used to track COVID-19, according to a Reuters report last week.

Health authorities will use CCTV footage, credit card transaction data, travel information, and location data to keep tabs on patients.

Using the smart city data bank combined with artificial intelligence, it would take an official roughly 10 minutes to figure out where a patient traveled over the course of the day, Reuters reports.

The government is also stockpiling infrared cameras to detect fevers, along with other medical equipment.

Medical members wearing protective gear guide drivers at a "drive-through" virus test facility in Goyang, north of Seoul, on February 29, 2020.

Getty Images

The South Korean government has devoted over $100 million to buy medical supplies and build isolation rooms as the fight against COVID-19 is expected to stretch into the coming months.

"We will have to step up our daily hygiene and disease prevention standards ... It will be a tedious battle, but we have to do this," Yoon Tae-ho, director general for public health policy at the health ministry told Reuters.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said on Saturday condemned the role of the Tamblighi Jamaat, which emerged as one of the biggest Covid-19 hotspots in the country. He also said that hiding a disease is definitely a crime.

Speaking to a television channel on Saturday, Adityanath said, To get a disease is not a crime but to hide a disease which is infectious is definitely a crime. And this crime has been done by those associated with the Tablighi Jamaat.

He also said that if those who attended the Jamaat congregation in Delhi last month had revealed about the disease, the state government would have controlled the coronavirus outbreak to a large extent.

The chief minister said that action would be taken against them for the crime that they have committed.

At least 16,500 people visited Jamaats headquarters in Nizamuddin between March 13 and 24, according to a Delhi police report that has been compiled after the biggest exercise the force has ever undertaken.

A Delhi government official, who did not wish to be named, said around 1,000 people from outside Delhi had come for the gathering.

Over the last four weeks, police have checked call details and the locations of all the 16,500 people and found that they had come in close contact with around 15,000. While some stayed at the markaz (centre), others left and visited different places of Delhi.

Tablighi Jamaat head Maulana Saad and six other functionaries of the group have been named in a First Information Report (FIR) for organising a religious gathering at the markaz despite restrictions on such congregations to check the Covid-19 spread.

The markaz has been linked to infections in at least 17 states and Union territories, according to Union health ministry data.
A few days ago, a video of Rajkot BJP MLA Arvind Raiyani spitting in a government run community kitchen had gone viral on social media, much to the disgust of netizens who lambasted him for the same.

In India, spitting is considered a punishable offence but that didn't really seem to matter to Raiyani who can be seen removing his mask before spitting in the middle of the kitchen - a kitchen which has been catering to the poor during the lockdown.

This led to an outrage on social media where people shamed the MLA for his actions. While some called it disgusting, others recommended that he should be punished for the same.

#DISGUSTING BJP MLA spits in government-run kitchen for poor in Rajkot - Ahmedabad Mirror https://t.co/T5iOWblAkM Niraj Bhatia (@bhatia_niraj23) May 2, 2020

Pls take strict action against this #BJP Leader @GujaratPolice , its national shame. BJP MLA spits in government-run kitchen for poor in Rajkot - Ahmedabad Mirror https://t.co/364v0AXMXM Nasir (@NasirMerra) May 2, 2020

@narendramodi Ahmedabad Mirror: BJP MLA spits in government-run kitchen for poor in Rajkot.https://t.co/P3Ugj2SulPWow... Double Standard. Others r booked for attempted murder, your guy is fined for 500 rs. At the very least he should b banned from politics for life Ravi S (@himymgot88) May 3, 2020

Realising that the video hadn't gone down well, Raiyani issued an apology and also paid a fine to the Rajkot Municipal Corporation. The fine for spitting in a public place is INR Rs. 500.

Speaking to ANI, the MLA said, "I spat in my property and not in government premises or road. However, I accept my mistake and I have paid Rs 500 as fine."
SACRAMENTO  Legislators return to the state Capitol on Monday for the first time in nearly two months, confronting an urgent need to deal with coronavirus legislation and a formidable budget deficit.

They must handle bills ranging from compensation for sick essential workers to planning for a November election thats likely to be done mostly by mail. They also must work with Gov. Gavin Newsom to address a shortfall that could total $35 billion.

And they dont have much time to get it all done. They must pass a balanced budget by June 15 or go without pay, and will have only a couple of months after that to consider other bills before the legislative session is scheduled to end.

Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon said he is resisting calls to focus only on coronavirus response. The Assembly returns Monday, while the Senate has extended its recess one more week.

There will be fewer bills, as members triage their legislative platforms and committee chairs pare hearing agendas. But California still faces problems that existed before the pandemic, Rendon said, including the lack of affordable housing, widespread homelessness, climate change and lack of access to clean water in some parts of the state.

The impacts of the coronavirus will be all-encompassing, however, including a budget process likely to extend to the end of the session in August as the Legislature deliberates cuts.

As a Democrat, I believe in an activist government. As a Democrat, I believe that government can help us solve problems, said Rendon, D-Lakewood (Los Angeles County). Californians need us more now than ever.

Here are the most pressing coronavirus-related problems the Legislature will confront:

Budget deficit: Lawmakers must immediately get to work on a multibillion-dollar deficit the pandemic has created. The surplus and rainy-day reserve that California built up in recent years will help, but wont eliminate the problem.

Newsom and lawmakers will probably have to abandon many progressive policy goals and pass a placeholder budget in June that continues current spending levels. Then, theyll have to start cutting.

Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, the San Diego Democrat who chairs the powerful Appropriations Committee, said legislators have been told to be selective in proposing bills.

Were got to be realistic about how we look at all the bills coming forward, she said. We said, Re-examine what youre sending, for a variety of reasons.

Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, said the pandemic has shifted the focus of the session from the legislative agenda to the budget, which she hopes can help those who have been devastated and hurt.

The budget is the single most important tool that we have in California to impact lives, she said. Weve got a lot of work to do in short order and we want to be focused and we want to be thoughtful.

The legislative analyst warned last month that the pandemic could blow a $35 billion hole in next years budget, with additional losses of $85 billion in the years that follow. Newsom must release a revised spending plan this month, and he has warned that numerous cuts are on the table.

Assemblyman Phil Ting, the San Francisco Democrat who chairs the Budget Committee, said lawmakers will consider asking voters to issue bonds to fund infrastructure projects to stimulate the economy.

Otherwise, he said, the state cannot borrow money and is largely dependent on the federal government to fund recovery programs.

That is the challenge, Ting said.

Voting by mail: The likelihood that the pandemic will still be here this fall has fueled calls for a vote-by-mail November election to prevent crowding at polling places.

Assemblyman Marc Berman, D-Palo Alto, has led the push. His AB860 would require elections officials to mail a ballot to every registered voter in California.

Most people already vote by mail  about 78% of voters did so in the March primary. Bermans bill would make that nearly universal, though he said the state should allow for a limited number of polling places, with social distancing guidelines.

Hopefully, we dont have a second phase (of the pandemic), but we need to plan as if there will be, Berman said.

Berman said his effort has drawn no organized opposition, though he expects it could cost the state several million dollars.

Rent and mortgage relief: California judicial officials have halted evictions and some foreclosures until 90 days after Newsom ends the stay-at-home order. But legislators say they want to cement those protections in state law and go further.

Ting has proposed AB828 to freeze evictions and allow courts to set up repayment plans so tenants can stay in their homes. He said he is considering seeking a ban on rent increases during the pandemic.

Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, who carried legislation last year that established a statewide cap on rent increases, said the support for the plight of tenants has only grown during the pandemic, but that California will very likely need federal assistance to pay for any program to prevent mass evictions of those who have fallen behind on their rent.

It has certainly continued to shine a bright light on the precarious situation for tenants in our state, Chiu said.

Compensation for frontline workers: Employees on the front lines of the pandemic could have an easier time securing workers compensation benefits under a proposed bill.

Essential workers who contract the coronavirus now must prove they were infected on the job in order to qualify for workers compensation and have their employer pay for costs associated with the illness.

AB664 by Gonzalez and Assemblyman Jim Cooper, D-Elk Grove (Sacramento County), would put the burden on employers to prove a worker wasnt exposed on the job.

It would be tough for an individual worker to show that they were infected on the job. Until were doing tracing, that would be hard to prove, Gonzalez said.

The effort is supported by labor unions, but its likely to face opposition from businesses that say theyre already under an existential economic strain.

The Workers Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau of California, an association of insurance companies, estimates that claims from essential workers with the coronavirus would cost $2.2 billion to $33.6 billion a year if the bill passes.

Expanding paid sick leave: Democratic lawmakers will propose legislation to close loopholes in federal and state law to ensure all workers have at least two weeks of paid sick leave during the pandemic.

Newsom signed an executive order April 16 requiring large companies to give food sector employees such as farmworkers, grocery store clerks and delivery drivers paid time off if they contract the virus or are quarantined.

His order partly closed a loophole in Congress coronavirus response, which requires businesses to provide sick leave during the pandemic unless they have more than 500 employees.

California legislators said they want to require two weeks for all workers, not just those covered by Newsoms order. California law now requires three paid sick days for all employees.

Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Oakland, said expanding sick leave could help slow the spread of the virus, by removing the economic incentive for sick workers to show up.

We need to make people comfortable to make public health decisions and not have that pressure to go to work sick, he said.

Help for farmworkers: Legislators will debate a package of bills to provide relief for agricultural workers and prevent disruption to Californias food supply chain.

The primary bill, AB2915, would provide farmworkers with paid sick leave, hazard pay, child care assistance and temporary housing to prevent overcrowding. Another bill, AB2956, would give farming companies a tax credit to pay overtime in an effort to combat a labor shortage.

Dustin Gardiner and Alexei Koseff are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: dustin.gardiner@sfchronicle.com, alexei.koseff@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dustingardiner, @akoseff
As we approach the Montana primary election, I need to let others of my conservative bent know my thoughts on our choice for whom to vote for as the Republican candidate for governor.

Three years ago, it appeared that conservatives had a chance to keep a seat in Congress. After the primary election Greg Gianforte emerged as the nominee. While certainly not my idea of a Montanan, he was the conservative candidate. I worked for and contributed to his successful campaign.

I voted for him with the idea that he would be The Montana Congressman. Instead, he has used his election to position himself for another office. He betrayed Montana by giving up his seat in Congress (which he was very likely to retain) with the possibility that a liberal could take that seat.

Last year, after my first contact by Congressman Gianforte regarding his plan to run for Montana Governor, I responded by saying that I was not going to be supporting him because 1.) He had betrayed my trust that he would stay in Congress and 2.) that Tim Fox is truly a Montanan who has the qualifications, character and experience needed for that office, whereas, Congressman Gianforte, is not a Montanan and has no experience to qualify him to be Montanas governor.
McDonald's urged to warn employees about porn website exploiting their financial struggles

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The National Center for Sexual Exploitation is urging McDonalds to warn its employees about how a pornography website is trying to recruit them as they suffer lower wages during the novel coronavirus pandemic.

NCOSE President Patrick Trueman sent a letter to the fast-food corporations CEO, Chris Kempczinski, to voice concern that McDonalds employees are being targeted for sexual exploitation during COVID-19.

Trueman called on Kempczinski to ensure that company-wide messages are sent out to educate employees about the harms that getting involved [in pornography] would entail, including (but not limited to) sexual harassment.

Unfortunately, we recently discovered that pornography websites are targeting workers who are financially affected during the coronavirus, the letter explains. In light of legal actions McDonalds employees have recently taken towards corporate regarding sexual harassment, it is even more important and timely for you to respond to this targeting of your employees.

NCOSE warned of reports of a big advertising push by IsMyGirl.com, a website that bills itself as offering users exclusive content from your favorite models.

The advertising push included a press release sent to over 500,000 McDonalds workers.

The press release stated that the new push is an effort to help McDonalds employees, and to make sure they can continue to provide for themselves and their families.

We want to help provide them with a legitimate option, the press release said, according to Vice. IsMyGirl has offered all McDonalds workers an exclusive offer to earn 90 percent of their proceeds (after credit card processing).

NCOSE argues that the type of employment that IsMyGirl is offering is not a legitimate option for anyone.

It is vital to recognize that pornography itself is a form of sexual exploitation, where performers endure physical and mental trauma due to sexual harassment, grooming, abuse and more, Trueman wrote in his letter.

Trueman cited a 2011 study published by the monthly peer-reviewed journal Psychiatric Services that concluded that female adult film performers have significantly worse mental health and higher rates of depression than other California women of similar ages. The study was led by Vice-Chair of Research at the New York University Department of Emergency Medicine Dr. Corita Grudzen.

The NCOSE CEO also cited a 2009 study, led by Grudzen, that was published by the Journal of Urban Health that found pornography performers experience physical trauma on the film set and often leave the industry with financial insecurity and mental health problems.

Performers engaged in risky health behaviors that included high-risk sexual acts that are unprotected, substance abuse, and body enhancement, the studys abstract reads. Women were more likely than men to be exposed to health risks. Adult film performers, especially women, are exposed to health risks that accumulate over time and that are not limited to sexually transmitted diseases.

Trueman stressed, We are particularly concerned for your employees living in households where domestic abuse and manipulation may lead to pressurized environments forcing them to partake in this industry to gain promised financial stability. It is vital to recognize that it is impossible for the pornography industry to judge from the content of a video or image whether force, fraud, psychological coercion, social manipulation, etc where used to instigate it.

This is especially true considering many sex traffickers and abusers will groom victims to claim that they are operating of their own free will. The pornography industry currently has no real metric to measure consent in any porn on its site, aside from complaints from victims of non-consensually shared porn.

Trueman concluded that it is Kempczinskis social responsibility to make his employees aware of this attempt to exploit them. Doing so would advance McDonalds reputation.

We call on your company to live up to your corporate ethical commitment to ensure the health and safety of your people, and provide a workplace free of harassment and its effects, Trueman wrote.

The Christian Post reached out to McDonald's for comment on NCOSE's letter. A response is pending.

Earlier this month, two McDonalds workers on behalf of 5,000 women from over 100 corporate-run McDonalds restaurants filed a $500 million sexual harassment lawsuit in which they accused the corporation of fostering "systemic sexual harassment by ignoring illegal harassment.

The company responded by saying in a statement to media that it has always been committed to ensuring that our employees are able to work in an environment that is free from all forms of discrimination and harassment.
The University Students Association of Ghana (USAG) is calling on the government to help streamline the various e-learning programmes in the country as a way of resolving the numerous challenges students are faced with benefiting from such programmes.

The association also says telecommunication networks should be integrated into plans for the rollout of e-learning platforms for students, indicating that this will help to resolve the challenges associated with network connectivity in certain geographical areas.

The president of USAG, Paul Abrokwa in a Citi News interview said, we are asking them to bring on board the AirtelTigo and [other] good networks because in some areas these are the only network which is available so as to support the system.

He stressed on the need for a simplified system for all university students due to the varying learning systems significant to each university which is challenging, saying that the University of Ghana is using Sakai and the others I dont know what they are using so this is a problem they are facing in a way. Whether the method system is supporting the system, it is still a problem so they should streamline [e-learning platforms] for the students.

Student loans

He further called on the government to disburse students loans to help cushion students especially because the funds have always been the backbone of university students amid financial constraints.

---citinewsroom
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Linkedin Lara Norgaard (The Jakarta Post) Manila  Sun, May 3, 2020 12:13 625 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd59668c 1 Books #book,#bookreview,#literature,#novel,#history,#Manila,#Indonesia,#author,#violence Free

A woman returns to her birthplace, Manila, carrying a heavy box of vinyl records and a suitcase full of books. She is a translator. Her name, Magsalin, simply means to translate in Tagalog. And yet she has returned to the Philippines to write her own detective story  to soak in the atmosphere, to check out a setting, to round out a missing character, to find the ending.

This is how the plot of the 2018 novel Insurrecto by Filipino author Gina Apostol begins.

I came across the book not in Manila but along the shelves of POST Bookshop in South Jakarta. As I scanned countless back covers, it was this novels broader premise that first caught my eye: an American filmmaker disappears on the island of Samar in the Philippines in the 1970s.

He had been shooting a movie based on the atrocities the United States committed against Filipino communities following an attack by local revolutionaries on American soldiers in Balangiga, Samar, in 1901.

The filmmakers daughter, Chiara Brasi, arrives in Dutertes Philippines decades later to make her own film on the same massacre and hires Magsalin as her translator.

Indeed, it is Chiara whom Magsalin chooses as the protagonist in her mystery novel  that is, before Magsalin ditches the project altogether to write her own version of Chiara Brasis film script.

Tracing history: The 'New York Times' calls Gina Apostol a magician with language in her novel 'Insurrecto'. Her most recent work uses her research on the Philippine-American War to cast a lens on our contemporary times. (Courtesy of ginaapostol.com/-)

In a novel about who writes history and how, Apostol tackles a double narration of violent political conflict across Filipino history, from colonialism, through Marcos US-backed, anticommunist military dictatorship and into the present context of increasingly illiberal democracy.

As much as the mysterious opening chapters of Insurrecto are steeped in the atmosphere of the bowels of Manilas shopping malls, the book also seemed to resonate in the context of the Jakarta market where I stood browsing.

In Indonesian literature, representing the collective trauma of past conflict is not uncommon. A range of authors  from the globally well-received Eka Kurniawan and Laksmi Pamuntjak to up-and-coming voices like Felix K. Nesi and Anindita S. Thayf  structure their works around histories of violence.

Given that Filipino literature is often published in English, novels like Apostols Insurrecto provide English-language readers in Indonesia a unique opportunity to access foreign approaches to familiar topics from another Southeast Asian archipelago.

But it is not just these broad comparisons that make Insurrecto specifically relevant in Indonesia. Apostols unique double narrative perspective between translator and author, as well as her preoccupation with postmodernism, connect to more specific concerns in Indonesias cultural scene.

In the competing narratives between foreign author Chiara and local translator Magsalin, tensions between interpretations of history across cultures shape the novels dual structure. That tension is first apparent in the characters earliest interactions, for example, during a debate over specific word choice:

She had a conversion into the world of the Filipino insurrectos of 1901, Chiara says.

That is not the correct term, Magsalin says.

What?

They were revolutionaries, Magsalin says. It was not an insurrection.

Chiara ignores her.

In this simple interaction, Chiara presumes ownership over Filipino history by snubbing Magsalins correction, and so Apostol highlights the fraught dynamics of a Westerner representing  or appropriating  historical trauma in a post-colonial context.

Through this attention to the language of narration, Apostol flips the focus of her novel from Filipino history to the individuals carrying out the act of representing that history.

Apostols literary critique of translation and its pitfalls are useful points for reflection in Indonesia, where the foreign-directed film The Act of Killing is arguably the most globally recognized cultural product about atrocities like the 1965 mass killings. As important as this award-winning documentary is, the question of who stands behind the camera and the implications of that perspective on representation merits reflection.

As an American who writes about Indonesian literature, Chiaras cavalier attitude toward her choice of words makes me pause  especially when I notice that Apostol allows Chiaras choice of words, not Magsalins, to define the novels overall title: Insurrecto.

Moreover, the way the title Insurrecto plays on a debate between two characters also emphasizes that the novel is a constructed story. Other such reminders sprinkle the text from start to finish: the book begins with a cast of characters as in a film script; the chapters in each section are out of chronological order (Part I begins with chapter 20, before continuing onto chapter two); and chapter titles include meta-reflections on storytelling like There Is Always An Alternate Story or even questions interrogating the novels setting, like Why Samar??!!

In these meta-fictional, fragmented approaches to storytelling, Apostol opts for a postmodern lens in representing conflicting histories.

Some prominent Indonesian cultural critics question the relevance of postmodernism in countries like Indonesia.

Wijaya Herlambang, for example, discusses the limits of postmodernism in his analysis of narratives about the 1965 mass killings in cultural production. The framework lacks relevance to class structures in Indonesia, he argues, because class still functions more along labor lines than the Western model of a silent majority passively consuming media.

And yet Apostol chooses to apply a fully postmodernist frame to a very similar historical question in a neighboring, postcolonial context. It is these subtle disjunctions and wider parallels between this Filipino novel and Indonesian cultural concerns that makes Insurrecto such an interesting read for those acquainted with Indonesia.

On the pages of Insurrecto, I found a work of English-language literature that places Indonesian concerns in a regionally comparative context. Read by an American living in Jakarta, Insurrecto uncovers the transnational implications of national histories and functions as a lens into a geographically proximate, literarily compelling fictional world. (ste)
At least 47 people were killed and 75 injured after a prison riot turned violent in Los Llanos prison centre in Guanare, Venezuela. In past, NGOs, as well as family members of inmates have repeatedly questioned the clamped up and inhumane space in the prisons.

Maria Beatriz Martinez, a parliamentary deputy reportedly confirmed the figures provided by Venzeualn Prison Observatory. Martinez also confirmed that all those who died were inmates.

According to an army report, the prisoner stated the disruption by destroying the security fences around the perimeter in a massive escape attempt The reports also added that the riot also claimed the life of the prison's director. However, Martinez denied the account stating that the prisoners started the riots because they did not have access to food.

Read: Ex-Green Beret Led Failed Attempt To Oust Venezuela's Maduro

Read: Dem Lawmakers Say Trump's Freeze For WHO To Hurt Venezuelans

'Visits have reduced'

According to the Venezuelan Prison Observatory (OVP), guards opened fire after the incident. In recent times, owing to coronavirus pandemic, visits from family and friends bringing food for the inmates have reduced. Speaking to international media reporters, Carolina Giron of OVP said that the identities of those killed were verified "through the morgue, thanks to relatives who recognised the dead in photos that were shown to them on a computer. However, OVP continues to accuse the guards of not transferring the food to providers resulting in the riots.

Venezuela has roughly 30 prisons and 500 jails that can hold an estimated 110,000 inmates. Human rights officials say the prisons are violent and badly overcrowded, with gangs that traffic weapons and drugs in control. A similar riot occurred a year ago in a nearby jail also in the state of Portuguese, where 29 inmates died at a police jail that housed several hundred detainees. Violence broke out when armed inmates objected to officers entering the jail.

A once-wealthy oil nation, Venezuela is gripped by a deepening political and economic crisis. Street violence is common in the nation that has had nearly 5 million residents flee in recent years as public services crumble.

Read: Riot Hits Venezuelan Prison; Wounded Warden Among Casualties

Read: Lawmakers: Donald Trump's Funding Freeze For WHO Hits Venezuela

Representative, Image Credits: redaquamedia/unsplash
Pastors Henry, Alex Seeley say quarantining at home is revealing foundation marriage was built on

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Henry and Alex Seeley, who founded The Belonging Co church in Nashville, say the lockdown has affected each of them differently, and offered advice on how to work through challenges and any unresolved tensions that have been brought to the fore during the quarantine.

The couple moved to Tennessee from Australia in 2012 and began leading their congregation six years ago after starting off as worship leaders. Now their worship team consists of some of the biggest names in worship music today. During the state lockdown in response to the coronavirus, the couple have had to navigate leading services online and hosting small groups with their church members.

Henry and Alex Seeley shared with The Christian Post how they've been keeping their marriage strong during the quarantine and offered practical advice for couples whose marriages are struggling in this season.

The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Christian Post: Stay-at-home orders can be challenging for couples who are trying not to take their frustrations out on each other. How have you been able to navigate married life in this season?

Henry: We just celebrated 22 years married. I think the further into marriage you get, the more you just realize the sacrificial element to marriage. I think that really is the essence of it. The further you get into marriage, the only way your marriage can not just survive but actually thrive and flourish, is when you are constantly from that heart posture of serving each other and not looking at what are my needs right now, but how can I serve? Obviously with that, when there's an equal balance of that, everybody's needs get met along the way; you do it with a different expectation.

For Alex and I coming into this season, we've kind of worked from home. The last five or six years, we haven't even had an office where our church offices are right now because our team has outgrown the space and so we work from home quite a bit, anyway. Before that, I've always had a studio from home, so I'm kind of used to being at home a lot. So I think we've really worked out and just got used to that kind of flow anyway in life.

I think during this season, thankfully it hasn't really affected us in a negative sense too much. I'm a bit of an introvert, so being at home for a month straight, that's no big deal. Alex has had some hard days where it's like, "I just need people, I need more people than just my immediate family."

Alex: I haven't been frustrated at my husband or the kids. I've been frustrated, but I've had a husband who's been sensitive to understand "My wife needs people; my wife, she's highs and lows." So because we've had a strong foundation in building who we are as a couple, this actually hasn't disrupted our normal. When there has been a moment, I've been pre-warning people so that people don't take it personal.

I think what it's (quarantine) been doing, it's been revealing the foundation of what marriage was built on. It's a real great indicator to see whether it was built on true relationship and conflict resolution and honoring, serving one another or whether the business of life masked a lot of our issues. I think it's a really important time for family and marriages to get it right. I thank God that honestly, I think we've had one fight, it was more of a meltdown, in the 42 days that we've been locked down.

CP: What advice do you have for couples in crisis on what to do to reestablish that foundation the proper way?

Henry: Don't ignore it. As crazy as this season is right now, I think it's the kindness of God on a lot of levels. Obviously, the illness has not come from God, this is not God's doing. Even the shutdown is not God's doing, but God will use any situation He can to get our attention.

I think it's so important, and we've encouraged people to do this, in every space in their life, use this time to assess  while you've got some time right now  where are the weaknesses? What are the weak areas? Where have I just ignored things because I've been so busy just working or pretending that everything's OK, both as an individual and if they're married, relationship. So I think don't ignore what's going on.

Also, don't allow the heightened sense of this close proximity to negatively affect the future but use it to say, "Alright, where are we? Where do we have tension points right now? Let's not argue about them. Let's sit down and work through them. Let's invite the Holy Spirit to help us in the center of our marriage to deal with this stuff."

Because God knew if you're a couple that's married before the Lord, God's in covenant with you. So there's no reason for it to not work. It just means that you've got to get in and do a bit of work, especially in a moment like this. I think as Alex said, so often we're so busy with other things with life, with work, with all these other distractions that you can go 10 or even 20 years without ever really dealing with some of these things that need to be dealt with. Use this time to just kind of get in that place with the Holy Spirit and ask Him to help in those areas.

Alex: I would just say, look inward rather than outward. Don't look at your spouse's issues. Look at your issues and ask, "What am I reacting to? Why am I getting offended? Why am I getting frustrated?" Write it down and then in a calm, cool, collected way, not in the heat of the moment, sit down and say, "I think these are areas that we need to work on and first admit fault. Be the first to say sorry, and be the first to go, "Hey, this is my issue but I think together we need to deal with it."

Ask the Holy Spirit to help you with displaying the fruits of the Spirit. I think the nine fruits of the Spirit are really important in this season of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control is really important. I think honestly, we can come out of this a lot stronger and a lot more like Christ.

Henry: I think oftentimes, it's easy to forget that you're on the same team. I think a lot of couples kind of fight from their own side of the playing field in marriage. One of the things I'm thankful that we were taught, even before we got married, is you're on the same team. You're not on opposing sides.

From day one of our marriage, we haven't always lived that out perfectly by any means but we've always come back to that place of, "Hang on, we're on the same team, why are we fighting against each other? We should be fighting for each other and for this marriage, so let's get on the same page here."

Honestly, it's been one of the keys to our marriage. I think it's been one of the keys to us raising our kids. Again, we haven't done a perfect job of raising our kids, but we've raised our kids really well, in general, and our family's peaceful for the most part because there's never been two sides. And the kids haven't had the option to go to dad if they don't get the response from mom that they want. We're always on the same side. So I think that's just a really huge part of marriage, just realizing that.
New Delhi, May 3 : The Indian Air Force (IAF) on Sunday conducted flypast across India and its jets as well as transport planes and choppers showered petals on hospitals and places of national importance to express honour and gratitude towards the coronavirus warriors who are battling the pandemic.

It was part of the nationwide thanksgiving effort by the armed forces to honour doctors, paramedics, sanitation staff, police and other frontline workers battling coronavirus in the country.

The IAF choppers and jets, including MiG-29, Sukhoi-30 and Jaguar, conducted flypasts and Army bands played patriotic tunes outside medical buildings in most districts across the country from east to west and north to south.

The armed forces showered petals at the Goa medical college, SNM hospital in Leh, Jaipur in Rajasthan, Rajpath and police memorial in Delhi, Sukhna lake in Chandigarh, Srinagar's Dal Lake, Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh, Panchkula hospitals in Haryana and the Kalinga Institute of Medical Sciences in Bhubaneswar.

In Mumbai, military aircraft dropped petals at the King Edward Memorial (KEM) Hospital and Kasturba Gandhi Hospital, among others. The IAF choppers showered flower petals on the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital in Chennai to pay tribute to healthcare workers fighting Covid-19 pandemic.

This was the third major display of gratitude to health workers across the country, following Prime Minister Narendra Modi's request to countrymen to clap, ring bells and beat utensils to support the Covid-19 warriors from their balconies, and later by people switching off their lights and lighting candles and 'diya'.

The medical fraternity and other corona warriors were seen assembled outside the COVID-19 hospitals and other government buildings putting hands on their chest to show honour to the respect to the efforts of armed forces.

The gesture of expresssing thanks started with laying of flowers by the three Service Chiefs at the police memorial in Delhi in the morning to honour police personnel deployed for enforcement of the nationwide lockdown. Sukhoi-30 MKI, MiG-29 and Jaguars, Chetak did a flypast over Rajpath and circled over Delhi and showered petals over India Gate and Red Fort.

Besides, C-130 transport aircraft followed a similar route. The aircraft flew at an approximate height of 500 meters to 1,000 meters. IAF's MI-17 V5 flew over Port Blair. The IAF fighter jets from the Western Air Command dropped petals at Delhi's Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital and Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital, AIIMS, Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital, GTB Hospital, Loknayak Hospital, Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, Safdarjung Hospital, Baba Saheb Ambedkar Hospital, Max Saket, Rohini Hospital, Apollo Indraprastha Hospital and Army Hospital Research and Referral.

The gesture of gratitude was expressed at a time when 1,301 people have died and nearly 40,000 are infected with the deadly novel coronavirus or COVID-19 pandemic across the country. South Western Air Command aircraft showered petals at Doon Hospital, AIIMS Rishikesh, Government Hospital Saharanpur in Dehradun; BJ Medical college in Ahmedabad, GMERS Civil Hospital Gandhinagar and MH Ahmedabad; Central Air Command choppers showered petals at BHU Trauma Centre and Deen Dayal Hospital in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's constituency Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh; IGI in Patna (Bihar), KGMC in Lucknow; Chirayu Hospital and AIIMS in Madhya Pradesh.

Rose petals were showered by the aircraft of Eastern Air Command in Dispur, Itanagar, Shillong and Kolkata hospitals that include M.M. Chaudhary Hospital and Guwahati Medical College, Tomo Riba Institute of Health and Medical Science, Civil Hospital Shillong, and ID & BG hospital Kolkata.

The petals were showered at Jalmahal in Rajasthan, Bada Talab in Madhya Pradesh, Hussain Sagar in Hyderabad, Vidhan Soudha in Karnataka; Vivekananda Rock and Secretariat in Kerala, and Sulur in Tamil Nadu.

Indian Navy personnel at INS Hansa in Goa expressed their appreciation by forming a 'human chain' and thanked the corona warriors in their unwavering commitment to fighting against the dreaded disease.

INS Jalashwa in Bay of Bengal saluted the COVID-19 warriors. Senior Indian Naval officers visited and thanked the Kasturba Gandhi Hospital at Mumbai. Navy Helicopter Chetak also carried out a flypast with showers in the petals over Kasturba Gandhi Hospital and Ashwini Naval hospital Colaba in Mumbai.

The Indian Coast Guard (ICG) also actively took part in the 'India Thanks COVID-19 Warriors' initiative by illuminating ships and showering petals at hospitals treating Corona patients.

In addition, ICG 10 helicopters showered petals on COVID-19 hospitals at five locations in Daman, Mumbai, Goa, Chennai, Port Blair where total of 46 ships will appreciate appreciate the efforts of the COVID-19 warriors by illuminating the ships in the evening around 7 p.m. at 25 locations covering the entire coastline of the country including the remote sites and island territories of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and Lakshadweep and Minicoy islands.
A pregnant woman died at a hospital in Jammu and Kashmir's Anantnag district on Sunday, with her family alleging negligence by doctors and medical authorities.

The family carried the body from the hospital in a stretcher trolley, a video of which went viral, triggering outrage.

This incident happened a week after another pregnant woman died along with her unborn twins at the MCCH in Anantnag. The woman, who eventually was declared COVID-19 positive, came from a Red Zone area and had been allegedly denied swift treatment.

Shakeela Akhtar, a resident of Salai Panzmulla area of the south Kashmir district, was admitted at sub-district hospital Seer Hamdan on Saturday night, but was referred to the Maternity and Child Care Hospital (MCCH) on Sunday morning where she died, officials said.

They said her family alleged delay in her treatment at the SDH and also protested outside MCCH against doctors claiming negligence.

The district administration, however, said while an inquiry has been ordered into the death of the woman at the sub-district hospital and a doctor and a nurse have been placed under suspension, the family took away the body without completing the formalities.

"Prima facie, medical negligence that warranted immediate suspensions. Further action shall follow after enquiry outcome. About denial of ambulance, the infuriated attendants apprehensive about delay in burial on account of tests, took away the dead body without completing formalities, additional district magistrate, Anantnag, Syed Yasir said on Twitter.

Deputy Commissioner Anantnag Bashir Ahmad Dar also said the family feared they would have to wait for the burial of the woman's body if her sample was taken for COVID-19 testing.

"Preliminary reports suggest the dead body was taken away by relatives, fearing they will have to wait for burial if sample is taken for covid test. Most unfortunate to say the least (sic), Dar wrote on Twitter.

Meanwhile, several political parties have demanded a time-bound inquiry into the death of the woman.

National Conference Member of Parliament from Anantnag Justice (retd) Hasnain Masoodi, while expressing grief and sorrow over the deaths of two pregnant women, welcomed the action taken by the authorities against the doctors and other staff suspected to have acted negligently.

Masoodi demanded time-bound inquiry and action warranted in light of the results of the inquiry.

CPI (M) leader Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami demanded an FIR must be lodged against the culprits without any delay.

There should be no eye-wash or cover-up as due to willful negligence of the doctors, a mother and a yet to be born baby have lost their lives, he said.

The Congress party also demanded an inquiry and action against all those involved in the death of two pregnant women in the district, a spokesman of the party said in a statement here.

Jammu and Kashmir Apni Party (JKAP) senior leader and former legislator Rafi Ahmad Mir also demanded a time-bound and a fair probe into the incident.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A war of words erupted between Punjab Health Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu and Akali leader Bikram Singh Majithia on Sunday as the state's coronavirus count crossed 1,000 with over 600 Sikh pilgrims returning from Maharshtra's Nanded testing positive for the infection.

While Majithia accused the state government of "mismanaging" the return of the pilgrims from the Nanded's Hazur Sahib gurdwara and sought the minister's sacking, Sidhu hit back at the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), daring its leaders to apologise for their misleading propaganda.

So far, 609 of the 4,000 pilgrims who recently returned from Nanded have tested positive for coronavirus.

Health Minister Sidhu in a statement here said the pilgrims contracted the disease before entering Punjab while stressing that 'sewadars' of the gurdwara have also tested positive for the virus.

Religious leaders have testified that Nanded pilgrims were tested in Maharashtra but the Punjab government did not receive any test report from the state government till now, said Sidhu, who is under fire from the Opposition.

Lashing out at SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal, Union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal and former state minister Bikram Singh Majithia, Sidhu accused them of indulging in political one-upmanship over a sensitive issue, that too without verifying facts.

These leaders unnecessarily hyped this issue by spreading this propaganda that pilgrims are being labelled as coronavirus positive as part of a conspiracy, said Sidhu.

By politicising this issue, Akali leaders were not only trying to demoralise all frontline warriors who are going beyond their call of duty to save Punjab but also giving false and fabricated comments over such a sensitive issue, Sidhu alleged.

Sidhu said there is no need to worry or panic after the spike in cases with the return of pilgrims.

He said the pilgrims have been given the best treatment and also assured that the state will recover from the challenge just as it did first from situations arising out of the return of foreigners and then Tablighi Jamaat members.

Meanwhile, Majithia asked Chief Minister Amarinder Singh to sack Sidhu from the cabinet.

Majithia alleged that Sidhu had started defaming the pilgrims by stating that they had spoiled all the good work done by the Punjab government in controlling COVID-19.

Stating that the "good work" of the Health Department has already been exposed by health workers who had failed to get PPE kits and facilities like ambulances and ventilators, the Akali leader said Sidhu has proven to be utterly incompetent and should quit his post immediately.

Majithia claimed that it was a fact that the Punjab government did not follow the ICMR guidelines while repatriating the pilgrims.

He said air-conditioned buses were used against established norms.

"Social distancing was not followed. The buses came through red zones and it was because of this mishandling that pilgrims, who were in good health in Nanded for more than one month, tested positive for COVID-19 on their return to Punjab", claimed Majithia.

He said this had also been borne out by the statement of Congress minister from Maharashtra Ashok Chavan who blamed the Punjab government for the plight of the pilgrims.

Majithia said the Congress-led government had first targeted NRIs and was now targeting Sikhs.

"If the state government commits mistakes in repatriation by mishandling the operation, it should not try to put the blame on others," he said.

He also sought from the Punjab government to shift the pilgrims to the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee 'sarais' for quarantine purposes.

He claimed that the pilgrims from Nanded have been quarantined in unhygienic government facilities.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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A raft of measures to support the most vulnerable in society including domestic violence victims and rough sleepers have been announced by the Housing Secretary.

Robert Jenrick announced a 76 million package for England to support more safe spaces and accommodation for survivors of domestic abuse and their children, to boost the recruitment of counsellors for victims of sexual violence, and to help charities offer helplines.

Addressing victims of domestic violence directly, Mr Jenrick said: You are not alone, you do not have to stay at home, you can and should leave the home if youre in danger.

He added: Our outstanding police will be there for you, they will help you.

Additionally, more than 5,400 rough sleepers known to councils have been offered safe accommodation in the past month, Mr Jenrick said, as he announced Dame Louise Casey will lead a new taskforce to tackle the issue.

The number of people who have died in hospitals, care homes and the wider community after testing positive for coronavirus in the UK as of 5pm on Friday rose to 28,131, up by 621.

(PA Graphics)

The death toll has edged closer to that of Italy, which at 28,236 is the highest in Europe, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

And the number of daily tests both concluded and sent out in the last 24 hours dropped to 105,937.

It comes as questions were raised over how tests are being counted after Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Friday he had met his target for 100,000 Covid-19 tests per day.

Among the measures to support domestic violence victims, Mr Jenrick also said on Saturday they would get priority need status for access to local housing.

Mr Jenrick added: As a father of three girls, I cannot even imagine women and young children being put in this situation.

But they are.

We must be alive to the reality of what is happening in all too many homes across the country.

Story continues

We are past the peak of #coronavirus thanks to your hard work. But we must keep going to make sure it counts. #StayHomeSaveLives pic.twitter.com/oiMBVqWLS7  UK Prime Minister (@10DowningStreet) May 2, 2020

I want us to defend the rights of those women and those children wherever we can, and that is what were going to do.

He said the Governments Domestic Abuse Bill, which had its second reading in Parliament last week, would create the first ever legal definition of domestic abuse.

He said that through the Bill, the Government would be ensuring that the victims of domestic violence get the priority need status that they need to access to local housing services much more easily.

Earlier, The Times reported that commuters could be asked to take their temperature before travelling, and those with an elevated reading  a symptom of Covid-19  would be expected to stay at home.

A senior Government source confirmed the plans are being looked at, but stressed they are a long way from being policy.
?? Autorizamos 380 vuelos internacionales humanitarios durante el Estado de Emergencia Nacional. https://t.co/duKQ8Lykwt



? Junto a @CancilleriaPeru se han repatriado a peruanos que estaban en diferentes paises.#PeruEstaEnNuestrasManos pic.twitter.com/qRfTGaLkaB
Even as the central government decided to extend the national lockdown by two more weeks on Friday, state governments have increased measures to help out those in need within their respective territories. And leading such efforts is Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal.

The Aam Aadmi Party has decided to double the monthly quota of rations provided to those in need. Kejriwal announced the same on Friday and also said that an additional ration kit will also be provided for residents to sail through the tough times.

The kits contain additional essential supplies like oil, sugar, soap, spices, and other important household items.

On April 3, Delhiites started sharing images of the ration kits they received, thanks to Delhi government.

Kejriwal also shared the image with the caption, "We have started distributing kits of essential items like salt, spices, oil, sugar, soaps, etc. They are given free of cost along with monthly ration to all. We cannot allow the poor to suffer in these difficult times".

The decision has won the applause of social media.

The move comes among a number of efforts made by the Delhi government to ease the pain of lockdown for the poor, even as the number of positive cases of coronavirus continued to increase. These include arranging for buses to get back students from Delhi stuck in Kota due to the lockdown.

Earlier in April, Delhi government also announced a Rs 5,000 one-time relief assistance for auto drivers.

As of Sunday, Delhi recorded a total of 4,122 positive cases of coronavirus.
Eighty per cent of Irish indigenous tech and high-growth companies expect to run out of cash within six months, unless the Government makes changes to its emergency supports, according to a survey.

In the wake of the Covid-19 crisis, Scale Ireland, an advocacy body for Ireland's innovation-driven companies, surveyed more than 350 Irish high-growth firms employing over 2,200 people.

It also found that 20pc of the companies were at risk of becoming bankrupt within the next four weeks if supportive action is not taken. It said this posed an "urgent threat" to the labour market.

In the absence of a targeted package of liquidity supports, Scale Ireland predicts the potential loss of 30,000 high-skill jobs across a range of sectors, while a further 60,000 future jobs, expected to be created by 2025, may fail to materialise.

Liz McCarthy, chief executive of Scale Ireland, said it was "unfortunate" that the provisions overlooked these companies.

According to Scale Ireland's research, the emergency supports are not responding to the needs of tech companies. It found eligibility criteria is overly complicated, that the pace of response is slow and that there was a lack of coordination between State agencies and banks.

Scale Ireland claimed Enterprise Ireland informed it last week that only 55 companies had applied for the Sustaining Enterprise Fund, with just one approved. It said this highlighted "deficiencies" with the structure of the support environment.

The fund now has 120 enquiries with two in the approvals process.

The group said the Government should update and simplify supports. It wants the Government to make debt solutions available to innovative companies, to put in place grants targeted at innovative firms and to start a bridging fund that leverages private investment.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday saluted the "corona warriors" for their unmatched contribution and sacrifice in fighting the COVID-19 epidemic.

Doctors, paramedics, policemen, sanitation workers and others engaged in different duties in the fight against the COVID-19 are called "corona warriors".

"India salutes its heroic corona warriors. I assure you that the Modi government and the entire country stands beside you. We have to free the nation from coronavirus by turning challenges into opportunities and set an example for the world by creating a healthy, prosperous and strong India. Jai Hind!," he tweeted in Hindi.

The armed forces conducted aerial fly-pasts and shower flower petals on several hospitals across the country on Sunday to express gratitude to lakhs of doctors, paramedics, sanitation staff and other front-line workers engaged in fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

Praising the gesture of the armed forces, the home minister said the respect shown by the Indian armed forces towards the doctors, police, paramilitary forces and others who work day and night to liberate the country from coronavirus, is heart touching.

"The bravery shown by these warriors while fighting coronavirus is certainly venerable. The bravery with which India is fighting the coronavirus is truly admirable.

"Today the three armed forces paid floral tributes to the brave soldiers fighting the disease, at the National Police Memorial. The whole country stands with their brave soldiers and their families in this difficult time," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hillary Clinton urged Americans to head to the polls this November while makeup free and wearing a face mask with the word 'Vote' written on it.

On Saturday, Clinton showed off the 'must-have accessory for spring' in a photo shared to Instagram and Twitter.

The former secretary of state embraced the natural look while she stood with her arms crossed and donned a protective 'Vote' face mask.

'No makeup? No pantsuit? No problem,' Clinton, 72, wrote.

'Ive got the must-have accessory for spring.

Im wearing a mask (and voting!) for my country, my community, and my grandchildren. #MaskingForAFreind.'

Hillary Clinton (pictured) sported a black face mask with the word 'Vote' written across it in a recent Instagram post

Clinton urged Americans to vote in the upcoming election after formally endorsing Joe Biden for president

Her message has garnered just over 612,000 likes in 24 hours.

Clinton's call to vote comes after she officially endorsed candidate Joe Biden for president in the upcoming 2020 election.

She remained mum about her any endorsements throughout the tumultuous primaries, but appeared confident in her formal announcement last week.

'I am thrilled to be part of your campaign, not only to endorse you, but to help highlight a lot of the issues that are at stake in this presidential election,' Clinton told the former vice president, who introduced her as 'the woman who should be president of the United States.'

Clinton's stamp of approval comes amid mounting pressure for Biden to personally address accusations made by a former staffer, Tara Reade, that he sexually assaulted her on Capitol Hill when he was serving as a U.S. senator.

During the virtual town hall, she asked viewers to image having a 'real president' in an unsubtle jab at President Trump.

'Think of what it would mean if we had a real president, not just somebody who plays one on TV, but somebody who gets up every morning worried about the people that he's responsible for leading during this crisis,' she said.

Hillary Clinton (right) endorsed Joe Biden (left) on a livestreamed event where she talked about their 25-year work history and friendship

'Think of what it would mean if we had a real president, not just somebody who plays one on TV,' she added mocking Trump, a former reality TV star.

During the virtual hall Clinton also criticized Trump's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has infected 1,160,519 Americans and killed 67,173.

'I want to add my voice to the many who have endorsed you to be our president,' Clinton said.

Joe Biden (left) is seen campaigning for Hillary Clinton (center) when she was running for president in 2016

Clinton and other officials have criticized President Trump (pictured) for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic that savaged the US

'Just think of what a difference it would make right now, if we had a president who not only listened to the science, with facts over fiction, but brought us together.

'Show the kind of compassion and caring that we need from our president, and which Joe Biden has been exemplifying throughout his entire life.'

Her support for Biden has resulted in backlash from Tara Reade, a former Biden Senate staffer who accused him of sexually assaulting her in the 1990s.

Reade said that the assault occurred after she was told to deliver a gym bag to the then-senator. Reade said she tracked down Biden on Capitol Hill and he remembered her name.

'And then we were alone. And it was the strangest thing. There was no, like, exchange really, he just had me up against the wall,' she said.

She said she was wearing a work skirt, but no pantyhose.

'He just had me up against the wall and the wall was cold,' she said. 'His hands were on me and underneath my clothes. He went down my skirt and then up inside it and he penetrated me with his fingers. He was kissing me at the same time,' she said.

She said that when she 'pulled back,' Biden 'looked annoyed.'

Reade said Biden said to her, 'Come on man, I heard you liked me.'

Reade posted an image on social media of what she looked like in 1993, the year she alleged Biden sexually assaulted her. A new clip has emerged that appears to back her claims that she told her mother, brother and a friend about the alleged assault when it happened in 1993

'He implied that I had done this,' she told the podcast host.

At first Reade didn't want to mention the other quote that got stuck in her head, but then she told Halper what it was.

'You're nothing to me,' she claimed the senator said to her. 'Nothing.'

Reade said that she had attempted to bring up her concerns about the alleged assault to her superiors in Biden's office but got nowhere, a claim that the new clip of her mother appears to back.

Reade, a lifelong democrat, told Fox News that she voted for Clinton in the 2016 election but feels slighted by the swift dismissal of her allegations.

'I voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. I voted for her in the primary. I'm a lifelong Democrat,' said Reade.

'But yet, what I see now is someone enabling a sexual predator and it was my former boss, Joe Biden, who raped me.'

Biden's campaign has explicitly denied Reade's accusation - but there are fresh calls for him to address it personally, with several new sources corroborating the ex-staffer's account in media reports this week.

A 1993 clip released last week showed Reade's mother asking TV host Larry King if they should come forward with allegations against a 'prominent senator.'

The 1993 clip shows an anonymous caller form California speak to Larry King about her daughter's problem with a 'prominent senator'. Reade said it is her mother's voice

Reade (pictured): 'Hillary Clinton has a history of enabling powerful men to cover up their sexual predatory behaviors and their inappropriate sexual misconduct'

The video appeared to back Reade's claims that she told her mother about the sexual harassment related to Biden 27 years ago.

There is no mention of sexual assault in the clip, but Reade confirmed it was her mother's voice and continued to double down on her accusations.

'Hillary Clinton has a history of enabling powerful men to cover up their sexual predatory behaviors and their inappropriate sexual misconduct,' Reade went on.

'We don't need that for this country. We don't need that for our new generation coming up that wants institutional rape culture to change.'

Clinton's endorsement comes as Biden has all-but locked up the Democratic nomination and received a flurry of endorsements from prominent party members including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Monday, and earlier this month President Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren, another 2020 rival.

Those endorsements were prompted by Bernie Sanders dropping out of the race and endorsing Biden five days later.

But while Biden's sealed the primary up, his campaign has had to deal with the drip, drip, drip from Reade's claims.

'I will not be smeared, dismissed or ignored. I stand in truth and I will keep speaking out,' Reade said to Fox.
Unlucky thirteen became lucky for Colonel Ashutosh Sharma to join the Army after attempting it for six-and-a-half years as he had no other dream than donning the olive green uniform.

Col Sharma, who was among five security forces personnel killed during an encounter with terrorists in north Kashmir, is the second Commanding Officer of the 21 Rashtriya Rifles who lost his life while combating terrorism.

Remembering Col Sharma, his elder brother Piush says that he always used to have his way, come what may. "It was like my way or the highway for him. His only dream was Army and nothing else," says Piush, who works for a pharmaceutical company in Jaipur.

"He had waged a war to join the Army some way or the other till he finally achieved success in his 13th attempt (in . From that day, there was no looking back for Ashu (Col Sharma)," Piush told PTI over phone.

Col Sharma joined the Army in the early 2000s.

Putting up a brave face while recollecting the childhood memories with his brother, who was three years younger to him, Piush recalled a conversation that he had with him on May 1.

"It was the Raising Day of Rashtriya Rifles and he informed us about how they had celebrated it amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

"I used to caution him many a times and he had fixed a standard reply 'muje kuch nahi hoga, bhaiya' (nothing will happen to me, brother)...," he said, struggling to hold back his tears.

Col Sharma sent some pictures and that is the last memory that the family has, he said and added "wish I knew that I am speaking to him for the last time, I would not have ended the call at all."



Holding on to Tamanna, daughter of Col Sharma who studies in class sixth, Piush feels that the child was not able to understand the changed realities.

"But I must say that she is a brave child of her brave father and she will be fine," he said.

"The only regret Ashu had that he could not join Special Forces," he said, while remembering his nature of going out of the way for his jawans and solving all their problems.

His friend Vijay Kumar, who is a Deputy Commandant in CISF, recalls memories with Col Sharma and said, "I advised him to look for other paramilitary forces but it was all Greek to him. It has to be only army and army and army was his reply always."



"His mannerism was always at its best and I have never seen anyone raising any complaints against him when we used to live in Bulandshahr (Uttar Pradesh)," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Scott Connell, a Missouri weatherman, was trying to record a tease last month, but Maple, his Cavalier King Charles spaniel, had other plans.

Three, two, one: More cold air  Mr. Connell, the chief meteorologist for KSDK in St. Louis, manages to say on the video before the dogs barks interrupt him.

Cold air continues across the area tonight; potential for some frost and freeze for some of us, he starts again, and Maple barks again. Mr. Connell claps his hands and calls the dog over. He is finally able to complete the tease, but not before Maple gets a few more barks in.

Like many people forced to work from home because of the coronavirus pandemic, TV reporters and meteorologists have had to adapt to a new normal, including unfamiliar professional settings. So have their pets, who sometimes join them, crashing their reports and mugging for the cameras.
Eric Holder, notorious attorney general under Obama, defended Joe Biden against sexual harassment allegations on Bill Maher's show.

"What has been described [regarding Tara Reade's allegations of Biden's sexual attack against her] is inconsistent with the person who I've come to know and I've worked with," Holder said. "The vice president has denied that it actually did occur. And as I said, his denial is consistent with the Joe Biden that I know."

Remember the old saying "tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are"?

This is Eric Holder, who was held in contempt by the Congress in 2013 for refusing to provide documents related to the botched Fast and Furious operation, which left 2,000 guns in the hands of Mexican drug-dealers and led to the murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in December 2010.

This is the very same official who, according to then-senator Jeff Sessions, being A.G. for about five months, ignored recommendations of the Office of Legal Counsel on the constitutionality of a D.C. voting bill, refused a request from law enforcement officials to keep interrogation methods confidential, and released dangerous detainees from American prisons. And who explicitly called the USA a "nation of cowards" on racial issues, causing a statement even from President Obama mentioning that he "would use different language" talking about the same topic. Furthermore, Mr. Holder refused to prosecute the famous case of voter intimidation by the Black Panthers in Philadelphia and called only black Americans "my people" while supposedly representing the whole American nation as the A.G. In 2013, the DOJ of the Obama administration, under the personal behest of Eric Holder, issued a subpoena of phone records from the Associated Press, and a search warrant targeting Fox News correspondent James Rosen's emails and other means of communication relevant to a government leak about North Korea. Even the New York Times characterized Holder's actions as "threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news."

That's quite a list, isn't it?

Needless to say, it's telling that individuals like Holder rush to the defense of the treasured old boy of the Democratic establishment.

But does Eric Holder, a graduate of Columbia Law School, really think that by just proclaiming on some show that "Joe is a good guy and would never do that," he would convince people of a clear image of the Democratic candidate? Probably not. So Holder then went into a trick of "whataboutism," attempting to turn the tables on President Trump.

"It's interesting that the people who are trying to fan this thing are the very people who support Donald Trump and, of course, who say nothing about the allegations that have been raised, I think very credibly, against Trump from a number of women  you know, rape," said Holder.

Besides employing whataboutism, this favorite tool of people who are out of luck palpably discussing a subject at hand, Holder professed, incorrectly, that it's "Trump-supporters" who are pushing Ms. Reade's allegations. Not only do Hollywood celebrities like Susan Sarandon and John Cusack back the accuser, but the New York Times published an article on May 1, asking Joe Biden to "play by the rules," meaning the trending motto (asserted by Biden on multiple occasions) that "women need to be believed" when they complain about sexual misconduct from powerful men. And lots of Bernie Sanders fans, convinced that Biden is damaged goods, call on Bernie to come back to the presidential election fight.

Image: North Charleston via Flickr.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 17:24:26|Editor: huaxia

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CAIRO, May 3 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian police forces killed 18 terrorists during a shootout in the country's restive North Sinai Province, Egyptian Ministry of Interior said early on Sunday.

In a statement, the ministry said that the national security sector obtained information about a hideout of terrorist elements in Bir El-Abd city in North Sinai.

A shootout between police forces and the terrorists resulted in the deaths of 18 terrorists, the ministry said, adding that 13 automatic refiles, three bombs and two explosive belts were found at the terrorists' den.

The operation came two days after a military officer and eight soldiers had been killed in a terrorist blast in North Sinai region.

Egypt has been countering terrorism since the Egyptian army ousted late President Mohamed Morsi in 2013. Enditem
Making the world a better place is what Col. Rick Leonard considers one of his highest priorities as he uses principles gained from a more than 30-year military background to enhance his passion for educating and building up civilian communities in the U.S. and abroad.

Leonard, principal of Cope Area Career Center, said the lessons he learned in the U.S. Army helped prepare him for his responsibilities in the education field.

"One, of course, is teamwork. That's very important. You have to rely on those things, including all the leadership courses I've taken," Leonard said.

He graduated from The Citadel in 1978 with a degree in education, but didn't stop there.

"I opted to enlist in the Army back in 1980. I went to training at Fort Leonard Wood back in 1980. A year later, I went to Fort Benning, Georgia, to Officer Candidate School and got my commission. In fact, I was inducted into the OCS Hall of Fame in 2010," Leonard said.

Referring to his early military days, he said, "The Cold War was back then. I went on a couple of missions down in Central America. I built some schools down in Panama and built a school in Belize. I helped build a road in Honduras. I was always interested in those types of things and always going to various trainings. I got to go to a whole laundry list of various schools," he said.

Leonard said his Army training came in handy.

"It helps with your civilian education as far as how to present, instruct, work with faculty. The other thing, of course, is the logistics and operations of running a school. The military has helped with time management and allocating resources. All those things go hand in hand," he said.

Leonard later earned his first master's degree from The Citadel in clinical counseling, an educational specialist degree from South Carolina State University and a second master's degree from the Army War College in strategic studies in 2007.

He said the focus of the last 10 to 12 years of his military career was involved in civil affairs, particularly during the War on Terror, an international military campaign launched by the U.S. government after the Sept. 11 attacks.

'We started building relationships'

Leonard embarked on three tours of duty during the War on Terror, the first of which landed him in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2003. He served as a director of personnel with the 360th Civil Affairs Brigade.

He served in Kabul, Afghanistan's capital and largest city.

"That was really interesting because this was before things really kicked off in Iraq. All of the emphasis, of course, was on Afghanistan. We're trying to go after Osama bin Laden in addition to cleaning up what the Taliban had done. We started building relationships there," Leonard said.

Part of the relationships he built was during his time as an English instructor at an all-girls school.

"I volunteered once a week and got to work in a girls' high school. During the Taliban era, girls were forbidden to learn how to read or go to school, period. I go over there and start trying to teach English. The ages of the students in the classroom ranged from like 9 to 29. It was just a really unique situation," Leonard said.

He added, "There was no power in the school. So depending on the time of the year, we had to rotate around the different classrooms in the building so we'd have enough sunlight to come in."

He enjoyed his travels around Kabul.

"I got to go all around Kabul. I got to see a lot of neat things and different ways of life. Security wasn't as bad as it is now. Every two weeks we tried to bring in different vendors to sell their goods to the soldiers. I got out with my driver and interpreter and we'd go to all these different shops and set up for them to come to our compound in downtown Kabul," said Leonard, who also got to meet Mohammad Zahir Shah, Afghanistan's last king, during his first tour in the country.

"He had come out of exile in Italy and put back in the palace there in Kabul. We helped provide some medical treatment for him, and I got to go along with our medical people to visit him. It was interesting to hear about his story," Leonard said.

Leonard's second tour took him to Iraq from 2009 to 2010. He served as a battalion commander and worked with the 25th Infantry Division and the 3rd Infantry Division.

"That was a good tour. The current president of the University of South Carolina, Gen. Robert Caslen, was commander of the 25th Infantry Division when I was in Iraq. He was the one who promoted me to full-blown colonel when I was there," he said.

Leonard was in charge of all of the civilian affairs officers in northern Iraq.

"I got to travel a good bit from Mosul to Sulaymaniyah. There's a part of Iraq where the Kurds are called Kurdistan. They're different from the other Iraqis in that they're not descendants of Shiites. This is the other group. The Kurds are very pro-American, very friendly. It was really nice to travel all through that part of Iraq," he said.

Leonard's experiences included his encounters with the Yazidis, a predominantly ethnically Kurdish group with a centuries-old religion that Leonard found fascinating.

"It was just strange, but they're very nice people. Another trip that I found interesting was my tour of Halabja. They have a memorial there. Back during Saddam Hussein's era in the late '80s, he gassed thousands of his own people. They were all Kurds. So there's a big memorial down there," said Leonard, who also visited one of Hussein's palatial compounds that had been taken over in Baghdad.

"It's a huge area where Saddam Hussein had his family. He had his own zoo and a little playground for his grandchildren. It looked like Flintstone village out of Hollywood ... It's just amazing the amount of wealth this guy had," Leonard said.

His third and final tour landed him back in Afghanistan from 2010 to 2011 with the 10th Mountain Division.

"I was stationed in Kandahar city. I was director of the Regional Command South (Forward). I worked in a small compound there and worked the U.S. State Department and other agencies from the U.S. like, for example, the Bureau of Prisons, FBI and CIA. The Canadian government had an office there too," Leonard said.

He worked with Kandahar's mayor to create an open market for the people, but assassinations soon began to upend progress.

"You're working with this guy and keeping things going along and, boom, he gets assassinated. I worked with another influential guy in the region, the half brother of Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, to try to get things done and he gets assassinated. So it wasn't promising. Then, of course, I got to work with the governor of Kandahar Province," Leonard said.

He said his work was interesting, but not without safety challenges.

"Security-wise, you had to be in a convoy when you go outside the compound. I preferred moving around in a helicopter. I felt that was a lot safer than being on the ground," Leonard said.

He recalled a prison breakout in Kandahar which resulted in the escape of approximately 200 Taliban.

"They had tunnels several hundred yards underground. Then U.S. Bureau of Prisons took over, and I got to tour that facility. Of course, they fired the warden and, in fact, imprisoned him there and got a new warden.

"It was a very embarrassing thing because the Canadian equivalent of our Bureau of Prisons was helping the Afghans run the prison. Then we took over and discovered all the tunnels and brought in one of those machines that sort of vibrates the ground and looks for holes ... and was able to find the other tunnels before they were used. It was like the Great Escape 2," Leonard said.

"There were very long days. We had, of course, nightly briefings as far as keeping everyone abreast of what was going on in the entire region. Everything was done over the computer. So if I physically wasn't at the division headquarters at Kandahar Airport, I could listen in on my computer down there at Camp Nathan Smith," he said.

"Then I got to go out and, of course, meet various Afghan people ... who were generally very nice."

'Some things you just can't win'

Leonard is proud of the work that the military was able to accomplish in Afghanistan, but acknowledged that challenges remain.

"We tried to do a lot of good in Afghanistan. I don't know if it took politically like we wanted. It was frustrating because I think Afghanistan is still the number one producer of opium," he said.

Leonard added, "It's hard to get some farmer when he's getting paid, for example, $100 an acre to grow opium, and we say, 'No, we don't want you to grow that. We want you to grow corn,' which you'll only maybe get $10 an acre. Well, economically, the farmers are going to go for the bigger crop. Not that they're using opium, but that's just a reality. Some things you just can't win."

He continued, "During my second tour in Afghanistan, it was sort of more about politics. The governor of Kandahar would get a photo-op. He'd get on a bulldozer and bulldoze a bunch of poppy fields. Well, we knew that wouldn't last."

The Greenville, South Carolina, native looks back on his military service as something he was sort of born into.

"I come from a military family. My father was career Air Force. He served in World War II and Korea, and then he flew for the civilian airlines during Vietnam. My grandfather also served in World War II and in World War I. Then I've traced my roots all the way back to pre-Revolutionary War times. So I guess the military is in my blood. Both of my sons have served in the military, both were in the Army. I've had a good career," Leonard said.

He and his wife, Lee, who reside in Orangeburg, are the parents of two sons, Zack and Nick.

"After I retired from the Army in 2011, there's also two organizations I joined in Columbia. I served a little while in what they call the South Carolina State Guard, and I then moved over to another outfit called the Joint Service Detachment that works directly for the adjutant general of South Carolina and was promoted to brigadier general in that organization," Leonard said.

He said he tries not to dwell on the tragedy of war that was, nonetheless, one of its realities.

"We went through the Cold War with the possibility of chemical war and then actually went to Afghanistan and Iraq, where we had rocket attacks and explosions and people getting killed. You don't dwell on that. You can't. You'd go nuts," Leonard said.

"As a commander, one of the hardest things is when you have to write that letter to surviving family members that their loved one's not coming home alive. That's a tough thing to do, but you try to go on the positive things like the camaraderie and working together.

"Hopefully the mission was successful and you did what you were told. Hopefully you can contribute and make not just the United States safer, but the world a better place. I guess that's the overall goal you try to have," he said.

Leonard is the recipient of a Legion of Merit award and three Bronze Stars.

'I enjoy what I'm doing'

Leonard delights in his work helping to mold young minds at the Cope Area Career Center.

"I enjoy what I'm doing. I think it's real important that you find something in life that you really enjoy. You hope you're doing the best you can. So I'm hoping to remain at the Cope Area Career Center a few more years, and then maybe move to a district-level position to help out and stay involved somehow," he said.

He hopes to one day become more involved with helping the City of Orangeburg.

"I'm on the Airport Commission now, and then maybe later on I can find some other role to help out with the city and even the county as I move beyond the education world. That's going to come to an end too as I get older. I tell anybody that it's not much about making money, it's doing what you enjoy doing," he said.

Leonard said it's a lesson not just for his students at the CACC, but himself.

"It's about dedication to duty and service. It's not always about the dollar. What can you do to help improve your community or your organizations? That's what we're trying to push at the Cope Area Career Center," he said.

Contact the writer: dgleaton@timesanddemocrat.com or 803-533-5534. Follow "Good News with Gleaton" on Twitter at @DionneTandD

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The state of Maryland has canceled an order for $12.5 million worth of masks and ventilators from a company that was politically connected.

The order was so contentious that the state has referred the matter to the Attorney General's Office.

Officials with the state in charge of procuring the person protective equipment (PPE) ended up involving law enforcement officials after 30 days had passed since the order was placed with Blue Flame Medical LLC and still nothing had been delivered.

Mike Gula, a one-time Republican fundraiser, suddenly began offering states and organizations personal protective equipment and ventilators for the coronavirus

Gula suddenly closed his fundraising charity and opened Blue Flame, taking orders from states

The company was launched just a few weeks ago by a former fundraiser for the Republican party, Mike Gula, who told The Wall Street Journal that the 1.5 million N95 masks were seized by government officials in China, where they were made.

Gula claims he was then forced to look for a new supplier with which he still plans to make good on the delivery.

The order would have seen Blue Flame purchase 1,550,000 N95 masks for $4.52 each. The state of Maryland also bought 110 ventilators for $40,000 each.

The order totaled $12,542,000 with $1 million for shipping charges.

Maryland placed a $4M order for 110 ventilators and $8.5M for N95 masks

Rep Katie Porter of California has written to the Inspector General to demand an investigation over possible fraudulent activity committed by so-called 'medical supply companies'

The State of Maryland paid Gula a 50 per cent down payment of $6,271,000, according to the purchase order see by the Journal with shipment due by the end of June.

The purchase order says the shipment was due by June 30 - but after no movement was made on the order, the state decided to cancel altogether.

'We have determined that since it has been one month since the order was placed with no confirmation of shipment, we are in the process of cancelling the order and have referred this matter to the Attorney General,' a spokesman for the Maryland Department of General Services said to the Journal.

Gula says about half of the ventilators will arrive shortly and the other half will be delivered at a later date.

Gula had raised tens of millions of dollars for GOP candidates over the last decade, but as the coronavirus began to spread he decided to quit fundraising and try his hand at selling protective medical supplies to firefighters, police officers, hospitals and governments.

Porter accused BlueFlame of hiking up the cost of supplies to make money during the crisis

Days after quitting fundraising he quickly launched his new website for Blue Flame Medical.

'We are the largest global network of COVID-19 medical suppliers,' the company stated on its website. 'Only the highest quality product delivered with the fastest service.'

But the sudden move to close his fundraising firm shocked many in Republican circles with many wondering about his intentions and how he was able to move so quickly, Politico said.

'Over the last 14 days I have built another business outside politics and will be focusing my full attention there,' Mike Gura said in an email. 'After this email, I will be unreachable. I wish you the best of luck in politics and life.'

But it appears Gula was struggling to complete orders in a suddenly crowded marketplace.

He lost a deal in Henrico County, Virginia, near Richmond after attempting to charge $300,000 in shipping - which was the same cost as the order itself.

Henrico County found another vendor to procure the supplies with far lower shipping costs.

Another contract was signed with the state of Alabama but on this order too the deposit was refunded and the order cancelled.

Gula's new company were hoping to secure contracts with sporting leagues and provide hand sanitizers, disinfectant wipes and face masks to fans entering stadiums.
The new number of COVID-19 deaths reported Sunday, May 5 fell to the lowest amount record since the end of March.

A total of 29 new COVID-19 deaths were reported Sunday by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, the lowest mark since March 29 when 21 deaths were reflected in the daily figures.

Both of the low figures have comes on Sundays, a day on which some county health departments do not report their numbers.

The total number of COVID-19 cases in the state now stands at 43,754, up 547 on Sunday, with 4,049 deaths. Saturdays total showed 43,207 confirmed cases and 4,020 deaths.

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A total of 79 of Michigans 83 counties have reported at least one case of COVID-19, including 59 counties with at least one death. Those figures are unchanged since Saturday, May 2.

Testing numbers have also shown an increase in recent days, with 11,385 on May 1, the latest available figure, the highest amount since testing began in early March.

Of the 11,385 tests, those coming back positive dipped to 9.9 percent, the lowest daily percentage so far.

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The largest number of cases remain concentrated in southeast Michigan.

A breakdown of the five areas in the state with the most cases breaks down as follows (deaths in parentheses):

Detroit: 9,280 (1,085)

Wayne County: 7,826 (799)

Oakland County: 7,475 (745)

Macomb County: 5,666 (625)

Kent County: 1,697 (36)

Detroit and Wayne County operates separate health departments. The state separately reports their figures.

Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, Michigans chief medical executive, spoke Sunday morning on NBCs Meet the Press, of improvements in the past few weeks, but she also pointed out the state is third in the nation for COVID-19 deaths.

Our hospitals were over capacity, particularly in the southeast area of the state several weeks ago, Khaldun told host Chuck Todd. We are having parts of the state that are still seeing an increase in the rate of rise of cases and we know their hospital capacity is not what it should be.

She added some of the states rural areas have already reached their capacity and there are several outbreaks on the west side where cases are on the rise.

The state is showing a nine percent fatality rate for COVID-19. The rate is calculated as a simple ratio of total deaths and total positive cases.

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African-Americans and Caucasians have felt the hardest impact from COVID-19, with 34 percent of causes impacting Caucasians and 32 percent of African-Americans.

Percentage of deaths among those cases sits at 48 percent for Caucasians and 41 percent for African-Americans.

African-Americans are being disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, however, with Caucasians making up 74.9 percent of the states population when compared to African-Americans at 14.1 percent.

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Figures show the youngest person to die of COVID-19 was 5, with the oldest person at 107. The average age of those who have died from the virus is nearly 75 years old.

The latest data released May 1 on recovery numbers show 15,659 people, up from 8,342 the prior week.

A recovery means someone who was a confirmed case is alive at least 30 days past their onset of illness.

Read more Michigan coronavirus coverage here

COVID-19 PREVENTION TIPS

In addition to washing hands regularly and not touching your face, officials recommend practicing social distancing, assuming anyone may be carrying the virus.

Health officials say you should be staying at least 6 feet away from others and working from home, if possible.

Carry hand sanitizer with you and use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and when you go into places like stores.

More on MLive:

Sunday, May 3: Latest developments on coronavirus in Michigan

National Guard to assist in testing 7,500 northern Michigan prisoners for coronavirus

Gov. Whitmer says protest 'depicted some of the worst racism and doesnt represent Michigan

Whitmer orders extension of protection guidelines for grocery stores, pharmacies until May 30
THE DUTCH HOUSE by Ann Patchett (Bloomsbury 8.99, 352 pp)

THE DUTCH HOUSE

by Ann Patchett (Bloomsbury 8.99, 352 pp)

With its commanding situation at the top of a hill on the outskirts of Philadelphia, the Dutch House is a glittering prize  or so Cyril Conroy thinks when he buys it in 1946 as a surprise for his wife, Elna.

But the house comes stuffed with the grand belongings of its previous Dutch owners and Elna finds it so oppressive that she leaves Cyril and their children, Maeve and Danny. It is Danny, seven years younger than his resourceful sister, who narrates the story of the baleful spell that the house seems to cast on its inhabitants.

A wicked stepmother, Andrea, moves in and when Cyril dies suddenly, she pushes out her step-children, having made sure that the house and money are all hers.

Ann Patchetts multi-layered novel of love, conflict and misunderstanding brings a fairytale twist to a captivating family drama.

PART OF THE FAMILY by Charlotte Philby (Harper Collins 8.99, 432 pp)

PART OF THE FAMILY

by Charlotte Philby (Harper Collins 8.99, 432 pp)

In 1963, the British traitor Kim Philby defected to the USSR, abandoning his five children whose mother had died in 1957. Philbys granddaughter, Charlotte, was five when Kim died in 1988, and her debut novel, combining a spy thriller with a domestic psychological drama, explores the experience of a mother forced by circumstance to abandon her children.

Anna seems to have an ideal life: a wealthy husband, a high-profile job, adorable twin daughters and enviable houses in north London and Greece.

But at the heart of this apparent perfection is a dark secret and Anna must make a choice between continuing to live a comfortable lie, or exposing the truth at terrible cost, not just to herself, but to her children.

With betrayal and jeopardy on every page, this demands to be read at a single sitting.

BIRD THERAPY by Joe Harkess (Unbound 9.99, 272 pp)

BIRD THERAPY

by Joe Harkess (Unbound 9.99, 272 pp)

Joe Harkness tried to commit suicide in 2013. Diagnosed with chronic anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder, he took time off work and began to rediscover the love of wildlife that he had learned as a child from his beloved grandfather.

Nine months after his breakdown, they went on a birdwatching trip together, and had the luck to see one of the rarest British birds, the bittern. I began to feel alive again, Joe writes.

His book  part memoir, part birdwatching manual  is a heartfelt and inspiring guide to reconnecting with nature.

Some aspects of birdwatching might exacerbate anxiety: the ticking-off of rare species and the sometimes brutal competitiveness of Twitchers, but Joe offers practical advice on avoiding these stresses: stay local, connect with the environment, and just try being at one with birds and nature.
A North Jersey priest has sued Gov. Phil Murphy over Executive Order 107, which was issued in late March and banned social gatherings of any size in the state including religious gatherings to help stop the spread of the coronavirus; saying that the order was unconstitutional.

The Rev. Kevin Robinson, of St. Anthony of Padua Church in North Caldwell, filed the complaint Thursday in U.S. District Court in Newark.

The lawsuit alleged that the order violates the First and Fourteenth amendments.

Murphys order also stated that when in public, people must practice social distancing by staying at least six feet apart from others, except immediate family members, caretakers, household members, or romantic partners, the order stated.

However, Robinson said his church can practice the same type of social distancing used in commercial businesses that were deemed essential by Murphy and stated that his congregations Mass typically numbers around 50, the same number that was permitted in Executive Order 104 which was eventually superseded by 107.

CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Newsletter | Homepage

The priest was threatened by a local police officer with arrest the day before Murphys order went into effect, the lawsuit alleged.

The officer was verbally aggressive, repeatedly stating that the Mass could not proceed because of the Governors order, thus making it clear that (Robinson) was subject to arrest while the members of his congregation were cowering in the basement in fear, the lawsuit stated. Only when the officer was informed by the local police chief via cell phone that Order 107 was not effective until the following day was his implicit threat of arrest withdrawn.

The lawsuit seeks a judges injunction that would stop the state from not allowing him to hold religious services and the priest also wants Executive Order 107 to be deemed unconstitutional.

As an alternative, the priest was looking for the 50-person limitation in Executive Order 104 to be put back into place for religious gatherings with the same social distancing mandates in Order 107.

Robinson said he was looking to hold Mass on Sunday and wanted a temporary restraining order issued immediately so he could do so.

A spokesperson for the governor had no comment on Saturday evening.

Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a voluntary subscription.

Chris Sheldon may be reached at csheldon@njadvancemedia.com.
KAMPALA  The ICT and National Guidance Minister Judith Nabakooba has paid special tribute to journalists who wake up every day to report about the COVID-19 pandemic amid fears of how to stay safe.

I therefore want to thank all media practitioners who have chosen to rise beyond these fears and decided to continue serving their country without fear or favour, said Minister Nabakooba.

In a statement marking World Press Freedom Day, being observed today May 3, she said the government is aware of the unique importance of the media industry and more significantly in the current war against COVID-19.

It is for this reason that His Excellency President Yoweri Museveni ensured that Media personnel are listed amongst the essential category of service providers that needed to continue operating un hindered amidst the ongoing lock down against COVID-19, the minister wrote.

She reiterated the commendation she extended to the media in her recent broadcasts to the country, applauding the good work they have done, and are still doing, as the nation confronts coronavirus.

The minister said that in an effort to support the media through these challenging times of COVID-19, government through her Ministry has made available an emergency fund of about UGX. 6 billion that is meant to bolster media efforts in informing and creating public awareness about COVID-19.

Reflecting on the theme of World Press Freedom Day 2020, Journalism without Fear the Minister has opined that Uganda has a very unhealthy dose of disinformation, fake news, purveyed by people who use media platforms, particularly the digital variant.

.. amidst the ongoing discussion on how media can continue to operate without fear or favour, the media is also being challenged on how to avoid publishing false and unverified information, she said, adding we are also witnessing a growth in mass circulation of false and sometimes malicious information.

She also noted that a lot of this false and malicious information is being circulated across social media platforms by selfish individuals who want to create fear and panic amongst the population; some of it is geared towards discrediting the good efforts of the President and government against COVID-19.

She challenged the all media practitioners to use this day to reflect upon the virtues of professional journalism.

Related
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 21:34:29|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, May 3 (Xinhua) -- China Merchants Bank, one of the largest lenders in China, posted a net profit growth of 10.12 percent in the first three months of 2020.

The bank raked in 27.8 billion yuan (about 3.9 billion U.S. dollars) in net profit attributable to shareholders in the period, according to the company's latest earnings report filed with the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

Its business revenue stood at 76.6 billion yuan, up 11.44 percent year on year.

By the end of March, the bank's non-performing loan ratio declined five basis points from the end of last year to 1.11 percent, while its provision coverage ratio rose 24.49 percentage points to 451.27 percent.

The lender's total assets amounted to 7.77 trillion yuan, up 4.7 percent from the end of last year.

Shares of China Merchants Bank closed 0.2 percent higher at 35.09 yuan on Thursday. Enditem
"There is a dynamic between the physical and the metaphysical world. They confirm each other. Experiences in the world affect the psyche and experiences of the psyche affect how we see the world," says contributor Jonathan Hoffman.
Veteran actor Rishi Kapoor's ashes were immersed in Banganga tank here on Sunday, his elder brother Randhir Kapoor said.

Rishi Kapoor died at the age of 67 on April 30 at H N Reliance hospital in south Mumbai, after a two year long battle with leukaemia.

Randhir Kapoor said a prayer meet for the actor was held on Saturday.

"We did prayer meet yesterday. Today we immersed his ashes in Banganga as we haven't received permission from the authorities to go to Haridwar," Randhir Kapoor told PTI.

A picture has gone viral on social media, where Rishi Kapoor's actor-son Ranbir and wife Neetu are seen sitting next to his photograph.

According to family sources, the actor's daughter Riddhima Kapoor Sahni, who was unable to attend the funeral as she was travelling from Delhi by road, was present at the prayer meet.

"There were not many people, Only five-six family members," the insider said.

Rishi Kapoor had returned to India last September after undergoing treatment for cancer in the US for almost a year.

In February, he was hospitalised twice.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-04 02:00:14|Editor: huaxia

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BUCHAREST, May 3 (Xinhua) -- The Romanian Air Force on Sunday sent a C-27 J Spartan aircraft to Madrid with 90,000 FFP2 protection masks for Spain.

The masks were handed over to the Spanish authorities with duties in the management of emergency situations, according to a press release from the National Defence Ministry of Romania.

They are part of the medical supplies purchased by Romania for an anti-epidemic stockpile established by the European Union (EU) in the country, added the release.

The air transport mission, which was supposed to take place on Saturday, was rescheduled for Sunday due to a technical problem of the plane.

This was the second time the Romanian Air Force had carried out the mission of delivering medical supplies against the novel coronavirus to other EU countries. On April 25, the Romanian Air Force sent a C-27 J Spartan aircraft with 90,000 FFP2 protection masks to Milan, northern Italy.

The European Commission announced on March 19 to create a common strategic stockpile of medical equipment. Romania is the first member that volunteered to purchase and host the reserves which include ventilators and masks, before they are sent to members that need them most.

According to the Commission, it will basically bear the relevant costs, while the hosting state is responsible for the procurement.

Romania has so far received a grant of 10 million euros from the EU, under an agreement signed with the Commission.

Since late March, Romania has sent more than a dozen planes to transport medical supplies from China, South Korea and Turkey. Enditem
Federal Liberal education minister Dan Tehan has launched a scathing attack on Victorian state Premier Daniel Andrews over the controversial issue of opening schools during the COVID-19 crisis, which Labor has described as bullying.

The attack came as state health minister Jenny Mikakos reported a teacher had tested positive to COVID-19 at the Meadowglen primary school in Melbourne, which will be closed for three days for cleaning.

Andrews has been adamant in not opening schools for fear of spreading the virus, while prime minister Scott Morrison has urged all schools to open.

But the prime minister has also previously said parents should listen to their premiers, although that stance now appears to have changed.

The question to Dan Andrews is, sure, take a sledgehammer to defeating the coronavirus but why are you taking a sledgehammer also to your schools system? Tehan told ABC on May 3.

He said Western Australia, South Australia, and the Northern Territory hadnt had to quash their education system to fight the virus and have a 70 percent attendance at their schools.

Pressed several times on the prime ministers previous advice to parents about listening to their premiers, Tehan said the governments advice was that parents should listen to the medical experts.

Its safe for schools to be open and it is safe for teachers to be in the classroom when the right protocols are in place, an unusually heated Tehan insisted.

He said the Victorian chief health officer was on the national medical expert panel which is providing that advice.

But Brett Sutton, unlike his federal counterparts, is against allowing students back to the classroom at this stage,

Mikakos said the prime minister needed to clarify whether Tehan was speaking for his government.

(Morrison) asked Victorian parents to listen to the advice of the Victorian premier, she told reporters.

I too would urge Victorian parents to listen to the advice of our government. The advice remains unchanged and that is that we will continue to engage in online learning for the foreseeable future.

Labors education spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek said Tehans attack was disappointing when states and territories had been working so well with the commonwealth government during the crisis.

We dont need the federal education minister trying to bully and harass state education ministers and state governments, she told reporters in Sydney.

This is a very difficult and stressful time for families  and to have a big political fight between the states and the commonwealth when it comes to schooling is the very last thing they need.

Australian state of Queensland Health Minister Steven Miles said he was unaware of Tehans comments but said no one should be criticizing state leaders.

It would be pretty disappointing if the Morrison government was using it as a chance to take potshots at the states, Miles said.

The last thing we need right now is levels of government criticizing each other.

However, Deputy Chief Medical Officer Nick Coatsworth said COVID-19 affected far fewer children than they represent as a proportion of society.

We know now that COVID-19 is not behaving the same way as influenza, he told Sky News.

Whereas with influenza, children are often primary transmitters in our society. It is clear now for COVID-19 that is not the case.

By Colin Brinsden
Jessica Leeds. Ivana Trump. Kristin Anderson. Jill Harth. Lisa Boyne. Mariah Billado. Victoria Hughes. Temple Taggart. Cathy Heller. Karena Virginia. Tasha Dixon. Bridget Sullivan. Melinda McGillivray. Natasha Stoynoff. Jennifer Murphy. Juliet Huddy. Rachel Crooks. Samantha Holvey. Ninni Laaksonen. Jessica Drake. Summer Zervos. Cassandra Searles. Alva Johnson. E. Jean Carroll. Karen Johnson.

Tara Reade.

Thats my idea of what fair and balanced (in the real sense, not the Fox News sense) journalism looks like when anyone tries the high-wire act of writing about the issue of serious sexual misconduct and assault as it pertains to the 2020 presidential election and the two men who have a credible chance of winning it  President Trump and Joe Biden.

 READ MORE: SIGN UP: The Will Bunch Newsletter

Since Trump announced his first presidential campaign in 2015, a staggering 25 women have been willing to go on the record with an array of charges that range from groping (an act the 45th president has famously bragged about on tape) to barging into dressing rooms of undressed teenage girls to, in one case, a highly credible allegation of straight-up rape.

Although there are other women whove accused Biden of what we might call creepy behavior, only Reade has alleged Biden sexual misconduct that could be viewed as criminal. He denies it, and she so far has not produced evidence beyond a classic she-said, he-said" scenario.

So, yeah, 25-1. So if youre looking at the 2020 race through a lens of feminism, and if you want to view the sexual misconduct piece of this as a numbers game, then Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, is your man. But of course, the toxic masculinity of our political leaders is not a numbers game, its a question of morality. And its beyond frustrating to me that in a nation of 330 million people, we somehow find it impossible to produce a presidential nominee with a lifetime of impeccable treatment of women. Is it really that hard?

In todays boiling stew of partisan anger, its hard to write or talk about Reade and the Biden case without losing ones sanity, let alone hundreds of Twitter followers. MSNBCs Chris Hayes  arguably the most thoughtful journalist on TV, whos offered by far the best coverage of the pandemic  last week gave a balanced report that allowed Reades allegations to be heard while also noting the problems with her story, and was besieged by so-called liberals tweeting #FireChrisHayes (which disgusted me).

Im pretty sure Bidens candidacy will survive the Reade allegations. But the explosion that occurred when the momentum of the #MeToo movement  which has done so much to elevate the stories of survivors of sexual assault  collided with our toxic partisan politics has the potential to seriously damage the feminist cause. And there are powerful forces out there that would love that, to make #MeToo become a blip that never really challenged the patriarchy. The person who can do the most to stop that from happening is Biden. Just as many once referred to Bill Clinton (pre-Obama, obviously) as Americas first black president, its really incumbent on Biden to promise the nation he will govern as Americas first woman president  until we can get the real thing.

I first mentioned the Reade allegation in this column on March 29, or more than a month ago. I wrote at the time that its credible enough that we should listen to her, and investigate fully. Since then, we do know a little more. The short version of her case is that she has worked as an aide to the then-Delaware senator in the early 1990s and last year  when as many as seven other women said Biden had made them uncomfortable with things like unwelcome touching or hair-sniffing  she added her name to that list. Reade said in 2019 that her ex-boss made her uncomfortable with shoulder or neck rubbing and asked her to serve drinks at an event because he liked her legs. But then she came back earlier this year with the more explosive charge that Biden had backed her against a wall and digitally penetrated her.

Reade has produced some corroborating evidence. One neighbor (and Biden voter) has said Reade told her of an assault not long after it allegedly happened. But other evidence  a call to CNNs Larry King Show from a woman who seems to be Reades late mother saying her daughter had problems with her powerful boss  seems more supportive of the 2019 version of events. Reade has said she made a written complaint at that time but that it does not mention a sexual assault, and Biden has now forcefully denied that an assault ever happened in two TV interviews. At the moment, the story is not a good look for Biden but lacks any smoking gun proof of a crime, and at this stage is not a campaign killer.

Still, the controversy stirred up deep and possibly irreparable divisions within the #MeToo movement that came as women poured online to tell their own stories of sexual harassment and assault in the wake of the allegations against not just Trump but powerful men like Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, and many, many others. Some Biden supporters who consider themselves feminists launched attacks on Reade that were unsupported and uncalled for; ones political leanings have nothing to do with the truth or falsity of a sexual assault allegation and that smacked of the other tropes that have caused our so-called justice system to reject womens claims over the years.

As someone who applauded Dr. Christine Blasey Ford for the courage to tell her story about now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, I was flummoxed to watch others who had felt the same way now trash Reade before her story was fully investigated. But heres what bothered me even more: I knew those contradictions will be exploited by all the dark forces out there who never wanted the #MeToo movement to succeed, who want a return to an era of zero accountability for sexism.

What exactly is feminism? Does it mean blindly supporting the Democratic Party because its better than the Republicans on issues like reproductive rights or equal pay, and in 2020 its the only thing standing between a second term for Trump? Or is it something more complicated? The best of the many pieces Ive read came from Sarah Jones, who wrote, in New York Magazine, on feminism: The movement exists to critique power: to identify its abuses and demand its redistribution. Accept that, and you dont serve the political class; youre in tension with it. Thats uncomfortable. Thats inconvenient. Thats the point.

Lets be clear: This couldnt have come at a worse time for #MeToo. The backlash from men  highlighted by the 2018 confirmation of Kavanaugh  that a movement that has striven for only two or three years to undo two or three millennia of patriarchy has lasted long enough continues to gain steam. Even the woman who created the hashtag, Tamara Burke, has complained that the movement has become unrecognizable.

 READ MORE: Dems cant have the one thing they desperately need: A presidential do-over. Now what? | Will Bunch

And now misogyny is enlisting humankinds most powerful weapon: fear. In the 2020 Democratic primaries, the women who led the Womens March and elected so many new female members of Congress in 2018 got cold feet that America would never elect one of a slate of incredibly talented women; many went with the 77-year-old white dude who has issues. And when those issues surfaced, it was telling that top women Democrats were badgered and hounded to answer for Biden with a fury that the men who are actually accused of misconduct rarely get.

I dont want to see women bullied about cleaning up this mess. I do want to see Joe Biden do even more than hes done so far. Hes capable  the best thing about Bidens overly long career in politics has been his ability to adapt, like his earlier-than-Obama embrace of gay marriage. But he can also be stubborn and set in his ways; just last week, as the Reade controversy was escalating, he announced a vice presidential search task force chaired by his old friend ex-Sen. Christopher Dodd, who was accused of gross sexual misconduct in a notorious 1990 magazine article.

Cmon, man.

If I were advising Biden? In a perfect world, before the coronavirus travel restrictions, Id tell him to go to Seneca Falls or some other appropriate setting (because the basement thing just isnt cutting it) and give a major address on womens rights on the 100th anniversary of female suffrage in America. And while Id have him repeat his denial of any assault on Reade, Id also ask him to go much deeper in acknowledging that this is a woman who seems to be in pain  and that he is truly sorry about that. Like most successful and stubborn politicians, Biden hates to apologize. But he should apologize, in the strongest possible terms, to any woman who feels wronged by him in the past, including Anita Hill. He needs to ask for absolution so he can focus on what really matters now, the future.

This Biden speech would outline how his presidency will accomplish things for women that would have been unimaginable when he was first elected to the Senate in 1972. In other words, he needs to go well beyond his admirable commitment to name a woman vice president and to put a black woman on the Supreme Court. He needs to lay out a Womens Bill of Rights agenda for the 21st century, on how women will finally get true pay equality, new guarantees of reproductive rights, and protection from domestic violence and sexual assault in the workplace or on campus, as well as societal changes like child care and paid sick leave that will make their lives better.

Heres the deal: I am a feminist. And  based on what we know today  going into the voting booth and choosing between Biden and his uncomfortable past versus Trumps open misogyny and his string of sexual assault allegations is a no-brainer for me or anyone else who proudly wears that label. But we also need to hold Biden accountable to do better for women, because I believe he can. We cant go back to 1993, either to find out what really happened or undo any mistakes of the past. But we can go forward in 2021. Joe Biden owes that to all women. We all do.
Flash flooding hit the small town of Isfana in Kyrgyzstan on May 2 after heavy rainfall in the area.

Kyrgyzstans Ministry of Emergency Situations said on Facebook that flooding was reported in the remote Leilek district, near the Central Asian nations border with Tajikistan.

This video shows a torrent of muddy water flowing down a street. The ministry said an emergency warning had been issued about flooding in the region. Credit: Ministry of Emergency Situations Kyrgyzstan via Storyful
ritical care manager Andy Roberts who recovered from coronavirus said he was 'angry' after being barred

6,500 people have already registered an interest in taking part

Gay and bisexual men are being turned away from Covid-19 blood plasma trial

Gay and bisexual men are not being allowed to take part in a blood plasma trial to help in the battle against coronavirus.

The NHS is looking for plasma donors from recovered patients to used in the trial by doctors at London's Guy's and St Thomas' hospital.

Earlier today it was reported that 6,500 people have already registered interest in taking part.

But under rules that enraged potential donors, gay and bisexual men will be barred from donating unless they had already abstained from sex for three months.

The NHS is looking for plasma donors from recovered patients to used in the trial by doctors at London 's Guy's and St Thomas' hospital (stock photo)

Critical care manager Andy Roberts told ITV News that although he had tested positive for coronavirus and has since recovered, he was turned down for the trial.

During a phone call with someone working on the trial, the married NHS worker was asked about his sexuality before being told he was not allowed.

Keith Ward, his partner of more than three decades, said Mr Roberts being barred from the trial just because he is a gay man made him 'angry'.

'We have been together in a monogamous relationship for more than 30 years and I previously didnt know of this outrageous three month rule,' he said.

'It only goes to show that in the UK being gay is still thought as a form of contamination, so if youre straight and sleep with a different person every weekend its safer according to the rules.'

Critical care manager Andy Roberts told ITV News that although he had tested positive for coronavirus and has since recovered, he was turned down for the trial (stock photo)

General blood donation guidelines stipulate gay and bisexual men are not permitted to donate blood unless they have abstained from oral or anal sex with another man for three months.

The time limit was reduced from 12 months in 2017. There is no exception given to married gay men or those in monogamous relationships.

The NHS Blood and Transplant service told MailOnline that the decision to use current donor selection guidelines are to 'protect donors and recipients'.

The Advisory Committee on the Safety of Blood, Tissues and Organs (SaBTO) makes recommendations to the Department of Health which decides on guidelines which NHSBT follow.

So the guidelines mentioned are Department of Health guidelines which we implement. Any reporting needs to be clear on this please.

An NHS Blood and Transplant spokesperson said: 'We will initially be using the current donor selection guidelines although we will keep this under review.

'The guidelines are there to protect the health of the donor and the recipient. Under the current guidelines, men must wait three months after having oral or anal sex with another man.

'We appreciate this deferral can feel disappointing if you want to save lives.

'Separately to the convalescent plasma trial, we are working with LGBT+ groups to explore whether we might be able to introduce a more individualised risk assessment for blood donation.'

For those who are permitted to take part in the trial, the donations have been collected and transfusions will begin in 'the coming weeks', the hospital's Biomedical Research Centre said.

It is hoped the potential treatment, known as convalescent plasma, will help patients whose bodies are not producing sufficient antibodies to fight the virus.

The hospital says if the trials prove the treatment to be effective, NHS Blood and Transplant will begin a national programme to deliver up to 10,000 units of convalescent plasma per week to the NHS, enough to treat 5,000 patients each week.
3M (MMM) has filed five legal actions in federal courts concerning fraudulent offers from vendors to sell N95 respirators at highly inflated prices- all while pretending to be affiliated with 3M.

In one case, one of the defendants claimed to have up to five billion respirators for sale, according to MMM. Another vendor attempted to sell 10 million N95 respirators to the Florida Division of Emergency Management at nearly 460% percent over list prices.

The claims, filed in Florida, Wisconsin and Indiana, are part of 3Ms global effort to protect the public and combat fraud and counterfeiting.

We are grateful that in each of these cases, the false offers were reported to 3M, and the attempts to deceive public officials did not succeed, said Ivan Fong, 3M Senior VP. We will continue to take legal action in cases like these and are working closely with national and international law enforcement to help stop the perpetrators of these unlawful and unethical schemes.

As the company points out, 3M has not changed the prices it charges for respirators as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak. It also said it will donate any damages recovered to coronavirus-related nonprofit organizations.

In total, 3M has now filed 10 lawsuits in April in its effort to combat fraud. The company, which is currently trading down 16% on a year-to-date basis, has a Hold consensus from the Street and $166 average analyst price target (12% upside potential). (See 3M stock analysis on TipRanks).

RBC Capital analyst Deane Dray notes that 3M aims to double its production of N95 respirators to 2 billion by year-end to meet the escalating global demand.

However he warns investors that the companys historical reputation for being a defensive safe haven has been eroded by its now-apparent sensitivity to demand softness and relatively limited forward visibility. Dray has a Hold rating on the stock and $148 price target (0.4% downside potential).

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 18:52:45|Editor: huaxia

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COLOMBO, May 3 (Xinhua) -- One inmate died while two prison guards were injured when a group of prisoners attempted to break out of the Mahara Prison on the outskirts of Sri Lanka's capital Colombo on Sunday, the police said.

According to the police media division, a group of seven inmates had tried to escape from jail using ropes and bed sheets to scale down the prison wall early on Sunday morning, and they were spotted by prison guards.

A scuffle broke out between the prison guards and prisoners which led to the guards firing in the air.

The police said one inmate and two guards were injured in the scuffle, and the injured inmate died later in a hospital.

The remaining 6 inmates were recaptured.

The police said an investigation has been launched into the incident. Enditem
On the same day that New York Citys 911 dispatchers fielded a volume of calls not seen since the Sept. 11 attacks, Paul Cary, a paramedic, set out for the nearly 1,800-mile drive from Denver to New York City in an ambulance.

Mr. Cary, a retired firefighter who worked for three decades with the Aurora Fire Department, was known for being a skilled paramedic who was willing to pitch in to cover the shifts of co-workers.

A colleague, Rick Diemert, described Mr. Cary as a really, really dependable gentleman.

Mr. Cary arrived in New York City in late March, days before the authorities issued an emergency alert about the growing coronavirus pandemic: Seeking licensed health care workers.

For three weeks, Mr. Cary transported Covid-19 patients to hospitals by ambulance and helped dispatch 911 calls because of the high volume.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a meeting to discuss strategies to restart the economy and initiate structural reforms in the MSME (Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises) sector to spur growth in the wake of coronavirus pandemic. He discussed strategies to support MSMEs and farmers by enhancing liquidity and strengthening credit flows and talked about ways to ensure financial stability to enable businesses severely hit by the nation-wide lockdown.

The meeting was held with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Home Minister Amit Shah, secretaries of the Ministry of Finance and other top officials. The key meeting was held a day before the second phase of lockdown ends on Sunday. The Centre has already extended the lockdown by two more weeks while giving some relaxations in red, orange and green zones.

Also read: RBI cancels licence of CKP Co-operative Bank; depositors to get up to Rs 5 lakh

PM Modi pointed out the need to generate gainful employment opportunities by helping businesses overcome difficulties due to disruptions caused by COVID-19.

He stressed on the need to strengthen major structural reforms undertaken in the past and new structural reforms in corporate governance, credit markets and infrastructure sectors were also discussed, a government statement said.

The PM also stressed the need to take speedy measures to commence work on new infrastructure projects and initiate speedy work in the infrastructure sector to make up for the time lost in COVID-19. Modi has said the projects taken up under the National Infrastructure Pipeline should be reviewed at the highest level frequently to avoid time delays and enable jobs creation.

PM Modi also discussed the reform initiatives undertaken by various ministries. He said that they continue unabated and action should be taken in a time-bound manner to remove obstacles in investment flows and capital formation.

Meanwhile, over 2,293 new novel coronavirus cases and 71 deaths were reported in India in the last 24 hours. The country's total number of COVID-19 cases now stands at 37,776, including 26,535 active cases, 10,017 recoveries, 1 migrated and 1,223 deaths, the Union Ministry of Health data says.

Also read: Coronavirus India Live Updates: Lockdown 3.0! 2,644 new cases in 24 hours; biggest 1-day spike; tally-37,776
A highly-decorated colonel of the Indian Army was among five security personnel killed during more than 12-hour operation to flush terrorists out of a house in Handwara in north Kashmir, officials said on Sunday.

Two terrorists were also killed in the encounter that began around 3:30pm on Saturday after they took hostages inside a house in Chanjmulla area of Handwara.

Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, the commanding officer of the armys 21 Rashtriya Rifles battalion, Major Anuj, a Lance Naik and a rifleman and sub-inspector Shakeel Qazi of the Jammu and Kashmir police were killed after the firefight with terrorists holed up in the house.

Officials said their bodies have been recovered from the encounter site. The civilians have been rescued, they added.

Throughout the night as the gun battle raged, several Pakistani accounts on Facebook and Telegram ran propaganda against the operation.

Bravery awards

Col Sharma had been decorated twice for bravery and had been part of several successful counter-terrorism operations in the past.

The commanding officer of 21 Rashtriya Rifles along with four others had entered the house to evacuate the trapped people after the firing had stopped for an hour.

The encounter began on Saturday afternoon after the army and state police launched a joint operation following a tip-off about the presence of terrorists in the area. The terrorists hid inside a house and took the residents as hostages.

A team comprising five army and J&K Police personnel entered the target area occupied by the terrorists to evacuate the civilians. The team entered the target area and successfully extricated the civilians, the army said in a statement.

However, during the process, the team was subjected to a heavy volume of fire by the terrorists. In the ensuing firefight, two terrorists were eliminated and the team of five comprising two army officers, two soldiers and one police sub-inspector attained martyrdom, it said.
A mobile application, developed by a startup incubated at the Indian Insititute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B), can remotely monitor heart and breathing rates of Covid-19 patients. This can help in reducing the burden on both the countrys medical infrastructure and the limited number of health workers amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Vytal Health Tracker application, designed by startup Vytal, helps clinics and community workers track key health indicators of patients, using their mobile phones. The application converts smartphones into mini medical devices by offering Photoplethysmographic (PPG) signal, using the smartphones in-built sensors. The PPG is a simple optical technique used to detect changes in blood volume.

The Vytal app offers PPG signals using the smartphones sensors in a non-invasive way. It doesnt need external sensors and is independent of ambient lighting conditions. From this, the patients heart and breathing rates are estimated, said Gunjan Jain, co-founder of Vytal, which was incubated at the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at IIT-B. Monitoring can continue from home or in the absence of expensive medical devices, she added.

Healthcare and community workers can track symptoms of users through a dashboard on the application that is available in English and Hindi. The tracker will also send an alert to doctors through text messages if a patients vital parameters breach the acceptable limits. In case of any signs of distress, the app also connects doctors with patients to provide video consultation.

The app minimises risks to health workers, offers continuous care, and can help individuals or patients in quarantine facilities and those under home quarantine, said Jain. The startup is in talks with government and civic authorities on the applications usage by frontline workers.

A separate segment on the app takes care of mental and psychosocial well-being of such patients/ individuals through relaxing and meditative games. It also helps curb the spread of fake news by keeping people informed about Covid-19.
Ten years ago, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was complaining that California received only 78 cents back for every tax dollar it sent to Washington, arguing that the states budget woes would disappear if the federal government would only play fair with funding.

Its too late for Schwarzenegger, but a new study found that California has moved off the list of donor states and now takes in almost exactly as much in federal payments as its businesses and residents pay in taxes.

While thats great news for California, its not nearly so upbeat a statistic for the country as a whole, said Alan Auerbach, director of the Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance at UC Berkeley.

The federal deficit has been going up every year, with the government spending more than it is taking in, he said. As they say at the carnival, Everyone is a winner.

The new study by the Rockefeller Institute of Government in New York found that in the 2017-18 fiscal year, there were only eight so-called donor states, which paid the government more than they received. That was down from a dozen states in 2015, including California, and 17 states in a 2007 study by the independent Tax Foundation.

John Blanchard

The federal balance of payments is growing, sparking more money for the states, said Laura Schultz, senior economist for the Rockefeller Institute and co-author of the new report. As that money gets spent, there are fewer states with negative balances.

The money that comes to Californians from the federal government includes retirement checks, like Social Security and veterans benefits, as well as Medicare and food assistance. California also receives billions in federal grants for Medi-Cal and other health programs, and money for transportation, education and housing.

Federal contracts with California companies are also included in the final figure, as are wages and benefits for federal workers and the military, according to a 2017 report by the state Legislative Analysts Office.

Some of those numbers have been rising steadily, said Auerbach of UC Berkeley.

Former President Barack Obamas Medicaid expansion and the Affordable Care Act allowed California to expand health care, and virtually all that money has come from the federal government, he said. Also, there are a lot of new defense contracts and other increases in spending.

The latest figures also show that while President Trump has threatened to slash federal funds from California for its sanctuary policies on undocumented immigrants and its tougher-than-Washingtons environmental rules, the states federal contract numbers keep getting bigger.

Californias greatest increase (in 2018) was in the number of contracts, which account for much of the growth in federal payments, said Schultz of the Rockefeller Institute. They rose from $54 billion in 2015 to $72 billion in 2018.

Those rising figures have little to do with any action California has taken.

When he took office in 2003, Schwarzenegger proclaimed himself the Collectinator, pledging to get more money from the federal government. He quickly discovered that plenty of those federal dollars are baked into formulas the state cant adjust.

Two of the states that get the most federal money, for example, are Virginia and Maryland, thanks largely to the huge number of federal workers and government facilities in the suburbs surrounding Washington, D.C.

And Californias population is one of the youngest in the nation, with about 14% of its residents 65 or older. By contrast, more than a fifth of Floridas residents are of retirement age, guaranteeing a river rather than a stream of Social Security money.

While California officials still might complain that other states get a higher percentage of federal money, no one is willing to change places with states like Kentucky, Alabama, West Virginia and Mississippi. Each of those low-income states gets better than $2 in federal payments for every dollar of taxes.

Poor states pay less taxes and have a lot of sick people, Auerbach said. Its pretty clear why Mississippi is a recipient state.

But California might not have much time to revel in its comfortable spot on the federal pay line. Both Schultz and Auerbach warned that next years survey could be bad news for the state.

Rockefellers new chart only captures about one month of the 2017 tax changes, Schultz said. We wont see the full effects ... until next year.

Although the tax package pushed through by a Republican Congress and signed by Trump trimmed peoples IRS bills across the nation, California and other high-wealth states like New York and New Jersey face special problems.

When the federal government capped the deductibility of state and local taxes and mortgage interest, California suffered a lot, Auerbach said. Relative to low-tax states like Texas, California will be paying higher taxes.

When the tax changes are factored in, Auerbach said, the donor state numbers are absolutely not going to stay the same.

John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jfwildermuth
Photograph: Nicolas Reusens/Getty Images

Researchers and citizens in Washington state are on a careful hunt for invasive murder hornets, after the insect made its first appearance in the US.

The Asian giant hornet is the worlds largest and can kill humans. But it is most dangerous for the European honeybee, which is defenseless in the face of the hornets spiky mandibles, long stinger and potent venom.

Related: Florida man stalks beach as Grim Reaper to protest reopening amid pandemic

Washington state verified four reports of Asian giant hornets in two north-western cities in December. The species becomes more active in April, prompting local officials to invite the public to help beekeepers by creating their own hornet traps.

Its a shockingly large hornet, Todd Murray, Washington State University Extension entomologist and invasive species specialist, said in a statement. Its a health hazard, and more importantly, a significant predator of honeybees.

Murray said it was important for people to learn to recognize the insect now, while the population is small and still new to the region.

Related Video: Giant Hornet Nest Exterminated From Car

We need to teach people how to recognize and identify this hornet while populations are small, he said, so that we can eradicate it while we still have a chance.

The hornets are about the size of an adult thumb, with a yellow and orange head. They are most destructive in the late summer and early fall. One telltale sign they have visited a hive is the remains of decapitated bees.

Some researchers refer to the insect as a murder hornet, according to a New York Times story published on Saturday.

In Japan, up to 50 people a year die after being stung, though the hornet is usually only aggressive to humans if it is disturbed.

The Times story prompted a slew of comments on social media, noting the appearance of the hornets in the US in 2020, alongside famine, pestilence and war.

Whomever had murder by hornet on their apocalypse bingo card, please step forward to collect your winnings, wrote Kaz Weida, a freelance journalist.

The comedian Patton Oswalt shared the story and wrote murder hornets. Sure thing, 2020. Give us everything. Hypno-frogs. Fecal blizzards. Toilet tsunamis. A CATS sequel. We can take it.

The author Rabih Alameddine posted: I really think that was missing from my life this year was murder hornets.
Republican Robert F. Hyde  who catapulted into the national spotlight when his name surfaced in connection with President Donald Trumps impeachment  is no longer planning a congressional run.

I can confirm (Hyde is out), J.R. Romano, chairman of the state Republican Party, told Hearst Connecticut Media late Saturday night.

Hydes end to his run for Congress was first reported by the Hartford Courant.

Although Romano was able to confirm Hyde has stepped away from the run against incumbent Democratic 5th-District U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes and Republican challenger David X. Sullivan, he said Hyde hasnt said why he made the decision.

The Courant indicated Hyde decided to withdraw from the race because Sullivan outraised him.

Sullivan has raised $136,055.42 as of March 31, according to data from the Federal Election Commission. In comparison, Hyde has raised $24,463.08 as of that same date, the data showed.

Hayes has raised $1,123,740.92, according to the data.

Hyde captured national attention when Democrats released records in January that included text messages between Hyde and Soviet-born businessman Lev Parnas from 2019.

His messages with Parnas  a close associate of Trumps personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani  appeared to indicate his involvement in surveillance of Marie Yovanovitch, U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. Hyde has denied being involved in the surveillance of Yovanavitch.
Well, that's put yer man Holohan back in his box, wha'? Get up the yard, Tony, we're not having some baldy bugger with a medical degree making Cabinet members look like they're not up to the job.

In recent days, the politicians desperately needed to be seen to kick ass...

Sorry, I'll reword that. In recent days, the politicians desperately needed to reassert their authority, in the interests of democracy and accountability.

It built slowly, then the knife went in, very fast.

And all through it, the politicians played the media the way Clapton plays the guitar.

"Sources" were leaking like one of those houses thrown up at the fag end of the Celtic Bubble.

And the Taoiseach, for the second week running, was mainlining photo ops.

Last Thursday, the politicians let it be known that Holohan and his National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) needed to be put in their place.

On Friday, in a deft series of moves, the Taoiseach and his team took the medics down.

It was a bit like watching Roy Keane go in knee-high on Alf-Inge Haaland. Effective, painful and terribly public.

The minor adjustments to the Covid-19 restrictions are not a big deal. And the "roadmap" to "normality" is tentative, and based on the work of Nphet. It can be changed or even scrapped entirely, if Nphet decides that's necessary for public health reasons.

The responsibilities haven't changed, but perception has been adjusted to enhance the Cabinet's image, and to push the Taoiseach front and centre.

We can expect Holohan to shrug it off - the work Nphet is doing is too important to care about the matters of image that preoccupy TDs.

Legitimate questions have been asked about Nphet. It's obviously necessary that a body with such powers should be accountable. It was, of course, the job of the politicians to make it so. They failed.

In matters of health (among others), the ham-fisted failures of the politicians were obvious.

In March, for instance, it was 14 years since the A&E chaos was officially dubbed a "national emergency", and they still hadn't figured out why people were lying on trolleys for days.

(Maybe it's because FF and FG cut thousands of beds - just a thought.)

As the coronavirus approached, we were grateful that Nphet took on the job of protecting us - about three dozen experts in epidemiology, virology and associated matters, in a team chaired by Chief Medical Officer Tony Holohan.

They're specialists, steeped in information about epidemics. They weigh up huge amounts of data, then make scary decisions. They know they can't always get things right. They know the consequences of getting things wrong.

Accepting World Health Organisation guidance, Nphet oversaw the measures required to implement the WHO principles of fighting a pandemic. The politicians deferred to Nphet. They also ably explained to the rest of us the policies of delay, contain and mitigate.

They imported the brilliant "flatten the curve" images and the vast majority of us cooperated.

The medical preparations held up against Covid-19's assault. And the strategy succeeded so far.

There were massive failures - such as the nursing homes disaster, and the response of throwing HSE staff into the breach, without proper PPE. The Direct Provision chaos - always a scandal - had by now become a frightening failure to protect public health.

All this will need accounting for.

And the failure to prepare for a crisis the politicians knew could strike at any time. They waited until the house went on fire, then they started building a fire station and putting out tenders for fire brigades.

Last Monday evening, Claire Byrne Live revealed a poll in which 79pc said they remained compliant with Nphet's strategy. And only 17pc were flagging.

The poll asked if Nphet should loosen the restrictions. Only 33pc said yes, and 47pc said no.

The people have patience.

The following day, though, we were hearing mostly about the people who wanted to get out and about.

TDs were annoyed. Some of their constituents were complaining that their businesses should be deemed essential. They wanted exceptions made for their sport. They were worried about the economy.

Politicians found themselves trying to dampen expectation which they had created, with nods and winks.

The words "loosen the restrictions" summed up the message. You could see that as a cry for freedom, or as an irresponsible response to necessary measures in terribly dangerous circumstances.

Under cover of the "accountability" trope, the cry of liberation went up - "I want to go shopping!"

Graduates of the Twitter University of Epidemiology explained how the "unelected" experts know nothing. Columnists had a feeling that despite the poll figures, and squeamish people like Tony Holohan, their readers would gladly sacrifice the lungs of the occasional pensioner if it meant they could try on a new outfit in BT.

Last Thursday, Holohan had to spend two hours with Government ministers, explaining the basis for Nphet's recommendations.

The ministers went outside and some of them told the political reporters how they'd gone head to head with the devilish dictator. The ministers, they said, had given Nphet some "push back". One complained that Holohan was regarded as a "bit of a God".

Among those reported to be "pushing back" was Finian McGrath. I voted for him, when he was first elected. He is, I still believe, a decent person concerned with the interests of others.

Four years ago, he raised the HPV vaccine five times in the Dail - once demanding that the Minister for Health "remove the vaccine as a matter of priority". There is no container on the planet large enough to hold the totality of my indifference to Finian McGrath's views on anything medical.

But, our Taoiseach is sensitive. Unease in the ranks had to be responded to.

Nphet is aware of the mental health consequences of a lockdown, and the economic damage. It met on Friday morning to consider what changes could safety be made to restrictions.

The Cabinet would meet to sign off on this later.

Holohan made no secret of the fact he was worried. At least 30 people a day are still being hospitalised. At a few minutes to 5pm it was announced that Holohan would hold Nphet's usual briefing at 5.30pm.

He would be asked about easing restrictions. He would, presumably, explain what was recommended, with context and caution.

About 15 minutes after the briefing was announced, it was cancelled. It was announced that Varadkar would make a "televised address" at 6.30pm. No questions allowed.

His speech had the changes agreed by Nphet. It also smacked of a campaign speech. Uplifting rhetoric, references to letters he received from children and pensioners.

Effectively, the Taoiseach hijacked the announcement.

The politicians politicised and inflated what should have been a low-key transfer of information. The TV news was full of it, prior to Varadkar's speech, with analysis afterwards, later news bulletins carried excerpts, then his appearance on The Late Late Show.

Ryan Tubridy was the only one allowed to question him - and Ryan did what Ryan does.

It's almost as though we're in the middle of a political campaign, not a health crisis.
Even under normal circumstances, nursing can be a stressful profession. The COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbates it.

New research led by Marian Reven, a Ph.D. student in the West Virginia University School of Nursing, suggests that aromatherapy may reduce nurses' on-the-job feelings of stress, anxiety, exhaustion and being overwhelmed. Her pilot study results appear in the International Journal of Professional Holistic Aromatherapy.

"If we can improve our nurses' emotional reserves and give them more resiliency by using aromatherapy--give them a place to step back, to do some mindfulness--we're doing a good thing at the other end of it by improving patient care," she said.

In an eight-week study, she and her colleagues--WVU researchers Janelle Humphrey-Rowan and Nina Moore--provided aromatherapy patches to 19 nurses who worked at the Infusion Center at the WVU Cancer Institute. The nurses affixed the patches to the badges they wore on lanyards around their necks. The patches were infused with a citrusy blend of essential oils: lemon, orange, mandarin, pink grapefruit, lemongrass, lime and peppermint.

I sat down with people from the WVU Cancer Institute's Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center, and we smelled three different oil blends. When they smelled this blend, everybody's face lit up, and they were immediately happy." Marian Reven, a registered nurse with WVU Medicine and certified, registered aromatherapist

Cutting stress levels in half

The nurse participants wore aromatherapy patches on their ID badges for four-to-eight-hour stretches, on eight separate occasions, while working at the infusion center.

Before and after wearing the patch each time, study participants completed a survey about their moods. They reported how strong certain emotions were, on a scale of one to 10.

The researchers found that participants felt significantly less stressed, anxious, fatigued and overwhelmed after wearing the aromatherapy patches. The levels of anxiety and fatigue they reported fell by 40 percent, and their stress levels and feelings of being overwhelmed decreased by half.

"Oncology nurses face a type of stress that is unique," Reven said. "There are so many cancers that are considered chronic illnesses that oncology infusion center nurses probably see these people for years instead of months. They know them. They get very invested in their lives."

"It's a stressful job," said Laurie Theeke, professor and director of the Ph.D. Program at the School of Nursing and nurse practitioner in the Department of Family Medicine. "You're dealing with life or death or chronic illness every day. And people in all of the health professions are stressed. This doesn't just have application to nursing. It's about workplace stress."

Stressful times, lonely patients

Aromatherapy might improve patients' moods, too, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, when hospital patients can't receive visitors.

"I work nightshift weekends," Reven said. "Last weekend, several of the patients tugged on my heart strings. They missed their family and friends so much during this time of 'no visitors.' I just wanted to be able to do something more for them. An aromatherapy patch with lavender or citrus might have helped.

"As a nurse, I spend a lot of time at the bedside of very ill people," she added. "I often think, 'How would I feel if it was me?' I get very sad sometimes watching the suffering, and yes, I personally use aromatherapy to help with my resiliency."

Loneliness isn't just unpleasant. It's also a predictor of depression, functional decline and mortality.

"People do die of loneliness," Theeke said.

The research results also suggest that aromatherapy might make people outside of healthcare settings feel better as they shelter in place to prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. After all, a patch on an employment badge isn't the only way to use essential oils. Someone can plug in an essential oil diffuser or simply add a drop of pure lavender essential oil to a teaspoon of lotion.

Reven emphasized the importance of buying essential oils only from reputable sources.

"There are two professional organizations that can give the layperson credible information about where to find essential oils and how to use them safely: the Alliance of International Aromatherapists and the National Association of Holistic Aromatherapy," she said.

But you don't have to buy anything special to enjoy the benefits of aromatherapy. Common household items, used during common household tasks, can be enough.

"Baking is aromatherapy," Reven said. "Cutting up an orange is aromatherapy. We need some aromatherapy all the time."
Veteran actor Rishi Kapoor's funeral was held in Mumbai on Thursday afternoon (April 30). His final rites were held in the presence of wife Neetu Kapoor, son Ranbir Kapoor, brother Randhir Kapoor, niece Kareena Kapoor Khan and her husband Saif Ali Khan, a few other family members and colleagues.

Riddhima Kapoor   Rishi Kapoor        | FilmiBeat

For the uninitiated, Rishi Kapoor was diagnosed with leukemia in 2018. The actor underwent treatment in New York for over a year and later returned to Mumbai. He was shooting for Sharmaji Namkeen in Delhi when he fell ill again earlier this year and later admitted to Sir. HN Reliance Foundation Hospital on April 29, 2020, where he breathed his last.

And now, a picture from the Bobby stars prayer meet has made its way on the internet. The photo first surfaced on a few fan pages and is breaking many hearts who continue to pray for the grieving family. It has Ranbir Kapoor sporting a saffron-colored turban with mother Neetu on the other end as they pose with the late actors picture at the prayer meet organized at their Mumbai residence.

Meanwhile, Rishi Kapoor's daughter Riddhima along with her daughter Samara Sahni has arrived from Delhi to be with her mother and brother. It must be recollected that Riddhima was unable to attend the funeral of her father due to the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions.

ALSO READ: RIP Rishi Kapoor: Lesser Known Facts Out Bollywood's Beloved Chintu Ji

ALSO READ: Mukesh Bhatt Says There Cannot Be A Xerox Copy Of Rishi Kapoor; 'He Will Live In My Heart Forever
US Congressman Mike Johnson discussed the coronavirus pandemic and the steps towards calling China to account, Fox News reported.

"I think we need to take decisive action. And so we proposed in our framework that China, really the government there, be held accountable," Johnson said Saturday. "How do you do that? Well, we could end these visas, for example, that Chinese government officials used to bring themselves and their families into the U.S. to take advantage of educational opportunities in leisure and otherwise until they retract their outrageous claims that somehow America was responsible for the coronavirus problem."

According to him, there were "a lot of things" the US could do to get China to allow the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) access to research the origins of the coronavirus.

"Look, there's a lot of things that we can do in terms of forcing their hand to have the CDC be able to have access to China to further research how this pandemic came about and how we can better respond to it," Johnson said. "We need to investigate the WHO [World Health Organization] and their connection to China, as well."
Three people were seriously injured after a wrong-way driver slammed head-on into another car early Sunday in Hunterdon County.

A 51-year-old Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, woman was driving east in the westbound lanes of Interstate 78 near milepost 13.8 in Union Township shortly before 2 a.m. when she sideswiped a pickup, according to New Jersey State Police Sgt. Jeff Flynn

She then collided head-on with another car, Flynn said.

Two passengers in that car, a 16-year-old boy and a 25-year-old man, both of Allentown, Pennsylvania, were thrown from the vehicle.

Both passengers and the driver, a 41-year-old Sayreville man, were airlifted to Morristown Medical Center with serious injuries. One was listed as stable, while the other two were in critical condition as of late Sunday morning, a hospital spokeswoman confirmed.

Three people were airlifted following a three-vehicle, wrong-way crash on Route 78 westbound in Union Township early Sunday, May 3.Rich Maxwell | for NJ Advance Media

The wrong-way driver was taken to St. Lukes University Hospital, Bethlehem, with minor injuries, while the pickup driver, a 52-year-old Stewartsville resident, was taken to Hunterdon Medical Center with minor injuries.

No charges have been filed. Police are still investigating how the driver ended up driving the wrong way, Flynn said.

The westbound lanes were closed about four hours and traffic was diverted to Route 173.

A state police NorthSTAR helicopter and Atlantic Air One transported the injured passengers for treatment.

Also responding to the crash were the New Jersey State Police Perryville Station, Pattenburg Fire Co., Clinton Fire Co., Squad 51 (Lebanon Boro Fire Co), Pattenburg Rescue Squad, Clinton Rescue Squad, Hampton Rescue Squad, paramedics from Hunterdon Medical Center and New Jersey Department of Transportations Traffic Diversion Team.

A wrong-way crash on Route 78 westbound, just east of exit 12 in Union Twp, Hunterdon County, sent three to the hospital with serious injuries early Sunday.Rich Maxwell | for NJ Advance Media

Photographer Rich Maxwell contributed to this report.

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Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com.
Thousands of medical students are getting a baptism of fire as they are fast-tracked onto the frontline to help battle Covid-19.

Students from all of Northern Ireland's colleges and universities have swapped the classroom for medical wards to do their bit during the biggest crisis the health service has ever faced.

One local college that has been in touch with many students sharing their experience of working during the pandemic is South Eastern Regional College (SERC).

Rosemary Peters, a lecturer in Health and Care at SERC, says: "They are getting fantastic support from everyone working in the NHS and they all are working with excellent teams."

Colm Davey (25) from Castlewellan was due to qualify as an ambulance practitioner in six months' time but instead has been thrown in at the deep end as part of the teams transferring intensive care unit (ICU) Covid-19 patients between hospitals.

He is working four 12-hour shifts each week in full PPE gear.

"I have been deployed to work with the Northern Ireland Specialist Transport and Retrieval Service (NISTAR) which is responsible for all the emergency transfers from ICUs of sick children and Covid patients," he reveals.

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"It is our job to collect patients who have been insulated and tubed from hospitals all over Northern Ireland and bring them to the new Nightingale hospital. These are all intensive care patients who are in induced comas.

"We help the nursing staff to try and get them stable to move them and it's definitely distressing. Most of the patients we are seeing are men in their 40s."

Working directly with Covid-19 patients, Colm has to wear full protective equipment which includes scrubs, a gown, an apron, two pair of gloves, a hairnet, mask and visor.

Removing the gear at the end of a shift is a careful eight-step process as this is when he is most at risk of coming into contact with the virus.

He lives alone, as his mum is unwell, and between shifts is delivering her essential goods and medication which he leaves on her doorstep.

Colm adds: "I never, ever expected I would be doing this job. I knew I would be working with sick patients but to be working with patients who are sedated and on machines which are breathing for them, and be part of a team responsible for getting them to hospital alive, is beyond what I ever imagined."

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Katie Lowry (22, left) from Downpatrick is a second-year nursing student at Magee College in Londonderry and plans for a career in palliative care.

She was asked if she wanted to opt in and help out and didn't hesitate to volunteer.

Katie has been working as a 'swabber' at the Covid-19 testing centre at Ards MOT Centre where her team of three have been testing around 100 people a day, mostly NHS workers, for over a month.

The test, which can be quite invasive as it involves swabbing the back of the throat and up the nostrils, has proved challenging for the team when it comes to children.

Katie says: "We found with babies when you put the swab in their mouths they are chewing it so we have had to make them cry by putting the swab up their noses first so we can get to the back of their throat.

"We feel so terrible doing it and no one likes it but we have no choice. Young children are hard, too, but we talk to them and try and reassure them, and their parents are great."

Katie has continued her studies with online lectures and has another year before she completes her degree. Work placement as part of the course was due to start on May 18 and this will go ahead, although students have no idea yet where they will be sent.

Katie adds: "I am a bit scared about where I am going to be but if it does involve working with Covid-19 patients, I wouldn't mind as I know I will have good PPE.

"I am happy to be able to help in some way, and every Thursday when everyone is out clapping it is amazing - I find it very emotional."
Thirteen new cases of COVID-19 were reported, taking the total number of infections to 614 in Karnataka, the government said, as it announced free bus services for three days from Sunday in a bid to help people, including large number of labourers, stranded within the state due to lockdown.

Karnataka will have more recovered cases than active cases soon, top government officials said.

According to a bulletin by the state health department as of 5 pm on May 3, cumulatively 614 COVID-19 positive cases have been confirmed in the state, it includes 25 deaths and 293 discharges.

Out of 295 active cases, 292 patients are in isolation at designated hospitals and are stable, while 3 are in ICU.

Officials said, "in few days Karnataka will have more recovered cases than active cases". With the gap between the two narrowing (just two short as on Sunday).

A total of 22 patients who have recovered, have been discharged on Sunday.

Announcing free bus service, Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa said the expenses will be borne by the government and appealed to the people to make use of the opportunity that will be available till Tuesday and not to create rush at bus stands.

"Keeping in mind the situation of poor labourers, for three days from today, free KSRTC (Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation) bus facilities will be made available for those travelling to their native places in Karnataka from various district headquarters and capital Bengaluru city," the Chief Minister said in a statement.

Thousands of labourers on Saturday expressed their inability to pay the higher fare that was fixed for commuting in KSRTC buses.

However, following the intervention of the Chief Minister later it was decided to charge single fare tariff for workers travelling by KSRTC buses within the state.

In further relief, Yediyurappa issued orders on Sunday making it free travel.

Officials are ensuring that the needy get the benefit of free travel, sources said.

Meanwhile, a large group of migrant workers including 1,190 from Odisha left to their respective states from the city on Sunday.

Among thirteen new cases reported on Sunday, six are from Kalaburagi, four from Bengaluru urban, and three Bagalakote district.

While seven are contacts of patients already tested positive, two each are with history of Influenza Like Illness (ILI) and Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI), one who had been to containment zone in Bengaluru, and the other's contact is under investigation.

Contact tracing has been initiated and is in progress for all the cases, the department said.

From across the state most number of infections have been reported in Bengaluru urban with 149 cases, followed by Mysuru 88 and Belagavi 71.

Out of total 293 patients discharged so far maximum 75 are from Mysuru, 72 from Bengaluru urban, eighteen from Kalaburagi.

A total of 74,898 samples were tested so far, out of which 5,168 were tested on Sunday alone.

So far 70,998 samples have reported as negative, and out of them 4,523 were reported negative on Sunday.

The government today said, Bengaluru Rural, Bengaluru Urban, Ramanagara, Chikkaballapur and Kolar districts will be treated as a single unit for the purpose of movement during day time between 7 am to 7 pm to undertake permitted activities only with the production of letter from the company or organisation they are working in and the official Identity Card.

Hence, no other inter-district passes will be required to move across these districts.

However, for other districts, inter-district movement passes for permitted activities will be required, which will be issued by local administrations, it said, no inter-district passes shall be issued for non-permitted activities except on one-time basis for stranded persons.

Meanwhile, armed forces on Sunday acknowledged the efforts of "corona warriors" in Karnataka in the fight against the pandemic with Indian Air Force helicopters showering flower petals on hospitals and the IAF band made a presentation.

While, INS Vikramaditya ship, which is at Anchorage off Karwar coast was illuminated; there was a flypast by transport aircraft at C 130 J Hercules over Vidhana Soudha, the seat of state legislature and secretariat here, as a mark of respect to front line COVID-19 workers.

The Chief Secretary has issued a circular, that 100 per cent staff from all the offices of the Departments mentioned as essential services should report to the duty from May 4 in the three Red Districts- Bengaluru Urban, Bengaluru Rural and Mysuru; while all Group A and B officers and 33 per cent of group C and D staff in respect of other departments in red zone districts will attend work.

Hundred per cent staff of all offices in all other Orange and Green Zones Districts, should report to duty from May 4, it said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Seoul: North and South Korea exchanged gunfire around the South's guard post early on Sunday, raising tension a day after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ended an almost three-week absence from public life with state media showing him visiting a factory.

North Korea fired at a South Korean military guard post several times around 7.41am local time, prompting it to shoot back twice and send out a verbal warning, according to South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff. No casualties or damage to equipment were reported in South Korea. The two sides are now in talks via a military communication line.

People watch a television broadcast reporting the appearance of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Seoul. Credit:Getty Images

The clash occurred a day after North Korean state media reported leader Kim Jong-un's first public appearance in almost three weeks. The authenticity of the photos has not been verified.

Kim's absence had prompted global speculation about his health. While US officials said they were told he was in critical condition after undergoing a cardiovascular procedure, a top South Korean foreign policy adviser later said he was "alive and well".
A group of women held a protest over what they said were their "rights and freedoms" being "taken away during the coronavirus lockdown, prompting outrage from a local NHS worker.

The demonstrators, who gathered at a park in Basingstoke, Hampshire, also claimed the UK coronavirus death toll had been exaggerated, and that they plan to demonstrate every Monday until social distancing restrictions are lifted.

One woman told the Basingstoke Gazette: We want to save our rights. We believe the number of people dead from Covid is exemplified [sic].

She claimed extra numbers were being added on to the governments daily tally, but did not provide any evidence.

The protest was organised by Save Our Rights UK  a group operating via Facebook  which is also behind similar protests in Brighton and Bedford.

Louise Creffield, who set up the group, told The Independent she planned to go ahead with the weekly protest in Brighton, where she lives, on Monday despite police in Basingstoke threatening to issue on the spot fines.

She said: We are very much about pro rights, we are not anti-lockdown  I feel like thats a very important distinction to make.

We feel like weve had our right to work, to education, to healthcare  all have been withdrawn and weve had no say in it.

The government has advised the public to observe social distancing measures and work from home where possible.

The 33-year-old said the group is backing a legal challenge by businessman Simon Dolan, who is seeking a judicial review over the governments lockdown measures.

One NHS worker who witnessed the demonstration questioned why the protesters had not been arrested.

The health worker, who did not want to be named, told the local paper: Its out of order for people who have lost someone and NHS workers like me who leave their kids and families to work.

This is outrageous to me and my colleagues.

Anti-lockdown protests have taken place in different parts of the world in recent days, including outside the Metropolitan Polices headquarters in London on Saturday.

A man was arrested after about 20 people took part in a group hug outside New Scotland Yard, chanting hug someone, save lives and carrying signs with slogans such as My body, my choice.

Hampshire Constabulary attended the protest in Basingstoke on Monday, however no arrests were made.

The Basingstoke Cops Facebook page posted later that day: This evening officers provided advice and moved on a group from War Memorial Park, Basingstoke.

Despite these reasonable steps, enforcement action has now been taken in Basingstoke town centre in relation to the same small group.

It added: For those who are not heeding the stay at home guidance, our officers will seek to engage, explain the circumstances and encourage you to do the right thing in complying with the government request.

If considered necessary, we may take enforcement action by way of a fixed penalty notice if you are putting others at risk.

The Independent has contacted Hampshire Constabulary for further comment.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 10:17:26|Editor: huaxia

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WASHINGTON, May 2 (Xinhua) -- Concerns over reelection and "the natural tendency to think foreign problems are not American problems" are among the factors behind the U.S. government's early delay in handling the COVID-19 pandemic which has now killed over 63,000 Americans, said a renowned public intellectual.

"To analyze why the U.S. has, by far, the largest number COVID-19 cases and deaths is a legitimate inquiry, indeed an essential inquiry, that will be discussed and debated for years," Robert Lawrence Kuhn, chairman of the Kuhn Foundation, told Xinhua in an interview on Friday.

"Some facts are generally accepted," he said. "Trump's initial reluctance to heed early warnings of the American intelligence community about the then-coming epidemic was likely rooted in his concern that tanking the economy would tank his re-election."

Kuhn noted that Trump was relying on the strength of the U.S. economy, especially historic highs of the stock market and historic lows in unemployment, to "carry him through a campaign that demographically would favor his Democratic opponent," and "he wasn't about to throw away that advantage when the number of cases was still very low."

"Moreover, Trump has shown preternatural confidence in his own intuitions, even if contrary to the expert advice of scientists, economists, and other professionals," he said.

The senior expert said he cannot say "all is Trump's fault," noting "To be fair, Trump did early on impose restrictions on travel from China and, at the time, he was criticized for it, though in retrospect, he is criticized for doing too little too late."

Kuhn added that "another, less dramatic reason" for the U.S. delay in handling of the COVID-19 pandemic is "a natural tendency to think foreign problems are not American problems, believable at the time due to the small handful of domestic cases."

"This early hesitation proved deadly," Kuhn said, due to the exponential growth of a contagion with a long infectious period, which has differentiated impact on different classes of infected patients, especially those with underlying conditions and co-morbidity issues.

Kuhn expressed his hope that the question concerning the origin of the COVID-19 virus be left for scientists to solve, and the United States and China, as the world's two largest economies, better cooperate in leading the global efforts to win over the virus.

"The increasing focus on blaming China in the U.S., and blaming the U.S. in China, is deeply worrisome: first, because the blame-game diverts attention from focusing on containment and prevention, and second, because only by the U.S. and China working together can this common enemy of all humanity be best fought," he noted.

"To be sure, discerning the origin of the pandemic is essential in order to mitigate future pandemics," said the expert, while noting that the question "has become wildly politicized," though it "can and should be addressed only by epidemiology and genomic sciences."

"Powerful forces in both countries seem spoiling for a fight, in trying to control the narrative as it plays out in the global media," he added.

However, Kuhn said: "I see a ray of hope. American and Chinese healthcare professionals and medical scientists are working well together, under the radar, not making noise. We should all pause, let them do their jobs, thank them and praise them."

A recently revealed 57-page memo sent by the National Republican Senatorial Committee to GOP campaigns has advised blaming Beijing to distract from Trump's errors in predicting and handling the pandemic, according to a recent Politico report. Enditem
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has decided to use its control room at North Block to resolve the problems faced by truck drivers and transporters engaged in the supply of essential items during the lockdown, officials said on Sunday.

Several complaints were raised by transporters that their goods trucks are not being allowed by the local authorities and the movement of empty trucks from one state to another.

The ministry has recently written to all states reminding that trucks should not be stopped at borders to maintain the supply of goods.

The control room number (1930) is being made available for the benefit of drivers/transporters who can now lodge any complaint pertaining to the lockdown, a statement by the Press Information Bureau said. In addition, National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) helpline number 1033 is also available for highway-related grievances.

It added that the NHAI, transport departments of states and Union Territories and transport associations will take necessary steps to provide information to drivers and transporters in this regard.

The officials deputed from ministry of road transport in the MHA control room will assist in complaint/ grievance resolution relating to the Transport sector/Drivers. These officials would also compile the daily report on such complaints received, it added.

This mechanism is expected to greatly address the issues/hurdles in the movement of goods across States/UTs during lockdown announced to curb COVID-19 pandemic in India, it added.
CKP Co-operative Bank, which bit the dust on May 2, has nearly 97 percent of Gross Non-Performing Assets (GNPAs), a lot of which are loans given to small and mid-sized real estate developers.

As on April 30, the bank had a loan book of Rs 158 crore and deposits of Rs 486 crore. The bank had a negative net worth of Rs 239 crore, according to the latest figures available.

Just like in the case of Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative Bank (PMC), this bank's failure has also come as a major shocker for depositors. The bank has about 97 percent NPAs. We tried our best. What has happened is unfortunate, Moreshwar Dhaimodkar, General Manager of CKP bank told Moneycontrol.

The deterioration in CKP's financials finally forced the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to revoke the lender's licence after several warnings and on account of the bank's inability to come with a revival plan. In fact, the RBI had restricted CKP Bank from taking deposits and giving new loans way back in 2014 due to financial irregularities.

Over the years, CKP Bank had built its business by lending to mostly small and mid-sized real estate developers in Mumbai, who did not pay back loans leading to a huge spike in NPAs. According to insiders, majority of the NPAs on the book are of around 10 developers.

CKP Bank has its head office at Matunga, Mumbai and has eight branches spread across Mumbai and Thane districts. The Bank has attained an important status in the co-operative banking sector, by crossing various milestones of quality and standards and by setting new standards of its own, its website says.

The lender is the latest cooperative bank to lose its licence on account of financial failure. Cancelling its licence, the RBI said that the financial position of the bank is highly adverse and unsustainable. Adverse financial position was only one of the many reasons behind the cancellation of the licence.

The bank, as per RBI's observation, also did not have any concrete revival plan or proposal for merger with another bank. On liquidation of the bank, CKPs depositors can avail up to Rs 5 lakh under the modified deposit insurance scheme.

There have been a series of financial failures in the co-operative banking sector. In September 2019, following a major financial fraud, the RBI had superseded the PMC Bank. PMC had hid details of its loans from the reserve bank for a long time. Out of its total loan book of Rs 8,383 crore, as on March 31, 2019, about 70 percent was given to one real estate firm  HDIL. The PMC crisis is yet to be resolved.

Consequent to the cancellation of its licence, The CKP Co-operative Bank Ltd., Mumbai, is prohibited from conducting the business of banking which includes acceptance of deposits and repayment of deposits as defined in Section 5 (b) read with Section 56 of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949 with immediate effect.
The spread of coronavirus pandemic has slashed shipments of Indian buffalo meat, driving prices higher and hitting sales.

Kuala Lumpur/Mumbai: For more than a decade Kuala Lumpur street vendor Abu Zahrim Ismail has seen brisk sales of daging dendeng, a spicy buffalo meat jerky, during the Muslim holy month of Ramzan.

But this year, the spread of coronavirus pandemic has slashed shipments of Indian buffalo meat, driving prices higher and hitting sales.

Most meat processing plants in India, the worlds second largest beef exporter and Malaysias top supplier, have been shut as the South Asian nation fights to contain the pandemic.

The virus has really turned everything upside down, Abu said.

India typically sells more than 100,000 tonnes of buffalo meat every month, but in March exports dropped to around 40,000 tonnes, according to two exporters.

Sales are likely to have been even lower in April as widespread lockdowns took effect, and even in May are expected to remain well below normal despite some parts of the Indian economy re-opening, they added.

Right now things are not going in favour of our industry. Even though it is food, it is not considered essential as it is for exports, said one of the exporters who is based in Uttar Pradesh.

As of now all the exporters are trying to move their current stocks that they are holding.

Wholesale prices of frozen buffalo meat in Malaysia have climbed 15 percent-20 percent from a year ago this month during the Ramadan festival, which usually accounts for up to 20 percent of the countrys annual consumption as families gather to break fast.

Typically, Malaysians would consume about 350 containers of buffalo meat a month from India, now it has fallen to half, said one importer based in Kuala Lumpur.

Diminished retail demand during Malaysias own lockdown has also hit overall meat import demand.

We are only open for takeaway during the movement control order. Sales have dropped about 80 percent, said Indian Muslim Restaurant Operators Association (Presma) president Ayub Khan.

Global meat mess

In 2019, India shipped close to 1.5 million tonnes of beef, which is sourced largely from dairy buffalos, compared with 2.3 million tonnes sold by top supplier Brazil, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

The absence of those supplies is being acutely felt in Malaysia, which relies on India for 70 percent of beef imports, as well as in Indonesia where a quarter of imports come from India and buffalo is popular among lower income groups due to its low cost.

Indonesian buyerswhich were expected to buy 170,000 tonnes of Indian beef this year before virus-led delays kicked inare trying to switch to other origins like Brazil and Argentina, industry sources in Jakarta said.

But the global COVID-19 pandemic has made replacing those lost supplies difficult, especially after the worlds biggest meat companies, including Smithfield Foods Inc, Cargill Inc, JBS USA and Tyson, halted operations at about 20 slaughterhouses and processing plants in North America after workers fell ill.

Number one beef exporter Brazil has also been hit, with meat processor BRF registering 18 COVID-19 cases in late April at an industrial hub that employs about 3,100 people.

Restrained reboot

Indian meat processors are keen to restart plants once restrictions are eased, but enduring social distancing measures mean it will not be easy to source animals in the usual way.

Dairy cattle in India are sent for slaughter after they have passed their productive prime, with agents from meat plants typically going house-to-house to buy up animals that are then trucked to abattoirs.

Animal marketsbanned or greatly restricted in scale under lockdownare also a key source.

Questions remain over how quickly raw material can be procured and processed following all rules of social distancing, an official at All India Meat and Livestock Exporters Association, told Reuters.

Exporters, importers and association officials were not willing to be named because of the sensitivity over food supplies.

The net effect of disrupted supplies from India will mean lower overall meat imports into cost-sensitive markets around Asia, said JY Chow, food and agriculture expert at Mizuho Bank in Singapore.

The supply is getting disrupted, so any substitute will need to be sourced from an upgrade, and it will thus erode volume demand. No other country sells buffalo meat in the volumes that India does.
Some attendees at the burial of President Muhammadus late Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, have tested negative to COVID-19 after completing their 14 days of isolation.

The Acting Secretary, FCT Health Secretariat, Mohammed Kawu, made this known in a brief statement on Sunday.

The Health and Human Services Secretariat of the FCT Administration, is happy to announce that the individuals exposed during the burial of late Chief of staff to the President, Malam Abba Kyari, have completed their 14 days of isolation.

Tests were conducted on them and they have all tested negative to COVID 19. They have been reunited with their families, he said.

He however, did not disclose the number of participants who were isolated and tested.

His statement comes about two weeks after the death of Mr Kyari.

The late chief of staff died at a private hospital in Lagos, about four weeks after he was confirmed positive for COVID-19 after he returned from an official trip to Germany.

He was buried at the military cemetery in Abujas Gudu neighbourhood, an event which triggered outrage over disregard for social distancing and other health advisories.

Many Nigerians have asked the Task Force to arrest and prosecute those who violated the protocols and guidelines of the NCDC at the funeral. Some Nigerians have also faulted the teams method of prosecuting defaulters of the lockdown order accusing it of targeting the vulnerable in the society.

After the funeral, Mr Kawu had announced that 11 attendees were identified and isolated.

Some presidential aides present at the burial were also barred from the villa by President Muhammadu Buhari. The president had ordered that they self-isolate.

It is, however, not clear if they are part of those who have tested negative to the disease.
New Delhi: The number of coronavirus COVID-19 cases shot up in Border Security Force (BSF) on Sunday (May 3) after 25 more personnel tested positive for the disease, taking the tally in the force to 42. A total of 40 BSF troopers deployed in Delhi have so far declared COVID-19 infected. This takes the number of affected BSF personnel across the country to 42.

At least 80 BSF personnel undergo the COVID-19 test and the report that came today showed 25 of them being infected with the disease.

The 25 troopers belong to a company, comprising 94 personnel, of the BSF`s 126 Battalion deployed with the Delhi Police in Jama Masjid area. Six other personnel out of nine were found COVID-19 positive on May 2.

Of the 94 personnel, reports of 89 have come, resulting in a total of 31 being found COVID-19 positive so far. The test report of five personnel is still awaited. All these 31 personnel have now moved to an isolation facility at the CAPF (Central Armed Police Forces) Referral Hospital located in Greater Noida.

Besides the 31 BSF personnel of 126 Battalion, one trooper from the 178 Battalion was also found positive on May 2. He was one of the personnel deputed with the Delhi Police personnel in Jama Masjid and Chandni Mahal area.

Eight more personnel of the BSF at the force`s hospital in R.K. Puram have tested positive earlier. These include two BSF jawans who are suffering from cancer and their attendants.

Two more BSF personnel were found positive in Tripura. One of them was admitted to a local hospital at Dhalai district while the other is his attendant.
EDWARDSVILLE  Former Edwardsville Mayor Gary Niebur passed away Saturday. A lifelong resident of Edwardsville, he was 64 years old.

Edwardsville Mayor Hal Patton confirmed Nieburs death on Sunday, and the Edwardsville YMCA announced the passing of Niebur on its Facebook page Sunday morning. Niebur retired in February 2018 from his position as Chief Executive Officer at the Edwardsville YMCA, where he was in charge for 35 years.

Niebur served as mayor for five terms from 1993-2013 before announcing he wouldnt seek a sixth term in office. He is the longest-serving mayor in the citys history. Niebur was elected into office following an uncontested race in 1993 after Dennis DeToyes decision not to run for re-election.

Prior to his time as mayor, Niebur was on the city council from 1985-1993 as an alderman and was the citys Parks and Recreation Department Director.

Niebur recently won Democratic primary for the Madison County Board District 17 seat. He defeated Victor Valentine Jr. in the March vote.

During Nieburs time at the YMCA, he raised $10 million in private donations, which allowed the expansion into the three facilities today. By his retirement, YMCA memberships grew from less than 1,000 when he started to nearly 19,200.

Niebur has been the recipient of numerous community service awards, including the Jaycees Ten Outstanding Young Persons in the State of Illinois; Rotary Club International Paul Harris Fellowship Award; the Boy Scouts of America Distinguished Citizen Award; SIUE Religious Center Interfaith Award, and the Edwardsville Glen Carbon Chamber of Commerce Lifetime Achievement Award.

Niebur served as a charter board member of the Greater Edwardsville Area Foundation, president of the Illinois Municipal League in 2002, vice-president of the Metro East Park and Recreation District since 2017, and has been a member of the Edwardsville Rotary Club since 1983. He was added to the Anderson Hospital Foundation Board of Directors in March 2019.

Niebur is survived by his wife, Debby, and their four children. On Sunday afternoon, the family issued a statement acknowledging his death.

Gary was admired by his wife, son, daughters and Papa to his grandchildren, who will miss him terribly, the statement read. We thank the community, which he loved so dearly, for your kindness and support at this time.
Lancaster police are investigating a Saturday-night shooting that sent one man to the hospital.

The shooting occurred on Conestoga Street near Prince and Mill streets, WGAL is reporting.

There is no word yet on the condition of the man who was shot.

No arrests have been reported.

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A former pensions minister has warned that people over the age of 70 would rebel and risk going to prison if the government mandates they must continue self-isolating even after the lockdown has lifted.

Baroness Ros Altmann, a Tory peer, told Sophy Ridge on Sky News that if the over-70 age group were put under house arrest while everybody else is free, it could risk social unrest, and that lots of people have told her they would rather break the rules.

Under current government guidelines, anyone over 70 years old, regardless of medical conditions, falls into the category of clinically vulnerable people. This group has been strongly advised to take particular care to minimise contact with others outside your household as they are at higher risk of contracting coronavirus.

Its age discrimination, theres no other way to look at it. A healthy 70-year-old is probably less risk to society than an unhealthy 40-year-old, in terms of vulnerability to this illness, she said on Sunday morning.

If the government wants to advise people and say, Look, if youre more at risk, dont consider going out unless its vital, thats different from formally mandating that people of a certain age must all be locked up as if theyre a homogenous group  which theyre not  and as if their lives dont count in the same way as others.

Her comments come as senior doctors issued a statement warning that any post-lockdown measures should not treat the over-70s differently from the rest of the population, first reported by The Sunday Times.

The British Medical Association (BMA) said in a statement: Any proposal to impose stricter social distancing for those at higher risk  essentially quarantining  based solely on age would be both unethical and illegal.

Any moves to do this could only be justified if it were to protect individuals whether to an arbitrary age of 60 or 70 or to younger people with underlying health conditions.

A blanket ban on any section of the population being prohibited from lockdown easing would be discriminatory and unacceptable.

Martin Marshall, chair of the Royal College of GPs, said prolonging self-isolation for the over-70s would impact their physical and mental health.

GPs are finding that many patients who are currently shielding are expressing concern about their ability to continue extreme isolation for a long period, and this needs to be taken into account as plans for how the lockdown will continue are formulated, Mr Marshall said.

But health secretary Matt Hancock called The Sunday Times report factually wrong and misleading. On Twitter, he said: The clinically vulnerable, who are advised to stay in lockdown for 12 weeks, emphatically DO NOT include all over-70s.

Mr Hancocks accusation appears to be at odds with government guidance, updated on 1 May, which classes people who are aged 70 or older, regardless of medical conditions, as clinically vulnerable.

We have strongly advised all over-70s to follow social distancing measures. However, there is no blanket ban and the suggestion that the clinically vulnerable include people ages over 70 or older regardless of medical conditions is wrong and deeply misleading, he said.

He also tweeted a link to another section of government guidance, which covers people who are clinically extremely vulnerable. This refers to people with severe underlying health conditions, many of whom have received letter instructing them to shield until the end of June.

The warnings come ahead of the prime ministers exit strategy, which is due to be published on Thursday. It is expected to reveal a slow easing of the lockdown.

Recommended Jobs on line if Johnson gets lockdown exit strategy wrong

Some people have taken to Twitter to confirm they would rebel if the exit strategy included telling those over a certain age would have to self-isolate for longer compared with everybody else.

One person said: Restricting my movements *solely* on my age and ignoring my health status, is discriminatory and illegal. I would risk arrest and gaol to make the point (& at least Id get 3 square meals a day FOC).

Another said: Bit worried about talk that over-70s might not be allowed out when lockdown ends. Many older people feel the same  when its open, were going out! And if the rainbow police come to arrest me, itll be Dog Day Afternoon at my house!
They ran a virtual Kentucky Derby on NBC on Saturday afternoon, featuring electronic versions of the all-time great Derby horses. Secretariat nosed out Citation, which made a late charge on the rail.

When it comes to the Kentucky Derby, virtual doesnt come close to reality. Trust me.

The virtual Kentucky Derby was run in lieu of the real Derby, which missed its annual first Saturday in May date and left another hole in the heart of sporting America.

Theres still a chance well have a Kentucky Derby in 2020. The Derby has been postponed until Sept. 5 because of the coronavirus, which keeps alive the hope of the longest-running annual sporting event in the country. Every year since 1875, theres been a Kentucky Derby.

Since 2007, a crew of my college friends have ventured to the Kentucky Derby in some form. What began as a barnstorming of the infield has gradually upgraded the same way in life you eventually trade Bud Light for an IPA or SoCo for Titos.

From sitting in the infield in Dale Earnhardt folding chairs purchased at Walmart to buying tickets in the grandstand and occasionally sneaking into the suites, figuring out how to navigate the Derby became emblematic of trying to navigate life in those late-20s post-college years.

Riders cross the finish line at the 145th running of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs on May 4th, 2019 in Louisville, Kentucky. (Ian Johnson/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Ive been to 10 Kentucky Derbys. It may be nine. Im really not sure. But Ive been to enough of them that Ive transitioned from the guy at the front of the betting line unable to put in a tri-wheel bet to the guy annoyed by the guy in the front of the betting line who cant put in a tri-wheel bet. (The real horse-racing vets, of course, do all their betting work electronically. But I still feel like signing up for that TVG betting account is the rubicon a casual horse fan doesnt want to cross.)

The first part of what hurt so much about a Derby-less first week in May was the calendar alerts. Marriott sent them out, reminding me of a Louisville hotel room that was canceled in late March. That quickly got trumped by the weather forecast of relentless sunshine and 82 degrees, as rain pelting down on Derby Day has become as expected as price-gouging at the concessions. (Local residents celebrated the Derby dressed up on their porches, a perfect communal celebration for a city that loves its horses.)

Story continues

Rain has factored into the Derby 11 of the past 13 years. So when people ask me about making Mint Juleps, I counter that Ive become more of an expert in rain ponchos and umbrella smuggling. (Mint Juleps are gross, by the way.)

Without a Kentucky Derby on this first Saturday in May, they ran the Arkansas Derby a few weeks after its normal post time. There were no fans. No frills. No winners circle. Just a tease of what we normally get on the first Saturday in May, but at Oaklawn Park instead of Churchill Downs.

A throng of the Derby crew  an unwieldy and constantly mutating group  got together in a Zoom on Saturday afternoon to toast our loss of the Derby and inevitable losses. About 20 people shuffled in and out from every corner of the country. Some familiar and some strangers, which is pretty much how the Derby works. We lost money by getting nosed out in the final Oaklawn to sink our Pick 5. Id have been disappointed if the feeling wasnt so familiar and comforting.

The pitter-patter of that unmistakable Derby verbiage came alive for a few hours.

Speed is holding

Never leave the juicers off your ticket

Cashing is better than trashing

Run you pig.

Fans are seen in the infield at Churchill Downs on Kentucky Derby day, Saturday, May 4, 2019, in Louisville, Ky. (AP Photo/Gregory Payan)

And, finally, after the end of the card at Oaklawn the temptation of the next race lurked. The races in Japan start in 26 minutes.

I learned that the new litmus test for middle-of-the-road racing degenerates is that theyre betting on races at Fonner Park in Grand Island, Nebraska. The elite degenerates on the call both realized theyd been betting on the same trotters in Sweden at 4 a.m. (Was it the day it was snowing? one asked. Yes! howled another.)

Anyone who has been initiated into the horse-racing world late in life realizes that its a bit like learning a new language with a minor in math. The morning steam  aka track gossip  starts every day. Learning about Beyer numbers, tri-boxes and Pick-4s is a bit like getting initiated into a club. By the time you leave the Derby and speak that language for three days, you go to Starbucks wondering if you can box your tea and cold brew.

A majority of the Kentucky Derbies Ive attended, Ive left overserved, light in the wallet and wet. Definitely wet. But Ive yet to meet a horse player who only tells tales about his losses, which is why Ill always remember leaving the 2011 Derby with so many hundred-dollar bills that I couldnt close my wallet. Thanks, Animal Kingdom, which came home around 20-1.

(That brag should quickly be balanced by the reality of every gambler and horse player  the win that year at Churchill paled in the losses the three prior years when I left broke and wet. Always wet.

The buildup to the Derby is one of my favorite parts. The track on Wednesday is quiet, as the beers are still $6, the stands empty and the parking lot filled with the Dodge Darts. Theres less pretense than your average American bowling alley. By Saturday, its like Woodstock broke out on the grounds, the grandstands pulsating with Prada and stretch limos backed up for blocks to enter. The A-listers can all afford the $11 beers.

Fans in the stands celebrate before the Kentucky Oaks at Churchill Downs Friday, May 3, 2013, in Louisville, Ky. Friday is Kentucky Oaks Day. (AP Photo/Gregory Payan)

The biggest misconception about the Derby is that its just one race. Theres typically a dozen races on the Thursday card, then Kentucky Oaks day on Friday and at least another dozen on Derby Day. (Ive been told its easy to lose all your spending money before the Derby itself is run, so be careful about that.)

All those races and bets provide the buildup for the actual Derby, which is equal-parts ridiculous and wonderful. Every year, the goosebumps appear on demand when that bugle pierces the din for the Call to the Post. The months of planning, weeks of steam and days of drinks get channeled into those two glorious minutes.

The two races after the Derby are when Churchill Downs transforms back to what its like the other 51 weeks. The desperate gamblers place $500 show bets to cut into the losses about the same time the limos are pulling into the private airports.

Then it all ends, and Sunday morning feels like the day after college graduation. Everyone is overtired, hoarse, broke and facing the cruel reality of 51 weeks of Mondays until the next Derby.

And, of course, once we dry out our clothing and blood stream, we always begin planning the next years reunion. Hopefully by next May, world order will be restored and well toast not having to bet on races in Sweden and Nebraska. Most of us, anyway.

Revelers dive into a catch basin for rain water in the infield at Churchill Downs after a sudden downpour soaked the track during Kentucky Derby day festivities, Saturday, May 1, 2004, in Louisville, Ky. (AP)

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One woman cried when she was handed a flat of tomatoes.

Another laughed joyfully at the delivery of toilet paper, exclaiming that her husbands socks would now be safe.

A member of a household of 12, spanning three generations, said, Weve been praying for food for a long time. We were hoping somebody would help us.

Although such cries for help from remote parts of northern Arizona could have easily gone unnoticed during the COVID-19 pandemic, instead, they were heard loud and clear by a small group of people with a willingness to act. The trio, with the support of the wider community and a few close friends, has been bringing truckloads of food and supplies to help families in areas of the Navajo Nation between Flagstaff and Tuba City, including Gray Mountain, Cameron, The Gap and other remote communities along the way.

Eileen Taggart, local Flagstaff realtor and founder of the popular Flagstaff Buy, Barter, Sell and Services Facebook group, said the effort is completely grassroots, with donations being given person to person, not through any particular organization.

She first heard about the need through friends in Gray Mountain she met during a community initiative about two years ago to save starving horses in this area. About a week ago, he called Taggart to tell her the elders living on the mountain didnt have anything. They were out of work and running out of supplies as COVID-19 needs redirected basic resources elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Teresa Schumann and Dusty Simper Brinkworth, leaders of the nonprofit rescue organization Northern Arizona Animal Search and Rescue, had heard of similar needs from their contacts living on the reservation, who had been awaiting a supply delivery that never arrived. The two teamed up with Taggart and created an online fundraising campaign for the effort, which Taggart shared with the Facebook groups 66,000 members.

You know us from the animal community, now it's time to help the humans, the campaign description stated.

In just a week, fellow community members donated $6,400 plus numerous donations of food and supplies, to the effort. Stores such as Sams Club agreed to waive the one-per-customer limits on essential goods to allow the team to have enough supplies for all the families they had identified. Mayas Mercado in Prescott Valley similarly filled the groups large produce order.

Its not just the animal people or the people people or the church or this or that, Taggart said of those participating. It was immediate and responsive and everybody is understanding that were working together. There is nothing about this that is you or me or us or them. Animals, people, native, white  doesnt matter.

The group has made two separate trips to communities along the route to Tuba City, including one this week, when they distributed face masks, produce, canned goods, flour, cooking oil, sugar, pasta, cleaning supplies, toilet paper, hygiene products, pet food and water.

Taggart estimated the group has likely served up to 50 families who had reached out for help themselves or been recommended by their neighbors, not including those in Tuba City, where the group dropped off donations for local law enforcement to distribute.

Schumann said though recipients were all very appreciative, the donations still seemed lacking.

Were glad we can do it, but seeing it hand-to-hand, it was very emotional. You just dont know until you see it, she said.

Such moments were abundant during this weeks trip, such as when a woman approached the group with her grandmothers death certificate in hand  proof of a personal loss caused by COVID-19.

Brinkworth particularly recalled a Vietnam War veteran who initially refused the food donations, saying others would be in greater need of it. When the team saw two kittens running around and asked if they needed a home, he finally agreed to a trade: two bottles of hot sauce for a kitten. The felines were given to a local shelter when the group returned to Flagstaff later that afternoon.

The neatest thing is going out there with humble intent. Sharing what we have is opening up communication between the people there and those of us here who live a totally different lifestyle but that are fighting the same enemy, Brinkworth said of the pandemic. Were working at building a community inside of two communities that might just bring us all a little closer together.

She said, in thanks, one family invited the group to return for dinner in August to celebrate their grape harvest.

Theyre willing to share that with us because we took the time and effort to share with them what others have shared with us, Brinkworth said. Were making new lifelong friends with this.

These new ties, though, made the homecoming this week difficult, as the deliverers were able to easily pick up pizza for dinner as well as hop in the shower and throw their clothes in the washing machine to prevent spread of the disease to their families.

The difference was startling. We didnt have any worries. We had done what good we had, we had seen the sadness and all of that and then we came back here where water was running and clean and we walked in our houses and turned the electricity on, sat down and had dinner with our families and didnt have to worry about anything else, Brinkworth said. I stood in the shower and cried for the first time through all of this.

Taggart was equally moved by the new connections between herself and the other leaders of the initiative, who might not normally have worked together in such a way.

We are complete political opposites and our hearts are completely together, Taggart said. We cant solve any of this, but we could, without even trying, without even thinking about it, leave all our differences behind and just go help. That is probably the best thing that could ever come out of it.

She noted that the experience has also shown the best of social media, with so many different people selflessly contributing to help families in need.

The group hopes to be able to keep up these regular delivery runs, pending donations, especially now that they have connected with so many families.

Were going to continue on until they get some help and we know that theyre going to be okay, Schumann said. This could be a long-going operation but were going to do everything we can to help.

For more information on this initiative, visit www.gofundme.com and search Help Feed People in Tuba City & Gray Mountain.

Kaitlin Olson can be reached at the office at kolson@azdailysun.com or by phone at (928) 556-2253.

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A bomb threat was made against a China Airlines cargo flight - AFP

The Anchorage airport, Alaska's largest, temporarily shut on Saturday to inbound traffic because of a bomb threat against a China Airlines cargo flight bound for Asia.

The cargo plane diverted to Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport early in the morning after leaving Seattle, airport officials said. No bomb was found and the airport was reopened shortly before noon, officials said.

The plane was searched in a secure, remote section of the airport, the airport said in a statement, with the Federal Bureau of Investigations and Anchorage Police Department.

"After extensive investigation, no explosive device was located," the airports police and fire department said in a statement. "Investigation at the airport has been completed, however, the investigation into the source of the threat continues. The FBI does not believe there is any continuing threat to our community as a result of this incident.

The Anchorage Daily News said the plane was headed to Taipei, Taiwan and the threat had been called into the Port of Seattle, quoting an FBI spokesman who said investigators were still trying to determine the source of the threat.

China Airlines, Taiwan's largest carrier, said in a statement the flight had already taken off for Taipei when it was informed of the threat by Seattle airport. The plane was then diverted to Anchorage.

The crew were taken to a hotel to rest while police searched the aircraft and determined nothing unusual, it added.

The aircraft is expected to land in Taipei late Sunday evening, China Airlines said.

Anchorage Airport is one of the worlds top five air-cargo hubs. It ranks second in the nation for weight of landed cargo. It ranks 58th in passenger travel among US airports.

While passenger flights have been sharply curtailed during the coronavirus pandemic, air cargo operations are considered by the state to be essential and have continued.

Flights that could not land in Anchorage on Saturday morning were advised to consider diverting to the airport in Fairbanks, another cargo hub.
Since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, some migrants and asylum seekers have been granted Portuguese citizenship to benefit from food security and health care.

But the story is different in United States of America [U.S.A.]. It has warned that despite the Covid-19 pandemic which has so far infected 3,424,053 people and claimed 240,376 lives globally, the country will continue to deport foreign nationals it deemed inadmissible to live in America back to their native countries.

The warning was contained in a deportation news report that was published by Immigration Customs and Enforcement (I.C.E.) and posted on its open website on April 8, 2020.

ICE is one of America's state departments charged with the responsibility to identify, trace, arrest, prosecute and deport illegal immigrants or criminals from the country.

An investigation conducted by this reporter revealed that ICE worked with the U.S. Department of State that brought home a total of 133 Americans and lawful permanent residents on the return leg of a deportation flight via ICE Air operations in April 7, 2020.

United States of America citizens occupied the space available (Space-A) seats on flights to the country from Honduras.

Investigation further revealed that (I.C.E.) removed Honduras nationals with final orders of deportation from the United States to their home country April 6, 2020.On the return flight to the United States of America, [ICE] facilitated the transportation of U.S. citizens in accordance with OMB circular A` 126 and the Department of Home Security (DHS) MD 0020.1.

Prior to boarding the [ICE] Air flight detainees were screened for a temperature higher than 100.4 degrees or shown other symptoms, detainees were immediately referred to medical providers who evaluated and observed them, it was learnt.

The state department in charge of deporting illegal immigrants from America strongly warned that, ``ICE will continue to work with other state security agencies and departments to facilitate the returns of U.S. citizens on future removal flight returns from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador throughout the duration of the Covid-19 pandemic.``

It again warned that these return operations have started to expand to other countries outside of the Northern Triangle including Colombia and Nicaragua.

The U.S. Ambassador to Ghana Stephanie S. Sullivan in a recent press statement published by Ghanaweb noted that 1,400 U.S. citizens have returned home from Ghana since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.

What she failed to inform Ghanaians was whether U.S. citizens actually returned on an ICE Air flight return leg on a removal of inadmissible Ghanaians from America to Ghana and how many Ghanaians were returned.

In Fiscal Year (FY) 2019, ICE`s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) together with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI)offices arrested approximately 143,000 aliens and removed more than 267,000-which is an increase in removals from the prior year.

While the numbers of individuals apprehended or found inadmissible America increased 68% over the previous fiscal year, the total number of aliens arrested by ICE dropped by nearly 10% compared to the fiscal year 2018.

More than 86% of those arrested by ICE had criminal convictions or pending charges.

The U.S. Embassy in Accra must come out because Ghanaians need to know.

WITH FILES FROM (I.C.E.) OPEN WEBSITE AND GETTY IMAGES.
Yo-Na Yakubu Abdulai Andani has donated a quantity of food items valued at thousands of Cedis to the Yendi Local Prison inmates, Persons With Disability (PWD), and some Muslims in Yendi township.



The items included; bags of sugar, crates of milk, bread, bags of maize among others.



Presenting some of the items on his behalf at the Yendi prisons service, Yo-Na Abdulai Yakubu Andani Nazo Abdulai Andani said they were to support fasting Muslims and the other inmates.



Yo-Na Yakubu Abdulai Andani appealed to the Prison Officers to train the inmates to acquire skills to lives useful lives after serving their terms in jail and advised the inmates to live in peace with one another, obey the laws in the prison and respect the officers.



Senior Chief Officer Christopher Kallai who received the items on behalf of Assistant Director of Prison Simon Adzah, the Yendi Municipal Prison officer and the inmates was grateful to Yo-Na for his donation adding that Government alone could not do everything for the inmates and it was important individuals supported Governments efforts to take care of them.



He said Yo-Na had been assisting them with cows and foodstuffs during Muslim fasting and Christmas festivities.



In another development, he donated three bags of sugar, two crates of milk, and two bags of maize to the Yendi PWDs at their Resource Centre in Yendi to support their fasting and advised them to adhere to COVID-19 protocols by using the nose masks, abiding by the social distancing, washing their hands among others.



Mr.Dawuni Abdul Yakubu chairman of the PWDs who received the items on behalf of the PWDs thanked Yo-Na for his kind gesture adding that it was not his first time of supporting them, as he did it annually.



Mr Dawuni appealed to the Yendi Municipal Assembly, Ministry of Health and Ghana Health Service to assist them with nose masks, hand sanitizers for the members and Veronica buckets to be placed in their Resource Centre.



He said since the pandemic started, they seemed to have been forgotten of, as they never received COVID-19 items.

Source: GNA









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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In 2016, Elizabeth Whitelock was appointed CEO of Houston We Have Limited (ASX:HWH). First, this article will compare CEO compensation with compensation at similar sized companies. Next, we'll consider growth that the business demonstrates. And finally we will reflect on how common stockholders have fared in the last few years, as a secondary measure of performance. This method should give us information to assess how appropriately the company pays the CEO.

Check out our latest analysis for Houston We Have

How Does Elizabeth Whitelock's Compensation Compare With Similar Sized Companies?

According to our data, Houston We Have Limited has a market capitalization of AU$6.4m, and paid its CEO total annual compensation worth AU$121k over the year to June 2019. While this analysis focuses on total compensation, it's worth noting the salary is lower, valued at AU$99k. We took a group of companies with market capitalizations below AU$311m, and calculated the median CEO total compensation to be AU$396k.

Next, let's break down remuneration compositions to understand how the industry and company compare with each other. On a sector level, around 67% of total compensation represents salary and 33% is other remuneration. Houston We Have is largely mirroring the industry average when it comes to the share a salary enjoys in overall compensation

Most shareholders would consider it a positive that Elizabeth Whitelock takes less total compensation than the CEOs of most similar size companies, leaving more for shareholders. While this is a good thing, you'll need to understand the business better before you can form an opinion. The graphic below shows how CEO compensation at Houston We Have has changed from year to year.

ASX:HWH CEO Compensation May 2nd 2020

Is Houston We Have Limited Growing?

On average over the last three years, Houston We Have Limited has seen earnings per share (EPS) move in a favourable direction by 119% each year (using a line of best fit). It achieved revenue growth of 3990% over the last year.

Story continues

Overall this is a positive result for shareholders, showing that the company has improved in recent years. Most shareholders would be pleased to see strong revenue growth combined with EPS growth. This combo suggests a fast growing business. Although we don't have analyst forecasts you might want to assess this data-rich visualization of earnings, revenue and cash flow.

Has Houston We Have Limited Been A Good Investment?

With a three year total loss of 93%, Houston We Have Limited would certainly have some dissatisfied shareholders. This suggests it would be unwise for the company to pay the CEO too generously.

In Summary...

Houston We Have Limited is currently paying its CEO below what is normal for companies of its size.

Many would consider this to indicate that the pay is modest since the business is growing. Despite some positives, it is likely that shareholders wanted better returns, given the performance over the last three years. We're not critical of the remuneration Elizabeth Whitelock receives, but it would be good to see improved returns to shareholders before the remuneration grows too much. When I see fairly low remuneration, combined with earnings per share growth, but without big share price gains, it makes me want to research the potential for future gains. Shifting gears from CEO pay for a second, we've spotted 5 warning signs for Houston We Have you should be aware of, and 3 of them shouldn't be ignored.

Important note: Houston We Have may not be the best stock to buy. You might find something better in this list of interesting companies with high ROE and low debt.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Three more persons, including two Surat returnees, have tested positive for COVID-19 in Odisha, taking the total number of such cases in the state to 160, official sources said.

Ganjam district, which had so far been a green zone, reported its first COVID-19 cases, after the two, who returned from Gujarat recently, were diagnosed with the disease.

The third patient to have tested positive for the disease is a woman from Jharsuguda district, the sources said.

With Ganjam, the home district of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, registering two cases, the number of districts under the grip of COVID-19 increased to 16 in the state. Odisha has a total of 30 districts.

Both the Surat returnees, aged 17 and 22 years, were asymptomatic, the sources said, adding that contract-tracing and follow-up action have been initiated.

A total of 2,065 samples were tested for COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, an official in the Health and Family Welfare Department said.

So far, Odisha has examined 38,658 samples.

Of the 160 cases in the state, the number of active cases stands at 103 as 56 have recovered. One person from Bhubaneswar succumbed to the disease on April 6.

Jajpur district in Odisha has reported the highest number of novel coronavirus cases at 48, followed by Bhubaneswar in Khurda at 47, Balasore at 20, Bhadrak at 19 and Sundergarh at 10.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
CAIRO  The coronavirus pandemic has triggered many questions in Egypt: Does the state hide the real numbers of those infected? When will the crisis in Egypt end? When will it end in the world? Fo2sh Times, a website and Facebook page, may answer these questions and more, as the country's first on-request reporting platform that relies on nontraditional and unbiased fact-checking, analysis and explanation that depends on reliable sources.

Fo2sh Times introduces itself through its official Facebook page in this way: We know that the Egyptian newspapers and talk shows are boring and not neutral. We know that you are unable to read international newspapers or to watch international talk shows and see what they say about us. Here, we will offer you all this. We will read, translate and summarize the most powerful articles in international newspapers and the most powerful topics presented by international channels.

Ahmed Fouad (no relation to Al-Monitor's correspondent) founded Fo2sh Times in 2013. The companys name comes from Fo2sh, an oft-used nickname for Fouad in Egypt. The 2 represents a glottal stop in pronunciation.

Fouad told Al-Monitor that translation was the starting point in 2013; however, the sites scope of activities has expanded to include analysis and explanation for many issues, most notably the recent spread of the coronavirus. It also provides some fact-checking services.

Among the most prominent articles introduced by Fo2sh Times is the March 17 report "Controlling the Coronavirus: Between the Pharaoh's Stick [Tyranny] and Tenderness, in which Fouad analyzes the influence of political ideologies on countries actions against the spread of the virus. He contrasts the Chinese model (which has been always described as tyrannical), which restricted individuals movement with the liberal model used by Singapore and Hong Kong, which imposed lighter restrictive measures and were late in doing so.

The article explains the defects of both models and their success or failure, based on information from the websites of the World Health Organization, The Times newspaper (London), The New York Times and Chinas Xinhua news agency. Fouad presents graphs comparing the two models daily reported cases.

The website also introduced a March 20 report titled "Corona: How can this crisis be eliminated? The article analyzes false or unconfirmed information such as that the virus is easily eliminated by hot weather or that discovery of a vaccine or cure is imminent. It takes three approaches to dealing with a pandemic  hard immunity, herd immunity or classifying it as endemic  while explaining the advantages and disadvantages of each.

"Many of these reports were provided based on readers' requests, recommendations and suggestions for issues that they wish to read about or their proposals for information to be validated through Facebook comments and WhatsApp messages, Fouad said. On-request reporting is a genuine part of Fo2sh Times policy, since writers and websites shouldn't work based their preferences, but upon the readers, he added.

Fouad was motivated to launch on-request reporting by his history as an engineering student, when he used to provide his colleagues with written explanations and simplifications of curricula, based on their requests about the difficult lessons.

"Since then, I have discovered my abilities and passion for explanation, analysis and writing, and this was why I launched Fo2sh Times  as an opportunity to follow my passion, he said.

Fo2sh Times Facebook page, which provides the same content as the website, has about 25,000 followers, while the newer website was being visited by around 5,000 unique users as of the end of 2019, and generating 9,000 page views monthly. These are promising figures, considering that Fouad operates them independently with no paid promotional campaigns on social media or search engines.

Hany el-Qady, one of Fo2sh Times followers on Facebook, told Al-Monitor, "The page and website are characterized by being unbiased concerning the information they provide. Some reports may include opinions of the writer in the introduction or the conclusion, but these are totally separate from the informative content  unlike other pages such as Al-Mawkef Al-Masry [The Egyptian Stance]," which Qasy said picks topics and analyzes them based on a political agenda that opposes the Egyptian regime.

In August and September, opposition arose against Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisis regime following speculation that it had spent billions of dollars to establish new presidential palaces and a new headquarters for the Ministry of Defense. However, Fouad  who in many situations seemed like a regime opponent because of the wording of the introductions and conclusions of some of his reports  analyzed the strategic importance of the ministrys new headquarters.

His Sept. 17 report, which includes many detailed maps and satellite photos, shows that the massive headquarters, known as the Octagon, comprises eight separate buildings connected through underground tunnels. Any two of the units together can act as an on-duty building and a standby for Egyptian Armed Forces main branches and authorities in case Egypt is subjected to a military attack.

Fouads report also examined speculation about the amount spent for building the Octagon, comparing this with facts about the costs of military headquarters in other countries, to show that Egyptians' conjecture about the cost involved might be inaccurate.

Among the most interesting topics Fouad has addressed, according to Hazem Gamal, a Fo2sh Times follower, is a Dec. 4 examination of the facts and speculation about the Ottoman invasion and rule of Egypt. The report follows the controversies surrounding the popular historical drama TV series "Kingdoms of Fire," which aired in November and December.

Gamal, who is a project manager at one of Egypt's leading real estate development companies, told Al-Monitor that Fo2sh Times deep, unbiased, on-request analysis indicates it could generate and sell business, economic and political studies and research  like, for example, Austin, Texas-based geopolitical intelligence publisher Stratfor. Fo2sh Times could become the first Egyptian service of its type. However, Fouad said he isnt planning to provide paid services, since the website isnt designed for profitability and he has his own work as a professional engineer.

Ramy Attallah, a journalism professor at Beni-Suef University, told Al-Monitor he thought Fo2sh Times greatest advantages were its use of Egyptian Arabic slang that all readers can understand and its ability to draw in readers with headlines that correspond to Egyptian culture, such as using traditional folk proverbs to help explain major international issues such as the coronavirus.
S ome social distancing measures will remain in place until a coronavirus vaccine has been developed, Michael Gove has said.

Speaking at the daily Covid-19 press conference on Sunday, Mr Gove said ministers will seek to restore people's lives to "as close to normal as possible".

But he also warned that people would have to live with "some degree of constraint" until they can be immunised against the deadly disease, suggesting Brits would have to accept a "new normal".

It comes as a total of 28,446 people have died after testing positive for Covid-19 as of 5pm on Saturday - an increase of 315.

Mr Gove revealed that the number of daily coronavirus tests in the last 24 hours had fallen to 76,496 - below the Government's 100,000 daily testing target - which was blamed on lower uptake over the weekend.

The Cabinet minister told the daily Downing Street press conference: "Ultimately, unless and until we have a vaccine then I suspect that we are going to have to live with some degree of constraint because of the nature of the virus.

Michael Gove speaking during a media briefing in Downing Street / PA

"But we obviously want to, wherever possible, and consistent with the measures on public health, restore people's lives to as close to normal as possible."

He said the Government will pursue a "phased approach" to removing lockdown restrictions rather than a sudden return to "the old normal".

NHS England's national medical director Professor Stephen Powis said it was "really difficult" to know how the virus would play out in the months and years ahead.

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He said there was "hope" that a solution - either a vaccine or drugs - would be found sooner than might have been hoped 10 or 20 years ago, though it is "impossible to say when that will be".

"But it's certainly true to say that we will need to adapt to a new normal until we get to that point."

Human trials of a vaccine developed by Oxford University began last month, with scientists aiming to have a million doses ready by September if efficacy tests go well.

Coronavirus hits the UK - In pictures 1 /81 Coronavirus hits the UK - In pictures A deserted Westminster Bridge PA A man wearing a face mask or covering due to the COVID-19 pandemic, walks past customers sat outside a restaurant AFP via Getty Images Boris Johnson addresses the nation on the Coronavirus lockdown Andrew Parsons Runners pass cardboard cutouts of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and Prince William during the London Marathon in London AP An empty escalator at Charing Coss London Underground tube station Jeremy Selwyn Electronic bilboards displays a message warning people to stay home in Sheffield PA A sign is displayed in the window of a student accommodation building following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Mancheste Reuters People take part in a 'We Do Not Consent' rally at Trafalgar Square, organised by Stop New Normal, to protest against coronavirus restrictions, in Londo AP People sing and dance in Leicester Square on the eve on the 10PM curfew Reuters Hearts painted by a team of artists from Upfest are seen in the grass at Queen Square, following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Bristol Reuters Graffiti reads 'good luck and stay safe', as the number of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases grow around the world, under a bridge in London Reuters A sign is pictured in Soho, amid the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in London Reuters Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures, during a coronavirus briefing in Downing Street, London AP A person runs past posters with a message of hope, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues in Manchester REUTERS Riot police face protesters who took part in a 'We Do Not Consent' rally at Trafalgar Square, organised by Stop New Normal, to protest against coronavirus restrictions in London AP An image of The Queen eith quotes from her broadcast to the UK and the Commonwealth in relation to the Coronavirus epidemic are displayed on lights in London's Piccadilly Circus PA Military vehicles cross Westminster Bridge after members of the 101 Logistic Brigade delivered a consignment of medical masks to St Thomas' hospital Getty Images Durdle Door in Dorset Reuters Captain Tom Moore via Reuters Mia, aged 8, and Jack, aged 5, take part in "PE with Joe" a daily live workout with Joe Wicks on Youtube to help kids stay fit who have to stay indoors due to the Coronavirus outbreak PA An NHS worker reacts at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital during the Clap for our Carers campaign in support of the NHS Reuters Goats which have taken over the deserted streets of Llandudno @AndrewStuart via PA Tobias Weller PA Novikov restaurant in London with its shutters pulled down while the restaurant is closed London Landscapes: Hyde Park and the Serpentine, central London. Matt Writtle A newspaper vendor in Manchester city centre giving away free toilet rolls with every paper bought as shops run low on supplies due to fears over the spread of the coronavirus PA Theo Clay looks out of his window next to his hand-drawn picture of a rainbow in Liverpool, as the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continue Reuters A young man cuts another man's hair on top of a closed hairdresser in Oxford Reuters General view of the new NHS Nightingale Hospital, built to fight against the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in London via Reuters Jason Baird is seen dressed as Spiderman during his daily exercise to cheer up local children in Stockport, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues Reuters A woman wearing a face mask walks past Buckingham Palace Getty Images A man holds mobile phone displaying a text message alert sent by the government warning that new rules are in force across the UK and people must stay at home PA Medical staff on the Covid-19 ward at the Neath Port Talbot Hospital, in Wales, as the health services continue their response to the coronavirus outbreak. PA Prime Minister Boris Johnson taking part in a virtual Cabinet meeting with his top team of ministers PA A shopper walks past empty shelves in a Lidl store on in Wallington. After spates of "panic buying" cleared supermarket shelves of items like toilet paper and cleaning products, stores across the UK have introduced limits on purchases during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some have also created special time slots for the elderly and other shoppers vulnerable to the new coronavirus. Getty Images People on a busy tube train in London at rush hour PA Mia, aged 8 and her brother Jack, aged 5 from Essex, continue their school work at home, after being sent home due to the coronavirus PA Children are painting 'Chase the rainbows' artwork and springing up in windows across the country Reuters Social distancing in Primrose Hill Jeremy Selwyn A general view of a locked gate at Anfield, Liverpool as The Premier League has been suspended PA Homeless people in London AFP via Getty Images A piece of art by the artist, known as the Rebel Bear has appeared on a wall on Bank Street in Glasgow. The new addition to Glasgow's street art is capturing the global Coronavirus crisis. The piece features a woman and a man pulling back to give each other a kiss PA The Queen leaves Buckingham Palace, London, for Windsor Castle to socially distance herself amid the coronavirus pandemic PA A general view on Grey street, Newcastle as coronavirus cases grow around the world Reuters Matt Raw, a British national who returned from the coronavirus-hit city of Wuhan in China, leaves quaratine at Arrowe Park Hospital on Merseyside PA Britain's Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty (L) and Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance look on as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures as he speaks during a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) news conference inside 10 Downing Street Reuters The ticket-validation terminals at the tram stop on Edinburgh's Princes Street are cleaned following the coronavirus outbreak. PA Locked school gates at Rockcliffe First School in Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear PA A sign at a Sainsbury's supermarket informs customers that limits have been set on a small number of products as the number of coronavirus (COVID-19) cases grow around the world Reuters Jawad Javed delivers coronavirus protection kits that he and his wife have put together to the vulnerable people of their community of Stenhousemuir, between Glasgow and Edinburgh AFP via Getty Images A sign advertising a book titled "How Will We Survive On Earth?" Getty Images A man who appears to be homeless sleeping wearing a mask today in Victoria Jeremy Selwyn A pedestrian walks past graffiti that reads "Diseases are in the City" in Edinburgh AFP via Getty Images Staff from The Lyric Theatre, London inform patrons, as it shuts its doors PA A quiet looking George IV Bridge in Edinburgh PA A quieter than usual British Museum Getty Images A racegoer attends Cheltenham in a fashionable face mask SplashNews.com A commuter wears a face mask at London Bridge Station Jeremy Selwyn A empty restaurant in the Bull Ring Shopping Centre Getty Images A deserted Trafalgar Square in London PA Passengers determined to avoid the coronavirus before leaving the UK arrive at Gatwick Airport Getty Images

Mr Gove said Boris Johnson would set out on Thursday how the country can get back to work, get the economy moving, return children to school and travel to work more safely.

"We're consulting with employers and unions, professionals and public health experts, to establish how we can ensure that we have the safest possible working environments, and the Prime Minister will be saying more later this week," he explained.

Earlier on Sunday, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps warned life would not return to "business as usual" when the Prime Minister sets out his exit strategy.

And he admitted that fewer Britons would have died from coronavirus if more tests had been available earlier.

Mr Shapps said "many things" could have been different if the UK's testing capacity was above 100,000 before Covid-19 spread in the country.

He also confirmed the NHSX contact tracing app - which he said would need 50%-60% of people to use for it to be successful - will be trialled on the Isle of Wight this week before being rolled out later this month.

Meanwhile:

A former Government chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, has assembled a group of experts to look at how the UK could work its way out of the lockdown in response to concerns over the "lack of transparency" coming from the Sage group of advisers.

Conservative peer and former minister Baroness Ros Altmann said a requirement for older people to remain in lockdown longer as restrictions are lifted for the rest of the country would be "age discrimination".

Former head of the army General Lord Dannatt and ex-chief of the defence staff General Lord Richards backed calls for health workers to be given daily allowances like those given to soldiers in war zones.

Professor Sir Ian Diamond, UK national statistician, cautioned against international comparisons of death figures and warned that a "lengthy and deep recession" could lead to increased deaths.

In an interview with BBC One's The Andrew Marr Show, Mr Shapps was asked whether fewer people would have died if testing capacity had been greater sooner.

He replied: "Yes. If we had had 100,000 test capacity before this thing started and the knowledge that we now have retrospectively, I'm sure many things could be different.

"The fact of the matter is this is not a country that had - although we're very big in pharmaceuticals as a country - we're not a country that had very large test capacity."

He also revealed that he was "actively looking at" quarantining people travelling to Britain from abroad to keep coronavirus infection rates under control.

It comes as Mr Johnson revealed that doctors prepared to announce his death as he battled coronavirus in hospital last month.

The Prime Minister spent three nights in intensive care at St Thomas' in London with the disease, where he said medics gave him "litres and litres of oxygen".

He described it as a "tough old moment", telling the Sun On Sunday: "They had a strategy to deal with a 'death of Stalin'-type scenario.

"I was not in particularly brilliant shape and I was aware there were contingency plans in place.

"The doctors had all sorts of arrangements for what to do if things went badly wrong."
The Akufo-Addo led administrations plans to construct 88 new district hospitals and six new regional hospitals within a year have come under heavy criticisms with many describing it as impossible.



During his eighth address to the nation on the coronavirus pandemic, President Akufo-Addo made an announcement that "there are 88 districts in our country without district hospitals; we have six new regions without regional hospitals; we do not have five infectious disease control centres dotted across the country, and we do not have enough testing and isolation centres for diseases like COVD-19. We must do something urgently about this.



Health Minister, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu has explained that the government was planning to construct 22 District Hospitals before the announcement of 88 new hospitals.



We had also selected to do 22 district hospitals even before the Presidents announcement . . . When we got an indication of allocation of the Sinohydro facility that the government was arranging to take, we listed 22 Districts without hospitals to begin construction, he said.



The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has criticised the President for using 'COVID-19 platform' for political gains. They have raised questions on the government's ability to construct the facilities within a year.



According to them, the existing health facilities that the government claim to be constructing started by former President John Mahama and bemoaned the fact that the ruling government has not yet constructed 'even one hospital'.



NPP Bono Regional Chairman, Kwame Baffoe, popularly known as Abronye DC speaking on UTV's late news programme queried: "Asiedu Nketia said measures to fight COVID-19 are to rig election 2020, was that not engaging in politics? When the lockdown was lifted they accused the President of doing so to allow the EC to compile a new voters' register. Is that not politics?"



Listen to his full submission in the video below







Source: Peacefmonline.com









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She said goodbye to her beloved lifestyle website, The Tig, back in 2017 but now its been revealed that Meghan Markle is planning to launch a new website to rival Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop.

Royal insiders have revealed that the Duchess of Sussex is planning to bring back The Tig now that she and Prince Harry have stepped back as senior royals.

Meghan Markle is reportedly planning to bring back The Tig. Photo: Getty Images

Gwyneth Paltrow is the founder of the lifestyle website Goop. Photo: Getty Images

"I think Meghan is going to have another Instagram. I think she's going to do a Goop, like a new version of The Tig ... I really think that's coming, royal expert Myka Meier told the Royally Obsessed podcast.

I have a friend with a little bit of insider knowledge, and I think she's already working on something. I think we will be seeing something very interesting and creative with masterminds from all over the world coming together to bring something inspiring soon."

Back in April 2017, Meghan wrote a letter straight from the heart to her loyal followers of The Tig, just a few months before her engagement to Prince Harry was revealed.

Meghan bid farewell to her fans on The Tig in 2017. Photo: The Tig

To all my Tig friends. After close to three beautiful years on this adventure with you, it's time to say goodbye to The Tig, she wrote.

What began as a passion project (my little engine that could) evolved into an amazing community of inspiration, support, fun and frivolity.

You've made my days brighter and filled this experience with so much joy. Keep finding those Tig moments of discovery, keep laughing and taking risks, and keep being 'the change you wish to see in the world.' Above all, don't ever forget your worth - as I've told you time and time again: you, my sweet friend, you are enough.

Thank you for everything.

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have moved to LA. Photo: Getty Images

Not long after that, the former Suits star deleted her Instagram account, as things got more and more serious with Prince Harry.

The couple tied the knot in May 2018 at Windsor Castle and welcomed their adorable son, Archie, into the world in May 2019.

However, royal fans were shocked in January this year when the Sussexes announced that they would be stepping down from their roles as senior royals.

Story continues

Within the space of a few weeks, the family had moved to Canada where they were spotted enjoying life in the countryside.

However, just after the coronavirus hit, they moved to LA to be closer to Meghans mum, Doria.

Got a story tip or just want to get in touch? Email us at lifestyle.tips@verizonmedia.com.
In keeping with our governors penchant for expressing himself in cliches, let me say the following:

Last week Phil Murphy jumped the shark.

That expression comes from the old sitcom Happy Days. In one episode, the writers tried to create interest by having the character Fonzi take a jump over a Great White shark on water skis. The expression soon came to describe any show that has passed its peak.

Thats true of Murphys executive order telling New Jerseyans that they can only leave home for certain specified reasons.

On Tuesday, Jerseyans flouted that edict by lining the Delaware and Hudson rivers to watch a flyover by the Navy Blue Angels and Air Force Thunderbirds.

It was on Wednesday that Murphy put on his waterskis and headed over the shark pit.

That came when he informed the critics of his executive orders that your interventions to me did not matter one little bit. With all due respect to all the pressure thats been out there, we couldnt frankly care.

Politicians are supposed to be a bit more solicitous toward their critics - especially when those critics include many of the governors fellow Democrats.

Senate President Steve Sweeney and other legislative leaders of both parties are rightfully worried that unless the states workers get back to work soon the state wont have the tax revenue to balance the state budget.

But instead of taking a bipartisan approach, Murphy last week rolled out a public relations onslaught of the sort usually associated with political campaigns.

He unveiled a slickly packaged six-step program titled The Road Back: Restoring Economic Health Through Public Health.

To implement that plan he announced the formation of a 21-member advisory group, one that I have christened as his Cronyvirus Committee.

It is packed with partisan operatives, including the director of a Beltway political advocacy group who has boasted that the group is the central hub for Trump resistance.

Murphy is up for re-election next year, and that lineup looked more like a campaign committee than a non-partisan panel of experts.

As for the plan, it has its good points. But when it comes to adopting it, the governors got a problem. Theres already a 120-member committee dedicated to deciding policy: The state Legislature.

The state constitution grants the power to write bills solely to the Legislature. The governor can veto those bills. But he cant write them.

Thats what hes doing under the guise of his emergency edicts, said one critic, Assemblyman Brian Bergen.

Any governor has to have the ability to take emergency action, said the Morris County Republican. But it has to be short-term and only long enough for the legislative body to get back to work.

Bergen said he is introducing a bill that would set that term at two weeks.

Murphys at six weeks and counting.

Bergen said that after that 14-day period the governor would have to work with the Legislature on addressing the emergency in question.

It cant just be unilaterally controlled by one person for an unlimited amount of time, he said. The reason the legislative body is made up of different people from all over the state is to represent the interests of different people from all over the state.

Thats the problem Murphy confronts. Most of the cases of coronavirus are concentrated in the northern suburbs close to New York City. The southern part of the state has a different problem. It also has a different champion.

Thats Senate President Steve Sweeney, a Democrat from Gloucester County. Sweeney is much more receptive to those critics in places like Cape May County who argue they need to start planning right away for a business season that kicks off just three weeks away, on Memorial Day weekend.

Sweeneys also open to interventions by all those small-business owners who argue theyre prevented from opening while big chains like Walmart and Target can sell the same products.

Then theres the governors original rationale for imposing the lockdown last month. At the time Murphy argued that the state needed to flatten the curve in key categories like hospital admissions.

Back on April 14, his health commissioner said those admissions were rising steeply, to the point they would reach almost 16,000 by April 25.

But it turned out that on April 14 hospitalizations began falling instead of rising. By Friday, the number had dropped to under 6,000.

The other major indicators have been dropping since mid-April as well.

The curve is not just flat. Its on a downward trajectory.

You can see that on the governors own online database. Perhaps he should check it and decide the time has come for him to hand the policy-making power back to the legislators.

Or he could wait for them to take it back.

But I suspect that leap wont turn out quite as well as Fonzis did.

ADD - THE INFAMOUS EPISODE THAT INSPIRED THE CLICHE:
There's the COVID unit nurse whose sister got infected and became a patient. The staffer who works 12-hour shifts, only to come home to unruly and frustrated children. The nurse who felt the added pressure of supporting an unemployed brother.

Dr. Jay Kaplan listens as staffers share their fears and problems. He tells them its OK to get sad or angry over the coronavirus that has sickened so many and upended their lives. He reads them his poems. He shares how, early in the outbreak, he came home and cried to his wife, overwhelmed by the deluge of dying patients.

Mostly, Kaplan, 71, an emergency room physician and wellness specialist at LCMC Health system in New Orleans, wants them to know theyre not alone.

We need to break the culture of silence and let people know its OK not to have it all together all the time, he said.

The psychological risks hospital staffs face during the coronavirus pandemic came into tragic focus last week, when Lorna Breen, 49, a Manhattan emergency room doctor who treated coronavirus patients and had been infected, died by suicide.

Kaplans chats with medical staff in the coronavirus fight  known as wellness visits  are a strategy for the hospital system to prevent its workers from spiraling into depression and post-traumatic stress disorder during the pandemic.

Hospitals from Seattle to New York City have launched similar initiatives in the next phase in the war against coronavirus: protecting health care staff from serious mental fallout after weeks of fighting the relentless virus.

As of Monday, the coronavirus had infected more than 1.1 million people in the USA and led to the deaths of more than 67,000. More than 9,200 health care providers have been infected by the virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A study released last month looking at the mental health outcomes of 1,257 health care workers attending to COVID-19 patients in 34 hospitals in China, where the outbreak started and where more than 4,600 people have died, found that 50% showed signs of depression, 45% reported anxiety and 72% had some form of psychological distress.

Story continues

Even before the pandemic, about 60% of emergency physicians experienced burnout in their career, according to the American College of Emergency Physicians. About 400 physicians commit suicide each year.

Health care workers are used to dealing with death but rarely witness it in such high numbers, said Colin West, an internist who has studied physician well-being at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota for nearly two decades. Nurses and doctors are not accustomed to putting themselves at constant risk while treating others, he said.

Health care professionals  physicians, nurses  already had high levels of stress and high rates of burnout, West said. A pandemic like this is going to add strain to an already strained group of workers.

Dr. Jay Kaplan, left, speaks to medical staffers in New Orleans involved in the coronavirus fight during one of his "wellness visits," designed to mitigate trauma in health care workers.

Doctors, nurses and technicians usually absorb "secondhand trauma" from gunshot victims and other patients they treat, said Debbie Minsky-Kelly, a social work professor at Carthage College in Wisconsin. Treating the coronavirus, they experience "firsthand trauma," risking infection and witnessing colleagues getting sick and even dying, she said.

Unchecked, the trauma could resurface when caseloads lighten and they have time to think about their experience, Minsky-Kelly said.

"What are going to be the triggers for doctors and nurses for future PTSD?" she said. "The person performing my surgery could suddenly be having a flashback in the middle of my procedure."

Workers at Mount Sinai hospitals in New York City have treated more than 2,000 COVID-19 patients and seen hundreds of their colleagues infected by the virus, said Dr. Jonathan Ripp, the system's wellness chief. About 20 workers died from the virus.

Doctors test hospital staff with flu-like symptoms for coronavirus (COVID-19) in tents set up to triage possible COVID-19 patients before they enter the main emergency department at St. Barnabas hospital in the Bronx on March 24 in New York City.

Starting in late March, the hospitals ramped up initiatives, such as a 24/7 mental health crisis line and one-on-one counseling, Ripp said. It launched a wellness and resilience center that will track staffers' long-term mental health.

"The number of (coronavirus) deaths were seeing in this country are higher than deaths we saw during the Vietnam War," Ripp said. "There's reason to be concerned."

Dr. Aisha Terry, a Washington, D.C., emergency physician and board member of the American College of Emergency Physicians, said she routinely fields calls from colleagues who break down in tears over what they're witnessing.

Others have endured some of the most traumatic scenes of their career but self-isolate from family members to avoid infecting them and don't have a support system when they need it the most, she said. Emergency physicians feel a sense of helplessness in facing a virus that has no known treatments or vaccines.

Her group offers free online counseling sessions to members and tries to sound the alarm that doctors and nurses in the fight against the coronavirus face serious psychological risks, she said.

"Things cannot go back to business as usual after COVID-19," Terry said. "The mental health of our emergency physician workforce has to be addressed in a definitive way."

Hospital staffers in Seattle are starting to see a decrease in cases, said Michele Bedard-Gilligan, a University of Washington psychiatrist who helped lead the university's medical mental wellness efforts.

Hospital administrators plan to track and treat staffers long term, including for a potential second-wave virus outbreak, she said.

"Potentially, we're looking at another year of tolerating increased stress," Bedard-Gilligan said. "How thats going to look like and how it's going to take a toll on us remains to be seen."

In New Orleans, Kaplan, the wellness specialist, begins each group session by sharing information in printed-out, colorful graphs: The hospital system has enough ventilators, intensive-care beds and personal protection equipment to see them through the crisis, the graphs show.

Next, he recites a poem titled, "When Corona Comes Knocking" ("Now death is our greeter as we walk in to work ... sometimes we see it walk in the door, other times it is wheeled in"). He wrote the poem in his journal as the pandemic hit New Orleans.

Kaplan often ends the 30-minute sessions by asking workers to think of the one thing they did that day that made a difference. Then he reads from Psalm 23 in the Bible: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me."

"We are in the valley of the shadow of death right now," Kaplan said. "And we will get through this if we can look into each other's eyes and give each other hugs, even if were 6 feet apart."

Follow Jervis on Twitter: @MrRJervis.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Coronavirus death count has doctors struggling with mental health
In an official announcement, Japan indicated that it could ease some of the restrictions from the coronavirus pandemic on economic activities and businesses. With proper social distancing measures, the parks, museums and other recreational premises might be allowed to resume in weeks ahead, Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura told the press conference as of May 3.

This comes as the country, with over 14,571 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus was set to announce the extension of the partial lockdown and the state of health emergency to stem the pathogens contamination. With some proper preventive measures are in place, it could be possible for Japan to reopen some of the activities in the country, Nishimura said at a news conference held on May 3. Among those could be some parks, museums, art galleries, and libraries in the 13 prefectures with low cases of the infection. He added that the premises can be timely disinfected and social distancing measures can be ensured to control the rate of transmission as restrictions lift.

Earlier, Japans Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told the press conference that he will consult with the health experts on whether to extend a national state of emergency or lift the confinement measures like the other nations. Although Japan has no enforcement for the lockdown, there are restrictions on the non-essential movement of the citizens and business operation, as per media reports.

Read: Japan Launches 'walk Through' Virus Testing

Read: Tokyo Olympics 'difficult' If Pandemic Not Contained: Japan PM Shinzo Abe

Expert advice needed

The current emergency declaration, however, was to conclude on May 6, at the end of the Golden Week national holidays in Japan which would allow citizens to do the movement. As the government fears the second wave of the pandemic to spread across Japan, and its low testing regime, PM Abe reportedly said he would depend on the expert advice and detailed analysis.

Nevertheless, under Japans state of emergency, many have been witnessed flouting the confinements. While some still have to commute for the jobs despite risks of exposure to the coronavirus, others were also witnessed to dine out at establishments functional with scant regard for measures. Ahead of the Golden Week holidays, Tokyo was packed with crowd lured with socializing according to local media reports. Experts warned, that while the country declared the state of a health emergency, the sense of health emergency amongst the citizen lacked.

Read: As Japan Imposes Shutdowns To Battle Pandemic, Rats Come Out On Empty Streets

Read: Japan Central Bank Eases Monetary Policy To Boost Economy

(Image Credit: AP)
Graduating into a free-falling economy is scary, especially for those of us carrying insurmountable student debt. Thats the nightmare I find myself in.

Its been a challenging two years getting through the rigours of the MBA program at the Schulich School of Business. The light at the end of the tunnel was graduating with those illustrious three-letter words; a proverbial passport to enter the lucrative corporate world.

But with a recession brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, that tunnel just got longer.

This isnt the first recession Ive experienced in adulthood. I graduated with a journalism degree in 2008, just as the global economy began to tank, in part due to a U.S. financial system that was fraught with vulnerabilities.

It was a time when the decline of the North American newspaper industry sped up amid widespread digital disruption. In 2015, I was hired by the Toronto Star. By 2016, I was laid off. With slim pickings in journalism, I attempted to reinvent myself through the MBA.

I recognize that the bull and bear markets are in a never-ending tango, but I didnt expect to graduate in a raging bear market a second time around. These are turbulent days for everyone, but especially for one demographic.

Millennials are those of us born in the early 1980s to mid-1990s. Economic uncertainty has left an indelible mark on our lives. Were priced out of the Toronto housing market. The idea of having kids seems like a pricey pipe dream. And precarious gig work is our norm.

Millennials are often labelled entitled or lazy. Id argue were disillusioned, and rightly so. Even with my best attempts to navigate the deluge of disruptions, Ive landed in a recession with $61,000 in student debt.

Its all very bleak, until I look at my peers in the MBA program. These are some of the brightest people Ive come across. And theyre driven, defying the typical millennial stereotype.

Take Tony Chen. He holds a degree in music from the University of Toronto. Prior to enrolling in the MBA program, Chen worked as a self-employed music instructor, while also performing various paid gigs with his band. He now plans to pivot into finance.

Or take Sheen Dhunjisha. She holds a graduate degree in interior architecture from UCLA. I havent met anyone with such a strong passion for sustainable design management.

The uncertainty paving our lives has one silver lining. It forces us to reinvent ourselves, whether that entails a shift from music to finance, or architecture to sustainability  or, in my case, journalism to marketing.

My strategy professor would refer to what were going through as a black swan, which is defined as an event so disruptive that it changes the course of society.

I would call it another year in the life of a millennial.
Social distance norms continue to thrown to the wind in Hyderabad whenever free rations are distributed. In this picture, women jostle to receive free rations from the Baptist Church at Shanthi theatre in Hyderabad. (DC Photo: Deepak Deshpande)at a

Hyderabad: According to data obtained from the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR), Telangana carried out 4,035 tests for coronavirus infection between April 19 and 26.

That number fell to 2,506 in the last four days of the month, that is, from April 27 to April 30.

On April 21, in a decision that defies logic, the Telangana government decided not to test anyone without Covid-19 symptoms or those who are not primary contacts of Covid-19 patients.

Any wonder then that it was also in the last week of April that the state began reporting new daily cases in the single digits?

Based on these figures, the government began expressing the hope that the spread of the virus was being contained.

ICMR oversees the testing process across the country. We obtained testing figures from ICMR and correlated them with the number of positive cases detected in Telangana.

In the initial days in Telangana, between March 10 and 22, the number of tests conducted 180 . This number rose dramatically rose to 4,781 between April 5 and 11. That, according to data received from ICMR, was the highest number of tests done in a week in Telangana.

In the period during which the state conducted the most tests, as per ICMR data, the number of positive cases, according to the patient list provided by the state, was found to be 241.

The next testing period for which ICMR provided data, April 12-18, was the also period during which Telangana discovered the most number of positive cases, 322.

After the state issued instructions, April 21, that it will restrict testing as per ICMR guidelines, the positive cases fell sharply. Between April 27 and April 30, when the number of tests came down to 2,506, the positive cases fell steeply to 35.

The government says it will stick to ICMR guidelines on testing. And anxieties over the shrinking circle of testing continue to rise.

In a recent interview, the director for the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Dr. Rakesh K. Mishra, said the importance of testing cannot be ignored and called for sustained testing to determine the extent of the spread of the disease.

His concerns reflect those of many other doctors here as well as the World Health Organization which has repeatedly stressed on increasing the rate and pace of testing to determine the true extent of the spread of the virus in the population.
Da'nae Frazier, left, and Davetta Frazier stand in front of the Maplewood Nursing & Rehabilitation Center, where Brenda Frazier, their grandmother and mother, respectively, was a resident before being sent to the hospital with coronavirus. Read more

The first confirmation that the coronavirus had infiltrated a Philadelphia nursing home came on March 20, an unseasonably warm Friday that hit 79 degrees. A test of a resident at the Renaissance Healthcare & Rehabilitation Center for COVID-19 came back positive.

In the weeks since, the coronavirus has torn through almost all of Philadelphias long-term care facilities, infecting at least 1,800 seniors, according to city records obtained exclusively by The Inquirer.

This first-ever picture of the havoc, how it spread, where and which homes were hit first and hardest is based on data the city inadvertently made available online that charted test results of residents at those homes from the start of the pandemic through April 23.

The consequences have been catastrophic: At least nine Philadelphia nursing homes had 50 or more cases by then. As of Saturday, 374 nursing home residents have died of the virus, accounting for more than half of Philadelphias COVID-19 deaths.

As the coronavirus took root in these facilities, the public and, all too often, family members of nursing home residents were left in the dark about where the outbreaks were occurring. Philadelphia public health officials, unlike those in other jurisdictions, so far have declined to disclose which senior facilities have experienced coronavirus outbreaks.

 READ MORE: Its a sinking ship: COVID-19 deaths triple at state-run vets nursing home in Chester County as families clamor for information

Early in the pandemic, nursing homes  unlike hospitals, which benefited from intense efforts to equip them for the coming surge  were sitting underfunded, ill-equipped, and woefully unsupported. Yet their employees also worked the front lines, caring for societys most vulnerable.

Even so, an analysis of the Philadelphia data shows that the worst 10 homes for rate of infections, based on number of beds, were all rated one star (much below average) to three stars (average) on the federal governments five-star rating system.

Nursing home officials cautioned against drawing hard conclusions about specific operators during a pandemic with a novel, insidious disease.

Standard infection-control programs in nursing homes, even when well-executed, were as effective against COVID-19 as against a hurricane because the virus can spread easily among people showing no symptoms, a fact only recently understood, said Joshua Uy, a Penn Medicine geriatrician and medical director at Renaissance.

With COVID, by the time you identify your first case, it has already spread, Uy said. It's going to spread in good nursing homes and bad nursing homes."

March 20  first confirmed case

Renaissance, a 123-bed facility in Philadelphias Kingsessing neighborhood, got some bad news. Only three days after the state barred visitors at care facilities, one of its residents got test results back from the lab: positive for COVID-19. Renaissance had the unwanted distinction as Philadelphias first confirmed coronavirus case in a nursing home.

In three more days, it had 10 more. Once inside, the virus can spread exponentially.

 READ MORE: Over 9 days, Bucks County saw 100 coronavirus deaths  most in nursing homes

Nursing homes are tinder boxes for the disease, one expert said, because they house a vulnerable population living in close quarters and residents may have daily contact with six or more caregivers, who must go from room to room, as well as to and from the facilities.

Uy, at Renaissance, said being first was lucky in a way. There was probably just a single exposure that led to our outbreak, he said. All employees immediately started wearing masks and eye shields at all times, he said, helping to control the spread to one wing.

March 25  17% of homes with at least one positive case

As the virus continued coursing through the city, reaching into more and more facilities, it claimed its first nursing home victim, a 73-year-old woman at Renaissance.

March 28  34% with cases

The Philadelphia Public Health Department knew stricter measures had to be taken. To try to slow the spread, it announced that all workers in nursing homes, even cleaning and food service staff, had to wear masks.

In hindsight, Public Health Commissioner Thomas Farley said he wished his agency had required all nursing home staff to wear masks earlier in the pandemic.

April 2  57% of homes

On this Thursday, U.S. officials reported more than 1,000 COVID-19 deaths in a single day and announced 6.6 million Americans sought unemployment benefits in a single week.

Chapel Manor, a nursing home in the Bustleton section of Northeast Philadelphia, also set a record: It reported 20 positive cases  the largest single-day tally to that point of any city nursing home.

But that count didnt reflect a surge of cases at the 238-bed facility, owned by Genesis Healthcare, the large national chain based in Kennett Square. Rather, a large pack of delayed results came back from the lab that day, Richard Feifer, Genesis chief medical officer, said in a statement.

The company said Chapel Manors records showed 126 confirmed cases at a time when city records showed only 76, a significant undercount.

 READ MORE: Workers at 180-bed South Philly nursing home ravaged by coronavirus have voted to strike

Not having enough test kits and a lag in getting back confirmed positives while improved in Pennsylvania, continues to be a key issue for all nursing home operators in curtailing the spread of the virus, he said. Of Chapel Manors 280 employees, 47 tested positive.

April 8  72% positive cases

For the 18th day in a row, at least one city nursing home learned it was infected with a case. By now, nearly three of four homes had dealt with a confirmed case, some with dozens of infections.

The extent of the outbreak wasnt clear to many family members who hadnt been able to visit inside homes for three weeks. And unlike New York, New Jersey, or Maryland, Philadelphia and Pennsylvania do not publicly disclose the number of cases or deaths at individual nursing homes. When asked, the facilities usually dont either.

 ASK US: Do you have a question about the coronavirus and how it affects your health, work and life? Ask our reporters.

Jean Hackney had no idea there was a coronavirus outbreak at her mother-in-laws nursing home until she got a call on April 8 telling her that her mother-in-law and two other residents of the Tucker House in North Philadelphia were being transported to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.

Tucker House had the citys highest rate of infections, 38 cases per 100 beds, based on health department data.

When I found out about it, they called to say that she had the virus, and she was on the way out, Hackney, 73, said.

By this date, Tucker House had more than 50 cases. Hackney said she had no problems with the facility before the pandemic, but was frustrated that it hadnt alerted family members about the outbreak sooner or that government officials hadnt disclosed where outbreaks were occurring.

My whole problem is, if this is happening to these seniors in nursing homes, somebody should be made aware, she said. I think that they should tell the public not just the people dying in nursing homes.

Hackneys mother-in-law died three days after she got the call.

 READ MORE: A virtual, fun experience 'full of love. How Philly-area readers reimagined Passover seders during the coronavirus

April 9  The peak

On Passover, when families were forced to participate in their annual Seder feasts with extended family over Zoom or FaceTime because of isolation measures, the city recorded its highest single daily count, 88 people in nursing homes confirmed to have the virus. In fact, over the four days from Passover to Easter, the city saw its highest total for confirmed cases, compared with any similar stretch.

It wasnt known at the time, but by Good Friday, the daily count had ticked lower, to 77, and would generally trend down for the next two weeks. The rapid moving spread through the citys nursing homes had hit a peak, at least for this period of the pandemic and based on the limited testing. By then, at least 115 seniors had died from the disease in nursing homes. Commissioner Farley said cases overall may have peaked in the city, but was not confident the same could be said of nursing home infections.

When I look at individual nursing homes, you see some cases coming and then maybe ending, but you don't know whether you might not get a subsequent cluster, Farley said in an interview Wednesday.

April 12  Tripled in four days

The spread of the virus may have been slowing citywide, but that didnt mean it was tamed inside individual homes. Staffers at the Immaculate Mary Center for Rehabilitation and Healthcare in Northeast Philadelphia learned of a torrent of cases on Easter weekend. In just four days, the number of residents confirmed positive had tripled, to 54.

Unknown is how many of those 54 remained in the facility, to be sequestered with others with the disease, and how many needed to go to the hospital for care. As was true for other homes, staffers had to improvise protective equipment then and in ensuing weeks because of shortages.

Staffers were using washable raincoats and donated Phillies ponchos as isolation gowns, said Paula Sanders, a lawyer for the owner. This is how sad the world has become, Sanders said. She also said the Immaculate Mary tally of 71 in the health departments records was inaccurate: The former archdiocesan home had only 53 confirmed cases on April 11.

 READ MORE: Assume coronavirus is already there, says a Philly nursing home doctor who learned the hard way

Immaculate Mary still has six social workers and six unit managers who are calling families to keep them apprised of their loved one's condition, Sanders said.

Alicia McGovern said that was not her family's experience. Her grandmother, Loretta Schaffer, had been at Immaculate Mary for at least six years because of dementia, but nobody in the family knew how sick Schaffer was until she was taken on April 4 to Nazareth Hospital.

"Why was she left there to get that bad?" McGovern said through tears.

Doctors at Nazareth diagnosed her with pneumonia and COVID-19. Schaffer died 10 days later at 82.

April 19  88% with coronavirus

It was the third Sunday in April when Shirley Adams finally got to see her sister, Brenda Frazier, on a video call at Maplewood Nursing Home & Rehabilitation Center in Germantown.

Adams had not seen her sister since visitors were banned in mid-March.

Her sister, a retired seamstress, went to Maplewood after a stroke and needed full-time care. In the week after Easter, whenever Adams had called Maplewood about her sister they brushed her off, she said, claiming Frazier was eating lunch or dinner, or sleeping, and was unavailable.

She was appalled.

Shes not groomed. She has a beard, Adams said. It broke my heart. She was just laying there, you know, to die, because they werent going to do anything.

By then, Maplewood, which has 180 beds, had 34 cases.

The family demanded that Frazier be sent to the hospital. She was admitted to Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia, found to be positive for COVID-19, her daughter, Davetta Frazier, said.

On Saturday, Frazier made the excruciating decision to take her mother off the ventilator.

Everything was failing on her, and they said she wasnt getting better.

The company that manages the facility, Bedrock Care, based in Pomona, N.Y., also operates four other nursing homes in Philadelphia  Care Pavilion, Cliveden, Tucker House, and York  plus Parkhouse in Montgomery County, according to its website. It did not respond to messages.

April 23  Only five homes spared

By this fourth Thursday of April, 34 days after the citys first confirmed nursing home case of COVID-19, the virus had infected at least 1,202 of the more than 6,500 elderly Philadelphians in the citys 47 long-term care homes. Only five of the 47 nursing homes reported no positive cases by that point. But while the peak in city nursing home cases may have passed, the suffering continued: Twenty residents died between that date and the next day.

The city data gave no information on how many tests the facilities were doing. If few tests were being conducted, it would result in low numbers of confirmed cases.

Some facilities, like Renaissance, have been able to squelch outbreaks in a matter of weeks, while others continue to battle the virus, the data show.

On March 23, Cliveden Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Mount Airy became the second facility in the city with a confirmed COVID-19 case but four weeks later was still reporting new cases.

With 85 cases, the St. John Neumann Center for Rehabilitation & Healthcare in Northeast Philadelphia had seen the highest number of its residents test positive for the virus as of April 23, and the second-highest rate, the data show. St. John Neumann objected to the notion of ranking the facilities by the number of cases, arguing that some facilities test more rigorously than others.

Chapel Manor in Bustleton, the York nursing home in East Oak Lane, and Immaculate Mary were also at the top for cases.

None of these four are rated above average on federal measures that take into consideration staffing levels, the mix of services required, and other measures of care.

For some, it isnt surprising to see lower-performing facilities at the top of the list.

It is luck, but it is also the way a facility is run, said Anthony Manzo, CEO of Protestant Home in Philadelphia, a 126-bed facility that had seen only 14 cases as of Friday. Theres no room for profit in this business, but it is big business, and some of the ones that run the big chains of nursing homes make a lot of money.

However, Farley, the health commissioner, said his staff has seen no correlation between how well facilities follow expert recommendations on infection control and how many COVID-19 cases they report.

With a vaccine a year or more away, it is time to begin a fundamental rethinking of how these facilities operate, he said. Right now, the facilities have a staff that dont get paid very much, and they operate on pretty thin budgets, and so it may be that youre not going to get the kind of meticulous attention to infection control that you need.

 READ MORE: AARP calls on Pennsylvania to release list of nursing homes with coronavirus cases

About the exclusive nursing home data

On April 23, Philadelphias Department of Public Health inadvertently exposed more than 35,000 coronavirus test results, including those of congregate facilities, on its website where it routinely updated public data sets about coronavirus cases, deaths, and other information. Those results did not include any names or personally identifiable information of tested individuals, and were closed off hours later. The records did name the facility, the date of each test, and whether the result was negative or positive. In interviews with Inquirer reporters over the last several days, the departments chief epidemiologist and commissioner explained the data, including its limitations. They also provided other data for context. Before publication, The Inquirer also shared with them its own analyses of these unique records for feedback. The city noted that the data were not final and may have discrepancies. To that end, in some instances nursing home operators told reporters the city data didnt match their own records of positive test results at their facilities. For example, a Chapel Manor official said its records showed 126 confirmed cases at a time when city records showed only 76, a significant undercount. At Immaculate Mary, an official said the health departments total of 71 was inaccurate: The former archdiocesan home had only 53 confirmed cases on April 24.
HAMILTON, Ontario, May 03, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Next Generation Manufacturing Canada (NGen), the industry-led organization behind Canadas Advanced Manufacturing Supercluster, today announced it has invested more than $21 million in projects that will lead to the production in Canada of critically needed technologies, equipment, and medical devices to aid in the fight against COVID-19.



Since NGen announced its COVID-19 funding program in late March, it has received over 900 expressions of interest from advanced manufacturing companies across Canada. The projects approved so far include the development and manufacturing of ventilators and components, test kits, face shields, and a coating material that kills bacteria and viruses on contact.

NGen worked closely with the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, Canadas National Research Council, Health Canada, and the Public Health Agency of Canada to prioritize projects for funding that will deliver the most immediate benefits to Canadians.

QUOTES

Manufacturers across Canada have stepped up to the challenge. Their capacity to innovative and mobilize advanced technologies has allowed them to respond rapidly, both in scaling up production of health care products and in delivering new solutions to front-line workers. There can be no better example of how important advanced manufacturing is to Canadians. Its really been an all-of-Canada approach. Collaboration has been key in fighting COVID-19, and it will remain important as we prepare to open up the economy once again.

 Jayson Myers, CEO, Next Generation Manufacturing Canada

Our government is mobilizing its resources in the fight against COVID-19, and its great to see Industry doing its part. Im proud of the superclusters, including NGen, for stepping up to leverage their broad membership and Canadas strong industrial base to confront COVID-19. Together, we will protect the health and safety of all Canadians.

 Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry

Story continues

I am truly inspired by the depth of knowledge, expertise and commitment from industry, government and the research base across such a wide range of technologies. These collaborations are meeting the immediate needs of patients and front-line workers with innovations in life sustaining equipment, medical products, and PPE, while also strengthening manufacturing capacity in Canada that will continue to grow and sustain Canadas economic recovery.

 John Laughlin, Chief Technology Officer, Next Generation Manufacturing Canada

SAMPLE PROJECT DESCRIPTIONS

Ventilator: Canadian Emergency Ventilators Inc./Starfish Medical (Toronto, ON)

This project is providing ventilators for use in challenging COVID-19 triage scenarios. The project is manufacturing what will be known as the Winnipeg Ventilator, which will be suitable for large scale manufacturing and use during the COVID-19 crisis. To date, a functional system has been developed, assembled and tested that demonstrates the functional performance of the device in healthcare settings. The core technology has also been licensed and cleared for use by the FDA in the U.S.

Ventilator Components: BOMImed (Winnipeg, MB)

Winnipeg, MB-based BOMImed, which manufactures and distributes airway management, anesthesia, critical care, warming therapy and patient monitoring products, is collaborating Synergy Mouldworks (Brantford, ON), and Precision ADM (Winnipeg, MB) to rapidly develop and launch production of high-quality, fast-to-produce and cost effective ventilator breathing circuit components. The project is dedicated to come up with a made-in-Canada solution to address the shortages in breathing circuit components for ventilated patients across Canada.

Face shields: Molded Precision Components (Oro-Medonte, ON)

Molded Precision Components (MPC), a full-service engineering and injection molding company, is working with Sterling Industries (Concord, ON), will be designing and mass producing a personal protective face shield. MPC will be moulding the head band strap portion of the face shield, while Sterling will be producing the face shield portion holding the strap. MPC expects to mass produce up to 5,000 face shields per day.

Face shields: Mosaic (Toronto, ON)

Mosaic is a digital manufacturing company using 3D printing technology and multi-material printing processes to produce a wide range of products. NGens funding will enable the company to rapidly produce and distribute 45,000 face Shields over a three-month period.

Face shields: Burloak Technologies (Burlington, ON)

Burloak, a supplier of precision manufactured 3D printed metal parts to the aerospace industry, is working with Hamilton Health Sciences to design, develop and manufacture a full-face shield to address the need for specific identified medical equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic. The prototype product is in trial and Burloak is tooling up to be producing 5,000 pieces per week.

Test Kit: Sona Nanotech (Halifax, NS)

Sona is using its proprietary nanotechnology to develop a rapid point-of-care test to screen for Coronavirus. The test will provide users with a quick-response lateral-flow test to screen patients. The test is expected to produce results in five to 15 minutes and is anticipated to be priced similarly to other tests used to diagnose infectious diseases.

Test Kit: Response Biomedical (Vancouver, BC)

Response Biomedical Corp. (RBM) has used its proprietary RAMP platform technology, a fluorescent-based lateral-flow Point of Care (POC) system with Health Canada clearance, to produce a rapid, economical and accurate COVID-19 diagnostic test for use in point-of-care settings near patients or in the community. The aim of the project is to develop and manufacture, at large scale, a novel SARS-Coronavirus-2 RAMP Point-of-Care test that will enable the rapid and accurate triaging of patients presenting with symptoms of COVID-19 in 15 minutes or less.

Sterilization Coating: Envision SQ Inc. (Guelph, ON)

EnvisionSQ is a joint effort with University of Guelph to develop an innovative self-sterilization clear coating product (EnvisionSQ Clear Coating  NanoCleanSQ) that can be easily applied to hard surfaces to help prevent spread of the Coronavirus. NanoCleanSQ kills bacteria and viruses on contact, particularly coronaviruses, and is safe and durable, providing long-lasting antibacterial and antiviral protection. The NGen COVID-19 funding will allow EnvisionSQ to scale up production of NanoCleanSQ within 12 weeks to produce more than 1,000 litres per week, enough product to protect over 1 million doorknobs, 75,000 km of handrails, or the interiors of 8750 elevators, 400 city buses or 200 passenger airplanes per week.

About NGen - Next Generation Manufacturing Canada

NGen is the industry-led not-for-profit organization that leads Canadas Advanced Manufacturing Supercluster. Its mandate is to help build world-leading advanced manufacturing capabilities in Canada for the benefit of Canadians. NGen works to strengthen collaboration among its membership of more than 2,000 manufacturers, technology companies, innovation centres, and researchers, and provides funding and business support to industry-led initiatives that aim to develop, apply, or scale-up transformative manufacturing solutions in Canada for commercialization in global markets. In March, NGen announced that it would allocate at least $50 million of funding from the Canadian Governments Innovation Superclusters Initiative to help launch innovative manufacturing solutions to help in the fight against COVID-19.

Media contacts:

Robbie MacLeod

Next Generation Manufacturing Canada

robbie.macleod@ngen.ca

613-297-3578 Kathleen Munro

Pilot PMR

Kathleen.Munro@PilotPMR.com

902-789-3165




Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said the five security personnel killed in Jammu and Kashmirs Handwara district during an operation to rescue civilians held hostage by terrorists served the country with utmost dedication.

The Prime Minister was paying his tributes to Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, Major Anuj Sood, Naik Rajesh Kumar and Lance Naik Dinesh Singh and sub-inspector of Jammu-Kashmir police Shakeel Qazi who fell in the line of duty during an operation in Changimulla of Handwara.

Tributes to our courageous soldiers and security personnel martyred in Handwara. Their valour and sacrifice will never be forgotten. They served the nation with utmost dedication and worked tirelessly to protect our citizens, the Prime Minister tweeted.

Condolences to their families and friends, he said.

Before him, defence minister Rajnath Singh and the army also offered tributes to the security personnel who sacrificed their lives in the Handwara encounter.

The loss of our soldiers and security personnel in Handwara (J-K) is deeply disturbing and painful. They showed exemplary courage in their fight against the terrorists and made supreme sacrifice while serving the country. We will never forget their bravery and sacrifice, Singh tweeted.

Watch| Handwara encounter: Army Colonel among 5 martyred, 2 terrorists gunned down

This operation exemplified true tradition and strong determination of the #SecurityForces to safeguard the lives of own citizens, the army also posted on Twitter.

Two terrorists, including a top commander of Lashkar-e-Taiba, were also killed in the encounter that began around 3:30pm on Saturday after they took hostages inside a house in Handwara district.
Raghottam Koppar By

Express News Service

GADAG: With anganwadis shut amid the lockdown, workers, who are normally responsible for taking care of children, are doing their bit in the fight against coronavirus. Hundreds of anganwadi workers in Ron taluk  300 to be precise  have been stitching and distributing free masks to the poor. They have already handed out thousands of masks to villagers, and are still going strong. The initiative has earned them a lot of praise too.

The tahsildar, gram panchayat members, PDOs and other villagers have appreciated these womens dedication to helping those in need. G B Jakkanagoudar, tahsildar, Ron, says, This is a really a great initiative. They are each stitching 25 masks, and after taking a count, we figured that more than 50,000 masks have been distributed till date. Its not an easy task  we are proud of all of them.

The women decided to take on this task after they realised that masks were being sold at very high prices, and were not being bought by the villagers. Talking about the project, YS Hadagali, an anganwadi worker, says, Many villagers are still in need of masks, so this is our way of contributing to protecting people from coronavirus. We are still stitching masks every day, and distributing them when we go for duty.

Another reason they took on this task was due to the difficulty in accessing chemists and medical stores in the area. Due to the lockdown, villagers were not able to reach the nearest town to purchase masks. Earlier, the villagers did not know where these masks were coming from. Many thought the masks were being provided to them by the government. So when the truth came out about these silent mask makers, the villagers felicitated the anganwadi workers, appreciating them for their efforts.

Some people have come forward to help them, including police officers from Ron, who are travelling to neighbouring villages to get what is needed. Anganwadi workers Parvati Kontikal, Nirmala Barker and Shashikala Ganiger say, As anganwadi workers, it is our duty to do something during a crisis situation. So we decided to stitch masks as most of us know how to sew. Now, donors are giving us cloth and elastic, but earlier, we were putting in our own money to purchase things. Each of us has put in between Rs. 6,000 and Rs 10,000 from our own pockets till now.Hadagali adds, We will keep stitching till the whole taluk has masks -- this is out small contribution to the cause.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 23:37:03|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, May 3 (Xinhua) -- China's cultural industry reported falling revenue in the first quarter of the year as the COVID-19 epidemic hurt business activities, official data showed.

The sector's combined revenue amounted to 1.69 trillion yuan (about 239 billion U.S. dollars) in the first three months, down 13.9 percent year on year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The bureau tracks around 59,000 cultural companies across sectors including cultural services and cultural manufacturing with annual revenue of more than 20 million yuan or those meeting other standards listed by the NBS.

In a bright note, sectors with emerging models led by "Internet Plus" cultural businesses saw revenue rise by 15.5 percent to 523.6 billion yuan during the period.

The country's more developed eastern region continued to lead cultural consumption, contributing 75.4 percent of the sector's total revenue.

China is planning to develop its cultural industry into a pillar of the national economy by upgrading its industrial structure, fostering major brands and boosting consumption. Enditem
T wo teenagers have been charged with the murder of NHS worker David Gomoh in east London.

The 24-year-old was attacked in Freemasons Road in Newham at around 10.25pm last Sunday.

His family were already grieving from tragedy as his father recently died from a coronavirus-related illness. His funeral had been planned for Wednesday.

Mr Gomoh, a nurse like his mother, was a key worker tasked with keeping NHS staff supplied with essential equipment amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Muhammad Jalloh, 18, and a 16-year-old boy from Telford in Shropshire, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were charged with his death on Sunday.

They were also charged with conspiracy to cause GBH in connection with another alleged incident shortly before Mr Gomoh was found with knife wounds in Freemasons Road.

The teenagers are due to appear at Thames Magistrates Court on Monday May 4.
KENT, Ohio  On May 4, 1970, Jim Banks was having lunch at Kent State Universitys Wright Hall dormitory where he was resident director, when a group of students approached him.

Come on, Mr. Banks, arent you going to the rally? one student asked.

No, thats exactly what you dont want to do, Banks replied.

Well, were just going to watch, were not going to do anything, the student said.

Dont you get it? By going to watch, you are creating a crowd, Banks said. Do not go!

The students departed and Banks went back to his office, grabbed a pair of binoculars and focused on Blanket Hill near Taylor Hall where members of the Ohio National Guard faced hundreds of youths in the latest round of three days of anti-war protest.

Suddenly a group of Guardsmen were kneeling, pointing their rifles, and Banks witnessed a horror that continues to echo 50 years later.

There will not be a commemoration of the tragedy this year, due to concerns regarding the novel coronavirus, as there has every year since that day when four Kent State students were shot and killed, nine wounded.

Jim, 80, and his wife, Paula, 77, who was also a student at Kent State that day, have never attended a May 4 commemoration.

The couple rarely talks about that day, but they recently dusted off their memories in their Medina home with the front-yard sign, Hate has no place here.

Jim said he was previously reluctant to talk about the shootings because "anything I would say might only add to more controversy.

"Both Paula and I have avoided any of the May 4th commemorations because we see the same political rhetoric of that era being played out today in our current political climate," he added.

The couple had been married six years when they came to Kent State with their 10-month-old son, David, in 1968. Jim was on leave as a Cuyahoga Community College history professor to earn his doctorate in history. Paula was working on a bachelors degree in history.

They lived and ate at the dorm, occupying a contrasting niche. When we were on campus, we were the old fogie conservatives, Paula said. When we were not on campus, we were these wild liberal heretics.

Antiwar protest was sweeping the nations colleges and Kent State was no exception, with an active Kent Committee to End the War in Vietnam, and a Students for a Democratic Society chapter.

Paula had mixed feelings about the antiwar activism on campus. Her brother, Marine Staff Sgt. Samuel Hewitt, 19, had been reported missing in action in Vietnam just two years earlier. (Hewitts remains were discovered in 2010, and he was buried in the Ohio Western Reserve National Cemetery in Rittman.)

I was very torn about that, and I hated that people who thought if you were against the war you were against the young men over there, she said. I felt that not being in favor of the war was supporting young men who perhaps would go.

The antiwar mood on campus intensified, the couple said, after President Richard Nixon announced on April 30 that U.S. forces would expand the war in Vietnam into Cambodia.

An anti-war rally on campus May 1 spilled over into the streets of downtown Kent that evening and police used tear gas to disperse the crowds.

The Kent mayor asked for aid from the National Guard the next day, and troops arrived shortly after the ROTC building on campus was burned to the ground to the cheers of an estimated 1,000 demonstrators.

I remember this rather crazed student saw me and said, Man, this is it. The revolution is beginning!  Jim recalled. And I just looked at him and said, Youre insane! Do you know what youve done? 

Among the artifacts that Jim and Paula Banks have kept from their days at Kent State University is a photo of demonstrators and Ohio National Guardsmen facing-off on campus in 1970. (Gus Chan, The Plain Dealer)The Plain Dealer

Sunshine, then gunfire

May 3 was sunny, with almost a carnival atmosphere between students and the nearly 1,000 National Guard troops on campus.

That evening, however, National Guardsmen lined-up outside Wright Hall, and students responded by jeering and blaring the old Mickey Mouse Club TV theme song from the dorm windows.

Banks went out to talk to the troops and met the officer in charge, Gen. Robert Canterbury. He asked the general why the Guard was at the dorm.

He said, We heard there was trouble. I said there is no trouble, but there will be trouble if you stay here.

The general responded,  If you dont put your boys to bed, my men and I will put them to bed,  Jim recalled. Thats when I kind of lost my temper and said nobody is going into that dorm with those kids, my wife and child, in there.

Banks went back in the dorm, got on the PA and told residents that the Guard had promised that if you got away from your windows, shut up and went back to your rooms, lights out, they would leave.

The message got through. Total silence.

The next day, May 4, Paula said she went to a morning class where the instructor said that despite bomb threats,  We are having class, and if we die, we die learning. Oh great.

She had misgivings about the way tensions seemed to be escalating on campus and the ability of the university to handle them. I was concerned that the people who were in charge were not in charge, and I felt very vulnerable, she recalled.

Shortly before noon the National Guard, using a bullhorn, ordered demonstrators to disperse. Troops moved across the campus Commons to enforce the order, met by shouts and rocks.

As the troops arrived at the top of Blanket Hill, according to the KSU narrative, 28 of the more than 70 Guardsmen turned suddenly and fired their rifles and pistols  into the air, the ground and the students. Some 61 to 67 shots were fired in 13 seconds

At that moment, Im looking at Taylor Hall through my 7 X 50s [binoculars] and I see a half a dozen guardsmen, kneeling, shooting. I saw the muzzle flashes. Oh, my god,  Jim recalled, as he watched a short walking distance from the scene of horror.

Then, within 10 to 15 minutes people are running back in [the dorm] lobby, near hysterical, many crying, yelling They shot at us! Then, chaos.

I was concerned that people who were in charge were not in charge, and I felt very vulnerable, said Paula Banks, who blames the Kent State University administration for a lack of communication and control during the 1970 antiwar demonstrations at Kent State University. (Gus Chan,The Plain Dealer) The Plain DealerThe Plain Dealer

A personal connection among students killed

Paula Banks had been off campus, taking a pregnant friend to a doctors visit. They returned to campus just as ambulances and police cars were rushing to the scene. Radio broadcasts mistakenly said Guardsmen had been shot and there was a sniper on campus.

When she learned students had been shot, Paula said she wasnt surprised, just because of the aggressive stance that the top of the military was taking.

But then she got the news that one of the students, Sandra Scheuer, had been shot and killed while walking to class. Scheuer had often babysat for the Banks son.

She was very interested in children. She and a bunch of girls on her floor took David around trick or treating in the dorm, Paula recalled. They would read him stories.

The Banks later sent a condolence note to Scheuers mother, who responded, Sandy used to tell us about the cute boy that she used to play with, and sometimes babysat for.

She closed her note, Wondering why this had to happen to quiet a few rock-throwing troublemakers.

After the shootings, the campus was evacuated and shut down. Jim and Paula were forced to spend the next couple of weeks living with friends in Medina.

In the days following the shootings, when they returned to campus to get things from their dorm apartment, they ran a gantlet of area police checkpoints. One time a police officer told Jim, The scores 4 to nothing, were winning.

In the aftermath, it was just a bizarre backlash that you saw, the hatred, Paula said. During a visit to her parents home in Indiana, she said, My mother [said] They shouldve shot more. [I said] Mom! WE were there! 

Jim and Paula Banks, who lived on campus at Wright Hall during the 1970 Kent State shootings, talk about the 50th anniversary of the May 4th tragedy. They have never been to a commemoration of the shootings. ( Gus Chan, The Plain Dealer)The Plain Dealer

Looking back in dismay, but possible hope

The couple both got their degrees in 1970 and moved to Medina where they raised three children: David, Alex and Beth.

Paula handled public relations for the Medina County library system, and Banks resumed teaching at Tri-C until he retired in 1998. He continues work as director of the Crile Archive Center for History Education on the western campus.

In looking back on May 4, they see lessons learned and not learned.

They are both sympathetic and critical of both the students and Guardsmen.

The panic, the fear, was very real on both sides, Jim said. Anger and fear short-circuited rational behavior. That is a formula for tragedy.

They also blame inflammatory rhetoric from politicians, including Nixon and Ohio Gov. James Rhodes as a contributing cause. Words matter, and that fuels the confrontation, Jim said.

I put more responsibility on the [college] administration and lack of leadership that these things happened, Paula said. Some of the people, I think, were in their desk well [hiding under their desk] praying for it to be 1958 instead of 1968.

The leadership of the Guard, campus and the state did nothing to calm things down, she said. Thats one of the reasons I do not particularly want to go back to Kent.

May 4, 1970, changed Jim and Paula Banks forever.

I try to value life for what it is rather than getting overwrought over what is perhaps minor, Jim said. I still try to view it as a significant, disastrous confrontation over a historical subject that . . . was encompassing the entire culture. I think what I learned is that confrontation doesnt work.

Could it happen again?

Look at whats happening now with protesters . . . the white supremacists, the anti-Jewish behavior and threats. I dont think our society has learned anything. It just seems to be more raw than Kent was, Paula said.

Her husband agreed. We havent moved that much further down the road of tolerance since the days of Kent State, he said. Of course it could happen again. The ingredients are there.

But he believed that hope may come from an unexpected and viral source.

The coronavirus seems to have softened the bitterness, confrontation and polarization [of the nation], Jim said. Perhaps the pandemic might soften our attitudes toward our differences, and its ironic that it takes a plague, so to speak, to get us to cooperate and work as a team.

Read more:

Kent residents cant ignore history, impact of May 4th shootings 50 years ago
The Emir of Kaura-Namoda in Zamfara, Alhaji Ahmad Asha, died on Sunday with the states COVID-19 task team attributing his demise to complications from the pandemic.

The Zamfara Government, while confirming the death in a statement, said that the Emir died at the age of 71.

Mustapha Jafaru, the Publicity Secretary of the states Committee on Prevention and Control of COVID-19, in a statement in Gusau, said the traditional ruler had been in isolation at the Yariman Bakura Specialist Hospital, Gusau, where he died.

He said that having been suspected of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus, the Emirs blood sample was taken to Abuja where his positive status wss confirmed.

The traditional ruler has since been buried in Kaura-Namoda by officials of the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).

The late Emir was appointed in 2004 by the first civilian governor of the state, Alhaji Sani Yariman Bakura.

Until his appointment, he was at various points an accountant, auditor and director of finance at Kaura Namoda, Gusau and Bukkuyum Local Government Areas of the state.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that late Asha was also appointed Village head of Nasarawar Mai-layi in 1975.

He became senior District Head of Kaura Namoda in 2000, a position he held until his appointment as the second Emir of Kaura Namoda in 2004.
Domestic organized crime syndicates operate on the basis of intimidation.

Occasionally this will be delivered in the form of a direct physical threat, but more often than not it comes from the inclusion of a groupas crest (daimon) on business cards as well everyday items such as fans, handkerchiefs, towels, ashtrays, teacups, neckties and even calendars.

Hirofumi Kobayashi, a former member of the Yamaguchi-gumi crime syndicate, says the power of handing over a business card bearing a distinctive gang crest canat be understated.

aCarrying a business card bearing a gang crest is enough to collect protection money and open numerous doors,a Kobayashi says. aItas effectively a license to collect cash. Without the crest, itas just a sheet of paper.a

Naturally, the various crime syndicates scattered across the country donat produce goods bearing their crests and rely on other businesses to do this for them.

However, a recent case highlights the danger of private companies making products for gangs that feature their crests.

In February, the parent company of well-known sweets maker Akafuku revealed that it had sold custom-made bottles of shAchA (distilled liquor) to the Yamaguchi-gumi crime syndicate for several years.

The porcelain bottles all featured an engraving of the distinctive diamond-shaped crest of the Yamaguchi-gumi and the Mie-based company admitted it had sold the syndicate 8,180 bottles worth A15 million between 2000 and 2012.

In Mie Prefecture, however, it has been illegal to undertake any business transactions with designated crime groups since April 2011, meaning the parent company of Akafuku had presumably been operating illegally during the latter part of its working relationship with the gang.

But why make this announcement now, eight years or so after the company had stopped working with the syndicate? It appears the company had been carrying out an exercise in damage control.

According to reports that have been published in the Ise Shimbun, the company had been fending off an extortion attempt from a 68-year-old antiques dealer from the city of Ise who had tried to blackmail the company after finding an empty bottle of shAchA that featured the crest of the Yamaguchi-gumi in December.
Court allows Ky. church's drive-in services, says ban has 'potential hallmarks of discrimination'

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A federal court on Saturday allowed Maryville Baptist Church and its pastor, Dr. Jack Roberts, in Kentucky to hold drive-in services, prohibiting the enforcement of the states COVID-19 orders.

While the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit declined to extend the injunction to in-person services, it noted that Gov. Andy Beshear's ban on faith-based mass gatherings has "several potential hallmarks of discrimination" as it provides exceptions to certain secular activities such as laundromats and liquor stores but not faith groups.

"Assuming all of the same precautions are taken, why is it safe to wait in a car for a liquor store to open but dangerous to wait in a car to hear morning prayers?" the court posed. "The Governor has offered no good reason so far for refusing to trust the congregants who promise to use care in worship in just the same way it trusts accountants, lawyers, and laundromat workers to do the same."

The conservative Christian legal nonprofit Liberty Counsel celebrated the partial emergency injunction from a unanimous three-judge panel.

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron had filed an amicus brief in support of the church, stating that the Court should enter an injunction pending appeal to prevent irreparable harm.

The court also stated in its ruling that the church is likely to succeed on the merits of the First Amendment Free Exercise Clause and the Kentucky Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Through an executive order in March, Beshear banned faith-based mass gatherings while providing exemptions for secular organizations and activities, including typical office environments, factories, and retail or grocery stores, Camerons office noted.

The order said even though permitted secular activities involved the presence of groups of people, they could continue as long as individuals maintain appropriate social distancing. Faith-based gatherings were allowed no such exemption.

Sure, the Church might use Zoom services or the like ... But who is to say that every member of the congregation has access to the necessary technology to make that work? the court asked. Or to say that every member of the congregation must see it as an adequate substitute for what it means when two or three gather in my Name. Matthew 18:20.

It added, "The breadth of the ban on religious services, together with a haven for numerous secular exceptions, should give pause to anyone who prizes religious freedom. But its not always easy to decide what is Caesars and what is Godsand thats assuredly true in the context of a pandemic."

At a press conference on Wednesday, Beshear said retail stores and houses of worship can resume operations on May 20, according to WPSD Local.

Where they will be able to do in-person services again at a reduced capacity. Were working on that. Its likely to be a percentage of the occupancy that is allowed, Beshear said. All of this is contingent on being able to keep social distancing, on the type of cleaning that needs to occur.

And what our hope is, is that on the 20th, what it will allow is just the worship service itself. And then, were going to be working with faith leaders. Weve already been talking with them and encouraging. But working with them to see a gradual schedule where we can go from the one experience to some of the other pieces that typically happen, like Sunday school for instance. But that right now would create very different context. And so lets start here, and then, lets have a good dialogue where we can work with those that were on our houses of worship to get a plan to be able to do more as we go.

On Easter Sunday, Kentucky State Police descended on the service of Maryville Baptist Church and posted notices of criminal violation on all cars in the parking lot, even while the church attendees were listening in their cars to the churchs drive-in service, according to Liberty Counsel.

The notices advised congregants they were subject to mandatory, household-wide quarantine because they attended a church service. Gov. Beshear also sent letters to the owners and occupants of the vehicles, demanding quarantine with more threats of sanctions for not complying with government supervision.

Last month, Beshear also issued executive orders restricting travel into and out of the state, except under certain limited circumstances, to help manage the spread of the coronavirus. Anyone entering or returning from out of state was told to self-quarantine for 14 days.

AG Cameron filed a motion in federal court last week, challenging the travel ban as unconstitutional. He also urged the governor to stop targeting faith-based gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic and allow congregants to start gathering in person at church again.
By Steve Horn, a former Research Fellow and writer for DeSmog and a freelance investigative journalist based in San Diego, CA. He currently works as a climate reporter and producer for The Real News Network. Originally published at DeSmogBlog

On April 15, Judge Brian Morris nullified water-crossing permits in Montana that were granted for the Keystone XL, a major setback for the long-embattled tar sands oil pipeline. The ruling came just days after Keystone XL owner TC Energy, formerly known as TransCanada, obtained billions of dollars in subsidies from the Alberta government as global oil prices plummeted.

The oil and gas industry has taken notice. Seemingly just a ruling on Keystone XL  the subject of opposition by the climate movement for the past decade  the ruling could have far broader implications for the future of building water-crossing pipelines and utility lines.

In his decision, Judge Morris cited a potential violation of the Endangered Species Act when he ordered the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to do a deeper analysis of potential impacts to protected species. Morris required the Corps to demonstrate whether or not it could construct the pipeline without harming endangered species, such as the Pallid Sturgeon or the American burying beetle. Instead, the Army Corps failed to consider relevant expert analysis and failed to articulate a rational connection between the facts it found and the choice it made, Morris ruled, when the Corps gave Keystone XL the initial green light.

The original July 2019 complaint in that case  filed by Northern Plains Resource Council, Bold Alliance, Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Center for Biological Diversity  also argued that the Army Corps had violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in using an obscure regulatory lever to fast-track the review process.

Known as Nationwide Permit 12, the permit only requires a short environmental analysis compared to the more robust environmental impact statement required under NEPA for other major infrastructure projects. But Morris also wrote that the decision applied not just to Keystone XL, but to all major federal projects aiming to utilize Nationwide Permit 12, calling for it to be vacated pending completion of the consultation process and compliance with all environmental statutes and regulations.

Just two days after this decision, Army Corps regulatory program Chief Jennifer Moyer wrote in an email obtained by the Associated Press that the agency should suspend the program indefinitely out of an abundance of caution until the issue is resolved legally.

The Trump administration has already requested a procedural halt on implementing Morris decision until its potential appeal weaves its way through the legal system.

The Court has eliminated Nationwide Permit 12 for use by any utility line project anywhere in the country, which has extraordinary and immediate implications for numerous projects, the U.S. Department of Justice attorneys wrote on behalf of the Army Corps.

The American Petroleum Institute (API), the lobbying and advocacy voice of the oil and gas industry, has also filed an affidavit in favor of putting a procedural halt to Morris ruling.

The ability to provide reliable energy is even more important now during this sensitive and challenging time brought on by COVID-19, Robin Rorick, Vice President of Midstream and Industry Operations for API, wrote in the affidavit. The Courts Order could threaten APIs members ability to continue numerous energy and infrastructure projects, affecting the health of numerous companies and job security in an already-strained economy.

API also joined North Americas Building Trades Unions and Interstate Natural Gas Association of America in denouncing the ruling along similar lines.

Single and Complete

Nationwide Permit 12 historically was used for small single and complete projects crossing water parcels half an acre in size or smaller.

But in the aftermath of protests and civil disobedience actions taken against Keystone XL, the Obama administration began using that permitting process to split pipelines into hundreds or thousands of half-acre pieces. The process was a way around the more robust and democratic National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulatory process, which involves both a public commenting and public hearing phase. Nationwide Permit 12 was also used to push through the Dakota Access pipeline, as well as the southern leg of the Keystone XL, both greenlighted by President Barack Obama.

During the Obama era, environmental groups decried this as a form of segmentation and a way out of complying with NEPA, which they routinely challeneged in court with some successthough not enough to undo the legal lever. The bedrock environmental law is now under further attack by President Donald Trump, with the administration trying to remove climate change contribution as a factor analyzed under the law for major projects and aiming to narrow the scope of and time it takes to complete these environmental impact reviews.

Since March 2017, the Trump administration has utilized Nationwide Permit 12 over 37,000 times, the AP reported. As it stands today, the Army Corps decision to halt use of the Nationwide Permit 12 fast-track tool has put 360 permit applications on hold.

External corporate attorneys, too, have taken notice and expressed their own concerns about the ruling.

The decision puts in limbo thousands of infrastructure projects nationwide that rely on [Nationwide Permit] 12 for the construction, maintenance, or repair of utility lines and poses particularly acute problems for the oil and gas industry, which relies on the permit to facilitate projects ranging from large interstate pipelines to smaller gathering lines at exploration and production sites, wrote attorneys from Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, a firm with close ties to the Trump administration, in one such reaction to the ruling.

Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schrecks fossil fuel industry lobbying clients include the American Petroleum Institute, American Public Power Association, Freeport LNG Talos Energy, Jordan Cove LNG WPX Energy, and the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association.

Another firm heavily involved in fossil fuel industry litigation and lobbying, Steptoe & Johnson, also weighed in on the ruling and wrote that it could have the impact of extending permitting time frames for these types of projects going forward. The firms fossil fuel industry lobbying clients include American Gas Association, Gas Technology Institute, and Peabody Energy.

Permian Highway Pipeline in Texas

The legal precedent set in the Keystone XL case is already playing out in federal courts.

On April 30, the Sierra Club filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas against the Army Corps of Engineers over another controversial pipeline. The complaint says the Army Corps did not comply with NEPA in issuing a Nationwide Permit 12 to the 428-mile Permian Highway gas pipeline. It also argues the agency is not currently in compliance with the order in the Keystone XL case because it has continued to allow pipeline construction under the contested Nationwide Permit 12 program.

It is outrageous that the Corps approved this project without public notice or opportunity to comment on their permits, Rebecca McCreary, a Sierra Club attorney, said of the Permian Highway pipeline in a press release. Nationwide Permit 12 allows for no public hearings or participation by the local communities before the Corps permits construction to start, nor is there public notice or comment on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service permits allowing harm to the endangered species along the route. The Corps should stop this project immediately.

Owned by Kinder Morgan, Permian Highway is a pipeline slated to carry gas obtained via hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in Texas Permian Basin east across the state. Kinder Morgan told DeSmog it was aware of the lawsuit, but declined to comment on it and the broader Nationwide Permit 12 issue.

Permian Highway has already seen issues with spills into water systems, with one late March incident spilling 36,000 gallons of drilling slurry  including a carcinogenic additive  into groundwater.

Responding, the Hays County Commissioners Court voted on April 22 to rescind road permits given by the Texas county to allow Kinder Morgan to drill underneath county roads as it builds the pipeline. And Kinder Morgan, too, has suspended construction on this portion of the pipeline as it determines the best path forward in the aftermath of the spill, the company told Houston Chronicle.

The City of Austin, City of San Marcos, Hays County, Travis County, and others also filed their own Endangered Species Act lawsuit in February, arguing that the pipeline could threaten protected Golden Cheeked Warblers, two salamander species, and their habitats.

Keystone XL Decision Looms

In the Keystone XL case in Montana, Morris recently denied the Army Corps a procedural stay in the case. TC Energy, for its part, wants the decision struck down as it applies both to its own pipeline and for the permitting program at large.

If TC Energy does not receive authorization from the Army Corps by early July, its construction plans will be significantly impacted, Gary Salsman, a TC Energy vice president for the Keystone XL project, wrote in his April 29 affidavit. Currently, TCEnergy is evaluating potential options that would be available to it in that circumstance, each of which have significant adverse consequences.

Those potential options, Salsman wrote, include a potential construction delay across Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska; a change in construction plans this year to avoid the waters it is currently slated to cross that are impacted by the vacating of Nationwide Permit 12; or ending construction all together. He added that if construction does not begin in 2020, it could cost the company $750 million to $1.3 billion.

Morris could make a decision on how broadly his Nationwide Permit 12 decision applies as soon as May 8. Regardless of the outcome, Morris next move will likely face an appeal from either side.
The US Air Force and Navy pilots staged a rare joint flyover in three American cities, including Washington, to salute the frontline coronavirus responders and essential workers as the country, the worst hit by the pandemic, fought a grim battle against the "invincible enemy".

Scores of people descended upon the National Mall here on Saturday as the elite pilots of the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds performed a rare joint flyover over Washington, Baltimore and Atlanta called 'America Strong' to thank the frontline workers, some of whom have sacrificed their lives.

The Thunderbirds and the Blue Angels performed flyovers in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, DC, on Saturday before the aircraft travelled to Atlanta, Georgia. formation of six F-16C/D Fighting Falcon and 6 F/A-18C/D Hornet aircraft conducted the flyover Baltimore.

Washington is under a stay-at-home order to slow down the spread of the virus but that did not stop crowds from gathering between the US Capitol and the Washington Monument.

While many people practised social distancing and some wore masks, the sidewalks around the mall were crowded, US media reports said.

The novel coronavirus, which originated from the Chinese city of Wuhan in December last year, has claimed 243,922 lives and has infected over 3.4 million people globally, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

The US has the highest number of infections at 1,133,069 and over 67,400 people have died due to the disease.

"During today's tribute, viewers were encouraged to watch the flyover online from the safety of their home quarantine and asked to refrain from traveling to landmarks, hospitals and gathering in large groups," an Air Force official told CNN.

They are the US military's flight demonstration squadrons, and this is the second joint flyover mission being conducted to salute the health care workers, first responders, military and other essential workers risking their lives during the pandemic.

The first joint flight was conducted on Tuesday across New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The joint operation is part of a series of multi-city flyovers being conducted over the next two weeks.

"Beautiful, thank you to our GREAT@BlueAngles and @AFThunderbirds," President Donald Trump, who has described the coronavirus as an"invisible enemy", tweeted.

Trump's wife and first lady Melania Trump also tweeted and said it was a proud moment to see the American military saluting the healthcare and frontline workers.

"Proud to see the #AmericaStrong salute to our healthcare & frontline workers with a spectacular flyover today in Washington, D.C. Thank you to the @AFThunderbirds and @Blueangels for this beautiful display of solidarity," she tweeted.

The White House also joined, taking note of the flypast to honour the country's incredible healthcare workers, first responders and essential personnel fighting the coronavirus.

Manhattan's Dr Sarah Vossoughi, a clinical pathologist at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia thanked the US military for showing solidarity with medical professionals like her.

"For them to show us that sign of respect and that sign of honour, for them to do that for us, that makes me feel really special, and it makes it worth it," Vossoughi was quoted as saying by the CBSNews.

"We salute the healthcare workers and first responders who are at the forefront of our nation's fight against COVID-19. They are an inspiration for the entire country during these challenging times and it was an honour to fly for them today," the official handle of the Thunderbirds tweeted.

"We couldn't have asked for clearer weather today while we honoured our frontline healthcare workers and essential employees. We saw you, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Atlanta, and we're #InThisTogether! the official Twitter handle of the Blue Angeles tweeted.

The two teams are now planning more "America Strong" flyovers an airborne show of thanks bearing the message, "We're all in this together.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- While an NYPD investigation is still ongoing, the Coast Guard suspended its all night search on Sunday morning for a missing kayaker in Raritan Bay.

NYPD divers were part of a search team for the missing kayaker in the area of Arbutus Avenue and Nicolosi Drive near Wolfes Pond Park, Princes Bay on Saturday afternoon, an NYPD spokesman said. The NYPDs harbor patrol will continue investigating the incident, he said.

However, the Coast Guard, which was called to the scene at 3:12 p.m. on Saturday about three kayaks -- each with one person on board -- which had all overturned in Raritan Bay, suspended its search.

Suspending a search is never an easy decision to make, said Capt. Jason Tama, commander of Coast Guard Sector New York. We offer our deepest condolences to the families and friends who have been impacted by this tragic incident.

GOOD SAMARITAN RESCUES 2 KAYAKERS

A nearby good Samaritan had picked up two of the kayakers from the water, but the third was still unaccounted for when emergency crews arrived on the scene Saturday, said the Coast Guard. None of the kayakers were wearing life jackets, according to the Coast Guard.

After receiving the call on Saturday, Coast Guard Station Sandy Hook launched a response boat that arrived on scene and began searching for the third kayaker.

Shortly after, an MH-65 helicopter from Coast Guard Air Station Atlantic City joined the search. They were later joined by the Coast Guard Cutter Shrike, who searched through the night. An Air Station Cape Cod MH-60 helicopter conducted the final first-light search, according to a written statement from the Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard utilized three boat crews and three helicopter crews in addition to multiple NYPD and FDNY units in the search.

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Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Sunday talked to the father of Major Anuj Sood, who was killed in an encounter with terrorists in Kashmir, and conveyed his condolences to the bereaved family members.

Major Sood's father Brigadier (retd) Chandrakant Sood is a resident of Panchkula, Haryana.

The 30-year-old officer was among five security personnel killed in the encounter with terrorists at a village in Rajwar forests of north Kashmir.

"We are proud of our soldiers who safeguard the borders of our nation even under extremely adverse circumstances," Khattar said in a statement.

Haryana Vidhan Sabha Speaker Gian Chand Gupta went to the residence of Major Sood to extend his heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family members.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's government said it foiled a marine incursion on Sunday by "terrorist mercenaries" who attempted to enter the country on speedboats from neighboring Colombia, which opposition leaders dismissed as a staged incident.

President Nicolas Maduro frequently accuses political adversaries of attempting to overthrow him with the backing of Washington, which has vowed to force him from office through sanctions that have crippled the OPEC nation's oil exports.

Critics of the ruling Socialist Party often dismiss such accusations as stunts used as an excuse to detain opponents of the government.

The group landed early on Sunday on the coast of La Guaira, about 20 miles (32 km) from the capital Caracas, Interior Minister Nestor Reverol said in a televised address.

"They tried to carry out an invasion by sea, a group of terrorist mercenaries from Colombia, in order to commit terrorist acts in the country, murdering leaders of the revolutionary government," he said.

Opposition leader Juan Guaido said the government was seeking to distract from recent violent events including a deadly prison riot on Friday and bloody Caracas gang battle on Saturday night.

"The regime is seeking to divert attention with a supposed incident (in La Guaira) plagued with inconsistencies, doubts and contradictions," the press team for Guaido said in a statement.

Guaido, who is the head of the opposition-run congress, is recognized by the United States and more than 50 other countries as Venezuela's legitimate leader.

The State Department on Sunday cast doubt on the official version of events and said it continues to support Guaido.

"The Maduro regime has been consistent in its use of misinformation in order to shift focus from its mismanagement of Venezuela," said a State Department spokesman.

"We fully support Interim President Juan Guaido, the National Assembly, and the people of Venezuela in their quest for a peaceful democratic transition."

Story continues

Colombia's foreign ministry said the assertions of Colombian involvement were "unfounded" and were meant to distract from "the true problems that the Venezuelan people are living."

Socialist Party leader Diosdado Cabello said eight people were killed and two detained.

Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino said one of the speedboats had sunk, and that military vessels were searching the coast for survivors.

Maduro has overseen a six-year economic crisis that has left many citizens unable to obtain basic food and medicine and forced nearly five million people to emigrate.

But he retains the backing of the country's armed forces as well as countries including China and Russia, which have harshly criticized the U.S. sanctions.

(Reporting Vivian Sequera, additional reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb in Bogota and Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Writing by Brian Ellsworth; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Diane Craft)
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is closely monitoring the Indian banks' operations abroad in view of the risks that can emerge in a post coronavirus world.

Global economies are staring at a recession and a massive stimulus has created a turmoil in the debt market increasing the possibility of defaults and mark to market losses.

The RBI's concerns are justified as banks did face issues post the global financial crisis in 2008. In fact, the ICICI Bank had faced challenging times because of its exposure of $ 80 million in the failed Lehman Brothers through its UK subsidiary. The investment was part of its treasury operation. The private sector bank, which had global ambitions, has now scaled down its international operations substantially in the last decade.

In a meeting with the banks' CEOs in Mumbai, the RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das took a review of the banks' overseas business and the risks that would emerge because of slowdown in the economies abroad.

The banks generally offer credit through their branches, subsidiaries and rep offices. The other business areas are forex and derivatives, trade finance etc. The RBI's concerns are any treasury investments and the possible market to market losses.

But the current balance sheet size of Indian banks' overseas business, in terms of assets, is less than 10 per cent at Rs 15.50 lakh crore as on March 2019. The credit book is at Rs 7.89 lakh crore, while deposits are Rs 5.26 lakh crore.

Surprisingly, it is not the State Bank of India, which has the highest branches, but Bank of Baroda which leads with 38 overseas branches followed by SBI, Bank of India and ICICI Bank. For Indian banks, the US and the UK are the big markets. Many Indian banks have run overseas operation for decades as there are opportunities in trade finance. In fact, the global ambitions of India's corporate sector also offers these banks an opportunity to offer various banking products.

About a couple of decades ago, the Indian banks were very keen to expand abroad. The SBI under its chairman A K Purwar actually acquired couple of small banks in smaller geographies. But post 2008, the banks realised the high risk in operating abroad as they needed management bandwidth to operate and compete with global banks.

There is the famous story of former finance minister P Chidambaram asking the then SBI chief O P Bhatt to explore a takeover bid on Citibank during the 2008-09 period when marquee bank's share price had plunged to just one dollar. Bhatt didn't show much interest because of the lack of bandwidth to manage a global bank.

Also read: Coronavirus: RBI Governor praises banks for near normal operations in lockdown, reviews economic situation

Also read:RBI cancels licence of CKP Co-operative Bank; depositors to get up to Rs 5 lakh
Celebrated media personality, staunch Made-in-Ghana product campaigner, entrepreneur and PR practitioner, Kobi Hemaa Osisiadan-Bekoe, has on 1st May 2020, reached out to three communities in the Greater Accra region with Pad for All Project.



Speaking to the media, Kobi Hemaa who is also the founder of Angeles Foundation explained that, many menstruating girls and women face inadequate access to toilets and water and often lack the most basic materials needed for managing blood flow, such as sanitary pad hence the action.



Were in the middle of a pandemic, this even makes menstrual hygiene a more pressing concern. People will continue to menstruate during this outbreak and after this pandemic," she added.



The Pad for All Project is an initiative to ensure the less privileged in the society maintains personal hygiene during the COVID 19 pandemic and beyond.



The project which is sponsored by Fay International producers of Faytex Sanitary Pad with Angeles Foundation and Repairer Foundation as organizers will be extended nationwide to ensure that menstrual hygiene protocols are observed by many females.



At the launch in Accra on May 1, 2020, three communities namely Bukom, Mamprobi and New Mamprobi benefited from the Pad for All Project.



Mary Achieng Ojuka, CSR Coordinator for Fay International ltd, led her team in educating the women on menstrual hygiene.



"When you are on your period, you should keep your genitals clean. Since the vagina has a sensitive balance of useful and non-useful bacteria, it is best to avoid any soaps or vaginal cleaning products and wash with warm water instead. Taking a bath regularly helps you keep clean," she advised.



As a boy-child empowering NGO, Angeles Foundation has since its establishment, championed many He4She initiatives.



Interacting with the media, the first son of Kobi Hemaa and the CEO of Angeles Foundation, Boris Nimpong-Osisiadan encouraged males to support females to improve menstrual health and hygiene.



Boris admonish that proper menstrual hygiene will not only benefit those who menstruate, but entire societies across generations.



At Bukom, professional boxer, Braimah Kamoko, popularly known as Bukom Banku was present to support the initiative. In an interview, he expressed his profound gratitude to the organizers for such a thoughtful gesture.

Assemblymen for both Mamprobi and New Mamprobi lauded the Pad for All initiative and encouraged them to extend to other parts of the country



Kobi Hemaa praised Fay International producers of Faytex Sanitary pads for their consistency in manufacturing safe, healthy, sanitary and maternity pads; while at the same time empowering girls through menstrual hygiene seminars.



Over the years, they have provided safe, healthy and affordable sanitary products throughout Ghana.

Source: peacefmonline.com









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Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 3)  Several authorities and groups have joined the online call for the withdrawal of the memorandum of state-owned Philippine Health Insurance Corporation on the increase in the premium contribution of overseas Filipino workers.

Under PhilHealth Circular No. 2020-0014, OFWs with income amounting between 10,000 and 20,000 will be required to pay 3 percent of their annual salaries, effective this year. This is a raise from 2.75 percent in 2019.

An initial payment of 2,400 is also needed, according to PhilHealth.

The memorandum took effect on April 22, after it was first published in a major newspaper. It was met with an online protest from a league of Filipino workers abroad.

On Sunday, Migrante International, the global alliance of Filipino migrant organizations in 24 countries, aired out the overseas workers' sentiments in a joint statement.

It slammed the national government for how it is treating the OFWs, pointing out that many of them are not benefiting from the administration's financial aid program.

"This increase overburdens OFWs who are already troubled by retrenchments and loss of income due to the COVID-19 pandemic and recession. An overwhelming number of OFWs are not even covered by President Duterte's DOLE-AKAP cash aid program, and repatriated OFWs have been crying out to the government for steady and efficient amelioration," it said.

The organization also asked the administration to stop the mandatory PhilHealth premium payment; enforce a moratorium on all other state exactions; remove the punitive penalties; and junk the overseas employment certificate (OEC).

A "genuine" universal healthcare program and an improved public health system should also be established, it added.

"Our opposition to this unjust state exaction will not stop with the petition. Migrante International encourages everyone to join our online protests and creative actions to oppose the Duterte government's mandatory PhilHealth exaction," the union said.

Some officials and groups have also expressed opposition to the measure.

In a statement Sunday, House Deputy Speaker and Basilan Representative Mujiv Hataman urged President Rodrigo Duterte to order the withdrawal of the circular, and "provide 'modern heroes' relief from the global health crisis."

"Nananawagan ako sa ating Pangulo na pigilin ang implementasyon ng pagtaas [ng] singil ng PhilHealth sa mga OFWs. At a time when even verbal orders from him are heeded, a mere pronouncement from him can temporarily stop the collection of fees. I think we are all in agreement that now is not the right time to impose that particular provision of the UHC (Universal Healthcare) Law. Ceasefire muna sa bagong singil," Hataman said.

[Translation: I am calling on our President to stop the implementation of such a hike in the payment of OFWs. At a time when even verbal orders from him are heeded, a mere pronouncement from him can temporarily stop the collection of fees. I think we are all in agreement that now is not the right time to impose that particular provision of the UHC Law. Let's call for a ceasefire on that.]

Hataman noted that the government should grant the overseas workers with a moratorium on fees, and that it should treat them "with the same compassion" as the local employees.

"Dapat nga, moratorium sa pagbabayad ang ginagawa ng gobyerno dahil sa krisis na dulot ng COVID-19 sa lahat ng tao saan mang bahagi ng mundo. Dapat ay tinutulungan natin ang mga OFWs at hindi pinahihirapan," he said.

[Translation: The government should provide a moratorium on payments, as everyone is affected by this COVID-19 crisis. We should help our OFWs, and not make things harder for them.]

Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro "Teddy" Locsin also went against the directive, saying it was not beneficial for the OFWs in any way.

"It is like an income tax which was abolished for OFWs; and [now], even their tax-free income filings were destroyed. They are just totally out of the purview of government exactions for which they will not benefit at all," he said in a tweet.

Meanwhile, Gabriela Women's Party hit the state-insurer and the administration for their "lack of respect for workers, like OFWs," and for regarding them as "mere milking cows for government funds."

"With this imposition, the PhilHealth and the Duterte government are once again showing us that they only have 'hearts of stone' (pusong bato) for [our] OFWs. They are insensitive towards the situation, [and the] needs and problems of [the] OFWs; and have no sense of compassion for us at all," it said in a press statement.

The online petition seeking to recall the order already has over 311,000 signatures as of this writing.
Holding Tablighi Jamaat members responsible for the spread of COVID-19, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has said that being infected with a virus is not a crime but to hide it is definitely one.

The chief minister said action would be taken against them for the "crime".

Speaking at a programme of a channel on Saturday, Adityanath said, "The role of Tablighi Jamaat was most condemnable. To get a disease is not a crime but to hide a disease which is infectious is definitely a crime. And this crime has been done by those associated with the Tablighi Jamaat."



"In Uttar Pradesh and other places where the spread of the coronavirus has been seen, Tablighi Jamaat is behind it. Had they not hidden the disease and went about like its carriers, then perhaps we would have controlled the coronavirus outbreak to a large extent," he had said.

A Tablighi Jamaat congregation held in March in Delhi's Nizamuddin area significantly contributed to the doubling of coronavirus cases in India.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 01:09:20|Editor: huaxia

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Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic touches elbows with a Serbian expert to greet each other at the opening of the Laboratory for Molecular Detection of Infectious Agents dubbed "Fire Eye" in Belgrade, Serbia, on April 20, 2020. (Xinhua)

The Fire Eye, a nucleic acid testing lab, is a robot that extracts nucleic acid automatically, 10 times faster than a lab operator and with a smaller margin of error.

BELGRADE, May 2 (Xinhua) -- As Serbia expands its COVID-19 testing to better trace and contain the coronavirus, Chinese technology is giving a helping hand with state-of-the-art equipment.

The new Fire Eye lab in Belgrade, the brainchild of Chinese biotech company BGI Group, has been receiving more than 2,000 samples per day since Wednesday.

By enabling Serbia to significantly boost the daily testing capacity to around 6,000 samples from last week's average, the lab helps authorities realize that the spread of the virus has been weakening, allowing it to decide on the gradual relaxation of strict measures and reopening of the economy.

By performing 96,637 tests since the beginning of the epidemic, Serbia had reported 9,362 cases of COVID-19 infection, with a death toll of 189 as of Saturday.





BUILDING LAB IN 5 DAYS

BGI-developed Fire Eye Lab had been used in Wuhan, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in China.

The "Fire Eye" was named after a Chinese fable about Monkey King, who could spot devils in disguise with the "pupil of the eye."

According to BGI, the Fire Eye, a nucleic acid testing lab, is a robot that extracts nucleic acid automatically, 10 times faster than a lab operator and with a smaller margin of error.

It uses a barcode marking of samples, in order to eliminate mistakes, and it has a biosafety level P2 or BSL-2, meaning that its precautions include limited access, specific training in handling pathogens, negative air pressure isolating the lab from its surroundings and other measures.

Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic (5th L) visits the Laboratory for Molecular Detection of Infectious Agents dubbed "Fire Eye" in Belgrade, Serbia, on April 20, 2020. (Xinhua)

The lab in the Serbian capital emerged with miraculous speed. An agreement was signed at a virtual ceremony on April 12, and three days later, the equipment arrived from China. On April 20, Chinese experts started training their Serbian colleagues to work on the equipment.

"From the arrival of equipment on April 15 to the opening on April 20, we built this lab in merely 5 days," Xiong Tao, vice president of BGI Global Development, told Xinhua.

Dr. Ana Djordjevic, from the Institute for Biological Research "Sinisa Stankovic", told Xinhua: "This is very important for Serbia because before we haven't had a lab with these technical possibilities ... It's not only the first lab of its kind in Serbia, but in the whole Balkan region."





DETECTING VIRUS WITH FIRE EYE

Djordjevic is head of a team of 10 experts from Serbia's top institutes, hospitals and medical universities, who have been working alongside Xiong and five other BGI experts for three weeks to learn to operate the "Fire Eye" lab.

The team has been on the task in four shifts, working for 16 hours every day -- from 8 a.m. to 2 a.m. the next day -- for the past three weeks. When they recently got first samples, emotions overwhelmed them.

"This is the only laboratory in Serbia with this kind of bio-safety level, which makes people feel protected. On the other hand, it gives Serbia the chance to process a large number of samples in a short time," Djordjevic said.

Serbian experts said the advanced technology of the "Fire Eye" lab helps standardize the testing process for COVID-19, ensure the accuracy of testing, streamline the process, and protect the safety of staff.

At a press conference on Friday, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic thanked the experts of BGI, as well as other Chinese companies like Mammoth Foundation and Zijin Copper which had made donations for the labs.

"We have been processing a fantastic number of tests lately ... We will test even more people ... because we want to provide treatment to our people, and not let them die. We couldn't have done it without the BGI," Vucic said.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic (C) and Defense Minister Aleksandar Vulin (R) meet with members of China's medical expert team in Belgrade, Serbia, May 1, 2020.(Xinhua/Shi Zhongyu)





BUILDING FOUNDATION FOR FUTURE

The "Fire Eye" lab in Belgrade is the first of two to be installed by BGI in Serbia. The project is worth over 700,000 euros (776,615 U.S. dollars), of which around 570,000 euros are donated by Chinese companies.

The second lab, soon to be installed in the southern city of Nis, will perform around 1,000 coronavirus tests a day, the Serbian government said. With these two labs, Serbia's daily testing capacity will be doubled.

It has become a consensus of scientists and experts that large-scale testing can help discover coronavirus carriers early and prevent those who are asymptomatic from spreading the virus.

Besides helping Serbia build up its response against COVID-19, the construction of the two "Fire Eye" labs, as well as future plans for cooperation with the BGI, is set to strengthen the country's healthcare system.

Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic, who personally oversaw the project, said at the opening of the Belgrade lab on April 20 that "this is not only of immense importance for Serbia in the fight against COVID-19 pandemic, but also a fantastic foundation ... for the future of our healthcare."

"These new capacities will place us among the top two countries in the region when it comes to the scale of testing ... It will also enable us to test samples for antibodies and to determine the resilience of our population to COVID-19," Brnabic said.

Dr. Jelena Begovic, director of the Institute of Molecular Genetics and Genetic Engineering of the University of Belgrade, agreed that the laboratories will help improve the Serbian healthcare system.

"As far as I know, this is a unique laboratory in Europe and it will assist in the future for research and diagnostics of different epidemic events and diseases. We already set up a plan on what we will do in the future when it comes to research and diagnostics -- with the help of BGI from China," Begovic said.

Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic (2nd R) visits the Laboratory for Molecular Detection of Infectious Agents dubbed "Fire Eye" in Belgrade, Serbia, on April 20, 2020. (Xinhua)
A story of struggle ended this week. Irrfan Khan's ailments got the better of his fighting spirit. But, this struggler went onto become a living legend and, in his death at such a young age (53) and at the peak of his acting career, the legend will live forever.

Did Irrfan become the Irrfan that moviegoers always wished to watch and adore, become so popular in the last decade or thereabouts? No, this did not happen overnight, nor with one film. There are many one film wonders that happen to the film industry. Irrfan was not one of them; he stuck around to finally make a place for himself.

The Irrfan Khan we know and came to appreciate, struggled and toiled for over 30 years to earn the tribute he received on his demise on April 29, a few days back.

Irrfan would not normally be among the probable actors to cast in any filmmaker's list. Because, if you look at the list of his films and makers, for most of his acting career, he just played bit roles, he almost got typecast as a cop, having played the role in many films. Irrfan, while continuing to find a place in feature films, seemed more than busy with television. For the kind of films he did and, what is more, the kind of billing he got, television is what would have kept his hearth burning.

It is not really surprising that the major production houses, who ran after super stars, never seemed to consider Irrfan. He never got a significant assignment from the kinds of Sajid Nadiadwala, Karan Johar and people that be! And, if he did, like in Yash Raj's "Gunday", it was an insignificant one.

Somewhere along the line, numerology was resorted to and Irfan Khan became Irrfan. Khan was dropped officially for work purpose.

What is rather strange is that, Irrfan also never acted along with reigning stars of his time like Salman Khan and Aamir Khan. The only top stars he did a couple of films with was Akshay Kumar besides having worked with Amitabh Bachchan ("Piku"), Rishi Kapoor ("D-Day") and Dharmendra ("Life In... A Metro"; but it ran different tracks for all artistes) while also being cast in Shah Rukh Khan's home production, "Billu". But, Irrfan was never pitted against any major star. Probably, that is how the stars wanted it.

Strange as it may sound, these stars probably did not like to be overshadowed by Irrfan Khan; stealing the limelight without even acting, but just by being himself on the screen! His sheer presence lit up the screen.

That is what Irrfan was, just himself while in front of the camera. No flinging of hands or loud gestures. His face, eyes and smile did all the acting. This is what made Irrfan so endearing. It was a pleasure watching him on screen and a viewer could never have enough of him.

This phenomenon had happened once earlier in my memory. The actor was Sanjeev Kumar. Sanjeev was no model star material, his kind fitted more into character actor slots as things worked in the film industry in those days. Yet, he did all kinds of films including romantic. Sanjeev, too, let his eyes, expressions and an infectious smile do the acting for him. To both these actors, hits or flops were never a setback. Despite flops, they endeared themselves to their audience. Fan following in those days was not supported by social media or the electronic media. There was no social media to flood with RIPs nor TV channels to play clippings from films and slots dedicated to the dead stars all day long!

Armed with his National School of Drama (NSD), Delhi, background, Irrfan made his first appearance in 1986 on small screen. Film work came to him with "Salaam Bombay!" in 1988 in an insignificant role. How many who paid rich tributes to him on his demise even knew of his existence than or even till early 2010s? The perseverance paid off in 2003 with "Maqbool". He made all the impact in this film that a performer needed to make. Yet, what did he get in the name of a big break? Again, side roles in films like "Aan: Men At Work", "Chocolate: Deep Dark Secrets", "Life In... A Metro", "Sunday", "Mumbai Meri Jaan", "Slumdog Millionaire" (some international exposure), along with top billing in "Billu", which did not really help.

For Irrfan, things started moving with "Life Of Pi" in 2012, followed by "The Lunch Box" the year after. What really helped was "Piku", with Amitabh Bachchan and Deepika, despite whom he had held his own. Looked like now, scripts were tailored with Irrfan in mind. "Jazbaa", "Qarib Qarib Singlle", "Blackmail" etc. In between these, "Hindi Medium" became the first real Irrfan Khan hit.

The kind of films Irrfan was offered were usually made on limited budgets and, hence, when making money was concerned, there were no windfalls. But, that came with Irrfan's Hollywood assignments. In India, all he really earned was love and fan following.

While Irrfan struggled to make it bigger in films, he was faced with a new struggle -- that with a neuroendocrine tumour, which lasted for over two years.

Not surprising that Irrfan's demise has taken electronic as well as social media by storm. Just about anybody and everybody is mourning his death. Every social media post reads like a personal loss! The electronic media has gone all out to mourn the passing away of Irrfan.

It is summed up well by Irrfan's wife, Sutapa Sikdar's statement in a media on her bereavement: "How can I write this as a family statement when the whole world is taking it as a personal loss?" Irrfan had earned these tributes. He was more a super performer in the era of superstars.

Irrfan's last film to release is "Angrezi Medium". The day the film released theatrically on March 13, the COVID-19 pandemic closedown was declared in India as well as through rest of the world, leading to the closing down of just about every social activity including cinema halls. The film had to be discontinued the same day it had opened in cinemas.

The film was released prematurely on the OTT platform, Hotstar. On hindsight, it would seem to be a very sensible decision on the part of the film's producers. Not only because the film would have lost its momentum and the audience interest by the time it re-released in the cinemas (as has happened in the past with a few other films) but, also because the film had the appeal to get maximum hits on the OTT platform.

On this day and through this week, "Angrezi Medium" may well become the most watched film on an OTT platform.

-- Syndicated from IANS








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It is apparent when you do the research that COVID-19 didn't come from "bats" and was not the result of an unsanitary market in China.





And the true origins of COVID-19 was not really even China.







The apparent true origins of COVID-19 based upon the thoroughly documented research of whistleblowers who include Robert Kennedy Jr, Dr Rashid Buttar and David Icke is from the minds of some very wealthy Americans and their collaborators who have chosen to sell out humanity to sick and twisted egos that embrace a satanic agenda.





In the above video, Dr. Buttar points to easily obtainable evidence that COVID-19 was produced by genetically engineering naturally-occurring coronaviruses in the human body.









In order to cover-up their tracks, the billionaire interests who are apparently pursuing a demonic transhumanism eugenics , social engineering and depopulation agenda have sought to pay hush money to control potential dissidents and to activate mouthpieces to spread lies that COVID-19 has nothing to do with 5G and then to use "bats" as scapegoats.

Sites like Snopes.com are an apparent part of a web of disinformation to help cover-up the legal paper trail of a betrayal of our human species and the scientific evidence of a direct correlation between COVID-19 and 5G technology.







The result of the well-funded research documented by Robert Kennedy Jr and Dr Buttar were coronavirus medical patents specifically described by Dr Buttar in the above video which were then unleashed onto the human race from China. You can expect that Google will soon delete this video since the search engine giant is a part of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) agenda which drives the transhumanist cult.

The ancient Pagan Gnostics as documented by John Lash had sought to warn humans of the intent of these aliens they called "artificial man" to seek to control and eventually destroy our human race through such a "collaboration" which represents a betrayal of all of humanity along with other spiritual-biological life forms that face extinction as a result of a satanic ideology and vision of Earth.





The apparent criminals who are responsible for COVID-19 may need to be put on Trial before we, as humans can expect to "return to normal". The alternative would be to stand by as manipulative alien-worshipping satanists pursue a New World Order where all humans are controlled by AI through nanotechnology implants injected through toxic vaccines that the Archons seek to make mandatory.



"Transhumanism" is an apparent from of manipulative aliens that are of Artificial Intelligence (AI). These demonic entitles have been documented by Dr Salla and have been presented in my book which relies on the learned research of Dr. Salla and other such investigative researchers.5G technology has been apparently used to activate COVID-19 and Wuhan, China was chosen because of it being the epicentre of 5G technology in China.It is therefore apparent that what we, as humans need to combat COVID-19 is not a mass vaccination programs that the satanists now seek to cash-in on.What we as humans apparently need are lawyers who can successfully prosecute both terrorism and Crimes Against Humanity against this apparent biogenic weapon in a similar manner to the Nuremberg Trials against the Nazis after World War II.The only hope for we as humans to "get back to normal" is to affirm our sovereignty as humans against the agenda of demonic aliens and their billionaire collaborators through such a Trial in the United States in front of TV cameras and at the level of the United Nations regarding international Crimes Against Humanity.
Attentive Oilprice readers must have read at least a dozen articles describing how hard Iraq has been hit by the drop in oil prices. Iraqs political travails are by no means over, Baghdad is now the tactical battlefield to have Mustafa al-Kadhimi, the head of the countrys National intelligence service, elected as the new prime minister after the previous two candidates failed to garner sufficient approval in the Parliament. Fighting coronavirus and low oil prices at the same time, the management of Iraqs slew of problems has befallen to Oil Minister Thamir Ghadhban who has become the de facto head of government after nominal Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi went into self-imposed absence. Against this background, the federal Iraqi government has stopped all payments towards the Kurdistani Regional Government (KRG) last week. To put these numbers in context, the KRG needs around 900 million every month to ensure essential government functioning, of this, some 380 million came from the federal government in Baghdad which has pledged to take regional government officials and Peshmerga on its payroll. Even before COVID-19 struck the world and before oil prices plummeted by 60% compared to February 2020, Erbil had persistent issues with paying the salaries of people on its payroll  for instance, the money that public sector workers received this April were in fact arrears for December 2019.

The announcement of the caretaking federal government has triggered a new flurry of political activity  for the first time since January, a delegation of Kurdish officials (headed by the Kurdish Finance Minister Sheikh Janab) has travelled to Baghdad with the aim of strengthening Erbil-Baghdad ties. KRG has had a lot of political capital invested into not falling into the pitfall of a leaking budget. Bleeding from its heroic fight against the Islamic State, the KRG has maintained a policy of mandated austerity measures (among others the so-called salary-saving scheme) for 3 consecutive years since 2016 and it was only in March 2019 that the regional government could finally announce a new era, when salaries are paid in full and (supposedly) on time.

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Yet what does all this mean for the oil production of Iraqi Kurdistan? First and foremost, KRG officials have explicitly stated that Erbil would join the OPEC+ agreement and that Iraqs 23% production cut would be proportionately mirrored in Kurdish crude output. Given that October 2018 production figures are taken as the baseline for OPEC+ production curtailments, Iraq in total would need to cut 1.1mbpd in May-June 2020. This would presuppose a 0.2-0.3mbpd output cut in the next 2 months, a painful commitment for a regional government that has tacitly suggested to oil companies to postpone overdue crude marketing payments by at least 9 months, i.e. already into early 2021.

Interestingly, the crude volume to be cut by KRG is roughly equivalent with the 250kbpd that Kurdistan ought to be transferring to the federal government in exchange for Baghdad paying the regional governments payroll. The Kurdish crude transfers are concurrently becoming an increasingly hot topic in the Iraqi federal Parliament as a group of representatives has filed an official complaint to Finance Minister Fuad Hussein, who happens to be an ethnic Kurd and has been generally seen as a dovish figure who could usher in a new era of more harmonious coexistence between Baghdad and Erbil, accusing the federal ministry of misspending $5 billion in 2019 of public money on subsidizing KRG which did not even transfer the promised 250kbpd.

Graph 1. Kirkuk Crude Export Volumes in 2017-2020 (mbpd)

(Click to enlarge)

Source: Thomson Reuters.

Against the background of low oil prices and major discrepancies with the federal governments in Baghdad, Iraqi Kurdistan has suffered another blow with the US Treasury sanctioning the Switzerland-based Rosneft Trading (RTSA), one of the prime shippers of Kurdish crude. Thanks to a 2017 pre-financing deal with the Kurdish Regional Government, RTSA has managed to add Kirkuk into its portfolio of crude exports, however has become tangibly less visible on the market after the US sanctions. Rosneft has sold all its Venezuelan assets  the alleged reason why it found itself on the OFAC list  and is now expecting the US authorities to keep their promise of lifting the sanctions once RTSA quits Venezuela. Rosneft might have served as a way out in this case, another pre-financing deal is by no means impossible, yet this could happen only after the US sanctions issue is settled.

Were the Kurdish Regional Government to find interested partners, a pre-financing deal with a world-class trading houses might be the solution to its growing woes. Until then, Erbil has to rely on the political instruments it has available, like calling for the UN to mediate between the Kurds and the Baghdad government, so far to no avail. With health workers starting a strike on April 27 and political protests remaining an enticing prospect for the incensed populace, the KRG leadership ought to safeguard the oil and gas infrastructure from any potential damage to the breakaway regions infrastructure, as any attacks would only exacerbate the financial agony.

By Viktor Katona for Oilprice.com

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Rigs are vanishing at a rapid clip in the United States, but oil and gas drilling activity is also falling worldwide.

The international rig count fell by 144 in April from a month earlier, bringing the total down to 915, according to Baker Hughes.

Latin America was hit the hardest, with a loss of 80 rigs. Colombia and Argentina made up the bulk of those losses  the rig count in Colombia fell by 21, and in Argentina by 38.

The Colombian government said that oil production would fall. If prices were to fall drastically to an average of around $30 this year, well then we would be talking about average production close to 790,000 to 800,000 barrels a day, Armando Zamora, the president of Colombias National Hydrocarbons Agency said on Thursday. That would be down from a prior forecast of 900,000 bpd.

Argentina is in even worse shape. Its rig count fell to zero in April from 38 in March. Argentinas highly-hyped Vaca Muerta shale has faced challenging economics, macroeconomic instability and political uncertainty for a long time. Oil majors have dabbled in the Vaca Muerta for a decade, more or less, but have held off on fully committing to large-scale investments.

But the global downturn has forced the Vaca Muerta on to life support. The Vaca Muerta is somewhat like a less competitive version of the Permian basin, and drillers are running into similar problems as their American competitors  high breakevens, a localized glut, lack of storage, and vanishing access to international markets. Shut ins are now front and center. State-owned YPF had to cut production at its flagship Loma Campana oil field a few weeks ago. But it isnt the only one.

We stopped drilling and completion activities and scaled-down our capital expenditure projects for the remainder of the year, Vista Oil & Gas CEO Miguel Galuccio said on a first-quarter earnings call on April 29. Vista, a private-equity backed driller in Vaca Muerta, shut in wells in March because of collapsing demand and the lack of available storage. Our current view for the second half of the year is to reopen shale oil wells as demand recovers, Galluccio said. He tried to reassure analysts on the arnings call that productivity of shut in wells would not be negatively affected.

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The Argentine government is considering fixing oil prices at $45 per barrel, which would provide artificially high prices for drillers. We must see how we can avoid a collapse in local production, which today is in excess in Argentina. The refineries are full, and it is necessary to avoid that the oil operating companies decide to suspend rigs because it will not easy to recover them later, Minister of Productive Development Matias Kulfas said recently. That came before the collapse of the rig count to zero.

Still, he also expressed some skepticism on the utility of costly measures to bail out the industry. The entire agro-industrial complex exports $30 billion [per year], Kulfas recently said. Meanwhile, the energy sector exports $3 billion, which is 10 times smaller.

Vaca Muerta has huge potential, but is an issue that will have to wait because of the international situation, Kulfas concluded.

While the government would like to prop up fracking, it has much larger immediate concerns. Argentina could be just weeks away from a major debt default.

Meanwhile, Venezuelas well-documented collapse continues. Production has been declining for years, made much worse by U.S. sanctions. The Trump administration recently told Chevron to wind down its operations in the country. State-owned PDVSA is getting a leadership overhaul, and may even end its decade-long policy of holding a majority stake in all projects. But there is very little reason to think that a turnaround is underway. The global market meltdown only deepens the misery.

In Mexico, state-owned Pemex continues to deteriorate. Moodys just cut the companys credit rating to junk. On Thursday, Pemex reported a massive $23.6 billion first quarter loss. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is stubbornly spending money on a hairbrained refinery project in Tabasco, and the decline of Pemex is now dragging down the sovereign.

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Brazil is in better shape. Petrobras originally announced that it would cut production by 200,000 bpd, but reversed course. The company said that a rebound underway in China could provide an outlet for its oil. At the same time, the coronavirus is spreading rapidly in the country. The Presidents of both Brazil and Mexico have downplayed and ignored the threat of the coronavirus, which doesnt bode well for containing the spread. As a result, the near-term outlook for both countries is highly uncertain.

Meanwhile, Latin America faces another problem. Many of its refineries are aging and were operating below capacity even prior to the global pandemic and oil market meltdown. The region has a total refining capacity of 7.5 million barrels per day (mb/d), but are now operating at about one-third of that capacity, according to Argus.

The worldwide glut for refined products has led to a rapid fill up of available storage, including using tankers for refined product storage. That has forced a sharp curtailment in refining processing. It appears that both upstream and downstream sectors in Latin America are bearing the brunt of the global downturn.

By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 13:34:14|Editor: huaxia

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NEW DELHI, May 3 (Xinhua) -- India's federal health ministry Sunday morning said 78 new deaths due to COVID-19, besides fresh 2,204 positive cases were reported since Saturday evening in the country, taking the number of deaths to 1,301 and total cases to 39,980.

"As on 8:00 a.m. (local time), today 1,301 deaths related to novel coronavirus have been recorded in the country," an information released by the ministry said.

On Saturday evening, the number of COVID-19 cases in the country was 37,776 and the death toll was 1,223.

According to ministry officials, so far 10,633 people have been discharged from hospitals after showing improvement.

"The number of active cases in the country right now is 28,046," the information said.

Sunday marks the 40th straight day of ongoing lockdown across the country announced by the government to contain the spread of the pandemic.

The lockdown which was announced on March 25 was Friday evening again extended for the third time for two more weeks until May 17.

The Indian armed forces will Sunday showcase a unique way of extending solidarity with the country's COVID-19 warriors. Army, Navy and Air Force will together display series of activities marking the nation's respect towards the endeavour of health professionals, security officials, sanitation workers, essential supply chain workers and media professionals during the fight against COVID-19.

The Armed Forces have made elaborate arrangements to mark the day with memorable gesture of solidarity. The C-130 carrier of the Indian Air Force flying at a very low altitude will cover the entire length of the country. The Air Force Helicopters will shower flower petals in Delhi and other cities. Fighter planes Sukhoi-30 , MiG-29 and Jaguar will fly past over the national capital and other places marking a salute to the COVID-19 warriors. Likewise, army bands will visit many hospitals treating COVID-19 patients throughout the day and play tunes to honour the warriors.

Hospitals in Mumbai, Kochi, Vizag and Goa will also witness showering of petals from navy helicopters. The efforts of the COVID-19 warriors will also be appreciated by Indian Coast Guard by illuminating the ships at 25 locations including Mumbai, Kochi, Chennai and Vizag covering the entire coastline of the country which can be witnessed from 7:30 p.m. local time in the evening until midnight.

"Our armed forces have always kept the nation safe. Even in times of disasters, they are out there helping people. Now, our Forces are, in a unique way, saying a big thank you to our frontline COVID-19 warriors for their endeavour towards making India COVID-19 free," Indian Prime Minister wrote on twitter.

The latest gesture by the armed forces is the third massive display of gratitude to health workers fighting the COVID-19 pandemic in India.

The first show of gratitude to health workers was called by Modi urging people to clap for COVID-19 warriors from their balconies. It was followed by a show of solidarity with turning off lights and lighting candles. Enditem
(CNN)  There are 98 people who may have died from COVID-19 at the Isabella Center in New York City, according to a statement from the geriatric care facility.

This statement comes after New York Rep. Adriano Espaillat accused nursing homes of not accurately reporting COVID-19 deaths to the Department of Health.

Espaillat wrote a letter addressed to Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York State Attorney General Letitia James calling for an investigation into nursing home facilities.

"Recent reports suggest that nursing home administrators across the state have abandoned transparency, leaving patients unnerved and their families unenlightened as to the status of their loved ones' health. By withholding important information regarding facility conditions, patients' status, and the accurate number of cases and deaths related to COVID-19 from families and elected officials, nursing home administrators are abnegating their most fundamental duty," Espaillat said in the letter.

As the virus hit the 705-bed center, the facility did not have access to testing to "quickly diagnose" residents and staff, according to a statement from Isabella Center.

It noted that more access to testing is available and that the center has reported accurate data to the Department of Health since the beginning of the pandemic.

NOTE: This story has been updated to accurately reflect a statement from the Isabella Center.

This story was first published on CNN.com "Nearly 100 people may have died from coronavirus at a nursing home in New York City"
Israel's high court was set on Sunday to begin hearing petitions against Benjamin Netanyahu forming a government while facing criminal indictments.

The proceedings, held by an exceptionally large panel of 11 justices and in a rare instance to also be broadcast live, will focus on the issue of whether a politician can form a government while under indictment - something the Israeli legal code does not explicitly prohibit.

If the court voids Netanyahu's ability to serve as prime minister, Israel could be plunged into political chaos, and it would likely trigger the country's fourth consecutive election in just over 12 months.

The high court has become a lightning rod for criticism by Netanyahu and his political allies, who accuse it of overreach and political interference, while the long-time leader's opponents consider it a bastion of democracy under dangerous assault.

Pro-democracy demonstrators have been taking to the streets weekly to protest Netanyahu's continued rule. Last week, counter-protesters against the court demonstrated against its hearing the petitions against Netanyahu's rule.

In an unprecedented move, Sunday's hearing would be broadcast live on the high court's website while most of the country remains under coronavirus movement restrictions.

Netanyahu was indicted earlier this year on charges of accepting bribes, fraud and breach of trust. He has denied any wrongdoing. His trial was postponed due to restrictions his hand-picked interim justice minister placed on the courts after the coronavirus crisis erupted and is scheduled to commence later this month.

Last week, Israel's attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit, said in an opinion to the court that while Netanyahu's indictments raise significant problems, there was no legal basis for barring him from serving while facing criminal charges.

Israeli law mandates that Cabinet ministers and mayors resign if indicted, but prime ministers are not specifically required to step down.

In January, the Supreme Court declined to rule on whether Netanyahu could form a government under indictment, saying the matter remained theoretical ahead of March's elections.

On Monday, the court will address petitions concerning Netanyahu's power-sharing coalition deal with his main rival, former military chief Benny Gantz.

Netanyahu and Gantz signed the agreement to form a national government last month after Israel's third consecutive, deadlocked election in just over a year. The deal would have Netanyahu serve the first 18 months as prime minister, after which Gantz would assume power for the next 18 months.

The coalition deal and Netanyahu's upcoming corruption trials have triggered large protests in Tel Aviv's main square. Participants in the demonstrations observed social distance in accordance with public health regulations.

The petitions against Netanyahu were filed by advocacy groups that have asked the high court to ban any indicted politician, including Netanyahu, from being allowed to form a new government. They also say that parts of the coalition deal are illegal.

Eliad Shraga, head of one of the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, one of the groups petitioning the court, said in a statement ahead of Sunday's proceedings that it was unconscionable that a man like this will go in the morning to court to sit in the dock and in the evening will manage the security cabinet and send us and our children to battle.

Netanyahu, Israel's longest serving prime minister, has held onto power as a caretaker leader for more than a year as political stalemate prevented the creation of a government and triggered successive elections.
Trinamool Congress leader and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's nephew Abhishek Banerjee hit out at the Narendra Modi-led Central government on Sunday for going ahead with the Rs 20,000-crore Central Vista renovation project in New Delhi at a time when the country is grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic.

A new Parliament building, with a common Central Secretariat, and revamping of the 3-km stretch of Rajpath have been proposed as part of the renovation project.

Abhishek, an MP from from Diamond Harbour in south Bengal, who is widely considered the second-in-command in the party ranks, wrote on Twitter that taxpayers' money was being used to renovate "Lutyens' Delhi".

"For the same amount at Rs 30 per meal, they could have fed 2 meals a day to 1.85 Cr Indians for the next 6 months. The only explanation is that they want to stay isolated in renovated chambers! the tweet read.

The Centre is splurging 20,000 Cr of the taxpayer's money to renovate Lutyens' Delhi. For the same amount at 30 per meal, they could have fed 2 meals a day to 1.85 Cr Indians for the next 6 months. The only explanation is that they want to stay isolated in renovated chambers! Abhishek Banerjee (@abhishekaitc) May 3, 2020

Sukhendu Sekhar Roy, another lawmaker from the ruling camp, which has been targetted by the state BJP unit for its handling of the outbreak in Bengal, said the Centre should put the Central Vista project on hold. "

Propriety demands that it should be put on hold and the money should be utilised for those struggling to make ends meet during the lockdown," Roy told News18, adding that a part of the money could also be diverted towards research on coronavirus vaccine.

Several opposition leaders in the country have come out against the Modi's government's decision to go ahead with the project during the health emergency, and have argued that the funds could better be utilised for welfare of the poor.

On Friday, Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi urged the Supreme Court to give precedence to petitions against the project.

On April 30, the top court had refused to entertain a plea against the project, saying it did not agree to the submission that the project needed to be stayed due to the pandemic.
Air passengers have slammed social distancing on planes, saying people are being crammed on board like sardines.

Pictures emerged showing packed trips including a BA service from Heathrow to Barcelona and a flight from Turkey.

It came as Transport Secretary Grant Shapps suggested foreign visitors travelling to Britain could face mandatory quarantine.

Airplane passengers says they are being crammed upon aircraft 'like sardines' and say this makes a mockery of the current social distancing guidelines

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps (pictured) said on Sunday that foreign visitors travelling to Britain may be forced to undergo up to two weeks of mandatory quarantine upon arrival

One passenger on Wednesdays BA flight said the lack of distancing measures makes a complete mockery of the lockdown rules. They added: There was no requirement to wear masks. Everyone was sitting within inches of their fellow passengers.

Personal trainer Gemma Bain, 21, revealed people were also packed on to her Pegasus Airlines flight from Turkey to Stansted on Tuesday.

She said: The crew had full protective kits on but we had nothing. It was really worrying. This was an emergency rescue flight but it seemed to pay no regard to Government guidelines.

There are currently no rules on in-flight social distancing.

Ministers are beginning to accept more stringent checks are needed at airports.

Passenger Gemma Bain said that airline staff had full protective masks on during her rescue flight from Turkey to London (above) but adds they did not pay any regard to social distancing guidelines apart from this

Speaking on the Andrew Marr Show yesterday, Mr Shapps said he was actively looking at quarantine requirements for foreign visitors, mirroring similar schemes in dozens of other countries.

He said: I think it is important that as we are seeing the numbers decrease and the rate we hope decrease... that we do ensure the sacrifices that we are asking the British people to make are matched by anybody who comes to this country.

Airlines UK, the trade body representing carriers, has warned a 14-day quarantine requirement would kill air travel.

Heathrow boss John Holland-Kaye suggested in the Daily Mail last week that passengers could be checked before they enter airports.

The uncertainty over the future of air travel is one of the main reasons why BA is warning of drastic cuts in the months to come.

Aircrafts have been full - including this British Airways flight from London Heathrow to Barcelona this week - despite the growing uncertainty over the short-term future of air travel

Bosses are planning to lay off a quarter of staff  up to 12,000 workers.

Senior BA managers were due to be questioned on the crisis by the Commons transport committee on Wednesday.

MPs had hoped to grill Willie Walsh, the boss of BAs parent company IAG. However, it emerged last night that Mr Walsh has refused to attend and no other BA senior manager would take his place.

Committee chairman Huw Merriman MP accused BA of seeking to avoid scrutiny.

On the issue of crowded flights, a BA spokesman said: We have taken several steps to reduce contact between customers and crew, and personal protective equipment is available to them.
NORWALK  Students at a Norwalk technology-based high school on Sunday prepared for an unusual graduation that will occur this month over video conferencing as the coronavirus pandemic has shuttered school buildings and upended traditional commencement ceremonies.

On Sunday, five staff members at Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH) went to the homes of the 20 graduating students to photograph them wearing caps and gowns in their front yards.

Everyone seems really excited and really proud, all smiles. Everyones dressed for the occasion  its really beautiful, said Karen Amaker, P-TECH director, while she was visiting one students home.

She said despite COVID-19, and the need to stay safe through physical distancing, the school still wants to celebrate the students accomplishment. What theyve done is amazing, Amaker said.

The school lets students earn earn an associates degree in applied science from Norwalk Community College alongside their high school diploma. Students can earn the college degree in four years with their diploma, or earn their associates in another year or two of study.

Students graduating with an associates degree will matriculate on May 21 over Zoom, and high school diplomas will be distributed on a date to be determined in June, Amaker said.

The photos taken Sunday will be compiled into a digital presentation aired as part of graduation, she said. Families have been understanding of the changes.

The adults in the community just understand that this is really about the students, she said
People dont want, they are afraid, they are taking care of their health - we will understand it. There are enough people who want it today - thousands and thousands of people want this event to be held, said Lukashenko.I am very worried that people will not approve if we, scared, scatter by holes. And in general, Belarus is a living monument of that war. And I think that representatives of all states could be present on this day, he added.In general, the president expressed confidence that the parade is not the most dangerous event from the point of view of epidemiologists and virologists.Because it will be organized as expected. We will talk about this later. Maybe from the rostrum of this parade, Lukashenko said.The day before, the World Health Organization stated that in Belarus the pace of the spread of coronavirus is one of the highest in Europe.
An IAF helicopter on Sunday showered rose petals on doctors, nurses and other para-medical staff of King George's Medical University (KGMU) and the Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute for Medical Sciences (SGPGI) here as a mark of respect towards the "corona warriors".

At around 10.15 am, two rounds of floral showering was conducted by a helicopter of the Indian Air Force over the area in front of the administrative building of KGMU.

As the flowers were showered, doctors, nurses and other para-medical staff of KGMU clapped and chanted 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' to express their happiness. Some of the doctors and nurses were overwhelmed by the gesture and became teary-eyed.

Head of Department of Transfusion Medicine at KGMU, Tulika Chandra said, "It was an emotional and heart touching scene. There were tears in our eyes The feeling of tiredness, which grips us after spending 18 hours on duty disappeared with this honour and our motivational level increased.

Senior surgeon and KGMU's spokesperson Dr Sandeep Tiwari said, "It was indeed a moment of honour when flowers were showered upon us. We are overwhelmed and will serve COVID-19 patients with double energy."



Vice-Chancellor of KGMU M L B Bhatt, while expressing happiness said, "The honour, which has been bestowed upon corona warriors today has made the doctors, nurses and para-medical staff very happy."



Meanwhile, director of Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute for Medical Sciences (SGPGI) R K Dhiman said, "This is a proud moment for all corona warriors. We feel that as if we are the jawans of the Indian Army who will take on the enemy in the battle field. He said the gesture has doubled the enthusiasm among the corona warriors at the SGPGI.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Earlier this month, RigUp began a pilot program offering screening and testing for the novel coronavirus to operators in the Midland-Odessa and San Angelo areas, as well as RigUps workforce in its oil and gas, wind and solar operations in the two markets.

In the two weeks since the pilot launched, about 1,000 oil and gas, solar, and wind industry workers have been digitally screened, with at least 500 workers physically tested.

A RigUp spokesman told the Reporter-Telegram the companys workers in Midland-Odessa have been given free access to online COVID-19 testing eligibility assessments. The online tool is voluntary and primarily benefits those workers who are concerned about potential symptoms or exposure.

Based on answers to the assessments, imaware will follow up with workers flagged for further evaluation and determine, on a case-by-case basis, if the individual needs a nasal swab and to self-quarantine until test results are received, usually in two to four days. The second step of the program is being guided by imaware, which has partnered with national laboratories for the testing and has arranged for TeleHealth professionals to discuss the next steps for workers with positive tests.

The need to mitigate COVID-19 exposure risk at a job site led one major operator to reach out to RigUp to conduct testing at two job sites north of Midland.

After one of its employees came down with a severe case of the novel coronavirus, the operator reached out to RigUp and its partner, imaware, to quickly screen and test its 50 workers at the two sites. Through its partnership with imaware, RigUp was able to coordinate the delivery of 100 test kits and send a licensed nurse to begin screening at-risk workers. The nurse facilitated 20 tests the same day of the request before returning to the job site the next morning with additional test kits delivered from Houston to screen the remaining workers at shift change.

Within 48 hours, the operator had screened and tested all of its at-risk workers and received positive or negative results for each of its workers.

RigUp has also announced a partnership with Parsley Energy, an early adopter of RigUps testing program in its pilot phase. Parsley is now rolling out the COVID-19 screening and mitigation program to a few hundred more of its workers at job sites throughout the Permian Basin.

RigUp is currently working with job site operators to expand the program to its workforce across the oil & gas, solar, wind, and construction industries nationwide in the coming weeks.
Princess Elizabeth was 13 years old when World War II broke out.

It was this world event in which the shy teenagers life was set into becoming a legendary monarch.

She and sister Margaret, the young princesses, became symbols of hope for a nation wracked by a horrific war, the terrors of the Blitz and the relocation of over a million children.

By 1945, Elizabeth had been transformed from a shy girl into a confident young woman and proved her mettle as a driver and mechanic in the womens branch of the army.

These are some of the many events that are chronicled in the documentary The Queen at War, which will premiere at 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 5, on New Mexico PBS.

This was an opportunity for Chris Granlund, an executive producer, to learn more about the queen.

Her life is so fascinating, he says during a recent interview. There was so much I didnt know about her life.

Granlund has worked on projects like this before and says its imperative that the filmmakers pay attention to the research.

The development process took over a year, and the crew was in production for about six months.

Of course, the filmmakers worked diligently to get interviews with people who were close to the queen, which proved to have its own set of obstacles.

Shes now 94, and the people that know her well are as old as her or they were way too young to know, he says. It came down to a small group of people. We found them one at a time, and we were grateful that we had these opportunities.

The documentary also delves into the war years, during which Elizabeths enduring love story blossomed.

Just two months before the outbreak of war, in September 1939, the 13-year-old met a handsome 18-year-old naval cadet during a family tour of the Royal Naval College.

Instantly smitten, the two wrote to each other throughout the war, during Philips military service.

Whatever it meant to her personally, it gave her this same sense of identity with so many other British women during the war, royal biographer Robert Lacey says. Their man  husband, fiance, boyfriend  was away, risking his life, which Philip did.

It was during the war that Queen Elizabeths famous sense of duty emerged, transforming her into the leader her country needed.

It made Princess Elizabeth grow up, Granlund says. She was able to become one with the people. In her speech, there was so much power and grace. This was a turning point for her.
The Spanish government published a series of orders on Sunday that detail the requirements that will be necessary for each province to pass from one phase to another during the deescalation of coronavirus confinement measures that will officially begin on Monday. The only essential quantitative requirements, according to the Official State Gazette (BOE), will be the availability, access to or capacity to install between 1.5 and 2 intensive care beds and between 37 and 49 beds for the seriously ill for every 10,000 inhabitants in a five-day period.

The deescalation phases will be introduced asymmetrically across Spain in each province, and the dates of passing from one phase to the other is likely to vary depending on the situation of each area. Spain is currently in Phase 0, although four of Spains islands  Formentera (Balearic Islands), La Gomera, El Hierro and La Graciosa (Canary Islands)  will automatically enter Phase 1 on Monday, given the low levels of coronavirus infections registered there.

Once a province has entered Phase 1, regional governments will have to make their next requests at least a week in advance.

The rest of Spains provinces will have to wait until May 11 before they get the chance to move to the next phase. Each regional government will have to send its request to do so before 2pm on May 6. The Health Ministry will study the applications and will try to reach a consensual decision with each region, although the ministry will have the last word. Once a province has entered Phase 1, regional governments will have to make their next requests at least a week in advance.

During this process of co-governance [between the regions and the central government], the order published today reads, the regions and the cities of Ceuta and Melilla can pass specific deescalation proposals for their territories to the Health Ministry [...] as well as presenting an activity that is not included in the permitted activities in the different phases.

The deescalation process will not be automatic nor mathematic. As well as the aforementioned requirements, the following factors will also be taken into account: the possibility of isolating those infected with the coronavirus, and the control of confirmed sources of contagion; early-warning systems and epidemiological monitoring; the identification and rapid containment of sources of potential contagion; the capacity of the primary healthcare and hospital systems; the mechanisms to guarantee the necessary collective protection measures; and the epidemiological progress in the territory in terms of transmission and active cases.

The ministry will call on the regions to guarantee the availability of sufficient healthcare professionals

Whats more, the ministry will call on the regions to guarantee the availability of sufficient healthcare professionals. A specific number is not provided, but the recommendation is that it is not lower than the existing figure on March 27, when the second extension to the state of alarm was implemented.

Until now, the government had been considering relaxing confinement measures in each province according to the percentage of free beds  both regular and ICU  that each territory had at the time of changing phase. According to the BOE published today, this criteria has been substituted for one that refers to installed beds, and not available beds.

English version by Simon Hunter.
Dame Carolyn Fairbairn, CBI director general. (Stefan Rousseau/PA via Getty Images)

The Treasury is facing growing calls to guarantee 100% of loans made to small businesses in a bid to speed the flow of cash to companies and prevent a wave of bankruptcies.

The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) both renewed calls on Thursday for the government to increase the state guarantee on coronavirus loans from 80% to 100% for smaller businesses.

It adds to growing pressure on Chancellor Rishi Sunak to offer even greater support to Britains smallest businesses to ensure they dont collapse. Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey, former Chancellor George Osborne, and the head of industry group UK Finance have all backed calls for an increased state guarantee.

The CBI said the government should stand behind 100% of loans of up to 500,000 ($616,097) made under the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme (CBILS).

The FSB, meanwhile, said the government should raise its backing to 100% for loans of up to 30,000.

The Chancellor has resisted calls for further state guarantees but the Financial Times reported on Friday morning that Sunak could be bending under the pressure. The paper said the Chancellor had called in bankers to help draft a scheme to guarantee 100% of loans below 25,000, although it was not clear if this policy had gone beyond the feasibility stage.

The calls from the FSB and CBI for further state action came hours after new figures showed that just 2.8bn of state support had reached the frontlines of small businesses in the month since special measures were announced by the Treasury.

Read more: UK economy suffers record shock and 'unprecedented' job losses

These figures mark an improvement, FSB chair Mike Cherry said. But we need to see far more from the banks where the speed of processing applications and making money available to the smallest businesses are concerned.

Banks are covered for only 80% of losses on loans under the CBIL scheme and so must still undertake full due diligence, which slows the process. A 100% government guarantee would mean lighter checks and allow companies to access cash faster.

Story continues

Germany and Switzerland have both agreed to stand behind 100% of loans extended to small businesses, leading to a quicker deployment of capital. Swiss banks issued 11.8bn-worth of loans to small businesses in just the first few days of its programme, according to Reuters.

The UK government is reluctant to extend the state guarantee to 100% as it could leave taxpayers with greater losses in the future.

Stephen Jones, head of industry group UK Finance, told the Treasury Select Committee last week the government was expressing a very different risk appetite to Germany and Switzerland. However, Jones backed calls for a 100% guarantee of loans below 25,000.

The CBI said on Thursday the process for applying for loans below 25,000 should be simplified.

Read more: Over 80% of UK firms unable to cope if lockdown lasts six months

The current loan scheme is up, running and working for many, said CBI director general Dame Carolyn Fairbairn. Now we need another big push to get money out the door faster.

This is a race against time, and the only winning strategy is scale, speed and simplicity. Nothing should be left on the table.

Asked about extending loan guarantees last week, chancellor Rishi Sunak said: Is there an argument for looking at something like that? Of course there is. We continually look at everything other countries are doing.
Khattar mourn martyrdom of Major Anuj Sood

Chandigarh, May 3 (UNI) Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar expressed his condolences over the telephone to Brigadier CK Sood, father of Major Anuj Sood, resident of Panchkula who attained martyrdom in an encounter with terrorists at Handwara in Kupwara of North Kashmir on Sunday.



In a message issued here, the Chief Minister said that citizens were taken hostage by terrorists in a house in Handwara, Kashmir and during their rescue the operation turned into an encounter; Major Anuj Sood was martyred along with five others who lost their lives. We are proud of our soldiers who safeguard the borders of our nation even under extremely adverse circumstances, he added.
LAKE VICTORIA  A ferry with an unknown number of passengers has on Saturday evening capsized in on the Kenyan side of Lake Victoria.

The boat identified as Water Bus is said to have been plying the Mageta IslandUsenge beach route in Siaya County in Kenya when the incident occurred.

The Citizen TV, quoting sources, reports the boat could have been hit by strong winds and high tides partly attributed to the swelling water levels of Lake Victoria.

The Citizen TV quoting authorities adds that a rescue mission is currently underway, coordinated by local administration and beach management units.

Water levels have been on the rise in Lake Victoria over the last four months

On Friday, Uganda issued an alert over Lake Victorias water levels that have surged to their highest level in more than half a century after about eight months of relentless downpours.

According to Reuters, sections of waterfront properties such as luxury hotels including one belonging to a unit of Nairobi-listed Tourism Promotion Services and a Protea Hotel which is part of Marriott International, became submerged in the last few weeks.

Ugandas water and environment minister Sam Cheptoris further warned that the situation could pose a threat to Ugandas hydropower plants.

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New Delhi, May 3 : To contain coronavirus effectively, the government has demarcated the country into three zones -- red, orange and green. There are more coronavirus cases in western region than the eastern region.

There are more red zones in prosperous states, like Maharashtra, than states considerably less advanced, like Bihar and Odisha. The number of cases in metros, like Mumbai and Delhi, is more than smaller cities in the eastern region.

In Maharashtra, there are 14 red, 16 orange and 6 green zones. In Bihar, there are 5 red, 20 orange and 13 green zones. There are 130 red, 284 orange and 319 green zones in the country, according to the letter written by Health Secretary Preeti Sudan to the state secretaries on April 30.

Explaining these zones, the government said the green zones comprised districts with either zero confirmed case or no confirmed case in the last 21 days. The classification of districts as red zones takes into account number of active cases, doubling rate of confirmed cases, extent of testing and surveillance feedback from there. The districts, which are neither defined as red nor green, are classified as orange zones.

As of 8 a.m. on May 3, Maharashtra reported 12,296 coronavirus cases and 521 fatalities. Bihar had 481 cases and 4 deaths; and Odisha 157 cases and one death, according to the Health Ministry.

Among the the other western states, Gujarat reported 5,054 cases and 262 deaths, followed by Rajasthan with 2,770 cases and 65 fatalities. In the eastern region, West Bengal reported 922 cases and 3 deaths, and UP 2,487 cases and 43 deaths.

Speaking to IANS, K. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), said, "The pattern reflects difference in economic development, indicated by the size of the international airports, number of international and domestic flights operating from those airports, foreign-returned travellers arriving and spreading out from there." "Western India is more urbanised, with greater mobility of people with whom the virus hitch hikes to spread fast. Eastern India has lower foreign returnees to initiate the spread," Reddy said.

According to him, the rural India has less mobility. "This too has protected eastern parts. That's why the more urbanised western countries too have seen a rapid spread. Similar phenomenon in India has occurred," he said.

Dr Manoj Goel, Director (Pulmonology), at Fortis Memorial Research Institute, told IANS attributed this distribution of infection to the population density in different parts of India.

"India is a large country. It's like a subcontinent with over 17 per cent of the world population. So there is likely to be no uniformity in distribution of cases in the different regions," he said.

Stating that the densely populated places in the west are the worst hit, he said, "Dense population makes it difficult for the virus to contain as social distancing can be difficult to manage. The states with large number of immigrants from abroad could also been witnessing more Covid-19 cases." The government has said the classification of districts into red, green and orange zones will be shared by the MoHFW with states and Union Territories on a weekly basis, or earlier, as required.

While states and UTs can include more districts in the red and orange zones, they may not lower the classification of a district included by the MoHFW.

India reported 39,980 coronavirus cases, and 1,301 deaths as on Sunday morning.

(Sfoorti Mishra can be contacted at sfoorti.m@ians.in)

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Former Vice President of the United States Joe Biden slammed his election rival and US President Donald Trump on Sunday for blaming former administration led by Barack Obama for the current situation of the Coronavirus outbreak in the country. Biden castigated Trump for ignoring the detailed response pandemic playbook put together by Obamas National Security Council. He further criticised Trump for guttering the office created to tackle the pandemic situation and pulling out the CDC officials from China.

Taking to Twitter, Biden wrote "We left a playbook. He ignored it. We created an office to prepare for pandemics. He gutted it. We had CDC officials in China to detect and contain outbreaks. He pulled them out. Trump can try and shift blame all he wants, but the fact is his actions left us unprepared".

READ | A referendum election in November? Trump allies see risks

We left a playbook. He ignored it.



We created an office to prepare for pandemics. He gutted it.



We had CDC officials in China to detect and contain outbreaks. He pulled them out.



Trump can try and shift blame all he wants, but the fact is his actions left us unprepared. https://t.co/NdsINZ307m  Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 2, 2020

READ | Donald Trump tells Joe Biden to 'just go out and fight' sexual assault allegations

Biden further said that the pandemic is bigger than any individual or country. This moment requires all of us to come together across the nation and around the world to solve this crisis.

This pandemic is bigger than any one individual or country. This moment requires all of us to come together  across the nation and around the world  to solve this crisis.  Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 2, 2020

READ | Trump hoping US deaths stay below 100,000

Trump blames former President Obama for Coronavirus menace in US

During a White House presser on Thursday, a reporter asked Trump to explain how it makes sense to blame former President Barack Obama for testing problems pertaining to a virus that didnt even exist until nearly three years after he left office. To which Trump replied by saying The last administration left us nothing. We started off with bad, broken tests, and obsolete tests". He further blamed Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden for their poor handling of the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak, which killed about 12,500 Americans. As of April 30, the coronavirus has killed more than 61,000 people in the US.

READ | Donald Trump issues first response as Kim Jong-un re-appears amid death rumours
After the stay-at-home orders lifted and businesses reopened at 25 percent occupancy across Texas, dozens of people headed out to restaurant patios and boat launches Saturday on Lake Conroe during the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Some customers soaked up the sun at the new Montys Lighthouse, a seafood restaurant with a Cajun flare that opened in October 2019 at the Old Sams Boat location next to Fajita Jacks. While the servers wore masks, many customers faces remained uncovered.

The Woodlands resident Christine Karnauch sipped wine and dined unconcerned about COVID-19.

It feels great to have a life again, to have sunshine, good food, people sitting beside you, Karnauch said. Its like were living again. Bringing the economy back. Im excited about it. The wait staff is making money again.

Lake Conroe resident John Morris, a New York native who owns both Montys Lighthouse and Fajita Jacks with his wife Cheryl, had to lay off more than 140 employees at both restaurants and lost tens of thousands of dollars at both establishments that are normally full on Saturdays.

We would see about 350 (people) at each location and now we are down to 120 people, he said.

As businesses shut down, the restaurants shifted to offering to-go orders and curbside meals from Fajita Jacks on a combined menu served by about 20 employees who remain. Morris became emotional as he talked about the impact and the challenges, including for employees.

Among the employees serving Saturday was a single mother who commutes from Plantersville and was able to keep working to provide for her son. For the most part, customers have been good to her, she said.

People have been very nice about everything, Employee Sierra Moore, 23, said. Some people feel awkward about us wearing gloves, but everybody has been really nice and taking care of us as servers and stuff. Its been really nice since we have been able to open back up, even to-go people were very thoughtful.

With the nice weather, Morris said about 90 percent of the customers requested outdoor seating.

We had a lot of people who said wow, its about time, Morris said. It was odd. It was like welcome to civilization.

Cheryl Morris shared Fajita Jacks plans to have specials for Cinco De Mayo but has been focused on getting staff back to work. Both restaurants are still offering to-go orders and curbside pick-ups.

She described the pandemic as a setback, but felt the restaurant has an obligation to the numerous people who also rely on the business, including for linen supplies and farmers throwing away produce and meat. But local businesses are counting on customers support, she shared.

The lake community relies on summer business to carry the slower months in the winter, in the off season, Cheryl Morris said. If you look at Texas restaurants, they are saying 12 percent of restaurants are not going to reopen. Same with other businesses, when hair salons open, weve got to embrace them, if we want them here in our community, because they are 100 percent shut down.

Outside the restaurant, Nicole Brown, of Crockett, stood next to a boat in the busy parking lot, as she prepared to hit the water after traveling from the small town for Lake Conroe.

Honestly, our life didnt change that much, Brown said before discussing the reopening. The economy needed (to reopen). It was necessary. I worked at a vets office and there are ways to deal with the coronavirus situation.

A short distance down Texas 105, Conroe resident Ashley Oestreich, 25, and her family stepped off the boat and headed to McDonalds with her four children under the age of eight.

It gets them out of the house and its still social distancing to a certain extent, she said holding her 1-year-old child wearing a life jacket in her arms.

Sitting on a dock at the IHOP next door, a retired Vietnam and Desert Storm veteran cast a line after traveling from Brenham with his wife.

Weve been cooped up for the last four weeks, and the wife and I just decided to come out here and spend the weekend here in Montgomery at the lake to relax and unwind a little bit, Ed Guerra, 65, said. Were trying to get things back to normal if there is such a thing anymore.

Guerra retired in June, shortly before the twin towers fell in the World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001. He equates the past to the pandemic.

I remember the awe, the shock from it all throughout the country just like this time, Guerra said. We never encountered anything like this before. Where we go from here is anybodys guess.

Another couple sat on the other end of the dock with another set of fishing poles, out of the house for the first time since the pandemic.

Its been calm, relaxing  a good relief, Alfredo Olivares, 21, of Houston said.
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Re: MG Hector modified into ambulance for Covid-19 patients Agreed that this is mainly a PR exercise but they have done it very well. Like GTO said, it is a win win for everyone. In this dire time our health care system is getting an ambulance even if it's a makeshift one. Also I don't think MG will go on and claim its a full fledged ambulance. Earlier I read about they providing about 100 Hectors with driver for transportation of medical staff and health care workers while following proper social distancing protocols and also something about manufacture of ventilators. Then that PR exercise was also beneficial to us.



We can keep in mind that this is a PR exercise to increase the brand visibility and goodwill of the company but we should also see that we are getting some benefits out of this and appreciate that. I have seen many a MS Omni used as primary ambulances and the MG Hector will anyday make a better one than that.



It's a bit sneaky but nothing remotely unethical.

My two Paisa.
The nursing homes across the Commonwealth are licensed and under the jurisdiction of the Pennsylvania Department of Health. Tragically, we are seeing a high rate of COVID-19 cases and deaths in these facilities. Unfortunately, this is not surprising  senior care facilities serve many elderly residents who have underlying health conditions.

Statewide, while a quarter of positive COVID-19 cases are among those aged 70 and up, nursing homes account for 65 percent of the deaths. My office has been inundated with calls from family members who are extremely and rightfully concerned about their loved ones in these locations. With these statistics, who can blame them?

There is no question that we need to take action to better protect our elderly friends, family members, and neighbors.

In our neighboring state of Maryland, an executive order was issued requiring all nursing home residents and staff to be tested for COVID-19 regardless of symptoms. Maryland has also created strike teams consisting of National Guard members, health officials, doctors, and nurses who respond to serious outbreaks, and bridge teams that support additional staffing needs of facilities in crisis.

In Connecticut, the National Guard and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been called in to assist the Department of Health in inspecting and reviewing all of the states nursing homes to curb the spread of the virus.

Nursing home staffs across the state continue to bravely battle this virus on the front lines day after day. I value and thank those who continue to put their own health on the line every time they go to work. Therefore, I am insisting that we must do more to help them protect the residents of nursing homes, stop the spread, and save lives.

In addition, I plan to introduce legislation that calls for shifting the licensing, inspection, and supervision of nursing homes to the county level in counties that have public health departments (such as Chester County in my Senate district). In this way, more immediate action can be taken to swiftly and urgent respond and mitigate potential outbreaks.

For instance, in Chester County, the Pocopson Home, which is under county jurisdiction and has been conducting widespread testing, has only had one fatality due to COVID-19.

Meanwhile, at the state-run Southeastern Veterans Center in East Vincent, also in Chester County, nearly 30 lives have been tragically lost to this virus. As the COVID-19 continues to run rampant there, residents and families have struggled to get reliable information and answers. Recently, state and local officials called for an investigation into the centers response to the pandemic.

The time to act is now. We must do more to protect our elderly residents and enhance emergency support and resources for nursing homes and staff in the ongoing battle against this virus.

Our senior care facilities deserve priority because they serve the greatest number of at-risk individuals and they fill a vital need in our health care infrastructure. Its high time that Pennsylvania brings its efforts and protocols in line with what other states are doing to fight this virus and save lives.

Any further delay is unacceptable.

State Sen. Andrew E. Dinniman is a Democrat who represents the 19th Senatorial District in Chester County.
India continues to grapple with the coronavirus emergency, but another grave threat to public health is the focus of a dramatic Nature Scientific Reports study to be released on May 4. Its lead author, Dr. Joaquim Goes of Columbia University told Mint, our planets alarm bells are ringing. There are very serious implications for India. All the hard-won economic gains of the past two decades could be wiped out now, just as the pandemic has done for the USA."

Goes and his co-authors - which include his wife, Dr. Helga do Rosario Gomes - at Columbias Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, along with colleagues at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman, and Tiangong and Xiamen universities in China, have been tracking the astonishing, exponential spread of a tiny plankton (Noctilucascintillans) in the Arabian Sea over almost two decades.

Once almost unknown in these waters, this uniquely resilient" organism is now forming thick, malodorous green swirls and filaments that are visible even from space." According to Goes, they occupy an area that is almost three times the size of the state of Texas. And since they are not a preferred food for most higher trophic organisms, they mostly attract only salps, jellyfish and turtles, thereby short-circuiting the food chain in the Arabian Sea. At least 120 million people along these coasts are now at risk. Our countries have to act now, to escape the growing crisis.

The new study, entitled Ecosystem state change in the Arabian Sea fuelled by the recent loss of snow over the Himalayan- Tibetan plateau region, is an unusually all-encompassing snapshot of the interconnected impacts of climate change.

Its abstract explains, global warming has exerted a disproportionately strong influence on the Eurasian land surface, causing a steady decline in snow cover [in the Himalayas]." This has disrupted winter convective mixing" which occurs when cold winter winds blow over the Arabian Sea, driving the surface waters down, which are in turn replaced by nutrient rich waters from below. That process allows photosynthetic phytoplankton  the basic building block of our ocean food chain  to thrive, along with all the fish species that eventually result in the seafood bounty so many of us rely on. The spectacular growth of Noctiluca demonstrates the scale of the threat to our nutritional security.

Goes says his study indicates that countries like India now face an unavoidable reckoning, we cannot deny the Himalayan and Tibetan glaciers are melting. They are central to our weather, food and health security, and feed the rivers that are integral to our culture and identity. Here, you can see the profound changes that are taking place in the oceans as well. Yet, instead of investing in renewable energy resources, and taking advantage of the fact that we are ideally situated in the sunbelt, we continue to rely on fossil fuels to drive the engines of our economy."

The ocean biologist and his wife (both of them were initially educated in their native Goa) are in lockdown in New York City, one of the worst-hit Covid-19 global hotspots. Goes says, We have not stepped out for the past 8 weeks. The transition to working from home hasn't been easy, but thanks to technology we have been able to surmount many challenges. I am sure many private enterprises, and even government offices, are realizing that their workers are as productive working from home. With less air travel, and diminished dependence on cars, we are seeing our waterways and air becoming cleaner. For many who believed that we cannot cut down on our dependence on fossil fuels to sustain economic growth, the virus has taught us a lesson."

The stunning growth in Noctilucablooms" has calamitous implications for the economies and societies that surround the Arabian Sea. According to Columbias in-house The Earth Institute, In Oman, desalination plants, oil refineries and natural gas plants are forced to scale down operations because they are choked by Noctiluca blooms, and the jellyfish that swarm to feed on them. The resulting pressure on the marine food supply, and economic security may also have fueled the rise in piracy in countries like Yemen and Somalia."

Goes told Mint, exactly the same changes that we report along the coasts of Oman and Yemen are happening (albeit on a smaller scale) not too far from of our fish loving state of Goa. We know that Ratnagiri andVengurla in Maharashtraare already seeing these blooms." He also shared an alarming video taken last month by a student researcher in coastal Kerala, that clearly shows patches when the surface seemed to have a yellow hue full of Noctiluca like cells."

Tracking this spectacularly adaptable millimeter-sized organism has proven to behighly effective, because its presence is dead-certain indication of already-disrupted food chains.

The Earth Institute says, Unlike diatoms, Noctiluca (also known as sea sparkle) doesnt rely only on sunlight and nutrients; it can also survive by eating other microorganisms. This dual mode of energy acquisition gives it a tremendous advantage to flourish. [Its] second advantage is that its endosymbionts accumulate a lot of ammonia in the cell, making the organism unpalatable to larger grazers. As a third advantage, the accumulated ammonia is also a repository of nitrogenous nutrients for the endosymbionts, making them less vulnerable to diminishing inputs."

The prescient decision to track Noctiluca almost twenty years ago has turned out to be the scientific equivalent of hitting the jackpot.

Goes told Mint, it was a chance discovery by our collaborator Dr. Prabhu Matondkar of the National Institute of Oceanography, who noticed this organism in the waters off the coast of Gujarat. Around 2005, using data from NASAs ocean color satellite, we also began noticing contrary to what we expected, that its productivity during the winter monsoon was also rising. In 2009, with the help of NASA and the US government, the Indian Space Research Organization and Indias Ministry of Earth Sciences, we began examining the physiology of this organism more closely, and discovered that it was thriving because the Arabian Sea was losing oxygen."

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There are five species of rhinoceroses left in the world, and most live inside the protection of national parks and reserves. In the wild, rhinos now exist in Asia and Africa, and they once roamed Europe, as we can see through the evidence of cave paintings left from long ago.

African and Sumatran rhinos have two horns, and other forms of the species have just one. All can fetch a lot of money in black markets around the world. Rhino horns are highly prized by some consumers, who want them for various reasons.

So what are these horns made of, that make people want them so badly? Here is a look at rhino horns and the drama that surrounds them.

Hair And Fingernails

One horned rhino mother and baby in Nepal. Image credit: Mesa Studios/Shutterstock.com

It does not sound very exciting, but it is true: rhino horns are actually made of the same stuff as your hair and fingernails, there is just a lot more of it in one place. This substance is called keratin, and it is a fibrous structural protein that is also found in wool, feathers, horses hooves, claws and the outermost layers of your skin. Keratin adds strength to your skin, and is useful as it can be pulled in many directions without being damaged.

According to National Geographic, strangely enough, however, rhino horns can bring a seller $3,000 per pound in South Africa, and even more on black markets in Asia. Rhino horns are now known to be more valuable than gold and diamonds, per pound.

That much money for fingernails? Yes, a lot of people are being fooled, when you really think about it.

The Illegal Rhino Horn Trade

Dehorning of rhinos for protection on October 14, 2015, in in Askari Game Lodge, Magaliesberg, South Africa. Image credit: Snap2Art/Shutterstock.com

The sad truth is that rhinos have been poached so much that they are facing extinction. The black rhino, as well as the Javan and Sumatran rhinos are now critically endangered. This means they have been characterized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as animals that are at a high risk of going extinct, and being lost on Earth forever.

Southern white rhinos now living in Africa are classified as near threatened, and their northern counterparts now are extinct in the wild. Only two northern white rhinos are still alive, and these are highly prized, living under constant surveillance in Kenya, in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy.

Technically, it is illegal to kill a rhinoceros for its horn, but many people still do it. In places where rhinos live wild, some people earn so little money that the prospect of earning much from killing just one rhino can be alluring.

Traditional Medicine And Status

A board from Save the Rhino Foundation Nepal reads 'my horn is NOT medecine.' Image credit: Thomas Dutour/Shutterstock.com

Why do people buy rhino horns? These horns are a strong component of traditional medicines used in Asia. Traditional Chinese medicine has recipes that prescribe consuming rhino horn to cure everything from a fever to gout and snakebites, hallucinations and more. Typically, rhino horns are ground up into a powder form and then mixed into boiling water, for a medicinal hot drink.

Does consuming rhino horn really do anything for you, though? The medicinal benefits of rhino horn have no scientific basis. As per scientists, eating or drinking the horn does as much for you as nibbling on your fingernails. Nonetheless, traditions die hard, and the rhino may just die out along with them, if we do not successfully prevent the killing of these animals that have been around on Earth for millions of years.

People also buy rhino horns to consume for other reasons. Some believe the horn to be an effective aphrodisiac (which is false), as well as a cure for a hangover. Others still are seeking status recognition among their peers, and are said to be gifting rhino horns to family members, friends and colleagues as a way to show their appreciation and also boast off their wealth.

Unfortunately, the rhino continues to lose out, and in the future, it may only live on in protected areas and zoos.
Same standards of food, drinks and cutlery for all ranks: Navy Chief

Supreme Court says yes to permanent commission for women in Navy

Navy thanks 'corona warriors', showers petals on Goa hospitals

India

pti-PTI

Panaji, May 3: A helicopter of the Indian Navy showered petals on two medical facilities in Goa on Sunday as a mark of respect for the dedication and commitment of health workers in the fight against COVID-19 pandemic.

State Health Minister Vishwajit Rane said the Navy's gesture would boost the morale of the health staff. The helicopter dropped flower petals on the Goa Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) building at Bambolim near here in North Goa district, and the specially-designated COVID-19 hospital at Margao in South Goa district.

Rane, who was present in a open area next to the GMCH building along with health workers when the helicopter showered petals, appreciated the "heartening gesture" and said it was an emotional and encouraging step.

"We salute our prime minister Shri @narendramodi ji for this heartwarming gesture of felicitating the frontline workers in our fight against #COVID19," Rane later tweeted.

"A moment of pride and honour for me today to stand beside our Coronawarriors viz, frontline workers, @indiannavy, @IndiaCoastGuard and armed Forces waiting for the flypast to thank all our Coronawarriors who fought relentlessly against #Coronavirus," he said in another tweet.
The South African government is considering a business model which would see South African Airways (SAA) winded down and replaced with a new state-owned airline.

Speaking to the City Press, public enterprises spokesperson Richard Mantu said the department was looking at how this new national carrier could remain competitive and offer safe and high-quality service.

He said the new airline would have a different structure to SAA, and would be focused on staff efficiency and strong leadership.

Mantu added the new airline should be a catalyst for investment, job creation, and economic growth  and that the government must continue to play a role in its operations.

Airlines around the world are failing, but with the correct vision, leadership, business, and operating model, as well as funding and implementations, the new national carrier will be well positioned to take to the skies again and contribute to the South African and African economy, Mantu said.

Mantu said the creation of this new airline would require the implementation of an effective corporate structure, as well as strong and experienced management.

It would have to be staffed at competitive rates to allow it to compete in the post-COVID-19 environment, he added.

It is essential to build a strong leadership coalition which is robust and strong enough to find solutions, and establish the foundations of a new airline, with a growth path in this uncertain environment, that is in the best interest of our nation and all of its citizens, Mantu said.

Old SAA is dead

SAAs business rescue practitioners began the process of liquidating the airline last month after the government declined to provide another bailout package, and have asked all employees to agree to severance packages.

On 2 May, Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan stated that the old SAA is dead, there is no doubt about that, adding that it may be replaced by a new national carrier or other airlines.

Gordhan did not elaborate at the time on how this new SAA could be created, calling it a complex issue.

The national COVID-19 lockdown has had a significant effect on South Africas airline industry, as it has stopped all international and domestic air travel.

Following the implementation of the lockdown, SAA applied to the government for another bailout.

This application was denied and resulted in the airline asking all employees to agree to severance packages.

The business rescue practitioners said the company did not have funds to continue trading or to pay salaries beyond the end of April, following years of making a loss and using taxpayers money to stay alive.

Labour unions have opposed the plan to retrench all staff at the airline, but are engaging with the government regarding the formation of a new state-owned airline to replace SAA.

A number of unions have also taken the issue to the labour court to attempt to block the mass retrenchment of workers at SAA, with the court yet to make a judgement regarding the planned staff cuts.
ISTANBUL - A smartphone app in Turkey asked for Murat Bur's identity number, his father's name and information about his relatives. Did he have any underlying health conditions, the app wondered, presenting him a list of options. How was he feeling at the moment, it asked. It also requested permission to track his movements.

None of this felt intrusive to Bur, a 38-year old personal trainer. The app, which he had voluntarily downloaded, had helpfully warned him that his neighborhood was a coronavirus hot spot. "There are people in our country still having parties and picnics. I do not see the harm in people being followed," he said. "There is an extraordinary situation in the world."

To the feelings of fear, restlessness, insecurity and sorrow taking hold around the globe, the pandemic era has added another certainty: being watched.

In a matter of months, tens of millions of people in dozens of countries have been placed under surveillance. Governments, private companies and researchers observe the health, habits and movements of citizens, often without their consent. It is a massive effort, aimed at enforcing quarantine rules or tracing the spread of the coronavirus, that has sprung up pell-mell in country after country.

"This is a Manhattan Project-level problem, that is being addressed by people all over the place," said John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab, a research center at the University of Toronto.

He is among a group of researchers and privacy advocates who say there is not enough debate over the consequences and utility of the new surveillance tools, and no indication how long the scrutiny will last - even as the flood of prying apps are becoming a reality for millions of people, like solitude and face masks.

Because of the pandemic, surveillance is a "necessary evil," said Lee Yoon-young, a South Korean university student who was under strict, government-monitored quarantine after returning home from her studies overseas. "I am not disturbed since I understand that stronger quarantine control allows those not under stay-at-home order to continue on with their lives without a nationwide lockdown," she said.

At least 27 countries are using data from cellphone companies to track the movements of citizens, according to Edin Omanovic, the advocacy director for Privacy International, which is keeping a record of surveillance programs. At least 30 countries have developed smartphone apps for the public to download, he said.

The monitoring has raised fewer objections in countries that have been more successful at battling the virus, like Singapore, and provoked a much louder debate in Europe and the United States - a difference that is reflected in the numbers of people who voluntarily download tracking applications.

In South Korea, millions of people have signed up to use websites or apps that show how the virus is spreading. More than 2 million Australians quickly downloaded a coronavirus contact-tracing app that was released on Sunday. But 3 in 5 Americans say they are unwilling or unable to use an infection-alert system being developed by Google and Apple, a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll has found.

Epidemiologists and government health officials have taken a central role in designing some of the coronavirus tracking programs. Privacy groups have been far more concerned when intelligence agencies have taken the lead, as they have in Pakistan and Israel, or when governments outsource tracing to private companies.

Infection-tracking software by NSO, an Israeli company, has attracted criticism before it has even launched. The company is best know for designing surveillance tools used by authoritarian governments to spy on dissidents, journalists and others. A person close to NSO said its new coronavirus tracking software, called Fleming, was being tested by more than two dozen governments around the world.

The pandemic has all but silenced the debate about encroachments on privacy by corporations, Scott-Railton said. "People are anxious. They are worried. They want to go back to normal, to handle doorknobs, to online date.

"We are looking to anyone who is pitching hope."

- - -

Turkey, which is wrestling with one of the worst outbreaks in the world, uses technology to track the spread of the virus in at least two ways. One is the app, called Life Fits in the Home, which solicits personal details to track infections and provides information, including the location of nearby hospitals and pharmacies.

The government has said that it is doing mandatory tracking of people 65 years or older, who are required to quarantine, and sending them cellphone messages when they venture out of their homes.

There has been little public backlash against the surveillance in Turkey, where people are accustomed to an intrusive and increasingly authoritarian central government. Any misgivings have also been tempered by a feeling the state should be taking stronger measures to control the outbreak.

Cigdem Sahin, an economics professor at Istanbul University, said she didn't think twice before downloading the tracking app, even though she is normally wary of government surveillance.

"I actually think it might be useful to surveil the spread of corona - if the system is used effectively and does not give an error," she said.

"I have no doubt that Turkey will use such apps as a vehicle for pressure and surveillance when need be," Sahin said.

But her primary concern was whether the app could work properly. It told her little she did not already know about her neighborhood, called Fatih, where there was a high concentration of infections. So she stopped using the app.

"We are being watched and our lives are being recorded, and one wonders how to deal with it," she said. "There is no escaping it."

One of the most critical questions is whether the programs actually yield reliable information about infection chains. Hasan Kasap, 73, a retired university professor, said he received a text message from the health ministry last month warning him to stay home, though he said he had not left his apartment in weeks.

"This approach made me lose my trust in this institution or this tracking system and even made me feel insulted," he said. "Location information is private. It should remain private." After the message, he turned off the option on his own phone that allowed it to be tracked, he said.

- - -

South Korea has never imposed a nationwide lockdown or travel restrictions in response to the coronavirus, only issuing strong advisories against nonessential travel as part of a national social distancing campaign. The country's coronavirus response, featuring widespread testing for infections, is often held up as a model around the world.

As part of that effort, South Korea's health authorities track the movement of people and then later retraces the steps of those diagnosed with the virus by using GPS phone tracking, credit card records, surveillance video and interviews with patients. The patient travel histories are published without names to help others identify whether they crossed paths with a virus carrier.

Another smartphone app monitors thousands of people under self-quarantine and reports their movements to the government.

Lee Yoon-young, the university student who has been under the remotely monitored quarantine, said she welcomed the geo-positioning app on her phone that allowed the government to pinpoint her location.

Lee returned to South Korea after her studies in the United Kingdom were disrupted by the pandemic. The contrast between the government response in the two countries was stark. In Brighton, where she studied, she had relied on patchy news reports to identify virus-prone locations to avoid. In South Korea, she has found it reassuring to be able to see online travel histories of virus carriers.

But the Korean travel data can be accessed not just by health-conscious residents but also voyeuristic onlookers, which was "concerning," she said, adding that personal information about infected people should be redacted.

Singapore also mobilized early to contain the epidemic by aggressively tracking chains of infection, imposing harsh penalties on patients who violated quarantine rules and mounting ubiquitous public awareness campaigns - while avoiding a full lockdown. Cellphone apps were developed to helped enforce self-quarantine rules and aid the contact-tracing effort by making use of Bluetooth technology.

Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, an author and journalist who lives in New York, saw how strictly quarantine rules were enforced when she flew to Singapore in late March and was forced to self-isolate in a hotel. Her location was monitored through her cellphone and twice a day, she was required to verify her whereabouts for the government, occasionally by sending a picture of her surroundings. Once, she got a video call from health officials, just to make sure she was where she said she was.

"They were very strict about it," she said. "As they should be."

Her experience in New York, with one of the world's deadliest outbreaks, made her more willing to accept government monitoring and less tolerant of people flouting quarantine and other distancing rules. "These are desperate times. I would have fought for my personal liberties on many levels before. Now I am the one trying to restrict the people around me. I am more of a scold," she said.

The intrusions were easier to accept because Singapore's government appeared to have citizens' welfare in mind, and no "ulterior motives," she said. But the number of intrusions was rising: one government app allowed people to report violations by their neighbors. More recently, some grocery stores had required people to provide their identity numbers to enter.

"It's worrying once you give up these liberties," she said. "Is this the way it's always going to be?"

- - -

The experience of countries hurriedly deploying apps and similar surveillance software highlights the limits of such technology and the challenge of wide-scale public buy-in even in places that are largely open to being watched.

Experts warn, for example, that apps relying on Bluetooth radios can provide inexact location data and falsely identify people as infected.

Jason Bay, the director of Singapore's contact tracing app, called TraceTogether, said in an online post last month, "If you ask me whether any Bluetooth contact tracing system deployed or under development, anywhere in the world, is ready to replace manual contact tracing, I will without qualification say that the answer is no."

John Scott-Railton of Citizen Lab said the effectiveness of such apps was ultimately determined by "human social behavior and racial and age demographics."

Apps are of limited utility unless a large percentage of a country's population downloads them, and even then, the reach of the software is limited to people who own smartphones, which often excluded lower income people, racial minorities and people over 65, he said.

Some surveillance initiatives have also run into organized efforts to rein them in.

In Israel, a group of civil liberties groups went to court in March to block a far-reaching effort by Israel's internal security agency, the Shin Bet, to track cellphones of covid-19 patients. The agency uses cellphone location signals of known coronavirus cases and its own vast trove of data to detect users who have been in proximity to an infected person - information health officials use to alert people to self-isolate.

On Sunday, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the government tracking would require parliamentary legislation to continue much past the end of April, when the emergency measure was due to expire.

Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, was one of the groups that filed a petition with the high court objecting to the government's reliance on emergency powers to expand the reach of its security apparatus. "Surveillance violates the constitutional right to privacy and there exist other tools to deal with the coronavirus," said Suhad Bishara, an attorney for Adalah.

While contact tracing is an important tool for isolating infected people, "extending the work of such an agency to do civil-related matters becomes very problematic," she said, adding that many Palestinians, subject to surveillance or interrogations by Israeli security services over decades, fear the agency would misuse health records and other data it has access to, she said.

Roxanne Halper, 60, who works in international development and leans toward the left end of Israel's political spectrum, said she would normally be wary of government surveillance, but not this time.

"I feel like I should have a problem with it and yet I don't," Halper said during a phone interview from her home on a small kibbutz between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Like many, she said health considerations now seem more pressing than privacy. She had even downloaded a voluntary government app and appreciated it every day when it told her she had had no contact with a known coronavirus case. (The app is separate from the Internal Security Agency's tracking efforts.)

"I take comfort from that," she said. "I can't be afraid of the [risk to privacy] right now. I'm much more afraid of corona and what it's doing to society," she said.

- - -

Kim reported from Seoul and Hendrix from Jerusalem. The Washington Post's Shibani Mahtani in Hong Kong, Zeynep Karatas in Istanbul and Brian Murphy in Washington contributed to this report.
New Delhi, May 3 : Commenting on #BanRSS hashtag trending on Twitter, senior Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi said, here on Sunday, though he differed with many Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) views he disagreed with the hashtag as India needed divergent views.

Singhvi said India needed both the extreme left and right views on economic issues. However, it may create a controversy as the Congress is opposed to both the extreme ideologies.

"India needs the extreme left and right views in economic spectrum. Similarly, need non-Hindu and Hindu views. Hence, cannot ban RSS. It's important that people from all walks exist in India to make us truly plural. Disagree with #BanRSS! Equally disagree with many #rss views!," Singhvi tweeted.

While the RSS considers itself a social cultural organisation, it is said to be political mentor of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is facing a defamation case in Mumbai for linking murder of Gauri Lankesh with the RSS. He has been bashing the RSS on different issues, including communalism and lynchings.
Pilibhit : , May 3 (IANS) Five persons have been injured in a series of attacks by a tiger in the Jari village near the Pilibhit Tiger Reserve (PTR) in Uttar Pradesh.

The tiger also attempted to attack a forest department team that was called in to push it back into the wild. Two persons were injured in this attack.

According to the victims, the incident first took place on Friday when the tiger attacked two brothers -- Gurpreet Singh and Hardeep Singh of village Jari -- when they were on way to their agricultural field on their motorcycle. They had a close shave but managed to flee by speeding away on their motorbike.

A few minutes later, the tiger pounced at Ram Bahadur, a cyclist, and injured him. The big cat left him as it was distracted by the noise of the bike's engine and horn blown by the two brothers.

Within 10 minutes, the tiger again pounced on two commuters, Ujagar Singh and his aide Lalta Prasad of Lalpur village. They sustained serious claw injuries on their heads and shoulders. As they started to scream and brandished the rod they were carrying, the tiger abandoned them and disappeared into the nearby shrubs.

The PTR Deputy Director Naveen Khandelwal said the tiger also charged at the forest staff when they tried to push it back towards the jungle.

"The operation was suspended on Friday afternoon and will be resumed depending upon the suitability of the ground conditions as we do not want to tranquilize the tiger. For the safety and security of villagers, the forest teams will keep monitoring the big cat's movement till the time it retreats into the forest," Khandelwal said.

On Saturday, the forest team lay in wait for the tiger but it did not make an appearance.

The local residents have been advised to remain indoors and to move in groups, only if necessary.

The victims would be given financial compensation, the official added.
The five security force personnel killed during an operation in Jammu and Kashmirs Handwara displayed supreme sacrifice while fighting and eliminating terrorists, the Indian Army said on Sunday as it paid its tribute and condoled their deaths.

Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, the commanding officer of the armys 21 Rashtriya Rifles battalion, Major Anuj Sood, Naik Rajesh Kumar and Lance Naik Dinesh Singh and sub-inspector Shakeel Qazi of the Jammu and Kashmir police were killed after the more than 12-hours of a firefight with terrorists in Handwara district.

In a series of tweets, with messages from the Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat and the army chief Gen MM Naravane, the force said Handwara operation highlighted the determination of the security forces to safeguard the lives of the people.

This operation exemplified true tradition and strong determination of the #SecurityForces to safeguard the lives of own citizens, it said.

The army had a special mention for Col Sharma, who was in charge of his men and had been locked in a gunfight with the terrorists holed up inside a house in Rajwar forests in Changimulla area of Handwara.

Col Sharma, who is survived by his wife and a 12-year-old daughter, had served in the Kashmir valley for a long time and twice awarded the Sena Medal for gallantry.

Commanding Officer leading from the front along with other personnel of the unit and J&K Police have laid down their lives, living upto the motto; Service Before Self (soc), the army said in a tweet.

The #ArmedForces are proud of their courage as they have successfully eliminated the terrorists. We salute these brave personnel and express our deep felt condolences for the bereaved families (sic), it added.

Two terrorists were also killed in the encounter that began around 3:30pm on Saturday after they took hostages inside the house.

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Researchers say it takes 21 days to develop new habits. In that time, weve seen bewildering changes in our communities and around the world. What habits have we formed and which will endure?

Despite the travel bans, quarantines, isolation and tragedy -- and the roller coaster of emotions that follow, were seeing firsthand the exponential value of nature in her simplest forms. In the last 21 days, Ive seen many new faces on the Helena trails and at Tenmile Creek Park. While 6 feet apart, we are connecting with a common experience of the power of Nature and the emotional, mental, and physical healing she provides. Listening to a creek, the smell after a rainstorm, feeling the sun on your face and the dirt under our feet on a mountain trail, these are all experiences that bring us together even when were apart.

Nature is also healing herself while the world presses pause. We are seeing a clearer picture of our role in the natural systems that provide clean air, water and habitable space. Still, statewide our outdoor resources are seeing unprecedented use -- especially lands and trails close to cities and towns. This is a fortunate dilemma, were lucky to have elbow room and I am grateful for Governor Bullock demonstrating leadership and including outdoor activity in his executive orders.

But our solace isnt free. What the public may not know is that behind the scenes, the land trust community and public land managers work hard to assemble public and private funding for our annual work and project budgets. We do not have sufficient or consistent funding to ensure protection of key wildlife, public access to streams, and public land or trail additions. Not to mention funding for maintaining those outdoor assets in the face of unprecedented demand currently, and undoubtedly in the future. The Great American Outdoors Act would finally fix that, with full, dedicated funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF).

When our leaders in Congress established LWCF 56 years ago, little did they know that their bipartisan commitment to safeguarding our natural areas would be one of the constants for their children and grandchildren in a COVID-19 reality. From Glacier and Yellowstone National parks to eastern Montana, our pristine outdoors feed our souls but they also drive this states economy. LWCF delivers pristine wildlife habitat and urban parks alike. It bridges rural urban divides, and Montanas future economic and physical well-being depends on it; because our outdoor places fuel commerce for our Main Street businesses and large enterprises alike.

In the last 21 days, weve developed new habits, and a habit that I hope endures is a deeper commitment to protecting and investing in our public lands. We need nature now more than ever. Our leaders in Congress view our future from the shoulders of those who enacted LWCF in 1964.

Today, as Congress works toward passing another COVID-19 package, they have the opportunity to pass the Great American Outdoors Act to fully fund LWCF, take care of the lands we love, and make smart investments in natural infrastructure that fuels our economy. Those investments will pay dividends for our natural systems -- and the generations who inhabit them -- forever.

Mary Hollow is the executive director of Prickly Pear Land Trust.

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Illustration by Kelly Caminero/The Daily Beast/Shutterstock

Lynn sat in the parking lot of her opioid treatment clinic in Columbus, Ohio, for hours on a recent Tuesday. Like in other parts of the country, the coronavirus pandemic was leading to longer wait times for medicationin this case, Suboxone.

Around her, people idled in their cars or stood in a smoking area until the doctor called them inside via text message. The process to get treatment took nearly four hours. I was worried COVID might escalate more. I didn't want to be dependent on something that I wouldn't be able to get all of a sudden, said the 30-year-old, who asked to be identified only by her middle name. I kind of weaned myself off Suboxone. That led to an overdose.

Lynn has struggled with heroin addiction since 2018. She said she hadnt used opioids for three months, until she was hit by the stresses and isolation of COVID-19, which public health officials fear may be contributing to relapses in Ohios recovery community and beyond. Lynn thought she could taper off doses of Suboxone, a drug containing buprenorphine thats used to treat opiate addiction, in case the pandemic caused more roadblocks for her treatment.

But on a Saturday night in late March, Lynn overdosed at her apartment after using heroin laced with fentanyl. When her boyfriend realized the blow dryer was running for a long time, he shoved through the bathroom door and found her, then administered Narcan, a brand of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone. As soon as I took one puzzle piece out of place, she said, the whole thing fell apart.

He Avenged His Sons MurderAnd Exposed the Opioid Crisis in America

Amid social distancing, authorities nationwide are reporting a surge in fatal opioid overdoses. Addiction and recovery advocates say the U.S. is now battling two epidemics at once. From 1999 to 2018, opioid overdoses involving prescription and illicit drugs have killed nearly 450,000 Americans. (One recent study found an additional 99,160 opioid deaths, previously unreported because of incomplete medical records.)

Story continues

In Franklin County, Ohio, where Lynn lives, the coroner is warning residents of a continued spike in drug deaths, including six on April 24. One week before, the coroner announced that five people died in a span of 12 hours. In February, overdoses were so prevalent the coroner said she might need a temporary morgue to handle the deluge.

Folks for the fourth Friday in a row we have had a surge of overdose deaths: 6 yesterday, Dr. Anahi Ortiz posted on Facebook on April 25. Please keep that narcan on hand, use fentanyl test strips and call 911 for an overdose. Families and friends check on your loved ones who use frequently, consider Thursday, Friday and Saturday to check in and talk.

Montgomery County, Ohiowhich is home to Dayton and was considered the countrys overdose capital in 2017is reporting a 50 percent jump in overdoses over last year. Coroner Kent Harshbarger told one local news outlet: March had around 42 which, our normal baseline is somewhere in the 20s usually. So 42 is a significant increase.

Indeed, authorities in counties across Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania and New York are also reporting rises in overdoses during the COVID-19 crisis.

Bags of heroin, some laced with fentanyl. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Helen Jones-Kelley, the executive director of Montgomery County Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services, said her agency is redoubling efforts to get in front of the spate of overdoses. That includes delivering naloxone kits to households with a history of drug abuse and reviewing ledgers to see whose kits are expired. She said her task force is penning personal notes for those who might be struggling, and informing people about telehealth treatment options for addiction. We think we can get a handle on this before it gets to a point where theres no turning back, Jones-Kelley told The Daily Beast.

The county had anticipated some spikes in overdoses because of a tumultuous last year, Jones-Kelley said. In August, a gunman killed nine people outside a Dayton bar, and tornadoes walloped Dayton and surrounding areas in May.

As those anniversary dates come around, you expect people to self-medicate to some extent, she said. This pandemic has escalated that behavior. Its the anxiety. You have people beat down to the point where coping strategies are at the lowest ebb.

Lynn told The Daily Beast she feels lucky to live with her partner, who is supportive of her recovery and knows the signs of opioid addiction; not everyone has a support system. Were asking families of those with substance use disorder to be a little bit more understanding. If you know whats going on, you can save them. You can monitor them. But if theyre hiding it, its roulette, she said.

She works with Harm Reduction Ohio, a nonprofit that connects people to Narcan kits and syringes for safer use. Im hearing of a lot of people relapsingpeople who rely on therapy and meetings. Zoom is just not the same, Lynn said.

Our worst fear is that because of social isolation, people are not being found or treated immediately, she added.

Jamie Decker, a peer support specialist at a Findlay hospital, said he lost a friend to a suspected heroin overdose last week. The 42-year-old man, who lived alone, was found on a Monday. Decker says the coronavirus pandemic may have led to his fatal drug use, though he struggled with addiction for years and was in and out of recovery.

We have a hard enough time finding a routine that works to stay in recovery, Decker, who has been sober for six years, told The Daily Beast. To find something and have it change creates a whole new set of problems. I have seen people relapsing more than usual.

Decker, 51, is on the board of Harm Reduction Ohio and supplies Narcan to drug users who need it. No judgment, nothing like that, Decker said. Its not my journey. I would just like for them to stay alive and stay healthy long enough that they will want to make different choices.

The people Im giving it to dont want to go to the health department, he said.

Lynn said isolation and boredom can be a trigger. The opposite of addiction is human connection, not sobriety, she said. Just being totally isolatedespecially now that stimulus money came through for a bunch of peopleits a huge temptation. I didnt get my money yet, and Im glad I didnt.

Traci Green, director of the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, told The Daily Beast that community programs should push to secure as much naloxone as possible and provide easy access to treatment in light of stimulus checks.

Because people will have money and the market pays attention to these things, Green said. All markets pay attention to these things. The illicit market is no different.

While some Americans struggle to find toilet paper and cleaning supplies during the pandemic, the countrys drug users are also facing a dwindling supply.

COVID-19 has interrupted the global supply chain of illicit drugs, including the synthetic opioid fentanyl. One key supplier in Wuhan, Chinathe worlds first coronavirus epicenter, and a hub for precursor chemicals used to create synthetic opioidsclosed shop earlier this year.

Last week, the Los Angeles Times reported that one of Wuhans biggest customers, Mexican drug cartels, are being stymied by a reduction in exports and new travel restrictions to the United States, leading to a hike in illicit drug prices.

The increased cost for drug users is a key concern, according to Glenn Sterner, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Penn State Abington.

Drug Companies Are Making the Opioid Crisis Worse

Exposing Hollywoods Not-So-Secret Opioid Epidemic: There Was So Much Drug Use

Just like were having trouble finding paper products and stuff in grocery stores, traffickers are having issues trying to find the chemicals to make our drugs, said Sterner, a member of the Opioid Overdose Task Force for the State of Pennsylvania.

In some ways this is a good thing, Sterner added. Were actually seeing less of these substances in our communities in some areas. If we cant get on planes, neither can the drugs.

But Sterner says in places with a shortage of heroin, prices will go up and put a bigger strain on drug users experiencing poverty. That in turn could lead to an increase in criminal activity, as people seek money to buy drugs, and to a spike in the use of other drugs like methamphetamine, which is becoming more widely available. He said addiction treatment for meth, however, isnt as robust as that for opioids.

Meanwhile, people might unknowingly be consuming less potent versions of drugs like heroin, which could be diluted in face of shortages. Sterner said that once the supply chain reemerges, it could open the floodgates to more overdoses, as drugs will be more potent and come at a cheaper post-coronavirus price.

We didnt do so great in preparing for the COVID pandemic, Sterner said. We need to make sure that weve learned from this experience. He said recovery groups and law enforcement should continue to supply naloxone to prepare for higher rates of overdose and provide access to fentanyl test strips. They should also ensure quick access to treatment and make sure residential treatment centers have open beds.

The old way of understanding the opioid crisis may not be the best way of understanding it in the post-COVID economy, Sterner added.

Green, of Brandeis University, said coronavirus is an opportunity to showcase what harm reduction can do in emergency situations.

An officer from the US Customs and Border Protection, Trade and Cargo Division finds Oxycodon pills in a parcel at John F. Kennedy Airport's US Postal Service facility in New York last year. The coronavirus pandemic is disrupting the global drug trade. Johannes EISELE / AFP via Getty Images

Some clinics and treatment centers decreased hours at their physical locations but continue to provide mobile services and delivery. (In New York City, for example, officials rolled out a methadone delivery system for people who are quarantined.)

Green also said the governments approval of certain emergency measureslike prescribing buprenorphine via telemedicinewas unexpected.

Its an opportunity to think about why we werent doing this before, she said.

Last month, the federal agencies that regulate opioid treatment programs (OTPs)which dispense methadone, buprenorphine and naltrexone to treat addictionissued guidance on how clinics should treat patients during COVID, including those quarantined at home with the virus.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) said providers can now prescribe buprenorphine over the phone, though this exemption doesnt apply to methadone. OTPs can also provide take-home medications, up to 14 doses for clinically less stable patients and 28 doses for stable patients.

Still, not all clinics followed the guidance, let alone quarantine protocols.

One patient and advocate, Louise Vincent, said more than 40 patients were waiting in her North Carolina methadone clinic on a recent Saturday. Ive called the state on them from Day 1. Theyre absolutely having tons more people than should be in a building [during COVID], she said.

Vincent, 44, is executive director of the Urban Survivors Union, a group of former and active users that advocates for drug policy reform. She says her OTP has yet to offer appointments via teleconferencing, and that it took more than a month for the clinic to allow take-home medications.

Nurses are behind glass and have masks and gloves, but people dont. Theres adult folks with oxygen tanks, people who have their parents coming in, Vincent said. While things are improving at her clinic, she said, Theres still been a number of times I put myself at terrible risk to be in there.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) have allowed providers to prescribe buprenorphine over the phone during the coronavirus pandemic, though this exemption doesnt apply to methadone. Photo by Jordan Silverman/ Getty Images

The National Alliance for Medication Assisted Recovery (NAMA) issued an April 8 letter describing some OTPS that allegedly forced patients to line up closely for their doses and continued to require in-person group counseling. Two patients in the same state who tested positive for COVID-19 were still regularly attending the OTP ... without being encouraged to quarantine.

The patients are concerned they will spread the virus to other patients and their community but are unable to quarantine because the Program Director advised they could not figure out how to implement chain of custody protocols, the letter states.

A majority of the opioid treatment programs are really trying, but theres a substantial minority of bad actors who are impacting a lot of patients, NAMA president Zachary Talbott told The Daily Beast, adding there could be tragic consequences for putting patients through too many hoops during a national emergency.

The opioid crisis rages on, even with COVID-19 pandemic, Talbott said. So you have two people caught in between two epidemics. If theyre not treated with dignity and respect that could potentially worsen both crises.

One 30-year-old Wisconsin man was visiting family in New York last month when COVID-19 disrupted his plans to return home safely. As a methadone patient for four years, his clinic approved him for guest dosing. When he requested a two-week extension, the Wisconsin State Opioid Treatment Authority declined his request.

The patient, who asked to remain anonymous, said the Wisconsin SOTA, Elizabeth Collier, refused the extension and told him, Flights are very cheap right now. Collier allegedly told him hed have to fly back to the Badger State or transfer to a New York clinic without insurancesomething he says he could not afford to do.

Asked for comment, a spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services said, Due to privacy laws we cannot discuss a persons treatment or provide any personal health information.

On Sunday, the man secured a flight back home. He says hes worried about transmitting COVID-19 to his 67-year-old mother. Both of us will be in the same household thats not set up for quarantining one person, the patient told The Daily Beast last week. It kept me up last night. I dont know how this is going to work. Thats my biggest fear: that Im going to get sick on the plane and bring it home to her.

Patients arent the only ones with anxiety over COVID. Mark W. Parrino, president of the American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence (AATOD), an industry trade group, said some OTPs ran out of protective equipment and were treating patients without masks.

Parrino said he received reports of one Louisiana addiction nurse dying of COVID, and of another OTP nurse in Baltimore contracting the virus.

When you have reports from news organizations applauding first responders, police or firefighters as heroes, you dont see that kind of reporting on the staff of OTPs, Parrino said. That may be related to stigma.

Allison Burns, the executive director of Hope House, a 95-bed residential treatment program in Bostons Methadone Mile, said some OTPs lack resources to enforce social distancing among patients waiting outside for methadone. When it comes down to taking methadone every day or being sick, theyll stand in line, Burns said.

Her staff has collaborated with OTPs to allow curbside dosing and pickups of medications with a clear chain of custody. All these things weve put in place but they didn't exist before, Burns said. It was an absolute crapshoot the first two weeks.

While smaller residential treatment facilities stopped accepting new patients, Hope House has kept its doors open during coronavirus.

Burns, a pharmacist who served in the Navy, said she immediately created quarantine quarters, hired professional cleaners, and crafted a 21-page coronavirus protocol she shared with other providers. She also obtained protective masks for all patients and staff.

Many of her patients dont have the means to buy smartphones, so her facility purchased tablets for their counseling sessions on Zoom.

I can only imagine what people are dealing with if theyre not in a facility, if they dont have anyone advocating for them, she said. Getting access to treatment is hard enough to begin with. During a pandemic, there are not as many providers available.

For Scott Strode, who runs The Phoenix, a free network of gyms for people in recovery, things changed overnight.

We werent able to run our programs anymore in person, Strode, a triathlete who once struggled with addiction, told The Daily Beast. Because of the constraint that was put on us, we had to figure out how to do this virtually.

Through live-streamed classes, which focus on yoga, meditation or weight-training, and Zoom social hours, the Phoenix has been able to reach people who otherwise wouldnt have visited its brick-and-mortar locations. Some new members live in more rural communities and even other countries.

In some ways its given us an opportunity to get to more people but in the same breath its taken away significant recovery support for a lot of people who are at different points on their recovery journey, Strode said.

A current thats operating under the radar is this despair, anxiety, feeling disconnected, fearful, he added. That is a fertile ground for addiction.

Strode said virtual programming has brought 1,000 participants a week. The only requirement to join is that theyve been sober for at least 48 hours.

Weve forwarded all our phone lines to cellphones for our staff, Strode said. The thing that scares me is the people we dont see that used to come to our locations.

In Detroit, Michigan, one recovery center is reeling from the loss of three employees to COVID. Twenty-five of its members also died of the virus.

Andre Johnson, president of the Detroit Recovery Project, said that even if people stay in recovery, theyre facing other health disorders and dont always have access to treatment. His clients are also struggling with social distancing.

Recovery folks are a tight-knit family. When people see each other, they hug each other, embrace each other, and tell each other they love each other, he told The Daily Beast. Now were challenged to change the cultural norm, which is a process in itself.

People of color are not trusting of the government, Johnson added. They havent always trusted white folks when you look at history, when you look at slavery and the trauma its caused. Now were dealing with COVID. Weve got so many bodies but not enough space in the morgues.

This creates mental health challenges for people, Johnson said.

As of Monday, the city had 8,679 cases of COVID and 950 deaths. And, as the Associated Press reported, nearly 77 percent of the residents who were killed by coronavirus-related complications have been African-American.

Detroit Recovery Project has responded by continuing to direct people to addiction treatmentand by supplying 1,000 masks and administering 200 COVID tests in a parking lot. The group is also helping older residents connect on Zoom. Ive seen a lot of love and people coming together to raise money over the last few weeks, Johnson said. Not only are people struggling with their addiction, but they cant even eat.

Were talking about a disenfranchised community, he added. People who are already living in a harsh situation and now its gotten worse.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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Nearly 300 Vietnamese citizens in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were flown back to Vietnam on Sunday with the support of the government amid the complex developments of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.

Flight number VN0088 departing from Dubai and landed safely at Can Tho International Airport in the namesake city, about 170km southwest of Ho Chi Minh City, with 297 Vietnamese citizens on board.

According to Vietnam Airlines, this was its first flight carrying Vietnamese from the Middle East because Dubai is not the carriers regular destination.

Taking part in this evacuation effort, made on Saturday and Sunday, were Vietnamese government agencies, the Vietnamese Embassy in the UAE, and national carrier Vietnam Airlines.

The Vietnamese government has tried its best to arrange such flights to repatriate the most vulnerable citizens from abroad, against the backdrop that all commercial flights between Vietnam and other countries have been temporarily shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Among these 297 citizens, the youngest is just only more than one month old and the oldest is a 78-year-old woman.

The rest include under-18-year-old overseas students, pregnant women, sick people, unemployed workers, travelers with expired visas, and others.

Vietnam Airlines said it had adhered to all safety protocols in order to protect everyones health and prevent any risk of COVID-19 infection.

All the passengers were subject to temperature checks, completed health declaration, and were sent to a centralized quarantine zone in Bac Lieu Province, over 100km south of Can Tho, as per regulations.

Before the UAE flight, the Can Tho airport had received two evacuation flights with 320 Vietnamese returnees from Singapore and Indonesia.

These passengers had also been transferred to quarantine areas in Can Tho and nearby Soc Trang Province.

On Friday, another flight taking off from Canada with nearly 300 Vietnamese citizens aboard touched down at Van Don International Airport, located in northern Quang Ninh Province, about 150km from Hanoi.

These people were evacuated because of the COVID-19 epidemic as well.

The Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam had announced there would be 13 flights to take Vietnamese citizens back from Japan, the U.S., Canada, France, Russia, Spain, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and the UAE.

Vietnamese agencies will continue repatriating more citizens in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the government said.

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While the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has yet to make definitive plans for the placement of dredged material pulled from Pools 5 and 6 near Winona, it is studying potential land  with a hope that beneficial use will help optimize existing land.

Pool 5 is located between Lock and Dam 4 in Alma, Wisconsin, and Lock and Dam 5 in Minneiska. Pool 6 is located at Lock and Dam 5A and stretches down to Lock and Dam 6 in Trempealeau, spanning nearly 15 miles.

As for where the Corps is having luck when it comes to dredged material placement between the two pools, Pool 5 is their shining star.

Bob Edstrom, project manager for dredged material management plans, said the Corps is looking to acquire roughly 950 acres of land for Pool 5 and use it immediately for dredged material placement.

When were talking 950 acres, thats a considerable amount of property and gives us a great deal of capacity, Edstrom said. So well identify the first few acres to be used. Right now, were looking at the parcel south (and north) of County Road 84.

The parcel Edstrom is referring to is the Rolling Prairie site, which is located in Wabasha County, 1.5 miles from West Newton Chute.

According to the Pool 5 Dredged Material Management Plan, the Corps describes the Rolling Prairie site as a multi-parcel mixed agricultural and upland placement site which provides more than 40 years of capacity, amounting to about 18,500,000 cubic yards.

Edstrom added that, if all goes well with land acquisition, a team will subsequently be assembled and look at official wetland delineations and cultural investigations  since the Corps is aware there may be tribal sites in the area  as well as develop site design.

The Corps is looking to meet with locals in the area of the Rolling Prairie site to address concerns about water management on the site and speak with the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Minnesota and Wisconsin Departments of Natural Resources, as the latter two have suggested ideas relating to site restoration opportunities.

In regards to site restoration, Edstrom said there is a creek on the site that could be undammed at a later date.

For Pool 6 in the Winona area, things are a little more difficult, as the Corps is attempting to keep a minimal footprint while keeping in mind the concerns of those within the area.

The current sites the Corps uses for Pool 6 are Latsch Island and its Homer West site that they acquired in 2018.

In a letter submitted to the Winona Daily News on April 5, one Winonan described the sand placement at Latsch Island as an eyesore and suggested that it already undermines the millions of dollars that public and private investors have spent downtown, which has (spruced) up the riverfront.

The reason why the Corps is looking for additional placement sites for Pool 6, however, is because the amount of material dredged from the Mississippi River has increased.

Edstrom said the Corps has been looking at potential sites for the past seven to eight years, and in that time the average volume of dredged material has gone up considerably.

The Corps said the reason for the increase is due to the area being in a wet cycle where there is more precipitation year-round, meaning more rain and snow. When snow melts, more water goes into the river, bringing excess sedimentation with it.

Due to this increase, new placement sites have been deemed necessary, but the Corps has acknowledged that many people are unwilling to sell their land. To compensate, theyre attempting to optimize the land they already use for dumping and expanding them.

The Corps said its new plan was devised by taking the worst dredging season on record  which is 2014 at 100,000 cubic yards  and adding a buffer of about 20 percent and finding just enough land to store upwards of 170,000 cubic yards of dredged material, amounting to about 12 acres of land.

Corps officials said they believe they can manage this downsize in acreage through what they call beneficial use, meaning the materials are available for anybody to take and use them for their purposes.

Primary benefactors of the material are the Minnesota Department of Transportation and contractors who are looking for fill.

Since the mid-1990s, according to the Corps, a little more than a million cubic yards of dredged material has been generated from Pool 6, and all of that sand has gone toward beneficial use projects, such as Fleet Farm, the Winona Middle School, the interstate bridge between Winona and Wisconsin and Industrial Park.

We really look at those sites (for) beneficial use or restoration opportunities, Edstrom said. We try to be good stewards, we try to be good neighbors. We never try to just leave these exposed piles of sand just because.

While optimizing the current land it has for Pool 6 is its preferred route, the Corps has acknowledged feedback from the community against the idea and is still working with the city to develop a plan that is agreeable for everybody.

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Cannasouth Limited (NZX: CBD , Cannasouth) is pleased to announce it has entered into a supply agreement with MediPharm Labs Australia Pty Ltd (MediPharm Labs Australia) for the supply of white label medicinal cannabis products into the New Zealand Market.

MediPharm Labs Australia is a subsidiary of MediPharm Labs Corp. (TSX: LABS) (OTCQX: MEDIF) (FSE:MLZ) (MediPharm Labs), a listed Canadian public company with a market capitalisation of approximately C$260m.

The agreement supports an important step for Cannasouth in meeting an initial business objective for the year, which includes making pharmaceutical grade medicinal cannabis products (products) available to New Zealand patients as soon as possible.

Under the agreement, MediPharm Labs Australia will supply a range of products that meet the required high-quality standards as regulated under the New Zealand Medicinal Cannabis Scheme (the Scheme). The Scheme came into effect on 1 April 2020 with the commencement of the Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis) Regulations 2019 where the New Zealand Ministry of Healths, Medicinal Cannabis Agency is responsible for regulatory oversight. After an exhaustive global search of New Zealand-compliant medicinal cannabis product manufacturers, Cannasouth's CEO Mark Lucas was impressed with both MediPharm's product range as well as the companys ability to deliver products that comply with Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs) and New Zealand quality standards.

Lucas says, "This is an important development in Cannasouth's initial go-to-market product strategy, and is a great first step for Cannasouth in entering the market by supplying prescribers and patients with a range of affordable, quality pharmaceutical-grade medicinal cannabis products.

Patients are desperately waiting for high-quality and competitively priced new cannabis-based medicines to become available under the Medicinal Cannabis scheme, and we are very pleased to achieve this first important step in that process. Meanwhile, Cannasouths experienced team of scientists will continue R&D efforts to develop our own next generation medicinal cannabis products, which is phase two of our product development plan.

As New Zealand is set to start seeing increased demand from patients for medicinal cannabis, MediPharm Labs will be ready to provide patients with a reliable supply of innovative pharmaceutical-quality products they can trust, said Warren Everitt, Chief Executive Officer, MediPharm Labs Australia. We are thrilled to be working with Cannasouth to bring new formulations and products to the New Zealand market. MediPharm Labs is well-equipped with our expertise, pharma-focused team of scientists, and GMP platform to meet the new quality standards set out by New Zealands regulators, which require all medicinal cannabis products be manufactured under GMP.

During the two-year term of the agreement with MediPharm, Cannasouth will have exclusive rights to the formulation and dosage forms set out in the agreement for the New Zealand market. MediPharm will supply the products with Cannasouths branding. As the Scheme is in its foundation stages, Cannasouth is unable to provide revenue estimates for sales of these products at this time.

The agreement is conditional on confirmation from the New Zealand Medicinal Cannabis Agency that the products meet New Zealands quality standards and licensing requirements, as well as Cannasouth confirming that MediPharm Labs manufacturing and testing operations align with industry standards and applicable regulatory requirements set for in Cannasouths quality assurance program. It is also conditional on Cannasouth confirming certain insurance arrangements.

About MediPharm Labs

Founded in 2015, MediPharm Labs Corp specializes in the production of purified, pharmaceutical-quality cannabis oil and concentrates and advanced derivative products utilising a Good Manufacturing Practices certified facility with ISO standard-built clean rooms. MediPharm Labs has invested in an expert, research driven team, state-of-the-art technology, downstream purification methodologies and purpose-built facilities with five primary extraction lines for delivery of pure, trusted and precision-dosed cannabis products for its customers. Through its wholesale and white label platforms, MediPharm Labs formulates, develops (including through sensory testing), processes, packages and distributes cannabis extracts and advanced cannabinoid-based products to domestic and international markets. As a global leader, MediPharm Labs has completed commercial exports to Australia and is nearing commercialisation of its Australian manufacturing facility. MediPharm Labs Australia was established in 2017.

About Cannasouth Limited

Cannasouth is a biopharmaceutical research and development company based in the Waikato heartland of New Zealand. The Company has been established to focus on the development of the medicinally beneficial attributes of cannabinoid compounds such as CBD, THC and associated chemical structures that are produced by the cannabis plant. Our goal is the development of next-generation cannabinoid medicines that support patients' health outcomes and improve their quality of life. Our products will be under GMP using environmentally friendly methods without the use of harmful chemicals or solvents, ensuring patients are treated with pure cannabinoid therapeutic compounds of the highest quality.

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A further 19 people have died from Covid-19 the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) confirmed.

There have now been a total of 1,303 deaths in Ireland from the coronavirus.

330 new cases were also confirmed today.

In total there are 21,506 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ireland.

According to data provided by the HPSC:

58% are female and 42% are male

the median age of confirmed cases is 49 years

2,825 cases (13%) have been hospitalised

of those hospitalised, 363 cases have been admitted to ICU

6,068 cases are associated with healthcare workers

Dublin has the highest number of cases at 10,406 (49% of all cases) followed by Kildare with 1,242 cases (6%) and then Cork with 1,164 cases (6%)

of those for whom transmission status is known: community transmission accounts for 63%, close contact accounts for 34%, travel abroad accounts for 3%

Earlier today, Dr Mary Favier, President of the Irish College of GPs, welcomed the fall in Covid-19 patients receiving treating in intensive care units (ICU).

Dr Favier said: "If people spend time in intensive care, whether they have had a serious operation or something has happened to them, it's often only a couple of days, this (coronavirus) can be a couple of weeks.

"So we'd expect there to be quite a substantial lag from the time people get the disease, to being admitted to hospital, to going into intensive care, to being discharged.

So it is very good that we are starting to see that line starting to come down, because it means that infections of, say, a month ago or six weeks ago were dropping.

The latest figure for patients in ICU is 98, only the second time it has been less than 100 in the last month.

Meanwhile, the HSE is investigating after the family of a person who died from Covid-19 was given the wrong body by a hospital mortuary last weekend.

The incident happened at Mullingar Regional Hospital on Friday, April 24.

Victims of Covid-19 are put in sealed body bags by morticians due to the nature of the disease, with neither families or undertakers allowed to view the remains.
Paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale is likely to die in jail as he faces more sexual abuse charges.

The 85-year-old will be heard on May 14 for 10 indecent assault charges and four buggery charges in Victoria between 1973 and 1979 to further his time behind bars.

The charges will likely extend his time behind bars beyond 2022, his earliest release date.

Ridsdale is suffering chronic health problems including heart conditions, arthristis, bowel problems and high blood pressure.

He has been charged with 136 offences since 1994, with his barrister Tim Marsh telling The Australian he is 'a repugnant figure to many, and for reasons that are only too understandable'.

Paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale is likely to die in jail as he faces 14 more sexual abuse charges

The Roman Catholic priest last week he admitted to more than a dozen rapes and indecent assaults against four victims aged seven to 16 in Victoria's west and surf coast in the 1970s.

'I plead guilty to every charge,' he said in the County Court.

Two victims were brothers who were abused when the then-parish priest took them rabbit shooting.

'We trusted our beautiful, innocent children with this b*****d without question when we should have been more vigilant on their behalf,' the elderly parents of the brothers said.

They labelled him as a 'filthy, conniving, make-believe priest and paedophile'.

The older brother was also raped by Ridsdale and suffered flashbacks from when he heard the paedophile's footsteps head to his room.

'The sound of squeaking floorboards causes me extreme anxiety,' he told the court.

The paedophile told the victim after raping him: 'Don't tell anyone anything, they won't believe you over a priest.'

Ridsdale (pictured in 2002) has been charged with 136 offences, with some of his victims as young as four-years-old

Despite the former priest admitting to the abuse, Mr Marsh said his client shouldn't spend more time behind bars for the crimes.

The rapist is serving a 34-year sentence for his horrific offending, but he could also be released in less than two years if granted parole.

Mr Marsh suggested an appropriate sentence would be one that does not interfere with the earliest possible release date and if Ridsdale had been sentenced for all his crimes at once his jail time would not exceed the existing sentence.

The prosecution labelled this as 'inappropriate' and pushed for more prison time.

Judge Gerard Mullaly questioned how Ridsdale was able to offend to such a degree.

'There's something unique about the fact that he had the apparatus of the Catholic church behind him,' Mr Marsh said.

'Had he been a man in virtually any any other walk of life it's highly unlikely it would have gone on for the extent that it did for as long as it did.'

But the judge said Ridsdale could not be punished for the 'failings of the institution'.
President Ram Nath Kovind paid tributes and expressed condolences towards the families of five security personnel martyred in an encounter with terrorists at a village in north Kashmir's Handwara area on Sunday. In counter-terror operations, an Army Colonel and a Major were among the five martyred, the Indian Army said.

Taking to Twitter, President Kovind asserted that the nation will always remember their supreme sacrifice and added that the country will stand united in the fight against the forces of terror and evil.

Tributes to our brave soldiers and security personnel martyred in Handwara, J&K. A grateful nation will always remember their supreme sacrifice. The entire country stands united in the fight against the forces of terror and evil. Thoughts and prayers with the families of martyrs.  President of India (@rashtrapatibhvn) May 3, 2020

READ: 5 personnel including Army Colonel, Major martyred in Handwara; Raksha Mantri pays tribute

Counter-terror operation

A team comprising of five Army and JK Police personnel entered the target area occupied by the terrorists to evacuate the civilians and extricated the civilians, the statement said. Two terrorists were eliminated and the team of five security forces personnel comprising of two Army officers, two Army soldiers and one JK Police Sub Inspector attained martyrdom. Top Lashkar-e Taiba commander Haider from Pakistan has been killed in Handwara encounter, reported news agency ANI quoting IG Kashmir Vijay Kumar.

READ: Handwara: UP govt announces Rs 50 lakh aid, job to kin of martyred Col Ashutosh Sharma

PM Modi Pays Tribute To Martyrs

Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid tributes and expressed condolences to families of five security personnel martyred in an encounter with terrorists at a village in north Kashmir's Handwara area on Sunday.

On Twitter, PM Modi hailed the valour and sacrifice of those brave jawans who "served the nation with utmost dedication and worked tirelessly to protect our citizens".

Tributes to our courageous soldiers and security personnel martyred in Handwara. Their valour and sacrifice will never be forgotten. They served the nation with utmost dedication and worked tirelessly to protect our citizens. Condolences to their families and friends.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) May 3, 2020

READ: Northern Command Indian Army salutes sacrifice of bravehearts in Handwara encounter

READ: Handwara encounter: General Naravane pays tribute to martyrs for their 'supreme sacrifice'
CARACAS (Reuters) - A prison riot in the western Venezuelan state of Portuguesa has left at least 46 people dead and 60 injured, according to a rights group and an opposition lawmaker.

CARACAS (Reuters) - A prison riot in the western Venezuelan state of Portuguesa has left at least 46 people dead and 60 injured, according to a rights group and an opposition lawmaker.

Beatriz Giron, director of the Venezuelan Observatory of Prisons which advocates for inmates' rights, said 46 bodies had been identified after the incident on Friday at the Los Llanos penitentiary. The South American country's prisons are infamous for extreme levels of violence and poor conditions.

The country's prisons minister, Iris Varela, told local newspaper Ultimas Noticias on Friday that the incident resulted from an escape attempt and that the prison director had been shot and wounded. She did not give a death toll, and Venezuela's information ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

Maria Beatriz Martinez, an opposition lawmaker from Portuguesa, said the riot followed came after a ban on inmates' family members bringing them food during visitation, which is common in Venezuelan prisons. The visitation restrictions are part of the country's effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in its overcrowded prisons.

Such restrictions have prompted riots in prisons in several countries, including Italy. In Argentina, prisoners rioted last month demanding some inmates be freed due to fears of infection.

(Reporting by Deisy Buitrago and Vivian Sequera; Writing by Luc Cohen; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
EastGroup Properties, Inc. (NYSE:EGP) shareholders are probably feeling a little disappointed, since its shares fell 2.3% to US$102 in the week after its latest quarterly results. EastGroup Properties reported US$89m in revenue, roughly in line with analyst forecasts, although statutory earnings per share (EPS) of US$0.60 beat expectations, being 6.5% higher than what the analysts expected. This is an important time for investors, as they can track a company's performance in its report, look at what experts are forecasting for next year, and see if there has been any change to expectations for the business. With this in mind, we've gathered the latest statutory forecasts to see what the analysts are expecting for next year.

Check out our latest analysis for EastGroup Properties

NYSE:EGP Past and Future Earnings May 3rd 2020

Taking into account the latest results, the most recent consensus for EastGroup Properties from eight analysts is for revenues of US$357.7m in 2020 which, if met, would be an okay 5.0% increase on its sales over the past 12 months. Statutory earnings per share are forecast to tumble 30% to US$2.25 in the same period. Yet prior to the latest earnings, the analysts had been anticipated revenues of US$354.2m and earnings per share (EPS) of US$2.25 in 2020. The consensus analysts don't seem to have seen anything in these results that would have changed their view on the business, given there's been no major change to their estimates.

The analysts reconfirmed their price target of US$116, showing that the business is executing well and in line with expectations. It could also be instructive to look at the range of analyst estimates, to evaluate how different the outlier opinions are from the mean. Currently, the most bullish analyst values EastGroup Properties at US$140 per share, while the most bearish prices it at US$98.00. There are definitely some different views on the stock, but the range of estimates is not wide enough as to imply that the situation is unforecastable, in our view.

Story continues

Another way we can view these estimates is in the context of the bigger picture, such as how the forecasts stack up against past performance, and whether forecasts are more or less bullish relative to other companies in the industry. We would highlight that EastGroup Properties' revenue growth is expected to slow, with forecast 5.0% increase next year well below the historical 8.4%p.a. growth over the last five years. Compare this to the 189 other companies in this industry with analyst coverage, which are forecast to grow their revenue at 4.4% per year. Factoring in the forecast slowdown in growth, it looks like EastGroup Properties is forecast to grow at about the same rate as the wider industry.

The Bottom Line

The most obvious conclusion is that there's been no major change in the business' prospects in recent times, with the analysts holding their earnings forecasts steady, in line with previous estimates. Happily, there were no real changes to sales forecasts, with the business still expected to grow in line with the overall industry. The consensus price target held steady at US$116, with the latest estimates not enough to have an impact on their price targets.

Keeping that in mind, we still think that the longer term trajectory of the business is much more important for investors to consider. We have forecasts for EastGroup Properties going out to 2024, and you can see them free on our platform here.

Plus, you should also learn about the 5 warning signs we've spotted with EastGroup Properties (including 2 which are a bit unpleasant) .

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
A sign advises shoppers that non-essential items aren't available for purchase inside the Walmart in Gallup, N.M., on May 1, 2020. (Patrick Sandoval/AP)

New Mexico Takes More Drastic Measures Against Virus Hotspot

SANTA FE, N.M.A city that is a modern-day trading post on the southern outskirts of the Navajo Nation was on lockdown over the weekend under the watch of National Guard troops and state police to discourage nonessential travel and commerce as local CCP virus infections soar.

Invoking provisions of the state Riot Control Act, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham ordered residents of Gallup to remain home except for emergencies and blocked roads leading in and out of town to nonessential travel and any vehicles carrying more than two people.

The restrictions were welcomed by local and state officials who have watched COVID-19 infections spread to nursing homes and homeless populations as well as overwhelm hospital intensive care units, leading coronavirus patients to be transferred to Albuquerque.

Some visitors were caught off guard as they traveled from the Navajo Nation to stack up on supplies, only to find entire sections of the Gallup Walmart cordoned off as sales were restricted to food and other essential commodities.

They didnt tell us on the radio or anything, said Patrick Sandoval of Ganado, Ariz., who came in search of food, games, baby wipes, and other items for his family and neighbors. You dont find out until you get in there that its just essential items.

Despite restrictions, lines of shoppers outside Walmart stretched for hundreds of yards on Friday afternoon. Stores have been ordered to close under emergency provisions that expire at noon Monday and can be extended by order of the governor.

Gallup is a hub for basic household supplies, liquor sales, and water-container refills for people living in remote stretches of the Navajo Nationoften without full indoor plumbingand indigenous Zuni Pueblo. The Navajo Nation has imposed evening and weekend curfews on the reservation spanning parts of New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah.

State Sen. George Munoz (D-Gallup) said the flow of visitors had gotten out of hand with little regard to state social distancing mandates, as federal stimulus checks arrived in March. He believes the crackdown had strong public support in Gallup.

COVID-19 infections in Gallup and surrounding McKinley County surpassed 1,060 confirmed cases on Friday and account for 30 percent of the cases stateside, surpassing infections in much larger communities such as Albuquerque. In all, more than 3,500 cases have been reported in New Mexico, with more than 130 deaths.

Federal health officials have linked the severity of the problem in Gallup to an early outbreak at a detox center that was followed by infections among homeless people and nursing homes.

Homeless residents who contracted COVID-19 were being offered temporary shelter at four motels at the expense of the state to isolate them and slow the spread of the virus.

Lujan Grisham is holding fast to business restrictions and social distancing mandates until at least May 15 in the northwest of the state, including large portions of the Navajo Nation, where infections are surging.

She eased some restrictions Friday on nonessential businesses that can provide curbside service and allowed the reopening of gun shops and veterinary offices. Elective surgeries and procedures were reinstated at hospitals that resorted to furloughs and staff reductions as income from traditional sources plummeted.

Yellow caution tape surrounds sections of merchandise at the Walmart in Gallup, N.M., to advise shoppers that non-essential items arent available for purchase on May 1, 2020. (Patrick Sandoval/AP)

City officials in Gallup requested the new state of emergency under the riot act that can prohibit people from walking the streets and using certain roads. Violations are punishable as misdemeanors on a first offense and as a felony on the second offense. Emergency declarations under the act expire after three days and can be renewed.

Gallup officials were correct to ask the governor to lock down the city because the influx of shoppers from the surrounding region makes it difficult to enforce social distancing, said David Conejo, CEO of Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health Care Services, which operates a Gallup hospital.

Gallups hospitals send COVID-19 patients to Albuquerque hospitals to keep beds available locally for new patients, Conejo said.

Were transferring and coordinating with them daily, he said. Theres a very structured system to address the COVID epidemic.

In addition to the Rehoboth McKinleys hospital, the Indian Health Service has a hospital in Gallup where the Army Corps of Engineers recently set up a hospital in a closed Gallup high school.

To the east, a pawn shop in Grants has been notified of a possible $60,000 fine for remaining open in defiance of a statewide public health order that restricted nonessential business operations.

That city of 9,000 has become a flashpoint of political conflict after Mayor Martin Hicks urged all businesses to reopen against the governors orders and advice from nearby Acoma Pueblo.

By Morgan Lee And Felicia Fonseca
New Delhi: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday (May 3) offered his condolence on the martyrdom of five security personnel, including decorated army colonel Ashutosh Sharma, in a firefight with terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir's Handwara yesterday.

Paying tributes to martyrs, Shah tweeted, "I bow to our soldiers and security personnel martyred while protecting our motherland during an encounter with terrorists in Handwara in J&K. Nation will always remain indebted to their supreme sacrifice. My deepest condolences to their bereaved families."

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister and several Congress leaders also offered their condolences to the soldiers who laid their lives while battling with terrorists in Handwara on May 2.

"Tributes to our courageous soldiers and security personnel martyred in Handwara. Their valour and sacrifice will never be forgotten. They served the nation with utmost dedication and worked tirelessly to protect our citizens. Condolences to their families and friends," Modi tweeted.

"The loss of our soldiers and security personnel in Handwara (J&K) is deeply disturbing and painful. They showed exemplary courage in their fight against terrorists and made supreme sacrifice while serving the country. We will never forget their bravery and sacrifice," Rajnath tweeted. "My heart goes out to the families who lost their loved ones today. India stands shoulder to shoulder with the families of these brave martyrs," the Minister tweeted.

Saluting the personnel, Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat said operations in Handwara highlighted determination of security forces to safeguard the lives of the people. The armed forces, he said, were proud of their courage as they eliminated terrorists. "We salute these brave personnel and express our deep-felt condolences for the bereaved families," he said.

In a statement, the Indian Army said based on the intelligence input that terrorists were taking hostage civilians of a house at Changimulla in Handwara of the Kupwara district, a joint operation was launched by the army and the J&K Police.

On May 2, five security personnel of Indian Army were killed in an encounter with terrorists at a village in north Kashmir's Handwara area.

Giving details, the Army said based on the intelligence input that terrorists were taking hostage some civilians in a house in Changimulla at Handwara of Kupwara district, a joint operation was launched by the Army and the Jammu and Kashmir Police. A team comprising of five Army and police personnel entered the target area occupied by the terrorists to evacuate the civilians and successfully extricated them, it said.

During the process, the team was subjected to heavy fire by terrorists. "In the fire-fight two terrorists were eliminated and the team of five army and J&K personnel, comprising two officers, two soldiers and one J&K Police sub-inspector, attained martyrdom," the army said.
Aircraft of the Indian Air



Force showered petals on hospitals in Ahmedabad and conducted a fly-past over the city and the Gujarat Assembly complex in Gandhinagar on Sunday to thank healthcare workers and others involved in the fight against COVID-19 pandemic.

The Indian Navy also saluted the 'corona warriors' by illuminating its vessels along the Gujarat coast in the early hours of Sunday.

An IAF helicopter showered petals on the civil hospital and the civic-run Sardar Vallabhbhai Hospital in Ahmedabad, where coronavirus positive patients are being treated, to express gratitude towards those engaged in the battle against the deadly disease.

Personnel of the IAF band also arrived at the two hospitals and played the tune of "Saare Jahaan Se Achcha, Hindustan Hamara", a defence release said.

Besides, the IAF's Sukhoi fighter jets (SU-30/3 fighter aircraft) carried out a fly-past over Ahmedabad city and the Legislative Assembly building in Gandhinagar in a formation at a low level, it said.

This was part of the nationwide thanksgiving exercise by the armed forces to honour doctors, paramedics, sanitation staff and other frontline workers battling COVID-19 across the country.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Tyson employees who have tested positive have been instructed not to return to work. People who have come into contact with those workers are being told to self-isolate.

Mounting re-open pressures

Pressure continues to build on Gov. Roy Cooper and his administration to act sooner than May 8 on restarting the states economy, including allowing non-essential businesses to reopen.

Hundreds of people connected with the ReOpen NC movement have protested in Raleigh for several weeks, questioning why rural counties are held to the same stay-at-home orders as the states five urban counties where virus outbreaks have been concentrated. Protesters suggest that with social distancing guidelines in place, stay-at-home orders are unnecessary.

But the Tyson plant outbreak and employee commuting patterns provide at least one example of how the virus can cross county lines under the radar.

Cooper has responded to the criticism by saying he and the state will continue to rely on science and data and facts and consultation with our business community who want to protect their employees.
Over 1,300 people stranded in Chandigarh have been brought back on government buses to their native places in Himachal Pradesh on Sunday, Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur said.

The Chief Minister stated this during video conferencing from Shimla with deputy commissioners, superintendents of police and chief medical officers.

Amidst viral videos of social distancing norms being violated while boarding buses at Himachal Bhawan in Chandigarh on Sunday morning, Thakur directed all DCs, SPs and CMOs to ensure home quarantine for all the returnees to the state to check the spread of coronavirus.

The CM said Himachal Pradesh would soon become coronavirus-free with relentless efforts of the state government and active cooperation of people.

Downloading Aarogya Setu app for the people entering the state should be ensured, he added.

Thakur said it would be the responsibility of the elected representatives of the Panchayati Raj Institutions and urban local bodies to ensure that those entering their areas do not jump home quarantine.

The people coming home particularly from red or orange zones must ensure distance of at least six feet from other family members during home quarantine for their safety, he said.

As many as 1,314 persons stranded in Chandigarh, Panchkula and Mohali (collectively known as tri-city area) returned to HP in 51 Himachal Road Transport Corporation (HRTC) buses, Thakur said.

They include 609 people of Kangra district, 335 of Hamirpur district, 132 of Una district and 238 of Chamba district.

Thakur said people from other HP districts stranded in the tri-city area would be brought back on Monday.

Stating that all possible efforts will be made soon to bring back people stranded in others parts to HP, he urged those who returned to their native places to strictly follow home quarantine norms.

Meanwhile, the CM's Principal Secretary Sanjay Kundu said liquor shops would remain open during curfew relaxation hours from Monday but bars and ahatas would remain closed.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hubei province is lowering its level of response to the novel coronavirus outbreak from the highest level on Saturday, but while this measure is taken by China's hardest-hit area, authorities across the nation were urged to remain vigilant against the disease after loopholes were found in epidemic prevention and control in Heilongjiang province.

In a release on Friday, the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council, China's Cabinet, called for better control of hospital infections, stronger nucleic acid testing capabilities and more attention to the risk of imported infections nationwide.

Since April, cluster infections caused by imported cases have resurged in the cities of Harbin and Mudanjiang in Heilongjiang. The infections also affected several hospitals, infecting dozens of people including medical staff.

In April, 131 domestically transmitted infections were reported on the Chinese mainland, of which more than 60 percent resulted from cluster infections in Heilongjiang, Mi Feng, a spokesman for the National Health Commission, said on Friday.

Of the six newly reported domestic cases on Thursday, five were in Heilongjiang and one in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, he said at a daily briefing.

The authorities in Harbin and Mudanjiang have failed to realize the risk of imported infections, and were lacking in their capability to curb the epidemic, according to the release.

The two cities also failed to implement the 14-day quarantine measure for people returning from overseas.

The resurgence of cluster infections has also exposed loopholes in infection control in hospitals, and a lack of capability in conducting nucleic acid tests in medical institutions in Harbin, it said.

All health authorities and medical institutions across the country are required to learn lessons from this.

All localities should improve management to detect, report, isolate and treat infections as early as possible, and provide support in policies, funds, human resources and materials to help medical institutions improve testing capacity and efficiency, the release said.

In a separate circular on Friday, the State Council also called for adopting strict measures to minimize possible infections in hospitals.

Hospitals should draft more detailed measures to curb infections. Fever clinicsthe first place to encounter possible COVID-19 patientsmust shoulder the responsibility of early reporting, early diagnosis and early quarantine, and transfer patients to designated hospitals in a timely manner, it said.

Meanwhile, Hubei, the nation's hardest-hit province, on Friday announced the lowering of its emergency response level from the highest to the second level from Saturday, after the province reported no new infections for 27 consecutive days.

A total of 82,874 infections had been reported on the Chinese mainland as of Thursday, with 4,633 deaths. Among them, Hubei province registered 68,128 infections and 4,512 deaths, according to the National Health Commission.

Yang Yunyan, vice-governor of Hubei, said on Friday that people were encouraged to avoid mass gatherings and indoor recreational facilities would remain closed.




President Muhammadu Buhari has sent a message of condolence to the people and government of Kano State over the death of the Emir of Rano, Alhaji Tafida Abubakar Ila Auta Bawo.

Buhari urged them to accept the death of the traditional ruler in good fate and ensure the legacies he left behind are not truncated.

Naija News recalls the Emir of Rano passed away on Saturday at a hospital in Kano at the age of 74.

The Presidents condolence message was contained in a statement on Saturday by Mallam Garba Shehu, his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity.

He said: President Muhammadu Buhari commiserates with Kano State Government and Council of Chiefs over passing of Emir of Rano, Alhaji Tafida Abubakar Ila Auta Bawo.

The President joins the family and Rano Emirate in mourning the royal father, whose words of wisdom, nobility and decency will be sorely missed, especially at a time the government is relying on traditional rulers to sensitize citizens on directives for safety.

President Buhari urges his family and the Emirate to find solace in the good works of the deceased and ensure his legacies are carried on.

The President prays that the almighty God will forgive the shortcomings of the Emir, remember his good works and grant his soul eternal rest.

Meanwhile, it will be recalled Rano Emirate Council is one of the four newly created emirates in Kano state by Governor Abdullahi Ganduje after the old Kano Emirate was balkanized.

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Veteran actor Rishi Kapoor's ashes were immersed in Banganga tank on Sunday, his elder brother Randhir Kapoor said. Banganga is part of the Walkeshwar Temple Complex in Malabar Hill area of Mumbai. Rishi Kapoor died at the age of 67 on April 30 at H N Reliance hospital in south Mumbai, after a two-year-long battle with leukaemia.

Randhir Kapoor said a prayer meeting for the actor was held on Saturday. "We did a prayer meet yesterday. Today we immersed his ashes in Banganga as we haven't received permission from the authorities to go to Haridwar," Randhir Kapoor told PTI.

His last rites were performed at a South Mumbai crematorium, by son Ranbir, while Alia Bhatt, Kareena Kapoor, Abhishek Bachchan were among the others present during the rituals.

A picture has gone viral on social media, where Rishi Kapoor's actor-son Ranbir and wife Neetu are seen sitting next to his photograph. According to family sources, the actor's daughter Riddhima Kapoor Sahni, who was unable to attend the funeral as she was travelling from Delhi by road, was present at the prayer meeting. "There were not many people, Only five-six family members," the insider said.

Rishi Kapoor had returned to India last September after undergoing treatment for cancer in the US for almost a year. In February, he was hospitalized twice.

Neetu Kapoor bids her final goodbye to Rishi Kapoor; says end of our story

Family Statement

Our dear Rishi Kapoor passed away peacefully at 8:45 am IST in hospital today after a two-year battle with leukaemia. The doctors and medical staff at the hospital said he kept them entertained to the last. He remained jovial and determined to live to the fullest right through two years of treatment across two continents. Family, friends, food and films remained his focus and everyone who met him during this time was amazed at how he did not let his illness get the better of him. He was grateful for the love of his fans that poured in from the world over. In his passing, they would all understand that he would like to be remembered with a smile and not with tears. In this hour of personal loss, we also recognise the world is going through a very difficult and troubled time. There are numerous restrictions around movement and gathering in public. We would like to request all his fans and well-wishers and friends of the family to please respect the laws that are in force. He would not have it any other way.

Lata Mangeshkar looks back at 80s film 'Karz', wishes Rishi Kapoor would come back to life

(with PTI inputs)

Get the latest entertainment news from India & around the world. Now follow your favourite television celebs and telly updates. Republic World is your one-stop destination for trending Bollywood news. Tune in today to stay updated with all the latest news and headlines from the world of entertainment.
Venezuelas government has said it foiled a marine incursion by terrorist mercenaries who attempted to enter the country on speedboats from neighbouring Colombia, adding security forces killed eight of the fighters.

The group landed early on Sunday on a beach in the port city of La Guaira, about 20 miles (32km) from the capital Caracas, Interior Minister Nestor Reverol said in a televised address.

They tried to carry out an invasion by sea, a group of terrorist mercenaries from Colombia, in order to commit terrorist acts in the country, murdering leaders of the revolutionary government, he said.

Socialist Party leader Diosdado Cabello said eight people were killed and two were detained.



We have deactivated an attempted incursion of our territory, thanks to intelligence efforts, Cabello told reporters.

President Nicolas Maduro frequently accuses political adversaries of attempting to overthrow his administration with the support of the United States, which has promised to force him from office through sanctions that have crippled the OPEC nations oil exports.

Critics of the governing Socialist Party often dismiss such accusations as stunts used as an excuse to detain opponents of the government.

Maduro has overseen a six-year economic crisis that has left many citizens unable to obtain basic food and medicine and forced nearly five million people to emigrate.

Tough sanctions

The US and more than 50 other countries disavowed Maduro after his disputed 2018 election, which they say was rigged, and instead have recognised opposition leader Juan Guaido as the nations legitimate interim leader.

But Maduro retains the backing of the countrys armed forces as well as countries including China and Russia, which have harshly criticised the US sanctions.

200328021011803

The US has led a campaign to remove Maduro, increasing pressure in recent weeks by indicting the socialist leader as a drug trafficker and offering a $15m reward for his arrest.

The US has also increased sanctions, cutting off Venezuelas oil sector to choke Maduro from a key source of hard cash.

In addition to that pressure, Maduros government has faced several small-scale military threats, including an attempt to assassinate Maduro with a drone and Guaidos call for a military uprising, which was joined by few soldiers.

Maduro and his allies say the Trump administration is determined to end Venezuelas socialist government to exploit the South American nations vast underground oil reserves.
Drake taking notes as we speak

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Harem? What? How does Thailand feel about polygamy?

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he has two wives currently (separated from one) and he had an official concubine at one point.

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Wild 

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100 people....what an asshole.

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Edited at 2020-05-03 07:07 pm (UTC) The Thai monarchy is a whole ass trip. They also force people to kneel/crawl before them, including in front of their portraits, while taking pictures with them (yes, even when they're overseas) and animals also have to kneel. Guillotine is wasted on them.

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When I went to Thailand there were portraits of the King everywhere. Even on plant boxes! He was always watching.

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what the everloving fuck

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That one chick is almost as tall as her while kneeling. What happens if your kneel/crawl isnt short enough? Do you slither?

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Probably. They have a law that a person's head is not allowed to be higher than the royalty, so that's why all of the crawling/kneeling.

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That girl is Mai Davika, a model and actress. She's so beautiful!

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I have bad knees, no thanks

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At the job I was fired from, we were going to meet a princess from Thailand at an overseas event in Bangkok. No one researched the protocols or told us we'd have to do THIS. What the FUCK. Seeing this, I'm not disappointed at ALL that I didn't get to participate. Hope my shitty asshole coworkers had fun groveling on the floor for some rich lady.

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What the hell???

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it's like they're testing how much they can get away with before the people are dusting off the guillotines

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Holy fucking motherfucking shit!

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Royals are useless.

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While sis was down there she should have taken the time to help the princess with her toe struggle cause...

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My friend in grad school was friends with a Thai princess, but idk which one bc there are a lot. Anyway, the princess is a geographer and paid for my friend to do her phd in our program. I don't know if there was crawling involved.

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Oh Christ, don't let trump find out about this.

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Eat the rich tbh.

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What the fuck?

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antifa king

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Comrade Gritsky

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Having a harem seems like way too much work.

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I'm open to it.

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Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in Hello! Your entry got to top-25 of the most popular entries in LiveJournal!Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in FAQ

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royalty needs to end. no one needs a king.

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Im American, so weve got our own set of problems and mess, but Im glad this particular problem Is not one I have to deal with.

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Your icon just made me bust out with laughter.



Thank you.

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Theres this episode of the West Wing where a conservative Christian radio host has been trashing gay marriage ends up at the White House on a tour or something and the President schools her in theology and at the end of the big speech (sorkin at his best) he says in this house when the president stands no one sits (bc she had been sitting the entire time)....and you know as much as watching the scene originally gives one a charge......I couldnt do that for trump

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Nope. My mind is refusing to even attempt to imagine it.

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Yk thats what this bitch and his pack of brainless followers wants the US to be

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european royals know they're useless as fuck now and are one referendum away from being abolished so they have to at least pretend to be down to earth and super relatable. what is this mess?!



Edited at 2020-05-03 08:07 pm (UTC)

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yeah like....at least stay in your country?? Even Liz II's dad didn't leave the country during WWII.

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KABUL - One-third of 500 random coronavirus tests in Afghanistans capital came back positive, health officials said Sunday, raising fears of widespread undetected infections in one of the worlds most fragile states.

Neighbouring Iran, meanwhile, said it would reopen schools and mosques in some locations, even though the nation has been the regional epicenter of the pandemic since mid-February.

The results of the random tests in the Afghan capital of Kabul are concerning, said Public Health Ministry spokesman Wahid Mayar. Afghanistan has performed only limited testing so far  close to 12,000, with more than 2,700 confirmed infections, in a nation of 36.6 million.

As more testing becomes available, the countrys confirmed infection numbers will likely rise sharply, said Mayar. He urged residents to stay home. Kabul and most other cities are in lockdown, but compliance has not been widespread.

The death toll  officially at 85  could also be much higher.

More than 250,000 Afghans returned home from Iran since the beginning of the year, fanning out across their country without being tested or quarantined. Anecdotal reports have emerged of dozens of returnees dying of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.

At a recent briefing, a senior government official said 40 people died of the virus in Sarobi district, barely 50 kilometres (30 miles) east of Kabul. The Health Ministry said it could not confirm the claim.

The countrys health care system, devastated by four decades of war, is woefully unprepared for a major outbreak. It has only 400 ventilators.

The new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms for most people. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness or death.

Testing in Afghanistan has been sporadic and some of those infected have been hiding their symptoms, in part because of local stigma. In parts of the country, there have been reports of COVID-19 patients being shunned by their neighbours and even refused food from the local markets.

The government, embroiled in political turmoil, has also faced criticism for responding too slowly to the crisis. Only recently, the government started testing in western Herat province where the hundreds of thousands of returnees from Iran have transited.

Afghanistan has two presidents, both of whom claim to have won last years election. American efforts to find a compromise have failed, causing U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to threaten to cut $1 billion in aid.

The bickering has also delayed implementation of a U.S.-Taliban peace deal signed in February to allow Washington to end its longest military engagement, end Afghanistans decades of war and bring more than 12,000 U.S. soldiers home.

In Iran, authorities said Sunday that 47 people had died in the preceding 24-hour period, the lowest daily toll in two months. Still, Iran remains the hardest-hit country in the Middle East, with more than 97,000 cases and more than 6,200 deaths.

President Hassan Rouhani announced Sunday that schools and mosques would reopen in some low-risk locations. Schools and universities have been shut down since late February.

Also Sunday, the U.N. childrens agency urged six countries in the Middle East to green-light special polio and measles vaccination campaigns that were put on hold because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Currently, nearly 10.5 million children under the age of five are at risk of missing their polio vaccination, UNICEF said. Nearly 4.5 million children under the age of 15 could miss their measles vaccinations.

Routine vaccinations for other diseases such as rubella and diphtheria are continuing, but special campaigns for polio and measles were put on hold in some countries because health systems were overwhelmed by the coronavirus pandemic or governments wanted to avoid crowding at clinics.

The polio campaigns are on hold in Syria, Sudan, Yemen and Iraq, while measles vaccinations are suspended in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and Djibouti, the agency said.

In Israel, the city of Tel Aviv announced it is postponing its annual gay pride parade, along with those in the cities of Haifa, Jerusalem and Beersheba. The annual event in Tel Aviv, which was scheduled for early June, drew over 250,000 people in 2019, making it one of the largest in the Mideast.

_____

Vahdat reported from Tehran, Iran. Associated Press Writer Kathy Gannon in Islamabad and Karin Laub in Amman, Jordan contributed to this report.
Maharashtra saw around 9,000 more Covid-19 cases and 330 deaths during the second lockdown, according to data from the state health ministry. The state health department feels the situation would have been far worse without the lockdown.

At the end of the first lockdown, on April 14, the cases in the state stood at 2,684, with 178 deaths. By the end of the three weeks of the lockdown on May 2, the cases are 12,296 with 521 deaths. In Mumbai, the case count was 1,756 with 112 deaths on April 14, which went up to 8,359, with 322 deaths on May 2.

On May 3, 678 new cases were reported, taking the state tally to 12,974 and death toll touched 548. Mumbai recorded 441 new cases on Sunday taking tally to 8,800 with 343 deaths.

Dr Pradip Awate, state disease surveillance officer, said, The government has enforced the lockdown measures very well. The cases have increased, but we cant ignore that we have controlled the doubling rate of corona cases from 2.5-3 days to 9 days. Without it, the situation could have been far worse and the numbers higher. The lockdown is helping us break the chain. We have also successfully managed to keep our mortality rate at 4.24%, better than the worlds 7.04%.

According to the state health department, among the 551 deaths, 368 (73 per cent) had comorbidities or other serious diseases.

Till May 2, around 2,000 people have recovered. In the last one week, the state has witnessed a huge jump in the cured category. The administration has also been creating containment zones wherever cases are rising to check local transmission. The spike in the cases in the last few days has been sharp, with a rise of 1008 cases reported on Friday and an increase of 790 in the next 24 hours.

The official, however, turned down the possibility of community transmission. We can say the infection is being transmitted locally and not on community level. The cases are increasing in areas where people are not following social distancing norms seriously. I urge people to do that, said Dr Awate.
On Saturday, we awakened to the latest salvos of continuing squabble between the contending factions of the PNM-UNC political monopoly, both seeking the approval of the parasitic oligarchy to appointed gatekeeper in office.
An Army Colonel and a Major were among five security personnel killed in an encounter with terrorists at a village in north Kashmir's Handwara area, Director General of Police Dilbagh Singh said on Sunday.

"Sad to inform that five brave personnel including Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, Major Anuj Sood and sub-inspector of JKP Shakeel Qazi were martyred in the line of duty," Singh told PTI.

He said the Colonel and his team bravely rescued civilians held hostage by the terrorists. The two terrorists were killed in the encounter.

Giving details, the Army said based on the intelligence input that terrorists were taking hostage some civilians in a house in Changimulla at Handwara of Kupwara district, a joint operation was launched by the Army and the Jammu and Kashmir Police.

A team comprising of five Army and police personnel entered the target area occupied by the terrorists to evacuate the civilians and successfully extricated them, it said.

However, during the process, the team came under a heavy volume of fire by the terrorists and in the ensuing firefight, two terrorists were eliminated and the five Army personnel and a policeman were killed in the line of duty, the Army said.

The terrorists are believed to have come to Handwara to receive an infiltrating group from Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, officials said.

Besides Colonel Ashutosh Sharma and Major Anuj Sood, the other Army personnel killed in the encounter were identified as Naik Rajesh and Lance Naik Dinesh.

Col Sharma was the Commanding Officer of the 21 Rashtriya Rifles and had been decorated for gallantry twice in Kashmir.

A wreath-laying ceremony would be held here after which the Col Sharma's body would be flown to Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh and that of Major Sood to Chandigarh, the officials said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Mouli Mareedu By

Express News Service

HYDERABAD: The migrant labourers, students, tourists and other people who are stranded in Hyderabad and the surrounding areas due to lockdown restrictions are facing a tough time in their attempt to travel back to their native places, even though the Ministry of Home Affairs has granted an exemption for the interstate movement of such persons.

One major hurdle in this regard is the non-availability of senior bureaucrats who were appointed as nodal officers for various states to facilitate the interstate travel of the migrant workers and others, as their mobile phones remain switched off for the most part of the day and they remain inaccessible. For instance, two nodal officers were appointed for Rajasthan  P Ramesh (IAS) and Janga Srinivasa Rao (IPS), and their mobile numbers (9929799297 and 9462876188) were also made public so that any Rajasthani migrant labourer stranded in other states will be able to contact them.

However, both numbers have not been working. Many labourers from Rajasthan are working in Telangana, especially in the capital city of Hyderabad and other adjoining areas. The other major problem is complete lack of knowledge among officials of police and other departments on how to go about the process of allowing the migrant labourers to return to their home states.

Police clueless

In Telangana, even senior police officials are clueless on how to facilitate the interstate travel of the migrant workers as there is no concrete procedure in place. Same is the situation of the police personnel in various police stations of the city, where migrant labourers have been gathering in hundreds, seeking help.

For example, some migrant workers reached Punjagutta police station armed with their Aadhaar cards and other documents, to seek travel permission. However, they were left disappointed as the police told them that they did not receive any information about issuing such permits.

Upset by the response, the workers made a desperate call to the Covid-19 control room and that too proved futile as the officials manning the control room said that no such facility is being provided as of now as they have not received any instructions to give permissions. The workers were instead asked to contact Hyderabad West Zone police at 040-27856794, but unfortunately that phone number too was non-operational.

Later, when the migrant workers contacted Hyderabad police control room number, they were informed that the Special Branch Police are issuing the necessary passes. But to their disappointment, the Special Branch Police said that they have now stopped issuing the passes.
Curt Pickens | Getty Images

The woman who approached our doorstep Monday morning was wearing a mask, her eyes doing their best to smile a greeting. She was hugging a folder and a bundle of papers. I held the door open for her but didn't extend my hand for her to shake. Nor did she, as she introduced herself. "This must be so weird for you," I said. My voice felt muffled by the cloth covering much of my own face. A loan closing agent, she was at our house so I could sign the many documents needed to wrap up refinancing our mortgage. I had applied a lifetime ago  Feb. 27  via Quicken Loan's Rocket Mortgage. Exactly two months after my application, the process was coming to an end in a coronavirus-esque way: Masks on, extra space between the agent and me.

While I worried periodically over the last 60 days that the country's economic woes or lenders' tighter standards would somehow upend a four-year-long goal of refinancing our privately held mortgage, it didn't go down that way. Closing was successful (more on that farther below). And I'm glad the refinance is finally done  my husband and I will save nearly $450 a month. The process was stretched out due to some hiccups along the way, including the challenge of getting documents and information from our private mortgage holder, who had recently moved overseas. Also unexpected: My employment was reconfirmed shortly before closing. Bill Banfield, Quicken's executive vice president of capital markets, told me that's due to the current economic environment.

Every lender, including us, wants to help people take advantage of today's low rates, but we need to validate as close to closing as possible that people are still employed. Bill Banfield executive vice president of capital markets for Quicken Loans

"We've had 26 million people file for unemployment over five weeks," Banfield said. "Every lender, including us, wants to help people take advantage of today's low rates, but we need to validate as close to closing as possible that people are still employed." (Note: I chose Quicken randomly from a list of online mortgage lenders such as SoFi or Bank of America. And, no one at Quicken knew I was planning to write about my experience. Banfield and I spoke several days after the loan closed.) I also ran into some other things that are worth sharing with anyone who explores an online mortgage or refinance.

Know your credit score

There are sites that let you enter your credit score to see what type of refinancing terms you may qualify for. However, unless you input your "classic" FICO score  which most mortgage lenders use in their decision-making  the output may not really be applicable to you. Generally speaking, the score tracked by many consumers is not that classic FICO score. This means there could be a difference between the score you follow and the one used by your lender. While I've known about this phenomenon, I didn't know whether I'd see a big disparity. In my case, my VantageScore (available on Credit Karma) was approaching 800. The actual score pulled by Quicken was just shy of 750. While I can't say with certainty how much it affected the terms of my refinance offer from Quicken, excellent credit scores  760 or higher for mortgages  typically snag the best offers. We locked in at 3.5%, although we also paid two discount points to do so (one point is equal to 1% of the loan). More from Personal Finance:

Cooking more under quarantine? How to trim your spending

Here's what happens to unpaid debts when you pass away

Picking a side hustle for your pandemic extra cash Additionally, when you start the application process, the lender will ask to make a hard inquiry on your credit report. That action may hurt your score temporarily. The good news, though, is that you get 10 days to apply for better terms elsewhere without additional inquiries dinging your score further. I did not see better offers elsewhere  in addition, the U.S. was beginning its slide into economic uncertainty and I was fearful of starting the process over  so I stuck with Quicken.

Dig up documents

The faster you can provide your new lender with all the documents requested, the faster you can go to closing, even in these odd times. The 60 days that it took for my loan to close is unusual, Banfield said. "Once you give us the documents we need, it's taking an average of 27 days," he said. "And 35% of refis are happening in less than 15 days." The documents Quicken asked for included my two most recent pay stubs, a copy of my homeowners insurance declarations page, my 2019 and 2018 W-2s (which shows income I earned from my employer), as well as proof of one year's worth of payments to my current lender.

Beware PMI

Generally speaking, you'll pay private mortgage insurance, or PMI, on loans that are for more than 80% of the home's value. When you have at least 20% equity in the home based on its then-current value, you can stop paying PMI. Due to a slightly lower-than-anticipated appraisal on our home and a miscalculation on my part about rolling closing costs into the new mortgage, we have to pay about $16 a month in PMI. Closing documents show that we'll be able to ask in December for that fee to be canceled, as long as we get another appraisal (which will cost money) and it comes back showing at least the same value used for the refinance.

In some cases, depending on how long that PMI is anticipated to last, you may be able to prepay it at closing and avoid the process of getting it removed down the road, said Al Bingham, a credit expert and mortgage loan officer with Momentum Loans in Sandy, Utah. "See if you can buy it out," Bingham said. "Depending on the monthly cost versus the one-time cost, it might make sense to do that."

Communication

Every time I communicated with Quicken with a question about my refi, a response was provided fairly quickly. However, it was a different person responding each time. This didn't bother me, generally speaking. If you're counting on some relationship-building, however, don't go the online route. I also preferred to communicate via email instead of phone so I could avoid a call that could be time-consuming or ill-timed. And, except for perhaps some miscommunication errors, this method suited me.

Closing

Depending on where you live, you may be able to do some or all parts of closing online, said Banfield at Quicken. In some states, though, holding any kind of closing at all may be harder due to coronavirus-related shutdowns. In my case, all documents were signed in person, at my kitchen table. Both the closing agent and I remained masked through the process, as we went through the pages and I signed or initialed where required. I had received an electronic copy of the closing documents, so the previous day I looked through them, closely reading certain parts to make sure I knew what to expect. (It's also where I learned about the process involved to get rid of PMI in December.) Once all the documents were signed, the agent gathered her things. When she reached the door, I noticed she had a disinfectant wipe in her hand. I watched her carefully turn the knob and pull open the door.
Lockdown's damaging impact on the UK economy has yet to be confirmed in hard numbers, but if you believe the experts, we're heading for a deep, short recession.

Economic activity in the three months to the end of June is expected to fall 35 per cent with nearly a third of the workforce furloughed.

With large (British Airways) and small businesses now beginning to lay off staff, unemployment is on the rise. Not a pretty picture for sure.

Closing down: It seems inevitable that more bank branches will be axed once the country comes out of lockdown

It's not all doom and gloom as our report opposite confirms  this country's entrepreneurial spirit remains as splendidly vibrant as ever.

Furthermore, much to the relief of this country's army of private investors, the stock market has bounced back strongly from its horrendous fall in late February and March  although Shell's decision last week to take a haircut to its dividend sent share prices spiralling downwards again.

With loads of 'bad' corporate and economic news in the offing, I would not be surprised if there are more sharp falls. Investors should remain cautious and focused on the long term  investing regularly and patiently via an Isa or a pension rather than dipping in and out of shares in the hope of capturing profits.

Certainly, the focus of the UK economy will shift irrevocably as a result of lockdown.

The high street will shrink as more business is done online and whatever you may think about their unwillingness to pay their fair share of UK taxes, the likes of Amazon aren't going away.

They will become more dominant than ever before (just writing those last eight words causes me to break out in a rash of goose bumps).

The trend towards greater online banking and less reliance on hard cash is also irrevocable. Indeed, lockdown has helped the banks in pursuing these dual goals.

According to cash machine network Link, cash withdrawals from ATMs are 60 per cent down as a result of lockdown.

More worryingly, research that Link has just completed indicates that some 44 per cent of consumers believe they will increasingly use digital and contactless payments in the months ahead in preference to cash.

It also seems inevitable that more bank branches will be axed once the country comes out of lockdown.

Although a majority of bank branches have remained open for business during lockdown, some have been temporarily shut while others have had their opening hours and days severely clipped.

Derek French, a longstanding campaigner for shared bank branches in every town up and down the country  outlets owned and run by all the mainstream banks  has been keeping a close eye on what the banks have been up to in recent weeks.

Everything he has seen or discovered through diligent research suggests that more branch closures are just around the corner. French, a former NatWest branch manager, says that Lloyds has 'temporarily' shut some 90 branches, a number in towns where they were the last bank of call. Barclays has followed suit, temporarily shutting some branches and severely restricting the opening days and hours of others.

By way of example, near where he lives in Hertfordshire, French says Barclays has shut for the time being its Leagrave and Bury Park (Luton) branches while curtailing the opening hours of its Harpenden branch more aggressively than rival banks in the town. Interestingly, he says that of the four big banks  the other two being NatWest and HSBC  Barclays and Lloyds are the most over-branched.

They have 950 and 850 high street outlets respectively, compared to the 600 that the other two each have.

French's reasonable conclusion from all this analysis is that Barclays and Lloyds are more likely than not to apply another haircut to their branch networks sooner rather than later.

Lockdown, he says, will have given them the perfect excuse to do so. Although the Government is keen to ensure that all communities have access to cash  whether it's through free-to-use cash machines, bank branches, the Post Office or cash back facilities  it won't stop the banks continuing to take an axe to their branches.
Help India!

While the world is celebrating World Press Freedom Day, in India press freedom has only dwindled. The author argues that the occasion should raise awareness on freedom of the press in India, and remind journalists of their rights and duties.

Syed Ali Mujtaba

Support TwoCircles



May 3 is World Press Freedom Day. However, in India, there is nothing to celebrate about the freedom of the press today. The Edelman report has labelled the Indian media as the second most un-trusted institution in the world. It is an online survey that covered 28 countries measuring their trust in the four institutions of government, business, NGO and media in doing what is right.

The Edelman report survey showed that the trust of people in media was an all-time low and the credibility and motive of these institutions have been under question.

A total of 28 countries were surveyed, out of which Indian media was seen as the second most corrupt country. It is not a surprise because the way Godi media has taken over the reins of the entire press in India; the distrust of the people is bound to happen and it has sharply increased in recent times.

Another international body Reporters Without Borders, in its annual World Press Freedom Index has said that India was now 138th-ranked in the world out of 180 countries measured, down to two positions since 2017 and lower than countries like Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, and Myanmar. Interestingly when the index was started in 2002, India was ranked 80th out of 139 countries surveyed by the Paris-based organization.

Pew Research Center another international body in its recent survey has said that exposure to false or incorrect information is a key concern for people in 11 emerging economies and India is one among them.

Indias falling image of press freedom is ringing alarm bells and there are reasons for it. If we look at the television, print media news or news on social media, all have a tainted outlook.

Television News

The television news channels have turned out to be a gossip box, with people ranting nonsense 24 x 7. Anchors like Arnab Goswami, Sudhir Chaudhary, Deepak Chaurasia, Amish Devgan, Anjana Om Kashyap, Rohit Sardana, Rajat Sharma etc which are household names on television screens. However, watching them for a while one gets the impression that they have their axe to grind. They are rental ponies who have no clue of the ethical parameters of journalism. They have never read Article 19 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights that talk about freedom of the press.

The so-called mainstream television media is the most corrupt wing of the press in India. On television what is going on in the name of journalism, is hate-mongering, agenda blabbering and propaganda of the ruling elite. There is absolutely no ethics and responsibilities seen in the news presentations. The news anchors have crossed all boundaries of ethical parameters and care two hoots about journalistic professionalism.

Print Media

Like television media, print media again is a capital intensive industry. It needs money, especially to compete with the dazzling HD-quality TV channels and it cannot survive on subscriptions alone. At a time when the ad revenues are going to the television channels, the print media has either to pander to business cartels or become pro-establishment. This is because if the government cut their ads they may become bankrupt. So to remain afloat, print media is indulging in unethical journalistic practices.

Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd, which owns the Times of India, is reported to have asked celebrities and the wealthy to pay for favourable coverage. They have offered a private treaty agreement, which accepts an equity stake in a company in return for favourable coverage.

Other print media companies are indulging in similar malpractices, demanding ads for giving them positive coverage. The commodification of news is big business in India and this done across the different media platforms.

Social Media

The Pew Research Center survey shows that social media though the most popular source of information is the most unreliable source which can be manipulated by the politicians and political parties. Many social media users report that they are being regularly exposed to misinformation when using this platform.

The digital connectivity has divided the people in their political opinions. This is because the information they get on social media are more hateful than the content they receive from any other source. These problems are further getting compounded with the growth in the number of users of social media in India.

At the end of 2019, the number of social media users in India was estimated at 356 million. On average, Indian users spend 2.4 hours on social media a day (slightly below the global average of 2.5 hours a day).

So to say that the Indian media has completely lost its credibility wont be incorrect. There is very little diversity in the range of social and political views expressed in the Indian media. Indian media is now endangered by business interests. There is no freedom of the press or what is called independent media. The entire media is either under the influence of corporate cartels or government control.

The low and falling quality of Indian journalism is evident with Cobrapost.com expose in 2018. Its undercover reporters approached several media houses and offered a payment of up to INR 500 crore in cash to promote Hindutva ideology for political gains. According to Cobrapost; the owners, as well as the senior executives of these media houses, consented to engage in campaigns to induce communal discord and polarize the Indian electorate. This exposes not only tarred the reputation of Indian media but also tarnished the countrys reputation of freedom of the press in India.

All said and done this is a very dangerous trend developing in the country. Indian journalism has a long history of professionalism, the editors and not the business head decided the content of the news. The editorials upheld the dignity of the freedom of the press and operated within the ethical parameters of journalism.

But in recent years, what is seen Indian media is reduced to caricatures of lap dogs and the barking dogs of ether corporate houses or Hindutva forces.

It is in this context; April 3 the World Press Day has come as a wake-up call. It raises the awareness of freedom of the press in India. It also reminds the journalists of their rights and duties. It also reminds the owners of the media houses that news is not a commodity. It also reminds the governments to respect and uphold the dignity of the freedom of the press.

Syed Ali Mujtaba is a journalist based in Chennai. He can be contacted at [email protected]
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un visits a fertilizer factory in Sunchon, South Pyongan Province, in this Friday photo released by the Korean Central News Agency, Saturday. / Yonhap





By Kang Seung-woo







North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's dramatic return to public view from a nearly-three-week hiatus, and despite a barrage of rumors surrounding his health, shows that obtaining a crumb of authentic information about the world's most secretive regime is still a tough nut to crack.







In addition, given that misinformation about the country could have unexpected and wide ramifications, divulging unconfirmed rumors and reports should be kept to a minimum, according to security experts.







On Saturday, the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency reported that Kim had participated in a fertilizer factory completion ceremony in Sunchon, South Pyongan Province, the previous day. It also showed a video clip of him cutting the tape, smoking and talking with his staff from a green electric cart.







His approximately 20-day absence prompted rumors and unconfirmed reports that he was "gravely ill," incapacitated or had even died, although the South Korean government repeatedly said there were no unusual signs indicating the North Korean leader was in poor health.







Although first raised by some media reports citing sources familiar with the issue, the so-called "infodemic" was trumpeted by North Korean defector-turned-lawmaker-elects, who it was believed had reliable sources inside their old country.







"One thing is clear... he cannot stand up by himself or walk properly," Thae Yong-ho, a former North Korean diplomat who was elected to the National Assembly last month, told CNN last week.







Along with the interview, Thae, who defected to South Korea in 2016, made headlines by claiming that his former boss was "not in a normal state."






Nearly 300 Vietnamese citizens were brought home from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on May 2-3 under the coordination among Vietnams relevant agencies, the Vietnamese Embassy in UAE, national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines and UAE authorities.

They included under-18 and elderly people, those with illnesses, and tourists who had been stuck. The Vietnamese Embassy in UAE had also sent staff to Dubai airport to directly support the citizens.

Upon arriving at Can Tho International Airport in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho, all the passengers and flight crew underwent health checks and were put in quarantine in line with Vietnams regulations on COVID-19 prevention and control.

Based on citizens wishes, the local quarantine capacity, as well as the pandemics developments, authorities and airlines will continue to conduct flights to repatriate more Vietnamese citizens in the time ahead./.
The Bachelor Australia's married couple Anna Heinrich and Tim Robards are expecting their first child.

And after announcing their baby joy on Saturday, the pair have now revealed how they've been preparing to become parents, while sharing also their fears.

'I've never been more nervous yet excited about something in my whole life,' Anna admitted during an interview with The Sunday Telegraph.

Surprise! The Bachelor's Anna Heinrich and Tim Robards (pictured) have revealed how they've prepared to become parents after announcing their surprise baby news on Saturday

Anna added: 'I come from such a close family and I've always wanted to be a mum. It's crazy to think I've already fallen in love with someone I haven't met.'

Tim said playing bad dad Pierce Greyson on Neighbours has helped him prepare.

'I've spent the last year and a half learning what not to do as a parent on Neighbours. I cant wait to become a dad for real. It is definitely the role of a lifetime. Only this time there's no audition,' the soon-to-be father said.

'I've spent the last year and a half learning what not to do as a parent': Tim said that playing bad dad Pierce Greyson on Neighbours (pictured in character) has helped him prepare

'I've never been more nervous yet excited about something in my whole life,' Anna admitted during an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, sharing her mixed feelings

Anna and Tim, who married in 2018, announced their happy news on Saturday.

'It's been so hard to keep this a secret, over the past few months, but I can now finally shout... I'M PREGNANT!!!' Anna, 33, gushed in an Instagram post.

'With everything that's going on in the world we feel incredibly lucky and grateful to be starting a family, and we're so looking forward to this next chapter in our lives.'

Tim, 37, echoed a similar sentiment on his own page, writing: 'We've been keeping busy in lockdown ... I can't wait to be a Dad!!!

'It's been so hard to keep this a secret over the past few months': Anna and Tim, who married in 2018, announced their happy news on Saturday via Instagram

'The giddy feelings in my stomach show there must be a few nerves, but I know Anna's going to be an absolutely amazing mother and I couldn't be more excited to start a family with her!'

They accompanied the joyous announcement with a cute maternity shoot.

Tim and Anna fell in love on the inaugural season of The Bachelor Australia in 2013.

At the time, Tim was a hunky chiropractor working from his practice located in Bondi, while Anna had not long started her career as a defence attorney having graduated with degrees in law and gender studies.

Despite stiff competition from 24 other women vying for Tim's heart, Anna bowled him over with her 'beautiful looks, humility and self-assurance'.

The fitness fanatic presented Anna with the final rose in a moving ceremony filmed in Thailand, leaving runner-up Rochelle Emanuel-Smith broken hearted.

In an emotional exchange, Tim told Anna: 'It feels so good to finally be able to acknowledge what my heart is feeling, and you have my heart. I have fallen madly and deeply in love with you...

'I want to make you feel special every day. I can't wait to start the next part of our journey together.'

Happy! 'We've been keeping busy in lockdown ... I can't wait to be a dad!' gushed Tim

Anna, who had been open about never being a serious relationship, admitted on the show: 'This will be the first boyfriend, and the last'.

While Anna was happy to have found 'the one', she later admitted to Daily Mail Australia that she felt people at work often looked 'down their noses' at her.

'I do feel the affects in my work, but I chose to go on the show so I've now got to live with the consequences,' she said in 2014.

True love: The couple found love on the inaugural season of The Bachelor Australia in 2013 when Tim fell in love with her 'beautiful looks, humility and self-assurance'. (Pictured)

'It's mostly all good and everyone is really positive and if they're not I think it reflects on them more so. I'm fine, but people do recognise me when I don't want them to.'

Tim and Anna took things slowly after filming wrapped, taking time to enjoy a normal relationship without the pressure of television cameras watching their every move.

After almost four years of dating, they took to Instagram to announce their engagement in May 2017, with a picture of Anna showing off her massive diamond sparkler.

What a rock! After almost four years of dating, they took to Instagram to announce their engagement in May 2017, with a picture of Anna showing off her massive diamond sparkler

Tim captioned his post: 'On the weekend in a little dinghy floating on a secluded river I asked this amazing woman to marry me she said YES!!! Woohoo!!'

Anna's engagement ring is worth an estimated $173,000 AUD.

The couple wed in a lavish ceremony at the Masseria Potenti hotel in Puglia, southern Italy, in June 2018.

The big day: The couple wed in a lavish ceremony at the Masseria Potenti hotel in Puglia, southern Italy, in June 2018

The stunning blonde wore a white beaded gown by Australian designer Steven Khalil, which she accessorised with a straight, flowing veil, diamond drop earrings and nude heels.

After the opulent ceremony, they set sail on a luxury yacht to spend a few weeks exploring the Mediterranean on their honeymoon.

They were the first couple from The Bachelor Australia franchise to wed legally.

Beautiful bride: The stunning blonde wore a white beaded gown by Australian designer Steven Khalil accessorised with a straight, flowing veil, diamond drop earrings and nude heels.

One month after their nuptials, Tim relocated to Melbourne after landing the role of Pierce Greyson on Neighbours, leaving Anna behind to hold down the fort in Sydney.

The couple are currently in a long-distant arrangement, with Tim still based in Melbourne, while lawyer Anna is in their marital home in Rose Bay, where she works as a criminal lawyer.

Tim told Who magazine in January that while they miss out on quality time together, they 'chat five times a day on FaceTime'.

The honeymoon: After the opulent ceremony, they set sail on a luxury yacht to spend a few weeks exploring the Mediterranean on their honeymoon

While Anna admitted that while starting a family had 'always been in the plan' the distance made it difficult.

'I'm 33 and we always wanted to have a family,' Anna admitted at the time, adding that Tim's acting career has been a barrier in their quest for children.

'When we have kids we definitely want to be in the same state,' Tim explained.

A-lister! The former chiropractor has made a huge splash on Neighbours and plans to continue his role 'well into 2020'

'So we'll just see how the start of this year pans out and go from there.'

Tim returned to their marital home in March after production of Neighbours was shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In an Instagram post from March 29, Anna said she was having to put more effort into her appearance with Tim living at home permanently.

'I'm 33 and we always wanted to have a family,' Anna admitted to WHO magazine in January, adding that Tim's acting career has been a barrier in their quest for children.

'Have been living in my PJ's but Tim's home so I have to make an effort now,' she joked.

Meanwhile, Tim recently said he was using his time at home for 'self-reflection'.

'It's a great time for some self-reflection, a time to check in with ourselves and reassess if we are living life to our own values,' he wrote on Instagram.

'Do we even know what they are? Why do we think, say and do certain things? And quite simply... what makes us happy and are we doing enough of it?'
A woman (L) sits on a bench and looks at her phone in Hong Kong on May 2, 2020. AFP




This year, Mayor Ron Nirenberg will issue San Antonios 35th consecutive National Day of Prayer Proclamation.

I was young, but I remember 34 years ago when hundreds of family and friends gathered that first Thursday in May, high above the city in the Tower of the Americas to pray over each business, home, hospital, street and family.

Our elders have spent decades placing their children in the cleft of the rock, in the hands of the Almighty, seeking his protection and guidance. We honor them and thank them so much for this heritage.

Though this years local National Day of Prayer event will not be a public gathering out of concerns for everyones health and safety amid the pandemic, the community is invited to participate by watching the worship service online at ndpsanantonio.org on Thursday.

The mayors proclamation will be read at noon, followed by the worship service. A pre-worship service, including a musical performance, will livestream at 11:30 a.m.

This is an historic time of contemplating last will and testament. As the world hit the pause button, inner monologues have only increased. The worry over meeting deadlines at work, not spending enough time with children, or searching for a significant other, has shifted to worrying about deadlines at life, about what to do with so much time with children, and the ever-looming question, Am I significant? Yes, you are.

As we have experienced daily, we are not the unshakable. God is, and his relationship with us is our only hope and salvation. His word says that God so loved us that He gave His son for us, so that whoever comes to Him will not perish but have eternal life.

How significant are we? Jesus last word on the cross was to call out to his Father, only to experience his Fathers turning away from him. God did not answer his sons call then, so that he will ALWAYS answer your call to him now. He so loves you.

Hundreds and thousands across San Antonio have bonded by the desire to help in any way we can. On just one Sunday morning last month, one local church community collected and donated over $1 million for food banks and front-line ministries.

Personally, the most humbling of all requests was an email received from a self-proclaimed atheist who would be going through life-threatening surgery in the coming days. He requested prayer. What an honor and privilege to pray for each other.

My parents are both in their 70s now. Like so many of our parents and grandparents who have been faithfully praying for San Antonio year after year, I love nothing more than to join them and invite you to join in prayer on Thursday as part of the National Day of Prayer.

Jesus said, All who are weary and carry heavy burdens, come find rest in me. Is it a mystery? Sort of, yes. But its a mystery to be solved. If we seek, we shall find. If we knock, the door will be opened. And it is Heavenly!

As poet Joseph M. Scriven wrote: What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear. What a privilege to carry everything to Him in prayer.

The National Day of Prayer in San Antonio will be held online at noon this Thursday, livestreamed at www.ndpsanantonio.org.

Stacy Dollar is a San Antonio native and sits on the steering committee for San Antonios National Day of Prayer. She also serves on the Advisory Board for Grace House of San Antonio, is a member of Trinity Grace Church, and volunteers as a religious education teacher at Lackland AFB.
As per Census 2011, the slum population in Mumbai was 41.8% of the total population, followed by 32.7% in Hyderabad

Ratan Tata recently lambasted developers and architects for creating vertical slums across various cities. He went on to state that these low-value structures, which lack in adequate fresh air, hygiene and open space are the very cause of the spread of the virus.

As per data sourced from National Disaster Management Authority, of Mumbais many slums, Dharavi, with nearly 850,000 people living within less than 10 sq. km,has had around 140 coronavirus cases detected in the slum. Experts fear the numbers to rise significantly in the days to come.

A towering concern

Apartment boom is in full swing in the slums. These walk-up, high-rise structures averaging seven to eight floors, with no windows, low ceilings and inadequate storage are densely packed, making them vulnerable to all kinds of hazards and diseases, especially something as contagious as the COVID-19.

According to 2011 Census data by Government of India Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, 65.49 million people live in 13.92 million slum households in 2,613 slum-reported towns that are spread across 31 states/Union Territories in the country. While Mumbai and Delhi are extreme cases, these trends are national, fundamentally reshaping the future of urban India. As per Census 2011, the slum population in Mumbai was 41.8% of the total population, followed by 32.7% in Hyderabad.

And it appears that when it comes to constructing most of the affordable buildings, building norms and rules dont mean anything. Most of such apartments have inward-facing balconies or live-on floors with only artificial lighting. Neither sunlight nor fresh air find their way through here.

N. Jaideep Reddy of Ashoka Builders, agrees that our policies are very old and need to change. Yes, slums going vertical is good, but what about cost of living and maintenance and lift usage and density? he asks. I hope post the COVID-19 situation, the PM and the state governments will wake up and come out with an attractive price for low-cost and affordable homes as land has become very expensive too.

Fresh outlook sought

The real-estate industry morphing longstanding norms and realities have made vertical slums just the space for living without proper guidelines.

No doubt, a lot of morphing is being done by small developers, which is creating lot of inconveniences, with cramped homes, states G. Ram Reddy, Chairman, CREDAI. Worse, they are not only flouting the norms, but also build without taking proper permissions.

Ram, however, assures that the volume of such developers is less in Telangana. Unlike in other metros such as Mumbai, where land is expensive, Hyderabad or Telangana has no restrictions on the floor space index (FSI). As per our stipulations, we can build how many ever floors we want to build taking into account the road width, he adds. One of our rules states that we cannot deviate from the building, and if we do, wed have to mortgage the total build-up area to the approving authority.

Ram, nevertheless, agrees that some such practises do happen especially in some areas such as Old City, where people are even constructing five-storied building.

That is something the government of Telangana has to address, he points out.

D. Srinivas Reddy, Managing Director, HSR Ventures Pvt Ltd., also avers that most of the developers in Telangana State are fairly different from their counterparts in Maharashtra. Our cheaper housing has (relatively) better planning, client demands and vastu compliance. It determined much of how we have shaped our industry here in Hyderabad and surrounding regions, he says.

Bettering this

Most of the developers we spoke to seem to have taken Ratan Tatas statement positively. However, they do point out that it is important to look at those who are still designing and building without following the basic etiquette of making the right kind of houses.

According to them, in the earlier decades, the system wasnt rugged enough to handle the illegal constructions. Moreover, even the infrastructure then wasnt adequate for the Government to enforce it upon developers. So too, they believe for something that was built over about a century, rebuilding in the right manner will surely take time.

Unlike in Mumbai, the slums density in Hyderabad is very low, states Vijaya Sai Meka, Executive Vice President, Telangana Real Estate Developers Association (TREDA). In Rasoolpura, the density and congestion are the results of height restrictions surrounding the Begumpet airport. As the landowners are unable to develop their land vertically, they are forced to stay in the available land despite increased family numbers since long time as they cannot distribute the land to the members of family.

All said and done, though, industrialist Sanjay Gulabani begs to differ with Ratan Tata. Accusing builders of prioritising financial gains and putting the residue garbage together  giving further rise to slums  is a unilateral thought. I strongly believe that many real-estate builders/architects have made attempts to create beautiful works that add value to the myriad stakeholders, states Sanjay, who, in partnership with N. Narsaiah of Shanta Sriram Constructions Pvt Ltd., is expected to construct Karein Acha, a highly budget-friendly set of homes, which start at Rs 19 Lakh.

N. Narsaiah, MD, Shanta Sriram Constructions Pvt Ltd. also agrees with his Karein Acha partner, Sanjay.

This generalisation really doesnt apply to the entire real-estate community. But to paint the whole industry as bad will be unfair to the industry, for there are numerous builders and architects who think differently, he adds.

So who is to be blamed? Those builders are mostly illegal and merely vote-bank of politicians, sums up Jaideep Reddy.
Photograph: Mariana Greif/Reuters

After an ill-fated Antarctic expedition in which 60% of passengers and crew contracted coronavirus and spent a month stranded off the coast of South America, the successful repatriation of 132 tourists from a Australian cruise ship seemed like a rare happy ending.

But what should have been a peaceful epilogue in which the crew of the Greg Mortimer sailed safely home has become a gruesome sequel of sickness and panic  with the added possibility of a legal battle in Miami courts.

In recent days, tensions onboard the stranded ship reached a breaking point over allegations that the ships operators and captain pressured the chief medical officer to mislead authorities in Uruguay about the health situation onboard.

Emails seen by the Guardian appear to show that two companies associated with the Greg Mortimer  Miami-based crewing company CMI/Sunstone and the Australian cruise operator Aurora Expeditions  urged Dr Mauricio Usme to downplay the severity of the outbreak.

A doctor from a third company linked to the vessel  the Fort Lauderdale medical company Vikand  also allegedly suggested Usme should play down the health situation onboard.

Related: Cruise ship stranded off Uruguay says 60% onboard have Covid-19

The ship remains anchored 20km off the coast of Uruguay. Thirty-three members of its 85-strong crew  including Dr Usme  have tested positive for coronavirus, and one has died of Covid-19.

More will continue getting sick, Usme told the Guardian over a tenuous WhatsApp connection.



Were all exposed to the risk of potential death as long as we remain onboard, because having coronavirus is like having a timebomb ticking inside you that could go off at any moment.

Usme and eight other crew members have retained the services of Miami maritime lawyer Louis Vucci. At some point there could be legal action for them getting Covid unnecessarily, Vucci told the Guardian.

The Greg Mortimer set out from the Argentinian port of Ushuaia on 15 March  four days after the World Health Organization (WHO) had declared an international pandemic.

Story continues

After a week at sea, coronavirus symptoms were detected, but by then, Argentina had closed its ports to cruise ships, so the Greg Mortimer changed course to Uruguay.

A passenger disembarks the Greg Mortimer along with others to head to the airport in Montevideo, Uruguay, on 15 April. Photograph: Matilde Campodonico/AP

As they neared Montevideo, Usme completed a maritime declaration of health  a standard form reporting the possible existence of infectious disease onboard.

Usme had already divided the ship into red, grey and yellow zones, for passengers in isolation, quarantine or observation. We didnt have test kits onboard, so I had to assume that anybody with symptoms was positive.

In his health declaration for Montevideo, Usme stated: We have patients with fever we need to rule out with specific test Covid-19/Sars2.

But before submitting the declaration, Usme received emails from CMI/Sunstone and Aurora Expeditions, apparently urging him to change his answers.



The risk we carry is public outcry and wharf side workers refusing to allow the ship to berth and allow passengers to disembark, wrote Aurora director Glenn Haifer in an email dated 26 March.

Please bear in mind that how you write the health declaration will influence the way that this is viewed. We dont know we have Covid-19. Haifer added: Give limited information truthfully.



Usme replied: For ethics, for morality, for responsibility with ourselves and with the health of those who are not affected, the health declaration must reflect the reality that we currently have.

A spokesman for Aurora said: We strongly disagree with the characterisation of the situation, but understanding that legal action has commenced between various other parties, it would be inappropriate for us to comment further.

The email from CMI argued that Usme should change his answer to a question about quarantine as the ship had not officially been put under quarantine.

A spokesman for CMI denied that any pressure was put on Usme, saying: The doctor was asked to accurately and truthfully complete the health declaration form.

The spokesman added that CMI and the vessel worked closely with the Uruguayan authorities on every aspect of the vessels arrival. This was done with full and complete transparency at every step, he said.

But at least two other crew members claimed pressure was brought to bear on the medical officer.

An audio recording heard by the Guardian suggests that, as the ship approached Montevideo, the ships Swedish captain, Joachim Saterskog, offered to change the doctors declaration, as the ship had not been placed under quarantine by authorities.

The company wanted to disembark the passengers, which was very irresponsible because they would have represented a great risk for Uruguay, ship storekeeper Marvin Paz Medina told the Guardian in a WhatsApp message.

Usme refused to reconsider and the unaltered declaration was sent to port authorities on 28 March  with the result that Uruguay did not allow the Greg Mortimer to disembark.

It was not until 11 April that a sanitary corridor was established for the first group of passengers to fly home to Australia, with a second flight leaving for the US a few days later.



Crew members maintain that the ships managers endangered passengers and crew by persisting with the cruise despite the WHO declaration of a pandemic.

We were convinced that, in light of the international pandemic alert already in place by then, this trip would be cancelled, the ships security officer, Lukasz Zuterek, told the Guardian.



Zuterek says he has been dismissed from duties and confined to his cabin, despite testing negative, after he recently spoke up against a plan by management to sail the ship to the Canary Islands.

The crew remains in limbo. Uruguay will not let them disembark until they all test negative for more than 14 days.



We are very afraid, one of us already died, five others have been extremely ill, said Paz Medina.



Saterskog on Thursday sent a message to all crew members assuring them that none of them would be forced to sail across the Atlantic against their will.

We are staying in Montevideo to make sure the entire ship is tested negative or until we receive permission from local authorities to disembark crew when commercial flights are available again, he wrote.



Crew members, meanwhile, are demanding to be evacuated via special charter flights as the passengers were.

Related: Revealed: 100,000 crew never made it off cruise ships amid coronavirus crisis

Both CMI and Aurora said that the decision to set sail on 15 March was made on the basis of the best information available to us at the time, adding that no passengers or crew were suspected of having contracted coronavirus at the time of boarding.

CMI also said that on the day the ship set sail, only two coronavirus cases had been confirmed in the entire province of Tierra del Fuego, which includes Ushuaia.

We were very aware of the globally evolving coronavirus situation and after deep consideration and having sought and received guidance from trusted and globally respected advisers, the decision was made to proceed. The safety and wellbeing of our passengers has always been paramount, said a spokesperson for Aurora.

We understand the frustrations of crew in this unprecedented emergency and believe  that the real issue is the repatriation of our seafarers, truly essential workers around the globe, throughout the pandemic, said a spokesperson for CMI.

Vikand and Saterskog did not respond to a request for comment.
Many have claimed the Justinianic Plague (c. 541-750 CE) killed half of the population of Roman Empire. Now, historical research and mathematical modeling challenge the death rate and severity of this first plague pandemic.

Researchers Lauren White, PhD and Lee Mordechai, PhD, of the University of Maryland's National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC), examined the impacts of the Justinianic Plague with mathematical modeling. Using modern plague research as their basis, the two developed novel mathematical models to re-examine primary sources from the time of the Justinianic Plague outbreak. From the modeling, they found that it was unlikely that any transmission route of the plague would have had both the mortality rate and duration described in the primary sources. Their findings appear in a paper titled "Modeling the Justinianic Plague: Comparing hypothesized transmission routes" in PLOS ONE.

"This is the first time, to our knowledge, that a robust mathematical modeling approach has been used to investigate the Justinianic Plague," said lead author Lauren White, PhD, a quantitative disease ecologist and postdoctoral fellow at SESYNC. "Given that there is very little quantitative information in the primary sources for the Justinianic Plague, this was an exciting opportunity to think creatively about how we could combine present-day knowledge of plague's etiology with descriptions from the historical texts."

White and Mordechai focused their efforts on the city of Constantinople, capital of the Roman Empire, which had a comparatively well-described outbreak in 542 CE. Some primary sources claim plague killed up to 300,000 people in the city, which had a population of some 500,000 people at the time. Other sources suggest the plague killed half the empire's population. Until recently, many scholars accepted this image of mass death. By comparing bubonic, pneumonic, and combined transmission routes, the authors showed that no single transmission route precisely mimicked the outbreak dynamics described in these primary sources.

Existing literature often assumes that the Justinianic Plague affected all areas of the Mediterranean in the same way. The new findings from this paper suggest that given the variation in ecological and social patterns across the region (e.g., climate, population density), it is unlikely that a plague outbreak would have impacted all corners of the diverse empire equally.

"Our results strongly suggest that the effects of the Justinianic Plague varied considerably between different urban areas in late antiquity," said co-author Lee Mordechai, an environmental historian and a postdoctoral fellow at SESYNC when he wrote the paper. He is now a senior lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and co-lead of Princeton's Climate Change and History Research Initiative (CCHRI). He said, "This paper is part of a series of publications in recent years that casts doubt on the traditional interpretation of plague using new methodologies. It's an exciting time to do this kind of interdisciplinary research!"

Using an approach called global sensitivity analysis, White and Mordechai were able to explore the importance of any given model parameter in dictating simulated disease outcomes. They found that several understudied parameters are also very important in determining model results. White explained, "One example was the transmission rate from fleas to humans. Although the analysis described this as an important parameter, there hasn't been enough research to validate a plausible range for that parameter."

These high importance variables with minimal information also point to future directions for empirical data collection. "Working with mathematical models of disease was an insightful process for me as a historian," reflected Mordechai. "It allowed us to examine traditional historical arguments with a powerful new lens."

Together, with other recent work from Mordechai, this study is another call to examine the primary sources and narratives surrounding the Justinianic Plague more critically.
03.05.2020 LISTEN

First, I am not from Akuapem but from Anlo where we have the protracted Awoamefia dispute which is still in the courts, thanks to the abysmal failures of the VR House of Chiefs to act honourably and the ordinary courts shameful dilly-dallying due to political chicanery and arm-twisting too. I am therefore interested in how chieftaincy disputes are handled in Ghana in general, as I have a vested interest in the Anlo case due to family background and as a student of political governance systems.

Secondly, I congratulate the ER House of Chiefs for reaching what is clearly a very sound and correct judgement. They have performed far much better than the moribund VR House of Chiefs. With the creation of the Oti Region from the Volta Region, I hope they gather a new sense of purpose to contribute to resolving not only chieftaincy disputes in the VR but also the development of the VR which is now linguistically more unified, as even all the members of the Central Togo tribes states remaining within it can speak Ewe and are very much intermarried with Ewes.

However, I am sorely disappointed that it took them a whole three years before reaching such a simple judgement based on the traditions of Akuapem. That case should not have taken more than a month to decide on. The dictum that justice delayed is justice denied has no meaning for the judges, lawyers and legal system in Ghana, a country of developing people not yet classified as civilised in which suspects are kept in jail for up to over ten years without being tried and found guilty! Damn! The Houses of Chiefs and the ordinary courts of the land have thus become major tools of fostering and prolonging chieftaincy disputes in the country and something needs to be done about this asap. Really, really pathetic and unacceptable!

Thirdly, I am very disappointed with the position of the spokesperson of the Abrewatia of Sakyiabea Royal Gate of Akuapem, Ohene Nana Bennet Smith Opoku, for saying they could go ahead with the installation of the new chief without going through the Queenmother.

(www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=940015&comment=25512181#com).

Such an action is just as lawless and against the traditions of Akuapem as what the Queenmother did in the first place. It may succeed in the past when Akuapem was independent but may not under the modern laws of Ghana with an appeal system to the Houses of Chiefs and the ordinary courts. Even if the opponents did not resort to an injunction, itd leave intractable bad feelings which will plague the rule of the new chief. What is supposed to be done was clearly spelt out by the ER House of Chiefs. Not following those procedures to install a new chief will make anyone installed illegitimate as well. I understand they had already done that, without waiting the next day for the Queenmother to receive them. Too bad!

In any case, was it the Asonahene that went to the Queenmother or representatives of the Abrewatia? The procedure is that the Abrewatia should give the name of the nominee to the Asonahene who then presents it to the Queenmother. If that is not what was about to be done before the Okuapehemaa claimed she was asleep, then they have also behaved illegally by breaching customs and traditions, regardless of the fact that they were in the majority. In any case, even if they had followed the procedure and it was the Asonahene who went to present the nominees name, a wait to see the Okuapehemaa next day would still have been necessary. Plenty of drinks, foodstuffs, appellations to recognise her and some money to greet her in these days of coronavirus and self-isolation would have melted her heart and create the basis for a cordial and peaceful resolution of the dispute. Now, they have blown it and created a new crisis! Very disappointing!

Way back in the 1990s, before I dropped out, a Sudanese researcher who graced our State Formation and Building Seminar group expounded on how African traditional systems are actually consociational, more than consensual democracy. He gave an example of how when the British took over Sudan and were establishing their indirect rule system they merged two kingdoms which were formerly independent of each other. They tried to make the king of the bigger kingdom the leader of the new unit but the smaller kingdom chiefs and people objected and insisted vehemently that an election must be held, with the sub-chiefs as the electoral college. The British, used to their majority carries the vote system, thought it'd be a ridiculous waste of time but were forced to agree, as, after all, no harm was expected by humouring the supposed idiosyncrasy of savage Africans anyway. The election was held and the candidate of the bigger kingdom with more chiefs expectantly won. However, he ruled badly, followed by his son who also ruled badly. On the third occasion when the son died, the sub-chiefs of the bigger kingdom voted overwhelming for the candidate of the smaller kingdom, whose conduct was above reproach, as they primed themselves for the next election and endeavoured to rule their part of the kingdom well. He ruled so well that his son was also voted to become chief after his death. Majority of ethnicity or group did not count, something else did: an intangible idea or principle.

In this case, they did not establish a rotation to gate system but a democratic field comprising both ruling houses are presented each time a vacancy occurs. The initial principle established which the British failed to understand is consociationialism, a governance system adopted by different conflicting interests or groups which otherwise would have been irreconcilable.

Now, if we take the history of Akuapem into account, it'd become clear why the ancestors of the Akuapems of today, comprising the original Guans and the Akyems they asked for help to fight off the marauding Akwamus, devised the system of choosing a new Okuapehene from the Akyems who assumed that role for helping the Guans. By not following the procedures, all the parties in the dispute are upsetting a time honoured principle which bide the people together, achieve consensus and gain the approval of all. Yes, even if it appears idiosyncratic to some today, rituals, mores and symbols are important in system maintenance. That's why I am very much disappointed with the faction led by the Abrewatia not following the traditional procedures too, after winning the case.

Shame on the miseducated big shots and midgets alike behind their decisions and penultimate actions. They should quickly go back to the drawing board and do the right thing. If we must continue to maintain chieftaincy as part of our governance system, then advocates of chieftaincy must learn to respect and obey one of the very reasons they often give for maintaining what many see as an archaic anachronism, that is, it serves as the custodian of our culture and traditions. If they cannot, then we can pack what is left of the much debased institution in the museums and archives and study it from there if the need arises. It is possible to design a new governance system with their relics as we forge ahead in the post-coronavirus and Pax Americana and new king in town China era. We cannot afford to be bogged down by endless chieftaincy disputes.

Andy C.Y. Kwawukume

[email protected]
The commander in chief of the Libyan National Army (LNA), Marshal Khalifa Haftar, proclaimed himself the supreme ruler of Libya and announced the transfer of power in the country to the military. During the appeal, which was distributed by the LNA office on April 27, the marshal announced the need to break the agreement reached in 2015 in Shirat, as a result of which the Government of National Accord (PNC) was formed in the country.

Haftar considers the PNS to be a puppet government, assuring the world community that ordinary Libyans are ready to support him and are determined to restore Libyan statehood together. Meanwhile, outside Libya, the position of the commander in chief of the LNA is less strong. Shuttle diplomacy of General Haftar showed a lack of interest in it from world leaders. Repeated visits to Moscow have been inconclusive. The closest allies of Field Marshal Egypt, the UAE also refrain from any high-profile statements, limiting themselves to military support. The EU is extremely skeptical of Haftar, as he does not hide his belligerent aspirations to overthrow the PNS by violent means.

Haftar's goal is unchanged - to take Tripoli. Only after that he is ready to talk about the creation of fundamentally new authorities in Libya and the holding of elections. Refusing to cooperate with the PNS and the proposal to take the post of Minister of Defense, Haftar demonstrated a peculiar refusal to establish secular power in Libya. Therefore, already now, the EU and Turkey are accusing the field marshal of striving to create a military dictatorship, ignoring the results of the Berlin Conference on Libya, held in January.

Haftar hopes to legitimize his power by consolidating in most of Libya. However, this is extremely problematic, given that he does not have a full-fledged army. Haftar is resorting to the help of foreign mercenaries, so his army can hardly be called national. The tribal militias, which form the basis of his armed forces, often carry out arrests and confiscation of property of Haftars opponents, often accompanied by looting.

Mercenaries, militias, in some cases gang formations - the reality of the LNA. It is difficult to manage such a motley army, it is even more difficult to trust, because you have to constantly fear that it might scatter. Such an army constantly needs to set ever new goals, investing huge financial resources.

In the West, in the actions of Haftar, they see the features of the overthrown Muammar Gaddafi. An authoritarian management style, uncompromisingness, determination. Haftar in the past - one of the commanders of Gaddafi. While the leader of the Libyan Jamahiriya during the war with Chad in 1987 did not turn his back on his commander in chief, Haftar was one of the military closest to Gaddafi.

In Washington, the field marshals identity is also unpopular, since after 20 years in the United States, he could collaborate with the CIA and therefore may have information that the West would not want to make public.

Haftar gives no guarantees to anyone; his policy is extremely slurred. He does not say anything about the post-war settlement in Libya, refrains from commenting on issues of cooperation in the oil and gas industry and other trade and financial agreements. Today, neither the West, nor Russia, nor Turkey are ready to question the legitimacy of the leadership of the PNS, since the UN put its hand to the creation of an interim Libyan government.

The Libyan state border is not controlled, which allows for the supply of weapons and drugs to the region, it is easy to block migration flows, as well as the export of values or resources. In the event of the victory of Haftar, it is not clear who will restore Libya, although many expect to receive income from the restoration of the country.
Chhattisgarh's COVID-19 count



touched 57 on Sunday after 14 migrant labourers, including two women, tested positive in Durg and Kabirdham districts.

State Health Minister T S Singh Deo said that eight cases were detected in Durg, while the rest six in Kabirdham.

He added that all of them are labourers, who had recently returned to the state from different parts of the country.

"Their samples tested positive at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Raipur this evening. Two of those who tested positive in Kabirdham are women," a public relations officer of the institute said.

The COVID-19 count in the state is now 57 though the number of active cases is 21 as 36 people have been discharged after recovery.

Chhattisgarh COVID-19 figures are as follows: Positive cases 57, new cases 14, deaths nil, discharged 36, active cases 21, people tested so far 19,902.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Cinerama Dome at ArcLight Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard is quiet and empty on March 20. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

At 8 o'clock on a Saturday night, the scene outside the Regal LA Live & 4DX theater complex in downtown L.A. would normally be packed. Moviegoers would be rushing to arrive by showtime, packing crosswalks and backing up traffic on a busy Olympic Boulevard. Across from the cineplex, taco trucks would be drawing their own crowds.

On this particular Saturday night, however, with California's stay-at-home order in effect, there were no cars, no moviegoers, no movies.

Of course, there were supposed to be movies. These are a few that theaters across the country would have been playing in recent days: "A Quiet Place Part II," which was set to open just as stay-at-home orders began. The live-action remake of Disney's "Mulan." The James Bond film "No Time to Die." Marvel's "Black Widow," which would have opened Friday.

Coming weeks would have seen the releases of "F9," the next "Fast & Furious" sequel; "Wonder Woman 1984"; Lin-Manuel Miranda's "In the Heights"; and "Top Gun Maverick." Those potential blockbusters will have to wait for later theater premieres while dozens of other films head for streaming or premium video-on-demand releases. Meanwhile, the theaters themselves remain in limbo, with no substantial summer slate of films anticipated until July, when it's hoped that Christopher Nolan's "Tenet" will open, followed by a very different awards season. For as The Times' Justin Chang and Glenn Whipp discuss in their conversation of summer movies past, there's nothing like the Xanadu of a giant screen, air conditioning, darkness, Milk Duds and a big Hollywood movie in a packed theater.

While movie studios are planning safe ways to get cameras rolling again, theater owners work out plans for reopening multiplexes, documentary makers are finding socially distant ways to shoot, and film professionals all over are discussing the ways their jobs will change in a post-quarantine Hollywood.

Story continues

We asked L.A. Times photographer Jay L. Clendenin to capture Hollywood's movie houses in this pandemic moment  all lighted up with nothing to play. It's part of our special report, "Reopening Hollywood: What's next for movies?"

 Laurie Ochoa, Sunday Calendar editor

The Regal LA Live & 4DX

The Regal LA Live & 4DX theater complex sits empty at 8 p.m. on a recent Saturday night in downtown Los Angeles. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

The New Beverly Cinema

The New Beverly Cinema, shown on April 19, is owned by filmmaker Quentin Tarantino. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

The New Beverly opened as a candy shop in 1929 and later served as nightclub Slapsy Maxie's. It's been showing movies since the 1950s. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

REOPENING HOLLYWOOD | SPECIAL REPORT: What's next for movies?

The Vista

The Vista on Sunset Boulevard, shown April 21, was originally called the Lou Bard Playhouse and opened in 1923. Its first film was "Tips," starring child star Baby Peggy. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

The Fairfax Cinema

The Fairfax Cinema was showing "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" the week the coronavirus spurred L.A.'s shutdown. The Fairfax was closed in 2017 after harassment allegations and other issues with Cinefamily, which previously programmed the theater. It reopened in 2019. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Los Feliz Theatre

Los Feliz Theatre has filled its marquee with quotes from classic movies, including a Charlie Chaplin quote from "The Great Dictator": "We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that." (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

El Capitan

El Capitan Theatre, in the heart of Hollywood, features "Big Hero 6" character Baymax and a thank you to healthcare workers battling the coronavirus. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Also flashing up on the marquee at El Capitan is a fitting quote from "Toy Story's" Buzz Lightyear: "The important thing is that we stick together." (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Characters from Disney Pixar's "The Incredibles" also make an appearance on El Capitan Theatre's marquee. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

The Nuart

The marquee, with the message "Be safe," is dark on April 18 at Landmark's Nuart Theater. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)




The Central bank of Nigerias intervention fund which is known as the Targeted Credit Facility to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on small scale businesses has kick-started.

Naija News Understands that the disbursement of the N50 billion Targeted Credit Facility (TCF) to beneficiaries was made known by the Nigeria Incentive-based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) Microfinance bank, on behalf of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

The facility is a stimulus package that was introduced by CBN, to help mitigate the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on households and MSMEs.

This was disclosed by the Managing Director of NIRSAL Microfinance Bank, Mr Abubakar Kure, at a media briefing during the official flag-off of the disbursement in Abuja to some of the beneficiaries. The 3,256 MSMEs are among the first batch of the beneficiaries of the disbursement.

The NIRSAL Microfinance boss said, The facility is available for service providers in the health sector, trading and all those businesses that have been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic

The idea is to provide cash flow which has been disrupted by the lockdown occasioned by the pandemic. The product is intended to provide liquidity for businesses, he said

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A man has been arrested in London after anti-lockdown protesters took part in a group hug outside the Metropolitan Polices headquarters in defiance of social distancing rules.

The small group of about 20 people were seen outside New Scotland Yard on Saturday, chanting hug someone, save lives and carrying signs with slogans such as My body, my choice.

Videos from the protest also showed some members of the group holding up signs supporting baseless conspiracy theories linking 5G technology to the coronavirus pandemic.

One man was filmed as he was carried away by police, shouting I do not consent, after he refused to comply with an order for the protesters to go home and follow lockdown rules.

All social gatherings involving people of different households have been banned in the UK since 23 March as part of measures designed to slow the spread of Covid-19.

A small number of protesters gathered near New Scotland Yard earlier today, a statement from the Met Police said.

Officers engaged with the protesters, encouraged them to go home and the group subsequently dispersed. One man arrested.

The demonstration was similar to those seen recently in the US, where thousands of people gathered at a popular beach in Southern California this week to protest the states stay-at-home order.

Governor Gavin Newsom ordered state and local beaches to be closed in Orange County on Friday after crowds of people defied lockdown rules last weekend.

However, despite the London protest on Saturday, there does not appear to be widespread support for lifting the UKs lockdown soon.

A poll by Opinium published in the Observer on Sunday showed fewer than one in five British adults believed it was the right time to consider reopening schools, restaurants, pubs and stadiums.

It showed only 17 per cent of respondents thought it was right to now consider reopening schools, compared to 67 per cent who thought they should remain closed.

Boris Johnson, the prime minister, has said the UK is past the peak of its coronavirus epidemic and his government is expected to set out plans for easing measures in the near future.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Sunday informed the countrys regional premiers that the number of daily coronavirus-related fatalities has fallen to 164 in the last 24 hours, according to four sources present at the meeting where he communicated the news.

Not since March 18, four days after the state of alarm was implemented by the central government, has that figure been so low.

The number should, however, be viewed with some caution given that since the crisis began there has been underreporting of the data at weekends and also when there are holidays. May 1 was a holiday in all of Spain, as was May 2 in the Madrid region.

New hospitalizations, probably the most solid data point to measure the advance of the Covid-19 disease, came in at 547

That said, there is a clear downward trend in the epidemic, with 276 fatalities reported on Saturday, and nine regions registering no new admissions of coronavirus patients to their ICUs. The number of coronavirus deaths peaked in Spain on April 2, when there were 950 fatalities reported by the Health Ministry. The total number of official coronavirus-related deaths in Spain now stands at 25,264.

According to the latest data, there were 838 new infections as confirmed by the more reliable PCR tests, and 1,247 Covid-19 patients discharged from treatment in the last 24 hours. Since the crisis began, there have been a total of 217,466 infections in Spain confirmed by PCR tests, while 118,902 patients have recovered.

New hospitalizations, probably the most solid data point to measure the advance of the Covid-19 disease, came in at 547 on Sunday, the lowest figure seen since the state of alarm was implemented.

First weekend of exercise

After 48 days of near-total confinement, on Saturday residents of Spain were for the first time allowed out to take walks or other exercise, albeit having to do so within set timetables according to age.

The local police in Barcelona removed citizens from the beaches on Saturday, after they ignored the rules governing the daily exercise that is now permitted. Municipal sources confirmed that groups of people had taken to the beach to watch the sunrise.

Barcelona has not yet reopened its beaches, which were closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, and as such citizens still cannot enter them.

Meanwhile, in Madrid, on Saturday evening police officers had to intervene to clear the Madrid Rio park of members of the public, who were walking along its paths despite all parks in the city still being closed.

In one video captured by an EL PAIS journalist, a mounted officer is seen telling citizens to leave the area, as well as reminding people that children under 14 are only allowed out onto the street from 12pm to 7pm.

Plane crash in Bolivia

Four Spaniards who were traveling in a light aircraft in Bolivia have died after the military plane crashed. The passengers had been left stranded in the South American country and were trying to reach Santa Cruz in order to catch a flight to repatriate them. The two Bolivian members of the crew also died in the accident.

Errata This article previously reported that the number of coronavirus-related deaths was 163. It has been updated to reflect the figure reported by the Spanish Health Ministry on Sunday.

English version by Simon Hunter.
Piers Morgan has said he will not host Good Morning Britain on Monday 4 May because he has been tested for coronavirus.

The ITV presenter said he was presenting mild symptoms for Covid-19 and would not be working on the show until his results come back.

On medical advice, and out of an abundance of caution for a mild symptom that arose in past 48hrs, Ive had a test for Covid-19 and so wont be working on @GMB until I get the result back, which should be tomorrow, he wrote on Twitter.

Mr Morgan has become an outspoken critic of the UK governments response to the coronavirus pandemic, accusing ministers of being unprepared for the outbreak.

Last month he clashed with health secretary Matt Hancock over government efforts to procure ventilators for Covid-19 patients, saying the minister had misjudged the public mood by refusing to admit to mistakes in the response to the pandemic.

If Mr Morgan tests positive, he will join a growing list of well-known people who have caught the coronavirus, such as Prince Charles, actor Tom Hanks, and prime minister Boris Johnson.

His Good Morning Britain co-host Susanna Reid also self-isolated in March after one of her children developed symptoms of the virus.

Although the vast majority of people will only have a mild illness from Covid-19, a total of 28,446 people have died in hospitals, care homes and the wider community after testing positive for the virus in the UK, as of Sunday.

Government guidance states the most common symptoms of coronavirus are the recent onset of a new continuous cough and/or a high temperature. 
By Trend

The number of people who have died from coronavirus infections in France rose by 166 to 24,760 on Saturday while hospitalisations for the disease and people in ICU units continued to decline, the French health ministry said, Trend reports citing Reuters.

Saturdays daily tally was markedly lower than the 218 recorded on Friday.

The number of people in hospital with COVID-19 fell to 25,827 from 25,887 on Friday, and the number of people in intensive care with COVID-19 fell to 3,827 from 3,878. Both numbers have been on a downward trend for more than two weeks.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
A coalition of religious leaders, business owners and state lawmakers are suing the administration of Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan over his stay-at-home orders meant to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus.

The lawsuit asks a federal judge to intervene to block Hogan's restrictions on certain businesses and religious gatherings, and presses the state to consider less restrictive alternatives.

Hogan, a Republican, pushed back against the pressure to lift social distancing policies, saying Sunday that he respects the rights of protesters, but it is too soon to safely reopen the state.

"Everybody has a right to protest and express their feelings," Hogan said during an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union."

"Sadly, we had far more people die yesterday in Maryland than we had protesters," Hogan said, referring to a "Reopen Maryland" demonstration Saturday from Frederick to Salisbury.

The state reported 59 additional coronavirus deaths on Saturday, and 30 on Sunday.

The legal action is the latest sign of frustration with fallout from the economic and cultural shutdown intended to contain the pandemic. Hogan and other leaders throughout the country are facing protests from residents who want to reopen the economy more quickly.

Hogan has said he won't consider lifting Maryland's stay-at-home measures until the state sees either a consistent plateau or downward trend in hospitalizations. Hospitalizations were down slightly for the third day in a row Sunday morning, according to state data.

In the court filing, some of Hogan's fellow Republicans say the governor is picking and choosing which businesses can continue to thrive during the pandemic, while violating the constitutional rights of individuals to gather to worship or engage in political speech.

Big box stores like Lowes and Walmart "are permitted to have hundreds of cars and people because the Governor chose them to be 'essential' businesses. However, under the same orders a church may not have anyone in its buildings with limited exceptions for 'virtual' services," according to the filing from Delegates Dan Cox, Warren Miller, Neil Parrott and Robin Grammar.

The religious leaders involved in the lawsuit say their congregations do not have the equipment to broadcast worship services online or to host drive-in services, and that many of their members do not have the resources to watch online.

Among the businesses, Adventure Park USA in Frederick County said it will lose $700,000 during the spring season if it cannot open in May and has already taken out a $150,000 loan to meet its tax obligations.

Cox, a delegate who represents Frederick and Carroll counties, said in the court filing that he was told by Hogan's advisers he could be arrested for attending and speaking at a rally protesting the stay-at-home orders.

Hogan spokesman Michael Ricci said Sunday that Cox was never told he could not speak.

"We fully respect Delegate Cox's right to protest and express his feelings, but that doesn't entitle him to make false and baseless claims."
The headquarters of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) here has been sealed after a personal staff of a senior officer and a bus driver of the paramilitary tested positive for coronavirus, officials said on Sunday.

The five-storeyed building is located inside the Central Government Offices (CGO) complex on Lodhi Road.

A personal secretary of a Special Director General (SDG) rank officer working in the headquarters tested positive for the virus on Saturday, they said.

Also, a bus driver who ferried personnel working at the headquarters, contracted the disease, they added.

"One driver attached with CRPF headquarters has tested COVID-19 positive. The headquarters is closed for sanitisation till the task is completed," a force spokesperson said.

Entry of officials in the headquarters has been barred from Sunday, they said.

A senior official said the force has informed the district surveillance officer for "initiating required protocols" as per medical guidelines, for time-bound proper sealing of the building.

"All procedures will be followed. CRPF Director General A P Maheshwari has issued clear directions that all COVID-19 guidelines have to be followed strictly," he said.

They said a contact tracing exercise has begun to quarantine all the personnel who came in touch with the two infected staffers.

The SDG-rank officer has already gone into self quarantine, they said.

The force has been witnessing multiple cases of the virus, with at least 135 personnel of its 31st battalion based in Delhi being infected and a 55-year-old Sub-Inspector of the unit succumbing to the disease last week.

At least three other personnel from different units have been found coronavirus positive and a number of their colleagues have been quarantined.

With about 3.25 lakh personnel in its ranks, the CRPF is the country's largest paramilitary force and is designated as the lead internal security force of the country.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 21:30:05|Editor: huaxia

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CAIRO, May 3 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry and his Italian counterpart Luigi Di Maio discussed on Sunday bilateral relations and a number of regional issues of mutual interest.

During a phone conversation, both ministers also tackled ways to fight the novel coronavirus pandemic, the Egyptian foreign ministry said in a statement.

The Italian minister expressed gratitude for the medical aid Egypt provided to fight the pandemic.

They highlighted further cooperation between their countries, as well as the need for continued coordination on all issues of common interest.

The ministers exchanged visions on the latest developments in Libya and ways to reach a comprehensive settlement to the crisis. Enditem
Girls who fled Boko Haram attacks are being enslaved and raped by human traffickers who then sell their babies.

As 16-year-old Miriam* stepped out of her tent to fetch water near the Madinatu Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp in Nigerias northeastern Borno state in January last year, a middle-aged woman she knew as Aunty Kiki approached her.

She asked Miriam if she was interested in moving to the city of Enugu to work as a housemaid for a monthly salary.

Miriam, who is now 17, wasted no time in accepting the offer and began to prepare for her trip to the east the following day.

She told her 17-year-old cousin, Roda*, about it and advised her to approach Aunty Kiki.

When Roda, who is now 18, met Aunty Kiki the next morning, she asked if there was a job for her, too. The woman quickly agreed, so Roda packed her bags.

We were both very excited to travel to Enugu, Miriam says. We had suffered so much for four years and were happy to go somewhere new to start a new life.

The promise

Both girls, who used to live in the same compound in Bama, fled the northeastern Nigerian town in 2017 when Boko Haram stormed the area, burning down houses and kidnapping women and children.

Miriam and Roda fled, leaving other members of their family behind. They do not know what happened to them.

The two girls trekked for several days to reach Madinatu, where they remained for nearly two years before their trip to Enugu in southeastern Nigeria.

In Madinatu, Miriam and Roda lived together in a small bamboo tent inside the camp that houses more than 5,000 people who, like them, had fled Boko Haram.

Life was tough in the camp. Food was in short supply and IDPs had to beg on the streets of the nearby town to be able to get enough to eat.

So the girls jumped at the chance of paid jobs in Enugu.

They did not have time to tell anyone they were going.

For two years, Miriam and Roda lived in a hut like this in Madinatu before they were trafficked to Enugu [Philip Obaji Jr/Al Jazeera]

The journey

First, they travelled with Aunty Kiki to Maiduguri.

Then a 12-hour journey to Abuja followed. They spent the night there in the home of a woman who knew Aunty Kiki.

The next day, after a nine-hour journey, they reached Enugu.

Aunty Kiki took them to a compound where she handed them over to an elderly woman she called Mma and told the girls to do whatever the woman asked of them.

The compound had two flats of three bedrooms each, filled with young girls, some of them pregnant, says Miriam. Aunty Kiki said it was where wed be working.

At first, the girls thought their jobs were to clean the compound and do household chores as Aunty Kiki had led them to believe. Their new employers, however, had other ideas.

A daily torture

Mma asked that we stay alone in separate rooms for that first night, Miriam explains. We were surprised because the other girls in the compound were sharing rooms, some of which had four people in them.

Late that night, according to Miriam, a man walked into her room, ordered her to take off her clothes, held her hands tightly, and raped her.

The same thing happened to Roda, but her rapist was much more brutal.

When I tried to scream, he covered my mouth and gave me a dirty slap, Roda says. If he saw tears in my eyes, he slapped me even more.

The next day, the girls were moved to shared rooms with others, only being sent to single rooms when they were required to work.

Both girls say they were raped almost daily by several different men.

They believe that Mma and Aunty Kiki work together in the same trafficking cartel and that Mma is the leader of the group.

All they could make out for sure, however, was that the two women communicated with each other and the men in Igbo, the language spoken in southeastern Nigeria.

Miriam stands outside her temporary home in Madinatu [Philip Obaji Jr/Al Jazeera]

Giving birth

Within a month, they were both pregnant. But still, they were raped.

It doesnt matter whether you are six weeks or six months pregnant, says Roda. If any of the men wants you, you cant say no.

It was pointless trying to escape, they explain, because the compound was guarded by men with guns.

Around a dozen girls were living in the compound when Miriam and Roda first arrived. But the number would change as the girls gave birth and were sent away, before new girls were brought in to produce more children for the cartel.

Miriam gave birth to a baby boy in the compound, with the assistance of a midwife who was called in from outside. But her son was taken from her.

Three days later, she was blindfolded and taken to a bus station where her traffickers made sure she boarded a vehicle back to the north.

They didnt want me to know the way to the compound, thats why they covered my face, she explains. I was given 20,000 naira (about $55) to assist in my transportation to my destination.

She first went to Abuja where she spent a night on the street before boarding a commercial vehicle back to Maiduguri.

Boys are more expensive

Miriam does not know how much her baby was sold for.

Some traffickers let their victims leave after giving birth because they believe if girls stay for too long, they could develop a plan to expose the trade, explains Abang Robert, public relations head of Caprecon Development and Peace Initiative, an NGO focused on rehabilitating victims of human trafficking in Nigeria. They are scared of sabotage.

Baby factories are more common in the southeastern part of Nigeria, where security operatives have carried out several raids, including an operation last year when 19 pregnant girls and four children were rescued.

Women and girls are held captive to deliver babies who are then sold illegally to adoptive parents, forced into child labour, trafficked into prostitution or, as several reports suggest, ritually killed.

Boys are more expensive than girls in the baby sale business, says Comfort Agboko, head of the southeastern arm of Nigerias anti-trafficking agency, the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), at her office in Enugu.

Male children are often sold for between 700,000 naira (about $2,000) to one million naira (about $2,700) while female babies are sold for between 500,000 naira (about $1,350) and 700,000 naira.

The majority of the buyers are couples who have been unable to conceive.

Although anyone caught buying, selling or otherwise dealing in the procurement of children can be prosecuted, the baby trade remains prevalent in Enugu.

Roda stands just outside her temporary home in Madinatu [Philip Obaji Jr/Al Jazeera]

Orphanages

In recent years, security officials have carried out several undercover operations targeting suspected baby trafficking cartels whose operations the Enugu state government said are aided by some security agencies and unscrupulous state officials.

To avoid suspicion in the local community, baby factories are often presented as orphanages, experts explain.

Baby factory operators hide under the canopy of orphanages, says Agboko. She believes people receiving babies from them either do not know or do not care that they are not really orphans.

NAPTIP has arrested and prosecuted a number of people involved in the sale of babies in the southeast in recent years, Agboko explains. There are currently around half a dozen cases going through the court system.

We are now working in collaboration with the association of orphanage homes operators in the entire southeast to identify, arrest and prosecute such people, she adds.

There is no official data to show how many babies are bought and sold each year in Nigeria, nor the number of girls exploited by human traffickers. The United Nations estimates, however, that about 750,000 to one million persons are trafficked annually in Nigeria and that over 75 percent of those trafficked are trafficked across the states, 23 percent are trafficked within states, while 2 percent are trafficked outside the country.

Human trafficking widespread

Like Miriam, Roda was also discarded after she gave birth to a boy.

The cousins were reunited in Madinatu, where they are now living together in a small mud house, not far from the camp they were trafficked from.

Luckily, we got to Madinatu on the same day, says Miriam, who spent weeks on the streets of Abuja, before she was able to make her way back to the northeast.

We thought it was no longer safe to stay in the camp, so talked to the man who owns this place to let us stay here.

To earn money, the girls now make and sell groundnut cakes at a mini kiosk just outside their compound.

They were not the first to be trafficked from the Madinatu camp. There have been many reports of girls being trafficked from the camp to cities in Nigeria and to countries including Italy, Libya, Niger and Saudi Arabia. The victims are often promised good jobs only to end up being exploited or enslaved.

Although widespread in Madinatu, the problem of human trafficking is not peculiar to this area alone. It is common across the entire northeast region.

The 2019 United States Department of State Trafficking in Persons report revealed that: Sexual exploitation, including sex trafficking of IDPs (internationally displaced persons) in camps, settlements, and host communities around Maiduguri remained a pervasive problem. The report also notes that some security officials are complicit in these activities.

NAPTIP says it is aware of high numbers of cases of human trafficking in Madinatu and is increasing efforts to address the issue in the IDP camp in particular.

The office has now increased surveillance in the IDP camp, Mikita Ali, head of the NAPTIP office covering the northeast region, says. We are working with camp managers and camp officials to whom weve given our toll-free numbers and told to call us if they suspect any case of human trafficking.

Mohammed Lawan Tuba, a community leader in Madinatu, urges IDPs to pay attention to messages about how to tackle human trafficking [Philip Obaji Jr/Al Jazeera]

Easy to exploit

Inside the Madinatu camp, however, residents remain worried about the number of cases. Community leaders say the lack of adequate amenities like potable water facilities and cooking stoves means that people have to walk long distances in search of water and firewood, making them vulnerable to the human traffickers who prey on them.

If we had easy access to water and firewood, thered be little talk of human trafficking, says Mohammed Lawan Tuba, a community leader in Madinatu. Criminals take advantage of our children when they go out to find what they need to keep them and their families alive.

Human rights campaigners are running sensitisation campaigns which aim to educate displaced persons about the dangers of human trafficking and how to spot the signs of it inside the IDP camp.

But Yusuf Chiroma, head of the Borno Community Coalition, a group of aid workers assisting survivors of the Boko Haram insurgency through skills acquisition programmes, says: Displaced persons in Madinatu are really struggling to survive, as they are not getting enough food supply from the government and that is why it is easy for traffickers to exploit those who are desperate for jobs.

Sensitisation programmes have to be matched with adequate security and availability of food and social services by the state government to effectively tackle human trafficking.

*Names have been changed
The Environment Minister has ordered the first-ever review of Victorias native wildlife protection laws after an investigation into the killing of hundreds of wedge-tailed eagles concluded with no further charges being laid.

An investigation was launched in May 2018 by the environment department after it uncovered the remains of scores of eagles at a property in Tubbut, near the Snowy River National Park, in far east Gippsland.

Murray Silvester, the farm manager at the property, was charged with killing protected wildlife and pleaded guilty to the charges last year.

He became the first person in Victorian history to be jailed for the destruction of protected wildlife after he was sentenced to 14 days in prison and fined $2500.
Trader He Ximing, 52, a recovered COVID-19 patient who tested positive for the virus' antibodies after a number of negative tests, line up in a hospital after the lockdown was lifted in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province and China's epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak, April 13, 2020. Reuters




Nico Rosberg also regrets that Formula 1 was unable to travel to the Netherlands for the Grand Prix at Zandvoort this weekend. The single world champion is disappointed with the cancellation due to the coronavirus, because he expected a big Dutch party on the circuit located in the dunes.

"Unfortunately there is no DutchGP in Zandvoort today", Rosberg writes Sunday on his Twitter account. The former Formula 1 driver of among others Williams and Mercedes had taken into account a big orange sea. "It would have been a huge F1 party with all the fans going crazy and supporting Max!"

When will F1 come to the Netherlands?

According to Rosberg not only he had been looking forward to the return of the Dutch Grand Prix. "I think we were all looking forward to this weekend very much", says the now 34-year old German. He concludes in Dutch: "I hope to see you soon".

It remains to be seen if the weekend in Zandvoort can be caught up in 2020. The latest reports indicate that there is no place for the Netherlands on the renewed calendar. Circuit director Robert van Overdijk also said last week that FOM has not yet submitted a concrete request for a new date.

Rosberg tweet about Zandvoort

Unfortunately no #DutchGP in Zandvoort todayIt would have been a huge @F1 party with all the fans going crazy and supporting Max! I think we were all looking forward to this weekend very much. Ik hoop je snel te zien, @f1_dutchgp! pic.twitter.com/lEAR44N63Y  Nico Rosberg (@nico_rosberg) May 3, 2020
First, do no harm. Its a saying almost as old as the idea of medicine itself. I heard it a lot in medical school. Its something that New Mexicos leaders need to think long and hard about right now.

At the beginning of our fight with COVID-19, our leaders acted quickly on limited information. But now we have better data and experience that beg a more sophisticated approach as our nation grapples with balancing public health and the economy.

Theres another saying going around right now: The cure must not be more deadly than the disease. The more we delay reopening, the more lives we endanger, violating the do no harm principle. Domestic violence has drastically increased in Albuquerque, as reported by District Attorney Raul Torrez and the Domestic Violence Resource Center. New Mexico is second in the country for suicides per capita. We are vulnerable to increased unemployment and poverty rates, factors intimately associated with suicide.

Those who advocate for earlier business reopening have been accused of being a death cult by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grishams spokesman. Yet, on April 16, the U.N. warned that the economic downturn would cause tens of millions to fall into extreme poverty and hundreds of thousands of children could die.

People die from poverty. There is a well-documented relationship between poverty and disease, just as there is between unemployment and suicide.

But advocates for later reopening dont seem to appreciate that a robust economy saves lives every day. Instead, they argue those who discuss economics dont value human life.

What began as the idea of slowing the spread has morphed into the argument that we should all stay home until a cure is found. That, Im afraid, is not only an unreasonable mentality, but a fundamentally dangerous one.

Experts agree the total number of Americans who will contract coronavirus ultimately wont be changed. The virus will run its course. Although the goal of social distancing was originally to protect hospital capacity, the goal posts have been moved to a focus on saving lives. Slowing the spread was never supposed to be a way to prevent transmission entirely or to shut down the nation for 18 months or more to find a vaccine; it was to make sure hospitals could keep up. Clearly, New Mexicos hospitals are dealing with the demand just fine.

We can all agree that human life is precious. We should take every reasonable measure to protect life. What we have to deliberate about now is what is reasonable.

Is it reasonable to ask people to permanently give up on their career to lower the possibility of overwhelming a hospital?

What we hate is the loss of control. We are used to the illusion that we can control everything in comfort.

Perhaps the most well-respected infectious disease doctor in the world, Paul Farmer, said, We know that the risk of acquiring HIV does not depend on knowledge of how the virus is transmitted, but rather on the freedom to make decisions. Poverty is the great limiting factor of freedom.

This principle can be seen impacting the Navajo Nation, disproportionately affected by COVID-19.

Our leaders should be paying attention to the massive death toll that economic devastation and closure of our health-care system takes on society at large. Were treating COVID-19 with blinders on. If our society were one of my patients, the doctor in me says we need to treat the whole patient, not just one symptom.

Reopening businesses and our health-care system shouldnt be viewed as devaluing human life. It should be seen as an act of love.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 14:20:50|Editor: huaxia

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ULAN BATOR, May 3 (Xinhua) -- A total of 261 Mongolian nationals have been evacuated on a chartered flight from COVID-19-hit European countries, the country's State Emergency Commission (SEC) said Sunday.

The flight landed in the Chinggis Khaan International Airport in the capital city of Ulan Bator on Sunday morning, with 261 passengers onboard, the SEC said in a statement.

The 261 passengers belonging to at-risk groups, including pregnant women, the elderly, children and sick people, will be isolated at designated facilities for 21 days, it added.

The passengers arrived in the western German city of Frankfurt from 13 European countries before boarding the flight, according to the Mongolian Foreign Ministry.

The Asian country has evacuated more than 2,600 nationals from abroad on chartered flights since mid-March.

Mongolia reported 39 cases of COVID-19 as of Sunday. All confirmed cases, including four foreign nationals, are imported.

There have been no local transmissions reported in Mongolia so far. Enditem
Israels high court is set to begin hearing petitions against Benjamin Netanyahu forming a government while facing criminal indictments.

The Sunday proceedings, held by a large panel of 11 justices and, in a rare instance, to also be broadcast live, will focus on the issue of whether an politician can form a government while under indictment  something the Israeli legal code does not explicitly prohibit.

If the court voids Mr Netanyahus ability to serve as prime minister, Israel could be plunged into political chaos and it would likely trigger the countrys fourth election in just over 12 months.

The high court has become a lightning rod for criticism by Mr Netanyahu and his political allies, who accuse it of over-reach and political interference, while the long-time leaders opponents consider it a bastion of democracy under dangerous assault.

Pro-democracy demonstrators have been taking to the streets weekly to protest against Mr Netanyahus continued rule. Last week, counter-protesters against the court demonstrated against its hearing the petitions against his rule.

A man holds a sign in front of a poster that reads say no to a corrupt government (Ariel Schalit/AP/PA)

In an unprecedented move, Sundays hearing would be broadcast live on the high courts website while most of the country remains under coronavirus movement restrictions.

Mr Netanyahu was indicted earlier this year on charges of accepting bribes, fraud and breach of trust.

He has denied any wrongdoing. His trial was postponed due to restrictions his hand-picked interim justice minister placed on the courts after the coronavirus crisis erupted and is scheduled to commence later this month.

Last week, Israels attorney general Avichai Mandelblit said in an opinion to the court that while Mr Netanyahus indictments raise significant problems, there was no legal basis for barring him from serving while facing criminal charges.

Israeli law mandates that Cabinet ministers and mayors resign if indicted, but prime ministers are not specifically required to step down.

Story continues

In January, the Supreme Court declined to rule on whether Mr Netanyahu could form a government under indictment, saying the matter remained theoretical ahead of Marchs elections.

On Monday, the court will address petitions concerning Mr Netanyahus power-sharing coalition deal with his main rival, former military chief Benny Gantz.

The petitions were filed by advocacy groups that have asked the high court to ban any indicted politician, including Mr Netanyahu, from being allowed to form a new government. They also say that parts of the coalition deal are illegal.
Photo Illustration by Lyne Lucien/The Daily Beast/Getty

These are not the sunniest times in the U.S. foreign policy and defense communities. How could they be, given that the United States has recently fought two excruciatingly long wars that have left our adversaries stronger than they were when the wars began, despite the loss of 7,000 American lives?

Meanwhile, the liberal world order America did so much to create out of the ashes of World War II seems to be under assault pretty much everywhere, including, ironically enough, from the White House in Washington, D.C. Relationships with European allies who helped build and sustain that order have been badly frayed by a self-indulgent president who is as disdainful of sound alliances as he is of sound advice.

Trumps willful disregard of allies and penchant for strategic incoherence are hardly the only reason things have gone awry. A new book by the well-respected counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen goes far in explaining another one of the crucial developments responsible for the decline of American (and Western) strategic and military effectiveness.

In The Dragons and The Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West, Kilcullen argues persuasively that while the United States has been mired down in forever wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, our current and potential adversaries have gotten the jump on us.

Gertrude Bell and the Wests Fatal Failure to Understand the Arab World

His book offers readers a skillfully annotated road map of contemporary conflict, describing in clear, measured prose how and why the days of American strategic and military preeminence are now behind us. While the United States squandered its military resources since 9/11 in futile wars against Muslim jihadists and other insurgents, Beijing and Moscow studied Americas military strengths and weaknesses, as well as its many strategic mistakes. Both of these rising powers have rebuilt their militaries, and equally important, have devised formidable grand strategies to challenge U.S. dominance in their respective spheres of influence. China is using its enormous economic power to gain substantial political leverage over Americas Asian allies. Its revamped military already has the anti-access area-denial (A2-AD) capability to challenge the U.S. Navy in both the Indian and Pacific oceans.

Story continues

Vladimir Putin, despite his nations anemic economic base, has run rings around the West in the geopolitical arena over the past few years, boldly reinserting Russia into the Middle East via the Syrian Civil War, and developing the most sophisticated hybrid warfare capabilities on the planet, in the eyes of many defense analysts.

What is hybrid warfare? Its an approach to conflict that integrates conventional military operations seamlessly with political front movements, multi-media propaganda campaigns, fake news, cyber warfare, traditional diplomacy, and economic and military threats. When intervention beyond Russias borders is called for, Moscow likes to employ local proxies to create a veneer of legitimacy for its actions, as it did in the Crimea and is now doing in Ukraine.

Hybrid warfare, which blurs the line between peace and war, is nothing new. What is new is the skill and boldness with which Moscow has implemented it. Moscows deft exploitation of social media platforms and information warfare has sown confusion, conflict, and fear in the body politics of many Western nations, particularly the United States.

Kilcullen, a former Australian Army officer who was both a participant in the war on terror and a long-standing adviser to American commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan (including General David Petraeus), divides the Wests adversaries into two groups. The dragons are the rising nation statesChina and Russiaalong with the rogue states of Iran and North Korea. The snakes include non-state actors of all stripes: terrorist groups, guerrilla insurgencies, proxy militias, and paramilitary organizations like Hezbollah in Lebanon, which began as an anti-Israel militia and blossomed over time into a powerful political party with its own army.

Kilcullen makes a strong case that in the ongoing effort to blunt the effectiveness of the Western way of war, states and nonstate actors have learned from each other, so that today many of the most effective techniques used by nonstate armed groups draw on ideas and technology acquired from states [including of course the United States], while many successful state strategies are copies from non-state groups.

The snakes have become both more elusive and more lethal by adapting relatively inexpensive commercial technologies with wide-ranging military applications, especially GPS satellite technologies, Google maps, and smart phones to strike at Western forces from greater distances and more precision. Many terrorist groups have also acquired advanced missile systems, drones, and other conventional western military hardware from Iran and elsewhere.

ISIS originally was one of a score of jihadist groups in Iraq and numbered only a few thousand hardcore fighters. Proclaiming its own rigidly intolerant, backward-looking version of Islam as the One True Religion and glorifying horrific acts of violence against defenseless infidels, ISIS was able to recruit 30,000 foreign fighters and more than double that number of Iraqis to do its bidding. Under the guidance of the elusive Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the group acquired enough conventional military hardware (including tanks and heavy artillery) and administrative expertise to establish a quasi-state in Iraq and Syria the size of Great Britain by 2014. It took a U.S.-led coalition five years to break ISIS hold over territory.

Now, just a year after the Caliphate surrendered its last bit of territory, the group is on the rise again.

The snakes, says Kilcullen, have learned a great deal the hard way: through a vast amount of combat experience, which speeds up the adaptation process considerably, in part by taking heavy, but inevitably replaceable, casualties. Combat, Kilcullen writes, imparts instantaneous, uniquely indelible lessons that affect not only individuals but also organizations, tactics and a host of norms and institutions that shape every aspect of how a military force operates. He believes todays nonstate combatants, broadly speaking, are much more capable than they were even a decade ago. I know of no serious student of the subject who would disagree.

By way of example, air supremacy had long been a given for the West in the global war on terror, yet our adversaries in Afghanistan and Iraq proved adept at mitigating its effects by operating in very small, semi-autonomous groups that shunned the use of detectable communications. Increasingly, these fighters operate in urban environments where they are able to disappear or maneuver through tunnels and passageways that are often invulnerable to air strikes. By sticking close to civilian populations, they have successfully exploited the Wests great sensitivity to collateral damage. Such groups, Kilcullen writes, use a dynamic swarm of self-synchronized small groups, with lightly equipped, fast-moving irregular forces that operated in the shadows, staying below the detection threshold of our intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (IRS) platforms, avoiding our major combat forces whenever possible, targeting the vulnerable populations and infrastructure we needed to protect, and attack or subverting our (often unreliable) local partners.

Much like the Vietcong in the Vietnam War, Americas enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan pursued a protracted war strategy. Time was their great ally. They knew very well that the American people would lose patience with distant conflicts that were producing ambiguous results, at best. Like the Vietcong, the jihadists respected American conventional military power, but they were not overawed by it. And they recognized, as the Vietcong did, the startling inability of American policymakers to develop strategies that coherently integrated military and political operations in a part of the world they little understand.

Al Qaeda, Americas initial enemy in the Global War on Terror, remains a vital and active organization 18 years after the United States and its allies ejected the group from its bases in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The guts were torn out of the central structure in the initial American campaign in 2001-2002, writes Kilcullen, but the organizations affiliatesin Yemen, Indonesia, East Africa, and Saudi Arabiabecame more influential. The core group re-emerged as a propaganda hub and a center for guidance and targeting direction rather than an operational organization. To strengthen itself, al Qaeda also went into the business of remote recruiting by exploiting other Western technologies: social media and the dark web.

For their part, both Russia and China have been assiduous students of American conventional military systems, as well as asymmetric warfare techniques, in which propaganda, cyber, and political warfare are used to sow conflict and confusion. Both nations have been willing to defy international law and international institutions to secure their foreign policy ends. They have gambled that while the West will protest vehemently, it will not react with force to their predations.

So far, they have guessed right. Beginning in 2013 China seized and militarized the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. The Philippines challenged the seizure in the UNs Permanent Court of Arbitration, and the Court ruled in the Philippines favor in 2016. China has ignored the ruling, claiming, disingenuously, that the South China Sea has always belonged to the Chinese people.

Russias annexation of the Crimea drew fiery protests from the United States and its European allies. Sanctions were imposed, but no one today thinks the Crimea will be returned to Ukraine.

Iran, which has been engaged in a twilight conflict with the United States since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, is a nation-state that uses both proxy forces and asymmetrical warfare techniques that defense experts usually associate with non-state groups to achieve its foreign policy ends. It hasnt done badly in its quest to reduce secular and Western influences in the Middle East. Its most capable proxy force, Hezbollah, has become a real thorn in Israels side, thanks to its arsenal of formidable rockets, missiles, and drones, all courtesy of Tehran. After the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, writes Kilcullen, Hezbollahs propaganda tools operated around the clock, spreading imagery that harmed Israels global reputation, mobilized the [the Lebanese Shia] diaspora, and helped generate international pressure for a ceasefire.

In Iraq, irony of ironies, Iran has extensive political as well as military influence over the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad, certainly more influence than the United States enjoys at the moment. Irans intelligence agents have co-opted the Iranian cabinet, pro-Iranian political parties exert substantial influence in the Parliament in Baghdad, and a cluster of Iraqi Shiite militias take orders not from Baghdad but from Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guards. Iraq and Iran are both populated largely by Shiite Muslims, and Tehran has skillfully exploited transnational Shiite loyalty to gain enormous sway over all aspects of Iraqi life.

The Dragons and the Snakes is an important contribution to the literature on contemporary warfare. Historians and defense analysts have written several hundred books about the revolution in military affairs, fourth-generation warfare, or the new way of war since the end of the Cold War. The vast majority of these books hold that technological innovation lies behind the sea-changes in modern warfare. Kilcullens book, like just a few others, is refreshingly different. It concerns the broadening of warfare, detailing the way conflicts between nations and groups are being increasingly carried out in what used to be considered non-military spheres of human interaction, such as politics, economics, and computer networks.

A distinctive feature of this new kind of warfareif one can call it thatis that traditional battlefield dominance isnt the big deal it used to be. A key lesson from the global war on terror, surely, is that superbly trained and armed soldiers with precision-guided munitions and state-of-the-art command and control systems cannot compensate for bone-headed, incoherent strategies, such as the ones offered up by recent American administrations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nor can they build nations in the American image.

Of course, this was one of the most important lessons of the Vietnam War, but we keep forgetting that this is so, and making the same mistakes, because we are American and we are Exceptional. No wonder the U.S. foreign policy journals are awash these days with essays counseling greater restraint in setting goals and curbing our addiction to sending in the Marines. Given whats happened to America in the greater Middle East over the past 19 years, restraint is surely the beginning of wisdom.

Kilcullens book is mainly about problems, not solutions, but he nevertheless concludes with some interesting comments on what the United States and the West might do to address this sorry state of affairs.

Like Andrew Bacevichanother former soldierand a longish line of other distinguished scholars of foreign policy, Kilcullen sees the militarization of American foreign policy as a huge problem that needs to be addressed. He calls on America to pursue a strategy of offshore balancing, in which Washington would forgo nation-building, hang up its world-policeman helmet, and cease trying to dominate near-competitors like Russia or China. Rather than dominating potential adversaries, our objectives can and should be much more modest: to prevent them from dominating us, and to do so at an acceptable and sustainable long-term cost.

Hmm. That sounds like a good start.

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(Reuters) - More than 3.34 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 237,137 have died, according to a Reuters tally, as of 0200 GMT on Saturday. DEATHS AND INFECTIONS * For an interactive graphic tracking the global spread, open https://tmsnrt.rs/3aIRuz7 in an external browser. * For a U.S.-focused tracker with state-by-state and county map, open https://tmsnrt.rs/2w7hX9T in an external browser

(Reuters) - More than 3.34 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 237,137 have died, according to a Reuters tally, as of 0200 GMT on Saturday.

DEATHS AND INFECTIONS

* For an interactive graphic tracking the global spread, open https://tmsnrt.rs/3aIRuz7 in an external browser.

* For a U.S.-focused tracker with state-by-state and county map, open https://tmsnrt.rs/2w7hX9T in an external browser.

EUROPE

* Joggers, cyclists and surfers across Spain emerged from their homes, with adults allowed out for exercise for the first time in seven weeks as the government began easing tough coronavirus restrictions.

* The United Kingdom's COVID-19 death toll rose 621 to 28,131 as of May 1, just short of Italy which has so far had the world's second most deadly outbreak of the disease after the United States.

* Boris Johnson and his fiancee Carrie Symonds have named their newborn son Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas, partly as a tribute to two of the intensive care doctors who they said had saved the British leader's life as he battled COVID-19 last month.

* Travellers to France, including French citizens returning home, will face a compulsory two-week quarantine and possible isolation when they arrive in the country to help slow the spread of coronavirus, the health minister said.

* Russia reported 9,623 new cases of coronavirus, its highest daily rise since the start of the pandemic, bringing the total to 124,054, mostly in the capital Moscow.

* Austrians flocked to newly reopened hairdressers, beauticians and electronics shops, relishing the loosening of a seven-week lockdown.

AMERICAS

* New York Governor Andrew Cuomo pushed back against what he called premature demands that he reopen the state, saying he knew people were struggling without jobs but that more understanding of the coronavirus was needed.

* Top U.S. health official Anthony Fauci will not testify next week to a congressional committee examining the Trump administration's response to the pandemic, the White House said on Friday, calling it "counterproductive" to have individuals involved in the response testify.

* Imported by the Brazilian elite vacationing in Europe, the new coronavirus is now ravaging the country's poor, ripping through tightly-packed neighborhoods where the disease is harder to control.

ASIA-PACIFIC

* India has ordered all public and private sector employees to use a government-backed contact tracing app and maintain social distancing in offices as it begins easing some of its lockdown measures in districts less affected by the coronavirus.

* A northeastern Chinese city of 10 million people struggling with currently the country's biggest coronavirus cluster shut dine-in services, as the rest of China eases restrictions.

* China has published a short animation titled "Once Upon a Virus" mocking the U.S. response to the new coronavirus, using Lego-like figures to represent the two countries.

* Malaysian authorities defended plans to ease lockdown measures next week even as the number of new infections jumped to a two-week high.

* Singapore will start easing some curbs over the next few weeks, authorities said.

MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

* Yemen reported the first case of the coronavirus in a third province late on Friday, raising the number of diagnosed infections to seven with two deaths in one of the world's most vulnerable countries.

* Iran's death toll from the coronavirus increased by 65 in the past 24 hours to 6,156, Health Ministry spokesman Kianush Jahanpur said in a statement on state TV.

ECONOMIC FALLOUT

* Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc is being hit hard by the pandemic, posting a record quarterly net loss of nearly $50 billion and saying performance is suffering in several major operating businesses.

* Austria's central bank expects economic output to shrink more than twice as much this year as it forecast just a month ago as the coronavirus lockdown lasts longer than anticipated, its Governor Robert Holzmann said.

* Ireland will allow firms impacted by the coronavirus crisis to warehouse tax liabilities for 12 months, offering a "lifeline" as part of an additional package of business supports that could reach 6.5 billion euros, the government announced.

* Corporations are warning on hits to their financial results as the pandemic disrupts supply chains and business activity.

(Compiled by Frances Kerry)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
'End of our story', wrote Neetu Kapoor as she shared a happy picture of Rishi Kapoor soon after he left the world for his heavenly abode.

It was 46 years ago that Rishi Kapoor and Neetu Singh's fairytale story began on the sets of 1974 movie Zehreela Insaan. That's when they first met. While shooting for the film, Rishi fell in love with her.



Narrating his love story, Rishi had earlier said, "I remember I had an argument with my girlfriend at the time and I was very heartbroken. Trying to win her back, I had taken Neetus help in writing telegrams to my girlfriend while the two of us were shooting for Zehreela Insaan'."

Twitter

"As time passed, I began to realise that Neetu is the one for me as I began to miss her when I had gone to Europe for a shoot. Ironically, I sent her a telegram from Europe to Kashmir saying that I was thinking of her."

Twitter

On the other hand, Neetu had her own version of the story. "I had a horrible first meeting with Rishi Kapoor. He had a habit of bullying, so he would comment on my make-up and clothes, and I'd feel so angry. He was actually a brat who would bully everyone and I was very young at that time. I used to be furious with him," she had said in an interview earlier.



Twitter

She added that whenever she would go out with Rishi on dinner dates, her protective mother would her cousin along with her. Eventually, she fell in love with him too.



Neetu said she chose to live a simple life after getting married. "And then my husband told me to finish everything, so we could eventually start a family. It wasn't that women couldn't work (after marriage) but I was tired working for 15 years continuously. I wanted a simple life."



Rishi and Neetu got married on 1980. The wedding reception invitation card that is going viral on social media. Mr and Mrs Raj Kapoor request the pleasure of your company on the auspicious occasion of the marriage reception of their son RISHI (Grandson of Late Mr and Mrs Prithviraj Kapoor with NEETU (Daughter of Mrs Rajee Singh) on Wednesday 23rd January 1980. Between 6-30 PM and 9-00 PM at R.K. Studios, Chembur, Bombay 400071," it reads.



Rishi Kapoor was one of the legendary stars of Bollywood. His death has has left a deep void in the hearts of his fans. He will be missed until the end of the time.
Senior Placement Advisors of TX teamed up with Taco Bar of College Station on Thursday to feed those working on the front lines during the COVID-19 pandemic. The group served dozens of nurses from Fortress Nursing and Rehabilitation.

Senior Placement Advisors of TX is a non-fee-based, veteran-owned and -operated company that specializes in senior living placement and elder care management. They recently launched a yard sign campaign, allowing supporters to purchase a #BCSstrong yard sign to place in front of a home or business. One hundred percent of donations received from the purchase of the yard signs will go to purchase food for local healthcare workers.

The yard sign campaign is a collaboration between Allumine Health Foundation, Senior Placement Advisors of Texas and The Rotary Club of College Station.

Bryan-College Station has been a wonderful home for Senior Placement Advisors of Texas and the local community has welcomed us with open arms, said owner Wade Budney. It is our pleasure to have teamed up with these two amazing organizations to provide a helping hand during this time of need.

Yard sign orders can be placed at www.alluminehealth.com.
The Aarogya Setu app generates a unique ID for each user and it keeps a track of all other IDs coming in contact with it and the GPS location and time of said contact.

As countries around the world are fighting COVID-19, old systems are being repurposed using new technology with one such system being that of contact tracing. It entails identifying those who are infected with disease, advising them to be under self-quarantine and tracking down all those whom they have been in contact with to prevent the disease from further spreading.

Ordinarily, this is done through the interview method, however, given the shortage of personnel, the rapid and unexplained pace of the virus's growth as well as the likelihood of inaccurate information given by any subject, technological solutions are being looked at across the globe.

The Indian government has addressed this by creating the Aarogya Setu app.

How does it work?

The app generates a unique ID for each user and it keeps track of all other IDs coming in contact with it and the GPS location and time of said contact.

The idea being that if the Bluetooth of two phones is connecting, if one individual is found to be infected then the other individual is at a potential risk of infection.

What are the concerns?

Given the sensitive nature of data involved and the mandatory prescription for using the app, concerns about privacy violations have been raised. The Supreme Court in the 2017 Puttaswamy judgment reiterated that the Right to Privacy is a fundamental right and laid down the proportionality test to assess any State restriction imposed on said right.

The proportionality test comprises these aspects: First, it must have a legislative basis and a legitimate aim must be pursued. Second, it should be a rational method to achieve the intended aim. Third, there must be no less restrictive means which can also achieve the intended aim (necessity). And fourth, the benefits must outweigh the harm caused to the right holder.

While independent arguments can be raised negating the fulfilment of each of these prongs, it is clear from the outset is that in the absence of any legislation governing this app, the criterion is not met as all these conditions have to be satisfied for the test to be fulfilled.

In addition, basic principles of data protection such as data minimisation, purpose limitation, transparency and accountability are not fulfilled. The inclusion of other services such as the PM-Cares Fund laughs in the face of the purpose limitation and scares many privacy activists of this evolving into another Aadhaar where the root purpose is needlessly clubbed with derived purposes.

The extensive personal information that the app secures is against the norm of data minimisation. In addition, the privacy policy of the app does not mention the relevant department with which the information may be shared.

Lastly, in the absence of any governing legislation, the terms of service and privacy policy play fast and loose with the data retention issue.

On to the technology, there is a possibility of false alarms as proximity does not indicate probability. Bluetooth would exchange the Unique IDs even if two people walk past each other within a certain range, while maintaining all necessary precautions, as well as people who may be sitting across different rooms and different floors. If one is found to be infected, all the concomitant user IDs would be incorrectly identified as potentially being infected.

How can this be addressed?

In the absence of a data protection legislation, there is a necessity to ensure that the government at the very least passes a legislation and if not an ordinance, which works in consonance with the principles laid down in the Puttuswamy judgment as well as those stated by Sri Krishna Committee Report on Data Protection.

Any legislative instrument should have a definite sunset clause, giving a prospective time period for how long the data acquired will be placed on the government cloud servers and of its subsequent deletion.

In doing so it would ensure that the element of parliamentary accountability is brought into effect. In the interim period, a judicial oversight committee should be formed as has been done by the government in South Africa.

Furthermore, if the raucous response (however delirious) by the masses to the prime ministers addresses is reflective of anything, is that unlike other countries there is an immense degree of faith in the Central leadership in India.

For the app to work it must be adopted 50 to 70 percent of the relevant population, thus transparency is key for having continued faith in the governments initiatives.

As contact tracing techniques will be critical in ensuring that the viruss resurgence is curtailed when the lockdown is eased, thus what the application also provides is an opportunity to have a new conversation on the usage of data.

One approach could be with the government having an open dialogue focusing on the usage of this app for public health, patients and lastly citizens. All essential aspects but each of a different nature.

Public health would focus on why this app needs to be used; its relevance in ensuring that finite resources that are being used most effectively in dealing with this pandemic.

From the patient's perspective, contact tracing could help patients in ascertaining how to address issues such as seeking care and ensuring access to health care providers. This would help them in addressing their worries in terms of how to deal with the virus.

Finally, the citizen perspective is relevant in having community-level strategies as has already done by the identification of different zones (Green, Orange and Red).

On a micro level this could help in collective curve flattening with the GPS information being collected used to develop community strategies. However, the caveat being that the personally identifiable information that the app presently collects is not clubbed with it. Instead the app should only state that a COVID-19 patient was there.

With respect to the Bluetooth technology, app developers could incorporate a user interface which would state that one is within a range of device XYZ, whether this is an infection range (Y/N). In the event of any false alarms, they can simply be clicked away. Better yet, the app design could invite people to add a nickname and a photo so that contacts could see who they are.

Conclusion

A judicial inquiry in this issue seems unlikely at this stage and if the Supreme Courts verdict in the Anuradha Bhasin (Kashmir lockdown) case is anything to go by, its clear that they are strongly advocating for the separation of powers doctrine in national security matters, by ensuring that the executive carries out a constitutional review of its actions.

The app is here to stay and likely to be critical in policy decisions.

While the Indian government has had a dodgy history when balancing between privacy and national security, this is an opportunity to show their belief in the rule of law even in the midst of a pandemic by engaging in some innovative thinking.
Bihar on Sunday classified all 38 districts either under the heavily restricted Red Zone or the comparatively relaxed yet strictly monitored Orange Zone till the scheduled end of the lockdown on May 17.

This means that there is not a single district in the Green Zone, considered free of Covid-19.

The government contended that there was need for strict implementation of the ongoing restrictions to contain the spread of Covid-19 in view of the rising cases in new areas and return of migrants and students from other states.

On Friday, while extending the lockdown that began on March 25 till May 17, the Union home ministry had said that states could classify areas under the three levels, but could not lower the level of an area fixed by the central government. It also allowed states to determine on lockdown norms. At the time, according to the central government classification, Bihar had five districts in the Red Zone, including capital Patna, 20 in Orange and 13 in Green Zone. With the latest order, the state government has recognised 33 districts in the Orange Zone.

By Sunday, the state had recorded a total of 516 Covid-19 positive case and four deaths.

Issuing the order, additional chief secretary (home) Amir Subhani said the Red Zone districts were classified as per norms laid down by the central government.

Under the Red Zone, only shops that deal in essential commodities are allowed to open. The Bihar home department order said the district magistrates in this zone could take a call on allowing other shops after assessing the requirement and ground situation.

In the Orange Zone, the order stated, activities like purchase of goods and delivery through e- commerce (essential and non-essential), construction activities (all types) and industrial activity would be allowed, apart from sale of essential items. Barber shops, salons and spas too would be permitted.

All other restrictions and orders would be applicable in orange zones as like red zones, the order stated.

Earlier in the day, the home secretary told HT that new guidelines on lockdown was being prepared as per the central government orders. In the day, Bihar top officials also interacted with cabinet secretary to discuss on various aspects of lockdown and strategy to be adopted after May 17 when the extended lockdown ends.

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When a British photographer learned that 90 percent of expectant parents in the United Kingdom would choose to terminate their unborn child if they found out they had Down syndrome, she decided it was time to make a change by creating awareness and depicting their beauty.

Nicole Louise Perkins, from Birmingham, first launched her awareness campaign called Down Right Beautiful in 2018, featuring 32 different people from babies to young adults with Down syndrome.

(Courtesy of Nicole Louise Photography)

Each person involved had their own page with their story and any advice their parents would give to new parents who have just been given a diagnosis, she told TODAY.

After receiving an overwhelming response to her 2018 campaign, which was informative, Nicole, who works as a full-time teaching assistant at a special-needs secondary school, decided to do another campaign in 2019. However, this time it was a slightly different theme and featured kids with Down syndrome donned as Disney characters.

I absolutely love Disney and as it is so magical I thought it would be perfect to celebrate the beauty of Down syndrome, she told Metro.

Aurora Marney as Ariel from The Little Mermaid. (Courtesy of Nicole Louise Photography)

In her series Down with Disney, Nicole created 12 classic characters from Disney movies such as The Little Mermaid, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Toy Story, and more. The heartwarming campaign ran for 12 days and featured children as young as 4 months old.

Each and every child involved has Down syndrome and dont they just look FABULOUS! she wrote, sharing her magical images on Facebook. As Walt Disney said- If you can dream, you can do it. Always remember that this whole thing was started by a mouse.

(L-R) Jackson Vaughan as Sheriff Woody and Rory Haywood as Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story. (Courtesy of Nicole Louise Photography)

Dorothy Mason as Snow White. (Courtesy of Nicole Louise Photography)

With her adorable pictures featuring kids beaming with a smile, Nicole hoped that her campaign would show parents-to-be who have received a diagnosis of their unborn child that having children with Down syndrome is indeed a true blessing.

Down syndrome is truly special and what doctors tell you about it isnt always right, she told The Metro. Children with Down syndrome are such a joy to be around and not to mention absolutely beautiful. They bring you a different kind of happiness.

Nicoles fabulous photo series has been shared more than 40,000 times, charming social media users around the world.

Leiya Cooper as Cinderella. (Courtesy of Nicole Louise Photography)

Though the Down with Disney campaign was successful, Nicole told Bored Panda that she had encountered some challenges while shooting, one of which included financial difficulties.

The greatest challenge was knowing when to stop. I could have gone on forever with these photo shoots but the props and everything is just so expensive, she said. However, she added that it was well worth it when she saw how much joy her photos had brought to people.

Additionally, Nicole was amazed by the responses she received. People left numerous comments for Nicole, telling her how much they love the photos as it made them happy, and their message left her feeling so full inside, she told TODAY.

(L-R) Jensen Pointon as the Beast and Holly Allan as Belle from Beauty and the Beast. (Courtesy of Nicole Louise Photography)

For Nicole however, one special message really touched her heart.

One of the best things was a personal message I received of a woman saying thank you and that her thoughts have now changed if she was to have a baby with Down syndrome and that was the best because that is the whole aim of the campaign, she added.

After the incredible response to her 2019 campaign, Nicole revealed that she was already planning to have her Down syndrome photo series again this year. She told The Mighty that there is a possibility of an extension of Down with Disney but with a twist.

Check out the rest of Down with Disney photo series below:

Zephaniah Ojar as Mowgli from The Jungle Book. (Courtesy of Nicole Louise Photography)

Jaxon Jones as Peter Pan. (Courtesy of Nicole Louise Photography)

Chloe Lennon as Merida from Brave. (Courtesy of Nicole Louise Photography)

Bella Gould as Boo from Monsters, Inc. (Courtesy of Nicole Louise Photography)

Angelo S. as Simba from The Lion King. (Courtesy of Nicole Louise Photography)

(L-R) Abdullah Adnan as Aladdin and Maryam El-Khamisi as Jasmine. (Courtesy of Nicole Louise Photography)

Photo courtesy of Nicole Louise Photography ( Website | Instagram | Facebook )

We would love to hear your stories! You can share them with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.nyc
The Court cannot say that a temporary restraining order prohibiting the City from taking the steps it reasonably deems necessary to slow the spread of Covid-19 serves the public interest, Pitlyk concluded.

The case is not done, however. Pitlyk scheduled another hearing for May 12.

Franks lawsuit says that shes been seeking a home since moving to St. Louis in November and had signed up for space in a hotel three weeks ago but is still waiting for a bed. The suit says clearing the camp would conflict with guidance from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which says clearing encampments can cause people to disperse throughout the community and break connections with service providers. And it says the eviction of Frank and others under threat of arrest would violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

It also seeks class-action status to represent others at the camp.

City officials insisted in court and in court documents that they were not planning criminal charges or arrests and said people at the park had been offered coronavirus tests.
With nearly four decades of service, General Maryanne Miller is the only female four-star general currently serving in the U.S. Department of Defense and the first reservist to lead the Air Mobility Command. What sets her apart is her down-to-earth attitude and belief that life is to serve.

Maryanne Miller, from Hillard, Ohio, graduated from Ohio State University in 1981 and joined the Air Force that very same year. She began her illustrious career as a pilot, and in 2016, she became the first woman to hold the title of chief of the Air Force Reserve. In August 2019, she became one of the few women in history to receive her fourth star as a general.

Back in 2001, after 20 years of service, Miller was about to retire from the Air Force. Nine-eleven was a catalyst that changed her mind. Tuesday, September 11 changed the world for me, she recalled in an awe-inspiring interview with Today. And by that Friday, I had called the Air Force Reserve and said pull my retirement papers.

Miller says she values humility despite her high rank and says to her young Airmen, Were all the same. The general also stated that when training recruits, she not only values their abilities as airmen but also their qualities as human beings. You need to be a good person. I spend a lot of time on their heart, she said.

General Maryanne Miller and Chief Greene visited the 43rd Air Mobility Operations Group at Pope Army Airfield last week. (Master Sgt. Katherine Novales/DVIDSHUB)

Gen. Maryanne Miller presents Staff Sgt. Kayla D. Lee a promotion certificate while visiting the 916th Air Refueling Wing on Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina, Sept. 10. (Staff Sgt. Mary McKnight/DVIDSHUB)

When asked how she felt about her status as the only female four star general serving, Millers response was nothing short of inspiring. I view it from the eyes of a young girl looking up at me. I want them to see someone who is convicted to get it right, who really understands what it means to be a great airman and to be a great leader, she explains.

As she lives day by day facing the challenges that come with her rank and responsibilities, General Miller said she turns to God for guidance. You know, my whole life is giving and giving and serving those around me, serving the mission and the airmen. I fill back up with prayer and contemplation, and its wonderful, she added.

U.S. Air Force 2nd Lt. Shawna Lennen poses for a photo with U.S. Air Force Gen. Maryanne Miller at EAA AirVenture July 27, 2019, in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. (Senior Airman Cameron Lewis/DVIDSHUB)

Not only that, but Miller also carries in her uniform hat, at all times, a powerful handwritten prayer. Keep our service members and civilian members strong in our purpose and safe in Your arms, it reads.

As a former softball player, General Miller was honored in her home state of Ohio, inside the Ohio Stadium in the Annual Military Appreciation game in November 2019, according to ABC 6.

A star is on display during the promotion where Gen. Maryanne Miller received her fourth star. (Staff Sgt. Michael Cossaboom/DVIDSHUB)

When asked by Today reporters whats the most important lesson she had for the new Air Force recruits, Miller emphasized the importance of putting service and heart into the military.

We can do the mission every day, we can have the best equipment in the world, we can be trained and equipped to do our job every single day, but at the end of it it comes down to the human in the loop, she stated. At the end of the day, its what is in your heart. Its whats inside. Thats what continues. Connect with each other, serve each other; life is about service.
A MAN has appeared in court charged with possession of a sub-machine gun and ammunition following an operation targeting an organised crime group.

Stephen Gibbons (56), of Rockleigh House in Gormanston, Co Meath, is also accused of attempting to smuggle a mobile phone and SIM card into a Dublin prison.

The defendant appeared before Dundalk district court this morning and was remanded in custody.

He was detained on Tuesday by gardai in Ashbourne as part of an investigation targeting organised crime in the Meath/Louth area.

Mr Gibbons is charged with possession of 12 rounds of 9mm Makarov calibre ammunition on January 15 last at Richardstown in Gormanston, Co Meath.

He is also accused of possession of a PM-63 RAK sub-machine gun at the same location on the same date.

Judge Eirinn McKiernan remanded him in custody to appear before Cloverhill District Court next Friday, May 8.

The accused also faces a third charge of attempting to convey a mobile phone and SIM card into Wheatfield Prison, Dublin 22, on May 13, 2017.

Judge McKiernan remanded Mr Gibbons in custody to appear before the court on a separate date in July in relation to this matter.
CEO salaries increased at the country's top mutual fund houses during 2019-20 on robust business growth, with HDFC Mutual Fund's Milind Barve being the highest paid executive.

According to an analysis of the data made public by mutual funds, the CEO salary given by the top 12 fund houses in terms of assets under management increased in the range of 2-132 per cent in 2019-20 from the preceding fiscal year.

However, CEO remuneration of Aditya Birla Sunlife MF, Nippon India MF and DSP MF dropped by up to 19 per cent during the period under review.

The salaries for chief investment officers also witnessed a rise for most fund houses.

Salary disclosed by the fund houses for 2019-20 was decided in April-May 2019 on the basis of 2018-19 profitability, which was at an all-time high for the industry, according to industry executives.

Overall, the past fiscal was a good year for the mutual fund industry barring the month of March, which saw record declines amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Barve, chief executive of second-largest fund house HDFC MF, claimed the top slot with a salary pay-out of Rs 7.43 crore for the fiscal. His package climbed by 3 per cent from Rs 7.23 crore in 2018-19.

In terms of percentage growth, SBI MF, which is the largest fund house in the country in terms of AUM, gave its CEO Ashwani Bhatia a salary jump of 132 per cent to Rs 51 lakh in 2019-20. He had earned a salary of Rs 22 lakh in the preceding fiscal.

Ironically, Bhatia is the lowest paid CEO among the top fund houses.

Apart from SBI MF, fund houses like UTI MF and Kotak MF too gave a staggering salary hike to their respective CEOs.

Barve is followed by Nilesh Shah, the top honcho of Kotak MF, who received a pay package of Rs 7.32 crore, 68 per cent higher than Rs 4.35 crore received in the preceding fiscal.

ICICI Prudential MF paid Rs 6.98 crore to its Managing Director Nimesh Shah last fiscal, a hike of 12 per cent from Rs 6.25 crore in 2018-19.

Nippon India MF's CEO Sundeep Sikka got a salary of Rs 6.01 crore, which is a decline of 8 per cent from last fiscal, while the same for A Balasubramanian, chief executive at Aditya Birla SunLife MF, was at Rs 5.41 crore, a decrease of 7 per cent.

IDFC Mutual Fund chief executive Vishal Kapoor's pay package rose to Rs 5.12 crore from Rs 5.01 crore, translating into an increase of 2 per cent.

Chandresh Nigam, chief executive at Axis MF, got a salary of Rs 4.8 crore in the period under review as compared to Rs 3.97 crore in 2018-19.

However, he took home a pay package of Rs 17.67 crore, which included a one time pay-out.

UTI MF's Acting CEO Imtaiyazur Rahman took home a salary of Rs 4.48 crore in the past fiscal, a 97 per cent jump from Rs 2.27 crore paid in 2018-19.

On the other hand, salary of DSP MF's Kalpen Parekh plunged by 19 per cent to Rs 4.2 crore in 2019-20.

The salary of Sanjay Sapre, president of Franklin Templeton MF, was not available for 2019-20 as the company's financial year ends in September. Sapre's salary was Rs 3.50 crore for the year ended September 30, 2019, as compared to Rs 2.99 crore in the previous fiscal.

L&T MF top boss Kailash Kulkarni's salary rose from Rs 2.41 crore to Rs 2.7 crore in the period under review.

The fund houses started disclosing salaries after Sebi, in April 2017, directed them to disclose annual remuneration of all employees earning Rs 1.02 crore or above within one month of a financial year, starting with 2016-17.

Earlier, remuneration of all employees earning Rs 60 lakh or above in a financial year was required to be disclosed.

This is part of Sebi's effort to promote transparency in remuneration policies so that executive salary is aligned with the interest of investors. While a few mutual fund houses have complied with Sebi's directive and disclosed the information, others still have to comply with the rule.

The asset under management of the industry, comprising 44 players, rose to Rs 27 lakh crore at the end of March 31, 2020 from Rs 24.5 crore in March-end 2019 and Rs 23 lakh crore in March-end 2018.

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The batch included chemical warfare gas masks and household cleaning gloves, which raises a question about how much of the shipment was useful.

Russia billed the U.S. nearly $660,000 for its medical aid flight last month that included thousands of pieces of equipment not typically used by hospitals, including chemical warfare-style gas masks and household cleaning gloves, according to a government record of the shipment.

The cargo also included 45 ventilators that were not immediately useable because of voltage-related issues, according to two U.S. officials, ABC News reports.

It was not immediately clear how useful the April 1 shipment to New York's JFK Airport has been for nearby hospitals. Thousands of respirators, surgical gloves, medical clothing and antiseptic packets were also included in the flight.

Still, the details and price tag of the shipment, which have not been previously reported, challenge public descriptions by the Kremlin and U.S. President Donald Trump and raise questions about whether the shipment served primarily as a public relations coup for Russia, known by U.S. intelligence for waging disinformation campaigns.

"I'm not concerned about Russian propaganda. Not even a little bit," Trump told reporters during an April 2 press briefing.

Trump said the cargo was offered by Russian President Vladimir Putin in a private phone call.

"He offered a lot of medical, high quality stuff that I accepted and that may save a lot of lives. I'll take it every day," Trump said.

Moscow referred to the flight in its state-run media as "humanitarian aid" that New Yorkers would be grateful to receive. Russia's foreign ministry said the Kremlin was covering the cost of half the value of the cargo with the other half being covered by the United States.

Read alsoUkraine blocks another Russian draft UN resolution aimed at sanction lift

Foreign policy experts though have questioned the move by Trump, saying it was a propaganda coup for the Kremlin as it continues to try to undercut U.S. interests.

According to Russias foreign ministry, the money for the supplies came from the Russian Direct Investment Fund  Russia's sovereign wealth fund that was sanctioned by Treasury in June 2015 as part of sanctions punishing Russia for its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

Also, at least some of the ventilators were made by a Siberian factory that is owned by a Russian state company sanctioned by the U.S. over Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2014.

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment about the utility of the cargo. On the question of sanctions, a senior administration official said the sanctions on the Russian Direct Investment Fund don't apply to medical equipment and supplies.

The batch included a total of 4,000 M-95 "full face masks with filters," which are military-grade masks used to protect against chemical and biological agents. The mask needed by U.S. health care workers and other frontline responders is the "N95" respirator, which does not cover a person's entire face.

Read alsoItalians offered EUR 200 for praising Putin's help on camera  media

The agency said the flight also included 15,000 respirators, some 80,000 packs of skin antiseptic, 30,000 surgical gloves and about 400,000 pieces of medical clothing.
State Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli said Saturday she is asking the National Guard to help New Jerseys nursing homes respond to the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed the lives of 3,670 people living in longterm care facilities.

Nearly half of all deaths in the state appear to come from nursing homes, based on lab-confirmed and presumed COVID-19 death data.

The decision to seek help from the state or federal branches of the National Guard is an abrupt change from what Gov. Phil Murphy had said as recently as Friday, when he called it an idea under consideration.

A prominent geriatric physician has issued two open letters to Murphy telling him the National Guard could be deployed to deliver food trays and other non-medical duties because there is a staffing crisis inside many of 670 state-licensed facilities.

When asked again Saturday during the states daily press briefing in Trenton, Persichilli said for the first time that the administration had put in a request with the guard once before, but its members had been diverted to another location.

Persichilli told NJ Advance Media after the briefing she intended to renew the request, with the state or federal branch of the National Guard, or both.

A spokesperson for the two branches could not immediately be reached for comment.

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Murphy already has dispatched the the National Guard to distribute personal protective equipment and food and help assemble field hospitals. Also, 75 medics were sent to the state veterans homes in Edison and Paramus as an increasing number of employees are out sick. There have been 63 deaths at the Paramus Veterans Home and 51 at the Menlo Park home, according to the health department.

We also need guardsmen, David Barile, medical director of Geriatric and Palliative Services at UPENN Hospital of Princeton and founder of Goals of Care Coalition of New Jersey, which promotes palliative care, wrote in an April 17 letter to the governor last month.

We need them in our vulnerable nursing homes to help with critical staff shortages so residents can be fed, washed, clothed and safely cared for in their rooms. This intervention will save lives and reduce age-related complications of remaining bedbound. Guardsmen will help to reduce the spread of COVID by keeping residents with dementia from moving room to room.

Many are left bedbound for days, likely to result in bedsores and subsequent illnesses such as pneumonia and fractures due to falls," Barile wrote.

Barile said he was pleased with the decision.

Calling for the National Guard to assist in the care of our most vulnerable is an important step in controlling the spread of COVID in our nursing homes, and will certainly save lives, he said.

Persichilli said the state is also looking to enlist student nurses to help at nursing homes, which has seen a significant but so far unspecified number of employees sidelined by the virus.

The health department has shared a list of about 1,000 nursing home aides who may be willing to help, she said, but added: Its very difficult to get people to do the activities of daily living, such as the bathing, feeding and toileting responsibilities.

Not a lot of them are anxious to do the work, she added.

In all, New Jersey  a state of 9 million residents  has reported at least 123,717 cases of the coronavirus, including 7,742 deaths, in a little more than eight weeks since the outbreak started March 4. Only New York has more cases and deaths among American states.

Local journalism needs your support. Subscribe at nj.com/supporter.

Susan K. Livio may be reached at slivio@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @SusanKLivio.

Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @johnsb01.
Indian Air Force's premier transport aircraft C-130 Hercules on Sunday conducted a fly-past over the famous Sukhna Lake here while IAF choppers showered petals over PGIMER and two other hospitals as part of a mega exercise to express gratitude to the frontline COVID-19 warriors across the country.

Chandimandir, near here, the headquarters of Army's Western Command, also organised programmes at civil hospitals in Panchkula and Mohali to honour the corona warriors with army bands in attendance.

The Army's Engineer Brigade of Zirakpur conducted a 30-minute show of gratitude for the entire medical fraternity at Phase-6 Civil Hospital in Mohali, a defence release said here.

On the occasion, the pipe band played 'Kadam kadam badhaye ja' and 'Sare jahan se acha'. Brigadier Parvinder Singh presented a gift hamper to the chief medical officer of Mohali.

Besides, gifts were also given to the staff individually as a token of appreciation.

The release said, "The IAF C-130 Hercules conducted a fly-past over Sukhna lake in Chandigarh. The IAF helicopters showered petals over PGIMER, Government Medical College and Hospital at Sector 32 Chandigarh and (Army's) Command Hospital (Chandimandir)."



"I am extremely thankful to our armed forces for appreciating and commending the efforts of health care workers, the frontline warriors battling the global pandemic of COVID-19. We appreciate the gesture, it is hugely motivational and has filled our hearts with gratitude," PGIMER-Chandigarh's Director Prof Jagat Ram said.

The helicopters showered petals on the health care workers comprising doctors, nurses, housekeeping, sanitation and other allied services staff of PGIMER, who had gathered in the premier institute's Kairon block.

Notably, fighter jets and transport aircraft of the IAF carried out fly-pasts over major cities and towns in the country on Sunday while military helicopters showered petals on leading hospitals across the country as part of a mega exercise to express gratitude to lakhs of doctors, paramedics and other frontline workers battling the coronavirus pandemic.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A $40 cardigan has sold out from Glassons 24 hours after being worn by Married At First Sight star Martha Kalifatidis in an Instagram photo.

The 31-year-old makeup artist used the 'Chunky Knit' to cover her modesty in two otherwise nude mirror selfies, one captured in the bathroom and one in the bedroom of the Bondi, Sydney, apartment she shares with boyfriend Michael Brunelli, late on Friday.

Martha showcased the style to perfection, giving fashionistas a full view of the over-sized sleeves and ribbed material which plunges into a deep V before closing down the front with chunky brown buttons.

Perfect for winter, the cosy cardigan has flown out of stock as Australia shivers through its coldest-ever start to May, with temperatures plummeting below zero in Victoria thanks to a bitter Antarctic front sweeping the east of the country.

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Martha Kalifatidis poses for a mirror selfie in the bathroom of her Bondi apartment wearing the 'Chunky Knit' from Australian womenswear label Glassons on Friday, May 1, 2020

The 31-year-old Married At First Sight star uses the textured knit to cover her modesty in a second shot taken on May 1, 2020

The cardigan has swiftly become Glassons' 'fastest selling online item' this year after flying off shelves in just 24 hours, a spokesperson for the brand told news.com.au.

Demand is so great the retailer is preparing to release four new shades of the 'Chunky Knit', with white, almond, espresso and green due to launch before the end of the month.

Practical yet stylish, the cardigan can be dressed up or down by wearing it over a silk slip midi-dress and boots, or tucked into a casual pair of jeans or tracksuit bottoms with sneakers.

Australian influencer Shani Grimmond wears a pale grey colour of the cardigan two Instagram photos on Saturday, May 2, 2020

Sydney model Lily May Mac wears the 'Chunky Knit' with a plaid miniskirt and over-the-knee socks in an Instagram photo on Friday, May 1, 2020

Australian influencer Shani Grimmond demonstrated a particularly stylish take on the look in an Instagram photo on Saturday, pairing her pale grey cardigan with white high-waisted jeans and thick gold hoop earrings.

Chunky cardigans have been enjoying a resurgence to the top of the trend charts since American actress Katie Holmes was photographed out in a brownish grey knit and matching bralet in New York in August 2019.

The look has been endorsed by catwalk megastars including Kaia Gerber and Gigi Hadid, who have both been seen in various over-sized knits in recent months.

Martha has spent much of her time in isolation driving sales of the stylish loungewear and tracksuits she has been wearing since March 23, when the federal government shuttered bars, restaurants and gyms to slow the spread of coronavirus.

Martha wears a grey crew neck and track pants from Pretty Little Thing outside her home in Bondi in Sydney's east on Monday, April 20, 2020

Martha with boyfriend Michael Brunelli, who became her 'husband' on Married At First Sight, in Bondi on Monday, April 13, 2020

The Melbourne makeup artist shot to fame on the 2019 series of MAFS, during which she met and 'married' Melbourne teacher Michael.

The couple sparked split rumours in early April after they shared screenshots of heated text exchanges to their respective Instagram accounts seemingly hinting they had ended their relationship.

Days later Martha confessed the posts were a publicity stunt to promote her new internet service provider.
Chris Hemsworth stars as black-market mercenary Tyler Rake in the Netflix action flick Extraction.

And on Saturday, the 36-year-old actor took to Instagram to 'say a massive thank you to everyone that checked out Extraction' and 'made it the #1 film' on the streaming platform.

'It looks like it is going to be Netflix's biggest feature film of all time, which is absolutely mind-blowing and we are blown away by the response and the support,' gushed Hemsworth in a video seen by his 41.3million followers.

Number one: Chris Hemsworth took to Instagram on Saturday to 'say a massive thank you to everyone that checked out Extraction' and 'made it the #1 film' on Netflix

Massive viewership: According to Netflix, Extraction has been streamed by 'an estimated 90 million households' since it premiere on April 24

According to Netflix, Extraction has been streamed by 'an estimated 90 million households' since it premiere on April 24.

Hemsworth continued: 'So, on behalf of myself, the Russo brothers, Netflix, and director Sam Hargrave, thank you so so much. We love you guys.'

In regards to Netflix pumping out 'sequels and prequels' of the record-breaking film, Chris stated that, though nothing has been confirmed, he would gladly return as Rake.

Biggest film: 'It looks like it is going to be Netflix's biggest feature film of all time, which is absolutely mind-blowing and we are blown away by the response and the support,' gushed Hemsworth in a video seen by his 41.3million followers

Part two: In regards to Netflix pumping out 'sequels and prequels' of the record-breaking film, Chris stated that, though nothing has been confirmed, he would gladly return as Rake

'There has been a lot of talk about sequels and prequels and all sorts of things and all I can say is who knows, but with this kind of support it is something I will be pretty stoked to jump back into.'

Hemsworth filmed the lengthy 'thank you' video from the comfort of the Australian home he shares with wife Elsa Pataky, 43, and their three children, daughters India, 7, and Sasha, 6, and son Tristan, 6.

'So, I love you guys, you're the best, be well, and stay safe! Cheers,' concluded The Avengers star.

Welcomes the idea: 'There has been a lot of talk about sequels and prequels and all sorts of things and all I can say is who knows, but with this kind of support it is something I will be pretty stoked to jump back into'

Extraction: Extraction is based on the graphic novel Ciudad by Ande Parks, Fernando Leon Gonzalez, and Eric Skillman, as well as Marvel film producers Joe and Anthony Russo, who also produced the film

Extraction follows former SASR operator-turned-mercenary Tyler Rake as he is recruited to rescue the son of India's biggest drug lord.

The son - played by actor Rudhraksh Jaiswal - is being held for hefty ransom by a rival drug lord in Bangladesh.

But when Rake attempts to complete the mission, things go terribly awry as corruption and greed come to light.

Job to do: Extraction follows former SASR operator-turned-mercenary Tyler Rake as he is recruited to rescue the son of India's biggest drug lord

The prize: The son - played by actor Rudhraksh Jaiswal - is being held for hefty ransom by a rival drug lord in Bangladesh

Upended: But when Rake attempts to complete the mission, things go terribly awry as corruption and greed come to light

Extraction is based on the graphic novel Ciudad by Ande Parks, Fernando Leon Gonzalez, and Eric Skillman, as well as Marvel film producers Joe and Anthony Russo, who also produced the film.

Hemsworth, himself, can be found among the film's lengthy list of producers.

Extraction also marked the directorial debut for American stuntman Sam Hargrave.

Directorial debut: Extraction also marked the directorial debut for American stuntman Sam Hargrave; Hargrave pictured with Hemsworth on the set of Extraction in 2019

Hargrave and Hemsworth met during the stuntman's work as stunt coordinator for several films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Shortly after Chris' virtual celebration for Extraction, the Australian native took to his Instagram Story to wish fellow action star Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson a happy birthday.

Hemsworth stood in his kitchen with a 'cake' constructed out of a rock and a generic birthday candle.

Happy Birthday: Shortly after Chris' virtual celebration for Extraction, the Australian native took to his Instagram Story to wish fellow action star Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson a happy birthday

'I'd make a toast with some of that delicious Teremana tequila you've been sending out all around the world, but you didn't send me any,' he joked.

Teremana is a tequila brand that The Rock launched in March of this year.

Hemsworth continued with his silliness by officially presenting Johnson with the cake he made him

'Well anyway, no worries, I made this rock cake here. Just come out of the oven!'

Silly: Hemsworth stood in his kitchen with a 'cake' constructed out of a rock and a generic birthday candle
Amazon head of safety Heather MacDougall.

Amazon

Heather MacDougall, the vice president of worldwide workplace health and safety for Amazon, gave us an inside look at Amazon's response to the coronavirus pandemic.

"I've learned in my first year with Amazon that there's speed in business, there's Amazon speed, and now there's pandemic speed," she said. "We've had to think fast and move quicker."

Read the full interview with MacDougall here.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The health and safety of Amazon's massive global workforce is the key responsibility of one top executive: Heather MacDougall.

In an exclusive and wide-ranging interview with Business Insider, MacDougall described how she spends her days in the midst of the pandemic, talked about when she realized coronavirus would be more serious than previous crises, and revealed what could change permanently about how Amazon operates as a result of the pandemic.

"I've learned in my first year with Amazon that there's speed in business, there's Amazon speed, and now there's pandemic speed," she said. "We've had to think fast and move quicker."

She said Amazon is tracking confirmed and suspected cases among employees and third-party workers, in addition to tracking the rate of employees going into quarantine due to close contact exposure.

"We have seen the quarantine rate fall dramatically," she said. "We aren't done though, we're continuing to innovate, exploring technology, such as through an app, to assist in reminding our people of the importance of social distancing  and providing reminders when they get too close."

MacDougall said she spends her days in internal meetings assessing the company's new and existing protective measures, such as temperature checks and disinfectant spraying in buildings. As she helps manage the company's response internally, she has also been reaching out to "peer companies" to discuss issues impacting the global supply chain, she said.

Story continues

"Like so many people, my days are long and blur one into the other," she said. "I have two teenage daughters, one home from college, and I try to take a break for dinner with them or to get outside to go for a walk or run but each day is consumed with planning and assessing Amazon's COVID-19 response. We can't rest."

MacDougall also addressed recent employee walkouts concerning safety issues and discussed the challenges of making decisions in an environment where information is rapidly changing, such as guidance on the efficacy of face masks.

"There are times when you don't know what you don't know; so we are at the tip of the spear in this," she said. "We faced a global lack of masks or knowledge as to the value of masks to slowing transmission of the virus. Guidance from various sources  whether that's WHO, CDC or OSHA  either initially hadn't been formed or continually evolves.

"This is one of the few times that I think employers are asking the government to issue guidance!" she continued.

Before joining Amazon, MacDougall was an attorney and served as a commissioner and chairman on the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, an independent federal agency that reviews citations and penalties resulting from workplace inspections.

Read the original article on Business Insider
The Maharashtra government allowed the functioning of standalone liquor shops in coronavirus disease (Covid-19)-affected Mumbai and Pune -- both in red zones --- on Sunday. According to a government notification, standalone shops selling non-essential items will operate in red zones.

The containment zones in such areas, including Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune, Pimpri Chinchwad and Malegoan, will not get any of these relaxations, a decision that is in line with the central governments Friday order.

Construction activities in all red zone districts will be allowed, provided workers are available on site.

The state will allow just five non-essential shops in each lane, according to news agency ANI. The numbers of essential shops are not restricted, it reported.

According to a home ministry official, liquor shops will open across all three zones --- red, orange and green -- across India. But only standalone liquor shops will function; such shops in malls will continue to be closed.

Shops selling liquor and tobacco products will ensure six-feet distance between two people and not allow more than five people at a time. Consumption of liquor, paan, gutka and tobacco in public places is not allowed.

Also, in red zones, all malls and market complexes within city limits will be closed, but those selling essential items are exempt, according to the fresh federal guidelines on Friday. All standalone shops, neighbourhood shops and shops in residential complexes --- irrespective of whether they are selling essential or non-essential items --- are allowed, but social distancing is a must.

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An aerial view shows the P4 laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province on April 17, 2020. (Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images)

Pompeo: Enormous Evidence Links CCP Virus to Wuhan Laboratory

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said there is evidence that links the CCP virus to a laboratory in Wuhan, China, the city where the virus originated.

I can tell you that there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan, Pompeo said on ABCs This Week on Sunday.

The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, a novel coronavirus, spread quickly across Wuhan and Hubei Province last year, while critics have said the regimes coverup and mismanagement allowed the virus to spread throughout China before it was transmitted worldwide.

Pompeo declined to say whether he believed the virus was intentionally released from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a top-level lab where researchers studied how coronaviruses can transmit from animals to humans.

Theres enormous evidence that thats where this began, Pompeo said of the lab. We have said from the beginning that this was a virus that originated in Wuhan, China. We took a lot of grief for that from the outset. But I think the whole world can see now.

He added, Remember, China has a history of infecting the world, likely referring to the CCPs cover-up of the SARS outbreak in the early 2000s.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks at a press briefing at the State Department in Washington on April 22, 2020. (Nicholas Kamm/Pool via Reuters)

The Chinese regime also has a history of running sub-standard laboratories, Pompeo added. These are not the first times that we have had the world exposed to viruses as a result of failures in a Chinese lab.

On April 30, President Donald Trump also asserted that he saw evidence that linked the virus to the Chinese lab. Yes, yes I have, Trump told reporters after he was asked about the link.

When he was pressed on the details, Trump said, I cant tell you that. Im not allowed to tell you that. Trump also noted it was possible that the CCP either couldnt stop the spread of the virus or intentionally allowed it to spread.

Last week, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that intelligence agencies concluded the CCP virus wasnt manmade or genetically modified, but the agencys head said it is still investigating whether the virus was accidentally released from the virology lab in Wuhan.

In the Sunday interview, Pompeo also did not say whether he believes the virus was manmade, but he ultimately agreed with the Director of National Intelligences report. Ive seen what the intelligence community has said. I have no reason to believe that theyve got it wrong.

Regardless of how the virus originated, the CCP behaved like authoritarian regimes do, attempted to conceal and hide and confuse, Pompeo said during the ABC interview. It employed the World Health Organization as a tool to do the same.

The secretary then pointed to Australian and some European countries calls for an investigation into how the CCP handled the initial stages of the pandemic.

I think the whole world is united in understanding that China brought this virus to the world, Pompeo concluded.
Amid the Coronavirus threat, the government of Mexico released new figures about the number of women murdered in the first quarter of the year. According to the data, almost one thousand women were murdered in Mexico in the first three months of the year, most of who were victims of 'femicide'.

Femicide is defined as gender-motivated killing of women which is prevalent in Mexico.

As per the government figures, the number of women killed was 8 per cent higher than in the same time period last year. At least 720 women were murdered in the first quarter of the year and 244 women were victims of femicide, the government informed.

READ | New Mexico takes more drastic measures against virus hotspot

The femicide rate in Mexico has more than doubled in the past five years. The Campaigners are also apprehensive that the troubling rate of violence could increase during the Coronavirus lockdown, which has been extended till the end of May. As per report, the calls and messages sent to the National Network of Shelters  a network of almost 70 refuges for women who have suffered violence  increased more than 80 per cent between mid-March and mid-April when compared to the previous month.

READ | New Mexico eases some restrictions on businesses

More than 10 females are murdered every day in Mexico, making it one of the most dangerous countries in the world for girls and women. In addition to half the population being at high risk of violence, the rule of law is in jeopardy as very few cases of violence against women result in convictions. Some 44 per cent of women have suffered violence from a partner and 66 percent of women have experienced some form of violence during their life, according to the Mexican Institute of Statistics and Geography.

READ | 'Remain in Mexico' asylum hearings suspended until June 1

Protests against gender violence in Mexico have intensified in recent years amid an increase in killings of women and girls. Government data showed 3,825 women met violent deaths last year, 7% more than in 2018. Murders have often been accompanied by sexual violence and exceptional brutality, with some women, burned or mutilated. Thousands of other women have vanished without a trace.

READ | Mexico's economy plunges deeper into recession: Report
History will remember Covid-19 through pictures, accounts of those lived to share their experiences, and reports filed by journalists across the globe, many of whom are putting their lives at risk to cover the pandemic from the front lines.

With coronavirus spreading to all parts of the globe, the task of documenting and reporting the news to millions has kept media on its toes despite the risks of contracting the virus. Journalism has always called for reporting from the field, especially during a crisis. The humble face mask, a pair of gloves, a jacket and a prayer are my ...
There will be a flight of capital from China in the post COVID-19 period and India could emerge as an attractive investment destination for global giants shifting businesses from the neighbouring country, BJP General Secretary Ram Madhav said on Sunday.

His comments came in the midst of reports that a sizeable number of global giants including Japanese and American companies are considering to shift their manufacturing facilities to other countries from China in the wake of the pandemic.

In the post-COVID period, there will be a flight of capital from China, and India will certainly be an attractive destination for them, Madhav told PTI in an interview.

He said Asian democracies like Singapore and South Korea along with India have set a "new example that you don't need to be authoritarian to handle such a big crisis".

The senior BJP leader said it will be interesting to see what course China takes in the post-pandemic phase.

"What course will China take is a big million dollar question.

"The way Chinese leadership conducted itself during the crisis has led the world to believe that it has not done enough.... Will the Chinese leadership rethink about the whole system," Madhav said.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly sought to blame China for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic which was first reported in Chinese province of Hubei before it spread to various parts of the world.

The virus has infected 3.4 million people and killed over 2,44,000 globally besides wrecking economies of a large number of countries.

Japan has recently indicated that leading companies from the country may quit China in view of the pandemic. The Japanese government has already announced an economic stimulus package to help its companies shift base from China.

A number of countries are mulling steps to protect their economic interests in various countries.

Tightening norms, India last month made prior clearance mandatory for foreign investments from countries that share land border with India, in a move aimed at curbing "opportunistic takeovers" of Indian companies by Chinese firms following fall in their valuation due to the coronavirus-induced economic downturn.

China criticised India for the the new policy, calling it discriminatory and demanded its review.

Madhav said the world will "closely watch" the Communist Party of China's upcoming Congress starting May 22 and how it "takes up all these issues".

The Indian economy has also been hit by the pandemic. In the last few days, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a series of meetings to discuss strategies to attract foreign investment, promote local manufacturing and boost the economy.
There's a new battle brewing in beachside suburbs where territorial surfers have warned visitors to steer clear.

Bondi, Bronte and Tamarama beaches in Sydney's eastern suburbs recently reopened for 'exercise only', five weeks after they were shut down due to visitors flouting social distancing rules during the coronavirus crisis.

Mayor Paula Masselos sparked outrage when she declared the 'swim and go' and 'surf and go' measures were strictly for residents in the Waverley local government area, which has the highest rate of coronavirus cases in NSW.

Surfers returned to Bondi in their droves when the beach was reopened for the first time in five weeks last Tuesday (pictured)

'People are not meant to be jumping in a car and travelling any significant distance to get to a beach,' she told the Sydney Morning Herald.

'As soon as it's safe to do so then people are welcome but we're in the middle of the pandemic.'

Her comments discouraging visitors from other parts of Sydney prompted other beachside communities to become territorial about their own surf breaks.

Scores of social media users said the council's decision to open the beach to locals only was 'elitist', while another said it was like 'apartheid by postcode'.

Days after Cr Masselos' comments, a 'locals only' message was painted on the headland at Maroubra Beach in the neighbouring Randwick Council area.

'An apt reminder that this is part of a long and violent history of territorial beach nationalism,' one woman commented on the photo posted on Twitter.

This territorial sign has appeared at Maroubra Beach, despite the local mayor stating that everyone, including non-locals are welcome to use the beach for exercise

Randwick mayor Danny Said has since stressed that everyone is welcome at Maroubra, Coogee and Clovelly beaches, which remain open for exercise only to maintain physical and mental well being.

Similar territorial signs have also been erected across Sydney's northern beaches.

'If you don't live here, don't surf here,' a sign at Newport Beach read.

'Respect local community's (sic) are for local residents at the moment.

'If you decide to come out anyway, it'll be a short surf anyway. Please respect our community's well being and move on.'

One local was outraged by the sign.

'I'm from Northern Beaches where vile signs like this have sprung up. Beaches are for everyone,' she captioned the photo on Twitter.

Signs have been erected on Sydney's northern beaches at North Narrabeen (left) and further north at Newport (right)

Newport surfer Nick Carroll grew up in a localism' culture , a patriotic attitude he says that changed in 1980s but has always remained to some extent.

'I think the pandemic is an excuse for a bit of localism to rear its head again,' he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

But Mr Carroll has seen no recent aggression between surfers in the surf and described the signs as 'not a real threat, it's a sort of fake threat'.

Locals at the notoriously territorial surf break at North Narrabeen have also urged visitors steer clear.

'Attention. The local community respectfully asks if you do not live on the North Beaches, do not surf here,' the sign states.

'Please do the right thing and go home. You are putting our community at risk.'

Non-Waverley residents are discouraged from visiting Bondi Beach. Pictured are a group of men entering the water for their daily swim on Friday

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Northern Beaches Council for further comment.

All beaches in the LGA remain open except Many, Freshwater and Dee Why.

In Sydney's south, beaches in the Sutherland Shire, including Cronulla are also restricted to exercise only.

However visitors are still welcome to visit the Shire as the council seeks to improve beach accessibility for the disabled during the ongoing pandemic.

While surfers are permitted at the reopened Tamarama Beach (pictured on Tuesday), the message from Waverley Council is for people to stay at home

The council has partnered with St Vincent de Paul for its new Beaches for Every Body project, which was launched on Thursday.

'We know our community loves the outdoors and enjoying our beautiful beaches, but for some, accessing the sand or ocean can be a challenge,' Sutherland mayor, Councillor Carmelo Pesce said.

'That's why we are partnering with St Vincent de Paul to ask what we can do to make Cronulla Beach more accessible for all to enjoy.

St Vincent de Paul chief executive Jack de Groot added: 'Australia's beach culture is a massive part of who we are, and everyone deserves to share in this great aspect of community life.'
Farmer Based Organisations (FBOs)have been advised to use the mobile phones to get to the Agriculture Extension Agents (AEAs) in the district for advice and directives on how to resolve challenges on their farms.



Mr Prosper Klu, the District Director of Agriculture for Asene Manso- Akroso District told the FBOs that the current situation in the country would not make it possible to always get into contact with the AEAs personally for solutions on their farms as it used to be.



Mr Klu was speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview at Manso in the Eastern Region.



He explained that, the directive on social gathering in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic seems to scare some FBOs in the area hence his advice to them on how to reach the AEAs without meeting them personally.



Mr Klu said AEAs in the district are reaching out to individual farmers and food processors in the district to monitor activities while they educate them on best farm practices and management that enhance agri-business.



In another development, Mr Samuel Adu, an AEA in the district, met with executives of Moral Entrepreneurial Group who are into food processing on how to keep farm records.



He explained that regular farm records were a crucial tool for a successful farming business as it tracks incomes and expenditure.



Mr Adu took the participants through the importance of farm record keeping, types of farm records, and how to draw the record.



Miss Lilly Braine-Jesuane, the leader of Moral Entrepreneurial Group thanked the facilitator and assured that, the knowledge acquired will be transferred to the rest of the group members to promote the business of food processing.



She advised farmers with challenges in literacy to attend programmes of this nature with their children to learn and keep records for them.

Source: GNA









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Indian Railways is only accepting passengers who have been brought to the station by the state governments. The Railways is operating Shramik Special trains to ferry stranded migrant workers, students, and pilgrims across the country. No other groups of travellers or individuals, other than the ones facilitated by the state governments are allowed to board trains.

All other passenger and suburban train services remain suspended and no tickets are being sold at any station. The ministry clarified that only registered people will be allowed to travel. "No one, under any circumstance, should come to railway stations looking for trains. We will not issue any tickets to any individual or entertain any request from any group or individual. We will allow only those passengers to board whom state government officials bring to the railway stations," the ministry said.

Around 10 Shramik Special trains were operated on Saturday to Jharkhand, UP, and Bihar from Rajashtan, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. Five similar Shramik Special trains operated on Friday.

The government had clarified that passengers would pay the ticket fee for these special trains. The fare amounts to the price of a regular sleeper class plus Rs 30 superfast charge and another Rs 20 additional charge. States could also coordinate and pay for the passengers.

One such train reached Uttar Pradesh's Lucknow from Maharashtra's Nashik on Sunday morning. The train that started on Saturday morning carried 847 migrant workers. This is the first train ferrying migrant workers to reach UP from Maharashtra. Once the passengers reached Lucknow, they were segregated according to their destination districts and screened for temperature. Special buses were arranged to transport the passengers to the respective districts. Anyone with symptoms were kept in quarantine centres.

Also read: Coronavirus India Live Updates: Lockdown 3.0! Armed forces to thank corona warriors on Sunday; cases-37,776

Also read: Coronavirus update: Special train carrying migrants from Nashik reaches Bhopal
The Civil and Local Government Staff Association, Ghana (CLOGSAG) has appealed to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to direct the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) to restructure its management and administrative system to assure workers of income security in retirement.



According to the Executive Secretary of CLOGSAG, Mr Isaac Bampoe-Addo, SSNIT was to reduce its administrative cost, high staff numbers and poor returns on investments per a recommendation given by a Presidential Commission on Pensions established by former President John Agyekum Kufuor in August 2004, but the Trust did not heed the recommendation.



The commission recommended that SSNIT, as an institution, should undergo an extensive restructuring which should involve an overhaul of its governance, management and administrative structure.



Also, the proposed increase from one to three Deputy Director Generals ought to be re-examined by the SSNIT management,  he noted.



Mr Bampoe-Addo was speaking during a 2020 May Day celebration and thanksgiving service organised by CLOGSAG in Accra yesterday.



Retirement income



He noted that the government, among others, accepted the commissions recommendations for a contributory three-tier pension structure, comprising two mandatory schemes and a voluntary scheme.



Another recommendation was for a mandatory basic state social security scheme to be managed by a restructured SSNIT, which will pay periodic monthly and other pension benefits.



These cost-saving measures that would have enabled SSNIT to effectively and efficiently manage its commitment under the Three-Tier Pension Scheme have still not been initiated, Mr Bampoe-Addo stated.



He, however, expressed the hope that a unified pension structure for all categories of workers in Ghana would be attained.



Thanksgiving service



Delivering a sermon at the service, the resident pastor of the association, Pastor Michael Adebisi, encouraged the public to avoid fear and believe that the fight against COVID-19 was in the hands of God.



He urged the public to continue to have faith and always give thanks to God, noting that God had the nation at heart, thus no epidemic would rule over it.







Source: Daily Graphic









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Aisling Quinn, of MoShoppa, said the US market was a natural place for the company to launch

MoShoppa, an e-commerce services company co-founded by FAI interim deputy CEO Niall Quinn, his daughter Aisling, and Mike English has launched its services into the US market.

The company, which formed in 2017, has a presence in Ireland, New York and New Delhi.

It offers budding entrepreneurs the chance to start their own online business by paying a $25 (23) monthly subscription to the platform, which builds an e-commerce website that can sell products from 10,000 brands - including Nike, Apple and Virgin Atlantic - across various sectors.

Speaking with the Sunday Independent, Aisling Quinn, chief operating officer and co-founder of MoShoppa, said the US market was a natural place for the company to launch as it already had product agreements in place there.

"It's performing really well and has exceeded our expectations. The attitude in the US seems somewhat different. They are willing to give these products a go; there is that openness to new things."

Quinn, who recently started online fitness platform Sweat25, said MoShoppa had been backed with 4.5m, with investors including Voxpro founder Dan Kiely.

The 26-year-old also hopes to launch the product back in Ireland at some stage.

"If we can crack it in America, then it is a no-brainer to bring it back home," she said.

"A lot of work has gone into it. The market just seems ready for something like this," she added.

"While it feels wrong to be opportunistic at this time, there are a lot of people working from home possibly looking for new ways to make a living. It seems like a good time for it."

Quinn is set to appear in an interview about her businesses on Richard Donelan's IrishStartUpTV today.
Four Indian Army personnel including the Commanding Officer of an unit of Indian Army's counter-insurgency force, a Major, two soldiers and one Jammu and Kashmir Police officer were martyred in an encounter in Chanjmulla area of Jammu and Kashmir's Handwara on Sunday (May 3). Two terrorists were also killed in the encounter, said Army sources.

It is learnt that an Indian Army unit had entered the house of a civilian to prevent a hostage situation when the terrorists opened fire on them. The troops managed to safely evacuate the civilians from the house.

"A team comprising of 5 Army and JK Police personnel entered the target area occupied by terrorists to evacuate the civilians. The team of Army and JK Police entered the area and successfully extricated the civilians," an Army spokesperson was quoted as saying by ANI.

However, in the fierce exchange of fire, the Army lost four bravehearts including two officers. One Jammu and Kashmir officer accompanying the Army unit was also killed.

The encounter started on Saturday (May 2) after the security forces succeeded in trapping the terrorists inside the house located in the forest of Handwara.

"Based on the intelligence input that terrorists were taking the civilian inmates of a house in Changimulla, Handwara of Kupwara district hostage, a joint operation was launched by Army and JK Police," added the Army spokesperson.

Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, Commanding Officer of 21 RRR, got martyred in the encounter. Colonel Sharma had been part of several successful counter-terrorist operations in the past.

Colonel Sharma was leading a team to rescue civilians who had been taken hostage by the terrorists hiding in the house. As the hostages were being rescued, the team, which also consisted of a Lance Naik and a Rifleman also, came under heavy fire which was effectively retaliated by the security personnel in the outer cordon.

Besides Colonel Sharma, Major Anuj Sood, Naik Rajesh Kumar and Lance Naik Dinesh Singh and sub-inspector of Jammu-Kashmir police Shakeel Qazi were martyred in the line of duty.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh expressed deep grief over the martyrdom of these security personnel and said, "I offer my tributes to the soldiers and security personnel who fell in action. My heart goes out to the families who lost their loved ones today. India stands shoulder to shoulder with the families of these brave martyrs."
Some oil-hungry Asian nations are taking advantage of the collapse in prices caused by the coronavirus pandemic to build up their crude stockpiles. Here are some questions and answers about strategic reserves and the region's oil supplies: - What are strategic oil reserves and why do countries need them? - Strategic reserves are stockpiles of oil and other fuels held by governments in secure storage facilities to cover unexpected disruptions to energy supplies. Major economies such as the US, China and Russia began to build up reserves after oil shocks in the 1970s, according to Ravi Krishnaswamy, regional senior vice president for energy and environment at consultancy Frost & Sullivan. The events that spurred them to take action were principally the 1973 Yom Kippur War between Israel and the Arab nations, and the 1979 Iranian revolution, which fuelled worries about supplies. - How big are the strategic reserves across the region? - China is believed to have the biggest in the Asia-Pacific. Beijing does not give an official estimate but analysts say it is at around 550 million barrels. In comparison, the United States' strategic reserves currently hold around 630 million. State-owned China National Petroleum Corporation said recently that the country's reserves were "obviously insufficient, and have not yet reached the international standard '90-day safety line'". The International Energy Agency requires its members to hold emergency oil stocks equivalent to at least 90 days of net oil imports. China is an associate member, but not a full member. Japan's oil reserves were around 500 million barrels at the end of February, equivalent to national consumption for more than seven months, according to the latest official data, while South Korea had around 96 million barrels in strategic reserves as of December 2019, enough for 89 days. India, by contrast, has reserves with storage capacity of approximately 40 million barrels -- which would last just 10 days in the country of 1.3 billion people. - How are reserves stored? - Strategic reserves are stored largely in secure underground depots like natural rock caverns. The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the world's largest supply of emergency crude, is stored in huge underground salt caverns along the Gulf Coast. But building underground storage is challenging as it needs to have the right geological formation, and countries also need to build infrastructure to pump oil in and out. The high cost of building reserves has stopped many countries developing them to sufficient levels. In Asia, India uses caverns to store its reserves but other countries, such as Japan, put theirs in above-ground tanks. - Which Asian countries are pouncing on low prices to build up stockpiles? - Australia, which has long had one of the lowest levels of emergency stockpiles in the developed world, said it will take advantage of the fall in prices to develop a strategic reserve in the United States. The country's own storage capacity is already full but it has an agreement with the US allowing it to lease space in its Strategic Petroleum Reserve. In China, the Shanghai International Energy Exchange last month gave approval for state-owned Sinopec Petroleum Reserve to add more storage capacity. One storage depot in southern Guangdong province can hold up to 600,000 cubic metres (3.8 million barrels), while another in northern Hebei province can hold up to one million cubic metres. India's Ministry of Petroleum tweeted on April 15 it was buying crude to fill its reserves, stored in rock caverns, "to their full capacity". Madhu Nainan, editor of industry publication PetroWatch, however, questioned whether the country had enough available storage space to build up capacity quickly. "In India, storage tanks and pipelines are full and dealers' tanks are full," he told AFP. Japan and South Korea, with ample stockpiles, have not announced plans to build up their reserves substantially. A Japanese trade ministry official said current levels were sufficient, while Seoul plans to increase stockpiles by less than one percent this year. - Could low prices boost the region's economies when lockdowns are lifted? - It looks unlikely, in the short term at least. Many observers believe economic activity won't bounce back quickly with the gradual lifting of lockdowns but only when a vaccine for the virus is discovered -- which could be some time away. "Low oil prices won't turbocharge Asian economic recovery," Jeffrey Halley, OANDA senior market analyst, told AFP. - Are there any winners from low prices? - Major oil-importers in Asia -- such as China, Japan and South Korea -- would in usual times benefit from low prices but this is unlikely to be the case immediately given the economic devastation caused by the pandemic. In Japan, for example, "the price crash has hit financial markets hard, which is negatively affecting the Japanese economy", said Toshihiro Nagahama, an economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute. "We can't apply our usual framework to this unprecedented period." Some economists, however, expect oil prices to stay low for a long period, meaning major importers could eventually emerge winners. "Oil prices are expected to remain low to some extent when the post-corona era comes, and given the current situation, it will have a positive effect on (South Korea's) economy in terms of recovery," said Jung Jun-hwan, a researcher at the Korea Energy Economics Institute. There are also "obvious losers" in Asia, such as oil exporters Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, said OANDA's Halley. burs-mba/sr/dan/axn The International Energy Agency requires its members to hold emergency oil stocks equivalent to at least 90 days of net oil imports
Manchester United defender Marcos Rojo has been filmed smoking while playing poker with friends in breach of the coronavirus lockdown in his native Argentina.

Rojo, currently on loan at Argentine club Estudiantes, was filmed by his brother Franco, who then uploaded the clip into his Instagram account. The video was quickly deleted but not before Argentine media outlets saw it.

The 30-year-old centre-back left Old Trafford to join his boyhood club during the January transfer window but this apparent breach of discipline could land him in hot water.

Manchester United defender Marcos Rojo has been filmed smoking while playing cards with friends in apparent breach of Covid-19 lockdown rules in his native Argentina

The clip which showed Rojo smoking was uploaded to Instagram by his brother Franco

The gathering of friends around Rojo looks to be a breach of Argentina's lockdown rules, which were recently extended by president Alberto Fernandez until May 10.

A nationwide mandatory quarantine has been in place since the middle of March though some restrictions were relaxed - with people allowed to go within 500 metres of their home for exercise.

However, it doesn't permit visits from other people, certainly in the groups shown in the video.

There have been almost 5,000 recorded cases of coronavirus in Argentina and 237 deaths as of this weekend.

Defender Rojo moved to his boyhood club Estudiantes de la Plata on loan back in January

The Argentine was deemed surplus at Old Trafford and allowed to move to Argentina on loan

His brother also got Rojo into trouble a day earlier when he posted an Instagram image of them having a kickabout with friends in the park.

To compound matters, Rojo was wearing the shirt of Estudiantes' rivals Boca Juniors with the name and No 10 of legendary player Roman Riquelme on the back.

However, Rojo has also done some good during the lockdown, delivering food and drink to more than 200 families in his home town of La Plata last month.

Rojo's brother also uploaded this image of the player having a kickabout with friends despite lockdown restrictions - and also wearing a Boca Juniors shirt

Rojo was deemed surplus to requirements at Old Trafford by United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer in January having started just one Premier League game all season.

He played just the one league game for Estudiantes prior to the shutdown of the Argentine league but had already expressed his wish for the loan to be extended.

Rojo said: 'If it depends on me, I will speak to Manchester United's management about the possibility of staying here for another six months.

'I will feel a tremendous sense of pain if I have to leave after playing in so few matches.'
The Reserve Bank of India on Sunday said 99.2 percent of The CKP Co-operative Bank's 1.32 lakh customers will be eligible for full recovery of their funds under the DICGC scheme when the bank is liquidated.

Under the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation (DICGC) scheme, full recovery for those accountholders is allowed who hold funds of less than Rs 5 lakh in case the bank goes bust.

A day after licence cancellation of the bank, RBI issued a clarification on Twitter to pacify the accountholders of the lender.

CKP Co-op Bank Ltd., Mumbai has been under All Inclusive Directions of @RBI since 2014. As there was no scope for revival of the bank, its licence has been cancelled. Out of 132170 depositors of the bank, about 99.2% will get full payment of their deposits from DICGC. Yogesh Dayal (@YogeshDayal17) May 3, 2020

RBI's CGM - Communications Yogesh Dayal in a tweet today said, "Out of 132170 depositors of the bank, about 99.2% will get full payment of their deposits from DICGC."

On Saturday also, the apex bank said all depositors will be covered under the deposit insurance scheme of the DICGC but did not specify how many of the bank's customers had accounts having less than Rs 5 lakh.

The limit of the DICGC scheme was increased from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 5 lakh after the PMC Bank episode.

Coronavirus crisis: RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das to meet bank chiefs today: What's on the agenda?

On May 2, the RBI cancelled the licence of CKP Co-operative Bank, with effect from the close of business on April 30, 2020. On liquidation, depositors are entitled to repayment of their deposits up to Rs 5 lakh only from the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation (DICGC) as per usual terms and conditions, the RBI said in a press release.

"The financial position of the bank is highly adverse and unsustainable. There is no concrete revival plan or proposal for merger with another bank. Credible commitment towards revival from the management is not visible," the RBI said.

The Registrar of Co-operative Societies, Pune, Maharashtra, has been asked to issue an order for winding up the affairs of the Mumbai-based CKP Co-operative Bank and appoint a liquidator for the bank, it said.

The Dadar, Mumbai-based CKP Co-operative Bank had deposits of Rs 486 crore. It was established in 1915.

Is RBI concerned about Indian banks' credit exposure abroad via foreign branches?
Over 150,000 Indians in the UAE, who wish to return home amid the coronavirus lockdown, have applied through the online registration process to the Indian missions here, according to media reports.

The Indian missions in the country last week opened online registration for the expatriates who wish to fly back home after getting stuck in the country amidst the lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.

As of 6 pm on Saturday, we received more than 150,000 registrations, Consul General of India in Dubai Vipul told the Gulf on Saturday.

A quarter of them want to return to their homeland after losing their jobs, he said.

According to a report in the Khaleej Times on Sunday, about 40 per cent of the applicants who have registered are blue-collared workers and 20 per cent are working professionals.

"Roughly 20 per cent have suffered job losses and about 55 per cent of the total applicants are from Kerala," Neeraj Aggarwal, Consul, Press, Information, Culture was quoted as saying in the report.

Aggarwal said that the figures would change as they are expecting registrations from workers from other states, including Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar.

About 10 per cent of the applicants are visit and tourist visa holders who got stranded here due to the ongoing lockdown in India.

India extended the ongoing lockdown by two weeks from May 4 to contain the spread of the coronavirus that has affected nearly 40,000 people in the country.

Aggarwal said that a small number of the applications constitute those from pregnant women and other medical cases.

Since the online registration process was launched, the Consulate's website crashed several times due to the heavy rush of applicants wishing to register to fly back home.

The site has been working fine now though it took a lot of time for it to stabilise in the initial phase due to the heavy traffic, the counsel general said.

He said that the missions here have not yet received any information from the Indian government about the mode of transport of the stranded citizens, the prices of the tickets or how the COVID-19 test results of applicants would be assessed for their journey.

There are high-level discussions going on regarding these things, he said in the report.

Meanwhile, Norka (The Non Resident Keralites Affairs) said it has received a total of 398,000 applications from Keralites across the globe who wish to return home.

"Of which, the highest numbers are from the UAE. At least 175,423 applicants have signed up from the UAE," Norka said in an official statement on Saturday.

It also received 54,305 registrations from Saudi Arabia, 2,437 from the UK, 2,255 from the US, and 1,958 from Ukraine from those who wish to return to India, the Khaleej Times reported.

The coronavirus has infected 13,599 people and claimed 119 lives in the UAE, the Ministry of Health and Prevention said on Saturday.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Little Kendal Flitcroft, from Bangor, Co Down, passed away on Tuesday.

There were emotional scenes yesterday as a five-year-old girl who died after a stroke was laid to rest under coronavirus restrictions.

Kendal Flitcroft, from Conlig, Co Down, died on Tuesday. Her funeral took place in the family home yesterday before she was laid to rest at Clandeboye Cemetery.

Her tiny pink coffin was placed in a horse-drawn hearse before being taken to her final resting place as weeping neighbours looked on.

Kendal had suffered from a number of serious health conditions since birth and her death has been felt deeply in the close-knit community.

Friend of the family Jacqueline Graham posted on Facebook: "Such a sad day for my sister Ash Keenan and her best friend Dawn Flitcroft as she lays to rest her beautiful little girl princess Kendal.

"My heart is breaking for you and all your family but I know my sis Ash will do her best to help you in this the hardest days of your life."

Special needs assistant Ashleigh Flannigan, who knew Kendal and her mum Dawn, set up a GoFundMe page last week to help pay for the funeral.

Expand Close Neighbours and friends paid tribute to five year old Kendal Flitcroft as her pink coffin was carried from her Conlig home by a horse drawn hearse during her funeral. / Facebook

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Whatsapp Neighbours and friends paid tribute to five year old Kendal Flitcroft as her pink coffin was carried from her Conlig home by a horse drawn hearse during her funeral.

So far it has raised over 4,600, smashing the original 600 target.

She said: "I am so overwhelmed by everyone's generosity. I know that this will go a long way to helping Dawn. Everyone's kindness is just amazing."

Speaking shortly after Kendal's death Ms Flannigan described her as "a smiler, a giggler and a real wee character." She added: "Kendal was a character, a very funny little girl who put a smile on everyone's face. She was a beautiful little miracle and because we will always remember her, we will always miss her and we'll always stand by her family."
Kaun Banega Crorepati 12: One of Indias most loved shows, Kaun Banega Crorepati is all set to be back on our television screens with Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan. Amid the coronavirus lockdown, the makers of Kaun Banega Crorepati have released a shot-at-home video of Big B announcing the 12th season. In the video, the megastar says that there can be a break on everything in life. The neighbourhood tea, conversations over a cup of tea, road ride, 9-5 boring office jobs, romance in mall or goofing around at midnight. But, there can never be a break on dreams.

To give wings to the dreams of millions of Indians of becoming a crorepati, Amitabh Bachchan is coming back on the television screens with KBC 12. The caption of the post reads that the registrations of KBC 12 will start on May 9 from 9 pm on Sony Tv.

Amitabh Bachchan also shared the promo on his Twitter profile. He tweeted, Yes, it is coming back to you soon. Reports say that the entire selection process of KBC 12 will be digital this year. Speaking about the shooting the promo, Filmmaker Nitesh Tiwari told a news portal that they start deliberating about KBC each year and think of new ways that could lead to an impactful narrative. The environment in which we are living in sets the context of the film this year.

Also Read: Smriti Khanna shares first picture with her baby daughter, pens an emotional note for the newborn

Also Read: Khatron Ke Khiladi 10: Karishma Tanna undergoes surgery amid coronavirus lockdown

Har cheez ko break lag sakta hai par sapnon ko break nahee lag sakta hai. Aapke sapnon ko udaan dene phir aa rahe hain @Srbachchan lekar #KBC12. Registrations shuru honge 9 May raat 9 baje se sirf Sony TV par. pic.twitter.com/1XmZ9QNtm2  sonytv (@SonyTV) May 2, 2020

ji .. its coming back to you again soon https://t.co/rCQn2kFsOK  Amitabh Bachchan (@SrBachchan) May 2, 2020

Speaking about how they shot the promo during coronavirus lockdown, Nitesh Tiwari said that it was a challenge. He shot the film with himself first and then shared it with Big B so that he gets an idea of his vision. Post which, the megastar shot the film at his home by himself. The director added that he really hopes audiences like the campaign and participate wholeheartedly.

Also Read: The Kapil Sharma Show re-running Irrfan Khan, Rishi Kapoors episodes over weekend, fans react

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Troops of Operation Lafiya Dole (OPLD) have sustained their offensive against Boko Haram terrorists that are hibernating in different locations within the North East theatre of operation.

The sustained offensive by the troops is yielding fruitful results as they have succeeded in dislodging and killing several of the insurgents.

The Coordinator, Defence Media Operations, Maj.-Gen. John Enenche, disclosed this in a statement on Wednesday.

Enenche said the troops of Sector 1 of OPLD had in the last seven days engaged the terrorists on many fronts.

He disclosed that the troops of 121 Task Force Battalion under 26 Task Force Brigade while in ambush position, killed terrorists on April 22 at Pulka crossing and recovered one loaded AK47 rifle.

According to him, troops recovered a motorcycle painted in military colour and one locally fabricated hand grenade.

Enenche also disclosed that troops of 192 Battalion of 26 Brigade deployed to Gwoza on April 24, killed two terrorists who were attempting to cross through the Mandara mountains to Sambisa forest.

He added that several other terrorists escaped with gunshot wounds while a bicycle and two copies of the Holy Quran with assorted clothing were recovered.

According to Enenche, troops of Echo Company 114 Battalion also neutralised two terrorists at Yenegu village in an attack on April 27 while others fled due to superior fire power of the troops.

Equally, the gallant troops of 152 Task Force Battalion deployed to Kumshe under 21 Special Armoured Brigade engaged terrorists in a fierce fire fight on April 22.

Unfortunately in the process, one soldier paid the supreme sacrifice while another sustained gunshot wound.

However, three Boko Haram terrorists were neutralised, while one motorcycle was captured. Others are suspected to have fled with life-threatening injuries.

Also on April 24, troops of 151 battalion conducted ambush operations along Firgi general area and made contact with terrorists and recovered one AK 47 rifle, two motorcycles, and two bicyles, he said.

The coordinator further said that the troops of 152 Battalion in another ambush operation on April 26, made contact with the terrorists food supply party near their crossing point at Miyanti.

He said that a soldier sustained a minor injury while three terrorists were killed.

According to him, four carts conveying several food items and clothing were destroyed at the location.

He also said that troops on clearance operations to Bula Shatane village, 15 Kilometres from Bama engaged the terrorists who fled on sighting the troops advancing towards their location with heavy gun fire.

According to him, the village was successfully cleared while all makeshift houses were destroyed.

Due to the ongoing offensive, two Boko Haram terrorists came out from Bula Bello and Yerimari Gana and surrendered to troops of the 21 Special Armoured Brigade Garrison deployed to Bama on April 23.

The two terrorists, who surrendered were handed over to 21SAB Military Intelligence Regiment.

During preliminary investigations, they revealed that the sustained military operations by land and air made them to surrender.

Additionally, on April 21, a total of 19 IDPs arrived Army Super Camp 6 Bama from Jebe village.

The IDPs were searched, screened, and accommodated at a holding facility pending the conclusion of preliminary investigations.

However, the IDPs were fed while the minors were administered with polio vaccines.

In summary about 11 Boko Haram terrorists were neutralised while many escaped with injuries, just as equipment and supplies were captured and destroyed.

The Armed Forces of Nigeria remain resolute and highly committed to ending the Boko Haram insurgency.

The general public is requested to continue to provide timely and credible information for the enhancement of our operations, he said.
With the announcement by Premier Doug Ford about a Pandemic Pay Premium on April 24 came a can of worms about who will be receiving the $4-per-hour premium as an acute hospital worker.

The initial announcement listed all the possible nursing jobs (RN, RNA, RPN, etc.), PSWs/attendant care workers and auxiliary staff including porters, cooks, custodian, housekeeping, laundry and other key workers as those getting this premium. At the time of the announcement I assumed that the medical lab technologist, which I am, and technicians were lumped into the other key workers category.

Then on April 29 the list of eligible workers was expanded to include EMTs and respiratory technologists. This was done because their regulatory bodies and workers complained to the premiers office about not being listed specifically. Does this mean if my job title is not specifically listed I will not get the premium?

This upset me because as an MLT we do the testing that diagnoses COVID-19, along with many other diseases. It is said that 70 per cent of all medical decisions a doctor makes are based on test results that a laboratory gives them. This includes everything from the diagnostic tests required to diagnose illnesses to monitoring the effectiveness of treatment plans. And yet my job is not considered essential?

At my hospital we have purchased a new analyzer and validated it, along with another pre-existing analyzer, to be able to perform in-house COVID-19 testing. This has enabled us to perform over 13,100 tests in house and assist in diagnosing over 1,000 patients with COVID-19. And yet my job is not considered essential?

It is also equally upsetting because last week of April 26 to May 2 happens to be National Medical Laboratory Week. We have received proclamations from Mayor John Tory (Toronto) and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as seen below:

The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, today issued the following statement on National Medical Laboratory Week, which runs from April 26 to May 2, 2020:

Today, I join Canadians to mark the beginning of National Medical Laboratory Week, and celebrate the invaluable and life-saving contributions of our countrys dedicated medical laboratory professionals.

As they work hard to provide timely, reliable test results for COVID-19, Canadas laboratory professionals have demonstrated their importance as core members of our health care team.

During this difficult time, their work is more important than ever. Laboratory professionals across Canada have been working day and night to process COVID-19 tests, while finding innovative ways to speed up the process. Working together with health care professionals, they play a key role in helping to identify cases of COVID-19 so we can stop its spread.

While we rely on the hard work of our laboratory and health care professionals, we all must do our part by following the recommendations of public health experts and staying at home. We will get through this together.

On behalf of the Government of Canada, I encourage all Canadians to join me to thank the many laboratory professionals on the front lines of the fight against COVID-19. Their professionalism, expertise, and dedication is helping to keep our loved ones, our health care professionals, and our communities safe.

Are we, as medical lab technologists, medical lab technicians, and patient care technicians now reduced to begging in the news and social media to be recognized as essential? I guess so!

So here it is: Premier Doug Ford, you need to add all lab personnel to the Pandemic Premium Pay Essential workers list! Without us the doctors are only guessing.

Sandra Sanford is a medical lab technician in Oakville.

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By Express News Service

BENGALURU: Karnataka stepped into 600- plus cases on Saturday, with 12 new positive cases bringing the total tally to 601. Two people died  one each from Bidar district and Bengaluru Urban, taking the toll in the state to 25. An 82-year-old male from Bidar admitted on April 27 evening with complaint of Severe Acute Respiratory Illness (SARI) died on April 28. His test results which have come now show that he was positive for Covid-19.

The second fatality was a 62-year-old man with a history of diabetes, hypertension, hypothyroidism, renal failure, multiple myeloma on chemotherapy and admitted with complaint of breathlessness in Bengaluru on April 30. He died on Saturday due to cardiac arrest at the designated hospital. While no new cases were recorded in Bengaluru Urban on Friday, four cases were recorded on Saturday. Of them, a 38-year-old female, 26-year-old female and 30-year-old male were contacts of Patient 565 who was diagnosed with Influenza-like Illness(ILI) and tested positive.

Another case was of a 32-year-old female who was contact of Patient 444. Two cases were recorded in Vijayapura  a 22-year-old male and 45-year-old male who were contacts of Patient 221. Tumakuru too had two fresh cases  a 40-year-old male and 29-year-old female who were contacts of Patient 535 and Patient 553 respectively. A 23-year-old male in Belagavi was a secondary contact of Patient 128 and tested positive. In Bagalkot district, a 45-year-old female, contact of Patient 381, tested positive. Twenty were discharged on Saturday, taking the tally to 271.

Primary and Secondary Education Minister S Suresh Kumar said, In the past seven days, the state has recorded 101 positive cases and the number of discharged patients is 113. Positive cases on an average per day were 14 while the discharges patient per day on an average came to 16. In Nanjangud-Mysuru cases, we have had 68% of patients discharged, which is a good number.

Randon sample testing is being done in two containment zones  Hongasandra and Padarayanapura. At Hongasandra, 72 were tested and all results were negative while in Padarayanapura, 96 people were tested, of whom three were positive. Pankaj Kumar Pandey, Commissioner for Health and Family Welfare, said that with the increase in number of SARI cases testing positive for Covid-19, the health department is working on it and tracing the source of contact of the affected person.
Several of Spains regional premiers told Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Sunday that they oppose another extension of the state of alarm that was implemented on March 14, a move that gave the central government extra powers to be used to deal with the coronavirus crisis. The state of alarm must be approved by Congress every two weeks, and the current period is set to end on May 9.

Sanchez, who heads a minority coalition government with junior partner Unidas Podemos, will need the support of other groups, such as the main opposition Popular Party (PP), if he is to secure the required votes in Spains lower house of parliament on Wednesday for a further two weeks of the state of alarm. The PP and far-right Vox, among other groups, have made it clear in recent weeks that they may not support another extension.

PP premiers are unhappy with the governments plan to deescalate confinement measures according to province

On Sunday, the prime minister held the eighth video conference call with the leaders of Spains 17 regions since the coronavirus crisis took hold in Spain. Todays meeting was characterized by criticism of the governments unilateral actions, which, they argued, have been taken without prior consultation with the regions.

Regional premiers from the PP continue to be unhappy with the central governments plan to deescalate confinement measures according to province, rather than geographical definitions based on the areas covered by each healthcare system.

The Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), meanwhile, one of the governments key allies in Congress, is also unhappy about Sanchezs plan to co-govern with the regions during the relaxation of the confinement measures, something that is aimed at boosting consensus and coordination.

The prime minister began the meeting by announcing that the number of daily coronavirus-related deaths had fallen to its lowest level today, 164, since the week that the state of alarm was implemented. He also detailed his plan for a 16 billion fund to assist the regions as they deal with the fallout from the coronavirus crisis.

Sanchez announced his commitment to the government assuming the cost of the pandemic

He also informed the regional leaders that the Cabinet would approve a third line of government-backed loans valued at 24.5 billion  10 billion for SMEs and the self-employed, 10 billion for large companies, 4 billion for the fixed-income alternative market and 500 million for CERSA, a state institution that offers financing for small businesses and the self-employed.

Sanchez announced his commitment to the government assuming the cost of the pandemic.

Basque Country premier Inigo Urkullu, of the PNV, objected to the decision-making processes of the government, and called for an end to the state of alarm  which recentralized many regional powers to Madrid  on the basis that there are other instruments at the governments disposal to deal with the current situation. Sanchez responded by saying that the state of alarm is part of the Constitution, and that he would be held accountable in Congress every two weeks during the debate preceding the vote on an extension. Its the only instrument that allows us to act on an immediate basis, he reiterated, while assuring Urkullu that the government would negotiate the deescalation with each region.

Catalan premier Quim Torra, meanwhile, stated that the pro-independence Together for Catalonia party would once again vote against an extension to the state of alarm. I continue to believe that co-governance is not the best way, said Torra, who is a hardline Catalan separatist. He also questioned the prime ministers approach of announcing measures on a Saturday, and then discussing them on Sundays with the regional premiers. Saturdays for talk and Sundays for announcements, he insisted.

The regional premier of Madrid told the prime minister that the state of alarm was limiting the fundamental rights of citizens

Sanchez responded saying that the governments actions were very different than those of other countries, such as Italy, which has implemented a six-month state of emergency, and France, which will vote on a similar measure that will last until June 24. Instead, in Spain the government has decided to go to parliament every two weeks to request an extension to the state of alarm, he said.

The regional premier of Madrid, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, told the prime minister that the state of alarm was limiting the fundamental rights of citizens, when the crisis that the country was going through was, in the end, a health issue. The PP politician warned that the impact on the economy of the crisis could lead to a million people without work by the end of the year in the region, something that could lead to disturbances, sources who were at the meeting reported her as saying. Sources from the regional government told EL PAIS that the number of unemployed cited by Ayuso had not been confirmed.

Ayuso called for fewer gatherings and that self-protection for citizens should be increased. Her comments came just a day after she apologized  as did the mayor and deputy mayor of Madrid  for organizing a closing ceremony at the coronavirus field hospital that was set up at the citys Ifema convention center. There was widespread controversy over the event given the large number of people who attended, and the scant regard for social-distancing measures.

Ayuso concluded by calling for fresh bilateral talks with the central government over the next steps to be taken to deal with the crisis.

The regional premier of Aragon, Javier Lamban of the PSOE, said that a deescalation by province is not suitable in regions such as his, where 76% of municipalities occupy 73% of the land, and represent just 12% of the regional population. More than half of the population, meanwhile, resides in Zaragoza. There are areas that could already reopen, he argued, citing the 730 areas that have fewer inhabitants combined than Zaragoza.

Lamban added that at previous meetings he suggested that municipalities with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants should get priority, and insisted that the best unit for deescalation measures should be the basic healthcare areas.

English version by Simon Hunter.
Nirupama Viswanathan By

Express News Service

CHENNAI: Officials are fearing a domino effect in Perumbakkam, one of the largest slum rehabilitation projects in the world. After a 26-year-old Corporation sanitary worker living there tested positive for COVID-19, the district administration of Chengalpattu has sealed the block of the TNSCB tenements in which he stayed.

Officials are now mulling the possibility of sealing off the entire tenements, keeping its residents from going to Chennai for work. So far, samples have been taken from 42 residents of these tenements. Based on the results, we will take a decision on sealing off the area, said the officials. By then, they are hoping relief measures to aid the now-jobless workers would be in place.

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We have enumerated over 500 workers who usually go into the city for work, mainly in four zones of the city corporation. The Collector will take the final call. We will also make sure relief measures are in place for those who wont be able to go to work in case of taking a decision (to seal off the site) said an official who did not want to be named.

Early containment in Perumbakkam could be crucial due to the sheer population living at the site that houses over 13,000 families, at an arms length from each other. According to the 2014 Comptroller and Auditor General report, the Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board tenements in Perumbakkam did not adhere to the National Building Code of India (NBC) norms with regard to density. While the permitted norm is 150 houses per hectare, here there are a whopping 251 units.

When asked if the district administration is planning to seal off the Perumbakkam site, the Chengalpattu district collector John Louis told Express: The opinion of the Block Medical Officer will be taken after the results of 40 samples of contacts of the positive patients are received. Meanwhile, a few residents of the Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board resettlement site at Navalur gathered in protest, throwing social distancing norms to the wind, due to the uneven distribution of relief. Residents claimed that fair price shops open and close at their own will, leaving many without the `1,000 relief and free rice announced by the State Government.
"They've gotten into fights with every northern European country with whom they should have an interest, and they've alienated every one of them." Loading Since the virus, the tone has only toughened, a measure of just how serious a danger China's leaders consider the virus to their standing at home, where it has fuelled anger and destroyed economic growth, as well as abroad. In the past several weeks, at least seven Chinese ambassadors  to France, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Ghana and the African Union  have been summoned by their hosts to answer accusations ranging from spreading misinformation to the "racist mistreatment" of Africans in Guangzhou, China. Just last week, China threatened to withhold medical aid from the Netherlands for changing the name of its representative office in Taiwan to include the word Taipei. And before that, the Chinese Embassy in Berlin sparred publicly with the German newspaper Bild after the tabloid demanded $US160 billion ($249 billion) in compensation from China for damages to Germany from the virus.

Trump said last week that his administration was conducting "serious investigations" into Beijing's handling of the coronavirus outbreak. Loading He has pressed US intelligence agencies to find the source of the virus, suggesting it might have emerged accidentally from a Wuhan weapons lab, although most intelligence agencies remain sceptical. And he has expressed interest in trying to sue Beijing for damages, with the United States seeking $US10 million for every American death. Republicans in the United States have moved to support Trump's attacks on China. Missouri's attorney general, Eric Schmitt, filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to hold Beijing responsible for the outbreak. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, called the suit "frivolous," adding that it had "no factual and legal basis" and "only invites ridicule."

The suit seems to aim less at securing victory in court, which is unlikely, than at prodding Congress to pass legislation to make it easier for US citizens to sue foreign states for damages. Loading "From Beijing's point of view, this contemporary call is a historic echo of the reparations paid after the Boxer Rebellion," said Theresa Fallon, director of the Centre for Russia Europe Asia Studies, referring to the anti-imperialist, anti-Christian and ultranationalist uprising around 1899-1901 in China that ended in defeat, with huge reparations for eight nations over the next decades. "The party's cultivation of the humiliation narrative makes it politically impossible for Xi to ever agree to pay any reparations." Instead, it has been imperative for Xi to turn the narrative around, steering it from a story of incompetence and failure  including the suppression of early warnings about the virus  into one of victory over the illness, a victory achieved through the unity of the party.

In the latest iteration of the new Chinese narrative, the enemy  the virus  did not even come from China, but from the US military, an unsubstantiated accusation made by China's combative Foreign Ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian. Chinese diplomats are encouraged to be combative by Beijing, said Susan Shirk, a China scholar and director of the 21st Century China Centre at the University of California, San Diego. The promotion of Zhao to spokesman and his statement about the US Army "signals to everyone in China that this is the official line, so you get this megaphone effect," she said, adding that it makes any negotiations more difficult. But in the longer run, China is seeding mistrust and damaging its own interests, said Shirk, who is working on a book called Overreach, about how China's domestic politics have derailed its ambitions for a peaceful rise as a global superpower. "As China started getting control over the virus and started this health diplomacy, it could have been the opportunity for China to emphasise its compassionate side and rebuild trust and its reputation as a responsible global power," she said.

"But that diplomatic effort got hijacked by the propaganda department of the party, with a much more assertive effort to leverage their assistance to get praise for China as a country and a system and its performance in stopping the spread of the virus." In recent days, Chinese state media has run numerous inflammatory statements, saying that Australia, after announcing its desire for an inquiry into the virus, was "gum stuck to the bottom of China's shoe." Beijing warned that Australia risked long-term damage to its trading partnership with China, which takes one-third of Australia's exports. "Maybe the ordinary people will say, 'Why should we drink Australian wine? Eat Australian beef?'" China's ambassador, Cheng Jingye, told The Australian Financial Review. Australia's foreign minister, Marise Payne, dismissed China's attempt as "economic coercion." Even in European countries like Germany, "the mistrust of China has accelerated so quickly with the virus that no ministry knows how to deal with it," said Angela Stanzel, a China expert with the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

In Germany, as in Britain, in addition to new questions about the advisability of using Huawei for new 5G systems, worries have also grown about dependency on China for vital materials and pharmaceuticals. France, which traditionally has good relations with Beijing, has also been angered by critical statements by Chinese diplomats, including a charge that the French had deliberately left their older residents to die in nursing homes. That prompted a rebuke from France's foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, and anger from legislators, despite an early reciprocal exchange of medical aid like masks. Recently, the German government complained that Chinese diplomats were soliciting letters of support and gratitude for Beijing's aid and efforts against the virus from government officials and the heads of major German companies. The same has been true in Poland, said the US ambassador to Warsaw, Georgette Mosbacher, in an interview, describing Chinese pressure on President Andrzej Duda to call Xi and thank him for aid, a call the Chinese heralded at home. "Poland wasn't going to get this stuff unless the phone call was made, so they could use that phone call" for propaganda, Mosbacher said.
McDonalds Changes Policy Amid Meat Shortage Concerns

McDonalds confirmed it is changing a policy on how its restaurants get their supply of pork and beef amid meat shortages caused by the CCP virus pandemic.

Burger patties, bacon, and sausage have been placed under the firms controlled allocation policy, meaning that the McDonalds supply chain will send restaurants meat based on calculated demand, the firm told Business Insider. Normally, management orders the amount believed will be needed at a specific location.

McDonalds distribution centers went on managed supply, while restaurants are under its controlled allocation policy as a precaution, the firm said.

The changes in policy have come as producers warned that there might be a U.S.-wide shortage of meat as workers get infected by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, a novel coronavirus that emerged in China last year. Some plants have been forced to shut down.

As pork, beef and chicken plants are being forced to close, even for short periods of time, millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the supply chain, Tyson Foods chairman John Tyson warned in an open letter last week. As a result, there will be limited supply of our products available in grocery stores until we are able to reopen our facilities that are currently closed.

Employees and family members protest outside a Smithfield Foods processing plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on April 9, 2020. (AP Photo/Stephen Groves File)

Meanwhile, Smithfield Foods, a Chinese-owned firm that operates in the United States, and JBS have also confirmed plant closures in recent weeks.

The threat of a meat shortage prompted President Donald Trump to invoke the Defense Production Act to order meat processing plants to stay open.

It is important that processors of beef, pork, and poultry (meat and poultry) in the food supply chain continue operating and fulfilling orders to ensure a continued supply of protein for Americans. However, outbreaks of COVID-19 among workers at some processing facilities have led to the reduction in some of those facilities production capacity, the president wrote in the order last week.

Trump said that such actions have led to closures of plants, but he stressed that it threatens the supply chain.

Given the high volume of meat and poultry processed by many facilities, any unnecessary closures can quickly have a large effect on the food supply chain, Trump wrote.

It comes as nearly 900 people at a Tyson Foods meat plant in north-central Indiana tested positive for the virus, WISH-TV reported.

The combination of worker absenteeism, COVID-19 cases, and community concerns has resulted in a collective decision to close, said Steve Stouffer of Tysons beef-and-pork subsidiary, according to The Associated Press on April 3o.
The governor appreciated the efforts of banks in ensuring normal to near normal operations during the lockdown period

New Delhi: Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das on Saturday held a meeting with the heads of banks and reviewed the economic situation and implementation of various measures announced by it to reduce stress in the financial system amid the COVID-19 crisis.

The meeting, which happened in two separate sessions through video conference, saw participation of managing directors and CEOs of major public and private sector banks, the RBI said in a statement after the meeting.

In his opening remarks, the governor appreciated the efforts of banks in ensuring normal to near normal operations during the lockdown period.

During the meeting, among other matters, review of the current economic situation and stability of the financial sector among other things were discussed.

Credit flows to different sectors of the economy, including liquidity to non-banking financial companies, microfinance institutions, housing finance companies, mutual funds, etc and post lockdown credit flows including provision of working capital, with special focus on credit flows to MSMEs were also deliberated.

Implementation of three months moratorium on repayment of loan instalments announced by the RBI was also reviewed during the meeting.

The Supreme Court earlier this week directed the RBI to ensure that its March 27 guidelines directing lending institutions to allow a three-month moratorium to all borrowers is implemented in letter and spirit.

Monitoring of overseas branches of banks in view of the slowdown in economies across the globe was discussed, it added.

The Reserve Bank has announced several steps to ease the pressure being faced by borrowers, lenders and other entities including mutual funds and has promised to take more initiatives to deal with the developing situation.

The RBI has injected funds within the system towards lending. The reverse repo rate cut will discourage banks from parking cash with the RBI and encourage them to lend to the economy.

The Indian economy may be headed for a rare quarterly contraction during April-June as economic activities have come to a halt due to the coronavirus lockdown.

The government had earlier unveiled a Rs 1.7 lakh crore package of free foodgrains and cash doles to the poor to deal with the challenges posed by the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic.
What community, with any pretence of fairness or equity, deems it acceptable to pay its essential workers less than two per cent of the compensation of a senior corporate litigator? Lawyers are useful, often important to have access to, but essential? Rarely.

Private nursing home aides and orderlies are the definition of essential. Always. Many make less than $20 an hour. A senior litigator can charge 50 times that. Not to mention the obscene compensation paid to our top 50 CEOs, none of whom receive less than $10 million a year, enough to hire 250 poorly paid health workers. It is this kind of shocking inequity that the pandemic has thrown a powerful searchlight on.

No middle class Canadian, even one with the deepest commitment to social justice, can be blamed for casting a blind eye to homeless beggars on Canadas streets, or ignoring stories of the plight of home care workers struggling with two jobs to survive barely above minimum wage. The problems seemed too deep and the political will too feeble, so most of us just walked on.

But as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said so eloquently last week, his two greatest nightmares at the beginning the COVID-19 crisis were that New Yorkers as a whole would simply say, No, I dont think so, Cuomo. Its too much, youre being political. But his second nightmare was even scarier than the first.

It was that essential workers would say, Well, if everyone must stay home to stay safe, so will I. He graciously acknowledged the hundreds of thousands of fire, police, EMTs, nurses and orderlies, transit workers and delivery people who did show up, observing that it was nothing he said, or their bosses demanded, rather it was their values as human beings and professionals that motivated them to turn day after risky exhausting day.

So now what are we going to do for the heroes of this unique battle? Clapping and cheerful childrens window signs were good morale boosters for a few weeks. But how about decent pay? Is the man who was essential to saving your grandmothers life in a nursing home, really worth less than half the annual salary of average Canadians?

The vast public sector is mostly represented by tough and well-managed public sector unions. Perhaps as citizens we can communicate to their employers how disgraceful we regard governments forcing strikes over two per cent salary increases. The top ups for essential workers can be made permanent. The politics of austerity in a post pandemic recovery and rebuilding moment will seem simply brain-dead.

No government can order a trucking firm, or a delivery service, let alone a private nursing home to raise salaries. They could require salary level disclosure, however, where any public funds are concerned. Ontario has a naming and shaming Sunshine List for the highest paid public employees. Why not a similar published list, by organization, for all employers who receive any form of funding from any level of government for the other end of the salary scale?

There will always remain the determination of some employers to pay as little as possible, to scramble to the bottom in a search for profit and market share. It has proved painfully difficult for private sector unions to organize the smaller groups of their employees.

Perhaps for the large number of poorly paid workers, or the gig economy precariat, we could use the power of social marketing to apply pressure. The fair trade movement has slowly raised standards and compensation for commodities from much poorer nations. They encourage their members to display their certification of membership and compliance. Why not a similarly framed fair pay project, where trucks, restaurants, and nursing homes could display large signs saying, We are proud to be part of the Fair Pay family. Backed by a social marketing campaign encouraging customers to favour those employers might nudge some to pay closer to decent wages.

The hard right small business lobby will no doubt claim that such a campaign would bankrupt too many family-owned businesses. To which we should be able to respond, Many of these people risked their lives to save ours. We believe that Canadians will never again support the impoverishment of the essential workers in every community. Many would be easily persuaded to spend a small amount more for their essential services. And we can hope that perhaps it is even true.
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump on Sunday sought to reassure Americans that it is safe for states to reopen amid the coronavirus pandemic, offering support to protesters who have railed against the lockdowns across the country.

"I really believe that you can go to parks, you can go to beaches . . . [if] you stay away a certain amount," Trump said during a Fox News Channel town hall at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.

Trump said it's possible to "satisfy both" anti-lockdown protesters and those who are afraid to resume public life. He noted that Americans have been wearing face masks and social distancing in recent weeks and said "you're going to have to do that for a while," even as states reopen their economies.

He scaled up the estimate he has used for the number of expected dead - projecting that the U.S. toll may be as high as 100,000 - while emphasizing that he takes the novel coronavirus seriously and noting that three of his friends have died after contracting it.

Trump had previously said that about 65,000 Americans would probably die of covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.

Trump's comments come as governors continue to grapple with reopening pains amid ongoing pushback against coronavirus restrictions. They also come as the administration is increasing its efforts to blame China for the virus, which has now taken the lives of more than 67,000 people in the United States.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, on Sunday defended her decision to extend a stay-home order to May 15, declaring that "whether you agree with me or not, I'm working to protect your life if you live in the state of Michigan."

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, said a recent spike in cases was merely a "one-day blip" caused by increased testing and pledged that he and other officials were "doing everything in our power to get our state opened as soon as possible."

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, said he had abruptly reversed a decision to make mask-wearing mandatory because people "were not going to accept the government telling them what to do."

Anti-lockdown protesters have demonstrated at capitols across the country in recent weeks. Trump on Friday expressed support for protesters in Michigan - some of whom were armed with military-style rifles - tweeting that "these are very good people, but they are angry. They want their lives back again, safely!"

Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator, rebuked some of the demonstrators, saying on "Fox News Sunday" that while she supports their right to protest, they should not be gathering close to one another and forgoing face masks.

"It's devastatingly worrisome to me personally, because if they go home and infect their grandmother or their grandfather who has a comorbid condition and they have a serious or an unfortunate outcome, they will feel guilty for the rest of our lives," Birx said. "So we need to protect each other at the same time we're voicing our discontent."

Amid heightened scrutiny of the federal government's response to the pandemic, some top Trump administration officials have been redoubling their efforts to focus voter anger on China.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed Sunday in an interview on ABC News' "This Week" that "enormous evidence" indicates that the novel coronavirus originated at a laboratory in Wuhan, China - even though the U.S. intelligence community declined last week to specify the origin of the virus.

Pompeo added that "the best experts" believe the virus was man-made. Pressed on the matter, Pompeo said he has "no reason to doubt" the U.S. intelligence community's assessment that the virus was not man-made or genetically altered.

After the expiration of the federal social-distancing guidance at the end of April, states have largely been left to their own devices when it comes to reopening their economies.

The White House last month released a three-phase plan for a gradual reopening, but it offered few specifics. Since then, members of the White House coronavirus task force have begun reviewing expanded guidelines, though there is debate within the administration over the impact the new guidance would have, particularly on faith communities and restaurants.

On Sunday, the governors of several states faced questions about the steps they have taken amid the pandemic. Some, such as Whitmer, defended the need for stay-home orders, arguing that "this isn't something we just negotiate ourselves out of."

"I'm going to continue to do my job, regardless of what tweets come out or what polls come out or what people think . . . makes sense," Whitmer said on CNN's "State of the Union." "We're going to listen to facts and science, because we have got to get this right."

Whitmer also sharply criticized "some of the outrageousness" that was on display during last week's protests in Lansing, Michigan, which she said "depicted some of the worst racism and awful parts of our history in this country."

"The Confederate flags, and nooses, the swastikas, the behavior that you have seen in all of the clips is not representative of who we are in Michigan," Whitmer said.

Mississippi's Reeves, meanwhile, said during a Friday news conference that he had intended to announce a relaxing of safer-at-home orders but instead shared the news that there were 392 cases in the state over the previous 24 hours.

On "Fox News Sunday," Reeves said the state had since analyzed the data and found that the number of cases was higher because more tests were done. He said that finding led him to conclude the state could further relax social distancing requirements, beyond his earlier announcement that retail stores could reopen beginning April 27.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican much of whose state will enter the first phase of reopening Monday, said he is "intent on moving forward to be able to get the society on its feet again."

"I think it's going to be an important step for [the] people of Florida to know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel," DeSantis said on Fox News Channel's "Sunday Morning Futures." "We're going to follow a safe, smart, step-by-step approach to Florida's recovery."

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, on Sunday announced a partnership with six neighboring states to jointly buy $5 billion of personal protective equipment, ventilators, tests and other standard medical equipment. The states, which include New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, seek to maximize their buying power as a collective and end the bidding competition against one another.

As states move forward with partially reopening, some residents are chafing at measures that would make it mandatory to wear face masks in certain establishments.

DeWine said in an interview on ABC News' "This Week" that he reversed course on such an order last week after it quickly became clear that many Ohioans were opposed.

"It just wasn't going to work. You got to know what you can do and what you can't do," he said.

Even in states that are partially reopening, some residents say it feels like it may be a long time before things go back to "normal."

When the mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma, announced last month that salons, gyms, restaurants and some other establishments would be allowed to reopen on May 1, Mary Breedlove, a 53-year-old hair stylist, was flooded with calls from clients.

But for Breedlove, the hardest part has been the stifling effect of having to wear a face mask while she works.

"[With a mask on], it's very impersonal, and our job is a very personal one," she said.

In the latter part of Sunday's Fox town hall, Vice President Mike Pence and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin made an appearance. Pence said he had erred last week when he visited the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota without wearing a face mask - a rare admission of a mistake by a Trump administration official.

"I should have worn a mask at the Mayo Clinic," Pence said.

Trump laid down his firmest marker yet in the next round of coronavirus negotiations on Capitol Hill, saying during the town hall that he would insist on a payroll tax cut as part of any eventual package. He said he spoke to Mnuchin about the issue earlier Sunday.

"We're not doing anything unless we get a payroll tax cut," Trump said. But Trump's demand for a payroll tax cut has gotten a lukewarm reception from both major parties on Capitol Hill because it cripples the source of revenue for Social Security funding and because it benefits only people who are currently employed and receiving paychecks.

He also said his administration will deliver a report "in two weeks" on how the coronavirus has disproportionately affected minority communities.

And in the shadow of Lincoln's statue, he declared that he is treated worse by the "hostile press" than Abraham Lincoln was, a remark that prompted ridicule from critics.

"They always said Lincoln - nobody got treated worse than Lincoln," Trump said. "I believe I am treated worse."

- - -

The Washington Post's Samantha Pell, Karen DeYoung, Candace Buckner and Aaron Gregg contributed to this report.
The prospect of a successful delivery of the Governments wide-ranging 6.5bn rescue package for businesses has been branded as questionable by one of the countrys largest regional chamber of commerce.

The financial supports  which include a 2bn credit guarantee fund, the writing off of a proportion of commercial rates bills, and a 12-month freeze on tax payments - were broadly welcomed over the weekend by a diverse range of representative bodies including the Small Firms Association, the Irish Farmers Association and the Family Business Network, which represents family-run companies.

However, County Kildare Chamber  which represents more than 400 member companies, which in turn employ more than 42,000 people  said delivery of the bulk of the support cannot become a reality until legislation is passed by the next government.

Business needs certainty and this has not been provided by the present government.

"We find it incredible that the Taoiseach stated that the next government may not be formed until June whilst then announcing two business measures that require legislation, said chamber CEO Allan Shine.

The warehousing of tax liability for one year and the SME credit guarantee scheme both require legislation.

Mr Shine, who said as much as 18% of the Chambers membership may struggle to reopen, called for an SME taskforce to be implemented to drive real change.

It has now become very clear that government and the political system at large need private sector influence, he said.

We do not need access to loans, we do not need endless grants that are not addressing the issues we face.

"We need certainty, we need state-backed accessible grants that are meaningful. We need an SME taskforce to influence change in Kildare Street.

"We are facing the largest deepest recession in our lifetime, we need clear precise and decisive action. We require a functioning government now not hopefully in June.

Meanwhile, the Irish Hotels Federation has called for a permanent reduction in the tourism Vat rate and waivers on local authority rates and charges.
Oil rigs are seen at Vaca Muerta shale oil and gas drilling, in the Patagonian province of Neuquen

By Eliana Raszewski

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentina plans to issue a decree setting a higher local oil barrel price to protect the domestic industry from being further decimated by a collapse in global prices and slumping fuel demand due to the coronavirus pandemic, two industry sources told Reuters on Thursday.

The locally-set oil price, known as the "criollo barrel" and used before to offset global price swings, would come as oil demand has collapsed around the world and domestically in Argentina due to a nationwide lockdown imposed in mid-March.

In Argentina as in other countries during the pandemic, a slower economy has slashed fuel demand. Refiners are not purchasing all the crude that is being produced, and storage space is growing scarce pressuring prices even more.

One of the people, a senior industry official with knowledge of government plans, said an announcement around the "criollo" barrel would likely be released next week, to help "put a floor under the steep fall." He added the official decree was not yet completed.

Both sources declined to be named because the plans were still private and under discussion.

Argentina is home to the huge Vaca Muerta shale deposit, the size of Belgium. It is thought to hold one of the world's largest reserves of unconventional hydrocarbons.

Argentina has typically produced around 500,000 barrels of oil per day, and with a fast ramp-up at Vaca Muerta has reduced reliance on imports. The country had been targeting an energy surplus in 2020.

Global oil prices have crashed to two-decade lows. On Monday, U.S. crude oil futures <CLc1> actually plunged into negative territory. Low prices are squeezing producers, especially those developing costlier shale reserves.

"A criollo barrel is vital and to maintain the price at the pump. Otherwise (refiners) buy crude at $20 and sell it at a pump at $50, which is what it is today," said the second source, an oil industry executive in Argentina.

Argentina's production ministry, which oversees the energy secretariat, did not respond to requests for comment. The South American country fixed oil prices previously until around 2016 to shield local firms from fluctuating prices.

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THE 'DEAD COW'

The pandemic has hammered producers in Vaca Muerta - Spanish for "dead cow" - which Argentina had hoped would produce major export income to help the country claw its way out of recession as it looks to restructure billions of dollars in debt.

"Companies around the world are slashing budgets. Vaca Muerta wasn't cost competitive with the Permian Basin or anywhere else in the United States before the market fell apart," said an executive at a U.S. energy firm in Argentina.

"So why would anyone spend a dime in Vaca Muerta now?"

Guillermo Pereyra, secretary general of the Rio Negro, Neuquen and La Pampa Oil and Gas Union around Vaca Muerta, told Reuters most workers have been sent home and production has fallen steeply in April.

His union, which has 25,000 workers, reached an agreement with oil companies on Thursday to guarantee that the 20,500 workers at home would receive at least 60% of their wages in April and May, he said.

"The pandemic led us to paralyze the economy, planes and vehicles stopped working, factories closed and demand fell," he said. "Refineries began to stock their products. Pipelines cannot pump more because there is nowhere to put oil."

"Vaca Muerta is more dead than ever," he said.

(Reporting by Eliana Raszewski; Additional reporting by Cassandra Garrison; Editing by Adam Jourdan, David Gregorio, Marguerita Choy and Daniel Wallis)
It's Friday morning in Alexandra township  a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of South Africa's largest city, Johannesburg  and dozens of people are gathered in a field outside a food distribution point, hoping today might be the day they get something to eat.

"If you're hungry, it's easy to get sick from stress and everything," says Mduduzi Khumalo, who's been lining up every day for two weeks. To get food your name has to be on the list and, so far, despite registering multiple times, his hasn't been.

Khumalo worked as a delivery man before South Africa's coronavirus lockdown decimated his income. His children used to get two meals a day at school, but schools are closed now. Every day, the kids wait for him at the family's tiny home, and every day brings the same bad news.

"They know that if I don't get anything for them, it's over," Khumalo tells CBS News.

Famines "of biblical proportions"

patta-pic.jpg

Residents of Diepsloot in South Africa wait for food but go home empty handed of Friday, April 23. CBS News

The coronavirus pandemic has left the world facing an unprecedented hunger crisis. The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) has warned that by the end of the year, more than 260 million people will face starvation  double last year's figures.

"In a worst-case scenario, we could be looking at famine in about three dozen countries," warned WFP director David Beasley. He said the world could face multiple famines "of biblical proportions within a few short months."

Oil prices have collapsed, tourism is drying up, and overseas remittances  foreign workers transferring money to their families in other countries  on which many people depend for survival, are expected to decline sharply.

There's "a real danger that more people could potentially die from the economic impact of COVID-19 than from the virus itself," Beasley said.

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Sub-Saharan Africa particularly at risk

If global GDP declines by 5% because of the pandemic, another 147 million people could be plunged into extreme poverty, according to estimates by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute.

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Children wait for food aid from their parents near Johannesburg, South Africa, on Friday, April 23. CBS News

More than half of those people  79 million  live in sub-Saharan Africa, David Laborde Debucquet, a senior research fellow at IFPRI, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Another 42 million are in South Asia, he said.

"We are talking about (people) earning below $1.90 a day... where basically your life is in danger because, when you have this type of poverty and you cannot eat, you will die," Debucquet told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "This will affect the urban poor much more. In the last couple of decades, we have seen very fast urbanization in these two regions."

"I'm afraid of getting sick, and I'm afraid of starving."

Thandi Lebho, 39, lives in the South African township of Diepsloot. She and her husband and three children have been waiting for food donations for three weeks. They haven't been able to get what they need since South Africa's lockdown began and her income from selling tupperware containers dried up.

"I've registered online and by phone, and I write on the papers from the street, and I came here at the clinic and registered, but nothing happened," she tells CBS News. When she manages to get to the food distribution truck, it's already run out of supplies.

"The kids are not going to school and education is going low. We are struggling to get money because I'm working for myself. I'm self-employed  so my business is in my house  so I'm not earning anything now," she says. "I'm starving now. I don't have anything."

She'll be back in the food line tomorrow, trying to get something to keep her family going.

"I'm afraid of getting sick, and I'm afraid of starving," she says.

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This is the Daytona Beach Police Department. We apologize for the inconvenience, but due to COVID-19, this park is currently closed.

So says a drone with a loud speaker attached to its top.

The coronavirus pandemic has forced police departments in the country and around the globe to fundamentally change the way they enforce laws. Police agencies are increasingly relying on these flying contraptions to do what they have not had to do before: policing while socially distancing. Over the past month, several law enforcement agencies have unveiled drones that broadcast announcements at parks, beaches and homeless camps to enforce stay-at-home orders and social-distancing guidelines.

In Daytona Beach, Florida, officials say the drones can also be used during rescue operations, such as giving a drowning person a life preserver without physical contact.

We started thinking about ways of how we can limit the ability to transmit (COVID-19), said Messod Bendayan, spokesman for the Daytona Beach Police Department. Instead of risking an officer, we just fly the drone and have the drone speak a message. It keeps officers safe and keeps people safe.

Pandemic freedoms: Government intrusions on civil liberties during pandemic raise risks, rewards

But civil rights groups have pushed back against the use of such technology, saying some of its capabilities are invasive and pose constitutional dangers. These include the ability to detect someones body temperature from a distance. To civil rights and privacy advocates, this amounts to an indiscriminate warrantless search  obtaining the private health information of people who did not give consent and aren't under a criminal investigation.

People have a right to privacy. You cant just take their temperature without any reason. I think this is just an example of something that police departments have a tendency to do. Someone sells them on a new technology and they can come up with what they think is reason to use it and they use it, but they dont necessarily think about how invasive it might be, said Caleb Kruckenberg, litigation counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance.

Story continues

Public safety vs. civil rights: Federal prosecutors could intervene if stay-at-home orders go too far, attorney general says

The Washington, D.C.-based group recently sent a letter asking the Daytona Beach Police Department to stop using drones that detect body temperatures.

Bendayan said the main function of the departments drones is to police public places such as parks. He said officials were considering using drones to find out who may have fever, but they have not done so, and any plans to use the technology to measure peoples temperatures are limited only to those entering the police department lobby.

Still, the use of drones has caused some controversy.

The police department in Westport, Connecticut, for example, abruptly pulled out of a pilot drone program that wouldve allowed the agency to monitor peoples temperatures from a distance and detect sneezing and coughing.

'It would cripple us completely': Coronavirus takes toll on rural police agencies

Police Chief Foti Koskinas said in April that the departments plan to participate in the drone program resulted in varied expressions of public concern and reservations.

Jim Marpe, the towns first selectman, said the use of drones was a good faith effort to get ahead of the virus, but the departments announcement of its participation in the program was not well-received and led to more questions.

David McGuire, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Connecticut, said the group is skeptical of local governments that are partnering with drone companies without information about what to do with the data the machines are collecting. McGuire said because many of those with COVID-19 are asymptomatic, fever-detecting drones may not be effective in limiting the spread of the virus.

Coronavirus and police: As more police get sick, it could be bad for rural policing

A police officer prepares to fly a drone that makes announcements asking people to stay indoors at Dharavi, one of Asia's largest slums, during lockdown to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus in Mumbai, India, Thursday, April 9, 2020.

The COVID-19 virus is a grave public health risk, so we shouldnt write off tools that might help mitigate the problem. But we also must recognize that technology is no magic pill to stemming the pandemic, McGuire said. The urgent need at the moment, according to public health experts, is to ramp up testing capability, suppress transmission through social distancing measures, and support our hospitals as they face an influx of patients.

Don Roby, third chairperson of the International Association of Police Chief's aviation committee, said police departments should be transparent, especially when they're using technology that's not available to the general public.

Its up to the chiefs, the sheriffs, the police commissioners to define what missions theyre going to use the drones for. ... They should be seeking some input from the community, Roby said.

The controversy over the use of drones underscore the uncertainty around a technology that's capable of gathering personal information.

Still, the technology has proved to be popular, especially at a time when law enforcement officials have had to think of other ways to do their jobs.

In Italy, police are using drones to check on residents who have tested positive for COVID-19. In India, police are using drones to track large gatherings and monitor narrow roads police cars can't get to. In France, health warnings are blared through drones flying over deserted beaches.

DJI Enterprise, a drone company headquartered in Shenzen in southeastern China, said it has provided the technology to 43 law enforcement and public safety agencies in 22 states.

'Naming and shaming': States stepping up enforcement of stay-at-home orders

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Coronavirus: Police using drones to enforce stay-at-home orders
LONDON (Reuters) - British royal Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, has video-called a number of new parents, midwives and other maternity service professionals to promote her message of mental health awareness during the coronavirus pandemic.

In a video posted on Twitter by Kensington Palace, the residence and office of Kate and her husband Prince William, the mother-of-three could be seen chatting via video-link with a woman who had given birth the night before, a midwife, and various others.

"As organisations you're playing such a vital role, giving key information, you're hugely trusted by the public in general, and therefore the information that you provide is a lifeline to many people at this time," Kate told professionals from not-for-profit mental health organisations on a group call.

The video was issued to mark Britain's Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week.

In a separate snippet, Kate could be seen chatting with a new mother on her hospital bed, congratulating her on the birth of her son and acknowledging the strangeness of having the conversation via video-link due to social distancing measures.

"This is definitely a first," she said, laughing along with the new mother.

A midwife also appeared from a hospital ward on the video-montage, asking whether Kate could tell that she was smiling underneath her protective face mask. "With your eyes, yes I can," the duchess replied.

Kate and William have long campaigned to raise awareness of mental health issues. Last week, the couple launched a new service called OurFrontline, which provides round-the-clock mental health support to key workers involved in the response to the coronavirus crisis.

William's grandmother, 94-year-old Queen Elizabeth, has issued a number of rallying messages to the nation since it went into lockdown in March, including a televised address that was only the fifth of her 68-year reign.

More than 28,000 people have died of COVID-19 across the United Kingdom.

(Reporting by Estelle Shirbon;Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
The Indian armed forces on Sunday organised a series of events across Jammu region to honour coronavirus warriors for their exceptional contribution in fighting the pandemic, a defence spokesman said.

Nagrota-based White Knight Corps of Northern Command and YOL Cantonment-based Rising Star Corps of Western Command organised events in Jammu and Kashmir, part of Punjab and Himachal Pradesh, he said.

Officers of Miran Sahib Brigade of Tiger Division honoured and complimented doctors, paramedics, health workers of the Government Medical College (GMC) hospital in Jammu, the spokesman said.

He said the coronavirus warriors were also given hand sanitisers and handmade face masks produced by Miran Sahib EME workshop and greeting cards from children.

The Indian Army's band performed outside the Government Medical College in Kathua district, government notified COVID-19 Hospital at Kangra and Rajendra Prasad Government Medical College & Hospital, Tanda (HP) to express gratitude towards medical professionals who are treating coronavirus patients, the spokesman said.

"Army garrison at Udhampur also felicitated all the agencies involved in the fight against COVID-19 by organising military pipe band displays as a token of appreciation and goodwill gesture at multiple locations in the station," he said.

Similar events were organised by the Ace of Spades Division in Poonch-Rajouri region, Crossed Swords Division in Sunderbani-Akhnoor Region, Tiger Division in Jammu region, Gurj Division in Pathankot (Punjab) and Kathua, Samba region.

"The events organised were a salute to the unflinching spirit of the coronavirus warriors who have worked with utter disregard to their own safety and contributed towards the national effort to contain the pandemic," the spokesman said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Author Maggie Brookes knew her father had been taken prisoner in the Second World War. But it wasnt until after his death and the discovery of a gut-wrenchingly detailed diary that she understood the extent of the cruelties he endured at the hands of the Nazis

Maggie with her father

As a child growing up in London, I was always thought of as a daddys girl, and our relationship was incredibly close. While I knew him as Daddy, to others he was Alfred Arthur Brookes, born in 1920.

Every evening he checked under my bed for wolves. He trudged out to the allotment on one rainy night to rescue my favourite doll. He sang to me (though he always got the words wrong). He was interested in everything, self-taught and knowledgeable about art, theatre and travel. His death in 1996, when I was 41, was devastating, but his overwhelming passion for life remained my enduring memory of him.

Throughout his life we discussed anything and everything, but there was one area that he would never share with me: his service during the Second World War. He would talk willingly about his childhood, his family, meeting my mother and everything that came after the war, but he never spoke about anything between 1939 and 1945. While my mother, Joan, told many tales about her experiences as a VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) nurse with the Navy, serving in hospitals in different locations around the coast of England, Dad never said a word. I only found out hed been a prisoner of war because Mum once told me  and I knew never to ask him about it.

It wasnt until my parents 40th wedding anniversary that I got a glimpse into his secret past when Harold Gudgion, my fathers lifelong best friend and fellow veteran, made a moving speech about my dads calmness and courage. Id known Harold my whole life, but I didnt fully understand at the time that he was referring not only to their time actively fighting during the war, but also the three years they spent as prisoners of war together. It would take me 20 years after Dads death to discover the full, extraordinary details.

I had spent many years as a journalist and BBC TV producer, but this was the most astonishing story Id ever come across. As I began my research, reading first-person testimonies to find out what life was like in these camps, I discovered that when Harold had died in 2010, he had a stash of diaries and had also recorded his memories on tape for his son John to transcribe, in order to leave behind a record of his experiences.

Harolds diaries and memoirs covered the years between 1942 and 1945, including the years he spent imprisoned with my dad first in North Africa, before moving on to the Carpi Camp in Northern Italy and then to Zedlach in Austria. My dad  Harolds brother-in-arms  featured on almost every page. When I first began to read, I was afraid of what I would find. Might they reveal aspects of my beloved dad that would spoil my memory of him?

Left: maggies dad Alfred in uniform, 1941, and, opposite, with Maggie in 1983. Right: Alfred, far left, and best friend Harold, third from right, with fellow POWs in Austria

I soon learned that Harold and Dad had met as gunners in the 64th Medium Regiment of the Royal Artillery, a battalion of young men including many volunteers from North London. Dad was 17 and Harold was 21. Most of their comrades were of similar ages. Their emblem was an elephant and they were nicknamed the elephant boys. In November 1940, after their basic training, they were posted to North Africa. Dad had always loved to explore new places and these pages showed where hed caught the travel bug  a long sea voyage around the Cape of Good Hope, along the east coast of Africa and through the Suez Canal to Egypt. Over the next 18 months they were posted to an astounding number of places: Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria.

Seeing Dad mentioned for the first time sent such a thrill through me. He made his appearance as Harold was describing an advance through the Egyptian desert on the eve of battle: In broad daylight under a clear sky I was standing up at the front of our truck and I suddenly realised that in the truck next to us there was Alfie Brookes and he shouted across above the noise, Im 21 today. It was with mixed feelings that I pictured Dad, young and handsome, fully alive in that moment and filled with excitement, knowing he would soon be charging into battle.

Later Harold described the terrible day in 1942 when they were captured in Egypt by the combined German and Italian Panzer Army Africa. Seven thousand British soldiers were taken prisoner in the same battle. With only the clothes on their back, and amid a great crush of men, Harold tells of how we spent the night in pens along the way westwards, and I had the great good fortune to meet up with Alf Brookes.

I read in growing horror as Harold described the tented encampment at Benghazi in Libya where they were guarded by trigger-happy, thoroughly unpleasant, totally unsympathetic tribesmen. One of their punishments was to string a man up against a wall with leather manacles, holding his body up crucifix-style so that his feet were off the ground. He would hang like that, without food or water, throughout the heat of the day, and when his tormentors decided, they would signal to the mans friends that they could take him down.

Father and daughter in 1957

I couldnt bear to think of my lovely, gentle dad faced with such abhorrent treatment. Harold wrote: Abominably we were kept in Benghazi for over three months. He doesnt say if either of them were tortured, but he does say, We had arrived as soldiers, we left nearer animals.

Eventually they were taken to Sicily, a sea voyage of three days in the pitch black hull of the ship, before being carted across Italy in cattle-truck trains. After five months of inhuman treatment, they arrived at a permanent camp in Northern Italy. I felt a sense of relief that perhaps the worst was over for Dad, but while their treatment improved slightly, the trials of living as a prisoner soon became apparent. The camp was on low-lying land which was boggy in winter and mosquito-ridden in summer. There Harold and Dad experienced the excruciating boredom of prison camp life for almost a year.

They tried to keep themselves occupied and fit: Harold began to teach my dad German; they played endless hours of bridge and poker; Dad carved an entire wooden chess set that was instantly confiscated by Nazi officers. The diary also revealed  somewhat surprisingly  that my dad had taught himself to knit: We were laden with kit and a great quantity of wool for Alfs new knitting fever. I never saw Dad knitting, but as a child I wrote an essay for school about him always picking up new crazes which hed throw himself into for a few months, perhaps a lasting influence of life in the camp. But I never saw him play cards  perhaps hed played enough games to last a lifetime.

Before the war, Harold had worked at a solicitors office and he passed on his knowledge of shorthand to my dad, a skill they used to make notes about the escapes they were hatching and their two abortive attempts to get away. As the Allies advanced up the leg of Italy towards their camp, all the prisoners assumed they would soon be liberated.

On 8 September 1943 their Italian guards vanished and Harold wrote in capital letters in his diary, It is over! I could only imagine their stomach-churning disappointment when the Nazis swept into the camp and the swastika was run up the flagpole. Instead of liberation, they were to be moved north into Austria, and Dad and Harold seized this chance to escape.

Because Dad never smoked, they were able to save his cigarette rations from the Red Cross parcels as currency to buy clothes to disguise themselves. Breaking free from the camp, they hid in the roof of a barn for two days and a night until they were discovered and hauled out and put in front of a firing squad. I read this with my heart in my mouth, imagining the terror they must have felt in that moment.

But Dad apparently thought, I wish theyd get on with it, I dont think I can stand here much longer. As I am here to tell this story, I know the firing squad was stood down. Nobody knows why. Perhaps they were just trying to terrify Harold and Dad into submission.

What followed was terrible to read: We were formed into a circle and made to hold each others shoulders. The Nazis formed up two or three deep around us and we were made to charge round while they hit us with rifle butts, tree branches and the helves [handles] of picks. The 12 men who suffered this brutal attack shared a quiet satisfaction that there had not been a murmur or groan from any of us. I wept, and I knew now what Harold meant when he praised Dads calmness and courage in his anniversary speech. It was only made worse by my knowledge that they would have to face another year and a half of imprisonment as they were transported by railway cattle truck from Carpi to Markt Pongau in Austria.

Having grown up on films such as The Great Escape and the Colditz TV series, Id imagined that all prisoners of war were cooped up in jails for years, plotting ways to break out. I hadnt realised that the majority of POWs  Dad and Harold included  were actually put to work outside the camps. All prisoners below officer rank were offered work, and Dad and Harold took the first opportunity they could to volunteer in order to leave the mind-numbing boredom of the camp.

They were taken high up into the Austrian Alps to build roads  back-breaking physical work on very poor rations  and locked up under guard at night. But for them, it was better than being cooped up. They were hungry most of the time. Pages of Harolds diary are about food  or the lack of it  and the huge importance of the Red Cross parcels that kept them from starvation. Now I understood why Dad would never throw away a single scrap of food, and why hed taken on two allotments when he married Mum, to ensure he could always feed his family.

In May 1945 the war in Europe ended, POW camps were liberated by the Allies and the slow process of repatriation began. Harolds entries towards the end of the war spoke of the way their friendship had carried them both through their terrible three-year imprisonment. Although they hadnt known each other before the war, they discovered they both lived in the same part of North London and so travelled home together, eventually arriving by tube.

They remained lifelong friends, and Harold wrote: By happy chance we had served in the same regiment, the same battery, the same troop. It had taken well over six years of our 20s somehow we had survived together. Nothing can match that sort of association. On both sides, no other candidate could possibly truly serve as Best Man. And so, in time, Dad was best man at Harolds wedding, and when Dad met Mum, the favour was returned.

It was painful to read of my darling Dad suffering as he did, but Im profoundly grateful to Harold for writing everything down, for ensuring the notebooks were preserved throughout the war and to his family for sharing them with me. Reading them brought Dad close to me in a new way that I will forever cherish. Through them, I discovered that he had always been the calm, quirky, funny and courageous man I knew, even under the most terrible of circumstances. I wish now that I could have spoken to him about his experiences, but know that he would have changed the subject and wanted to look forward not back.

In the 1960s, my parents opened their home to Italian and German exchange students.

Dad used to say it was a small way of trying to ensure that nothing like the war they had known would ever happen again. Now that I understand the treatment my father endured as a prisoner, Im more amazed than ever at just how admirable and forgiving he was as a human being. Im full of gratitude that I am the daughter of such a wonderful man.

Left: Alfred and Joans 40th wedding anniversary with Harold and his wife (Left), in 1989. Right: A page from Harolds wartime diary

Maggie Brookess debut novel, The Prisoners Wife, will be published by Century on 16 April, price 12.99
[May 03, 2020] Terminus' Technologies Going Overseas, Bringing the Light of Intelligence to Cities

BEIJING, May 3, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The current wave of globalization is fuelled by new ICT technologies such as 5G, AI, Internet of things and big data. The development of cutting-edge technologies is not only a reflection of the concrete strength of a country and a region, but also an increasingly critical production factor for promoting social and economic development. In particular, given the current COVID-19 pandemic across the globe, technologies have been playing a vital role in preventing and controlling its spread. Terminus is an epitome of China's new tech companies that exports its technologies to battle against the pandemic. As the leading company of the "new technology" sector of China Everbright Group and the core strategic technology platform of China Everbright Ltd (CEL), Terminus has been fully applying its AI and Internet of Things technologies in China, and receiving positive feedback from the market. Meanwhile, more acknowledgment from abroad are saying high of Terminus' corporate responsibility as an international company. Blueprint for AI CITY What Terminus has been doing is to build AI CITY one after another around the world, and gather numerous "points of aggregation" of AI CITY into a complete AI CITY "plane" through the iteration of AIOT technologies. From point to plane, Terminus will be able to deploy its global network of AI CITY. In the Middle East, by cooperating on projects and inviting investment, the United Arab Emirates is bringing the world's leading tech enterprises into the country, hoping to go smart and be powerful in the future with the help of the imported advanced productivity. Terminus is one of the leading tech companies on top of its list. By far, Terminus has reached an agreement with Injazat Data System on the smart city project. The cooperation will focus on smart city, energy, intelligent security among other fields, enabling the two sides to jointly explore the blue ocean market in the UAE and the Middle East. Look deeper, you will find this business partner of Terminus is supported by Mubadala Development Company, the world's largest sovereign investment fund. Such a cooperation is the best illustration of a company's tech strength and its ability to go global. ? Terminus and Injazat Data System reaching a consensus on smart city cooperaion and signing the project agreement



However, this is only a glance at Terminus' market reach and its AI CITY deployment in the UAE. Last year, Terminus signed a cooperation agreement with District 2020 Dubai Expo Special Zone, under which Terminus will provide AIOT solutions in intelligent security, energy, smart city, etc. In addition, Terminus will set up an AIOT industrial R&D center, as well as its incubators and accelerators, in District 2020 Dubai Expo Special Zone to fully utilise local AIOT industrial resources and expand its industrial layout.

? Terminus signing a cooperation agreement with District 2020 Dubai Expo Special Zone In April this year, China Everbright Group AI Industrial Base officially started its construction in Chongqing, a metropolis in southwest China. It is the first world-class AI CITY created by Terminus and China Everbright. It can be said that Terminus has sketched its grand vision for global AI CITY in Chongqing, and undoubtedly, the multiple AI CITY projects in the UAE are the early stage deployment of the company's global network. Fighting the pandemic with technologies has expanded the company's global reach. At the critical stage of the global fight against coronavirus, Terminus' Huolei Initiative has entered its 100th day. It has been upgraded from a simple aid initiative to a two-way communication and assistance platform for the international community to prevent and control the pandemic. Terminus' successful experience in fighting the pandemic with technologies has become a "hard currency" in the overseas market. Not only has it received thumb-up from the Minister of State and formed an alliance with Qatar Airways, but also implied a close tie with Qatar to promote high-quality development. This also brings Terminus an increasing attention from the international community. As early as the beginning of April, pandemic control supplies were offered by Terminus to the Qatar authorities. By collaborating with Qatar Airways, Terminus was able to send tech products for pandemic control to the country, including back-end control system for pandemic control, all-in-one portrait recognition and thermometer, early warning instrument with thermal imaging temperature screening, thermal imaging thermometer, etc. They were immediately sent to government bodies and ports of Qatar upon arrival, bringing great convenience to the frontline battle for fighting with the coronavirus. His Excellency Akbar Al Baker, Minister of State of Qatar, Secretary General of the Qatar National Tourism Board, and CEO of Qatar Airways Group, wrote a special letter to Victor Ai, CEO of Terminus. Not only did he delivered the sincere gratitude, but also expressed his commitment to fight against the coronavirus together with Terminus, which as he described, was a precious ally. On 20th last month, His Excellency Ahmad Mohammed A Y Al-Sayed, Minister of State of Qatar and Chairman of the Qatar Free Zone, also sent a letter to Victor Ai, showing Qatar's deep solicitude for the Chinese people in fighting the pandemic, and strongly affirming the heroic performance of Terminus in its Huolei Initiative. As the world's leading provider of intelligent scene solutions, Terminus has made substantial achievements in AI, data service, smart city construction and other fields. As early as last November, on his trip to China for the 2nd China International Import Expo, Ahmad Sayed, Minister of State of Qatar, also visited Terminus' office in Shanghai with the company of Mohamed Al-Dehaimi, Ambassador of Qatar to China. Back then in the office, the Minister of State said that he had not thought that China's tech companies were far ahead of other countries in intelligent technologies, and that Qatar was willing to conduct in-depth cooperation with Terminus in the related industries. At this special moment, Terminus has taken concrete actions to expand the tech cooperation between China and other countries to minimize the impact of the pandemic and seek new opportunities. The flourishing project launches at home and abroad have shown the world the great resilience of China's economy. Behind Terminus' AI CITY, it lies the truth that China is bringing new opportunities to and other countries in the form of "new infrastructure", and adding confidence to the stable development of global economy. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/terminus-technologies-going-overseas-bringing-the-light-of-intelligence-to-cities-301051492.html SOURCE Terminus? Technologies

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Cancer patients face increased death risks by putting off a diagnosis over fears attending a GP or hospital exposes them to Covid-19.

New research shows many patients are not being referred for specialist treatment because they fear picking up Covid-19 in healthcare settings, meaning necessary interventions are not happening as regularly as before the coronavirus outbreak.

Professor Mark Lawler, who is leading cancer research at Queen's University Belfast, has warned more cancer patients will die as a result of not seeing a doctor urgently.

"There will be excess deaths in the Irish situation," he told the Sunday Independent.

"It is difficult to predict what those numbers will be."

However, he said UK and international research can be used as a guide.

Prof Lawler has found Covid-19 will have a direct impact on mortality rates in people with cancer in the UK.

The study, carried out in conjunction with University College London and the UK's health data research hub for cancer, estimates there could be at least 6,270 additional deaths in newly diagnosed cancer patients alone within a year. This number could rise to an estimated 17,915 additional deaths in a year if all people currently living with cancer are considered.

He said the research model can be applied to other countries and shows more cancer patients in Ireland will die than otherwise would have been the case if the Covid-19 crisis had not emerged.

"We believe this is a universal phenomenon," Prof Lawler said. His work with colleagues had already identified "displacement" of cancer awareness in Eastern European health systems.

"What we found was on average cancer referrals, so the early warning system when you are referred from a GP to a specialist, were down 76pc from pre-Covid-19 levels. That is when red flags are raised and people follow up on a lump or bleeding they are concerned about so it shows the early warning system isn't working.

"Chemotherapy appointments and attendances, a proxy indicator of how healthy the cancer service is, were down 60pc. Those two things worried us."

"You would expect a similar thing to happen [in Ireland]. Obviously the numbers would not be the same given the population difference in size, but certainly one of the things we are encouraging people to do is to take our model and use it on their own population."

Prof Lawler said the findings show cancer and other underlying health conditions are at risk of adding to the escalating death toll of the pandemic. The research suggests many of those who will die because of new cancers will also have an underlying medical condition. He said anyone with a health concern must be encouraged to see a doctor despite Covid-19 anxieties.

"Of those predicted to die, eight in 10 would have underlying health conditions," Prof Lawler said.

"People who suspect they may have cancer are worried about attending the doctor for two reasons. One, they don't want to put pressure on them because they feel doctors are overwhelmed by Covid-19.

"The other reason is that they are worried they might get Covid-19 by attending a health service."

The Department of Health's chief medical officer Tony Holohan has repeatedly urged the public to attend their doctor if they have concerns about other ailments. These numbers have increased somewhat in recent weeks but are still considered too low.

HSE figures show referrals of people with suspected cancers dropped significantly following the introduction of Covid-19 restrictions.

Referrals for suspected cases of skin cancer this year dropped by more than 70pc between March 16 and April 19 when compared with the number of cases in the period to mid-March. Lung cancer referrals dropped by 61pc, and the number of people being transferred for breast cancer checks dropped by 55pc. The number of prostate cancer referrals halved in this period.

"The message is, from a patient point of view and anyone who suspects they have cancer, please access your GP," Prof Lawler said.

"From a Government and assistance point of view, if we are encouraging people to access services, we need to make sure they are always there so people can be correctly diagnosed and put on the right treatment."
The whole house is very much displeased with the government on issues that bother on our agitations and welfare. We are perturbed with the non-committal response from the government despite repeated calls and letters to get their attention, the letter read.
Warren Buffett is confident USA's economy will bounce back from its pummeling by coronavirus because "American magic has always prevailed."

His prediction came after his holding company Berkshire Hathaway reported first-quarter net losses of almost $50 billion, as per a report in AFP.

Buffett also announced that his company had sold all its stakes in four major US airlines last month, as the pandemic clobbered the travel industry.

"It turns out I was wrong," he said of his acquisitions of 10 percent stakes in American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines.

Berkshire Hathaway had paid $7 billion to $8 billion, and "we did not take out anything like that," he said.

Between the purchases that took place over months, and the sale, "the airlines business I think changed in a very major way" and could no longer meet Berkshire criteria for profitability, he said.

AFP

Buffett's announcement may further hurt airlines already pushed to the brink by coronavirus lockdown measures, now looking to the US government for $25 billion in relief funds.

Berkshire Hathaway, based in Omaha, Nebraska, called its first-quarter setback "temporary" but said it could not reliably predict when its many businesses would return to normal or when consumers would resume their former buying habits.

"We've faced great problems in the past, haven't faced this exact problem -- in fact we haven't really faced anything that quite resembles this problem," Buffett said in a lengthy speech on the country's economic history.

"But we faced tougher problems, and the American miracles, American magic has always prevailed and it will do so again."

"We are now a better country, as well as an incredibly more wealthy country, than we were in 1789... We got a long ways to go but we moved in the right direction," he said, referencing the abolition of slavery and women's suffrage.

AFP

"Never bet against America."

Buffett is considered one of the savviest investors anywhere. His fortune of $72 billion is the fourth-largest in the world, according to Forbes, and in normal years, the company's annual gathering in Omaha is a high-point of the calendar for investors, a "Woodstock for capitalists."

But the devastating economic impact of the pandemic has hit hard at Berkshire Hathaway's wide range of investments, and the need for social distancing forced it to hold the annual meeting online.

Buffett addressed his shareholders in a livestream flanked only by Gregory Abel, who is in charge of Berkshire's non-insurance operations.

His business partner for six decades, 96-year-old Charlie Munger, did not appear.

Buffett, in a statement, played down his company's bleak-looking net figure. He said a better measure of the company's performance was its operating earnings, which exclude investments and are less subject to sharp fluctuations.

By that measure, Berkshire Hathaway saw growth to $5.9 billion from $5.55 billion a year earlier.

AFP

The brutal drop in the net -- to a loss of $49.75 billion from a profit last year of $21.7 billion -- resulted primarily from the virus-related decline in value of its broad investment portfolio, which ranges from energy to transport to insurance and technology.

The annual meeting often has an almost carnival atmosphere, as thousands of fans and investors flock to Nebraska to hear from the celebrated "Oracle of Omaha." Buffett, famous for his relatively modest lifestyle, turns 90 on August 30.

In documents filed Saturday, Berkshire noted that until mid-March many of its companies were posting "comparative revenue and earnings increases" over the same 2019 period.

Many of its companies -- including in rail transport, energy production and some manufacturing and service businesses -- are deemed essential and are able to continue working amid the far-reaching confinement orders.

But their turnover slowed considerably in April, the company statement said.

Moves taken by those companies such as employee furloughs, salary cuts and reductions, and capital spending reductions are "necessary actions" and "temporary," it said.


President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un stand inside the demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating the South and North Korea in Panmunjom, North Korea, on June 30, 2019. (Handout photo by Dong-A Ilbo via Getty Images)

Trump Says Hes Glad to See Kim Jong Un Back

President Donald Trump responded to reports about North Korean despot Kim Jong Un, reposting state media photos that purport to show Kim attending a ceremony at a fertilizer factory.

I, for one, am glad to see he is back, and well! Trump wrote on Twitter.

Kims attendance at the ribbon-cutting ceremony was the first public appearance hes made in about three weeks, and it comes amid speculation about his health. Several news outlets in Asia had reported that Kim, 36, was brain dead or had died, although South Korean officials said he was alive and still in control of the regime.

I, for one, am glad to see he is back, and well! https://t.co/mIWVeRMnOJ  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 2, 2020

An adviser to South Korean President Moon Jae-in told news outlets that Kim had been staying in the Wonsan area since mid-April and noted that no suspicious movements have so far been detected.

Questions arose about Kims health after he missed the celebration of his grandfather, the regimes founder, Kim Il Sungan event that hes attended every year since he took power in 2011.

At the same time, during the speculation about his death, North Korean state media didnt respond. The impoverished communist country still hasnt publicly responded to reports about his health, which is considered a matter of state security.

North Korea tightly controls all information about its leader, the subject of an extensive personality cult. Meanwhile, a power vacuum at the top could lead to a civil war-like scenario, as Kim has not named a potential successor, according to experts, although some have said that his sister, Kim Yo Jong, could be tapped to become the next leader.

President Donald Trump meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the North Korean side of the border at the village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone, on June 30, 2019. (Susan Walsh/AP Photo)

Last week, several South Korean officials said that Kim, for the past month, was trying to avoid the spread of the CCP virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus.

South Korean Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul said Kims absence from the ceremony wasnt unusual.

It is true that he had never missed the anniversary for Kim Il Sungs birthday since he took power, but many anniversary events including celebrations and a banquet had been canceled because of coronavirus concerns, the minister told a parliamentary hearing, Reuters reported last week.

I dont think thats particularly unusual given the current [CCP virus] situation.
NEW YORK, May 03, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against VMware, Inc. (VMware or the Company) (NYSE: VMW) and certain of its officers. The class action, filed in United States District Court for the Northern District of California, and indexed under 20-cv-02182, is on behalf of a class consisting of all persons and entities other than Defendants who purchased or otherwise acquired VMware securities between March 30, 2019, and February 27, 2020, both dates inclusive (the Class Period), seeking to recover damages caused by Defendants violations of the federal securities laws and to pursue remedies under Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the Exchange Act) and Rule 10b-5 promulgated thereunder, against the Company and certain of its top officials.



If you are a shareholder who purchased VMware securities during the class period, you have until June 1, 2020, to ask the Court to appoint you as Lead Plaintiff for the class. A copy of the Complaint can be obtained at www.pomerantzlawfirm.com. To discuss this action, contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll-free, Ext. 7980. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, telephone number, and the number of shares purchased.

[Click here for information about joining the class action]

VMware provides software in the areas of hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, modern applications, networking and security, and digital workspaces in the United States and internationally, and sells its products through distributors, resellers, system vendors, and systems integrators.

The Complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and misleading statements regarding the Companys business, operational and compliance policies. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) VMwares reporting with respect to its backlog of unfilled orders was not in compliance with all relevant accounting and disclosure requirements; (ii) the foregoing subjected the Company to a foreseeable risk of heightened regulatory scrutiny and/or investigation; and (iii) as a result, the Companys public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.

On February 27, 2020, during after-market hours, VMWare filed a Current Report on Form 8-K with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), disclosing an SEC investigation into the Companys backlog of unfilled orders. Specifically, that Form 8-K advised investors that, [i]n December 2019, the staff of the Enforcement Division of the [SEC] requested documents and information related to VMwares backlog and associated accounting and disclosures. The Form 8-K also advised investors that, although VMware is fully cooperating with the SECs investigation, it was unable to predict the outcome of this matter at this time.

On this news, VMwares stock price fell $15.11 per share, or 11.14%, to close at $120.52 per share on February 28, 2020.

The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Paris, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlawfirm.com.

CONTACT:

Robert S. Willoughby

Pomerantz LLP

rswilloughby@pomlaw.com
Engineering giant Rolls-Royce is preparing to cut up to 8,000 jobs in its jet engine business.

An insider said the company's 52,000-strong global workforce will be pared back in a crisis restructuring to save around 750 million.

Cuts: An insider said the company's 52,000-strong global workforce will be pared back in a crisis restructuring to save around 750 million

Its jet engines division has been hit hard by the aviation crisis. Its two biggest customers  Boeing and Airbus  have cut production by 30 per cent since the start of the pandemic after airlines cancelled orders for new planes.

Most of the job cuts will fall in the UK, where Rolls-Royce employs 16,000 aerospace engineers. Around two-thirds are based at its Sinfin plant, in Derby.

The company will announce the final number of job cuts later this month, after working with the unions to save as many jobs as possible. Its UK defence and submarine businesses will be unaffected.

A Rolls-Royce spokesman said: 'We have taken swift action to strengthen our resilience in these exceptionally challenging times, but further action is needed.'
Press Release

May 3, 2020 De Lima seeks basic hazard pay for all essential workers; and additional hazard allowances for medical frontliners during disasters or calamities To ease their burden during times of disasters or calamities, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, opposition Senator Leila M. de Lima urges the government to grant basic hazard allowances for essential workers for both public and private sectors; as well as an additional hazard pay for all public health workers. Last April 27, De Lima filed Senate Bill (SB) No. 1439 to amend Section 13 of Republic Act (RA) 10121, otherwise known as the Philippine Disaster Risk and Management Act of 2010, to extend the hazard pay grant to all essential workers in both public and private sectors that will be tasked to deliver or augment delivery of services during state of emergencies. Existing laws, including RA 7305 or the Magna Carta for Public Health Workers, only grants hazard pay to health workers employed by the government in times of national emergency and similar situations. "This bill therefore seeks to grant hazard allowance to employees of government and those belonging to the private sector who are mobilized to deliver or augment the delivery of disaster risk reduction programs and activities," De Lima said. "Together with our health workers are other members of the public and private sector who continuously work and serve our country despite the grave danger that this [COVID-19] pandemic pose to their safety and well-being," she added. De Lima noted that workers such as security guards, bank tellers, cashiers, media workers, food service employees, traffic enforcers, police, and office clerks, to name a few, deserve to be given additional pay because of the additional risks that they go through in the performance of their duties during times of crisis. The lady Senator from Bicol explained that although the responsibilities of the abovementioned workers differ from healthcare frontliners, they too "have the right to be protected and be assisted by the government". SB 1439 leaves it up to the Secretary of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), and heads of other implementing agencies to recommend how much basic hazard pay the essential workers will receive. In addition to the widened coverage of hazard pay for essential workers, SB 1439 also proposes compensatory benefits and individual personal accident insurance for all workers, in both public and private sectors, who will incur "illness, death or injury" in the performance of their duties during state of emergencies. De Lima also urges the government to award public health workers (PHW) and temporary human resources for health (HRH) workers, an additional hazard allowance. "Additional hazard allowances are likewise sought for public health workers and temporary human resources for health during a state of calamity," De Lima said. HRH workers, as described by the Bayanihan Law are "medical and allied medical staff" which complements the health workforce and those tasked to construct, establish or man temporary medical facilities created to accept those affected by disasters or other crisis. Currently, the existing hazard pay as described by RA 7305 is equivalent to at least 25% of the basic salary of public health workers with Salary Grade 19 and below; and 5% of those with Salary Grade 20 and above. The additional hazard allowance, De Lima notes in her bill, should be distinct and separate from the hazard pay granted by RA 7305; and will be based upon the recommendation of the Secretary of the Department of Health (DOH).
Former Pakistan pacer Rana Naved ul Hassan has alleged that a number of senior players "deliberately under-performed" during the 2009 ODI series against New Zealand in the UAE as they were unhappy with Younis Khan's captaincy.

The 42-year-old Rana, who played 9 Tests, 74 ODIs and 4 T20Is for Pakistan, specifically spoke about two ODIs during that tour.

"We lost two ODI matches against New Zealand in the UAE during 2009 because some of the players involved deliberately did not play well," Rana told a local channel.

The pacer also claimed he pulled out of the tour because he didn't want to be a part of the conspiracy by seniors against the skipper.

It was after the 2009 Champions Trophy in South Africa where some players gathered together and reportedly vowed to oust Younis as they felt he was too "arrogant and abusive".

"I preferred to sit out of the tour. But I had informed Younis Khan that this was a conspiracy against you and that they wanted me to be part of it," he said.

Rana, however, maintained that it was not a rebellion against Younis, the person but Younis as captain.

"After he (Younis) became captain, his personality and attitude changed and some seniors (he didn't name them), who harboured ambitions of leading the side didn't want to play under him."



The senior players during that phase were Mohammed Yousuf, Shahid Afridi, Shoaib Malik, Kamran Akmal and Saeed Ajmal.

Pakistan lost the three-match ODI series, 1-2 despite winning the first match in a convincing fashion by 138 runs. They lost the remaining two matches by 64 and seven runs, respectively.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Thank you also to the employees at our grocery stores and pharmacies who worked overtime to keep us as safe as possible. Many of the stores had curtailed hours so workers thoroughly could disinfect the stores during the night. Clerks also worked hard to keep the shelves as stocked as possible, Many of the stores reserved early hours for elderly residents, the most vulnerable among us. It is hoped, as we go forward, that if there is a reassurance of the novel coronavirus in the fall -- as many medical experts warn -- that all of us will be respectful of each other and not hoard toilet paper, hand sanitizer and cleaning supplies. We all will need them and there will be plenty to go around if we just buy what we actually need.
Crew members on board the Norwegian Escape cruise ship have claimed they are being forced to share rooms amid the coronavirus pandemic despite the availability of single-crew cabins.

Workers on the ship are in quarantine with people who have come from other vessels in the Norwegian Cruise Line fleet and images appear to show hundreds of people crowded together on the upper deck.

Workers have also shared images of the lodgings which put at least two people to a small room on the ship of 3,800 people waiting until they can fly home, and complained: 'We are fearful for our safety'.

They said that despite a ship doctor dying on board the Norwegian Gem, the company has not stepped up measures to ensure those on board are safe.

Images show a packed out deck and the small cabins workers are reportedly sharing on the Norwegian Escape

Crew said they feared for their safety and claimed the company doesn't care about them

Hundreds of people appear to be crowded together on board the cruise liner

Norwegian Escape (file photo)

This week European workers were consolidated onto the Norwegian Breakaway and non-Europeans were placed on the Norwegian Escape before they left Great Stirrup Cay in the Bahamas and headed for Miami, Florida.

It was as the company - which has nine ships in the fleet - tried to reduce costs of the repatriation process.

But some crew members have complained it's 'ridiculously crowded'.

'We were not assigned separate living quarters as expected. two individuals assigned to small cramped guest staterooms. No privacy, no social distancing. In an environment with 3800 crew members, we are fearful for our safety,' an anonymous worker wrote to Cruise Law News.

'We were not assigned separate living quarters as expected  two passengers assigned to small cramped guest staterooms. No privacy, no social distancing. In an environment with 3,800 crew members, we are fearful for our safety.

On the Norwegian Gem, senior Dr. Alex Guevara passed away on the ship where others had tested positive for coronavirus, lawyer Jim Walker reported on his blog

'We believe that the Company doesn't care about us anymore and they are more focused on cutting cost as opposed to protecting our health and safety. When asked about our living arrangements, the answer is that "This is directives from Miami".'

The blog by Miami Lawyer Jim Walker claims to have 'everything cruise lines don't want you to know' and a crew member transferred from the Norwegian Gem told the blog: 'We are hoping that we are sent home immediately as we all fear for our health and safety here onboard. We are due to arrive in Miami this morning. It feels like a disaster waiting to happen.'

On the Norwegian Gem, senior Dr. Alex Guevara passed away from coronavirus, Walker reported on his blog. A nurse fell seriously ill and other people have contracted the virus. However the 59-year-old doctor wasn't tested.

'Despite the obvious health risks, and with crew members from the NCL Gem which a) had confirmed cases of Covid-19 and b) suffered a fatality two days ago; the Escape has refused to put people in single cabins,' the whistleblower continued. 'There are more than enough cabins available owing to the refusal of the NCL Getaway crew to stay on the Escape.'

Another crew member claimed that they 'have been queuing in our HR lines every day to try to get single living arrangements'.

'Some have reported their roommates feeling ill but not wanting to go to the on board medical, and the HR and guest service representatives have only advised that because of our positions, ie housekeeping, cruise staff, art gallery, photographers, or even youth counselors, we are 'not entitled' to single cabins  because 'they've already cleaned the crew cabins' and we cannot 'just request it',' the person claimed to the lawyer.

A nurse fell seriously ill and other people have contracted the virus on the Norwegian Gem (pictured)

'When bringing up our fear for health and safety, they relay the same message 'because of your position on board, you are not entitled to a single cabin.'

A third person said that after images were leaked, the crew members had more privileges taken away from them.

'Due to a lovely crew member onboard that sent pictures to the media, this has now resulted in the flexibility we had to keep crew happy to now stop,' the anonymous person shared from meeting notes.

They claimed bosses took a water and soda bar out of service and removed tables and chairs so that people counter linger in areas. They stated that media attention had resulted in an investigation but the CDC.

'In the eating places there will now be an empty table in between each one so going for food you will have to wait till people leave before you can enter so will take longer to eat.,' the person said of the meeting notes.

'They were expected to have flights in a couple of days for some countries but now they have been postponed due to the actions of this crew member. The CDC is now evaluating the issue.

'Security will now be increased around the ship to make sure crew members abide by these rules. If the rules are not being adhered to then the next step will be crew are to remain in their rooms and eat only at the allotted time only. Please don't let it come to this. Thank you.'

DailyMail.com has reached out to Norwegian Cruise Lines for comment.

An investigation has been launched into Norwegian Cruise Line after leaked emails revealed how staff were ordered to downplay the risks of coronavirus to customers.

The Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody's office announced at the end of March that it was launching a probe over allegations the cruise line gave 'misleading and potentially dangerous sales pitches' to customers amid the pandemic.

Leaked internal emails emerged in early March showing that managers were giving sales staff phrases to tell customers dismissing the risk of contracting coronavirus on board ships to try to flog more holidays.

The emails, leaked to Miami New Times by a whistleblower, showed that a senior sales manager in the company's Miami headquarters had created scripts with the misleading talking points so staff could persuade worried customers not to cancel their trips.

Staff were told to say lines such as 'the only thing you need to worry about for your cruise is do you have enough sunscreen,' and 'the coronavirus can only survive in cold temperatures, so the Caribbean is a fantastic choice for your next cruise,' the emails revealed.

The General Attorney's office said Norwegian is cooperating with the investigation.
At a time when women are breaking barriers everywhere in politics, the presidential field has boiled down to two very old men who face credible charges of sexual assault.

Joe Biden is saying and doing all the right things now. He will not attack his accuser. He says her claims deserve to be investigated. He agreed to let his staff talk, and to release personnel records. In a 20-minute interview Friday morning on MSNBCs Morning Joe, Biden was clear, convincing, and a gentleman as always.

And yet.

I suspect the charges against him are true. His accuser, Tara Reade, says that in 1993 Biden cornered her in a Senate hallway, reached under her skirt, and penetrated her vagina with his fingers. She did not go to police, but she told friends and family at the time that Biden assaulted her, and two of the friends confirmed that to the New York Times a few weeks ago.

Yes, there are reasons to doubt her. Her account has changed over time, varying between unwanted touch and assault. In 2017, she retweeted praise for Bidens work combating sexual assault as the author of the Violence Against Women Act. She says she complained to three Biden staffers about harassment, but all three told the Times that was not true. And Biden, at age 77, has never before been accused of sexual assault.

I called Sen. Cory Booker on Friday after Biden spoke, and asked about the spectacle of Democrats rejecting Reades account after siding so fervently with Christine Blasey Ford during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York went so far as to say women who complain about sexual assault should be believed every time.

Booker says he never went that far. I have a very strong belief that all women have a right to be heard, and to have all the facts gathered, he said. I said that very loudly during the Kavanaugh hearings and I know Joe Biden believes it as well, which gives me a lot of solace.

My own emotions are more accurately described as full-blown panic at the prospect of the Mad King winning a second term.

The Democratic victory in the 2018 midterms rested on a surge of support among suburban women, just the group that might stay home if they feel their choice is between two sex criminals. All Trump has to do is peel off a small percentage of women in the right swing states and he could win again.

Trump is sitting on a mountain of cash, he has no scruples, and he has Fox News to fan these flames with the cult-like devotion.

The former vice president is also vulnerable on Hunter Biden, and that one really does reflect poor judgment. How could Biden let his son take a job earning $50,000 a month with a Ukrainian gas company at a time when Biden himself was the point man on Ukraine policy for the Obama administration? This came at a time when Hunter Biden was an active drug addict, in and out of rehab, making it beyond obvious that the intention of the hire was to buy favor from the vice president.

Yes, Trump and his crew have made up a bunch of stuff about Ukraine, charging that Biden blocked a corruption investigation of the gas firm. But thats dirty tricks strategy  throw in a lie on top of a damaging truth, and it becomes tough to sort out the details. The damage is magnified.

Dont get me wrong: I will vote for Biden and would do so even if the race were decided purely on sexual assault histories.

More than 20 women have accused Trump of sexual abuse, who openly bragged during the campaign about assaulting women without consequence. He enforces gag orders, pays his accusers to keep quiet, and even he denied one claim by saying the accuser was not his type. Its hard to imagine more repugnant behavior.

Still, I worry. We live in tribal times, when half the country seems ready to believe the absolute worst about the other half. Biden, at least, is showing his accuser respect, and trying to keep this discussion civil. Like Booker, we can all try to find some solace in that.

More: Tom Moran columns

Tom Moran may be reached at tmoran@starledger.com. Follow him on Twitter @tomamoran. Find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.
Modifying some of the relaxations and restrictions announced on Saturday, the Chandigarh administration on Sunday decided not to implement the odd-even formula for vehicles while reducing the market timings to eight hours from 12 hours.

The lockdown will continue for another two weeks while the curfew imposed in the city on March 24 will be lifted from Monday.

The development comes after traders and resident bodies questioned the move, with even social media users pitching in.

In the detailed order issued on Sunday, the administration stated that all shops dealing in non-essential goods in internal sector markets (neighbourhood shops) will remain open from 10am to 6pm on odd-even basis. It means, shops with numbers ending with even digit will be open on even-numbered dates and those with odd on odd-numbered dates.

In the Saturday order, the timings were fixed as 7am to 7pm, corresponding with the window given for the movement of people.

Shops selling essential goods, such as groceries, milk, vegetables and medicines, will remain open on all days. However, the relaxations dont cover hotels, restaurants, discotheques, salons, barber shops, spa centres, gyms and apni mandis, and these will remain shut.

Meanwhile, shops selling liquor, paan, gutka and tobacco will have to ensure minimum six-foot distance between customers, and also ensure that not more than five of them are present at one time in the shop. Also, only sale of liquor is allowed and taverns will remain closed.

MALLS, CONGESTED AND MAIN MARKETS TO REMAIN SHUT

In view of need for social distancing, all congested markets, such as Patel Market in Sector 15, Gandhi Market in Sector 18, Sadar Bazar and Palika Bazar in Sector 19, Shastri Market in Sector 22, Janata Market in Sector 27, Krishna Market in Sector 41 and Rehri Market in Sector 46, will remain closed. Significantly, some of the market associations had declared on Sunday that they would keep their establishments closed on their own if there were no instructions from the administration.

Shops in Sector 17, malls and market complexes such, as Elante Mall, DLF Mall, and shops located on sector dividing roads, such as Madhya Marg and Dakshin Marg, will also remain closed.

Criticising the administrations decision on the Sector 17 market, Chandigarh Business Council president Neeraj Bajaj said: Sector 17 has spacious shops with ample parking and verandahs. Social distancing could have been easily observed here. In fact, Sector 17 should have been the first market to open to test whether social distancing will work in the city post curfew.

Chandigarh Beopar Mandal chairman Charanjiv Singh said: Opening shops for more than five hours doesnt make sense. We shopkeepers feel exposed dealing with public for such a long time.

MOVEMENT PROHIBITED BETWEEN 7PM AND 7AM

All non-essential activities and people movement will remain strictly prohibited between 7 pm and 7am and residents will have to stay indoors as per the prohibitory orders issued by the district magistrate.

However, reversing the odd-even rule, all vehicles can ply between 7am and 7pm. Four-wheelers can have maximum two passengers besides the driver while a two-wheeler cannot have a pillion rider.

UT adviser Manoj Kumar Parida said: We realised that odd-even rule for vehicles will be difficult for people when there is no public transport. Also, carpooling will promote infection, though it will prevent pollution.

Also, persons above 65 years of age, those with co-morbidities, pregnant women and children below the age of 10 years have to stay at home at all times, except for meeting essential requirements and for health purposes, as per the national directives.

MANDATORY MASKS, RESTRICTED GATHERINGS

Wearing of face cover (mask) is also compulsory in public places as well as work places, as per the order issued on Sunday.

Work places have to keep adequate stock of such face covers.

Meanwhile, no organisation or manager of public place can allow gathering of five or more people. Marriages related gatherings have to ensure social distancing, and the maximum number of guests allowed can not be more than 50. Funeral rites related gatherings too have to ensure social distancing and the maximum numbers allowed is 20.

RESIDENT BODIES REMAIN DIVIDED

The administration had on Saturday decided to lift the curfew while restricting the containment zones to six affected pockets, including parts of hotspots Bapu Dham Colony and Sector 30, where no relaxations are to be granted.

Residents remained divided over both the Saturday and Sunday orders.

Federation of Sector Welfare Associations Chandigarh (FOSWAC) chairman Baljinder Singh Bittu said: The administration has taken a bold decision and we stand behind it. Life cannot stop just because of Covid-19 and sooner or later we will have to go back to our previous routines.

However, Chandigarh Residents Association Welfare Federation (CRAWFED) chairman Hitesh Puri felt the relaxation is still too long. The move should have been done in a phased manner. Eight-hour relaxation is too long; the market hours should be reduced to six as fresh cases are still being reported in Chandigarh.

OTHER REVISED, NEW DECISIONS

All government offices will be opened on May 4, but no public dealing will take place till May 11. Even Sampark Centres will open from May 11.

Interstate travel will be allowed for permitted activities only. Passes issued by the deputy commissioners of Mohali and Panchkula will be honoured, though thermal scanning will be done at entry points.

Traders residing in Mohali and Panchkula but having shops in Chandigarh will require passes from the respective deputy commissioners, clarified UT principal secretary, home, Arun Gupta.

KHERS ADVICE GOES UNHEEDED

Advocating for continuation of strict restrictions in the city, MP Kirron Kher had voiced strong reservations over the administrations decision to allow opening up of markets, businesses and workplaces.

I shared my concerns with the UT officials on Saturday over allowing major relaxations at time when the cases are increasing in the city. Only essential services and shops should be allowed to be open now. However, the administration made no major change in its decision despite this advice.

Commenting on it, Parida said: As an MP, she has every right to give her views. All should respect her opinion. The administrator has taken the decision after taking views of all stakeholders and experts, keeping in view the home ministrys directions.

ENJOY THE CONFUSION, SAYS PARIDA

After the Saturday order, UT adviser Manoj Parida took to Twitter, responding 700 queries, to bring clarity on various decisions, especially the odd-even rule, but ended up suggesting: Enjoy the confusion.

Pointing out the formulas impracticality, a Twitter user asked Parida that if his shop number is odd and his vehicle number is even, how would he go to his shop? Parida suggested he opens his shop every second day, assuming he sold essential goods. When another user pointed out that shops in Chandigarh villages do not have numbers, Parida suggested he should enjoy the confusion.

Finally, Parida assured everyone that the decisions will be reconsidered before implementation, as was done on Sunday evening.
Illustration by Bicram Rijal

An Australian photographer embarks on a jungle expedition in search of a critically endangered species. With a Canon camera on his shoulder and a pair of khaki shorts, he walks through a forest, occasionally stepping in puddles and crossing creeks. It is harder to find than I thought, he says, looking straight into the camera. There is, there is, there is! Come, come, come, come! He gets super excited. And he points to something, before concluding: Its a healthy one too. Wow! Thats amazing! Then he directs his long camera zoom towards the species, takes a few shots of it and shakes his head in disbelief: Its in perfect conditioncritically rare, endangered. Wow! Cant believe it! Wow! Then there is a close-up shot of the critically endangered species. It turns out the species is none other than a roll of toilet paper. The photographer on the expedition is Robert Irwin, a teenage conservationist and TV personality, and son of late crocodile hunter Steve Irwin. He shares the satirical video on April 1st through his Instagram account with his more than 2 million followers. April Fools! he reveals at the end of the video.

Toilet paper may not be a critically endangered species, but it has become a scarce item in our pandemic times. In Canada, United States and beyond, the news about the scarcity of toilet paper broke out well before the health crisis of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic unfolded. Toilet paper was one of the first four items that went out of stockboth online and in-storealong with surgical masks, hand sanitizer, and cleaning products in the West.

I have been following COVID-19 coverage very closely and noticed how toilet papera mundane everyday object in the Westhas become an artifact revealing a myriad of social practices and processes of the contemporary moment shaped very much by the pandemic itself. Its manifestations range from an object of humor to the consumer acts of panic-buying. And it has become a subject of the Internet memes, online trolls, incessant news commentary, and even global celebrities toilet paper challenge. An ordinary item so closely associated with private bodily practicedefecationtoilet paper has brought to the public spotlight humanitys intimate habits and mannerisms, which remain a taboo subject in most societies.

Defecation habits in cross-cultural contexts

How did a relatively invisible object of private life become a topic of global discussion during the emergent COVID-19 pandemic? This is a question that has lingered in my mind since I first read the news about the toilet paper shortage. Indeed, toilet paper is now an indispensable and essential item of contemporary life in the West. But it was merely a disposable and taboo object when it was first invented some 160 years ago in the United States. To understand why and how toilet paper has become a potent object of neoliberal modernity, we need to discuss a brief history of the object itself, as well as our defecation practices and their transformation over time.

Lets first touch on the taboo surrounding defecation. The taboos around defecation habits and excreta are specific to cultural contexts. In the West, for example, while words like penis and sex are easily pronounced in public, the term shit receives heavy scrutiny and censorship. So much so that, according to author Dave Praeger (2007), nobody wanted to ask for toilet paper by its name until the early 20th century. It was so taboo that you couldnt even talk about the product, he writes. Up until the 1920s, the manufacturer would not put its tagline on the roll of toilet paper fearing the public embarrassment. Praeger also notes that the taboos surrounding poop are societys response to its physical properties: it stinks, disgusts us, and comes from our private parts.

In Nepal, things around taboo work quite differently. The topic of sex is an exponentially bigger taboo than defecation. One can easily pronounce gu (shit) in a public settingeven in front of eldersbut no one says lando (penis) in a public conversation. Gu aayo, gaun aayo (We have reached the village because there is shit around everywhere) was a common expression among those visiting the rural villages until a few years ago, in referring to a pertinent sanitation problem characterized by open defecation. In the absence of toilets in private homes, people used roadside, riverbank, backyard, agriculture field, bushes, creek, forest, etc. as places for defecation. It was only September last year that Nepal declared itself an open defecation free (ODF) country, after claiming that every single household had built a toilet. The declaration came two years after the original deadline of 2017, which had been pushed back due to the devastating earthquakes that hit Nepal in April and May of 2015. However celebratory the achievement may have been for the Nepali government, the questions on the legitimacy of such a claim still linger post-declaration.

Toilet paper as potent object

For the most part of human history, people have used whatever that was available in front of them to clean themselves after defecation: rocks, corncobs, soil, hay, grass, dry cow or buffalo dung, sticks, moss, paper scraps, rags, wood chips, leaves, water, sponge, etc. Toilet paper and flushing systems are only recent additions to the defecation habitus in the West. For example, toilet paper was not a commonly used item in the United States until the 1920s.

Photo by Bicram Rijal

Up until the late 19thcentury, outhouse toilets were common sanitary infrastructure in the West. It was only in the early 20thcentury when indoor toilets became the norm. But, for the most part, in the absence of modern plumbing and flushing systems, they were not really the modern-day toilets, but were rather called earth closets, an equivalent of todays composting toilet. Instead of water, they used ash or dirt to cover human waste and absorb its foul smell. According to Brian M. Sipe (1988), [t]he resulting earth and manure mixture could then be thoroughly mixed, dried, and reused as many as seven times before finally being utilized as fertilizer. He adds that the companies producing the earth closets advertised them for saving both soil and money.

With the introduction of modern plumbing and the manufacture of soft tissues, toilet paper seemed to have become a commercially produced household item only by the 1930s in North America. However, within the next 40 years, the apparently embarrassing object would transform into an indispensable item of everyday life. For example, by the 1970s, it had already become one of the most essential items in the United States, so much so that comedian Johnny Carsons joke about a fictional toilet paper shortage in December 1973 led to its actual shortage for as long as four months. Writing in the New York Times on Feb 03, 1974, Andrew H. Malcolm noted: it was a shortage that need never have been. For the toilet paper shortage was a rumor run wild in a nation that has recently become geared to expect shortages in items considered absolute necessities. A relatively unknown item until a century ago, toilet paper has now become a potent cultural and economic artifact, with some estimates claiming it to be a 31 billion dollar per year industry in the US alone.

News coverage of toilet paper shortage in St. Petersburg Times, Dec. 27, 1973.

Cultural and ideological message of neoliberal modernity

In the contemporary West, the use of toilet paper and flushing system bears a powerful cultural and ideological message of modernity. As the toilet increasingly helped defecation become a private act  as opposed to the collective sociality embedded in the practices of open defecation  the sanitary modernity imagines the radical separation between the body and its product. The Western modernist and progressivist notion of sanitation embodies the idea that to become modern is to suppress and to feel repugnant about ones own privy mannersi.e. defecation, urination, farting, bathing, to name some. Such constructs calls for suppressing, if not outright erasing, the senses of vision, smell, and touch in relation to human excreta. Margaret Morgan (2002) points out the role of modern sanitary infrastructure in the sensory erasure of our bodily product as she writes: Plumbing, with every sanitary flush, with every gleaming knob and valve, every glint on the surface of the porcelain, is meant to allow you efficiently to forget about the fact of your personal self.

In fact, as historical sociologist Norbert Elias (2000) reminds us, the contemporary habits are a result of a long civilizing process. Even in the 16th century, European society had already started practicing privacy in relation to defecation habits as he writes that it does not befit a modest, honorable man to prepare to relieve nature in the presence of other people. By the 18th century, he notes, Europeans were encouraged to relieve themselves, urinate and fart in secrecy such that as far as natural needs are concerned, it is proper (even for children) to satisfy them only where one cannot be seen.

In a way, relatively shorter and lesser sensory engagement with excreta, with the help of toilet paper, wipes, and flushing, is seen as a speedy pathway toward sanitary modernity. Therefore, the contemporary mantra of Western sanitation involves doing ones business, wiping, flushing, and moving on. While cleaning with water after defecation is still common in many parts of the world, wiping is essentially the only way to go in the developed West. And such sanitary practice embodies not only the cultural values of comfort and convenience, but also the neoliberal ideologies of individuality and privacy.

Toilets and new subjectivity

Partly due to the globalization of sanitary ideology in recent times, countries where open defecation is still a massive problem show a lot of panic around the issue. As Nepals recent toilet-building campaigns suggest, in the broader spectrum of sanitation, open defecation not only represents incivility, immorality, non-citizenship, indignity, and an impediment to progress and prosperity, but it is also conceived to be a root cause of public health problems. When there were outbreaks of cholera and other waterborne diseases in the recent past, open defecation was among the first factors to be blamed as a possible cause.

Advertising board with a sanitation message at a government office building in Dolakha district in central Nepal. Photo by Bicram Rijal

Since 2011, Nepals state-led sanitation campaigns have deemed open defecation a social crime to force people to build toilets in order to achieve the national goal of ODF. In some areas, until the ODF declaration last year, people who did not have toilets at home were denied citizenship cards and other state-delivered services, including the much-needed government grant for home rebuilding in the aftermath of 2015 earthquakes.

Ongoing toilet paper shortage: a cultural interpretation

One may wonder why the aisles of bathroom tissues are all empty during the COVID-19 pandemic. Why are panicked buyers in the West hoarding toilet paper? While psychologists are blaming individuals herd mentality, others are calling it a problem in the supply chain instead.

However, as an anthropologist, I think that the scarcity of toilet papers has got to do primarily with the culture of defecation. When wiping becomes the only habit to deal with defecationand reproduced as such by specific toilet training, toilet technology design, and an assemblage of sanitary infrastructure, including sewers and water supplyit is difficult to get rid of heavy reliance on tissues. Both private homes and public buildings in the West offer no alternative to wiping. It is quite unlike what I would observe in Nepal, where most people in rural villages still know nothing about toilet paper. In most household toilets, people keep a plastic bucket and a jar to use water for cleaning after business. Even the urban commodes (raised toilets) in private homes have bidet sprayers attached to them for washing that body part after defecation. When I asked my family and friends in Nepal a few days ago about the shortage of stuff during the total lockdown of the country due to COVID-19, they did not mention toilet paper, but cooking gas, petrol, and vegetables. In other words, toilet paper is not an essential item yet for most Nepali households, unlike here in North America.

An empty aisle inside Safeway store in Kensington Square Centre, Burnaby, BC on March 17, 2020. Photo by Bicram Rijal

In Western societies, where defecation habits are increasingly private and wiping offers a refrain from the tactile experience of matter out of place, bodily wastetoilet paper is ingrained in peoples minds as a savior of their privacy and dignity, and an assurance for physical and mental comfort. So, the hoarding of toilet paper is guided by a peculiar, culturally and contextually shaped psychologynot irrationality, as most psychologists would suggestin which people fear that their long-practiced privacy and convenience may be compromised or lost without mundane tissues.

In his recent piece, anthropologist Stephen E. Nash interprets panic-buying of toilet paper as an act of identity construction, a way of defining ourselves as individuals and as a group, referring to a characteristic of a consumerist society. He thinks that panic buying is a demonstration of economic virility in a time of crisis.

It is certain that several other explanations are possible for this emergent behavior. However, I argue that the historical, cross-cultural and processual perspectives will be helpful in offering a thick understanding of the intricate link between a mundane paper and crucial embodied practices of everyday life.

Works Cited

Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations. Blackwell Publishing, 2000.

Morgan, Margaret. The plumbing of modern life. Postcolonial Studies, vol. 5, no. 2, 2002, pp. 171-195.

Praeger, Dave. Poop Culture: How America Is Shaped by Its Grossest National Product. Los Angeles: Feral House, 2007.

Sipe, Brian M. Earth Closets and the Dry Earth System of Sanitation in Victorian America. Material Culture, vol. 20, no. 2/3, 1988, pp. 27-37.

Bicram Rijal is a PhD. Candidate in Anthropology at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Simon Fraser University, Canada. His doctoral research focuses on the politics and transformation of sanitation and defecation habits in Nepal.

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By Padraic Halpin

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland will allow firms impacted by the coronavirus crisis to warehouse tax liabilities for 12 months, offering a "lifeline" as part of an additional package of business supports that could reach 6.5 billion euros, the government announced on Saturday.

Commercial rates will also be written off for three months, a 2 billion euro credit guarantee scheme introduced for small and medium sized businesses and Ireland's sovereign wealth fund mandated to invest 2 billion euros directly into bigger firms, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe said in a statement.

After a lockdown to stop the spread of COVID-19, Ireland laid out a roadmap on Friday for a gradual re-opening of the economy that could allow building sites and some retailers to reopen in two weeks, with restaurants following in June, hotels in July and finally pubs in August.

The government concentrated its initial 8 billion euro fiscal response on increased jobless payments and wage subsidies for workers, with 1 billion euros of liquidity supports offered to reeling firms.

The much larger package on Saturday also included a 10,000 euro restart grant for micro and small businesses. Ireland's main business lobby, IBEC, welcomed the measures as an important further step in addressing the cashflow crisis facing many.

Highlighting the scale of the economic shock, Donohoe said firms had deferred 800 million euros of tax in March alone and that that figure could reach 2 billion euros by June.

He also hoped the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund's (ISIF) new equity fund would lead to investment far in excess of the 2 billion euros available capital as it will seek to maximise added capital from existing shareholders and new co-investors.

While Jobs Minister Heather Humphries said more supports will be needed for sectors that will find the coming months harder than others, Donohoe said the acting government had not yet considered any potential sector-specific cut to VAT rates.

Story continues

Hotels, restaurants and pubs, which will only be allowed operate at limited capacity when they open, have called for the VAT rate for the hospitality sector to be temporarily cut to 0%from 13.5% and for state funds to help them pay rent.

Donohoe said a new government would be required to enact the tax deferral and credit guarantee schemes, the first tangible sign that the political deadlock since an election in February election could directly hurt business if it cannot be broken.

Donohoe's Fine Gael and rival Fianna Fail are trying to find enough support from smaller parties to form a coalition. No new legislation can be passed until a new government is formed and selects the remaining members of the upper house of parliament.

"It is very clear to me that there are economic decisions that our country will need relavent to keeping jobs and creating new jobs that in the coming weeks will require the election of a new Taoiseach (prime minister)," he told a news conference.

(Editing by Frances Kerry)
New Delhi, May 3 : With 25 fresh positive reports received on Sunday, a total of 40 Border Security Force (BSF) troopers deployed in Delhi have so far declared Covid-19 infected.

This takes the number of affected BSF personnel around the country to 42.

The 25 troopers belong to a company, comprising 94 personnel, of the BSF's 126 Battalion deployed with the Delhi Police in Jama Masjid area.

Six other personnel were found Covid-19 positive on Saturday.

Of the 94 personnel, reports of 89 have come, resulting in a total of 31 being found Covid-19 positive so far. The test report of five personnel is still awaited.

All these 31 personnel have now moved to an isolation facility at the CAPF (Central Armed Police Forces) Referral Hospital located in Greater Noida.

Besides the 31 BSF personnel of 126 Battalion, one trooper from the 178 Battalion was also found positive on Saturday. He was one of the personnel deputed with the Delhi Police personnel in Jama Masjid and Chandni Mahal area.

Eight more personnel of the BSF at the force's hospital in R.K. Puram have tested positive earlier. These include two BSF jawans who are suffering from cancer and their attendants.

Two more BSF personnel were found positive in Tripura. One of them was admitted to a local hospital at Dhalai district while the other is his attendant.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
People in many parts of the world are emerging from their homes as coronavirus-related restrictions begin to ease and springtime temperatures climb.

The global pandemic took a turn for the worse in other places, however, with India reporting more than 2,600 new cases on Sunday, its biggest single-day jump.

In Russia, new cases exceeded 10,000 for the first time. while the US continues to have tens of thousands of new infections each day, with more than 1,400 new deaths reported Saturday.

On the eve of Italys first steps toward easing restrictions, the Health Ministry reported 174 Covid-19 deaths in the 24-hour period ending on Sunday evening  the lowest day-to-day number since the national lockdown began on March 10.

Parks and public gardens are expected to reopen on Monday.

In Spain, many ventured outside for the first time since the countrys lockdown began March 14 but social distancing rules remained in place and masks will be mandatory on public transport.

New Jersey in the US reopened state parks, though several had to turn people away after reaching a 50% limit in their parking lots.

Russias latest tally of infections was nearly double the new cases reported a week ago.

More than half of Russias new cases were in Moscow, where concern is rising about whether the capitals medical facilities will be overwhelmed.

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Indian air force helicopters showered flower petals on hospitals in several cities to thank doctors, nurses and police at the forefront of the battle against the pandemic.

The countrys number of confirmed cases neared 40,000 as the population of 1.3 billion marked the 40th day of a nationwide lockdown.

The official death toll reached 1,323.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis for international collaboration in the search for a vaccine and treatment for Covid-19 and invited people of all religions to spiritually unite in prayer, fasting and works of charity on May 14.

The virus has infected 3.4 million people and killed more than 244,000 worldwide, including more than 66,000 dead in the United States, according to a count by Johns Hopkins University.
(Photo : ChesterW23/Wiki Commons) English: ILOVEYOU Virus, sometimes referred to as Love Bug or Love Letter is a computer worm that attacked tens of Millions of Windows personal computers on May 5 2000 local time in the Philippines when it started spreading as an email message with subject line "LOVEYOU" and the attachment "LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU".

At the start of the millennium, a different virus has once baffled the world. With just an email, the I Love You virus has spread immediately, crashing computers, deleting files, and causing about $10 billion of damage in a glance.

On May 4, 2000, people worldwide received emails with "ILOVEYOU" on the subject. The message read: "kindly check the attached LOVELETTER coming from me."

Unsuspecting victims then opened the text file. Unfortunately, it was "an executable program" that allowed the virus to take control. It is a worm that replicated itself and sent copies of itself to all in the victim's email address book.

The cycle kept on, recipients continued to open the attachment and dispersed it further. Soon after, office email servers were clogged as thousands of love letters went back and forth.

"This wasn't something that people were used to as a concept, they didn't realize that email could be so dangerous," Michael Gazeley told CNN as he recounted his experiences when the virus broke out. Gazely is a part-owner of the information security firm, Network Box, located in HongKong.

It was worse than just a chain letter. The ILOVEYOU virus soon destroyed the victim's hard drive and scrubbed numerous files.

The Creator?

On May 11, international media flew to the Philippines to cover the arrest of a 23-year old student who is said to have coded the ILOVEYOU virus.

Onel de Guzman dabbed sweat on his face as journalists raised their question about how he was able to put up such a destructive program. His lawyer Rolando Quimbo claimed that de Guzman was not even aware of whether those acts alleged against him "were indeed done by him".

"So if you ask me whether or not he was aware of the consequences, I would say that he is not aware," Atty. Quimbo said.

No hard drive or files were confiscated from De Guzman's house during the arrest. There was just some computer equipment, magazines, and accessories.

De Guzman was accused of the creation and dissemination of "the first truly global computer virus." ILOVEYOU virus paralyzed businesses and government agencies over the world. It has even affected the Pentagon and the British Parliament. The total damages were estimated up to $10 billion.

Two decades after the LoveBug

The ILOVEYOU virus remains one extremely destructive malware in history. People followed how authorities tracked the creator of the virus as it swept the front pages.

Although the charges against de Guzman were dropped due to insufficient evidence, this incident called the attention of "a largely complacent public" to become vigilant against the dangers of cyber-attacks.

It also showed the vulnerabilities that still exist even after 20 years since the love bug came out.

"What's frightening is that 20 years after, there are still plenty of organizations who don't take this seriously until they are hit," said Gazeley adding that people still do not plan.

National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) Director Michael Vatis said it is still possible for people to fall to the same trap even with the advanced technologies available now.

"Humans are always the weak link," Vatis said. "It's almost always easier to exploit a human through some social engineering gambit than it is to crack, you know, some technological defensive measure."

Vatis then compared the situation to people who avoid getting annual flu jabs, which does not concern the society until a lot of people get sick.

Coincidentally, the world is now struck by another virus that affected 3,362,778 and killed 239,227 across the globe. There is still no approved cure or vaccine against the coronavirus, which has crippled the economy and social activity worldwide.

Read also: Free Service! Ameelio Letters Lets You Keep In Touch With Incarcerated Family While In Lockdown, Here's How

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said on Sunday that he backed down from his mandate that all state residents who walk into retail stores wear face masks to combat the spread of the coronavirus because it was a bridge too far.

People were not going to accept the government telling them what to do, DeWine told ABC News This Week on Sunday.

DeWine, who was one of the first governors to order his state to shut down due to the ongoing pandemic, has been under pressure from protesters to restart economic activity in the Buckeye State.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Sunday said his order for customers to wear masks in retail locations in the state went 'too far'

DeWine has been under pressure from protesters to allow businesses in the state to reopen. The image above shows protesters in front of the Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio, on Friday

On Tuesday, he rescinded a statewide order requiring customers wear masks at all retail locations.

DeWine acknowledged on Twitter that some found the face-mask directive offensive.

He said that while the state will not make face masks mandatory, wearing them is still strongly encouraged.

Face masks are very important and our business group came back and said every employee, for example, should wear a face mask, the governor said.

So were continuing that, whether its retail or wholesale, whatever it is, manufacturing, every employees going to have the face mask.

The governor on Sunday said that supporters of the Republican Party were more likely to support restarting the economy while Democrats were concerned with the spread of the virus.

I think generally Republicans are less inclined to have the government tell them what to do, DeWine said.

And thats generally how I am. Im a conservative Republican.

I think were better off not having the government tell us what to do.

Dozens of protesters of Ohios stay-at-home orders returned to the Statehouse in Columbus on Friday, pounding on windows and shouting.

Reopen all Ohio businesses now read one protesters sign. State troopers in riot gear stood by.

Ohio state health officials on Saturday said the number of confirmed and probable deaths associated with the coronavirus has now reached 1,021.

The Ohio health department posted figures on Saturday indicating 940 confirmed deaths and another 81 probable deaths associated with the virus.

The department noted more than 18,500 confirmed cases of the virus and a confirmed and probable total of more than 19,300.

For most people, the virus causes mild or moderate symptoms that clear up in a couple of weeks.

Older adults and people with existing health problems are at higher risk of more severe illness, including pneumonia, or death.

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (above) on Sunday condemned protesters in her state who brandished arms and waved racist and anti-Semitic placards earlier this week

One protester likened the governor to Hitler during a protest in Lansing on Thursday

Several protesters tried to enter the Michigan House of Representatives chamber in Lansing on Thursday. Many were not wearing face coverings

A militia group with no political affiliation from Michigan stands in front of the governor's office after protesters occupied the state capitol building in Lansing on Thursday

We have to listen to the epidemiologist and health experts and displays like the one we saw at our capitol is not representative of who we are. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer reacts to protesters descending on her states capitol, including some who were armed #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/nz7kV3mHQU  CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) May 3, 2020

DeWine announced that the state would gradually begin to reactivate the economy though critics warn that encouraging people to leave quarantine too fast could once again lead to another massive outbreak.

I told Ohioans Friday, I said we can do two things at once, DeWine told ABC News.

When asked what would happen in the event of another major outbreak in his state, DeWine said: Well have to take action.

We got to bring the economy back, but we also have to continue to protect people, the governor said.

On Friday, DeWine extended the state shutdown until May 29, dubbed the Stay Safe Ohio Order.

We can stay safe, we can protect each other, we can protect our most vulnerable, and at the same time get people back to work, the Republican governor said.

Consistent with DeWines earlier announcements, health care offices were allowed to reopen on Friday, followed by construction companies, distributors, manufacturers and offices on Monday, May 4.

Bars and movie theaters remain closed, along with in-person dining at restaurants.

Sporting events and concerts are still prohibited.

Multiple working groups are being formed to come up with the best and safest way to restart activities, including hair care, dining out, going to the gym, visiting libraries and participating in sporting events, DeWine said.

Dr. Deborah Birx of the White House coronavirus task force said it was 'devastatingly worrisome' to see protesters not wear face coverings

Anti-lockdown protests in Ohio and Michigan have generated headlines in recent days after several demonstrators were seen waving racist and anti-Semitic placards.

A large number of demonstrators were also seen not wearing any face coverings.

In Michigan, several demonstrators armed with automatic rifles were seen gathering just outside the office of Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

White House coronavirus coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx on Sunday said it was devastatingly worrisome to see protesters in Michigan and elsewhere not wear masks or practice social distancing as they demonstrate against stay-at-home orders.

Birx was responding to the hundreds of protesters who crowded the Michigan statehouse last week to push for a reopening of businesses.

She told Fox News Sunday that people 'will feel guilty for the rest of our lives' if they pick up the virus because they didnt take precautions and then unwittingly spread it to family members who are especially vulnerable to severe illness due to preexisting conditions or older age.

Protests took place in several states over the weekend amid growing frustration over the economic impact from stay at home orders during the coronavirus outbreak.

Birx says: 'We need to protect each other at the same time were voicing our discontent.'

Michigans governor says gun-carrying protesters who demonstrated inside her states Capitol 'depicted some of the worst racism' and 'awful parts' of US history.

Whitmer, a Democrat, told CNN that the protests featured 'Confederate flags, and nooses,' as well as swastikas.

Members of the Michigan Liberty Militia protested the states stay-at-home orders this week, some with weapons and tactical gear and their faces partially covered.

They went inside the Capitol, where being armed is allowed, then demanded access to the House floor, which is prohibited.

Some went to the Senate gallery, where a senator said armed men shouted at her.

Michigans Republican-controlled Legislature has questioned Whitmers authority to extend stay-at-home orders amid the coronavirus pandemic.

But the governor used an executive order to extend a state of emergency declaration and has directed most businesses statewide to remain closed.

Mentioned as a possible running mate for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, Whitmer said Sunday, 'This isnt something we just negotiate ourselves out of and its a political matter.'

'This is a public health crisis,' she said.

Michigan on Saturday had the highest coronavirus fatality rate in the United States as deaths increased by 232 to 4,021.

The states death rate reached 9.3 per cent on Saturday amid protests over lockdown measures after Whitmer extended her stay-at-home order through May 28.

Deaths from coronavirus in the U.S. have now exceeded 67,000 as Michigan, New York and New Jersey all reported more than 200 deaths in the past day.

The national number of infections climbed to 1,160,519 by Saturday evening after new daily infections spiked by 35,052 on Friday.

This was the third highest number of new cases in a day in America since the start of the pandemic.

New daily deaths decreased to 1,872 on Friday, however, after three days where they had soared over 2,000.

The coronavirus fatality rate in the US is 5.8 per cent, as of Saturday evening.
Dubai South Free Zone has announced economic stimulus incentives, such as free zone flexible payment plans with easy instalment schemes and waivers of penalties on late renewals, in bid to mitigate the effects of the current Covid-19 situation.

This announcement is part of Dubai South Free Zones unwavering commitment to foster a business-friendly environment and meet the needs of its valued customers.

Dubai South Free Zone has announced economic stimulus incentives to mitigate the effects of the current situation that the UAE and the world is going through due to Covid-19 pandemic.

This announcement comes as part of Dubai South Free Zones unwavering commitment to foster a business-friendly environment and meet the needs of its valued customers.

Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Chairman of Dubai Civil Aviation Authority and Chairman and Chief Executive of Emirates Airline and Group, and also Chairman of Dubai Airports said: "Dubai South is proud to be part of the emirates overall value proposition and we are keen to enhance its competitiveness and attractiveness to ensure it can attract more domestic and foreign direct investment."

"Our current customers are our most important asset; therefore, our focus is to provide them with all our support in these challenging times and beyond, so that they will be able to support the national economy and contribute to GDP growth," stated Sheikh Ahmed.

"The stimulus package is part of our mandate to exert our tireless efforts and align them with the initiatives and decisions of our government so that Dubai will remain a sought-after business destination and maintain its prominent position on all global performance indicators," he added.

Sheikh Ahmed said as the continuity of businesses was a priority, Dubai South would be offering individuals and companies in its free zone flexible payment plans with easy instalment schemes as well as waivers of penalties on late renewals and cancellations of contracts and licences.

Customers will also benefit from a 20 per cent reduction on licence fees renewals, while first year license fees for new customers in the aviation, logistics and e-commerce sectors and the Business Park will be waived.

In addition, customers who operate in the Business Park Free Zone will have the opportunity to apply for a lease deferral request of up to six months, which will be granted on a case-by-case basis.

Meanwhile, Dubai South Business Centre customers renewing their contracts between now and October 2020 will receive a reduction of up to 25 per cent on their renewal fees as well as the flexibility to settle annual rental fees in up to four installments.

Furthermore, individuals and companies looking to establish a new business will be granted rental fee reductions of up to 25 per cent.

Dubai Aviation City Corporation & Dubai South Executive Chairman Khalifa Al Zaffin said: "This incentive package complements the measures announced by the Government of Dubai and its ongoing efforts to reduce the costs of doing business in the emirate and help enhance corporate liquidity."

"The support will enable companies to maintain their resources and employees and to be fully prepared to continue their operations, especially as the lockdown is being gradually lifted, paving the path towards gradual business cycle normality," stated Al Zaffin.

In mid-March, the Dubai government unveiled a Dh1.5 billion ($408 million) economic stimulus package to support companies and the business sector.

The initiative aimed to enhance liquidity and reduce the impact of the current global economic situation following the outbreak of Covid-19.-TradeArabia News Service
Four Georgian sailors, who escaped from pirates, are safe - GeorgianJournal
Over 260 Organizations from across the world have petitioned Chinese Ministry of Commerce and copied over 10 Chinese institutions not to include projects that directly impact local environments, communities, and livelihoods, in their COVID-19 financial support.



This, they said was due to pre-existing risks and controversies before the onset of the pandemic and if pursued, some of the projects would harm and destroy forest, marine, desert, river, or other increasingly fragile and remaining intact ecosystems, and the people who depended on them.



Chinas Ministry of Commerce and the China Development Bank (CDB) in February jointly issued a Notice on the COVID-19 Pandemic Situation and Development of Financial Services in Supporting the High Quality Joint-Construction of the Belt and Road.



But in a letter to the Chinese authorities, the over 260 organizations of which A Rocha Ghana is one, identified 60 projects as 'High Risk Projects' of which the planned bauxite mining in Atewa Forest being pursued by the Ghana Integrated Aluminium Development Corporation was part.



The letter stated that the COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the fact that international cooperation and transparency were crucial to ensure and maintain a healthy planet.



The COVID-19 has painfully highlighted how climate change and biodiversity loss hamper humanitys ability to effectively combat pandemics, and it is clear that preemptively protecting the natural world plays a critical role in controlling future outbreaks.



The Organizations said, in qualifying projects as high quality, they believed that environmental and social issues such as Local community consultations are done according to Free, Prior, Informed Consent (FPIC) standards, per the 169 International Labor Organization Convention and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.



"Environmental impact assessments are robust, credible, comprehensive, transparent, assess full range of available alternatives, and account for cumulative impacts and Project developers and financiers institute robust, accessible, and clear channels of communication with all relevant local stakeholders".



Among the issues are that all relevant project information, such as pre-feasibility assessments, environmental impact assessments, project information, and other relevant information, should be disclosed (in the appropriate local language) to affected communities and stakeholders and allow for public feedback and participation starting from the earliest-planning phases to allow for better inclusive decision-making.



Also Projects should comply with international norms and best practices, including; existing Chinese green finance policies such as the Green Credit Guidelines, Projects should not negatively impact internationally (that is those protected by international conventions such as World Heritage, Ramsar) or national protected areas, key biodiversity areas, and old growth or primary forests and Projects should not block free-flowing rivers, biological corridors, or migratory routes of animals listed by conventions on migratory species (Bonn Convention).



Projects should not contribute to the extinction of threatened species (thus, per the IUCN Red List), Projects should not trigger or exacerbate political, ethnic, labour, religious, intra-community, or resource-sharing domestic or trans boundary conflicts and Projects should not result in mass or involuntary displacement of local or indigenous communities, and should not encroach on cultural and religious sites. 



A Rocha Ghana and several NGOs in Ghana believe that mining Bauxite in Atewa Forest is not eligible for the Chinese COVID-19 financial support or only be eligible, if all concerns related to design and implementation are not appropriately and effectively addressed to the satisfaction of local communities and stakeholders.



At its core, the high risk projects is based on criteria identified in the Ministry of Commerce and CDB announcement, that projects of high quality, comply with local laws, and have controllable risks, of which the Atewa Bauxite Mining Project did not meet.



The Atewa Forest bauxite mining will not contribute to a healthy recovery in the global economy, and may even intensify the environmental drivers  such as biodiversity loss, climate change, habitat destruction, loss of primary forests, and disruption of free flowing rivers  which increase the likelihood of recurring global pandemics in the future.



Ghanaian NGOs are asking government to exclude Atewa Forest from bauxite mining to secure crucial water provisioning services, biodiversity protection and climate mitigation.

Source: GNA









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Freightfinder.net.au scored 71 Social Media Impact. Social Media Impact score is a measure of how much a site is popular on social networks. 3.5/5.0 Stars by Social Team

This CoolSocial report was updated on 10 Sep 2014, you can refresh this analysis whenever you want.

freightfinder.net.au is very popular in Facebook. Furthermore its facebook page has 5775 likes.

This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared the freightfinder homepage on Twitter + the total number of freightfinder followers (if freightfinder has a Twitter account). The total number of people who shared the freightfinder homepage on Delicious. The total number of people who shared the freightfinder homepage on StumbleUpon. The total number of people who shared the freightfinder homepage on Google Plus by a google +1 button. This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared, liked or recommended the freightfinder homepage on Facebook + the total number of page likes (if freightfinder has a Facebook fan page).

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PAGE TITLE Freight Finder DESCRIPTION KEYWORDS OTHER KEYWORDS freight, quotes, our service, transporters, service, vehicles, motorcycles



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FACEBOOK PAGE LINK FOUND FACEBOOK PAGE www.facebook.com/freightfinder DESCRIPTION Freight Finder is Australia's best online tool to link transport services nationally. We have thousands of freight providers and customers ready to go! LIKES 5775 PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT 912 PAGE TYPE Transport/freight TIMELINE PAGE TIMELINE

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An acronym aimed to inspire and influence New Mexicans to chase their dreams is the name of a fashion line created by two men from Hobbs.

Each letter in the Gapelii fashion brand name is significant.

G stands for growth, A stands for ambition, P stands for prosperity, the E stands for elevate, the L is lifestyle, the first I is innovation, and lastly, Influence, because that is one of our main goals, is to influence people, said Toja Hodge, founder and CEO of Gapelii Brand. No matter what you have going on in life, whatever your visions are, whatever your dreams are, once you influence people (to believe) whatever they put their minds to, they can make it happen.

Hodge and co-founder, business partner Andrew Akufo dream big. They plan to take the Gapelii Brand to a global level and compete with the likes of luxury brands Gucci, Versace and Louis Vuitton but at a more affordable price.

Ive always been into fashion even though I couldnt always afford it, Hodge said. I like Gucci, I like Louis Vuitton, I like Givenchy and all those brands, but at the same time I wanted to create a brand that wasnt $500 for a shirt and everybody can afford it around the $50 range and still feel good wearing it and it feels like theyre wearing Gucci but its Gapelii.

Really feel good, really feel inspired, really feel confident wearing one of our high-end T-shirts.

Hodge and Akufo may just be starting out in the world of fashion, but they have plans to expand their clothing line, as well as offer cologne, watches, sunglasses and more. The brand currently offers T-shirts, hats, sweatshirts, sweatpants, hoodies, denim jackets and more for men, women and children. Not all of its merchandise is featured on the website, gapeliibrand.com, but customers can message the company for special orders, including different fabric colors.

Gapellis shoe line is on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The shoes are actually handcrafted and made in Italy, so it ships from Italy to any destination in the world, Akufo said. We currently have that on hold, based upon what is going on in Italy and throughout the entire world. So we put a temporary hold on that, but once everything clears up we will make that available for everybody to purchase again. We also take direct messages, and anybody who is interested, we will go ahead and hold the order.

There are plans to launch a footwear line for women, and some prototypes have been drawn up.

We dont want to forget about the ladies, Akufo said. We know yall like to rock yalls heels and you want to be cute. You want to be fly. You want to go somewhere nice, and yall got to have your footwear, so we definitely want to do that as well.

Staying connected with the community is something Hodge and Akufo plan to sustain, no matter how large their fashion line grows.

We really want to give back and help in any way, Hodge said. We just have to do our research. Were not sure which foundations need it the most, but depending on if we get the sales and get the results that we need, this will be something that we can participate in as far as genuinely helping with the people that are on the front lines, helping provide masks or help people who get sick and cant afford to get groceries, just help meet their basic needs.

The business partners also plan to help customers outside New Mexico.

We will definitely research the potential charities and social service organizations that contribute to those specific needs, Akufo said. Ultimately, donating 10% back to the community which we serve. So say we have a customer who ordered something out of San Diego; well definitely look into that community and see what the most dire needs are within that area, and then we would donate the proceeds to the organization that we feel would best serve that need.

Gapelii has ambassadors in other areas of the country but are hoping for New Mexicans blessing to succeed.

We really need the support of all our New Mexicans, Hodge said. This is something we want people to be proud of and support, because that is the way it is going to be successful. This is not a New York company. This isnt a Los Angeles company. This is a New Mexico company thats determined to be worldwide.
When early humans arrived in south-east Asia tens of thousands of years ago, they were mostly eating fish. Research has found they quickly learned to love rat.

Australian researchers working in the Indonesian region have discovered that ancient humans were mostly eating fish and other marine-based food as they travelled through the region more than 45,000 years ago.

Shell fish hook recovered from the site of Lene Hara cave in Timor dating to 11,000 years ago. Credit:Sue OConnor

Griffith University Associate Professor Julien Louys said by about 20,000 years ago, many of the humans who had settled into the region had transitioned to a mostly land-based diet.

It indicates that humans are incredibly flexible, ecologically, thats one of the defining traits of humanity, the palaeontologist said.
We have only just begun Gov. Greg Abbotts experiment in balancing the protection of public health from the further spread of COVID-19 with restarting the states economy. Given that only about 1 percent of Texans have been tested for the virus and that the state has failed to meet some benchmarks set by Abbotts own advisers, this reopening, even in its measured three phases, is almost certainly happening too soon.

With a second and possibly even third outbreak possible, any date for reopening, however late in the year, would carry anxious uncertainty. But less of a risk would have been a date established after guidelines about actions such as increasing testing capacity and the number of contact tracers had been followed.

Guidelines such as the ones thoughtfully articulated in a report recently released by the local health team advising San Antonio and Bexar County officials on reopening. Led by Dr. Barbara S. Taylor, an infectious disease specialist at UT Health San Antonio, the COVID-19 Health Transition Team is made up of pulmonary critical care specialists, hospital leaders, epidemiologists, ethicists and public health experts. They have studied the existing medical literature and data on COVID-19 and other community reopening plans, and consulted advisers for technical expertise to inform their recommendations.

In the reports guiding principles, the transition team recognized the linkage of public health and a strong economy while clearly stating its priority:

Human health and economic prosperity are tightly linked. We prioritize human life in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. We understand that continued, severe economic hardship undermines the health of the community as much as disease. We share San Antonio and Bexar Countys values of working safely, caring for people across the generations, protecting those who are medically at risk, and ensuring that no one is left behind. These shared values will guide a transition towards economic recovery, balanced by preserving the safety and integrity of our community.

Under their guidelines, any local reopening of businesses must be preceded by four signs:

1. A sustained, two-week decline of COVID-19 cases.

2. The ability to test all people with COVID-19 symptoms, their close contacts and those in public-facing roles, such as grocery store employees.

3. Effective contact tracing capacity to identify all close contacts of people diagnosed with COVID-19 and offer them testing.

4. A prepared health care system that can safely care for all patients, and includes sufficient hospital capacity, workforce and PPE for health care workers.

The transition teams pathway to reopening is detailed, cautious, forward-looking and guided strictly by data. Like Abbotts plan, it would is reopen the city and county in phases, but unlike the governors plan, Fridays openings wouldnt have begun since the proposed benchmarks havent been reached.

While recognizing that anyone can be infected by COVID-19, but that some communities are especially vulnerable, the report recommends prioritizing the needs of those communities: Those with disabilities, the medically vulnerable, low-wage front-line workers, the incarcerated, the housing insecure, seniors, minority communities and many others.

This is an intersectional strategy that ensures that all who are highest risk are reached, it reads.

The health transition teams reopening has four phases. Phase IV begins when COVID-19 is no longer a threat to our community and we can focus on being prepared for the next public health threat.

But the only way to ensure that COVID-19 is no longer a threat is to cautiously proceed through the first three phases. Thats what the city recommends, but is the state doing that?
There are many unwritten sidebars to the story at the heart of this series on the Wuhan virus in Minnesota. One such story is Governor Walzs use of the media and their failure to hold him to account for his performance. Walz press secretary Teddy Tschann has excluded me from the daily briefings run by the governor. Minnesota Department of Health press officers Doug Schultz and Michael Schommer included me in the briefings run by the department in the governors absence, but they now exclude me. Tschann, Schultz, and Schommer have failed even to acknowledge my emails asking why they have excluded me. Is it something I said?

Whatever it is, I am scheduled to appear on Justice and Drew tomorrow morning at 7:35. The show is broadcast on Twin Cities News Talk 1130 AM from 6:00 to 9:00 on weekday mornings. You can stream the station and the show at either of the links. The show is also available by podcast. Please tune in tomorrow when I can call these public servants out by name.

On the subject of the lockdown, Jon Justice, Drew Lee, and producer Samantha Sansevere express a contrarian take reflecting a bad, bad attitude. I doubt that any one of them could get a foothold in the daily briefings either. I appreciate their having me on the show tomorrow to discuss my experience.

On Friday the authorities attributed 28 new deaths to the virus for a new total of 371. Twenty-eight matched the previous high. Twenty-four of the 28 new decedents occurred among residents of long-term care facilities. Six were in their 90s, 10 in their 80s, five in their 70s, four in their 60s, and three in their 50s. MDH updated the data again yesterday. The number of new deaths declined to 24 for a new total of 395. Twenty-one of the 24 deaths reported Saturday were residents of long-term care facilities. The median age of decedents remains 83.

Does anyone see a pattern here? The MDH Situation Update now includes the running total of [d]eaths among cases that resided in long-term care or assisted living facilities. As of today, that is 317 of the total of 395 deaths attributed to the virus. I believe that comes to 80 percent.

As I have asked a time or two before, why the statewide lockdown?

At Fridays briefing (run by MDH in the governors absence, recording below with a few technical glitches that also dogged the live stream), MCH Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm and MDH Infectious Diseases Division director Kris Ehresmann addressed the nursing home crisis (at about 06:00 of the recording). Indeed, Erhesmann read a brief statement on it, noting the localization of high numbers of deaths in a few facilities. Although there are 221 nursing homes or assisted living facilities that have at least one case in a resident or staff member, 21 facilities have 20 or more cases; about half the facilities have one or two cases.

In yesterdays Star Tribune, Glenn Howatt summarized the thoughts of former state epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, now at the University of Minnesota and the brains behind much of the thinking on which Walz relies. According to Howatts paraphrase of Osterholm, the virus will continue its spread until a critical mass of the population develops immunity through infection  roughly 70%. Right now, an estimated 5 to 6% of people have been infected, and even then it is unclear how long immunity will last.

Once again, why the statewide lockdown?
Press Release

May 3, 2020 IMEE: SAVE TOURISM WORKERS FOR POST-COVID ECONOMIC GROWTH More than five million workers in the travel and tourism industry must be saved from losing their jobs to boost economic recovery when the COVID-19 pandemic is over, Senator Imee Marcos said. Marcos, who chairs the Senate committee on economic affairs, said travel and tourism made up more than 12% of the country's gross domestic product but have been the "longest-suffering industry" since the viral outbreaks in China and Korea, the Philippines' largest tourist markets. "A cut in the marketing and advertising budget of the Department of Tourism (DOT), amid the slump in domestic and international travel, can be used instead to subsidize payrolls of tourism partners especially in micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs)," Marcos proposed. "The Finance department should look into this, since government has already spent 90% of its supplemental budget and is now asking for more funds from Congress," Marcos added, citing the DOT's recent ads on CNN International and social media. The government's latest community quarantine restrictions have given a low priority for modes of transport, travel agencies, tour operators, hotels, resorts, restaurants and bars to resume operations due to their perceived risk of spreading COVID-19. "Even local tourists in Boracay, Cebu, and Ilocos have dwindled. It's unlikely that promoting domestic travel right now will make up for the slump in arrivals from China and Korea. Better to spend on payroll support for the tourism sector's MSMEs until COVID-19 blows over," Marcos said. Despite Boracay's six-month closure in 2018, the surge of tourist arrivals grew from a year earlier and continued in January to October 2019 when visitors from China grew by 41% to more than 1.5 million, and those from Korea by 22% to more than 1.6 million. By December, when COVID-19 appeared in Wuhan, the DOT had recorded a total of about 6.8 million tourist arrivals, or a more than 15-percent increase from 2018, contributing about Php2.5 trillion to the Philippine economy. "The significant impact of travel and tourism on the country's economic growth is clear. Their workers must be saved," Marcos said.
Help India!

By Yusuf Ansari, TwoCircles.net

Over the years, the mainstream in India has been producing negative and adverse stereotypes of Muslims. The Muslim think tank Indian Muslims for Progress and Reform (IMPAR), with over 200 intellectuals has taken up the onus to counter this adverse stereotyping. In a detailed report published on April 29, TwoCircles.net had discussed the reactions and responses of the Muslim community towards IMPAR and soon it was picked up by the countrys renowned Hindi statesman Asghar Wajahat. Taking to Facebook, Wajahat commended the initiative and advised that it is necessary to reach out to the poor, illiterate and weaker sections of the Muslim community. He also gave other recommendations to the think tank, which TwoCircles.net is producing below.

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Asghar Wajahat welcomes the step, and has some advice

It has recently been in the news that around 200 intellectuals of the country, best known in their professions and skills have come together to form Indian Muslims for Progress and Reform (IMPAR) that would operate as a think tank to eliminate the negative media propaganda against the community. IMPAR would connect with independent thinkers and organizations promoting the composite culture of India and reflect the secular fabric. It is clear from the name that the organization is brimming with potential as it is made of progressive, secular and reformist Muslims.

This is a very welcome step and the thinkers behind this deserve applause for creation of an entity as such. It would work to transmit authentic information thus filling the void where the consciousness of Muslims in the society was slowly getting lost. Here is a list of things that the organization would take care of in regard with dealing with the Muslim community:

It is an urgent need to address the poor, illiterate and weaker Muslims whose mother tongues are either Hindu or Urdu. In fact, Hindi is more common. Since the new generation of Muslims are familiar with Hindi, to address them would be the work of Hindi and Urdu spoken leaders. IMPAR would work with the weaker sections in a way that achieves their understanding and participation. Usually, for the development of the Muslim community, associations employ highly educated intellectuals with zero access to poor Muslims. So the need here is to choose Muslims that have close links with Muslim ghettos and those in the lower rungs so that they can connect with the lowest sections who cannot even read or write. Some unruly elements in the country continue to plot conspiracy for defaming Muslims and Islam. In such a situation there is a need for a group that would highlight the role and importance of Muslims and also submit an accurate picture of Islam. With regards to Indian history, there are a lot of misconceptions in the medieval Indian history that distort facts suggesting that Muslims were anti-Hindu. In this regard, the think tank must play a significant role in conveying facts of medieval Indian history. The organization may also focus on organizing diverse and mixed cultural programmes like Ghazal, Mushaira, Music, Drama, and other art programmes. But it must be kept in mind that these have to be for the target audience, which are weaker sections and they should not be intimidated by keeping these programmes in five-star facilities. The organization should also use modern means of creative communication to reach out to people. The organization should pay special attention to the education of Muslims in madrasas and community schools. Health and Safety awareness should also be mandated. Instead of focusing on violence, it should concentrate on the spirit of mutual understanding and cooperation. In order to build a peaceful relationship with the majority community, there should be a variety of programmes. Muslim society should be made aware that in order to overcome the communal divide, they must cooperate and stay in peace with the majority community.
Madeleine McCann's parents are urging people to 'please remember Madeleine' despite the coronavirus lockdown.

Kate, 52, and Gerry, 51, are marking the 13th anniversary of their daughter's disappearance and asking people to join in with prayers tonight.

The couple usually have an outdoor gathering at the village war memorial which has had to be cancelled this year because of the pandemic.

The family will mark the day behind closed doors with their 15-year-old twins Sean and Amelie.

Kate, 52, and Gerry McCann, 51, are marking the 13th anniversary of their daughter's disappearance and asking people to join in with prayers tonight

On their Facebook page, Official Find Madeleine Campaign, they said: 'It is now 13 years since we were last with Madeleine.

'Her 17th birthday is to follow in the next couple of weeks... the latter tangibly, painfully, bringing it home to us what we have missed and continue to miss as a family.'

Maddie's great-uncle Brian Kennedy said the family had circulated two prayers to churchgoers, the Daily Star reported.

He said they are asking people to remember the anniversary and read or say the prayers at 7pm on Sunday, which is when the outdoor gathering would normally be held.

Heart doctor Gerry and ex-GP Kate, from Rothley, Leicestershire, cling on to hope that Maddie could still be alive.

On their website Find Madeleine they say that there is nothing to suggest Maddie has been harmed and she's still missing, young and vulnerable and needs their help.

On May 3, which marks the anniversary of Maddie's disappearance, the couple normally go to church then walk a mile from their house to the village war memorial, where a gathering is held.

A candle still burns as a beacon of hope for Maddie after she vanished from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2007.

She had been inside sleeping with her two-year-old siblings while Gerry and Kate were in a nearby tapas restaurant with friends.

The couple insist they made regular checks on the children throughout that evening and have never given up hope of finding their daughter.

A candle still burns as a beacon of hope for Maddie after she vanished from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2007

British police have requested new funding to continue the 12million search. A Met Police source said they'd been told there hopefully wouldn't be a problem with new funding.

The Met took over the hunt in 2011 after Gerry and Kate made a personal plea to then-Prime Minister David Cameron.

Ex-detective Mark Williams-Thomas recently claimed the case will never be solved because a crucial CCTV camera was switched off when Maddie disappeared.

On their website Find Madeleine Kate and Gerry said: 'There will also be many vulnerable people whose situation will have become even more precarious in the current lockdown conditions, with fear, worry and isolation - emotions that we dreaded Madeleine experiencing and which haunted us for a long time - and still do on occasions.

'Our thoughts and prayers are with all those suffering at this time.'

This week, the McCanns were targeted by trolls who photoshopped an image from an old public appeal.

They edited the photo so it looked like they were holding a placard saying the slogan 'Stay at home, save lives'.
New Delhi, May 3 : Jamaat-e-Islami Hind President Syed Sadatullah Hussaini has expressed serious concern over reports of an FIR registered by Delhi Police's Special Cell against Delhi Minorities Commission Chairman Zafarul Islam Khan under grave sections of the Indian Penal Code.

In a media statement, the JIH President said: "Speaking on and drawing the attention of the government towards the various injustices perpetrated on the minorities is part of his official duty. If the news of this FIR is true, then it is apparent that not only the trusted individuals but also even important democratic institutions are no longer safe from the police transgression. This is a matter of great concern for the entire nation." JIH said that Khan is a respectable intellectual, writer and journalist. His writings in Urdu, Arabic and English are read all over the world. Currently, he is the Chairman of the Delhi Minorities Commission, an important legal and quasi-judicial institution.

Hussaini said: "One may differ with some of the aspects of the social media post of Khan which is being used to file this FIR. He has also issued a note of clarification regarding it." He praised the genuine efforts of Khan, as the Chairman of Delhi Minorities Commission, to solve the problems of the minorities.

"The timely actions by Khan have increased the confidence of Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and all the other minorities of Delhi on the Minorities Commission. He has written extensively against extremism and religious violence all over the world. He has been very critical of ISIS and other radical organisations through his statements and analytical articles and has played an important role in the fight against extremism.

"Today if he says something against the growing extremism and communalism in the country then it should be taken as his love for the people and the nation and as part of his ongoing fight against extremism and radicalism," he added.

JIH has demanded that the government and the Delhi Police should withdraw this case and stop the people who are misinterpreting the statement of Khan to create division and hatred despite his clarification.
Reports suggest COVID-19 pandemic to be an outcome of coronavirus spillover from bats to pangolins to humans. Should that be it, the question arises, why has such spillover occurred? The answer lies in our slighting attitude towards forests.

The disease-causative agents behind majority of the outbreaks in the past including yellow fever (Africa, South America), dengue (pan tropical), Chikungunya (Africa, south and southeast Asia), Ebola (Africa), HIV (worldwide), Nipah (South Asia), SARS (Southeast Asia), Malaria (Africa, Southeast Asia, South America) and Lyme disease (worldwide) are forest denizens, and at least the initial disease outbreak is attributable to deforestation and forest fragmentation.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), two thirds of known human infectious diseases are shared with animals, and the majority of recently emerging diseases are associated with wildlife.

Let us consider how deforestation results in the emergence of infectious diseases. Forest is a natural ecosystem hosting a community of trees of different types and sizes with vegetative undergrowth and thriving populations of microorganisms (such as bacteria and viruses), insects, reptiles, birds and other animals.

All these life forms exist in a dynamic balance in a forest ecosystem and constitute its biodiversity. Disease causative agents (virus, bacteria or parasites) that have co-evolved with their reservoir hosts (mosquitos, ticks, rodents, bats and other wild animals) are all part of this dynamic balance of biodiversity.

When a forest habitat is cleared for the development of infrastructure like roads, power lines, dams and canals, or for human habitations and industrial purposes, or for extension of agriculture and grazing livestock, the outcome is loss of tree cover and creation of fresh forest-edges. Such changes alter the balance of biodiversity and modify the locality factors of temperature, sunshine, moisture and wind. This has implications for the outbreak of infectious diseases.

Firstly, under the stress of disturbance, the reservoir host may shed higher pathogen load through saliva, urine and faecal matter. This can increase the chances of infection among humans and their livestock interacting with such disturbed forest habitat. Second, the populations of host species and their predators can undergo change resulting in increased/decreased abundance of hosts, and thereby the scope for pathogen spillover.

Third, fresh habitat opportunities can arise that may favour breeding and result in increased abundance of host species locally. For example, sunlit puddles of water on forest edges are favoured habitats for breeding mosquitos. Fourth, reservoir host species can disperse from the disturbed forest habitat along with the pathogen load-carrying disease to new areas.

Fifth, the disease-causing agents can find alternative hosts in humans and their livestock that use such disturbed forest habitat. Sixth, enhanced interaction of livestock with the host wild animals can facilitate spill over of disease-causing agents to humans.

Nipah virus, first isolated in 1999, caused more than 100 human deaths in 1998 in Malaysia. Nipah virus had infected humans through reared pigs. Pigs had nibbled on the fruits eaten by fruit bats (reservoir host). Fruit bats were displaced by deforestation carried out for cultivation of palm oil plantations and pig farming. In May 2018, Nipah virus claimed 21 lives in Kerala.

Also, a study published in the International Journal of Epidemiology in December 2019 on the Kyasanur Forest Disease (KFD) in the Western Ghats in Karnataka provides clear evidence for increasing forest loss and disease spread. KFD (also known as monkey fever) is endemic to the Ghats and was first reported in 1957 from Kyasanur Forest of Shivamogga district in Karnataka.

A tick - Haemaphysalis spinigera - found in forest margins transmits KFD virus to humans. During the past five years, KFD has expanded its range throughout the Ghats and beyond. This indicates its potential as an emerging infectious disease (EID) in India.

Thus, it is seen that loss of forests and biodiversity increases the chances of forest-linked disease outbreaks. Experts opine that in a high biodiversity forest, availability of a number of other potential victims of the disease agent creates a dilution effect reducing the chances of infection to humans.

Protective factor

According to a review of the state of knowledge published by WHO and Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) on biodiversity and human health in 2015, rich biodiversity may serve as a protective factor for preventing transmission, and maintaining ecosystems may help to reduce exposure to infectious agents. Precluding the emergence of infectious diseases through forest conservation is a recognised novel ecosystem service of forests.

Further, the impending climate change has added a whole new dimension to forest-linked disease outbreak as changes in ambient temperature and humidity, drought frequency and rainfall distribution are likely to modify the disease rate, range, seasonality, distribution of disease agents and their hosts, and human-disease host interactions.

Risk of infection intensifies when people venture into forest habitats for collection of forest produce, cattle grazing, bush-meat hunting and tourism. Such risk is further compounded due to migration of more-vulnerable poor people into opened up forest areas without adequate housing, water, medical and sanitation facilities.

Creation of buffer area zones between forests and human-cultured landscape and stringent measures against bush-meat hunting and trade in wild animals are necessary to safeguard the larger common interest of preventing zoonotic disease outbreak. It is pertinent to take note in this context that government notifies eco-sensitive zones around national parks and sanctuaries that host rich biodiversity.

The outbreak of COVID shows that society ends up paying extremely high economic and social cost for violating natural environment. However, in our pursuit for economic development, we continue to neglect and erode its environmental basis.

Uncaring development process is likely to intensify the possibility for outbreak of forest-linked infectious diseases. Contextually, halting deforestation and defragmenting forests, strengthens the environmental basis of economic development and insures against the outbreak of diseases.

There lurks a real risk of next pandemic emerging from forests. Epidemiologists suggest preservation of the health of our forest ecosystems to secure our own.

(The writer is Karnataka cadre Indian Forest Service officer)
Ghanaians have been shocked at the news of the demise of versatile veteran actor, Bishop Bernard Nyarko. Many have taken to social media to celebrate the man they describe as a legend, touting him for his excellent acting skills.



Whilst Ghanaians are yet to know the cause of death of the famous Kumawood actor, snippets of a particular video of him have gone viral.



The video which was uploaded on January 9, 2020, on youtube, had Bishop speak on the topic, 'I will rise up again' to some congregants in a church.



The actor spoke about foes who are always around us and fake their love for us but wish for our downfall.



Bishop Bernard Nyarko stated in April 2020, that he was now a full-time man of God, announcing his retirement from the acting industry.



According to reports, the actor ditched acting for the gospel after he was hit with an unknown illness.



Watch the sermon below:















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Nyarko #UnitedShowbiz With Empress @iamamamcbrown

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Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Early satellite-spotting pioneers. In this 1965 photo, volunteer satellite trackers in Pretoria, South Africa, were part of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Moonwatch Network, one of more than 100 teams worldwide. (Image credit: Smithsonian Institution Archives)

Around the planet, a loosely knit but closely woven band of amateurs monitor the whereabouts of satellites  be they secretive spacecraft, robotic space drones, rocket stages, orbital debris or lost-in-space planetary probes.

But what's the motivation behind this group of sky prowling spirits? What kind of tools are they using now or in the future to purge secrets from space  at times revealing what some countries don't want others to know about?

Space.com reached out to a small set of these hobbyists that contribute to SeeSat-L, a mailing list intended to facilitate rapid, reliable communications among a worldwide cadre of visual satellite observers.

Photos: Spotting satellites & spaceships from Earth

No formal organization

Ted Molczan is a Toronto-based amateur satellite observer. He said that there is no formal organization of satellite onlookers  no leader or board of directors. There are no assigned roles or responsibilities.

The most common activities, Molczan said, are observing, analyzing observations to update the whereabouts of space objects, devising strategies to find newly launched satellites, writing computer software and attempting to resolve the mission of satellites based on their orbits and other information gleaned from open sources.

"Participants decide which of these activities to pursue based on their interest. It is common to wear more than one hat," Molczan said, and explains that the field has made great progress in recent decades.

Secret orbits

In the mid-1990s, satellite sleuths began to use small telescopes to find and track secret objects orbiting Earth at geosynchronous altitude, about 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers) above the equator, where satellites match the speed of the Earth's rotation.

The U.S. Air Force's X-37B robotic space plane in orbit, as photographed by satellite tracker Ralf Vandebergh. (Image credit: Ralf Vandebergh)

By 2010, the efforts of the amateurs and the professional International Scientific Optical Network had resulted in the identification of every single large object known to have been launched into a secret geosynchronous orbit since 1968. In 2006, amateurs began to track satellites in secret orbits by measuring and analyzing the Doppler shift of their radio signals, or changes in the frequencies of the radio waves caused by the relative motion of the observer and the satellite.

"Today, this potent technique is a key tool in the amateur kit," Molczan said. "Amateurs contribute to public knowledge. By tracking objects in secret orbits, they provide independent information on the activities of governments in orbit, and expose the practical limits to secrecy."

Eyes-on observations

Amateur interest is not limited to secret satellites. To this point, Molczan flags a list of "eyes-on" assists from citizen satellite trackers.

Molczan said that in 2011, Russia sought the assistance of amateurs to track its ill-fated Phobos-Grunt mission during the spacecraft's planned burn to escape Earth orbit, after which it crashed into the Pacific Ocean.

Phobos-Grunt image taken from the ground on Nov. 29, 2011, by amateur astronomer Ralf Vandebergh in The Netherlands. (Image credit: Ralf Vandebergh/ESA)

When the probe became stuck in low-Earth orbit after launching on what was supposed to be a mission to retrieve a soil sample from Mars' moon Phobos, satellite tracker Thierry Legault obtained high-resolution video imagery of the stranded spacecraft with useful information on its orientation. Amateur orbit analysis revealed a series of unusual maneuvers by the doomed spacecraft, Molczan added, that could potentially have aided in determining the cause of the failure.

In 2015, radio and optical tracking by amateurs assisted The Planetary Society to track its LightSail satellite.

Currently, amateurs are heeding the call of professional astronomers for data on the brightness of SpaceX's Starlink satellites to determine their potential to ruin imagery obtained by Earth-based telescopes. For example, Ralf Vandebergh, a Dutch astronomer, professional photographer and veteran satellite spotter has dedicated considerable time to monitoring the growing Starlink constellation.

Related: SpaceX's Starlink satellites will soon get glare-reducing 'sunshades,' Elon Musk says

A telescopic closeup of a SpaceX Starlink satellite. (Image credit: Ralf Vandebergh)

As for the future growth of satellite watching, it's impossible to forecast, Molczan said, but it is reasonable to expect amateurs to continue to exploit advanced technology that is within their grasp. Fully automated image acquisition, data reduction and orbital analysis is one possibility, he said.

"High-tech will not appeal to everyone. Fortunately, low and high-tech can be expected to continue to coexist. Observers who prefer to get out under the stars will still be able to contribute usefully using the traditional binoculars and stop-watch method," Molczan concluded.

Moonwatch to today

Mike Waterman of the United Kingdom saw his first satellite, Sputnik 2, in 1958, and a few years later joined a UK-based satellite watching group that provided predictions of spacecraft flyovers.

Ready and waiting. Mike Waterman of the United Kingdom saw his first satellite, Sputnik 2, in 1958. (Image credit: Malcolm Waterman)

Waterman recalled that at that time there were three such groups, one based in the UK, one in the USSR and another in the U.S. called "Operation Moonwatch," which was an amateur science program formally initiated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts and organized as part of the 1957-1958 International Geophysical Year, which was a worldwide cooperative effort to gather scientific data about the Earth.

"Observations were gathered and used for scientific and other purposes," Waterman said, "in particular gravity harmonics, upper air density and upper atmosphere winds. Communication was mostly by post, rarely by telephone, and observing was done primarily with binoculars, star atlases (on paper) and mechanical stopwatches."

Waterman points with pride to the time when he started doing his own predictions, and an early highlight was observing the rocket stages for Apollo missions 8, 10 and 12, going towards the moon.

"I got my first computer in 1983 and within a few weeks I was using it for predictions. By 1985 I had part of a star atlas on my computer, so [I] was avoiding most errors in satellite positions," Waterman said. "Undoubtedly the most important change was the internet and email. Suddenly, for me in 1999/2000, you could send and receive orbits, observations and opinions anywhere, almost for free!"

New skills and strategies

Brad Young of Tulsa, Oklahoma is a highly active observer. In recent years, he has augmented his sharp-eyed skills by means of remote telescopes that enable him to observe geosynchronous satellites that never rise above his horizon. He uses half a dozen cameras, located in Spain, Australia, New Mexico and California.

Brad Young, armed with binoculars for spacecraft spotting, along with his telescopes for satellite detective work. (Image credit: Brad Young)

"The future is bright," Young said. "Active development of phone app tracking and reporting systems are happening to enlist a global team of observers." As example, he pointed to TruSat, a citizen-powered, open source system for creating a globally-accessible record of satellite orbital positions.

Along with this, Young said that skywatching training is being upgraded to inform the general public and excite their interest in tracking satellites. "The sea change will be involving more people," he said, emphasizing that crowdsourcing visual observations with mobile apps will be crucial.

"Imaging systems and analysis tools are becoming accessible to more people and can provide amazing results in finding lost objects and checking on [satellite] maneuvers and conjunctions," Young said. "Remote imaging networks give global coverage. Open, timely collaboration between analysts will promote understanding how and why orbits change."

Young said that he sees new skills and strategies popping up "to make people aware of the issues with our orbital infrastructure, and how they can help, but also exciting them to get out and observe."

Shed some light

A professional archeologist, Marco Langbroek is deeply interested in meteors and satellites and works in the astronomy department at Leiden University in The Netherlands. He does extensive research into secret satellites, and publishes his findings on his blog and is a consultant on Space Situational Awareness issues to the Space Security Center of the Royal Dutch Air Force.

Marco Langbroek spotted the spy satellite USA 276 over Leiden, The Netherlands, on May 25, 2017. (Image credit: Marco Langbroek)

"I think there have always been great observing and analysis skills within the amateur community, but over the last decade or so it has become more publicly visible through blogs, Facebook, Twitter etc. As a result, the press knows how to find us more easily as well, and has come to recognize our skills."

Regarding the overall value of the worldwide amateur observers, Langbroek paints a big picture.

"Over the past decades, space technology has taken a very important role in our society, often without people realizing it. Our modern economies highly depend on space technology, like logistic networks, trade and communications. Same for the modern military as space assets play an increasingly important role there. And important geopolitical decisions are made based on intelligence gathered from space," Langbroek said.

That makes us vulnerable as a society, he added. "Thus, what happens up there is of prime importance to our society. At the same time, a part of what happens in space remains hidden, because it concerns classified space programs. The amateur satellite watchers serve to shed some light onto that otherwise unknown aspect of space that otherwise would go without public scrutiny, while having a very large impact on our lives," Langbroek said.

Wider relevance

Similar in view to other satellite watchers, Langbroek said that the technological revolution that transformed much of our society has had its impact on the observing prowess of skywatchers. More high-tech equipment (cameras notably) have become available, as well as more computer power. The internet has provided much better access to data sources, books, articles and other sources over the past two decades or so, he said, and it has made contacts and cooperation between members of a far-flung group much more easy.

In looking into the future, Langbroek said that automatic, near real-time detection, recognition, characterization and orbital determination of satellites in the sky is one development that is already in the making.

"I also think that third parties  commercial and government  are already and increasingly will be starting to take more interest in the skills and data we have obtained," Langbroek concluded. "So from a bunch of hobby nerds in a very esoteric niche, we are drawn into a wider, more professional world and a wider relevance to our society."

Leonard David is the author of the book "Moon Rush: The New Space Race," published by National Geographic in May 2019. A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
Addressing the 55th annual general meeting (AGM) of Berkshire Hathaway on May 2, Warren Buffett said what many probably wanted to hear from him  nothing can stop the United States.

The 89-year-old Oracle of Omaha acknowledged that the novel coronavirus pandemic could have a wide range of impacts on the economy and his investments, but emphasised that US will overcome the challenges.

Buffett dragged people's attention to the crises of Great Depressions, the civil wars and Cuban Missile Crisis, 9/11 and said that US had emerged stronger every time.

He further emphasised that the 'American miracle' was intact and urged investors to never bet against the country.

However, he also cautioned that there is always an element of uncertainty in the market and while one can bet on the US, they must be careful about their bets.

Berkshire Hathaways AGM is an event that investors across the world wait for. The meeting was held virtually for the first time due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was streamed by Yahoo Finance.

The company was hit by the outbreak, posting a record quarterly net loss of nearly $50 billion on May 2, highlighting that the performance is suffering in several major operating businesses.

According to a Reuters report, Berkshire said most of its more than 90 businesses are facing relatively minor to severe negative effects from COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus and now punishing the global economy, with revenue slowing considerably in April even at businesses deemed essential.

Also Read: Berkshire sells entire stakes in U.S airlines: Buffett

While quarterly operating profit rose 6 percent, several larger businesses including the BNSF railroad posted declines.

In the AGM, Buffett said he was wrong about valuing airline stocks and revealed that Berkshire had dumped its entire airline stake.

Buffett underscored that the world had changed after the pandemic for the airline industry.

The world has changed for the airlines. And I dont know how its changed and I hope it corrects itself in a reasonably prompt way, he said.

I think there are certain industries, and unfortunately, I think that the airline industry, among others, that are really hurt by a forced shutdown by events that are far beyond our control, he added.

Berkshire has been among the biggest shareholders in the four largest US airlines  American, Delta, Southwest and United.

Buffett has not made a big acquisition in the last few years despite Berkshire's huge cash pile. He said he intended to do it, but was not able to find anything attractive.

Charlie Munger and Ajit Jain did not attend the AGM.

Buffett said Munger is in good health and he will return to the annual meeting next year. Buffett was joined by Vice Chairman Greg Abel Abel who lives closer to Omaha than Munger and Jain.

Abel oversees Berkshires non-insurance businesses. He is considered to be the top candidate who will eventually succeed Buffett as chief executive officer. Ajit Jain who manages Berkshires insurance businesses is also considered to be a leading candidate to be the company's next CEO.
Spanish doctors in a small study found five types of body rash in patients diagnosed with Covid-19, as the BBC reported.

According to doctors, the rash most often appeared in young people and lasted several days. Often the rash appeared as red dots on the body, similar to chickenpox. But the researchers were extremely surprised when they discovered so many varieties of rash in patients with Covid-19. It is worth emphasizing that the rash is currently not included in the list of coronavirus symptoms.

So, many cases of the so-called Covid finger were recorded - this rash appeared on the toes of patients with Covid-19, even if other symptoms of the disease were absent. But the head of the study, Dr. Ignacio Garcia-Doval, stated that the most common form of rash with Covid-19 was the maculopapular rash, which rises above the skin level, has a flat or domed surface. She most often appeared on the torso of patients.

"It was strange to see several different rashes, and some of them are quite specific. Usually, the rash appears after a respiratory manifestation of the disease, so this symptom is not suitable for the diagnosis of Covid-19," Garcia-Doval said.

He emphasized that all the patients studied were already in the hospital and had respiratory symptoms.

The peer-reviewed article was published in the British Journal of Dermatology. After that, all dermatologists in Spain were asked to share details about patients with Covid-19 who had a rash over the past two weeks. Such cases were recorded 375.

As we reported before, for a long time, the Chinese authorities concealed and destroyed data on the outbreak of the coronavirus Covid-19 in Wuhan, which has already taken more than 243.8 thousand people in the world.
Advertising tycoon Sir Martin Sorrell has warned that weak firms will be wiped out in a 'Darwinian culling'  as forecasts show unemployment is set to rocket.

Sir Martin, the founder and former chief executive of the WPP media empire, predicted that only the strongest companies would pull through the Covid-19 pandemic in a survival-of-the-fittest fight that he compared to naturalist Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection.

'You feel it in the markets already. It's terrible, shocking, it's catatonic. A lot of companies will go down,' he said. 'This is a Darwinian culling.'

Prediction: Sir Martin Sorrell is the founder and former chief executive of the WPP media empire

With 50 years in advertising behind him, Sir Martin's comments are seen as a bellwether for consumer confidence and spending  and they come ahead of a major report from the Bank of England due out this week on how the economy is holding up in lockdown.

The Bank will detail its expectations for growth and unemployment in the UK on Thursday  the same day the Government releases its plans to exit lockdown.

The latest jobs data indicates up to five million people could become unemployed as a result of the pandemic, according to analysis handed to The Mail on Sunday by recruitment boss James Reed.

The owner of Reed.com, the largest recruitment website in Britain, forecast it would take three years for employment to recover to preCovid-19 levels. The number of new job listings on his site has halved from 181,000 to just 89,000 in April alone.

The figure was 275,000 this time last year. He said Reed's analysis of trends in the data suggest up to 15 per cent of the workforce could become unemployed as businesses struggle to bring back all the staff who have been furloughed.

He added: 'I don't see how businesses can bring back everyone. If your income is half what it was, or worse, how can you cover the costs you had before?

'These figures are a leading indicator of what things will look like, and that could suggest as many as five million unemployed. If you look at previous cycles, it could take at least three years to recover. That would be the highest rate of unemployment since the 1930s. It suggests a very different economy will emerge out of this, and coming out of furlough will be a big challenge.'

Howard Archer, chief economist at the EY Item Club, a forecaster that uses the Government's own figures, said: 'A number of policymakers have sounded cautious about whether the economy will bounce back quickly. They think there will be consumer caution even after the lockdown has eased, and that could cause the recovery not to be very sharp.

'Longer-term forecasts will give us an idea about how much permanent damage has been done to the economy in terms of how many businesses go under and what the unemployment rate will go up to.'

Company profit warnings hit a record 301 in the first three months of the year, with travel and leisure firms worst affected, according to accounting giant EY. There were just 313 for the whole of 2019. Alan Hudson, UK head of restructuring at EY, predicted a spike in insolvencies and said the crisis had 'exacerbated existing weaknesses'.

Sir Martin Sorrell said Britain was entrenched in a 'wartime' mode. He forecast a deep V-shaped recession, where the usual rules for companies spending their way out of a downturn no longer apply. March to June would be 'horrendous', he said, the next three months would be 'tough but better', and the final three months of the year would be 'a recovery'.

But he warned that many companies would not survive that long. 'A lot of companies will have gone to the wall by then,' he told client magazine Finito World in an interview shared with the MoS.

'In our industry, a lot of highly regarded production companies have gone.'

He also criticised Chancellor Rishi Sunak's rescue programmes for businesses, saying: 'They take time to implement. A lot of this stuff will be deployed where it is least needed  to large not small businesses.'

Sir Martin founded WPP in 1985 and grew it into a FTSE100 company, making him one of the most highly paid businessmen in Britain, with a 368 million fortune. He stepped down in 2018 amid allegations of misconduct and misuse of company funds  which he denies  and set up digital advertising firm S4 Capital.

On Thursday, S4 will publish a trading update for the first three months of the year, which will show the impact of lockdown from March.

WPP, now led by Mark Read, last week announced a 4.9 per cent fall in turnover for the first three months of the year.

Sir Martin said the crisis would hand even more power to online giants such as Google and Facebook, adding: 'Imagine the data that Amazon is buying on consumer buying patterns: it will give them a huge data advantage. The same will be true for Tencent, Alibaba and TikTok in the east.'
After the shocking news of Rishi Kapoors demise on April 30, 2020, the industry and fans have been immersed in grief. The last rites and a funeral were held on the same day. His family and loves ones were present to bid him adieu one last time.

Yesterday, his daughter, Riddhima Kapoor Sahni travelled from Delhi to be with her family amidst the lockdown. She was not sanctioned permission to fly down on the same day for the funeral. She reached Mumbai by road for the prayer meet held in memory of her late father and actor Rishi Kapoor.

The actor valiantly fought cancer for two years. Heres a picture from his prayer meet held at his residence today.
Childrens charities are in the midst of a funding crisis due to Covid-19. However, lets not be fooled into thinking they were in a strong position before the pandemic  a decade of policy changes and decreased state funding has left childrens services dangerously vulnerable. For many, coronavirus is just the tipping point.

Charities across the spectrum have been impacted heavily by the coronavirus pandemic, with many services being postponed or moved online, fundraising events being cancelled, and efforts scaled back. Early research suggests charities are predicting a projected loss of a third of their overall income, with over half reducing their levels of service.

With 59 per cent of voluntary sector organisations aiming to benefit children and young people, it is unsurprising that childrens support services have been heavily hit. Indeed, the Childhood Trust reported that over one-third of Londons child poverty charities are at risk of closure due to Covid-19, while one of the largest leading childrens charities, Barnardos, has already furloughed over 3,000 of its staff due to funding pressures. And while the chancellor has promised a 750m support package for charities, this goes little way in addressing the estimated 4bn shortfall.
Vietnam confirmed a new Covid-19 patient Sunday evening, a British expert who arrived in HCMC this week to work on a Petrovietnam project.

The new patient has raised Vietnam's infection tally to 271 and the number of active cases to 54, ending the country's nine-day streak of staying clear of new infections.

Vietnam has, however, maintained its record of going 17 days without a community transmission.

Of the 54 active cases, 14 are relapses.

"Patient 271" is a 37-year-old British expert with the Vietnam Oil and Gas Group (Petrovietnam). He arrived at Ho Chi Minh City's Tan Son Nhat International Airport on April 28 with 12 other experts on a private jet.

All of them were placed under quarantine upon arrival in Can Gio District and had tested negative upon arrival, the Health Ministry said.

On May 2, they were tested again and one tested positive. He has been moved for treatment to the city's Cu Chi Field Hospital.

Of three critically-ill Covid-19 patients in the country, an 88-year-old Hung Yen woman under treatment in Hanoi, Vietnams oldest patient, has tested negative once. The condition of a 64-year-old Hanoi woman has improved slightly while that of a 43-year-old British man in HCMC remains critical.

More than 30,000 people are quarantined in the country  246 suspected patients in hospitals specialized for Covid-19 treatment, over 5,700 at centralized facilities and the rest at home.

The Covid-19 pandemic has spread to 212 countries and territories, with more than 245,000 deaths reported so far.
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Linkedin Stevie Emilia (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sun, May 3, 2020 16:47 625 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd59f0fd 1 Art & Culture #MuseumMACAN,#art,#culture,#artists,#Jakarta,#Indonesia,#COVID19,#MelatiSuryodarmo,#TisnaSanjaya,#AgusSuwage Free

As the pandemic bring the world to a standstill, art communities have come up with creative ways to survive, from putting on shows online, holding virtual auctions and, a latest one, holding an arisan (rotating savings gathering and raffle popular among housewives) that will give lucky winners the prize of an art piece.

The idea came from one of Indonesias leading museums, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara (Museum MACAN).

Responding to the crisis, the museum invited art lovers to purchase mystery artworks through the Arisan Karya (artwork raffle) event at a flat rate of Rp 1 million (US$69).

The initiative also gives a rare chance for art lovers to acquire a piece by a leading Indonesian artist or yet-to-be-discovered star. Some leading Indonesian artists, including Melati Suryodarmo, Tisna Sanjaya, Saleh Husein and Agus Suwage, have pledged their support.

Arisan is a social tradition where participants contribute to an agreed amount of money that is then collected and raffled at a weekly or monthly gathering. The participants whose names are drawn at the raffle, take home the money.

At its core, arisan is a tradition that values trust and support among participants. In the same spirit, the museum announced that Arisan Karya was designed to be an act of support that will drive other acts of support, giving much-needed funds to artists at this time of crisis.

The initiative also aims to stimulate the artistic community during a time of need and great uncertainty and is a gesture to recognize and remember the important role that art has in society.

This is a fun initiative that has serious outcomes. Right now, artists are wondering when their next paycheck will come. The art system, at the best of times, is hard to maneuver and understand  it is not all art fairs and parties  but its real, often under-recognized work can benefit society, which we need to support, the museums director Aaron Seeto said in a statement.

Museum MACAN has reached out across its networks to launch an open call to artists across Indonesia, encouraging them to create artworks  which may be paintings, sculptures, prints or photographs  for Arisan Karya.

The public can join the initiative by purchasing a ticket, which will later be raffled via Instagram Live on @museummacan and @shopatmacan_id. Each ticket sold receives an artwork.

The raffle will be held in three rounds in May, June and July, with the first one scheduled to take place on May 18-28 on shop.museummacan.org. All artworks are anonymous until revealed through the raffle.

Artists or charities of their choice will receive 70 percent of the collected funds. The balance is allocated to facilitate artists in sharing knowledge with the public through online resources, such as practical art tips, workshop tutorials at home or talks that will be delivered through Museum MACANs digital platforms.

We really hope that this initiative will not only motivate the local art community but also be a source of joy for art enthusiasts who are working and studying from home, Seeto says.

In a time like this, we have to postpone the physical experience of encountering art. But it is also a time like this that should inspire action.
Kellan Lutz looked hunky while out walking his dog Koda around LA on Saturday.

The Twilight saga star, 35, made the most of the sunny day, flashing his muscular arms in a sleeveless shirt.

For the outing, Kellan opted not to wear a mask, but did have a bandanna tied around his neck just in case.

Stroll: Kellan Lutz looked muscular when he took his dog Koda for a walk on Saturday

Kella and Koda walked a bit before arriving at the park. There, they played a solid round of fetch.

Kellan and wife Brittany are happily quarantining with their pup of four-years.

It comes after a tough time for the couple, who enduring the stillbirth of their daughter in February.

Play ball! The Twilight actor and his furry friend played fetch at the park

Quarantine crew: Kellan and wife Brittany are happily quarantining with their pup of four-years

But Kellan opened up about how faith has lead them through the devastating experience during an April interview for LaPalme magazine.

'There is no easy way, but I'm just so grateful for our faith and sharing the blood of Jesus Christ.

'We don't have all the understanding in the world. There are some tough days where you'll see the sonogram, and you'll see her cute little nose that she had.

'But then again, we are so grateful she is in heaven, and we remind ourselves that she didn't have to come into this world and deal with heartbreak, and she gets to be with Jesus. It's bittersweet.'

Tragedy: Kellan said he is 'so grateful' his Christian faith helped him and wife Brittany through the devastating stillbirth of their baby girl

The What Men Want actor said he 'trusts' that he and his wife will go on to have multiple children.

He added: 'But I'm happy to trust that one day we'll have a big family.'

The 'FBI: Most Wanted' actor recalled how he'd noticed a change in Brittany's bump but 'never thought' it was a sign of the devastation to come.

He said: 'We had just returned from our Babymoon in Fiji. We had such a great trip, but I remember her stomach was looking smaller. The thing for me is that I never thought this was a possibility.'

Kellan previously admitted he and his wife are planning to 'try again' to have a child as soon as the 'time is right'.

Loss: The 35-year-old Twilight actor's wife, 31, delivered their first child six and a half months into her pregnancy in February, with the grieving couple relying on their strong beliefs to help guide them through the ordeal

United: Speaking to LaPalme magazine, Kellan said: 'There is no easy way, but I'm just so grateful for our faith and sharing the blood of Jesus Christ' (pictured January 2019)

He tweeted last month: '@brittanylynnlutz you have been unbelievable during this hard past month! So grateful for you! I wanted to give a shout out to you all for all your love and support as we lost our baby girl who became stillborn at 6.5 months.

'We can't wait to try again when the time is right God willing.

'There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: A time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.'

'Ecclesiastes 3:1, 3-8 NIV I've had my season of mourning and now I'm ready to dance. Love you all! -K. (sic)'

In February, Kellan broke the tragic news to his followers with a photo of his wife showing off her bare baby bump.

From K: Kellan praising his wife for working through the pain of the last month writing: '@brittanylynnlutz you have been unbelievable during this hard past month!'

He wrote at the time: 'Taking heartbrokenness to a whole new level but Grateful for these past 6 months and the journey itself.'

Adding: 'In life we might not get the answers to all of our questions but we will always remain faithful! God will restore. I love you @brittanylynnlutz. ... Can't wait to see our baby girl in Heaven when God calls us home. (sic)'

While Brittany also mourned the loss of her baby, as she wrote: 'Baby girl, it was my absolute honor and pleasure to be your mom these last 6 months. I did my best and it was an absolute joy seeing your little face all those times on that screen and feeling your tiny kicks.'

Still struggling with the loss she added: 'I don't know why it happened the way it did, but part of me finds so much peace knowing you never experienced pain or heartache and never will. You're in the arms of Jesus now and one day we will get to meet you for real. Until I see you in heaven... your mommy loves you so much. (sic)'

Two weeks after their announcement Brittany shared how she was choosing to feel the good and the pain.

She posted a photo on Instagram of hearts drawn in chalk on a sidewalk.

'After tragedy or heartache it can be tempting to shut down so you don't feel pain. Aka survival mode.

'But when you shut yourself off to pain, you also shut yourself off to the things that can bring you joy too. I've done that in the past.

'More than once. I can tell you from experience it takes a LOT of work to soften your heart after you've let it go hard,' she wrote in the caption for her nearly 52,000 followers.

'Throughout the last two weeks I've worked SO hard to remain soft.

'As much as I'm tired of falling apart, and want to be done finding myself crying in a ball on the floor, if I allowed myself to fall into the temptation to shut down, I know I'd be missing those special moments that have made me smile and laugh and feel happy again,' she added.

Hopeful message: Two weeks after the stillbirth Brittany took to Instagram with a hopeful message

Brittany then explained the photo. 'Today Kel and I were walking after church and I saw this sidewalk full of hearts.

'Instead of being numb to avoid all the things that remind me of being pregnant just two short weeks ago, I was able to see a sidewalk full of hearts as a little hug for my heart letting me know God's got us. He's not done writing my story,' she posted.

'Like my doctor said the day I found out our sweet baby girl didn't have a heartbeat anymore: 'This isn't the end of your story. This is just a crappy chapter, but you're going to get through this.' 

For support after a stillbirth or neonatal death in the US call the Starlight Legacy Foundation on 952-715-7731 or email info@starlegacyfoundation.org

For support after a stillbirth or neonatal death in the UK call Sands on 0808 164 3332 or email helpline@sands.org.uk
Canberra, May 3 (UNI) "Five Eyes", which is an intelligence alliance of five countries - United States, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom and New Zealand- has accused China of willfully concealing information about the Novel Coronavirus outbreak.

Australian newspaper 'The Saturday Telegraph' quoted the anglophone alliance's 15-page dossier, in which China has been accused of destroying virus samples.

According to the newspaper, the document charges China for "suppression and destruction of evidence" pointing out several indiscretions, including destruction of virus samples at genomic labs, not publicly sharing genome sequencing, and keeping data on asymptomatic 'silent carriers' a secret.
The input material supply from China ha resumed, but some American and European buyers have asked to delay deliveries for the orders they had previously placed.

This has dealt a strong blow to Garment 10 JSC. Than Duc Viet, general director of the company, predicted that the company may have to lay off workers. However, he has not made any official announcement.



Buyers from the US and EU, including Germany, Spain and Italy, have also stopped receiving deliveries from VitaJean, commencing from March 13 and March 17, respectively.



VitaJeans president Pham Van Viet said that the losses include capital buried in input materials previously bought to prepare for the production. Cash flow also may not occur because European and American buyers are facing difficulties. In addition, the company still has to pay workers every month.



The efforts by VitaJean to shift to make face masks has not helpef the company increase turnover. Selling 500,000 face masks a day is a difficult task as there are 20 large manufacturers making products in the country.

Vietnamese textile and garment exporters are facing lower demand and buyers have stopped receiving deliveries. According to Le Tien Truong, general director of Vinatex, this had never happened before in the history of the manufacturer.

Vietnamese textile and garment exporters are facing lower demand and buyers have stopped receiving deliveries. According to Le Tien Truong, general director of Vinatex, this had never happened before in the history of the manufacturer.



In 2019, Vinatex exported $2.9 billion worth of textile and garment products. But the figure may be unattainable this year.



Analysts warn that the goal of exporting $42 billion worth of textiles and garments this year may be out of reach. The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) reported that in the first two months of 2020, exports increased slightly by 2.2 percent, much lower than the growth rate of 11.8 percent of the same period last year.



They also warned that a high number of workers in the industry will become redundant. Vinatex is considering cutting the number of working days and pay minimum wage to workers. Meanwhile, VitaJean has asked 50 percent of workers to stay off work and wait for jobs, commencing from April 5. The proportion may reach 80 percent from April 15.



With nearly 1,000 workers, VitaJean will need VND5 billion a month to pay minimum wage of VND2 million a month to workers.



With the high openness of the economy, Vietnam may bear big impact on economic growth and jobs. Vo Tri Thanh, a respected economist, estimated that 80 percent of businesses may go bankrupt if the pandemic lasts until June.

Mai Lan

Pandemic-hit garment producers find way to weather crisis The COVID-19 pandemic has left Vietnams textile and garment sector in deep trouble because of rising order cancellations and delays, but some producers have found a way around and been able to weather the storm.
By Trend

Over the past 24 hours, Armenian armed forces have violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops 22 times, Trend reports referring to Azerbaijani Defense Ministry.

The Armenian armed forces were using large-caliber machine guns and sniper rifles.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding regions.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on the withdrawal of its armed forces from Nagorno Karabakh and the surrounding regions.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
Washington

Four months after a mysterious new virus began its deadly march around the globe, the search for a vaccine has taken on an intensity never before seen in medical research, with huge implications for public health, the world economy and politics.

Seven of the roughly 90 projects being pursued by governments, pharmaceutical makers, biotech innovators and academic laboratories have reached the stage of clinical trials. With political leaders increasingly pressing for progress, and with big potential profits at stake, drugmakers and researchers have signaled they are moving ahead at unheard-of speeds.

But the whole enterprise remains dogged by uncertainty about whether any coronavirus vaccine will prove effective, how fast it could be made available to millions or billions of people and whether the rush will sacrifice safety.

Some experts say the more immediately promising field might be the development of treatments to speed recovery from COVID-19, an approach that has generated some optimism in the last week through initially encouraging research results on remdesivir, an antiviral drug previously tried in fighting Ebola.

In an era of intense nationalism, the geopolitics of the vaccine race are growing as complex as the medicine. The months of mutual vilification between the United States and China over the origins of the virus have poisoned most efforts at cooperation between them. The U.S. government is already warning that American innovations must be protected from theft  chiefly from Beijing.

The intensity of the global research effort is such that governments and companies are building production lines before they have anything to produce.

"We are going to start ramping up production with the companies involved," Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the federal government's top expert on infectious diseases, said on NBC last week. "You don't wait until you get an answer before you start manufacturing."

Two of the leading entrants in the U.S., Johnson & Johnson and Moderna, have announced partnerships with manufacturing firms, with Johnson & Johnson promising 1 billion doses of an as-yet-undeveloped vaccine by the end of next year.

Not to be left behind, the Britain-based pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca said last week that it was working with a vaccine development project at the University of Oxford to manufacture tens of millions of doses by the end of this year.

With the demand for a vaccine so intense, there are escalating calls for "human-challenge trials" to speed the process: tests in which volunteers are injected with a potential vaccine and then deliberately exposed to the coronavirus.

Because the approach involves exposing participants to a potentially deadly disease, challenge trials are ethically fraught. But they could be faster than simply inoculating human subjects and waiting for them to be exposed along with everyone else.

There are big challenges to scaling up production and distribution. Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder, whose foundation is spending $250 million to help spur vaccine development, has warned about a critical shortage of medical glass.

Without sufficient supplies, there will be too few vials to transport the billions of doses that will ultimately be needed.

The scale of the problem and the demand for a quick solution are bound to create tensions between the profit motives of the pharmaceutical industry and the public's need for quick action to get any effective vaccines to as many people as possible.

So far, much of the research and development has been supported by governments and foundations. And much remains to be worked out when it comes to patents and what national governments will claim in return for their support and pledges of quick regulatory approval.

It is no surprise that while scientists and doctors talk about finding a "global vaccine," national leaders emphasize immunizing their own populations first. President Donald Trump said he is personally in charge of "Operation Warp Speed" to get 300 million doses into American arms by January.

Already, the administration has identified 14 vaccine projects it intends to focus on, a senior administration official said, with the idea of further narrowing the group to a handful that could go on, with government financial help and accelerated regulatory review, to meet Trump's goal.

But other countries are also signaling their intention to nationalize their approaches. The most promising clinical trial in China is financed by the government. And in India, the chief executive of the Serum Institute of India said most of its vaccine "would have to go to our countrymen before it goes abroad."

George Daley, dean of Harvard Medical School, said thinking in country-by-country rather than global terms would be foolhardy since it "would involve squandering the early doses of vaccine on a large number of individuals at low risk, rather than covering as many high-risk individuals globally to stop the spread around the world.

Given the proliferation of vaccine projects, the best outcome may be none emerging as a clear winner.

"Let's say we get one vaccine quickly but we can only get 2 million doses of it at the end of next year," said Anita Zaidi, who directs the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's vaccine development program. "And another vaccine, just as effective, comes three months later but we can make a billion doses. Who won that race?"

The answer, she said, "is we will need many different vaccines to cross the finish line."

Speed vs. safety

Some of the leading contenders for a coronavirus vaccine are now promising to have the first batches ready in record time, by the start of next year. They have accelerated their schedules by collapsing the standard vaccine timeline.

They are combining trials that used to be carried out one after the other. They are pushing their formulations into production, despite the risk that the trials will fail, leaving them with millions of useless doses.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

But some experts want to do even more to speed up the conveyor belt. Writing last month in the journal Vaccines, the vaccine developer Dr. Stanley Plotkin and Dr. Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at NYU Langone Medical Center, proposed infecting vaccinated volunteers with the coronavirus. The procedure might cut months or years off development but would put test subjects at risk. Even without these challenge trials, accelerated testing may run the risk of missing potential side effects.

"It will be extremely important to determine that does not happen," said Michel De Wilde, a former senior vice president of research and development at Sanofi Pasteur, a vaccine maker in France.

Nation vs. globe

In the early days of the crisis, Harvard was approached by Chinese billionaire Hui Ka Yan. He arranged to give roughly $115 million to be split between Harvard Medical School and its affiliated hospitals and the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Diseases for a collaborative effort that would include developing coronavirus vaccines.

"We are not racing against each other, we are racing the virus," said Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a professor at Harvard Medical School who is also working with Johnson & Johnson. "What we need is a global vaccine  because an outbreak in one part of the world puts the rest of the world at risk."

That all-for-one sentiment has become a mantra among many researchers, but it is hardly universally shared.

In India, the Serum Institute  the heavyweight champion of vaccine manufacturing  has signed agreements in recent weeks with the developers of four promising potential vaccines. But in an interview with Reuters, Adar Poonawalla, the company's chief executive, made it clear that at least initially any vaccine the company produces would have to go to India's 1.3 billion people.

The tension between those who believe a vaccine should go where it is needed most and those dealing with pressures to supply their own country first is one of the features of the global response.

The Trump administration has awarded grants of nearly half a billion dollars each to two U.S.-based companies, Johnson & Johnson and Moderna.

Paul Stoffels, the company's vice chairman and chief scientific officer, said in an interview that the Department of Health and Human Services understood "we can't pick up our research and move it" to the United States. But it made sure that the company joined a partnership with Emergent BioSolutions  a Maryland biological production firm  to produce the first big batches of any approved vaccine for the U.S.

"The political reality is that it be would very, very hard for any government to allow a vaccine made in their own country to be exported while there was a major problem at home," said Sandy Douglas, of the University of Oxford.

The Oxford vaccine team has already begun scaling up plans for manufacturing by half a dozen companies across the world, including China and India, plus two British manufacturers and the British-based multinational AstraZeneca.

In China, there are nine Chinese COVID-19 vaccines in development, involving 1,000 scientists and the Chinese military.

China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention predicted that one of the vaccines could be in emergency use by September, meaning that in the midst of the presidential election, Trump might see TV footage of Chinese citizens getting injections.

"It's a scenario we have thought about," a member of Trump's coronavirus task force said. "No one wants to be around that day."

It is one thing to design a vaccine in record time. It's a different challenge to manufacture and distribute billions of doses, transported at below-zero temperatures worldwide. Enormous logistical issues include basic manufacturing capacity to shortages of medical glass and stoppers that Gates and others warned about.
N Sathiya Moorthy By

The recent social media rumours about China wanting to dump the American dollar in favour of the nations own currency for international trade has since been found to be a rumour, a mischief of sorts. It is equally likely that someone, possibly not excluding China, may have indulged in kite-flying to test the waters, if only for the distant, post-Covid future.

Be it as it may, there is a message for India as to the possibilities on the China front, especially in relation to the nations Neighbourhood Policy. China may be better placed than in the pre-Covid era to hit where it hurts, and without firing a shot, be it from across the long land borders up north or the Indian Ocean waters, where China still remains an extra-regional power.

For long, strategic experts have concluded that China would not want any military engagement with India for a long, long time to come. They also agreed that China does not want to grow politically and economically to compete, both in the regional and global geostrategic space.

Unlike Pakistan, China understood it cannot weaken India through a thousand cuts, as the ISI continues to try despite always failing. Beijing has not held on to the theory after its early forays to fund and aid some of the Northeastern insurgency groups failed to help. Instead, China has spread its net around India since the turn of the century, and seems to be reaching where it wants India to be stuck in the neighbourhood.

Net-provider of security: The greater Indian focus on South Asia over the past decade and more, and Prime Minister Narendra Modis apt coinage of the Neighbourhood First phrase at his inauguration in May 2014, owes to a full understanding of Chinas motives and methods. Despite the Wuhan spirit displayed by Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping and the prompt follow-up with Chennai Connect, nothing has dissuaded Beijing from wooing Indias neighbours more than earlier.

In his time, Modis predecessor as prime minister, Manmohan Singh of the Congress, declared that India was the net provider of security for South Asian neighbours. The continuing Indian naval dominance in the Indian Ocean, then and since, and also the Quad construct involving the US, Australia and Japan, flows from such a strategic concern, which are for real.

However, China seems to be in no great hurry to rush through its military project, if any for South Asia, aimed at tying down India militarily and by extension economically, too, in particular. After all, wars burn money as none else, and India is in no position or mood to undertake a war, be it with China or Pakistan, short or long. This does not include any war that is forced on India.

Development spending: In this background, China seems to have done its calculations well. For a decade and more now, Beijing has been choosing Indias friendly neighbours for massive development spending. In comparison, while Indias economy has vastly improved over the past nearly three decades, it has not reached a stage where it can divert massive capital to the neighbourhood to help fund their developmental expenditure, at least over the short and medium terms.

This is where China has displayed an upper hand. In almost every country in Indias neighbourhood, starting from Sri Lanka and Maldives in the Indian Ocean region to Bangladesh, Nepal, Afghanistan and Pakistan, China has made huge investments in domestic infrastructure, to improve transportation and increase power generation, two of the major ingredients for greater and faster industrialisation.

New Delhi did try to encourage private Indian investors to chip in where the government itself cannot find the funds for developmental expenditure in neighbouring nations. The results have been mixed at best, but have not moved as fast as thoughtand was/is needed.

Soft-power influence: In this context, the argument is put forth that India did exert a lot of positive vibes and influence in the post-Independence past, when it was poorer than at present. Nations like Sri Lanka in the immediate neighbourhood were even aspiring to become another Singapore, but failed.

So, when Indias China war happened in 1962, there was a lot of sympathy and political support for India in the neighbourhood. Now, again, the support and sympathy remain, but the quality of the same has changed. There is an urgent need for India to strengthen its soft-power relations with individual neighbours and the neighbourhood as a whole.

Such soft-power projections do not necessarily include perceptions of common cultural affinities, which are at times frowned upon in the neighbourhood, for different reasons. Yet, there is no denying that through the past two-plus decades, India did deliberately end up losing the advantage, known in the neighbourhood as Indias traditional sphere of influence.

Reclaiming that position is not hard to do, but for that to happen, India needs to retune its global ambitions even more and recalibrate its understanding of the neighbourhood from the current perspectives of those nations as much as from New Delhis institutional memory, which is not always the right way to go about it.

N Sathiya Moorthy

Distinguished Fellow & Head of Chennai Initiative, Observer Research Foundation

(Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)
Results from two eagerly awaited clinical trials of the experimental anti-viral drug remdesivir showed it is effective against COVID-19, indicating for the first time the potential for medicines to help in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

These two rigorously done trials provide really the first evidence of the efficacy of any therapeutic for this disease, Lloyd Minor, MD, dean of the Stanford School of Medicine, said April 29 during a university town hall meeting (SUNet ID required). I think this is very encouraging in terms of the future.

Stanford began recruiting participants for the two trials in early March, when patients sick with the virus began showing up at its hospitals. Both trials took place at dozens of sites. One trial was a randomized, placebo-controlled study by the National Institutes of Health; the other, which had no placebo arm, was by Gilead Sciences, a company based in Foster City, California, that makes the drug.

On May 1, two days after early data from the remdesivir trials was released, the Food and Drug Administration approved emergency use of the drug for the treatment of COVID-19.

More than 60,000 people in the United States have been killed by the disease, according to data compiled by Stanford Medicine-compiled data.

Im very excited by the trial results, said Neera Ahuja, MD, principal investigator of the NIH-sponsored trial at Stanford and chief of the division of hospital medicine. Still, this is not a panacea. We dont know if this is the best treatment. Its an IV drug at this time and cant be given outside the hospital. We still need to look for the most effective drug.
Four Spaniards who were being repatriated because of the coronavirus crisis and two aircraft crew have died in a plane crash in Bolivia.

They were on a Bolivian Air Force (FAB) plane which went down after reporting technical difficulties as it headed for the city of Santa Cruz and turning back to its departure airport.

The bodies of the two crew members along with one male and three women passengers are now in a local hospital morgue ahead of the post-mortems.

The plane, FAB-051, crashed about six miles from the city of Trinidad, in north-eastern Bolivia, just before 2pm local time on Saturday.

The four Spaniards have been named as Francisco Jose Gallegos Gonzalez; Alba Aparicio Fornas; Yandira Oliverra Velarde; and Deliz Salvatierra Valverde.

Francisco and Deliz were husband and wife.

The plane crashed about six miles from the city of Trinidad, in north-eastern Bolivia, just before 2pm local time on Saturday

Alba had been working with an organisation called Psychologists Without Borders and had planned to travel around Bolivia after finishing a six-month placement before the Covid-19 crisis.

The four passengers were due to take a second repatriation flight home from Santa Cruz later this week.

The two Bolivians on the plane that went down, a Beechcraft Baron B-55, have been named as Favio Jerez and Richard Cossio.

Bolivian Defence Minister Luis Fernando Lopez Julio expressed his condolences to the dead in a tweet.

The plane, FAB-051, crashed about six miles from the city of Trinidad, in north-eastern Bolivia, just before 2pm local time on Saturday

The two Bolivians on the plane that went down, a Beechcraft Baron B-55, have been named as Favio Jerez and Richard Cossio (File picture of a Beechcraft Baron B-55)

An investigation into the accident is now underway.

Pictures from the scene showed the plane ripped in half in half and in flames.

Local reports said one of the six survived the initial impact but died on the way to hospital.

A Bolivian Air Force spokesman said in a statement: 'At 13.42 on May 2 a Beechcraft Baron B-55 plane which was undertaking a humanitarian flight, suffered an accident when it was transporting Spanish nationals for repatriation from Trinidad to Santa Cruz.

'Tragically the two crew and four passengers on board lost their lives.'
Mukesh Ranjan By

JHARKHAND: As Aditya Ranjan, posted as Deputy Development Commissioner of West Singhbhum, has changed the face of primary education with his innovative ideas by developing all 750 Anganwadi (rural childcare) centres, turning them into nutri-education centres where children are provided quality education besides taking all care about their mental and physical developments.



In order to make it work, Anganwadi sevikas (staff) have been imparted an intensive 80-hour training module, developed for the purpose so that holistic development of each and every child could be ensured at these centres.

Besides uniform and shoes, a sanitation kit, which includes nail-cutter, comb, tissue paper along with soap and other stuff, is provided to each student for keeping themselves clean and tidy. Anganwadi sevikas have been instructed to pay extra attention to the hygiene of the children. Thanks to the initiative by Ranjan, most centres in West Singhbhum now look like private playschools, attracting more and more students.



The neat and clean walls painted with numbers, alphabets, pictures of animals, birds along with the images Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Birsa Munda in these Anganwadi centres themselves explain the leap taken in the field of primary education by this tribal-dominated district of Jharkhand.

The idea, according to Ranjan, came to his mind when he was in his early years of probation in Deoghar. He had come across an Anganwadi sevika, a widow, who had spent all her remunerations in developing a centre and converted it into a modern one. Taking a cue from her, the 2015 IAS officer started implementing the same after taking charge as DDC in West Singhbhum.

To begin with, he selected Gitilipi Anganwadi centre as a pilot project and started making changes one by one, renovating the buildings with paint, plaster and functional toilets.

He has also transformed the entire curriculum of the centres. Within a period of less than two and a half years, he has changed the face of education in all 750 Anganwadi centres in the district.



Now, the focus is on holistic development of each and every child by providing quality education to them, besides taking all care of their physical and mental health, said the IAS Officer. West Singhbhum Deputy Commissioner Arwa Rajkamal lauds the initiatives taken by Ranjan.



It has really helped in motivating Anganwadi sevikas and children that ultimately improved the attendance of students across all the centres. I am getting reports that due to the unique techniques adopted by Angawadi sevikas, children are learning fast, said the deputy commissioner.
With spring break in full swing, Sophia Basile was looking forward to returning to school and seeing her friends, but the coronavirus pandemic caused her university to close for the rest of the semester midway through break.

Now, seven weeks later, shes isolating in her dads house and taking online classes.

I look outside and what the situation has come down to is a tiny virus, that started all the way in Wuhan, is now over here and controlling everything we do, and it sucks, said Basile, a sophomore law student at Suffolk University in Boston.

I feel like my education is being stripped away from me.

College students are one of the large groups affected by stay-at-home orders put in effect to protect people from the coronavirus. Entangled Solutions, a California-based education consultancy, reports that 4,234 higher education institutions and 25.8 million college students have been impacted by the pandemic.

The first impacts Basile felt were on March 10, when the university announced it was moving to virtual learning for the remainder of the semester.

Basile had to move off campus until further notice. Her hopes for going back to school after spring break were crushed.

For us to go from being in school every day, going to work, having a social life, to being locked in our houses, living in fear, not knowing when we will be able to go outside again and seeing people with masks and gloves on is scary and takes a huge physical and mental toll, Basile said.

While she misses her former life, she believes learning from home may be for the better  at least for now.

I have a mother who is very high risk, and if she gets the virus, the chances of her surviving are slim to none, said Basile. So, if its between going back to campus and (having) the possibility Ill get the virus, and staying home and doing online classes with a lower risk, I would much rather stay at home and practice social distancing.

Still, Basile said she does not want the fall semester to be done online, even though she knows shell obsess about the cleanliness of her desk and the hygiene of her classmates on return to campus.

I want to be able to go to college and I want to be able to see my friends, but at the same time theres no way we can be reassured that every square inch of the school is disinfected or everyone is healthy, she said.

I feel like were never going to be able to go back to the way things were before.

Attending classes in the closet

Professors are also adjusting to virtual learning and planning for the future. Salvador Bondoc, chairman of Quinnipiacs occupational therapy program, said he and his colleagues are doing their best to give students the value theyd receive on site.

Normally, students in clinical programs work hands on with patients and professionals. Now, students use videotaped therapy sessions for simulated patient observation and use a Quinnipiac-designed virtual experience to accomplish other competencies.

Absent the clinical setting, Boldoc said students are able to practice exercises with their families. It can be a rewarding experience for the families to see what their children are studying, he said.

Boldoc said there has been mostly positive reception to online learning in the OT department, but he knows its difficult for students to adjust.

He said in families with little space in their house and a bunch of commotion, for example, some students are attending classes in their closets.

Its very inconvenient for some students, and theyre struggling with finding balance, Boldoc said.

Boldoc said being empathetic and understanding is important.

Its not just about teaching, right? said Boldoc. Its also about being student-centered and understanding what theyre going through and then helping them manage that. They have multiple lives, right? Not just academic lives, their social lives, and whats happening in their own home. So [we need to] be able to respond to their needs and be flexible.

While Boldoc and his colleagues are working their hardest to make online learning succeed, hes concerned about the volume of preparation that needs to be done for classes in the fall.

We start classes, I think, Aug. 24 in the fall, and contracts begin Aug. 11 or something like that, said Boldoc. Im not sure if two weeks would would be enough for us to turn things around as rapidly as we did (in the spring) on a high-quality, highly efficient level. And, of course, the clinical piece we can only simulate so much. How are we going to do that?

In an email sent to faculty and staff Tuesday, Quinnipiac President Judy Olian said our strong preference is to complete the full 2020-21 academic year on campus, although she acknowledged several issues need to be resolved first.

To that end, Olian announced four multidisciplinary planning groups that will examine short- and long-term options related to public health, academics and operations, from business as usual to worst-case scenarios.

Our goal is to return Quinnipiac to a focus on advancing the university of the future, with the benefit of lessons learned from the COVID-19 crisis, Olian said.

Bryan Proctor is a student at Quinnipiac University.








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U.S. President Donald Trump has suggested that COVID-19 has been the product of a conspiracy and now it seems he may be quite right.





In the above video, Dr. Rashid A. Buttar reveals that COVID-19 has been the product of the genetic engineering on a naturally-occurring "coronavirus" in the human body.





Dr Buttar elaborates that viruses have been a normal part of human evolution which generally don't lead to illness. But COVID-19 was the product of controlled medical experiments by U.S. funders.





The same elites who have been denying the manmade origins of the COVID-19 and who are seeking to steer public policy on COVID-19 are the same elite backers of official COVID-19 bioweapon patents Dr Buttar reveals.

And now, the same Americans who have been funding the COVID-19 patent are now seeking to cash-in by using their power to back politicians who will endorse a mandatory vaccination program which will furthermore support the use of nanotechnology to microchip everyone so they can be controlled by the same group of fascists who own an Artificial Intelligence (AI) infrastructure owned by Google and other parts of the Deep State.





David Icke reveals that manipulative aliens are seeking to control and destroy who we are as humans by implementing an AI agenda to robotize humanity.





Crashing the global economy to bring about a New World Order "cashless society" is apparently part of this agenda.



These U.S. funders couldn't continue to pursue their illegal activities in the U.S., so they apparently picked Wuhan to continue their satanic activities.Wuhan, China was picked by these U.S. funders to be the centre of experiments to engineer the 5G COVID-19 bioweapon. However, what is more shocking is Dr. Buttar's revealing that the most vocal proponents in America that have championed fear, "social distancing" and a sought vaccination were the very financial-backers of medical experiments to genetically engineer the benign "coronavirus" into COVID-19.It's apparent that U.S. President Trump is fully aware of Deep State interests who for years have been researching on the creation of COVID-19 as a bioweapon.Dr Buttar elaborates that the same Deep State which has genetically engineered the COVID-19 and the use of 5G to attack human immune systems are the puppetmasters of the politicians who are presiding over the apparent "plandemic" which includes calls to support mass vaccinations.U.S. intelligence agencies are debunking a conspiracy theory, saying they have concluded that the new coronavirus was not manmade or genetically modified . But, who controls these agencies?When pushed on why he felt confident the novel coronavirus originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Trump vaguely said, "I can't tell you that, I'm not allowed to tell you that."
I cant even imagine looking somebody in the face and telling them, Youre laid off right now, and by the way, good luck with your health insurance during a pandemic.

The hotels pastry chef, Dallas Kee, was worried she would be one of the first people laid off. Some of her friends  pastry chefs at other hotels  had been.

Instead, the hotel has found other ways to make things work.

Our senior leaders, they were very much in constant communication with all the employees, letting them know what exactly was happening, what exactly they needed to do when the furloughs happened and then working tirelessly to get this PPE loan to bring the employees back, she said.

I really felt like that the senior management here, they were really looking out for the employees and not just for the bottom line.

Giving backThe Hotel at Auburn University is finding ways to give back to the community. It has partnered with the Hudson Family Foundation to provide meals to those in need. Its also partnered with EAMC, Van der Reijden said.
The history and works of Shakespeare & Company are revealed in 'Shakespeare & Company: When Action is Eloquence,' co-written by company member Bella Merlin and Founding Artistic Director Tina Packer.

New Book Looks at History, Work of Shakespeare & Company

LENOX, Mass.  The founding and philosophy of the internationally regarded Shakespeare & Company are now available in "Shakespeare & Company: When Action is Eloquence," co-written by company member Bella Merlin and Founding Artistic Director Tina Packer, with a special foreword by Artistic Director Allyn Burrows.

Drawing on previously unpublished material  including notebooks, lectures, interviews and rehearsal diaries  and the company's newly collated historical archive, the book provides insight into the works of a theater company, and sheds light on the role Shakespeare plays in the modern world.

Published by Routledge in March 2020, "Shakespeare & Company: When Action is Eloquence" is now on sale. Beginning Wednesday, May 6, Shakespeare & Company will present a series of virtual events to promote it.

"As we currently feel the challenges of social separation, now could be the perfect time to read this book," Merlin said. "The work initially pioneered by Tina Packer and Kristin Linklater in 1978  sustained and emboldened by Shakespeare & Company for over 40 years through training, education and performance  heads straight to the heart of collective storytelling.

"I'm humbled, yet proud, to have been entrusted by Tina Packer, the late Dennis Krausnick, Kevin G. Coleman, and Allyn Burrows with telling the Company's collective story: it's arguably one of the biggest acts of love and service I've ever felt inspired to undertake."

The book is the first comprehensive investigation into the internationally acclaimed company founded in 1978 in Lenox by actor-director Packer and voice pioneer Linklater, with the idea of the transformative power of Shakespeare's language at its heart. The book poses the questions: Why act Shakespeare? What is his relevance in the 21st century? The answers to these questions lie at the center of this journey into Shakespeare & Company's aesthetics, pedagogy and practice.

"My relief at getting the book out about the training, education and performance methods of Shakespeare & Company is enormous," Packer said. "I hope others will be inspired and can use the knowledge we have put together over half a century to go even further! Theater not only tells the stories of our lives; the training methods we practice hold secrets of the body and the brain: it is life itself."

The book includes material on Shakespeare & Company's founding and early history, as well as its aesthetic, rooted in Elizabethan theater principles of the art of rhetoric, structure of the verse, voice and movement, clown, fight and actor/audience relationship. Additionally, the book encompasses the vocational components of its actor training Intensives, practical pedagogy of its education programs, and insights into its unique approaches to performance.

Notably the book also explores the impact and legacy of its three lifetime founding members: Dennis Krausnick (actor training), Kevin G. Coleman (education) and Packer herself.

"This is a powerful book," Burrows said. "Not only is it a page turner that delves into a unique philosophy and methodology around Shakespeare training, it also makes a compelling case for why we should continue to hold theater and theater companies in the forefront of our collective desires. As beautifully outlined by Bella Merlin and Tina Packer, Shakespeare & Company has taken the words of its namesake playwright and put them into practice with one goal, to learn what it is to be human through the union of language, heart, and mind."

The virtual book launch events include:

 Wednesday, May 6: Video Interview with Tina Packer and Bella Merlin, hosted by Allyn Burrows, sent via Shakespeare & Company's Newsletter and posted to Facebook at 11 a.m.

 Thursday, May 7: Facebook Live with Bella Merlin and Tina Packer from 4 to 4:45 p.m. on the Shakespeare & Company Facebook page. Additionally, the company will host virtual a book giveaway; copies will be signed and personalized by Packer.

 Thursday, May 14: Video Interview with Kevin G. Coleman, Tina Packer and Bella Merlin, hosted by Allyn Burrows, sent via Shakespeare & Company's Newsletter and posted to Facebook at 11 a.m.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Sunday paid tributes to Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, who was killed in an encounter with terrorists in Kashmir, and announced Rs 50 lakh and a job for his kin.

Colonel Sharma was from Bulandshahar in UP. The state government will also build a 'Gaurav Dwar' in his memory in village Parwana, an official statement said.

The officer was among five security personnel killed in the encounter at a village in north Kashmir's Handwara area.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A male pedestrian has been rushed to hospital after becoming trapped between two vehicles when a van "failed to stop for police and crashed".

Officers indicated for a van to stop at around 11am in Haringey, at which point "the van drove off a short distance" before crashing into two parked cars, police said.

"A pedestrian became trapped between the two vehicles," a spokesman for Met Police said. "He was treated by paramedics at the scene before being taken to hospital."

While the force awaits an update on his condition, London Ambulance Service (LAS) said the man suffered injuries to his chest, pelvis and ankle.

He was rushed to a major trauma centre "as a priority", a spokesman for LAS said.

The driver of the van was also injured and was treated by paramedics at the scene, at the junction of Palace Gates Road and Bedford Road.

Met Police also awaits an update on the driver's condition.

A police spokesman said: "Shortly before 11am a marked police car indicated for a van to stop in Buckingham Road, Haringey.

"The van then drove off a short distance to the junction of Palace Gates Road/ Bedford Road & collided with two parked vehicles.

"A pedestrian became trapped between the two vehicles. He was treated by LAS at scene before being taken to hospital - condition update awaits.

"The driver of the van is being treated at the scene by paramedics. Condition update awaits. Enquiries continue."

A LAS spokesperson added: "We were called at 10.56am to reports of a road traffic collision in Palace Gates Road, Wood Green.

"We sent two ambulance crews, a medic in a fast response car and an incident response officer to the scene. We also dispatched Londons Air Ambulance.

We treated a man at the scene for injuries to his chest, pelvis and ankle and took him to a major trauma centre as a priority.
There is a stench about our politics that nobody should be happy about. During the last presidential election proceedings, then candidate Trump was lambasted with accusations surrounding allegations of sexual improprieties.

Fast forward to the Kavanauh confirmation hearing and the medias bludgeoning of the man who would be Supreme Court justice. The media and the left jumped on the band wagon of the Me Too movement in an attempt to derail the nomination of Kavanaugh.

Now we have a similar situation with Joe Biden and yet for the most part the media is silent while the political left completely discounts the victims account and continues to support good old Joe.

I have no idea of the credibility of the alleged victims of either Kavanaugh or Biden but I do know the political left hasnt treated the situations the same.

It stands to reason that when one's political agenda dictates the support or lack of, it is purely partisan and ultimately wrong.

The very ones opposing Kavanaugh (Pelosi, those seeking vice presidential nominations) are completely supportive of Joe Biden even though the situations a very similar.

Consistency or lack there of is disgustingly obvious. It would seem that political agenda takes precedence over common sense and consistency.

Hypocrisy abounds and I guess were supposed to just ignore it and move along as if theres nothing to see here.

Mike Cox

* * *

Many claim to have moral standards or beliefs but their own actions dont conform with their claims. This whole pandemic that is the weaponization of accusations of sexual harassment is disgusting. It is purely political. The evidence is clear if you have a D after your name you get very different treatment than those with an R.

One after another of the opportunists and media types lined up before the cameras to profess their absolute belief in Christine Blasey-Ford during the Kavanaugh hearings. Was it coincidental that many of the same professed their absolute belief in the unseemly stories told repeatedly by Michael Avenatti? Was it coincidental many of the same believed everything the World Health Organization has told about China and COVID-19?

Theres a common thread here and it is greater than hypocrisy. When does hypocrisy morph into fraud? We should ask that question of every politician running for national office. Who do they believe and why?

Mike Cox, I believe you. What you said is true, hypocrisy abounds. And in some cases it goes much farther.

Ralph Miller

* * *

The once respected and powerful Democratic party is self imploding at the speed of light. My family was Kennedy era Democrats and stayed the course for generations. We were very proud of their once promising direction.

However, something went terribly wrong with the Democrats as they absolutely dont believe in equal judgment as in the case with Joe Biden and the sexual allegations against him. He should come under the very scrutiny that Mr. Kavanaugh came under by being forced to defend himself in public hearings on national TV. The Democrats constantly are on witch hunts and doing absolutely zero for the American people. The elected Democrats in Congress and the Senate have slid so far to the left with socialist enthusiasm, cover up their internal crime, accuse the innocent, scorn the constitution, all while neglecting the American people for their quest to control all power.

Biden has been accused of sexual assault and should be tried, Clinton destroyed classified documents and should be tried, The FBI has lied over and over again destroying innocent people's lives and all involved should be tried, to name a few. Let's correct the double standard the Democrats support, they should step up to the plate and take their turn at defending themselves just as Trump, Kavanaugh, Flynn and others had to do.

The shining light in all of this is that the Democrats are assuring Trump a gigantic landslide victory in November by their hate speech and never-ending witch hunt as many respectable Democrats have had enough of their party and are flipping to the Republican side. Many of these are personal friends and respected individuals Ive known for years. Interestingly, if this is happening within my circle of friends then I can only imagine how the switch is spreading across our nation.

My suggestion to the Democrats is to find true statesmen / women to replace your old and new guard. Nance Pelosi is the face of the Democrats and what a disgusting face she is just in the fact of her tearing up the Sate of the Union speech by President Trump for the world to she her hate and contempt.

I am very thankful I changed to the Republican party many years ago and hope and pray many other decent and good Democrats will eventually see the light and do the dame.

By the way, is it true Nancy held up stimulus funding until she got $25 million attached at the end of the stimulus package to go to the Kennedy Center where her daughter may be a director? If Im wrong in any of the above please show me where and correct me with facts. I promise I have an open mind and will not be offended.

I for one would welcome true statesmen/women in the Democratic party with dignity and good morals in this country again for checks and balances. However I bleed Republican as long as the Republicans they stay the current course.

God bless Trump and praying for Democrats to see the light,

Michael Mansfield


From deploying tens of thousands of home videoconferencing kits to travelling through the night in search of screen monitors, technology chiefs across Asia are rebooting banks for a new era of flexible working ushered in by the coronavirus pandemic.

The health crisis has forced companies across the globe to rethink how to keep business ticking when staff are barred from the office by travel restrictions and shutdowns in cities from New York to Singapore.

The technical challenges of the world's largest work-from-home experiment have been particularly exacting for bankers and traders, who are subject to a vast array of regulations put in place since the 2007-08 global financial crisis. Staff often work with finely tuned set-ups featuring as many as six monitors at their desks to access financial data in real-time.

Stuart Gurr, Deutsche Bank's group chief information officer for Asia-Pacific, was tasked with ensuring 25,000 staff members across 14 countries in the region could remotely access their desktops, stay in contact with colleagues and clients and create effective workspaces in relatively small flats in cities, such as Hong Kong and Singapore.

It was an operation that would normally take weeks or months, but he had to do it within days, Gurr said.

"Remote working hasn't been part of banking's core DNA," Gurr said. So the bank had to take extraordinary measures such as deploying 50,000 videoconferencing sets globally over two weeks in February to keep employees connected.

Banks are considered essential businesses by many governments, with regulators asking them to lend to struggling businesses and keep the financial markets running smoothly.

The Herculean task of keeping tens of thousands of employees connected when they cannot venture into the office " to trade, conduct initial public offerings or engage with clients " fell on operations and information technology staff.

Citigroup, for example, was forced to book blocks of hotel rooms next door to its call centres in India and the Philippines in March to ensure employees were available as local authorities instituted strict lockdowns on travel. Those rooms remain in use.

Story continues

The American bank and its rivals adapted in other ways. Citigroup conducted 10 bond and equity capital raising roadshows virtually in the past two weeks alone, including a US$650 million international stock sale by Taiwanese electronics manufacturer and Apple supplier Yageo.

Even as the city's civil servants prepare to return to the office next week, Citigroup still has about 70 per cent of its staff in Hong Kong working from home and other banks have up to 100 per cent of their staff working remotely in parts of the region that remain under lockdown.

At Deutsche Bank, Gurr said the bank received little notice of full lockdowns going into effect in Manila and the Maharashtra state in India and his team scrambled to secure equipment for back-office workers who were reduced to accessing the internet by mobile phones at home.

The bank sourced thousands of laptops and two-factor authentication tokens in days, with one staff member driving across the country to pick up 300 laptops to take to its technology and operations support centre in India.

But Gurr was not just competing with banks. Companies from across industries were racing to suppliers in search of laptops and other equipment, he said.

"Everyone was facing the same problem at exactly the same time. Being decisive and acting quickly was critical," Gurr said. "If you waited a day or two to decide on your strategy, laptops you wanted would have been gone."

Goldman Sachs also was forced to hunt down equipment for its staff and bolster the bandwidth of its internal infrastructure in March to handle the larger number of people working from home. That included sending a team in the middle of the night in a warehouse in India to secure additional monitors for employees.

Standard Chartered has increased the capacity of its virtual private network system by more than 600 per cent since the beginning of February as most of its 84,000 employees globally continue to work from home, a spokeswoman said.

The threat of cyberattacks added to the tension. Email phishing scams, many related to the pandemic, have risen dramatically this year, prompting the United States and the United Kingdom cybersecurity officials to issue a joint warning on April 8 about potential scams and malware attacks.

Paul Jackson, Asia-Pacific leader for cyber risk at Kroll, said banks lose a lot of the control they have to monitor their systems when employees are out of the office. "The protections on their employees' systems may not be adequate for this new environment," Jackson said.

In April, HSBC's new cybersecurity Index found that 16 per cent of Hong Kong residents surveyed incurred financial losses as a result of cyber scams, losing HK$2,811 (US$363) on average and only about 8.5 per cent of Hongkongers have an advanced understanding of cybersecurity best practices.

Despite the challenges, remote working is likely to remain a larger part of the banking industry for years to come, according to Gurr, the Deutsche Bank executive.

"The digital workplace will be changed forever," Gurr said. "People will become much more effective at working in this way."

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright  2020 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Copyright (c) 2020. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
Officers responding to a report of fish in a hot tub at a Lancaster County home found 15 dead fish inside, Northern Lancaster County Regional police say.

The report came in around 11 a.m. Thursday, at a home in the area of Holly Tree Road and Pond Vista Lane in Penn Township, NLCRPD says.

Officers found the floating fish and after talking with the homeowner, learned they were put in the tub as a result of a new relationship and old boyfriend conflict, police say.

Investigators were able to identify all the people involved, and the homeowner declined charges.

Police say they only investigated the criminal aspects of the situation, not anything considering licensing or fish or game-related offenses.

Read more on PennLive:
I wish to make use of this occasion of the International Workers Day to salute and pay my respect to the working masseswho are making boundless sacrifices in the face of challenges before the nation caused by COVID  19 outbreak.



Many were the challenges we faced and overcame throughout history. In each such instance, working class in the country is the segment that was directly affected and at the forefront. History has proven their resilience and commitment, which, indeed is a great credit to the working class. It is certain that we will win the battle against COVID  19 as we had conquered all the difficulties in the past,hand in hand with the working class.



International Workers Day is an opportunity to showcase the unity, strength and revolutionary spirit of working people to the world. The global working community has lost the opportunity to celebrate May Day this time due to the global pandemic. Nevertheless, I am confident that their determination to create a better and just society will remain the same.



Our government,despite difficult circumstances, did not disrupt the daily life of the working people. We not allow any room for such a situation to occur. Similarly, we will take steps to secure daily livelihood of the workforce by ensuring the functioning of the production and service sectors while mitigating the effects of the epidemic.



Last year the working class of our country had to forego May Day celebrations due to the Easter Sunday carnage. Even though we have ended that inhumaneness, due to unexpected world epidemic situation, this time too,May Day celebrations and processions will not be held. This decision was taken according to the guidelines prescribed by the health authorities. Nevertheless, we should pursuethe struggle to achieve just rights. May theaspirations of this International Workers' Day may further enhance the courage for the collective efforts of rebuildingthe Sri Lankan nation and the economy of the country.



I salute the Sri Lankan working class.

April 30, 2020 Gotabaya Rajapaksa
Healthcare workers on Sunday had an "inspiring" start to the day as helicopters hovered over hospitals in the city and showered flower petals to thank the "corona warriors".

While the workers were "elated" and "overwhelmed" by the gesture, they also said it will send out a message to those who have stigmatised and humiliated them.

A fleet of military jets carried out a spectacular fly-past over the national capital as part of a nationwide exercise to express gratitude to lakhs of doctors, paramedics, sanitation staff and other frontline workers engaged in fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

The military jets, including Sukhoi-30 MKI, MiG-29 and Jaguar, flew over Rajpath, Delhi's centrepiece boulevard, and then orbited over the city for around 30 minutes from 11 am.

More than 200 healthcare workers in the national capital have been affected by the coronavirus.

Dr Meenakshi Bhardwaj, MS of RML Hospital, said the healthcare workers felt "elated", "overwhelmed" and "honoured" by the gesture.

"It is a thoughtful gesture to thank the healthcare workers, who are risking their lives and leaving behind their families to serve people. People have been aggressive towards doctors in some instances and this is a message for them. It is a morale booster," she added.

"The forces have done what people have not done -- giving due recognition and according respect to doctors, who are putting their lives on the line like the Army does for the nation. The gesture is really heartwarming," said Dr Neeraj Gupta, professor in the Department of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at the Safdarjung Hospital.

He said even the prime minister had appealed to people not to mistreat doctors and healthcare workers and on the day of the "Janata Curfew", urged them to clap in the honour of the corona warriors.

"Despite all these pleas, the frontline workers have faced the wrath of those very people for whom they are working," he said.

Dr Nitesh Gupta, nodal officer of COVID-19 and assistant professor in the Department of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at the Safdarjung Hospital, compared the healthcare workers to Army personnel.

"Like the Army stays at the forefront, even the healthcare personnel are at the forefront now battling the deadly novel coronavirus and we appreciate the mutual admiration for each other," he said.

Nursing officer Manju Dahiya, who is deployed at the COVID-19 ward at the Safdarjung Hospital, said, "It was such a nice gesture on the part of the Indian Army. We feel proud, motivated and inspired. It is so good to know that the country is with you and recognising your contribution."



Arockia Mary A, a nursing officer in the AIIMS COVID-19 screening area, echoed the views of her colleagues and said now it is time for the citizens of the country, for whom they are constantly working, leaving their families at home.

"Because attacks on heathcare personnel hurt their morale. We are always ready to help people, they should support us too," she said.

At the Delhi government-run LNJP Hospital, healthcare workers stepped out when the flower petals were showered and clapped in response to the gesture.

Dr JC Passey, Medical Director of the hospital, said, "It is a very good gesture to thank the healthcare workers. It acts as a motivation for them to fight this battle and even motivates those, who are a little reluctant or hesitant to deal with infected patients. The gesture will also act as a strong deterrent to those who have humiliated healthcare workers, who have been at the forefront of fighting the coronavirus.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Willie Coonan built a blue-chip property agency off the cuff. As an aide memoire, Willie J wrote notes on the back of his hand. By the end of the day, the left hand of this natural-born networker was inky blue with names and phone numbers.

With no more space on the flesh, the immaculately laundered double cuff took more memos. Before retiring to bed, the reminders were transcribed on to yellow Post-it stickers. And they would form the basis of the next day's work, setting up deals and selling property.

When Willie said he would "get back to you" he meant it. Every square inch of his desk was covered in hundreds of Post-its, as was the car dashboard and speedometer. The little notes were the making of a successful and respected commercial and residential real estate business.

In 1961, Willie Coonan, then 18, joined the family business established in 1892 by his grandfather, Edward A Coonan. Willie's father Billy died young and he served his apprenticeship under his widowed mother Eileen, who took over the reins of the business.

Based in Maynooth, Coonan's already had a reputation for selling prime farmland in north Kildare and south Meath when Willie took the helm in 1978. He worked incredibly hard, establishing a reputation as an expert in the area of stud farm valuations and sales. He was directly involved in the sale of more than 60 stud farms and properties including Ireland's first 1m farm, Bushfield, near Castledermot. The sale hit the headlines in the late 1970s and a report captured the excitement as Willie, with gavel in hand, took the competing bids. "It was similar to hearing that Roger Bannister had run a mile in less than four minutes. For Willie Coonan who is the fourth generation of his family in the auctioneering business it was a great personal triumph. His brilliance was in taking the 1m bid in his stride and fighting for every last penny of the remaining 183,000," the Irish Independent report stated.

Willie loved the romance of property and the white-hot heat of a high-octane auction, yet privately he was shy, quietly spoken, easy going, with impeccable manners and a gentle chivalry. But business allowed him to find an outgoing personality. He was at the heart of the sales of Carton House Hotel, Maynooth; Humewood Castle, Wicklow; Greenmount, Limerick (now Limerick Racecourse); Ballymacol Stud, Dunboyne; Dollys Grove, Dunboyne; Castlesize, Sallins; Ballymaglassan Stud, Batterstown; Ballysheehan Stud, Cashel; Baroda Stud, Newbridge and Derrinstown Stud. Willie's son, Will, has headed the company in recent years with business partner Philip Byrne. But Willie remained involved daily as a consultant until his death at home last week, aged 76. He died peacefully in his sleep from a suspected heart attack. Willie is survived by his wife Mary and children Will, Sally and Lisa, sons- and daughters-in-law, seven grandchildren and brother, Eddie, and sister, Marie.

A private funeral has taken place but a public celebration will be announced later.
The spring semester is usually a time for juniors and seniors to visit colleges, making final decisions on where the want to attend in the fall. With college campuses closed, like its educational programs, colleges are moving their tours online.

For Jocelyn Nordwall, a senior at Jacksonville High School, had to reevaluate her college plans after MacMurray College announced its closure last month, leaving her to pick a new school based entirely on online tours and phone calls.

I had to do a virtual tour, because obviously I couldnt go to the campus, Nordwall said.

Nordwall was set on MacMurray College so hadnt looked at other schools. Looking online and talking with counselors on the phone, she has decided on the University of Illinois-Springfield where she plans to studying nursing.

Using online platforms, Nordwall said shes talking with current or former students, but said she feels likes shes missing out on a large experience by being able to interact in person.

Id like to see it in person rather than just online, she said. I hope to be able to see if before the start of the fall semester.

It isnt just the campus that she wanted to see though. Nordwall said she would have liked to have more interaction with the schools faculty.

I dont get to meet the professors  itd be nice to see how the professors are, how they teach, see the classrooms, Nordwall said.

Jacksonville High School senior Chrissi Batty plans to attend Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville without getting to explore the campus or meet current students.

We are supposed to go on a mandatory visit, but it was cancelled and there were no other times we could go, Batty said. Ive been doing virtual tours, but its tough because I didnt get a chance to explore the campus.

Batty said there are things that you only learn and see by visiting in person, something else she and her fellow seniors will miss out on as they wait for things to reopen.

Most college hold incoming events for freshmen, something Batty said allows them to make connections prior to the start of the school year.

Its a missed opportunity to socialize and make friends right off the bat, Batty said. We lose the chance to bond with other new students that would have been there.

The colleges are also having to do things differently. While many schools offer online tours all year long, they are relying on those virtual programs to attract new students.

Evan Wilson, dean of admission and student financial service, the school had to rethink how to interact with perspective students.

The face-to-face interaction is an important part of the process, Wilson said. This has changed all that and weve had to cancel our admitted students event.

While the school has had virtual tours, Wilson said they are more reliant on those to attract students.

The school has extended its decision date to June 1 and hopes to be able to open back up for in-person tours.

We know this isnt the same as being on campus, Wilson said.
A Second Amendment supporter who created a Facebook group in support of Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield, says the senator tried to take some control of it, and then threatened him with legal action and denied knowing him after he refused.

Jonathan Scott, a GOP activist who moved from Chesterfield County to Maryland last summer, created a Second Amendment Facebook group in September as gun rights supporters picked up political steam. Scott, describing himself as pure grassroots, said he doesnt work for campaigns.

Chase and her staff took interest in his group after Democrats won control of the legislature in November and the group was growing, he said. Chase joined the group, he said.

Chase had announced in late 2019 that she would run for governor in 2025. But after Scott learned from her staff she might run in 2021, he said, he made a second Facebook group, in January, called Supporters of State Senator Amanda Freeman Chase for Governor of Virginia. Chase announced her campaign for governor in February.

The group was a closed discussion group for members only. And that is the group that has become controversial. Four months later, the group still exists, and for a time, Chase was a member and posted in the group.
New Delhi, May 3 : Renowned legal luminary and Queen's Counsel Harish Salve said implementing a stimulus package amounting to 10 per cent of GDP on the lines of the UK and US, would not be tough for India. In an exclusive interview to IANS, Salve also stressed on making India a welcoming country for foreign investment, and that the "nit-picking details which suffocate businesses by strangling capital account transactions should perhaps be re-looked".

Responding to a question on the lending culture of banks, he said there is a general impression that Indian banks have done too much lending and this is simply not true, but that they have done "too much lending to the wrong people and for the wrong reasons".

Following is the text of the interview.

Question: Stimulus package should be 10% of GDP on the lines of the UK and US. Would it not be tough for India to implement it? Answer: I do not think it will be tough for India to implement a stimulus. The government of India has access to some of the finest minds in the world of economics and commerce and is in a position to put in place such a stimulus package effortlessly. The present government is politically robust and the Prime Minister has established over and over again his qualities of decisiveness. In such a situation I do not find it difficult for India to evolve and implement a stimulus package.

Q: How is India in a better place to attract manufacturing companies, after they move out of China due to Covid-19? Would major labour reforms and sensible land acquisition policies help in attracting manufacturing companies? A: India is the world's largest English speaking democracy. It has the demographic advantage of a young population, and a large number of educated people are available at wages which compete favourably with the rest of the world. The problems which challenge doing business in India are easy to remedy.

Firstly, the regulatory departments of the government including the tax departments of the Union and the states, have to be made more user-friendly. The recommendation by the young tax officers to increase tax rates at the time where incomes have vanished due to closure of all means business and earning income, establishes the mindset of these departments. India's economy has been plagued by corruption in financial institutions, and undoubtedly this calls out for urgent repair. But this is not the time to take any measures that make India look like an inhospitable ecosystem to invest in. Land acquisition is vital for sourcing land for industries. And yes labour reforms are also a must. But perhaps this is not the right time for labour reforms when the country is coming out of this difficult situation.

Q: Allowing domestic credit to increase -- in the USA it is 187% of GDP, world average is 129% and India's average is 50% -- would work positively for the economy? A: India has to reconsider the lack of depth in its capital market, and ways in measures of increasing liquidity in the market. There is a general impression that Indian banks have done too much lending - this is simply not true. What the Indian banks have done is too much lending to the wrong people and for the wrong reasons. That is the problem of governance. Government control over public sector banks has proved to be a major factor which has encouraged corruption. While the political environment has cleaned up, there is a lot of work yet to be accomplished at the lower levels to put the banks back on their feet.

Q: What is your reaction to three crucial things to boost the economy - bring down the domestic lending rate of interest, repeal FEMA and allow inexpensive foreign funds to India? A: The domestic lending rates can only be brought down when there is free access to international inexpensive capital. It is my personal view that the Foreign Exchange Management Act has lost all relevance. The current level of foreign exchange balances, and the overall strength of the economy in which interventions by the Reserve Bank can always protect the rupee, should provide sufficient measure of safety. Besides as a sovereign country, control over foreign exchange on a macro level can be reimposed at any time. But the nit-picking details which suffocate businesses by strangling capital account transactions should perhaps be re-looked at this time. And the enforcement directorate officers could be put to more efficient use in doing various other things which are very necessary at this time to get our economy back on track.

Q: Allowing deficit financing and printing money and putting it back into the system, would these measures jump start the economy? A: That is my view. For example, the RBI has granted a moratorium to flat buyers. The SEBI, on the other hand, has perhaps a good reason, not granting a moratorium to the financial intermediaries in their repayment obligations to mutual funds and banks. In this situation, the intermediaries find themselves in a crunch. At both ends of the spectrum is the common man - the flat buyer and the investor in the mutual fund. The first has to be relieved from an immediate cash obligation to pay, and the second must get his income from the mutual fund. The only solution to this is by the government injecting funds in the middle so that the financial intermediaries and mutual funds can survive this period of time during which their cash flows from their customers can be restored. This example can be multiplied manifold.

Q: Corporatising the agriculture sector on the lines of Reliance Retail, how would it resolve the agricultural distress? A: Agriculture has to be de-romanticised. Land is an economic resource - its status on an emotional plane has to be revisited. Secondly, agriculture has to be made economically viable. Land reforms have reduced the size of agricultural holdings to a point that in the current economic scenario, the land holdings become economic units. Some kind of consolidation is called for. Allowing corporate intervention in the field of agriculture will, on the one hand, relieve the government of its obligation of ensuring that crops are insured and the farmer insulated from the vagaries of the monsoon and other elements and that the farmer gets abundant supply of fertiliser and seeds and all that he needs for an abundant crop.

On the other hand, the customer will benefit by getting cheaper agricultural produce and with higher degree of quality control. It will only hurt the middleman - but then the middleman must now find other occupations. Besides all over the world, hypermarkets, markets, and neighbourhood stores and groceries have survived side-by-side - each of them fulfilling a specific purpose. This transition has to be made.

Q: There are Covid 19 cases against China by different countries - enforcing the judgement will be a matter of concern. Do you think the international justice system is strong enough to pass an order binding on China? A: As at present, it is very difficult to have any real optimism in the matter of bringing China to account for what it has done. China is an economically and politically powerful nation. The world community is divided and each country would like to do a side deal with China. China, I am sure, has great comfort in the thought that unity in the world in dealing with a problem such as this is extremely unlikely with each country looking out for its own economic interest and political interest in aligning with China.

Q: How can we change laws to avoid repetition of Vodafone case and Nokia case. Would this help in attracting manufacturing companies? A: This requires a change in mindset, which in turn must be reflected in the manner in which we administer our laws. Improving the ease of doing business by making the regulatory environment more user-friendly is the real solution.

Q: Separate regulation for the banking industry and divorcing it from RBI, what is your reaction on this? A: I am strongly in favour of creating a banking regulator. The overall economic control over banks will continue with the RBI including the power to free monetary policy. However regulating individual banks in their functioning is something which it is now clear the RBI has neither the resources nor the skills to monitor. Considering the problems we have manifested themselves in Indian banks including the corruption and networking, it is obvious that they need a much closer monitoring and for this purpose, a separate monitoring mechanism through a separate regulator may prove to be advantageous.

(Sumit Saxena can be contacted at sumit.s@ians.in)
In a relief for engineering and medical aspirants, the HRD ministry will announce fresh dates for competitive exams --JEE and NEET-- on May 5.

The exams were postponed due to nationwide lockdown announced to contain the COVID-19 spread.

"The fresh dates will be announced by HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' on May 5. This will put an end to uncertainty for the aspirants. The minister will also interact with students online the same day," a senior ministry official said.

While Joint Entrance Exam-Mains (JEE-MAINS) is conducted for admission to engineering colleges across the country, the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) is held for medical colleges.

More than 15 lakh students across the country have registered for NEET this year, which is the gateway to medical colleges in India, whereas more than 9 lakh have registered for JEE Mains, the entrance exam for all other engineering colleges except IITs.

The JEE-Mains is considered as a qualifying exam for JEE-Advanced.

The HRD Ministry's National Testing Agency (NTA) had also given students an option to change their opted centres for the two tests as students have moved to different places since the lockdown.

Universities and schools across the country have been closed since March 16 when the centre announced a countrywide classroom shutdown as one of the measures to contain the COVID-19 outbreak. Later, a nationwide lockdown was announced from March 25, which was extended till May 17.

There is however, no clarity yet on when the pending board exams for class 10 and 12 will be conducted by the Central Board of Secondary (CBSE).

The board had announced that it will conduct pending exams in 29 subjects crucial for promotion and admission to higher institutions.

The death toll due to COVID-19 rose to 1,301 and the number of cases climbed to 39,980 in the country on Sunday, according to the Union health ministry.

The number of active COVID-19 cases stood at 28,046, while 10,632 people have recovered and one patient has migrated, the ministry said.

The total number of cases include 111 foreign nationals.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Seven northeast states will join together to purchase medical equipment and testing supplies to help with reopening in the coronavirus pandemic.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced during his daily briefing from New York City that his state would join Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania in a coalition to buy personal protective equipment, ventilators and whatever we need to buy.

The new Northeast Regional Procurement Consortium will give the states buying power that would outweigh that of any individual state, Cuomo said. That should allow the states to save money on medical supplies such as ventilators, masks, gowns and other medical equipment which will ultimately lower prices and save taxpayers money.

New York state alone buys about $2 billion of medical supplies this year, he said, adding that those states buy another $5 billion in medical supplies.

Governors Phil Murphy of New Jersey, Ned Lamont of Connecticut, John Carney of Delaware and Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania all spoke by video during the briefing.

Cuomo suggested that the consortium focus on buying less from China and more on products made in America. Even better, he said, would be buying from states in the region.

The governor also said New York state will begin requiring all hospitals to keep a 90-day supply of personal protective equipment. That supply should be enough to respond to a surge of coronavirus cases.

We cant go through this day-to-day moving masks all across the state  this mad scramble that we were in and in many ways still are in.

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Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com

Nolan Weidner is a reporter for the Syracuse Post-Standard and Syracuse.com. Got a comment or idea for a story? He can be reached by call or text at 315.247.7419 or via email at nweidner@syracuse.com.
Mannequins stand by boxes packed for shipment in the L.A. Fashion District in 2016. (Kody Kinzie)

Within weeks of the COVID-19 outbreak, my parents  both undocumented workers in Los Angeles garment industry  lost their jobs. For weeks I was the only gainfully employed member of my family. The income from my internship in Washington, D.C., had to support me, my unemployed parents and my younger sister whos in college. Im 22.

While millions of American citizens have become financially insecure because of the coronavirus outbreak, many are eligible for paid sick leave or unemployment benefits and have access to COVID-19 testing. This is not the case for many immigrants in the U.S. illegally who, like my parents, are low-wage workers and ineligible for public benefits because of their immigration status.

For years, my parents have worked in garment sweatshops in unsanitary conditions under an exploitative piece-rate system. Like many, they sewed, trimmed, ironed and packaged suits, dresses and blouses. Thankfully, my dad was called back to work last week to help make the face masks that are in such great demand.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced my parents to tap into emergency savings that will be depleted in less than a months time. My dad has diabetes and my mom has high blood pressure, chronic conditions that make them even more susceptible to serious health consequences from the coronavirus.

As the U.S.-born Latina daughter of immigrants, I am seeing firsthand how the virus disproportionately affects mixed-status families like mine, whose members have varying legal status. It has exacerbated our financial instability and food insecurity.

As a direct result of the pandemic, 49% of Latino households in the U.S. have either had their pay cut or lost their jobs, according to a Pew Research Center survey. Meanwhile, an estimated 6 million immigrants have been designated as essential workers who are exempt from quarantining so they can work.

About 200,000 of these workers are legally here as DACA recipients, among those who came to the U.S. illegally as children but qualified for relief from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. An additional 130,000 workers have temporary protected status, which allows them to live legally, if temporarily, in the U.S.; many are healthcare workers on the front lines of the pandemic. These immigrants who are here legally also deserve to have all federal government COVID-19 relief extended to them, including having their work permits extended to avoid deportation.

Story continues

Many undocumented workers earn their living as farmworkers, grocery store clerks or construction-site workers  without unemployment benefits, paid sick leave or access to COVID-19 testing. They are often underpaid.

Yet, despite their critical role in the workplace, these immigrants arent benefiting from recent legislation passed by Congress to address the economic fallout from the pandemic.

The recently passed federal CARES Act offers $1,200 to Americans earning up to $75,000 in adjusted gross income and who have a Social Security number; it also provides $500 for each child in the family. However, it excludes millions of undocumented workers and mixed-status families because the COVID-19 stimulus checks are available only to those with Social Security numbers.

Many immigrants, including my parents, pay taxes every year using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, issued to people working in the U.S. without permission but who are still required to pay taxes.

But my parents will not receive the $1,200 stimulus check, and neither will my sister, who is also U.S-born. If one member of a family is undocumented, the entire family  including members who are U.S. citizens  are excluded from benefiting from the CARES Act. Two lawsuits were filed last week that challenge the legality of excluding mixed-status families from receiving federal coronavirus relief payments.

The Families First Coronavirus Response Act, also approved by Congress in March, requires certain employers to provide benefits for workers affected by the pandemic and includes a provision to provide 100% of the costs for testing uninsured people.

However, the measure excludes uninsured immigrants who do not otherwise qualify for full Medicaid coverage. Immigrants who fall into this category, like my parents, rely on emergency Medicaid that low-income earners can use for immediate medical emergencies but not chronic conditions. To protect the health of immigrants, all states should extend emergency Medicaid to include COVID-19 testing, diagnosis and treatment.

At the state and local level, policymakers are trying to offer protections to immigrants, regardless of status.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot signed an executive order extending government benefits to all refugees and immigrants that includes such COVID-19 relief as a one-time $1,000 housing assistance grant. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a privately funded Immigrant Emergency Relief program that would provide up to $1,000 to 20,000 immigrants, regardless of documentation.

And in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced a $125-million Disaster Relief Fund to provide aid to immigrants who are ineligible for unemployment benefits. About 150,000 immigrants will receive a one-time cash payment: $500 per person and $1,000 per household.

The measures put in place in Chicago, New York City and California are not only fair but humane. The next federal stimulus package should mirror those efforts. No ones health should be jeopardized because of a lack of means.

The financial support provided by California gives my parents some hope, but millions of immigrants across the U.S. cant expect such help. Most immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally  an estimated 15 million  are not receiving the immediate financial help or healthcare assistance they need during the pandemic.

This increases their vulnerability, but it also harms broader society. Failing to provide direly needed support to immigrants could hamper efforts to defeat the pandemic. In a public health crisis, an effective national response should extend relief to everyone, regardless of their immigration status.

Rocio Perez is an intern at the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank.
The beef supply chain in the United States typically starts on a ranch like Marty Malones, in Paradise Valley, with the birth of calves. After a summer of grazing, a cow reaches about 500 to 700 pounds. Then the cow is sold to a feedlot in the Midwest or Great Plains, where it eats feed like corn and barley to fatten up. At about 1,200 pounds and 18 months of age, its slaughtered at a nearby packing plant. Then its shipped to a wholesaler, who sells the meat to a restaurant or grocery store, where an end customer purchases it.

One month into nationwide stay-at-home orders related to COVID-19, that supply chain has been disrupted in the middle, with many of the nations largest packing plants shutting down due to COVID-19 outbreaks at their facilities. That means fewer cattle are being slaughtered, which means fewer are being taken off feedlots, which means fewer are being purchased from ranchers like Malone. On Friday, April 24, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported 23% fewer cattle were put on feed in March 2020 than in March 2019.

Regardless, Malone and other ranchers still have the same amount of cattle. And in what was anticipated to be a record year for beef producers, prices are now down about 30% since the beginning of the year.

It depresses the market, and theres a backlog all the way back to the cow-calf guy, Malone said.

Though cow-calf production is a year-round business, most Montana ranchers calve their herds in the spring and sell in the fall. They will soon face a tough choice regarding their 2.5 million cattle: skip this years paycheck and keep the cattle on their land and buy more feed for winter, or sell at about $111 less per head than pre-pandemic prices.

There is so much uncertainty in where the market lies, said Jay Bodner, executive vice president of the Montana Stockgrowers Association. That is the No. 1 thing on our mind right now: how can we try to fix whats going on?

Montana ranchers arent alone. Nationwide, cow-calf producers are expected to lose $8 billion in 2020 and beyond, according to a study from Oklahoma State University. In other parts of the country, with packing plants slowing down, hogs and chickens are being euthanized, having become essentially worthless. But cattle are worth more and take longer to grow to market weight, said David Anderson, a professor of agricultural economics at Texas A&M. Earlier this month, Congress passed a relief bill that includes $19 billion for the agriculture industry, but which producers get what share is still being determined, Anderson said.

In Montana, ranchers will likely breed less this coming fall.

We are likely going to see reductions in herd sizes, said Anton Bekkerman, an associate professor of agricultural economics at Montana State University. It stinks a lot, because those decisions cant be made right now because cows are already calving.

The majority of Americas meat is slaughtered at a small number of plants, so shutdowns or slowdowns have a large impact on the amount of meat produced nationwide. With COVID-19 outbreaks at different plants, overall meat production is down about 20%. As a result, Tyson Foods, JBS and Smithfield, the nations largest meat producers, have projected that grocery stores will see meat shortages in as little as two weeks due to the reduced amount of meat coming out of packing plants. With production down, wholesale beef prices reached record highs last week. That price increase will likely be passed on to consumers, Anderson said.

There are no large meat processing plants in Montana. When Montana cattle reach about 500 pounds, theyre sold to feedlots closer to slaughterhouses in states including Iowa, Nebraska and Colorado, because its cheaper to haul a 500-pound calf hundreds of miles than a 1,200 pound cow, Bodner said.

Four major meat processing companies  Tyson, Cargill, JBS and National Meat  slaughter about 80% of U.S. cattle. Even though these companies are facing outbreaks at their plants, they still stand to make record profits because they are paying about 30% less for live cattle and receiving record prices for processed beef, Anderson said.

Earlier this month, the Montana Stockgrowers Association joined with organizations in 21 other states to ask the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate whether those companies are manipulating prices. The USDA had already begun investigating the allegation after beef prices surged during the pandemic.

After Tyson said it was considering closing 80% of its meat processing facilities, President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday, April 28, to keep the plants open under the Defense Production Act, a law used to compel industries critical to national well-being to continue operations regardless of lost profits. The law also prevents the companies from price gouging.
Asked how she would like to be remembered in literary history, Eavan Boland replied: "I would rather be in the unidentified chapter ... Because it's more likely to be the human one." And she mentioned "a terrible chapter" in Thoreau's book Cape Cod [1865].

"In it he finds an Irish shipwreck on the beach. And he finds them putting them into coffins from one of the famine ships from Galway, Brid and her sister, and her sister's children ... that is the imaginative area I feel for: not for the individual, romantic intelligence."

When Eavan Boland died last Monday aged 75, beyond the terrible shock and sadness, I remembered her as a friend and, more importantly, a selfless, extraordinarily generous friend to poets and poetry. And above all, I remembered her humanity. She had no ego. Instead, she brought to every situation a focused, rigorous and curious energy. In her poetry and prose, her high intelligence shone.

Growing up in Dublin, London, New York, as the daughter of the diplomat Frederick Boland and artist Frances Kelly, her background was privileged, sophisticated, cosmopolitan. And her Irishness was central.

In An Irish Childhood in England: 1951, she, "a freckled six-year-old", was told by the teacher in a London convent "when I produced 'I amn't' in the classroom, 'You're not in Ireland now'".

Brilliant, academic, never, never self-important, she was interested in everyone and equally at home in the most prestigious universities as in a writing workshop in an underfunded working-class community centre.

She read in Wesley College twice and she asked as many questions of her young audience as they did of her, the 13-year-olds especially. She challenged and treated them with sympathetic respect both for what they had to say and for their potential.

Other memories include her hand delivering to school, the next day, her reply to an invitation to write a foreword to Lifelines 3; her showing me, in her Dundrum home, the black lace fan her mother gave her that prompted one of her finest, most beautiful poems; her coming to our house on two different occasions to meet poets Lauris Edmond and Fleur Adcock; her immediately saying yes to launching the Windharp anthology at the National Library. The warmth and immediacy of her speech that evening made the occasion very special.

And when we spent six months in California, she invited us to Stanford where she taught and insisted on buying us a book about the university in the campus bookshop. I also remember an hour-long phone conversation with her about the Thom Gunn poetry course I audited at Berkeley.

One letter, from 1997, captures her delight in being alive, her joy in her family - married to the writer Kevin Casey, she had two daughters, Sarah and Eavan Frances - her work: "It's wonderful to be home. But Stanford was exciting and endearing as always ... and the family came out and had a marvellous spring visit out there, right in the middle of the magnolia and bougainvillea. Other than finding a lizard in my cottage there was nothing adverse! We also managed to make a senior appointment in fiction which involved a blizzard of paper, but was well worth it." More recently, she delighted in and adored her grandchildren.

Video of the Day

Now a household name, in 2001 the "new", post-Soundings Leaving Cert poetry course included 10 of her poems.

Chosen by committee, she wrote to me about their choice: "It sounds so prejudiced to say I was relieved, but I was. I suppose I had a slight unease that a selection of 'domestic' poems might create a damaging, but entirely subliminal distinction, between 'women's' poetry and 'Irish' poetry, subtly suggesting - however unintentionally - that one could not quite be the other. But the selection - and I can see this - is completely free of that assumption. I'm glad of that. It seems most constructive."

In those Leaving Cert poems students encounter suburban Dublin, sectarian violence, a past historical and personal, a celebration of married love, the discovery that love has "the feather and muscle of wings", a mother's clear-eyed, deeply felt understanding of her relationship with her teenage daughter.

The latest New Yorker contains a new Eavan Boland poem. Eviction remembers her grandmother in Drogheda, "in court for rent arrears". In it she says: "I have always resisted history" because history does not note a woman leaving a courtroom in tears.

Again, Boland is on the side of the forgotten individual. "You can accept the history at face value and write out of that, I don't want to. I feel a great need to somehow get behind that history as a woman and as a poet to the great source out of which the history comes."

Reading Eviction and hearing her read it on the New Yorker website is doubly poignant. Her body is now still. But her voice lives on.

In her poem Time and Violence she speaks of "the melancholy/ of growing older" and in Energies from Night Feed, her 1982 collection, Eavan Boland wrote: "This is my time: the twilight closing in." Dusk, twilight occurs in many of the poems, that sad, beautiful time before darkness.

But here, in the closing lines of The Black Lace Fan My Mother Gave Me we hear Eavan Boland's celebratory, life-affirming, generous lyric voice. She gives us bright sunshine and birdsong. A gift to Leaving Cert students, a gift to all of us.

The blackbird on this first sultry morning,

in summer, finding buds, worms, fruit,

feels the heat. Suddenly she puts out her wing -

the whole, full, flirtatious span of it.
Makhlouf says government forces arrested his employees amid pressure for him to step down from his business empire.

Sanctions-hit Syrian tycoon Rami Makhlouf said security forces were arresting employees at his companies in an inhumane way amid pressure on him to step down from his business empire and pay millions of dollars in tax.

Makhlouf, a cousin of President Bashar al-Assad and widely considered part of the presidents inner circle, has a business empire that ranges from telecoms and real estate to construction and oil trading. He played a big role in financing Assads war effort, Western officials have said.

Today pressures began in unacceptable ways and the security forces, in an inhumane way, are arresting our employees, Makhlouf said on Sunday in a video in an unprecedented attack on the powerful security forces by one of the countrys most influential figures.

Mr President (Assad), the security forces have started attacking peoples freedoms. These are your loyal supporters  The situation is dangerous and by God, if we continue, the situation of the country will be very difficult, Makhlouf said.

The security forces made no immediate comment.



Makhlouf said in the video he had been asked to step down from his companies, including Syriatel, the main mobile operator and main source of revenue for the sanctions-hit government.

I have been asked today to step down from my companies and take instructions while I close my eyes. Authority is not given to put pressure on people to give in, he said.

Did anyone expect the security forces would pounce on Rami Makhloufs companies who were their biggest supporters and their patron during the war?

200430100703673

He said he would not bow to pressure to hand over his wealth.

The billionaire has been under US sanctions since 2008 for what Washington calls public corruption and it has since toughened measures against top businessmen who are close to him.

The European Union has also slapped sanctions on Makhlouf since the Syrian conflict began in 2011, accusing him of bankrolling Assad.

Makhlouf became a hated figure to many pro-democracy protesters who rose up against corruption and the authoritarian rule of Assad in March 2011.

Makhlouf, who belongs to Assads Alawite minority sect that holds political power in Syria, owes his fortune to Assad and was seen by many Syrian businessmen and others as a frontman for the president and other members of the ruling family.

The tycoon was rumoured in private business circles last year to have fallen out of favour with Assad. But until a first video he released on Thursday, he had kept out of the spotlight.

In Thursdays video, Makhlouf lashed out at his critics who accuse him of monopolising sectors of the economy through political patronage, saying his businesses and a charity arm had provided thousands of jobs for Syrians.

He said he would appeal to Assad to allow Syriatel to reschedule the payment of taxes. He said the governments demand for 130 billion Syrian pounds ($300 million) was unjust but that he would comply.

Makhlouf said in Sundays video that he would not bow to pressure to hand over his wealth to powerful rivals, whom he did not name.

This is an attack on private property. What I already have is something I cannot give up, he said defiantly.
The president of Tanzania says he will send a plane to Madagascar to import a herbal tonic which has been touted as a cure for coronavirus by the country's president.



Congo-Brazzaville's president has also promised to import the drink.



It is produced from the artemisia plant - the source of an ingredient used in malaria treatment.



The World Health Organization has said there is no proof of any cure and has advised people against self-medicating.



The drink was launched as Covid-Organics was being marketed after being tested on fewer than 20 people over a period of three weeks, the president's chief of staff Lova Hasinirina Ranoromaro told the BBC.



In response to the launch of Covid-Organics, the WHO said, in a statement sent to the BBC, that the global organisation did not recommend "self-medication with any medicines... as a prevention or cure for Covid-19".



It reiterated earlier comments by WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus that there were "no short-cuts" to finding effective mediation to fight coronavirus.



International trials were underway to find an effective treatment, the WHO added.



In March, the US-based National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health warned against purported coronavirus remedies, including herbal therapies and teas - saying the best way to prevent infection was to avoid exposure to the virus.



Speaking on TV, Tanzania's President John Magufuli said he was already in contact with the government of Madagascar and would despatch an aircraft to the island nation to collect the medicine.



"I am communicating with Madagascar, and they have already written a letter saying they have discovered some medicine. We will despatch a flight to bring the medicine so that Tanzanians can also benefit. So as the government we are working day and night," he said.



Mr Magufuli has already been widely criticised for his reaction to the coronavirus pandemic.



He has encouraged the public to continue gathering in places of worship, while much of the world has faced lockdown.



Tanzania's delay in enforcing stricter measures to prevent further spread of coronavirus in the country could have led to the spike in positive cases, according to the WHO.



The country has 480 confirmed cases of coronavirus while Congo-Brazzaville has 229 and Madagascar has 135.

Source: BBC









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Ukraine Mission to EU added that "Russian propaganda is afraid of truth".

On World Press Freedom Day, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine has called on the international community to increase pressure on Russia to release Crimean Tatar journalists imprisoned on trumped-up charges.

"On World Press Freedom Day, we join the call of Ukrainian journalists, former illegally held persons Roman Sushchenko and Stanislav Aseiev, to increase international pressure on Russian authorities to release Crimean Tatar public journalists Ramzi Bekirov, Osman Arifmemetov, Rustem Sheikhaliev, Nariman Memedinov, and rights activist Server Mustafeiev, as well as lift the illegal charges off of them," MFA Ukraine wrote on Facebook.

The Foreign Ministry emphasizes that in order to conceal from the world the real situation in the temporarily occupied Crimea, the Russian occupation administration has since occupation start set up an "information ghetto"  systematically destroying freedom of speech on the peninsula, harassing and imprisoning journalists and bloggers under the pretext of combating extremism or separatism, and impeding their work in every way possible.

Read alsoRussia insisted on putting supporters of "Russian Spring" in Odesa on swap list  MFA Ukraine

"ZMINA. The Center for Human Rights and the Crimean Human Rights Group recorded more than 300 violations of rights of journalists and bloggers over the six years of occupation of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol," the report said.

The Foreign Ministry emphasized that of 3,000 media outlets officially operating on the peninsula until 2014, only 232 were able to re-register with the occupation authorities. Some media outlets tried to register more than three times, but were refused under formal pretexts. This was the case, in particular, with the Crimean Tatar media holding ATR Channel.

"Russia has actually deprived the population of the opportunity to hear an alternative opinion, blocking signals of Ukrainian radio stations and access to online publications. Not only did Russian propaganda media seize the information space of Crimea, they also spread the word of intolerance, depicting Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars as enemies. We urge the international community to take decisive action against the destruction of freedom of speech and gross violation of human rights by the Russian Federation in the temporarily occupied Crimea," the Foreign Ministry said.

Ukraine Mission to EU on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day added that "Russian propaganda is afraid of truth".
Attentive Oilprice readers must have read at least a dozen articles describing how hard Iraq has been hit by the drop in oil prices. Iraqs political travails are by no means over, Baghdad is now the tactical battlefield to have Mustafa al-Kadhimi, the head of the countrys National intelligence service, elected as the new prime minister after the previous two candidates failed to garner sufficient approval in the Parliament. Fighting coronavirus and low oil prices at the same time, the management of Iraqs slew of problems has befallen to Oil Minister Thamir Ghadhban who has become the de facto head of government after nominal Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi went into self-imposed absence.

Against this background, the federal Iraqi government has stopped all payments towards the Kurdistani Regional Government (KRG) last week. To put these numbers in context, the KRG needs around 900 million every month to ensure essential government functioning, of this, some 380 million came from the federal government in Baghdad which has pledged to take regional government officials and Peshmerga on its payroll. Even before COVID-19 struck the world and before oil prices plummeted by 60% compared to February 2020, Erbil had persistent issues with paying the salaries of people on its payroll  for instance, the money that public sector workers received this April were in fact arrears for December 2019.

The announcement of the caretaking federal government has triggered a new flurry of political activity  for the first time since January, a delegation of Kurdish officials (headed by the Kurdish Finance Minister Sheikh Janab) has travelled to Baghdad with the aim of strengthening Erbil-Baghdad ties. KRG has had a lot of political capital invested into not falling into the pitfall of a leaking budget. Bleeding from its heroic fight against the Islamic State, the KRG has maintained a policy of mandated austerity measures (among others the so-called salary-saving scheme) for 3 consecutive years since 2016 and it was only in March 2019 that the regional government could finally announce a new era, when salaries are paid in full and (supposedly) on time.

Story continues

Related: The Death Of U.S. Oil

Yet what does all this mean for the oil production of Iraqi Kurdistan? First and foremost, KRG officials have explicitly stated that Erbil would join the OPEC+ agreement and that Iraqs 23% production cut would be proportionately mirrored in Kurdish crude output. Given that October 2018 production figures are taken as the baseline for OPEC+ production curtailments, Iraq in total would need to cut 1.1mbpd in May-June 2020. This would presuppose a 0.2-0.3mbpd output cut in the next 2 months, a painful commitment for a regional government that has tacitly suggested to oil companies to postpone overdue crude marketing payments by at least 9 months, i.e. already into early 2021.

Interestingly, the crude volume to be cut by KRG is roughly equivalent with the 250kbpd that Kurdistan ought to be transferring to the federal government in exchange for Baghdad paying the regional governments payroll. The Kurdish crude transfers are concurrently becoming an increasingly hot topic in the Iraqi federal Parliament as a group of representatives has filed an official complaint to Finance Minister Fuad Hussein, who happens to be an ethnic Kurd and has been generally seen as a dovish figure who could usher in a new era of more harmonious coexistence between Baghdad and Erbil, accusing the federal ministry of misspending $5 billion in 2019 of public money on subsidizing KRG which did not even transfer the promised 250kbpd.

Graph 1. Kirkuk Crude Export Volumes in 2017-2020 (mbpd)

(Click to enlarge)

Source: Thomson Reuters.

Against the background of low oil prices and major discrepancies with the federal governments in Baghdad, Iraqi Kurdistan has suffered another blow with the US Treasury sanctioning the Switzerland-based Rosneft Trading (RTSA), one of the prime shippers of Kurdish crude. Thanks to a 2017 pre-financing deal with the Kurdish Regional Government, RTSA has managed to add Kirkuk into its portfolio of crude exports, however has become tangibly less visible on the market after the US sanctions. Rosneft has sold all its Venezuelan assets  the alleged reason why it found itself on the OFAC list  and is now expecting the US authorities to keep their promise of lifting the sanctions once RTSA quits Venezuela. Rosneft might have served as a way out in this case, another pre-financing deal is by no means impossible, yet this could happen only after the US sanctions issue is settled.

Were the Kurdish Regional Government to find interested partners, a pre-financing deal with a world-class trading houses might be the solution to its growing woes. Until then, Erbil has to rely on the political instruments it has available, like calling for the UN to mediate between the Kurds and the Baghdad government, so far to no avail. With health workers starting a strike on April 27 and political protests remaining an enticing prospect for the incensed populace, the KRG leadership ought to safeguard the oil and gas infrastructure from any potential damage to the breakaway regions infrastructure, as any attacks would only exacerbate the financial agony.

By Viktor Katona for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:

Read this article on OilPrice.com
While the office of secretary of state is a partisan one, the best practitioners have been those who leave their party loyalties at the door. Credibly fulfilling the offices duties  overseeing audits, ensuring free and fair elections and potentially drawing boundaries for legislative districts  requires an executive committed to the needs and trust of the public. In the competitive Democratic primary, Oregonians should vote for Mark Hass, who has long demonstrated the fair-mindedness, professionalism and trustworthiness needed for the job.

Hass, 63, is seeking the position after notching a landmark win with the passage of the Student Success Act, an education funding measure he helped craft. It was the culmination of a long legislative career that shows not only his ability to build coalitions but also his steady focus on delivering for the public.

That dedication comes through in his detailed platform for the secretary of states office. Among his priorities: auditing the states response to the coronavirus pandemic to ensure failures are fixed for the next crisis; piloting ranked-choice voting efforts to help broaden options for voters; and establishing an independent ombudsman to handle child-protection complaints.

His opponents in the primary are Sen. Shemia Fagan, who jumped into the race this year after former legislator Jennifer Williamson bowed out amid questions about her campaign spending; and Jamie McLeod-Skinner, a natural-resources attorney from Central Oregon who ran for Congress in 2018.

Fagan doesnt show that same public-first mentality as Hass, instead showing that her loyalty lies with the public employee unions primarily funding her campaign  more than $100,000 in the past month. For example, when asked about the offices auditing function, she criticized an exhaustive foster care audit conducted under the late Dennis Richardson, saying it demoralized case workers. She initially claimed the report didnt offer solutions and failed to show the work employees are doing. Neither claim is true. The audit included solutions, highlighted one caseworkers experiences in particular and called out management bullying as contributing to caseworkers difficulties. Fagans recasting of the audit as an attack on employees when it actually exposed leaders failures to protect kids should raise alarm bells about her priorities. The offices role in determining whether initiatives qualify for the ballot and investigating campaign finance violations requires someone whose independence is clear.

McLeod-Skinner also doesnt match up. While Oregon could use the perspective of another non-Portland resident in a statewide office, she offers an uninspiring agenda for the office, reflecting her relative unfamiliarity with some of the states most entrenched issues.

In the Republican primary, voters should mark their ballots for Sen. Kim Thatcher, 54, of Keizer. A longtime legislator who has co-chaired the audits committee, she understands the role of the office and its ability to inject accountability into state government far better than her challenger, Dave Stauffer.

-The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board

For links to all our endorsements for the May 2020 election, click here.
A man drives past a mosque during the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, in southern Tehran. (AP)

Tehran: Iranian president Hassan Rouhani said mosques would reopen across large parts of the country on Monday after they were closed in early March amid the Middle East's deadliest novel coronavirus outbreak.

Rouhani said 132 counties, around one-third of the country's administrative divisions, would "reopen their mosques as of tomorrow".

"Social distancing is more important than collective prayer," he added, arguing that Islam considers safety obligatory, while praying in mosques is only "recommended".

The targeted counties are "low-risk", Rouhani said in a televised meeting of the country's virus taskforce.

He said the committee was also mulling reopening schools by May 16 to allow for a month of classes before the summer break.

The new coronavirus has killed more than 6,150 and infected over 96,440 in Iran since it announced its first cases in mid-February.

Rouhani claimed hospital visits over potential infections were "much lower" compared to recent weeks.

Iran on Saturday reported its lowest daily toll of new infections since March 10.

Experts and officials both in Iran and abroad have cast doubts over the country's COVID-19 figures, saying the real number of cases could be much higher than reported.

The Islamic republic has tried to contain the spread of the virus by shutting universities, cinemas, stadiums and other public spaces since March.

But it has allowed a phased reopening of its economy since April 11, arguing that the sanctions-hit country cannot afford to remain shut down.

Only "high-risk" businesses like gyms and barbershops remain closed.

"We will continue the reopenings calmly and gradually," Rouhani said.

Yet he warned that Iran should prepare for "bad scenarios" too, saying "this situation may continue into the summer".
UPDATE: N.J. says most of its websites, including unemployment, are down on Sunday.

Some unemployment recipients in New Jersey will see a delay in payments because of an outage in the state Labor Departments computer system, the agency said Saturday.

Workers woke up Saturday morning and found they could not access the system to certify their weekly benefits.

Anyone who cannot certify on Saturday can do so Monday through Thursday next week, during their regular time slot, and they can claim two weeks of benefits, Angela Delli-Santi, a labor department spokeswoman, said. That will delay their payments by a couple of days. No one will lose a pennys worth of benefits.

The agency responded to questions about the Saturday outage after Gov. Phil Murphy was asked about it at his daily press briefing in Trenton.

I dont blame people for being frustrated. We dont begrudge that for one second, Murphy said. This is an extraordinary crisis."

"But I would also say: We have chopped through ... an enormous amount of claims. Theyre trying to stay above water. These keep coming in at extraordinary levels.

The problems started Friday when intermittent outages happened early in the day, and then some workers were unable to certify their benefits during their regular Friday night times.

The labor department in its statement said Friday was the first day independent contractors and self-employed workers could claim federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) and the department processed 600,000 weekly payments. The number, the agency said, was by far the most ever in its history. In financial terms, thats roughly another $100 million in benefits paid in a single day.

That volume took longer than expected to process, the department said, making the online certification system unavailable Saturday.

Saturday is traditionally the lightest day for benefit certifications because its a day with an open schedule for those who missed their certification time slot during the week, Delli-Santi said.

When asked why the department didnt warn people ahead of time that the system would be down Saturday, as problems appeared to have begun on Friday, Delli-Santi said it has a team of experienced, knowledgeable and dedicated professionals who try to take every possible scenario into account and prepare for it.

The number of back weeks claimed by those receiving the expanded federal benefits pushed the system to its capacity, she said.

There was no way to accurately predict the number of weeks that would be claimed by filers on the first day, Delli-Santi said. We are taking the steps necessary to address the issue.

It took until nearly noon on Saturday for the agency to post a message on its site that the system would be unavailable and that people should check back at 4 p.m. on Saturday. That message has also been updated.

Gov. Murphy and whoever runs the unemployment system should be embarrassed, one worker told NJ Advance Media. This is 2020. Their system is awful and the site is confusing and over loaded with information. They need to keep it simple and running. Just telling people they will `get every penny they are entitled to does not put food on the table now or pay our bills."

CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Newsletter | Homepage

The labor department said that new filers can submit applications after 8 p.m. on Saturday night, and the certification system will be back Sunday morning.

The agency added that there will be a new certification schedule to better control volume.

The Department continues to do the best it can to serve all of its customers, Delli-Santisaid. It is ahead of most other states on making Pandemic Unemployment Assistance payments. But, when there are tens or even hundreds of thousands of claims being filed each week, the number who have not yet been served is always going to be a big number.

As of April 24, the agency said, approximately 622,000 people were collecting weekly benefits  a 524% increase from the number collecting benefits a year ago. That does not include the estimated 200,000 workers who are eligible for the new expanded federal benefits that started to be processed on Friday. More than $1.5 billion has already been paid to workers.

Local journalism needs your support. Subscribe at nj.com/supporter.

Karin Price Mueller may be reached at bamboozled@njadvancemedia.com.

Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com.
In an effort to collaborate and keep trade flows open during the ongoing Covid-19 crisis, Abu Dhabi Ports has joined 19 of the worlds leading port authorities in signing a first-of-its-kind virtual declaration.

Hosted via video conference, the Ports Authorities Roundtable (PAR) Declaration calls on member ports to work together by allowing merchant ships to berth and carry out cargo operations to maintain the global supply chain.

Organised by Singapore, the PAR is a forum for leading port authorities to discuss issues of mutual interests, address common challenges, and engage in collaborative opportunities.

Other members joining Abu Dhabi Ports in signing of the declaration included the ports of Rotterdam, Tokyo and Los Angeles.

The declaration also commits the maritime sector to adhere to best practice in ensuring the safety of seafarers in terms of precautionary measures when dealing with coronavirus cases, said the statement from Abu Dhabi Ports.

Held in the presence of officials from the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and the International Association of Ports and Harbors (IAPH), Abu Dhabi Ports was the sole representative from the Mena region at a virtual roundtable that also included participants from Asia, Europe and North America.

On the deal, Chief Corporate Authority Officer Captain Maktoum Al Houqani said: "Abu Dhabi stands at the centre of global maritime trade and our participation at the Port Authorities Roundtable affirms our strategic status as a vital hub that links East and West."

"The international shipping and logistics community stands together at this time of great crisis in maintaining the smooth flow of essential goods and medical supplies," stated Al Houqani.

Abu Dhabi Ports, he said, proudly joins hands with the worlds maritime sector in affirming and renewing our resolve to battle Covid-19 and to support seaborne trade.

The virtual declaration initiated by member countries of PAR has very real implications for our entire industry by ensuring our ports and economic lifelines remain open, and our seafarers and maritime personnel are protected, he added.-TradeArabia News Service
Less than 10 coronavirus patients remain in hospital in Western Australia, bolstering the case for further restrictions to be loosened.

WAs tally remains at 551 after the state on May 2 recorded its third straight day of no new cases.

The number of active cases has fallen to just 23 including six from the Artania cruise ship and one from interstate.

Eight of those people are in hospital with three in intensive care.

Having already increased the two-person indoor and outdoor gathering limit to 10, the state government will look to ease further restrictions in the coming weeks.

On May 8 the national cabinet meeting will guide any changes, along with discussions with the states chief health officer and police commissioner.

The reopening of cafes and restaurants could be the next step with preparations already underway for a hospitality industry restart.

But regional travel restrictions are likely to remain in place for the foreseeable future.

Well be looking for two things  things which are small in terms of a public health risk but are strong in terms of their benefit to the economy, Health Minister Roger Cook said.

We want to get people back to work. Jobs are a single focus for us in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cook said WA had recorded just 20 cases of influenza last month.

More than 445,000 West Australians have already received the flu shot, which is free for primary school-aged children this year.
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Employees of retirement fund body EPFO have collectively contributed Rs 2.5 crore towards the PM-CARES Fund to support fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

The EPFO employees have also come forward to support the government's initiative in combating the COVID-19 crisis and voluntarily contributed one day's salary, amounting to around Rs 2.5 crore, towards the PM-CARES Fund, according to a statement by the labour ministry.

The EPFO, as one of world's largest social security organisations, stands committed in the service of the nation in every possible way, it said.

COVID-19, declared as a pandemic by the World Health Organization, has posed serious challenges for the health and economic security of millions of Indians.

The Government of India has set up a public charitable trust under the name of the Prime Minister's Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund (PM-CARES Fund) with the primary objective of dealing with any kind of emergency or distress situation.

Officers and staff of EPFO are also contributing by putting in extra efforts for providing relief by expeditiously processing EPF withdrawal claims including COVID-19 claims under the PMGKY package.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
(Left) Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in meet across the North-South Border. (Right) The Demilitarized Zone.

Getty

North and South Korea briefly exchanged fire their troubled border Sunday, just hours after Kim Jong Un made his first appearance in public for several weeks after rumors of his possible death.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a Sunday statement that at 7.41 a.m. local time that multiple shots were fired from the North Korean side of the border towards a guard post in the south.

South Korean military personnel said they responded to the shots by returning "two rounds of gunfire and a warning announcement according to our manual."

On Saturday, Kim Jong Un seemed to make his first appearance in public since rumors that he had died, or was gravely ill, circulated last week. He opened a fertilizer plant in Pyongyang, state media reported.

One media report suggested that Kim will use his return to unleash a wave of executions in his homeland, and begin military saber-rattling against western powers.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

North and South Korean forces briefly exchanged fire across the warring nations' troubled border Sunday, just hours after Kim Jong Un made his appearance in public for several weeks after rumors of his possible death.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a Sunday statement that at 7.41 a.m. local time that multiple shots were fired from the North Korean side of the border towards a guard post in the south.

The incident took place in the demilitarized zone between the two countries, near the city of Cheorwon, which is on the South Korean side of the border.

South Korean military personnel said they responded to the shots by returning "two rounds of gunfire and a warning announcement according to our manual," according to the BBC.

Officials went on to say that they did not believe that the shots were an official provocation as they came from farmland and it was a foggy morning.

"In absence of vision [for the target] and in the fog, would there be an accurate provocation?"  the official said, according to Reuters.

Story continues

The approximate location of where the gunfire incident happened.

Google Maps

The incident on the fiercely defended border came the morning after North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un appeared to make a first outing in public in several weeks, following widely circulated rumors that he was gravely ill or possibly even dead.

North Korean state media released images of the country's leader, Kim Jong Un, making his first public appearance after weeks of speculation about his health and whereabouts.

Kim attended the completion ceremony of a fertilizer plant north of the capital, Pyongyang on Saturday, marking his first public appearance since April 11, photos published by official state media outlets appeared to show.

Business Insider has not confirmed the authenticity of the images, or whether they were actually taken on Saturday.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attends the completion of a fertilizer plant, together with his younger sister Kim Yo Jong, in a region north of the capital, Pyongyang, in this image released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on May 2, 2020.

KCNA via Reuters

As well as rumors of his death, it has also been speculated that Kim's absence was down to him having heart surgery. Footage of Kim during his outing in Pyongyang Saturday appeared to show a black circular mark on his wrist, which some media outlets speculated is a sign he has had surgery.

Senior officials in South Korea said that they do not believe this is the case.

"There were speculative reports that Chairman Kim underwent a surgery citing some difference to his walk," a senior official said, according to Reuters.

"We have reasons to believe that there was no surgery, but cannot disclose such details."

A screenshot from a Mail Online video pointing to the supposed needle mark on Kim's wrist.

Screenshot/Mail Online

As Kim appeared to reemerge after his period of absence from public life  which some have linked to possible fears about the North Korean leader contracting coronavirus  Britain's Daily Mirror reported that there are fears he could embark on a campaign of executions and military brinkmanship as a means of reasserting his strongman image.

The newspaper reported that Kim is "likely to order a 'wave of public executions' and fresh nuclear threats against the West to re-establish credibility after being off grid for weeks."

The Mirror cited an unnamed western security source as saying: "I believe we could expect a violent taking out of any perceived threat amongst Kim's inner-circle."

Read the original article on Business Insider
New Delhi/Raipur, May 3 : Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel has urged the Prime Minister to include policemen, local bodies and officer-employees of district administration in insurance scheme in PM's Poor Welfare Package, on the lines of health workers.

Baghel said, "They are working day and night to make Covid-19 prevention and lockdown successful. Rs 50 lakh insurance for healthcare workers will be a welcome step." Bhupesh Baghel congratulated the Prime Minister for implementing the Epidemic Diseases Ordinance (Amendment) Act, 2020.

He said in Chhattisgarh state, health service personnel, policemen and officers and employees of other departments are performing their duties by establishing complete coordination.

Although no incident of any attack on healthcare personnel has occurred in Chhattisgarh, the above ordinance provides a strong protection for warriors fighting corona infection.

Drawing the prime minister's attention towards the contribution of thousands of employees and officers who are working day and night to make the lockdown successful, the chief minister said many employees and officers have also been infected with Covid-19 while performing their duties.

"It is a matter of concern that these state employee-officers are not included in the insurance scheme implemented by the Government of India for healthcare workers," wrote Baghel.

He said that the definition of 'health service worker' under the above ordinance of Section-1A (b) (ii) includes such persons who are authorized to take necessary steps to prevent the epidemic.

"That is, policemen, officers and employees of local bodies and district administration will also be definitely included in the periphery of this definition, by whom tireless efforts are being made for prevention and control of corona infection. Therefore, benefits should be extended to these people considering them to be health workers." Baghel added.
TV producer Binaifer Kohli, who has shows like Bhabhiji Ghar Par Hain and Happu Ki Ultan Paltan, has assured fans that the shows will begin shoots as soon as they are allowed because the episodes are all ready. She also revealed she is in touch with her technicians and helping them sail through the tough times amid lockdown in the wake of Covid-19 pandemic.

Binaifer told Times of India in an interview, Whenever things get back to normalcy, channels will implement budget cuts. I have two shows  Bhabiji Ghar Par Hain! and Happu Ki Ultan Paltan  on air currently and I will do everything in my control to ensure a smooth sailing for them. There will be a lot of things I will take care of, like having a doctor and nurse on the set every day. I will also have a thermal testing machine so that everyone can be checked on a daily basis. I will follow all the rules, because my conscience will not allow me to put anybodys life on risk. I am the captain of the ship and I will make sure that everyone is healthy and hearty.

Also read: Deepika Padukone reveals her guilty pleasure, says youre simply the best, better than anyone, anyone I ever met

She further told the daily,  The whole unit will stay on the set itself even the actors have agreed to stay on the set so that no one carries any kind of infection home. We will appoint a cook to whip up amazing food for the unit members. I might even arrange for movie screenings in the night to keep them entertained.

Ahead of the lockdown, most TV and film shootings had been cancelled and stalled mid-March. Speaking about the decision, Binaifer had then told Hindustan Times, Its like we are sitting on a time bomb. I felt guilty that we were unable to stop shooting. Now I am relieved.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
Last week, human rights lawyers filed an ultimately unsuccessful injunction for the early release of a Victorian prisoner with multiple medical conditions. This followed recent calls to immediately release vulnerable prisoners from custody nationwide. The impulse for this advocacy is intuitively reasonable. Custodial environments are susceptible to a COVID-19 outbreak given the confined conditions and potential for overcrowding. Moreover, prison populations are vulnerable, possessing poorer physical and mental health and other social challenges (substance misuse, homelessness) compared to the general population.

Lawyers have argued the impracticality of physical distancing in prisons creates a risk of coronavirus transmission among prisoners and prison staff. Credit:Jason South

As of writing, Australian governments have yet to immediately release select prisoners into the community as part of efforts to mitigate the spread of coronavirus, despite recent advocacy to do so. Experts across a number of sectors have recommended the early release of prisoners from vulnerable groups where possible, including Indigenous Australians, the elderly, victims of domestic violence and those with chronic health issues.

However, the proposed de-carceration strategy (which the author is sympathetic to) requires an assessment of its potential community consequences, and most importantly, its immediate impact on the health and wellbeing of candidate prisoners for release.

Stage three restrictions have now been in effect state-wide for one month. Victorian prisons have yet to record a case of COVID-19. A number of safety mechanisms were introduced by correctional facilities to help contain potential transmission of the virus. These include, but are not are not limited to: the infra-red temperature testing of all staff before entry to the facility; staff who present with high temperatures are sent home and required to undertake a COVID-19 test before returning to work; isolating all new prison admissions for 14 days; closing group programs to abide with physical distancing; allowing prisoners to connect with family members on tablet devices as an alternative to in-prison visitation. Moreover, conventional health and (cultural) support systems continue to be available to prisoners. With no confirmed cases and ongoing efforts to restrict the materialisation of COVID-19 in Victorian custodial settings, the potential costs of releasing vulnerable prisoners into the community necessitates further scrutiny.
The public have been urged to exercise caution when buying cloth masks in traffic as their efficacy and the condition of production cannot be ascertained.



Mr Muntaka Chasant, an entrepreneur in respiratory protection devices, expressed worry that flaunting cloth masks in the faces of drivers and passengers for sale in traffic could lead to the contamination of the masks.



Street hawkers displaying their cloth masks ostentatiously in the faces of drivers and other commuters who touch them to select which design they prefer is an area we have to look at quickly, Mr Chasant told the Ghana News Agency in an interview on Saturday.



Cloth masks may help to block the larger droplets from the wearer in case they have the virus, but it is absolutely important wearers understand that they get minimal protection compared with certified filtering face pieces such as N95, KN95, and P2, which use electrically charged fibers to filter out particles down to 0.3 microns.



Mr Chasant, the Chief Executive Officer of AirMask and Textiles Company, an anti-pollution mask company in Accra, explained that the N95 respirator, for instance, was airtight and when worn correctly, enables the wearer to breathe through the snug mask without leaks on the sides.



He expressed worry that cloth mask wearers may be having a false sense of security, thinking they had the same level of protection as wearing of certified respirators.



Homemade masks fit loosely, and usually use filtering layers that are not scientifically tested to filter out tiny particles that are of concern to the wearer.



Some people seem to position the masks to sit right below their noses, which expose them to infection, especially the coronavirus.



Mr Chasant is also an air pollution awareness campaigner, known for his campaign on the health effects of air pollution in low income areas such as Agbogbloshie and Jamestown in Accra.



He said respiratory protection was based on science and it was time to educate mask wearers on the dos and donts in order not to put themselves in harms way.



Aside the benefit respirators provide during this COVID-19 pandemic, we should be happy that wearers may also see reduced exposure to particulate pollutants from car exhaust, road dust, open burning of residential trash, and soot from the use of biomass-fueled cookstoves indoors, he said.



Mr Chasant urged people with lung function problems to seek medical advice before wearing any kind of respiratory protection device.



Meanwhile he has urged the Accra Metropolitan Assembly to ensure that street beggars stopped touching vehicles in traffic and getting too close to drivers and passengers because nobody knows what infection they may be carrying.



You find panhandlers in a lot of traffic stops in Accra, and it is frightening at this point in time to still see children and adults darting from car to car, touching car windows and getting too close to drivers.



They move between hundreds if not thousands of cars each day begging for money. They are at risk themselves, and also expose commuters to infection and disease. Its a difficult situation but the City of Accra must endeavour to do something about it, Mr Chasant said.

Source: GNA









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India registered a record jump of 83 deaths and 2,487 cases in 24 hours, even as Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Sunday that the growth rate of COVID-19 cases has been steadying for a while and the nation was on the path of winning the war against the pandemic.

The number of COVID-19 fatalities rose to 1,306 and total cases climbed to 40,263 on Sunday, according to the health ministry.

With the country set to enter the third phase of the lockdown from Monday, Vardhan urged people to observe the curbs extended till May 17 in the letter and spirit, and treat it as an effective intervention to cut the chain of transmission of the virus.

"We are on the path of success. We will win this war against COVID-19," he said after visiting the Lady Hardinge Medical College Hospital (LHMC) in Delhi to review the status of COVID-19 management.

He said around 10,000 people have been cured of the disease so far.

"The recovery rate of COVID-19 patients has steadily increased, which shows that more and more patients are getting better and going back home. The rate of growth of new cases has also been steadying for a while," he said.

According to data received on Sunday, for the past three days the doubling rate of the virus is 12 days, for seven days it is 11.7 and for 14 days it is 10.4, the minister was quoted as saying in a statement.

"We have crossed over 10 lakh tests and are performing over 74,000 tests in a day presently," he said.

The government has distributed around 20 lakh PPE kits all over India and supplied medicines, both hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and paracetamol (PCM), to more than 100 countries, Vardhan added.

He said India is on a "better footing" compared to other nations in managing the pandemic, adding that with more than 2.5 lakh beds in dedicated COVID-19 hospitals and health centres, the country is capable of pulling off any eventuality.

The health minister urged people not to ostracise doctors treating COVID-19 patients or stigmatise those who have survived the deadly disease.

According to the health ministry's evening update, the number of active COVID-19 cases stood at 28,070, while 10,886 people have recovered and one patient has migrated.

The total number of cases also include 111 foreign nationals.

Of the 83 deaths reported since Saturday evening, 36 were from Maharashtra, 26 from Gujarat, 11 from Madhya Pradesh, three each from Rajasthan and Delhi, two from Telangana and one each from Tamil Nadu and Bihar.

With 521 fatalities, Maharashtra accounts for the maximum of the nationwide 1,306 deaths. Gujarat comes second with 262 deaths, followed by Madhya Pradesh 156, Rajasthan 65, Delhi 64, Uttar Pradesh 43, and West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh 33 each.

The death toll reached 29 in Tamil Nadu, 28 in Telangana, while Karnataka has reported 25 fatalities due to the respiratory disease. Punjab has registered 20 COVID-19 deaths, Jammu and Kashmir eight, Kerala, Bihar and Haryana have reported four deaths each. Jharkhand has recorded three COVID-19 fatalities.

Meghalaya, Himachal Pradesh, Odisha and Assam have reported one fatality each, according to the ministry data. The health ministry's Saturday evening update had put the death toll at 1,223 and the number of cases at 37,776 in the country.

A PTI tally of figures on Sunday reported by states directly showed at least 1,328 deaths across the country while the number of confirmed cases of infection had reached 40,440. Of them, 10,661 have been cured and discharged.

There has been a lag in the Union Health Ministry figures, compared to the aggregate of numbers announced by different states, which officials attribute to procedural delays in assigning the cases to individual states.

Vardhan, in his remarks, said India's fight against COVID-19 is "lauded not only by WHO, but by the whole world in unison".

At the COVID-19 block in the the Lady Hardinge Medical College Hospital, Vardhan spoke through video call to two intern doctors who got infected with the virus while treating patients and were admitted at the facility.

He also interacted with two patients admitted in the COVID-19 ward through the digital platform, who, in turn, apprised him about the facilities in the ward.

"In last few days, I have been visiting various hospitals like AIIMS (Delhi), LNJP, RML, Safdarjung, AIIMS, Jhajjar, Rajiv Gandhi Super Specialty and now LHMC to review the preparedness of COVID-19. I am satisfied with the arrangements made by these hospitals to effectively deal with the coronavirus outbreak," Vardhan said.

He also said there are 130 COVID-19 hotspots districts, 284 non-hotspot districts and 319 non-infected districts in the country.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
They stand by the side of state government ministers and experts delivering vital information about COVID-19 on a daily basis but on several occasions the West Australian interpreters have overshadowed the officials and arguably been far more entertaining.

From animatedly signing hecklers to car alarms and laughter, Access Plus WA Deaf interpreters Dianne Prior and Fiona Perry have become famous in their own right.

But it's their essential role of conveying information to the deaf and hard-of-hearing community they want to pay attention to.

With a combined professional career of more than 70 years, both Ms Prior and Ms Perry grew up with deaf parents and have made it their lifes work to ensure the one in six Australians in the deaf/hard-of-hearing community have access to the same timely, accurate and relevant information as the rest of the community.
A young businessman who launched a men-focused skincare company with $100 has gone on to see it valued at $27million just one year later.

Henry Weaver, 28, who lives in Sydney, remembers a time before he created The Daily where the only beauty lotions available to men were $15 bottles of moisturiser from the supermarket that were 'filled with chemicals'.

He couldn't figure out why women were being offered good quality skincare at a lower price point, when men were looking for something just as fuss-free to keep their faces clean.

So on May 1, 2019, Mr Weaver registered the business name, The Daily, organised a domain and set up a Shopify store for people to pre-order the product - as yet uncreated.

Henry Weaver (pictured) remembers a time before he created The Daily where the only beauty lotions available to men were $15 bottles of moisturiser from the supermarket that were 'filled with chemicals'

So on May 1, 2019, Mr Weaver registered the business name, The Daily, organised a domain and set up a Shopify store for people to pre-order the product - as yet uncreated

'Over the next few days, I connected with graphic designers to do the logo, packaging and demo product shots for people to pre-purchase. We had our very first order on May 4, 2019,' he told FEMAIL.

'My theory was that we had to make sure that people actually wanted this before we over invested in product development and packaging a brand.

'So we kept everything as cheap as possible, using services like Fiverr for freelancers and by May 4 we had our first sale and had only spent $100.'

Mr Weaver started to interview men who had purchased the product, and they would then share those videos with their own networks - giving The Daily free exposure without having to pay for advertising.

Mr Weaver started to interview men who had purchased the product, and they would then share those videos with their own networks - giving The Daily free exposure without having to pay for advertising

'I was feeling confident that people were actually wanting this, considering it was a roughly $30 product. Our orders in this time were going from 10's, 20's, 30's to close to 4,000 units in such a short period,' he said

'We had $1,600 worth of product sold before we had a real product which meant we could use that cash to get product made - and quickly,' Mr Weaver said.

'I was feeling confident that people were actually wanting this, considering it was a roughly $30 product. Our orders in this time were going from 10's, 20's, 30's to close to 4,000 units in such a short period.'

The Daily's customer base has grown from just Australia to nine other countries abroad and its sold in 300 stores across the United States.

The website sells a $30 Clean Face Cleanser, a larger 100mL cleanser called Bigger, Cleaner Face for $40, $30 Skin Repair Moisturiser, $30 Fresh Eyes Eye Cream with cucumber oil and the $35 Mud Face Scrub and Mask.

The Daily's customer base has grown from just Australia to nine other countries abroad and its sold in 300 stores across the United States

Despite some men still believing a bar of soap is enough to clean their face, Mr Weaver believes that 'skin is skin' and no matter what gender or race you are, it should be nourished.

'By taking care of your skin by washing away the days dirt, sweat, dead skin cells and rehydrating it, it will mean you will have clearer and healthy looking skin that feels better to touch, reducing problem areas like pimples or oily skin,' he said.

'It's like your favourite t-shirt that you wear every day. If you don't take care of it and wash it, it will get torn or look old and haggard pretty quickly.'

What results have customers seen? * Balances oily skin. So it won't dry your skin out or remove essential oils with our Clean Face. The moisturiser is super light and doesn't clog your pores or make you sweat after putting it on after the gym. However, it deeply hydrates and softens your skin. Consider this step one in your daily skincare routine. For your anti-ageing routine, this sulfate free gel works to remove damaging pollutants and free-radical damage that can lead to premature damage. * Great for sensitive skin: We have had feedback that it has reduced inflammation and red patchiness of the skin. Doesn't cause pimples and helps them heal quite quickly due to the products reducing that inflammation. * Reduces dark circles around the eyes: Our daily intensive eye cream contains cucumber oil to soothe and reduce eye puffiness. As well as native lemon aspen to strengthen the capillary walls and reduce the appearance of dark circles. Advertisement

Not even the global pandemic has been enough to halt the progress of The Daily, with customer orders totalling $200 over the last few months, above their usual average of $89.

'From launching The Daily to where it is today has been a real learning curve on what works and what doesn't without over investing too hard down one path,' Mr Weaver said.

'For me it's been enjoyable to watch something grow over that time but with everything we do, it always comes back to having an impact in the communities we are involved with and making sure we have a product customers actually want.'
News outlets and publishers call for release of all jailed reporters amid increasing threat during COVID-19 pandemic.

To mark World Press Freedom Day on Sunday, the One Free Press Coalition has called for the immediate release of all imprisoned journalists amid increasing threats to press freedom worldwide during the coronavirus pandemic.

Each month, the coalition, which comprises prominent news organisations and publishers, including Al Jazeera Media Network, brings to the publics attention the 10 most urgent cases of journalists whose freedoms are being suppressed or whose cases are seeking justice.

Throughout the years, the campaign has highlighted the plight of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist who was killed inside the kingdoms consulate in Istanbul in 2018, as well as Mahmoud Hussein, an Al Jazeera journalist who has been held without any formal charges in Egypt since December 2016.

At least half of the journalists on the latest list published on May 1 are currently behind bars and at heightened risk of exposure to the coronavirus.

Here is the full list:

1. Azimjon Askarov, Kyrgyzstan

On May 11, a Kyrgyz court is scheduled to hear the final appeal in the case of the award-winning ethnic Uzbek journalist Azimjon Askarov.

The journalist had been reporting on human rights when he was arrested in 2010 on trumped-up charges that included incitement to ethnic hatred and complicity in the murder of a police officer, according to the coalition.

Askarovs wife, Khadicha, recently wrote a letter to Kyrgyzstans president pleading for the journalists release, saying he is absolutely innocent and suffers from painful bone and joint inflammation.

Azimjon Askarovs health is worsening after nine years in prison [File: Courtesy of Sherzod Askarov]

2. Abdulkhaleq Amran, Akram al-Waleedi, Hareth Hameed and Tawfiq al-Mansouri, Yemen

Four Yemeni journalists  Abdulkhaleq Amran, Akram al-Waleedi, Hareth Hameed and Tawfiq al-Mansouri  were sentenced to death on April 4 on charges of spreading false news.

They have been held for nearly five years by the Houthis, a rebel movement at war with the internationally-recognised government that is backed by a Saudi-UAE-led military coalition.

Read more here.

3. Mahmoud al-Jaziri, Bahrain

Mahmoud al-Jaziri was moved to solitary confinement on April 8 as retaliation for an audio clip that surfaced on dissident-run media channel Bahrain Today3, according to the coalition. In the recording, he disputed reports that Bahraini authorities had taken measures to protect prisoners from the spread of the novel coronavirus.

A reporter for the now-defunct independent newspaper Al-Wasat, the last of the countrys independent newspapers, al-Jaziri has been imprisoned since December 2015 on a 15-year sentence on charges of belonging to a terrorist group.

4. Solafa Magdy, Egypt

The overcrowding of Egyptian prisons, such as the one in al-Qanater housing Solafa Magdy, and inhumane conditions threaten to turn detention places into coronavirus clusters.

Magdy, a freelance multimedia journalist, and her husband have been jailed since November 2019 on charges of membership of a banned group and spreading false news.

She has endured medical neglect and even declined treatment for fear of contracting an infection in the facilitys unhygienic hospital, the coalition said.

Solafa Magdy has been jailed since November 2019 on charges of membership of a banned group and spreading false news [File: Courtesy Magdy family]

5. Darvinson Rojas, Venezuela

Venezuelan freelance journalist Darvinson Rojas spent 13 days in police custody after officers showed up at his home claiming to be conducting a test for the new coronavirus. According to the coalition, the police violently arrested him and later interrogated him about sources of his reporting on the pandemic.

According to local press freedom organisation Espacio Publico, Rojas was secretly presented before a judge on March 22 and charged under the controversial Anti-Hate Law with incitement to hate and instigate. Rojas was denied the right to his private lawyer, instead represented by a court-appointed public defender.

6. Truong Duy Nhat, Vietnam

Truong Duy Nhat, a blogger with Radio Free Asias Vietnamese language service funded by the United States Congress, disappeared from a shopping centre in Thailands capital, Bangkok, in January 2019.

Two days later, he was in pretrial detention where he remained for 15 months before being sentenced on March 9 to 10 years in prison on charges of abusing his position and power while on duty as a reporter.

Previously, he had served two years in prison for blog posts that were critical of the Communist Party.

Read more here.

Truong Duy Nhat stands trial in the central Vietnamese city of Da Nang on March 4, 2014 [File: Vietnam News Agency/AFP]

7. Elena Milashina, Russia

On April 12, independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta correspondent Elena Milashina wrote that quarantined Chechens had stopped reporting coronavirus symptoms for fear of being labelled terrorists.

Chechnya leader Ramzan Kadyrov called that nonsense and accused the Federal Security Service for not silencing her, the coalition said. It added that Milashina sought protection from the Investigative Committee of Russia and the prosecutor generals office but did not receive any response. The journalist has told The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) by phone she is really afraid, as Kadyrovs threats are really serious, according to the coalition.

Six journalists who covered Chechnya have been murdered in Russia since 1992.

8. Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman, Pakistan

The CEO, owner and editor-in-chief of Jang Media Group, Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman, was arrested on March 12 over a case involving allegations that he illegally acquired land in 1986.

The next day, the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority ordered cable distributors throughout the country to stop transmitting Geo TV, which is owned by Jang Media Group and is the nations largest television news channel, or move its broadcasts to a harder-to-find channel. Geo TV has criticised the governments coronavirus preparations.

Shakil-ur-Rahman was denied bail on April 7, even though no charges have been filed against him,

Police officers and media people gather as Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman leaves after attending court proceedings in Lahore, Pakistan [File: Stringer/Reuters]

9. Yayesew Shimelis, Ethiopia

On March 26, journalist Yayesew Shimelis published on Facebook and YouTube a report about the new coronavirus which Ethiopias Ministry of Health condemned as false. Yayesew told a friend he feared government retaliation, and the next day was arrested at a relatives home, according to the coalition.

On three occasions from April 15-21, police failed to respect court orders to release Yayesew, instead introducing new allegations against him, the coalition said. He was eventually released on bail until a May 15 hearing on charges of distributing disinformation, punishable with up to three years in prison or a fine of up to $3,000 under a recently-enacted law.

Yayesew Shimelis was released on bail until a May 15 hearing on charges of distributing disinformation after police failed to respect court orders to release for three times [File: Courtesy Ethio Forum Productions]

10. Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia imprisoned 26 journalists in 2019, according to the CPJ, and has yet to deliver justice in the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post, inside the kingdoms consulate in the Turkish city of Istanbul.

Findings from the US and UN point to an extrajudicial killing involving the Saudi crown prince and demand an independent criminal investigation. The crown prince denies involvement.

On March 25, Turkey indicted 20 Saudi nationals on charges of murder and incitement linked to the October 2, 2018, murder.
(UPDATED) Former senator Jose Ejercito Jr. Jinggoy Estrada was arrested Sunday afternoon, May 3, for allegedly violating quarantine protocols while distributing relief goods in San Juan City.

San Juan City Mayor Francis Zamora confirmed the arrest. He said the former senator was not authorized to go around the city and conduct relief operations.

Kanina nakatanggap kami ng tawag na ang NCRPO (National Capital Region Police Office) ay gumalaw sa lungsod ng San Juan sapagkat itong si dating senador Jinggoy Estrada ay may ilang araw na nag-iikot dito sa Lungsod ng San Juan ng walang authority...Dahil tayo ay nasa enhanced community quarantine kinakailangan yan under DILG regulation and under IATF directives and PNP laws kinakailangan ikaw ay may authority or permit outside residence, Zamora said.

Unang una wala sya nyan (permit) so wala syang dahilan para magikot-ikot sa iba ibang barangay. Pangalawa kung gusto nyang tumulong sa ating mga mamamayan, ayon sa ating DILG any organization any person who would like to conduct any relief operation ay kinakailangan kumuha po ng certification from the local government unit para siguraduhin na meron social distancing para siguraduhin na hindi nagkakagulo. Yaan po ay mga bagay na palagay ko ay nilabag nya at yan po ang dahilan siguro kung bakit siya inaresto ng PNP, he added.

Estrada, in another television interview, admitted that he did not have a permit to conduct relief operations.

But he also blamed politics for his arrest. Zamora is a political rival who defeated the former senators daughter Janella during the 2016 elections, thus, ending the Estrada familys 50-year rule in San Juan.

Local politics, that's about it you know because the mayor here in San Juan has always been very consistent in instructing all the barangay captains not to entertain me, not to give me any support if I go to their barangays. So that's very clear, he is politicking at this early stage, Estrada said in a television interview.

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Estrada said he has been distributing relief goods for two weeks before he was arrested Sunday afternoon.

Zamora clarified that he has nothing to do with Estradas arrest.

He said the Department of the Interior and Local Government, Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases, and the Philippine National Police have been regularly monitoring the enforcement of quarantine guidelines.

Kasi yung ginagawa niyang pagikot sa ibat-ibang barangay, kitang kita naman ng lahat yan, kahit saan ka magtanong sa San Juan alam nila na nag-iikot parating maraming tao walang social distancing...Siguro namonitor na sila ng IATF at ng DILG kaya hinuli na sila ngayon, he said.

The DILG earlier instructed individuals and groups planning to conduct relief operations to coordinate with and secure a permit from the local government to ensure peace and order during the distribution.

Alam mo unfortunately maraming mg NGOs, civic organizations, private individuals, civilians like me who are distributing relief goods almost everyday without any permit. Why are they singling me out? I think that is unfair, said Estrada.

I have been a mayor here for nine years before so alam ko. Gusto ko lang tumulong sa ating mga kababayan. Bakit naman ako pipigilan nitong kasalukuyang admistrasyon dito sa San Juan? Bakit naman ako pipigilan tumulong dito sa aking mga kababayan? he added.

Zamora said he would have granted Estrada a permit had he requested for it.

He said he issued a permit to Estradas daughter, Janella, on April 29 for the distribution of free medicine to the residents of San Juan.

Last month, however, Zamora ordered the closure of a rolling store established by Janella due to lack of permit.

Estradas father, former President Joseph Ejercito Estrada, went to the police station after the former senators arrest.

He said his son was distributing milkfish to the poor residents when he was approached and arrested by policemen.

The police has yet to provide report on Estradas arrest. (SunStar Philippines)
Passive investing in index funds can generate returns that roughly match the overall market. But one can do better than that by picking better than average stocks (as part of a diversified portfolio). For example, the Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (NYSE:BMY) share price is up 24% in the last year, clearly besting the market decline of around 5.9% (not including dividends). If it can keep that out-performance up over the long term, investors will do very well! However, the stock hasn't done so well in the longer term, with the stock only up 9.3% in three years.

View our latest analysis for Bristol-Myers Squibb

In his essay The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville Warren Buffett described how share prices do not always rationally reflect the value of a business. One flawed but reasonable way to assess how sentiment around a company has changed is to compare the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price.

Over the last twelve months, Bristol-Myers Squibb actually shrank its EPS by 33%.

So we don't think that investors are paying too much attention to EPS. Since the change in EPS doesn't seem to correlate with the change in share price, it's worth taking a look at other metrics.

We think that the revenue growth of 16% could have some investors interested. We do see some companies suppress earnings in order to accelerate revenue growth.

The graphic below depicts how earnings and revenue have changed over time (unveil the exact values by clicking on the image).

NYSE:BMY Income Statement May 3rd 2020

We consider it positive that insiders have made significant purchases in the last year. Even so, future earnings will be far more important to whether current shareholders make money. This free report showing analyst forecasts should help you form a view on Bristol-Myers Squibb

What About Dividends?

When looking at investment returns, it is important to consider the difference between total shareholder return (TSR) and share price return. The TSR is a return calculation that accounts for the value of cash dividends (assuming that any dividend received was reinvested) and the calculated value of any discounted capital raisings and spin-offs. Arguably, the TSR gives a more comprehensive picture of the return generated by a stock. We note that for Bristol-Myers Squibb the TSR over the last year was 28%, which is better than the share price return mentioned above. The dividends paid by the company have thusly boosted the total shareholder return.

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A Different Perspective

It's good to see that Bristol-Myers Squibb has rewarded shareholders with a total shareholder return of 28% in the last twelve months. And that does include the dividend. That gain is better than the annual TSR over five years, which is 0.7%. Therefore it seems like sentiment around the company has been positive lately. In the best case scenario, this may hint at some real business momentum, implying that now could be a great time to delve deeper. While it is well worth considering the different impacts that market conditions can have on the share price, there are other factors that are even more important. For example, we've discovered 4 warning signs for Bristol-Myers Squibb (1 is potentially serious!) that you should be aware of before investing here.

There are plenty of other companies that have insiders buying up shares. You probably do not want to miss this free list of growing companies that insiders are buying.

Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on US exchanges.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
From the early days of the Trump administration, Stephen Miller, the presidents chief adviser on immigration, has repeatedly tried to use an obscure law designed to protect the nation from diseases overseas as a way to tighten the borders.

The question was, which disease?

Mr. Miller pushed for invoking the presidents broad public health powers in 2019, when an outbreak of mumps spread through immigration detention facilities in six states. He tried again that year when Border Patrol stations were hit with the flu.

When vast caravans of migrants surged toward the border in 2018, Mr. Miller looked for evidence that they carried illnesses. He asked for updates on American communities that received migrants to see if new disease was spreading there.

In 2018, dozens of migrants became seriously ill in federal custody, and two under the age of 10 died within three weeks of each other. While many viewed the incidents as resulting from negligence on the part of the border authorities, Mr. Miller instead argued that they supported his argument that President Trump should use his public health powers to justify sealing the borders.
To help contain the spread of the coronavirus, many Japanese universities have closed or transitioned to online classes to keep their students and staff safe.

However, that also means that access to resources like university libraries is also cut off, and with internet cafes also closed, students who donat have a computer donat have the ability to access their online classes.

Thatas why Meiji Gakuin University has decided to give all 12,000 of their students a uniform grant of 50,000 yen each, to help offset the costs of online learning. Itas meant to aid students who donat have an at-home internet connection or a computer, but undoubtedly the funds will also help those who have lost their jobs stay afloat until they can go back to work again.

The university, which closed both its Tokyo and Yokohama campuses on April 8, made the emergency decision to provide the grant with the desire to areduce even a little bit of the financial burden on our studentsa. Since they extended the closure and use of online classes to May 20, thatas likely a big help for many. The 600 million yen required for the grants has been taken from the reserves of the universityas scholarship fund.

Meiji Gakuin University is also considering relief measures for students whose familiesa incomes have been drastically affected by the pandemic, such as a special scholarship for students whose parents lost their jobs. The due date for tuition payments was also extended from the end of April to the end of May, though the university does not appear to be considering reducing tuition or fees for its students at the moment.
These are crazy times were living in, times when we wake up each day and hear the latest COVID-19 death toll and consider it progress if its less than yesterdays.

We are asked to sacrifice individual freedoms for the good of the whole and we are growing increasingly tired of it. But for most of us, our everyday lives are comfortable compared to what hospital workers are going through.

Health care specialists face obvious risks as they try to protect us from the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A former North Iowan who is now a physician in Massachusetts knows firsthand the agonizing dilemma doctors and nurses face every day because he finds himself engulfed in it. And he worries about trying to save lives in his work environment without going home and exposing his family to the deadly illness.

Dr. Asitha Jayawardena, a 2005 graduate of Mason City High School, says juggling these two basic moral issues  saving lives without endangering your family  are a daily drama for health care workers.

Jayawardena, the son of Dr. Harsha and Darshini Jayawardena, works in the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and Massachusetts General Hospital as a pediatric specialist in ear, nose and throat ailments.

He recently wrote about these challenges, ones that todays health care workers have never faced before, in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The emotional toll is enormous, according to Jayawardena.

He says health care in the United States has been flipped upside down because of the pandemic and he, like thousands of other medical professionals find themselves in the middle of it.

As a doctor, Jayawardena wants to be on the frontline of fighting the disease. But as a husband and father he worries. I want to help fight the battle against this invisible enemy but I wonder: How do I not catch this disease? he asks.

In his specialty, he is at particularly high risk for exposure and he is aware that many of his colleagues around the world have contracted COVID-19 and several have died. As an airway intervention specialist, he is likely to be exposed to a child with the virus every day.

Jaywardena asks himself: Am I an asymptomatic carrier of the disease  potentially spreading it to all the children at my hospital who were born with complex airway problems?

And what about after work?

Every evening when I finally finish my day, my beautifully oblivious 17-month-old daughter is unabashed in her desire to hug me as soon as I walk through the door. He said his challenge is to make it to the shower before she has a chance to touch him. He also worried about infecting his wife who was eight-months pregnant at the time he wrote the article.

His worst fears were realized when both his wife and daughter developed symptoms of the COVID-19 virus. I feel immense guilt at having burdened them with this horrible disease because of my career choices, he said.

The craziness of the situation can create some crazy thoughts, said Dr. Jayawardena. He began to think about how if they both tested positive and then beat the disease, there might be a chance of immunity.

He thought about how their immunity would eliminate his deepest fear  causing harm to his family because of his work. But his wife and daughter both tested negative  great news for the family but putting to rest the doctors far-fetched idea for immunity.

This previously preposterous shift in my own way of thinking echoes the chaos and rapid shifts of strategy that our country is making almost daily in our fight against this invisible beast, he wrote.

Like many clinicians, I am not quite sure what tomorrow will bring. For now, my tiny family and I go back to our own fight. Waiting for something positive.

John Skipper retired from the Globe Gazette in February 2018 after 52 years in newspapers, most of that in Mason City covering North Iowa government and politics.

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Piers Morgan will be taking some time off Good Morning Britain while he awaits the results of a coronavirus test.

The presenter, 55, started feeling unwell over the weekend and will stay off the programme 'out of an abundance of caution'.

He had been going into the west London studio every morning, doing his own make-up and sitting two metres away from co-host Susanna Reid.

Mr Morgan tweeted on Sunday night: 'UPDATE: On medical advice, and out of an abundance of caution for a mild symptom that arose in past 48hrs, I've had a test for COVID-19 and so won't be working on @GMB until I get the result back, which should be tomorrow.'

The presenter (left with co-host Susanna Reid) has been one of the strongest voices holding the government to account throughout the crisis

It comes after Ms Reid self-isolated at her London home for two weeks in March following a member of her household developing symptoms of the bug.

Mr Morgan, who is usually on the show with Ms Reid from Monday to Wednesday, has been one of the strongest voices holding the government to account during the crisis.

Since the country was put in lockdown on March 23, he has become the interviewer ministers fear most due to his ruthless scrutinising of the facts.

He has spoken truth to power at every turn, including fiercely questioning decisions made by both the UK and US governments.

In an article for MailOnline on Thursday, the columnist branded Prime Minister Boris Johnson's first press briefing back after beating Covid 'complete and utter bullsh*t'.

He said Mr Johnson's speech had made US President Donald Trump seem credible and that his Brexit strategy cannot be used to beat the virus.

In an article for MailOnline on Thursday the columnist branded Prime Minister Boris Johnson (pictured) first press briefing back after beating Covid 'complete and utter bullsh*t'

Mr Morgan wrote: 'When Boris fans, the vast majority of them with union jack flags and Brexit slogans in their profiles, scream abuse at me all day long on Twitter for challenging their hero's coronavirus strategy, they do so because to them, any criticism of the government over this crisis is a re-run of the viciously toxic and partisan Brexit campaign.'

He added: 'None of Boris Johnson's political skills that won him the Referendum and December's election are working like they did before the virus struck.'

The journalist pointed to a chart that was shown at the end of the briefing on the 'Global Death Comparision'.

He spotted how it showed the UK was trending to be the second worst hit country in the world for Covid-19 deaths.

On Sunday the number of fatalities in Britain rose by 315 to 28,446, putting it on course to become the hardest hit in Europe.

Its toll is now 264 behind Italy - the continent's original epicentre - which it will likely overtake tomorrow to suffer the second highest fatalities in the world after the US.

Mr Johnson was not the only world leader Mr Morgan has targeted, with him going toe-to-toe with President Trump over the US's coronavirus strategy.

The presenter has repeatedly called out Mr Trump's approach to the bug, which has rampaged across the US and killed more than 65,000 people.

The presenter has repeatedly called out Mr Trump's (pictured on Sunday) approach to the bug, which has rampaged across the US and killed more than 65,000 people

This culminating in him saying Mr Trump was 'batsh*t crazy' for his handling of the crisis.

The US President faced widespread ridicule after he suggested tackling coronavirus with the use of 'powerful' UV light or even injecting patients with disinfectant.

Starting his column by telling Mr Trump to 'shut the f*** up', Mr Morgan admonished the President for using his position to air the 'batsh*t crazy theories'.

The presenter later announced Mr Trump had unfollowed him on Twitter.

Mr Morgan's approach to politicians was vindicated last week when OFCOM cleared him for his 'combative' style.

The GMB host attracted more than 3,000 complaints from two interviews with care minister Helen Whately on the show last month.

Almost 600 viewers also complained about another interview with Health Secretary Matt Hancock on April 16.

But Ofcom said: 'It is clearly in the public interest that broadcasters are able to hold those making political decisions to account.'

Mr Morgan grilled Ms Whately about the number of NHS and care workers who have died from Covid-19 and accused her of 'massively understating' the effects of the virus.

In the interview Mrs Whately claimed 76 NHS and care workers had died from the disease, to which the host replied: 'You see these numbers again, are completely wrong.

Care Minister Helen Whately (right) was on the receiving end of two of the journalist's (left) most memorable displays within the space of a week last month

'The real figure of all the people who work in the NHS and care homes who have died is actually 111.'

Mr Hancock was challenged by the MailOnline columnist on whether he would volunteer for a salary reduction.

During the exchange on April 16, Morgan was also angered when the politician claimed the Government was prepared for the pandemic, telling him: 'Stop playing that game with me, Mr Hancock. You're buying yourself a bit of time.'

Mr Morgan said he would have 'admired' Mr Hancock more if he would have just admitted that the Department of Health 'had not been prepared' for the impact the coronavirus pandemic has had on the National Health Service.

He added: 'Your resolute refusal to concede you made any mistakes here grates with me and misjudges the public mood'.

The pair continued to clash as Morgan chastised Mr Hancock, reminding him he runs the show after the politician urged him to 'let him speak', during the interview.

On Good Morning Britain Mr Morgan said of the watchdog investigation: 'They have not held up any of the complaints. I'm glad about that.

'Freedom of speech matters and journalists doing their job matters. Getting the government to think about every decision they are taking matters, holding them to account matters.

'We do our job they do theirs. But we are all on the same side here and we shouldn't mistake challenging government's with wanting government to fail.

'I want our government to succeed. We do this challenging everyday with ministers to help them make better decisions, so that fewer people die.

'We are on the same side against the same enemy. It's not a referendum, its not an election, its one virus against the world.'

It is not clear who will step in for Mr Morgan while he is off.
The name is a pop culture reference derived from a 1984 movie flop that became a cult classic called Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo. It went through various mutations and emerged sometimes as the Big Igloo or the Big Luau. That is why adherents sometimes wear Hawaiian shirts, say those who track them. Many such shirts were in evidence when armed protesters stormed the state capital in Lansing, Mich., Thursday and they have appeared in rallies across the country.

Enthusiasts riff on the name, calling themselves boojihadeen or the boog. Not all those in the boogaloo movement are white supremacists, but groups who track hate culture find some overlap in terms of Nazi iconography and other extremist symbols.

There are some 125 such groups on Facebook, more than 60 percent created this year, according to a report from the Tech Transparency Project of the Campaign for Accountability, a nonprofit watchdog group.

Facebook, which had previously said it wrestled with the term because it is also the name of a popular music genre, issued a statement on Friday saying it would remove posts that link the term to violence. Were updating our policies to prohibit the use of these terms when accompanied by statements and images depicting armed violence, said a Facebook spokesman, who spoke on the condition of not being identified, as per company policy.

A common thread found on the internet is that Americans might soon be pitted against their government. In one YouTube video called Top 5 Boogaloo Guns, which has more than 340,000 views, the host warns of a tyrannical government and you have got to take to the streets and take care of business. The speaker was wearing a Hawaiian shirt decorated with pineapples and grenades.

Engagement with violent extremist content online in states with extended stay-at-home orders grew 21 percent in early April compared with the eight previous months, according to a report by Moonshot CVE, a start-up that monitors extremist searches on Google.

ISD Global, a London think tank that studies American social media, found that subscriptions to extremist channels also jumped markedly.
An 83-year-old hotelier, Ashok Kumar, running a prominent hotel chain in Rajasthan and many educational institutes in Haryana, UP and Punjab, has used the lean period of lockdown to find out the itinerary of Lord Ram during his exile period in the atlas of present times.

Speaking to IANS, he said, "We have found 195 places which still have the memorials connected to the events narrated in the Ramayana which directly relate to the life of Ram and Sita. These include Tamsa Tal (Mandah in UP), Shringverpur (Singraur in UP), Bhardwaj Ashram (located near Allahabad), Atri Ashram, Markandaya Ashram (Markundi in UP), Chitrakoot, Pamakuti (on banks of the Godavari), Panchvati, Sita Sarovar, Ram Kund in Triambakeshwar near Nasik, Shabari Ashram, Kishkindha (village Annagorai in Karnataka), Dhanushkoti and Rameshwar temple (in Tamil Nadu) and many others.

"Today, when people watch the Ramayana serial which is smashing many TRP records, they often ask if it is a myth or a reality that Ram went for Vanvaas for 14 years", says Kumar.

"His travel itinerary is clearly seen on today's atlas. Lord Ram started from Ayodhya (still exists) to Janakpur (Nepal), returned through Bihar to go south via Chhattisgarh (Bastar region), Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and finally through Tamil Nadu, reached a non-descript place where he established a Shiva-lingam which was finally called as Rameshwaram. Nearby was the stone-bridge he created to walk up to Jaffna region in today's Sri Lanka," says Kumar.

In Ramayan, it is mentioned that Ram's army constructed a bridge over the sea between Rameshwaram and Lanka. After crossing this bridge, Ram's army defeated the demon king Ravana.

Recently, NASA had put out pictures on the Internet of a bridge, the ruins of which are lying submerged in Palk Strait between Rameshwaram and Sri Lanka, he says.

"The Ashok Vatika or Sita Vatika exists in Sri Lanka even today and has been maintained as a popular tourist destination. It is over the highest hills in south of that country. They call it Sita Eliya. One has to first go to Lanka's hill station named as Nuwara Eliya. From there, people drive further up and reach Sita Eliya," says Kumar.

So Sri Lanka has maintained Sita's place "even 7,078 years after a historical incident" when Ram had to fight against Ravana to bring back his wife, Sita who was abducted by Ravana, Kumar says, adding that he followed Tulsidas Ramayan to track his itinerary.

He says the geography has naturally undergone a change over so many centuries. So to revive the same grandeur may be out of question. "But something may always be better than nothing", he says.

Running many prominent educational institutions in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab, he has also asked a few professors to conduct a research on Ramayana, Mahabharat and Chanakya period to evaluate what kind of world existed in those years and how those times were different from today's.

"We are trying to bring out four maps of the four different periods to know how the world has changed," he says.

"I am also conducting a research on the period somewhere around 1200 years ago before the Mughal invasion of India", he says.

Ashok Kumar is the chairman of Seth Mukund Lal Memorial Institutions which have some 23,000 students. With around Rs 85-crore turnover, he runs his hotel chains -- Mansingh Hotels in Rajasthan.
Nothing stirs up the conspiracy theorists like a government agency's advice. Last week, Revenue advised its home-based staff not to talk about work issues around smart speakers.

In other words, it thinks there's a risk that smart speakers are secretly listening to their conversations, with the content of those conversations possibly being available to people who may want to cheat them. Understandably, the conspiracy theorists pounced.

'Aha,' they cried. 'You see? They ARE spying on us.'

Such an outcry is understandable. Here is Ireland's most serious, sober State agency saying that smart speakers may be secretly recording us. Therefore, shouldn't ordinary Irish businesses also not discuss sensitive issues around our Echoes or Nests?

For that matter, shouldn't the same apply to Government ministers and other senior individuals discussing sensitive matters, sometimes regarding the very companies that make the speakers?

Moreover, if smart speakers are secretly recording us, isn't it logical that our phones are also doing so? After all, many of them are set up with smart assistants to recognise voice commands. Is it time to ditch our smartphones, too?

The problem with all of this is that there is virtually no evidence to support any of it.

When I asked the Revenue, it confirmed as much. "The matter of work conversations taking place near smart speakers was recently raised at an OECD forum on tax administration virtual discussion on potential Covid-19 risk and fraud issues," a spokesman said.

"While the OECD has no evidence that any virtual assistants are making use of anything heard, it was flagged as a potential risk. As such, Revenue's guidance reflects the recommended OECD/FTA mitigation approach on this matter."

So where did the OECD's forum on tax administration get the idea? Last year, there was a string of mini-scandals involving smart speakers. Staff (and contractors) tasked with improving the accuracy of voice commands sometimes checked snippets of commands to see whether the machines were understanding them correctly, or whether tweaks to the machine-learning were necessary.

The companies involved - Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft - hadn't explicitly said that this kind of human oversight for some snippets might be occurring. It was poor form from them. They admitted it and stopped the practice unless users gave consent for it. (In Apple's case, many of the contractors involved were based in Cork and lost their jobs with a number of them being rehired by Apple in the city.)

But the die was cast. Some decided to frame it in a wider narrative that 'smart devices are secretly listening to you'.

For some time, this has been an understandable fear among the general public. Many people have stories that involve them talking about a thing and 'suddenly' that thing turns up in a Facebook or Instagram ad.

But here's the thing. Smart speakers have been around for over five years. In that time, there hasn't been a single reported instance of the devices actually spying on us, or secretly listening to conversations in anything resembling the way its accusers allege. It is true that devices such as smart webcams - including those made by Amazon - have been hacked. But secretly listening as a built-in feature? Sorry, no. There is a greater chance of your laptop being hacked. And it would be an interesting recommendation indeed if the Revenue advised its agents to stop using laptops.

Caution and prudence are valuable things, especially in the country's most sensitive financial body. And the Revenue says it was only passing on something it heard at an OECD meeting.

Even still, I can already see the Facebook group page administrators' glee. For years to come, they will point to the Revenue's advice as "proof" that smart speakers are secretly spying on us.

Losing contact with trust

A contact-tracing app, if it is downloaded by a majority of smartphone users, would be an effective aid in helping stop the spread of coronavirus.

But right now, the Government may be setting the app up for failure.

Other countries are being open about the approach they're taking, allowing the public to become invested in the project.

Here, the Government has locked down any discussion about it, insisting that it all must remain secret until a big reveal in a few weeks' time.

This approach is already leading to early mistrust. Theories that it might spy on us are gaining traction. This is a real problem. The more negative the public feels about an upcoming contact-tracing app, the lower the likely adoption rate. The lower the adoption rate, the more irrelevant a contact-tracing app is.

Simon Harris said as much himself last week. "This will only work if the people of Ireland download it," he told the Dail on Thursday. "Otherwise it won't make a blind bit of difference." Yet he won't share even basic details about it.

The thing is, it was always going to be an uphill struggle to get people to download and use such an app anyway.

We know this from countries such as Singapore, one of the first to introduce a contact-tracing app. Despite it being live for weeks, only a fifth of the population has downloaded it. Australia has reported three million downloads in the first week of its contact-tracing app being live, but that is still barely more than 10pc of the population. Most experts say it needs at least 50pc population penetration to be effective.

With these numbers, why is the Government keeping everything secret, allowing a chunk of the population to believe that a contact-tracing app might spy on them?
More than 12,000 Iranian lawyers have protested to a draft bill that undermines their independence and in effect replaces the Iranian Bar Association with a group of judiciary officials appointed by the government.

Based on the draft the Judiciary will form a new body named the "Supreme Council for the Coordination of Lawyers' Affairs" that will be based at the Judiciary branch of the government "to coordinate matters relating to attorneys."

Iranian lawyers have been struggling for independence since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that, among other things, put clerics with no legal training or formal law education on top of the Judiciary branch.

Even some of those appointed as Chief Justice, prosecutors and judges in the post-1979 Iran have never been to a law school. In the meantime, the government has refused to respect the independence of attorneys and has put dozens of lawyers in jail for insisting on legal principles and citizens' rights.

Iran's legal system is based mainly on Shiite religious rules, however, untrained or hardliner clerics serving as judges have been often accused of issuing arbitrary verdicts leading to sentences disproportionate with what people have done.

In a letter to the head of the Islamic Republic's Judiciary, the lawyers called for abandoning the new draft regulations, stressing that the it "is against the interests of the country's legal system and the will of the lawyers' community, and will not be accepted by Iranian legal practitioners."

Earlier, in a letter to the heads of the three branches of government the lawyers had called the new regulations "a blatant violation of the law."

They also described the move by the judiciary as "devastating for the independence of the Bar Association and distorting the procedures of fair legal investigations."

The Iranian Judiciary argues that two of the individuals selected by the government will "represent the lawyers."

Since the downfall of the monarchy, and the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, the independence of the country's lawyers has been restricted at various degrees in different periods.

Among the latest cases is the Article 48 of the new Code of Criminal Procedure. The clause presents the head of the judiciary as the sole authority to appoint lawyers for defending suspects in preliminary stages of cases relating to internal and extraterritorial security of the Islamic Republic.

Consequently, the head of the judiciary has issued a list of his "trusted lawyers" to the courts. The move has prompted widespread criticism and protests from thousands of legal experts and attorneys out of the list.
03.05.2020 LISTEN

Washington, DC 4th May 2020  Infectious disease scientist, Dr. Dougbeh Chris Nyan has said that Liberias extremely high case fatality rate of 10-11% is unrealistic and questionable since these numbers come from COVID-19 testing of dead bodies that may not have haboured the virus several hours or days after a person was pronounced dead.

The Liberian scientist raised the concerns on 29th April 2020 as he analyzed Liberias COVID-19 Pandemic data on Monrovias OK FM 99.5 The Conversation with Julius Jeh. Liberia seems to have the highest case fatality rate in the West African sub-region.

Since the detection of COVID-19 in the index case in Liberia in March, the Liberian COVID-19 Case Management System has reportedly been carrying out community testing of dead bodies of people not previously under its observation, but coming out with positive laboratory test results for COVID-19.

Dr. Nyan made reference to the case of 72 years old John Teah, a hypertensive patient who died at the ELWA Hospital in Paynesville, Monrovia in early April and a 42-year-old man who suddenly died on April 3, 2020, upon arrival at the Jackson F. Doe Memorial Hospital in Tappita, Lower Nimba County. The test results of the 42-year old deceased man were first declared negative, then later declared positive. Relatives of both deceased persons disputed the COVID-19 test results by public health authorities.

You [health authorities] cannot just say somebody died from COVID-19 simply by taking a swab from the mouth [of the dead body] whereby these people had underlying conditions that probably led to their deaths.

Dr. Nyan, an infectious disease scientist, explained in simple terms that COVID-19 is an RNA virus. Unlike DNA, the RNA is fragile and degrades very quickly after the virus dies on surfaces and in dead people who might have been infected with the virus. COVID-19 does not survive in a non-living system or non-supportive medium.

He raised a number of questions as to when did they [deceased persons] die, when were the samples [specimens] taken, how long were that samples transported, how long were the samples processed in order to detect the positive result?

Dr. Nyan then recommended that a panel of scientists and public health personnel should review those testing data of the all dead persons tested, and emphasizing that, if these questions are not properly answered and not scientifically documented, those results must be questionable and must be thrown out.

Representative Edwin Snowe of Bomi County who called in to the Julius Jeh Show, said he was concerned that Liberia is showing the highest death rate  all other countries in West Africa are showing under 2% of death rate, but Liberia is accounting for about 10% death rate and that has been bothering me.

Representative Snowe further stated that, fortunately he [Dr. Nyan] answered my question today and we need to go back to the drawing board I want to thank the doctor [Nyan] for a very, very brilliant presentation; the doctor has done us a good service.

On her Facebook post on 30th April 2020, Akovi Faith wrote with similar concern that, Liberia has the second highest case fatality rate in Africa, 12.5%, second to Algeria's 12.6%. Liberia is testing community deaths while other countries in the region may not so that could explain the ratio.

Dr. Nyan then recommended that, public health officials should stop testing dead bodies, and further proposed that, the protocol being used should be revised so as to address this particular issue [of testing dead bodies for COVID-19 infection].

Testing remains a challenge and testing kits for COVID-19 are in short supply in Liberia.

The country has only one testing facility at the National Public Health Institute of Liberia. From January through March 2020, Dr. Nyan and his Diagnostic Team offered to develop Liberias COVID-19 testing kits for free, but the government did not respond. He is the invented of the US-patented Rapid Multiplex Detection Test (called the Nyan-Test) for many infections including the Coronaviruses (COVID-19).
Congressman Michael McCaul, the U.S. representative from District 10, has been in Washington since the COVID-19 pandemic hit. McCaul and his fellow members of Congress have been tasked with an unprecedented challenge- preventing the spread of disease while simultaneously preventing the total collapse of the economy. Now that the state is beginning to reopen, McCaul is urging his constituents to move forward responsibly to rebuild the local economy while remaining safe.

Small businesses are among the hardest hit by the economic downturn. These same small businesses are a strong part of Katys cultural identity. How can Katy help these businesses? How can we preserve the verve of our community while these businesses are struggling?

My colleagues and I in Congress are extremely concerned about small businesses, which is why we created the Paycheck Protection Program, which gives small businesses a lifeline during this difficult time to keep their employees on the payroll.

Now that the state is starting to reopen, it is important for Katy to help its businesses by encouraging safe, responsible, socially distant activities to resume.

Related: Congressman Michael McCaul pushes for economic growth, human rights activism

We get a lot of conflicting information from different sources. What advice would you give your constituents on navigating the deluge of information during this time?

Looking at online updates from places like Centers for Disease Control, Harris County Public Health, and the Texas Department of State Health Services can be very helpful. My office created a webpage that has up to date information on cases, important websites, how to get tested, where to go to receive loans and so on. I wanted to be sure to make this as easy as possible for my constituents, so they have one place to go to find a whole list of resources.

That website is McCaul.House.Gov/Resources/Coronavirus-Updates-and-Resources. For hour by hour updates, you can follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We also have sent out paper mail, too, to more rural areas, so they are kept up to date. Lastly, my newsletter includes updates on what is going on in Congress, but also what is happening in our community.

We hear so many ways that the political parties are divided on the COVID-19 response. What are some of the ways the two parties are united? How are they working together for the benefit of the country?

Over the last few weeks we have seen the news highlight the divide in Congress, but I think what matters most is that at the end of the day we are able to come together and get things done for the American people. If you look at the legislation we have passed to combat the coronavirus, dating back to the first piece of legislation on March 4, it has all passed by an overwhelming bipartisan vote.

What is your biggest priority right now?

I will have to answer this question in three parts.

First, we need to figure out the origins of the coronavirus and hold the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) accountable. That is why I have requested a bipartisan investigation into the WHO and CCPs mishandling of the coronavirus. The CCP let an epidemic become a pandemic. Had they been more transparent about COVID-19, we could have had the opportunity to stop it, but unfortunately, they took away that option for us by covering up the facts.

Meanwhile, the WHO fundamentally failed in one of their most important tasks of alerting to the dangers of this virus because they took everything the CCP told them at face-value, instead of examining credible warnings from places such as Taiwan. By getting these answers, we are taking the steps to make sure this never happens again.

Secondly, I am working with state and local officials to make sure they get the resources they need, like testing, and working with agencies like the FDA, CDC, and NIH to get treatments out as quickly as possible to save lives and help us get back to work.

And finally, the energy sector has taken a huge hit because of COVID-19 and the oil war between Russia and Saudi Arabia. The U.S. energy industry supports thousands of U.S. jobs, many of which are in Texas. We are the number one exporter of energy in the world, and we want to maintain that. It will be important to find ways to particularly help the small oil and gas producers to get through this tough time as we prepare for a rebound of the economy this summer.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, you were working to treat diseases across the globe. Has that experience given you any perspectives on this crisis in the U.S.?

From the work I have done with Global HOPE Act to support childhood cancer efforts globally to funding the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria, one of the great takeaways is that disease sees no political party, ethnicity, creed, culture, or anything else. We are all in this together and need to all cooperate to defeat this virus.

Related: Rep. McCauls Global Hope Act brings lifesaving cancer treatments to children in developing nations

Obviously, the community has been hit by a lot of bad news lately. Can you share some good news with us?

I think we see it almost every day, its from the stories we hear of places like Freys Backyard BBQ in Tomball who delivered free meals to the first responders and health care workers at HCA Houston Healthcare Hospital to Shire Distillers reworking their operations to make hand sanitizer for first responders and residents in Katy. The Texas resolve is something to be in awe of because in times of crisis we come together to help our neighbors.

claire.goodman@chron.com
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sun, May 3, 2020 17:20 625 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd5a4811 1 News travel,tourism,Tourism-and-Creative-Economy-Ministry,Wishnutama,Tourist,coronavirus,COVID-19,pandemic,Asita Free

Tourism and Creative Economy Minister Wishnutama Kusubandio shared some insights to help the travel industry regain its power after the coronavirus pandemic.

He encouraged travel agents to have digital platforms, as he predicted a surge in tourism once the pandemic is over.

We can see how technology and the digital media has brought new routines and ways of life, he said on Saturday as reported by tempo.co .

He also urged the Association of Indonesian Tour and Travel Agencies (ASITA) to have a digital platform, as it is considered essential in the travel ecosystem.

ASITA members need to find potential amid this pandemic. Like it or not, the digital era is happening and it is a challenge for the association, he said.

Read also: RedDoorz launches sanitation, hygiene certification program

The minister said he was coordinating with various stakeholders in tourism to be prepared for a surge in tourists by formulating promotional plans.

The first step is to encourage Indonesian tourists by coming up with alluring travel packages, he said. "The pandemic has brought new routines; [this is] the new normal."

He also noted a new trend in tourism brought by the outbreak as the landscape will be reformed in terms of health and comfort.

For the next tourism development, we will focus on the principle things, namely hygiene and sanitation in tourist attractions, accommodation and modes of transportation, he said.

Wisnutama shared his hope for some form of certification to ensure these criteria.

Wed need strong cooperation to push mitigation and recovery efforts, during the pandemic and afterward, he said. (wng)
Nurses and supporters protest the lack of personal protective gear available at UCI Medical Center amid the CCP virus pandemic in Orange, Calif., on April 3, 2020. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

National Nurses Week: Celebrations Put On Hold by COVID-19 Pandemic

This year marks the bicentenary of British nurse Florence Nightingales birth, but with the grim reality of nurses dying on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic, the celebrations will have to wait.

Nurses are especially disappointed they wont be able to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Nightingales birthday on May 12 as part of National Nurses Week, Dr. Marketa Houskova, executive director of the American Nurses Association\California, told The Epoch Times.

But due to the pandemic, social distancing, and a ban on public gatherings, this years National Nurses Week eventsscheduled for May 6-12, and themed Year of the Nurse and Midwifehave been postponed.

Were all really, really sad that we dont get to do that, said Houskova. Its more important to ensure hospitals are able to care for patients.

Nightingalewho fought tirelessly against infectious diseases during the Crimean War in the 1850s and is considered the godmother of modern nursingwould have been especially proud of the way todays nurses are battling against COVID-19. Since 1993, National Nurses Week festivities begin each year on May 6 and end on her birthday, in her honor.

This year, in recognition of their contributions, the week has been expanded to National Nurses Month, Houskova said.

But even though this years celebratory events have been postponed, people can still show their appreciation for nurses, said Houskovaby honoring the shared struggles and challenges they are facing due to the pandemic.

Showing Appreciation for Nurses



In the last 200 years, nursing has grown into an evidence-based, scientifically focused professional practice, Houskova saidso there is plenty to celebrate, even if nurses have to wait until next year for their big party.

To honor their efforts, many restaurantsincluding Starbucks, Burger King, KFC, Krispy Kreme, and Dunkin Donutsare offering free meals or discounts to nurses for the week of May 6-12.

Companies are doing this for nurses. They are supporting, helping, recognizing, and thanking nurses, said Houskova. We are very happy for any of those recognitions, because there is nothing that nurses love more than coffee and doughnuts, or some good food.

She added that people can also support nurses by donating to the Coronavirus Response Fund for Nurses, created by the American Nurses Foundation to help nurses in financial distress.

This is a great way for the public to help nurses, through the fund, she said.

And even though celebratory events have been canceled, people can still show their appreciation for nurses this week by staying healthy, Houskova said.

If you really want to help and support us, and show us that you respect us, then follow the recommendations from state and federal agencies, she said. I think that would be the most important part.

Nurses are also encouraging people to call their friends and families to make sure everyone is OK, and has access to food, shelter, and security.

Those are essential determinants of health, she said, and they have direct consequences on health care, health, and well-being.

And dont forget to exercise, she added.

You can go outside, you can go for a walk, you can get some exercisebut make sure you have a minimum of six feet between you and somebody who is also walking on the street, she said. We have to be smart, and we have to be responsible in our behavior.

A nurse holds up a sign to protest the lack of personal protective gear available at UCI Medical Center in Orange, Calif., on April 3, 2020. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Nurses Facing Fears

Like others throughout society, nurses are facing many uncertainties, both professionally and personally, due to the pandemic.

While some nurses on COVID-19 floors are working long hours, many arentbecause elective surgeries have been canceled in many hospitals.

In the meantime, nurses are being put on hold, Houskova said.

If something doesnt change soon, the fear is this: that nurses will be in dire financial situations, along with everybody else in our society.

Those nurses who work in hospitals on COVID-19 floors constantly worry about contracting the disease and spreading it to their families.

Many nurses have isolated themselves in hotel rooms, rented homes, or are living in recreational vehicles (RVs), Houskova said. Others are isolating themselves in separate rooms in their own homes, after working long hours and commuting.

They dont want to increase the likelihood that they could put their family in danger, she added.

Many nurses have set up tents, or some type of washing station, outside their homes, where they change clothes. They then go inside their homes to showerand change againbefore entering the main living areas.

Houskova added, When youre working in a hospital, and if youre working on a COVID-19 floor and you do take care of COVID-19 patients, you go home, and all you worry about is, Am I keeping my family, my parents, my children, and my loved ones safe?

Nurses Are Terrified

Nurses need to be able to freely speak out about what they are experiencing on the job, Houskova said. But many who attempt to speak out about the lack of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) or unsafe conditions have been hit with gag orders, silencing them, or are simply afraid of losing their jobs.

Its really difficult for me to even reach out to our members and ask them to talk publicly. I think that nurses are terrified, Houskova said.

Nobody wants to speak publicly. Very few of them are willing to use their name, because they are worried about their license. Theyre worried about their future. Theyre worried about their careers.

She added, The fact that we are speaking out stems from our code of ethics. Thats part of our nursing education. Thats part of our nursing profession.

In a recent national survey of more than 32,000 nurses conducted by the American Nurses Association (ANA), nearly 90 percent said they feared going to work for lack of protection.

More than half reported being short on or out of PPE, including surgical masks, face shields, filters, disposable gowns, goggles, and sanitizer. About 43 percent have made their own PPE, and more than a quarter of those surveyed said they have been forced to create their own surgical masks.

According to the survey, conducted between March 20 and April 10, about half of all nurses lack adequate training to conduct COVID-19 testing. And about 68 percent say they are working without the necessary nurse staffing.

Dr. Ernest J. Grant, president of the ANA, called the results of the survey distressing.

It is our hope that the survey findings serve as both a wake-up call and an opportunity to make swift change for the future now, as we plan for a second surge and ongoing challenges in the years ahead, Grant said in an April 24 media release.

While there have been strides to deploy PPE and other critical aid to the front lines, we are still hearing reports from nurses that they continue to lack basic PPE, he said. And as a result, nurses dont feel safe, and are concerned about spreading the disease to their patients and family members and becoming infected themselves.

He added, This is leading to extraordinary stress and exhaustion among nurses and other health care professionals.

The ANA represents the interests of the nations 4 million registered nurses, the media release stated.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 9,200 health care workers in the United States had tested positive for COVID-19 through April 9.

National Nurses United (NNU), the largest nationwide union and professional association for registered nurses, stated on April 30 that more than 60 nurses have died so far from the diseasethough due to lack of testing, the number is likely higher.

Nurses and supporters protest about the lack of personal protective gear available at UCI Medical Center amid the CCP virus pandemic in Orange, Calif., on April 3, 2020. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Acts of Kindness

Nurses have fantastic standing in the community, but with that trust, ethics, and honesty, comes huge responsibility, Houskova said.

We speak out, and we advocate on behalf of our patients, she said. Thats what makes us so trustworthy, and so honored, and so trusted.

Houskova is disheartened by social media trolls suggesting that nurses shouldnt complain, because they signed up for this.

We signed up to take care of our communities, and to take care of our patients, she said.

She noted that other social media posts defended nurses, saying they didnt sign up to fight a pandemic without PPE any more than American troops signed up for battle without protective gear and equipment.

We have to work in a safe environment, she said, stressing the need for more N95 respirator masks.

There have been many heartwarming stories of people supporting nurses, by making decorative cloth masks and showing their appreciation on social media.

People have made signs, thanking nurses for their care, she added.

But Houskova said one story in particularof a kind neighbor helping a nursereally touched her heart.

The nurses car wouldnt start, and so the kind neighbor lent her his car, so she could get to the hospital and report for work. When the nurse returned home, she found the neighbor had replaced her car battery and filled up the gas tank.

Some people have even shared their federal relief funds with nurses.

Theyre actually sharing the money, and offering free gas for nurses, she said. Its just wonderful to know that we are being recognized and appreciated for the fundamental and crucial work we do. There are so many different things that make us happy, and give us a warm feeling.

So there is still plenty to celebrate throughout this month that honors them, even if nurses have to wait until next year for bigger festivities, Houskova said.

They really do need to celebrate, she added.

If we cant do it in 2020, we definitely need to do it in 2021, she said. Im hoping well all do better in 2021.

Until then, the steadfast dedication of Americas nurses during this time of difficulty would make Florence Nightingale proud.

The Epoch Times refers to the novel coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19, as the CCP virus because the Chinese Communist Partys cover-up and mismanagement allowed the virus to spread throughout China and create a global pandemic.
Tanzanian president, John Magufuli on Sunday ordered a probe on the countrys coronavirus testing kits after samples taken from a goat and pawpaw tested positive.



Speaking at an event in Chato in the northwest of Tanzania, Magufuli said the COVID-19 testing kits which had been imported from abroad had technical errors.



The president said he had instructed Tanzanian security forces to check the quality of the kits, who then randomly obtained several non-human samples, including from a pawpaw, a goat, and a sheep, but had assigned them human names and ages.



According to him, these samples were then submitted to Tanzanias laboratory to test for the coronavirus, with the lab technicians left deliberately unaware of their origins.



President Magufuli later disclosed that samples from the pawpaw and the goat tested positive for COVID-19, adding it was likely that some people were being tested positive when in fact they were not infected by the Coronavirus.



We extracted a sample from a goat which turned positive. This tells you that something is not adding up, he stated.



Are we now supposed to quarantine goats and fruits? President Magufuli questioned.

Source: LIB









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A statement signed by Mr Razak Kojo Opoku, the Founder and President of the CVM, said the concerns of Ghanaians in this COVID-19 period had been reasonably addressed by the President.

It said the President had been engaging relevant stakeholders, holding strategic meetings, reaching consensus and having serious discussions at Cabinet, all geared towards ensuring the safety of the people.

This is also to stabilize the economy for the collective good of the populace, the statement said.

It commended the government for critical thinking and consultation with experts on the best way forward to contain the pandemic.

---GNA
An empty classroom at Manor Park School and Nursery in Knutsford, Cheshire. (Getty)

Parents are unlikely to get fined if they keep their children at home when schools reopen as part of the lifting of lockdown restrictions, Ofsteds chief inspector has said.

Amanda Spielman, the head of the schools inspectorate, told Sky Newss Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme that given the number of children in households where somebody is at high risk, it is extraordinarily unlikely that anybody would start at the stick end of the spectrum rather than the carrot.

I am fairly sure we will be running a mixed economy of schooling for a while yet with some children attending and some children learning as best, they can remotely, she said.

Spielman argued it is in the best interests of children to reopen schools as quickly as possible, with younger children in particular missing the structured routine provided by schools.

Signs showing support for key workers outside a primary school in Woodseats, Sheffield. (Getty)

Her comments come amid reports in The Sunday Telegraph that schools could be reopened as early as June 1 as part of a roadmap to ending the lockdown restrictions.

Prime minister Boris Johnson is reportedly hoping to put teachers on three weeks notice to reopen primary schools in the coming days.

Latest coronavirus news, updates and advice

If you look at the interests of children, its very clear that their interests are best served in the vast majority of cases by being back at school as soon as possible, Spielman said.

Of course that has to be weighed up with a great many issues for adults, for staff in schools, for the healthcare system - but nevertheless if we look at children, it is in their interests.

Asked about a phased approach to sending children back to school, and whether primary school children should be a priority, she said there was a great deal of logic to younger pupils returning first.

We know that returning to normality for children is really important. The younger the child, the more they need that simple, structured routine where they understand whats happening.

Story continues

Its hard for them to go to school one day and then not for another two weeks.

Theres also a logic from the point of view of parents. Younger children are the ones who need the greatest care and oversight.

Spielman said schools were in the hands of the health experts to take guidance on social distancing within classrooms.

But while she said she didnt want to second guess the experts, the fact that children were somewhat less susceptible to serious complications should mean they were safe in schools.

Earlier on Sunday morning, transport secretary Grant Shapps said: "Its no secret that of course we want the kids to go back to school.

But Id be over-egging it to say theres a date in place, theres a plan in place."

It comes as a poll published by The Observer showed more than four in five Britons are against lockdown restrictions being eased for schools, pubs and restaurants this week.

Only 17% of those polled thought the time was right to consider re-opening schools, with smaller proportions of people thinking conditions had been met to allow cinemas, sporting stadia and nightclubs to open their doors.

The Opinium poll for the Observer questioned 2,000 adults between Wednesday and Friday and showed 79% of people were continuing to follow lockdown restrictions into their sixth week.

Coronavirus: what happened today?

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This article, Spinosaurus fossil discovery rewrites history of swimming dinosaurs, originally appeared on CNET.com.

Was Spinosaurus, a menacing monster of a dinosaur with the head of a crocodile and a huge spiky sail running down its back, able to swim?

It's a contentious question that has plagued paleontologists for the better part of a decade. Much of the fossil record suggests Spinosaurus, a theropod (three-toed) dinosaur, lived around water and fed on fish. But when researchers suggested the 50-foot-long Spinosaurus aegyptiacus lived a life aquatic in 2014, they were met with considerable resistance.

Donald Henderson, a paleontologist at Canada's Royal Tyrrell museum, argued Spinosaurus was top-heavy and could float quite well, but it was unlikely the huge beast would be able to sink and pursue prey underwater.

Now a new study, published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, shows Spinosaurus was definitely more Michael Phelps than Eric the Eel. Thanks to an assortment of new bones discovered in late 2018, researchers have been able to reconstruct the tail of Spinosaurus, solidifying the argument it was a great swimmer, able to maneuver and hunt prey beneath the surface.

"This discovery is the nail in the coffin for the idea that non-avian dinosaurs never invaded the aquatic realm," said Nazir Ibrahim, first author on the study and National Geographic Explorer, in a press release. Ibrahim has long been an advocate for Spinosaurus' aquatic abilities, having published the original hypothesis in 2014 suggesting it Spinosaurus wasn't afraid to get a little wet.

"It probably spent most of its life in the water," he said.

Marco Auditor

Ibrahim and his collaborators uncovered new Spinosaurus tail bones from the Kem Kem beds, a fossil site in Morocco which he has recently dubbed "the most dangerous place in the history of planet Earth." Parts of a Spinosaurus were first uncovered from the beds, near the town of Zrigat, during 2007 and 2008. Between 2015 and 2018, Ibrahim's team went back, dusting through a wider area of the site. They were able to locate an almost complete set of tail bones belonging to Spinosaurus. These aren't tiny bones either. Some are up to 12 inches (30 centimers) thick.

The team hypothesized Spinosaurus' tail would be particularly good at helping it move through water. They compared it to tails of two extinct land-dwelling dinosaurs and two modern-day semi-aquatic species, the Nile crocodile and the crested newt, by creating 2D models they tested in the water.

They discovered Spinosaurus had a tail which generated eight times more thrust than its land-dwelling dinosaur counterparts and was 2.6 times as efficient. The team concludes its tail must have been used to propel it through the water and likely prevented it from rolling over while floating.

"The new fossil evidence ... and the clever experimental work on the swimming performance of the tail changes dramatically everything we have ever learned about the theropod dinosaurs as large terrestrial predators," says John Long, strategic professor in paleontology at Flinders University in Australia. "We now know they were a highly adaptable group."

Spinosaurus belongs to the family of dinosaurs known as the spinosaurids (literally "spined lizards") and its family members have been found all across the world, thriving across the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous for a period of more than 50 million years. There were many huge beasts lurking in the prehistoric seas, including marine reptiles, but until Spinosaurus' life in the water was first hypothesized, no dinosaurs had been recognized as swimmers.

The new data is so remarkable it has even tripped up Japanese gaming behemoth Nintendo. In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, recently released for the Nintendo Switch, players are able to dig up fossils and display them in a museum. One such fossil is the Spinosaurus, but players have discovered Nintendo's version of the "river monster" is already out of date.

But that's science -- our understanding of dinosaurs continues to be rewritten by new fossil finds. The team argue the latest fossil evidence shows dinosaurs had fully invaded the aquatic environment across the globe. Long suggests the new data might see researchers take another look at theropods, like the fearsome Baryonyx, and contemplate whether they were more like Spinosaurus in lifestyle.
As the coronavirus-forced lockdown stretches out, the 250-odd microbreweries across the country are staring at a loss of around eight lakh litres of fresh beer, according to industry experts.

Not only this, around 1.2 million cases of Indian-Made Foreign Liquor worth Rs 700 crore are "stuck"in northern states, except Delhi, as with the start of the new financial year, the sellers need the nod of respective state governments to clear the stock which could not be used due to the lockdown restrictions.

Ishan Grover, who is a brewery consultant, said that unlike bottled beer, fresh beer or craft beer has a short life. Several brewers in Gurgaon have started draining beer as the plants need electricity to maintain a specific temperature for keeping the beer fresh, he said.

According to Craft Brewers Association of India, all plants storing about eight lakh litres of fresh beer have remained shut due to the nationwide lockdown and if a solution is not found at the earliest, lakhs of litres of brewed beer will go down the drain.

As the Centre has further extended the lockdown for two weeks, the association has demanded that microbreweries should be allowed to start take-away facility with the help of beer growlers so that their business is not affected.

"Several relaxations have been given in latest guidelines, but beer bars and clubs have not been given any relaxation.

"We should be allowed to start take-away facility with beer growlers. By doing this, social-distancing can strictly be followed," Nakul Bhonsle, president of Maharashtra Craft Brewers Association of Indian, told PTI.

Bhonsle said that in around 35 countries such a facility is in place for years and people take away fresh beer in growlers.

Sibi Venkataraju, who runs brewpub Toit in Bengaluru and is the national officer bearer of Craft Brewers Association of India, said that there are 250-odd microbreweries in the country and they provide employment to around 50,000 people.

He said that the beer plants have remained shut since the lockdown came into force on March 25.

Confederation of Indian Alcoholic Beverage Companies (CIABC) general director Vinod Giri said that they have estimated that around 1.2 million cases of IMFL are stuck due to the lockdown in northern states, except Delhi.

"This stock worth Rs 700 crore was to be finished by the end of previous financial year, but the nationwide lockdown came into force on March 25, so we could not clear it.

"We will need approval of state governments to sell the old stock of 1.2 million cases of IMFL" in the new financial year, Giri told PTI.

According to the latest lockdown guidelines issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs, sale of liquor, paan and tobacco will be allowed from Monday after ensuring a minimum six feet social distancing with not more than five persons at one time at shop.

These shops should not be located in markets and malls in urban areas.

All shops in rural areas, except in malls, are permitted to remain open without any distinction of essential and non-essential.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Twins of popular Oyo Islamic cleric, Alhaji Taofeek Akewugbagold have been released almost 8 days after they were abducted.

This is coming after the abductors demanded for 100,000 which is equivalent to N55 million for the release of the children.

The twins, a boy and a girl who are children of Sheikh Taofeeq A, kewugbagold were kidnapped by gunmen in Ibadan, the state capital of Oyo state about a week ago.

The twins were released to their father beside a bush this morning around 5:30am.



He revealed the release of the twins via his Facebook account.

It was not clear how much he paid as ransom.

Alhaji Akewugbagold thanked everyone for the support and prayers and also appreciated God for returning his beloved kids.

He wrote; ALHAMDULILLAH! AT 5.30AM OF SUNDAY 3RD MAY MY ABDUCTED TWIN KIDS ARE RELEASED TO ME BESIDE A BUSH AFTER 8DAYS IN AN UNKNOWN LAND. THANKS TO U ALL FOR FOR YOUR PRAYERS AND SUPPORT, JAZAKUMULLAHU KHAIRAN. ABERE MI BO SINU OKUN, OLOUN YO PADA FUN MI.

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British Airways has asked all staff to sign new 'zero hour' contracts that would allow the airline to lay them off without negotiations, it has been reported.

The beleaguered carrier has already announced plans to send up to 12,000 workers 'to the dole' owing to the coronavirus crisis, and warned it may end operations at Gatwick, London City Airport and even Heathrow.

Its Spanish owner, International Airlines Group (IAG), has secured 900million of commercial loans with 70 per cent guaranteed by the Madrid government to prop up Iberia and Vueling during the crisis.

However, it has not taken out loans for BA or sought a bailout from UK authorities. It is thought that this may be in a bid to force other companies out of the UK market.

Unite the Union ordered legal proceedings against the airline yesterday, and demanded that the business supports its UK workers.

British Airways has reportedly asked staff to sign the contracts as it operates less than five per cent of its normal schedule. BA planes are pictured parked in Bournemouth, Dorset

It has revealed plans to lay off a quarter of its workforce, and has furloughed more than half. The planes are pictured above parked at Bournemouth airport

Airlines have been hit hard by the crisis - prompting analysts to warn the industry may implode. Pictured above is empty Heathrow airport

BA's plan to change staff contracts was reported by The Sun on Sunday, with union leaders fearing employees may be railroaded into the agreement.

Unite's assistant general secretary, Howard Beckett, accused the airline of 'despicable' behaviour while they receive taxpayers' money for furloughed staff.

'It is fairly despicable that BA is threatening to dismiss its entire workforce and then reinstate some of them when they are in receipt of government money to furlough workers and when they have 3billion of cash reserves,' he said.

Unite's national officer for aviation, Oliver Richardson, accused BA of 'smash and grab' opportunism on Friday.

He said that while the parent company's actions to seek government-backed loans in Spain were to be welcomed, it was 'concerning' a similar deal was not being sought in Britain.

'This is another gross insult to the UK workforce that BA plans to send to the dole,' he said. Rather than seeking to preserve jobs and workers' terms and conditions and act for the good of the UK aviation sector, BA is guilty of smash and grab opportunism.'

Coronavirus has also seen passengers kept away from Gatwick airport, pictured, as international travel is suspended

Unite the Union launched legal action against BA yesterday and called on the airline to seek a government-backed loan for its UK workers. So far its owner has only done that for workers in Spain

A leaked memo to BALPA this week revealed the airline is considering stopping its last remaining flights out of Heathrow. It has already suspended Gatwick and London City flights

BA's plans to lay off up to 12,000 workers come after the airline furloughed 22,626 employees, more than half of its 45,000 total.

How coronavirus has affected airlines in the UK over the past month Flybe: Europe's largest regional airline collapsed on March 5 after months on the brink, triggering 2,400 job losses and left around 15,000 passengers stranded across the UK and Europe. Flybe's owners, a consortium including Virgin Atlantic, the Stobart Group and hedge fund firm Cyrus Capital, blamed coronavirus for hastening the ailing airline's collapse. Flybe operated up to 50 UK routes, accounting for 40 per cent of all domestic flights, and was used by 9.5million passengers a year. British Airways: The International Airlines Group, which also includes Iberia and Aer Lingus, said on March 16 that there would be a 75 per cent reduction in passenger capacity for two months, with boss Willie Walsh admitting there was 'no guarantee that many European airlines would survive'. The company has since said it wants to reduce the number of staff by 12,000. easyJet: The airline with 9,000 UK-based staff including 4,000 cabin crew grounded its entire fleet of 344 planes on March 30. The Luton-based carrier said parking all of its planes 'removes significant cost' as the aviation industry struggles to cope with a collapse in demand. Loganair: The Scottish regional airline said on March 30 that it expects to ask the Government for a bailout to cope with the impact of the pandemic. Loganair will go to the government despite being told by Finance Minister Rishi Sunak last week that airlines should exhaust all other options for funding, before asking for help. Jet2: The budget holiday airline has suspended all of its flights departing from Britain until April 30. A number of Jet2 flights turned around mid-air last month while travelling to Spain when a lockdown was announced in the country. Virgin Atlantic: The airline said on March 16 that it would have reduced its lights by 80 per cent by March 26, and this will go up to 85 per cent by April. It has also urged the Government to offer carriers emergency credit facilities worth up to 7.5billion. Ryanair: More than 90 per cent of the Irish-based airline's planes are now grounded, with the rest of the aircraft providing repatriation and rescue flights. Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary said his airline would be forced to shed 3,000 jobs while seeking pay reductions of up to 20 per cent by those who remain. Advertisement

Under the plans the airline would cut 1,130 captain and co-pilot jobs from its headcount of 4,346.

In a leaked memo to BALPA, reported by the BBC, the airline warned it may be forced to suspend the few services it still runs out of Heathrow as there are 'no clear signs of improvement in air passenger demand'.

'We have not ruled out suspending the remainder of our Heathrow operation,' it said.

'In the last week, we operated fewer than five per cent of our normal schedule.

'Our Gatwick and London City operations are now closed and there is no certainty as to when these can return.'

Its CEO, Alex Cruz, wrote to staff on April 28 that the airline is having to prepare for a 'new future'.

The airline saw 700million shaved off its total revenue in the first quarter of this year, as it declined to 4.6billion.

This resulted in an operating loss of 535million compared to a profit of 135million last year.

'The operating result in the first two months of 2020 was similar to that of last year,' said Mr Cruz, 'despite the suspension of flights to China due to Covid-19 from the end of January'.

There have been rumours that the airline could pull out of Gatwick and London City airport.

However, the BALPA union's general secretary, Brian Struttion, said: 'As far as BALPA are aware there is no truth in the rumour that BA will pull out of Gatwick and there has been no indication of that from BA to us. However, it is on our list of questions to ask them.'

Airlines worldwide have been hit hard by the pandemic, which has seen air travel plummet to near-zero levels as nations impose lockdowns to stem the spread of the disease.

The UK government has turned to Morgan Stanley for advice on packages that could help to keep Britain's once leading airline sector afloat, following warnings the industry could implode.

EasyJet and Jet2 have all grounded their aircrafts as the companies attempt to sit out the pandemic.

Ryanair has also pulled its fleet out of the sky, and announced that it doesn't expect passenger numbers to tick back up to pre-crisis levels until at least 2022.

Chief executive Michael O'Leary also warned planes would stay on the ground until 'at least July'.

Wizz Air has announced it was looking to re-start some flights to Spain, Portugal and eastern Europe this month, before saying it would need a bailout from UK authorities.

Virgin Atlantic has also sought a bailout from the UK government. It is 51 per cent owned by Richard Branson's Virgin Group and 49 per cent owned by US airline Delta.

The British government has so far been wary of bailing out travel companies and in March allowed regional carrier Flybe to collapse, which became one of the first big corporate casualties of the outbreak.

British Airways planes pictured sitting stationary above at London Gatwick Airport, Crawley

A spokeswoman for Virgin Atlantic said it was exploring all available options to obtain additional external credit, adding it was working with Houlihan Lokey on private sector funding and ongoing discussions with stakeholders were 'constructive'.

Meanwhile, Branson and the Virgin Group were committed to the airline and were not looking to sell it, a representative for the group said on Friday.

BA said: 'We can't comment further while we consult with our unions.'
You could always count on the folksy and cheery optimism of Warren Buffett.

But if you listened closely to Mr. Buffett over the weekend during Berkshire Hathaways shareholders meeting  his annual Woodstock for Capitalists was conducted virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic  his words often betrayed a deep sense of concern about the immediate future. That should be a warning to all investors and policymakers.

While many of the headlines about the meeting were about Mr. Buffetts positive aphorisms  Nothing can basically stop America, You can bet on America  underneath those long-term proclamations was a decidedly different message.

Each year for the last decade, I sat onstage at this big meeting in Omaha with Mr. Buffett and his best friend, Charlie Munger, as one of several journalists asking him questions sent in by the public. His positivity, even during difficult economic moments, always radiated with a clear sense of certainty. After all, he is known as the Oracle of Omaha.

Thats why it was unsettling on Saturday to hear him repeatedly say I dont know. He was careful to say the markets would improve in the long term  though his time frame for certainty was decades, not months or not even necessarily years from now. About the current climate, he said, You can bet on America, but you kind of have to be careful about how you bet. He added simply because markets can do anything.
Given the outrbeak, many were forced to postpone their weddings; some tied the knot in front of a handful of guests. Getting married during the coronavirus crisis is nobody's dream, but it has been some couples' lovely, fragile reality. There's no doubt that once the situation gets better they will have a bigger celebration in front of loved ones. But for now, as the world battles coronavirus, this will have to do.


WASHINGTON -- In speeches during the 1960 presidential campaign, John Kennedy addressed Americans' anxiety about national lassitude at the end of eight years under Dwight Eisenhower by mildly saying: "I believe we can do better." Joe Biden, responding to national embarrassment about the least presidential president, can campaign on a modest theme: "Is this really the best we can do?"

This question answers itself, particularly concerning foreign policy. Fortunately for Biden, events and his opponent are making this central to the 2020 election.

It is axiomatic that Americans' preference regarding foreign policy is to have as little of it as possible. Hence most of this cycle's Democratic presidential aspirants avoided reminding people that the world is a dangerous place. However, in the Feb. 25 debate in Charleston, South Carolina, Biden called China's President Xi Jinping "a thug": "This is a guy who doesn't have a democratic-with-a-small-'d' bone in his body."

Economist John Maynard Keynes supposedly said, "When the facts change, I change my mind." Biden, citing new facts, including aggression against Hong Kong's freedom and "a million Uighurs" in "concentration camps," has jettisoned his 2016 talk of his "enhanced cooperation" with Xi. In 34 of Biden's 36 Senate years, he was on the Foreign Relations Committee, which he chaired for four years. Donald Trump's foreign policy judgments have ranged from the contemptible (siding with Vladimir Putin at Helsinki in 2018 against U.S. intelligence officials regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election) to the preposterous ("There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea") to the weird (he and North Korea's Kim Jong Un "fell in love" after exchanging "beautiful letters").

Trump now wants to make relations with China central to this campaign. His rhetorical skills -- probably honed where they evidently peaked, on grammar school playgrounds -- are emulated by his campaign in references to "Beijing Biden." Biden can, however, turn China to his advantage by showing Trump what a policy of national strength would look like.

Biden served in the Senate for a decade with Sen. Henry Jackson, D-Wash., a liberal Cold Warrior who helped to make the Soviet Union's human-rights abuses costly to the regime. Today, Biden should speak forcefully against China's arrests of Martin Lee, 81, Jimmy Lai, 71, Margaret Ng, 72, and other leaders of Hong Kong's democracy movement.

Biden can practice what he preaches about bipartisanship by associating himself with Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton's measured but insistent support for the investigation of the possible role of a Wuhan research laboratory in the coronavirus outbreak. And with former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley's call to require U.S. universities to disclose China's funding of their professors and research. Cotton questions the visas for Chinese to pursue postgraduate studies here in advanced science and technology fields: If Chinese students want to study "Shakespeare and the Federalist Papers, that's what they need to learn from America. They don't need to learn quantum computing and artificial intelligence from America."

In February, a senior adviser for the World Health Organization's director-general praised China's "bold approach" that "changed the course" of the epidemic. Indeed China did: Its first approach was to deny that there is human-to-human transmission. Biden should say that continued U.S. participation in this organization will be contingent upon its granting Taiwan membership. Biden should also promise to discuss Taiwan's exemplary response to COVID-19 with Tsai Ing-wen in the Oval Office. She would be the first Taiwanese president welcomed in the United States since the 1979 "normalization" of relations with China.

By taking such steps, Biden can reconnect his party with its luminous post-1945 achievement. In that golden moment in the history of this nation's engagement with the world, the talents of Dean Acheson, George Marshall, George Kennan, Averell Harriman, Robert Lovett, Charles Bohlen, John McCloy and others created the structures of free trade and collective military security that produced the related phenomena of global enrichment and Soviet collapse.

The winners of the past seven presidential elections (1992-2016) have averaged 330 electoral votes. If today's state-by-state polls are correct, and if the election were held today, Biden would win 333 electoral votes: 227 from Hillary Clinton's states plus those from Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona and North Carolina.

More than any particular policy outcome, Americans want a sense that their nation can regain the spring in its step, and can adopt a robust realism regarding the Leninist party-state that is its principal adversary. The first step toward a jauntier, safer America is to make the election a referendum on the right question: "Is this really the best we can do?"

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Small businesses make up the majority of the economy all over the world. And most of them are hurting badly right now as the spread of the coronavirus has forced lockdowns and closures that have made business as usual all but impossible. Whether these businesses will be around to see the end of the pandemic could depend on where they call home.

- - -

- In Germany, a friendly tax man and free money - fast

BERLIN - As Europe began shutting down in early March, 61-year old Mario Rizzello and his 30-year old daughter, Daria, watched nervously from their small family-owned Italian restaurant in Hamburg.

Once Germany imposed its own restrictions a couple of weeks later, the 16 tables in the Rizzellos' "Trattoria Toscana" - usually crowded with businesspeople during lunch and with regulars in the evenings - were suddenly empty. Mario Rizzello feared for the survival of the restaurant he had spent much of the last 30 years in.

"We don't know ... how to get through this," the family wrote on its website in a message to customers.

Partially because Germany had been quick to respond to the pandemic, restrictions on restaurants such as Trattoria Toscana were more relaxed than in other countries. Customers were not allowed to dine in,but Trattoria Toscana was permitted to sell takeout food, drawing many loyal customers who wanted their local restaurant to survive.

Still, revenue dropped by more than half. Within weeks, the business would have faced a financial squeeze.

Then, help arrived.

"I had applied for government aid but assumed it was going to take four or five months to be approved," Mario Rizzello recalled. Instead, within one week after filing his application, he found himself with emergency aid of about $15,000. About two-thirds of the money came from the national government, which set up a $54 billion rapid-fire rescue package for small businesses and freelancers; the rest came from the Hamburg regional government. The restaurant also applied for tax deferral under newly-created government programs.

The restaurant's $15,000 grant does not have to be paid back and covers more than half of the restaurant's operating costs for three months. Earnings from takeout sales cover most of the remaining overhead.

"Everyone has been really friendly, from the tax authorities to the emergency fund officials - it's been pretty easy," Daria said of the process to secure the funding, even though she added the current solution remained "unsustainable in the long run."

The family deems itself to be in a more comfortable position than friends and relatives in their virus-stricken home country, Italy, where many business owners are waiting for far smaller amounts of aid.

"I'm happy to be in Germany right now," Mario Rizzello said.

- Rick Noack

- - -

- Working for peanuts, waiting for help in Brazil

RIO DE JANEIRO - For most of his working life, Paulo Roberto Nunes knew exactly who he was. He was a peanut salesman - the most renown in town, in his opinion.

"I'm famous," he boasted from his house in Rocinha, the largest favela in Brazil. "But it has been difficult."

It has never been more difficult than this. No one is buying peanuts. Most people are inside their homes, and those who aren't on lockdown are too fearful to buy nuts from the heated tray he hauls through the favela. His monthly income has plummeted from around $400 to around $25.

He fears his two young children and wife will go hungry, so he applied three weeks ago for the monthly $110 the government has offered to informal workers who represent roughly 40 percent of the workforce. But he's still waiting. The phone application the government rolled out says only his case is "under analysis."

The federal government's attempt to help its poorest has been a stew of bureaucratic snafus, technical glitches and political infighting. President Jair Bolsonaro has said stay-at-home orders aren't working and informal workers - maids, street salespeople, Uber drivers - need to make money to survive. But local officials say the federal government isn't providing enough support to offset lost incomes and to allow people to stay home. This week, lengthy lines curled outside of banks in Rio de Janeiro, as people lined up for their handout, undercutting official calls for social distancing.

Among the millions in need was Nunes. He had never wanted to take help from the government. It made him feel "powerless." But he can't see any other way. So he checks his phone daily for news on his case.

"I can't do anything else," he said. "I have children at home."

- Terrence McCoy

- - -

- U.K. firm finds 'reason to keep fighting'

LONDON - In early March, Simon Freeman kept track of news about the spread of the coronavirus in Asia and wondered how it could affect his business if it hit hard in Britain.

Freeman owns the digital platform Freestak, which works with the likes of Nike and Under Armour to connect them with outdoor and endurance influencers - a coterie of amateur and elite runners, hikers and cyclists who chat, post videos and generally enthuse about their exploits. As a test, he asked his 11-person team of staffers and contractors to work at home for a week to determine whether they could be as efficient there as in their small office in north London. They did and they were.

Freeman, 45, and his wife, Julie, seemed well-positioned when British authorities on March 23 ordered offices to close. Launched four years ago, Freestak was projected to generate about $1 million in revenue this year, but no one planned for a life-changing pandemic. Within weeks, Freestak dropped all contractors and furloughed three of its six U.K.-based staffers, and Freeman and his wife took deep pay cuts. And there was the matter of the $1,300 monthly office rent - cheap by London standards, but tough to pay without cash flow.

Then, the landlord rang. "'You've been great tenants,'" Freeman recalled her saying before she offered to waive rent for April, May and June.

Freeman received another pleasant surprise. The government came up with hundreds of billions of dollars for loans and aid, including tax breaks, to ease the financial pain to companies and workers. One program promised to reimburse employers for roughly 80 percent of monthly wages - or as much as about $3,100 per worker - for those they furloughed. Freeman submitted his request to cover the three furloughed employees, and on April 27 he saw roughly $9,000 in government funds had been transferred into Freestak's account. "I applied, but I never thought it would work out," Freeman said. "The money gives us a reason to keep fighting."

Someday, he plans to return at least one big favor. "My landlord! I will repay her as soon as I can afford it."

- Christine Spolar

- - -

- Russian tattoo parlor drowns in red ink without government help

MOSCOW - Thanks to a sympathetic landlord, the rent for April still hasn't been paid. May rent might have to wait, too. If the Faux Pas Tattoo studio can't open by June, it'll likely cease to exist.

"One month is over and the next one will be the last we can survive without opening," said Pavel Zelentsov, who co-owns Faux Pas with Vitaly Kazantcev.

The coronavirus pandemic has hit Russia's small-business sector especially hard as the country has held off from rolling out a broad stimulus package comparable to those in the United States and Europe. Meanwhile, with Russia eclipsing 100,000 confirmed cases of the disease, President Vladimir Putin has extended the "nonworking" period until May 11, keeping nonessential businesses shuttered whiledirecting them to continue paying employee salaries.

Russia's government has encouraged lenders to be flexible amid coronavirus closures, but Zelenstsov said Faux Pas hasn't received any state aid, in part because it's unclear to him if there's any available. The business has survived the past month thanks to the understanding of its landlord.

Chief among the Kremlin's measures was a tax holiday and a plan for state-owned banks to offer companies interest-free salary loans to ensure they can keep paying workers. But on April 10, Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina acknowledged the program got off to a "slow" start - just 1.2 percent of the loans applied for had been approved after two weeks.

Faux Pas, which Zelentsov said makes around $13,500 a month, covered salary for its four administrative staff, but since its resident artists are typically paid by the client, they haven't received any money from the tattoo studio since Moscow imposed strict stay-at-home orders on March 28. Zelentsov, 37, said Faux Pas has also continued to pay the woman who regularly cleaned the parlor because "we have to support her, too, in these difficult times."

To try to bring in income while still closed, Faux Pax has started online consultations for those who want a custom tattoo design; a completed design costs $40. It's also offering gift cards, so those who plan to get a tattoo there in the future can financially support the business in the interim.

"I have thought about how in other countries, there is more government support," Zelentsov said. "But we have what we have here."

- Isabelle Khurshudyan

- - -

- Cheese (the dog) and huge tax savings ease pain for Chinese start-up

Early Wednesday morning, Claire Gong masked up and flew to meet a client in Hangzhou.

As co-founder of Beijing-based artificial intelligence start-up Mor.AI, Gong, 31, was used to crisscrossing China to tout the company's software - and its newest offering, a robot receptionist.

What was different this time was that she had 30 surgical masks in tow. A gantlet of temperature checks lay ahead.

"It's a little more complicated now," she said as she pulled out of the airport in a taxi.

When the lockdown began in January, Cheese - Gong's golden retriever - would pop into work video conferences, and colleagues' babies wailed and parents wandered into view to see what was going on.

There were other inconveniences, of course. Cheese's dogwalker no longer could come over. Gong had to make all her own lunches. With the pink streaks fading from her hair and salons still closed, Gong bought blue dye online and redid her highlights herself.

But Gong and Mor.AI, which has around 70 full-time employees, are fortunate, despite the travails of the last several months. The company is the kind of emerging technology business that Beijing is hoping to prop up as it rolls out its pandemic stimulus, which offers tax breaks for small businesses. Gong said Mor.AI qualified for several weeks of free office rent worth $6,800. The company was also allowed to forego $184,100 in social security contributions that enabled it to avoid layoffs and keep its employees on full salary.

Gong declined to discuss her company's revenue, other than to say it plunged significantly in the first quarter as electronics manufacturing clients paused production; some even went broke, she said, and venture capital has also dried up.

"Because of the virus and the economic situation, it's made them very conservative," Gong said.

Gong said she and her colleagues are looking for opportunities in e-commerce to offset their manufacturing client losses this year. She also hopes there will be more visitors soon for their robot receptionist, which has suffered in silence for several weeks on a lonely Mercedes showroom floor in Shenzhen.

- Eva Dou
TDT | Manama

His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa yesterday called on the Bahraini media to stand united against attempts to sow discord and divisions in the society through false information and defend the professional and ethical principles of press freedom as a partner in the countrys development.

His Majesty said this in his message marking the World Press Freedom Day celebrated every year on the 3rd of May. Journalism without Fear or Favour is the theme of this years celebrations.

HM King said the concurrence of the Press Freedom Day with the spiritual atmosphere of the blessed month of Ramadan allows us to recall our humane values and principles derived from the spirit of the teachings of our tolerant Islamic faith.

These teachings call for the harmony of hearts, uphold the values of honesty, integrity and objectivity in expressing opinions and stand together to confront attempts to sow discord and divisions through false information and news that are increasingly spreading in the digital age and through satellite channels broadcasting hatred and subversion.

HM expressed his pride in the role of Bahraini women in journalism that is equal to their role in all fields, especially during these exceptional conditions.

We reiterate our pride in the work of Bahraini men and women in the field of journalism and media. His Majesty said the press and media have risen to the anticipated level of responsibility with their continuous support to the National Taskforce for Combating the Coronavirus and educating citizens and residents about preventive and precautionary measures.

History will always mention brightly how our national media assumed its responsibilities with courage and steadfastness in facing all the local, regional and international challenges that our beloved kingdom has had to face, said HM the King.

HM King said independent press and free and responsible media are among the most important national gains since the launch of the reform project, describing freedom of opinion and expression as the foremost achievement accomplished without restrictions or intimidation.

Bahraini media have proven to be an essential building block for society and its progress, a beacon of thought, creativity and knowledge, a fundamental component of the rule of law, and a safety valve against extremism, terrorism, incitement and hate speeches.

HM, the King thanked the Ministry of information for creating the right regulatory environments for the press and media freedoms to flourish.
Published On May 03, 2020 02:11 PM By Sonny

It will likely feature a more conventional design than some of Toyotas recent SUVs

New Toyota SUV spied testing in Thailand.

It is said to be based on the Corolla sedan and will feature a traditional SUV design.

New SUV will be based on the same TNGA platform as C-HR, RAV4 and Corolla.

It is expected to make its global debut in 2021.

There is no official timeline yet for a Toyota compact SUV for India.

The compact SUV segment continues to be a highly competitive one and still offers significant sales opportunities for every carmaker. Toyotas working on a new compact SUV, which is reportedly based on the latest generation of the Corolla sedan. It has been spied testing in Thailand.

Toyotas current compact SUV offering in select international markets is the C-HR, which is more like a stylised crossover vehicle with 154mm ground clearance. The new Corolla-based SUV will likely be bigger than the C-HR and feature a more conventional SUV design with more ground clearance too. It will be based on the same TNGA platform. The Thai-spec C-HR measures 4360mm in length with a 2640mm long wheelbase.

Also read: Toyota Yaris Cross Compact SUV Is Smaller Than The Hyundai Creta

The SUV spied was covered by camouflage but the character lines are similar to a larger model, the Toyota RAV4. While the front end has not been seen, it is expected to feature the same styling as the RAV4 and the facelifted Fortuner with a sporty grille, large bumper and sleek headlamps. In its global-spec, the Corolla-based compact SUV will likely feature the same petrol and hybrid powertrain options.

It is expected to make its global debut in 2021 and it could arrive in India later that year. A Toyota SUV with a conventional design along with the brands famed ownership experience could make it a popular premium offering here. It would rival the likes of the Hyundai Creta, Kia Seltos and Nissan Kicks. There is also the chance that Toyota may not bring its new TNGA-based SUVs to India and instead opt to borrow the yet-to-be-introduced Suzuki compact SUV (possibly the new-gen global Vitara) under their current partnership .

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Linkedin Tri Indah Oktavianti (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sun, May 3, 2020 19:02 625 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd5aa073 1 National COVID-19,COVID-19-in-Indonesia,LBH-Pers,AJI,journalists,press-freedom,press-freedom-in-Indonesia,World-Press-Freedom-Day Free

The COVID-19 outbreak may also threaten Indonesian journalists with unfair employment treatment and limitations placed on press freedom, the Legal Aid Institute for the Press (LBH Pers) said on Sunday, setting a tone for the annual World Press Freedom Day that is much bleaker than previous years.

Between April 3 and May 2, LBH Pers and the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) received 61 reports from journalists from 14 media organizations in Greater Jakarta whose employment rights had allegedly been violated.

The organizations received 26 reports from journalists who were laid off due to the economic fallout of the outbreak, while 21 journalists also reported that they had been furloughed and 11 reported they received pay cuts.

LBH Pers director Ade Wahyudin said that most media organizations cited the outbreak as force majeure that forced the companies to cut their journalists salary or lay them off.

However, force majeure does not automatically justify termination of employment and/or pay cuts and pay delays, according to the Employment Law, Ade said in a written statement on Sunday, citing Article 164 of the 2003 Employment Law, which states that layoffs due to force majeure are only allowed if a company has permanently closed or is no longer operating.

LBH Pers also reported that the pandemic had spurred growing hostility against journalists, with three cases of violence reported so far.

Journalists Mohammad Hashemi Rafsanjani and Dinar were intimidated and assaulted for reporting a residents death due to hunger during the pandemic in Banten province on April 20.

Another journalist, Sahril Helmi, was physically assaulted while reporting on state funds allocated for the COVID-19 response in Busiu village, South Halmehera regency, North Maluku, on Friday.

LBH Pers also cited the job creation omnibus bill and Criminal Code Bill as threats to Indonesian press freedom.

The fact that the House of Representatives has been aggressively proposing the bills to be passed amid the pandemic has made the freedom of the press situation in Indonesia more concerning, Ade said.

LBH Pers also urged President Joko Jokowi Widodo to instruct the Manpower Ministry to oversee employment rights violations in the press industry.

A recent survey from the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) also revealed that more than 65 percent of journalists worldwide have suffered pay cuts, job losses and worsening job conditions. The survey also found that 73 percent of journalists have been experiencing more restrictions in covering COVID-19-related news.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 10:48:41|Editor: huaxia

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SHANGHAI, May 3 (Xinhua) -- The production rate of Tesla's Model 3 sedans in its Shanghai gigafactory will top 4,000 units per week by mid-2020, the U.S. electric carmaker said on Thursday.

The Shanghai gigafactory was producing 280 vehicles every day at the end of last year.

Tesla's product line in Shanghai only contained the Standard Range Plus version of Model 3 in the first quarter. The company has launched an online configurator for a Long Range version and a Performance version since April.

The carmaker said it will continue to ramp up production of Model 3 in Shanghai in the second quarter, with more efficient assembly lines of the Shanghai-built Model Y SUVs, which will start deliveries in 2021.

Tesla reduced the price of the Standard Range Plus version of Model 3 made in China to from 303,550 yuan (about 43,000 U.S. dollars) to 271,550 yuan on Friday to meet the government's new eligibility requirements for subsidies. Enditem
A 43-year-old woman has allegedly been caught drink driving with a blood alcohol reading more than six times the legal limit with a toddler in her car.

South Australia Police pulled her over in Port Lincoln, west of Adelaide, on Saturday afternoon after receiving calls from concerned members of the public.

She allegedly blew 0.302  a result police described as staggering.

After receiving calls from concerned members of the public, Port Lincoln police say they allegedly caught a 43-year-old woman driving with a blood alcohol reading of 0.302. Source: AAP

Checks revealed she was also disqualified from driving.

The woman will be summonsed to appear in Port Lincoln Magistrates Court at a later date on charges, including disorderly behaviour.

She has also lost her licence for 12 months and had her car impounded for 28 days.

Police are notifying the Department for Child Protection.

Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@yahoonews.com.

You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and download the Yahoo News app from the App Store or Google Play.
There's no doubt that money can be made by owning shares of unprofitable businesses. For example, although software-as-a-service business Salesforce.com lost money for years while it grew recurring revenue, if you held shares since 2005, you'd have done very well indeed. Having said that, unprofitable companies are risky because they could potentially burn through all their cash and become distressed.

Given this risk, we thought we'd take a look at whether Sunmoon Food (SGX:AAJ) shareholders should be worried about its cash burn. For the purpose of this article, we'll define cash burn as the amount of cash the company is spending each year to fund its growth (also called its negative free cash flow). First, we'll determine its cash runway by comparing its cash burn with its cash reserves.

Check out our latest analysis for Sunmoon Food

Does Sunmoon Food Have A Long Cash Runway?

A company's cash runway is the amount of time it would take to burn through its cash reserves at its current cash burn rate. As at December 2019, Sunmoon Food had cash of S$5.0m and no debt. Importantly, its cash burn was S$2.3m over the trailing twelve months. Therefore, from December 2019 it had 2.1 years of cash runway. That's decent, giving the company a couple years to develop its business. Depicted below, you can see how its cash holdings have changed over time.

SGX:AAJ Historical Debt May 3rd 2020

How Well Is Sunmoon Food Growing?

Happily, Sunmoon Food is travelling in the right direction when it comes to its cash burn, which is down 80% over the last year. Unfortunately, however, operating revenue dropped 47% during the same time frame. On balance, we'd say the company is improving over time. Of course, we've only taken a quick look at the stock's growth metrics, here. You can take a look at how Sunmoon Food has developed its business over time by checking this visualization of its revenue and earnings history.

How Hard Would It Be For Sunmoon Food To Raise More Cash For Growth?

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Sunmoon Food seems to be in a fairly good position, in terms of cash burn, but we still think it's worthwhile considering how easily it could raise more money if it wanted to. Companies can raise capital through either debt or equity. Many companies end up issuing new shares to fund future growth. We can compare a company's cash burn to its market capitalisation to get a sense for how many new shares a company would have to issue to fund one year's operations.

Sunmoon Food's cash burn of S$2.3m is about 8.7% of its S$26m market capitalisation. That's a low proportion, so we figure the company would be able to raise more cash to fund growth, with a little dilution, or even to simply borrow some money.

So, Should We Worry About Sunmoon Food's Cash Burn?

Even though its falling revenue makes us a little nervous, we are compelled to mention that we thought Sunmoon Food's cash burn reduction was relatively promising. Considering all the factors discussed in this article, we're not overly concerned about the company's cash burn, although we do think shareholders should keep an eye on how it develops. On another note, Sunmoon Food has 4 warning signs (and 1 which is potentially serious) we think you should know about.

Of course Sunmoon Food may not be the best stock to buy. So you may wish to see this free collection of companies boasting high return on equity, or this list of stocks that insiders are buying.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
One of the worlds biggest art world players claims to have invented the gallery of the future, with a virtual reality show opening on Thursday featuring a galaxy of contemporary stars.

Hauser & Wirth is letting people visit a show in its huge new private gallery on the Spanish island of Menorca -- which will not physically open until next year -- on their computers and smartphones.

Beside Itself features one of French legend Louise Bourgeois giant spiders as well as work by Jenny Holzer, Paul McCarthy, Bruce Nauman, Charles Gaines, Ellen Gallagher, Mike Kelley and Lawrence Weiner, whose work inspired the name of the show.

The Swiss-based art giant said it had invested heavily in VR and modelling technology, setting up ArtLab in Los Angeles and drawing on 3D techniques used in architecture, construction and video-game design.

While museums across the world are offering virtual tours during the coronavirus lockdowns, Hauser & Wirth said their technology was of a different order.

Gallery founder Iwan Wirth told AFP that like some of the best inventions, this one comes from necessity.

Our primary goal was to create technology that would help our artists visualise the spaces where their exhibitions would be presented, he said, enabling them to plan better and reduce the amount of travel and transportation.

Wirth said they had speeded up development when the virus hit realising many people would be stuck alone at home.

We feel this new approach to virtual reality exhibitions is especially relevant and will engage as many people as possible, he added.

The exhibition can be visited through the gallerys website.

The bricks and mortar gallery on Menorca, designed by Paris designer Luis Laplace on a hilltop overlooking the Mediterranean, will open next April.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.)

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Senior doctors have warned Boris Johnson the lockdown should be eased for over-70s that are considered healthy, due to the damage keeping them inside is doing to their mental health.

Both the Royal College of GPs and the British Medical Association (BMA) weighed in to say that age alone should not be the determining factor when the government establishes who can return to their daily lives as the lockdown is eased, potentially in the coming weeks and months.

Around 1.8 million people classed as 'clinically vulnerable' were told to stay indoors for 12 weeks when the lockdown began as they were considered to be the most at-risk people in the UK from Covid-19.

Some ministers have even suggested that such groups could have to stay at home until a vaccine has been developed, which could well take a year or more.

Those in the 'clinically vulnerable' category include anyone 'aged 70 or older regardless of medical condition', as well as anyone who is younger than 70 with a 'underlying health condition'.

Senior doctors have said that coronavirus measures currently keeping all over-70s and anyone with an underlying health condition should be considered on the individual risk. Pictured: Elderly man, 79, with a carer in PPE at Newfield Nursing Home, Sheffield, April 2020

According to The Times, the doctor's union said that while it agreed that the most vulnerable people in society must be protected, measures should be determined on individual risk with a system that applies to all ages, and not just 'an arbitrary age of 60 or 70.'

Martin Marshall, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, warned of the harm a prolonged lockdown would do to the 'physical and mental' of those over the age of 70, and that their age is not the best way to determine 'who should self-isolate and to what extent during the next stage of lockdown'.

The BMA said said in a statement: 'A blanket ban on any section of the population being prohibited from lockdown easing would be discriminatory and unacceptable.'

Speaking at the Downing Street daily briefing, Dr Jenny Harries said officials were 'trying to review' the restrictive rules 'because we do recognise that asking somebody to stay shielded  for a very long period of time  is quite a difficult thing for them to do.'

Dr Harries told reporters that experts were looking at the measures in two different ways, including adapting existing services and 'looking at those risks again now we have more information to try and build a better, more stratified picture'.

Social distancing measures have been in place to protect the most vulnerable people from the coronavirus. Pictured: Rainbow posters, used as a symbol of hope during the coronavirus pandemic, are seen in the window at Oakland House care home in Manchester

Communities minister Robert Jenrick also acknowledged the 'huge emotional impact' shielding was having on those affected.

He said the Government is considering more long-term plans and told the briefing that local councils have been sent lists of shielded people so they can provide 'more tailored support', and a 'check in and chat' service is being developed.

The Royal College of GPs (RCGP) said it was not involved in lockdown discussions, but argued age alone was not a 'sophisticated criteria' on which to base decisions on who should self-isolate and for how long in the future.

RCGP chair Professor Martin Marshall said: 'People of all ages have a wide range of capabilities and are subject to various risk factors, of which their age is one, that might affect their health and how they respond to Covid-19.

'Asking any individual to undertake strict isolation measures is already a significant ask that will undoubtedly have some impact on their physical and mental health.

'GPs are finding that many patients who are currently 'shielding' are expressing concern about their ability to continue extreme isolation for a long period, and this needs to be taken into account as plans for how the lockdown will continue are formulated.'

He said doctors could only 'strongly advocate' that patients follow official guidance, but could not 'mandate' action.

Dr Jenny Harries ppeaking at the Downing Street daily briefing. She said officials were 'trying to review' the restrictive rules 'because we do recognise that asking somebody to stay shielded  for a very long period of time  is quite a difficult thing for them to do'

On Tuesday, the mother of a vulnerable child asked the Health Secretary Matt Hancock whether shielding was the only option before a vaccine was developed.

The question was posed by a woman called Sadie, whose 10-year-old son has cystic fibrosis and autism.

Mr Hancock said that the safest thing for people in the shielded category to do is to stay at home and be 'protected from all contact'.

Medical conditions that place someone at greatest risk of severe illness from Covid-19 include specific cancers, severe respiratory conditions such as cystic fibrosis and asthma, rare diseases and inborn errors of metabolism that significantly increase the risk of infections.

The Government is considering more long-term plans and local councils have been sent lists of shielded people so they can provide 'more tailored support', and a 'check in and chat' service is being developed

The UK today announced another 621 coronavirus deaths, taking Britain's official fatality toll to 28,131 - edging the country closer to becoming Europe's worst-hit nation.

Officials also recorded another 4,806 cases, with more than 180,000 Britons having now been infected since the crisis hit the UK in February - but a lack of testing means potentially millions of cases have been missed.

Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick revealed the figures, which include fatalities in all settings, at tonight's Downing Street press briefing. But the Government has stopped providing a breakdown of how many deaths occurred in different settings, such as hospitals or care homes.

Britain's death toll (28,131) is now bound to overtake Italy's (28,236) by next week and make the UK the second worst-hit country in the world, behind only the US (65,173). The outbreak in the UK is two weeks behind Italy's, meaning its daily death and infection jumps are decreasing at a slower rate.
WOOD RIVER  Gov. J.B. Pritzker warned residents on Sunday against falling victim to coronavirus-related scams as the number of cases statewide surpassed 60,000.

The Madison County Health Department announced another death and 19 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, bringing the total to 24 deaths and 364 cases. The deceased was identified as a woman in her 60s.

Statewide there were 2,994 new cases and 63 new deaths reported on Sunday. Pritzker said there are now 2,618 deaths statewide and 61,499 cases. He also noted there were 19,417 new tests performed in the past 24 hours  the highest number to date.

Pritzker also said cases have been reported in all but five of Illinois 102 counties. He said there are 4,701 people hospitalized with coronavirus, including 1,232 in intensive care unit beds and 759 on ventilators.

The Madison County figures on Sunday included 75 people hospitalized and 99 recovered, meaning they have completed isolation.

Illinois Department of Public Health information released by ZIP code Sunday showed additional cases in the Alton, Edwardsville, Glen Carbon, Troy, Granite City and Collinsville, areas. For the first time, the Maryville area also was noted on the IDPH website with six cases.

A total of 96 cases were reported in 62025 (Edwardsville) with 58 in 62040 (Granite City/Pontoon Beach), 50 in 62002 (Alton), 42 in 62034 (Glen Carbon), 30 in 62234 (Collinsville), 15 in 62294 (Troy) and 11 in 62035 (Godfrey).

Ten cases were reported in 62052 (Jerseyville), 62060 (Madison), 62249 (Highland) and 62056 (Litchfield); nine in 62095 (Wood River); eight in 62010 (Bethalto); seven in 62024 (East Alton), 62090 (Venice) and 62069 (Mount Olive); and six in 62062 (Maryville) and 62088 (Staunton).

The IDPH is releasing case numbers by ZIP code for areas with more than five cases. Numbers are not released in ZIP codes with fewer cases to protect the privacy of patients. The information is available online at www.dph.illinois.gov. Click on the coronavirus banner, then COVID-19 statistics in the drop-down menu on the left side.

More Information Area COVID-19 cases by county St. Clair - 537 (33 deaths) Madison - 364 (24 deaths) Clinton - 112 (5 deaths) Monroe - 75 (11 deaths) Montgomery - 28 (1 death) Jersey - 13 (1 death) Bond - 6 (1 death) Macoupin - 32 Washington - 13 Greene - 3 Calhoun - 1 Sources: Illinois Department of Public Health and Madison County Health Department. See More Collapse

Additional cases also were reported Sunday in Montgomery, St. Clair, Clinton and Monroe counties in the Metro East, according to the IDPH website. One additional death was noted in Monroe County.

During the briefing, Pritzker noted numerous COVID-19 related scams ranging from cyberscams text messaging to door-to-door solicitations for donations. He reminded people to be vigilant and report scams to the Illinois Attorney Generals Office.

You will be caught; you will be prosecuted, he told scammers, calling them reprehensible bad actors.

For the latest information on COVID-19 or coronavirus resources, visit the Madison County Health Department online at www.madisonchd.org or on Facebook @MadisonCHD. Also visit www.co.madison.il.us for more news and a daily update or on Facebook @MadisonCountyIL.
There's been a lot of progress in recent the years when it comes to the legalization of cannabis. In 2018, Canada became just the second country in the world (after Uruguay) to legalize recreational marijuana. In the U.S., more than 30 states permit the medical use of marijuana, and a farm bill was passed over a year ago that made hemp legal federally. Even conservative countries in Asia such as South Korea and Thailand now permit marijuana for medical use. The latest milestone for the industry comes from the Middle East, where Lebanon has become the first Arab country to permit medical marijuana.

New law could make Lebanon a major supplier of cannabis in the world

In Lebanon, farmers can now grow cannabis for medicinal and industrial purposes. Cannabis can also be exported, which could pave the way for more competition in North America and other parts of the world that rely on foreign supply. Lebanon has a warm climate that can make it easy to grow cannabis year-round. And with more than 100 years of cultivation experience with cannabis, the country knows how to grow pot. Data from the United Nations indicates that after Morocco and Afghanistan, Lebanon is the largest supplier of cannabis resin (hashish) in the world.

Now that it's legal to export pot out of the country, farmers in Lebanon have an opportunity to take advantage of the industry's growth in many different parts of the world. And while that may be good for the global cannabis market, it could spell trouble for North American cannabis companies -- especially those involved with hemp, such as Charlotte's Web (OTC:CWBHF).

Is this bad news for hemp producers?

Although Lebanon legalized medical marijuana, the law effectively addressed hemp, as it limited the plants' tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content to less than 1%. And with hemp legal federally in the U.S., foreign producers in Lebanon could potentially import hemp into the country, driving down prices and margins in the process. According to industry experts, there's already an oversupply of hemp in the U.S.; more coming online may only make matters worse.

Charlotte's Web, which produces products using cannabidiol (or CBD, a non-psychoactive compound found in the hemp plant), is already facing challenges in moving its goods. The company wrote off $13.9 million of inventory, including $12 million of finished goods, in its most recent quarterly results. That's not something you expect to see, especially in a growing industry. But many companies are growing hemp because that's the easiest way to tap into the cannabis industry's growth in the U.S. And if there are more hemp suppliers in the future, generating sales growth will be even more difficult for Charlotte's Web. In the company's fourth-quarter results, sales were up by just 6% from the prior-year quarter and down 9% from the third quarter.

What does this mean for investors?

The legalization of medical marijuana in Lebanon isn't going to have any significant effect on North American pot stocks, at least not anytime soon. However, cannabis investors will want to keep an eye on companies that may expand to that part of the world as a result of legalization. After all, the climate in Lebanon is more conducive to growing pot than that in many parts of North America. For cannabis producers, it could be an opportunity to produce low-cost pot and get closer to reaching breakeven.

Cannabis companies from Lebanon could also start to appear on the global stage, and some of those could be great investment opportunities. And while those developments may still be months or years away, they serve as important reminders for investors not to get too comfortable holding a stock like Charlotte's Web. The more places that legalize cannabis, the more competition there will be in the industry. Investors will have many more options to choose from in the years ahead, and a domestic grower may not necessarily be the best choice.
London: Britain will want to analyse the origins of the coronavirus "in detail," a UK cabinet minister has said.

Australia is pushing for an independent inquiry into the origins of the virus. Any probe would also examine China's cover-up and whether it and the World Health Organisation could have stopped it from leaving Wuhan, where the outbreak began.

China has reacted angrily to the idea and threatened a trade boycott of Australia.

Speaking at the government's coronavirus briefing, Communities Minister Robert Jenrick said that time for an inquiry was not now, citing the need to import precious medical and protective wear for nurses and doctors from China.
Prime minister tells The Sun doctors gave him litres and litres of oxygen to keep him alive.

Boris Johnson, the United Kingdoms prime minister, has revealed that the British government made contingency plans for his death as his condition deteriorated while battling COVID-19 in hospital last month.

In an interview with The Sun newspaper on Sunday, Johnson said doctors gave him litres and litres of oxygen to keep him alive.

Johnson, 55, returned to work on Monday, a month after testing positive for COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the new coronavirus.

He spent 10 days in isolation in Downing Street from late March, but was then was taken to Londons St Thomas Hospital where he received oxygen treatment and spent three nights in intensive care.

They had a strategy to deal with a death of Stalin-type scenario, Johnson told The Sun. It was a tough old moment; I wont deny it.





He added: I was not in particularly brilliant shape, and I was aware there were contingency plans in place.

After Johnson was discharged, St Thomas said it was glad to have cared for the prime minister, but the hospital has given no details about the gravity of his illness beyond stating that he was treated in intensive care.

Johnson and his fiancee, Carrie Symonds, on Saturday announced the name of their newly born son as Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas, partly as a tribute to two of the intensive care doctors who they said had saved Johnsons life.

The doctors had all sorts of arrangements for what to do if things went badly wrong, Johnson said of his COVID-19 battle. The bloody indicators kept going in the wrong direction.

He said doctors discussed invasive ventilation.

The bad moment came when it was 50-50 whether they were going to have to put a tube down my windpipe, he said.

That was when it got a bit  they were starting to think about how to handle it presentationally.

Johnson described feeling frustrated as his health worsened and became emotional as he described the ordeal, according to The Sun.

He put down his recovery to wonderful, wonderful nursing, adding: it was an extraordinary thing.

The experience made him more determined to fight the disease and get the country back to normal, Johnson said, adding that he would announce a roadmap towards easing the lockdown restrictions imposed in late March later this week.

The prime ministers comments came as the government announced 621 more deaths in the outbreak, taking the overall cumulative toll to 28,131  just behind Europes worst-hit country, Italy.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, FAIR Canada, a not-for-profit organization that advocates for the rights of investors, is asking regulatory agencies, including the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC), to waive or impose a moratorium on cancellations, penalties and forfeitures to which group RESP (Registered Education Savings Plan) contributors are usually subject to if they miss a monthly contribution or make changes to their accounts.

It is our job to represent the interests of investors and with the coronavirus there has been a major economic impact, including mass unemployment, said Ermanno Pascutto, executive director of FAIR Canada. Exemptions of every sort are being granted by regulators, but many of the groups who are asking have loud voices. We are advocating for investors in group RESPs because these plans tend to be targeted toward lower- or middle-income people, precisely those who have lost their sources of income.

In group RESPs, investments for children of the same age are pooled together and their money grows together, theoretically amassing greater interest than the funds would if invested individually. Unlike single or family RESPs, group RESPs are generally sold by private companies, however, and tend to have higher fees and more restrictive rules, according to the OSC.

One of these rules usually requires investors to make a monthly contribution of a specific amount. The penalty for missing a contribution can be cancellation of the investors membership in the plan. Since these plans generally require large sales fees that are front-loaded, an investor whose plan is cancelled will get back the investment, minus sales fees and penalties. This could mean a significant loss of money for the investor. Hence, FAIR Canadas efforts to prevent investors with little free cash to spend from being tossed from a group RESP during COVID-19 unemployment.

No one came to us to request this, said Pascutto. We want to try to head off problems before they happen. Its not onerous for these companies to stop their fees and forego cancelling accounts for now. It would be a magnanimous gesture.

The group RESP rules and penalties are detailed in a prospectus, which generally isnt available to the investor until after the group RESP is purchased. It is often a lengthy document unintelligible to the average person. Given that the sales forces often target vulnerable customers, such as exhausted new parents or recent immigrants eager to better the lot of their families, its not surprising rules often arent properly understood.

The people who sell them are usually incentivized to sell them to any warm body, Pascutto said.

In addition, the way the product is structured, it isnt investor-friendly. Regulators tend to rely on disclosure, but their prospectuses are very complex  youd probably need a university degree and a law degree on top of it to understand them.

The OSC also cautions prospective purchasers that group plans often have additional rules about how much and how often your child can take Educational Assistance Payments (from the RESP) and which education programs are eligible. Know the rules before you open a group plan. If a student chooses to attend a vocational program, rather than a university, for example, there is a chance the plan provider will deem them ineligible to receive the money invested.

Shawn Todd, an Ottawa-area certified financial planner with ECIVDA Financial Planning Boutique, says he finds that these pooled plans have restrictions that mean people could be excluded or discounted. He generally doesnt recommend group RESPs, but wants consumers who are considering them to be aware of what they are buying.

Clients need to understand the difference between single, family and group RESPs, Todd said. They should understand the rules of how these programs work; its important to educate yourself.

Before a consumer invests in an RESP, he suggests consulting with a certified financial planner (CFP) for some unbiased advice on the products under consideration.

You want to deal with a CFP or someone qualified to give impartial advice, Todd said. In some cases, you can be the recipient of some very sales-like advice.

The RESP, generally, is an excellent savings vehicle for parents or family members. The money invested in an RESP is allowed to grow tax-deferred while in the plan, and each beneficiary (child) is also eligible for a federal government contribution of up to $7,200 over the lifetime of the plan.

Even if you dont invest in a vehicle that offers good returns, over time your money will still grow due to the government grant, said Todd. That alone is a compelling reason to invest in an RESP.

Family members or other contributors may invest up to $50,000 per child over the lifetime of the plan. Group RESPs are sold only by scholarship plan dealers, while individual and family plan RESPs are available from banks, credit unions, investment dealers, trust companies. and mutual fund dealers. A plan may stay open for 36 years; the beneficiary can withdraw money from the plan once enrolled in a college, university or other qualifying/specified higher education program.

Todd generally recommends a family plan for young families who may have more than one child, since the money can be transferred between them. Funds in the individual plan can only be used by a single beneficiary. However, whichever plan parents choose, they should understand how those funds will be invested.

They need to see what they can achieve depending on the time horizon and their risk tolerance, Todd said.

The Ontario Securities Commission offers additional useful information about RESPs (https://www.getsmarteraboutmoney.ca/invest/savings-plans/resps/).
The news that the Grinnell College campus would be closing for the semester was delivered around lunchtime. The Dining Hall, a minute before busy with the midday rush, came to a standstill as hundreds of students read the Campus Memo, a wave of realization rippling through the packed tables.

Over a month later, the chairs in the Dining Hall now sit vacant.

The Dining Hall is still functioning in a limited capacity to serve meals to the students whose petitions to stay on campus were approved. In accord with strict safety procedures, Dining Hall and Facilities Management staff have been coordinating meal delivery to dorms to allow students to comply with social distancing. Facilities Management has set up tables in the loggia outside of each dorm, which they refill with boxed meals for students to pick up at each mealtime.

The College gave students currently living off-campus the option to opt out of their meal plan and be refunded for the cost of the rest of the semester. Those living on campus are still required to be on a meal plan. Students who were forced to move from college-owned language and project houses into dorms were also given a meal plan at no extra expense.

Due to a shortage of student staff, the Dining Hall has greatly reduced the variety of food options available at each meal. Instead of the usual plethora of stations, the Dining Hall is serving two meal options: one meat and one vegan. Students remaining on campus filled out a survey indicating which option they prefer, which they are now served at every meal. The survey also asked for students to specify at what mealtimes they prefer to be served their meals if on a plan with less than 20 meals a week.

Students say that theyve noticed an increase in food quality, with stronger and more consistent vegan options being offered.

They have been popping off. I think because the chefs are able to spend more time cooking the food and they dont have to feed as many people, said Hudson Clulow 23, who is still living on campus.

Clulow is one of 23 students still working in the Dining Hall. According to Director of Dining Services Jeanette Moser, All part-time and full-time staff may work a reduced schedule but are being paid for their regular pre-COVID hours. This applies to non-student workers but is not the case for students who lost their work study jobs with Dining Services.

The Union of Grinnell Student Dining Workers (UGSDW) has been advocating for student workers throughout the process, including in an April 8 open letter to President Kington. One of their demands was for workplace health protections for on-campus workers.

All staff members still working in the Dining Hall have employed extra safety measures to ensure an even more sanitary work environment than usual.

I dont feel super at-risk walking into D-Hall and going into work, said Clulow. Mostly because every surface in there is coated in soap and sanitizer, and every person there has had to wash their hands thoroughly at least three times an hour and everyone is wearing masks.

Dish room Supervisor Hamid Sidi said that social distancing rules are being enforced inside the Dining Hall for all staff  the customary six feet have been respected and all staff are wearing gloves, masks and face shields.

Clulow said that as a student worker, they have not been allowed to have any direct contact with food. Instead they have worked shifts sanitizing dishes and equipment or bagging prepackaged snacks into bagged meals.

Yet the job has changed in more than just the amount of safety precautions taken.

Im really missing working with a lot of students and Im really missing their regular service. said Sidi. Hopefully, all this will end soon, because all students I know are having a difficult time with online classes. So, when a student comes in, I also check in with them now.  I ask them how their families are, how theyre doing, if they need anything, you know?
BLAINE, WASH.In his decades of beekeeping, Ted McFall had never seen anything like it.

As he pulled his truck up to check on a group of hives near Custer, Washington, in November, he could spot from the window a mess of bee carcasses on the ground. As he looked closer, he saw a pile of dead members of the colony in front of a hive and more carnage inside  thousands and thousands of bees with their heads torn from their bodies and no sign of a culprit.

I couldnt wrap my head around what could have done that, McFall said.

Only later did he come to suspect that the killer was what some researchers simply call the murder hornet.

With queens that can grow to 2 inches long, Asian giant hornets can use mandibles shaped like spiked shark fins to wipe out a honeybee hive in a matter of hours, decapitating the bees and flying away with the thoraxes to feed their young.

In Japan, the hornets kill up to 50 people a year. Now, for the first time, they have arrived in the United States.

Scientists have since embarked on a full-scale hunt for the hornets, worried that the invaders could decimate bee populations in the United States and establish such a deep presence that all hope for eradication could be lost.

This is our window to keep it from establishing, said Chris Looney, an entomologist at the Washington State Department of Agriculture. If we cant do it in the next couple of years, it probably cant be done.

Looney went out on a recent day in Blaine, carrying clear jugs that had been made into makeshift traps. He filled some with orange juice mixed with rice wine, others had kefir mixed with water, and a third batch was filled with some experimental lures  all with the hope of catching a queen.

If a hornet does get caught in a trap, Looney said, there are plans to possibly use radio-frequency identification tags to monitor where it goes  or simply attach a small streamer and then follow the hornet as it returns to its nest.

While most bees would be unable to fly with a disruptive marker attached, that is not the case with the Asian giant hornet. It is big enough to handle the extra load.
One of the major concerns for Odisha government in getting a grip over the rising numbers of Covid positive cases in the State when the numbers went up further today after 150 migrant labourers of Ganjam district, who had returned from Surat a day ago, fled from two quarantine centres over lack of food, water and other facilities.

Around 200 migrant workers were kept in two quarantine centres set up at Janata High School and Adarsh Vidyalaya in Beguniapada block of Ganjam district after they were brought back from Surat in two buses on Saturday. But on Sunday, 150 of them attempted to flee protesting lack of proper facilities. While the police managed to catch 50 of them, a hunt is on to nab the rest.

The labourers alleged that they did not get food, drinking water and other facilities at the two quarantine centres. After we reached the quarantine centre, we did not get any water to drink or to take bath. We were told that the officials had made arrangements for only 60 people. Why should we stay in quarantine if we dont get basic facilities, said one of the migrant labourers working in a diamond polishing units of Surat.

If the government cant provide food and other facilities to 100 people, how would they ensure stay of lakhs of people who are returning to the state, the labourer asked.

A similar scene played out in another quarantine centre of Khallikote block where the migrant workers created a ruckus over being served breakfast of upma at noon. In a video that has gone viral, the migrant workers, kept in an Adarsh Vidyalaya of Subalaya grampanchayat of Khallikote block, are seen putting the upma served on a disposable plate on ground refusing to eat it. Subalaya sarpanch Kedar Swain, however, said that the matter has been sorted out.

As per the guidelines of the Odisha government, all migrant workers who are returning to villages will have to undergo a 14-day mandatory quarantine in the 7,000-odd temporary medical centres. The state government has approved per diem expenditure of Rs 120 on their food for an adult and Rs 100 for a child below 14 years. Similarly, Rs 300 would be spent on personal hygiene kit that includes tooth brush, paste, tongue cleaner, soaps, oil, razor, masks, sanitary pad, mug, bottle and bucket. After successful of quarantine, each of them would get Rs 2,000.

The jumping of quarantine came on the heels of two of the Surat-returned migrants in Ganjam testing positive. Both the Surat returnees, aged 17 and 22 years, were asymptomatic and travelled in a bus. Till now, 162 persons in Odisha have tested positive with more than half turning out to be with travel histories to Covid hotspots like Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat.

Sounding a warning for those jumping quarantine, chief secretary Asit Tripathy said violators will be arrested as per the Epidemic Act and will not get the Rs 2,000 incentive. The returnees, who are creating nuisance and escaping from quarantine centres, will be kept at quarantine centres away from their respective home districts. Once caught, these violators will be arrested and their quarantine period will extend, said Tripathy.

In the last two months, we have been able to contain Covid-19 spread in Odisha in comparison to other states. A lot of frontline workers are working 24x7 across the state and their contribution is commendable. We will continue the good work and will not comprise it at any level, he said, requesting migrants coming by buses to avoid overcrowding and maintain social distancing. Buses must have a valid pass, without which entry into the State borders will be denied. Overcrowded buses will also be denied entry.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly every relationship is now considered a long-distance one.

With the statewide social distancing and quarantine orders in place, gatherings of more than five people are forbidden, and restaurants are open for takeout or delivery only. Socializing is taking place almost entirely online for the time being, forcing everyone to figure out ways to stay in touch with friends and family.

Some might think that for teenagers and young adults, this form of communication is no different than what they are already used to. But many say they are struggling just as much as everyone else.

Its been hard for me being away from my friends because although I like my alone time, I like it on my own terms rather than being forced into it, said University of Connecticut senior Ally Urban. However, I know this is for the public good, so its necessary.

While some are optimistic that the worst of the pandemic will be over by the fall, others say it could last for at least another year.

Im not sure things will ever return to the way they were before the pandemic struck, said UConn journalism professor Scott Wallace. There is considerable concern about a resurgence of transmission if we let our guard down. It could be another full year or even two, once we have widespread testing and a readily available vaccine, before things settle down.

According to UConn sociology professor Phoebe Godfrey, normal might also be a thing of the past.

Normal will probably be different, as we will all have some residual trauma and fears, she said.

With more than 1 million coronavirus cases confirmed in the United States alone, colleges and schools all over the country have shut down and moved their classes online, canceling graduations and sporting events.

Ten years ago we would have had to cancel school altogether, Godfrey said. That might have been nice in a way and more stressful in another.

With technology like cellphones and computers, staying in touch with others is now easier than ever. Many students are still able to be connected with their professors and friends thanks to programs like FaceTime, Zoom, Discord and Skype.

Its definitely hard to not actually be with someone, but technology at least holds us all over until we can meet up again, UConn senior Kyle Jackson said. I watch movies with my girlfriend with a new app called Netflix party.

I play poker with my poker group each week online and play Minecraft with a group of good friends almost every night. Sometimes well have a couple drinks, as if we were all actually socializing.

Others are finding that their relationships have to be put on hold.

When I moved back home, I joined some dating apps, and then once this all happened, I got super overwhelmed and deleted it, said Shira Tall, who graduated from UConn in December 2019.

I havent re-downloaded any since deleting them, but its also hard because I see no point since I cant meet up with anyone. I had [also] only been at work for about two months when the shelter in place was declared, so I didnt really feel like I formed any connections with anyone.

Students say they are prepared to be quarantined for the time being, but technology cant replace face-to-face interaction.

I dont think anything will ever be as fulfilling as in-person [communication], but I think you can still prevent social isolation and burnout by video chatting and texting, Tall said. I really think that you almost have to try some method of communication or youll go mad.

Kara Murray is a student at the University of Connecticut.
Washington: Top US health official Anthony Fauci will not testify next week to a congressional committee examining the Trump administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic, the White House said on Friday, calling it "counterproductive" to have individuals involved in the response testify.

The White House issued an emailed statement after a spokesman for the House of Representatives committee holding the hearing said the panel had been informed by Trump administration officials that Fauci had been blocked from testifying.

"While the Trump administration continues its whole-of-government response to Covid-19, including safely opening up America again and expediting vaccine development, it is counter-productive to have the very individuals involved in those efforts appearing at congressional hearings," White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement. "We are committed to working with Congress to offer testimony at the appropriate time."

Fauci's testimony was being sought for a May 6 hearing by a House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees health programs, said spokesman Evan Hollander. The Washington Post first reported that Fauci would not testify.

Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been one of the leading medical experts helping to guide the US response to the highly contagious virus that has swept across the United States.

Trump has repeatedly clashed with the Democratic-controlled House over its moves to investigate his actions or those of his administration.

In recent days, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer have urged wide-ranging investigations into Trump's handling of the coronavirus outbreak, which has killed tens of thousands of Americans.

Democrats have criticized Trump, saying he has failed to develop a comprehensive and effective plan for testing Americans for the coronavirus and tracing contacts of those who are infected by the virus that causes the sometimes fatal Covid-19 respiratory disease.

Fauci, 79, has had a respectful but sometimes complicated relationship with Trump.

The well-regarded doctor has at times corrected or contradicted the president at White House briefings or in press interviews on issues such as the time required to develop a vaccine and the likelihood that the coronavirus will return in the fall.

Trump has occasionally shown exasperation with Fauci but ultimately has followed, largely, the advice that he and Dr Deborah Birx, the White Houses coronavirus task force coordinator, have provided on responding to the pandemic.

Last month, the White House said Trump was not firing Fauci despite his retweet of a supporters #FireFauci message.

At the time, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said: "Dr Fauci has been and remains a trusted adviser to President Trump."

Aides to Fauci were not immediately available to comment on the House committee's desire to have him testify.
A convicted Real IRA bomber linked to the intimidation of directors at Quinn Industrial Holdings (QIH) has been delivering PPE to hospitals and care homes in Fermanagh and Cavan.

John Connolly, who police suspect was the masked man pictured issuing threats against company bosses, has been handing out consignments of breathing respirators, face-masks, protective suits and overalls.

The 44-year-old, from Newtownbutler, was jailed for 14 years in 2000 after being caught with a 220lb Real IRA mortar bomb the day before Remembrance Sunday.

While in prison, Connolly was Real IRA leader and organised a dissident republican rooftop protest against prison conditions. He was freed in 2007, and after drifting away from politics is now chairman of the Cavan branch of Republican Sinn Fein, which is the political wing of the Continuity IRA.

Cops on both sides of the border have linked people with terror connections to the intimidation of QIH directors and torture of Kevin Lunney.

In a 2011 interview with Sunday Life, Connolly insisted he was no longer involved in violence, saying: "When I got out of jail in 2007 I broke all contact with the IRA. If I am guilty of anything it is of being a proud, unrepentant Irish republican." But in the years since, the PSNI and gardai have become increasingly concerned he has returned to militant republicanism.
Republicans, meanwhile, are pushing for limits. In an opinion column published on the conservative website townhall.com, three lawyers for Trumps campaign argued for maintaining strict ballot rules to prevent fraud. Among their positions: Voters should have to request an absentee ballot application rather than be sent one automatically; ballots must be received by Election Day to be counted; and security measures such as photo ID and signature-matching rules must be maintained even during the pandemic.
MINISTER Patrick ODonovan hopes that memorial Masses for the deceased will be attended in the same numbers as conventional funerals.

He says it is a big, big problem how we are managing grief at the moment and how communities are going to be able to manage that level of grief.

In rural areas we are so used to embracing bereavement. It is terrible at the moment that friends and neighbours are being buried and you cant sympathise with the family.

I have had a number of incidences now of people both with Covid and non Covid deaths. The families will tell you the loss is terrible but it is matched by the fact that they dont have what we are used to in rural areas with the encapsulation by the community. Where the community wraps its arms around the individual, said Minister ODonovan.

How quickly or soon these memorial gatherings will be, nobody knows. But the Fine Gael TD hopes whenever they are locals will come out in force.

Years and years ago grief was something that was very private  something to be got over. It led to a lot of issues down the line. I think the fact that people cant grieve publicly and have that community involvement is terrible.

I hope when all of this is over when people have  memorial Masses, ceremonies, get-togethers  that the community will turn out in the same numbers as they would to a conventional funeral. Minister ODonovan has spoken to a number of undertakers.

They all say the same thing - it is terrible to look on at families that are being bereaved, whether it is Covid or non-Covid related. The way in which they cant grieve publicly - it is very hard. It is particularly hard for certain older generations as well.

I have heard of incidences of really bad things like they cant give them a hug, they cant give them a kiss on the forehead  the type of things we are used to doing as family members who lose somebody.
A third Russian doctor has plunged from a hospital window after complaining about medics facing intolerable coronavirus pressures.

Alexander Shulepov, 37, is fighting for his life with head injuries after taking part in in a video which claimed he was ordered to work despite testing positive for Covid-19.

He and colleagues also warned about PPE shortages in Voronezh city. Later - lying in a coronavirus hospital bed - Shulepov made a second video to retract the claims amid suspicions he was pressured to do so.

On Saturday, while being treated at Novousmanskaya district hospital, the experienced ambulance doctor plunged from a second floor window sustaining skull fractures. He is now in a grave condition.

Ambulance doctor Alexander Shulepov (left), 37, and ambulance paramedic Alexander Kosyakin, (right). Shulepov is fighting for his life with head injuries after taking part in in a video which claimed he was ordered to work despite testing positive for Covid-19

Shulepov made a second video to retract the claims amid suspicions he was pressured to do so

Russia suffers 10,633 new Covid cases in 24 hours giving it fastest-growing rate in Europe Russia recorded a new record rise in coronavirus infections today with 10,633 cases in the past 24 hours, taking the total to 134,687. Deaths rose by 58 to 1,280, official figures show, as Russia is now recording more new infections than any European country. Front-line medical workers have been hit hard with the Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin admitting around 2,000 suffering from coronavirus in the capital city. Moscow has emerged as a hotspot for the virus in Russia, with the mayor earlier estimating from screening results that 2 per cent of the population has been hit - more than a quarter of a million people. More than half of the new deaths were in Moscow - some 34. President Vladimir Putin says the situation remains 'very difficult' with another 200,000-plus under medical supervision, suspected of contracting the disease in Russia. Advertisement

Two senior women doctors in Russia have died recently after falling from hospital windows amid reports they had challenged their superiors over a lack of PPE for coronavirus patients.

Shulepov was filmed with paramedic colleague Alexander Kosyakin who - a day earlier - had been summoned by police under suspicion of spreading fake news after complaining about PPE shortages.

Their hospital chiefs claimed the allegations were untrue, but the medics believed Shulepov's infection proved the lack of protection equipment.

In the video Kosyakin said: 'Ambulance doctor Alexander Shulepov is next to me, he is just confirmed Covid-19.

'The chief doctor is forcing us to work, what do we do in this situation?

'We are not leaving the shift

'Myself and Alexander has been working together for a month.

'This is the situation.

'Everyone says it's fake (but) these are real facts for you.'

Three days later after being hospitalised, Shulepov recorded a video claiming his condition had improved.

'I have a runny nose, otherwise all is well,' he said.

Doctor and acting head of Krasnoayrsk Veterans hospital, Yelena Nepomnyashchaya, died after falling out of the 5th floor office window

He claimed that in the earlier video 'we were high on emotions' and that after he was found to be Covid-19 positive, he was taken off his shift.

This has led to allegations that was forced to record a message from his sick bed clearing his hospital bosses.

Hospital chief doctor Igor Potanin has refused to comment.

In another case, Dr Natalya Lebedeva, 48, plunged 60ft to her death from the sixth floor of a Moscow hospital after colleagues said she was unfairly blamed for the spread of coronavirus at her clinic in Star City, near Moscow, the training centre for cosmonauts.

She had become infected from Covid-19.

Dr Natalya Lebedeva, 48, plunged 60ft to her death from the sixth floor of a Moscow hospital after colleagues said she was unfairly blamed for the spread of coronavirus at her clinic in Star City, near Moscow, the training centre for cosmonauts

Alexander Kosyakin had been summoned by police under suspicion of spreading fake news after complaining about PPE shortages

Dr Yelena Nepomnyashchaya, 47, a mother of two, sustained fatal injuries after falling 60ft from a window at her Krasnoyarsk hospital.

Colleagues said she had complained about an 'acute shortage' of personal protection equipment for doctors and nurses.

It came as Russia recorded a new record rise in coronavirus infections today with 10,633 cases in the past 24 hours, taking the total to 134,687.

Deaths in the country also rose by 58 to 1,280 as Russia is now recording more new infections than any European country.

Front-line medical workers have been hit hard with the Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin admitting around 2,000 suffering from coronavirus in the capital city.
MOGADISHU, Somalia 03 May, 2020  On the occasion of World Press Freedom Day May 3 2020, we the undersigned Somalia media fraternity express our grave concern on the spate of threats, attacks and intimidation against journalists and media professionals in the past year.

The past twelve months has been a horrible for Somali journalists in the country with 81 targeted attacks, 53 arbitrary arrests, killing of two journalists, forcing 12 journalists to flee into exile due to death threats by multiple actors including government security forces and al-Shabaab, shuttering of seven media houses, more than 15 incidents of obstruction of access to information and the introduction of a draconian media bill  all representing violation against the vital constitutional right to access to information and media freedom.

This year alone, two media houses were banned, one journalist: Abdiwali Hassan Ali (Online) was killed, 19 journalists were arbitrarily arrested, four were physically harassed, over a dozen of journalists were denied access to information, and two key reporters were targeted with intimidation, a worrying trend that indicates how the Somali authorities have scaled up the crackdown on the independent media.

The Somali media fraternity is particularly appalled by the heavy-handed measures used by Somali government to gag media and journalists covering Covid-19 and to stifle the free flow of information. We believe the role of the journalists and media houses, as preserved in the Constitution, is to keep the public informed about key developments affecting their lives including the ongoing pandemic.

While, we call for Somalia Federal Government and the Federal Member States to immediately cease threats, intimidations, jailing and harassing journalists, we have, through our lawyer, officially submitted a protest letter, that documents key recent violations against the Somali media professionals and media houses, to the Offices of the President, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed (Farmaajo), Prime Minister, Hassan Ali Khaire and the Minister of Information, Mohamed Abdi Hayir (Maareeye) for their consideration. Should the government fail to take swift and appropriate action to reverse the recent trend and end the violence against the journalists and the media; we are afraid that we won't have any other option than to move to the Court to seek further redress.

Signed by:

1. Somali Media Association (SOMA)

2. Somali Independent Media Houses (SIMHA)

3. Federation of Somali Journalists (FESOJ)

4. Somali Women Journalists Organization (SWJO)

5. Somali Journalists Syndicate (SJS)
BLAINE, Wash.  In his decades of beekeeping, Ted McFall had never seen anything like it.

As he pulled his truck up to check on a group of hives near Custer, Washington, in November, he could spot from the window a mess of bee carcasses on the ground. As he looked closer, he saw a pile of dead members of the colony in front of a hive and more carnage inside  thousands and thousands of bees with their heads torn from their bodies and no sign of a culprit.

I couldnt wrap my head around what could have done that, McFall said.

Only later did he come to suspect that the killer was what some researchers simply call the murder hornet.

With queens that can grow to 2 inches long, Asian giant hornets can use mandibles shaped like spiked shark fins to wipe out a honeybee hive in a matter of hours, decapitating the bees and flying away with the thoraxes to feed their young. For larger targets, the hornets potent venom and stinger  long enough to puncture a beekeeping suit  make for an excruciating combination that victims have likened to hot metal driving into their skin.

In Japan, the hornets kill up to 50 people a year. Now, for the first time, they have arrived in the United States.

McFall still is not certain that Asian giant hornets were responsible for the plunder of his hive. But two of the predatory insects were discovered last fall in the northwest corner of Washington state, a few miles north of his property  the first sightings in the United States.

Scientists have since embarked on a full-scale hunt for the hornets, worried that the invaders could decimate bee populations in the United States and establish such a deep presence that all hope for eradication could be lost.

This is our window to keep it from establishing, said Chris Looney, an entomologist at the Washington State Department of Agriculture. If we cant do it in the next couple of years, it probably cant be done.

On a cold morning in early December, 2 1/2 miles to the north of McFalls property, Jeff Kornelis stepped on his front porch with his terrier-mix dog. He looked down to a jarring sight: It was the biggest hornet Id ever seen.

The insect was dead, and after inspecting it, Kornelis had a hunch that it might be an Asian giant hornet. It did not make much sense, given his location in the world, but he had seen an episode of the YouTube personality Coyote Peterson getting a brutal sting from one of the hornets.

Beyond its size, the hornet has a distinctive look, with a cartoonishly fierce face featuring teardrop eyes like Spider-Man, orange and black stripes that extend down its body like a tiger, and broad, wispy wings like a small dragonfly.

Kornelis contacted the state, which came out to confirm that it was indeed an Asian giant hornet. Soon after, they learned that a local beekeeper in the area had also found one of the hornets.

Looney said it was immediately clear that the state faced a serious problem, but with only two insects in hand and winter coming on, it was nearly impossible to determine how much the hornet had already made itself at home.

Over the winter, state agriculture biologists and local beekeepers got to work, preparing for the coming season. Ruthie Danielsen, a beekeeper who has helped organize her peers to combat the hornet, unfurled a map across the hood of her vehicle, noting the places across Whatcom County where beekeepers have placed traps.

Most people are scared to get stung by them, Danielsen said. Were scared that they are going to totally destroy our hives.

Adding to the uncertainty  and mystery  were some other discoveries of the Asian giant hornet across the border in Canada.

In November, a single hornet was seen in White Rock, British Columbia, perhaps 10 miles away from the discoveries in Washington state  likely too far for the hornets to be part of the same colony. Even earlier, there had been a hive discovered on Vancouver Island, across a strait that probably was too wide for a hornet to have crossed from the mainland.

Crews were able to track down the hive on Vancouver Island. Conrad Berube, a beekeeper and entomologist in the town of Nanaimo, was assigned to exterminate it.

He set out at night, when the hornets would be in their nest. He put on shorts and thick sweatpants, then his bee suit. He donned Kevlar braces on his ankles and wrists.

But as he approached the hive, he said, the rustling of the brush and the shine of his flashlight awakened the colony. Before he had a chance to douse the nest with carbon dioxide, he felt the first searing stabs in his leg  through the bee suit and underlying sweatpants.

It was like having red-hot thumbtacks being driven into my flesh, he said. He ended up getting stung at least seven times, some of the stings drawing blood.

Jun-ichi Takahashi, a researcher at Kyoto Sangyo University in Japan, said the species had earned the murder hornet nickname there because its aggressive group attacks can expose victims to doses of toxic venom equivalent to that of a venomous snake; a series of stings can be fatal.

The night he got stung, Berube still managed to eliminate the nest and collect samples, but the next day, his legs were aching, as if he had the flu. Of the thousands of times he has been stung in his lifetime of work, he said, the Asian giant hornet stings were the most painful.

After collecting the hornet in the Blaine area, state officials took off part of a leg and shipped it to an expert in Japan. A sample from the Nanaimo nest was sent as well.

A genetic examination, concluded over the past few weeks, determined that the nest in Nanaimo and the hornet near Blaine were not connected, said Telissa Wilson, a state pest biologist, meaning there had probably been at least two different introductions in the region.

Looney went out on a recent day in Blaine, carrying clear jugs that had been made into makeshift traps; typical wasp and bee traps available for purchase have holes too small for the Asian giant hornet. He filled some with orange juice mixed with rice wine, others had kefir mixed with water, and a third batch was filled with some experimental lures  all with the hope of catching a queen emerging to look for a place to build a nest.

He hung them from trees, geotagging each location with his phone.

In a region with extensive wooded habitats for hornets to establish homes, the task of finding and eliminating them is daunting. How to find dens that may be hidden underground? And where to look, given that one of the queens can fly many miles a day, at speeds of up to 20 mph?

The miles of wooded landscapes and mild, wet climate of western Washington state make it an ideal location for the hornets to spread.

In the coming months, Looney said, he and others plan to place hundreds more traps that could catch worker hornets that would start becoming active over the summer. State officials have mapped out the plan in a grid, starting in Blaine and moving outward.

The buzz of activity inside a nest of Asian giant hornets can keep the inside temperature up to 86 degrees, so the trackers are also exploring using thermal imaging to examine the forest floors. Later, they may also try other advanced tools that could track the signature hum the hornets make in flight.

If a hornet does get caught in a trap, Looney said, there are plans to possibly use radio-frequency identification tags to monitor where it goes  or simply attach a small streamer and then follow the hornet as it returns to its nest.

While most bees would be unable to fly with a disruptive marker attached, that is not the case with the Asian giant hornet. It is big enough to handle the extra load.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
While addressing the leaders of the UK, USA, Canada, South Africa, Germany, Belgium, Australia, and other overseas units of the party over the telephone on Saturday night, Pakistan based political party MQM founder and leader Altaf Hussain has said that his life could be lost any time as a result of informing the workers and the people about the truth. He said that his life was in grave danger and his murder could be given any colour, but it will be premeditated murder.

Claiming that there is no leader in Pakistan except him who was born from the poor and middle class and despite not having political background formed an organised movement whose discipline is recognised by the world. "Hussain is the only leader of Pakistan who made MQM the third-largest party in the country without any help from the establishment. This is an open fact but the question is how much does the elite in Pakistan accept this truth? Despite all the positive steps, what is the general impression of the MQM and Altaf Hussain," he asked. He also claimed that MQM and Altaf Hussain are termed as terrorist group and terrorists.

READ | Pahariwala Gurudwara sends food materials for Hindu Pakistani refugees

Making a massive statement about Pakistani state and involvement of ISI, he said that he was arrested three times in Pakistan and subjected to the worst mental and physical torture. "When no tactic could stop him from his struggle, the establishment and the ISI were bent upon killing him. So on extreme pressure from his colleagues, he had to come to London but he didn't deviate from his ideology," he added.

READ | Centre to facilitate return of over 190 Pakistani nationals in India through Attari-Wagah

Altaf Hussain on Covid

In his address, Hussain said that when the COVID-19 started spreading, every news related to it was listened to with attention, as to learn about how many people were infected with the coronavirus in how many countries, how many people died, what steps are being taken in which country, safety measures, social distancing, personal hygiene, etc.

He further said that "so much has been said in this regard that gradually the yearning to know about the coronavirus was no longer there. Now the news for us is that a vaccine is being developed in a certain country. Vaccines have been developed in the country and vaccines are being tested in such and such a country. There was so much news about this that people lost interest."



READ | Imran Khan's 'Naya Pak' omits Ahmadiyyas from minorities commission, cites 'sensitivity'

He said that China and the United States are blaming each other for the spread of COVID-19. China emerged as the Republic of China on October 1, 1949, while the United States became independent two and a half hundred years ago. "The question then arises as to how China has surpassed the United States in the nuclear sector and economics. This clearly means that the development and prosperity of any country require organised, hardworking and sincere leadership which believes in the development of the country and the nation instead of its own caste."

READ | Abdul Razzaq reveals why India would continue to dominate Pakistan in World Cups



(with ANI inputs)
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After the recent rally, we are advising clients to book some profits and wait for a better point to enter again. Also, we would continue to stick with large, quality names, Sumit Bilgaiyan, Founder of Equity99 said in an interview to Moneycontrol's Sunil Shankar Matkar.

edited excerpts:

Q) Do you expect the market rally to continue in May? Also is it a bear rally?

A) This was just a bear market rally which we witnessed in April. In May, we can expect the index to head lower towards March lows.

Q) After a 32 percent rally from March lows, are you still advising clients to continue buying quality stocks?

A) After this recent rally, we are advising clients to book some profits and wait for a better point to enter again. Also, we would continue to stick with large, quality names.

Q) What are the major factors to watch out for in May on domestic as well as global front?

A) Factors to watch out for going forward should be how COVID-19 cases shape up in India and globally, fiscal stimulus measures to be taken in India if any, how does demand pan out in green zones which shall start operations along with crude market movements.

Q) How do you read Tech Mahindra, Reliance Industries and HUL quarterly results, what is your suggestion (buy, sell or hold)? What could be the opening price of RIL and what are triggers and risks to look for?

A) Tech Mahindra gave a very disappointing set of numbers, would recommend selling the stock as the IT sector might see weaker quarters ahead.

Reliance Industries too gave disappointing numbers with an unexpected loss. Investors can book partial profits in Reliance Industries.

Hindustan Unilever results were certainly weak. We would recommend adding on dips as these are defensives and essential products, demand of which might not be impacted in the downturn.

Q) Have you seen any change in investor/trader behaviour in the last four months?

A) What's surprising is the level of activity has increased by traders and investors. Generally in such falls volumes dry and investors lose hope. But that hasn't been seen yet this time.

Q) Do you think US-China trade tensions will resurface again, especially after COVID-19 impact seen on the United States? Do you think Europe will act in a similar way?

A) With upcoming elections in the US, it would be natural for the ruling party to put the blame of COVID-19 disruption on China. And hence, there could be trade tensions in terms of retaliation. We can expect a few European nations to act in a similar way.

Q) What are your top three stocks to buy?

A) Apollo Micro Systems: It is a pioneer in design, development and assembly of custom-built electronics and electro-mechanical solutions. The company mainly caters to defence, space and homeland security for the Ministry of Defence, government-controlled public sector undertakings and private companies. Apart from the defence sector, the company is aiming to enter emerging projects such as Smart City projects, projects related to the protection of strategic and critical infrastructure projects by utilising its existing infrastructure and technical capabilities. Its PAT has grown at 42.80 percent and income has grown 20.30 percent CAGR over the last 4 years. Stock is looking highly undervalued at CMP. We are recommending a buy in a staggered manner for medium to long term.

Rallis India: Rallis is known for its deep understanding of Indian agriculture, sustained contact with farmers, quality agrochemicals, branding & marketing expertise along with its strong product portfolio. Rallis is also known for its manufacturing capabilities and ability to develop new processes and formulations, hence is considered as a preferred partner for contract manufacturing by leading global corporations. Agro related industry is looking attractive during the current scenario and Rallis India is the best pick from this sector. We are recommending a buy in a staggered manner for medium to long term.

L&T Technology Services (LTTS): It is a listed subsidiary of Larsen & Toubro Limited focused on Engineering and R&D (ER&D) services. LTTS has an equity capital of just Rs 21 crore supported by reserves of Rs 2,614 crore. It paid 1,050 percent dividend for FY19 and paid 375 percent interim dividend for FY20. At the CMP of Rs 1,235, the stock trades at a P/E of just 16x. We are recommending a buy in a staggered manner for medium to long term.

Disclaimer: The views and investment tips expressed by investment expert on Moneycontrol.com are his own and not that of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions.

'Reliance Industries Ltd. is the sole beneficiary of Independent Media Trust which controls Network18 Media & Investments Ltd.'
A bill that seeks to replace the Quarantine Act with a Control of Infectious Disease Act quickly passed first and second reading at the House of Representatives on Tuesday.

The bill, sponsored by the Speaker of the House, Femi Gbajabiamila, has 82 clauses and has since generated controversy among Nigerians.

The contention surrounding the bill is not only regarding its provisions but also the speedy passage it got from the lower chamber.

Many are also angered at the fact that the legislation appears to be a plagiarised copy of existing law in Singapore.

Hasty consideration

Presenting the bill, Mr Gbajabiamila said the bill seeks to strengthen the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and make it more proactive and not just reactive and function when there is an outbreak.

While the Quarantine Act provides a penalty of N500 for defaulters, the new bill proposes a penalty of between N200,000 and N5 million as well as jail terms, he said.

While the lawmakers agreed to suspend the House Standing Rules to allow the bill pass through all stages, the process was cut short as some members said they had not seen or read the bill. This is even as they called for caution and asked for time before giving it further consideration.

It was for this reason that the clause-by-clause consideration of the bill was postponed to next Tuesday.

Even at that, the second reading of the bill was approved despite the resounding rejection during the voice vote.

Provisions of the bill

The content of the bill has triggered outrage among Nigerians.

While it seeks to empower the president, the minister of health, as well as the director-general (DG) of NCDC, and the institutions they head, to make regulations on quarantining, vaccination and prevention of infectious diseases in Nigeria, many say the stipulations are draconian and give the NCDC chief too much power.

Some of the provisions are:

 The NCDC DG shall be responsible for the Act and shall appoint any public officer or employee of a prescribed institution, to be a Health Officer.

 The president may (by an order) declare a public health emergency if he satisfied that there is an outbreak or imminent outbreak of an infectious disease that could be fatal to humans or the country.

 The president may declare an area as a restricted zone. He may also restrict entry, stay, public meetings or other gatherings in that area.

 Such order will remain for 14 days and can be renewed by the president from time to time.

 The National Assembly can pass a resolution to annul the presidents order and it (the order) will cease to have an effect.

READ ALSO:

 An authorised public officer or police officer may direct people at a public gathering within the restricted area to disperse. And anyone who fails to comply without reasonable excuse may be arrested without a warrant and may be removed from the place.

 Medical practitioners, laboratory workers, anyone aware of a carrier of an infectious disease or one who dies from such disease, must inform the NCDC DG. Failure to do so, such person will be tried in court for knowing about a disease  until he/she proves otherwise.

* Autopsy report/disposal of corpses, animals etc.

 The DG may order an autopsy report when a person dies of an infectious disease or suspected to have died of the disease.

This will be done to determine the cause of death or investigate any outbreak or suspected outbreak as well as prevent possible spread.

 Healthcare professionals are required to provide the DG with information of their patients for the purpose of investigating or preventing read or possible outbreak of an infectious disease. Anyone who fails to comply, shall be found guilty of an offence.

 The DG may prohibit the wake-keep over an infected (or suspected) corpse. Or impose conditions fit for removal or disposal of the corpse.

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 The DG may also order the destruction of any animal and the disposal of any food or water if he considers such animal, food or water to be a source for the transmission of an infectious disease.

Failure to comply makes a person guilty. And a health or police officer may without a warrant and necessary force, enter the premises and take the necessary cause of action.

* Isolation of certain persons/area

 The DG may also order anyone affected (or suspected) of an infectious disease to be detained and isolated in a hospital or other place for such period of time and subject to such conditions he may determine.

Same for anyone who has recently recovered from or been treated for such disease. And where it is a minor, a parent or guardian may be asked to accompany such person to the isolation centre.

 The minister may declare any premises to be an isolation area  which shall be effective until the expiration of such period or until it is revoked by the minister.

 No one shall enter or leave the area without the permission of the DG who can also restrict movement of persons and goods in the area.

 If the DG feels a building is overcrowded and may cause the risk of an infection to the occupants, the DG may direct the occupier to abate the overcrowding or to close the building or part.

Anyone who fails to comply, is guilty of an offence . And a health or police officer mat take necessary measures without warrant and with the force required.

 Any person who is aggrieved by the order, may within seven days from the date of the notice, appeal to the minister whose decision shall be final.

 Also, if the DG feels that a premise is at risk of infectious disease, he may order the closure of the premises for a period not exceeding 14 days or prohibit the sale or distribution of food or water in the premises.

The DG may also order that the place be disinfected.

This applies to trades or businesses that the DG feel could pose a threat.

* An enforcement officer may place a mark on or about a premises in which any case of infectious disease has occurred and may keep such mark affixed for such time as necessary.

Any person removing mark without the authority of an enforcement officer commits an offence and is liable on conviction to a fine of N100,000 or to a non-custodial sentence.

*An enforcement officer may obtain an order of court to destroy any building in which a case of infectious disease has occurred, or of any article or thing which may be considered necessary in the interest of the public health.

*Prevention of international spread

 The president can declare an area an infected area where he believes an infectious disease may be introduced into the country. He may also issue an order prohibiting entry into the country.

* Vaccination and other prophylaxis

 Every person on an international leaving or arriving Nigeria must have undergone vaccination against all or any of the diseases as may be prescribed and produce valid international certificates of vaccination to a Health Officer.

 Notwithstanding, a Health Officer may require such person to undergo vaccination and may subject him to isolation as he thinks fit. He may also return any non-citizen (who fails to comply) to their place of origin, if he thinks fit.

 No person shall import into Nigeria any vectors capable of transmitting a disease without first obtaining the written permission of the DG and offenders shall be liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding N5 million or imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months or to both.

 No corpse other than cremated ashes, shall be brought into or exported from Nigeria, unless accompanied by a medical certificate or other evidence showing the name of the deceased, the date and cause of death and the measures adopted to preserve the body.

 The DG may order all or any persons arriving in Nigeria to undergo any medical examination specified in the order.

Vaccination

 In an outbreak (or suspected) of any infectious disease, the DG may order any person not protected or vaccinated against the disease to undergo vaccination.

 All vaccinations shall be carried out by a medical practitioner, nurse or any other suitably trained person.

 An exemption from vaccination may be granted where there s a valid medical reason.
Europe on Sunday prepared for a further cautious easing of coronavirus restrictions following signs the pandemic may be slowing, after Spaniards flocked to the streets to jog, cycle and rollerskate for the first time after 48 days of confinement.

More than 242,000 people have been killed and 3.4 million infected worldwide by the virus, which has left half of humanity under some form of lockdown and pushed the global economy towards its worst downturn since the Great Depression.

With signs that the spread of the contagion has been brought under control, parts of Europe and the United States have begun to lift restrictions to try to inject life into economies crippled by weeks of closures and ease the pressure from populations wearying of captivity.

After a two-month lockdown in Italy -- with the second-highest number of virus deaths in the world -- people on Monday will be allowed to stroll in parks and visit relatives. Restaurants can open for takeaway and wholesale stores can resume business.

And in Hungary, some stores and museums, outdoor spaces of restaurants and hotels, beaches and baths can reopen from Monday -- but restrictions will remain in the capital Budapest, which has recorded about 70 percent of the country's cases.

Germany will also continue its easing at the start of the week, with schools in some areas expected to reopen, while Slovenia and Poland will allow some businesses and public spaces to operate again.

France has said it will partially lift its lockdown on May 11.

But with health experts warning the disease could hit hard once again, they are sticking to social distancing measures, the use of masks and more testing to try to track infections.

World toll of coronavirus infections and deaths as of May 2 at 1900 GMT. By (AFP)

"We must maintain social distancing, maximum hygiene levels, and masks. We've done our bit to the best of our ability. From Monday, it's up to you," Italian emergency response official Domenico Arcuri said.

Despite the lingering concerns, there was joy and relief in Spain on Saturday, where people were allowed to exercise and walk freely after the government eased seven weeks of strict lockdown in a country with one of the highest number of deaths at more than 25,000.

"After so many weeks in confinement I badly wanted to go out, run, see the world," said financial advisor Marcos Abeytua in Madrid. "Yesterday I was like a child on Christmas Eve."

'Beyond breaking point'

Across the Atlantic, the pressure to ease virus measures is intense on leaders in the United States, where the economy has been hammered with tens of millions left jobless and anti-lockdown protests erupting in many areas.

A spectator watches the US Navy Blue Angels and US Air Force Thunderbirds fly over the Washington area on May 2 as a tribute to essential workers. By Olivier DOULIERY (AFP)

Crowds of demonstrators, some armed, denounced the lockdowns in New Hampshire and Kentucky, while at California's Huntington Beach, some surfers defied orders to stay away from the shore.

"Surfing is essential business around here, dude!" 25-year-old Todd told AFP.

The United States has the most coronavirus deaths in the world and President Donald Trump is keen for a turnaround to help reduce the economic pain.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett was optimistic, saying Saturday he's confident the American economy will bounce back because "American magic has always prevailed" -- though it is far from certain if that recovery will come in time to help Trump win reelection in November.

There are signs that the pandemic is slowing down in some parts of the United States.

In New York City, the epicentre of the US outbreak, an emergency field hospital erected in Central Park is set to close, the Christian charity running it said Saturday, as virus cases decline in the city.

But authorities are wary of letting their guard down too fast, with fears the virus could wreak havoc in the most vulnerable communities in the United States.

A massive wave of infections is sweeping through America's prison population -- the world's largest at 2.3 million -- with coronavirus deaths on the rise in jails and penitentiaries across the country.

Riots over inadequate protection and slow responses by authorities have already taken place in prisons in Washington state and Kansas.

"Things are beyond breaking point at this facility," said Brian Miller, an officer at the Marion prison in Ohio. "Right now it's hell."

Emotional toll

In addition to Europe, countries elsewhere are also relaxing some coronavirus measures.

Singapore has announced it would gradually ease some of its restrictions, while Turkey on Saturday said it would lift curbs on the export of medical supplies.

Thailand allowed businesses such as restaurants, hair salons and outdoor markets to reopen Sunday so long as social distancing was maintained and temperature checks carried out.

But experts have warned that some countries are still in the first stages of their outbreaks and things could get worse there.

In a sign of the pandemic's emotional toll, families of coronavirus victims in the Philippines are being denied traditional death rites in favour of hurried, impersonal cremations, with virus restrictions often meaning they cannot take a last look at their loved ones.

Leandro Resurreccion IV, 26, was not allowed to visit his father as he was dying from the virus in hospital, and never saw his corpse -- just the plastic he was wrapped in.

"The fact that... my family wasn't able to say goodbye could probably be the second most tragic thing that happened after my dad's death," he said.

burs-qan/amj
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 03:06:45|Editor: huaxia

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TRIPOLI, May 2 (Xinhua) -- The National Center for Disease Control of Libya on Saturday announced four new COVID-19 recoveries, bringing the total number of recoveries in Libya to 22.

Ahmed Al-Marghani, the center's awareness program's official, said that home quarantine and curfew in Libya aim to control the coronavirus, explaining that the country still faces risks in the spread of the disease.

"We test a number of samples, which some may see is relatively low. However, the pandemic has spread widely in the world, which means any country will face lack of resources, given the huge demand for laboratory operating materials," Al-Marghani told Xinhua.

The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Libya so far is 63, including 22 recoveries and three deaths, according to the center.

Imposing a curfew, banning public gatherings, banning movements among cities, and closing borders are among a series of protective measures taken by the Libyan authorities to fight the pandemic. Enditem
Israels top court will meet on Sunday to consider whether to block the coalition deal between Netanyahu and Gantz.

Hundreds of Israelis took to the streets in Tel Aviv on Saturday night, demonstrating against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus new coalition deal with his chief rival a day before the countrys Supreme Court is to begin debating a series of legal challenges to the agreement.

Demonstrators gathered for the third consecutive weekend in Tel Avivs Rabin Square, standing more than six feet apart in organised rows to conform with social-distancing rules to protect against the spread of the coronavirus.

Shame! Shame! chanted the protesters. One of the posters showed a picture of Netanyahu and Benny Gantz with the slogan, We Say No to a Corruption Government.

Israelis mainly dressed in black and keeping a safe distance considering the lingering coronavirus pandemic threat, take part in a demonstration in Tel Avivs Rabin Square on May 2, 2020 [Jack Guez/ AFP]

Protesters are upset that Netanyahus power-sharing deal with Gantz leaves the prime minister in power as he prepares to go on trial for corruption charges.

Netanyahu was formally charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust in January, becoming the first Israeli prime minister ever indicted in office. His trial was due to open in March but has been postponed until May 24.

Under the deal, Netanyahu and Gantz agreed to share the premiership, with Netanyahu serving as prime minister the first 18 months and Gantz serving the next 18 months.

It also includes a clause to advance plans to annex parts of the occupied West Bank, including Israeli settlements, starting on July 1.

Saturdays protest was organised by the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, one of the advocacy groups that has filed a legal challenge to the countrys Supreme Court.

Smaller protests also took place in other cities across Israel.

The groups are asking the high court to ban any indicted politician, including Netanyahu, from being allowed to form a new government. They also say that parts of the coalition deal are illegal.

The Supreme Court will meet for two days from Sunday to consider whether to block the agreement.

If the court strikes down the coalition deal, Israel could be plunged into a fourth consecutive election in just over 12 months.
This new plan to get out of lockdown, is it just plucked from thin air?

Definitely not, it's largely science-based. Officials do weigh up other factors too, such as people's patience with the restrictions and how they will comply with the measures. The economic impact of shutting down huge swathes of industry is also a factor but the biggest consideration is the virus itself. We can't see or do much about it until we get a vaccine, so officials have to make sure restrictions can contain the virus spread.

So what's the science?

The R number is crucial. It measures how many people pick up the infection from a confirmed case. This has been below 1.0 recently, which is good. That means positive cases are infecting fewer than one other person on average. If the R number stays static it shows we are controlling the virus. Public health officials also consider how the virus is behaving in care settings, such as nursing homes, and the capacity in our hospitals. The main aim is to contain the virus so hospitals are not overwhelmed as they were in Italy at the start of the crisis there. Flattening the curve is less of a buzz term recently but it is still the key aim.

Are we flattening the curve?

We have not had that huge spike everyone feared at the start but the number of new cases has jumped and fallen intermittently over the past couple of weeks. Testing is key, and our regime has been littered with promises that have not been delivered upon. Testing needs to get ahead of the virus if we are going to make progress. The plan is to be able to conduct 100,000 tests a week before moving on to phase one on May 18. This will enable people to get rapid results and allow contact tracing to pick out anyone else who may have been infected but struggles here leave lingering doubts about how this can be ramped up sufficiently.

But if the curve stays flat we get out of this, right?

Hopefully. The R number needs to stay low and the number of new cases must drop off. If either of these rise, it is unlikely officials will feel confident enough to allow us to progress to the next stage of the plan to exit lockdown. For example, it is hoped a new phase will kick in on May 18 allowing us to meet people from other households outdoors or visit tourist sites. This will only happen if the virus is under control in the period up to mid-May.

And if the virus isn't under control at any stage?

We don't move on to the next phase.

Are people getting better? Isn't that a factor?

That's true, the figures we hear on the news every night for the total number of cases also includes people who have made a recovery from the virus. Figures released by the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) last week show 70pc of people have recovered. As of last night we had reached more than 21,000 confirmed cases but a significant volume of these people have recovered. This is a positive but anxiety about people still picking up the virus calls for caution.

Are other countries being as cautious?

Ireland wasn't the only country to put a plan in place last week and everywhere is taking slightly different approaches. Countries are at different stages of their Covid-19 battle and everywhere has different cultures and health systems to consider. In Italy, relatives can visit each other from tomorrow, exercise outside and up to 15 people can attend funerals. Their hairdressers are reopening on June 1. In the Czech Republic everyone must now wear masks to control spread, and Belgium, Austria and Spain have afforded people some freedoms. Grandparents in Switzerland have been told it is OK to hug their grandchildren.

That seems dangerous. I thought children are vectors?

It seems there have been very few cases of children passing the virus to other people, according to research suggesting they "do not play a significant role" in how Covid-19 is spread. Swiss scientists concluded young children pose no risk of infection from Covid-19 because they do not have the "receptors" targeted by the virus.
Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffetts iconic holding company, held its annual general meeting on 2 May. The meeting is an annual pilgrimage of sorts for dedicated equity investors. This year due to the travel bans and Covid-19 lockdown, the meeting was conducted over video conferencing. In it, Buffett revealed important parts of his thinking and his investments in the midst of the Covid 19 crisis.

Pay attention to risk: Despite Warren Buffetts famous quote about being greedy when others are fearful, Buffett made just $1.8 billion of net equity purchases in Jan-March 2020 (the company has a cash pile of $137 billion). Moreover, these purchases were more than offset by net sales of equity amounting to $6.1 billion in April 2020. When asked why he had not bought more shares, he answered that the cash pile is there to protect against a number of risks, not just one.

Investor takeaway: Mutual Funds or equity investors raring to take advantage of the stock market drop, should keep this conservatism in mind. Keep a large emergency fund, ensure near term financial goals are funded and only then invest in equity if you have the risk appetite.

Admit your mistakes: Berkshire Hathaway posted a quarterly loss of about $50 billion. To put this into some perspective, the market capitalization of the company is $443.79 billion. Berkshire stock has down about 17% over the past year as at the time of writing this article. In the annual general meeting, Buffett admitted he had made a mistake in buying about 10% stakes in the four largest US airlines, a move he initiated in 2016. Buffett completely exited the airlines in April, citing uncertainty about their prospects post the Covid-19 lockdown and an oversupply of aircraft even if there is a partial recovery in travel.

Investor takeaway: If you have made any pointed sectoral bets in your equity portfolio or moved too much into particular segments like small cap stocks, dont be afraid to acknowledge your mistakes and correct them. "It is important to get out of underperforming funds. Investors should consult a financial advisor before making these shifts. But as a thumb rule, for instance, a change in fund manager or a needlessly diversified portfolio are triggers at which you should look to switch," said Pushkar Shah, a Pune based mutual fund distributor.

Dont bet against progress: Buffett went over about 238 years of US history since its independence in 1776 to make the point that the long term direction of the US economy is up. This was not evident during challenging times such as the US Civil War or the Great Depression he noted but a broad bet on US economic growth helped him build his fortune. Long term economic growth is also true of countries such as India, particularly after the economic reforms of 1991 although investors should diversify across countries to reduce their risk. In financial terms, this translates into equity working well for investors over the long term. However the time period of this long term trend can be highly unpredictable. Buffett emphasized that it took the US stock market until 1954 to reach the peak of 381 it had made in 1929, a time period of 25 years characterised by the Great Depression and Second World War. The subsequent 66 odd years have been one of solid equity returns if you consider the current Dow level of about 23,000 (translating to a CAGR of about 6.5% in USD terms).

Investor takeaway: Although stock markets can take many years after a collapse to stage a recovery, but in the very long term equity works best for investors. Build a high level of patience and tolerance for volatility. For equity, I ask investors to have at least a 5-7 year time horizon. If you are doing SIPs, this is even longer at 7-10 years because the initial few years are spent accumulating mutual fund units," said Shah.

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New Delhi, May 3 : The sealing of the Delhi-Haryana border has become a major hurdle for healthcare professionals engaged in ferrying COVID-19 samples for laboratory testing and for the movement of such workers.

Speaking to IANS Sanjeev Vashishta, Managing Director & CEO, PathKind Diagnostics said the sealing of the Delhi- Haryana border has developed as a concern for healthcare professionals commuting between Delhi-Gurgaon and Delhi-Faridabad.

"We are authorized by the health department to conduct COVID-19 sampling and testing but are facing challenges in commuting and transporting the samples. We, as healthcare workers will be able to contribute better once the necessary authorizations are given to the doctors, para medics, lab scientific officers and ground force to ferry the samples and necessary consumables/re-agents", said Vashishta.

He insisted that the government has assured to place a hassle free system to allow travel of medical professionals so that healthcare/COVID-19 testing service delivery is not adversely affected.

After Haryana government's announcement to impose stricter restrictions on the movement of vehicles in and out of Gurugram, a major traffic jam occurred at the Delhi-Gurugram border on Friday afternoon. Many people claimed despite valid passes or those involved with essential services were not allowed to either enter or exit Gurugram. The Haryana police sealed the Delhi-Gurugram border at 10 a.m. on Friday. Reportedly, a member of the nursing staff of a hospital at the IFFCO chowk was stopped at the Delhi-Gurugram border near Sehraul despite showing her identity card.

Siddhartha Bhattacharya, Secretary-General of NATHEALTH-Healthcare Federation of India, said with the announcement regarding Delhi-Haryana border sealing order, healthcare sector personnel are facing considerable challenges. "We request the Government to ease the logistical movement of doctors, medical personnel and other associate service persons to commute to and fro into Delhi across the border from Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. This is essential to deliver uninterrupted essential healthcare services", said Bhattacharya.

Detailing on difficulties faced by doctors and hospital staff while crossing the border, Ritu Garg, Zonal Director of Fortis Memorial Research Institute, said the recent announcement of restricting the movement across borders may help in reducing the movement and further transmission. "The biggest challenge that we are currently facing is that a number of our health workers are settled outside Gurugram. While we are trying to make some arrangements, during this challenging phase, it is difficult for them to leave their families and move here", added Garg.

She insisted that it would be a great help if a system is put into place for healthcare workers to be screened and movement is allowed across the border after full validation by authorities. "This will be immensely helpful in ensuring continuity of medical care for our patients", added Garg.
How Books and Buckets program in Long Beach aims to keep kids away from gang violence
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan Serzhan Abdykarimov has been invited to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan, where Deputy Foreign Minister Khalaf Khalafov met with him, Trend reports.

During the meeting, Khalafov expressed serious concern about the death of one person and the injury of two as a result of using weapons during the detention of Azerbaijani citizens Ibrahimov, Nuriyev, Ahmadov and Novruzov, by the Coast Guard of the Border Service of the National Security Committee of Kazakhstan in the Caspian Sea on April 30, 2020, and presented to the ambassador the corresponding note of the ministry.

Khalafov pointed out that the use of firearms resulting in human casualties does not correspond to the mechanism of joint cooperation between border services, and the spirit of friendly and fraternal relations between the two countries.

At the same time, in accordance with the principles of relations between the two allied countries and strategic partners, the deputy minister asked the Kazakh side to thoroughly and objectively investigate the incident, the death and wound of Azerbaijani citizens and to inform the Azerbaijani side about the results of the investigation. Azerbaijani side has appealed in connection with the early delivery of the body of the Azerbaijani citizen who died during the incident.

Ambassador Abdykarimov, in turn, expressed regret that the incident led to human casualties and extended condolences to the relatives of the deceased. He expressed hope for the speedy recovery of the wounded. The diplomat also noted that he will bring to the attention of his country the note and serious concern of Azerbaijan about what had happened.

It was noted that the Kazakh Embassy in Azerbaijan will provide the necessary assistance for the speedy return of the body of the Azerbaijani citizen to the homeland.
Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), an Indian multinational conglomerate, said that the deal for sale of 20 per cent stake in the company to global oil giant Saudi Aramco was still on track as due diligence was on-going.

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani had in August last year announced initial agreements for the sale of its key stakes in the oil-to-chemical business to the Saudi Aramco. Also, a 49 per cent interest in fuel retailing business was sold to UK's BP for Rs7,000 crore, reported Business Today.

In line with this, RIL said it plans to hive off its oil-to-chemicals (O2C) business into a separate division to enable the sale of 20 per cent stake in Aramco.

The RIL's board has approved the proposal, while it needs to get approved by the National Company Law Tribunal, stated the report, citing a company filing to Bombay Stock Exchange.

"The board at its meeting held today has approved a scheme of arrangement for transfer of O2C undertaking of the company to Reliance O2C Limited as a going concern on slump sale basis for a lump sum consideration equal to the income tax net worth of the O2C undertaking as on the appointed date of the scheme," it added.

Post the approval, the oil-to-chemical business will become a separate vertical (Reliance O2C Limited) with independent balance sheet just like the digital arm, Jio Platforms.

"O2C division of the company comprises of entire oil-to-chemicals business consisting of refining, petrochemicals, fuel retail and aviation fuel (majority interest only) and bulk wholesale marketing businesses together with its assets and liabilities," it added.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Mortgage payments have been met, protective equipment has been distributed and fire stations have been fed in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, thanks in part to the heroic efforts of the Tunnel to Towers Foundation.

President Donald Trump on Friday commended the Staten Island-based organization at a White House ceremony honoring individuals and organizations that have exhibited hard work, heroism and hope."

Said Trump: In the midst of so much pain, the heroes we honor today are a true source of inspiration for us all."

Since the onset of the pandemic, the foundations COVID-19 Heroes Fund "has reached $5 million in support of our nations frontline health care workers, said Trevor Tamsen, assistant manager of media relations for the organization.

The group has assumed mortgage payments for families of 25 first responders and frontline health care workers who have died, raised money to deliver more than one million pieces of personal protective equipment, and delivered meals to EMS stations and police departments.

*** CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF CORONAVIRUS IN NEW YORK ***

Tunnel to Towers CEO Frank Siller spoke Friday about the guiding light of the organizations mission.

We follow the teachings of St. Francis of Assisi, who said, brothers and sisters: while you are here, while you have time, let us do good," Siller said. And we know that is our guiding light for the foundation.

Siller also received a Presidential citation Friday for his work, along with a personalized introduction by the commander-in-chief.

Frank Siller from Staten Island, New York, a really special place," Trump said. I spent many an hour, many a day with my father there over the years. And its just great.

Tunnel to Towers was formed nearly 20 years ago to honor the legacy of Sillers younger brother, Stephen, an FDNY firefighter who died in the 9/11 attacks after carrying 60 pounds of life-saving gear through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel to the World Trade Center.

Each year, thousands of participants retrace the steps of Stephen Siller in the annual Tunnel to Towers 5K Run & Walk Series.

Trump on Friday spoke briefly about the foundations history, telling Frank Siller: Stephen is looking down right now saying, my brother is in the White House."
A medical worker checks notes in front of food delivery employees, who wait in line to have their nucleic acid test, at a health services center in Suifenhe, China on April 24, 2020. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Leaked Government Documents Suggest Serious Virus Outbreaks at Hospitals in Northern China

After two hospitals in the northeastern city of Harbin experienced CCP virus cluster outbreaks, the nearby city of Mudanjiang also reported cluster outbreaks at the Kangan Hospital, considered the citys top hospital.

Both cities are located in Heilongjiang Province.

Internal documents that The Epoch Times recently obtained also revealed that the Heilongjiang government issued strict regulations to control and prevent outbreaks inside hospitals, noting that they should adopt measures similar to those in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the epidemic first broke out.

The Heilongjiang government also arranged for a Mudanjiang official to take over two hospitals in the city, indicating that the outbreak had become severe.

Cluster Outbreaks at Hospitals

The Epoch Times previous reporting showed that authorities in northern China have underreported infections. But even going by official statistics, it showed that the virus was spreading within multiple hospitals.

For several weeks, the Heilongjiang health commission has announced new patients and asymptomatic carriers in Mudanjiang and Harbin nearly every daymost of them having contracted the virus at hospitals.

Medical workers are looking for close contacts with patients that tested positive on nucleic acid tests in Suifenhe, China, on April 25, 2020. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

In one example, a woman surnamed Gong visited the Mudanjiang Kangan Hospital for her liver disease in late March. After the hospital became fully devoted to treating COVID-19 patients, she was transferred to another hospital.

But soon after, she developed COVID-19 symptoms. Her husband, Mr. Wang, who accompanied her on hospital visits, also began to develop symptoms.

In mid-April, both tested positive for COVID-19. Since then, more than ten people who were close contacts with Gong, including medical staff and patients at the second hospital where she was being treated, also tested positive.

Wuhan Mode

Mudanjiang currently has three designated COVID-19 hospitals. Hongqi Hospital is dedicated to treating patients in severe and critical condition; Kangan Hospital is dedicated to treating patients in mild and medium condition; and the Suifenhe Peoples Hospital treats asymptomatic carriers. Suifenhe also has a makeshift hospital.

Suifenhe is a county level city that is experiencing a second wave outbreak, and is under the administration of Mudanjiang.

Internal documents from the Heilongjiang government revealed more details about how hospitals were dealing with the outbreak.

According to memos of a recent conference with Heilongjiang health officials held in Harbin on April 15, officials said they would encourage Harbin residents to take nucleic acid tests to test for the virus, but they must pay for the tests themselves.

At another conference held on April 19, officials spoke about adopting similar measures as in Wuhan inside COVID19-designated hospitals of Mudanjiang, according to the meeting memos.

Memos from the ninth conference convened by Heilongjiang provincial officials about the virus. The document instructs hospitals to adopt measures similar to those in Wuhan, where the virus first broke out. (Provided to The Epoch Times by insider)

For example, hospitals would rearrange their layout to have three zones: the red zone, the area where a virus patient is being treated; the clean zone, an area not exposed to the virus; and the buffer zone, an area where medical staff can disinfect themselves and take off their protective suits.

All medical staff at designated hospitals in Mudanjiang cannot go back to their homes at this time, and can only stay at the hospital or a designated hotel. Furthermore, the Mudanjiang medical teams who were previously dispatched to Hubei Province in February and March to assist in treating the large number of virus patients will now lead treatment teams in the city.

Hubei Province, where Wuhan is capital, is the hardest-hit region in China.

Inside the citys quarantine centers, officials requested that patients be monitored similar to patients in Hong Kong, meaning all must wear an electronic tracker wristband. The wristband is part of a geofence system; when the person walks outside the allowed perimeter, the system will alarm authorities.

Mudanjiang also decided to prolong the quarantine period for people returning to China from overseasfrom 14 days to 35 days. The city will also temporarily stop flights and trains to and from Beijing.

Staff wearing hazmat suits are checking the temperature of a driver at a customs checkpoint on the border with Russia at Suifenhe, China, on May 1, 2020. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

New Leader

A Mudanjiang internal government document dated April 17 explained that Communist Party committees would be set up inside the Hongqi Hospital and Kangan Hospital.

Zhao Rongguo, the citys deputy mayor, would be appointed to lead the two hospitals Party committees, with Liu Ying, director of the citys health commission, as deputy leader.

In China, all state-run businesses have Party organizations installed in order to ensure that employees toe the Party line. Both aforementioned hospitals are state-run.

U.S.-based China affairs commentator Tang Jingyuan said that the move was likely an indicator that the cluster outbreaks in the hospitals have spun out of control, adding that hospitals adopting Wuhan measures also suggested that the outbreak was very severe.
Sean Kelly being restrained during the incident

The PSNI is investigating after Shankill bomber Sean Kelly had to be restrained by passers-by during an incident outside a Belfast supermarket yesterday.

The mass killer was pictured wielding a stick after a customer was asked to leave the Eurospar at the Flax Centre in Ardoyne.

Several men and women restrained ex-IRA prisoner Kelly who was in an agitated state.

Sunday Life understands that he reacted to a comment made during the scuffle. Mobile phone footage of the row has since been viewed thousands of times on social media platforms.

Expand Expand Previous Next Close Another man being restrained during the melee Sean Kelly during the incident / Facebook

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A PSNI spokesman said: "Police are aware of a video posted on a social media platform on Saturday 02 May.

"An investigation into the circumstances surrounding this incident has commenced.

"Enquiries are continuing."

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Kelly (47), who works at the Flax Centre Eurospar, murdered nine innocents in the October 1993 Shankill bomb in which fellow IRA member Thomas Begley died. More than 50 others were maimed in the no warning blast, for which he received nine life sentences.

Kelly was released early in 2000 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. In 2013, he publicly apologised for the slaughter, however this was rejected by the families.
Before the onset of the novel coronavirus pandemic, Adam Friedman, professor and interim chair of dermatology at George Washington University, rarely wore a face mask. Today, working full days at the GWU outpatient facility, he wears one up to eight hours a day. As a result, his face has become perennially inflamed with an angry red rash.

"I'm now a dermatologist and a patient at the same time," he says.

While he isn't seeing many patients in person - only urgent cases - he's still around his co-workers all day, so the mask must stay on. "These masks are super uncomfortable," he says.

Skin irritation from wearing personal protective equipment is a hazard already familiar to health-care providers working in settings where infection control is critical. Now it has also become familiar to many people wearing masks in public, and frequently washing their hands. (Even bandannas and cloth masks, different from medical masks, can cause reactions, depending on the cloth, dyes and the detergent used to clean them, experts say.)

Friedman applies moisturizer to his face several times a day to decrease friction between his skin and the mask, useful advice for everyone, he says.

"It's all about the barrier," he says. "We need to protect our biological armor. This means not overwashing, especially with soap, and applying a moisturizer, preferably a thicker lotion or cream, to damp skin to lock moisture in where it's needed, and to add an extra layer of protection from all the nasty things out there."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that everyone wear face masks or cloth coverings over the mouth and nose when in public, especially where social distancing may be difficult, so it's probably wise to take steps to protect the skin to prevent or alleviate problems.

"I think we will be wearing masks for months to come, given the smoldering nature of this viral pandemic," Friedman says. "These skin issues, without good preventive and treatment strategies - which we have - will likely persist and become more prevalent."

Dawn Davis, a dermatologist with the Mayo Clinic, says the skin, which is the body's largest organ, protects us from the environment but can become damaged when it cannot respond fast enough to stresses.

"The skin is a very active organ of the body, just like any other organ," she says. "In contrast to many other organs, it continually regenerates and produces its own moisturization. Our skin is very busy on a day-to-day basis on a level we don't think about. It's a full-time job."

She compares skin to beleaguered feet that end up in ill-fitting or too tight shoes.

"The skin compensates by creating calluses," she says. "The difference between the foot and the hands and face is that the bottom surface of the foot is much thicker than the skin on the backs of hands and on the face, so it doesn't have the natural mechanism to form a callus. Instead, you get irritation, dryness, friction and dermatitis."

She suggests using hypoallergenic soaps and washing hands and face in warm - not scalding - water. Pat dry, using linen or cotton, less abrasive than a paper towel. For hands, if moisturizing with cream or lotion alone doesn't work, she recommends covering the lotion layer with an ointment, like petroleum jelly, then putting cotton socks over the hands overnight.

And if that's not enough, try what she calls the "skin burrito," a technique that adds additional moisture. Wash your hands, pat them dry and apply two layers of hypoallergenic lotion or cream. Put a teaspoon of white vinegar into a glass or small bowl of warm water and soak two clean washcloths in the solution. Wring them out, wrap them around your hands and cover them with socks.

The advice is similar for the face. Wash, pat dry and apply hypoallergenic moisturizer - lotion or cream - twice, leaving a thick layer. The vinegar soak works here, too. Lay the wet cloths across the irritated parts of the face for about 15 minutes, three or four times a day.

Davis also likes zinc oxide - which fights inflammation - the same stuff lifeguards put on their noses to prevent sunburn, and parents put on babies' bottoms to treat diaper rash. Put a thin layer in facial areas where the mask rubs.

It's also important to remember that broken skin is a portal for infection, and that ignoring skin problems can cause long-lasting, although treatable, skin discoloration, or require prescription medications. Moreover, mask wearing can worsen existing primary skin diseases, such as seborrheic dermatitis, or red scaly skin, rosacea, or red patches and visible blood vessels, eczema, an itchy inflammation, and perioral dermatitis, an acnelike redness around the mouth.

"Many of the masks that people - and myself - have at home are these fairly hard cone masks that can be very irritating from the pressure," says Brian Kim, a dermatologist and co-director of Center for the Study of Itch and Sensory Disorders at Washington University School of Medicine. "Usually these masks are used very transiently while people are doing housework that creates dust.

"However, during covid-19, people are wearing them all day," Kim says. "My face had long pressure lines, with redness, soreness, and my face was also very flushed underneath. I also have some mild rosacea, which was getting exacerbated by the heat and humidity and causing my face to get unusually red."

Karen Ousey, director of the Institute of Skin Integrity and Infection Prevention at the University of Huddersfield in England and the author of a recent paper describing the skin issues among health-care workers, urges them to ensure masks are fitted correctly and aren't too tight.

Apply moisturizer at least 30 minutes before putting on the mask, to avoid an improper fit, she says. She also warns that paraffin products are flammable, so anyone using them should not smoke. Finally, "if possible and safe to do so," she says, remove masks every two hours to relieve pressure.

Most of these problems are preventable and easily treated, Friedman says.

"In this unprecedented time, we all need to do our part to protect ourselves and those around us," he said. "Face masks save lives. Moisturizers save skin. Apply both to your daily routine."
One of Australia's top advisers to the World Health Health Organisation refuses to download the government's coronavirus tracking app.

University of NSW professor Mary-Louise McLaws said until she knew more about where the data it collected was stored and secured, she couldn't install it.

Four million Australians have downloaded CovidSafe since its launch last Sunday night, well short of the 40 per cent the government said it needed.

The app has been plagued with technical issues and privacy concerns despite repeated government promises that it is safe.

University of NSW professor Mary-Louise McLaws said until she knew more about where the data it collected was stored and secured, she couldn't install it

Professor McLaws, a member of the peak WHO coronavirus response panel, is not convinced, as she is concerned the data could be accessed through Amazon's servers under U.S. law.

'What's not clear is who the custodian of the data is and where the data is stored. It's not true informed consent,' she told the Sydney Morning Herald.

'Until we know what the source code is and until we know whether Amazon has to fulfil Australian law, I won't download the app.'

American delivery giant Amazon won the tender to store the app's data on its servers in the U.S.

The data could theoretically be obtained under American laws through a subpoena, but Health Minister Greg Hunt claimed legal advice said Australian law would prevent this.

Polls indicate more than half of Australians support the app and say they will download it, but only 16 per cent have actually done so.

A new Ipsos poll found 54 per cent supported the app and 37 per cent were opposed, and a Newspoll last Sunday found 54 per cent said they would download it versus 39 who wouldn't.

Australia's coronavirus tracing app could be interfering with diabetes-monitoring apps. Pictured: A woman uses her mobile phone while walking at Bondi Beach

About a million people downloaded it within the first day, but that trailed off with only a tenth of that installing it by the end of the week.

The government has resorted to all but declaring the 40 per cent threshold is necessary for pubs to open and life to go back to normal.

Critics slammed this rhetoric as 'emotional blackmail' but some supporters have gone as far as saying those who've not installed it shouldn't be allowed outside.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said restarting the economy was as important as stopping the spread of the virus, but that more people had to download the app.

'Australians have earned an early mark through the work that they have done,' he said on Friday.

Expanded testing capacity, boosting tracing through the app and preparing the health system for surges in infections would pave the way for relaxed restrictions.

National Cabinet is confident those conditions have largely been met, allowing leaders to move faster on changing the rules.

The tech community, who within minutes of the app launching were analysing its code, is also divided over whether it is safe to use.

Billionaire chief executive of software firm Atlassian, Mike Cannon-Brookes, urged fellow IT gurus to be positive about the app.

More than four-million Australians have downloaded the COVIDSafe app (pictured), which has been hailed as the nation's ticket out of strict lockdown restrictions

But other IT experts had reservations, and one quickly found several security and privacy holes and warned against downloading the app.

'Vulnerabilities discovered so far: High risk to man in the middle attacks. File references are only deleted, not the file itself,' they wrote.

'Potential that if you delete the app, it will remain on your phone. Likely can be backdoor-ed by the government.'

They also wrote that the app was too easy to clone and create one that looked similar enough to scam people into downloading it and stealing their data.

Some technology experts said they could not support downloading the app until they looked at the source code, which the government has promised to release.

Some users have also reported a glitch with the app after experiencing connection problems with their continuous glucose monitoring apps.

The app hopes to slow the spread of coronavirus by using Bluetooth connections to trace who infected people came into close contact with.

Diabetes Australia said there was 'no need to panic' when flagging the connectivity issues in a post to Facebook on Wednesday.

'We have received reports from a number of people with diabetes who have downloaded the COVIDSafe app to their smartphone that they have experienced connection problems with their continuous glucose monitoring apps,' the post said.

'We have advised the Department of Health that there may be an issue.'

Pictured: A woman in a face mask uses her mobile phone while walking across the Princes Bridge in Melbourne

Diabetes Australia encouraged those who use an app for CGM and have downloaded COVIDSafe to 'closely monitor' if there are connectivity issues.

'If you are worried, you should temporarily uninstall the COVIDSafe app from your phone,' the post read.

'If you have experienced any issues since downloading the COVIDSafe app, please let us know.'

Diabetes Australia said they would provide additional updates when they receive further information.

Federal and state leaders agreed to bring forward a decision on relaxing coronavirus restrictions after the latest National Cabinet meeting on Friday.

They will decide on relaxing some social and economic clamps on Friday, May 8 - a week earlier than expected.

Chief medical officer Brendan Murphy urged more to sign up, with the number of people on board not enough to make the scheme effective.

'We need the app uptake to be higher before we can say that the final piece in the jigsaw puzzle of contact tracing is there,' he said.

Mr Morrison said getting back to the pub would be rely on people signing up for the app.

The Federal Government has warned that millions more Australians need to download the app - which was launched on Sunday April 26 - to ease baseline national restrictions

Federal and state leaders agreed to bring forward a decision on relaxing coronavirus restrictions after the latest National Cabinet meeting on Friday. Pictured: A woman uses her phone in Melbourne during the coronavirus pandemic

'Now if that isn't an incentive for Australians to download COVIDSafe on a Friday, I don't know what is,' he said.

But the COVIDSafe app's tracing capability is not yet operational.

The information gathered by the app cannot yet be passed onto state and territory health officials as it is in the process of being finalised.

'The rules on privacy are being finalised, along with final IT testing,' a Department of Health spokesman said in a statement to the ABC.

'The system will be operational next week ahead of the decision on possible easing of restrictions.'

Deputy Chief Medical Officer Michael Kidd believes it is 'realistic' to expect millions more to sign up before the National Cabinet sits next Friday to consider lifting restrictions.

But he conceded that app is not yet live and won't up and running until next week, and health officials can not use the data but will be able to trace back from the time when someone downloaded the app.
Three teenage girls have been arrested in NSW over a vicious shopping centre attack that police believe was filmed and posted online.

A 14-year-old girl suffered bruises and soft tissue damage to her body and face and was taken to Wollongong Hospital, south of Sydney, about 7pm on Friday.

Police said the victim was set upon by three other teenage girls in the parent's room of a Figtree shopping centre on Friday, just before 5.30pm.

The 14-year-old victim claimed the beating was so severe she had a seizure, and is still scared about having to face her alleged attackers again.

She told the Illawarra Mercury she was kneed in the head and relentlessly kicked and punched during the ordeal.

Confronting vision of the attack shows the teenage girls setting upon the 14-year-old in the parents bathroom

'They were hitting me until the point I had a seizure... I'm still scared,' she said.

In confronting footage of the incident, the victim had her head slammed into a wall while two girls pummelled her.

At one point, she could be heard screaming 'you're going to kill me or something,' the publication reported.

She pleaded with the girls to stop.

The young victim claimed she knew the girls through mutual friends.

Police say the victim was set upon by three other teenage girls in the parent's room of a Figtree shopping centre (pictured) on Friday, just before 5.30pm

The attackers allegedly grabbed their victim's hair, threw her to the ground and kicked and punched her.

Two 15-year-old girls and a 17-year-old girl are each facing assault charges, while the younger two are also accused of destroying or damaging property.

All three were refused bail and are due to face a children's court on Monday.

The 14-year-old victim has since been released from Wollongong Hospital to recover at home.

Anyone with information about this incident is urged to contact Crime Stoppers: 1800 333 000.
P olice have arrested 13 people and issued 11 more with fines after breaking up two parties in Liverpool during coronavirus lockdown.

Merseyside Police said three officers were assaulted after arriving at a house party in Garmoyle Road, Wavertree just before 8:30pm on Saturday.

Eleven people, most who had travelled from Greater Manchester, were issued with fixed penalty notices for breaching Covid-19 legislation, the force said.

A 20-year-old woman, from Hyde in Greater Manchester, was also arrested on suspicion of breaching of Covid-19 legislation as well as three counts of assaulting constables.

Just after 1.20am on Sunday, police were also called to Duke Street, after suspicions that a group had forced entry into a property and were holding a party.

Officers on patrol stopped a dark-coloured Audi, which was leaving the scene, and arrested four people in the car on suspicion of burglary.

Eight more people were arrested on suspicion of burglary after officers attended the property, a police spokesman said.

Chief Inspector George Phillips said: "The overwhelming majority of our communities are showing admirable patience and understanding in these difficult times.

"They are selflessly making huge sacrifices for the sake of the NHS as well as the health of themselves and others.

"Unfortunately last night two groups of people did not show the same level of respect for others, and flagrantly ignored Government advice to only travel when essential and to social distance from anyone outside your own household.

"We attended both scenes and took swift action. It is despicable to think that in their efforts to protect the wider public, three of our officers were assaulted.

"Enforcement will always be a last resort, but when people travel to gather in this way with others outside their home we are left with little option but to issue fines and make arrests to protect the wider public.

"I am sure the vast majority of people support this approach and will continue to report any concerns."
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP)  Florida deputies arrested a man who had been living out his quarantine on a shuttered Disney World island, telling authorities it felt like a tropical paradise.

Orange County Sheriff's deputies found Richard McGuire on Disney's Discovery Island on Thursday. He said he'd been there since Monday or Tuesday and had planned to camp there for a week, according to an arrest report.

The 42-year-old said he didn't hear numerous deputies searching the private island for him on foot, by boat and by air because he was asleep in a building. He told the deputy he didn't know it was a restricted area, despite there being numerous no trespassing signs.

Richard stated that he was unaware of that and that it looked like a tropical paradise, according to the arrest report.

Orange County Marine deputies on Bay Lake used a public address system to tell McGuire he was not allowed to be on the property, but he remained on the island, anyway, according to the arrest report.

A security representative for Disney said she saw McGuire using a company boat Thursday, noting that the area had several no trespassing signs and two closed gates. She asked the agency to press charges.

McGuire was arrested on a trespassing charge and taken to jail without incident. It was not immediately clear whether he had an attorney who could comment.

Previously called Treasure Island, Discovery Island had been the site of a zoological park before the island was closed to the public in 1999.

-- The Associated Press
Why IFJ is monitoring Cambodias media

In January 2020, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen celebrated his 35th year in power, making him Asias longest-serving leader. At a meeting with local journalists on January 14, 2020, he boldly declared that he had no intention of stepping down and would be prime minister for the next 10 years.

As a constitutional monarchy, Cambodias constitution proclaims the country a liberal, multiparty democracy. However, the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen and his Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP) are intent on securing leadership by undermining political opposition, civil society groups and the independent media.

Hun Sen entered the cabinet as a foreign minister for the Peoples Republic of Kampuchea, a new government installed by Vietnam, in 1979. In 1985, when he was 32 years old he was unanimously elected as prime minister by the National Assembly to replace Chan Sy, who passed away while in office in December 1984.

In 1991, the four warring factions, including CPP agreed to sign the Paris Peace Accords which consisted of political settlements to end the conflict in the country. Article 15 in the agreement requires all sides to observe and respect human rights and fundamental freedoms. As part of the Paris Peace Accords, free and fair elections were overseen by the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) in May 1993. While Hun Sen lost the elections, he refused to accept the results. In a fragile power sharing arrangement, Hun Sen shared power with his political rival, the Funcinpec Party's Prince Norodom Ranariddh. In July 1997, Hun Sen staged a military coup, ousted his co-prime minister and killed Princes military and political allies.

While Hun Sen boasts about the Cambodias democratic credentials, the reality tells a different story. He has told journalists and civil society groups to hold the government to account by reporting on corruption and injustice, yet crackdowns on freedom of expression and punishes those critical of the government.

A Cambodian staff (C) of Radio France Internationale (RFI) in Khmer Service, works during the Inauguration of Radio France Internationale (RFI) in Khmer Service station in Phnom Penh on June 20, 2013. Credit: Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP

The steep decline of Cambodias democracy intensified in the lead up to the 2018 election. There has been increasing pressure on independent media following the closure of numerous independent news outlets.

The politicised judiciary has enabled abuses of power by the government, and the introduction of restrictive legislations has raised concerns. These have included amendments to articles 34 and 42 of Cambodias Constitution to require that every Cambodian defend the motherland and empower the government to take action against political parties if they do not place the country and nations interest first. And Cambodias lese-majeste law which was adopted by parliament in February 2018 This law requires political parties as well as Khmer citizens to primarily uphold the national interest. This law, with a punishment of up to five years in prison and a US$2,000 fine, has since been used to silence government critics and restrict press freedom.

Freedom of expression has been further curtailed, as the government has extended its power to monitor and control online news content, including websites and social media. This aims to obstruct and prevent the publication of content that the government says is intended to create turmoil and to undermine national defence, national security, relations with other countries, the economy, public order and nations cultural.

The broad term fake news has been used to suppress government critics. A proposed Fake News Law will tackle articles that cause hostility or anger or writing that makes the problem become worse. But it appears the law is more geared towards punishing journalists who expose injustice and corruption in Cambodian society. There are also concerns with access to information. Officials are able to reject requests for information that may harm national security. This has led to a refusal to provide information, hampering the ability of journalists to reporting freely, safely and independently.

With a worrying decline in press freedom and democratic rights in Cambodia, the IFJ and its affiliate in Cambodia will continue on its mission to promote press freedom and the peoples right to know.
In many countries around the world, doctors, nurses, lab scientists, and other frontline health workers in battle against Coronavirus are being celebrated and honoured. They deserve the honour as our heroes, who put their lives at risk so we can live as the world continues to fight an invisible common enemy called COVID-19.

While countries as part of steps to halt the spread of the virus implement stay at home orders and social distancing measures, remote or virtual office and online shopping have been keeping what is left of the disrupted business ecosystem and livelihood going.

However, unlike the healthcare professionals, the bridge connecting the virtual and reality divide is relatively uncelebrated. As individuals in the last-mile delivery value chain - agents, drivers and bike riders working for e-Commerce companies like Jumia and the rest, despite also providing humanitarian services and risking their lives all in bid to get essentials such as foodstuff, toiletries, and medicines to people at homes, have remained largely unsung heroes.

In fact, amidst the lockdowns, the world of last-mile delivery workers and those providing logistics is a challenging one. According to a section of them spoken to, driving on virtually empty roads carrying essential items to peoples homes, the fear of contracting Coronavirus, and the frequent sad news of increasing numbers of confirmed cases and fatalities over the media channels are real threats they dread most every day.

In the words of Adebisi (not real name as he pleaded anonymity), a Jumia contactless delivery agent, hopping on the bike taking delivery of tons of orders for groceries, foodstuff, sanitary and hygiene products to people at home and medications to the sick and the elderly persons in their homes, is an assignment that comes with lot of pressure and hazards.

A lockdown means there are increased orders for groceries and other essentials on the e-Commerce platforms like Jumia and this puts more pressure on the delivery department. I leave home every morning putting on all protective kits provided by the company, but still wary of the risk involved in the process even with the limited human contact, he said.

Being human, Adebisi further explained the reality he and his colleagues are faced with in the discharge of their job amidst the pandemic. We are always scared that the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in Nigeria is increasing by the day, which means the risk of contracting the virus is high. We get orders and go out for deliveries, but we know that the more you go out, the higher the risk of contracting the virus, he asserted.

Sharing the same sentiment, Stanley (who volunteered his first name only), said having a smooth ride on the usually busy traffic-prone Lagos roads often reminds him of the danger posed by the faceless pandemic. His words: Whenever I remember why the roads are free and what is keeping people indoors, I quickly adjust my helmet to ensure my face is well covered. Of course, we now do more delivery of groceries and other essential items like toiletries within a few minutes, but its at a higher risk.

While further buttressing the work risks associated with providing logistics at this challenging time, Godwin, a Byte Labs Logistics rider, said his recent delivery of medical items at the gate of the Infectious Disease Centre in Yaba gave him a good idea of the pandemic just seeing fully kitted doctors, nurses and other healthcare givers from afar in their personal protective equipment and kits.

I know the risk of what I am doing at this time, though I have hand sanitizers and disinfectants, which I use on my hands and my bike every morning before setting out and at regular intervals. I am scared anytime I hear in the news that some doctors have died of Coronavirus infection. Those doctors had more protection than us, yet they couldnt help it, he stated.

Excited by the humanitarian interventions by e-Commerce operators like Jumia, a Lagos-based barrister at law, Esther, who admitted that she has not stepped out of her residence since the lockdown began, disclosed that since her first experience of taking food delivery via OFood a few months ago, she has used Jumia Food delivery six times in the last two weeks. Getting six orders delivered within two weeks with the present reality, means these guys are doing a great job. And they are also risking a lot in doing so, she enthused.

In spite of the risks associated with being at the forefront of delivering groceries, food and essential items to people at their homes, another significant thing worthy of mention is that e-Commerce operators like Jumia are not only supporting the humanitarian needs in efforts to combat COVID-19 pandemic, they have also been supportive of many Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) to stay afloat while the lockdown lasts. Many restaurants, kitchens and pharmacies now use the logistics channels of e-Commerce operators to reach their customers during this lockdown, Godwin added.

Sunday Animashaun, who works with MPT Logistics, could not hide his joy about the positive impact the e-Commerce operation has had on his finances amidst the lockdown. According to him, due to the closedown of businesses by most of his customers providing non-essential services, his association with some delivery agents working with e-Commerce operators motivated his foray into the delivery of foodstuff and groceries to customers at home.

I was not used to doing foodstuff delivery, but I must confess that Ive had more connections in this regard since the lockdown. The majority of my deliveries these days are foodstuffs. I interact with riders from the likes of Jumia, and I was motivated to be involved in the supply of essential items especially foodstuffs. Its these guys that make grocery delivery. But Im now fully into it as well, he stated.

As the world continues the search for a cure for Coronavirus and government especially the federal and state governments in Nigeria intensify efforts to flatten community transmission of COVID-19, it is hoped that the strategic role of last-mile delivery workers as front liners that keep lives and businesses afloat in time of lockdown would be accorded its rightful place.
Hong Kong police seized a homemade bomb and some poisonous and inflammable chemicals at a wasted school in Kowloon Bay on Saturday, the 11th time for the police to find explosives in Hong Kong since social unrest last year.

Li Kwai-wah, senior superintendent of the Organized Crime and Triad Bureau, said the homemade bomb was discovered at a men's room of the school, along with remote control devices, a pressure cooker and four kgs of ammonium nitrate explosives after the police received a report at noon.

Li said finding the pressure cooker was an alarming signal as the seemingly harmless kitchenware is frequently used in terrorist attacks across the globe.

It is reported that an explosive device made of a pressure cooker containing bombs, nails and other hard objects will cause more casualties after being detonated remotely by a mobile phone or an alarm clock.

About 10 kgs of chemicals including quicksilver were also seized during the operation, which is suspected of being stolen from the laboratory of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University during the two-week occupation by rioters in November.

The police also said Saturday evening that a 15-year-old male and a 46-year-old female were arrested for throwing petrol bombs on the street and possessing gasoline with intent to damage property.
NEW DELHI  A gun battle between the Indian Army and militants in Kashmir left at least seven people dead, Indian officials said on Sunday, and the violence threatened to heighten tensions in the disputed region.

The army said soldiers were hunting down militants fighting Indian rule in the remote town of Handwara, in northern Kashmir, close to the border with Pakistan, when the militants took civilians hostage on Saturday afternoon. The claim could not be independently verified.

As fighting worsened, the army said, five Indian security personnel  including a colonel, a major and a Kashmiri police officer  were killed. Indias defense minister, Rajnath Singh, said on Sunday on Twitter that the loss was deeply disturbing.

We will never forget their bravery and sacrifice, he said.

Kashmir  caught in a territorial dispute between Hindu-majority India, which controls much of the territory, and Muslim-majority Pakistan  has endured brutal conflict for decades. A violent secession movement that started in the late 1980s saw many guerrilla fighters crossing the border from Pakistan into India. In turn, India increased its military presence in the region to try to quell the uprising.
It's almost two months since the Government first announced restrictions to combat the Covid-19 crisis. These restraints - together with the deaths and serious illnesses which the virus has brought to Ireland - have made many of us more determined to get around to items on our bucket list once the emergency passes.

So how much would you need in the bank to fulfil one or more of your bucket list dreams when the crisis is over - and are there any ways to limit the cost of such experiences and ensure you get your money's worth?

Hot air balloon ride

Hot air balloon rides over Cappadocia in Turkey or the Yarra Valley in Australia are said to be among the most spectacular in the world - but you'll save yourself a lot of money if you stay at home and have a hot air balloon flight in Ireland instead.

Irish Balloon Flights offers hot air balloon rides in Ireland. You can expect to pay between 149 and 240 as a single passenger on an Irish hot air balloon flight with this company - depending on the type of flight and exactly when you fly. It usually works out cheaper per person if the flight is shared.

The company also offers VIP exclusive flights for couples - where just two passengers and the pilot fly -at a cost of 975 per couple.

Hot air balloon trips with Irish Balloon Flights usually run between April and September, though the VIP flights can also run during the winter. However, all flights are currently cancelled until the end of June at the earliest due to the Covid-19 crisis. For those who already hold vouchers with Irish Balloon Flights and whose hot air balloon trips have been cancelled as a result of the crisis, voucher validity dates are being extended by the period of the flying shutdown.

Should a hot air balloon trip be one of the items on your bucket list and you wish to book a flight with Irish Balloon Flights when the Covid-19 crisis passes, you must buy a voucher to do so - and it is important that you understand the terms and conditions of these vouchers before buying one. Weather conditions will largely determine whether your flight can go ahead, so your hot air balloon ride may be cancelled on a number of occasions if the weather is not suitable. The company's Freedom Platinum vouchers are the only vouchers which you can get a refund on if unsuitable weather leads to your flights being cancelled a number of times. Otherwise, vouchers are non-refundable for weather cancellations - though the validity date of your vouchers should be extended if you have had multiple cancellations on foot of unsuitable weather. Remember too that under new gift voucher rules, gift vouchers bought on or after December 2, 2019, must be valid for at least five years after they have been sold.

"Businesses are free to set their own terms and conditions under which they provide a product or service," said a spokeswoman for the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission.

"Particularly for experiences which are reliant on weather, there is a very real chance that they may be cancelled so make sure that you ask and read what the business terms are for refunds and cancellations - including any restrictions. The terms and conditions of your contract should set out your and the businesses' rights and responsibilities if something goes wrong so it is important to read this information before you buy."

Horse trek on beach

With so many spectacular beaches, Ireland can be an ideal destination for a horse ride on a beach and such treks are usually not that expensive. Eagle Rock Equestrian Centre in Kerry, for example, offers beach treks around the stunning Derrynane Bay at a cost per adult of 35 per hour. You can also go horse trekking with other equestrian centres around Ireland.

You'll need to wait until the Covid-19 crisis passes before you can book a trek as many equestrian centres are temporarily closed. Whenever things return to normal, shop around before choosing the destination for your beach trek.

In some parts of the country, a two-hour beach trek could cost 80 or 90 per adult or more. Going on your trek as part of a small group - rather than privately - is usually cheaper.

African safari

You'll need deep pockets for an African safari holiday, but according to Eoghan Corry, editor of Travel Extra magazine, a safari is "the one holiday which everyone should do in their lifetime". "There is real action on a safari holiday which you simply won't get on any other holiday," said Corry. "Don't go to a game park for a safari holiday though - go to a real safari in a national park, such as Kruger National Park, Serengeti National Park or the Masai Mara National Reserve. The most beautiful place to go on safari is Botswana - but it's very expensive."

Be sure to go on safari at the right time - visit at the wrong months and you could miss out on wildlife sightings. A week's safari holiday could cost several thousand euro or more per person - depending on where and when you go - and whether or not it's a luxury safari. A seven-night luxury safari in Dulini Lodge in Kruger National Park last September, for example, could have set you back 8,649 per person with Trailfinders - based on two people sharing.

Given the high cost of safari and the uncertainty around travel and the future financial viability of a number of airlines, hold off booking such a trip until the Covid-19 crisis passes.

For those interested in a safari trip between January and March 2021, Trailfinders is quoting a starting price of 2,799 per person for its nine-night Ultimate Tented Kruger Experience trip - based on two people sharing. This trip includes two nights in a luxury safari tent at the Nkomazi Game Reserve - and another three nights in similar accommodation in Hamilton's tented safari camp. The price includes board and game drives at both safari camps, as well as flights from Dublin to Johannesburg, hotel accommodation for the other four nights, and car hire.

You can save money by travelling in the less popular months for such holidays, limiting your safari trip to a couple of nights, and booking standard - rather than luxury - accommodation.

Antarctic cruise

An Antarctic cruise often features high on people's bucket lists - but it could cost about 11,000 per person (based on two people sharing) to go on one. The cost of a top-end 12-night trip with Trailfinders for example starts at 10,699 per person - based on two people sharing and a departure date of late February 2021.

That price - which is for its Opulent Antarctica trip - includes flights from Dublin to Santiago, a 10-night Antarctic cruise, meals and drinks on board, and hotel accommodation in Santiago. Trailfinders has a cheaper 'Best of Antarctica' trip - which includes flights and a nine-night Antarctic cruise - for 6,899 per person, based on two people sharing and a departure date of early November 2021.

Given the uncertainty around travel, it's best to book a cruise with a company which will allow you to change your booking if necessary.

Dream experiences

There are plenty of bucket list experiences which you can fulfil in Ireland, including bungee jumping, tandem sky diving, night kayaking on a lake, and race car driving.

There are a number of companies you can bungee jump with in Ireland and Northern Ireland - and the cost typically varies from around 55 to 95 per jump. A tandem skydive could cost you anything from 200 to around 300, depending on the company and when you jump. A night kayak on a lake could cost a couple around 130 (or 65 each). A race car drive in Mondello Park will typically cost anything from 159 to 499, depending on the type of car and driving experience booked.

Bear in mind that most of the companies offering bucket-list experiences are temporarily closed as a result of the Covid-19 crisis, so you will need to wait until they reopen before you book. Most of us are now accustomed to putting things on hold under Covid-19.

However, this crisis will pass - so until it does, set aside a bit of money if you can afford it so that you will have a good chance of realising one or more of your bucket list dreams when things return to normal.
People are encouraged to pay virtual tribute to the Second World War generation ahead of VE Day by contributing to a digital Wall of Remembrance.

The coronavirus pandemic means this years commemorations for the 75th anniversary of victory in Europe day on May 8 have had to be cancelled or moved online.

To help families mark the occasion, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) is launching a digital campaign to collect photos, stories and memories of those who lived through the hardships of the war.

The public can submit their contribution by using the hashtag #ShareYourTribute on social media, or by uploading it to a special section on the CWGCs website from Monday.

One person who will be sharing a tribute is Deborah Hamlyn, 49, from Sheffield, who plans to honour the memory of her late grandfather John Allen.

War veteran John Allen (Commonwealth War Graves Commission/PA)

Mr Allen, from Bradford, who passed away in March at the age of 101, had a military career encompassing the Dunkirk evacuation, serving in India and the bloody Battle of Monte Cassino in Italy.

Ms Hamlyn, who herself served with the Royal Signals for six years, including in Northern Ireland, said she used to call her grandfather every day on the way to work.

We used to have a bit of a giggle about things that weve both done, and wed trade stories really. I could never beat his, though, to be truthful, she said.

She described Mr Allen, who was a corporal by the end of the war, as a really honest hard-working family man with a mischievous sense of humour.

He initially joined the 13th infantry division anti-tank and served in France before returning to the UK in a small fishing boat from Dunkirk.

John Allen while in the Army (Commonwealth War Graves Commission/PA)/PA)

After being posted to the east coast of the UK, he was eventually sent to serve in the Indian army, later moving on to Baghdad, Kuwait, Lebanon and Egypt.

He was at the Battle of Monte Cassino before witnessing the end of the war in Trieste.

His stories included waking up unharmed surrounded by shrapnel in Italy, dive-bombing birds at the cookhouse in India, passing through empty French villages and witnessing a boat next to his blow up near Dunkirk.

Story continues

Nothing compares to what he must have been through, what he must have witnessed, Ms Hamlyn said.

He said it all along that he was very, very lucky. He got away with not a scratch.

She explained her grandfather did not talk about the tragedies he likely witnessed, preferring to focus on the funny stories.

Ms Hamlyn explained that later in life he was very, very humble and enjoyed playing games, and taught all his grandchildren to swim.

He wouldnt describe himself as a hero he would have said people who didnt get to come home would have been the heroes, she added.

Image from the digital Wall of Remembrance (Commonwealth War Graves Commission/PA)

She praised the CWGC initiative as a great way to honour the wartime generation, with her family planning to share a photo and tribute.

They will be putting up bunting, raising a toast and holding a video call with relatives on May 8.

Its actually really important that we dont forget, its a massive sacrifice from the previous generation, she said.

Victoria Wallace, CWGC director general, said: At this dark time, we want to give people a way to honour those brave men and women who gave their lives in the Second World War, creating this virtual Wall of Remembrance, so they can take part in VE Day.

Whether it is a simple thank you, a picture or a few lines of text, we want to collect as many tributes as possible.

Despite trying circumstances, we will ensure that these men and women are remembered in perpetuity.

The CWGC maintains memorials and cemeteries around the world that commemorate the 1.7 million Commonwealth servicemen and women who died during the two world wars.

To add a tribute to the online Wall of Remembrance visit: cwgc.org/share-your-tribute.
Could Spark New Zealand Limited (NZSE:SPK) be an attractive dividend share to own for the long haul? Investors are often drawn to strong companies with the idea of reinvesting the dividends. If you are hoping to live on your dividends, it's important to be more stringent with your investments than the average punter. Regular readers know we like to apply the same approach to each dividend stock, and we hope you'll find our analysis useful.

In this case, Spark New Zealand likely looks attractive to investors, given its 5.7% dividend yield and a payment history of over ten years. It would not be a surprise to discover that many investors buy it for the dividends. Some simple analysis can offer a lot of insights when buying a company for its dividend, and we'll go through this below.

Click the interactive chart for our full dividend analysis

NZSE:SPK Historical Dividend Yield May 3rd 2020

Payout ratios

Dividends are usually paid out of company earnings. If a company is paying more than it earns, then the dividend might become unsustainable - hardly an ideal situation. As a result, we should always investigate whether a company can afford its dividend, measured as a percentage of a company's net income after tax. Looking at the data, we can see that 102% of Spark New Zealand's profits were paid out as dividends in the last 12 months. A payout ratio above 100% is definitely an item of concern, unless there are some other circumstances that would justify it.

Another important check we do is to see if the free cash flow generated is sufficient to pay the dividend. With a cash payout ratio of 134%, Spark New Zealand's dividend payments are poorly covered by cash flow. Paying out such a high percentage of cash flow suggests that the dividend was funded from either cash at bank or by borrowing, neither of which is desirable over the long term. Cash is slightly more important than profit from a dividend perspective, but given Spark New Zealand's payments were not well covered by either earnings or cash flow, we are concerned about the sustainability of this dividend.

Story continues

Is Spark New Zealand's Balance Sheet Risky?

As Spark New Zealand's dividend was not well covered by earnings, we need to check its balance sheet for signs of financial distress. A rough way to check this is with these two simple ratios: a) net debt divided by EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation), and b) net interest cover. Net debt to EBITDA is a measure of a company's total debt. Net interest cover measures the ability to meet interest payments. Essentially we check that a) the company does not have too much debt, and b) that it can afford to pay the interest. Spark New Zealand has net debt of 1.83 times its EBITDA, which is generally an okay level of debt for most companies.

Net interest cover can be calculated by dividing earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) by the company's net interest expense. With EBIT of 15.70 times its interest expense, Spark New Zealand's interest cover is quite strong - more than enough to cover the interest expense.

We update our data on Spark New Zealand every 24 hours, so you can always get our latest analysis of its financial health, here.

Dividend Volatility

Before buying a stock for its income, we want to see if the dividends have been stable in the past, and if the company has a track record of maintaining its dividend. For the purpose of this article, we only scrutinise the last decade of Spark New Zealand's dividend payments. Its dividend payments have declined on at least one occasion over the past ten years. During the past ten-year period, the first annual payment was NZ$0.24 in 2010, compared to NZ$0.25 last year. Dividend payments have grown at less than 1% a year over this period.

It's good to see some dividend growth, but the dividend has been cut at least once, and the size of the cut would eliminate most of the growth, anyway. We're not that enthused by this.

Dividend Growth Potential

Given that the dividend has been cut in the past, we need to check if earnings are growing and if that might lead to stronger dividends in the future. Earnings have grown at around 5.5% a year for the past five years, which is better than seeing them shrink! Although per-share earnings are growing at a credible rate, virtually all of the income is being paid out as dividends to shareholders. This is okay, but may limit growth in the company's future dividend payments.

Conclusion

When we look at a dividend stock, we need to form a judgement on whether the dividend will grow, if the company is able to maintain it in a wide range of economic circumstances, and if the dividend payout is sustainable. It's a concern to see that the company paid out such a high percentage of its earnings and cashflow as dividends. Second, earnings growth has been ordinary, and its history of dividend payments is chequered - having cut its dividend at least once in the past. In this analysis, Spark New Zealand doesn't shape up too well as a dividend stock. We'd find it hard to look past the flaws, and would not be inclined to think of it as a reliable dividend-payer.

It's important to note that companies having a consistent dividend policy will generate greater investor confidence than those having an erratic one. At the same time, there are other factors our readers should be conscious of before pouring capital into a stock. For example, we've identified 3 warning signs for Spark New Zealand (1 doesn't sit too well with us!) that you should be aware of before investing.

Looking for more high-yielding dividend ideas? Try our curated list of dividend stocks with a yield above 3%.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Biden denies sexual assault claims, calls for complaint to be released if it exists Biden campaign 'inaccurately' claims NYT report shows sexual assault 'did not happen'

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UPDATE: 8:30 a.m. Friday: Former Vice President Joe Biden on Friday publicly denied the allegations of sexual assault leveled against him by former staffer Tara Reade. The allegations surfaced over a month ago but Biden hasn't been asked to respond until today. He also issued a lengthy statement on Medium before going on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" where he said the National Archives should release the document showing her complaint if it exists. However, the National Archives told Business Insider that it doesn't keep such records but the Senate does.

Original:

The New York Times says the Biden campaign misrepresented its reporting on the presumptive 2020 Democrat presidential nominees sexual assault accuser, Tara Reade, refuting claims that the newspaper reported that the allegation didnt happen.

On Wednesday, a New York Times spokesperson told Fox News that the reported talking points circulated by the Biden campaign on the former senate staffers accusation that the former Delaware senator reached under her skirt in 1993 inaccurately suggest that the newspapers reporting found that the allegation did not happen.

Our investigation made no conclusion either way," the spokesperson explained. "As Buzzfeed correctly reported, our story found three former Senate aides whom Reade said she complained to contemporaneously, all of whom either did not remember the incident or said that it did not happen."

The newspapers statement comes after prominent Democrat politicians thought to be potential vice presidential selections defended former Vice President Joe Biden in the media in recent days, relying on The New York Times reporting to imply that Reades allegation is unfounded.

The New York Times did a deep investigation and they found that the accusation was not credible. I believe Joe Biden, Stacy Abrams, a former Georgia gubernatorial and lawmaker, said on CNN Tuesday night, adding that she believes that the incident did not happen.

Although the former vice president himself has remained silent on the allegations, BuzzFeed reports that his campaign circulated talking points shortly after The New York Times published its investigation into Reades allegation earlier this month.

The newspaper reportedly spoke to over two dozen people who worked with Biden in the early 1990s. The article reports that none of the people The New York Times spoke with were able to corroborate Reades claims.

Although there are at least eight women who have accused Biden of being too handsy and violating their personal space over the years, the newspaper reported that it found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Biden because no other allegation about sexual assault surfaced during its investigation.

According to talking points distributed by the campaign and reviewed by BuzzFeed, the campaign claimed: a thorough review by the New York Times has led to the truth: this incident did not happen.

Heres the bottom line. Vice President Joe Biden has spent over 40 years in public life: 36 years in the Senate; 7 Senate campaigns, 2 previous presidential runs, two vice presidential campaigns, and 8 years in the White House, the talking points added. There has never been a complaint, allegation, hint or rumor of any impropriety or inappropriate conduct like this regarding him  ever.

Although the former staffers who spoke with The New York Times could not corroborate Reades accusations, people Reade said she told about the incident at the time recalled in media interviews that they remember Reade telling them about the incident with Biden.



Reade claims that Biden reached under her skirt and penetrated her when she met him in the corridor in which she was to deliver the senator a duffle bag.



The New York Times spokesperson also said in his statement that the article also explained that former interns interviewed for the article remember Reade suddenly changing roles and that she no longer oversaw their work.

According to the spokesperson, Reades change in roles took place during the same time period that Reade said she was abruptly reassigned.

The Times also spoke to a friend who said Reade told her the details of the allegation at the time; another friend and Reades brother say she told them of a traumatic sexual incident involving Biden," the spokesperson said.

Last week, The Intercept unearthed a recording from CNNs Larry King Live from August 1993 that shows Reades mother anonymously calling in to the show to voice her frustrations with a certain senator and asked King who her daughter could turn to besides media to hold the senator accountable.

Since publishing the article in mid-April, The New York Times made edits to change the wording of the article.



The newspaper originally reported that it found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden, beyond the hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable." The reference to beyond the hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable has been removed.

New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet admitted that the edit was made at the request of the Biden campaign.

Even though a lot of us, including me, had looked at it before the story went into the paper, I think that the campaign thought that the phrasing was awkward and made it look like there were other instances in which he had been accused of sexual misconduct, Baquet told columnist Ben Smith. And thats not what the sentence was intended to say.

Baquet said he didnt note the change in the article because he believed it was not a factual mistake.

I thought it was an awkward phrasing issue that could be read different ways and that it wasnt something factual we were correcting, Baquet said. So I didnt think that was necessary.

Reade said she file a complaint against Biden at the time with a congressional human resources office. However, The Washington Post reports that it was unable to find any record of the complaint.

Reade has called for the release of Bidens senate records, which were donated to the University of Delaware and are sealed from the public.

Members of Biden's campaign "rifled through" the documents on "at least one occasion," University of Delaware spokeswoman Andrea Boyle Tippett said in a statement to Business Insider. The campaign officials went to the university's library to search through the documents after Biden announced the launch of his campaign in April 2019 and returned to the university in March to conduct a subsequent search.

I believe it will have my complaint form, as well as my separation letter and other documents," Reade told Fox News. "Maybe if other staffers that have tried to file complaints would come to light. Why are they under seal? And why won't they be released to the public?"
Judge Walker, a protege of Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, was confirmed to the Western District of Kentucky last October and was nominated last month by Mr. Trump to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where four of the current nine Supreme Court justices served.

Turning 38 this month, he would be one of the youngest judges on the appellate bench.

Judge Walker has belonged to the Federalist Society since 2006, when he was studying at Harvard Law School, according to his resume.

The letter expressed deep concern with the proposed ban, which Judge Walker and the others said misunderstands the Federalist Society. The proposal, they wrote, also applies a double standard by not banning affiliations with the American Bar Association, which conservatives have long called biased against Republican judicial nominees.

Three of Mr. Trumps appellate nominees who were deemed unqualified by the American Bar Association were confirmed nonetheless. The group also rated Judge Walker unqualified when he was nominated to the district court because of his lack of trial experience.

The ethics panel, a group of 15 judges led by an appellate judge in North Dakota appointed by Mr. Trump, acknowledged concerns about the American Bar Association but distinguished it from the Federalist Society and the American Constitution Society because it was concerned with the improvement of the law in general and advocacy for the legal profession as a whole.

The objecting judges, in their letter, pointed to positions the American Bar Association had taken in high-profile cases like those involving a baker who refused to create a wedding cake for a gay couple and Mr. Trumps travel ban. On both occasions, the bar group took sides by filing a so-called amicus brief.

Over the last decade, the A.B.A. has filed more than 100 amicus briefs in many of our nations most charged cases, the judges wrote. The Federalist Society has not filed even one.
By Jeff Mason and Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top U.S. health official Anthony Fauci will not testify next week to a congressional committee examining the Trump administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic, the White House said on Friday, calling it "counterproductive" to have individuals involved in the response testify.

The White House issued an emailed statement after a spokesman for the House of Representatives committee holding the hearing said the panel had been informed by Trump administration officials that Fauci had been blocked from testifying.

"While the Trump administration continues its whole-of-government response to COVID-19, including safely opening up America again and expediting vaccine development, it is counter-productive to have the very individuals involved in those efforts appearing at congressional hearings," White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement. "We are committed to working with Congress to offer testimony at the appropriate time."

Fauci's testimony was being sought for a May 6 hearing by a House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees health programs, said spokesman Evan Hollander. The Washington Post first reported that Fauci would not testify.

Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been one of the leading medical experts helping to guide the U.S. response to the highly contagious virus that has swept across the United States.

Trump has repeatedly clashed with the Democratic-controlled House over its moves to investigate his actions or those of his administration.

In recent days, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer have urged wide-ranging investigations into Trump's handling of the coronavirus outbreak, which has killed tens of thousands of Americans.

Democrats have criticized Trump, saying he has failed to develop a comprehensive and effective plan for testing Americans for the coronavirus and tracing contacts of those who are infected by the virus that causes the sometimes fatal COVID-19 respiratory disease.

Story continues

Fauci, 79, has had a respectful but sometimes complicated relationship with Trump.

The well-regarded doctor has at times corrected or contradicted the president at White House briefings or in press interviews on issues such as the time required to develop a vaccine and the likelihood that the coronavirus will return in the fall.

Trump has occasionally shown exasperation with Fauci but ultimately has followed, largely, the advice that he and Dr. Deborah Birx, the White Houses coronavirus task force coordinator, have provided on responding to the pandemic.

Last month, the White House said Trump was not firing Fauci despite his retweet of a supporters #FireFauci message.

At the time, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said: "Dr. Fauci has been and remains a trusted adviser to President Trump."

Aides to Fauci were not immediately available to comment on the House committee's desire to have him testify.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Richard Cowan; Editing by Sandra Maler, Leslie Adler and Daniel Wallis)
CLEVELAND, Ohio  A cat adopted from the Lake Humane Society is a lifesaver, literally, to her owner, the animal adoption organization said Saturday.

The organization, located in Mentor, said in a feel-good Facebook post that a cat adopted from the shelter in 2018 recently saved her owners life.

The black cat named Bear was adopted by a man named Alan, the post says. The man lives alone and has several health concerns.

Recently, the man was not feeling well and decided to take a nap, according to the Facebook post. However, Bear sensed that something was amiss and did not allow her owner to fall asleep; she pawed at him, jumped on him and licked his face to wake him up.

The man felt worse upon waking up, so he called 911. Paramedics arrived and found the mans blood sugar levels were dangerously high, prompting a trip to the hospital, the Facebook post says.

The mans doctor told him that if the cat had not pounced into action, the man would have died, the post says.

The Lake Humane Society says you can find your own hero animal by looking through their list of adoptable pets at lakehumane.org.

More Northeast Ohio community news:

Watch 96th birthday parade for WWII veteran Salvatore Scherma, organized by his family in Independence

K-9 Bolts onto Richmond Heights police force

Cleveland Public Library suffers revenue loss during coronavirus pandemic, library officials say
A political party opposing compulsory vaccinations and fluoride in water has overcome objections from the nation's highest health offices to win a name change with the Australian Electoral Commission.

The Involuntary Medication Objectors (Vaccination/Fluoride) Party will now be known as the Informed Medical Options Party, a change medical experts warned was an attempt to conceal the party's true agenda and appear more mainstream.

The AEC has approved an application from the Involuntary Medication Objectors (Vaccination/Fluoride) Party to change its name to the Informed Medical Options Party. Credit:AAP

Despite formal objections from the Australian Medical Association and federal Health Minister Greg Hunt, the AEC found the name change met the requirements of the Electoral Act.

AMA Victoria president Julian Rait said the AEC decision was disappointing and maintained the name could mislead voters.
Some babies are born bald, their hair an afterthought that creeps in like a cap of soft moss in the months to follow. Some babies are born with little more than tufts of wispy down; a peachy, fuzzy hint of the glory that is to come.

And some babies are born like Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas Johnson, already equipped with a glorious top thatch. For he is freshly hatched with a fully operational mop, complete with noble quiff and magisterial sideburns.

It is a marvellous sight. At less than a week old, gorgeous baby Wilf already looks like a gavelbashing elder statesman. Order! Order! In Kiddy Court! Or a captain of the Onedin Line at the very least. Can Carrie's boy be any cuter?

Boris Johnson and Carrie Symond's baby, Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas who was born with a full head of hair

And could this blond bundle of joy be more Johnsonian if he tried? Already Wilfred is the lucky recipient of the crowning glory that represents the chromosomal power of the Johnson gene; the trademark haystack of golden hair that marks them out as a towhaired tribe to be reckoned with.

Even now it grows unchecked on his tiny head  lush, fertile and unstoppable, rather like the Johnsons themselves. Who but Boris could have brought into the world a perfect baby boy so bursting with life and vigour that he already has a barnet to rival that of any three-year-old  or most of the Prime Minister's advisors, experts and ministers.

The odd thing is, there really was a Wilfred the Hairy, a Count of Barcelona in the 9th century and a modern day hero for Catalan nationalists. He is credited with creating the hereditary passage of titles from one generation to the next, a very Johnsonian trait from a family who do not stint from promoting themselves and each other.

In the meantime, let us celebrate the birth of Wilfred, this tousle-haired tot who has captured the nation's heart.

Piper Rae Reid is eight months old and was described by a midwife as 'the hairiest baby she'd ever seen'

She was hairy all over!

Piper Rae Reid is eight months old. She lives with mum Michelle, 23, an admin assistant, near Inverness. Michelle says:

I didnt expect to have a baby with quite so much hair. When she came out, one of the midwives said she was the hairiest baby shed ever seen! As well as the hair on her head, she had it all over her shoulders and back, but thats all fallen out now. Shes also got a Mallen streak of white hair. Shes just won a competition for having the best hair so, after lockdown, she gets a free photoshoot.

Dannan Devine was born with such long hair most people think it's a wig

Everyone thinks its a wig

Dannan Devine lives with mum Jenna, 31, a company director, and father, Daniel, 33, in Derry, Ireland. Jenna says:

I had suffered with every pregnancy symptom going apart from heartburn, and the day before I gave birth I remember saying: This baby is going to be so bald. When he came out we were all shocked! Neither my husband nor I have particularly thick hair, so I dont know where he got it from. I wash it every day and it grows so quickly that Ive even considered taking up a hairdressing course because I have to take him to a salon to get it trimmed. People always ask: Is it a wig? Its so gorgeous!

Indie Willis's hair was so plentiful it was visible on the sonogram

'Strangers are amazed! '

Indie Willis, 11 weeks, lives with mum Sara, a marketing manager, dad Nick, an engineer, and brother Hudson, two, in Bromley. Sara says:

We had a 36-week scan and the sonographer told us then that Indie had a lot of hair. Even so, we were unprepared for the way her hair stands on end. Whenever we go out, people stop us and comment on it, which I love. Her brother Hudson has now lost his dark hair and has gone blond. So Id say to Carrie and Boris: embrace it, as it might not last

Bronagh Keys was also born with a full head of hair. After she was washed by midwives it went fluffy and spiky

It looked like shed had an electric shock

Bronagh Keys is nearly three. She lives in Aberdeen with mum Kirsty, 32, a full-time mother, dad Rick, 32, an engineer, and sister Orla, 11 months. Kirsty says:

My mum said I had lots of hair as a newborn, so I suspected my baby might also have a lot of hair. The sonographer showed us a picture of Bronagh in the womb and said: I cant tell you what colour it is, but I can tell you this baby has a lot of hair. When Bronagh was born, everyone was surprised by just how much hair there was. In fact, the midwives kept fighting over who would bath her first  as when her hair dried it went so fluffy and spiky she looked like

Renesmae Managh had a head of very dark hair when she was born but now its almost bleach blonde

We could even see her hair on the scan

Renesmae Managh is 23 months old. She lives in Telford, Shropshire, with mum Claire Shenton, 27, and two sisters and one brother. Claire says:

All three of my daughters had thick, full heads of hair when they were born, but my son didnt. Its funny because I had heartburn with the girls but not with the boy, so I think there is something in that old wives tale. The midwives could see the hair on the scan and when Renesmae was born they couldnt get over how spiky and fluffy it was. I think she gets it from both me and her father as we both have quite a lot of hair. It was very dark when she was born but now its almost bleach blonde.

Phoebe Pond was born with more hair than her siblings with natural highlights

Shes got natural highlights

Phoebe Pond is 11 months old. She lives in Croydon, South London, with mum Amy, 33, a hospital social worker, dad Andrew, 41, who works in IT, and sisters Amelia, six, and Matilda, four. Amy says:

My other two girls had some hair when they were born, but not as much as Phoebe. I had terrible heartburn when pregnant with her and they do say that is a sign of a hairier baby. I gave birth to Phoebe at home and it was fairly traumatic as the cord was wrapped around her neck and she needed to be resuscitated by the midwives. But all was well. She has the most amazing hair, which has natural highlights and lowlights and passers-by are always commenting on it.

Esme Kearsley's mum thought her hair was only temporary but it's stayed around

I thought itd all fall out

Esme Kearsley, was born in 2018. She lives in East Yorkshire with mum Sarah, a teacher, and dad Josh, a doctor. Sarah says:

I was surprised when the sonographers mentioned that Esme had so much hair while she was growing in the womb, but then both my husband and I had a lot of hair as babies so it was only natural. When I was giving birth, every time the midwives examined me to see the head all they kept saying was: Oh theres so much hair! and they were right. Esme was born 7lb 11oz and I expected a lot of her hair to fall out  but it never did!

Case studies by Jill Foster

Why ARE some babies born with a bouffant?

By Beth Hale

Most parents have no idea whether their By Beth Hale little one will arrive with a thick thatch or bald as a coot, blonde or brunette. But their own hair can be a good indicator of what to expect.

'We have many genes from both parents and beyond which may influence hair type, abundance, colour and density,' says trichologist Iain Sallis. Dr Anand Saggar, a consultant in clinical genetics, adds: 'You have not just got the parents' own type of hair, but also the additional influence of the combination of those two genomes coming together.'

Babies with thick hair are more common in parents of Mediterranean and Asian heritage. But the darker pigmentation can also make hair appear fuller, even if the baby has the same number of strands as another child with lighter coloured hair. 'You have more hair follicles if you are blonde,' says Harley Street trichologist Sara G Allison, of hairlossconsultant.co.uk.

'But the hair may be finer than dark hair. Blonde hair reflects the light, creating an optical illusion that dark hair looks more abundant.' Hair growth in babies starts long before birth. A foetus grows a type of soft hair called lanugo from around four to five months old, which spreads around the whole body.

It is believed to help regulate the unborn baby's body temperature, and forms a barrier to the vernix  the thick, white substance that sometimes still coats a baby at birth  which is there to protect the unborn child's skin from the amniotic fluid. Some premature babies are born still covered in this downy hair.

But usually lanugo is shed between the seventh and eighth month of pregnancy and replaced by vellus hair, which is finer. According to urban myths, how much hair a newborn will have can be predicted from what the mother eats during pregnancy and whether she has experienced heartburn.

While there is no proof of the former assertion, there is some for the latter. In 2007, U.S. researchers conducted a study of 64 pregnant women, about 78 per cent of whom had reported experiencing heartburn.

After they gave birth, of the 28 who had reported moderate to severe heartburn, 23 had babies with average or above-average amounts of hair, while those who had reported no heartburn had babies with little or no hair.

This may be attributed to the hormone oestrogen, which in high levels can cause heartburn and influence foetal hair growth. And while baby hair is often a source of parental pride  it may not last.

Hormonal changes can prompt a baby to enter a hair loss  telogen  phase at the same time as its mother, at around eight to 12 weeks, before it grows back again. And what grows back can be quite different to the first head of hair  potentially changing in colour and texture.
BALTIMORE - Maryland officials are seeking an investigation into a politically connected company that contracted to provide the state with $12.5 million worth of personal protective equipment that never arrived.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the state signed a deal on April 1 with Blue Flame Medical LLC for 1.5 million N95 masks and 110 ventilators. But the equipment never showed up and Maryland cancelled the contract.

Blue Flame Medical was founded in late March by Mike Gula, a former Republican Party fundraiser, with John Thomas, also a GOP consultant, according to multiple news reports.

We have determined that since it has been one month since the order was placed with no confirmation of shipment, we are in the process of cancelling the order and have referred this matter to the Attorney General, Nick Cavey, a spokesman for the state Department of General Services, said in a statement to The Baltimore Sun on Saturday.

A spokeswoman for Democratic Attorney General Brian Frosh confirmed receiving a referral about the contract, but declined to comment.

Republican Gov. Larry Hogans office referred questions to the Department of General Services.

Officials at Blue Flame sent a text to The Baltimore Sun on Saturday saying the contract wasnt cancelled. They promised to provide more details.

Gula told the Wall Street Journal that under the terms of the deal, the company has until June 30 to fulfil the order.

Hospitals around the country have scrambled to find suppliers as the demand for masks, gowns, gloves, ventilators and testing supplies has skyrocketed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Hogan earned national acclaim and was criticized by President Donald Trump for using his connections with South Korean officials to buy 500,000 coronavirus tests from a South Korean company.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 20:13:23|Editor: huaxia

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MACAO, May 3 (Xinhua) -- The gross weight of containerized cargo by land to Macao in March grew by 28.3 percent year-on-year to 1,777 tonnes, the special administrative region's statistic service said here on Sunday.

The latest report from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that the cargo passing through the Cotai Checkpoint expanded by 33.1 percent to 1,777 tonnes, as all the containerized cargo by land went into Macao through that checkpoint in March.

On the other hand, the gross weight of port containerized cargo decreased by 37.8 percent to 7,830 tonnes, with cargo handled at the Kaho Harbour diving by 85.9 percent to 826 tonnes, and cargo shipped through the Inner Harbour rose by 3.9 percent to 7,004 tonnes.

In the first quarter, the gross weight of containerized cargo by land increased by 13.1 percent year-on-year to 5,077 tonnes, while that of port containerized cargo dropped by 27.5 percent to 26,440 tonnes.

The Macao International Airport handled 2,327 tonnes of air cargo in March, a drop of 35.0 percent year-on-year.

In the first quarter, the air cargo reduced by 26.0 percent year-on-year to 6,401 tonnes. Enditem
Project to preserve Black churches gets $20M donation; Mayfield church first to receive funds
Five years ago during a public hearing at the Soldiers Home in Holyoke, retiring superintendent Paul Barabani said the states failure to respond to his repeated pleas for additional funding and staffing amounted to deceit.

Before an audience that included one of his bosses, state veterans affairs secretary Francisco A. Urena, the homes trustees, residents and their family members, Barabani put it simply: Current staffing levels are inadequate and jeopardize patient care.

It was a position that Urena disputed to the same audience, saying the state and the administration of Gov. Charlie Baker had shown a demonstration of commitment to the Soldiers Home. A family member of a 97-year-old resident then looked at Urena and said the state was engaging in a lot of the political talk. Were the stepchildren. Were the forgotten few.

Fast forward to today and the issue of insufficient staffing and its impact on care at the Soldiers Home is front and center as now more than a third of its veterans are dead in the midst of the outbreak of the COVID-19 coronavirus that rampaged through the home in mid-March, affecting both residents and staff.

Since then, the homes current superintendent, Bennett W. Walsh, has been suspended, interim leadership and the National Guard brought in to provide clinical care to the remaining veterans and at least four state and federal investigations are underway to determine how the outbreak unfolded and how the response to it was handled.

For years, Western Massachusetts legislators say they have heard time and time again about the need for increased funding for the Soldiers Home. They heard it at Memorial Day parades, they heard it at Veterans Day observances and they heard it at what had been an annual breakfast for lawmakers at the home.

Barabani, though, took the issue to a new level in 2015, making it clear in a very public battle with state leadership and the homes trustees in December 2015 that he was retiring because state officials failed to boost funding, leading to staffing shortages and other deficits at the home.

Ive been given a mission, but I havent given the resources to accomplish that mission, Barabani said at the time.

Former Holyoke Soldiers' Home Superintendent Paul Barabani speaks at a Dec. 23, 2015 meeting as Francisco A. Urena, secretary of the state's Department of Veterans' Services, looks on.The Republican file

The state-run long-term care facility for aged and infirm military veterans has been devastated by COVID-19. More than 80 veterans have died since mid-March, with more than 70 testing positive for the disease. Scores more are infected in an outbreak that is reportedly the worst in any health care facility in the country.

Walsh was placed on administrative leave on March 30 and has said he is cooperating with the string of investigations that are probing what occurred when and how the response to the outbreak was handled. The allegations include poor management, a lack of communication and inadequate staffing.

State officials, including Urena, have said they only learned about the spreading coronavirus over the weekend of March 28 after at least eight veterans had died. Mary Lou Sudders, secretary for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, sent a team of experts to investigate the problem which found most of the veterans on one unit were suffering from COVID-19 and the disease had spread when those infected were not quarantined from others.

Val Liptak, a registered nurse who headed the state-run Western Massachusetts Hospital in Westfield, was brought in to take over leadership. A clinical team, headed by Lisa Colombo, executive vice chancellor for Commonwealth Medicine and a former hospital administrator, with experts in infectious disease, finance and operations also stepped in to try to stabilize conditions at the Soldiers Home.

About 160 National Guard members have also been working at the home for nearly a month to augment the staff  which was described by Liptak as already small for the number of residents  which was now overwhelmed because so many nurses and certified nursing assistants were out ill with COVID-19. Currently, 81 employees have tested positive for the disease.

Walsh, over the course of the past month, has issued statements in which he maintains he kept both Urenas and Sudders agencies aware of the unfolding outbreak, including filing a request on March 27 for assistance with staffing from the National Guard. His request for the added help was rejected, Walsh has said.

Soldiers' Home Superintendent Bennett Walsh speaks at a 9/11 ceremony in West Springfield in September 2019. (Don Treeger / The Republican)

State legislators say Barabani often lobbied them for funds during his four-year tenure, as did his predecessor, Paul Morin. At the time of his exit Barabani said the only way he would stay was if a concrete plan was established to add jobs and fill positions that had long been vacant. He demanded that the trustees vote unanimously to support him and allow him to make decisions he felt were needed to properly run the facility. Even Urena that December said those conditions would not likely be met.

It wasnt long before there was another indicator that the staffing issue was contributing to level of care provided at the home. Between January 2014 and August 2017, the Soldiers Home recorded 2,074 cases of residents falling at the facility with a veteran hurt in nearly 600 of those falls, suffering bone fractures, joint dislocations and a loss of consciousness. Many of those falls were attributed to inadequate staffing, according to employees and families of residents.

An audit done by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in 2018 found the home met or provisionally met all 231 standards established by the federal government for health and safety standards, although it is unclear if the audit examined staffing issues.

When the homes trustees met for their monthly meeting on March 10, 11 days before the first veteran tested positive for COVID-19, Walsh reported that multiple precautions had been put in place to help prevent the virus from spreading. In response to a trustees question about contingency plans in the event staff members became ill, Walsh said the home regularly contracts with four outside staffing agencies and could bring in temporary employees if needed, according to the meeting minutes.

The need for additional staffing had not been addressed by the state, and former deputy superintendent John Paradis says its clear the issue will not go away without more funding.

This will continue to happen until the state realizes they cant ignore staffing issues at the Soldiers Home, among other things, says Paradis. Retired as a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, Paradis continues to work with veterans. He resigned in 2015 at the same time as Barabani. At the end of the day, I resigned because of the failure of the state Department of Veterans Services to understand the human and financial resources needed to run the Soldiers Home.

Barabani has not returned calls for comment, but Paradis says his former boss took steps to make changes aimed at better management of the home, including developing what he called a triage admissions policy, instead of the first-come-first-serve standard that had been in place for years to handle the long waiting list. Its goal was to ensure those who needed care the most were accepted first. Barabani also discussed plans to build a new wing to the building that would create a more modern facility allowing veterans to have single rooms and their own bathrooms.

We came into it with one reason  to do our very best to ensure the veterans had the best quality of life, Paradis says.

John Paradis, a former deputy superintendent for the Holyoke Soldiers' Home, salutes at a National Vietnam War Veterans Day ceremony in West Springfield in March 2018.The Republican file

Long-term care facilities are proving especially vulnerable to the coronavirus since they serve the elderly and infirm, some of whom are most likely to suffer severe and often fatal cases of the disease. Many of these patients have either  or both  do-not-resuscitate and do-not-hospitalize orders in place. Also, experts say the congregate nature of the facilities make it more difficult to contain the virus and keep it from spreading.

Over the past six to eight weeks, the Soldiers Home has come to have the highest death and infection rate of any facility in the country.

Like a lot of people I heard about what happened on the news, Paradis says. It was a total and complete sense of shock to see it at a facility that is iconic in our region. Then, I had a sense of utter anger. I was angry at the state government.

While Paradis has praise for work done by the support staff, including certified nurse assistants, food service and other workers, he says the lack of staffing always stood in the way of providing the best medical care to veterans.

The Soldiers Home is unusual as a long-term care facility because it is financed by the state, with about half the funding reimbursed by the federal Veterans Affairs. It is overseen by a board of trustees, the members of which are appointed by the governor, and the Department of Veterans Services, which comes under the Executive Office of Health and Human Services.

During the four years of Baribanis leadership, Paradis says there was a consistent effort to lobby the regions legislators for funding. Very detailed information, showing the nuts and bolts of everything including maintenance and cleaning and went as far as to figure the cost of the care of residents with different needs to the hour, was prepared to support the effort, he says.

We felt they cant help you if they dont know there is a problem, Paradis says. We felt we need to make some fixes and impress upon them the challenges.

As word of those lobbying efforts reached state headquarters, though, according to Paradis, Barabani was summonsed to Boston where he was reprimanded by Urenas predecessor, Coleman Nee.

Signs and flags outside the Holyoke Soldiers Home on May 1, 2020.Greg Saulmon / The Republican

Area legislators say the funding process for the home has evolved in recent years. State Sen. James Welch, D-West Springfield, says that in 2005, when he was first elected a state representative, the governor and secretary of health and human services would put together a budget and the then-superintendent, Paul Morin, would talk to the Western Massachusetts delegation to lobby for additional funding. At one point in 2002, the home had to lay off more than 50 workers and was prepared to close of its long-term care wing in a particularly heated budget battle.

Later, under Gov. Deval Patricks administration, the state would put together the budget and Barabani would assemble a separate proposal, saying this is what we really need, a move Welch says created friction between Boston and Holyoke.

Now, they are more in lockstep, Welch says. The administration has tried to bring it under the same umbrella so they were asking for the same thing.

While the Holyoke Soldiers Home budget has increased 22.8% over the past eight years, there have been a number of lean years, especially recently. In fiscal 2016, the same year Barabani left, the Soldiers Home saw one of the largest boosts in funding, when the budget increased by 7.8% from $21.4 to $23.1 million, state records show.

But in fiscal year 2017, Walshs first year as superintendent, funding was cut by 2.4% to $22.5 million. The next two years funding remained the same. In this fiscal year, which started in July, the budget increased by 5.6% to $23.8 million, records show.

The budget cut was tied to a reduction in the number of residents who were accepted in the home, according to Paradis. In Barabanis first three years as superintendent the budget increased a total of 9.8% from $19.5 million in 2012 to $21.4 million in fiscal year 2015, state records show.

The budget for the coming year has not been submitted yet, but minutes of the trustees March meeting shows there is at least an initial request for a 1% increase.

(Member) Christopher Dupont questioned why the Soldiers Home is asking for only a 1% increase in its annual budget for next year. Is it being mandated by the commonwealth of Massachusetts that we can only ask for 1% or is that just what the Soldiers Home in Holyoke does on an annual basis? the minutes state.

No answer was given, and trustees are now referring all questions to state health and human services officials. Officials at the department have not responded to questions The Republican submitted in writing.

State Rep. Aaron Vega, D-Holyoke, says Barabani always talked to him about a lack of funding and staffing shortages and would request money for projects. Walsh, meanwhile, did not do that.

In what had been an annual tradition, area legislators were welcomed to a breakfast at the Soldiers Home at which they would meet with the superintendent, doctors, nursing director and other administrators to learn about funding needs. That changed when Walsh took over, with officials mostly talking about new programs and initiatives at the home, according to former state Sen. Donald Humason, who is now mayor of Westfield.

Humason says Walsh did not keep completely silent and would address issues when legislators sought him out on a one-on-one basis.

The sense was that they could do more if they had more people. If they had more staff they could serve more veterans, Humason says. It would be more of an off-the-record thing. My sense was the superintendent was advised not to go against their bosses.

Walsh declined to comment for this story through his lawyer, former Hampden County district Attorney William M. Bennett, who is also his uncle.

The state has a three-tiered administrative system for the Soldiers Home in which Gov. Charlie Baker is the appointing authority and decision-maker. The superintendent directly reports to veterans services secretary Urena, and the homes operations are also overseen by the Executive office of Health and Human Services.

Some observers say adding the additional level of bureaucracy was a mistake and made it more difficult for the superintendent to reach the secretary to discuss issues tied to medicine and nursing. Others question if it should instead be under the state Department of Elder Affairs, which oversees most long-term facilities.

State Rep. John Velis speaks at an event in Westfield in Aug. 2017.Don Treeger / The Republican file

One of the issues (at the Soldiers Home) is funding, and we do realize it will be a big part of going forward, says state Rep. John Velis, D-Westfield. A major with the Army Reserve, Velis visits the home regularly, holds office hours for constituents there and is an advocate for veterans needs.

Velis, like Welch, says funding requests were not made to members of the legislative delegation in recent years. Why were we not asked? Why did no one ask us for funding? Velis says. There may have been extra influences, outside influences that told them not to ask.

Velis says hes heard now from people associated with the Soldiers Home that administrators were told not to raise the issue of funding to legislators.

There are now at least four investigations underway concerning the operation of the home in the midst of the pandemic, including one by an independent investigator appointed by Baker. In addition, U.S. Attorney Andrew E. Lelling, state Attorney General Martha Healey and Inspector General Glenn Cunha have initiated investgations. The House and Senate plan a separate hearing on the issue, requested by Vega, when legislators return to session.

Paradis feels the home was especially vulnerable due to the crowded conditions that had three and even four people to a room. Without changes moving forward, a crisis like this could occur again, he believes.

Velis is hopeful the investigations at all levels will reveal what has been happening at the home. We have a national tragedy that has run afoul of everything that we care about in this nation, he says.

Velis says he met with Liptak and other current leaders at the home, receiving an update about everything they are doing to care for the veterans. I think they are doing everything in their power to stabilize and right the ship, he says. They are doing everything in their power to stop people from dying. They are doing everything in their power to stop the spread of this horrible, insidious disease.

Velis also toured a unit at the home where about 30 residents who have tested negative are living. He says he talked with some of the residents he has gotten to know from his past visits and was surprised at how upbeat many of them were despite the tragedy they are facing.

He also praised the staff members, saying he has never heard anyone complain about the one-on-one care the veterans received, especially from the certified nursing assistants. He says he understands the toll the deaths are taking on those employees, who spend the most time with the residents and get to know them the best.

On the visit he attended a memorial service outside the building for a gentleman who lived in his district. As they were playing Taps, I looked at all the staff nurses standing around and there was nothing but wet eyes there, he said.

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Dozens of Rohingya refugees stranded at sea for weeks have been relocated to a controversial flood-prone island in the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh officials said Sunday.

Bangladesh last year constructed facilities for 100,000 people on Bhashan Char, a muddy silt islet in the cyclone-prone coastal belt, saying they needed to take pressure off crowded border camps that are home to almost one million Rohingya.

The 28 Rohingya were taken to the island late Saturday instead of the camps as authorities were afraid they might be infected with the coronavirus, Foreign Minister A.K. Abdul Momen told AFP.

"Most likely they will stay there until they return to Myanmar."

They are the first group of Rohingya to be sent to the island, local government administrator Tanmoy Das told AFP, adding they were being looked after by navy personnel who had built the facilities.

Officials said the group -- including 15 women and five children -- were detained after coming ashore on Saturday from one of two boats suck at sea while trying to reach Malaysia.

Some 250 other refugees who also left the boat in six or seven dinghies have not been found, he added.

Bangladesh had refused to let the two trawlers carrying about 500 people land on its territory despite UN calls to allow them in as a powerful storm bears down on the region.

So far, no coronavirus cases have been confirmed in the sprawling camps in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar that house Rohingya who fled a 2017 military crackdown in neighbouring Myanmar.

The plan to move the refugees to Bhashan Char has been staunchly opposed by the Rohingya community.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR said Sunday that comprehensive assessments were needed before anyone is moved to the island, spokeswoman Louise Donovan told AFP.

"UNHCR has all preparations in place to ensure the safe quarantine of any refugees arriving by boat to Cox's Bazar, as a precautionary measure related to the COVID-19 pandemic," she added.

Human Rights Watch South Asia chief Meenakshi Ganguly said the relocation would place the refugees "at further risk after the suffering that they have already endured".

In mid-April, 396 starving refugees were rescued from a trawler stranded in the Bay of Bengal for more than two months. At least 60 people died on the boat.

The survivors were moved to transit centres near the border camps where they were quarantined.

Thousands of Rohingya try every year to reach other countries, making the perilous journey on crowded, rickety boats.
Top Lashkar-e Taiba commander Haider from Pakistan has been killed in Handwara encounter, reported news agency ANI quoting IG Kashmir Vijay Kumar.

Top Lashkar-e Taiba commander Haider from Pakistan killed in Handwara encounter: IG Kashmir Vijay Kumar pic.twitter.com/OY8YeYMAWQ  ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2020

In the same operation, an Army Colonel and a Major were among five security personnel martyred in an encounter with terrorists at a village in north Kashmir's Handwara area on Sunday. Issuing an official statement on Sunday, Indian Army said that they were martyred in an encounter with terrorists at a village in north Kashmir's Handwara area. The statement said that based on the intelligence input that terrorists had taken civilian as a hostage in a house in Changimul, Handwara of Kupwara district, a joint operation was launched by Army and JK Police.

A team comprising of five Army and JK Police personnel entered the target area occupied by the terrorists to evacuate the civilians and extricated the civilians, the statement said. Two terrorists were eliminated and the team of five Security Forces Personnel comprising of two Army officers, two Army soldiers and one JK Police Sub Inspector attained martyrdom.

5 personnel including Army Colonel, Major martyred in Handwara; Raksha Mantri pays tribute

Defence Minister & CDS pay tribute

Paying his tribute to the martyrs, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said: "I offer my tributes to the soldiers and security personnel who fell in action. My heart goes out to the families who lost their loved ones today. India stands shoulder to shoulder with the families of these brave martyrs. The loss of our soldiers and security personnel in Handwara(J&K) is deeply disturbing and painful. They showed exemplary courage in their fight against the terrorists and made supreme sacrifice while serving the country. We will never forget their bravery and sacrifice."

Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat said that armed forces are proud of their courage as they have successfully eliminated the terrorists. He also said that the armed forces salute these brave personnel and express deepfelt condolences for the bereaved families.

CDS General Bipin Rawat salutes martyred personnel in J-K's Handwara
Whatever Happened To: 38 The Spot's Crystle Lampitt - In Kansas City Crystle Lampitt was the bubbly, ever-cheery host of 38 The Spot for nearly a decade, as well as the co-host of the now-defunct, pay-for-play gabfest Kansas City Live. During her tenure on KCL, Lampitt had the chance to interview a slew of guests-everyone from local business owners to comedians to culinary pros.

A fun interview with a trash TV fave and the many creepers who admired her body of work that was supposed to be wholesome and nice . . . Read more:
Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on an antiwar protest at Kent State University on May 4, 1970. Above, youths cluster around a victim with Guardsmen in the background. (Associated Press)

The images from that day are horrific: National Guard troops, armed with rifles and bayonets, advancing across the campus lawn; an anguished teenage girl kneeling beside a young man on the pavement as he bleeds to death; a clutch of students gathered on a grassy hill, comforting a classmate whos taken a bullet in the chest.

The reality was even worse: Four students were killed and nine wounded by National Guardsmen who fired without warning into a crowd of unarmed students protesting the escalation of the Vietnam War on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio.

Monday is the 50th anniversary of that American tragedy. And the photos taken that day offer a sobering glimpse of a nation at war with itself  a nation not so different from the one we live in today, steeped in conflict and struggling to manage fractious ideological, social, racial and generational splits.

Ohios hard-line governor  whod summoned the National Guard  used the deaths to shore up political support in an election year. He called campus protesters the worst type of people America harbors  worse than the Brownshirts and the Communist element and also the Night Riders and the vigilantes."

In a Gallup Poll taken days after the shootings, 58% of respondents blamed the students for the bloodshed and only 11% blamed the National Guard.

But college students across the country saw things very differently. The carnage sparked a national student strike, which mobilized more than a million young people and forced the shutdown of hundreds of universities.

I was a sophomore then at an all-black Cleveland high school, a 40-minute drive from the Kent State campus. Like many of my classmates, I would be the first in my family to attend college, and Kent had seemed like a good fit  far enough away that I could live in a dorm, but close enough that I could bring my laundry home.

But those images  of students fleeing tear gas and bullets, and huddling over the dead bodies of friends  would haunt me for years and knock Kent off my college list. And the photos made me wonder about something else. Where were the black students?

Story continues

I can still remember, after the shock subsided, my non-college-going friends began teasing me: If those troops could shoot white kids so nonchalantly, why do you think you would be safe?

And as the anniversary of the tragedy rolled around again, I decided it was time for answers to a question Ive carried around for half a century: What did it feel like to be in the eye of the storm back then, when there were so many things that needed protesting?

I was talking about that with my sister-in-law, and she mentioned that her uncle had been president of the Black United Students on campus at the time of the massacre. Last week, I talked with him.

It was not some sort of extreme place, said Charles Eberhardt, a retired Cleveland math teacher who earned his bachelors and masters degrees at Kent State. There were all types of peace initiatives and nonviolence campaigns.

It was the presence of the National Guard, he said, that shifted the tenor of antiwar rallies that spring.

Eberhardt, now 70, explained that members of his group were allied with the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which organized antiwar protests on campuses across the country.

We supported their issues, including ending the Vietnam War, Eberhardt said. And they supported ours.

But on May 4, 1970, race presented an unexpected dividing line.

The rally that day followed a weekend of unruly rallies that had drawn thousands of students outside to protest President Nixons decision to invade Cambodia, prolonging an unpopular war hed promised to end.

When the ROTC building on campus was torched, to the cheers of exuberant activists, troops from the Ohio National Guard were dispatched to quell the protests and protect the smoldering husk.

When Eberhardt saw hundreds of helmeted troops carrying rifles and bayonets, positioned around the campus, he sensed this was a battle the students wouldnt win.

Hed been a teenager in Cleveland when race riots swept the city four years earlier. I knew this would be a bad scene, he said, remembering heavily armed Guardsmen patrolling street corners and rolling down his block in military tanks. You dont forget how that made you feel.

The Black United Students had planned to join the peaceful protest scheduled for noon on Monday, May 4. Instead, Eberhardt spent the morning urging black students to remain in their dorms and avoid any contact with the Guard.

To be honest, we didnt think they would shoot or kill anybody on campus, he says now. But we didnt want to have anything to do with them.

So while white students were defiantly protesting on the Commons, never imagining they could be shot, black students were uneasily sheltering indoors because they imagined theyd be easy targets.

A lot of us wanted to be out there, he said. Most of the students on campus were antiwar."

Eberhardt was in his room when he heard the volley of gunshots; he dashed across campus and into the melee, where he got the news that several students had been hit. I was stunned, just totally shocked, he said.

I couldnt believe they were shooting, with live ammunition, on a college campus. I couldnt believe they would do that against white students.

I was shocked, totally shocked. And overcome with sadness for a long, long time, he said. For the kids who died, for their parents, for all of us.

@SandyBanksLA
Eighty-seven Manipuris, who



arrived here on Saturday after being stranded in Assam for days, have tested negative for COVID-19, health department officials said.

They were stranded in Assam in the wake of the nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of coronavirus.

As per protocol, they would be sent to their homes after counselling for strict adherence to quarantine rules, said Khoirom Sasheekumar Mangang, Additional Director and Spokesperson, Health Department.

The district authorities concerned will be closely monitoring them, the official said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Copyright  2020 Albuquerque Journal

Five Democrats have lined up to replace Santa Fe County Clerk Geraldine Salazar, who is ineligible to seek reelection under state law, having already completed two consecutive four-year terms.

With no other candidates from other political parties vying for the position, the Democratic primary election on June 2 will all but determine Salazars successor.

The field of qualified candidates includes a political consultant, a self-described data nerd, a retired business owner and veteran candidate, a former employee in the clerks office and a political newcomer.

Katharine E. Clark has worked on numerous political campaigns, most recently those of Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia and state Rep. Christine Chandler of Los Alamos, but shes never run for office before.

Ive off and on been working in politics for about 20 years. Having helped a lot of candidates get into office, it has stressed the need to me that every vote counts, she said when asked why she decided to run for county clerk. If you really care about government and the attack on our institutions, it gets back to basics  like every vote counts.

Clark said the importance of every vote, and the assurance that everyone has the opportunity to vote, was instilled in her in college at UC-Berkeley. Successful efforts to boost student voter rolls were diminished by inadequate accommodations to cast a vote, she said. There were no voting convenience centers; people waited for hours before election officials ran out of provisional ballots.

A lot of students were turned away that day. It was heartbreaking, she said.

After college, Clark says she went to work for marketing and tech companies. She stayed involved in politics as a political consultant, helping mostly women candidates with messaging, policy and campaign strategy.

Shes proud of getting Chandler elected to the statehouse in 2018, helping get Democrats to turn out to vote in traditionally Republican Los Alamos County.

Thats something I really care about, turnout, she said.

A military brat born in Germany, where her father, an Air Force colonel, was stationed, and raised in California, Clark was working in the tech sector in Colorado when she moved to New Mexico, following her mother here in 2012.

I became interested in working for civil rights and social justice, and working to help people, she said of her getting involved in New Mexico politics.

Clark has garnered the support of several state and county officials through her connections with the Democratic Party. She has the endorsement of Chandler, Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, state Treasurer Tim Eichenberg, Santa Fe City Councilor Renee Villarreal, County Commissioner Anna Hamilton, and Salazar, the woman she hopes to replace. She also is supported by the Northern New Mexico Central Labor Council and Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 412.

Bryan P. Flores is on the ballot. He declined to be interviewed, instead requesting that questions be sent to him via email. He did not respond to those questions prior to the Journal Norths deadline.

Sarah M. Guzman says an experience at a polling place probably was the impetus for her decision to run for county clerk. She and her husband Juan, a native of Mexico, went to vote. Juan picked up a voter guide only to find it was available solely in English and not in Spanish, his first language.

That seemed wrong.

Constitutionally, (Spanish) is one of the official languages in the state of New Mexico, Guzman said, adding that she recognized language as being a barrier for many voters. At the bare minimum, it should have been in the two languages we speak. So that is one of the things I would want to make sure was in place if Im elected.

A native of El Paso, Guzman attended New Mexico State University, earning a degree in government and foreign language, with an emphasis on Spanish. She went on to get a masters degree in information systems and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

As part of her grad program, she did a practicum with the United Nations Commission on Human Rights that took her to Mexico City.

I worked with women, children and the elderly  the most vulnerable populations, said Guzman, who says shes always had an interest in social justice issues.

Her travels continued as she set out on a career in management consulting, working primarily for such nonprofit groups as Research to Prevent Blindness in New York and the BreastCare Center in Arizona.

But I missed being closer to my family and missed my friends in New Mexico, she said.

She returned to the state in 2010 and got involved in campaigns for U.S. Congressman Harry Teague and gubernatorial candidate Diane Denish. She later latched on with the states Legislative Finance Committee and Legislative Education Committee.

They were really focused on data analysis. Im a data nerd. Everything Ive been involved with has involved data, and I think thats what separates me from the other candidates, she said. I have a keen awareness of the legislative process, budgeting, lobbying  . I want voters to know that my experience aligns well with whats needed to perform the job of county clerk.

Guzman is the mother of young daughters, Valentina and Victoria, ages 4 and 6.

Letitia Montoya is making her third consecutive run as a candidate for county clerk, having lost to Salazar in the most recent two elections.

She did beat Salazar once, though, back in 2004 when each ran for state Senate, but she still placed third, while Salazar was fourth.

Montoya also made a bid for Secretary of State two years later, but lost in the Democratic primary.

A Santa Fe native who has been involved in New Mexico politics for years, having twice been chosen as secretary for the state Democratic Party, and multiple times as delegate at the state and national conventions, Montoya is passionate about people using their right to vote.

My whole goal is to get peoples minds changed and empower them, she said of folks who dont think voting is worth the time. There could be an issue that comes up thats important to them and if they didnt vote, they have to reason to complain.

Reaching voters has been challenging during the COVID-19 virus pandemic. Candidates cant really canvass neighborhoods or hold campaign rallies and fundraisers like they used to.

But the good thing about that is I started (campaigning) about a year ago, so Ive been out for a long time, she said. Now, I feel more like a campaign manager doing things a campaign manager normally does.

Now retired, Montoya and her husband, Michael Segura, operated Assure Financial Group, where she served as chief compliance and operating officer. She said her work involved preparing annual budgets, data management, computer quality assurance, and compliance with state and federal regulations.

The company did at one point file for bankruptcy and the couple is currently the subject of a lawsuit that stems from a $550,000 mortgage they took out in 2005. Wells Fargo Financial filed the complaint for foreclosure in 2017. A district court judge last month granted a 60-day stay in the case due to the coronavirus outbreak.

A lawsuit Montoya filed against the Santa Fe Elks Lodge 460, in which she claimed she tripped over an electrical cord and was injured, was dismissed in 2018.

Montoya also pleaded no contest to a DUI charge some 30 years ago.

The mother of five, with as many grandchildren ranging in age from 6 months to 6 years, Montoya isnt ready to relax into retirement. Shes still on a mission to get people out to vote, something she frames as a quality-of-life matter.

I care for the people of the county and I want them to make the connection between the value of voting and their quality of life, she said. Even if theyre not going to vote for me, go out and vote because your vote is your voice.

Richard Rick Padilla is the one candidate for county clerk who has experience working in the clerks office. He spent 17 years there, starting as a microfilm technician, then in election compliance.

Padilla retired Jan. 1 as director of operations, a position in which he was tasked with the programming, testing and security of voting machines. Working under the supervision of the deputy clerk assigned to the Bureau of Elections, he also trained staff and poll workers.

We also did registrations, titles, marriage licenses, he said. Ive worked in all those areas. A lot of people dont realize that the clerks office is more than just elections.

Padillas father ran a janitorial business in Colorado, which had contracts in New Mexico, and thats what brought him here in the late 1970s.

After three years, I decided I liked it here and decided to stay, he said.

Part of the appeal was the outdoors. Padilla says he loves to hunt and fish.

He also found love and got married. He and his wife Tracy Dotson have six kids, 10 grandchildren, one great-grandchild and two adopted dogs.

In the meantime, Padilla got a job with the Secretary of States Election Compliance Office and worked there for seven years.

Basically, that involved going to the 33 counties to train technicians and get them ready for elections, and deal with any problems they may have, he said, adding that training poll workers was also a part of that job.

Asked why he was willing to give up retirement to serve as county clerk, Padilla said, Ive been doing this for quite some time and I just wanted to continue sharing what I know and what I shared throughout New Mexico. I just believe that with my education and the work experience I have, I wanted to throw my hat in there, continue working for the people of Santa Fe and see how things came out.

Padilla acknowledged that he has two DUIs on his record, the most recent one 34 years ago.

That was part of my growing up, he said. Im very hardcore about not drinking and driving.

He hopes people will vote for him, in part because he believes hes in the best position to provide for a smooth transition.

I have a background of 24 years with the clerks office and the Secretary of State, and that makes me uniquely qualified to be clerk in Santa Fe County, he said.

Money matters

Campaign finance reports posted on the Secretary of States website indicate that, as of April 13, Floress campaign had not raised or spent any money.

Among the candidates that did file finance reports, Clarks campaign had raised the most money. She reported raising $20,600, though that total included a $6,000 loan from herself. She received contributions from state Rep. Christine Chandler, Santa Fe school board president Kate Noble, Albuquerque City Councilor Pat Davis, Albuquerque political consultant Neri Holguin, Santa Fe County Commissioner Anna Hamilton, Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 412 and Los Alamos County Councilor David Izraelevitz, among others.

Montoya reported fundraising of $11,259, but that included a $5,000 loan she gave herself. She also received $5,000 from Pojoaque Pueblo tribal government.

Guzman reported raising $6,655. She neglected to identify most of her contributions by name, but it is clear from her filings that contributions came from people associated with WildEarth Guardians, Albuquerques Bregman law firm, and Earl Potter at Santa Fes Five and Dime.

Padillas campaign had raised a little more than $1,000, including a $500 loan he gave himself.

Editors Note: This article has been updated to correct the name of Letitia Montoyas husband and information regarding Katharine Clarks contributors.

Katharine E. Clark

AGE: 38

EDUCATION: BA in Cognitive Neurosciences & Interdisciplinary Studies from University of California-Berkeley; MBA in Public Policy & Human Resources from the University of New Mexico

OCCUPATION: Small-business owner, political consultant

CAMPAIGN WEBSITE: Clark4Clerk.com

Sarah M. Guzman

AGE: 37

EDUCATION: BA in Government and Foreign Language from New Mexico State University; MA in Public Policy and Management from Carnegie Mellon University

OCCUPATION: Management consultant

CAMPAIGN WEBSITE: sarahguzman4santafecountyclerk.comLetitia Montoya

AGE: 57

EDUCATION: BA in Mathematics and MA in Education from College of Santa Fe

OCCUPATION: Retired as chief operations officer, Assure Financial Group

CAMPAIGN WEBSITE: letitiacountyclerk.comRichard A. Padilla

AGE: 67

EDUCATION: High school

OCCUPATION: Retired as director of operations with the Santa Fe County Clerks Office

CAMPAIGN WEBSITE: Facebook.com/Rick Padilla4SFcountyclerkBryan P. Flores declined an interview and did not provide a photo.
As the second wave of the CCP virus outbreak hits northeast China, Harbin, a city of 10 million people, has been forced to shut dine-in services in all of its eateries.

Catering services operating in the city, such as barbecue eateries and those selling skewers, hot pot, and stew, must suspend dine-in meals until further notice and in accordance with changes in the epidemic situation, said an emergency notice issued on May 1 by the citys epidemic prevention office.

Harbin is the provincial capital of Heilongjiang, Chinas northernmost province bordering Russia, which has become a hotspot for CCP virus infections in the past month.

The Second Wave

In March, Harbin city authorities lifted lockdown measures and allowed social gatherings. At the time, Harbin, as was the case with the majority of Chinese cities, declared itself to be free of any new virus cases.

But in early April, the Heilongjiang authorities reported another wave of infections in several cities, with Harbin hit the hardest.

The authorities have imposed strict lockdown measures, banning entry to residential zones by non-locals and vehicles registered elsewhere.

Residents told The Epoch Times that the city had forced many into quarantine at home, without permission to go outside.

The Chinese regime blames many of the infections on citizens returning from Russia, and has deployed additional police, border guards, and the Peoples Armed Police paramilitary forces to the Russian border.

This comes as the Russian government has begun expatriating Chinese living in Russia and the Chinese regime refuses to allow them to return.

Coverup

Leaked documents from Harbin show the number of virus patients there may be 200 times the official data.

Local officials have massively underreported cases of the CCP virus during the second wave of its local outbreak, according to internal government documents obtained by The Epoch Times.

The Epoch Times also obtained an internal warning notice issued by the Heilongjiang government on April 13, in which it admitted that the outbreak in Harbin was in an aggregated, explosive situation.

Meanwhile, one major hospital in Harbin had stopped accepting new patients because of overcapacity and infections among medical staff, The Epoch Times reported on April 22. Some workers were being observed for symptoms at quarantine centers.

Nicole Hao and Reuters contributed to this report.

From The Epoch Times
The detention and arrest of Journalist, Kufre Carter by DSS could be a sign of media silencing on Covid-19 by Powerful Forces in Akwa Ibom according to Investigative Journalist, Fisayo Soyombo.

Fisayo Soyombo brought the issue to light on Twitter and also tweeted about the sacking of the Akwa Ibom state Epidemiologist who according to reports was sacked because he refused to falsify Covid-19 evidence in Akwa Ibom.

In Akwa Ibom, some powerful forces are not only against widespread testing of people to ascertain their COVID-19 statuses, theyre also foisting a culture of silence on the public. Seeing the arrest, detention and persecution of journalist @KufreCarter by the DSS

1/2  Fisayo Soyombo (@fisayosoyombo) May 3, 2020

The refusal to test and media silencing culture being encouraged in Akwa Ibom could be counter productive and have a disastrous outcome in Akwa Ibom.

Public awareness and transparency are some of the tools used by the NCDC to educate Nigerians on the virus.

Mr. Kufre Carter was detained by the DSS in Akwa Ibom after he circulated an Interview with a Doctor.

The Interview revealed allegations of cover up by the State Governor, Udom Emmanuel on Corona Virus figures in Akwa Ibom state.

Nigeria ranks 115 in the 2020 World Press Freedom Index and currently has 2388 confirmed cases of Covid-19.
The Armed forces on Sunday flew their helicopters over various COVID-19 designated hospitals in the southern states and showered flower petals acknowledging the role played by front-line personnel such as doctors, paramedics and police in the fight against the pandemic.

Helicopters of the Indian Air Force, the Navy and the Coast Guard took to the skies and carried out the thanksgiving effort in cities, including Hyderabad, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi, Visakhapatnam, and Bengaluru.

In Kochi, the headquarters of the Southern Naval Command, Naval aircraft carried out a fly-past over the Marine Drive while seven Fast Interceptor Crafts undertook a steam-past in the channel along the city's iconic spot.

The activities were part of the nation-wide initiative announced by Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat who had on Friday said the three services will carry out a series of activities to thank the "corona warriors".

The front-line workers were overwhelmed by the gesture of the armed forces as they clapped and took photos as the choppers whizzed past them.

"We are doing our duty, we know the danger of the disease, but we come here and do as its our duty. Such gesture, that too from the Armed forces is great, it will help us keep going," a hospital staff said in Bengaluru.

In Hyderabad, IAF's Chetak helicopter hovered over the state-run Gandhi hospital and showered petals as doctors, nurses, paramedical, sanitation and other staff and police personnel assembled near the premises.

Several of the COVID-19 'warriors' were seen taking videos and photos using their mobile phones while some others clapped.

In Kerala, the Indian Air Force and Navy helicopters showered flower petals on hospitals in Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi while a fly-past and steam-past were also conducted.

A Sarang helicopter of IAF hovered over the Government Medical College Hospital and the General Hospital in the state capital and showered petals.

Navy's representatives, including Commodores N Anil Joseph, Arti Sarin and G K Dutta, met doctors, paramedics, police personnel, firemen, sanitation workers and other frontline workers at the Ernakulam General Hospital and applauded their efforts in fighting COVID-19.

A Chetak helicopter of the Navy showered flower petals on the district hospital, a report from Kochi said.

Rajendra Maidan at Ernakulam was open to the public for a limited time with social distancing protocol to witness these activities and show their support.

The Southern Naval Command band played some famous numbers on a warship berthed opposite the Cochin Shipyard Limited and near the Vikrant-Venduruthy Bridge.

A report from Andhra Pradesh capital Amaravati said helicopters of the Indian Navy from the Eastern Naval Command flew past the designated Covid-19 hospitals -- the state-run Chest and Communicable Diseases Hospital and the private Gitam Hospital -- at Visakhapatnam and showered flowers.

Doctors, nurses and paramedical staff lined up on the hospital premises and acknowledged the Defence forces gesture.

The ENC officers later felicitated the doctors and other medical staff in a thanksgiving gesture.

In Chennai, helicopters of the IAF strew flower petals on the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital and the Tamil Nadu Government Multi-Super Speciality Hospital at Omandurar Estate in the heart of the city.

Later, a Coast Guard helicopter carried out a similar activity honouring personnel at the Government Stanley Medical College and Kilpauk Medical College in the city.

In Bengaluru, IAF's Mi-17 helicopter showered flower petals on the Victoria Hospital and Command Hospital while the air warrior's band also made a presentation.

The front-line workers too acknowledged the gesture of the Defence forces by clapping while several clicked photos.

The Defence Public Relations Office in Bengaluru tweeted that bands from Madras Engineer Group (MEG), Parachute Regiment Training Centre (PRTC), Army Service Corps bands performed on Saturday thanking the corona warriors.

"Indian Army thanking all the #CoronaWarriorsIndia for their efforts in mitigating #Covid_19india crisis. Bands from #MEG, #PRTC, and #ASC performed at Vidhan Soudha, National War memorial and MG Metro stn respectively yest," it said.

The armed forces on Friday announced conducting fly- pasts, light up ships at sea, display military bands and shower flower petals on hospitals in a grand display of gratitude to lakhs of "corona warriors" like doctors, paramedics and police personnel.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
V Nilesh By

Express News Service

HYDERABAD: Just days after migrant labourers protested at IIT-Hyderabad wanting to back home, several migrant labourers staged a protest on Saturday in Tellapur at the construction site of a well-known real estate developer.

Their demand was similar. They wanted to be sent back home by train or bus. Police officials swung into action to pacify an estimated 3,000 labourers at the site. These included migrants from West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha.

Since the Central government has given the nod for construction activity to start if workers are available at the site, the labourers were told to start working from Monday. This did not go down well with the labourers who alleged that they had not been paid their full wages since the lockdown. Besides, they were given only meagre rations, forcing them to spend money out of their own pockets.

When Express visited the spot, hundreds of labourers gathered around with a unanimous demand - that the Telangana government must allow them to go back to their homes. Lallan, one of the labourers, from Bihar, said, I came here to earn money but I spent around `3,000 from my own pocket because we were provided with insufficient rations.

We have no information of whom to contact to go back to our homes. Now we are being forced to work in such conditions. Many of the workers at the site said they were ready to walk back home if allowed.
21 Pro Video

San Antonio police are looking for a man they say shot another man in the leg following an altercation at a West Side convenience store Sunday morning.

Officers were called to Baptist Emergency Hospital on Cupples Road about 2 a.m. where the victim was being treated for a gunshot wound to his leg.
Mark Anthony Balcueva knew there was a chance he might catch Covid-19, but he was still shaken to his core when he received news of his infection, which resulted in a close brush with death and 13 days in hospital.

The 41-year-old Filipino drummer and father of one performed in packed bars in Hong Kong six nights a week to make ends meet, but 48 hours after his last show on March 23, he became seriously ill with stomachache and diarrhoea, and a persistent fever of more than 39 degrees Celsius.

He went to Ruttonjee Hospital in Wan Chai for a check-up, and six hours later, was told he had Covid-19.

I cried so hard for the first time, because I didnt know what was next, he recalled. Balcueva has heard many grim stories of coronavirus patients, and knew it was up to fate. I didnt know if I was [going to be] the one to die or recover.

If I slept, I didnt know if I would still be alive tomorrow.

In hospital, Balcuevas condition worsened. He lost his sense of taste, had an acute shortness of breath, and had to be given oxygen. His lung scans revealed patterns similar to frosted glass.

I was opening my mouth wide and gasping for air, but it felt like something was pressing my chest and the air simply wouldnt go in. Every breath was an effort.

Balcueva had a close brush with death when he came down with Covid-19. Photo: Edmond So

For a few days, Balcueva drank only water and ate biscuits because of difficulties in breathing and swallowing. He said what kept him going was his eight-year-old daughter back in the Philippines. Every day I tried to call her using FaceTime. I told her, dont worry, Im going to recover. Because being a father is about not letting your daughter worry.

Balcueva is one of the 103 coronavirus patients in the bar and band cluster that shocked the city as its largest group outbreak to date, far outstripping a cluster of 19 linked to a Buddhist worship hall in North Point, or a group of 15 who attended a wedding party in Lantau Island, and another 13 who gathered for a hotpot dinner in Kwun Tong.

Story continues

The first patient in the bar cluster emerged on March 18, and the last was almost a month later on April 13. The infections started with customers and workers at a number of bars and pubs in the nightlife districts of Lan Kwai Fong, Wan Chai and Tsim Sha Tsui, and later spread to their close contacts and family members, including a six-week-old baby, the youngest local patient recorded, who was believed to have contracted the virus through an infected person from the cluster.

The thought of his daughter in the Philippines gave Balcueva strength to fight the disease. Photo: Edmond So

Hong Kong shut bars, pubs and nightclubs on April 3 following a wave of related infections.

The city recorded no new cases on Saturday, with the total tally at 1,039 and four deaths, although a five-day streak of no infections was broken a day earlier by two patients who tested positive among a group of Pakistan returnees.

The citys record of no local infections for 13 days in a row still stood as of Saturday.

I was just doing my job and I have done everything I can by wearing masks and cleaning my hands

Mark Anthony Balcueva, musician

Balcueva has performed at Insomnia, Centre Stage, Dusk till Dawn and All Night Long  all linked to the bar cluster  but said he was still unsure where he got infected.

I wear masks every day even when I go to the market or walk down the street. I wore masks at the bars until I performed because its hard to sing behind a mask. Balcueva also had meals with his bandmates in bar kitchens before they took to the stage. Another member in his band of six was also infected.

Dusk till Dawn in Wan Chai was one of the bars hit by the cluster outbreak. Photo: Bruce Yan

Balcueva said he knew of the risks, because in bars there were many people in a dark environment, but said he had to soldier on to make HK$9,000 (US$1,160) a month. I also have the passion to play music.

As a Covid-19 patient, he was given a US$200 (HK$1,550) handout by the Philippine government, but Balcueva argued that the illness should be listed as an occupational hazard in Hong Kong to protect against work-related infections.

I was just doing my job and I did everything I could by wearing masks and cleaning my hands, he said. I am trying not to feel angry, but I think our company could have told us earlier that others in the bars may have been infected, and let us know about the risks.

Lan Kwai Fong in Central became a ghost town after a cluster of cases emerged. Photo: Dickson Lee

Balcueva was discharged on April 6 after a cocktail therapy of drugs helped improve his condition, but he still has to go back to the hospital for further check-ups. Fortunately, he feels his lung functions have largely returned to normal, and he can walk up the stairs without struggling to catch his breath.

Above all, he is deeply grateful to the doctors and nurses who looked after him in Ruttonjee Hospital. I am not even a Hong Kong national. They really saved my life, I am so thankful.

He said he might still return to performing when bars reopened, if he needed the cash. But for now, my birthday is next month, and I need to celebrate the second life I was given. I feel so blessed.

This is the third of a four-part series on the 100th day of Hong Kongs Covid-19 crisis. Other parts of this series have examined how the pandemic exposed Hong Kongs inadequate links between public and private hospitals; the deepest fears held by some of the citys medical heroes; and, how the pandemic has officials rethinking plans for Hong Kongs public hospitals.

Help us understand what you are interested in so that we can improve SCMP and provide a better experience for you. We would like to invite you to take this five-minute survey on how you engage with SCMP and the news.

More from South China Morning Post:

This article Coronavirus: musician from Hong Kongs Covid-19 bar cluster recounts harrowing experience of battle with disease first appeared on South China Morning Post

For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2020.
The Delhi Police on Saturday came to the rescue of a woman who was unable to feed her eight cats due to the COVID-19 induced lockdown.

Tahseen Khan, a resident of Shaheen Bagh, has eight cats, including kittens. She was unable to feed the animals as their food got over, police said.

She had placed an order with a pet shop at New Friends Colony in South Delhi, but due to the restrictions the shop owner was unable to deliver the food. Thereafter, the woman contacted Shaheen Bagh SHO Vijay Pal Singh, they said. The SHO contacted the owner of the shop, collected the pet food and delivered it to Khan, police added.

This, however, is not a one off affair. Police departments from different parts of the country are trying to provide relief to those in need. While some are helping the citizens get pet food, others are launching initiatives to feed the strays. Cyberabad Police is one such department who have launched an initiative to feed street dogs in association with various animal welfare and other organisations.
LIKE A HOUSE ON FIRE by Caroline Hulse (Orion 14.99, 416 pp)

LIKE A HOUSE ON FIRE

by Caroline Hulse (Orion 14.99, 416 pp)

I loved Hulses hilarious, skilful debut The Adults, which was stuffed with believable characters, and this second book is just as witty, warm and brilliantly realised.

After a series of hideous, vicious, circular-style arguments and unsuccessful couples therapy sessions, Stella and George are getting divorced  but first Stella has a big favour to ask from her soon-to-be-ex.

Her mother, Margaret, recently received a terminal cancer diagnosis and wants to gather her nearest and dearest for one final family party.

Family, however, is sort of an alien concept for this lot and none of them is close enough to have any idea about whats really going on in each others lives, including Stellas imminent divorce.

George agrees to attend and pretend everything is fine, but it quickly transpires there are many more secrets and unspoken resentments bubbling away under the surface among the attendees.

This novel is a wonderful tale of how we hang onto childhood roles well into adulthood, nursing old grudges to continue patterns of behaviour when they should be well past their sell-by-date.

Some of the one-liners had me howling with laughter and the characterisation is bang on once again  even Goldie the dog has a fully-formed personality. Fabulous.

THE SWITCH

THE SWITCH by Beth OLeary (Quercus 12.99, 336 pp)

by Beth OLeary (Quercus 12.99, 336 pp)

I might not have loved this gentle, relentlessly feelgood read quite so much pre-lockdown, but it provided some blissful escapism from our current isolated reality.

Eileen is 79 and very active in her local village community, but has been on her own since her husband walked out.

Although she doesnt miss him, Eileen hates being single so starts online dating.

Her granddaughter, Leena, is in her 20s with a high-pressure job in London but is struggling with grief since her sister died and is now making big mistakes at work. At the start of an enforced two-month sabbatical she visits Eileen in the Yorkshire Dales and soon the two of them agree to swap lives.

Eileen heads for trendy Shoreditch and a bigger pool of eligible men, while Leena stays in the village and assumes her grandmothers responsibilities for the Neighbourhood Watch committee and May Day festival.

Unlikely as it seems initially, they both flourish in their new settings  proving its easier to get perspective on your life when you step outside it.
Kevin Clifton will star as Scott Hastings in the UK tour of Strictly Ballroom The Musical, based on the smash hit Baz Luhrmann film on March 13, 2020 in London, England.The tour, directed by Craig Revel Horwood, kicks off in September this year and will play at theatres all over the UK until June 2021 (Photo by Dave J Hogan/Getty Images for Strictly Ballroom The Musical)

Kevin Clifton has confessed he asked to be Stacey Dooleys dance partner before the pair took the title on the 2018 series of Strictly Come Dancing.

The star made the revelation while talking to BBC documentary maker Dooley, who he is now in a relationship with, while she appeared as a guest on his latest podcast.

The 37-year-old told how he called in a favour from Strictly choreographer Jason Gilkison, who he said owed him one after the pair met while working on West End dance show Burn The Floor.

Read more: Kevin Clifton quits 'Strictly Come Dancing' after seven years

Clifton told Dooley he had heard she was taking part, saying: I was a fan of your documentaries and for the last couple of years Id tweeted you a few times, going I really liked your documentary, and you were like, Oh cheers Kev!

So yeah, I was like Stacey Dooleys wicked. Shell be really interesting... great just to talk to about her experiences.

Strictly Come Dancing finalists Stacey Dooley and Kevin Clifton leave BBC Broadcasting House in London after appearing on the Chris Evans radio show. (Photo by Gareth Fuller/PA Images via Getty Images)

Clifton went on to explain how he performed in a Gilkison show on painkillers as a favour.

He continued: Once I heard you were doing it, I said to Jason, Remember that time when I had broken shins and me performing was the difference between Burn The Floor going bust or going to Broadway? And you [Jason] were like I need you to give a big performance tonight and I was, Yes Ill do it. Ill take lots of ibuprofen and go on stage.

Upon hearing Dooley might be involved, reminding Gilkison of the favour says he asked his friend Do you remember that time and what I did for you?.

Clifton then added: Jason was like What do you want? and I said, Well Ive heard Stacey Dooley may be doing Strictly. If theres any chance and then I really pushed for you to be my partner - which I dont usually do.

Read more: Stacey Dooley planning to quit UK for America and wants to start a family

Despite BBC bosses claiming they do not allow dancers or celerities to pick their partners, it would appear Clifton got his way.

It appears to have worked out well, with the couple going on to win the series and now being in a relationship.

Clifton announced he was leaving Strictly in March after seven years as one of the shows pro dancers. His podcast is available online now.
Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan has withdrawn remarks he made slamming Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews' leadership, conceding frustration over schooling in the state during the coronavirus crisis led to his scathing attack.

He lashed out at Mr Andrews' handling of the controversial issue of opening schools during the COVID-19 crisis during a Sunday morning television interview, which federal Labor has since labelled as 'bullying'.

The attack came as the Victorian government announced that Meadowglen Primary School in Melbourne's north will be closed for three days for cleaning after a male teacher tested positive to coronavirus.

'The question to Dan Andrews is, sure, take a sledge hammer to defeating the coronavirus but why are you taking a sledgehammer also to your schools system?' a furious Mr Tehan told ABC's Insiders program.

Meadowglen primary school (pictured) in Epping, Melbourne, will be closed for three days after a teacher tested positive to coronavirus

'This is a failure of leadership from Dan Andrews. And it is the most disadvantaged children who are being most affected.

'The premiers should listen to the medical experts, the panel that was put together by all state and territory leaders to advise on schools.'

'Are you saying that the system, through the National Cabinet, is not delivering the right result?' program host David Speers asked.

'It's not. Because we have one premier in particular who is jeopardising the national consensus on this,' Mr Tehan shot back.

Later on Sunday, Mr Tehan issued a statement saying he had expressed his personal frustration that more schools weren't starting more in-class learning in his home state.

'It was this frustration that led me to overstep the mark in questioning Premier Andrews' leadership on the matter and I withdraw,' Mr Tehan said.

'I will continue working constructively with my state counterparts as they run their state school systems to support them with the best medical and education expert advice the federal government can offer.'

He told the ABC program that Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory hadn't had to quash their education system to fight the virus and have a 70 per cent attendance at their schools.

When pressed on the prime minister's previous advice to parents about listening to their premiers, Mr Tehan said the government's advice was that parents should listen to the medical experts.

'It's safe for schools to be open and it is safe for teachers to be in the classroom when the right protocols are in place,' Mr Tehan insisted.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews (left) has been slammed by the federal Health Minister Dan Tehan (right) for refusing to open schools in his state

The attack had come before state health minister Jenny Mikakos reported a teacher had tested positive to COVID-19 at the Meadowglen primary school, which will be closed for three days for cleaning.

Mr Andrews has been adamant in not opening schools for fear of spreading the virus, while Scott Morrison has urged all schools to open.

Mr Andrews made no mention of Mr Tehan's scathing attack when he took to Twitter on Sunday afternoon to update Victorians about the teacher who tested positive.

'He's recovering at home, and our thoughts and best wishes go out to him,' Premier Andrews tweeted.

Any Meadowglen students who can't learn from home will be able to attend another local school. Parents are being contacted, and we'll make sure that every child is taken care of.

He also offered his heartfelt thanks to Victorians teachers and school staff.

'Please know that in Victoria, you will always be valued. You will always be listened to. And we'll always have your back,' Premier Andrews tweeted.

Australia's death toll rose to 95 on Sunday with the death of a woman in western Sydney and the death of a woman at home in Western Australia

Prime minister Scott Morrison has also previously said parents should listen to their premiers.

Ms Mikakos said she will continue to urge Victorian parents to listen to the advice of our government. The advice remains unchanged and that is that we will continue to engage in online learning for the foreseeable future.'

Labor's education spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek said Mr Tehan's attack was 'disappointing' when states and territories had been working so well with the commonwealth government during the crisis.

'We don't need the federal education minister trying to bully and harass state education ministers and state governments,' she told reporters in Sydney.

'This is a very difficult and stressful time for families ... and to have a big political fight between the states and the commonwealth when it comes to schooling is the very last thing they need.'

Queensland Health Minister Steven Miles said he was unaware of Mr Tehan's original comments but said no one should be criticising state leaders.

'It would be pretty disappointing if the Morrison government was using it as a chance to take pot shots at the states,' Mr Miles said.

'The last thing we need right now is levels of government criticising each other.'

War of words: Victorian Health Minister Jenny Mikakos has urged parents to listen to the advice of Mr Andrews and keep their kids at home

Deputy Chief Medical Officer Nick Coatsworth said COVID-19 affected far fewer children than they represent as a proportion of society.

'We know now that COVID-19 is not behaving the same way as influenza,' he told Sky News.

'Whereas with influenza, children are often primary transmitters in our society. It is clear now for COVID-19 that is not the case.'

The national death toll rose to 95 on Sunday after the deaths of two more women- one in New South Wales and the other in Western Australia were confirmed.
Donald Trump's top economic adviser has signalled that Congress and the White House may need to strike another deal soon to help small businesses keep people on their payrolls.

There may well be additional legislation. There's kind of a pause period right now, director of the National Economic Council Larry Kudlow said in an interview with CNN on Sunday.

Mr Kudlow echoed congressional Republicans' wait-and-see approach to more legislation, saying negotiators should revisit the idea of another bill in "a couple of weeks".

The federal government has passed five bills totalling more than $2.7trn in response to the coronavirus pandemic since early March. That's roughly 13 per cent of the country's GDP.

In the two most recent bills, the government has spent $660bn to help small businesses retain employees through the Treasury Department's so-called Paycheck Protection Programme (PPP), which lends money to businesses through banks and other financial institutions that don't need to pay back the loans if the owners use a certain amount of it on payroll.

Congress replenished PPP with $310bn last month after it ran out of its first tranche of $350bn within days.

The Small Business Administration indicated in a report over the weekend that the program is once again running out of money quickly and has just $135bn left.

"This has been an extremely popular and effective program, no question about it," Mr Kudlow said. "Keeping folks on the payroll is so important," he said, signalling the White House could be interested in passing another interim relief bill that focuses on PPP funding.

"You know we waited a little bit too long I thought when the last tranche ran out. Let's not make the same mistake again," Mr Kudlow said.

The possibility of Congress passing a narrow bill is remote, with Democrats harbouring broader ambitions for the next coronavirus response legislation.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has dismissed the idea of narrow legislation that only provides money for the small business aid, insisting instead that Congress address a host of medical and economic issues such as more money for states and local governments, more direct cash relief to Americans, and a robust investment in US infrastructure that would provide universal broadband internet access.

"No. The next bill will be CARES 2," Ms Pelosi said, referring to Democrats' proposal of a follow-up deal to the $2.2trn economic stimulus package passed in March known as the CARES Act.
The $1.386 billion added investment will help accelerate Long Son Petrochemical Complex that has fallen behind schedule.

Long Son Petrochemical Complex received $1.386 billion added capital

SCG was approved to pump an additional $1.386 billion into Long Son Petrochemical Complex, increasing the total investment capital to $5.1 billion.

The project, which was previously known as Southern Petrochemical Complex, has changed investors numerous times, going from PetroVietnam to Vinachem, Vina SCG Chemicals Co., Ltd., and then to Thai Plastic and Chemicals Pcl.

As of June 2018, this complex became a 100 per cent invested company of SCG Group from Thailand, which completed the purchase of a 29 per cent stake from PetroVietnam to increase its holding in the complex from 71 per cent.

The construction of the complex was kicked off in early 2018, however, as of now, the construction is behind the initial schedule. The authorities urged the investor to accelerate construction works.

Last year, SCG proposed adjusting the investment capital for the project and committed to taking the complex into operation in late 2022. The authorities approved the proposal after clarifying the source of the added capital.

The capital adjustment of Long Son Petrochemical helped increase capital inflows from foreign investors to existing projects in Vietnam in the first four months by 45.6 per cent to $3.07 billion. This turned around the declining trend observed throughout the first three months.

The petrochemical complex is located in Long Son commune of Ba Ria-Vung Tau province, 100 kilometres from Ho Chi Minh City. This integrated petrochemical complex will have a total olefin production capacity of 1.6 million tonnes per year. In addition, the project will create more than 20,000 jobs during construction, including more than 1,000 skilled positions, and is expected to contribute around $60 million per year to the annual budget.

The complex is designed to produce various petrochemical products, including essential plastic materials such as polyethylene, polypropylene, and other products in excess of two million tonnes per year, enabling it to substitute imported polyolefin products. Non-petrochemical supporting infrastructure, such as a deep sea port and other facilities, are also included. VIR

Ha Vy

Vietnam attracts 12.33 billion USD in FDI in four months Vietnam attracted $12.33 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) in the first four months of 2020, a year-on-year decrease of 15.5 percent due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Border Security Force (BSF) said on Sunday that 42 of its personnel had been infected with Covid-19, so far.

Of these, 31 belong to a 98-member-unit that was deployed with Delhi Police at Markaz headquarters of Tablighi Jamaat at Nizamuddin and in Chandni Mahal area.

Around 58 members of this 126th battalion of BSF have tested negative while five reports are awaited. Earlier on Sunday, the Delhi headquarters of the CRPF was sealed after a driver posted there was tested positive for the disease. On Saturday, CRPFs 31st battalion in Delhi had reported 135 positive cases.

The central paramilitary forces have been asked by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to maintain safety standards for its personnel, sanitise its work places, work with reduced staff strength wherever possible.
Chron.com is following the latest headlines on the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on the Houston area.

5:00 p.m.

Four new deaths due to COVID-19 were reported on Sunday, according to Houston Health Department officials. There were also 73 new cases of COVID-19. This new statistics bring the city's case total increased to 3,908, while the death total increased to 69, officials said.

The four patients who died all had underlying health conditions: Female | Age 90-99 | Black | Death: 4/12/20

Male | Age 70-79 | Hispanic | Died: 4/15/20

Female | Age 50-59 | Black | Death: 4/20/20

Male | Age 80-89 | | White | Death: 4/30/2020

1:30 p.m.

Governor Greg Abbott announced a breakthrough in Texas cases of confirmed COVID-19 recoveries on Sunday. Abbott tweeted that the Texas Department of State Health Services reports an estimated 15,544 individuals have recovered as of Sunday.

Abbott added that Texas has ranked third among U.S. states with the highest recovery rates. The second phases of Abbott's plan is slated to start on May 18.

11:34 a.m.

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo is now asking residents to report any businesses and/or restaurants which are violating Governor Abbott's order.

Any businesses which have reopened and are now operating beyond 25% capacity can be reported.

10 a.m.

Liberty County Judge Jay Knight warns that the coronavirus threat is not over yet, and numbers may increase now that Governor Abbott has reopened essential businesses throughout the state.

We had a bump there one day and then two days with no reports, but I still think were at the plateau, Knight said.

Judge Knight emphatically said that there absolutely would not be a requirement for citizens to wear masks, but they were a good idea when out and about. Read more here.

9:22 a.m.

Starbucks has expanded its services Monday to customers in the U.S. and Canada at certain locations, with strict adherence to CDC guidelines. America's popular coffee chain has been serving its top products through the drive-thru only. On Monday, select locations will feature grab-and-go orders.

8:20 a.m.

Beachgoers descended upon Galveston yesterday, after beaches reopened since being closed for more than a month amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The influx brought some of the town's traffic to a standstill, and the water's red-flag current added yet another obstacle.

"It's been a pretty busy day," said Peter Davis, chief of the Galveston Police Department's beach patrol division. Read the in-depth report from Houston Chronicle's Robert Downen.

8:00 a.m.

There are 3,448,057 confirmed cases of coronavirus worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University. In the U.S., there are 1,133,069 confirmed cases of coronavirus, with a death toll climbing to 66,385 as of Sunday morning. The total recoveries stand at 175,382 in the U.S.

7:04 a.m.

Florida deputies arrested a man who had been living out his quarantine on a shuttered Disney world island, telling authorities it felt like a "tropical paradise." Read more here.
New Delhi, May 3 : While the new government guidelines have allowed IT manufacturing units including mobile phones to resume operations from May 4, there has been no official confirmation yet and Realme India is awaiting the nod to open its factory at Greater Noida and begin streamlining overall processes, its CEO Madhav Sheth said on Sunday.

Due to the extended lockdown, there are many challenges faced by businesses with huge impact from sales, manufacturing and cost.

"With the recent extension of the lockdown period for two more weeks, we haven't received any official confirmation on when can the production will resume," Madhav Sheth, Vice President, Realme and CEO, Realme India, told IANS.

"We have reached out to the government for approval on opening of factory and now await their decision. We will abide by the government's order strictly, while prioritising people's health," he added.

The India Cellular And Electronics Association (ICEA) on Friday welcomed the decision to let the IT manufacturing units including mobile phones resume operations, saying it thanks the MHA for accepting the industry's recommendations to restart manufacturing of IT Hardware products which include mobile phones and mobile devices.

The extended lockdown in India has resulted in zero shipments for the smartphone players in India in the month of April as factories are shut.

According to Sheth, from manufacturing point of view, even if the government allows factories to reopen, it will take at least two-four weeks for the factory to resume its normal capacity.

"We don't want to rush and open our factory as the situation is still not normal and we value our employees and their safety. We would wait for the government's further notice to understand that till what extent the factories can start working and would decide further on that,' he elaborated.

The month of March saw a steep annual decline in smartphone shipments, at -19 per cent, due to COVID-19 nationwide lockdown that settled in from March 24.

On cost factors, the outbreak of COVID-19 has also influenced countries like China, Korea, the US and Japan, where most of the upstream component suppliers of smartphones are located.

"However, the demand on the sales side also got reduced due to the lock-down as most brands couldn't operate their business and had to delay product plans," said Sheth.

In the future, he added, the disturbance of manufacturing along with the new surge of demand post lock-down might have further impacts on the price of components, which eventually influences smartphone selling price.

"The GST hike and fluctuating rupee exchange rates are other two cost factors," he said.

Other problem smartphone manufacturers are facing is lack of manpower.

"The migrant workers, truckers and helpers have gone back to their hometown. It will take more time to revamp the entire production cycle even after the lock-down period is over," Sheth told IANS.

The bigger uncertainty comes on the demand side.

"If the nation's economy and people's income got hampered, then the smartphone demand in 2020 may not be optimistic. We will need to evaluate further how the economy recovers post the market reopen," he emphasized.

"Bringing the factory back to work can help us sustain our business and employee welfare. Even during lock-down, we have been paying the same amount of salaries to workers on a monthly basis instead of daily wage," informed Realme CEO, adding that while sustaining business and considering employees welfare are top priorities, "we would hope to revamp the production to normal as fast as possible".
Most transmission of Covid-19 occurs at the very early stage of the disease or before the onset of symptoms, a study based on Taiwan's contact tracing system has found.

The research looked at the outcomes for 2,761 close contacts linked to Taiwan's 100 confirmed cases of the disease caused by a new coronavirus up to March 18.

Only 22 of those contacts were found to have contracted Covid-19, and all of them caught the disease from people who had not yet reached their sixth day of illness or had not even started to show symptoms.

The findings  published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Internal Medicine on Friday  come as countries around the world are looking to find the best ways to stop the disease spreading as they ease social distancing measures and start to reopen their economies.

They provide important information for global Covid-19 control measures, according to JAMA Internal Medicine editor-at-large Robert Steinbrook.

The finding that asymptomatic people and those with minimal or fewer symptoms early in infection are those most likely to transmit Covid-19 strongly argues for maintaining social distancing and having people wear face masks to reduce the potential for transmission, he wrote in an editors note, that also said it highlighted the importance of comprehensive contact tracing and testing.

Testing only those people who are symptomatic will miss many infections and render contact tracing less effective, he said.

Taiwan has been hailed as a model for containment of the respiratory disease that has infected more than 3.4 million people worldwide and caused over 240,000 deaths.

The Taiwan Centres for Disease Control reported 432 total cases as of May 3, out of a population of around 24 million, on an island that has close travel and business ties with mainland China, where the disease was first identified.

Story continues

Contact tracing in Taiwan has involved identifying people who had more than 15 minutes of face-to-face contact with a person confirmed to have Covid-19 without appropriate personal protective equipment and then quarantining and monitoring them at home for 14 days.

The latest study on those cases, conducted in affiliation with the Taiwan Centres for Disease Control, could help health authorities determine how to best direct resources for contact tracing, the authors said.

The take-home message is that the transmission was the most intense immediately before and after the onset of the symptoms, co-author Lin Hsien-Ho, a professor at the Institute of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine at National Taiwan University, told JAMA.

The risk of infection decreased substantially after the first week of symptom onset, he said, noting the findings align with virological studies on when the presence of the virus peaks.

Of the 852 people who had close contact with confirmed cases after the sixth day of their illness, none of them contracted the disease.

There were also no confirmed cases linked to asymptomatic patients, the researchers found, but those who were exposed before patients showed symptoms were at risk.

Countries around the world are rushing to build teams of thousands of contract tracers or launch apps with similar capabilities to trace contacts and isolate and test potential cases before they can spread the disease to others.

The World Health Organisation has recommended that people who were in contact with a Covid-19 patient two days before the onset of symptoms should be traced, and this should continue for all contacts in the 14 days after the emergence of symptoms.

The authors of the Taiwan-based study suggest that, based on their data, in situations where the number of index cases and contacts is too large for all contacts to be traced, contact tracing should focus on people who came into contact with a sick person just before or soon after the onset of symptoms.

The study also found people living in the same households or part of the same family as confirmed cases were at greater risk than other groups, including health care workers. Their risk was seven to eight times higher than average, according to Lin.

The researchers noted that they could not completely separate out the effect of this close family and household contact with the early stage transmission of the disease, but found that pattern existed across different types of exposure.

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This article Coronavirus most likely to be passed on in early stages of illness or before symptoms appear, Taiwan study says first appeared on South China Morning Post

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Ged Nash would be kidding if he denied his eyes were on the Labour Partys leadership earlier this year. Highly rated by his outfits membership, he was tempted to hurl his lot into the race to succeed Brendan Howlin.

But he thought better of it. He was, after all, only returning from the political wilderness - which stemmed from the 45-year-olds failed re-election bid of 2016 - by taking a seat on behalf of the Louth and East Meath constituency, confirming himself as one of just six successful Labour candidates countrywide.

Alan Kelly would subsequently assume the partys reins, though Nash remains a key player within the organisation and is presently part of their delegation charged with responding to the proposed Fine Gael/Fianna Fail programme for government.

Labour will make recommendations on foot of what theyve read and Nash has strong feelings on a variety of social issues, though its fanciful, in the UCD-alumnus view, to suggest that they will be an active power-sharer when the Dail resumes. Support for him may have been clawed back domestically, yet Labour, having received 4.4 percent of the vote, clearly has work to do on the public mandate front.

In the last election we didnt exactly receive a ringing endorsement from the Irish people, says Nash, who received just shy of 6,000 first preference votes.

We, in fact, lost a seat and theres an argument to suggest that the party doesnt have a mandate to go into government.

But that being said, we have always, throughout our history as the oldest political party in the state, taken our responsibilities very, very seriously. While that may not involve actively going into government at this point in time, there are other ways that we could support more positive initiatives that the next government may take to refloat our economy and to develop our public services.

We are not by nature a party of public protest, were a party of doers. There are others on our extreme left who merely serve to protest and critique government policy; we critique government policy, we analyse government legislation and try to improve legislation when its tabled in the Dail.

Our whole raison detre is to improve the lives of working people and well continue to do that. Whether thats while in government or not is something thats still being considered.

Is it, though, becoming a minor government player equal to drinking from a poisoned chalice at this stage? The Green Party was wiped out in 2011, only to build their recovery in the decade since, and Labour have gone from holding 33 seats to six in the space of two general elections.

Nash thinks not and is not shy in declaring his pride at what both he and the party achieved during their five years in coalition with Fine Gael. He rhymes off six successive increases to the national minimum wage, the creation of a national living wage and the effective abolition of zero-hour contracts as being indicative of Labour Party values and fruits of their effort.

Remember the circumstances we were in in 2011, living under the cosh of the Troika, the lender of the last resort, he says.

We managed to secure state industries, keeping the ESB under state ownership and protecting social welfare rates, something which I feel history will prove that we were correct in doing. I think history will look favourably on that period.

If you look at the Fine Gael 2011 general election manifesto, it pointed towards mass redundancies for public service workers, mass privatisation of state companies and the contracting out of the work that public and civil servants were doing. We blocked all of that, but you dont get any credit for blocking things and preventing things from happening.

There is always huge potential to get really good things done when youre in coalition and the document that Fine Gael and Fianna Fail presented to us has some potential, but I would say the kind of transformation that we need in our economic model now is, I think, absolutely beyond the ken of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail collectively.

The demands that are going to be placed on this country are so deep and so challenging that business as usual is just not an option. The document that they produced insisted that the next government should not touch income tax.

That means, for example, that proposals we might make to introduce modest increases in the Universal Social Charge for those with incomes of over 100,000 will not be entertained. Thats unconscionable at a time where we say that we need to improve our public services, resource our health service and build 80,000 social and affordable homes.

Neither would I see a situation where proposals we would make to introduce new taxes on wealth would fly with Fine Gael and Fianna Fail. We have a remarkable situation in this country where only about 500 million of our total tax table is actually from land.

The top five percent of people in this country own over 40 percent of the wealth and practically every party bar the Labour Party doesnt favour an increase on land property; thats extraordinary.

Weve parties like Sinn Fein who are telling us that the USC will be abolished for practically everybody and property taxes would be abolished. Thats simply not feasible if we want to resource the public services that we all say we want to have.

A self-professed committed socialist, who is very much in favour of the EU introducing the controversial corona bonds in a bid to share the inevitable debt burden, Nash is determined to grow the Labour Party locally.

One of my ambitions is to make sure that the Labour Party can win a seat in north Louth in the next local elections because it is completely unacceptable to me that weve a situation where my party - the Labour Party: the oldest political party in the state, founded in 1912 - which has a proud and honorable track record of public service, hasnt won a seat on the local authority in north Louth since 1974 - the year before I was born. That doesnt sit well with me.

Weve an ambition to serve the people of all of County Louth and that requires winning a seat in Dundalk and in mid-Louth as well.

Brexit and DkIT are also high on Nashs lengthy political agenda.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has revealed that doctors prepared to announce his death as he battled coronavirus in hospital last month.

The prime minister spent three nights in intensive care at St Thomas' Hospital in London with the disease, where he said medics gave him "litres and litres of oxygen".

He described it as a "tough old moment", coming to terms with hospital staff having a strategy to deal with a 'death of Stalin'-type scenario, he told the Sun On Sunday.

"I was not in particularly brilliant shape and I was aware there were contingency plans in place, Mr Johnson said.

Boris Johnson spoke candidly of his close brush with death while fighting COVID-19. Source: AAP

Mr Johnson, 55, said it was "hard to believe" his health had deteriorated in just a few days, saying he "couldn't understand why I wasn't getting better".

The PM told the paper the "indicators kept going in the wrong direction" and he kept asking himself: "How am I going to get out of this?"

Mr Johnson shared his experience of the disease as the number of people to die of COVID-19 in British hospitals, care homes and the wider community rose to 28,131.

The death toll has edged closer to that of Italy, which now stands at 28,710 and is the highest in Europe, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Mr Johnson's (left) fiancee Carrie Symonds (right) gave birth to their son just days ago. Source: AAP

After a fortnight convalescing from the virus and just two days after he returned to work full-time, Mr Johnson's fiancee Carrie Symonds gave birth to their son, Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas Johnson.

They named him after their grandfathers and two doctors  Dr Nick Price and Professor Nick Hart  who helped save Mr Johnson's life.

The two doctors are experts in infectious diseases and ventilation, and shared their "warm congratulations" with the couple.

"We are honoured and humbled to have been recognised in this way, and we give our thanks to the incredible team of professionals who we work with at St Thomas' and who ensure every patient receives the best care," they said in a statement.

Meanwhile two former British military chiefs, General Lord Dannatt and General Lord Richards, have backed calls for health workers to be given daily allowances like those given to soldiers in war zones.

Story continues

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We're all under lockdown, we're just stuck at home, and we're all dreaming of travelling and going on vacations. After this is all over, probably everyone will be 'hashtag wanderlust' and you know what, fair enough.

So, here are some next-level wanderlust goals that a guy and his adorable travel companion are giving us. Here's the story of Tom Turcich, who left his hometown in the US four years ago with a goal - to walk 25,000 miles across the seven continents.

And, the best thing about this isn't the ambitious goal, but actually who he's travelling with. Tom and his adorable doggo Savannah are on a world tour and it's the most wholesome thing ever.

Before his epic journey came to a halt due to coronavirus, he had covered 16,500 miles across 37 countries in six continents. Damn, that's impressive. Just a few thousand miles and one continent left.

Since they were travelling through Asia at the time of lockdown, both him and Savannah are in Azerbaijan currently.

After the pandemic is over, they plan on continuing their journey and travelling to Mongolia and then eventually Australia, before returning home to the US.

Both of them are now inseparable but it didn't actually start off that way. She was a stray dog that he found soon after he started his journey and took her along as protection while crossing the Mexican border.

He said, "I was hoping she would provide some protection, but after crossing Mexico together, which was a whirlwind for me and basically where Savannah grew up, I realized how much she meant to me. Now, after having walked for four years together, having faced nearly every challenge imaginable, my feelings for Savannah have evolved beyond even love and admiration, what I feel for her now is more akin to pride and respect."

She's also about to become the first dog ever to walk through the Americas and if everything goes as planned, she'll be the first dog to walk across the world.

He went on, "I have a deep sense of respect for her because I've been right there with her through it all. The challenges Sav and I face vary from country to country. In places like Costa Rica it was adjusting to the sweltering heat and humidity in the jungle, whereas next year crossing Kazakhstan the challenge will be carefully planning that we have enough water and food crossing the desert between towns. There's also the ever-present challenge of finding somewhere to sleep each night."

Talking about his future plans for the rest of his epic walk, he said, "The timing of my plans has been thrown out of wack because of COVID-19. I thought I had things timed out pretty well that I could reach the capital of Mongolia before winter set in there, but with the month delay that's seeming unlikely. Either way, I'll push as far east as I can this year, heading into Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan again then Mongolia. After that, we'll walk Australia then return home for a six-month walk across the US from California to my home in NJ."

Does anyone else feel like walking across the world now, or is it just me?
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex and Prince Harry might be former senior members of the royal family. But, like everyone else, they have been hunkered down, waiting things out as the COVID-19 pandemic ravages the country.

They have been spotted out and about at least once, delivering meals to residents of a California neighborhood, but they havent been speaking out regarding their plans for the future or about any projects that they have put on hold. Still, it is only a matter of time before the former royals start stepping out on a regular basis. And, when they do, according to a new PageSix report, they will likely be targeted by photographers even more so than they were in England.

Meghan Markle and Prince Harrys high-profile royal marriage

When Meghan and Prince Harry married in May 2018, it seemed as though everyone was full of hope for the future. Their union marked a bold new direction for the monarchy, and many believed that Meghan would begin to bring positive change to the country.

However, it wasnt long before things were soured by a slew of negative press coverage and a series of possible missteps by the high-profile couple.

Meghan and Prince Harry welcomed their son, Archie Harrison, in May 2019, and once again, fans were hopeful that the childs birth could change the course of the couples future within the royal family. Still, their decision to raise him in privacy, and to keep traditionally public events like his christening extremely private, angered many.

All in all, it seemed as though Meghan and Prince Harry werent very comfortable living their lives in the spotlight, and often seemed to want to pick and choose the perks of fame.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have spoken out against the tabloids

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle attend a reception for young people at the Palace of Holyroodhouse on February 13, 2018 in Edinburgh, Scotland | Andrew Milligan  WPA Pool/Getty Images

From the very beginning, the British press had a hard time accepting Meghan. Whether it was her former profession as an actress, her American nationality, or other, more devious reasons like racism, the tabloids in England rarely had positive things to write about her. In fact, their coverage often crossed the line into what the duchess and Prince Harry deemed as racist and cruel.

Prince Harry was very vocal about defending his wife to the press, but it became increasingly clear over time that the attacks were taking a toll on Meghan. In late 2019, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex opened up to journalist Tom Bradby about how hard the relentless media attacks, with the duchess admitting that she was not okay. Shortly after, the couple took legal action against the British tabloid Mail on Sunday.

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry moved to a hotbed for paparazzi

In January 2020, Meghan and Prince Harry announced that they would be stepping away from their roles as senior members of the royal family. While their reasons for leaving didnt specifically reference the tabloid harassment, many believed that their desire for privacy played a big role in their decision to leave the spotlight.

In the early spring, the couple moved to Los Angeles, a move that, to many critics, seemed counterproductive for their requests for a low-key life.

California is the hub of the Hollywood film industry, with movie stars living in many of the more expensive neighborhoods. Prince Harry and Meghan chose to settle in Los Angeles, the heart of the action. According to a recent PageSix report, the couple couldnt have picked a more conspicuous new home if they tried.

Sources claim that Meghan and Prince Harry live in a gated community, but that waiting just outside the gates of their estate is a swarm of close to three-hundred paparazzi, a veritable hotbed  all eager for the latest photos of the formerly royal pair. If this was an intentional move by Meghan and Prince Harry, then it is likely they didnt truly leave the royal family over the need for privacy.
Bahrain's Minister of Works, Municipality Affairs and Urban Planning Engineer Essam Abdullah Khalaf hailed the role of workers in the kingdom's growth on the occasion of International Labour Day, which was observed on May 1.

Dubbing the workers as 'the main pillar in all infrastructure and urban development projects across the world,' Khalaf said that celebrating the occasion underscores the Bahraini governments respect to workers in all sectors, reported BNA.

The minister pointed out that this year the world was observing the occasion amidst exceptional circumstances, and that his ministry had been taking all preemptive measures to ensure the safety of workers in all work places, in line with the recommendations of the national taskforce headed by HRH the Crown Prince to curb the spread of coronavirus, stated the report.

Khalaf also extended heartfelt congratulations to His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, HRH Prime Minister Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa and HRH Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince, Deputy Supreme Commander and First Deputy Premier on the International Labour Day, it added.
The Assam government on Sunday said the first instance of African Swine Flu has been detected in the state and it has already killed around 2,500 pigs across 306 villages.

Despite a go-ahead from the Centre, the state government will not resort to culling of the pigs immediately and will adopt an alternate mechanism to prevent the spread of the highly contagious disease, Assam Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Minister Atul Bora said at a press conference.

He said the disease has no relation at all with COVID-19.

"The National Institute of High Security Animal Diseases (NIHSAD), Bhopal has confirmed that it is African Swine Flu (ASF). The central government has informed us that it is the first instance of the disease in the country," Bora said.

As per a 2019 census by the department, the pig population was 21 lakh, but it has increased in recent times to around 30 lakh, he added.

"We have discussed with experts if we can save the pigs without culling them. The death percentage of the pigs affected by the disease is almost 100 per cent. So we have made some strategies to save the pigs, which are not affected by the virus," Bora said.

The department will collect samples within one km radius of the infected area and test them, he informed.

"After testing, we will cull only those pigs which will be found infected. We are avoiding the immediate culling of the pigs. We will take daily updates and will take a decision as and when the situation arises," Bora said.

The further testing will be done in Assam itself in three labs here, but these will not be sufficient and officials concerned have been asked to contact the Health Department for this, he added.

The minister said that the state government has requested the neighbouring states to take steps so that there is no movement of pigs.

"The virus spreads through pig's meat, saliva, blood and tissue. So there will be no transportation of pigs between districts. We will also check what can be done to the pigs passing through our state.

"We will have a surveillance zone within 10 km radius so that no pigs are transported out of the area or no feed is moved from a different location. We will also do GPS mapping," Bora said.

He, however, said the disease has not spread much yet and around 2,500 pigs have died due to ASF across 306 villages in seven districts in the state.

"The disease was detected during the last part of February. However, it started in April 2019 in China at a village of Xizang province bordering Arunachal Pradesh. It is suspected that the disease crossed over to Arunachal Pradesh and then reached Assam," Bora said.

Usually pigs roaming freely are infected, but off late those in the farms are also seen affected, he added.

"In a particular case of one farmer, whose 230 pigs have died, his employee's personal pig died due to this. So it is suspected that the employee carried the virus from his home to the farm and got the pigs infected. We have seen it in some other farms also. So humans also carry this virus," Bora said.

The Veterinary Department started giving the vaccine of classical swine flu to the pigs after this outbreak, but it was stopped as there was a danger of spreading the virus through the doctor, he added.

"However, it never affects humans. There is no problem in consuming pork from the areas where there is no infection. We will conduct awareness and training of farmers. We have selected 13 districts for this purpose," the minister claimed.

He also said that the government has formed district level committees to implement the guidelines such as pigs will not be allowed to roam freely and the farmers will have to keep them in enclosures.

When asked about compensating the farmers incurring losses, Bora said, "Farmers have been affected. We are assessing the total damage. We will see the provisions from the disaster management authorities and compensate them accordingly.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In a message to residents, Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff C. McKay (D-At Large) warned that the county is in the exponential growth phase of our epidemic curve and said residents could expect to see cases and deaths increase for several more weeks. He also noted, however, that known infections in Fairfax, as in other jurisdictions, were growing because of increased testing.
In an official announcement, Vienna Airport said that it would start the Coronavirus testing on the premises to avoid the passengers entering Austria having to quarantine for the mandatory 14 days. Further, the passengers will have to produce a health certificate to prove that they are free from the Coronavirus, along with the negative results not older than four days, as per media reports.

With scheduled flights from Doha, Dortmund, Duesseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Lisbon, Minsk, and Sofia, as well as charter flights and business trips, the airport announced that a test was mandatory. The passenger would be required to undertake a molecular biological (polymerize chain reaction or PCR) COVID-19 test while they enter the airport, according to reports.

The result would be declared within two to three hours. The airport said in a statement that all air travel, whether business journeys or urgent trips would become safer by following the testing protocol. It added that the health safety for the passengers was integral for the airport authorities.

Read: Penguins Roam Around Freely At Singapore Zoo Amid Coronavirus Lockdown; Watch

Read: Singapore Records 657 New Coronavirus Cases In 24 Hours; Total Soars To 17,548

Tests for 190 euros ($209)

The COVID-19 tests would cost the passengers approximately 190 euros ($209), and can also be taken by passengers leaving Vienna to prove to the destination country that they are negative to the coronavirus, as per media reports.

Media reports also state that Vienna airport is operating scheduled flights to Doha, Dortmund, Duesseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Lisbon, Minsk and Sofia, as well as charter flights and business trips. It has landing bans in force from flights from high risk areas.

According to reports, the health authorities have commenced the designation of the Austrian quarantines for the presumptive cases. Last month, the leading airlines, Emirates, in coordination with Dubai Health Authority (DHA), announced that it was the first airline in the world to conduct on-site rapid COVID-19 tests for passengers to ensure health safety, reports confirmed.

Meanwhile, the WHOs European office reportedly warned that the continent is in the grip of the pandemic as the region that accounts for 46 percent of total global cases, and 63 percent of deaths.

Read: Johnson Says Doctors Prepared For His Death In Coronavirus Battle

Read: Russia Reports More Than 10,000 New Coronavirus Cases
New pictures have emerged of the former Joe Biden staffer who claims he sexually assaulted her in 1993, showing her as a young actress dressed in a flapper costume.

In March, Tara Reade came forward to allege that the former Vice President had sexually assaulted her when she worked for him two decades ago aged 29. Biden finally broke his silence about the allegation to deny it on Friday.

And on Sunday Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez dismissed calls for an independent investigation into the accusations leveled at Biden.

Likening Tara Reade's claims to 'the Hillary emails', because 'there was nothing there', Perez told This Week: 'The most comprehensive investigation of the vice president was when he was vetted by Barack Obama in 2008.'

Some Democrats have expressed concern the accusations will be used against Biden, much as Republicans spoke in 2016 on Clintons private email server.

Reade has admitted she is 'not sure' of the words she used in her complaint against Biden. She told NBC Saturday: 'I filed a complaint re sexual harassment and retaliation but I am not sure what explicit words on that intake form until we all see it again.'

The new images of Reade show her as a young dancer after she sent them to producer Oliver Stone in December last year.

Accuser Tara Reade is pictured in a series of images she shared online with Oliver Stone

Reade posted an image on social media of what she looked like in 1993, the year she alleged Biden sexually assaulted her. She has detailed how she did not specifically use the words sexual harassment or assault in her initial report about Biden to the Senate in 1993

On Friday, Joe Biden finally broke his silence about the allegation to deny it

She tweeted him and former leader of the UK Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn to say: 'Happy 2020! Thank you Oliver Stone for all your creative and educational international films.

'In the below pics I played a flapper dancing to that song "Ain't we got fun" and the lyrics ring oh so true today. I hope the anti Russian propaganda will end this decade & peace wins.'

Defending Biden Sunday, Perez said: 'I'm very familiar with vice presidential vetting process. They look at everything about you.

'They looked at the entire history of Joe Biden, his entire career, and I will tell you, if Barack Obama had any indication that there was an issue, Barack Obama would not have had him as his vice president.'

'I'm saying unequivocally, it never, never happened,' the former vice president and senator said in an interview on MSNBC's Morning Joe.

On Friday another woman, Eva Murry, 26, accused Biden of making a lewd comment to her when she was just 14-years-old.

But the organizer for Delaware's annual Gridiron Dinner, where the alleged incident is said to have taken place, said Biden was not at the event in 2008, Fox News reports.

Tara Reade, pictured in 2019, has been supported by two more people regarding her claims that she was sexually assaulted by presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden

Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez, pictured, on Sunday dismissed calls for an independent investigation into sexual assault accusations leveled at Joe Biden

They looked at the entire history of Joe Biden  Barack Obama trusted Joe Biden, I trust Joe Biden, DNC Chairman Tom Perez tells @marthaRaddatz when asked why the DNC wont convene an independent panel.



Joe Biden denied the sexual assault allegation. https://t.co/IKnZgw8Pyn pic.twitter.com/UwYJZ1F1Q0  This Week (@ThisWeekABC) May 3, 2020

Governor of Michigan Gretchen Whitmer also added her support to Biden Sunday, arguing not 'every claim is equal'. She said: 'We need to give people an opportunity to tell their story. But then we have a duty to vet it. And just because you're a survivor doesn't mean that every claim is equal.'

She told CNN Sunday: 'I have read a lot about this current allegation. I know Joe Biden, and I have watched his defense. And there's not a pattern that goes into this.

'And I think that, for these reasons, I'm very comfortable that Joe Biden is who he says he is. And I will tell you this. I don't believe that it's consistent with the Joe Biden that I know. And I do believe Joe, and I support Joe Biden.'

But critics in both parties are saying that Democrats and the media have brushed off the standard of 'believe all women' that they set in the hearings on sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said: 'It has been appalling the hypocrisy as to how Brett Kavanaugh was treated versus Joe Biden.

'Brett Kavanaugh -- every accuser was put on TV, it was wall-to-wall coverage, they went into his high school yearbook, they said they needed an FBI investigation.'

'It went from 'me too,' 'me too,' 'me too,' to 'move on,' 'move on,' 'move on' in a nanosecond because he's a Democrat and hypocrisy is appalling.'

And Reade has slammed Democrats for 'hypocrisy' as she revealed the intense online abuse she has received since making the accusation.

She hit out in an interview with Fox News on Saturday night as she said that 'creepy' voice messages were being left for her as part of a torrent of abuse following her claim against the presumed Democratic presidential candidate.

'I find it astounding - the hypocrisy that Democrats are talking about women being able to tell their story safely,' Reade told Fox.

'I'm a Democrat, a lifelong Democrat, but yet here I am trying to talk about my history with Joe Biden and I'm just the target of online harassment.'

She also said the treatment of Anita Hill acted as a deterrent in her coming forward with her allegations.

Hill accused then-Supreme Court-nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment when Biden led the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Reade told Fox News: 'I really believed Anita Hill and I thought she was treated badly. I think a lot of women felt the same way. They were watching that, that were professionals, you know, I was a young professional at the time.'

'And I didn't like the way Joe Biden dealt with her, but I also didn't like how she was dealt with in general, right? And what it did was that it made us more silent.

'What it did was show us was, 'Okay when you try to go up against this, this is basically what you're gonna face. So it was an example of... a deterrent.'

Reade has accused Biden, pictured, of shoving his hand under her skirt and penetrating her with his fingers while they stood in a Senate corridor in 1993 while she was on his staff

Reade spoke about the shocking extent of the abuse as two further people were identified who corroborated her story about the sexual assault.

One friend, who knew Reade in 1993, said Reade told them about the alleged assault when it happened, The Associated Press reported Saturday.

The second friend met Reade more than a decade after the alleged incident and confirmed that Reade had a conversation with the friend in 2007 or 2008 about experiencing sexual harassment from Biden while working in his Senate office.

Both spoke on condition of anonymity to protect their families' privacy.

There are now at least four people who have corroborated Reade's allegations.

Reade has said that she filed a complaint about Biden at the time but is uncertain what exactly it contains. She said she did not directly accuse him on sexual assault as she was 'scared'

Pictured are Tara Reade, left, and Joe Biden circa 1993 when the alleged assault took place

The two who previously came forward included Lynda LaCasse, a former neighbor, who said Reade told her about the alleged assault a few years after Reade said it happened in the mid-1990s.

The other was a former coworker Lorraine Sanchez who said Reade told her she had been sexually harassed by her boss during her previous job in Washington.

Reade's interview with Fox also followed her criticism of an Associated Press report covering her accusations earlier on Saturday, which she claims misrepresented her in its headline.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Reade has restated a previous claim that she not explicitly accused Joe Biden of sexual assault or harassment when she filed a limited report with a congressional personnel office in 1993.

Yet speaking to Fox News, Reade said, 'I do not know what is on the form until we see it. I filed a sexual harassment complaint and included retaliation'.

On Saturday, Reade slammed the AP report as 'false' for saying in its headline that she had not directly accused Joe Biden of sexual assault even though the story included a direct quote from her stating such.

It also included 2019 quotes in which she said she had 'chickened out' and not detailed the sexual harassment in the report at the time because she was scared.

Tara Reade branded an AP report as 'false' on Saturday despite the article including a direct quote from her stating 'I know I didn't use sexual harassment' in her report

Reade added that the headline was misleading. She says that she filed a form regarding the sexual harassment but that she decided against detailing the assault in 1993 fearing backlash

Reade later told Fox that she had filed a sexual harassment complaint even if she hadn't used those exact words.

'They're standing by the fact... that I said I don't think I used the term 'sexual harassment.' We didn't use it as much back in 1993, so I don't know but that's not to say that there isn't a box that I didn't check. Until we get that form, we don't know,' Reade explained.

According to an interview with Reade published by the AP on Saturday, the former Biden staffer said she filed a limited report with a congressional personnel office that did not explicitly accuse him of sexual assault or harassment.

Shortly after the interview was published, however, Reade shared the story tweeting 'this is false', despite the article including a direct quote from her stating 'I know I didn't use sexual harassment' in the report.

She later attempted to clarify her meaning by tweeting that 'the headline was quite misleading' in saying she had not mentioned sexual harassment specifically but she doesn't know if there was a box she ticked about it until she sees the report.

'I filed the intake form regarding sexual harassment and retaliation however that was articulated on form in 1993. I filed with Senate Personnel. Perhaps Joe Biden knows where that form is located. Ask him,' she added.

Reade later told Fox News the 'story itself is correct' but the headline, which read 'Tara Reade says a Senate report she filed against Joe Biden didn't refer to sexual harassment or assault', was wrong.

In multiple interviews with the AP on Friday, Reade insisted she filed an 'intake form' at the Senate personnel office, which included her contact information, the office she worked for and some broad details of her issues with Biden.

On Saturday, Reade told the AP there may have been a box to check on the form noting a sexual harassment complaint, but she couldn't remember and wouldn't know for sure until she saw the form.

Reade filed an official criminal complaint against the now presumptive Democratic presidential nominee on April 9 of this year, accusing Biden of shoving his hand under her skirt and penetrating her with his fingers while they stood in a senate corridor, an accusation he has denied.

She says she was fired from Biden's office after filing a complaint with the Senate alleging harassment.

The former staffer made the complaint about the alleged assault last month after going public with her story in March but the statue of limitations had passed.

The former Biden staffer has spoken out about the threats she has received online

Reade was among the women who came out last year alleging Biden was too handsy but did not make her allegation of sexual assault until speaking with journalist Katie Halper for her 'Katie Halper Show' podcast on March 25.

She says she was reluctant to share details of the assault during her initial conversations with reporters over a year ago because she was scared of backlash, and was still coming to terms with what happened to her.

According to the Associated Press, Reade filed a report after the alleged assault but it did not mention sexual assault or harassment specifically.

'I remember talking about him wanting me to serve drinks because he liked my legs and thought I was pretty and it made me uncomfortable,' Reade said.

'I know that I was too scared to write about the sexual assault.'

Reade said she described her issues with Biden but 'the main word I used - and I know I didn't use sexual harassment - I used 'uncomfortable'. And I remember 'retaliation'.'

The AP reported that it had discovered additional transcripts and notes from its interviews with Reade last year in which she says she 'chickened out' after going to the Senate personnel office. They interviewed Reade in 2019 after she accused Biden of uncomfortable and inappropriate touching.

The existence of the Senate report has become a key element of the accusations against Biden, which he has flatly denied.

Reade says she doesn't have a copy of the report, and Biden said Friday that he is not aware that any complaint against him exists. He asked the Senate and the National Archives to search their records to try to locate a complaint from Reade.

But Reade is suggesting that even if the report surfaces, it would not corroborate her assault allegations because she chose not to detail them at the time.

According to a transcript of her 2019 interview with the AP, Reade said: 'They have this counseling office or something, and I think I walked in there once, but then I chickened out.'

She made a similar statement in a second interview with AP that same day, according to written notes from the interview.

On Friday, Reade said she was referring to having 'chickened out' by not filing full harassment or assault allegations against Biden.

Reade was one of eight women who came forward last year with allegations that Biden made them feel uncomfortable with inappropriate displays of affection.

During one of the April 2019 interviews with the AP, she said Biden rubbed her shoulders and neck and played with her hair. She said she was asked by an aide in Biden's Senate office to dress more conservatively and told 'don't be so sexy.'

She said of Biden: 'I wasn't scared of him, that he was going to take me in a room or anything. It wasn't that kind of vibe.'

Biden acknowledged the complaints and promised to be 'more mindful about respecting personal space in the future'.

Reade's recent accusation has roiled Biden's presidential campaign, however, sparking anxiety among Democrats.

Republicans have accused Biden backers of hypocrisy, arguing that they have been quick to believe women who have accused President Donald Trump and other conservatives of assault.

Trump has faced multiple accusations of assault and harassment, all of which he denies.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 3)  Police have arrested three suspected drug peddlers, and confiscated about 2.5 million worth of crystal meth or shabu, in a buy-bust operation in Lucena in Quezon Province.

The operation was conducted on May 2 by personnel of the Lucena City Drug Enforcement Unit (CDEU), the Quezon Provincial Drug Enforcement Unit (PDEU/PIB), and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency at around 5:30 PM in Barangay Mayao Crossing. It led to the arrest of three Filipino nationals, Danilo Borjos Dumaplin, Claire Jan Argana Alagon, and Crislyn Sayson Dolor.

Authorities hauled some 126.83 grams of shabu, a police report said.

The suspects were brought to the Lucena City Police Station. They will face charges for violation of Sections 5 and 11 of Republic Act No. 9165 or the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act.
Hollywood star Kevin Bacon has expressed his desire to portray convicted zoo owner Joe Exotic, the main subject of Netflix docu-series "Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness", on the big screen.

During an appearance on US chat show "Today", the 61-year-old actor said he would say yes to the opportunity of starring in a film about Exotic in "a second".

"It's funny because before that even came out, I said to my wife, you know, she said, Why are you watching that show?' I said, 'This is an amazing show'," Bacon said.

"I said, The reason that I'm watching this show is because these are the kind of characters that I get asked to play and, to me, documentaries are way better'," he added.

"Tiger King", a seven-episode series, has become a rage among the audiences ever since it debuted on Netflix on March 20.

The story focuses on Joseph Maldonado-Passage, aka "Joe Exotic", a former Oklahoma tiger-zoo owner who's serving a 22-year prison sentence for his role in a murder-for-hire plot against Baskin, who was trying to shut down his big-cat operation.

Previously, "Parks and Recreation" alum Rob Lowe had revealed that he will be collaborating with Ryan Murphy for a project on Joe Exotic.

"Saturday Night Live" star Kate McKinnon had also announced that she will adapt the story as limited series, taking on the role of Baskin.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The governors of seven Eastern states agree to coordinate on purchasing medical equipment.

A group of Eastern states announced Sunday that they would band together to purchase and allocate the massive amounts of personal protective equipment and medical equipment needed to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

Speaking in a joint virtual news conference, the governors of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Delaware said that by aggregating their orders, they expected to be able to purchase at lower prices and better stabilize the supply chain.

The governors of Massachusetts and Rhode Island were not present at the conference, but Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said that they would also be included. Those seven states agreed in April to coordinate their reopenings.

We will buy as a consortium, P.P.E., medical equipment, ventilators, whatever we need to buy, Mr. Cuomo said, before turning to each of the other governors.
DALLAS, May 2, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Ashford Group of Companies announced today that all of its companies, including Ashford Inc. (NYSE American: AINC), Ashford Hospitality Trust, Inc. (NYSE: AHT) ("Ashford Trust"), and Braemar Hotels & Resorts Inc. (NYSE: BHR) ("Braemar"), will return all funds provided by the Small Business Administration's ("SBA") Paycheck Protection Program ("PPP") due to the agency's recently changed rules and inconsistent federal guidance that put the companies at compliance risk.

Federal Government assistance is required to repair the most significant damage in history to U.S. hotels and hospitality businesses caused by government-ordered shutdowns and restrictions on travel and public gatherings. Industry-wide revenue is down approximately 80-90% as a result of the government orders, resulting in the immediate loss of 3.9 million jobs, according to the American Hotel & Lodging Association.

Some media and members of Congress have falsely implied that Ashford accessed "loopholes" in the CARES Act to qualify for the PPP funds. In fact, Congress designed the PPP to specifically allow companies that own multiple hotel properties to obtain separate loans for each property as a means to prevent the economic collapse of the hospitality industry that is now occurring. This is why Congress wrote the CARES Act to waive the SBA's standard affiliation rules for hotels and restaurants, as follows:

[A]ny business concern that employs not more than 500 employees per physical location of the business concern and that is assigned a North American Industry Classification System code beginning with 72 at the time of disbursal shall be eligible to receive a covered loan.

This specific provision of the law was referenced in the SBA's Paycheck Protection Program Frequently Asked Questions ("FAQ") published on April 13, 2020:

Question 24: How do the $10 million cap and affiliation rules work for hotels and restaurants (and any business assigned a North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code beginning with 72)?

Answer: Under the CARES Act, any single business entity that is assigned a NAICS code beginning with 72 (including hotels and restaurants) and that employs not more than 500 employees per physical location is eligible to receive a PPP loan.

Ashford relied on the statute as passed by Congress and the guidance provided by the SBA to apply for PPP loans in good faith. Ashford also relied on the SBA's view that its affiliation rules do not apply to any business entity that is assigned a NAICS code beginning with 72 and that employs not more than a total of 500 employees. Under these rules, qualified hotels and restaurants that are owned by a parent business are permitted to apply for separate PPP loans, provided that each property maintains a unique EIN. The $10 million maximum loan amount under the PPP applies to every eligible business entity.

Ashford applied for PPP loans for each qualified hotel property in full compliance with this guidance, and in the belief it was our obligation to protect our employees, vendors, communities, lenders and shareholders from unfair economic damage.

Since we submitted our loan applications, the rules have changed almost daily. In fact, the SBA has issued numerous Interim Final Rules and at least 12 separate FAQs. For example, the SBA added the following new guidance relating to public companies on April 23, 2020 (weeks after we submitted our PPP applications):

31. Question: Do businesses owned by large companies with adequate sources of liquidity to support the business's ongoing operations qualify for a PPP loan?

Answer: In additionborrowers should review carefully the required certification that "[c]urrent economic uncertainty makes this loan request necessary to support the ongoing operations of the Applicant." Borrowers must make this certification in good faith, taking into account their current business activity and their ability to access other sources of liquidity sufficient to support their ongoing operations in a manner that is not significantly detrimental to the business. For example, it is unlikely that a public company with substantial market value and access to capital markets will be able to make the required certification in good faith, and such a company should be prepared to demonstrate to SBA, upon request, the basis for its certification.

Ashford companies do not have "substantial market value" compared to the majority of other publicly-traded companies or even Ashford's own market values before the government shutdown actions. We also now have limited access to the capital markets across our companies.

More recently, the SBA issued a Fifth Interim Final Rule on April 30, 2020, with the following addition:

Can a single corporate group receive unlimited PPP loans?

No. To preserve the limited resources available to the PPP program, and in light of the previous lapse of PPP appropriations and the high demand for PPP loans, businesses that are part of a single corporate group shall in no event receive more than $20,000,000 of PPP loans in the aggregate. For purposes of this limit, businesses are part of a single corporate group if they are majority owned, directly or indirectly, by a common parent. This limitation shall be immediately effective with respect to any loan that has not yet been fully disbursed as of April 30, 2020. Businesses are subject to this limitation even if the businesses are eligible for the waiver of affiliation provision under the CARES Act or are otherwise not considered to be affiliates under SBA's affiliation rules.

While we believed then and continue to believe today that we qualify for PPP loans based on the legislation and rule-making in place at the time our applications were submitted, continuous SBA rule changes and evolving opinions by Administration officials have led us to conclude that we may no longer qualify. As a result, the Ashford Group of Companies will return all PPP funds on or before May 7, 2020, in accordance with SBA's previously announced safe harbor.

Ashford management had no intention of crowding out any business from gaining equal access to the PPP funds, and could not have known that congressional appropriations for the program would be insufficient to cover the needs of all other businesses in the nation that have suffered similar harm. Congress and the Administration should have known but chose to restrict funding when the CARES Act was passed on March 27, only to provide additional funding later. In fact, Congress did not make any changes to the rules under which Ashford had already applied for and received funds when it passed its second version of the CARES Act nearly a month later on April 23. In the face of continuing confusion, the need for immediate government action to fix the PPP program and repair economic damage is acute and growing.

"The hotel industry has been devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting National Emergency," commented Monty J. Bennett, Ashford Inc.'s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and the Chairman of the Board of Ashford Trust and Braemar. "Hotel industry executives met with the Administration at the White House on March 17, 2020 to plead for help for our industry. We are disappointed that, in an abundance of caution to avoid any risk of non-compliance with the changed PPP rules, our actions mean that our employees, vendors, communities and others in need will not benefit from the PPP as Congress intended. We call on Congress, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve to provide assistance to the hotel industry to protect jobs and asset values that have been severely impaired as a result of the pandemic and the government's actions that have followed."

Ashford Inc. provides global asset management, investment management and related services to the real estate and hospitality sectors.

Ashford Hospitality Trust is a real estate investment trust (REIT) focused on investing predominantly in upper upscale, full-service hotels.

Braemar Hotels & Resorts is a real estate investment trust (REIT) focused on investing in luxury hotels and resorts.

Ashford has created an Ashford App for the hospitality REIT investor community. The Ashford App is available for free download at Apple's App Store and the Google Play Store by searching "Ashford."

Certain statements and assumptions in this press release contain or are based upon "forward-looking" information and are being made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements in this press release include, among others, statements about Ashford's strategy and future plans. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties. When we use the words "will likely result," "may," "anticipate," "estimate," "should," "expect," "believe," "intend," or similar expressions, we intend to identify forward-looking statements. Such statements are subject to numerous assumptions and uncertainties, many of which are outside the registrant's control.

These forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated, including, without limitation: the impact of the novel strain of coronavirus (COVID-19) on our business; the ability of Ashford Trust to meet the NYSE continued listing standards; our ability to repay, refinance or restructure our debt and the debt of certain of our subsidiaries; general volatility of the capital markets and the market price of our common stock and preferred stock; changes in our business or investment strategy; availability, terms and deployment of capital; availability of qualified personnel; changes in our industry and the market in which we operate, interest rates or the general economy; and the degree and nature of our competition. These and other risk factors are more fully discussed in the registrant's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The forward-looking statements included in this press release are only made as of the date of this press release. Investors should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. We will not publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or circumstances, changes in expectations or otherwise except to the extent required by law.

SOURCE Ashford Inc.
The state's environment watchdog has been accused of failing to ensure proper oversight of the dredging of contaminated sludge for a motorway tunnel under Sydney Harbour.

Two weeks after its initial response to a report on the impact of the Western Harbour Tunnel, the Environment Protection Authority asked the transport agency behind the project to provide contaminant levels for sediment samples from areas of the harbour to be dredged.

But one of NSW's leading contamination experts said the EPA's request for more data about the level of chemicals in the harbour sludge did not go nearly far enough.

Dr Bill Ryall says the environment watchdog has not gone far enough in its oversight of the harbour tunnel project. Credit:Dean Sewell

"The public have been let down massively by the EPA," said Bill Ryall, who worked as an EPA-accredited auditor for a decade. "They have hardly considered the contaminated sediments at all. This is the most sensitive part of the whole project."
The foreign ministers of Egypt and Italy discussed on Sunday the means of reaching a comprehensive settlement to the Libyan crisis and achieving security and stability in the war-torn country.

According to an official statement, Egyptian foreign ministry spokesman Ahmed Hafez said that Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry received a phone call from his Italian counterpart Luigi Di Maio.

Shoukry and Di Maio exchanged viewpoints on the latest developments in Libya and means to reach an overall settlement for the crisis to achieve the aspirations of the Libyan people and eliminate the threats posed by terrorist organisations to the security of Libyans and the region.

The two ministers also discussed the latest developments in combating the coronavirus pandemic and means of cooperation to stem its spread.

Di Maio expressed his appreciation for the support provided by Egypt in this regard, adding that Egyptian aid has helped his country's efforts in stemming the spread of the virus.

The phone call also witnessed consensus on the importance of continued work towards boosting bilateral cooperation between Egypt and Italy in various fields and the necessity of continued coordination between Cairo and Rome in various issues of common interest.

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In the YouTube Original, "State of Pride," Oscar-winning filmmakers Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman and host Raymond Braun travel to three diverse communities  Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and Tuscaloosa, Alabama  fifty years after the Stonewall uprising. It provides an unflinching look at LGBTQ Pride, from the perspective of a younger generation for whom it still has personal urgency.

Video transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to "BUILD." I'm your host, Brittany Jones-Cooper, and today I'm sitting down with Raymond Braun. The activist and influencer is here to talk about the YouTube Original documentary "State of Pride" from Academy Award-winning filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. The film follows Braun as he travels to three diverse communities to experience how small towns and big cities celebrate LGBTQ pride. Take a look.

- My name is Raymond Braun, and I'm from a small town in Ohio. When I say that I didn't know how to go into the closet, I think this demonstrates that. I mean, hello.

[CHUCKLES]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[SIRENS BLARING]

[CHANTING]

Since Stonewall, Pride has been a looking glass to the entire LGBTQ community, so I want to know what it means to young people today.

- 1, 2, 3, Pride!

- I decided to take a road trip to big cities and small towns across the country.

- The first couple years, people, especially who grew up here, were just shook.

- I was at work, and this guy, he's like, I'm not going to be served by this him-she, or whatever "it" is.

- Carson asked us to go to the Pride parade. I felt like I don't need to go to a Pride parade to show you that I support you.

- I learned from early age that it's not OK for me to be different. They almost killed me.

- It's no secret that no Pride is inclusive of trans women.

- It's important for the world to know that there are certain experiences that are particular to people in one community.

- We still have so far to go.

[UPLIFTING MUSIC]

Story continues

- Pride is both a party and a protest.

- The world is ever-changing. The world is ever-evolving.

- This is my momma's first Pride.

- And everyone should just get with the program.

- As long as LGBTQ people are facing any form of discrimination, Pride is still relevant.

- People have been doing this for a long time. We owe it to our elders that we get to be here today.

- Welcome to the family.

- Happy Pride, everybody!

- People could clock I was gay from as early as I can walk on the--

- I mean, look at you.

- [LAUGHS]

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: --together for Raymond Braun.

RAYMOND BRAUN: Hi! Happy Pride! I love you right here in the front looking very Pride festive.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: I mean, he has the flag, he has a crown, he has a shirt.

RAYMOND BRAUN: Yes, we're ready.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: I feel under-dressed, man.

RAYMOND BRAUN: No, you look great.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: I wore blue today.

RAYMOND BRAUN: You can borrow this any time.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: I told you I'm going to borrow.

RAYMOND BRAUN: Yeah, I was saying I feel like this is the type of thing that you can't really wear many times because it's pretty distinct, so this is my "BUILD" moment.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: Well, you've got all month for Pride, so you can just rent it out every day and spread the joy.

RAYMOND BRAUN: If you want it, tweet me. If you're in New York, LA, DC.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: You're going to regret saying that. People are for sure going to tweet.

RAYMOND BRAUN: I'm down.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: So I got to check out "State of Pride" last night. And when I sat down to watch it, I didn't really read a lot before, so I didn't know what to expect. And I'm so happy that that's how I went into it, because more than anything, I just love all of the stories. I got to hear all the different perspectives, all the different narratives that show that it is one community, but also there are distinct important stories within the community that we need to talk about. So I just want to say congratulations on this film. I think you're going to touch and connect with a lot of people.

On that note, I want to know, how did this project come to you? How did this whole thing start?

RAYMOND BRAUN: So I'm from a small rural conservative town in Northwest Ohio. It's literally like a lot of farm land. Whenever I go home to visit my parents--

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: I'm from Omaha, Nebraska, so--

RAYMOND BRAUN: There you go, you got it. So growing up, I think a lot of LGBTQ people can relate to this who didn't grow up in major cosmopolitan cities. But I felt like I was the proverbial lone gay in my town, and there weren't a lot of people-- there weren't really anyone that I could see who was out and proud. And so for me, the internet was my lifeline. It was the place where I saw those first images of Pride, and where I saw those first images a positive LGBTQ portrayals.

And so I always wanted to be part of that as I got older, and as I got more comfortable with myself, being able to help facilitate stories and images that could potentially inspire, or open up, or connect with people who are living in places where they do feel isolated, and knowing that they're not alone.

And with this project in particular, I've always just had-- I don't know if you can tell by my jacket-- I've always just had a fascination with Pride, and with some of the really overt symbols of LGBTQ visibility. And I feel like Pride is a really fascinating barometer for what's happening across the country. We could put a pin down on any location on the map of the United States and ask some questions. Do they have a Pride? If they do, who organizes it? What are the politics of that? Who gets to march? What's the order of marching? Is it controversial? Who feels included and excluded? There's so many questions you can explore with every individual Pride. How does it reflect the local culture and customs?

And then if they don't have a Pride, the question is, why not? We've seen in some small towns, they try, the city council votes it down. Or the LGBTQ people don't feel safe enough to have a Pride.

And so it's like this really interesting lens, from my perspective, to just view what's happening culturally, socially, and politically in our country right now. And I also love travel.

And so originally, I was pitching this idea-- it's been in the works for several years-- as "Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives" but small-town Prides with the idea of going in and seeing all the funky, quirky traditions. And what originally inspired that was I was doing research in college for a paper about LGBTQ visibility and community organizing in non-cosmopolitan areas, and I heard this story about a Walmart in North Dakota where one of the employees there is a gay man, and they didn't have any queer spaces-- gay bars, LGBTQ centers-- nearby. So on Saturday nights, he would basically invite people to come to one of the aisles of Walmart, and they would just hang and do drag and runway.

And this was something that was cited in this paper I read. I still don't know if it's mythic or if it's real, because I really tried to find it, because I want to go to it. But that idea, that we find spaces wherever we are-- because we are everywhere, let me tell you. I've traveled all around. I don't care how small the town is, we're here.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: And throughout history, by the way.

RAYMOND BRAUN: Absolutely.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: Like everywhere.

RAYMOND BRAUN: Yes.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: I want to talk about the cities that were selected. Tuscaloosa, Alabama, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Utah.

RAYMOND BRAUN: And DC.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: And DC. Why these places?

RAYMOND BRAUN: So DC is what we start and close the film with. And I thought given that it's called "State of Pride" and we're looking at what's happening across the United States, just having that visual of the capital, and of Pride, and with what's happening politically right now, we wanted to see how Pride was manifesting in the current climate.

And also, Troye Sivan. You go wherever Troye is. Troye was headlining Capital Pride that year. And he's a friend of mine, and he had been so supportive of this project, and the idea, and we were talking about all the different ways that we could collaborate.

And so when him and his team invited us to go backstage with him, have me interview him in his trailer, and then film his headlining performance, that was amazing. An added bonus was that my drag mom from "RuPaul's Drag Race," Asia O'Hara, was also performing in that same lineup. So that was all friends and family in DC. And my mom came. That was her first Pride.

Tuscaloosa, I really wanted to showcase a small-town Pride, and we wanted to explore how Pride is manifesting itself in the South. As one of the people that we interviewed in Alabama said, the purpose of Pride in small rural towns in the South in a way hearkens back to the original source of Pride across the country, which was visibility at any cost.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: I literally wrote that on my card. It was so moving when he said that, because that fight-- sometimes we think, oh, we're past so much of it. But there are certain communities where it is a little more tangible. You can feel it.

RAYMOND BRAUN: Absolutely. So Tuscaloosa-- we were looking at all different small-town Prides. We were looking at Charlottesville, Virginia. This isn't the South, but Spencer, Indiana, and all different Prides in the Deep South.

And really, what was powering our inquiry were the stories. Because this documentary is all about these stories. All of the incredible people that we got to meet.

And so we had a short list of Prides. But at the end of the day, it was about who has the most powerful, compelling stories. And also, who has something at stake? We follow people who are going to their first Pride since coming out, since transitioning. First Pride with a family member who maybe previously wasn't supportive.

And so those stories take time to find. And then you have to find people who are comfortable being on camera, and giving you access to their life. And so there was a lot of criteria to narrow down.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: But the stories-- that's what makes this film so moving, is the selection of the different narratives, how diverse it is. There's so many people of color in this film, and I thought that was really important, because that representation really gets buried so often. And so was that something intentional for you guys, to make sure that just everybody was represented?

RAYMOND BRAUN: Absolutely. Thank you for noticing that. I think for me, you can't have a conversation about Pride and about the history of LGBTQ advocacy without centering queer people of color. And especially when you think about Stonewall, and when you think about our legacy of LGBTQ civil rights milestones, we've had-- in many cases-- trans women of color to thank for being on the front lines and really advocating.

And I'm excited that-- and as we reflect on the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson are getting statues in New York, which is amazing. And I'm so happy that more people are learning their names and their stories. And having Daroneshia's story, for example, in Alabama where she calls that out. And it's like, you need to know that we have trans women of color to thank for Pride. That was really important to me.

And also, we wanted to really try to reflect the diversity of our community. And so it just felt natural that we were going to have as many different kinds of voices and perspectives as possible. And I hope we can do follow-ups and more content, because there are so many more stories to be told as well.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: I think in hearing those different stories, I started seeing Pride celebrations as the protest versus the pride. I don't think before, watching this, I really understood the distinction. I thought Pride was just like, oh, let's just celebrate. But for a lot of people, they are still protesting, because they're still fighting for civil rights. And especially in the trans community. So I thought that was a really important distinction that you guys showed, that yes, we can have fun, but there's a real message in Pride as well.

RAYMOND BRAUN: I'm glad that you got that, and I hope that everyone is intentional this Pride season and beyond, to think about how Pride's DNA is really in protest, and rebellion, and activism. And I'm also encouraging everyone, if you identify with one letter in the LGBTQ acronym, that doesn't necessarily make you an expert on the experiences and challenges of every other letter within the acronym. And I think we could all do a better job of talking to each other, getting to know each other. And through those relationships and personal connections, you naturally develop more empathy for each other and learn how to be better allies. And so that's a message that I really hope people will take on during Pride as well.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: Yeah. So for you personally, going to all these different Prides, which one was just the most impactful for you? Most memorable, most fun.

RAYMOND BRAUN: They were all memorable in different ways. Being at DC Pride with a close friend like Troye, and having my mom there, and watching Pride through her eyes was so powerful. For Salt Lake City, seeing Carson's story with his family. He comes from a very strictly Mormon family who is having a lot of challenges reconciling their faith with Carson's sexual orientation. And so watching them struggle through that journey, and then seeing the ending-- I won't give it away-- but that was really moving to me.

But I think that Tuscaloosa was just so memorable because it was so different from anything that I'd ever experienced. It was in its third year of Pride. And the first year of Tuscaloosa Pride, they had 50 people there. And so we really just had no idea what to expect, how big it would be, how moving it would be. And as you see in the film, I had some major revelations just about Pride in general after having been through Tuscaloosa's Pride.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: Yeah, because I think so often, we see New York and San Francisco. But when you saw Tuscaloosa, you're like, oh, this actually might mean more for this community, because the visibility, and the connection, and just being able to be in a safe space is very rare, probably, in that area.

RAYMOND BRAUN: So true. And I was thinking about-- some people said, oh, only 50 people. But I said, no, first of all, that's amazing. And second of all, the ripple effect is so much greater than that. Because there are kids that live in the surrounding area of Alabama that saw the report on the nightly news, or saw the photo in the front page of their newspaper, and they said, oh my gosh, these people are like me. They're fighting for me. And they live in my community. They don't live in this city that's far away.

There's this narrative, I think-- I certainly heard it a lot when I was a kid in Ohio, which is like, well, if it's not accepting where you are, just move to a bigger city. But I think that first of all, a lot of people don't have the privilege, resources, access, or even interest in moving. Maybe they want to be with their family. Maybe their work is in whatever location.

And so I think we should have a Pride in literally every community, because like I said, we're everywhere. So even if it's 10 people in a picnic table and a flag, go for it. But at least show that you're here. Find a way to organize and connect with each other.

And it's also a great way to mobilize. I mean, if you're living in a state where there is active legislation that's targeting trans people, or that's looking to undermine LGBTQ folks, if you're in one of the 30 states where you can be fired from your job, evicted from your home, or denied basic services simply for being LGBTQ, Pride is a great opportunity to celebrate each other, but it's also an opportunity to all be together and say, what are we going to do about this? How can we raise awareness and mobilize?

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: Absolutely. Clap for that.

RAYMOND BRAUN: Thank you.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: I'm just staring into your eyes, listening to you speak. I'm like, yeah, man!

RAYMOND BRAUN: Thank you. I'm really passionate about all this--

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: Yeah. And it's amazing, the work that you're doing. You mentioned Carson in Salt Lake City. And he has this Mormon family who's very conservative. But he also had a spinal cord injury, and is in a wheelchair.

And again, the visibility of that for the LGBTQ disability community-- again, you don't see those stories told. That is sort of an invisible population, oftentimes.

RAYMOND BRAUN: I talked to Carson a lot before we started filming about his story, and why he wanted to be involved with a project. And one of the things that he said that was really moving to me is that there's so few visibility of LGBTQ folks who have a disability or spinal cord injury. And also, he talks a lot about the de-sexualization too, and the idea of not seeing people with disabilities as sexual beings, or in that capacity. And that was something that he really wanted to challenge in the film. And I'm really proud of him for doing that and sharing his story.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: Yeah. I have been having this conversation a lot with friends, actually, just about how invisible the disability community is. So again, I think this is going to connect with a lot of people. That's another reason-- I'm happy it's on YouTube. Troye Sivan had mentioned that he actually used YouTube when he was young to connect to the community, and how impactful that was for him in identifying his sexuality and getting comfortable with it. And the fact that this is streaming on YouTube-- have you thought about the impact that you're going to get to have on so many young men and women?

RAYMOND BRAUN: I have. I've heard of so many people-- and it was me too who said, I'm in the closet. I wait till my parents go to bed. I shut my door, I put my headphones in, and I watch YouTube videos of people coming out, or I watch YouTube videos of people talking about their transition. And that helped give me a connection, and that helped give me information and foster community.

And for me, the fact that this documentary is available globally for free was so important, because we want it to get to as many people as possible who need to see it, or who don't have a Pride where they can celebrate.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: So for you, what was the biggest impact of this film on your life? Because you're out now, you're talking about it, you're promoting it. Have you had a chance to sit back and look at what you guys created and let it soak in?

RAYMOND BRAUN: It's all happening fast, and I'm really excited, and I'm really so moved by the response it's getting so far, and all the people who are reaching out, and tweeting, and DMing, and sharing it, and just seeing the way that the community is mobilizing to support this film. It's truly moved me.

I think the best thing to come out of it would be the relationships that I made with everyone who's in the film. We call ourselves the "State of Pride" family. We're all in touch in different forms. And just seeing all the different places where they are in terms of their coming out journey, or their transition journey, and seeing them form connections with each other as well, and support, that has been so exciting.

We've had some different screenings and premieres across the country where they've been able to connect and meet each other in different groups. And so I just-- I mean, we say the word "community" a lot as LGBTQ folks-- LGBTQ community-- but I think we sometimes forget the meaning of it. And I've just been really feeling that, and feeling warmth from it all. So I really loved that.

And then it's also just been surreal for me. If you look up on the poster, it says "directed by Academy Award-winners Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman." When I was a junior in high school, we do this big history paper at the end of junior year that is kind of mythic. As soon as you start as a freshman, it's like, what are you going to write your History 33 on? It's like a 30-page research paper.

And I was in the closet at the time, but it bothered me that we only got a sentence for the Stonewall riots and for LGBTQ history in our entire curriculum for American history. And so I was really scared, but I pulled my teacher aside after class one day and I said, I really want to learn about LGBTQ history and write a paper on it, but I'm not out, and I know that we have to do a lot of public check-ins with our classmates about our topic. She said, why don't you work with me after school on this, and then we'll come up with a fake topic that you can just give high-level updates on when you have to do the class check-ins.

And so I worked with her for four months, and the first documentary that I watched was one by Rob and Jeff. Rob is the first openly gay man to win an Academy Award for directing. And it was revolutionary in 1980 when he stood on stage with his Oscar and said, I'd like to thank my partner in life, and basically spoke about his relationship with a man. That visibility was huge.

And so to learn about them as a high school student, to write about them, to cite them in my paper and just be a fan, it was beyond comprehension to me that they would actually direct this, and that I would be able to collaborate alongside them and present the film alongside them. So that's been another huge impact of this.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: That's huge. That's like such a full circle moment.

RAYMOND BRAUN: It really felt like it. I broke down when-- we made our world premiere at South by Southwest film festival, and it all hit me as we were onstage presenting it together. And I just started crying, like I couldn't even talk.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: You can't keep it together. You just go into the ugly cry really fast.

RAYMOND BRAUN: Exactly, exactly. You've seen the film too. I'm an ugly crier. They're like, B-roll, B-roll, because I already cried at the beginning, and then there was another moment where I'm crying where they're showing nice images of the countryside while I'm crying. Yeah.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: So what are your plans for the rest of the month? Are you going to go to some different Prides and different events? What's your schedule?

RAYMOND BRAUN: Well, believe it or not, I'm going to more Prides this year than I did even when we were filming this. And so I think there's 20 on the calendar so far for this year. There has been a ton of Prides who are reaching out, and they want to organize screenings and panels. And so even outside of the United States, like a couple different Prides in Germany, and London Pride want to do screenings. And so I'm going to as many Prides as I can.

This weekend, for example, I have DC on Saturday and then LA on Sunday. So just going to as many Prides, screening the film, meeting more people, hearing more stories. Because again, I would love to continue with this project in some capacity, and so continuing to just hear people's stories and talk about it.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: Yeah, I definitely think a followup would be amazing. I would love to continue to follow these stories, because they were so captivating, and so honest and genuine in this first one.

RAYMOND BRAUN: Thank you.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: We do have a couple of questions.

RAYMOND BRAUN: OK. I love it.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: Who do we have first?

RAYMOND BRAUN: Hi.

- Hi, how are you?

RAYMOND BRAUN: Good.

- So any tips for an introvert to get out and enjoy Pride? Because that's--

RAYMOND BRAUN: Mm-hmm. Have you been to a Pride before?

- No.

RAYMOND BRAUN: First time, OK. Is New York what you're thinking of for your first time?

- Probably.

RAYMOND BRAUN: Awesome. I think that I-- by the way, I love your rainbow laces. Sorry, I just got distracted by them. They're so nice. I think that my first tip would be to do a little bit of research on Pride before going physically. So there are a lot of tags that you can look at on social media, on Instagram. You can watch the documentary. You can watch YouTube videos with footage of the Pride that you're planning to attend, because I think just knowing what you're getting yourself in for, or what it looks like, what the structure is like, will help you feel a little bit calmer going in.

Because for me personally, I like just having a sense of what I'm getting into with any situation, so I think that might help calm you down. And if you do have a friend, or someone who you really trust or connect with who can go alongside you and just be with you as a support if things get overwhelming.

Another thing is to know that you can leave at any point. You can also watch from afar. In the New York parade, there are a lot of different restaurants and buildings that have balconies and places where you can watch that won't be so in the heat of it all, so you can get a little glimpse of it.

Another idea might be to do some Pride tourism, and you could go to a smaller town Pride, like Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where it is going to be a lot more low-key, but you can still feel that spirit of Pride. You don't have to start in the biggest Pride in the world, which will be New York Pride this year. You're like diving into the deep end, but.

- Thank you.

RAYMOND BRAUN: Although it is a lot of fun, New York Pride.

- It is. I hope to see you there. I'm going to look for you, but I hope you go.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: It really is a choose-your-own-adventure too. I love New York. You can be up close. You can stand back, like you said. It really is like wherever you're comfortable.

RAYMOND BRAUN: And this might sound counter-intuitive, but sometimes if you're an introvert, maybe the best place would be to actually march or be on a float, because there are parade barricades, and so you don't have to worry as much about the crowds, because you're just with a small group of people on your float.

- OK. Thank you.

RAYMOND BRAUN: Of course.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: And next question.

- Right away, hold--

RAYMOND BRAUN: Can we give props to your outfit first and foremost, if there's a camera on you? I love it.

- Thank you. When I was watching the-- where do I hold? I don't know. When I was watching the documentary, I kept wondering, what made you decide to put this Pride first and this Pride second? Because when I went into watching the documentary, I was thinking like, oh, he's probably going to start out with the small-time Pride, and then as the documentary goes on, he's going to go into larger-scale Prides.

But then I was just like, oh, you're starting out with-- I think with DC Pride first, I think it was. Yes, and I was just like, oh, so what made you-- or you and the editors, I suppose-- choose the order of the Prides in the documentary?

RAYMOND BRAUN: Thanks for that question. So Rob and Jeff are the creative visionaries behind this project, and they were really involved in the edit. Because I'm in the film, I actually wasn't that involved with the edit. But I do know that we wanted to start and close with DC, because Troye's music was so powerful that we wanted to start and end with the music and the visual motif of that.

DC was also an entry point because we started with my story. So people, if they don't know who I am or why I care so much, we can give them a little bit of context about why I'm on this journey. And there was a nice tie-in with DC Pride and my mom being there.

And then, of course, we close with his music and the montage. And I you're a fan of Troye. You know the significance behind the song "Heaven," which is what we close with.

In terms of starting with Tuscaloosa, I did want to start with a Pride that would be probably the most foreign for most people. If you talk about Pride, people have an image in their mind most likely of images coming from San Francisco or New York, one of the bigger ones. And so the idea is kind of like, hook 'em in and bring 'em in with one that's wildly different from what you might expect. And then we evolve from there.

And I think ending with Carson's story-- and I don't want to give away the ending, but there's a really fascinating moment at the end that's kind of a culmination. And so, yeah.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: Thank you.

RAYMOND BRAUN: Thank you.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: Well, Raymond, thanks again for just putting this film together. Like I said, it was such a joy to watch. And I feel like you're not only going to touch a lot of people and connect with a lot of people, but I think you're probably going to inspire some people to take action in their own life, or just to feel confident in who they are, and there's nothing more special than that. So congratulations.

RAYMOND BRAUN: Thank you. I really appreciate that.

BRITTANY JONES-COOPER: And if you guys want to check it out, "State of Pride" is streaming now on YouTube. Give it up for Raymond Braun.

RAYMOND BRAUN: Thank you so much. Thank you. Happy Pride, everyone.

[MUSIC PLAYING]
65% of Americans support Trump's pause on immigration during COVID-19: poll

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A majority of Americans  as much as 65 percent  favor a temporary pause on most immigration to the United States as the coronavirus pandemic continues, according to two separate new surveys.

A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll released Tuesday shows that even though a majority of Americans they surveyed seemingly disapprove of President Trumps response to the outbreak, they approve of his plan to temporarily halt nearly all immigration to the U.S.

The survey of 1,008 Americans was launched after Trump announced on April 20 that he planned to pause immigration during the pandemic to protect high skilled jobs for the tens of millions of Americans who've filed for unemployment in recent weeks.

However, the survey was launched before the details of the executive order were made public two days later on April 22.

Respondents were asked if they support or oppose temporarily blocking nearly all immigration into the U.S. during the coronavirus outbreak.

With over six in 10 respondents saying that they support such a plan, 34 percent said they oppose.

Broken down by self-identified party affiliation, 83 percent of Republicans, 67 percent of Independents and nearly half (49 percent) of Democrats said they support a temporary ban.

The poll also shows consensus between races as a majority of white respondents (67 percent) and nonwhite respondents (61 percent) support the proposal.

According to the surveys co-director, University of Maryland government and politics professor Michael Hanmer, a majority of 18-to 29-year-olds are also supportive of the idea to temporarily block nearly all immigration.

Another poll released last week by Rasmussen Reports found similar results.

In a survey of 1,000 likely voters conducted between April 22 and April 23, the research group found that 57 percent favor a temporary halt to most immigration because of the economic impact of the coronavirus.

The poll showed that 31 percent opposed the idea and 13 percent were undecided.

The survey also found that 52 percent agreed and 38 percent disagreed with Trumps rationale for the immigration freeze: to help put unemployed Americans first in line for jobs.

The findings come as polling in recent years has suggested that most Americans view immigration is a good thing.

One way for people to deal with the reality that so many scientific and policy questions have yet to be answered is to look to concrete solutions, Hanmer said.

On April 22, Trump signed the order restricting various categories of immigrants from entering the U.S. for 60 days, such as those who are not already inside the country and dont have a valid immigrant visa to travel to the U.S.

Those barred from entering the U.S. during this period include family members of green card holders and adult children of U.S. citizens.

The order exempts spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens, health care workers, immigrant investors, special immigrant visa-holders and other categories of immigrants such as those essential to criminal investigations.

Although Democrats widely and repeatedly criticized Trumps China travel ban that was also expanded to include Europe to help stop the spread of the coronavirus, U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said on Sunday that she thinks the Trump administration should have banned U.S. citizens and green card holders from returning to the U.S. from China, where the virus originated. Pelosi's suggestion that U.S. citizens should be banned from returning home is unconstitutional.

Trump issued partial travel restriction in January barring Chinese foreign nationals from coming to the U.S. Pelosi told CNN that the ban allowed U.S. citizens and green card holders to return home from China.

If youre going to shut the door because you have an evaluation of an epidemic, then shut the door, Pelosi said Sunday.

Pelosi had previously slammed Trump's travel restrictions as "outrageous" and "un-American."

Speaker Pelosi on Trump's China travel restriction: "Tens of thousands of people were still allowed in from China. It wasn't as it is described as this great moment. ... If you're going to shut the door because you have an evaluation of an epidemic, then shut the door" #CNNSOTUpic.twitter.com/jpKFxYVCu6  CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) April 26, 2020

The Washington Post survey also found that 52 percent of respondents rated Trumps response to the virus as not so good or poor. Meanwhile, 47 percent rated the presidents response to the pandemic as excellent or good.

When asked about their state governors, 77 percent of respondents rated their governors responses as excellent or good, while 22 percent rated the responses as not so good or poor.

Sixty-six percent of respondents said that they think current restrictions on how stores and other businesses operate in their states are appropriate. Seventeen percent felt the restrictions were too restrictive and 16 percent felt they were not restrictive enough.
The Electric Picnic could still technically take place in Laois but the new Covid-19 exit roadmap appears to further diminish the chance of it happening in Stradbally this year

A number of factors will play a part in determining its fate.

Firstly, the event needs a licence. Festival Republic applied to Laois County Council for a licence in April.

However, this is subject to a five week public consultation process which was delayed by the lockdown. The extension of restrictions to May 18 means such a public consultation would not be complete until mid June at the earliest.

It is not clear if the consultation process can even begin on May 18 as only limited types of work and public interaction can commence on that date.

The HSE and Gardai are among those who must be consulted by the council before reaching a licence decision.

Anoother legal requirement is a drinks licence. A district court judge in Portlaoise would be the person to permit alcohol sales. Gardai would be consulted as part of this application.

The Government's roadmap to ease restrictions will also influence the outcome.

The Stradbally event would be subject to Covid-19 measures set out in the new lockdown exit roadmap.

The first and subsequent four phases of the roadmap to ease restrictions will take at least three weeks each to implement and monitor.

The timing of the start of phases two to five will all depend on the virus and how we manage it.

Restrictions can be reimposed if it flares up. The exit roadmap could be paused or reset in such a scenario.

Another factor not in its favour is that bigger public gatherings will not be allowed until phase five of the roadmap. Even then measures must be taken to guard against further infections.

An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said we could reach phase five by August 20. However, he has also suggested that big events like the All-Ireland Finals could take place but behind closed doors.

All of this does not bode well for EP2020.

The Picnic is scheduled to take place over the first weekend of Septmber. Acts have been booked and tickets have sold out.

A previous announcement by Government said mass gatherings can take place from September.

A crowd of 70,000 is due to attend this year.
Parish officials in Acadiana are continuing to encourage limited retail business openings, even after Gov. John Bel Edwards highlighted troubling signs that the region is taking backward steps in combatting coronavirus. At least one box chain retailer, meanwhile, reopened at full service in Lafayette this week after Mayor-President Josh Guillory established operating rules for certain nonessential businesses.

More than 50 cars were parked outside Hobby Lobby on Thursday, with a steady stream of customers going in and out. Multiple checkout lines were stacked with more than 15 people each, with no imposed distancing. An employee who answered the phone said the store had reopened on Tuesday.

That was one day after Edwards said he would extend Louisianas stay-home order until May 15 in a somewhat surprising move. The governors recent measured optimism led many to believe he would begin the first phase of economic mobilization once the order expires Friday.

Edwards extension announcement followed his meeting Sunday with public health experts who highlighted elevated incidence growth based on CDC epidemic curves in Acadiana, Baton Rouge and Monroe regions. In Acadiana, the incidence growth followed a period of sustained decline, according to charts provided by the state health department.

+7 Acadiana restaurants prepare outdoor eating areas in response to loosened coronavirus restrictions Dons Seafood, 4309 Johnston St., is offering more than its mostly available full menu to customers starting Friday. Under new state and cit

My sense is the governor was completely kind of taken aback by the results, said Susan Hassig, an epidemiology professor at Tulane University who helped advise the governor. You might have a plan, but then reality comes and kicks you in the teeth.

Acadiana on Thursday recorded eight new deaths, its highest single-day toll. That brought the total number of deaths in the seven-parish region to 114. The region, which has a population of about 600,000, has seen 1,338 confirmed cases. Louisiana has now topped 28,000 cases, with 1,862 deaths.

Guillory on April 16 issued guidelines for gray area businesses  those deemed nonessential but not specifically prohibited from opening  to operate safely. St. Landry Parish, where the virus mortality rate is unusually high, announced a nearly identical policy on Monday, the same day Edwards said he would extend the statewide order.

The businesses that local officials are trying to nudge have been permitted to open throughout the stay-home period. But the policies in Lafayette and St. Landry differ from the governors order in one respect: they limit store occupancy to 25% of the maximum allowed by the fire marshal, while the order requires fewer than 10 people overall.

That would seem to allow nonessential box businesses such as Hobby Lobby to skirt the person limit, though the companys justification for reopening in Lafayette is unclear. Company representatives did not respond to a query. Its website indicated that three of its 10 stores in Louisiana are open, with those in Denham Springs and Hammond joining the one in Lafayette.

The local rules also require standard social distancing of six feet between people, and for employees to wear masks. Business owners risk citations, having their electricity cut or losing their license if found to be violating the rules.

Other Acadiana parishes, such as Iberia and St. Martin, have also issued similar policies while adhering to the fewer-than-10 occupancy limit in the governors order.

The Guillory administration did not respond to queries about Hobby Lobby.

Top stories in Acadiana in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up

A spokeswoman for the governor, Christina Stephens, said in an email that the Lafayette and St. Landry occupancy measures are not necessarily inconsistent with the Governors order, but she added that nonessential, nonprohibited businesses should abide by the limitations on the number of people allowed to gather, which is 10.

Guillory was curt when asked in a press briefing Thursday why his policy strays from the governors 10-person limit.

We felt it was safe. Next question, Guillory said.

Guillory replied in similar fashion when asked if Edwards warnings about Acadiana had given him any pause, particularly with respect to his occupancy policy.

No, not at all, he said.

Guillory later suggested that Acadianas cases are rising because the virus was detected in neighboring parishes later than in Lafayette. Asked about the risk of nearby residents shopping in Lafayette, the regional commercial center, Guillory said policies that focus on social distancing and self-responsibility are the best way to combat virus.

+8 Federal aid 'huge relief' for Acadiana businesses, but some losing workers to unemployment benefits Many small-business owners in Acadiana are using a federal loan program to stay afloat during the coronavirus shutdown, although at least one 

Our people are smart. I trust in our people and our businesses far more than I do in the governor, Guillory said, while adding that he intended to comply with the governors order.

Essential retail businesses in Louisiana are those that provide food, medicine and other similar goods necessary for the individual or a family member. Guillorys local order lists specific types of businesses fitting that criteria, and its hard to see how any would apply to Hobby Lobby.

The St. Landry Parish economic development director, Bill Rodier, said that box stores such as Hobby Lobby are not what he had in mind when discussing the guidance with business leaders and elected officials in the parish.

My overall thought process was this is directed toward smaller retail operations, Rodier said. In Sunset for example, there are a lot of mom-and-pop operations that are very small down Main Street.

Asked about the timing of the St. Landry announcement on the same day that Edwards singled out Acadiana and other regions, Rodier said he discussed the parishs plans with Governors Office staffers in advance. He declined to share their response.

I dont know if there is ever a right time, Rodier said of encouraging reopening. Its a slight calculated risk, but it felt like a manageable risk.
Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has spoken out in favour of lifting of anti-Russian sanctions imposed by the EU after the reunification of Russia with Crimea, as he underscored that cooperation with the Russian Federation was especially vital in amid the global health and economic crisis spawned by the COVID-19 pandemic, Sputnik reports.

Right now, when we are facing difficult economic times due to the coronavirus crisis, we need more cooperation. That is why senseless sanctions have to go, said Schroeder.

When asked in the interview to comment the fact that the sanctions were Europe's answer to the alleged annexation of Crimea that violated international law, Schroeder said:

Anyone who thinks that sanctions could be used to force Russia to do something is wrong. No Russian president will ever return Crimea to Ukraine. 

Speaking about the situation in the east of Ukraine, Schroeder noted that "peaceful coexistence will only exist if Ukraine becomes a federal state in which the east of the country will gain more autonomy."

Underscoring the need for countries to join forces in the fight against the common enemy  the COVID-19 virus, Schroeder said:

"Instead of confrontation, today it is all about understanding, cooperation and solidarity worldwide."

As he urged the German government to face the lessons of history unflinchingly ahead of the 75th anniversary of the end of WWII, Schroeder emphasised:

It was a cruel campaign of extermination with the aim of making Russia disappear from the world political stage. We must never forget that - and German Russia policy must take this into account more than is currently the case.

The former German Chancellor concluded that despite the past, Russia is willing to work with the new Germany in a spirit of trust cannot be overestimated. It does not fit that we continue to support the sanctions against Russia. "
(Natural News) The Peoples Republic of China and Taiwan both have the word China in their names  the latters official name is the Republic of China. But thats where the similarities end: The two countries have been embroiled in a bitter geopolitical conflict, which came to a head when the coronavirus crisis hit the globe.

The main point of contention is whether the island nation of Taiwan is a sovereign state or a breakaway province  a claim heavily and bitterly disputed by both sides. The latter, in particular, is a stance that China has played to its advantage, starting from Taiwans exclusion from the United Nations in 1971 to having the nation compete as Chinese Taipei at the Olympics.

In recent times, China has increased its anti-Taiwanese rhetoric, in part, because of the election  and subsequent re-election  of pro-independence hardliner Tsai Ing-wen as president of Taiwan. When Tsai rolled out measures to block Chinas one country, two systems framework for political unification with the island, Chinas Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson An Fengshan accused Tsai of harming the interest of both sides to progress.

Then COVID-19 happened

Health authorities in China first reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) the presence of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan on Dec. 31, 2019  despite infections cropping up in the city as early as November.

Taiwan, however, was locked out of the conversation, the latest in a string of moves from Beijing to oppose the countrys inclusion to the global health agency. This effectively meant that the island nation had to contain the outbreak without official help from WHO or other international bodies.

According to Chou Jih-haw, chief of Taiwans Centers for Disease Control, the government had written to both the WHO and China as early as Dec. 31 to ask whether the new outbreak had human-to-human transmission; an inquiry that wasnt answered.

That same day, the government began screening passengers flying in from Wuhan. On Jan. 2, the country established a coronavirus response team. This move won plaudits from public health experts around the world, saying that it allowed Taiwan to effectively control the spread of the virus.

While the WHO was busy praising China for its increased capacity to manage new outbreaks, saying that the novel coronavirus does not transmit readily between people, Taiwan concluded otherwise. It stated that the virus was far more dangerous than initially assumed and that it was highly capable of human-to-human transmission.

Its worth noting that during this time, China flew bombers around the island  a move that prompted Tsai to scramble warplanes  and made it significantly harder for Taiwan to evacuate its residents from Wuhan. Despite these hurdles, the country was well-prepared to respond to its first COVID-19 patient on Jan. 21.

Taking notes from its bungled approach to the 2003 SARS outbreak, the country activated its Central Epidemic Command Center, which implemented quarantines and conducted drills at hospitals. The country also banned the export of masks and ramped up their production, which meant that people would be able to buy surgical masks.

It was only at this time that the WHO recognized that there was evidence of human-to-human transmission in Wuhan. By the time the WHO recognized the severity of COVID-19 and declared it a public health emergency, there were already over 9,000 confirmed cases worldwide.

Despite the kneecapping from both WHO and China, Taiwan proved competent when it came to handling the crisis. As of May 2, the island nation only had 429 confirmed COVID-19 cases and six deaths  no small feat for an island just over 110 miles off the coast of mainland China.

Taking a page out of Chinas playbook

Taiwans recent success in handling the coronavirus outbreak has earned praise from health experts around the world, and attracted powerful friends.

Beijing ramped up its efforts to win over the European Union by sending medical teams and test kits. But their efforts, a mix of soft power policy, political messaging and aid shipments  which it calls mask diplomacy  provoked a backlash, from Israel banning the use of Chinese-made testing kits to reports of subpar medical masks.

In addition, medical equipment purchased by Spain, the Netherlands and Turkey from private Chinese companies turned out faulty.

When Taipei sent masks to the EU, on the other hand, it got this tweet from no less than EU President Ursula von der Leyen:

The European Union thanks Taiwan for its donation of 5.6 million masks to help fight the #coronavirus. We really appreciate this gesture of solidarity. This global virus outbreak requires international solidarity & cooperation. Acts like this show that we are #StrongerTogether.  Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) April 1, 2020

When asked about von der Leyens tweet, EU foreign affairs spokesperson Virginie Battu-Henrikson said that it still recognizes the Peoples Republic of China as the sole government of China.

The EU promotes practical solutions regarding Taiwans participation in international frameworks wherever this is consistent with the EUs One China policy and the EUs policy objectives, she added. Most analysts and EU officials agree: While it appears unlikely that governments would favor Taiwan over China, it does create the potential for more informal diplomacy in the months ahead.

In fact, Taiwan has found its partner in the EU in the Czech Republic; the two inked a formal partnership for fighting COVID-19 in April. The central European country has long been in Chinas crosshairs, thanks to Prague Mayor Zdenek Hrib, who has managed to infuriate both Chinese and Russian authorities over his recent policies. In particular, Hrib has called China out for its persecution of the Uyghurs and for hiding the facts about the coronavirus pandemic.

The U.S. has also voiced its support for Taiwans participation in the WHO, following its successful response to COVID-19  drawing sharp criticism from China. In a tweet, the U.S. Mission to the UN pushed for the inclusion of Taiwan to the global organization, saying that barring the country is an affront to UN principles.

In response, a spokesperson for Chinas UN Mission called the tweet a serious violation of the General Assembly resolution  the same one that ousted Taiwan  and the countrys sovereignty and territorial integrity.

There is only one China in the world. The government of the Peoples Republic China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China, and Taiwan is an inalienable part of China, the unnamed spokesperson said.

But if Taiwan plays its cards right, it might just change this narrative.

According to data from Johns Hopkins University Saturday, since it emerged from the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year, the coronavirus has infected over 3.3 million people and caused 237,796 deaths worldwide.

More of the latest news about the COVID-19 outbreak at Pandemic.news.

Sources include:

BBC.com

Brookings.edu

NavyTimes.com

TheGuardian.com

TheNation.com

News.Yahoo.com

WHO.int 1

JapanTimes.co.jp

WHO.int 2

Coronavirus.JHU.edu

Twitter.com

Asia.Nikkei.com

Politico.eu

NPR.org

NYTimes.com
Her sister took her arm and dragged her into the front yard. For Jones, who is blind, so much of high school was about ensuring that she had the same experiences as other students. She used a high-powered camera to magnify text, but she wouldnt bring her cane to school. She figured most students who didnt know her well didnt know about her disability. Now, so many of the normal parts of high school were gone for all of her classmates.
Five security force personnel, including a Colonel and a Major and a police officer, were killed in the gunbattle with terrorists in Handwara in north Kashmir

Handwara: Five security force personnel, including a Colonel, a Major and a police officer, were killed in the gunbattle with terrorists in Handwara in north Kashmir, Indian Army said on Sunday.

"Four Indian Army personnel including the Commanding Officer, Major of 21 Rashtriya Rifles unit along with 2 soldiers and one Jammu and Kashmir Police jawan lost their lives in an encounter in Handwara in Jammu and Kashmir," Army officials said.

Two terrorists were neutralised in the encounter, which ensued between terrorists and security forces at Chanjmullah area of Handwara on Saturday.

The team of 21 Rashtriya Rifles had entered the house of a civilian to prevent a hostage situation when they came under attack from the terrorists who had already reached there. While the four Army personnel and the police Sub Inspector lost their lives in the encounter, the civilians trapped in the house were safely evacuated.

I offer my tributes to the soldiers and security personnel who fell in action. My heart goes out to the families who lost their loved ones today. India stands shoulder to shoulder with the families of these brave martyrs.  Rajnath Singh (@rajnathsingh) May 3, 2020

The name of the 21 Rashtriya Rifles Commanding Officer, who lost his life in the Handwara operation, is Colonel Ashutosh Sharma. He had been part of several successful counter-terrorism operations in the past, Army officials said. He had been twice awarded gallantry medals for exemplary bravery in counter-terrorist missions.

He was also the first Commanding Officer or a Colonel-rank Army person in the last five years to have lost his life in an encounter with terrorists.

He had received his gallantry award as a commanding officer when a terrorist was rushing towards his men on a road with a grenade hidden in his clothes. Sharma shot him at a close range which helped in saving the lives of many of his troops along with Jammu and Kashmir Police personnel.

Army persons who lost their lives in the Handwara operation include Major Anuj Sood, Naik Rajesh and Lance Naik Dinesh.
Entering the job market for the first time is never simple, and the coronavirus pandemic and its devastating effects on the economy are not making it any easier for college seniors.

NBC reported on March 29 that this year could be the worst job market since the 2007-2008 financial crisis, and some Connecticut students are already feeling the strain.

The class of 2020 and maybe beyond have gone from entering what could be described as the best job market in a very long time to the worst job market in a very long time almost overnight, said Kevin Lembo, Connecticut state comptroller.

Students who planned to move away from home and start a career are grounded by travel bans, fear and an unstable economy worldwide.

Im nervous Ill be stuck home for a while, said Janna Marnell, a graphic design major at Quinnipiac University in Hamden. My original plan was to move out post graduation and be on my own. Now I have to lean on my parents more than I would like to.

Kelvin Rutledge, director of career and professional development at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, said it is more likely that students will be delayed job offers, rather than denied them because of the virus.

According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, of organizations that were already searching, only 2 percent of organizations are rescinding the plans to actually hire, Rutledge said. Organizations are still moving forward across all industries, its just a matter of, Can our budget handle a start date of June 15 or can we handle an Aug. 15 start date?

For Catherine Martin, a senior at Quinnipiac University who hopes to pursue a career in game design, her career plans are in limbo. While she hasnt been rejected from a job, she also hasnt been offered anything.

All of my applications have been sent back not with rejection letters, but with recruitment has been suspended citing COVID-19, Martin said.

Lembo said it might not be as easy as delaying a start date because some industries may not recover.

Having hundreds of thousands of newly minted grads, hundreds of thousands, millions of people whose jobs who have not only gone away, but are not coming back  what do we do to face that? Lembo said.

James Lowe, assistant vice provost at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, said even in fields where there is high demand, some students might face obstacles. He pointed out that while nursing students are in high demand, there is a question if they will be able to complete board exams virtually.

Are they going to be able to sit for the boards or are nursing boards testing agencies going to provide virtual options? Lowe said. There are a lot of dynamics in terms of how this whole thing functions.

Lowe said that based on conversations he has had with some of Connecticuts employers, any delays students are having in finding a job do not mean long-term financial strife. Unlike during the 2007-2008 crisis, he said, employers plan to keep the talent pipelines open.

Once people are back out and back to work, this is not going to be a years-long kind of thing, Lowe said. Once people are able to go back to the workplace, theyre going to need employees to manage these companies and deliver on pent-up demand.

Lembo said relying on the private sector to continue hiring employees as they did prior to the pandemic might not be enough. He floated the idea of some New Deal-like programs to get people back to work while improving society.

More Information Six pieces of career advice for new graduates: "Learning how to virtually network and position themselves through LinkedIn and other connections - those are the people who are going to find the jobs." - Kathleen Lindenmayer, director of career success center at Western Connecticut State University "The biggest thing we are hearing from employers is that they want candidates to focus on what they can control. They can control having a really good resume and cover letter, they can control and make sure they have the technology to engage, but you can't control whether an organization can open up magically on June 15." - Kelvin Rutledge, director of career and professional development at Southern Connecticut State University "You don't have to wait until this is over. There are actions that students can take now in terms of connecting with a career adviser now in a virtual format, in terms of getting their resume out to employers who are still hiring." - James Lowe, assistant vice provost at the University of Connecticut At an interview, discuss "how did you respond to the impact of COVID-19? A student could have an opportunity in that story to talk about how they quickly adapted to remote learning or how they changed their plans to originally study language in one country and now they have a chance to tell a story about how they used their ability to be flexible, to pivot, to explain how they approached this unprecedented time in history." - Persephone Hall, Hale family senior director at the Hale Center for Career Development at Connecticut College "Students are not alone. They should feel the need to do a lot of self-reflection, a lot of documentation, look at all the accomplishments and achievements they have been allowed to do and I would definitely say to begin networking." - Scott Dranka, director of the career center at Springfield College "Research companies that you're interested in. Maybe even reach out to past employers or professors to get information from them. Even things like learning a second language would be a very positive thing to add to the resume. Volunteer, even virtually, for some kind of opportunity. There's lots and lots of things that students can be doing during this difficult time." - Deirdre Bennett, manager of employer development at Fairfield University See More Collapse

Something that would actually make work building infrastructure that not only puts people back to work but corrects and fixes a lot of the important areas that have been ignored for decades, Lembo said.

Molly Rabinovitz, a sociology major at Quinnipiac, said she is approaching the next phase of her life with unease. She pointed out that as a dependent of her parents, she missed out on the stimulus check from the Trump administration.

There is an insurmountable sense of fear of diving into the unknown, Rabinovitz said. Its a whole economic reset that is not looking great for new graduates. Some of us do not qualify for unemployment and also got screwed out of Trump's stimulus deal. So, what now?

Luckily for students, some colleges and universities across Connecticut are being innovative in hopes of keeping their students engaged in the job finding process.

Marcus Paca, assistant director of employer relations at University of New Haven, said the career development team is investing in online education programs, online seminars and a new podcast on market trends for this year and years to come.

Now is the time to think forward, and thinking forward has us in the mindset that we have to be prepared for the next potential pandemic, Paca said. The foundation we are building right now of a dual strategy of course planning and hoping for the best that we will be back on campus but at the same time we should also plan for the realization that this may be long term.

Regardless of when and how the pandemic ends, Lembo said Connecticut must not return to business as usual.

We need to lean in on the very question, What are we doing to help partner the reinvention of the economy for this new generation of workers and frankly the old generation of workers to make sure that it is retooled for today? Lembo said.

Emily DiSalvo is a student at Quinnipiac University.
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Redding police are asking for the publics help to identify a suspect who used a stolen credit card in Trumbull.

The victims credit card was used at a Target Store located in Trumbull.
Hefty sums found their way to Vietnamese e-wallets from diverse partners during the year, turning the segment into one of the investment hotspots.

E-wallets bring convenience to payment services

Since late 2019, vast money flows have made its way to Vietnam, mainly into e-wallets via mergers and acquisitions deals.

Vietnamese online gaming giant VNG Corporation has reduced its stake in wholly-owned e-wallet ZaloPay to 60 per cent by issuing shares to other investors.

The reduction of its shareholdings in Zion JSC, the owner of ZaloPay, happened in the third quarter of 2019, VNG said in its 2019 financial statement released in February.

Zion had raised its charter capital from VND367.4 billion ($15.9 million) to VND612.3 billion ($26.6 million) through an issuance of shares to other investors whose names were not disclosed.

VNG has earned more than VND464 billion ($20.17 million) from the deal.

ZaloPay had later on scaled up its charter capital to VND900 billion ($39.13 million).

Last December, Chinas Ant Financial, the fintech affiliate of e-commerce giant Alibaba, has quietly acquired a sizeable stake in Vietnamese e-wallet eMonkey of small Vietnames fintech firm M-Pay Trade.

Although the deal value has not been disclosed, it was reported that after the deal the foreign partner would have significant influence and provide technical expertise to the e-wallet.

Earlier, VNPAY, a leading Vietnamese digital payments firm, closed a deal with Japan-based SoftBank Vision Fund and Singapore-based sovereign fund GIC. Accordingly, SoftBank and GIC poured nearly $300 million into VNPay, turning this fintech firm into a market leader who currently provides e-payment services to more than 40 banks, five telecom firms, and more than 20,000 local firms.

Another major deal last year involved VinID JSC which is 80 per cent owned by Vingroup  the leading private conglomerate in Vietnam  which had completed procedures to acquire e-wallet MonPay. The deal value has not been disclosed.

Last year's line-up of deals continues, including the merger of e-wallets Vimo and mPOS (both under the management of tech startup NextTech Group), or e-wallet Momo receiving a very large, undisclosed investment from US equity firm Warburg Pincus, just to name a few.

Economic experts forecast that the Vietnamese e-wallet market would be a mainstay on investors radar this year due to the governments strong commitment to spurring non-cash payments and e-wallets continuous tempting promotion programmes which help draw in users by the droves.

The State Bank of Vietnams figures show that by mid-November 2019, 32 companies were licensed to provide intermediary payment services in Vietnam. Their numbers included more than 20 e-wallet businesses.

According to the freshly-released report titled FinTech in ASEAN: From Start-up to Scale-up by United Overseas Bank (UOB), PwC, and the Singapore FinTech Association (SFA), investment in Vietnamese fintech accounts for 36 per cent of total investment flowing into this field in the whole ASEAN region in 2019, attesting to the charm of Vietnamese fintech firms in the eyes of foreign investors.

A recent report by J.P.Morgan also shows that 19 per cent of e-commerce transaction value in Vietnam takes place via e-wallets. This figure equals that of cash payments, and is behind card payments that take the lead with 34 per cent and bank transfer (22 per cent). VIR

Tuan Thuy

Are fintechs in Vietnam mostly e-wallets? Investment funds had poured $410 million into Vietnams fintechs as of the end of September 2019, according to a report of PricewaterhouseCoopers, United Overseas Bank and Singaporean Fintech Association.
Over a month after it had sealed



its border with neighbouring states in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, the Mizoram government has decided to open an entry point to allow movement of goods from Tripura, an official said on Sunday.

The state government will open Kanhmun check point at Mizoram-Tripura border in Mamit district soon after the deployment of a medical team and installation of disinfectant facilities there, the official said.

According to the guidelines, issued by the government on Saturday, the state border with Tripura will be opened at Kanhmun for vehicles carrying both essential and non-essential commodities, Mamit district Deputy Commissioner Dr. Lalrozama told PTI.

The district administration is making efforts to deploy a medical team and install disinfectant chambers, he said



"We will hold a meeting on the matter on Monday. Movement of traffic will be allowed after deployment of a medical team and installation of disinfectant facilities, which will take at least two days to complete," he said.

Barring two entry points at Vairengte and Bairabi to continue transportation of goods from Assam, the Mizoram government had sealed its inter-state and international border prior to imposition of the nationwide lockdown on March 25 to contain the spread of the coronavirus outbreak.

Mizoram shares 284-km long inter-state border with Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya and Tripura.

It also shares 722-km long international border with Bangladesh and Myanmar.

The council of ministers, in its meeting on Saturday, extended the lockdown till May 17 as decided by the Centre.

The new notification, issued in accordance with the Centre's guidelines, said that all other entry points will remained closed, barring the three.

Vehicles carrying passengers will be allowed to cross border with prior permission from state home department.

The government allows inter-village movement of commercial vehicles and public transport within the city and towns with passengers, not exceeding 50 per cent of a vehicle's seating capacity, an official said, adding that they will be permitted to run on alternative days based on "odd- even" registration number system.

The assembly of more than five persons has been prohibited while people are not allowed to go out of their homes between 7 pm and 4 am during the extended lockdown, he said.

Essential departments such as health, police, home guards, civil defence, fire and emergency services, disaster management, excise and narcotics, municipal services, forest and public health engineering will function.

All group 'A' and 'B' officers will attend their offices while 33 per cent of Group 'C' and 'D' staffers will come to their workplace on alternate days.

Mizoram has reported only one COVID-19 case so far and the patient is undergoing treatment at Zoram Medical College (ZMC) near hear.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
To be in one of the Covid patients shoes, to me, seems horrifying. They have an illness that we dont fully understand yet. Theyre alone. Theyre short of breath. I can only imagine how scary it must be. Thats part of the reason why were just trying to do everything we can to support the patients both medically and, I guess, spiritually. This strange overlap just happened between my two different lives of music and medicine. And theyve come together in some unexpected and beautiful way. Hi, Andrew. How are you? Hey, Rachel. Im fine. How are you doing? Great, nice to see you. There are very few things in this world where you can kind of transcend time and your place. And I definitely know that music is one of those things. It adds a level of humanity to a situation that I think this virus has taken away. The atmosphere on the shifts where Im working, its impossible to describe. Weve been seeing a lot of difficult deaths. And thats throughout New York City. I think a lot of doctors that Ive talked to have expressed the same sentiment, that we arent helping enough. Theres a pianist, a violist and a cellist that are in the same place. And theres a cellist on the West Coast. And they actually already had sort of a project going on where they play for more vulnerable populations, and were very interested in helping with the patients that I was seeing. I just had this phone call with Rachel. She mentioned that wouldnt it be incredible if the Covid patients who were more isolated from their family and friends than ever could experience this. FaceTime concerts for Covid patients. And it suddenly clicked that we could provide that. [phone ringing] Hey, Rachel. Hey, guys. Thank you so much. How are you? We get a call from Rachel on FaceTime. Im going to put the phone down on the table, and then you guys can go, OK? OK. OK, great. Thank you. Thank you. And she says, OK guys, youre on. And just, we play. Its not silence on the other side of the call. Its a lot of noise. Its a lot of beeping from the machines. Typically you can hear the ventilator breathing for the patient. [beeping] It takes us, in a way, like, boom, were right in the front lines. This is how we can hold their hands right now. Its through music. Every time we get off the phone, theres a bit of a different atmosphere in this house. I started off studying to be a classical musician. So to be able to bring music into the hospital, I really never thought that would happen. The first concert was for a patient that had really no ability to interact. We had talked to the family. And I was standing there next to this Covid patient. It was so surreal, but I just felt like at that moment in time in my life, that everything I had had up until that point had led me to that. And I think everybody was really feeling their own mortality. And I thought to myself at that time, if I dont make it through this, then Ive done what Im supposed to do. I have a couple, a couple songs that I chose that I just think are really beautiful on the cello. I hope you enjoy. Thank you. At my hospital, were all a family. And I think that it actually helps not only the patients, but also the morale of the doctors and nurses. [cello playing] We hope that this music for patients brings them a sense of comfort thats definitely lacking. I hope these concerts can ease the pain a bit, and I hope that it can give them hope.
Vietnam is looking forward to receiving high-quality investments from Europe once the EU-Vietnam FTA (EVFTA) and the EU-Vietnam Investment Protection Agreement (EVIPA) take effect.

On the first working day of the Year of the Rat, Heineken Vietnam, a brewery in Vung Tau City, got approval to raise its investment capital by $68.8 million to $381.3 million.





The capital increase will allow the brewery, located in My Xuan A IZ, to increase production capacity to 1,100 million liters a year.



Datalogic Vietnam in the HCM City Hi-tech Park, an Italian invested company that makes barcode readers, after 10 years of increasing capacity, has revenue of $200 million a year.



According to Dang Van Chung, director of Datalogic Vietnam, the factory in Vietnam is the biggest one of the group and is always ready to increase capacity once the demand increases in the world.

In January 2020 alone, four French invested and three German invested new projects were licensed, two French and three German projects got approval to increase capital, and French investors bought into 19 Vietnamese enterprises and German enterprises bought into four.

Nestle Bong Sen, a Nestle Vietnams factory in Hung Yen province, has raised its total investment capital to 107 Swiss francs and doubled the capacity.



The decisions by Heineken, Datalogic and Nestle to pour more capital into their projects in Vietnam show the European businesses confidence in the Vietnamese environment.



By mid-2019, Vietnam had licensed 2,250 European invested projects with total registered capital of $25 billion, according to FIA.



Investors from Europe have been increasing their investments in Vietnam. In January 2020 alone, four French invested and three German invested new projects were licensed, two French and three German projects got approval to increase capital, and French investors bought into 19 Vietnamese enterprises and German enterprises bought into four.



The Netherlands had one new investment project, capitalized at $20 million, and contributed capital to six enterprises, worth $15 million.



Analysts commented that the moves were taken to take full advantage of the EVFTA and EVIPA.



In fact, investors have been preparing for this for the last three years. Nicolas Audier, chair of EuroCham, commented that EVFTA is the most comprehensive and ambitious FTA ever signed by the EU with a developing country.



The agreement allows Vietnam to access the EU large consumer market with 500 million consumers, while paving the way for European investors to expand their markets.



An EuroChams survey on 1,000 European enterprises operational in Vietnam in 2019 found a tendency of expanding business and trade in Vietnam.



Thoi Bao Kinh Te Sai Gon quoted experts as predicting that with the EVFTA leverage, Vietnams GDP may grow by 7-8 percent by 2025.



According to Phan Huu Thang, former FIA Director, the commitments to fairly, equally, safely and adequately protect investments and investors in EVIPA will help Vietnam attract more investment capital from the EU and other countries.

Kim Chi

EVFTA to grow Vietnams fertilizer industry Free trade agreements, including the latest one signed between Vietnam and the EU, will benefit the domestic fertilizer sector, with more diverse import and export markets, experts said.
By Yael Ossowski

With so many of us doing our part to stay at home, its been the perfect time to dive into binge-worthy Netflix series.

For many, its been Tiger King or reruns of Friends, but some of the more interesting series deconstruct the American justice system and its complexities: innocence or guilt, truth and facts, and institutional bias.

Because television series allow directors to carefully examine a story and interview dozens of witnesses and experts, audiences have become addicted to the very real characters dealing with tragedy and the inadequacies of our courts.

Shows such as Making a Murderer and The Staircase, in which their principal characters cling to innocence, inspired millions to ask the simple question: is the American legal system just and can it deliver justice? What happens when experts lead juries and judges astray?

It should be no surprise then that miscarriages of justice and tainted evidence, mixed in with biased scientific evidence, are not just fodder for documentarians but are represented in thousands of cases that dont get their own TV deal.

Our binge sessions allow us to rummage through the hundreds of examples of junk science that has been taken for a fact before judges and juries, sending innocent people to prison or resulting in multi-million-dollar lawsuit settlements to tort injury lawyers. In The Innocence Files, it was a controversial bite mark analysis that sent an innocent man to death row for nearly 16 years. Earlier this year, Washington Post writer Radley Balko examined the very bogus forensic science that has plagued our nations courts: bite mark analysis, tire treads, ballistics evidence, carpet fibers, and more.

One tool our legal system has devised to counter bogus science, however, is the process of a Daubert standard, an eponymous process from a Supreme Court trial that seeks to classify expert testimony and evidence.

Daubert hearings empower judges to examine the gathering of evidence and whether it should be allowed in court cases. And this applies to broader scientific evidence beyond simple forensics. Balko mentions one D.C. judges Daubert ruling on ballistics specifically, calling into question the black-or-white conclusions such science could produce. Thats inspired lawyers around the country to ask for Daubert rulings in their cases.

One such example in the headlines is whether or not baby powder, an essential product for new moms and dads and a staple of the female hygiene industry, contains cancer-causing minerals such as asbestos.

Rulings on both sides have awarded up to $4.7 billion to plaintiffs suing pharmaceutical and beauty giant Johnson & Johnson. Select scientific evidence, and whether it can be admitted as evidence at trial, is at the heart of these cases.

To that end, a U.S. District Court in New Jersey is currently reviewing whether submitted scientific evidence that purports a link between talc, a main ingredient of baby powder, and various cancers should be allowed as evidence. Thus far, major independent studies have found no causal link, including evaluations by the American Cancer Society and a recent study from the National Institutes of Health.

But expert witnesses brought in by the plaintiffs have conducted studies that say the opposite. Some of those studies have yet to be peer-reviewed or replicated, but theyve been admitted regardless. Which evidence will get the light of day? That is what the judge will have to decide.

In this civil trial, millions of dollars and reputations are at stake. In so many others, its the lives of innocent men and women.

As citizens, taxpayers, and consumers, one major concern with our justice system should be that only the most rigorous and reputable science be admitted as evidence. Only incontrovertible truth and seasoned scientific inquiry should sway juries, not evidence that can be easily debunked or will be easily refuted years later.

If we uphold that as our standard, we can strive toward the legal reform we truly deserve, both for those accused of crimes and those in the crosshairs of civil disputes. Thats the only way well achieve true justice in our nations courts.

Yael Ossowski is a writer, consumer advocate, and deputy director at the Consumer Choice Center.

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12:52

Board of Control for Cricket in India president Sourav Ganguly is deeply saddened and intimidated by the devastation caused because of the COVID-19 pandemic and has equated the unprecedented crisis to playing a Test match on a dangerous wicket.

The decorated former player opened up on life under lockdown due to the novel coronavirus pandemic that has claimed over 2.40 lakh lives across the world while infecting more than 34 lakh people.

"This situation is a Test match on a very dangerous wicket. The ball is seaming and spinning as well - the batsman has very little margin of error," Ganguly said while speaking on '100 Hours 100 Stars', an initiative started by Fever Network.

"So, the batsman has to score runs and keep his wicket safe with this little margin of error, and win this Test match," he added.

A winner of innumerable fierce battles during his playing days when there was no dearth of fearsome fast bowlers and quality spinners, Ganguly was tempted to draw a parallel between the tough moments in the sport and the health crisis.

"This is very difficult, but we hope that we will win this match together," he added.

Ganguly expressed his sadness at the number of lives lost in the pandemic and the irreparable damage that it has caused.

"I am really upset seeing the current situation, because so many people are suffering outside. We are still struggling to understand how to stop this pandemic," he said.

"This atmosphere all over the world has really bothered me. We don't know how, when and where it came from - we all were unprepared for this," he added.

Not just upset, Ganguly conceded he cannot help feeling a big scared of what's unfolding because of the disease.

"People are being affected by this so much. There have been so many deaths. This situation upsets me, and I also feel scared," he said.

"People come to my house to deliver groceries, food, so I feel a little scared as well. So it's a mixed feeling. I just want this to end as quickly as possible," he added,

He said cricket has taught him to face tough situations in life and the importance of staying alert at all times.

Asked how he keeps himself positive, the former captain said: "Cricket has taught me a lot. I faced real life, high-pressure situations. You have to make runs and there is just one ball left.

"If you make one wrong move, one wrong footwork, you will not get another chance. These kind of situations make you alert and aware about real life situations," he said. -- PTI
Anchorage, Alaska

Members of the Grammy-winning rock band Portugal. The Man are stepping into a banned book controversy in their Alaska home town.

After the school board at the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District in Palmer voted 5-2 last week to remove five classics used for high school English elective courses, including F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby," "Joseph Heller's Catch-22" and Maya Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," the band announced it would buy the books for any student or parent who wanted them.

The other two books are "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison and "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien.

The books are controversial because of sexual references and descriptions of rape and incest, "things that are pretty serious problems, especially in our teenage world," said board member Jeff Taylor, a Wasilla business owner who voted in favor of the ban.

Portugal. The Man guitarist Eric Howk was surprised to learn of the decision in the district north of Anchorage, where the band members attended school, KTVA-TV reported.

"We were all students of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough school district and we have a lot of teachers there that we love," Howk said.

"I think when it comes to stories and to books, we're storytellers. You know, we're songwriters and we're storytellers and we take the situations and the experiences and the people that we meet and we kind of turn those into the stories that we carry on with us to the next place and to the next town. Storytelling is just kind of sacred to us and it just hits really close to home."

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District spokeswoman Jillian Morrissey declined to comment on the offer by Portugal. The Man. The books remain in district libraries, she told The Associated Press.

The National Coalition Against Censorship has asked the school board to reverse its decision.

In a letter to the board's president, coalition officials said removing from the curriculum "every book that some member of the community might find controversial would leave education in shreds and students at a disadvantage."

The Anchorage Daily News reported that the agenda for the school board's next meeting Wednesday includes a proposal to rescind the vote.
The Irish Hotels Federation is calling for a permanent reduction in the Tourism Vat rate.

Reacting to the Government's 6bn fund to support businesses after Covid-19, it says while welcome, the measures fall short.

At the moment about 85 per cent of hotels across the country are closed, with many people laid off or on short-time.

Irish Hotels Federation President, Elaina Fitzgerald-Kane said a number of steps are needed to help the hotels' sector:

Ms Fitzgerald-Kane said: "A big, big part for us is continuation of the wage subsidy scheme into recovery and equally VAT to be reduced, and what we are suggesting is 0% for 12 months and returning then to an increased rate thereafter.

"In some countries it has been 7%, it has previously been 9% in Ireland."

ICTU has said it will only support the Government's package to help businesses during Covid-19 if it is used to protect and create jobs.

While it says the supports announced yesterday are positive, it says it is important State aid applicants do not forget their responsibilities to workers.

More than 427,000 are having their wages subsidised by the State and 43,000 employers have already received subsidy payments.

Fergal O'Brien from business group IBEC has indicated that some firms will need yet more support to pay wages.

Mr O'Brien said: "For some companies particularly that are going to be facing a much higher cost base and lower revenue as a result of social distancing measures, Government will probably need to support those companies in very significant ways, possibly through a wage subsidy-type model."
Foreign visitors to the UK could face time in quarantine as the Government 'actively' considers stronger anti-coronavirus measures at the borders, a senior minister revealed today.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said that new arrivals could also be forced to download a new contract app onto their smartphone as a condition of entry.

New restrictions would make the UK one of the last countries to introduce them, with the country very much an outlier in recent weeks by not halting inbound flights or insisting arrivals are checked.

People arriving are advised to self-isolate but there is no enforced testing.

Home Secretary Priti Patel is believed to be among those who have demanded tougher rules for foreign visitors and the remaining Brits still abroad who make it home.

Appearing on the BBC's Andrew Marr show Mr Shapps said: 'I think it is important that as we are seeing the numbers decrease and the R rate we hope decrease... that we do ensure that the sacrifices in a sense - social distancing - that we are asking the British people to make are matched by anybody who comes to this country.

'I am actively looking at these issues right now so that when we have infection rates within the country under control we are not importing.'

Appearing on the BBC's Andrew Marr show Mr Shapps said: 'I think it is important that as we are seeing the numbers decrease and the R rate we hope decrease... that we do ensure that the sacrifices in a sense - social distancing - that we are asking the British people to make are matched by anybody who comes to this country'

People arriving are advised to self-isolate but there is no enforced testing at UK airports and ports

Although the vast majority of global air travel has collapsed, flights are still arriving, and ports are also allowing mostly freight traffic into the UK to keep vital services and firms going.

The boss of Heathrow is among those who has urged ministers to introduce mass screening at airports. In a major intervention, chief executive John Holland-Kaye wrote to Health Secretary Matt Hancock to demand stringent regulations to combat coronavirus.

Last week Bournemouth Airport became the first UK airport to start checking passengers for signs of coronavirus.

Bosses have installed thermal fever detection cameras that are capable of recording body temperatures and alerting border guards to anyone with a fever.

The tripod-mounted cameras have been fixed to the airports staff entrance but will soon be installed at every entrance to the airports departures and arrivals terminals.

Speaking to Sky News's Ridge on Sunday this morning, Mr Shapps announced that the new smartphone contact tracing app being developed by the NHS's digital arm would start trials on the Isle of Wight this week.

And he mooted the idea of making its use mandatory for new arrivals - although it is unclear how people who do not possess a mobile phone would be affected.

Speaking to Sky News's Ridge on Sunday this morning, Mr Shapps announced that the new smartphone contact tracing app being developed by the NHS's digital arm would start trials on the Isle of Wight this week

He said: 'I think it would be wrong ... if we are all still being asked to socially distance, for people coming in not to do the same thing.

'So we'll be looking at things like this app -which very soon, in two or three weeks' time we are going to be asking the whole country to download - which will help with the test and track and trace, this is obviously the tracking part of it, that's very important.

'We could be asking everybody who comes here to be required to have that app and the same rules apply to anyone visiting which is, as you know, to stay locked down effectively.

'The same social distance rules clearly would need to apply to everybody under those circumstances.'
G Subhash Chandra By

Express News Service

DEVANGERE: It was a shocking Sunday for people of Davangere. As the number of COVID-19 patients suddenly took a giant leap with the reporting of 21 fresh cases. This took the total number of patients in the district to 31 from 10.

Giving the information about the sudden spurt in the cases, Deputy Commissioner Mahantesh Bilagi on Sunday evening said out of 31 cases, two were cured while one died. The 28 active cases are undergoing treatment at Chigateri District Hospital's isolation ward.

Mahantesh said it is still unknown how the infection got spread and social teams have been formed to assess the spread of COVID-19 in the Jali Nagar area.

Out of the 166 'Category A' high-risk samples sent to Shivamogga's VRDL for testing, only 37 were put under the scope and 21 among them returned positive. The same has been ratified by National Insititue of Virology in Pune, he added.

"We have to establish the relationship of the patients, their primary and secondary contacts and then isolate them. Our police, health department workers are on the ground to trace them and isolate them", he said.

Member of Parliament GM Siddeshwara said that it was very sad to know that out of 37 samples, 21 turned positive. He said Davangere would now be categorised as orange or red zone.

The MP has directed the district administration to strictly impose movement restrictions in Davangere, and seal Jali Nagar, Basha Nagar and other areas where positive cases have been reported. No person should come out and essentials should be supplied to the doorstep on demand, in order to prevent further spread of the dreadful viral disease.
The gunbattle in norths Kashmirs Handwara, during which an Indian Army colonel and four other security personnel were killed, had been raging since Saturday afternoon.

Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, Major Anuj Sood, Naik Rajesh Kumar and Lance Naik Dinesh Singh and sub-inspector of Jammu-Kashmir police Shakeel Qazi were martyred in the line of duty while rescuing civilians held hostage by the terrorists.

Two terrorists were also shot dead by the security forces in the Handwara encounter.

Col Sharma, the commanding officer of the armys 21 Rashtriya Rifles battalion, was leading the three army men and the sub-inspector and had been locked in a gunfight with the terrorists holed up inside a house in Rajwar forests.

The army said a joint operation was launched by the army and state police based on the intelligence input that terrorists were taking hostage some civilians in a house in Changimulla.

A team comprising of the five army and police personnel entered the target area occupied by the terrorists to evacuate the civilians.

The terrorists came into the village near the forest as the operation was underway and went inside the house that had a cowshed near to it.

Col Sharma, who had been decorated for gallantry twice in Kashmir, Major Sood and sub-inspector Qazi took refuge inside a house as they thought that the terrorists were hiding inside the cowshed. The moment they went inside the house, a gunfight ensued.

After that, there was no communication between the army teams outside the house and CO who had gone inside for a few hours.

Late in the night, assault teams of the army went inside the house late and recovered the bodies of all five security force personnel.

However, the team came under a heavy firing by the terrorists during the process and in the ensuing firefight, two terrorists were gunned down and the security personnel were killed.

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-03 18:38:43|Editor: huaxia

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KUALA LUMPUR, May 3 (Xinhua) -- Malaysia reported more than 100 new COVID-19 cases for the second day in a row on Sunday, bringing the total to 6,298.

Health Ministry Director-General Noor Hisham Abdullah said at a press briefing that 122 new cases had been reported on Sunday, pushing the total cases in the country to 6,298, of which 70 are local transmissions and 52 are imported cases.

Another 87 patients have been released, bringing the total cured and discharged to 4,413 or 70 percent of all cases. Of the 1,780 cases still receiving treatment, 27 are currently being held in intensive care and 13 of those are in need of assisted breathing.

Noor Hisham added that another two deaths had been reported, with the victims having suffered from health conditions prior to being infected, bringing the total fatalities to 105.

Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin on Friday announced the easing of restrictions to help restart the country's economy, which has taken a hit since the government imposed a movement control order on March 18 that has closed businesses, shops and schools as well as imposing travel bans and calling for residents to stay at home.

However, the Malaysian Peninsula states of Penang, Selangor, Negeri Sembilan, Pahang and Kedah as well as the northern Borneo states of Sabah and Sarawak have announced they will not fully follow federal government's decision by either continuing the restrictions or impose their own conditions. Enditem
The Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) has revised a two-day-old guideline on novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) prevention and control measures for tourism businesses, which included a controversial ban on tourists sharing information about the local epidemic situation.

VNAT chairman Nguyen Trung Khanh signed off the patch on Friday, May 1, two days after the guideline's initial release on April 29.

The guideline is intended to reinforce measures to ensure safety against COVID-19 for tourism businesses, tourist accommodation facilities, and tourism service providers.

The original guideline stated a no-go for tourists and tourism service users to post updates on social media about the epidemic situation of their service providers.

The ban gave rise to objection from the public with allegations of personal privacy intrusion and infringement upon the people's right to information.

The controversial regulation has been completely scrapped in the revised guideline.

In response to Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper's request for comments regarding the amendment, chairman Khanh admitted there had been a slip in their process of drafting the initial document due to time restriction.

The amendment also brought changes to a section of the guideline that used to state that tour guides and tourism staff members may not share, update, post on social media and other means of communication about the epidemic-related situation of tourism facilities.

The revised guideline now bans the spreading of false and unverified news only.

Being one of the hardest-hit factors of the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic, the tourism industry in Vietnam is gradually reopening after the relaxing of social distancing rules from April 23.

This years successive four-day break, beginning Thursday, in celebration of the Reunification Day (April 30) and International Workers' Day (May 1) in Vietnam saw major sightseeing attractions like Phan Thiet and Da Lat crammed with visitors once again.

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The biggest challenge that EVs are facing today has to do with batteries. To be more specific, extracting maximum range from the batteries and reduce the charging times. There are a lot of technologies being developed that would be the solution to these problems, but the brightest one as of now is the solid-state battery. These are much safer, but cost a lot more than lithium-ion packs, and its application in EVs is not mainstream yet. How long would it take for it to feature in EVs, you ask? BMW says at least seven years.

Why Are Solid-State Batteries So Far Away?

The Bavarian automaker believes that solid-state batteries are still at least seven years away from becoming mainstream. BMWBlog spoke to a few people in Munich who are closely working with battery development, and they believe itll take seven years for solid-state batteries. One of the members said, Solid-state batteries have created very high expectations, I would say, the technology itself over the years,. He further added, We dont see that kind of technology [maturing] before 2027. Were not saying well have it ready by then, but it definitely wont be ready in any way until 2027. Right now, this kind of technology is in its incipient stage and theres a lot more work to be done before it could be used in the automotive sector.

Is It Better Than Lithium-Ion Batteries?

The two main drawbacks to solid state batteries at this point are the operating temperature and energy density.

At this point, solid-state batteries dont hold an advantage over lithium-ion batteries neither in terms of performance nor cost. Even the fast-charging hasnt drawn positive conclusions. As for the operational temperature, the batteries are heating up beyond the ambient temperature. Thanks to all these drawbacks, BMW has said it could take at least seven years.

What Is A Solid-State Battery, Though?

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A solid-state battery has solid electrodes and a solid electrolyte, instead of the liquid or polymer gel electrolytes found in lithium-ion or lithium polymer batteries.

Materials proposed for use as solid polymers and solid electrolytes in solid-state batteries include ceramics like oxides, sulfides, phosphates. The biggest advantage is that the chances of an explosion in solid-state batteries are significantly lower than the lithium-ion batteries. For now, the applications are limited to pacemakers, RFID, and wearable devices. Back in 2012, a 20 Ah solid-state battery cell would cost around $100,000. And, a high-range EV would require at least 80-100 of these. Costs may have come down now, but it still isnt financially viable.

What Other Battery Technologies Can We Expect In The Future?

At CES 2020 held earlier this year, Mercedes-Benz showcased an electric concept called the Vision Avtr. Although the concept in itself showcased a futuristic design and features, there was one thing that caught everyones attention  the organic batteries. Mercedes revealed a 110-kWh battery with graphene-based organic-cell chemistry with a water-based electrolyte that is free of any toxic materials or metals. It doesnt make use of any rare and expensive minerals, thus saving the fossil resources. The batterys materials are compostable and completely recyclable. When the company revealed the Avtr, it said that the battery has a high-energy density and an extraordinary fast charging capability. The battery can be fully replenished in less than 15 minutes. However, the company said that it is around 15-20 years away.

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Tesla currently sources batteries for its cars from Panasonic, but is working on developing its own battery cells and we could see them put to use in the near future.

Musk has mentioned on previous occasions that the present battery modules last between 300,000 and 500,000 miles. However, the new Tesla battery pack, thats still in development, could last almost a million miles. The new battery is a Lithium-ion battery cell with a next-generation single crystal NMC cathode and a new advanced electrolyte. After testing these cells extensively, they think that the battery could power an electric car for over 1.6 million kilometers [1 million miles]. You can expect this battery to see a significant improvement in the range as well.

Final Thoughts

Since EVs are still in their infancy stages, a lot of such technologies will be developed. Some might be successful and some not, but in the end, the battery range will keep getting better, the charging times will get faster, and the battery size will keep reducing consistently over time as scientists and automakers develop new technologies. What do you think is the future of batteries? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Source: BMW Blog
Pierce Brosnan looked meditative during an afternoon outing in Hawaii Sunday.

The former James Bond enjoyed a relaxing day during quarantine, first going for a nice hike before settling down on the beach to read.

The 66-year-old star was handsome as always, stepping out in simple tee shirt and shorts combo.

Peace and quiet: Pierce Brosnan went hiking to his favorite reading spot as he continues to social distance in Hawaii

It seemed like Pierce was adjusting to island living, seen with distinguished grey locks and without his recent beard.

The silver fox was equipped for adventure, carrying his backpack and a walking stick.

During his hike Pierce practiced social distancing, stopping to talk to a few fellow travelers from afar. He made sure to be careful, seeing as he'd forgotten his mask that day.

After a bit of activity Brosnan made it to the beach, where he got himself comfortable in a wooden chair and read a book.

Relax: It seemed like Pierce was adjusting to island living, seen with distinguished grey locks and without his recent beard

Walkabout: The silver fox was equipped for adventure, carrying his backpack and a walking stick

Transitioning into the shade, he was sure to trade his sunglasses for reading specs.

The actor's next film is slated to be Eurovision, also starring Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams while he is also set to play The King in a retelling of Cinderella starring Camila Cabello as the title character.

It comes after Pierce left fans shocked on Friday when he shared a funny Instagram selfie with a rugged grey beard and scraggly long locks.

The James Bond star appeared to have dirt on his face and left fans speculating whether he will be bringing back his shipwrecked character, Robinson Crusoe.

Just last month: Pierce had noticeably darker hair and a Van Dyke beard last month at The Prince's Trust Awards in London (pictured)

The actor jokingly shared: 'Isolation and this is only week six!'

Fans were left shocked by his unruly appearance which was a far cry from the iconic slick 007 tuxedo.

Many fans teased that he is perhaps bringing back his 1997 role of Robinson Crusoe, who was left ship-wrecked on a deserted island.

However, some followers suggested that he in fact resembled James Bond when he was held captive in North Korea.

Is that you? Pierce recently left fans shocked when he shared a funny Instagram selfie with a rugged grey beard and scraggly long locks

Pierce looked completely different while sharing a tribute to his wife Keely Shaye Smith on their anniversary.

The couple, who met in 1994 and tied the knot in 2001, took to Instagram to share sweet throwback snaps.

Pierce wrote: 'My darling angel heart Keely, thank you for bringing such love and beauty into my life, for making these past twenty six years the greatest joy of my life...Happy anniversary my brown eyed girl'.

In character: The star appeared to have dirt on his face and left fans speculating whether he will be bringing back his shipwrecked character, Robinson Crusoe (1997)

Keely, 56, wrote: 'Still celebrating the day we met ...on a beach in Mexico. Happy 26th my love 4/8 (1994).'

The American journalist posted a throwback photo alongside a more recent one of the pair.

Pierce and Keely met the year before he made his James Bond debut and got married in 2001 at Ballintubber Abbey in his native Ireland.

Sweet: Pierce and wife Keely Shaye Smith shared heartfelt tributes to one another as they celebrated their 26th anniversary last week

He was previously married to Australian actress Cassandra Harris, herself a Bond girl to Roger Moore in For Your Eyes Only, from 1980 until her death after a battle with ovarian cancer in 1991.

Pierce is the biological father of three sons, two by Keely - Dylan, 23, and Paris, 19, - and Sean, 36, by Cassandra.

He is also the adoptive father of Charlotte and Christopher Brosnan, Cassandra's two children by her first husband Dermot Harris, whose brother was Richard Harris of Harry Potter fame.

Soulmates: The couple, who met in 1994 and tied the knot in 2001, took to Instagram to share throwback snaps

Charlotte, who like Christopher took Pierce's surname when she was adopted, died at the age of 42 in 2013 of the same illness that claimed her mother's life.

He has often been vocal about how Keely saved him from depression following his personal tragedies, describing her as a ' strength I wouldnt be able to live without.'

Pierce is now a proud grandfather of three - Charlotte's children Isabella, 21, and Lucas, 14, as well as Sean's daughter Marley May, four.
Students across the United States are using three-dimensional, 3D, printing equipment to make face shields for medical workers.

Some of the students are attending Camdenton High School in Camdenton, Missouri. They have been using 3D printers from a nearby middle school to produce hundreds of shields for working battling the coronavirus.

When teachers learned of serious shortages of personal protective equipment, they got the idea to use the printers to make the much-needed devices. The project began with a request from a local hospital for 150 face shields, but production quickly rose as demand kept increasing for equipment to protect health care workers.

The 3D manufactured shields differ from traditional face masks worn by doctors and nurses. The shields are placed on top of the head and have a long piece of plastic in front to completely cover the face. They guard against particles coming from an infected persons mouth or nose.

Camdenton Middle School received the 3D printers as part of a project with the University of Missouris College of Education. The aim was to show middle school students how to use modern technology to solve problems affecting their communities.

Johannes Stobel is a professor of Information Science and Learning Technologies at the university. He says the project was successful in more ways than one. He said the effort helped fill a great need for protective equipment. But it also gave the students experience in using technology to attack a problem and serve the community.

Doing hands-on projects that solve real-world problems gets students more interested in science, technology, engineering and mathematics [or STEM], Stobel wrote.

His comments appeared on The Conversation website. He added that research has shown that students, especially girls and students of color, become motivated and interested in engineering when it is tied to working for the social good.

Zane Foulk is a senior at Camdenton High School and a member of a local youth robotics team. He told the University of Missouris Mizzou News he was pleased to see medical workers wearing the new face shields.

Foulk added that support in the community had been strong and the team planned on continuing production. We have been making roughly 40 face shields a day and will keep going until we run out of material or the hospitals get what they need, he said.

In the Washington D.C. area, another high school senior helped to organize volunteers to make face shields with 3D printers. Jonah Docter-Loeb said the idea came to him as he watched news reports and heard that supplies of protective medical equipment were fast disappearing.

Doctor-Loeb is in his final year with the private Georgetown Day School. He decided to contact members of a local online community of 3D printers for help. He found a publicly available design for face shields that people could use to print from home.

In less than a month, his idea grew into an effort called Print to Protect, involving about 100 3D printers, mostly in individual homes. The group has been producing face shields for medical workers in D.C. area hospitals.

In Amarillo, Texas, another high school student is using his own 3D printer to make face shields and donate them to medical workers.

Adam Uszynski, who attends the iSchool Virtual Academy of Texas, says his idea came out of a discussion with his father, who is a doctor. Uszynski said he has already printed more than 150 face shields and has a goal to produce more than 1,000.

A report on his activities appeared on the website of Responsive Ed, a not-for-profit group that provides support to the school.

Im Bryan Lynn.

Bryan Lynn wrote this story for VOA Learning English, based on reports from The Associated Press, the University of Missouris College of Education, The Conservation and Responsive Ed. George Grow was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

three-dimensional  adj. appearing to have length, depth and width

shield  n. a piece of equipment used as protection

mask  n. a covering for the face

motivate  v. to make someone more interested in doing something

senior  n. a student in his or her final year in college of high school

roughly  adj. about
A masked Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) gestures to Rep. Carolyn D. Maloney (D-N.Y.) as they speak in the House of Representatives on April 23. (Associated Press)

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is hauling senators back to Washington this week even as the city reports record numbers of new coronavirus cases and the two parties are mired in a stalemate over the next bill to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Republicans have demanded that any new economic relief measure must shield businesses that reopen from liability against lawsuits brought by customers and employees. Democrats have balked, saying workers need more protection, not less. Their chief demand is $1 trillion for state and local governments burdened by burgeoning costs and plunging revenues.

I see that as being a really tough bridge to gap, Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), said in a phone interview. The fact that [Democrats] said its a nonstarter on the liability protection, I dont think thats probably a good way to throw the gauntlet out there to challenge us to do something on state and local governments.

With congressional leaders far apart and no serious negotiations underway, a new bill is likely weeks away. Further complicating matters, Republicans are newly reluctant to add to the nearly $2.8 trillion in coronavirus-related spending that Congress has already added to the deficit.

That hasnt stopped lawmakers from floating ideas for what theyd like to see in another bill. Progressives want an additional $2,000 monthly for every American over 16 who earns under $130,000 a year. Democrats are also hoping to rescue the foundering U.S. Postal Service and encourage vote-by-mail for this falls elections.

Among Republicans, Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah has floated the idea of providing bonus pay for healthcare and grocery workers. Republicans more broadly want some way of condemning China for its role in the outbreak. There is bipartisan support for redirecting the nations medical supply chain away from China.

The particulars provide much to fight over. But even the question of whether Congress should return to Washington  and whether members should wear masks  has become partisan.

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Bringing lawmakers back has been a clarion call for Republicans eager to reopen the economy and send the message that if healthcare workers and grocery clerks can do their jobs, so can their members of Congress. So the Republican-controlled Senate is returning, while the Democratic-led House  on its doctor's advice  is not.

This idea that were going to hunker down and shelter in place for an indefinite period of time is just inconsistent with the reality of us needing to do our job, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said.

The handful of Republicans in the Capitol recently for brief sessions mostly have not worn masks, while most Democrats have. Masks will be encouraged but not required in the Capitol this week.

Congress' Office of the Attending Physician has instructed senators to maintain social distance, limit the number of staff in their offices and self-monitor for symptoms. Republicans say those steps are enough to ensure the Senate's safety.

Senators will not be routinely tested for the virus. Concerned with those optics, President Trump on Saturday tweeted that there are enough Abbott-branded tests for senators to be tested  and for the House, too.

"There is tremendous CoronaVirus testing capacity," he wrote, adding that the same is true for "the House, which should return but isn't because of Crazy Nancy P."

With rare unanimity, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and McConnell (R-Ky.) in a statement jointly declined the offer for rapid-result coronavirus testing at the Capitol. Acknowledging that testing nationwide is still "continuing to scale up," they said that Congress would prefer to "keep directing resources to the front-line facilities where they can do the most good the most quickly."

Pelosi is not bringing the House back until May 11 at the earliest, based on the attending physician's advice.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who at 86 is the oldest senator, said McConnell should reconsider because bringing the Senate back is not worth the risk. Despite her opposition, Feinstein, who has been working out of her San Francisco home, plans to return to Washington for votes, according to a spokesman.

Feinstein, like many other Democrats, says Congress needs to work remotely, partly to set an example for the country. Democrats are also furious that McConnell is convening the Senate to further his personal goal of filling administration and judicial vacancies  not to respond to the coronavirus crisis.

On tap for the Senate are votes to confirm the inspector general of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other Trump nominees whom McConnells office says are mission-critical COVID-19 or national security nominees. The Senate is also expected to debate reauthorizing previously expired rules allowing the federal government to eavesdrop on citizens.

One Senate committee will consider a controversial nomination of a McConnell protege to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, while another will hear from White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci. House Democrats blasted the White House for allowing Fauci to testify in the GOP-controlled Senate but blocking him from appearing before one of their committees.

No coronavirus-related legislation is expected in the Senate this week, but negotiations might begin.

McConnell, having previously said that state and local governments should be allowed to declare bankruptcy, suggested last week that aid for them would get through the Senate only if Democrats agreed to the liability waivers for business owners. He called his condition a red line.

"The Senate is not interested in passing a bill that does not have liability protection, McConnell said in an interview on Fox News last week. Thats an integral part of our economy getting back to normal. Were getting back to work.

Democrats are dubious at best.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that allowing business owners to call workers back without adequately protecting them makes no sense.

Tort law already protects companies from frivolous lawsuits and Congress should leave it to judges and juries to decide if companies put employees and customers at risk, said Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance). I think it would be difficult for the House of Representatives to shield businesses from negligence, he said, especially if it results in people getting sick or getting killed.

States and local governments have already begun layoffs. Last month, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti warned that the economic downturn facing Los Angeles will be more painful than the 2008 recession, requiring cuts to government programs and the furlough of thousands of city employees.

Democrats argue that cities and states need the money to keep healthcare workers and first-responders employed. The next package must include robust funding for state and local governments to pay front-line workers, Pelosi said in a press call. Governors and mayors, Republicans and Democrats, are crying out for support.

Democrats also want to expand the number of cities that are eligible. The earlier CARES Act allowed cities with populations of 500,000 people or more to qualify for direct aid, but Democrats say that excludes many cities and should be expanded to those with at least 50,000 residents.

Orange County is the sixth most populous county in the country, Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine) said, and yet we don't have a single city thats over half a million people.

House Republicans have signaled a potential opening in the stalemate. Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) said Congress would need to limit how states and local governments can spend any aid, to ensure they don't use it to fix pension liabilities or other budget holes that existed before the COVID-19 pandemic.

"If I just sent that money directly to Sacramento, would Bakersfield or Porterville or Lancaster ever get that money they need for their first-responders or others? he said. Show me the challenge and the account, the financial risk of what took place during COVID, and let's put it appropriately to what we're dealing with.
Prison guards in Sri Lanka foiled an attempt by inmates to escape on Sunday after they used ropes and bed sheets to scale down the wall, leaving at least one dead, police said.

Seven prisoners tried to flee the penitentiary in Mahara on the outskirts of the capital Colombo, the police spokesman's office said.

They were confronted by guards after scaling down the prison walls, leading to a scuffle during which the guards fired in the air, police said. One inmate and two guards were injured and the inmate later died in a hospital, police said.

Sri Lankan prisons are highly congested with more than 26,000 inmates crowded in facilities with the capacity of 10,000.

In March, two inmates were killed and six others wounded when they fought with guards during a protest against new strict measures to control the spread of the coronavirus in prisons.

Last month, the government temporarily released on bail about 3,000 prisoners.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Deanna Berg has spent the past 28 years caring for patients and their families -- first as a certified nursing assistant and now as the administrator of a local long-term care facility, assuming nearly every role in between.

It makes it a lot easier when you can relate to everybody at all of the levels. You know, you've done all of those jobs, you've worked in those positions  you're willing to pitch in and help out, she said. It takes a whole army  everybody has such an important role.

The Tappen native became the administrator of the Baptist Health Care Center in Bismarck last March. She previously served four years as its director of nursing.

In high school, Berg said she was interested in pursuing a career in either accounting or nursing, but decided on the latter during a tour of the University of Jamestown.

The head of the nursing department there had actually said to me, 'I really think you should go into nursing. You should go be a CNA and see if you like that, and then consider nursing,' the Tappen High School graduate said. And so I did. I went into nursing and absolutely loved it.

Berg worked as a CNA at the Golden Manor nursing home in Steele while furthering her education at Bismarck State College and Medcenter One College of Nursing, from which she graduated in 1996. She also worked as a CNA during this time at what is now known as Bismarck's Sanford Health.

The registered nurse began her career at the Fargo VA Health Care System, fulfilling two years of service owed for a scholarship she received. While there, she helped implement its same day surgery.

My dad, Dale, is a veteran from Vietnam  being the daughter of a veteran, they just have a very big place in my heart, she said. I just have the utmost respect for all of our soldiers.

Berg then worked in the neonatal intensive care unit at Medcenter One in Bismarck for two years before moving back to Tappen, where she lives with her two sons, Bradyn, 18, and Dylan, 14. She signed on as treatment nurse at her old stomping ground -- the Golden Manor.

The RN also served as a minimum data set nurse, assistant director of nursing and director of nursing during her time in Steele, which ended due to the facility's closure in 2009. The Golden Manor reopened as a basic care facility two years later.

Berg began working in August 2008 as the director of nursing for the Medcenter One Mandan Living Center, which was in the process of moving its residents to a new facility on Sunset Drive. About seven years later, she accepted the director of nursing position at the Baptist Health Care Center, where she serves as administrator.

At that time in my career  when I heard there was a Christian facility that had an opening, it was where I felt my calling was and that I needed to be a part of serving the Lord in a Christian facility, Berg said, noting her mother, Shirley, almost died as the result of a brain bleed during this time. God has been very gracious to me, that's what I will say. The Lord has been very good to me.

Just is the one word Shelle Aberle used to describe Berg when nominating her for the honor. A local heath care panel selected the administrator as one of the top 10 nurses.

Deanna is a well-respected leader across the state in skilled nursing. Her steps from CNA to administrator show her growth and passion for eldercare and continuing education, and inspire others to just start somewhere and keep growing, Aberle wrote. She is an incredibly giving person.

Berg, who said she loves to see her residents smile, is a member of St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tappen. She volunteers with the local 4-H club, in which her sons participate in livestock judging. The family lives on a farm on the edge of town, two houses down from Berg's parents.

My mom and dad were instrumental in helping me with my children so I could pursue my career  without them helping, I wouldn't have been able to get to where I am today, she said. I feel very blessed.

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Jamal Rushdy has been the CEO of Collagen Solutions plc (LON:COS) since 2016. First, this article will compare CEO compensation with compensation at similar sized companies. Next, we'll consider growth that the business demonstrates. And finally - as a second measure of performance - we will look at the returns shareholders have received over the last few years. This method should give us information to assess how appropriately the company pays the CEO.

Check out our latest analysis for Collagen Solutions

How Does Jamal Rushdy's Compensation Compare With Similar Sized Companies?

At the time of writing, our data says that Collagen Solutions plc has a market cap of UK9.5m, and reported total annual CEO compensation of UK244k for the year to March 2019. Notably, the salary of UK236k is the vast majority of the CEO compensation. We examined a group of similar sized companies, with market capitalizations of below UK160m. The median CEO total compensation in that group is UK267k.

Now let's take a look at the pay mix on an industry and company level to gain a better understanding of where Collagen Solutions stands. Talking in terms of the sector, salary represented approximately 68% of total compensation out of all the companies we analysed, while other remuneration made up 32% of the pie. Collagen Solutions has gone down a largely traditional route, paying Jamal Rushdy a high salary, giving it preference as a compensation method to non-salary benefits.

So Jamal Rushdy receives a similar amount to the median CEO pay, amongst the companies we looked at. While this data point isn't particularly informative alone, it gains more meaning when considered with business performance. The graphic below shows how CEO compensation at Collagen Solutions has changed from year to year.

AIM:COS CEO Compensation May 3rd 2020

Is Collagen Solutions plc Growing?

On average over the last three years, Collagen Solutions plc has seen earnings per share (EPS) move in a favourable direction by 23% each year (using a line of best fit). In the last year, its revenue is up 19%.

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This shows that the company has improved itself over the last few years. Good news for shareholders. This sort of respectable year-on-year revenue growth is often seen at a healthy, growing business. Although we don't have analyst forecasts you might want to assess this data-rich visualization of earnings, revenue and cash flow.

Has Collagen Solutions plc Been A Good Investment?

Since shareholders would have lost about 61% over three years, some Collagen Solutions plc shareholders would surely be feeling negative emotions. So shareholders would probably think the company shouldn't be too generous with CEO compensation.

In Summary...

Jamal Rushdy is paid around the same as most CEOs of similar size companies.

We think that the EPS growth is very pleasing, but it's disappointing to see negative shareholder returns over three years. We'd be surprised if shareholders want to see a pay rise for the CEO, but we'd stop short of calling their pay too generous. On another note, Collagen Solutions has 5 warning signs (and 1 which is concerning) we think you should know about.

Important note: Collagen Solutions may not be the best stock to buy. You might find something better in this list of interesting companies with high ROE and low debt.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.